CHAPTER XIX

THE FOURTH SUB-RACE, THE KELTIC x
By this time the great Central Asian Race was far on the road to its decline, but the Manu had been careful to preserve dignity, power, and pristine vigour in two branches to which He had given much special training — the seed of the fourth and fifth sub-races. His arrangements for them had been somewhat different from those of the earlier segregations. The type of the Root Race, the points in which it varied from the Atlantean, were now thoroughly established, so He was able to devote his attention to another kind of specialisation.
Those who were to constitute the fourth sub¬ race were drawn apart as usual, into a large valley in the mountains, not far from the capital ; the Manu selected a number of the most refined people whom He could find in the City as the nucleus of the new sub-race, and a division of classes arose in the colony ; for the Manu was striving to develop certain new characteristics, to awaken im¬ agination and artistic sensibility, to encourage poetry, oratory, painting and music, and the people who
1 Our band of Servers took no part in the founding of the fourth and fifth sub-races. They were at work in many countries, and may be met in the Lives of Alcyone.
THE FOURTH SUB-RACE, THE KELTIC 307
responded to this could not do agricultural and other hard manual labour. Anyone who showed any artistic talent in the schools was drafted off for special culture ; thus Neptune was observed re¬ citing, and was given special attention in order to develop the artistic faculty revealed in his recit¬ ation. He was remarkably handsome, and physical beauty was a marked characteristic of the sub-race, especially among this artistic class. The people were also trained to be enthusiastic, and to be devoted to their leaders. Great pains were taken for many centuries to develop these characteristics, and so effective was the work that they remain the special marks of the Kelt. The valley was managed practically as a separate State, and great predominance was given to the arts already named, art of all kinds being endowed in various ways. Under this special treatment the sub-race, as time rolled on, grew somewhat conceited, and looked down upon the rest of the kingdom as being what we should now call ‘ Philistine 5. And, indeed, they had much justification for their vanity, for they were an extraordinarily handsome people, cultured and refined in their tastes, and with much artistic talent.
The time chosen to send them forth was about 20,000 B. C., and their instructions were to proceed along the northern frontier of the Persian Kingdom, and to win for themselves a home among the mountains which we now call the Caucasus, at that time occupied by a number of wild tribes of predatory nature who were a constant annoyance to Persia. By taking advantage of this, the Manu
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was able to make arrangements with the Persian Monarch not only to allow free passage and food to His enormous host, but also to send with them a strong army to assist in subduing the mountaineers. Even with this help this proved no easy task. The new-comers soon conquered for them¬ selves a place in which to live, and they easily defeated the tribes when the latter could be per¬ suaded to risk a pitched battle ; but when it came to guerilla warfare they were by no means so successful, and many a year had passed before they could consider themselves reasonably secure from attack. They established themselves first somewhere in the district of Erivan, on the shores of Lake Sevanga, but as the centuries rolled on and their number greatly increased, they gradually exterminated the tribes or reduced them to submission, until eventually the whole of Georgia and Mingrelia was in their hands. Indeed in two thousand years they were occupying Armenia and Kurdistan as well, and later on Phrygia also came under their domination, so that they held nearly all Asia Minor as well as the Caucasus. In their mountain home they flourished greatly and became a mighty nation.
They formed rather a federation of tribes than an Empire, for their country was so broken up into valleys that free communication was im¬ possible. Even after they had begun to colonise the Mediterranean coast, they looked back to the Caucasus as their home, and it was really a second centre from which the sub-race went forth to its glorious destiny. By 10,000 B. C. they began to resume their westward march, travelling not as a
THE FOURTH SUB-RACE, THE KELTIC 309
nation, but as tribes. So it was only in comparative¬ ly small waves that they finally arrived in Europe, which it was their destiny to occupy.
Even a tribe did not go as a whole, but left behind it in its valley many of its members to carry on the work of cultivation ; these inter¬ married with other races, and their descendants, with some intermixture of Semitic blood in their veins, are the Georgians of to-day. Only in the cases in which a tribe proposed to settle in a country already in the hands of their sub-race did they depart from their old home in a body.
