SECTION III.

The Fossil Relics of Man and the Anthropoid Ape.
A.
GEOLOGICAL FACTS BEARING ON THE QUESTION OF THEIR
RELATIONSHIP.
The data derived from scientific research as to "primeval man" and the ape lend no countenance to theories deriving the former from the latter. "Where, then, must we look for primeval man?** — still queries Mr. Huxley, after having vainly searched for him in the very depths of the Quaternary strata.
Was the oldest Homo sapiens Pliocene or Miocene, or yet more ancient? In still older strata do the fossilized bones of an ape more anthropoid, or a man more pithecoid than any yet known, await the researches of some unborn palaeontologist? Time will show.*
It will — undeniably — and thus vindicate the Anthropology of the Occultists. Meanwhile, in his eagerness to vindicate Mr. Darwin's Descent of Man, Mr. Boyd Dawkins believes that he has all but found the **missing link" — in theory. It was due to Theologians more than to Geologists that, till nearly i860, man had been considered as a relic no older than the Adamic orthodox 6,000 years. As Karma would have it, though* it was left to a French Abbe — Bourgeois — to give this easy-going theory even a worse blow than had been given to it by the discoveries of Boucher de Perthes. Everyone knows that the Abbe discovered and brought to light good evidence that man was already in existence during the Miocene period, for flints of undeniably human making were excavated from Miocene strata. In the words of the author of Modem Science and Modem Thought:
They must either have been chipped by mau, or, as Mr. Boyd Dawkins supposes, by the dryopithecus or some other anthropoid ape which had a dose of intelligence so much superior to the gorilla or chimpanzee, as to be able to fabricate tools. But in this case the problem would be solved and the missing link discovered, for sach an ape might well have been the ancestor of Palaeolithic man.t
* ManU Place in JVainre, p. 159.
t Op cit., p. 157.
7H
THE SECRET DOCTKIXH.
Or — fke dfsctndani of Eocene man^ which is a variant offered to the theory. Meanwhile, the dryopithecus with such fine mental endow- || ments is yet to be discovered. On the other hand. Neolithic and even \ Palaeolithic man having become an absolute certainty, and as the same author justly observes:
If 100^000,000 years have elapsed since the earth became sufficiently solidified to support vegetable and animal life, the Tertiary period may have lasted for 5,000.000; or for 10,000,000 years, if the life-sustaining order of things has lasted, as Irydi^^ supposes for at least aao,ooo,ooo years — * ^^^
why should not another theory be tried? JLet us carr>' man, as a h^-po- thesis, to the close of Mesozoic times — admitting argumend causa that the (much more recent) higher apes then existed! This would allow ample time for man and the modem apes to have diverged from the mythical "ape more anthropoid," and even for the latter to have degenerated into those that are found mimicking ma.n in using '* branches of trees as clubs, and cracking cocoa-nuts with hammer and stones.*'t Some savage tnbes of hillmen in India build their abodes on trees^^H just as the gorillas build their dens. The question, which of the two* V the beast or the man, has become the imitator of the other, is scarcely an open one, even granting Mr. Boyd Dawkins' theory. The fanciful character of this hypothesis, is, however, generally admitted. It is argued that while in the Pliocene and Miocene periods there were true apes and baboons, and man was undeniably conlemporaueous with the former of these times — though, as we see, orthodox Anthropology still hesitates, in the teeth of facts, to place him in the era of the dryo- pithecus, which latter —
Has been considered by some anatomists as in some respects superior to the' chimpanzee or the gorilla— J
yet. in the Eocene there have been no other fossil primates unearthed and no pithecoid stocks found save a few extinct lemurian forms. And we find it also hinted that the dryopithecus may have been the "missing link," though the brain of the creature no more warrants the theory than does the brain of the modem gonlla. (See also Gaudry's specula- tions.)
• ihid^ p. »6i.
Y This the way ptimitivt man must have acted? Wc mre not aware of men, not even of savages, is our offe. whoore known to have imitated the ape« which lived side by side with them in the furestsof America and the iBland«. But wc do know of large apes who, tamed and HWnjr in honses, will mi men to the length of donning hats and coata. The writer once hod a chimpanzee who, without bt tJingbt, opened a newspaper and pretended to read it. It ia the dcKcading gracraUona, the chOdR^^ who mimic their parenta— not the reverK.
J /*«/., p. 151.
INSURMOtJNTABLE DIFFICtTLTlES.
715
Now we would ask who among tlie Scientists is ready to prove that there was no man in existence in the early Tertiar>' period? What is it that prevented his presence? Hardly thirty years ago his existence any farther back than six or seven thousand years was indignantly denied. Now he is refused admission into the Eocene age. Next century it may become a question whether man was not contemporary with the "flying dragon/' the pterodactyl, the plesiosaurus and iguano- don, etc Let us listen, however, to the echo of Science.
