As the last Glacial period extended from 240,000 to 80,000 years ago

(Prof. Croll’s view), therefore, man must have appeared on Earth from

100,000 to 120,000 years ago. But, as says Prof. Winchell with reference

to the antiquity of the Mediterranean race:

It is generally believed to have made its appearance during the

later decline of the continental glaciers. It does not concern,

however, the antiquity of the Black and Brown races, since there

are numerous evidences of their existence in more southern

regions, in times remotely pre‐glacial.(1645)

As a specimen of geological _certainty_ and _agreement_, these figures

also may be added. Three authorities—Messrs. T. Belt, F.G.S., Robert Hunt,

F.R.S., and J. Croll, F.R.S.,—in estimating the time that has elapsed

since the Glacial epoch, give figures that vary to an almost incredible

extent:

Belt: 20,000 years.

Hunt: 80,000 years

Croll: 240,000 years(1646)

No wonder that Mr. Pengelly confesses that:

It is at present and perhaps always will be impossible to reduce,

even approximately, geological time into years or even into

millenniums.

A wise word of advice from the Occultists to the gentlemen Geologists;

they ought to imitate the cautious example of Masons. As chronology, they

say, cannot measure the era of the creation, therefore, their “Antient and

Primitive Rite” uses 000,000,000 as the nearest approach to reality.

The same uncertainty, contradictions and disagreement reign on all other

subjects.

The scientific authorities on the Descent of Man are again, for all

practical purposes, a delusion and a snare. There are many Anti‐Darwinists

in the British Association, and Natural Selection begins to lose ground.

Though at one time the saviour, which seemed to rescue the learned

theorists from a final intellectual collapse into the abyss of fruitless

hypothesis, it begins to be distrusted. Even Mr. Huxley is showing signs

of truancy, and thinks “natural selection _not the sole_ factor”:

We greatly suspect that she [Nature] does make considerable jumps in the

way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some

of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms.(1647)

Again, C. R. Bree, M.D., argues in this wise in considering the fatal gaps

in Mr. Darwin’s theory:

It must be again called to mind that the intermediate forms must

have been vast in numbers.... Mr. St. George Mivart believes that

change in evolution may occur more quickly than is generally

believed; but Mr. Darwin sticks manfully to his belief, and again

tells us “_natura non facit saltum_.”(1648)

Herein the Occultists are at one with Mr. Darwin.

Esoteric teaching fully corroborates the idea of Nature’s slowness and

dignified progression. “Planetary impulses” are all periodical. Yet this

Darwinian theory, correct as it is in minor particulars, agrees no more

with Occultism than with Mr. Wallace, who, in his _Contributions to the

Theory of Natural Selection_, shows pretty conclusively that something

_more_ than Natural Selection is requisite to produce physical man.

Let us, meanwhile, examine the _scientific_ objections to this scientific

theory, and see what they are.

Mr. St. George Mivart is found arguing that:

It will be a moderate computation to allow 25,000,000 for the

deposit of the strata down to and including the Upper Silurian.

If, then, the evolutionary work done during this deposition only

represents a hundredth part of the sum total, we shall require

2,500,000,000 (two thousand five hundred million) years for the

complete development of the whole animal kingdom to its present

state. Even one quarter of this, however, would far exceed the

time which physics and astronomy seem able to allow for the

completion of the process.

Finally, a difficulty exists as to the reason of the absence of

rich fossiliferous deposits in the oldest strata—if life was then

as abundant and varied, as, on the Darwinian theory, it must have

been. Mr. Darwin himself admits “the case at present must remain

inexplicable; and this may be truly urged as a valid argument

against the views” entertained in his book.

Thus, then, we find a remarkable (and on Darwinian principles all

but inexplicable) absence of minutely graduated transitional

forms. All the most marked groups—bats, pterodactyles, chelonians,

ichthyosaurians, amoura, etc.—appear at once upon the scene. Even

the horse, the animal whose pedigree has been probably best

preserved, affords no conclusive evidence of specific origin by

significant fortuitous variations; while some forms, as the

labyrinthodonts and trilobites, which seemed to exhibit gradual

change, are shown by further investigation to do nothing of the

sort.... All these difficulties are avoided if we admit that new

forms of animal life of all degrees of complexity appear from time

to time with comparative suddenness, being evolved according to

laws in part depending on surrounding conditions, in part

internal—similar to the way in which crystals (and, perhaps from

recent researches, the lowest forms of life) build themselves up

according to the internal laws of their component substance, and

in harmony and correspondence with all environing influences and

conditions.(1649)

“The internal laws of their component substance.” These are wise words,

and the admission of the possibility is prudent. But how can these

internal laws be ever recognized, if Occult teaching be discarded? As a

friend writes, while drawing our attention to the above speculations:

In other words, the doctrine of Planetary Life‐Impulses must be

admitted. Otherwise, why are species now _stereotyped_, and why do

even domesticated breeds of pigeons and many animals relapse into

their ancestral types when left to themselves?