The first section to cross into Europe from Asia Minor were the ancient Greeks — not the Greeks of our 4 Ancient History,’ but their far-away ancestors, those who are sometimes called Pelasgians. It will be remembered that the Egyptian priests are mentioned in Plato’s Tnnoeus and Critias as having spoken to a later Greek of the splendid race which had preceded his own people in his land ; how they had turned back an invasion from the mighty nation from the West, the conquering nation that had subdued all before it, until it shivered itself against the heroic valour of these Greeks. In com¬ parison with these, it was said, the modern Greeks — the Greeks of our history who seem to us so great — were as pigmies. From these sprang the Trojans who fought with the modern Greeks, and the city of Agade in Asia Minor was peopled by their descendants.
These, then, had held for a long time the sea-board of Asia Minor and the islands of Cyprus and Crete, and all the trade of that part of the
310 MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
world was carried in their vessels. A fine civilisation was gradually built up in Crete, which endured for thousands of years, and was still flourishing in B. C. 2,800. The name of Minos will ever be remembered as its founder or chief builder, and he was of these elder Greeks, even before B. C. 10,000. The final cause of their definite entry into Europe as a power was an aggressive movement on the part of the Emperor of Poseidonis.
The Mediterranean coasts and islands had for many centuries been in the hands of a number of small nations, most of them Etrurian or Akkadian, but some Semitic ; and, except for occasional squabbles, these people were usually peaceful merchantmen. But it occurred one day to the Emperor of Poseidonis to annex all these States, by way of extending his realm and rivalling the traditions of his forefathers. So he prepared a great army and a mighty fleet, and started on his career of conquest. He subdued without difficulty the large Algerian island ; he ravaged the coasts of Spain, Portugal and Italy, and forced all those peoples to submit to him ; and Egypt, which was not a great naval power, was already debating whether to propose a treaty with him, or to anger him by a resistance which it was feared would be hopeless. Just when he felt secure of the success of his plans, a difficulty arose from an entirely unexpected quarter. The Greek sailors of the Levant declined altogether to be impressed by his imposing forces, and defied him to interfere with their trade. He had been so sure of victory that he had divid¬ ed his fleet, and had only half of it immediately available ; but with that half he at once attacked
THE FOURTH SUB-RACE, THE KELTIC 311
the presumptuous Greeks, who inflicted upon him a serious defeat, drowning thousands of his soldiers, and leaving not one ship afloat of the great num¬ ber that attacked them. The battle was not unlike the destruction by the English of the great Spanish Armada ; the Greek vessels were smaller than the Atlantean, and not so powerfully armed, but they were faster and far easier to handle. They knew their seas thoroughly, and in several cases decoyed their enemies into positions where the loss of the larger ship was certain. The weather helped them, too, as in the case of the Spanish Armada. The Atlantean ships had great banks of oars, and were clumsy, lumbering things, quite unfitted for heavy weather, and shipping water easily. They also could only navigate deep water, and the agile Greek vessels fled into channels navigable enough for them but fatal to their heavy antagonists, which promptly ran aground.
The second half of the Atlantean fleet was hastily collected and another attack was made, but it was no more successful than the first, though the Greeks lost heavily in repelling it. The Atlantean Monarch himself escaped, and contrived to land in Sicily, where some of his troops had established themselves ; but as soon as it became known that his fleet had been destroyed, the conquered populations rose against him, and he had to fight his way home through the whole length of Italy. He withdrew as he went the various garrisons which he had established, but, nevertheless, by the time he reached the Riviera, he had but a few utterly exhausted followers. He
312 MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
made his way in disguise across the south of France, and eventually reached his own kingdom in a merchant ship. Naturally he vowed direst vengeance against the Greeks, and at once ordered preparations for another vast expedition ; but the news of the total loss of his fleet and army emboldened various discontented tribes in his own island to raise the standard of rebellion, and during the rest of his reign he never again found himself in a position to undertake foreign aggression.
The success of the Greeks immensely strengthened their position in the Mediterranean, and within the next century they had established settlements on many of its shores. But a worse enemy than the Emperor of Poseidonis now assailed them, and for the moment conquered them, although in the end it proved beneficial. It was the terrible tidal wave created by the sinking of Poseidonis, in B. C. 9,564, which destroyed most of their settlements, and seriously injured the remainder. Both the Gobi Sea and the Sahara Sea became dry land, and the most appalling convulsions took place.
