chapter xxv

of _Genesis_ contains the allegorical history of the birth of the Fifth Race.

Says the _Siphra Dtzenioutha_:

And the Kings of ancient days died and their chiefs [crowns] were found no more.

And the _Zohar_ states:

The Head of a nation that has not been formed at the beginning in the likeness of the White Head: its people is not from this Form.... Before it [the White Head, the Fifth Race or Ancient of the Ancients] arranged itself in its [own, or present] Form ... all Worlds have been destroyed; therefore it is written: and Bela, the Son of Beor, reigned in Edom [_Gen._, xxxvi. Here the “Worlds” stand for Races]. And he [such or another King of Edom] died, and another reigned in his stead.

No Kabalist who has hitherto treated of the symbolism and allegory hidden under these “Kings of Edom” seems to have perceived more than one aspect of them. They are neither the “worlds that were destroyed,” nor the “Kings that died”—alone; but both, and much more, to treat of which there is no space at present. Therefore, leaving the mystic parables of the _Zohar_, we will return to the hard facts of materialistic Science; first, however, citing a few from the long list of great thinkers who have believed in the plurality of inhabited Worlds in general, and in Worlds that preceded our own. These are, the great mathematicians Leibnitz and Bernouilli, Sir Isaac Newton himself, as may be read in his _Optics_; Buffon, the Naturalist; Condillac, the Sceptic; Bailly, Lavater, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and, as a contrast to the two last named—suspected at least of Mysticism—Diderot and most of the writers of the _Encyclopædia_. Following these come Kant, the founder of modern Philosophy; the poet Philosophers, Goethe, Krause, Schelling; and many Astronomers, from Bode, Fergusson and Herschel, to Lalande and Laplace, with their many disciples in more recent years.

A brilliant list of honoured names indeed; but the facts of physical Astronomy speak even more strongly than these names in favour of the presence of life, of even organized life, on other Planets. Thus in four meteorites which fell respectively at Alais in France, in the Cape of Good Hope, in Hungary, and again in France, on analysis, there was found graphite, a form of carbon known to be invariably associated with organic life on this Earth of ours. And that the presence of this carbon is not due to any action occurring within our atmosphere is shown by the fact that carbon has been found in the very centre of a meteorite; while in one which fell at Argueil, in the south of France, in 1857, there was found water and turf, the latter being always formed by the decomposition of vegetable substances.

And further, examining the astronomical conditions of the other Planets, it is easy to show that several are far better adapted for the development of life and intelligence—even under the conditions with which men are acquainted—than is our Earth. For instance, on the Planet Jupiter the seasons, instead of varying between wide limits as do ours, change by almost imperceptible degrees, and last twelve times as long as ours. Owing to the inclination of its axis the seasons on Jupiter are due almost entirely to the eccentricity of its orbit, and hence change slowly and regularly. We shall be told, that no life is possible on Jupiter, as it is in an incandescent state. But not all Astronomers agree with this. For instance, what we state is declared by M. Flammarion; and _he_ ought to know.

On the other hand Venus would be less adapted for human life such as exists on Earth, since its seasons are more extreme and its changes of temperature more sudden; though it is curious that the duration of the day is nearly the same on the four inner planets, Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars.

On Mercury, the Sun’s heat and light are seven times what they are on the Earth, and Astronomy teaches that it is enveloped in a very dense atmosphere. And as we see that life appears more active on Earth in proportion to the light and heat of the Sun, it would seem more than probable that its intensity is far, far greater on Mercury than here.

Venus, like Mercury, has a very dense atmosphere, as also has Mars, and the snows which cover their poles, the clouds which hide their surface, the geographical configuration of their seas and continents, the variations of seasons and climates, are all closely analogous—at least to the eye of the physical Astronomer. But such facts and the considerations to which they give rise have reference only to the possibility of the existence on these Planets of human life as known on Earth. That some forms of life such as we know are _possible_ on these Planets, has been long since abundantly demonstrated, and it seems perfectly useless to go into detailed questions of the physiology, etc., of these hypothetical inhabitants, since, after all, the reader can arrive only at an imaginary extension of his familiar surroundings. It is better to rest content with the three conclusions which M. Flammarion, whom we have so largely quoted, formulates as rigorous and exact deductions from the known _facts_ and laws of Science.

i. The various forces which were active in the beginning of evolution gave birth to a great variety of beings on the several worlds; both in the organic and inorganic kingdoms.

ii. The animated beings were constituted from the first according to forms and organisms in correlation with the physiological state of each inhabited globe.

iii. The humanities of other worlds differ from us, as much in their inner organization as in their external physical type.

Finally the reader who may be disposed to question the validity of these conclusions as being opposed to the _Bible_, may be referred to an Appendix in M. Flammarion’s work dealing in detail with this question, since in a work like the present it seems unnecessary to point out the logical absurdity of those churchmen who deny the plurality of worlds on the ground of biblical authority.

In this connection we may well recall those days when the burning zeal of the Primitive Church opposed the doctrine of the Earth’s rotundity, on the ground that the nations at the Antipodes would be outside the pale of salvation; and again, we may remember how long it took for a nascent Science to break down the idea of a solid firmament, in the grooves of which the stars moved for the special edification of terrestrial humanity.

The theory of the Earth’s rotation was met by a like opposition—even to the martyrdom of its discoverers—because, besides depriving our orb of its dignified central position in space, the theory produced an appalling confusion of ideas as to the Ascension—the terms “up” and “down” being proved to be merely relative, thus complicating not a little the question of the precise locality of Heaven!(1663)

According to the best modern calculations, there are no less than 500,000,000 Stars of various magnitudes, within the range of the best telescopes. As to the distances between them, they are incalculable. Is, then, our microscopical Earth—a “grain of sand on an infinite sea‐ shore”—the only centre of intelligent life? Our own Sun, itself 1,300,000 times larger than our Planet, sinks into insignificance beside the giant Sun, Sirius, and the latter in its turn is dwarfed by other luminaries in infinite Space. The self‐centred conception of Jehovah as the special guardian of a small and obscure semi‐nomadic tribe, is tolerable beside that which confines sentient existence to our microscopical Globe. The primary reasons were without doubt: (_a_) astronomical ignorance on the part of the early Christians, coupled with an exaggerated appreciation of man’s own importance—a crude form of selfishness; and (_b_) the dread that, if the hypothesis of millions of other inhabited Globes were accepted, the crushing rejoinder would ensue: “Was there then a Revelation to each World?”—involving the idea of the Son of God eternally “going the rounds,” as it were. Happily it is now unnecessary to waste time and energy in proving the possibility of the existence of such Worlds. All intelligent persons admit it. That which now remains to be demonstrated is, that if it is once proven that there are inhabited Worlds besides our own, with humanities entirely different from each other as from our own—as maintained in the Occult Sciences—then the evolution of the preceding Races is half proved. For where is that Physicist or Geologist who is prepared to maintain that the Earth has not changed scores of times, in the millions of years which have elapsed in the course of its existence; and that changing its “skin,” as it is called in Occultism, the Earth has not had each time her special Humanities adapted to such atmospheric and climatic conditions as were entailed by such change? And if so, why should not our preceding four and entirely different Mankinds have existed and thrived before our Adamic Fifth Root Race?

Before closing our debate, however, we have to examine the so‐called organic evolution more closely. Let us search well and see whether it is quite impossible to make our Occult data and chronology agree—up to a certain point—with those of Science.

C. Supplementary Remarks On Esoteric Geological Chronology.

It seems possible to calculate the approximate duration at any rate of the geological periods from the combined data of Science and Occultism now before us. Geology is, of course, able to determine one thing with almost certainty—the thickness of the several deposits. Now, it also stands to reason that the time required for the deposition of any stratum on a sea‐ bottom must bear a strict proportion to the thickness of the mass thus formed. Doubtless the _rate_ of the erosion of land, and of the sorting out of matter on to ocean beds, has varied from age to age, and cataclysmic changes of various kinds have broken the “uniformity” of ordinary geological processes. Provided, then, that we have some definite numerical basis on which to work, our task is rendered less difficult than it might at first sight appear. Making due allowance for variations in the rate of deposit, Professor Lefèvre gives us the relative figures which sum up geological time. He does not attempt to calculate the lapse of years since the first bed of the Laurentian rocks was deposited, but postulating that time as _x_, he presents us with the relative proportions in which the various periods stand to it. Let us premise our estimate by stating that, roughly speaking, the Primordial rocks are 70,000 ft., the Primary 42,000 ft., the Secondary 15,000 ft., the Tertiary 5,000 ft., and the Quaternary some 500 ft. in thickness:

Dividing into a hundred parts the time, _whatever its actual length_, that has passed since the dawn of life on this earth [lower Laurentian strata], we shall be led to attribute to the Primordial age more than half of the whole duration, say 53.5; to the Primary 32.2; to the Secondary 11.5; to the Tertiary 2.3; to the Quaternary 0.5 or one‐half per cent.(1664)

Now, as it is certain, on Occult data, that the time which has elapsed since the first sedimentary deposits is 320,000,000 years, we are able to construct the following table:

ROUGH APPROXIMATIONS OF LENGTH OF GEOLOGICAL PERIODS IN YEARS.

Primordial (Laurentian, Cambrian, Silurian): 171,200,000.

Primary (Devonian, Coal, Permian): 103,040,000.

Secondary (Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous): 36,800,000.

Tertiary (Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene): 7,360,000.

Quaternary: 1,600,000.(1665)

Such estimates harmonize with the statements of Esoteric Ethnology in almost every particular. The Tertiary Atlantean part‐cycle, from the “apex of glory” of that Race in the early Eocene to the great Mid‐Miocene cataclysm, would appear to have lasted some three‐and‐a‐half to four million years. If the duration of the Quaternary is not, as seems likely, rather over‐estimated, the sinking of Ruta and Daitya would be Post‐ Tertiary. It is probable that the results here given allow somewhat too long a period to both the Tertiary and Quaternary, as the Third Race goes very far back into the Secondary age. Nevertheless, the figures are most suggestive.

