Section IV. Duration of the Geological Periods, Race Cycles, and the Antiquity of Man

Millions of years have sunk into Lethe, leaving no more recollection in the memory of the profane than the few millenniums of the orthodox Western chronology as to the Origin of Man and the history of the primeval races.

All depends on the proofs found for the antiquity of the Human Race. If the still-debated man of the Pliocene or even the Miocene period was the Homo primigenius, then Science may be right (argumenti causâ) in basing its present Anthropology—as to the date and mode of origin of Homo sapiens—on the Darwinian theory.1631 But if the skeletons of man should at any time be discovered in the Eocene strata, while no fossil ape is found there, and the existence of man is thus proved to be prior to that of the anthropoid—then Darwinians will have to exercise their ingenuity in another direction. Moreover, it is said in well-informed quarters that the twentieth century will be still in its earliest teens when such undeniable proof of man’s priority will be forthcoming.

Even now much evidence is being brought forward to prove that the dates hitherto assigned for the foundations of cities, civilizations and various other historical events have been absurdly curtailed. This was done as a peace-offering to biblical chronology. The well-known Palæontologist Ed. Lartet writes:

No date is to be found in Genesis, which assigns a time for the birth of primitive humanity.

But Chronologists have for fifteen centuries endeavoured to force the Bible facts into agreement with their systems. Thus, no less than one hundred and forty different opinions have been formed about the single date of “Creation.”

And between the extreme variations there is a discrepancy of 3,194 years, in the reckoning of the period between the beginning of the world and the birth of Christ. Within the last few years, archæologists have had also to throw back by nearly 3,000 years the beginnings of Babylonian civilization. On the foundation cylinder deposited by Nabonidus, the Babylonian king, conquered by Cyrus—are found the records of the former, in which he speaks of his discovery of the foundation stone that belonged to the original temple built by Naram-Sin, son of Sargon, of Accadia, the conqueror of Babylonia, who, says Nabonidus, lived 3,200 years before his own time.1632

We have shown in Isis Unveiled that those who based history on the chronology of the Jews—a race which had none of its own and rejected the Western till the twelfth century—would lose their way, for the Jewish account could only be followed through kabalistic computation, and only then with key in hand. We characterized the late George Smith’s chronology of the Chaldæans and Assyrians, which he had made to fit in with that of Moses, as quite fantastic. And now, in this respect at least, later Assyriologists have corroborated our denial. For, whereas George Smith makes Sargon I (the prototype of Moses) reign in the city of Akkad about 1600 b.c.—probably out of a latent respect for Moses, whom the Bible makes to flourish 1571 b.c.—we now learn from the first of the six Hibbert Lectures delivered by Professor A. H. Sayce, of Oxford, in 1887, that:

Old views of the early annals of Babylonia and its religions have been much modified by recent discovery. The first Semitic Empire, it is now agreed, was that of Sargon of Accad, who established a great library, patronized literature, and extended his conquests across the sea into Cyprus. It is now known that he reigned as early as b.c. 3,750.... The Accadian monuments found by the French at Tel-loh must be even older, reaching back to about b.c. 4,000.

In other words, to the fourth year of the World’s creation agreeably with Bible chronology, and when Adam was in his swaddling clothes. Perchance, in a few years more, the 4,000 years may be further extended. The well-known Oxford lecturer remarked in his disquisitions upon “The Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians,” that:

The difficulties of systematically tracing the origin and history of the Babylonian Religion were considerable. The sources of our knowledge of the subject were almost wholly monumental, very little help being obtainable from classical or Oriental writers. Indeed, it was an undeniable fact that the Babylonian priesthood intentionally swaddled up the study of the religious texts in coils of almost insuperable difficulty.

That they have confused the dates, and especially the order of events “intentionally,” is undeniable, and for a very good reason: their writings and records were all Esoteric. The Babylonian priests did no more than the priests of other ancient nations. Their records were meant only for the Initiates and their disciples, and it is only the latter who were furnished with the keys to the true meaning. But Professor Sayce’s remarks are promising. For he explains the difficulty by saying that as:

The Nineveh library contained mostly copies of older Babylonian texts, and the copyists pitched upon such tablets only as were of special interest to the Assyrian conquerors, belonging to a comparatively late epoch, this added much to the greatest of all our difficulties—namely, our being so often left in the dark as to the age of our documentary evidence, and the precise worth of our materials for history.

Thus one has a right to infer that some still fresher discovery may lead to a new necessity for pushing the Babylonian dates so far beyond the year 4,000 b.c., as to make them pre-cosmic in the judgment of every Bible worshipper.

How much more would Palæontology have learned had not millions of works been destroyed! We talk of the Alexandrian Library, which has been thrice destroyed, namely, by Julius Cæsar 48 b.c., in a.d. 390, and lastly in the year a.d. 640 by the general of Kaliph Omar. What is this in comparison with the works and records destroyed in the primitive Atlantean Libraries, wherein records are said to have been traced on the tanned skins of gigantic antediluvian monsters? Or again in comparison with the destruction of the countless Chinese books by command of the founder of the Imperial Tsin dynasty, Tsin Shi Hwang-ti, in 213 b.c.? Surely the brick-clay tablets of the Imperial Babylonian Library, and the priceless treasures of the Chinese collections, could never have contained such information as one of the aforesaid “Atlantean” skins would have furnished to the ignorant world.

But even with the extremely meagre data at hand, Science has been able to see the necessity of throwing back nearly every Babylonian date, and has done so quite generously. We learn from Professor Sayce that even the archaic statues at Tel-loh, in Lower Babylonia, have suddenly been assigned a date contemporary with the fourth dynasty in Egypt.1633 Unfortunately, dynasties and pyramids share the fate of geological periods; their dates are arbitrary, and depend on the whims of the respective men of Science. Archæologists know now, it is said, that the afore-mentioned statues are fashioned out of green diorite, that can only be got in the Peninsula of Sinai; and

They accord in the style of art, and in the standard of measurement employed, with the similar diorite statues of the pyramid builders of the third and fourth Egyptian dynasties.... Moreover, the only possible period for a Babylonian occupation of the Sinaitic quarries must be placed shortly after the close of the epoch at which the pyramids were built; and thus only can we understand how the name of Sinai could have been derived from that of Sin, the primitive Babylonian moon-god.

This is very logical, but what is the date fixed for these dynasties? Sanchuniathon’s and Manetho’s synchronistic tables—or whatever remained of these after holy Eusebius had the handling of them—have been rejected; and still we have to remain satisfied with the four or five thousand years b.c., so liberally allotted to Egypt. At all events one point is gained. There is, at last, a city on the face of the Earth which is allowed, at least, 6,000 years, and it is Eridu. Geology has discovered it. According to Professor Sayce again:

They are now also able to obtain time for the silting up of the head of the Persian Gulf, which demands a lapse of between 5,000 and 6,000 years since the period when Eridu, now twenty-five miles inland, was the seaport at the mouth of the Euphrates, and the seat of Babylonian commerce with Southern Arabia and India. More than all, the new chronology gives time for the long series of eclipses recorded in the great astronomical work called “The Observations of Bel”; and we are also enabled to understand the otherwise perplexing change in the position of the vernal equinox, which has occurred since our present zodiacal signs were named by the earliest Babylonian astronomers. When the Accadian calendar was arranged and the Accadian months were named, the sun at the vernal equinox was not, as now, in Pisces, or even in Aries, but in Taurus. The rate of the precession of the equinoxes being known, we learn that at the vernal equinox the sun was in Taurus from about 4,700 years b.c., and we thus obtain astronomical limits of date which cannot be impugned.1634

It may make our position plainer if we state at once that we use Sir C. Lyell’s nomenclature for the ages and periods, and that when we talk of the Secondary and Tertiary age, of the Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene periods—this is simply to make our facts more comprehensible. Since these ages and periods have not yet been allowed fixed and determined durations, two-and-a-half and fifteen million years being assigned at different times to one and the same age (the Tertiary); and since no two Geologists or Naturalists seem to agree on this point—Esoteric Teachings may remain quite indifferent to the appearance of man in the Secondary or the Tertiary age. If the latter age may be allowed even so much as fifteen million years’ duration—well and good; for the Occult Doctrine, jealously guarding its real and correct figures so far as concerns the First, Second, and two-thirds of the Third Root-Race, gives clear information upon one point only—the age of Vaivasvata Manu’s humanity.1635

Another definite statement is that during the so-called Eocene period the Continent to which the Fourth Race belonged, and on which it lived and perished, showed the first symptoms of sinking, and that it was in the Miocene age that it was finally destroyed—save the small island mentioned by Plato. These points have now to be checked by scientific data.

A. Modern Scientific Speculations About The Ages Of The Globe, Animal Evolution, And Man.

May we not be permitted to throw a glance at the works of specialists? The work on World-Life: Comparative Geology, by Prof. A. Winchell, furnishes us with curious data. Here we find an opponent of the nebular theory smiting with all the force of the hammer of his odium theologicum on the rather contradictory hypotheses of the great stars of Science, in the matter of sidereal and cosmic phenomena based on their respective relations to terrestrial durations. The “too imaginative physicists and naturalists” do not fare very easily under this shower of their own speculative computations placed side by side, and cut rather a sorry figure. Thus he writes:

Sir William Thompson, on the basis of the observed principles of cooling, concludes that no more than 10 million years [elsewhere he makes it 100,000,000] can have elapsed since the temperature of the earth was sufficiently reduced to sustain vegetable life.1636 Helmholz calculates that 20 million years would suffice for the original nebula to condense to the present dimensions of the sun. Prof. S. Newcomb requires only 10 millions to attain a temperature of 212° Fahr.1637 Croll estimates 70 million years for the diffusion of the heat....1638 Bischof calculates that 350 million years would be required for the earth to cool from a temperature of 2,000° to 200° Centigrade. Reade, basing his estimate on observed rates of denudation, demands 500 million years since sedimentation began in Europe.1639 Lyell ventured a rough guess of 240 million years; Darwin thought 300 million years demanded by the organic transformations which his theory contemplates, and Huxley is disposed to demand 1,000 millions [!!].... Some biologists ... seem to close their eyes tight and leap at one bound into the abyss of millions of years, of which they have no more adequate estimate than of infinity.1640

Then he proceeds to give what he takes to be more correct geological figures: a few will suffice.