Now, where%*er anthropoid apes lived it is clear that, whether as a question of anatomical stnicture, or of clhnate and aurroundings, man, or some creature which was the ancestor of man, might have lived also. Anatomically speaking, apes and monkeys areas much special variations of the mammalian type as man, whom they resemble bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, and the physical animal man is simply an instance of the quadrumanous type specialized for erect posture and a larger brain* . . . If he could survive, as we kuow he did, the adverse condi- tions and extreme vicissitudes of the Glacial period, there is no reason why he might not have lived iu the semi-tropical climate of the Miocene period, when a genial climate extended even to Greenland and Spitzbe^-^n.t
When most of the men of Science wno are uncompromising in their belief in the descent of man from an "extinct anthropoid mammal/' will not accept even the bare tenability of any other theory than an ancestor common to man and the dryopithecus, it is refreshing to find in a work of real scientific value such a margin for compromise. Indeed, it is as wide as it can be made under the circumstances, i.e,^ without immediate danger of getting knocked off one's feet by the tidal wave of science-adulation. Believing that the difficulty of accounting —
For the development of intellect and morality by evolution is not so jfreat as that presented by the difference as to physical structuret between man and the highest animal —
the same author says:
* It is asked, whether it waald change one ioia of the scientific: truth and fact contained in the Bbo\*e Bcntcmce if it were to read : " the ape is Rimply an instance of the biped type spcciolixed for going on all foum gcneraUy. and vrlth a smaller brain." Ssotcrically speaking, this is the real tnith, and not the rcrcrse.
t Modem ScUnci and Modern Thomght, pp. 151, 15a,
X We cnnnot follow Mr. Uting herr. When avowed narwiniats like Roxley point to "the gnat gulf which intervenes between the lowest ape and the highest man io intellectual power," the "enormous gulf . . . between Ihetn." the "immeaiiurable and practically infinite divergence of the human from the Hinitan stirps " i.Vun'j Fiace in Satntf. p. 102 and note); when even the physical basis of mind — the brain— so caj/Zv exceeds in size that of the highest existing apes: when men like Wallace are forced to invoke the agency of extxa- terrestrial intelligences in order to explain the rise of such a creature as the piihecanthroptis alalus. or speechlem savage of Hieckcl, to the level of the Urge-brained and atom/ man of to-day— when all this is the case, it is idle to di»miss evolutionist puxzles so lightly. If the structural evidence Is so unconvincing and. token as a whole, so hostile to Darwinism, the difficulties as to the "how" of the evolution of the human mind by natural sclccUou ore tenfold greater.
7i6
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
But it is not so easy to see how this difTerence of physical structure arose, and how a being came into existeuce which had such a brain and band, and such un- developcHl capabilities for an almost unlimited progress. The difficulty is this: the difference in structure between the lowest existing race of man and the highest existing ape is too great to admit of the possibility of one being the direct descen- dant of the other. The negro in some respects makes a alight approximation towards the Simian type. His skull is narrower, his brain less capacious, his muzzle more projecting, his arm longer than those of the average European man. Still he is essentially a man, and separated by a wide g^lf from the chimpanzee or the gorilla. Even the idiot or crdtin, whose brain is no larger and intelligence no greater than that of the chimpanzee, is an arrested man. not an ape.
If, therefore, the Darwinian theory holds gooil in Uie case of man and ape, we must go back to some common ancestor from whom both may have originated. . . . But to establish this as a fact and not a theory we require to Bod that ancestral form, or, at any rate, some intermediate forms tending towards it . . . in other words . . . the "missing link." Kow it must be admitted that, hitherto, not only have no such missing links been discovered, but the oldest known human skulla and skeletons which date from the Glacial period, and are probably at least 100,000 years old. show no very decided approximation towards any such pre- human type. On the contrary, one of the oldest types, that of the men of the sepulchral cave of Cro-Magnon,* is that of a fine raoc, tall in stature^ large in brain, and on the whole superior to many of the existing races of mankind. The reply of course is that the time is insufficient, and if man and the ape had a common ancestor, that as a highly developed anthropoid ape, certainly, and man, probably, already existed in the Miocene period, such ancestor must be sought still further back ut a distance compared with which the whole Quaternary period sinks into insiguiiicance. . . . All this is true, and it may well make us hesitate before we admit that man ... is alone an exception to the general law of the universe, and is the creature of a special creation. This is the more difficult to believe, as the ape family which man so closely resembles [?] in phy.sical structure contains numerous branches which graduate into one another, but the extremes of which differ more widely than man does from the highest of the ape scries. If a special creation is required for man, must there not have been special creations for the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the orang, and for at least 100 difiercnt spccica of apes and monkeys which are all built on the same hues P t
There was a "special creation" for man, and a "special creation" for the ape, his progeny; only on other lines than ever bargained for by Science. Albert Gaiidry and others give some weighty reasons why man cannot be regarded as the crown of an ape-stock. When one finds that not only was the "primeval savage" (?) a reality in the Miocene times, but that, as de Mortillet shows, the flint relics he has
d
* A rac« which MM. de Qtutrcfagu and Huny regard u ■ branch of the same stock wltcaot tte Canary Iiland Guanchca spninc— oOshools of Ibc AUanteana, in abort.