But the argument from geological evidence being in favour of only 100,000,000 years, let us compare our claims and teachings with those of exact Science.

Mr. Edward Clodd,(1666) in referring to M. de Mortillet’s work _Matériaux pour l’Histoire de l’Homme_, which places man in the Mid‐Miocene period,(1667) remarks that:

It would be in defiance of all that the doctrine of evolution teaches, and moreover win no support from believers in special creation and the fixity of species, to seek for so highly specialized a mammalian as man at an early stage in the life‐ history of the globe.

To this, one could answer: (_a_) the doctrine of evolution, as inaugurated by Darwin and developed by later evolutionists, is not only the reverse of infallible, but it is repudiated by several great men of Science, _e.g._, de Quatrefages, in France, Dr. Weismann, an ex‐evolutionist in Germany, and many others, the ranks of the Anti‐Darwinists growing stronger with every year;(1668) and (_b_) truth to be worthy of its name, and remain truth and fact, hardly needs to beg for support from any class or sect. For were it to win support from believers in special creation, it would never gain the favour of the evolutionists, and _vice versâ_. Truth must rest upon its own firm foundation of facts, and take its chance of recognition, when every prejudice in the way is disposed of. Though the question has been already fully considered in its main aspect, it is, nevertheless, advisable to combat every so‐called “scientific” objection as we go along, when making what are regarded as heretical and anti‐ scientific statements.

Let us briefly glance at the divergencies between orthodox and Esoteric Science, on the question of the age of the globe and of man. With the two respective synchronistic tables before him, the reader will be enabled to see at a glance the importance of these divergencies; and to perceive, at the same time, that it is not impossible—nay, it is most likely—that further discoveries in Geology and the finding of fossil remains of man will force Science to confess that it is Esoteric Philosophy which is right after all, or, at any rate, nearer to the truth.

PARALLELISM OF LIFE.

SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES: Science divides the period of the Globe’s history, since the beginning of life on Earth (or the Azoic age), into five main divisions or periods, according to Hæckel.(1669)

ESOTERIC THEORY: Leaving the classification of the geological periods to Western Science, Esoteric Philosophy divides only the Life‐periods on the Globe. In the present Manvantara the actual period is separated into seven Kalpas and seven great human Races. Its first Kalpa, answering to the Primordial Epoch is the age of the Primeval.

SCIENTIFIC: PRIMORDIAL EPOCH: Laurentian, Cambrian, Silurian. The Primordial epoch, Science tells us, is by no means devoid of vegetable and animal life. In the Laurentian deposits are found specimens of the Eozoon canadense—a chambered shell. In the Silurian are discovered sea‐weeds (algæ), molluscs, crustacea, and lower marine organisms, also the first trace of fishes. The Primordial epoch shows algæ, molluscs, crustacea, polyps, and marine organisms, etc. Science teaches, therefore, that marine life was present from the very beginnings of time, leaving us, however, to speculate for ourselves as to _how_ life appeared on Earth. If it rejects the biblical “creation” (as we do), why does it not give us another, approximately plausible hypothesis?

ESOTERIC: “PRIMEVAL”(1670): Devas or Divine Men, the “Creators” and Progenitors.(1671) The Esoteric Philosophy agrees with the statement made by Science (see preceding), demurring, however, to one particular. The 300,000,000 years of vegetable life (see “Brâhmanical Chronology”) preceded the “Divine Men,” or Progenitors. Also, no teaching denies that there were traces of life _within_ the Earth, besides the Eozoon canadense, in the Primordial Epoch. Only, whereas the said vegetation belonged to this Round, the zoological relics now found in the Laurentian, Cambrian, and Silurian systems, so called, are the _relics_ of the Third Round. At first astral like the rest, they consolidated and materialized _pari passu_ with the new vegetation.

SCIENTIFIC: PRIMARY: Devonian,(1672) Coal, Permian. “Fern‐forests, sigillaria, coniferæ, fishes, first trace of reptiles.” Thus saith Modern Science.

ESOTERIC: “PRIMARY”: Divine Progenitors (Secondary Groups), and the two and a half Races. The Esoteric Doctrine repeats that which was said above. These are all relics of the preceding Round.(1673)

Once, however, the prototypes are projected out of the Astral Envelope of the Earth, an indefinite amount of modification ensues.

SCIENTIFIC: SECONDARY: Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous. This is the age of Reptiles, of the gigantic megalosauri, ichthyosauri, plesiosauri, etc. Science denies the presence of man in this period. But it has still to explain how men came to know of these monsters and describe them _before_ the age of Cuvier! The old annals of China, India, Egypt, and even of Judea are full of them, as demonstrated elsewhere. In this period also appear the first marsupial mammals(1674)—insectivorous, carnivorous, phytophagous; and, as Prof. Owen thinks, a herbiferous hoofed mammal.

Science does not admit the appearance of man before _the close_ of the Tertiary period.(1675) Why? Because man has to be shown younger than the higher mammals. But Esoteric Philosophy teaches us the reverse. And as Science is quite unable to come to anything like an approximate conclusion as to the age of man, or even as to the geological periods, the Occult teaching is, therefore, more logical and reasonable, even if accepted only as a hypothesis.

ESOTERIC: “SECONDARY”: According to every calculation the Third Race had already made its appearance, as during the Triassic there were already a few mammals, and it must have separated before their appearance.

This, then, is the age of the Third Race, in which the origins of the early Fourth may be perhaps also discoverable. We are, however, here left entirely to conjecture, as no definite data are yet given out by the Initiates.

The analogy is but a poor one, still it may be argued that, as the early mammalia and pre‐mammalia are shown in their evolution merging from one kind into a higher one, anatomically, so are the human races in their procreative processes. A parallel might certainly be found between the monotremata, didelphia (or marsupialia) and the placental mammals, divided in their turn into three orders(1676) like the First, Second, and Third Root‐Races of men.(1677) But this would require more space than can be now allotted to the subject.

SCIENTIFIC: TERTIARY(1678): Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene. No man is yet allowed to have lived during this period.

Says Mr. E. Clodd, in _Knowledge_: “Although the placental mammals and the order of primates to which man is related, appear in Tertiary times, and the climate, tropical in the Eocene age, warm in the Miocene, and temperate in the Pliocene, was favourable to his presence, the proofs of his existence in Europe before the close of the Tertiary epoch ... are not generally accepted here.”

ESOTERIC: “TERTIARY”: The Third Race has now almost utterly disappeared, carried away by the fearful geological cataclysms of the Secondary age, leaving behind it but a few hybrid races.

The Fourth, born millions of years before(1679) the said cataclysm took place, perished during the Miocene period,(1680) when the Fifth (our Âryan Race) had had one million years of independent existence.(1681) How much older it is from its origin—who knows? As the “historical” period began with the Indian Âryans, with their _Vedas_ for their multitudes,(1682) and far earlier in the Esoteric Records, it is useless to establish here any parallels.

Geology has now divided the periods and placed man in the Quaternary.

SCIENTIFIC: QUATERNARY: Palæolithic Man, Neolithic Man, Historical Period.

ESOTERIC: “QUATERNARY”: If the Quaternary period is allowed 1,500,000 years, then only does our Fifth Race belong to it.

Yet—_mirabile dictu_—while the non‐cannibal Palæolithic man, who must have certainly antedated cannibal Neolithic man by hundreds of thousands of years,(1683) is shown to be a remarkable artist, Neolithic man is made out to be almost an abject savage, his lake dwellings notwithstanding.(1684) For see what a learned Geologist, Mr. Charles Gould, tells the reader in his _Mythical Monsters_:

Palæolithic men were unacquainted with pottery and the art of weaving, and apparently had no domesticated animals or system of cultivation; but the Neolithic lake‐dwellers of Switzerland had looms, pottery, cereals, sheep, horses, etc. Implements of horn, bone, and wood were in common use among both races, but those of the older are frequently distinguished by their being sculptured with great ability, or ornamented with life‐like engravings of the various animals living at the period; whereas there appears to have been a marked absence of any similar artistic ability(1685) on the part of Neolithic man.(1686)

Let us give the reasons for this.

(1) The oldest fossil man, the primitive cave‐men of the old Palæolithic period, and of the Pre‐Glacial period (of whatever length, and however far back), is always the same genus man, and there are no fossil remains proving for him

What the Hipparion and Anchitherium have proved for the genus horse—that is, gradual progressive specialization from a simple ancestral type to more complex existing forms.(1687)

(2) As to the so‐called Palæolithic hatchets:

When placed side by side with the rudest forms of stone hatchets actually used by the Australian and other savages, it is difficult to detect any difference.(1688)

This goes to prove that there have been savages _at all times_; and the inference would be that there might have been civilized people in those days as well, cultured nations contemporary with those rude savages. We see such a thing in Egypt 7,000 years ago.

(3) An obstacle which is the direct consequence of the two preceding: Man, if no older than the Palæolithic period, could not possibly have had the actual time necessary for his transformation from the “missing link” into what he is known to have been even during that remote geological time, _i.e._, even _a finer specimen of manhood than many of the now existing races_.

The above lends itself naturally to the following syllogism: (1) The _primitive_ man (known to Science) was, in some respects, even a finer man of his genus than he is now. (2) The earliest monkey known, the lemur, was _less_ anthropoid than the modern pithecoid species. (3) Conclusion: Even though a _missing link_ were found, the balance of evidence would remain more in favour of the ape _being a degenerated man_, made dumb by some fortuitous circumstances,(1689) than in favour of the descent of man from a pithecoid ancestor. The theory cuts both ways.