According to Sir William Thompson “the whole incrusted age of the world is 80,000,000 years”; and agreeably with Prof. Houghton’s calculations of a minimum limit for the time since the elevation of Europe and Asia, three hypothetical ages for three possible and different modes of upheaval are given, varying from the modest figure of 640,730 years, through 4,170,000 years to the tremendous figure of 27,491,000 years!!

This is enough, as one can see, to cover our claims for the four Continents and even the figures of the Brâhmans.

Further calculations, the details of which the reader may find in Prof. Winchell’s work,1641 bring Houghton to an approximation of the sedimentary age of the globe—11,700,000 years. These figures are found too small by the author, who forthwith extends them to 37,000,000 years.

Again, according to Croll,1642 2,500,000 years “represents the time since the beginning of the Tertiary age” in one work; and according to another modification of his view, 15,000,000 only have elapsed since the beginning of the Eocene period,1643 this, being the first of the three Tertiary periods, leaves the student suspended between two-and-a-half and fifteen millions. But if one has to hold to the former moderate figures, then the whole incrusted age of the world would be 131,600,000 years.1644

As the last Glacial period extended from 240,000 to 80,000 years ago (Prof. Croll’s view), therefore, man must have appeared on Earth from 100,000 to 120,000 years ago. But, as says Prof. Winchell with reference to the antiquity of the Mediterranean race:

It is generally believed to have made its appearance during the later decline of the continental glaciers. It does not concern, however, the antiquity of the Black and Brown races, since there are numerous evidences of their existence in more southern regions, in times remotely pre-glacial.1645

As a specimen of geological certainty and agreement, these figures also may be added. Three authorities—Messrs. T. Belt, F.G.S., Robert Hunt, F.R.S., and J. Croll, F.R.S.,—in estimating the time that has elapsed since the Glacial epoch, give figures that vary to an almost incredible extent:

Belt: 20,000 years.

Hunt: 80,000 years

Croll: 240,000 years1646

No wonder that Mr. Pengelly confesses that:

It is at present and perhaps always will be impossible to reduce, even approximately, geological time into years or even into millenniums.

A wise word of advice from the Occultists to the gentlemen Geologists; they ought to imitate the cautious example of Masons. As chronology, they say, cannot measure the era of the creation, therefore, their “Antient and Primitive Rite” uses 000,000,000 as the nearest approach to reality.

The same uncertainty, contradictions and disagreement reign on all other subjects.

The scientific authorities on the Descent of Man are again, for all practical purposes, a delusion and a snare. There are many Anti-Darwinists in the British Association, and Natural Selection begins to lose ground. Though at one time the saviour, which seemed to rescue the learned theorists from a final intellectual collapse into the abyss of fruitless hypothesis, it begins to be distrusted. Even Mr. Huxley is showing signs of truancy, and thinks “natural selection not the sole factor”:

We greatly suspect that she [Nature] does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms.1647

Again, C. R. Bree, M.D., argues in this wise in considering the fatal gaps in Mr. Darwin’s theory:

It must be again called to mind that the intermediate forms must have been vast in numbers.... Mr. St. George Mivart believes that change in evolution may occur more quickly than is generally believed; but Mr. Darwin sticks manfully to his belief, and again tells us “natura non facit saltum.”1648

Herein the Occultists are at one with Mr. Darwin.

Esoteric teaching fully corroborates the idea of Nature’s slowness and dignified progression. “Planetary impulses” are all periodical. Yet this Darwinian theory, correct as it is in minor particulars, agrees no more with Occultism than with Mr. Wallace, who, in his Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, shows pretty conclusively that something more than Natural Selection is requisite to produce physical man.

Let us, meanwhile, examine the scientific objections to this scientific theory, and see what they are.

Mr. St. George Mivart is found arguing that:

It will be a moderate computation to allow 25,000,000 for the deposit of the strata down to and including the Upper Silurian. If, then, the evolutionary work done during this deposition only represents a hundredth part of the sum total, we shall require 2,500,000,000 (two thousand five hundred million) years for the complete development of the whole animal kingdom to its present state. Even one quarter of this, however, would far exceed the time which physics and astronomy seem able to allow for the completion of the process.

Finally, a difficulty exists as to the reason of the absence of rich fossiliferous deposits in the oldest strata—if life was then as abundant and varied, as, on the Darwinian theory, it must have been. Mr. Darwin himself admits “the case at present must remain inexplicable; and this may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views” entertained in his book.

Thus, then, we find a remarkable (and on Darwinian principles all but inexplicable) absence of minutely graduated transitional forms. All the most marked groups—bats, pterodactyles, chelonians, ichthyosaurians, amoura, etc.—appear at once upon the scene. Even the horse, the animal whose pedigree has been probably best preserved, affords no conclusive evidence of specific origin by significant fortuitous variations; while some forms, as the labyrinthodonts and trilobites, which seemed to exhibit gradual change, are shown by further investigation to do nothing of the sort.... All these difficulties are avoided if we admit that new forms of animal life of all degrees of complexity appear from time to time with comparative suddenness, being evolved according to laws in part depending on surrounding conditions, in part internal—similar to the way in which crystals (and, perhaps from recent researches, the lowest forms of life) build themselves up according to the internal laws of their component substance, and in harmony and correspondence with all environing influences and conditions.1649

“The internal laws of their component substance.” These are wise words, and the admission of the possibility is prudent. But how can these internal laws be ever recognized, if Occult teaching be discarded? As a friend writes, while drawing our attention to the above speculations:

In other words, the doctrine of Planetary Life-Impulses must be admitted. Otherwise, why are species now stereotyped, and why do even domesticated breeds of pigeons and many animals relapse into their ancestral types when left to themselves?

But the teaching about Planetary Life-Impulses has to be clearly defined and as clearly understood, if present confusion is not to be made still more perplexing. All these difficulties would vanish as the shadows of night disappear before the light of the rising Sun, if the following Esoteric Axioms were admitted:

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

(b) The actuality of the Seven Rounds

(c) The separation of human Races (outside the purely anthropological division) into seven distinct Root-Races, of which our present European Humanity is the Fifth;

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

(e) That as these Races evolve from ethereality to materiality, and from the latter back again into relative physical tenuity of texture, so every living (so-called) organic species of animals, with vegetation included, changes with every new Root-Race.

Were this admitted, if even only along with other, and surely, on maturer consideration, no less absurd, suppositions—if Occult theories have to be considered “absurd” at present—then every difficulty would be made away with. Surely Science ought to try and be more logical than it now is, as it can hardly maintain the theory of man’s descent from an anthropoidal ancestor, and deny in the same breath any reasonable antiquity to such a man! Once Mr. Huxley talks of “the vast intellectual chasm between the ape and man,” and “the present enormous gulf between them,”1650 and admits the necessity of extending scientific allowances for the age of man on Earth for such slow and progressive development, then all those men of Science who are of his way of thinking, at any rate, ought to come to at least some approximate figures, and agree upon the probable duration of those Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene periods of which so much is said, and about which nothing definite is known—even if they dare not venture beyond. But no two Scientists seem to agree. Every period seems to be a mystery in its duration, and a thorn in the side of the Geologists; and, as just shown, they are unable to harmonize their conclusions even with regard to the comparatively recent geological formations. Thus, no reliance can be placed on their figures when they do give any, for with them it is all either millions or simply thousands of years!

That which is said may be strengthened by the confessions made by themselves and the synopsis of these, to be found in that “Circle of Sciences,” the Encyclopædia Britannica, which shows the mean accepted in the geological and anthropological riddles. In that work the cream of the most authoritative opinions is skimmed off and presented; nevertheless, we find in it a refusal to assign any definite chronological date, even to such comparatively speaking late epochs as the Neolithic era, though, for a wonder, an age is established for the beginnings of certain geological periods; at any rate for some few, the duration of which could hardly be any more shortened, without an immediate conflict with facts.

Thus, it is surmised in the great Encyclopædia that:

One hundred million years have passed ... since the solidification of our earth, when the earliest form of life appeared upon it.1651

But it seems quite as hopeless to try to convert the modern Geologists and Ethnologists, as it is to make Darwinian Naturalists perceive their mistakes. About the Âryan Root-Race and its origins, Science knows as little as of the men from other Planets. With the exception of Flammarion, and of a few Mystics among Astronomers, even the habitableness of other Planets is mostly denied. Yet such great Adept Astronomers were the Scientists of the earliest races of the Âryan stock, that they seem to have known far more about the races of Mars and Venus than the modern Anthropologist knows of those of the early stages of the Earth.

Let us leave Modern Science aside for a moment and turn to Ancient Knowledge. As we are assured by Archaic Scientists that all such geological cataclysms—from the upheaval of oceans, deluges, and shifting of continents, down to the present year’s cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, and even the extraordinary weather and seeming shifting of seasons which are perplexing all European and American Meteorologists—are due to, and depend on the Moon and Planets; aye, that even modest and neglected constellations have the greatest influence on the meteorological and cosmical changes, over, and within our Earth—let us give one moment’s attention to our sidereal despots, the rulers of our globe and men. Modern Science denies any such influence; Archaic Science affirms it. We will see what both say with regard to this question.

B. On Chains Of Planets And Their Plurality.

Did the Ancients know of Worlds besides their own? What are the data of the Occultists in affirming that every Globe is a Septenary Chain of Worlds—of which only one member is visible—and that these are, were, or will be, “man-bearing,” just as is every visible Star or Planet? What do they mean by “a moral and physical influence” exerted on our Globe by the Sidereal Worlds?