♦ ^**rf., pp. iBo-ifta.
"BLURRED COPIES" OF THEIR BESTIAL SIRES.
left behind him were splintered by fire m that remote epoch; when we learn that the dryopithecus, alone of the anthropoids^ appears in those strata, what is the natural inference? That the Darwinians are in a quandary. The very man-like gibbon is still in the same lew grade of development^ as it was when it coexisted with man at the close of the Glacial period. It has not appreciably altered since the Pliocene times. Now there is little to choose between the dryopithecus and the existing anthropoids — gibbon, gorilla, etc. If, then, the Darwinian theory is all-snfficient, how are we to "explain" the evolution of this ape into man during the first half of the Miocene? The time is far too short for such a theoretical transformation. The extreme slowness with which variation in species supervenes renders the thing inconceivable — more especially on the "natural selection*' hypotliesis. The enormous mental and structural gulf between a savage acquainted with fire and the mode of kindling it, and a brutal anthropoid, is too great to bridge even in idea, during so contracted a period. Let the Evolutionists push back the process into the preceding Eocene, if they prefer to do so; let them even trace both man and dryopithecus to a common ancestor; the unpleasant consideration has, nevertheless, to be faced that in Eocene strata the anthropoid fossils are as conspicuous by their absence, as is the fabulous pithecanthropus of Hseckel. Is an exit out of this atl de sac to be found by an appeal to the '* unknown," and a reference, with Darwin, to the ** imperfection of the geological record'*? So be it; but the same right of appeal must then be equally accorded to the Occultists, instead of remaining the monopoly of puzzled Mate- rialism. Physical man, we say, existed before the first bed of the Cretaceous rocks was deposited. In the early part of the Tertiary age, the most brilliant civilization the world has ever known flourished at a period when the Hseckelian man-ape is conceived as roaming through primeval forests, and Mr. Grant Allen's putative ancestor as swinging himself from bough to bough with his hair>' mates, the degenerated Liliths of the Third Race Adam. Yet there were no anthropoid apes in the brighter days of the civilization of the Fourth Race; but Karma is a mysterious law, and no respecter of persons. The monsters bred in sin and shame by the Atlantean Giants, '*blurred copies" of their bestial sires, and hence of modern man, according to Huxley, now mislead and overwhelm with error the speculative Anthropologist of European Science.
Where did the first men live? Some Darwinists say in Western
718
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Africa, some in Southern Asia, others again believe in an independent origin of human stocks in Asia and America from a simian ancestry. HsBckel, however, advances gaily to the charge. Starting from his prosimia. *'the ancestor common to all other catarrhiui including man*' — a "link" now, however, disposed of for good by recent anatomical discoveries — he endeavours to find a habitat for the primeval pithe- canthropus alalus.
In all probability it [the transformation of animal into man] occurred in Southern Asia, in wliich region many evidences are forthcoming that here was the origiaa] home of the different species of man. Probably Southern Asia itself was Dot the earliest cradle of the human race, but Lemuria, a continent that lay to the south of Afiia. and sank later on beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. The period during which the evolution of the anthropoid apes into ape-like men took place was probably the last part of the Tertiary period, the Pliocene age, and perhaps the Miocene age, its forerunner^*
Of the above speculations, the only one of anj' worth is that referring to IvCmuria, which was the cradle of mankind — of the physical sexual creature who materialized through long aeons out of the ethereal her- maphrodites. Only, if it is proved that Kaster Island is an actual relic of I/;muria, we must believe that according to Haeckel the "dumb ape-men," just removed from a brutal mammalian monster, built the gigantic portrait-statues, two of which are now in the British Museum. Critics are mistaken in terming Hxckelian doctrines "abominable, revolutionary, immoral" — though Materialism is the legitimate out- come of the ape-ancestor myth — they are simply too absurd to demand disproof.
B.
WESTERN EVOLUTIONISM: THE COMPARATIVE ANATOMY OP MAN
AND THE ANTHROPOID IN NO WAY A CONFIRMATION
OF DARWINISM.
We are told that while every other heresy against Modem Science may be disregarded, this, our denial of the Darwinian theory as applied to man, will be the one *' unpardonable" sin. The Evolutionists stand firm as rock on the evidence of similarity of structure between the ape and man. The anatomical evidence, it is urged, is quite overpowering in this case; it is bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, even the brain conformation being very much the same.
hanttmAn, the monkkv-god.