But the teaching about Planetary Life‐Impulses has to be clearly defined

and as clearly understood, if present confusion is not to be made still

more perplexing. All these difficulties would vanish as the shadows of

night disappear before the light of the rising Sun, if the following

Esoteric Axioms were admitted:

(_a_) The existence and the enormous antiquity of our Planetary Chain;

(_b_) The actuality of the Seven Rounds

(_c_) The separation of human Races (outside the purely anthropological

division) into seven distinct Root‐Races, of which our present European

Humanity is the Fifth;

(_d_) The antiquity of man in this (Fourth) Round; and finally

(_e_) That as these Races evolve from ethereality to materiality, and from

the latter back again into relative physical tenuity of texture, so every

living (so‐called) _organic_ species of animals, with vegetation included,

changes with every new Root‐Race.

Were this admitted, if even only along with other, and surely, on maturer

consideration, no less absurd, suppositions—if Occult theories have to be

considered “absurd” at present—then every difficulty would be made away

with. Surely Science ought to try and be more logical than it now is, as

it can hardly maintain the theory of man’s descent from an anthropoidal

ancestor, and deny in the same breath any reasonable antiquity to such a

man! Once Mr. Huxley talks of “the vast intellectual chasm between the ape

and man,” and “the present enormous gulf between them,”(1650) and admits

the necessity of extending scientific allowances for the age of man on

Earth for such slow and progressive development, then all those men of

Science who are of his way of thinking, at any rate, ought to come to at

least some approximate figures, and agree upon the probable duration of

those Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene periods of which so much is said, and

about which nothing definite is known—even if they dare not venture

_beyond_. But no two Scientists seem to agree. Every period seems to be a

mystery in its duration, and a thorn in the side of the Geologists; and,

as just shown, they are unable to harmonize their conclusions even with

regard to the comparatively recent geological formations. Thus, no

reliance can be placed on their figures when they do give any, for with

them it is all either millions or simply thousands of years!

That which is said may be strengthened by the confessions made by

themselves and the synopsis of these, to be found in that “Circle of

Sciences,” the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, which shows the mean accepted in

the geological and anthropological riddles. In that work the cream of the

most authoritative opinions is skimmed off and presented; nevertheless, we

find in it a refusal to assign any definite chronological date, even to

such comparatively speaking late epochs as the Neolithic era, though, for

a wonder, an age is established for the beginnings of certain geological

periods; at any rate for some few, the duration of which could hardly be

any more shortened, without an immediate conflict with facts.

Thus, it is surmised in the great Encyclopædia that:

One hundred million years have passed ... since the solidification

of our earth, when the earliest form of life appeared upon

it.(1651)

But it seems quite as hopeless to try to convert the modern Geologists and

Ethnologists, as it is to make Darwinian Naturalists perceive their

mistakes. About the Âryan Root‐Race and its origins, Science knows as

little as of the men from other Planets. With the exception of Flammarion,

and of a few Mystics among Astronomers, even the habitableness of other

Planets is mostly denied. Yet such great Adept Astronomers were the

Scientists of the earliest races of the Âryan stock, that they seem to

have known far more about the races of Mars and Venus than the modern

Anthropologist knows of those of the early stages of the Earth.

Let us leave Modern Science aside for a moment and turn to Ancient

Knowledge. As we are assured by Archaic Scientists that all such

geological cataclysms—from the upheaval of oceans, deluges, and shifting

of continents, down to the present year’s cyclones, hurricanes,

earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, and even the extraordinary

weather and seeming shifting of seasons which are perplexing all European

and American Meteorologists—are due to, and depend on the Moon and

Planets; aye, that even modest and neglected constellations have the

greatest influence on the meteorological and cosmical changes, over, and

within our Earth—let us give one moment’s attention to our sidereal

despots, the rulers of our globe and men. Modern Science denies any such

influence; Archaic Science affirms it. We will see what both say with

regard to this question.