Such are the questions often put to us, and they have to be considered from every aspect. To the first of the two queries the answer is: We believe it because the first law in nature is uniformity in diversity, and the second is analogy. “As above, so below.” The time is gone by for ever when our pious ancestors believed that our Earth was in the centre of the Universe, and the Church and her arrogant servants could insist that the supposition that any other Planet could be inhabited should be regarded as blasphemy. Adam and Eve, the Serpent and Original Sin, followed by Atonement through Blood, have been too long in the way of progress, and universal truth has thus been sacrificed to the insane conceit of us little men.

Now what are the proofs thereof? Beyond inferential evidence and logical reasoning, there are none for the profane. To the Occultists, who believe in the knowledge acquired by countless generations of Seers and Initiates, the data offered in the Secret Books are all-sufficient. The general public needs other proofs, however. There are some Kabalists, and even some Eastern Occultists, who, failing to find uniform evidence upon this point in all the mystic works of the nations, hesitate to accept the teaching. Even such “uniform evidence” will be forthcoming presently. Meanwhile, we may approach the subject from its general aspect, and see whether belief in it is so very absurd, as some Scientists along with other Nicodemuses would have it. Unconsciously, perhaps, in thinking of a plurality of inhabited “Worlds,” we imagine them to be like the Globe we inhabit, and to be peopled by beings more or less resembling ourselves. And in so doing we are only following a natural instinct. Indeed, so long as the enquiry is confined to the life-history of this Globe, we can speculate on the question with some profit, and ask ourselves, with some hope of at least asking an intelligible question, what were the “Worlds” spoken of in all the ancient scriptures of Humanity? But how do we know (a) what kind of beings inhabit the Globes in general; and (b) whether those who rule Planets superior to our own do not exercise the same influence on our Earth consciously, that we may exercise unconsciously, say on the small planets (planetoids or asteroids) in the long run, by our cutting the Earth in pieces, opening canals, and thereby entirely changing our climates. Of course, like Cæsar’s wife, the planetoids, cannot be affected by our suspicion. They are too far, etc. Believing in Esoteric Astronomy, however, we are not so sure of that.

But when, extending our speculations beyond our Planetary Chain, we try to cross the limits of the Solar System, then indeed we act as do presumptuous fools. For—while accepting the old Hermetic axiom, “as above, so below”—as we may well believe that Nature on Earth displays the most careful economy, utilizing every vile and waste thing in her marvellous transformations, and withal never repeating herself, so we may justly conclude that there is no other Globe in all her infinite systems so closely resembling this Earth, that the ordinary powers of man’s thought should be able to imagine and reproduce its semblance and containment.1652

And indeed we find in the romances as in all the so-called scientific fictions and spiritistic “revelations” from Moon, Stars, and Planets, merely fresh combinations or modifications of the men and things, the passions and forms of life, with which we are familiar, though even on the other Planets of our own System nature and life are entirely different from those prevailing on our own. Swedenborg was preeminent in inculcating such an erroneous belief.

But even more. The ordinary man has no experience of any state of consciousness other than that to which the physical senses link him. Men dream; they sleep the profound sleep which is too deep for its dreams to impress the physical brain; and in these states there must still be consciousness. How, then, while these mysteries remain unexplored, can we hope to speculate with profit on the nature of Globes which, in the economy of Nature, must needs belong to states of consciousness other and quite different from any which man experiences here?

And this is true to the letter. For even great Adepts (those initiated of course), trained Seers though they be, can only claim thorough acquaintance with the nature and appearance of Planets and their inhabitants belonging to our Solar System. They know that almost all the Planetary Worlds are inhabited, but—even in spirit—they can have access only to those of our System; and they are also aware how difficult it is, even for them, to put themselves into full rapport even with the planes of consciousness within our System, differing as they do from the states of consciousness possible on this Globe; such, for instance, as those which exist on the Chain of Spheres on the three planes beyond that of our Earth. Such knowledge and intercourse are possible to them because they have learned how to penetrate to planes of consciousness which are closed to the perceptions of ordinary men; but were they to communicate their knowledge, the world would be no wiser, because men lack that experience of other forms of perception which alone could enable them to grasp what they might be told.

Still the fact remains that most of the Planets, like the Stars beyond our System, are inhabited, a fact which has been admitted by the men of Science themselves. Laplace and Herschel believed it, though they wisely abstained from imprudent speculation; and the same conclusion has been worked out and supported with an array of scientific considerations by C. Flammarion, the well-known French Astronomer. The arguments he brings forward are strictly scientific, and are such as appeal even to a materialistic mind, which would remain unmoved by such thoughts as those of Sir David Brewster, the famous Physicist, who writes:

Those “barren spirits” or “base souls,” as the poet calls them, who might be led to believe that the earth is the only inhabited body in the universe, would have no difficulty in conceiving the earth also to have been destitute of inhabitants. What is more, if such minds were acquainted with the deductions of geology, they would admit that it was uninhabited for myriads of years; and here we come to the impossible conclusion that during these myriads of years there was not a single intelligent creature in the vast domains of the Universal King, and that before the protozoic formations there existed neither plant nor animal in all the infinity of space.1653

Flammarion shows, in addition, that all the conditions of life—even as we know it—are present on some at least of the Planets, and points to the fact that these conditions must be much more favourable on them than they are on our Earth.

Thus scientific reasoning, as well as observed facts, concurs with the statements of the Seer, and the innate voice in man’s own heart in declaring that life—intelligent, conscious life—must exist on other worlds than ours.

But this is the limit beyond which the ordinary faculties of man cannot carry him. Many are the romances and tales, some purely fanciful, others bristling with scientific knowledge, which have attempted to imagine and describe life on other Globes. But one and all they give but some distorted copy of the drama of life around us. It is either, with Voltaire, the men of our own race under a microscope, or, with de Bergerac, a graceful play of fancy and satire; but we always find that at bottom the new world is but the one we ourselves live in. So strong is this tendency that even great natural, though non-initiated, Seers, fall victims to it when untrained; witness Swedenborg, who goes so far as to dress the inhabitants of Mercury, whom he meets with in the spirit-world, in clothes such as are worn in Europe!

Commenting on this tendency, Flammarion says:

It seems as if in the eyes of those authors who have written on this subject, the Earth were the type of the Universe, and the man of Earth, the type of the inhabitants of the Heavens. It is, on the contrary, much more probable, that, since the nature of other planets is essentially varied, and the surroundings and conditions of existence essentially different, while the forces which preside over the creation of beings and the substances which enter into their mutual constitution are essentially distinct, it would follow that our mode of existence cannot be regarded as in any way applicable to other globes. Those who have written on this subject have allowed themselves to be dominated by terrestrial ideas, and have therefore fallen into error.1654

But Flammarion himself falls into the very error which he here condemns, for he tacitly takes the conditions of life on Earth as the standard by which to determine the degree to which other Planets are adapted for habitation by “other humanities.”

Let us, however, leave these profitless and empty speculations, which, though they seem to fill our hearts with a glow of enthusiasm and to enlarge our mental and spiritual grasp, do but in reality cause a factitious stimulation, and blind us more and more to our ignorance not only of the world we inhabit, but even of the infinitude contained within ourselves.

When, therefore, we find “other worlds” spoken of in the Bibles of Humanity, we may safely conclude that they not only refer to other states of our Planetary Chain and Earth, but also to other inhabited Globes—Stars and Planets; withal, that no speculations were ever made about the latter. The whole of antiquity believed in the Universality of Life. But no really initiated Seer of any civilized nation has ever taught that life on other Stars could be judged by the standard of terrestrial life. What is generally meant by “Earths” and “Worlds,” relates (a) to the “rebirths” of our Globe after each Manvantara and a long period of Obscuration; and (b) to the periodical and entire changes of the Earth’s surface, when continents disappear to make room for oceans, and oceans and seas are violently displaced and sent rolling to the poles, to cede their emplacements to new continents.

We may begin with the Bible—the youngest of the World-scriptures. In Ecclesiastes, we read these words of the King-Initiate:

One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever.... The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun.1655

Under these words it is not easy to see the reference to the successive cataclysms by which the Races of mankind are swept away, or, going further back, to the various transitions of the Globe during the process of its formation. But if we are told that this refers only to our world as we now see it, then we shall refer the reader to the New Testament, where St. Paul speaks of the Son (the manifested Power) whom God hath appointed heir of all things, “by whom also he made the worlds” (plural).1656 This “Power” is Chokmah, the Wisdom and the Word.

We shall probably be told that by the term “worlds,” the stars, heavenly bodies, etc., were meant. But apart from the fact that “stars” were not known as “worlds” to the ignorant editors of the Epistles, even if they must have been thus known to Paul, who was an Initiate, a “Master-Builder,” we can quote on this point an eminent Theologian, Cardinal Wiseman. In his work (i. 309) treating of the indefinite period of the six days—or shall we say “too definite” period of the six days—of creation and the 6,000 years, he confesses that we are in total darkness as to the meaning of this statement of St. Paul, unless we are permitted to suppose that allusion is made in it to the period which elapsed between the first and second verses of chapter i of Genesis, and thus to those primitive revolutions, i.e., the destructions and the reproductions of the world, indicated in chapter i of Ecclesiastes; or, to accept, with so many others, and in its literal sense, the passage in chapter i of Hebrews, that speaks of the creation of “worlds”—in the plural. It is very singular, he adds, that all the cosmogonies should agree to suggest the same idea, and preserve the tradition of a first series of revolutions, owing to which the world was destroyed and again renewed.

