Chapter II, On Organic Kvolution. " Ubrary of Contemporary Science.") Why does he reject the

possibility of a Secomlary-age mnn r Simply becnuMc he is tuvolved In the meshes of the Darwiniaa Anthropology. "The origin of man is bound up with that of the higher mammals"; he appeared "only with the last types of his class " I This is not argument, but dogmatism. Theory can never excommunicate fact. Must ever)thing give place lo the mere working bypothejtcs of Western Evolutionists? Surely not!
t The above parallels stand good only if Professor CroU's earlier calculations are adopted, namely. of 15,000,000 years since the beginning of the Hocene period (see Charles Oould's Atythical JifomsU*t. p. 84), not those in his Cltmote and Time, which allow only two -and -a- half million years, or at the utmost three million yeare' duration to the Tertiary age. This, however, would make the whole dura- tion of the incrusted age of the world only ijt.too.ooo years, according to Profe*sor Winchell. whereas in the Esoteric Doctrine, sedimentation began in thts Kaund approximately over jm.ocm.ooo years *go. Yet his calculationii do not clash much with ours with regard to tlie epochu of glacial periods In the Tertiary age, which is called in our Esoteric books the "Age of the Pigmies." With Trgardtothe 320,000,000 of years assigned to Aedimentation. it must be noted that even a greater time clapMal during the preparation of thi« Globe for the Ponrth Round previouz Iq \twatificaiion.
) These placcntalia of the third sub-class are divided, it appears, into viUiplaccntalu ^placenta composed of many separate scattered tu/ls), the conoplacentalia (girdle -shaped placental, aunt the discoplacenlalia (or discoid). Mseckc] sees in the mar^uptalia didelphia. one of the connecting link» Meneahficalty between man and the rooneron ! t
t This inclusion of the Pirst Race In the Secondary is necessarily only a provisional worldog hypothesis— the actual chronulogy of the l^rst, Second, and early Third Races txdug clo»ely veiled by th« Initiates. For all that can be said on the subject, the Eirst Root-Race may have t>ecn Pre* Secoadary, as is, indeed. Uoght.
THB SUFFICIENCY OF THE "ANIMAUSTS."
755
appearinTertiary times, and the climate, before* the said cataclysm took place.
tn>pical in the Eocene age, warm in the perished during the Miocene period, t
Miocene, and temperate in the Pliocene, when the ?*iflh (our Aryan Race) had had
was favourable to his presence, the proofs one miUion years of iudependeut exist*
of his existence in Europe before the close of the Tertiary epoch .... are not generally accepted here."
ence.J How much older it is from its origin — who knows? As the "historical" period began with the Indian Aryans, with their lledaj for their multitudes, $ 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
QCATERNARY. "QUATERNARY."
PalseoHthic Man. Neolithic Man, His- If the Quaternary period is allowed torical Period. 1,500.000 years, then only does our Fifth
Race belong to it
Yet — mirabik ^/W;/— while the non-caniiibal Palceolithic man, who must have certainly ajitedated cannibal Neolithic man by hundreds of thousands of years.tl is shown to be a remarkable artist. Neolithic man is made out to be almost an abject savage, his lake dwellingfs not- withstanding.f For see what a learned Geologist. Mr. Charles Gould, tells the reader in his Mythical Monsters :
Palaeolithic men were unacquainted with pottery and the art of weaving, and apparently had no domesticated animals or system of cultivation ; but the Neolithic lakC'dwellers of Switzerland had looms, pottery, cereals, sheep, horses, etc Im- plements 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
* Though wc apply the term " truly hnnun," only to the Fourth Atlonteaa Root-Rmcc, yvt the TtUrd Rac« tA aInioKt human in Its latcat portion, since it la during its fifth sexually, and that the Jirst man wax born accordingr to the now normal process. This "first man " answers, in the Bible, to Bnos or Henoch, son of Selh {Genesis. Iv.).
♦ (Oology records the fanner existence of a universal ocean, and sheets of marine sediment nniformly present ever>'where testify to it; but it is not eren the epoch referred to in the altegory of VaivasvatB Manu. The Utter is a Deva-Man (or Manu) snvlnic in an Arlc (the female principle) Ctae germs of humanity, and also the seven Rishls — who stand here as the S3rml>o1s for the srven human principles— of which allegory we have spoken elsewhere. The " Universal Deluge" is the Watery Abyss of the Primordial Principle of Berosus. (See Stanzas li to viil, in Part I.) How, if it, million years are allowed by CroU to have elapsed since the Rocene period (which we state on the authority of a (Geologist, Mr. Ch. Cou'd). only bo millions are oasigned by him "since the beginning of the Cambrian period, in the Primordial age"— posses comprehcnKion. The Secondary strata are twice the thickness of the Tertiary, and Geology thus shows the Secondary age alone to be of twice the length of the Tertiary. Shall we then accept only 15 million }-eara for tK>th the Primary and the Primordial f No wonder Darwin rejected the calculation.