719
Well, what of that? All this was known before King Herod; and the writers of the Rdnidyana^ the poets who sang the prowess and valour of Hanum3n» the Monkey-God, "whose feats were great and wisdom never rivalled," must have known as much about his anatomy and brain as does any Haeckel or Huxley in our modem day. Volumes upon volumes have been written upon this similarity, in antiquity as in more modem times. Therefore, there is nothing new given to the world or to philosophy in such volumes as Mivart's Man and Apes^ or Messrs. Fiske and Huxley's defence of Darwinism. But what are those crucial proofs of man's descent from a pithecoid ancestor? If the Darwinian theor>- is not the true one, we are told, if man and ape do not descend from a common ancestor, then we must explain the reason of:
(i) The similarity of structure between the two; the fact that the higher animal world — man and beast — is physically of one type or pattern.
(ii) The presence of rudimentary organs in man, i.e., traces of former organs now atrophied by disuse. Some of these organs, it is asserted, could not have had any scope for employment, except in a semi-animal, semi-arboreal monster. Why, again, do we find in man those •'rudimentary" organs — as useless as its rudimentary wing is to the apteryx of Australia — the vermiform appendix of the caecum, the ear muscles,* the ''rudimentary tail" with which children are still sometimes born, etc.?
Such is the war cry; aud the cackle of the smaller fry among the Darwinians is louder, if possible, than even that of the scientific Evolutionists themselves!
Furthermore, the latter — with their great leader Mr. Huxley, and such eminent Zoologists as Mr. Romanes and others — while defending the Darwinian theory, are the first to confess the almost insuperable difficulties in the way of its final demonstration. And there are as great men of Science as the above-named, who deny, most emphatically, the uncalled-for assumption, and loudly denounce the unwarrantable exaggerations on the question of this supposed similarity. It is sufficient to glance at the works of Broca. Gratiolet, Owen, Pruner-Bey, and finally at the last great work of de Quatrefages, Introdtutioii h
* ProfeAsor Owen believes that these miinclcs— the attollcns, retnhens. and attrahetw ttama— were actively funciiooloK in men of the Stone a^. This may or may not be the case. The queittion folLt under the ordinary "occult" explauation, and iuvotvea no postulate of an "animal pmgmitor" to Mlve it.
4
yaO ^ THK SECRET DOCTRINK.
P^iude des Races Humaines, Qtusfions G/^t/rales, to discover the fallact of the Evolutionists. We may say more: the exaggerations concermag this alleged similarity of structure between man and the aQthropomor. phous ape have become so glaring and absurd of late, that even Mr. Huxley has found himself forced to protest against the too sanguiDC expectations. It was that great Anatomist personally who called tb« '•smaller fry" to order, by declaring in one of his articles that tht differences between the structure of the human body and that of the highest anthropomorphous pithecoid, were not only /ar from brinfi trifiing and unimporiani, but were, on the contrary, very great and suggestive :
Every bone of a gorilla bears marks by which it might be distinguished frora Ui« corresponding bone of a man.*
Among the existing creatures there is not one single intenncdiau form that could £11 the gap between man and the ape. To ignore thil gap. he added, "would be no less wrong than absurd."
Finally, the absurdity of such an unnatural descent of man is $o palpable in the face of all the proofs and evidence as to the skull ol the pithecoid compared to that of man, that de Quatrefages resorted unconsciously to our Esoteric theory by saying that it is rather the apes that can claim descent from man than vice versa. As proven by Gratiolet, with regard to the ca\nties of the brain of the anthropoids— in which species that organ develops in an inverse ratio to what would be the case were the corresponding organs in man really the product ot the development of the said organs in the apes — the size of the hunun skull and its brain, as well as the cavities, increase with the individoal development of man. His intellect develops and increases with age, while his facial bones and jaws diminish and straighten, thus becoming more and more spiritualized; whereas with the ape it is the reverse. In its youth the anthropoid is far more intelligent and good-natured, while with age it becomes duller: and, as its skull recedes and seems to diminish as it grows, its facial bones and jaws develop, the brain being finally crushed, and thrown entirely back, to make with every day more
■ Mam''s Pl&a in Nmimre, p. 104. To dte another good aaUiorily : "We find oa« of the like at>M (tfibbon) in Uie Tertiary period, and thin ipcdcs is uilt %n thf lamr tow grad^, and sidt kj side with it at the cud of the Ice pcriotl. umti it round in the »Anic high ^rade as lo-daT*, the ape not having approximated more aearly tu the man, aud modern man not havtni bccmuc furtfaer removed from the ape than the finl (fowll) man . . . these facta contradict a theory of coosiuit iwoya- sive development." (Pfaff.) Wlieo, according to Vof^. the average Atulraliaa braio ^ 99'3i cnb. inchea; that of the gorilla 3051. and that of the chimpanxcc only ts'4). the rimmt gap to be bridgtd by the advocate of " Natuml " Selection bccomci appaxcuL
THK GORItUV'S ADDRESS TO THE EVOLUTIONIST.