Had the Cardinal studied the Zohar his doubts would have been changed into certainties. Thus saith the “Idra Suta”:

There were old worlds which perished as soon as they came into existence; worlds with and without form called Scintillas—for they were like the sparks under the smith’s hammer, flying in all directions. Some were the primordial worlds which could not continue long, because the “Aged”—his name be sanctified—had not as yet assumed his form,1657 the workman was not yet the “Heavenly Man.”1658

Again in the Midrash, written long before the Kabalah of Simeon Ben Iochai, Rabbi Abahu explains:

The Holy One, blessed be his name, has successively formed and destroyed sundry worlds before this one1659.... Now this refers both to the first races [the “Kings of Edom”] and to the worlds destroyed.1660

“Destroyed” means here what we call “obscuration.” This becomes evident when we read the explanation given further on:

Still when it is said that they [the worlds] perished, it is only meant thereby that they [their humanities] lacked the true form, till the human [our] form came into being, in which all things are comprised and which contains all forms ...—it does not mean death, but only denotes a sinking down from their status [that of worlds in activity].1661

When, therefore, we read of the “destruction” of the Worlds, the word has many meanings, which are very clear in several of the Commentaries on the Zohar and in Kabalistic treatises. As said elsewhere, it means not only the destruction of many Worlds which have ended their life-career, but also that of the several Continents which have disappeared, as also their decline and geographical change of place.

The mysterious “Kings of Edom” are sometimes referred to as the “Worlds” that had been destroyed; but it is a “cloak.” The Kings who reigned in Edom before there reigned a King in Israel, or the “Edomite Kings,” could never symbolize the “prior worlds,” but only the “attempts at men” on this Globe—the Pre-Adamite Races, of which the Zohar speaks, and which we explain as the First Root-Race. For as, speaking of the six Earths (the six “Limbs” of Microprosopus), it is said that the seventh (our Earth) came not into the computation when the six were created (the six Spheres above our Globe in the Terrestrial Chain), so the first seven Kings of Edom are left out of calculation in Genesis. By the law of analogy and permutation, in the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, as also in the Books of Knowledge and of Wisdom, the “seven primordial worlds” mean also the “seven primordial” races (sub-races of the First Root-Race of the Shadows); and, again, the Kings of Edom are the sons of “Esau, the father of the Edomites”;1662 i.e., Esau represents in the Bible the race which stands between the Fourth and the Fifth, the Atlantean and the Âryan. “Two nations are in thy womb,” said the Lord to Rebekah; and Esau was red and hairy. From verse 24 to 34, chapter xxv of Genesis contains the allegorical history of the birth of the Fifth Race.

Says the Siphra Dtzenioutha:

And the Kings of ancient days died and their chiefs [crowns] were found no more.

And the Zohar states:

The Head of a nation that has not been formed at the beginning in the likeness of the White Head: its people is not from this Form.... Before it [the White Head, the Fifth Race or Ancient of the Ancients] arranged itself in its [own, or present] Form ... all Worlds have been destroyed; therefore it is written: and Bela, the Son of Beor, reigned in Edom [Gen., xxxvi. Here the “Worlds”stand for Races]. And he [such or another King of Edom] died, and another reigned in his stead.

No Kabalist who has hitherto treated of the symbolism and allegory hidden under these “Kings of Edom” seems to have perceived more than one aspect of them. They are neither the “worlds that were destroyed,” nor the “Kings that died”—alone; but both, and much more, to treat of which there is no space at present. Therefore, leaving the mystic parables of the Zohar, we will return to the hard facts of materialistic Science; first, however, citing a few from the long list of great thinkers who have believed in the plurality of inhabited Worlds in general, and in Worlds that preceded our own. These are, the great mathematicians Leibnitz and Bernouilli, Sir Isaac Newton himself, as may be read in his Optics; Buffon, the Naturalist; Condillac, the Sceptic; Bailly, Lavater, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and, as a contrast to the two last named—suspected at least of Mysticism—Diderot and most of the writers of the Encyclopædia. Following these come Kant, the founder of modern Philosophy; the poet Philosophers, Goethe, Krause, Schelling; and many Astronomers, from Bode, Fergusson and Herschel, to Lalande and Laplace, with their many disciples in more recent years.

A brilliant list of honoured names indeed; but the facts of physical Astronomy speak even more strongly than these names in favour of the presence of life, of even organized life, on other Planets. Thus in four meteorites which fell respectively at Alais in France, in the Cape of Good Hope, in Hungary, and again in France, on analysis, there was found graphite, a form of carbon known to be invariably associated with organic life on this Earth of ours. And that the presence of this carbon is not due to any action occurring within our atmosphere is shown by the fact that carbon has been found in the very centre of a meteorite; while in one which fell at Argueil, in the south of France, in 1857, there was found water and turf, the latter being always formed by the decomposition of vegetable substances.

And further, examining the astronomical conditions of the other Planets, it is easy to show that several are far better adapted for the development of life and intelligence—even under the conditions with which men are acquainted—than is our Earth. For instance, on the Planet Jupiter the seasons, instead of varying between wide limits as do ours, change by almost imperceptible degrees, and last twelve times as long as ours. Owing to the inclination of its axis the seasons on Jupiter are due almost entirely to the eccentricity of its orbit, and hence change slowly and regularly. We shall be told, that no life is possible on Jupiter, as it is in an incandescent state. But not all Astronomers agree with this. For instance, what we state is declared by M. Flammarion; and he ought to know.

On the other hand Venus would be less adapted for human life such as exists on Earth, since its seasons are more extreme and its changes of temperature more sudden; though it is curious that the duration of the day is nearly the same on the four inner planets, Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars.

On Mercury, the Sun’s heat and light are seven times what they are on the Earth, and Astronomy teaches that it is enveloped in a very dense atmosphere. And as we see that life appears more active on Earth in proportion to the light and heat of the Sun, it would seem more than probable that its intensity is far, far greater on Mercury than here.

Venus, like Mercury, has a very dense atmosphere, as also has Mars, and the snows which cover their poles, the clouds which hide their surface, the geographical configuration of their seas and continents, the variations of seasons and climates, are all closely analogous—at least to the eye of the physical Astronomer. But such facts and the considerations to which they give rise have reference only to the possibility of the existence on these Planets of human life as known on Earth. That some forms of life such as we know are possible on these Planets, has been long since abundantly demonstrated, and it seems perfectly useless to go into detailed questions of the physiology, etc., of these hypothetical inhabitants, since, after all, the reader can arrive only at an imaginary extension of his familiar surroundings. It is better to rest content with the three conclusions which M. Flammarion, whom we have so largely quoted, formulates as rigorous and exact deductions from the known facts and laws of Science.

i. The various forces which were active in the beginning of evolution gave birth to a great variety of beings on the several worlds; both in the organic and inorganic kingdoms.

ii. The animated beings were constituted from the first according to forms and organisms in correlation with the physiological state of each inhabited globe.

iii. The humanities of other worlds differ from us, as much in their inner organization as in their external physical type.

Finally the reader who may be disposed to question the validity of these conclusions as being opposed to the Bible, may be referred to an Appendix in M. Flammarion’s work dealing in detail with this question, since in a work like the present it seems unnecessary to point out the logical absurdity of those churchmen who deny the plurality of worlds on the ground of biblical authority.

In this connection we may well recall those days when the burning zeal of the Primitive Church opposed the doctrine of the Earth’s rotundity, on the ground that the nations at the Antipodes would be outside the pale of salvation; and again, we may remember how long it took for a nascent Science to break down the idea of a solid firmament, in the grooves of which the stars moved for the special edification of terrestrial humanity.

The theory of the Earth’s rotation was met by a like opposition—even to the martyrdom of its discoverers—because, besides depriving our orb of its dignified central position in space, the theory produced an appalling confusion of ideas as to the Ascension—the terms “up” and “down” being proved to be merely relative, thus complicating not a little the question of the precise locality of Heaven!1663

According to the best modern calculations, there are no less than 500,000,000 Stars of various magnitudes, within the range of the best telescopes. As to the distances between them, they are incalculable. Is, then, our microscopical Earth—a “grain of sand on an infinite sea-shore”—the only centre of intelligent life? Our own Sun, itself 1,300,000 times larger than our Planet, sinks into insignificance beside the giant Sun, Sirius, and the latter in its turn is dwarfed by other luminaries in infinite Space. The self-centred conception of Jehovah as the special guardian of a small and obscure semi-nomadic tribe, is tolerable beside that which confines sentient existence to our microscopical Globe. The primary reasons were without doubt: (a) astronomical ignorance on the part of the early Christians, coupled with an exaggerated appreciation of man’s own importance—a crude form of selfishness; and (b) the dread that, if the hypothesis of millions of other inhabited Globes were accepted, the crushing rejoinder would ensue: “Was there then a Revelation to each World?”—involving the idea of the Son of God eternally “going the rounds,” as it were. Happily it is now unnecessary to waste time and energy in proving the possibility of the existence of such Worlds. All intelligent persons admit it. That which now remains to be demonstrated is, that if it is once proven that there are inhabited Worlds besides our own, with humanities entirely different from each other as from our own—as maintained in the Occult Sciences—then the evolution of the preceding Races is half proved. For where is that Physicist or Geologist who is prepared to maintain that the Earth has not changed scores of times, in the millions of years which have elapsed in the course of its existence; and that changing its “skin,” as it is called in Occultism, the Earth has not had each time her special Humanities adapted to such atmospheric and climatic conditions as were entailed by such change? And if so, why should not our preceding four and entirely different Mankinds have existed and thrived before our Adamic Fifth Root Race?

Before closing our debate, however, we have to examine the so-called organic evolution more closely. Let us search well and see whether it is quite impossible to make our Occult data and chronology agree—up to a certain point—with those of Science.