This, however, affected the main stock of the sub-race in its highland home but slightly ; messengers from the almost destroyed emigrants arrived in the Caucasus, begging urgently for help, and they went from tribe to tribe, haranguing the people, and urging them to send help to their suffering brethren. Partly from fellow-feeling, and partly with the wish of bettering their own con¬ dition and furthering their fortunes by commerce, the tribes combined, as soon as it seemed certain that the catastrophe was over, to send exploring
THE FOURTH SUB-RACE, THE KELTIC 313
expeditions to ascertain the fate of their brethren beyond the seas, and, when those returned, further relief was organised on a large scale.
The early Greek settlements had been all on the sea-coast, and the colonists were daring sailors ; the populations of the interior were not always friendly, though overawed by the dash and valour of the Greeks. But when these latter were almost all destroyed by the cataclysm, the few survivors were often persecuted, and even in some cases enslaved, by the interior races. When the bottom of the Sahara Sea was heaved up, its waters poured out through the great gap between Egypt and Tunis, where Tripoli now stands, and the tidal wave destroyed the sea-coasts, though the interior suffered but little ; it was just those sea-coasts on which the Greeks had settled, so that they were the chief sufferers. The Sahara
gradually sank down again, and a new coast line rose, assuming the configuration known to us along the African coast, the great Algerian island joining
the mainland, and forming with the new land the
northern coast of Africa.
Almost all shipping had been simply annihilated, and new navies had to be built ; yet so great
was the energy of the Greeks that within a few years all the ports of Asia Minor were once more in working order, and streams of new ships went forth from them to see what help was needed across the seas, to re-establish the colonies, and to redeem the honour of the Greek name by delivering those who bore it from a foreign yoke. In a surprisingly short time this was done, and the fact that these ancient Greeks were the first to
314 MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
recover from the shock of the great cataclysm gave them the opportunity of annexing all the best harbours of the new coast line, and since most of the trade of Egypt also was in their hands, the Mediterranean remained for centuries practically a Greek sea. There came a time when Phoenicians and Carthaginians divided the trade with them, but that was much later. They even carried their trade eastward, an expedition going as far as Java, and founding a colony in that island, with which a connection was long kept up.
The Phoenicians were a fourth Race people derived from the Semites and Akkadians, the fifth and sixth Atlantean sub-races, the Akkadian blood much predominating. The Carthaginians, later, were also Akkadian, intermixed with Arab, and with a dash of negro blood. Both were trading peoples, and in the much later days, when Carthage was a mighty city, its troops were almost entirely mercenaries, recruited among the African tribes, the Libyans and Numidians.
The emigration from Asia Minor into Europe was almost continuous, and it is not easy to divide it into distinct waves. If we take these ancient Greeks as our first subdivision, we may perhaps count the Albanians as the second, and the Italian race as the third, both of these latter occupying about the same countries as those in which we know them now. Then after an interval came a fourth wave of astonishing vitality — that to which modern ethnologists restrict the name 4 Keltic \ This slowly became the predominant race over the north of Italy, the whole of France and Belgium
THE FOURTH SUB-RACE, THE KELTIC 315
and the British Isles, the western part of Switzer¬ land, and Germany west of the Rhine. The Greeks of our 4 Ancient History ’ were a mixture, derived from the first wave, mingled with settlers from the second, third and fourth, and with an infusion of the fifth sub-race, coming down from the north and settling in Greece. These gave the rare, and much admired, golden hair and blue eyes, occasion¬ ally found among the Greeks.
The fifth wave practically lost itself in the north of Africa, and only traces can now be found of its blood, much mingled with the Semitic — the fifth sub-race of the Atlantean to which the name originally belonged, and the second sub-race of the Aryan, the Arabian, sometimes also called Semitic — among the Berbers, the Moors, the Kabyles, and even the Guanches of the Canary Islands, in this last case mingled with the Tlavatli. This wave encountered the fourth and intermingled with it in the Spanish peninsula, and at a later stage of its existence — only about two thousand years ago — it contributed the last of the many elements which go to make up the population of Ireland; for to it belonged the Milesian invaders who poured into that island from Spain — some of them founding a dynasty of Milesian Kings in France — and bound it under curious forms of magic.
But a far more splendid element of the Irish population had come into it before : that from the sixth wave, which left Asia Minor in a totally dif¬ ferent direction, pushing north-west until they reached Scandinavia, where they intermingled to some extent with the fifth sub-race, the Teutonic, of which
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we shall speak in the next chapter. They thus descended upon Ireland from the north, and are celebrated in its history as the Tuatha-de-Danaan, who are spoken of more as Gods than men. The slight mixture with the Teutonic sub-race gave this last wave some characteristics, both of disposi¬ tion and of personal appearance, in which they differed from the majority of their sub-race.