On the other hand, if the existence of Atlantis be accepted, and the statement be believed that in the Eocene age—

Even in its very first part, the great cycle of the Fourth Race men, the Atlanteans, had already reached its highest point,(1690)

then some of the present difficulties of Science might easily be made to disappear. The rude workmanship of the Palæolithic tools proves nothing against the idea that, side by side with their makers, there lived nations highly civilized. We are told that:

Only a very small portion of the earth’s surface has been explored, and of this a very small portion consists of ancient land surfaces or fresh water formations, where alone we can expect to meet with traces of the higher forms of animal life. And even these have been so imperfectly explored, that where we now meet with thousands and tens of thousands of undoubted human remains lying almost under our feet, it is only within the last thirty years that their existence has even been suspected.(1691)

It is very suggestive also that along with the rude hatchets of the lowest savage, explorers meet with specimens of workmanship of such artistic merit as could hardly be found, or expected, in a modern peasant belonging to any European country—unless in exceptional cases. The “portrait” of the “Reindeer Feeding,” from the Thayngin grotto in Switzerland, and those of the man running, with two horses’ heads sketched close to him—a work of the Reindeer period, _i.e._, at least 50,000 years ago—are pronounced by Mr. Laing to be not only exceedingly well done, but the former, the “Reindeer Feeding,” is described as one that “would do credit to any modern animal painter”—by no means exaggerated praise, as anyone may see, by glancing at the sketch given below from Mr. Gould’s work. Now, since we have our greatest painters of Europe side by side with the modern Esquimaux, who also have a tendency, like their Palæolithic ancestors of the Reindeer period, the rude and savage human species, to be constantly drawing with the point of their knives sketches of animals, scenes of the chase, etc., why could not the same have happened in those days? Compared with the specimens of Egyptian drawing and sketching—7,000 years ago—the “earliest portraits” of men, horses’ heads, and reindeer, made 50,000 years ago, _are certainly superior_. Nevertheless, the Egyptians of those periods are known to have been a highly civilized nation, whereas the Palæolithic men are called _savages_ of the lower type. This is a small matter seemingly, yet it is extremely suggestive as showing how every new geological discovery is made to fit in with current theories, instead of fitting the theories to include the discovery. Yes; Mr. Huxley is right in saying, “Time will show.” It will, and it must vindicate Occultism.

Meanwhile, the most uncompromising Materialists are driven by necessity into the most Occult‐like admissions. Strange to say, it is the most materialistic—those of the German school—who, with regard to _physical_ development, come the nearest to the teachings of the Occultists. Thus, Professor Baumgärtner believes that:

The germs for the higher animals could only be the eggs of the lower animals; ... besides the advance of the vegetable and animal world in development, there occurred in that period the formation of _new original germs_ [which formed the basis of new metamorphoses, etc.] ... the first men who proceeded from the germs of animals beneath them, lived first in a larva state.

Just so; in a larva state, we say too, only from no “animal” germ; and that larva was the soulless astral form of the pre‐physical Races. And we believe, as the German professor does, with several other men of Science in Europe now, that the human races—

Have not descended from one pair, but appeared immediately in numerous races.(1692)

Therefore, when we read _Force and Matter_, and find that Emperor of Materialists, Büchner, repeating after Manu and Hermes, that:

Imperceptibly the plant glides into the animal, the animal into the man(1693)

—we need only add “and man into a spirit,” to complete the kabalistic axiom. The more so, since we read the following admission:

Evolved by spontaneous generation ... that whole rich and multiform organic world ... has developed itself progressively, in the course of endless periods of time, by the aid of natural phenomena.(1694)

The whole difference lies in this: Modern Science places her materialistic theory of primordial germs on Earth, and the _last germ_ of life on this Globe, of man, and everything else, between _two voids_. Whence the _first_ germ, if both spontaneous generation and the interference of external forces, are absolutely rejected now? Germs of organic life, we are told, by Sir William Thompson, came to our Earth in some meteor. This helps in no way, and only shifts the difficulty from this Earth to the supposed meteor.

These are our agreements and disagreements with Science. About the “endless periods” we are, of course, at one even with materialistic speculation; for we believe in Evolution, though on different lines. Professor Huxley very wisely says:

If any form of the doctrine of progressive development is correct, we must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of the antiquity of man.(1695)

But when we are told that this man is a product of the natural forces inherent _in_ Matter—Force, according to modern views, being but a quality of Matter, a “mode of motion,” etc.—and when we find Sir William Thompson repeating in 1885 what was asserted by Büchner and his school thirty years ago, we fear all our reverence for real Science is vanishing into thin air! One can hardly help thinking that Materialism is, in certain cases, a _disease_. For when men of Science, in the face of magnetic phenomena and the attraction of iron particles through insulating substances, like glass, maintain that the said attraction is due to “molecular motion,” or to the “rotation of the molecules of the magnet,” then, whether the teaching comes from a “credulous” Theosophist innocent of any notion of Physics, or from an eminent man of Science, it is equally ridiculous. The individual who asserts such a theory in the teeth of _fact_, is only one more proof that: “When people have not a niche in their minds into which to shoot facts, so much the worse for the facts.”

At present the dispute between the spontaneous generationists and their opponents is at rest, having ended in the provisional victory of the latter. But even they are forced to admit, as Büchner did, and Messrs. Tyndall and Huxley still do—that spontaneous generation _must have occurred once_, under “special thermal conditions.” Virchow refuses even to argue the question; it _must_ have taken place some time in the history of our planet; and there’s an end of it. This seems to look more natural than Sir William Thompson’s hypothesis just quoted, that the germs of organic life fell on our Earth in some meteor; or the other “scientific” hypothesis coupled with the recently adopted belief that there exists _no_ “vital principle” whatever, but only vital phenomena, which can all be traced to the molecular forces of the original protoplasm. But this does not help Science to solve the still greater problem—the origin and the _descent_ of Man, for here is a still worse plaint and lamentation.

While we can trace the skeletons of Eocene mammals through several directions of specialization in succeeding Tertiary times, man presents the phenomenon of an _unspecialized_ skeleton which cannot fairly be connected with any of these lines.(1696)

The secret could be soon told, not only from the Esoteric but even from the standpoint of every religion the world over, without mentioning the Occultists. The “specialized skeleton” is sought for in the wrong place, where it can never be found. Scientists expect to discover it in the physical remains of man, in some pithecoid “missing link,” with a skull larger than that of the ape’s, and with a cranial capacity smaller than in man, instead of looking for that specialization in _the super‐physical essence of his inner astral constitution, which can hardly be excavated from any geological strata_! Such a tenacious, hopeful clinging to a self‐ degrading theory is the most wonderful feature of the day.

Meanwhile, there are specimens of engravings made by Palæolithic “savages”: Palæolithic meaning the “earlier Stone‐age” man, one supposed to have been as savage and brutal as the brutes he lived with. Leaving the modern South Sea islander, or even any Asiatic race, aside, we defy any grown‐up schoolboy, or even a European youth, one who has never studied drawing, to execute such an engraving or even a pencil sketch as good. Here we have the true artistic _raccourci_, and correct lights and shadows without any _plane_ model before the artist, who copied direct from nature, thus exhibiting a knowledge of anatomy and proportion. The artist who engraved this reindeer belonged, we are asked to believe, to the primitive “semi‐animal” savages (contemporaneous with the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros), whom some over‐zealous Evolutionists once sought to picture to us as distinct approximations to the type of their hypothetical “pithecoid man”!

This engraved antler proves as eloquently as any fact can do, that the evolution of the Races has ever proceeded in a series of rises and falls, that man is, perhaps, as old as incrustated Earth, and—if we can call his divine ancestor “man”—is far older still.

Even de Mortillet himself seems to experience a vague distrust of the conclusions of modern Archæologists, when he writes:

The pre‐historic is a new science, far, very far, from having said its last word.(1697)

According to Lyell, one of the highest authorities on the subject, and the “father” of Geology:

The expectation of always meeting with a lower type of human skull, the older the formation in which it occurs, _is based on the theory of progressive development_, and it _may_ prove to be sound; nevertheless we must remember that as yet _we have no distinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in chronological order that of the higher races_.(1698)

Nor has such evidence been found to this day. Science is thus offering for sale the skin of a bear, which has hitherto never been seen by mortal eye!

This concession of Lyell’s reads most suggestively with the subjoined utterance of Professor Max Müller, whose attack on Darwinian Anthropology from the standpoint of language has, by the way, never been satisfactorily answered:

What do we know of savage tribes beyond the last chapter of their history? [Compare this with the Esoteric view of the Australians, Bushmen, as well as of Palæolithic European man, the Atlantean offshoots retaining a relic of a lost culture, which throve when the parent Root‐Race was in its prime.] Do we ever get an insight into their antecedents? Can we ever understand what after all is everywhere the most important and the most instructive lesson to learn—how they have come to be what they are?... Their language proves, indeed, that these so‐called heathens, with their complicated systems of mythology, their artificial customs, their unintelligible whims and savageries, are not the creatures of to‐ day or yesterday. Unless we admit a special creation for these savages, they must be as old as the Hindûs, the Greeks and Romans [far older] ... They may have passed through ever so many vicissitudes, and what we consider as primitive, may be, for all we know, a relapse into savagery or a corruption of something that was more rational and intelligible in former stages.(1699)

Professor George Rawlinson, M.A., remarks:

“The primeval savage” is a familiar term in modern literature, but there is no evidence that the primeval savage ever existed. Rather _all the evidence looks the other way_.(1700)

In his _Origin of Nations_, he rightly adds:

_The mythical traditions of almost all nations place at the beginning of human history a time of happiness and perfection_, a “golden age” which has no features of savagery or barbarism, but many of civilization and refinement.(1701)

How is the modern Evolutionist to meet this consensus of evidence?

We repeat the question asked in _Isis Unveiled_:

Does the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that there were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized? When the present population of the Earth has disappeared, and some Archæologist belonging to the “coming race” of the distant future shall excavate the domestic implements of one of our Indian or Andaman Island tribes, will he be justified in concluding that mankind in the nineteenth century was “just emerging from the Stone age”?(1702)

Another strange inconsistency in scientific theories is that Neolithic man is shown as being far more of a primitive savage than Palæolithic. Either Lubbock’s _Pre‐historic Man_, or Evans’ _Ancient Stone Implements_ must be at fault, or—both. For this is what we learn from these works and others:

(1) As we pass from Neolithic to Palæolithic man, the stone implements become rude lumbering makeshifts, instead of gracefully shaped and polished instruments. Pottery, and other useful arts disappear as we descend the scale. And yet the latter could engrave such a reindeer!