I See Esoteric Buddhism, pp. jj-55. Fourth Ed.
( We hope that we have furnished all the scientific data for it elsewberr.
II It is conceded by Geology to be " beyond doubt that a comiiderable period must bave sapcrveiinl alter the departure of PataeoUthic man and before the arrival of his Neolithic successor." (See Ji Getlcte'a Prehistoric Europe, and Ch. Gould's Mythical AfonsUrj, p. 98.)
^ lietterabling in a manner the pile- villages of Northern Borneo.
756 THB SBCRBT DOCTRINE.
ability, or ornamented with life-like engravings of the various animals liviiig at the period ; whereas there appears to have been a marked absence of any similar artistic ability* on the part of Neolithic man.t
Let us give the reasons for this.
(i) The oldest fossil man. the primitive cave-men of the old Palzeo- Hthic 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 Anchilherium have proved for the genus horse — thai '^ gradual progressive specialization from a simple ancestral t}*pe to more complex
existing forms-t
(2) As to the so-called Palaeolithic hatchets :
When placed side by side with the rudest forms of stone hatchets actually used by the Australian and other savages. It is difificult to detect any difference.^
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 Egr>'pt 7,000 years ago.
(3) An obstacle which is the direct consequence of the two pre- ceding: Man. if no older than the Palaeolithic 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 thftt remote geological time, i.e.^ even a finer specimen of maitho&d than many of the now existing faces*
The above lends itself naturally to the following syllogism : (i) 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, (j)
* "The most clever Kulptor of modem times would probably not socctred Trry much t>ettrr. if Ms prnver weic a splinter of flint, and stone and l>one were the materials to be engraved " ( |Pn>C Boyd Dawlcios' Cavt-HuHting, p. 344.) It is ncedlcsii ^cr such a coaccaxion to furtber tnatst od nuxlej^a. Schmidt's, Lain^'s. and others' statemeots to the effect that Palxolithic man cannot Xjc cofisi to lead us back in any wny to a pithecoid human race ; thiw Ihey demolish the fantasies of muiy aoperficial evolutionists. The relic of artistic merit here reiipf>faring in the Chippcd-Stone-o^ men. is traceable to their Atlantean ancestry. Neolithic man was a fore-runner of the prcal Aryma ia- vaalOQ, and immigrated from (^uitc another quarter— Asia, and in a meastire Northern Aftlcm. The tribes peoplior the latter towards the North-West, were certainly of an Atlantean origin —datfi^ back hundreds of thousaads of years before the Neolithic Period in Kurope— but they bad to diverged from the i>arent lypr as to present no longer any marked characteristic peculiar to It. Af to the contrast between Neolithic and Palirolithic man, it is a remarkable fact that, as Cari Vogt points oat, M/j^rrnur was a cannibal, Uie much earlier man 0/ the AfammotA rta was not. Kumaa mjuinen and customs du not seem to improve with time, then ? Not in tbla instance at any rate.
+ Op. cit,, p. 97.
% Modtrn Sciena and htoitm Thpught, p. tSt. Ibid., p. 112.
ONE SAI,VATION POR SCIKKCK. 757
Conclusion: Even though a missing link were found, the balance of e\ndence would remain more in favour of the ape being a degenerated man, made dumb by some fortuitous circumstances,* 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 accept.^, and the statement be believed that in the Eocene age —
Even in ita very first part, the great cycle of the Fourth Race men, the Atlan- teans, had already reached its highest pointtt
then some of the present difficulties of Science might easily be made to disappear. The rude workmanship of the Palseolithic tools proves nothing against the idea that, side by side with their makers, there lived nations highly ci\nlized. 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. J
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 modem animal painter" — by no means exaggerated praise, as anyone may see, by glaiicitig at the sketch given below from Mr. Gould*s work. Now, since we have our greatest painters of Europe side by side with the modem Esqui- maux, who also have a tendency, like their Palaeolithic ancestors of the Reindeer period, the rude and savage human species, to be constantly
• On the data furnished by Modern Science, Physriology. and Natural Selection, aud without resortlDjr to any miraculous creation, two human nefrro specimens of the lowest intelligence— say idiots bora dumlk— miffht by breeding produce a dumb Pastrana species, which would start a new modified race, and thus produce, in the course of geological time, the regular Anthropoid ape.
t Esottric Buddkiim, p. (X4.
i Mod*rn ScUnc* and Modem Thought, p. 98.