B. On Chains Of Planets And Their Plurality.

Did the Ancients know of Worlds besides their own? What are the data of

the Occultists in affirming that every Globe is a Septenary Chain of

Worlds—of which only one member is visible—and that these are, were, or

will be, “man‐bearing,” just as is every visible Star or Planet? What do

they mean by “a moral and physical influence” exerted on our Globe by the

Sidereal Worlds?

Such are the questions often put to us, and they have to be considered

from every aspect. To the first of the two queries the answer is: We

believe it because the first law in nature is uniformity in diversity, and

the second is analogy. “As above, so below.” The time is gone by for ever

when our pious ancestors believed that our Earth was in the centre of the

Universe, and the Church and her arrogant servants could insist that the

supposition that any other Planet could be inhabited should be regarded as

blasphemy. Adam and Eve, the Serpent and Original Sin, followed by

Atonement through Blood, have been too long in the way of progress, and

universal truth has thus been sacrificed to the insane conceit of us

little men.

Now what are the proofs thereof? Beyond inferential evidence and logical

reasoning, there are none for the profane. To the Occultists, who believe

in the knowledge acquired by countless generations of Seers and Initiates,

the data offered in the Secret Books are all‐sufficient. The general

public needs other proofs, however. There are some Kabalists, and even

some Eastern Occultists, who, failing to find uniform evidence upon this

point in all the mystic works of the nations, hesitate to accept the

teaching. Even such “uniform evidence” will be forthcoming presently.

Meanwhile, we may approach the subject from its general aspect, and see

whether belief in it is so very absurd, as some Scientists along with

other Nicodemuses would have it. Unconsciously, perhaps, in thinking of a

plurality of inhabited “Worlds,” we imagine them to be like the Globe we

inhabit, and to be peopled by beings more or less resembling ourselves.

And in so doing we are only following a natural instinct. Indeed, so long

as the enquiry is confined to the life‐history of this Globe, we can

speculate on the question with some profit, and ask ourselves, with some

hope of at least asking an intelligible question, what were the “Worlds”

spoken of in all the ancient scriptures of Humanity? But how do we know

(_a_) what kind of beings inhabit the Globes in general; and (_b_) whether

those who rule Planets superior to our own do not exercise the same

influence on our Earth _consciously_, that we may exercise

_unconsciously_, say on the small planets (planetoids or asteroids) in the

long run, by our cutting the Earth in pieces, opening canals, and thereby

entirely changing our climates. Of course, like Cæsar’s wife, the

planetoids, cannot be affected by our suspicion. They are too far, etc.

Believing in Esoteric Astronomy, however, we are not so sure of that.

But when, extending our speculations beyond our Planetary Chain, we try to

cross the limits of the Solar System, then indeed we act as do

presumptuous fools. For—while accepting the old Hermetic axiom, “as above,

so below”—as we may well believe that Nature on Earth displays the most

careful economy, utilizing every vile and waste thing in her marvellous

transformations, and withal _never_ repeating herself, so we may justly

conclude that there is no other Globe in all her infinite systems so

closely resembling this Earth, that the ordinary powers of man’s thought

should be able to imagine and reproduce its semblance and

containment.(1652)

And indeed we find in the romances as in all the so‐called scientific

fictions and spiritistic “revelations” from Moon, Stars, and Planets,

merely fresh combinations or modifications of the men and things, the

passions and forms of life, with which we are familiar, though even on the

other Planets of our own System nature and life are entirely different

from those prevailing on our own. Swedenborg was preeminent in inculcating

such an erroneous belief.

But even more. The ordinary man has no experience of any state of

consciousness other than that to which the physical senses link him. Men

dream; they sleep the profound sleep which is too deep for its dreams to

impress the physical brain; and in these states there must still be

consciousness. How, then, while these mysteries remain unexplored, can

_we_ hope to speculate with profit on the nature of Globes which, in the

economy of Nature, must needs belong to states of consciousness other and

quite different from _any_ which man experiences here?

And this is true to the letter. For even great Adepts (those initiated of

course), trained Seers though they be, can only claim thorough

acquaintance with the nature and appearance of Planets and their

inhabitants belonging to our Solar System. They _know_ that almost all the

Planetary Worlds are inhabited, but—even in spirit—they can have access

only to those of our System; and they are also aware how difficult it is,

_even for them_, to put themselves into full rapport even with the planes

of consciousness _within_ our System, differing as they do from the states

of consciousness possible on this Globe; such, for instance, as those

which exist on the Chain of Spheres on the three planes beyond that of our

Earth. Such knowledge and intercourse are possible to them because they

have learned how to penetrate to planes of consciousness which are closed

to the perceptions of ordinary men; but were they to communicate their

knowledge, the world would be no wiser, because men lack that experience

of other forms of perception which alone could enable them to grasp what

they might be told.