731
room for the animal tj'pc. The organ of thought — the brain — recedes and diminishes, entirely conquered and replaced by that of the wild beast — the jaw apparatus.
Thus, as wittily remarked in the French work, a gorilla could with perfect justice address an Evolutionist, claiming its right of descent from him. It would say to him: We, anthropoid apes, form a retro- gressive departure from the human type, and therefore our development and evolution are expressed by a transition from a human-like to an animal-like structure of organism; but in what way could you, men, descend from us — ^how can you form a continuation of our genus? For. to make this possible, your organisation would have to differ still more than ours does from the human structure, it would have to approach still closer to that of the beast than ours does; and in such a case justice demands that you should g^ve up to us your place in nature. You are lower than we are, once that you insist on tracing your genealogy* from our kind ; for the structure of our organization and its development are such that we are unable to generate forms of a higher organization than our own.
This is where the Occult Sciences agree entirely with de Quatrefages. Owing to the very type of his development man cannot descend from either an ape or an ancestor common to both apes and men, but shows his origin to be from a type far superior to himself. And this type is the "Heavenly Man*' — the Dhyan Chohans. or the Pitris so-called, as shown in the first Part of this Volume. On the other hand, the pithe- coids, the orang-outang, the gorilla, and the chimpanzee can^ and, as the Occult Sciences teach, do^ descend from the animalized Fourth human Root-Race, being the product of man and an extinct species of mammal — whose remote ancestors were themselves the product of Lomurian bestiality — which lived in the Miocene age. The ancestry of this semi-human monster is explained in the Stanzas as originating in the sin of the '* mind-less" races of the middle Third Race period.
When it is borne in mind that all forms which now people the Earth are so many variations on basic types originally thrown off by the Man of the Third and Fourth Round, such an evolutionist argument as that insisting on the "unity of .structural plan" characterizing all verte- brates, loses its edge. The basic types referred to were very few in number in comparison with the multitude of organisms to which they ultimately ga\'e rise; but a general unity of t>'pe has, nevertheless, been preserved throughout the ages. The economy of Nature does
722
THE SKCRKT DOCTHINK.
not sanction the coexistence of several utterly opposed "ground of organic evolution on one planet. Once, however, that the genenl drift of the Occult explanation is formulated, inference as to dettil may well be left to the intuitive reader.
Similarly with the important question of the "rudimentary" organs discovered by Anatomists in the human organism. Doubtless this h« of argument^ when wielded by Darwin and Haeckel against their Euro* pean adversaries, proved of great weight. Anthropolo^sts. who ventured to dispute the derivation of man from an animal ancestr>-, were sorely puzzled how to deal with the presence of gill-clefla, with the *'tair* problem, and so on. Here again Occtdtism comes to our assistance with the necessary data.
The fact is that, as previously stated, the human typt is the repertory of all potential organic forms, and the central point from which these latter radiate. In this postulate we find a true "evolution" or •'im- I folding" — in a sense which cannot be said to belong to the mechaoial theory of Natural Selection. Criticizing Darwin's inference from "rudiments," an able writer remarks:
Why U it not juai as probably a true hypolhesU to suppose that man was 6nt created with these rudimentary sketches in his orj^uization, and that they becamt ' nseful appendages in the lower animals into which man degenerated, as it is tA suppose that these parts existed in full development, activity and practical use. ia the lower animals out of whom man was generated?*
Read for "into which man degenerated," "the prototypes which man sk^ in the course of his astral developments," and an aspect of the true Esoteric solution is before us. But a wider generalization is now to be formulated.
So far as our present Fourth Round terrestrial period is concerned, the mammalian fauna are alone to be regarded as traceable to proto- types shed by Man. The amphibia, birds, reptiles, fishes, etc., are the resultants of the Third Round, astral fossil forms stored up in the atuic envelope of the Earth and projected into physical objectivitj' subsequent to the deposition of the first Laureutian rocks. "Evolu- tion" has to deal with the progressive modifications, which Palaeon- tology shows to have affected the lower animal and vegetable kingdoms in the course of geological time. It does not, and from the nature c^M things cannot, touch on the subject of the pre-physical types whic^l served as the basis for future differentiation. Tabulate the general
* Ceo. T. Curtia. Creation, or SvoitUiottf p. Ttf.
THE DARWI^nSTS AND THEIR OPPONENTS.
723
laws controlling the development of physical organisms it certainly may, and to a certain extent it has acquitted itself ably of the task.
To return to the immediate subject of discussion. The mammalia, whose first traces are discovered in the marsupials of the Triassic rocks of the Secondare' period, were evolved from purdy astral pro- genitors contemporary with the Second Race. They are thus post- hutnaji^ and, consequently, it is easy to account for the general resemblance between their embr>'0nic stages and those of Man. who necessarily embraces in himself and epitomizes in his development the features of the group he originated. This explanation disposes of a portion of the Darwinist brief.