758
THE SECRET DOCTRINE,
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 Eg^-ptian 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 Palaxjlithic 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 discover>' 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^J Occultists. Thus, Professor Baumgartner believes that: ^H
The germs for the higher animals could only be the eggs of the lower aniiuals; . . . besides the advance of the vegetable and animal world in development, there occurred in that period the formation of new ori^nal germs [which formed the basis of new metamorphoses, etc.] . . . the first men who proceeded ^m the germs of animaU beneath them, Lived ^st 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 me of Science in Europe now, that the human races —
Have not deacended from one pair, but appeared immediately in numerons races.*
Therefore, when we read Force a?td Mailer, and find that Emperor Materialists, Biichner, repeating after Manu and Hermes, that : Imperceptibly the plant glides into the animal, the animal into the man t
— 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 mttltifonn organic world • . . has developed itself progressively, in the course of endless periods of time, by the aid of natural phenomena. :{
* Anjangf ru einer Pkysiolotixhin ScAdp/ungs-gaehichte ier fytanMen- untf TkurweU, aMj. f Op. eit.. p. sit. ) /bt'd., p. II.
BETWEEN TWO VOIDS.
759
The who]e difference lies in this: Modern Science places her mate- rialistic theory of primordial germs on Earth, and the iasl 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.*
But when we are told that this man is a product of the natural forces inherent in Matter — Force, according to modem 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 Biichner 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 attrac- tion 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 assert* such a theory in the teeth oi fact, is only one more proof thai: "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 Biichner 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 miist have taken place some time in the history of our planet; and there's an end of it. This seems to look
* Man's Ptac* im Nature, p. 159.
760 THH sac RET I>OCTRINK.
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 proto- plasm. 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 phenomenoD of an unspaia/iz£d skeleton which cannot fairly be connected with any of these lines.'
The secret could be soon told, not only from the Esoteric but even from the standpoint of every religion the world over, without mention- ing the Occultists. The ''specialized skeleton" is sought for in the
RatNDBSR HNGRAVHD ON Antler bv Pal-'Eolithic Man. {After G€ikie.\f 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 theor>' is the most wonderful feature of the day.
Meanwhile, the above is a specimen of an engraving made by a Palaeo- lithic "savage": Palaeolithic meaning the "earlier Stone-age" man, one supposed to have been as savage and brutal as the brutes he lived with.
• Sir W. Dawaoa, U*J>., F.iLS^ Orixin 0/ the Wwtd, p. 39. t M^uai Mmutan, p. 97.
A PALfiOLITHIC LANDSEER.
761
Leaving the modem 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 engTa\'ing or even a pencil sketch as good. Here we have the true artistic raccaurci, 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 arc asked to believe, to the primitive "semi-animal" savages (contem- XJoraneous 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 Morlillet himself seems to experience a vague distrust of the conclusions of modern Archaeologists, when he writes;
The pre-liistoric is a new science, far, very far, from having said its last word,* 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 bastfd on the theory of progressive lUvehpm^i, and it may prove to be sound; nevertheless we must remember that as yet lue have vo distinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are caUed the inferior races of mankind has ahvays preceded in chronological order thai of the higher races.'f
Nor has such evidence been found to this day. Science is thus ofiFering for sale the skin of a bear, which has hitherto never been seen by mortal eye!
This concession of L3^eirs reads most suggestively with the subjoined utterance of Professor Max Miillcr, whose attack on Darwinian Anthro- pology 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 Palaeolithic Europeau man, the Atlantean otfshooLs retaininp; a relic of a lost culture, which throve when the parent Root-Race was in its prime.] Do we ever get au insight into their antecedents? Can we ever understand what after all is every- where 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-
/VcAu
t A nttquity of Afam, p. 25.
762
THS SKCRBT DOCTRINE.