(2) Palæolithic man lived in caves which he shared with hyænas and lions,(1703) whereas Neolithic man dwelt in lake‐villages and buildings.

Every one who has followed even superficially the geological discoveries of our day, knows that a gradual improvement in workmanship is found, from the clumsy chipping and rude chopping of the early Palæolithic hatchets, to the relatively graceful stone celts of that part of the Neolithic period immediately preceding the use of metals. But this is _in Europe_, only a few portions of which were barely rising from the waters in the days of the highest Atlantean civilization. There were rude savages and highly civilized people then, as there are now. If 50,000 years hence, pigmy Bushmen are exhumed from some African cavern together with far earlier pigmy elephants, such as were found in the cave deposits of Malta by Milne Edwards, will that be a reason for maintaining that in our age all men and all elephants were pigmies? Or if the weapons of the Veddhas of Ceylon are found, will our descendants be justified in setting us all down as Palæolithic savages? All the articles which Geologists now excavate in Europe can certainly never date earlier than the close of the Eocene age, since the lands of Europe were not even above water before that period. Nor can what we have said be in the least invalidated by theorists telling us that these quaint sketches of animals and men by Palæolithic man, were executed only toward the close of the Reindeer period—for this explanation would be a very lame one indeed, in view of the Geologists’ ignorance of even the approximate duration of periods.

The Esoteric Doctrine teaches distinctly the dogma of the risings and falls of civilization; and now we learn that:

It is a remarkable fact that cannibalism seems to have become more frequent as man advanced in civilization, and that while its traces are frequent in Neolithic times they become very scarce or altogether disappear in the age of the mammoth and the reindeer....(1704)

—another evidence of the cyclic law and the truth of our teachings. Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship died out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African negroes, etc.) gradually brought the worship back. The _Vedas_ countenance no idols; all the modern Hindû writings do.

In the early Egyptian tombs, and in the remains of the pre‐ historic cities excavated by Dr. Schliemann, images of owl‐ and ox‐headed goddesses, and other symbolical figures or idols, are found in abundance. But when we ascend into Neolithic times, such idols are no longer found, or, if found, it is so rarely that archæologists still dispute as to their existence ... the only ones which may be said with some certainty to have been idols are one or two discovered by M. de Braye in some artificial caves of the Neolithic period ... which appear to be intended for female figures of life size.(1705)

And these may have been simply statues. Anyhow, all this is one among the many proofs of the cyclic rise and fall of civilization and religion. The fact that no traces of human relics or skeletons are so far found beyond Post‐Tertiary or Quaternary times—though Abbé Bourgeois’ flints may serve as a warning(1706)—seems to point to the truth of another Esoteric statement, which runs thus:

_Seek for the remains of thy forefathers in the high places. The vales have grown into mountains and the mountains have crumbled to the bottom of the seas._

Fourth Race mankind, thinned after the last cataclysm by two‐thirds of its population, instead of settling on the new continents and islands that _reäppeared_—while their predecessors formed the floors of new oceans—deserted that which is now Europe and parts of Asia and Africa for the summits of gigantic mountains, the seas that surrounded some of the latter having since “retreated” and made room for the table lands of Central Asia.

The most interesting example of this progressive march is perhaps afforded by the celebrated Kent’s Cavern at Torquay. In that strange recess, excavated by water out of the Devonian limestone, we find a most curious record preserved for us in the geological memoirs of the Earth. Under the blocks of limestone, which heaped the floor of the cavern, were discovered, embedded in a deposit of black earth, many implements of the Neolithic period of _fairly excellent workmanship_, with a few fragments of pottery—possibly traceable to the era of the Roman colonization. There is no trace of Palæolithic man here. No flints or traces of the extinct animals of the Quaternary period. When, however, we penetrate still deeper through the dense layer of stalagmite beneath the black mould into the red earth, which, of course, itself once formed the pavement of the retreat, things assume a very different aspect. _Not one implement_ fit to bear comparison with the _finely‐chipped weapons found in the overlying stratum_ is to be seen; only a host of the rude and lumbering little hatchets (with which the monstrous giants of the animal world were subdued and killed by little man, we have to think?) and scrapers of the Palæolithic age, mixed up confusedly with the bones of species now either extinct or emigrated, driven away by change of climate. It is the artificer of these ugly little hatchets, you see, who sculptured the reindeer over the brook, on the antler as shown above! In all cases we meet with the same evidence that, from historic to Neolithic and from Neolithic to Palæolithic man, things slope downwards on an inclined plane from the rudiments of civilization to the most abject barbarism—_in Europe again_. We are made also to face the “Mammoth age”—the extreme or earliest division of the Palæolithic age—in which the great rudeness of implements reaches its maximum, and the brutal (?) appearance of contemporary skulls, such as the Neanderthal, points to a very low type of humanity. But they may sometimes point also to something else; to a race of men quite distinct from our (Fifth Race) Humanity.

As said by an Anthropologist in _Modern Thought_:

The theory, scientifically based or not, of Peyrère may be considered to be equivalent to that which divided man in two species. Broca, Virey, and a number of the French anthropologists have recognized that the lower race of man, comprising the Australian, Tasmanian, and Negro race, excluding the Kaffirs and the Northern Africans, _should be placed apart_. The fact that in this species, or rather sub‐species, the third lower molars are usually larger than the second, and the squamosal and frontal bones are generally united by suture, places the _Homo afer_ on the level of being as good a distinct species as many of the kinds of finches. I shall abstain on the present occasion from mentioning the facts of hybridity, whereon the late Professor Broca has so exhaustively commented. The history, in the past ages of the world, of this race is peculiar. It has _never originated a system of architecture or a religion of its own_.(1707)

It is peculiar, indeed, as we have shown in the case of the Tasmanians. However it may be, _fossil_ man in Europe can neither prove nor disprove the antiquity of man on this Earth, nor the age of his earliest civilizations.

It is time that the Occultists should disregard any attempts to laugh at them, scorning the heavy guns of the satire of the men of Science as much as the pop‐guns of the profane, since it is impossible, so far, to obtain either proof or disproof, while their theories can stand the test better than can the hypotheses of the Scientists, at any rate. As to the proof of the antiquity which they claim for man, they have Darwin himself and Lyell with them. The latter confesses that they, the Naturalists—

Have already obtained evidence of the existence of man at so remote a period that there has been time for many conspicuous mammalia, once his contemporaries, to die out, and _this even before the era of the earliest_ historical records.(1708)

This is a statement made by one of England’s great authorities upon the question. The two sentences that follow are as suggestive, and may well be remembered by students of Occultism, for with all others he says:

In spite of the long lapse of prehistoric ages during which he [man] must have flourished on earth, _there is no proof of any perceptible change in his bodily structure_. If, therefore, he ever diverged from some unreasoning brute ancestor, we must suppose him to have existed at a far more distant epoch, _possibly on some continents or islands now submerged_ beneath the ocean.

Thus lost continents are officially suspected. That worlds, and also races, are periodically destroyed by fire (volcanoes and earthquakes) and water, in turn, and are periodically renewed, is a doctrine as old as man. Manu, Hermes, the Chaldæans, all antiquity, believed in this. Twice already has the face of the Globe been changed by fire, and twice by water, since man appeared on it. As land needs rest and renovation, new forces, and a change for its soil, so does water. Thence arises a periodical redistribution of land and water, change of climates, etc., all brought on by geological revolution, and ending in a final change in the axis of the Earth. Astronomers may pooh‐pooh the idea of a periodical change in the behaviour of the Globe’s axis, and smile at the conversation given in the _Book of Enoch_ between Noah and his “grandfather” Enoch; the allegory is, nevertheless, a geological and an astronomical fact. There is a secular change in the inclination of the Earth’s axis, and its appointed time is recorded in one of the great Secret Cycles. As in many other questions, Science is gradually moving toward our way of thinking. Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., F.G.S., writes in the _Popular Science Review_:

If it be necessary to call in extra‐mundane causes to explain the great increase of ice at this glacial period, I would prefer the theory propounded by Dr. Robert Hooke in 1688; since, by Sir Richard Phillips and others; and lastly by Mr. Thomas Belt, C.E., F.G.S.; namely, a slight increase in the present obliquity of the ecliptic, a proposal in perfect accord with other known astronomical facts, and the introduction of which involves no disturbance of the harmony which is essential to our cosmical condition as a unit in the great solar system.(1709)

The following, quoted from a Lecture by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S., delivered in March, 1885, on “The Extinct Lake of Bovey Tracey,” shows the hesitation, in the face of every evidence in favour of Atlantis, to accept the fact.

Evergreen figs, laurels, palms, and ferns having gigantic rhizomes have their existing congeners _in a sub‐tropical climate, such, it cannot be doubted, as prevailed in __ Devonshire in Miocene times_, and are thus calculated to suggest caution when the _present climate_ of any district is regarded as normal.

When, moreover, Miocene plants are found in Disco Island, on the west coast of Greenland, lying between 69° 20´ and 70° 30´ N. lat.; when we learn that among them were two species found also at Bovey (Sequoia couttsiæ, Quercus lyelli); when, to quote Professor Heer, we find that “the ‘splendid evergreen’ (Magnolia inglefieldi) ‘ripened its fruits so far north as on the parallel of 70°’ ” (_Phil. Trans._, clix. 457, 1869); when also the number, variety, and luxuriance of the Greenland Miocene plants are found to have been such that, had land continued so far, some of them would in all probability have flourished at the Pole itself, the problem of changes of climate is brought prominently into view, but only to be dismissed apparently with the feeling that the _time for its solution has not yet arrived_.