Still the fact remains that most of the Planets, like the Stars beyond our

System, are inhabited, a fact which has been admitted by the men of

Science themselves. Laplace and Herschel believed it, though they wisely

abstained from imprudent speculation; and the same conclusion has been

worked out and supported with an array of scientific considerations by C.

Flammarion, the well‐known French Astronomer. The arguments he brings

forward are strictly scientific, and are such as appeal even to a

materialistic mind, which would remain unmoved by such thoughts as those

of Sir David Brewster, the famous Physicist, who writes:

Those “barren spirits” or “base souls,” as the poet calls them,

who might be led to believe that the earth is the only inhabited

body in the universe, would have no difficulty in conceiving the

earth also to have been destitute of inhabitants. What is more, if

such minds were acquainted with the deductions of geology, they

would admit that it was uninhabited for myriads of years; and here

we come to the impossible conclusion that during these myriads of

years there was not a single intelligent creature in the vast

domains of the Universal King, and that before the protozoic

formations there existed neither plant nor animal in all the

infinity of space.(1653)

Flammarion shows, in addition, that all the conditions of life—even as

_we_ know it—are present on some at least of the Planets, and points to

the fact that these conditions must be much more favourable on them than

they are on our Earth.

Thus scientific reasoning, as well as observed facts, concurs with the

statements of the Seer, and the innate voice in man’s own heart in

declaring that life—intelligent, conscious life—_must_ exist on other

worlds than ours.

But this is the limit beyond which the ordinary faculties of man cannot

carry him. Many are the romances and tales, some purely fanciful, others

bristling with scientific knowledge, which have attempted to imagine and

describe life on other Globes. But one and all they give but some

distorted copy of the drama of life around us. It is either, with

Voltaire, the men of our own race under a microscope, or, with de

Bergerac, a graceful play of fancy and satire; but we always find that at

bottom the new world is but the one we ourselves live in. So strong is

this tendency that even great natural, though non‐initiated, Seers, fall

victims to it when untrained; witness Swedenborg, who goes so far as to

dress the inhabitants of Mercury, whom he meets with in the spirit‐world,

in clothes such as are worn in Europe!

Commenting on this tendency, Flammarion says:

It seems as if in the eyes of those authors who have written on

this subject, the Earth were the type of the Universe, and the man

of Earth, the type of the inhabitants of the Heavens. It is, on

the contrary, much more probable, that, since the nature of other

planets is essentially varied, and the surroundings and conditions

of existence essentially different, while the forces which preside

over the creation of beings and the substances which enter into

their mutual constitution are essentially distinct, it would

follow that our mode of existence cannot be regarded as in any way

applicable to other globes. Those who have written on this subject

have allowed themselves to be dominated by terrestrial ideas, and

have therefore fallen into error.(1654)

But Flammarion himself falls into the very error which he here condemns,

for he tacitly takes the conditions of life on Earth as the standard by

which to determine the degree to which other Planets are adapted for

habitation by “other humanities.”

Let us, however, leave these profitless and empty speculations, which,

though they seem to fill our hearts with a glow of enthusiasm and to

enlarge our mental and spiritual grasp, do but in reality cause a

factitious stimulation, and blind us more and more to our ignorance not

only of the world we inhabit, but even of the infinitude contained within

ourselves.

When, therefore, we find “other worlds” spoken of in the Bibles of

Humanity, we may safely conclude that they not only refer to other states

of our Planetary Chain and Earth, but also to other inhabited Globes—Stars

and Planets; withal, that no speculations were ever made about the latter.

The whole of antiquity believed in the Universality of Life. But no really

initiated Seer of any civilized nation has ever taught that life on other

Stars could be judged by the standard of terrestrial life. What is

generally meant by “Earths” and “Worlds,” relates (_a_) to the “rebirths”

of our Globe after each Manvantara and a long period of Obscuration; and

(_b_) to the periodical and entire changes of the Earth’s surface, when

continents disappear to make room for oceans, and oceans and seas are

violently displaced and sent rolling to the poles, to cede their

emplacements to new continents.