4
CAllcd beathcna, with their complicated systems of mythology, their artificial customs, their unintelligible whiuiii Jind savageries, are uot the creature* of to^ljj or yesterday. Unless we admit a special creation for these aava^es. they must be as old as the HindQs, the Greeks and Romans [far older] . . . They may h-w passed through ever bo many vicissitudes, and what we consider as pritnitire, mty be. for all we know, a relapse into savagery or a corruption of somethiag thai wu mure rational and intelUgibk in former stages.*
Professor George Rawlinson, M.A., remarks:
"The primeval savage" is a familiar term in modem literature, but there is evidence that the primeval savage ever existed. Rather ali ihe cviiUnct tooki tk othn' way. t
In his Origin of Nations, he rightly adds:
Thi myihical traditions of almost ail nations place at the beginning of kmmaa hisiory a time of happiness and perfection, a "golden age" which has no features of savagery or barbarism, but many of civilization and refinement;
How is the modern Evolutionist to meet this consensus of evidence?
We repeat the question asked in A/5 Unveiled:
Does the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that there were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized? "WTicn the present populaUoo of the Karlh ha.s disappeared, and some Archieologist belonging to the "comiaj race" of the distant future shall excavate the domestic implements of one of our Indian or Andaman Island tribes, will he be justiSed in concluding that mankind ia the nineteenth century was "just emerging from the Stone age"?j
Another strange inconsistency in scientific theories is that Neolithic man is shown as being far more of a primitive savage than Palaeolithic. Either Lubbock's Pre-historic Man, or Evans* Ancient Stone Impiements must be at faulty or — both. For this is what we learn from these works and others;
(i) As we pass from Neolithic to Palaeolithic man, the stone imple? ments become rude lumbering makeshifts^ instead of gracefully shap«^ and polished instruments. Pottery, and other useful arts disappear we descend the scale. And yet the latter could engrave sudi a reindeer f
(2) PalsEoIilhic man lived in caves which he shared with hyaenas and lions,!! whereas Neolithic man dwelt in lake-villages and bnildings. ^H
• India, fVkat can it Teach Lh f K courae of Lecturw delivovd before the Univenrity of Cunbhd|^^ in iflBi. Lecture III,, p. no, Ed. iftqa. t A ntiquily of Man HisioricaUv Connderett. " Preacnt I^y TracU." Vol. IT. EwBy IX, p. 95, X Of>.cit.,^p, 10, 11.
I op. cit., \. 4.
II PalKollUiic man must have been endowed In hU day wiUi thrice Herculean force mud magic vnlnerBbimy. orelse the lion wii* n* weak ai a lamb at that ptriod, for both to shnre the »arae dwell We mny as well be uked to believe thai U ii that lion or hyicna which enKraved the deer anUer, a* be lold tlitt this piece of workmanship woi done by a navogc of such a kiud.
14
I
THE RISINGS AND FALLS OP CIVILIZATION.
763
Every one who has followed even super6cially the geological dis- coveries of our day, knows that a gradual improvement in workman- ship is found, from the clumsy chipping and rude chopping of the early Palaeolithic 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 de- scendants be justified in setting us all down as Palaeolithic 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 Palaeolithic man, were executed only toward the close of the Reindeer period — for this expla- nation would be a ver>' lame one indeed, in view of the Geologists' ignorance of even the approximate duration of periods.
The Esoteric Doctriue teaches distinctly the dogma of the risings and falls of civilization; and now we learn that:
It is ft remarkable fad that cannibalism seems to have become more frequeat 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 . . .•
— 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 ot the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African negroes, etc.) gradually brought the worship back. The y^das countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do.
In the early Egyptian tombs, and in the remains of the pre-hisloric cities ex- cavated by Dr. Scbliemann, images of owl- and oz-hcaded 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 archreologists 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. do
^^ I ^IHH *j»Hg SECRET DOCTKINE. ^^^™^
Braye in some artificial caves of the Neolithic period . . . which appear to be intended for female figures of life 5ize.«
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 Abbe Bourgeois* flints may serve as a warning t — 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 vaia have grown into mountains and the mountains have crumbled to the boitom 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 reappeared — 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 ha\'ing since "retreated" and made room for the table lands of Central Asia.
The most interesting example of this progressive march is perhaps aflforded 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 oi fairly excellent workmanship, with a few fragments of pottery* — possibly traceable to the era of the Roman colonization. There is no trace of Palaeolithic man here. No flints or traces of the extinct animals of the Quaternary period. Wlien, how- ever, we penetrate still deeper through the dense layer of stalag:mite beneath the black mould into the red earth, which, of course, itself once formed the pavement of the retreat, things assume a very difl"erent aspecL Not one implement fit to bear comparison with ih^ 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 Palaeolithic age, mixed up confusedly with
• /bid,, p. 199.
t- More than twenty •pecimnis of fossil monkeys have been found in one locality alone, in Mtoceor strata Tikermi, nrar Athcnii). If man wa« nut then, the prriott is loo short for him to hare beta irttnt/onmdsiTtlQh. it ns one may. And if he was, and if no monkey ia found earlier, what foUowaf
STRANGE CONFESSIONS OF SCIENCE.