It seems to be admitted on all hands that the Miocene plants of Europe have their nearest and most numerous existing analogues in North America, and hence arises the question: How was the migration from one area to the other effected? Was there, as some have believed, an Atlantis?—a continent, or an archipelago of large islands, occupying the area of the North Atlantic. There is perhaps nothing unphilosophical in this hypothesis; for since, as geologists state, “the Alps have acquired 4,000, and even in some places more than 10,000 feet of their present altitude since the commencement of the Eocene period” (Lyell’s _Principles_, 11th ed., p. 256, 1872), a Post‐Miocene[?] depression might have carried the hypothetical Atlantis into almost abysmal depths. But an Atlantis is apparently unnecessary and uncalled for. According to Professor Oliver, “A close and very peculiar analogy subsists between the Flora of Tertiary Central Europe and the recent Floras of the American States and of the Japanese region; an analogy much closer and more intimate than is to be traced between the Tertiary and recent Floras of Europe. We find the Tertiary element of the Old World to be intensified towards its extreme eastern margin, if not in numerical preponderance of genera, yet in features which especially give a character to the Fossil Flora.... This accession of the Tertiary element is rather gradual and not abruptly assumed in the Japan islands only. Although it there attains a maximum, we may trace it from the Mediterranean, Levant, Caucasus, and Persia ... then along the Himâlaya and through China.... We learn also that during the Tertiary epoch, counterparts of Central European Miocene genera certainly grew in North‐West America.... We note further that the present Atlantic Islands’ Flora affords no substantial evidence of a former direct communication with the mainland of the New World.... The consideration of these facts lead me to the opinion that botanical evidence does not favour the hypothesis of an Atlantis. On the other hand, it strongly favours the view that at some period of the Tertiary epoch North‐Eastern Asia was united to North‐Western America, perhaps by the line where the Aleutian chain of islands now extends.” (_Nat. Hist. Rev._, ii. 164, 1862, Art., “The Atlantis Hypothesis in its Botanical Aspect.”)

See, however, on these points, “Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Reality of Several Submerged Continents.”

But nothing short of a pithecoid man will ever satisfy the luckless searchers after the thrice hypothetical “missing link.” Yet, if beneath the vast floors of the Atlantic, from the Teneriffe Pic to Gibraltar, the ancient emplacement of the lost Atlantis, all the submarine strata were to be broken up miles deep, no such skull as would satisfy the Darwinists would be found. As Dr. C. R. Bree remarks, no missing links between man and ape having been discovered in various gravels and formations above the Tertiary strata, if these forms had gone down with the continents now covered with the sea, they might still have been found—

In those beds of contemporary geological strata which have _not_ gone down to the bottom of the sea.(1710)

Yet they are as fatally absent from the latter as from the former. Did not preconceptions fasten vampire‐like on man’s mind, the author of The _Antiquity of Man_ would have found a clue to the difficulty in that same work of his, by going ten pages back (to p. 530) and reading over a quotation of his own from Professor G. Rolleston’s work. This Physiologist, he says, suggests that as there is considerable plasticity in the human frame, not only in youth and during growth, but even in the adult, we ought not always to take for granted, as some advocates of the development theory seem to do, that each advance in physical power depends on an improvement in bodily structure, for why may not _the soul, or the higher intellectual and moral faculties play the first instead of the second part in a progressive scheme_?

This hypothesis is made in relation to evolution _not being entirely due_ to “natural selection”; but it applies as well to the case in hand. For we, too, claim that it is the “Soul,” or the Inner Man, that descends on Earth first, the psychic Astral, the mould on which physical man is gradually built—his Spirit, intellectual and moral faculties awakening later on as that physical stature grows and develops.

“Thus incorporeal spirits to smaller forms reduced their shapes immense,” and became the men of the Third and the Fourth Races. Still later, ages after, appeared the men of our Fifth Race, reduced from what we should call the still gigantic stature of their primeval ancestors, to about half that size at present.

Man is certainly _no_ special creation. He is the product of Nature’s gradual perfective work, like any other living unit on this Earth. But this is only with regard to the human tabernacle. That which lives and thinks in man and survives that frame, the masterpiece of evolution—is the “Eternal Pilgrim,” the Protean differentiation in Space and Time of the One Absolute “Unknowable.”

In his _Antiquity of Man_(1711) Sir Charles Lyell quotes—perhaps in rather a mocking spirit—what Hallam says in his _Introduction to the Literature of Europe_:

If man was made in the image of God, he was also made in the image of an ape. The framework of the body of him who has weighed the stars and made the lightning his slave, approaches to that of a speechless brute who wanders in the forests of Sumatra. Thus standing on the frontier land between animal and angelic natures, what wonder that he should partake of both!(1712)

An Occultist would have put it otherwise. He would say that man was indeed made in the image of a type projected by his progenitor, the creating Angel‐Force, or Dhyân Chohan; while the wanderer of the forest of Sumatra was made _in the image of man_, since the framework of the ape, we say again, is the revival, the resuscitation by abnormal means, of the actual form of the Third Round and of the Fourth Round Man as well, later on. Nothing is lost in Nature, _not an atom_: this is at least certain on scientific data. Analogy would appear to demand that _form_ should be equally endowed with permanency.

And yet what do we find? Says Sir William Dawson, F.R.S.:

It is farther significant that Professor Huxley, in his lectures in New York, while resting his case as to the lower animals mainly on the supposed genealogy of the horse, which has often been shown to amount to no certain evidence, avoided altogether the discussion of the origin of men from the apes, now obviously complicated with so many difficulties that both Wallace and Mivart are staggered by them. Professor Thomas in his recent lectures (_Nature_, 1876), admits that there is no lower man known than the Australian, and that there is no known link of connection with the monkeys; and Hæckel has to admit that the penultimate link in his phylogeny, the ape‐like man, is absolutely unknown (_History of Creation_).... The so‐called “tallies” found with the bones of Palæocosmic men in European caves, and illustrated in the admirable works of Christy and Lartet, show that the rudiments even of writing were already in possession of the oldest race of men known to archæology or geology.(1713)

Again, in Dr. C. R. Bree’s _Fallacies of Darwinism_, we read:

Mr. Darwin justly says that the difference physically and, more especially, mentally, between the lowest form of man and the highest anthropomorphous ape, is enormous. Therefore, _the time_—which in Darwinian evolution must be almost inconceivably slow—must have been _enormous_ also during man’s development from the monkey(1714). The chance, therefore, of some of these variations being found in the different gravels or fresh‐water formations above the tertiaries, must be very great. And yet not one single variation, not one single specimen of a being between a monkey and a man has ever been found! Neither in the gravel, not the drift‐clay, nor the fresh‐water beds and gravel and drift, nor in the tertiaries below them, has there ever been discovered the remains of any member of the missing families between the monkey and the man, as _assumed_ to have existed by Mr. Darwin. Have they gone down with the depression of the earth’s surface and are they now covered with the sea? If so, it is beyond all probability that they should not also be found in those beds of contemporary geological strata which have _not_ gone down to the bottom of the sea; still more improbable that some portions should not be dredged from the ocean‐bed like the remains of the mammoth and the rhinoceros, which are also found in fresh‐water beds and gravel and drift!... The celebrated Neanderthal skull, about which so much has been said, belongs confessedly to this remote period [bronze and stone ages], and yet presents, although it may have been the skull of an idiot, immense differences from the highest known anthropomorphous ape.(1715)

Our Globe being convulsed each time that it _reäwakens_ for a new period of activity, like a field which has to be ploughed and furrowed before fresh seed for its new crop is thrown into it—it does seem quite hopeless that fossils belonging to its previous Rounds should be found in the beds of either its oldest or its latest geological strata. Every new Manvantara brings along with it the renovation of forms, types and species; every type of the preceding organic forms—vegetable, animal and human—changes and is perfected in the next, even to the mineral, which has received in this Round its final opacity and hardness; its softer portions formed the present vegetation; the astral relics of previous vegetation and fauna were utilized in the formation of the lower animals, and in determining the structure of the primeval Root‐Types of the highest mammalia. And, finally, the form of the gigantic ape‐man of the former Round has been reproduced in this one by human bestiality, and transfigured into the _parent_ form in the modern anthropoid.

This doctrine, even imperfectly delineated as it is under our inefficient pen, is assuredly more logical, more consistent with facts, and _far more_ probable, than many “scientific” theories; that, for instance, of the first organic germ descending on a meteor to our Earth—like Ain Suph on its Vehicle, Adam Kadmon. Only, the latter descent is allegorical, as every one knows, and the Kabalists have never offered this figure of speech for acceptance in its dead‐letter garb. But the germ‐in‐the‐meteor theory, as coming from such high scientific quarters, is an eligible candidate for axiomatic truth and law, a theory people are in honour bound to accept, if they would be on a right level with Modern Science. What the next theory necessitated by the materialistic premisses will be—no one can tell. Meanwhile, the _present_ theories, as anyone can see, clash far more discordantly among themselves than even with those of the Occultists outside the sacred precincts of learning. For what is there, next in order, now that exact Science has made even of the life‐principle an empty word, a meaningless term, and insists that life is an effect _due to the molecular action of the primordial protoplasm_? The new doctrine of the Darwinists may be defined and summarized in the few words, from Mr. Herbert Spencer:

The hypothesis of special creations turns out to be worthless—worthless, by its derivation; worthless, in its intrinsic incoherence; worthless, as absolutely without evidence; worthless, as not supplying an intellectual need; worthless, as not satisfying a moral want. We must, therefore, consider it as counting for nothing in opposition to any other hypothesis respecting the origin of organic beings.(1716)

Section V. Organic Evolution and Creative Centres.

It is argued that Universal Evolution, otherwise the gradual development of species in all the kingdoms of Nature, works by uniform laws. This is admitted, and the law is enforced far more strictly in Esoteric than in Modern Science. But we are also told, that it is equally a law that:

Development works from the less to the more perfect, and from the simpler to the more complicated, by incessant changes, small in themselves, but constantly accumulating in the required direction(1717).

It is from the infinitesimally small that the comparatively gigantic species are produced.