C. Supplementary Remarks On Esoteric Geological Chronology.

It seems possible to calculate the approximate duration at any rate of the geological periods from the combined data of Science and Occultism now before us. Geology is, of course, able to determine one thing with almost certainty—the thickness of the several deposits. Now, it also stands to reason that the time required for the deposition of any stratum on a sea-bottom must bear a strict proportion to the thickness of the mass thus formed. Doubtless the rate of the erosion of land, and of the sorting out of matter on to ocean beds, has varied from age to age, and cataclysmic changes of various kinds have broken the “uniformity” of ordinary geological processes. Provided, then, that we have some definite numerical basis on which to work, our task is rendered less difficult than it might at first sight appear. Making due allowance for variations in the rate of deposit, Professor Lefèvre gives us the relative figures which sum up geological time. He does not attempt to calculate the lapse of years since the first bed of the Laurentian rocks was deposited, but postulating that time as x, he presents us with the relative proportions in which the various periods stand to it. Let us premise our estimate by stating that, roughly speaking, the Primordial rocks are 70,000 ft., the Primary 42,000 ft., the Secondary 15,000 ft., the Tertiary 5,000 ft., and the Quaternary some 500 ft. in thickness:

Dividing into a hundred parts the time, whatever its actual length, that has passed since the dawn of life on this earth [lower Laurentian strata], we shall be led to attribute to the Primordial age more than half of the whole duration, say 53.5; to the Primary 32.2; to the Secondary 11.5; to the Tertiary 2.3; to the Quaternary 0.5 or one-half per cent.1664

Now, as it is certain, on Occult data, that the time which has elapsed since the first sedimentary deposits is 320,000,000 years, we are able to construct the following table:

Rough Approximations of Length of Geological Periods in Years.

Primordial (Laurentian, Cambrian, Silurian): 171,200,000.

Primary (Devonian, Coal, Permian): 103,040,000.

Secondary (Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous): 36,800,000.

Tertiary (Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene): 7,360,000.

Quaternary: 1,600,000.1665

Such estimates harmonize with the statements of Esoteric Ethnology in almost every particular. The Tertiary Atlantean part-cycle, from the “apex of glory” of that Race in the early Eocene to the great Mid-Miocene cataclysm, would appear to have lasted some three-and-a-half to four million years. If the duration of the Quaternary is not, as seems likely, rather over-estimated, the sinking of Ruta and Daitya would be Post-Tertiary. It is probable that the results here given allow somewhat too long a period to both the Tertiary and Quaternary, as the Third Race goes very far back into the Secondary age. Nevertheless, the figures are most suggestive.

But the argument from geological evidence being in favour of only 100,000,000 years, let us compare our claims and teachings with those of exact Science.

Mr. Edward Clodd,1666 in referring to M. de Mortillet’s work Matériaux pour l’Histoire de l’Homme, which places man in the Mid-Miocene period,1667 remarks that:

It would be in defiance of all that the doctrine of evolution teaches, and moreover win no support from believers in special creation and the fixity of species, to seek for so highly specialized a mammalian as man at an early stage in the life-history of the globe.

To this, one could answer: (a) the doctrine of evolution, as inaugurated by Darwin and developed by later evolutionists, is not only the reverse of infallible, but it is repudiated by several great men of Science, e.g., de Quatrefages, in France, Dr. Weismann, an ex-evolutionist in Germany, and many others, the ranks of the Anti-Darwinists growing stronger with every year;1668 and (b) truth to be worthy of its name, and remain truth and fact, hardly needs to beg for support from any class or sect. For were it to win support from believers in special creation, it would never gain the favour of the evolutionists, and vice versâ. Truth must rest upon its own firm foundation of facts, and take its chance of recognition, when every prejudice in the way is disposed of. Though the question has been already fully considered in its main aspect, it is, nevertheless, advisable to combat every so-called “scientific” objection as we go along, when making what are regarded as heretical and anti-scientific statements.

Let us briefly glance at the divergencies between orthodox and Esoteric Science, on the question of the age of the globe and of man. With the two respective synchronistic tables before him, the reader will be enabled to see at a glance the importance of these divergencies; and to perceive, at the same time, that it is not impossible—nay, it is most likely—that further discoveries in Geology and the finding of fossil remains of man will force Science to confess that it is Esoteric Philosophy which is right after all, or, at any rate, nearer to the truth.

Parallelism of Life.

Scientific Hypotheses: Science divides the period of the Globe’s history, since the beginning of life on Earth (or the Azoic age), into five main divisions or periods, according to Hæckel.1669

Esoteric Theory: Leaving the classification of the geological periods to Western Science, Esoteric Philosophy divides only the Life-periods on the Globe. In the present Manvantara the actual period is separated into seven Kalpas and seven great human Races. Its first Kalpa, answering to the Primordial Epoch is the age of the Primeval.

Scientific: Primordial Epoch: Laurentian, Cambrian, Silurian. The Primordial epoch, Science tells us, is by no means devoid of vegetable and animal life. In the Laurentian deposits are found specimens of the Eozoon canadense—a chambered shell. In the Silurian are discovered sea-weeds (algæ), molluscs, crustacea, and lower marine organisms, also the first trace of fishes. The Primordial epoch shows algæ, molluscs, crustacea, polyps, and marine organisms, etc. Science teaches, therefore, that marine life was present from the very beginnings of time, leaving us, however, to speculate for ourselves as to how life appeared on Earth. If it rejects the biblical “creation” (as we do), why does it not give us another, approximately plausible hypothesis?

Esoteric: “Primeval”1670: Devas or Divine Men, the “Creators” and Progenitors.1671 The Esoteric Philosophy agrees with the statement made by Science (see preceding), demurring, however, to one particular. The 300,000,000 years of vegetable life (see “Brâhmanical Chronology”) preceded the “Divine Men,” or Progenitors. Also, no teaching denies that there were traces of life within the Earth, besides the Eozoon canadense, in the Primordial Epoch. Only, whereas the said vegetation belonged to this Round, the zoological relics now found in the Laurentian, Cambrian, and Silurian systems, so called, are the relics of the Third Round. At first astral like the rest, they consolidated and materialized pari passu with the new vegetation.

Scientific: Primary: Devonian,1672 Coal, Permian. “Fern-forests, sigillaria, coniferæ, fishes, first trace of reptiles.” Thus saith Modern Science.

Esoteric: “Primary”: Divine Progenitors (Secondary Groups), and the two and a half Races. The Esoteric Doctrine repeats that which was said above. These are all relics of the preceding Round.1673

Once, however, the prototypes are projected out of the Astral Envelope of the Earth, an indefinite amount of modification ensues.

Scientific: Secondary: Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous. This is the age of Reptiles, of the gigantic megalosauri, ichthyosauri, plesiosauri, etc. Science denies the presence of man in this period. But it has still to explain how men came to know of these monsters and describe them before the age of Cuvier! The old annals of China, India, Egypt, and even of Judea are full of them, as demonstrated elsewhere. In this period also appear the first marsupial mammals1674—insectivorous, carnivorous, phytophagous; and, as Prof. Owen thinks, a herbiferous hoofed mammal.

Science does not admit the appearance of man before the close of the Tertiary period.1675 Why? Because man has to be shown younger than the higher mammals. But Esoteric Philosophy teaches us the reverse. And as Science is quite unable to come to anything like an approximate conclusion as to the age of man, or even as to the geological periods, the Occult teaching is, therefore, more logical and reasonable, even if accepted only as a hypothesis.

Esoteric: “Secondary”: According to every calculation the Third Race had already made its appearance, as during the Triassic there were already a few mammals, and it must have separated before their appearance.

This, then, is the age of the Third Race, in which the origins of the early Fourth may be perhaps also discoverable. We are, however, here left entirely to conjecture, as no definite data are yet given out by the Initiates.

The analogy is but a poor one, still it may be argued that, as the early mammalia and pre-mammalia are shown in their evolution merging from one kind into a higher one, anatomically, so are the human races in their procreative processes. A parallel might certainly be found between the monotremata, didelphia (or marsupialia) and the placental mammals, divided in their turn into three orders1676 like the First, Second, and Third Root-Races of men.1677 But this would require more space than can be now allotted to the subject.

Scientific: Tertiary1678: Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene. No man is yet allowed to have lived during this period.

Says Mr. E. Clodd, in Knowledge: “Although the placental mammals and the order of primates to which man is related, appear in Tertiary times, and the climate, tropical in the Eocene age, warm in the Miocene, and temperate in the Pliocene, was favourable to his presence, the proofs of his existence in Europe before the close of the Tertiary epoch ... are not generally accepted here.”

Esoteric: “Tertiary”: The Third Race has now almost utterly disappeared, carried away by the fearful geological cataclysms of the Secondary age, leaving behind it but a few hybrid races.

The Fourth, born millions of years before1679 the said cataclysm took place, perished during the Miocene period,1680 when the Fifth (our Âryan Race) had had one million years of independent existence.1681 How much older it is from its origin—who knows? As the “historical” period began with the Indian Âryans, with their Vedas for their multitudes,1682 and far earlier in the Esoteric Records, it is useless to establish here any parallels.

Geology has now divided the periods and placed man in the Quaternary.

Scientific: Quaternary: Palæolithic Man, Neolithic Man, Historical Period.

Esoteric: “Quaternary”: If the Quaternary period is allowed 1,500,000 years, then only does our Fifth Race belong to it.

Yet—mirabile dictu—while the non-cannibal Palæolithic man, who must have certainly antedated cannibal Neolithic man by hundreds of thousands of years,1683 is shown to be a remarkable artist, Neolithic man is made out to be almost an abject savage, his lake dwellings notwithstanding.1684 For see what a learned Geologist, Mr. Charles Gould, tells the reader in his Mythical Monsters:

Palæolithic men were unacquainted with pottery and the art of weaving, and apparently had no domesticated animals or system of cultivation; but the Neolithic lake-dwellers of Switzerland had looms, pottery, cereals, sheep, horses, etc. Implements of horn, bone, and wood were in common use among both races, but those of the older are frequently distinguished by their being sculptured with great ability, or ornamented with life-like engravings of the various animals living at the period; whereas there appears to have been a marked absence of any similar artistic ability1685 on the part of Neolithic man.1686

Let us give the reasons for this.

(1) The oldest fossil man, the primitive cave-men of the old Palæolithic period, and of the Pre-Glacial period (of whatever length, and however far back), is always the same genus man, and there are no fossil remains proving for him

What the Hipparion and Anchitherium have proved for the genus horse—that is, gradual progressive specialization from a simple ancestral type to more complex existing forms.1687

(2) As to the so-called Palæolithic hatchets:

When placed side by side with the rudest forms of stone hatchets actually used by the Australian and other savages, it is difficult to detect any difference.1688

This goes to prove that there have been savages at all times; and the inference would be that there might have been civilized people in those days as well, cultured nations contemporary with those rude savages. We see such a thing in Egypt 7,000 years ago.