But how to account for the presence of the gill-clefls in the human foetus, which represent the stage through which the branchiae of the fi&h are developed;* for the pulsating vessel corresponding to the heart of the lower fishes, which const!- stutes the fcetal heart: foi the entire analogy presented by the segmentation of the human o\'um, the formation of the blastoderm, and the appearance of the "gas- trula" stage, with corresponding stages in lower vertebrate life and even among the sponges; for the various types of lower animal life which the form of the future child shadows forth in the cycle of its growth? . . . How comes it tn pass that stages in the life of fishes, whose ancestors swam [seons before the epoch of the First Root-Race] in the seas of the Silurian period, as well as stages in that of the later amphibian, reptilian fauna, are mirrored in the "epitomized history" of human fcetal development?
This plausible objection is met by the reply that the Third Round terrestrial animal forms were just as much referable to types thrown off by Third Round Man, as that new importation into our planet's area — the mammalian stock — is to the Fourth Round Humanity of the Second Root-Race. The process of human foetal growth epitomizes not only the general characteristics of the Fourth, but of the Third Round terrestrial life. The diapason of type is run through in brief. Occultists are thus at no loss to ** account for" the birth of children with an actual caudal appendage, or for the fact that the tail in the human foetus is, at one period, double the length of the nascent legs. The potentiality of every organ useful to animal life is locked up in Man^the Microcosm of the Macrocosm^ — and abnormal conditions may not unfrequently result in the strange phenomena which Darwinists
• " At this period." writes Darwin, " Ihc arteries run in arch-like hranchea, «> if to carry the hloofi to brftnchisc which are not present in the hisher vertebrAta, Lhoufh ibc alila on Ibe side of the aeck Btill remain, marldnK^ their former [?] position."
It is noteworthy that, though giill-clens are absolutely u«cleiM to all but amphibia and tishes. etc.. their appearance is re^Urly noted in the foetal development of vertebrates. Et'cn cbildnn are •ccaaicoally bom with an opcniag^ in Uie neck corresponding to one of the clefla.
724
THE SECRET I>OCTRI2ra.
regard as "reversion to ancestral features."* Reversion, indeed, but scarcely in the sense contemplated by our present-day empiricistsf
C.
DARWINISM AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND THEIR ANCESTRY.
THE ANTHROPOIDS
The public has been notified by more than one eminent modem Geologist and man of Science, that :
All estimate of geological duration is not merely imperfect, but necessarily im- possible: for we are ignorant of the causes, though they must have existed, which quickened or retarded the progress of the sedimentar>' deposits-t
And now another man of Science, as well known (Croll) calculating that the Tertiary age began either fifteen or two-aud-a-half milUoo years ago — the former being a more correct calculation, according to Esoteric Doctrine, than the latter— there seems in this case, at least, no very great disagreement. Exact Science, refusing to see in man a "special creation" (to a certain degree the Secret Sciences do the same), is at liberty to ignore the first three, or rather two-and-a-half Races — the spiritual, the semi-astral, and the semi-human — of our teachings. But it can hardly do the same in the case of the Third, at its closing period, the Fourth, and the Fifth Races, since it already divides mankind into Palaeolithic and Neolithic man.^ The Geologists of France place man in the Mid-Miocene age (Gabriel de Mortillet), and some even in the Secondary period, as de Quatrefages suggests;
* 'PhcNte who witb Hscckpl regard tbr gill-clcftft with their attendant phcnoniena as illusiratiw of au active fanclion in our amphibian and piscine ancestors {see his twelfth and thirteenth stafei), ought to explain why the "vegetable with leaBets" (Prof. AndrC' I^f%vn) repreaented in fcrtal growitt. does not appear in bis* twenty-two stages throogh which tbc Monera have paaaed in their aaccnt to Man. BoKikel does not postulate a vegrtabU ancealor. The emtiryological arflTumctit is Uias a edged sword and here cuts its ponseiwor.
T l^f^vre, Pkilotophv Historicul and CrUicat, pt. ii. p. 480, " Library erf" Contemporary Science.'
J We confess to not being able to see any good reasons for Mr. H. Clodd's positiw statement is Knowledge. Speaking of the men of NeoUthic times, "concerning whom Mr. Grant Allen haa given . . . a vivid and accurate sketch," and who are "the- direct ancestors of peoples of whom reULnaois yet lurk in out-of-the-way camera kK Enropc, where Ihcy have been s "but the men of Pohcolithic times can be identified with no cxiBting races; they were savages «f % more degraded type than any extant ; tall, yet barely erect, with short legs and twisted knees, with prognathoos, that it, projecting ape-like jaws, and small brains. Whence they come we cuukM WD, and their "grave knoweth no roan to this day.'"
fieaides the poaatbility that there may be men who know whence tiKy came and bow Uicy pcriaftfd —it is not tme to say that the Palscolitliic tuen. or their foisiU, arc all found with "amall hr^SK-" The oldest skull of oU thonc hitherto found, the "Neanderthal skull," is of average OMjMkcity. ittd Mr. Huxley was compelled to confess that it was no real approximation whatever to that of "nuBslBg link." There are aboriginal tribes io India whose brains are for smuUAir and nearer to ^ tbc ape than any hitherto found among the skulls of PahcoUlhic man.