Esoteric Science agrees with this, but adds that this law applies only to what is known to it as the Primary Creation—the evolution of Worlds from Primordial Atoms, and the Pre‐primordial ATOM, at the first differentiation of the former; and that during the period of cyclic evolution in Space and Time, this law is limited and works only in the lower kingdoms. It did so work during the first geological periods, from simple to complex, on the rough material surviving from the relics of the Third Round, which relics are projected into objectivity when terrestrial

## activity recommences.

No more than Science, does the Esoteric Philosophy admit “design” or “special creation.” It rejects every claim to the “miraculous,” and accepts nothing outside the uniform and immutable laws of Nature. But it teaches a cyclic law, a double stream of Force (or Spirit) and of Matter, which, starting from the Neutral Centre of Being, develops by its cyclic progress and incessant transformations. The primitive germ from which all vertebrate life has developed throughout the ages, being distinct from the primitive germ from which vegetable and animal life have evolved, there are side laws whose work is determined by the conditions in which the materials to be worked upon are found by them, and of which Science—Physiology and Anthropology especially—seems to be little aware. Its votaries speak of this “primitive germ,” and maintain that it is shown beyond any doubt that:

The design [and the “designer”], if there be any [in the case of man, with the wonderful structure of his limbs, and his hand especially], must be placed very much farther back, and is, in fact, involved in the primitive germ, from which all vertebrate life certainly, and probably all life, animal or vegetable, have been slowly developed.(1718)

This is as true of the “primitive germ” as it is false that that “germ” is only “very much farther back” than man is; for it is at an immeasurable and inconceivable distance, _in Time_, though not in Space, from the origin even of our Solar System. As the Hindû philosophy very justly teaches, the “Aniyâmsam Anîyasâm,” can be known only through false notions. It is the “Many” that proceed from the “One”—the living spiritual germs _or centres of forces_—each in a septenary form, which first generate, and then give the primary impulse to the law of evolution and gradual slow development.

Limiting the teaching strictly to this our Earth, it may be shown that, as the ethereal forms of the first Men are first projected on seven zones by seven Dhyân‐Chohanic Centres of Force, so there are centres of creative power for every root or parent species of the host of forms of vegetable and animal life. This is, again, no “special creation,” nor is there any “design,” except in the general “ground‐plan” worked out by the Universal Law. But there are certainly “designers,” though these are neither omnipotent nor omniscient in the absolute sense of the term. They are simply Builders, or Masons, working under the impulse given them by the ever‐to‐be‐unknown (on our plane) Master Mason—the One Life and Law. Belonging to this sphere, they have no hand in, nor possibility of working on any other, during the present Manvantara, at any rate. That they work in cycles and on a strictly geometrical and mathematical scale of progression, is what the extinct animal species amply demonstrate; that they act by design in the details of minor lives (of side animal issues, etc.) is sufficiently proved by natural history. In the “creation” of new species, departing sometimes very widely from the parent stock, as in the great variety of the genus Felis—like the lynx, the tiger, the cat, etc.—it is the “designers” who direct the new evolution by adding to, or depriving the species of certain appendages, either needed or becoming useless in the new environments. Thus, when we say that Nature provides for every animal and plant, whether large or small, we speak correctly. For it is these terrestrial Spirits of Nature, who form the aggregated Nature—which, if it fails occasionally in its design, is neither to be considered blind, nor to be taxed with the failure; since, belonging to a _differentiated_ sum of qualities and attributes, it is in virtue of that alone _conditioned and imperfect_.

Were there no such thing as evolutionary cycles, as an eternal spiral progress into Matter with a proportionate _obscuration_ of Spirit (though the two are one) followed by an inverse ascent into Spirit and the defeat of Matter—active and passive by turn—how could we explain the discoveries of Zoology and Geology? How is it that, on the dictum of authoritative Science, one can trace the animal life from the mollusc up to the great sea‐dragon, from the smallest land‐worm up again to the gigantic animals of the Tertiary period; and that the latter were once crossed is shown by the fact of all those species decreasing, dwindling down and becoming dwarfed. If the seeming process of development working from the less to the more perfect, and from the simpler to the more complex, were a universal law indeed, instead of being a very imperfect generalization of a mere secondary nature in the great cosmic process, and if there were no such cycles as those claimed, then the Mesozoic fauna and flora ought to change places with the latest Neolithic. It is the plesiosauri and the ichthyosauri that we ought to find developing from the present sea‐ and river‐reptiles, instead of these giving place to their dwarfed modern analogies. It is, again, our old friend, the good‐tempered elephant, that would be the fossil antediluvian ancestor, and the mammoth of the Pliocene age who would be in the menagerie; the megalonyx and the gigantic megatherium would be found instead of the lazy sloth in the forests of South America, in which the colossal ferns of the carboniferous periods would take the place of the mosses and the present trees—dwarfs, even the giants of California, in comparison with the Titan‐trees of past geological periods. Surely the organisms of the megasthenian world of the Tertiary and the Mesozoic ages must have been _more complex and perfect_ than those of the microsthenian plants and animals of the present age? The dryopithecus, for instance, is more perfect anatomically, is more fit for a greater development of brain power, than the modern gorilla or gibbon. How is all this, then? Are we to believe that the constitution of all those colossal land‐ and sea‐dragons, of the gigantic flying reptiles, was not far more developed and complex than the anatomy of the lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and even of the whales—in short, of all those animals with which we are acquainted?

Let us admit, however, for argument’s sake, that all those cycles, races, septenary forms of evolution, and the _tutti quanti_ of Esoteric teaching, are no better than a delusion and a snare. Let us agree with Science and say that man—instead of being an imprisoned “spirit,” and his vehicle, the shell or body, a gradually perfected and now complete mechanism for material and terrestrial uses, as claimed by the Occultists—is simply a more developed animal, whose primal form emerged from one and the same primitive germ on this Earth as the flying dragon and the gnat, the whale and the amoeba, the crocodile and the frog, etc. In this case, he must have passed through the identical developments and through the same process of growth as all the other mammals. If man is an animal, _and nothing more_, a highly intellectual “ex‐brute,” he should at least be allowed to have been a gigantic mammal of his kind, a “meganthropus” in his day. This is exactly what Esoteric Science shows to have taken place in the first three Rounds, and in this, as in most other things, it is more logical and consistent than Modern Science. It classifies the human body with the brute creation, and maintains it in the path of animal evolution, from first to last, while Science leaves man a parentless orphan born of sires unknown, an “unspecialized skeleton” truly! And this mistake is due to a stubborn rejection of the doctrine of cycles.

A. The Origin And Evolution Of The Mammalia: Science And Esoteric Phylogeny.

Having dealt almost exclusively with the question of the origin of man in the foregoing criticism of Western Evolutionism, it may not be amiss to define the position of the Occultists with regard to the differentiation of species. The pre‐human fauna and flora have been already dealt with generally in the Commentary on the Stanzas, and the truth of much of modern biological speculation has been admitted, _e.g._, the derivation of birds from reptiles, the _partial_ truth of “natural selection,” and the transformation theory generally. It now remains to clear up the mystery of the origin of those first mammalian faunæ which M. de Quatrefages so brilliantly endeavours to prove contemporary with the Homo primigenius of the Secondary Age.

The somewhat complicated problem relating to the “Origin of Species”—more especially of the varied groups of fossil or existing mammalian faunæ—will be rendered less obscure by the aid of a diagram. It will then be apparent to what extent the “factors of organic evolution,” relied upon by Western Biologists,(1719) are to be considered as adequate to meet the facts. The line of demarcation between ethereo‐spiritual, astral and physical evolution must be drawn. Perhaps, if Darwinians deigned to consider the possibility of the second process, they would no longer have to lament the fact that:

We are referred entirely to conjecture and inference for the origin of the mammals!(1720)

At present the admitted chasm between the systems of reproduction of the oviparous vertebrates and mammalia constitutes a hopeless crux to those thinkers who, with the Evolutionists, seek to link all existing organic forms in a continuous line of descent.

Let us take, for instance, the case of the ungulate mammals, since it is said that in no other division do we possess such abundant fossil material. So much progress has been made in this direction, that in some instances the intermediate links between the modern and Eocene ungulates have been unearthed; a notable example being that of the complete proof of the derivation of the present one‐toed horse from the three‐toed anchitherium of the old Tertiary. This standard of comparison between Western Biology and the Eastern Doctrine could not, therefore, be improved upon. The pedigree here utilized, as embodying the views of Scientists in general, is that of Schmidt, based on the exhaustive researches of Rütimeyer. Its _approximate_ accuracy—from the standpoint of evolutionism—leaves little to be desired:

[Illustration: Ungulate Mammals]

Ungulate Mammals

At this, the midway point of evolution, Science comes to a standstill.

The _root_ to which these two families lead back is unknown.(1721)

[Illustration: The Root]

The Root According to Occultism

Schmidt’s diagram represents the realm explored by Western Evolutionists, the area in which climatic influences, “natural selection,” and all the other _physical_ causes of organic differentiation are present. Biology and Palæontology find their province here in investigating the many physical agencies which so largely contribute, as has been shown by Darwin, Spencer and others, to the “segregation of species.” But even in this domain the sub‐conscious workings of the Dhyân‐Chohanic wisdom are at the root of all the “ceaseless striving towards perfection,” though its influence is vastly modified by those purely material causes which de Quatrefages terms the “milieu” and Spencer the “environment.”

The “midway point of evolution” is that stage where the _astral_ prototypes definitely begin to pass into the physical, and thus become subject to the differentiating agencies now operative around us. Physical causation supervenes immediately on the assumption of the “coats of skin”—_i.e._, the physiological equipment in general. The forms of men and of other mammals previous to the separation of the sexes(1722) are woven out of astral matter, and possess a structure utterly unlike that of the physical organisms which eat, drink, digest, etc. The known physiological contrivances requisite for these functions were almost entirely evolved subsequently to the incipient physicalization of the seven Root‐Types out of the astral—during the “midway halt” between the two planes of existence. Hardly had the “ground‐plan” of evolution been limned out in these ancestral types, than there supervened the influence of the accessory terrestrial laws, familiar to us, resulting in the whole crop of mammalian species. Æons of slow differentiation were, however, required to effect this end.