(3) An obstacle which is the direct consequence of the two preceding: Man, if no older than the Palæolithic period, could not possibly have had the actual time necessary for his transformation from the “missing link” into what he is known to have been even during that remote geological time, i.e., even a finer specimen of manhood than many of the now existing races.

The above lends itself naturally to the following syllogism: (1) The primitive man (known to Science) was, in some respects, even a finer man of his genus than he is now. (2) The earliest monkey known, the lemur, was less anthropoid than the modern pithecoid species. (3) Conclusion: Even though a missing link were found, the balance of evidence would remain more in favour of the ape being a degenerated man, made dumb by some fortuitous circumstances,1689 than in favour of the descent of man from a pithecoid ancestor. The theory cuts both ways.

On the other hand, if the existence of Atlantis be accepted, and the statement be believed that in the Eocene age—

Even in its very first part, the great cycle of the Fourth Race men, the Atlanteans, had already reached its highest point,1690

then some of the present difficulties of Science might easily be made to disappear. The rude workmanship of the Palæolithic tools proves nothing against the idea that, side by side with their makers, there lived nations highly civilized. We are told that:

Only a very small portion of the earth’s surface has been explored, and of this a very small portion consists of ancient land surfaces or fresh water formations, where alone we can expect to meet with traces of the higher forms of animal life. And even these have been so imperfectly explored, that where we now meet with thousands and tens of thousands of undoubted human remains lying almost under our feet, it is only within the last thirty years that their existence has even been suspected.1691

It is very suggestive also that along with the rude hatchets of the lowest savage, explorers meet with specimens of workmanship of such artistic merit as could hardly be found, or expected, in a modern peasant belonging to any European country—unless in exceptional cases. The “portrait” of the “Reindeer Feeding,” from the Thayngin grotto in Switzerland, and those of the man running, with two horses’ heads sketched close to him—a work of the Reindeer period, i.e., at least 50,000 years ago—are pronounced by Mr. Laing to be not only exceedingly well done, but the former, the “Reindeer Feeding,” is described as one that “would do credit to any modern animal painter”—by no means exaggerated praise, as anyone may see, by glancing at the sketch given below from Mr. Gould’s work. Now, since we have our greatest painters of Europe side by side with the modern Esquimaux, who also have a tendency, like their Palæolithic ancestors of the Reindeer period, the rude and savage human species, to be constantly drawing with the point of their knives sketches of animals, scenes of the chase, etc., why could not the same have happened in those days? Compared with the specimens of Egyptian drawing and sketching—7,000 years ago—the “earliest portraits” of men, horses’ heads, and reindeer, made 50,000 years ago, are certainly superior. Nevertheless, the Egyptians of those periods are known to have been a highly civilized nation, whereas the Palæolithic men are called savages of the lower type. This is a small matter seemingly, yet it is extremely suggestive as showing how every new geological discovery is made to fit in with current theories, instead of fitting the theories to include the discovery. Yes; Mr. Huxley is right in saying, “Time will show.” It will, and it must vindicate Occultism.

Meanwhile, the most uncompromising Materialists are driven by necessity into the most Occult-like admissions. Strange to say, it is the most materialistic—those of the German school—who, with regard to physical development, come the nearest to the teachings of the Occultists. Thus, Professor Baumgärtner believes that:

The germs for the higher animals could only be the eggs of the lower animals; ... besides the advance of the vegetable and animal world in development, there occurred in that period the formation of new original germs [which formed the basis of new metamorphoses, etc.] ... the first men who proceeded from the germs of animals beneath them, lived first in a larva state.

Just so; in a larva state, we say too, only from no “animal” germ; and that larva was the soulless astral form of the pre-physical Races. And we believe, as the German professor does, with several other men of Science in Europe now, that the human races—

Have not descended from one pair, but appeared immediately in numerous races.1692

Therefore, when we read Force and Matter, and find that Emperor of Materialists, Büchner, repeating after Manu and Hermes, that:

Imperceptibly the plant glides into the animal, the animal into the man1693

—we need only add “and man into a spirit,” to complete the kabalistic axiom. The more so, since we read the following admission:

Evolved by spontaneous generation ... that whole rich and multiform organic world ... has developed itself progressively, in the course of endless periods of time, by the aid of natural phenomena.1694

The whole difference lies in this: Modern Science places her materialistic theory of primordial germs on Earth, and the last germ of life on this Globe, of man, and everything else, between two voids. Whence the first germ, if both spontaneous generation and the interference of external forces, are absolutely rejected now? Germs of organic life, we are told, by Sir William Thompson, came to our Earth in some meteor. This helps in no way, and only shifts the difficulty from this Earth to the supposed meteor.

These are our agreements and disagreements with Science. About the “endless periods” we are, of course, at one even with materialistic speculation; for we believe in Evolution, though on different lines. Professor Huxley very wisely says:

If any form of the doctrine of progressive development is correct, we must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of the antiquity of man.1695

But when we are told that this man is a product of the natural forces inherent in Matter—Force, according to modern views, being but a quality of Matter, a “mode of motion,” etc.—and when we find Sir William Thompson repeating in 1885 what was asserted by Büchner and his school thirty years ago, we fear all our reverence for real Science is vanishing into thin air! One can hardly help thinking that Materialism is, in certain cases, a disease. For when men of Science, in the face of magnetic phenomena and the attraction of iron particles through insulating substances, like glass, maintain that the said attraction is due to “molecular motion,” or to the “rotation of the molecules of the magnet,” then, whether the teaching comes from a “credulous” Theosophist innocent of any notion of Physics, or from an eminent man of Science, it is equally ridiculous. The individual who asserts such a theory in the teeth of fact, is only one more proof that: “When people have not a niche in their minds into which to shoot facts, so much the worse for the facts.”

At present the dispute between the spontaneous generationists and their opponents is at rest, having ended in the provisional victory of the latter. But even they are forced to admit, as Büchner did, and Messrs. Tyndall and Huxley still do—that spontaneous generation must have occurred once, under “special thermal conditions.” Virchow refuses even to argue the question; it must have taken place some time in the history of our planet; and there’s an end of it. This seems to look more natural than Sir William Thompson’s hypothesis just quoted, that the germs of organic life fell on our Earth in some meteor; or the other “scientific” hypothesis coupled with the recently adopted belief that there exists no “vital principle” whatever, but only vital phenomena, which can all be traced to the molecular forces of the original protoplasm. But this does not help Science to solve the still greater problem—the origin and the descent of Man, for here is a still worse plaint and lamentation.

While we can trace the skeletons of Eocene mammals through several directions of specialization in succeeding Tertiary times, man presents the phenomenon of an unspecialized skeleton which cannot fairly be connected with any of these lines.1696

The secret could be soon told, not only from the Esoteric but even from the standpoint of every religion the world over, without mentioning the Occultists. The “specialized skeleton” is sought for in the wrong place, where it can never be found. Scientists expect to discover it in the physical remains of man, in some pithecoid “missing link,” with a skull larger than that of the ape’s, and with a cranial capacity smaller than in man, instead of looking for that specialization in the super-physical essence of his inner astral constitution, which can hardly be excavated from any geological strata! Such a tenacious, hopeful clinging to a self-degrading theory is the most wonderful feature of the day.

Meanwhile, there are specimens of engravings made by Palæolithic “savages”: Palæolithic meaning the “earlier Stone-age” man, one supposed to have been as savage and brutal as the brutes he lived with. Leaving the modern South Sea islander, or even any Asiatic race, aside, we defy any grown-up schoolboy, or even a European youth, one who has never studied drawing, to execute such an engraving or even a pencil sketch as good. Here we have the true artistic raccourci, and correct lights and shadows without any plane model before the artist, who copied direct from nature, thus exhibiting a knowledge of anatomy and proportion. The artist who engraved this reindeer belonged, we are asked to believe, to the primitive “semi-animal” savages (contemporaneous with the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros), whom some over-zealous Evolutionists once sought to picture to us as distinct approximations to the type of their hypothetical “pithecoid man”!

This engraved antler proves as eloquently as any fact can do, that the evolution of the Races has ever proceeded in a series of rises and falls, that man is, perhaps, as old as incrustated Earth, and—if we can call his divine ancestor “man”—is far older still.

Even de Mortillet himself seems to experience a vague distrust of the conclusions of modern Archæologists, when he writes:

The prehistoric is a new science, far, very far, from having said its last word.1697

According to Lyell, one of the highest authorities on the subject, and the “father” of Geology:

The expectation of always meeting with a lower type of human skull, the older the formation in which it occurs, is based on the theory of progressive development, and it may prove to be sound; nevertheless we must remember that as yet we have no distinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in chronological order that of the higher races.1698

Nor has such evidence been found to this day. Science is thus offering for sale the skin of a bear, which has hitherto never been seen by mortal eye!

This concession of Lyell’s reads most suggestively with the subjoined utterance of Professor Max Müller, whose attack on Darwinian Anthropology from the standpoint of language has, by the way, never been satisfactorily answered:

What do we know of savage tribes beyond the last chapter of their history? [Compare this with the Esoteric view of the Australians, Bushmen, as well as of Palæolithic European man, the Atlantean offshoots retaining a relic of a lost culture, which throve when the parent Root-Race was in its prime.] Do we ever get an insight into their antecedents? Can we ever understand what after all is everywhere the most important and the most instructive lesson to learn—how they have come to be what they are?... Their language proves, indeed, that these so-called heathens, with their complicated systems of mythology, their artificial customs, their unintelligible whims and savageries, are not the creatures of to-day or yesterday. Unless we admit a special creation for these savages, they must be as old as the Hindûs, the Greeks and Romans [far older] ... They may have passed through ever so many vicissitudes, and what we consider as primitive, may be, for all we know, a relapse into savagery or a corruption of something that was more rational and intelligible in former stages.1699

Professor George Rawlinson, M.A., remarks:

“The primeval savage” is a familiar term in modern literature, but there is no evidence that the primeval savage ever existed. Rather all the evidence looks the other way.1700

In his Origin of Nations, he rightly adds:

The mythical traditions of almost all nations place at the beginning of human history a time of happiness and perfection, a “golden age” which has no features of savagery or barbarism, but many of civilization and refinement.1701

How is the modern Evolutionist to meet this consensus of evidence?

