SECTION 11.

The Ancestors Mankind is Offered by
Science.
Thb question of questions for mankind— the problem which uoderlies all others, and is raor« deeply interesting than any other— is the ascertainment of the place which man occupies in Nature, and of his relations to the universe of things.*
The world stands divided this day and hesitates between Divine Progenitors — be they Adam and Eve or the I^unar Pitris — and Bathybius Heeckeliiy the gelatinous hermit of the briny deep. Having explained the Occult theory, it may now be compared with that of Modern Materialism. The reader is invited to choose between the two after having judged them on their respective merits.
We may derive some consolation for the rejection of our Divine Ancestors, in finding that the Haeckelian speculations receive no better treatment at the hands of strictly exact Science than do our own, Haeckel's Phylogenesis is no less laughed at by the foes of his fantastic evolution, by other and greater Scientists, than our primeval Races will be. As du Bois-Reymond puts it, we may believe him easily when he says that the
Ancestral trees of our race sketched in the Sckdpfungsgesckichte are of about as much value as are the pedigrees of the Homeric heroes in the eyes of the historical critic.
This settled, everyone will see that one hypothesis is as good as another. And as we find Haeckel himself confessing that neither Geo- logy in its history of the past nor the ancestral history of organisms will ever "rise to the position of a real 'exact* science," f a large margin is thus left to Occult Science to make its annotations and lodge its protests. The world is left to choose between the teachings of Para-
• T. Huxley, Man's Place in Nature, p. 57. t Op. cit,, " The ProofB of ^volution," p. 273.
6^ THE S«CRST DOCTREBB.
celsos, the " father of modern chemistry," and those of HseckeL the
••father of the m\'thical Sozura." We demand no more.
Without presuming to take part in the quarrel of such very learned Naturalists as du Bois-Reymond and Haeckel a prvpos o€ our blood relationship to
Those anccstoni [of onts] which have led np fTom the uniceUolar r1 ■!!»€■, Vttmts. Acntnia, Piscu, Amphibia. Reptilia to the Aves
we may put a brief question or two, for the information of onr
readers. Availing ourselves of the opportunity, and bearing in miod Darwin's theories of Natural Selection, etc, we would ask Science— with regard to the origin of the human and animal species — which theory of Evolution of the two herewith described is the more scientific or the more unscientific, if so preferred.
(i) Is it that of an Evolution which starts from the be^nning with sexual propagation?
(2) Or that teaching which shows the gradual development of organs; their solidification, and the procreation of each species, at first by simple easy separation from one into two or even several individuals: then a fresh development — the first step to a species of separate distinct sexes — the hermaphrodite condition ; then agaia, a kind of partheuo- genesi3, ''virginal reproduction.'* when the egg-cells are formed within the body, issuing from it in atomic emanations and becoming matured outside of it; until, finally, after a definite separation into sexes» the human beings begin procreating through sexual connection?
Of these two, the first ''theory'*— or rather, a "revealed feet" — is enunciated by all the exoteric Bibles, except the Purdnas, preeminently by the Jewish Cosmogony. The second is that which is taught by the Occult Philosophy, as has been explained.
An answer is found to our question in a volume just published by Mr. Samuel Laing — the best lay exponent of Modem Science* In