We may begin with the _Bible_—the youngest of the World‐scriptures. In

_Ecclesiastes_, we read these words of the King‐Initiate:

One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the

earth abideth for ever.... The thing that hath been, it is that

which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be

done, and there is no new thing under the sun.(1655)

Under these words it is not easy to see the reference to the successive

cataclysms by which the Races of mankind are swept away, or, going further

back, to the various transitions of the Globe during the process of its

formation. But if we are told that this refers only to _our_ world _as we

now see it_, then we shall refer the reader to the _New Testament_, where

St. Paul speaks of the Son (the manifested Power) whom God hath appointed

heir of all things, “by whom also he made the worlds” (plural).(1656) This

“Power” is Chokmah, the Wisdom and the Word.

We shall probably be told that by the term “worlds,” the stars, heavenly

bodies, etc., were meant. But apart from the fact that “stars” were not

known as “worlds” to the ignorant editors of the Epistles, even if they

must have been thus known to Paul, who was an Initiate, a “Master‐

Builder,” we can quote on this point an eminent Theologian, Cardinal

Wiseman. In his work (i. 309) treating of the indefinite period of the six

days—or shall we say “too definite” period of the six days—of creation and

the 6,000 years, he confesses that we are in total darkness as to the

meaning of this statement of St. Paul, unless we are permitted to suppose

that allusion is made in it to the period which elapsed between the

_first_ and _second_ verses of chapter i of _Genesis_, and thus to those

primitive revolutions, _i.e._, the destructions and the reproductions of

the world, indicated in chapter i of _Ecclesiastes_; or, to accept, with

so many others, and in its _literal sense_, the passage in chapter i of

_Hebrews_, that speaks of the creation of “worlds”—in the plural. It is

very singular, he adds, that all the cosmogonies should agree to suggest

the same idea, and preserve the tradition of a first series of

revolutions, owing to which the world was destroyed and again renewed.

Had the Cardinal studied the _Zohar_ his doubts would have been changed

into certainties. Thus saith the “Idra Suta”:

There were old worlds which perished as soon as they came into

existence; worlds with and without form called Scintillas—for they

were like the sparks under the smith’s hammer, flying in all

directions. Some were the primordial worlds which could not

continue long, because the “Aged”—his name be sanctified—had not

as yet assumed his form,(1657) the workman was not yet the

“Heavenly Man.”(1658)

Again in the _Midrash_, written long before the _Kabalah_ of Simeon Ben

Iochai, Rabbi Abahu explains:

The Holy One, blessed be his name, has successively formed and

destroyed sundry worlds before this one(1659).... Now this refers

both to the first races [the “Kings of Edom”] and to the worlds

destroyed.(1660)

“Destroyed” means here what we call “obscuration.” This becomes evident

when we read the explanation given further on:

Still when it is said that they [the worlds] _perished_, it is

only meant thereby that they [their humanities] lacked the true

form, till the human [our] form came into being, in which all

things are comprised and which contains all forms ...—it does not

mean death, but only denotes a sinking down from their status

[that of worlds in activity].(1661)

When, therefore, we read of the “destruction” of the Worlds, the word has

many meanings, which are very clear in several of the Commentaries on the

_Zohar_ and in Kabalistic treatises. As said elsewhere, it means not only

the destruction of many Worlds which have ended their life‐career, but

also that of the several Continents which have disappeared, as also their

decline and geographical change of place.

The mysterious “Kings of Edom” are sometimes referred to as the “Worlds”

that had been destroyed; but it is a “cloak.” The Kings who reigned in

Edom before there reigned a King in Israel, or the “Edomite Kings,” could

never symbolize the “prior worlds,” but only the “attempts at men” on this

Globe—the Pre‐Adamite Races, of which the _Zohar_ speaks, and which we

explain as the First Root‐Race. For as, speaking of the six Earths (the

six “Limbs” of Microprosopus), it is said that the seventh (our Earth)

came not into the computation when the six were created (the six Spheres

above our Globe in the Terrestrial Chain), so the first seven Kings of

Edom are left out of calculation in _Genesis_. By the law of analogy and

permutation, in the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_, as also in the _Books of

Knowledge_ and of _Wisdom_, the “seven primordial worlds” mean also the

“seven primordial” races (sub‐races of the First Root‐Race of the

Shadows); and, again, the Kings of Edom are the sons of “Esau, the father

of the Edomites”;(1662) _i.e._, Esau represents in the _Bible_ the race

which stands between the Fourth and the Fifth, the Atlantean and the

Âryan. “Two _nations_ are in thy womb,” said the Lord to Rebekah; and Esau

was _red_ and _hairy_. From verse 24 to 34, 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.