But, on the whole, we may describe the men of this fourth, or Keltic sub-race, as having brown or black hair and eyes, and round heads. They were, as a rule, not tall in stature, and their character showed clearly the result of the Manu’s efforts thousands of years before. They were imagi¬ native, eloquent, poetical, musical, capable of en¬ thusiastic devotion to a leader, and splendidly brave in following him, though liable to quick depression in case of failure. They seemed to lack what we call business qualities, and they had but scant regard for truth.
The first Athens — or the city built upon the site where Athens now stands — was built B. C. 8,000. (The Athens of our histories was begun about B. C. 1,000, the Parthenon being built in B. C. 480.) After the catastrophe of B. C. 9,564, some of the old Greeks settled down in Hellas, occupying the country, and it was there that the Mahaguru, the Supreme Teacher, came to them, Orpheus, the Founder of the most ancient Orphic Mysteries, from which the later Mysteries of Greece were derived. About B. C. 7,000 He came, living chiefly in the forests, where He gathered His disciples round Him. There was no King to
THE FOURTH SUB-RACE, THE KELTIC 317
bid Him welcome, no gorgeous Court to acclaim Him. He came as a Singer, wandering through the land, loving the life of Nature, her sunlit spaces and her shadowed forest retreats, averse to cities and to the crowded haunts of men. A band of disciples grew around Him, and He taught them in the glades of woodland, silent save for the singing of the birds and the sweet sounds of forest life, that seemed not to break the stillness.
He taught by song, by music, music of voice and instrument, carrying a five-stringed musical instrument, probably the origin of Apollo’s lyre, and He used a pentatonic scale. To this He sang, and wondrous was His music, the Devas drawing nigh to listen to the subtle tones ; by sound He worked upon the astral and mental bodies of His disciples, purifying and expanding them; by sound He drew the subtle bodies away from the physical, and set them free in the higher worlds. His music was quite different from the sequences repeated over and over again by which the same result was brought about in the Root- stock of the Race, and which it carried with it into India. Here He worked by melody, not by repetition of similar sounds ; and the rousing of each etheric centre had its own melody, stirring it into activity. He showed His disciples living pictures, created by music, and in the Greek Mysteries this was wrought in the same way, the tradition coming down from Him. And He taught that Sound was in all things, and that if man would harmonise himself, then would the Divine Harmony manifest through him, and make all
318 MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
Nature glad. Thus He went through Hellas sing¬ ing, and choosing here and there one who should follow Him, and singing also for the people in other ways, weaving over Greece a network of music, which should make her children beautiful and feed the artistic genius of her land. One of His disciples was Neptune, a youth of exquisite beauty, who followed Him everywhere, and often carried His lyre.
Traditions of Him came down among the people and spread far and wide. He became the God of the Sun, Phoebus-Apollo, and, in the North, Balder the Beautiful ; for the sixth Keltic wave, as we have seen, went northward to Scandinavia, and carried with it the legend of the Singer of Hellas.
As we think over the symbolism used by this Supreme Teacher, coming as Vyasa, as Hermes, as Zarathustra, as Orpheus, we recognise the unity of the teaching under the variety of the symbols. Ever He taught the Unity of Life, and the one¬ ness of God with His world. For Vyasa it was the Sun, that warmed all and gave life ; for Hermes it was the Light, that shone alike in heaven and in earth ; for Zarathustra it was the Fire, that lay hidden in all things; for Orpheus it was the Har¬ mony, in which all vibrated together. But Sun, Light, Fire, Sound, all gave but a single message: the One Life, the One Love, that was above all, and through all, and in all.
From Hellas some of the disciples went to Egypt, and fraternised with the teachers of the Inner Light, and some went teaching as far afield as Java. And so the Sound went forth, even to
THE FOURTH SUB-RACE, THE KELTIC 319
the ends of the world. But not again was the Supreme Teacher to come to the teaching of a sub¬ race. Nearly seven thousand years later He came to His ancient people, came for the last time, and in a body taken from them in India He reached final Illumination, He finished His lives on earth, He
became a Buddha.
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