The second diagram represents the domain of the purely astral prototypes previous to their descent into gross matter. Astral matter, it must be noted, is fourth‐state matter, having, like our gross matter, its own “protyle.” There are several protyles in Nature, corresponding to the various planes of matter. The two sub‐physical elemental kingdoms, the plane of mind, Manas, or fifth‐state matter, as also that of Buddhi, sixth‐state matter, are each and all evolved from one of the six protyles which constitute the basis of the Object‐Universe. The three “states” so‐ called of our terrestrial matter, known as the “solid,” “liquid,” and “gaseous,” are only, in strict accuracy, _sub_‐states. As to the former reality of the descent into the physical, which culminated in physiological man and animal, we have a palpable testimony in the fact of the so‐called spiritualistic “materializations.”

In all these instances a complete temporary mergence of the astral into the physical takes place. The evolution of _physiological_ man out of the astral races of the _early_ Lemurian age—the Jurassic age of Geology—is exactly paralleled by the “materialization” of “spirits” (?) in the séance room. In the case of Professor Crookes’ “Katie King,” the presence of a _physiological_ mechanism—heart, lungs, etc.—was indubitably demonstrated!

This, in a way, is the Archetype of Goethe. Listen to his words:

Thus much we should have gained ... all the nine perfect organic beings ... [are] formed according to an archetype which merely fluctuates more or less in its very persistent parts and, moreover, day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of reproduction.

This is a seemingly imperfect foreshadowing of the Occult fact of the differentiation of species from the primal astral Root‐Types. Whatever the whole _posse comitatus_ of “natural selection,” etc., may effect, the _fundamental unity of structural plan_ remains practically unaffected by all subsequent modifications. The “unity of type” common, in a sense, to all the animal and human kingdoms, is not, as Spencer and others appear to hold, a proof of the consanguinity of _all_ organic forms, but a witness to the essential unity of the “ground‐plan” Nature has followed in fashioning her creatures.

To sum up the case we may again avail ourselves of a tabulation of the actual factors concerned in the differentiation of species. The stages of the process itself need no further comment here, for they follow the basic principles underlying organic development, and we do not need to enter on the domain of the biological specialist.

FACTORS CONCERNED IN THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE.

Basic astral prototypes pass into the physical, the Dhyân‐Chohanic impulse, constituting Lamarck’s “inherent and necessary” law of development. It lies behind all minor agencies: variation transmitted by Heredity, Natural Selection, Sexual Selection Physiological Selection, Isolation. Correlation of Growth, Adaptation to Environment. (Intelligent as opposed to Mechanical Causation.)

B. The European Palæolithic Races: Whence, And How Distributed.

Is Science opposed to those who maintain that, down to the Quaternary period, the distribution of the human races was widely different from what it is now? Is Science against those who, further, maintain that the fossil men found in Europe‐although they have almost reached a plane of sameness and unity which continues till this day, regarded from the fundamental physiological and anthropological aspects—still differ, sometimes greatly, from the type of the now existing populations? The late M. Littré admits this in an article published by him in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ (March 1st, 1859) on the Mémoire called _Antiquités Celtiques et Antediluviennes_ by Boucher de Perthes (1849). Littré therein states that: (_a_) in these periods when the mammoths, exhumed in Picardy in company with man‐made hatchets, lived in the latter region, there must have been an eternal spring reigning over all the terrestrial globe;(1723) nature was the contrary of what it is now, and thus is left _an enormous margin for the antiquity of those __“__periods__”_; he then adds (_b_):

Spring, Professor of the Faculty of Medicine at Liège, found in a grotto near Namur, in the mountain of Chauvaux, numerous human bones “of a race quite distinct from ours.”

Skulls exhumed in Austria offer a great analogy with those of negro races in Africa, according to Littré, while others, discovered on the shores of the Danube and the Rhine, resemble the skulls of the Caribs and of the ancient inhabitants of Peru and Chili. Still, the Deluge, whether Biblical or Atlantean, is denied. But further geological discoveries made Gaudry write conclusively:

Our forefathers were positively contemporaneous with the rhinoceros tichorrhinus, the hippopotamus major.

And he added that the soil called _diluvial_ in geology—

Was formed partially at least after man’s apparition on earth.

Upon this, Littré pronounced himself finally. He then showed the necessity, in face of “the resurrection of so many old witnesses,” of rehandling all the origins, all the durations, and added that there was an age hitherto unknown to study—

Either at the dawn of the actual epoch, or, as I believe, at the beginning of the epoch which preceded it.

The types of the skulls found in Europe are of two kinds, as is well known: the orthognathous and the prognathous, or the Caucasian and the Negroid types—such as are now found only among the African and the lower savage tribes. Professor Heer—who argues that the facts of Botany necessitate the hypothesis of an Atlantis—has shown that the plants of the Neolithic lake‐villagers are mainly of African origin. How did these plants appear in Europe if there were no former point of union between Europe and Africa? How many thousand years ago did the seventeen men live whose skeletons were exhumed in the department of the Haute Garonne, in a squatting posture near the remains of a coal fire, with some amulets and broken crockery around them, and in company with the ursus spelæus, the elephas primigenius, the aurochs (regarded by Cuvier as a distinct species), the megaceros hibernicus—all antediluvian mammals? Certainly they must have lived in a most distant epoch, but not in one which carries us further back than the Quaternary. A much greater antiquity for man has yet to be proved. Dr. James Hunt, the late President of the Anthropological Society, puts it at nine million years. This man of Science, at any rate, makes some approach to our Esoteric computation, if we leave out of the computation the first two semi‐human, ethereal Races, and the early Third Race.

The question, however, arises—who were these Palæolithic men of the European Quaternary epoch? Were they aboriginal, or were they the outcome of some immigration dating back into the unknown past? The latter is the only tenable hypothesis, as all Scientists agree in eliminating Europe from the category of possible “cradles of mankind.” Whence, then, radiated the various successive streams of “primitive” men?

The earliest Palæeolithic men in Europe—about whose origin Ethnology is silent, and whose very characteristics are but imperfectly known, though expatiated on as “ape‐like” by imaginative writers such as Mr. Grant Allen—were of pure Atlantean and “Africo”‐Atlantean stocks.(1724) (It must be borne in mind that by this time the Atlantean Continent itself was a dream of the past.) Europe in the Quaternary epoch was very different from the Europe of to‐day, being then only in process of formation. It was united to Northern Africa—or rather to what is now Northern Africa—by a neck of land running across the present Straits of Gibraltar—Northern Africa thus constituting as it were an extension of the present Spain, while a broad sea filled the great basin of the Sahara. Of the vast Atlantis, the main bulk of which sank in the Miocene, there remained only Ruta and Daitya and a stray island or so. The Atlantean connections of the forefathers(1725) of the Palæolithic cave‐men are evidenced by the upturning of fossil skulls in Europe, reverting closely to the type of the West Indian Carib and ancient Peruvian—a mystery indeed for all those who refuse to sanction the “hypothesis” of a former Atlantic continent to bridge what is now an ocean. What are we also to make of the fact that while de Quatrefages points to that “magnificent race,” the tall Cro‐ Magnon cave‐men, and to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, as representatives of one type, Virchow also allies the Basques with the latter in a similar way? Professor Retzius independently proves the relationship of the aboriginal American dolichocephalous tribes and these same Guanches. The several links in the chain of evidence are thus securely joined together. Legions of similar facts could be adduced. As to the African tribes—themselves diverging offshoots of Atlanteans modified by climate and conditions—they crossed into Europe over the peninsula which made the Mediterranean an inland sea. Fine races were many of these European cave‐men, as the Cro‐Magnon, for instance. But, as was to be expected, _progress is almost non‐existent_ through the whole of the vast period allotted by Science to the Chipped‐Stone age.(1726) _The cyclic impulse downwards_ weighs heavily on the stocks thus transplanted—the incubus of the Atlantean Karma is upon them. Finally, Palæolithic man makes room for his successor—and disappears almost entirely from the scene. Professor André Lefèvre asks in this connection:

Has the Polished succeeded the Chipped‐Stone Age by an imperceptible transition, or was it due to an invasion of brachycephalous Kelts? But whether the deterioration produced in the populations of La Vézère was the result of violent crossings, or of a general retreat northwards in the wake of the reindeer, is of little moment to us.

He continues:

Meantime the bed of the ocean has been upheaved, Europe is now fully formed, her flora and fauna are fixed. With the taming of the dog begins the pastoral life. We enter on those polished stone and bronze periods, which succeed each other at irregular intervals, which even overlap one another in the midst of ethnical migrations and fusions, at once more confused and of shorter duration than less advanced and more rudimentary ages. The primitive European populations are interrupted in their special evolution, and without perishing, become absorbed in other races, engulfed, as it were, by the successive waves of migration overflowing from Africa, possibly from a lost Atlantis [? far too late by æons of years] and from prolific Asia. On the one hand came the Iberians, on the other Pelasgians, Ligurians, Sicanians, Etruscans—all forerunners of the great Âryan Invasion [Fifth Race].(1727)

Section VI. Giants, Civilizations, and Submerged Continents Traced in History.

When statements such as are comprised in the above heading are brought forward, the writer is, of course, expected to furnish _historical_ instead of _legendary_ evidence in support of such claims. Is this possible? Yes; for evidence of such a nature is plentiful, and has simply to be collected and brought together in order to become overwhelming in the eyes of the unprejudiced.

Once the sagacious student gets hold of the guiding thread he may find out such evidence for himself. We give _facts_ and show landmarks; let the wayfarer follow them. What is adduced here is amply sufficient for _this_ century.