HUXtEY S BOU> SPECITLATIONS.
725
while the English savants do not generally accept such antiquity for their species. But they may know better some day. For, as says Sir
Charles Lyell:
If we consider the absence or extreme scarcity of human bones and works of art in oU slrata, wlielUer marine or fresh-water, even in those formed in the immediate proximity of land inhabited by millions of hiunan beings, we shall be prepared for the general dearth of human memorials in glacial formations, whether recent, pleistocene, or of more ancient date. If there were a few wanderers over lands covered with glaciers, or over seas infested with icebergs, and if a few of them left their bones or weapons in moraines or in marine drifts, the chances, after the lapse of thousands of years, of a geologist meeting with one of them must be infinitesimally smaU.*
The men of Science avoid pinning themselves down to any definite statement concerning the age of man. as indeed they are hardly able to make auj', and thus leave enormous latitude to bolder speculations. Nevertheless, while the majority of the Anthropologists carr>' back the existence of man oniy into the period of the post-glacial drift, or what is called the Quaternary period, those of them who, as Evolutionists, trace man to a common origin with the monkey, do not show great consistency in their speculations. The Darwinian hypothesis demands, in reality, a far greater antiquity for man, than is even dimly suspected by super- ficial thinkers. This is proven by the greatest authorities on the question — Mr. Huxley, for instance. Those, therefore, who accept the Darwinian evolution, ipso facto hold very tenaciously to an antiquity of man so very great, indeed, that it falls not so far short of the Occultist's estiraate.f The modest thousands of years of the Encyclo- peedia Britannica and the 100,000 years, to which Anthropology in general limits the age of Humanity, seem quite microscopical when compared with the figures implied in Mr. Huxley's bold speculations. The former, indeed, makes of the original race of men ape-like cave- dwellers. The great English Biologist, in his desire to prove man's pithecoid origin, insists that the transformation of the primordial ape
* Antiquity
t The actual time irqoirvd for Bnch a theoretical transrormaUon is necesMrily euonnous. "If," says Professor Pfaff, " in the hundreds of thousands of years which j'ou [thr EvotutiontBls] accept betwrcn the rise of palseolithic man and our own day, a greater distance of man from the tirutc is not demon- strable {ihf most attcient man ivas jujl at far removfd from the tfrutt as tht no:o living man), what reasonable grouud can be advanced for bcticviug tliat man has been developed from tbe brute, and has receded further from it by infinitely small gradations. . . . The longer the intervai of time piaced Mween »ur times and the so-caiUd palatotithic men, the more omitu>us and destructive for the theory of the gradtai development of mum from the animal kingdom is the result staled.'* Huxley arritcs {Man's Plau in Naiurt, p. iw) Uial the moit ttber^l tsXimaXt^ for the auUquity of nua must bt 4iillfmrihtr extended.
726
THE SECRBT DOCTRI?^.
into a human being ninst have occurred milHons of years back. For^ criticizing the excellent cranial capacity of the Neanderthal skuU. notwithstanding his assertion that it is overlaid with "pithecoid bocy walls," coupled with Mr. Grant Allen's assurances that this skull- Possesses large hosses on the forehead, slrikiugly [?] suggestive of those »h)d give the gorilla iU peculiarly fierce appearance*—
Still Mr. Huxley is forced to admit that, in the said skull, his theory a once more defeated by the —
Completely human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones, together mU the fair development of the Engis skull.
In consequence of all this we are notified that these skulls —
Clearly indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock whence man hu proceeded, need no longer be sought by those who entertain any form of ife doctrine of progressive development in the newest Tertiaries; but that they out be looked for in an epoch more distant from the age of the elepUas primigeo:iu than that is from us.t
An untold antiquity for man is thus, then, the scientific sine quA »«« in the question of Darwinian Evolution, since the oldest Palseolithic man shows as yet no appreciable differentiation from his moden descendant. It is only of late that Modern Science has with evm year begun to widen the abyss that now separates her from ancient Science, as that of Pliny and Hippocrates; none of the old wrilen would have derided the Archaic Teachings with respect to the evolti' tion of the human races and animal species, as the present day Scientist — Geologist or Anthropologist — is sure to do.