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 Palaeolithic man, things slope down- wards 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 Palaeolithic age — in which the great rudeness of implements reaches its maximum, and the brutal (?) appearance of contemporarj' skulls, such as the Neanderthal, points to a veo' 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 Modem Thougfil;
The theory, scieutifically t>ased or uot, of Peyr^re 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, com- prising the AtistraliaTi, Tasmanian, and Nej^o 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 commentetL The history, in the post ages of the world, of this race is peculiar. It has never originated a system of architecture or a religion of its own**
It is peculiar, indeed, as we have shown in the case of the Tasmanians. However it may h^t/ossH 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 thera, 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 antiquitj- which they claim for man, they have Darwin himself and Lyell with them. The latter confesses that they, the Naturalists —
Have already obtaine that there has been time for many conspicuous mammalia, once his contemporaries, to die out, and this even before t/ie era of the earliest historical records.t
» Dr. C Carter Blake, Art., "The Ccne&ia of Man.*
r Antiquitjf of Man, p. 530.
766
THE SKCRBT DOCTRINE.
This is a statement made by one of England's great authorities upon the question. The two sentences that follow are as suggestive, anA may well be remembered by students of Occultism, for with alt others he says:
111 spite of the long lapse of prehistoric ages during which be [man] mutt ha«T flourished on earth, there is mo proof of any perceptible change in his bodily slntctavt. If, therefore, he ever diverged from some unreasoning brute ancestor, we aim suppose him to have existed at a far more distant epoch, possibly on sOf»i£ cont^tmH or islaruis now submerged beneath the ocean.
Thus lost continents are officially suspected. That worlds, and also races, are periodically destroyed by fire (volcanoes and earthquake-^! and water, in turn, and are periodically renewed, is a doctrine as old 35 man. Manu, Hermes, the Chaldseans, all antiquity, believed in ti^ Twice already has the face of the Globe been changed by fire, and by water, since man appeared on it. As land needs rest and renovatii new forces, and a change for its soil, so does water. Theuce arises 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 conversa- tion given in the Book of Enoch between Noah and his ••grandfather Enoch; the allegory is, nevertheless, a geological and an astronomi fact. There is a secular change in the inclination of the I^arth's and its appointed time is recorded in one of the great Secret Cycl As in many other questions, Science is gradually moving toward 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 cxtra-mundanc causes to explain the great increase of ice at this glacial period. I would prefer the theory propounded by Dr. Robert Hookc in 1688; since, by Sir Richard Pliilltps and others; and lastly by Mr. Thomas Belt. C.E., F.G.S.; namely, a slight increase in the present obUquity of the ecliptic, a proposal in perfect accord with other known astronomical facts, and the introduc- tion of which involves no disturbance of the hannony which is essential to our cosmical condition as a unit in the great solar sj-stem.*
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 AtlantiSi to accept the fact.
Evergreen figs, laurels, palms, and ferns having gigantic rhizomes have tb
existing congeners in a sub-lropical climate^ such, ii cannot be doubted, as prevail^ w
* VevSoks. i. MS AJt, *^BTldeiiees of Umb Age of Xwt.**
:ner
I
A ONCE TROPICAL POLB.
767
Devonshire in Miocene times, and are thus calculated to suggest caudon 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, lyinj^ between 69* 20' and 70* 30' N. lat ; when we learn that among them were two species found also at Bovey (Sequoia couttsi^, 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 lo be dismissed apparently with the feeling that the time /or its solution has not yet arrived.
It seems to be admitted on all bands that the Miocene plants of Europe have their ueurest 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 Allautisr — 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 alti- tude since the commencement of the Eocene period" (Lyell's Principles, tith ed^ p. 256, 1872). a Post-Miocene [?] depression might have carried the hypothetical Atlantis into almost abysmal depths. But aa Atlantis is apparently unnecessary and uncalled for. According to Professor Oliver. **A close and very peculiar analogy subsists between the Flora of Tertiar>' 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 iutensificd towards its extreme eastern margin, if uot in numerical preponderance of genera, yet in features which especially give a character to the Fossil Flora. . . . This acces- sion of the Tertiary element is lather gradual and not abruptly assumed in the Japan islands only. Although it there attains a maximum, we may trace it from the Mediterranean, I^evant, Caucasus, and Persia . . . then along the Himdlaya and through China. . . - We learn also that during the Tertiarj' epoch, counter- parts of Central European Miocene genera certainly grew in North-West America. . . , We note further that the present Atlantic Islands' Flora affords no substan- tial 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-Kastcni Asia was united to North- Western America, perhaps by the line where the Aleutian chain of islands now extends.'* {JVat. 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 uotbing short of a pithecoid mail will ever satisfy the luckless
768 ^~ THB SECRET DOCTRINB.