We repeat the question asked in Isis Unveiled:

Does the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that there were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized? When the present population of the Earth has disappeared, and some Archæologist belonging to the “coming race” of the distant future shall excavate the domestic implements of one of our Indian or Andaman Island tribes, will he be justified in concluding that mankind in the nineteenth century was “just emerging from the Stone age”?1702

Another strange inconsistency in scientific theories is that Neolithic man is shown as being far more of a primitive savage than Palæolithic. Either Lubbock’s Prehistoric Man, or Evans’ Ancient Stone Implements must be at fault, or—both. For this is what we learn from these works and others:

(1) As we pass from Neolithic to Palæolithic man, the stone implements become rude lumbering makeshifts, instead of gracefully shaped and polished instruments. Pottery, and other useful arts disappear as we descend the scale. And yet the latter could engrave such a reindeer!

(2) Palæolithic man lived in caves which he shared with hyænas and lions,1703 whereas Neolithic man dwelt in lake-villages and buildings.

Every one who has followed even superficially the geological discoveries of our day, knows that a gradual improvement in workmanship is found, from the clumsy chipping and rude chopping of the early Palæolithic hatchets, to the relatively graceful stone celts of that part of the Neolithic period immediately preceding the use of metals. But this is in Europe, only a few portions of which were barely rising from the waters in the days of the highest Atlantean civilization. There were rude savages and highly civilized people then, as there are now. If 50,000 years hence, pigmy Bushmen are exhumed from some African cavern together with far earlier pigmy elephants, such as were found in the cave deposits of Malta by Milne Edwards, will that be a reason for maintaining that in our age all men and all elephants were pigmies? Or if the weapons of the Veddhas of Ceylon are found, will our descendants be justified in setting us all down as Palæolithic savages? All the articles which Geologists now excavate in Europe can certainly never date earlier than the close of the Eocene age, since the lands of Europe were not even above water before that period. Nor can what we have said be in the least invalidated by theorists telling us that these quaint sketches of animals and men by Palæolithic man, were executed only toward the close of the Reindeer period—for this explanation would be a very lame one indeed, in view of the Geologists’ ignorance of even the approximate duration of periods.

The Esoteric Doctrine teaches distinctly the dogma of the risings and falls of civilization; and now we learn that:

It is a remarkable fact that cannibalism seems to have become more frequent as man advanced in civilization, and that while its traces are frequent in Neolithic times they become very scarce or altogether disappear in the age of the mammoth and the reindeer....1704

—another evidence of the cyclic law and the truth of our teachings. Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship died out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African negroes, etc.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindû writings do.

In the early Egyptian tombs, and in the remains of the prehistoric cities excavated by Dr. Schliemann, images of owl-and ox-headed goddesses, and other symbolical figures or idols, are found in abundance. But when we ascend into Neolithic times, such idols are no longer found, or, if found, it is so rarely that archæologists still dispute as to their existence ... the only ones which may be said with some certainty to have been idols are one or two discovered by M. de Braye in some artificial caves of the Neolithic period ... which appear to be intended for female figures of life size.1705

And these may have been simply statues. Anyhow, all this is one among the many proofs of the cyclic rise and fall of civilization and religion. The fact that no traces of human relics or skeletons are so far found beyond Post-Tertiary or Quaternary times—though Abbé Bourgeois’ flints may serve as a warning1706—seems to point to the truth of another Esoteric statement, which runs thus:

Seek for the remains of thy forefathers in the high places. The vales have grown into mountains and the mountains have crumbled to the bottom of the seas.

Fourth Race mankind, thinned after the last cataclysm by two-thirds of its population, instead of settling on the new continents and islands that reäppeared—while their predecessors formed the floors of new oceans—deserted that which is now Europe and parts of Asia and Africa for the summits of gigantic mountains, the seas that surrounded some of the latter having since “retreated” and made room for the table lands of Central Asia.

The most interesting example of this progressive march is perhaps afforded by the celebrated Kent’s Cavern at Torquay. In that strange recess, excavated by water out of the Devonian limestone, we find a most curious record preserved for us in the geological memoirs of the Earth. Under the blocks of limestone, which heaped the floor of the cavern, were discovered, embedded in a deposit of black earth, many implements of the Neolithic period of fairly excellent workmanship, with a few fragments of pottery—possibly traceable to the era of the Roman colonization. There is no trace of Palæolithic man here. No flints or traces of the extinct animals of the Quaternary period. When, however, we penetrate still deeper through the dense layer of stalagmite beneath the black mould into the red earth, which, of course, itself once formed the pavement of the retreat, things assume a very different aspect. Not one implement fit to bear comparison with the finely-chipped weapons found in the overlying stratum is to be seen; only a host of the rude and lumbering little hatchets (with which the monstrous giants of the animal world were subdued and killed by little man, we have to think?) and scrapers of the Palæolithic age, mixed up confusedly with the bones of species now either extinct or emigrated, driven away by change of climate. It is the artificer of these ugly little hatchets, you see, who sculptured the reindeer over the brook, on the antler as shown above! In all cases we meet with the same evidence that, from historic to Neolithic and from Neolithic to Palæolithic man, things slope downwards on an inclined plane from the rudiments of civilization to the most abject barbarism—in Europe again. We are made also to face the “Mammoth age”—the extreme or earliest division of the Palæolithic age—in which the great rudeness of implements reaches its maximum, and the brutal (?) appearance of contemporary skulls, such as the Neanderthal, points to a very low type of humanity. But they may sometimes point also to something else; to a race of men quite distinct from our (Fifth Race) Humanity.

As said by an Anthropologist in Modern Thought:

The theory, scientifically based or not, of Peyrère may be considered to be equivalent to that which divided man in two species. Broca, Virey, and a number of the French anthropologists have recognized that the lower race of man, comprising the Australian, Tasmanian, and Negro race, excluding the Kaffirs and the Northern Africans, should be placed apart. The fact that in this species, or rather sub-species, the third lower molars are usually larger than the second, and the squamosal and frontal bones are generally united by suture, places the Homo aferon the level of being as good a distinct species as many of the kinds of finches. I shall abstain on the present occasion from mentioning the facts of hybridity, whereon the late Professor Broca has so exhaustively commented. The history, in the past ages of the world, of this race is peculiar. It has never originated a system of architecture or a religion of its own.1707

It is peculiar, indeed, as we have shown in the case of the Tasmanians. However it may be, fossil man in Europe can neither prove nor disprove the antiquity of man on this Earth, nor the age of his earliest civilizations.

It is time that the Occultists should disregard any attempts to laugh at them, scorning the heavy guns of the satire of the men of Science as much as the pop-guns of the profane, since it is impossible, so far, to obtain either proof or disproof, while their theories can stand the test better than can the hypotheses of the Scientists, at any rate. As to the proof of the antiquity which they claim for man, they have Darwin himself and Lyell with them. The latter confesses that they, the Naturalists—

Have already obtained evidence of the existence of man at so remote a period that there has been time for many conspicuous mammalia, once his contemporaries, to die out, and this even before the era of the earliest historical records.1708

This is a statement made by one of England’s great authorities upon the question. The two sentences that follow are as suggestive, and may well be remembered by students of Occultism, for with all others he says:

In spite of the long lapse of prehistoric ages during which he [man] must have flourished on earth, there is no proof of any perceptible change in his bodily structure. If, therefore, he ever diverged from some unreasoning brute ancestor, we must suppose him to have existed at a far more distant epoch, possibly on some continents or islands now submerged beneath the ocean.

Thus lost continents are officially suspected. That worlds, and also races, are periodically destroyed by fire (volcanoes and earthquakes) and water, in turn, and are periodically renewed, is a doctrine as old as man. Manu, Hermes, the Chaldæans, all antiquity, believed in this. Twice already has the face of the Globe been changed by fire, and twice by water, since man appeared on it. As land needs rest and renovation, new forces, and a change for its soil, so does water. Thence arises a periodical redistribution of land and water, change of climates, etc., all brought on by geological revolution, and ending in a final change in the axis of the Earth. Astronomers may pooh-pooh the idea of a periodical change in the behaviour of the Globe’s axis, and smile at the conversation given in the Book of Enoch between Noah and his “grandfather” Enoch; the allegory is, nevertheless, a geological and an astronomical fact. There is a secular change in the inclination of the Earth’s axis, and its appointed time is recorded in one of the great Secret Cycles. As in many other questions, Science is gradually moving toward our way of thinking. Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., F.G.S., writes in the Popular Science Review:

If it be necessary to call in extra-mundane causes to explain the great increase of ice at this glacial period, I would prefer the theory propounded by Dr. Robert Hooke in 1688; since, by Sir Richard Phillips and others; and lastly by Mr. Thomas Belt, C.E., F.G.S.; namely, a slight increase in the present obliquity of the ecliptic, a proposal in perfect accord with other known astronomical facts, and the introduction of which involves no disturbance of the harmony which is essential to our cosmical condition as a unit in the great solar system.1709

The following, quoted from a Lecture by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S., delivered in March, 1885, on “The Extinct Lake of Bovey Tracey,” shows the hesitation, in the face of every evidence in favour of Atlantis, to accept the fact.

Evergreen figs, laurels, palms, and ferns having gigantic rhizomes have their existing congeners in a sub-tropical climate, such, it cannot be doubted, as prevailed in Devonshire in Miocene times, and are thus calculated to suggest caution when the present climate of any district is regarded as normal.