In a letter to Voltaire, Bailly finds it quite natural that the sympathies of the “grand old invalid of Ferney” should be attracted to the representatives of “knowledge and wisdom,” the ancient Brâhmans. He then adds a curious statement. He says:

But your Brâhmans are very young in comparison with their archaic instructors.(1728)

Bailly, who knew nought of the Esoteric teachings, nor of Lemuria, believed, nevertheless, unreservedly in the lost Atlantis, and also in several pre‐historic and civilized nations which had disappeared without leaving any undeniable trace. He had studied the ancient classics and _traditions_ extensively, and he saw that the Arts and Sciences known to those we now call the “ancients,” were—

Not the achievements of any of the now or even then existing nations, nor of any of the historical peoples of Asia....

and that, notwithstanding the learning of the Hindûs, their undeniable priority in the early part of their race had to be referred to a people or a race still more ancient and more learned than were even the Brâhmans themselves.(1729)

Voltaire, the greatest sceptic of his day, the materialist _par excellence_, shared Bailly’s belief. He thought it quite likely that:

Long before the empires of China and India, there had been nations cultured, learned, and powerful, which a deluge of barbarians overpowered and thus replunged into their primitive state of ignorance and savagery, or what they call the state of pure nature.(1730)

That which with Voltaire was the shrewd conjecture of a great intellect, was with Bailly a “question of historical facts.” For, he wrote:

I make great case of ancient traditions preserved through a long series of generations.

It _was_ possible, he thought, that a _foreign_ nation should, after instructing another nation, so disappear that it should leave no traces behind. When asked how it could have happened that this ancient, or rather archaic, nation should not have left at least some recollection in the human mind, he answered that Time was a pitiless devourer of facts and events. But the history of the Past was never entirely lost, for the Sages of old Egypt had preserved it, and “it is so preserved to this day elsewhere.” The priests of Saïs said to Solon, according to Plato:

You are unacquainted with that most noble and excellent race of men, who once inhabited your country, from whom you and your whole present state are descended,(1731) though only a small remnant of this admirable people is now remaining.... These writings relate what a prodigious force your city once overcame, when a mighty warlike power, rushing from the Atlantic sea, spread itself with hostile fury over all Europe and Asia.(1732)

The Greeks were but the dwarfed and weak remnant of that once glorious nation.(1733)

What was this nation? The Secret Doctrine teaches that it was the latest seventh sub‐race of the Atlantean, already swallowed up in one of the early sub‐races of the Âryan stock, one that had been gradually spreading over the continent and islands of Europe, as soon as they had begun to emerge from the seas. Descending from the high plateaux of Asia, where the two races had sought refuge in the days of the agony of Atlantis, it had been slowly settling and colonizing the freshly emerged lands. The immigrant sub‐race had rapidly increased and multiplied on that virgin soil; had divided into many family races, which in their turn divided into nations. Egypt and Greece, the Phœnicians, and the Northern stocks, had thus proceeded from that one sub‐race. Thousands of years later, other races—the remnants of the Atlanteans—“yellow and red, brown and black,” began to invade the new continent. There were wars in which the new comers were defeated, and they fled, some to Africa, others to remote countries. Some of these lands became islands in course of time, owing to new geological convulsions. Being thus forcibly separated from the continents, the result was that the undeveloped tribes and families of the Atlantean stock fell gradually into a still more abject and savage condition.

Did not the Spaniards in the Cibola expeditions meet with _white_ savage chiefs; and has not the presence of African negro types in Europe in the pre‐historic ages been now ascertained? It is this presence of a foreign type associated with that of the negro, and also with that of the Mongolian, which is the stumbling‐block of Anthropology. The individual who lived at an incalculably distant period at La Naulette, in Belgium, is an example. Says an Anthropologist:

The caves on the banks of the Lesse, in South‐Eastern Belgium, afford evidence of what is, perhaps, the lowest man, as shown by the Naulette jaw. Such man, however, had amulets of stone, perforated for the purpose of ornament; these are made of a psammite now found in the basin of the Gironde.(1734)

Thus Belgian man was extremely ancient. The man who was antecedent to the great flood of waters—which covered the highlands of Belgium with a deposit of lehm or upland gravel thirty metres above the level of the present rivers—must have combined the characters of the Turanian and the Negro. The Canstadt, or La Naulette, man may have been black, and he had nothing to do with the Âryan type whose remains are contemporary with those of the cave bear at Engis. The denizens of the Aquitaine bone‐caves belong to a far later period of history, and may not be as ancient as the former.

If the statement be objected to on the ground that Science does not deny the presence of man on Earth from an enormous antiquity, though that antiquity cannot be determined, since such presence is conditioned by the duration of geological periods, the age of which is not ascertained; if it is argued that the Scientists object most decidedly to the claim that man preceded the animals, for instance; or that civilization dates from the earliest Eocene period; or again, that there have ever existed giants, three‐eyed and four‐armed and four‐legged men, androgynes, etc.—then the objectors are asked in their turn, “How do you know? What proof have you besides your personal hypotheses, each of which may be upset any day by new discoveries?” And these future discoveries are sure to prove that, whatever this earlier type of man known to Anthropologists may have been in complexion, he was in no respect _apish_. The Canstadt man, the Engis man, alike possessed essentially human attributes.(1735) People have looked for the missing link at the wrong end of the chain; and the Neanderthal man has long since been dismissed to the “limbo of all hasty blunders.” Disraeli divided man into the associates of the apes and the angels. Reasons are here given in favour of an “angelic theory”—as Christians would call it, as applicable to at least some of the races of men. At all events, if man be held to exist only since the Miocene period, even then humanity as a whole could not be composed of the abject savages of the Palæolithic age, as they are now represented by the Scientists. All they say is mere arbitrary speculative guess‐work, invented by them to answer to, and fit in with, their own fanciful theories.

We speak of events hundreds of thousands of years old, nay, even millions of years old—if man date from the geological periods(1736)—not of any of those events which happened during the few thousand years of the pre‐ historic margin allowed by timid and ever‐cautious history. Yet there are men of Science who are almost of our way of thinking. From the brave confession of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, who says that:

Traditions, whose traces recur in Mexico, in Central America, in Peru, and in Bolivia, suggest the idea that man existed in these different countries at the time of the gigantic upheaval of the Andes, and that he has retained the memory of it—

down to the latest Palæontologists and Anthropologists, the majority of scientific men is in favour of just such an antiquity. _Àpropos_ of Peru, has any satisfactory attempt been made to determine the ethnological affinities and characteristics of the race which reared those Cyclopean erections, the ruins of which display the relics of a great civilization? At Cuelap, for instance, such are found, consisting—

Of a wall of wrought stones, 3,600 feet long, 560 broad, and 150 feet high, constituting a solid mass with a level summit. On this mass was another, 600 feet long, 500 broad, and 150 feet high, making an aggregate height of 300 feet. In it were rooms and cells.(1737)

A most suggestive fact is the _startling resemblance between the architecture of these colossal buildings and that of the archaic European nations_. Mr. Fergusson regards the analogies between the ruins of “Inca” civilization and the Cyclopean remains of the Pelasgians in Italy and Greece, as a coincidence—

The most remarkable in the history of architecture.... It is difficult to resist the conclusion that there may be some relation between them.

The “relation” is simply explained by the derivation of the stocks who devised these erections, from a common centre in an Atlantic continent. The acceptance of the latter can alone assist us to approach a solution of this and similar problems in almost every branch of Modern Science.

Dr. Lartet, treating upon the subject, settles the question by declaring that:

The truth, so long contested, of the coëxistence of man with the great extinct species [elephas primigenius, rhinoceros tichorrhinus, hyæna spelæa, ursus spelæus, etc.], appears to me to be henceforth unassailable and definitely conquered by science.(1738)

It is shown elsewhere that such is also de Quatrefages’ opinion. He says:

Man has in all probability seen Miocene times(1739) and consequently the entire Pliocene epoch. Are there any reasons for believing that his traces will be found further back still?... He may then have been contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia, and go back as far as the Secondary period.(1740)

Egypt is far older than Europe as now traced on the map. Atlanto‐Âryan tribes began to settle on it when the British Islands(1741) and France were not even in existence. It is well known that “the tongue of the Ægyptian Sea,” or the Delta of lower Egypt, became firm land very gradually, and followed the highlands of Abyssinia; unlike the latter, which arose suddenly, comparatively speaking, it was very slowly formed, through long ages, from successive layers of sea‐slime and mud, deposited annually by the soil brought down by a large river, the present Nile. Yet even the Delta, as a firm and fertile land, has been inhabited for more than 100,000 years. Later tribes, with still more Âryan blood in them than their predecessors, arrived from the East, and _conquered_ it from a people whose very name is lost to posterity, except in the Secret Books. It is this natural barrier of slime, which sucked in slowly and surely every boat that approached those inhospitable shores, that was, till within a few thousand years B.C., the best safeguard of the later Egyptians, who had managed to reach it through Arabia, Abyssinia, and Nubia, led on by Manu Vînâ in the day of Vishvâmitra.(1742)

So evident does the antiquity of man become with every day, that even the Church is preparing for an _honourable_ surrender and retreat. The learned Abbé Fabre, professor at the Sorbonne, has categorically declared that pre‐historic Palæontology and Archæology may, without any harm to the Scriptures, discover in the Tertiary beds as many traces as they please of Pre‐Adamite man.

Since it disregards all creations anterior to the last deluge but one [that which produced the diluvium, according to the Abbé], Bible revelation leaves us free to admit the existence of man in the grey diluvium, in Pliocene, and even Eocene strata. On the other hand, however, geologists are not all agreed on regarding the men who inhabited the globe in these primitive ages as our ancestors.(1743)

The day on which the Church shall find that its only salvation lies in the Occult interpretation of the _Bible_ may not be so far off as some imagine. Already many an Abbé and ecclesiastic has become an ardent Kabalist, and as many appear publicly in the arena, breaking a lance with Theosophists and Occultists in support of the metaphysical interpretation of the _Bible_. But they commence, unfortunately for them, at the wrong end. They are advised, before they begin to speculate upon the _metaphysical_ in their Scriptures, to study and master that which relates to the purely _physical_—_e.g._, its hints on Geology and Ethnology. For such allusions to the septenary constitution of the Earth and Man, to the seven Rounds and Races, abound in the _New_ as in the _Old Testament_, and are as visible as the Sun in the heavens to him who reads both symbolically. To what do the laws in