searchers after the thrice hypothetical "missing link." Yet. if bcneait the vast floors of the Atlantic, from the Teneriffe Pic to Gibraltar, the ancient emplacement of the lost Atlantis, all the submarine stnti were to be broken up miles deep, no such skull as would satisfy \ht Darwinists would be found. As Dr. C. R, Bree remarks, no missing links between man and ape having been discovered iu various gravcb and formations above the Tertidry 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 »v/ gon^ down tc the bottom of the sea.*
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 n^ 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. Rollestou's work. Tiiia Physiologist, he says, suggests that as there is considerable plasticity in the human frame, not only in youth and during growth, but evenm the adult, we ought not always to take for granted, as some ad\-ocatcj 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 sohI^ or the higfur intcIUctual and morai /acuities play the fim instead of the second part in a progressive schetne?
This hypothesis is made iu relation to evolution not being entirety 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 Race& Still later, ages after, appeared the men of our Fifth Race, reduced from what we should call the still gigantic stature of their primevtl ancestors, to about half that size at present.
Man is certainly no special creation. He is the product of Nature^* 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 evolti-
PALEOLITHIC MAN, A CALLIGRAPHIST.
769
tton— is the "Eternal Pilgrim," the Protean differentiation in Space and Time of the One Absolute "Unknowable.**
In his Antiquity of Man* ^\r Charles Lyell quotes — perhaps in rather a mocking spirit — what Hallam says in his Inirodiution to the Literature of Europe:
If man was made in the image of God, he was also mflde in the image of an ape. The framework of the body of him who has weighed the stars and made the light- ning his slave, approaches to thai of a speechless bnite who wanders in the forests of Sumatra. Thns standing on the frontier land between animal and angelic natures, what wonder that he should partake of both!t
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 DhySn Chohau; while the wanderer of the forest of Sumatra was made in the image of man, since the frame- work 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 Rouud 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 fonn should be equally endowed with permanency.
And yet what do we find? Says Sir William Dawson, F.R.S. :
It is farther significant that "rofessor 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 alto- gether the discussion of the origin of men from the apes, now obviously compli- cated with so many difficnllies that both Wallace and Mivart arc 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 con- nection with the monkeys; and Hsckel has to admit that the penultimate link in his phylogeny, the ape-like man, is absolutely unknown {History 0/ Creation). . . . The so-called "tallies" found with the bones of Palaeocosmic men in European caves, and illustrated in the admirable works of Christy and Lartet, show that the nidiincnts even of writing were already in possession of the oldest race of men known to arclucology or geology.^
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 enomtof^ also during man*s development from
• Op. cit., p. 501. Kd. i86j.
t Op. cit., iv. iba.
4 Sec on this ciucsUoti WUsou's PrthUioric Man^ U. 54 ; Origin of the ^'orld, pp. 393, 3M.
770
THE SBCRKT DOCTRINE.
the monkey.* ^The chance, therefore, of Bome of these variations being (onaAl the different gravels or fresh-water formations above the tertiaries, mtut be great. And yet not one single variation, not one single specimen of a being b^ twcen a monkey and a man has ever been found! Neither in the grarel, nor t^ drift-clay, nor the fresh-water beds and gravel and drift, nor in the tertiarie* beloi them, has there ever been discovered the remains of any member of the nu«ti( families between the monkey and the man, as assumed to have existed bf Mr. Darwin. Have they gone down with the depression of the earth's surface udmt they now covered with the sea? If so, it is beyond all probability that theyihoold not also be found in those beds of contemporary geological strata which have « gone down to the bottom of the sea; still more improbable that some porlMOi should not be dredged from the ocean-bed like the remains of the mammoth of the rhinoceros, which are also found in fresh-water beds and gravel and dnJll . , . The celebrated Neanderthal skull, about which so much haa been m^ belongs confessedly to this remote period [bronze and stone agesj, and yet preseot^ although it may have been the skull of an idiot, immense differences from tke highest known anthropomorphous ape.t
Our Globe being convulsed each time that it reawakens for a new period of actixity, like a field which has to be ploughed and furrowri before fresh seed for its new crop is thrown into it — it does seem qiiiic hopeless that fossils belonging to its previous Rounds should be fouM in the beds of either its oldest or its latest geological strata. Ercry new Mauvantara brings along with it the renovation of forms, tj-pcs 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 hard- ness; 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 modem anthropoid.