When, moreover, Miocene plants are found in Disco Island, on the west coast of Greenland, lying between 69° 20´ and 70° 30´ N. lat.; when we learn that among them were two species found also at Bovey (Sequoia couttsiæ, Quercus lyelli); when, to quote Professor Heer, we find that “the ’splendid evergreen’ (Magnolia inglefieldi) ’ripened its fruits so far north as on the parallel of 70°’ ” (Phil. Trans., clix. 457, 1869); when also the number, variety, and luxuriance of the Greenland Miocene plants are found to have been such that, had land continued so far, some of them would in all probability have flourished at the Pole itself, the problem of changes of climate is brought prominently into view, but only to be dismissed apparently with the feeling that the time for its solution has not yet arrived.

It seems to be admitted on all hands that the Miocene plants of Europe have their nearest and most numerous existing analogues in North America, and hence arises the question: How was the migration from one area to the other effected? Was there, as some have believed, an Atlantis?—a continent, or an archipelago of large islands, occupying the area of the North Atlantic. There is perhaps nothing unphilosophical in this hypothesis; for since, as geologists state, “the Alps have acquired 4,000, and even in some places more than 10,000 feet of their present altitude since the commencement of the Eocene period” (Lyell’s Principles, 11th ed., p. 256, 1872), a Post-Miocene[?] depression might have carried the hypothetical Atlantis into almost abysmal depths. But an Atlantis is apparently unnecessary and uncalled for. According to Professor Oliver, “A close and very peculiar analogy subsists between the Flora of Tertiary Central Europe and the recent Floras of the American States and of the Japanese region; an analogy much closer and more intimate than is to be traced between the Tertiary and recent Floras of Europe. We find the Tertiary element of the Old World to be intensified towards its extreme eastern margin, if not in numerical preponderance of genera, yet in features which especially give a character to the Fossil Flora.... This accession of the Tertiary element is rather gradual and not abruptly assumed in the Japan islands only. Although it there attains a maximum, we may trace it from the Mediterranean, Levant, Caucasus, and Persia ... then along the Himâlaya and through China.... We learn also that during the Tertiary epoch, counterparts of Central European Miocene genera certainly grew in North-West America.... We note further that the present Atlantic Islands’ Flora affords no substantial evidence of a former direct communication with the mainland of the New World.... The consideration of these facts lead me to the opinion that botanical evidence does not favour the hypothesis of an Atlantis. On the other hand, it strongly favours the view that at some period of the Tertiary epoch North-Eastern Asia was united to North-Western America, perhaps by the line where the Aleutian chain of islands now extends.” (Nat. Hist. Rev., ii. 164, 1862, Art., “The Atlantis Hypothesis in its Botanical Aspect.”)

See, however, on these points, “Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Reality of Several Submerged Continents.”

But nothing short of a pithecoid man will ever satisfy the luckless searchers after the thrice hypothetical “missing link.” Yet, if beneath the vast floors of the Atlantic, from the Teneriffe Pic to Gibraltar, the ancient emplacement of the lost Atlantis, all the submarine strata were to be broken up miles deep, no such skull as would satisfy the Darwinists would be found. As Dr. C. R. Bree remarks, no missing links between man and ape having been discovered in various gravels and formations above the Tertiary strata, if these forms had gone down with the continents now covered with the sea, they might still have been found—

In those beds of contemporary geological strata which have not gone down to the bottom of the sea.1710

Yet they are as fatally absent from the latter as from the former. Did not preconceptions fasten vampire-like on man’s mind, the author of The Antiquity of Man would have found a clue to the difficulty in that same work of his, by going ten pages back (to p. 530) and reading over a quotation of his own from Professor G. Rolleston’s work. This Physiologist, he says, suggests that as there is considerable plasticity in the human frame, not only in youth and during growth, but even in the adult, we ought not always to take for granted, as some advocates of the development theory seem to do, that each advance in physical power depends on an improvement in bodily structure, for why may not the soul, or the higher intellectual and moral faculties play the first instead of the second part in a progressive scheme?

This hypothesis is made in relation to evolution not being entirely due to “natural selection”; but it applies as well to the case in hand. For we, too, claim that it is the “Soul,” or the Inner Man, that descends on Earth first, the psychic Astral, the mould on which physical man is gradually built—his Spirit, intellectual and moral faculties awakening later on as that physical stature grows and develops.

“Thus incorporeal spirits to smaller forms reduced their shapes immense,” and became the men of the Third and the Fourth Races. Still later, ages after, appeared the men of our Fifth Race, reduced from what we should call the still gigantic stature of their primeval ancestors, to about half that size at present.

Man is certainly no special creation. He is the product of Nature’s gradual perfective work, like any other living unit on this Earth. But this is only with regard to the human tabernacle. That which lives and thinks in man and survives that frame, the masterpiece of evolution—is the “Eternal Pilgrim,” the Protean differentiation in Space and Time of the One Absolute “Unknowable.”

In his Antiquity of Man1711 Sir Charles Lyell quotes—perhaps in rather a mocking spirit—what Hallam says in his Introduction to the Literature of Europe:

If man was made in the image of God, he was also made in the image of an ape. The framework of the body of him who has weighed the stars and made the lightning his slave, approaches to that of a speechless brute who wanders in the forests of Sumatra. Thus standing on the frontier land between animal and angelic natures, what wonder that he should partake of both!1712

An Occultist would have put it otherwise. He would say that man was indeed made in the image of a type projected by his progenitor, the creating Angel-Force, or Dhyân Chohan; while the wanderer of the forest of Sumatra was made in the image of man, since the framework of the ape, we say again, is the revival, the resuscitation by abnormal means, of the actual form of the Third Round and of the Fourth Round Man as well, later on. Nothing is lost in Nature, not an atom: this is at least certain on scientific data. Analogy would appear to demand that form should be equally endowed with permanency.

And yet what do we find? Says Sir William Dawson, F.R.S.:

It is farther significant that Professor Huxley, in his lectures in New York, while resting his case as to the lower animals mainly on the supposed genealogy of the horse, which has often been shown to amount to no certain evidence, avoided altogether the discussion of the origin of men from the apes, now obviously complicated with so many difficulties that both Wallace and Mivart are staggered by them. Professor Thomas in his recent lectures (Nature, 1876), admits that there is no lower man known than the Australian, and that there is no known link of connection with the monkeys; and Hæckel has to admit that the penultimate link in his phylogeny, the ape-like man, is absolutely unknown (History of Creation).... The so-called “tallies” found with the bones of Palæocosmic men in European caves, and illustrated in the admirable works of Christy and Lartet, show that the rudiments even of writing were already in possession of the oldest race of men known to archæology or geology.1713

Again, in Dr. C. R. Bree’s Fallacies of Darwinism, we read:

Mr. Darwin justly says that the difference physically and, more especially, mentally, between the lowest form of man and the highest anthropomorphous ape, is enormous. Therefore, the time—which in Darwinian evolution must be almost inconceivably slow—must have been enormous also during man’s development from the monkey1714. The chance, therefore, of some of these variations being found in the different gravels or fresh-water formations above the tertiaries, must be very great. And yet not one single variation, not one single specimen of a being between a monkey and a man has ever been found! Neither in the gravel, not the drift-clay, nor the fresh-water beds and gravel and drift, nor in the tertiaries below them, has there ever been discovered the remains of any member of the missing families between the monkey and the man, as assumed to have existed by Mr. Darwin. Have they gone down with the depression of the earth’s surface and are they now covered with the sea? If so, it is beyond all probability that they should not also be found in those beds of contemporary geological strata which have notgone down to the bottom of the sea; still more improbable that some portions should not be dredged from the ocean-bed like the remains of the mammoth and the rhinoceros, which are also found in fresh-water beds and gravel and drift!... The celebrated Neanderthal skull, about which so much has been said, belongs confessedly to this remote period [bronze and stone ages], and yet presents, although it may have been the skull of an idiot, immense differences from the highest known anthropomorphous ape.1715

Our Globe being convulsed each time that it reäwakens for a new period of activity, like a field which has to be ploughed and furrowed before fresh seed for its new crop is thrown into it—it does seem quite hopeless that fossils belonging to its previous Rounds should be found in the beds of either its oldest or its latest geological strata. Every new Manvantara brings along with it the renovation of forms, types and species; every type of the preceding organic forms—vegetable, animal and human—changes and is perfected in the next, even to the mineral, which has received in this Round its final opacity and hardness; its softer portions formed the present vegetation; the astral relics of previous vegetation and fauna were utilized in the formation of the lower animals, and in determining the structure of the primeval Root-Types of the highest mammalia. And, finally, the form of the gigantic ape-man of the former Round has been reproduced in this one by human bestiality, and transfigured into the parent form in the modern anthropoid.

This doctrine, even imperfectly delineated as it is under our inefficient pen, is assuredly more logical, more consistent with facts, and far more probable, than many “scientific” theories; that, for instance, of the first organic germ descending on a meteor to our Earth—like Ain Suph on its Vehicle, Adam Kadmon. Only, the latter descent is allegorical, as every one knows, and the Kabalists have never offered this figure of speech for acceptance in its dead-letter garb. But the germ-in-the-meteor theory, as coming from such high scientific quarters, is an eligible candidate for axiomatic truth and law, a theory people are in honour bound to accept, if they would be on a right level with Modern Science. What the next theory necessitated by the materialistic premisses will be—no one can tell. Meanwhile, the present theories, as anyone can see, clash far more discordantly among themselves than even with those of the Occultists outside the sacred precincts of learning. For what is there, next in order, now that exact Science has made even of the life-principle an empty word, a meaningless term, and insists that life is an effect due to the molecular action of the primordial protoplasm? The new doctrine of the Darwinists may be defined and summarized in the few words, from Mr. Herbert Spencer:

The hypothesis of special creations turns out to be worthless—worthless, by its derivation; worthless, in its intrinsic incoherence; worthless, as absolutely without evidence; worthless, as not supplying an intellectual need; worthless, as not satisfying a moral want. We must, therefore, consider it as counting for nothing in opposition to any other hypothesis respecting the origin of organic beings.1716