I
* For/nig fi/ly RfvitMi, tBSs. The bftAclcRBncfi cxug^eraUotis of the imagrinativc Mr. Grant Allen, wan nbly exposed by tbe eminent Anat ProfeMor R. Owen. In Limgtmtn's Magaxine, No. i. Musi U be repeated, raoreowr, that the Ov- Ma^on PalicDlithic type U •opcrior la that of a very larg-e number or exUting r&cea i
-* It thus stands to reason that Science would nc^er dream of a Pre-Tertiary man. and tkit dc Quatrefoge*' Secoudory man makca every Academician and RR.S. faint with faorror bccaute, lo preserve the ape-theory, Sdencc must make man Post -Secondary. This is just what dc Quatrefsfe« has twitted the Darwinists with, addin);, that on the whole there were moir scientific reosona for tradat the ape from miui than man from the anthropoid. With this exception Science has not one »inf1c Tolid ai:funient to offer og^ain^l the antiquity of man. Hut in this case modem KvY>1utJon demsiid* for more than the fldcen million years of Croll for the Tertinry period, for two very simple but g^tai nmions: \a\ no anthropoid ape has been found before the Miocene (leriod; (ft) man's flint relics been traced to the Pliocene and their presence sutpected, if not accepted by all. in the Miocene st Again, where is the "missing link" in such case.* And bow conld even a PaUeoUthic savage, * "man of Constadt," evolve into a thinking man from the brute dryopithecus of the Miocene r* ;j ikori a timef One sees now the reason why Darwin rejected tbe theory that only 60.000,000 years had elapsed since Uie Cambrinn period. " He judges from tbe smalt amount of orfi^anic change aince the commencement of the g'lacial epoch, and adds that the previous 140 mitliou shears can hardly be cob* aidered as sufficient for the development of the varied Torms of life which certainly existed loward tbe close of the Cambrian period." iflix.iiOMXd, Mythtca! Monstert, p. &4.I
THE PEDIGREE OF THE AFES.
727
Holding, as we do, that the mammalian type was a post-humau Fourth Round product, the following diagram — as the writer understands the teaching — may make the process clear:
The Pedigree of the Apes.
Primeval Astral Man.
(Astral) Mammal Prototypes
Q-->^ ^..^*- Second Race (Astral).
..M Third Race (Semi-Astral).
(Separation into sexes.) Fourth Race (Physical),
— Fifth Race.
(Physical} iiowcr Mammals
Lower Apes.
I The unnatural union was invariably fertile, because the then mamma-
lian types were not remote enough from their root-type* — Primeval Astral Man^to develop the necessary barrier. Medical Science records such cases of monsters, bred from human and animal parents, even in
(our own day. The possibility is» therefore, only one of degree, not of fact. Thus it is that Occultism solves one of the strangest problems presented to the consideration of the Anthropologist.
The pendulum of thought oscillates between extremes. Having now finally emancipated herself from the shackles of Theology, Science has embraced the opposite fallacy; and in the attempt to interpret Nature on purely materialistic lines, she has built up that most extravagant theory of the ages — the derivation of man from a ferocious and brutal ape. So rooted has this doctrine now become, in one form and another, that the most Herculean efforts will be needed to bring about its final rejection. The Darwinian Anthropology is the incubus of the Ethno-
• Let UB rcmtmbn- in this connection the Esoteric Teochltifr which lelU that Man in the Third Round WAS poaacAArd of a gigantic ape-like foroi on the astr&l plane. And nmiUrly fit the cIOM of the Third Race in this Round. Thus it accounts for the human features of the apei, especially of the later an thrDpoid»— apart from the fact that these latter preserve by heredity a rrscmblance to their Atlanto-I^emttrian sires.
728
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
legist, a Sturdy child of modern Materialism, which has ^own up and acquired increasing vigour, as the ineptitude of the theological legend of Man's ••creation" became more and more apparent. It has thriven on account of the strange delusion that— as a Scientist of repute puts it :
All hypotheses and theories with respect to the rise of man can be reduced to two [the evolutiouist and the biblical exoteric account]. - . . There is no other hypothesis conceivable [! !].
The anthropology of the Secret Volumes is. however, the best possible answer to such a worthless contention.
The anatomical resemblance between man and the higher ape, so frequently cited by Darwinists as pointing to some former ancestor common to both, presents au iuterestiiig problem, the proper solution of which is to be sought for in the Esoteric explanation of the genesis of the pithecoid stocks. We have given it as far as it was useful, by stating that the bestiality of the primeval mindless races resulted in the production of huge man-like monsters — the oflfspring of human and animal parents. As time rolled on, and the still semi-astral forms consolidated into the physical, the descendants of these creatures were modified by external conditions, until the breed, dwindling" in size, culminated in the lower apes of the Miocene period. With these the later Atlanteans renewed the sin of the *' Mindless" — this time with full responsibility. The resultants of their crime were the apes now known as anthropoid. ^H
It may be useful to compare this ver>' simple theory — and we a^^l willing to offer it merely as a hypothesis to the unbelievers — with the Darwinian ^cheme, so full of insurmountable obstacles, that no sooner is one of them overcome by a more or less ingenious hypothesis, than ten worse difficulties are forthwith discovered behind the on disposed of.