This doctrine, even imperfectly delineated as it is under our inefficient pen, is assuredly more logical, more consistent with facts, and y&r www- 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
* And bow much more "eoormous* ^velopment from (he Third Race Man. t Op. dt., pp. t6o, i6i.
if we reverse the tubJccU. and say during Uie moukcT**
HERBERT SPENCER ON SPECIAL CREATIONS.
771
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 Modem Science. What the next theor>^ necessitated by the materialistic pre- misses 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 learn- ing. 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 nwlecutar action of ike 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 creadotia 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.*
• Ptindpl4* 0/ B$0logy, i. 345.
SECTION Y. Organic Evolution and Creative Centres,
It is argfued that Universal Evolution, otherwise the gradual develop- ment of species in all the kingdoms of Nature, works by uniform \tfti. This is admitted, and the law is enforced far more strictly in Esoteric than in Modem Science, But we are also told, that it is equally akw
that:
Development works from the less to the more perfect, and from tbe simplet i» tlie more complicateil. by incessant changes, small in themselves, but coosUaCy accumulating in the required direction,*
It is from the infinitesimally small that the comparatively gigaatic species are produced.
Esoteric Science agrees with this, but adds that this law applies onlr 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 gerni from which aU vertebrate life has developed throughout the ages, being distinct from the primitive germ from which vegetable and aniznal life
THK "GROUND-PLAN AND "DESIGNERS.
373
uave evolved, there are side laws whose work is determined by the conditions in wt?ich 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, aalmal or vegetable, have been slowly developed- °
This is as true of the "primitive genu" as it is false that that "germ*' is only "very much farther back" than man is; for it is at an immeasur- able and inconceivable distance, in Time^ though not in Space, from the origin even of our Solar System. As the Hindu philosophy very justly teaches, the "Aniydmsam Aniyasam,*' can be known only through false notions. It is the "Many" that proceed from the "One" — the living spiritual germs or centres of forces—^zch. 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 Dhyau-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 Mftson — the One Life and Law. Belonging to this sphere, they have no hand in, nor possibility of woVking 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 some- times very widely from the parent stock, as in the great variety of the genus Felis — like the Ij^nx, the tiger, the cat, etc. — it is the "designers"
• /but.
774
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
who direct the new evolution by adding to, or depriving the species of certain appendages, cither 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 considerwi blind, nor to be taxed with the failure; since, belonging to a differoi' Hated sum of qualities and attributes, it is in virtue of that alone cw- ditioned 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 cf 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 lo 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 ante- diluvian 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 perfeet 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
THE " MEGANTHROPUS.
775
or gibbon. How is all this, then? Are we to believe that the constitu- tion 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 iutti qnanti 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 com- plete 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 bom 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 differ- entiation 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 selec- tion," and the transformation theor>' generally. It now remains to clear up the mysterj' of the origin of those first mammalian faunae
77^
THB SECRET DOCTRINE.
which M. de Quatrefages so brilliantly endeavours to prove contem- porary with the Homo primigenius of the Secondarj' Age.
The somewhat complicated problem relating to the "Origin of Species" — more especially of the varied groups of fossil or existing mammalian faunae — will be rendered less obscure by the aid of a dia- gram. It will then be apparent to what extent the "factors of organic evolution/' relied upon by Western Biologists,* 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 ! t
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 Tertiar>'. This standard of comparison between Western Biology and the Eastern Doctrine, could not, therefore, be improved upon. The pedigree here utilized, as em- bodying the views of Scientists in general, is that of Schmidt, based on the exhaustive researches of Riitimeyer. Its approximate accuracy — from the standpoint of evolutionism — leaves little to be desired:
* Tbe DarwioiaD thcury hai bc«n >o vtralned, that even Huxley was forced at one tine lo deprecate its occflcioiial degieupration into " f«nalici*m." Oscar Schmidt presents a good instance of « thinker wbo unconsciously exaggerates the worth of a hypothesis. He admiu ( Tht DocUine of i:>tMmt *n4 Daranmtsm, p. 158), tliat " natural selection . . . is in Momc ca»es . . ■ inadequate, ... in others . . . Dol nrquisite, aa the solution o( the rorraalion of species is found in oUicr lutursl cooditionB." He aXso asserts the " iotcrmediate grades at* • . . wanting, which would cncitlc u^ to infer with certainty the direct transition from implaccntal to placental mammals " (p. 171); that "we are referred entirely to conjecture and inference for the origin of the mammals" vp, »tAi, and he speaks of the rrpcated failures of the frajncrs of " hypothetical pedigrees," more esf>«cUUj oi HKCkel, while regarding their attempts as valuable (p. 250). NcwerthelcM he asserts {p. t-^) that "what wt have gsined by the doctrine of descent based on the theory of selection ... is tbe knoTAledge of the connection of organisms as consanguineous beings." Knowledge, la thic face at Uje above -cited concrssiooii, in, then. thesynon>'m for conjecture and theory only?
t Tk0 noctrim* o/lMtcgnt and Darvnmiim, p. 16S.
SCHMIDT'S DIAGRAM.
777
Tragnlidae.
Ungulate Mammals.
Tapirs. Rornes.
Antelopes. Rhinoceroses Oxen.
Deer. /
r
Hipparion.
M acrauchenidae. Auchitiieriuui.
Anoplotheridae. PalaeotberiUie.
At this, the midway point of evolution. Science comes to a standstill. The root to which these two families lead back is unluiown.*
Thb "Root" According to Occultism.
Anoplotheridae. Pulaeotheridie.
One of the seven primeval physic o-astral and bisexual Root-Types of the mammaUati animal kingdom. These were contemporaries of the earl> X^emurian races — the "unknown roots" of Science.
Schmidt's diagram represents the realm explored by Western Evo- lutionists, the area in which climatic influences, "natural selection," and all the other physical causes of organic differentiation are present. Biology and Palaeontolog>' 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 Dhydn-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 "environ- ment."
The "midway point of evohition" 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" — /.«., the physiological equipment in general. The
• ibid., pp. ri\-V}%.
778
forms of men and of other msmmals previoos to the separation of the sexes* are woven oat of aaSial matter, and possess a structure utterl^r unlike that of the pkjreical organi»ns which eat, drink, digest, etc The known physiological contrivances requisite for these functions were almost entir^ evolved subsequently to the incipient physicalixa- tion of the seven Root-T^pes out of the astral — during the "midway halt** between the two planes of existence. Hardly had the "ground- plan" of evolution been Umned ovt in these ancestral t>*pes, than there supervened the infioence of the accessory terrestrial laws, familiar to U&, resulting in the whole crop of mammalian species, ^ons of slow differentiatiott were, however, required to effect this end.
The second dtairnun represents the domain of the purely astral proto- types previous to their descent into gross matter. Astral matter. it must be noted, is f6urth*5tate matter, having, like our gross matter, its own '*protyle." There are several protyles in Nature, corres- ponding to the varkms planes of matter. The two sub-physical ele- mental kingdoms^ the plane of mind. Manas, or Eflh-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-Uni- verse. The three "states" so-called of our terrestrial matter, known as the "solid," "liquid," and "gaseous*" are only, in strict accuracy, iir^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 £act of the so-called spiritualistic "materialixa- tions."
In all these instances a complete temporary mergence of the astral into the physical takes place. The evolution of physiological man oat of the astral races of the «r/y Lemurian age — the Jurassic age of Geo- logy— is exactly paralleled by the "materialization" of "spirits" (?) in the seance room. In the case of Professor Crookes' "Katie King," the presence of a pkysi^iegicati mechanism — heart, lungs, etc. — i indubitably demonstrated I
This, in a way, is the Archetype of Goethe. Listen to his words:
Thu3 mach we should h«Te gained ... all the nine perfect organic beings . . . [axe] formed according to an archetype which merely fluctuates more or leas in ita very persistent parts and, moreorer. day by day. completes and transfomia itself by means of reproduction.
* Bear in mlad, please, that thouvti the aniauOa— manunaUans Included— have an been kvqI««4 after and partiaQy /*vm man's cast-off Ujaaes, MiU, aa a far lower being, the *"*"""*"''ti became placental and separated far CHiIio- than num.
FACTORS IN THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
779
This is a seemingly imperfect foreshadowing of the Occult fact of the differentiation of species from the primal astral Root-Types. What- ever the whole posie comitatus of "natural selection," etc., may effect, ^Q fundamental unity of structural plan remains practically unaffected by all subsequent modifications. The "unity of type" common, iu 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 unit}' 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.