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- 19. The second race (was) the product by budding and expansion ; the a-sexual ( form ) from the sexless ( shadow ). Thus was, O Lanoo, the second race produced (a).
(a) What will be most contested by scientific authorities is this a-sexual Race, the Second, the fathers of the “ Sweat-born ” so-called, and perhaps still more the Third Race, the “ Egg-born ” androgynes. These two modes of procreation are the most difficult to comprehend, especially for the Western mind. It is evident that no explanation can be attempted for those who are not students of Occult metaphysics. European language has no words to express things which Nature repeats no more at this stage of evolution, things which therefore can have no meaning for the materialist. But there are analogies. It is not denied that in the beginning of physical evolution there must have been processes in Nature, spontaneous generation, for instance, now extinct, which are repeated in other forms. Thus we are told that microscopic research shows no permanence of any particular mode of reproducing life. For “ it shows that the same organism may run through various metamorphoses in the course of its life-cycle, during some of which it may be sexual, and in others a-sexual ; i.e., it may reproduce itself alternately by the co-operation of two beings of opposite sex, and also by fissure or budding from one being only, which is of no sex.” * “ Budding ” is the very word used in the Stanza. How could these Chhayas reproduce themselves otherwise ; viz., procreate the Second Race, since they were ethereal, a-sexual, and even devoid, as yet, of the vehicle of desire, or Kama Rupa, which evolved only in the Third Race ? They evolved the Second Race unconsciously, as do some plants. Or, perhaps, as the Amœba, only on a more ethereal, impressive, and larger scale. If, indeed, the cell-theory applies equally to Botany and Zoology, and extends to Morphology, as well as to the Physiology of organisms,
* See Laing’s “ Modern Science and Modern Thought,” p. 90.
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and if the microscopic cells are looked upon by physical science as independent living beings — just as Occultism regards the “ fiery lives ” * — there is no difficulty in the conception of the primitive process of procreation.
Consider the first stages of the development of a germ-cell. Its nucleus grows, changes, and forms a double cone or spindle, thus, 
within the cell. This spindle approaches the surface of the cell, and one half of it is extruded in the form of what are called the “ polar cells.” These polar cells now die, and the embryo develops from the growth and segmentation of the remaining part of the nucleus which is nourished by the substance of the cell. Then why could not beings have lived thus, and been created in this way — at the very beginning of human and mammalian evolution ?
This may, perhaps, serve as an analogy to give some idea of the process by which the Second Race was formed from the First.
The astral form clothing the Monad was surrounded, as it still is, by its egg-shaped sphere of aura, which here corresponds to the substance of the germ-cell or ovum. The astral form itself is the nucleus, now, as then, instinct with the principle of life.
When the season of reproduction arrives, the sub-astral “ extrudes ” a miniature of itself from the egg of surrounding aura. This germ grows and feeds on the aura till it becomes fully developed, when it gradually separates from its parent, carrying with it its own sphere of aura ; just as we see living cells reproducing their like by growth and subsequent division into two.
The analogy with the “ polar cells ” would seem to hold good, since their death would now correspond to the change introduced by the separation of the sexes, when gestation in utero, i.e., within the cell, became the rule.
“ The early Second (Root) Race were the Fathers of the ‘ Sweat-born ’ ; the later Second (Root) Race were ‘ Sweat-born ’ themselves.”
This passage from the Commentary refers to the work of evolution from the beginning of a Race to its close. The “ Sons of Yoga,” or the primitive astral race, had seven stages of evolution racially, or collectively ; as every individual Being in it had, and has now. It is not Shakespeare only who divided the ages of man into a series of seven, but Nature herself. Thus the first sub-races of the Second Race were born at first by the process described on the law of analogy ; while the last began gradually, pari passu with the evolution of the human body, to be formed otherwise. The process of reproduction had seven stages also
* See Book I., Part I., Stanza VII. Commentary 10.
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in each Race, each covering æons of time. What physiologist or biologist could tell whether the present mode of generation, with all its phases of gestation, is older than half a million, or at most one million of years, since their cycle of observation began hardly half a century ago.
Primeval human hermaphrodites are a fact in Nature well known to the ancients, and form one of Darwin’s greatest perplexities. Yet there is certainly no impossibility, but, on the contrary, a great probability that hermaphroditism existed in the evolution of the early races ; while on the grounds of analogy, and on that of the existence of one universal law in physical evolution, acting indifferently in the construction of plant, animal, and man, it must be so. The mistaken theories of mono-genesis, and the descent of man from the mammals instead of the reverse, are fatal to the completeness of evolution as taught in modern schools on Darwinian lines, and they will have to be abandoned in view of the insuperable difficulties which they encounter. Occult tradition — if the terms Science and Knowledge are denied in this particular to antiquity — can alone reconcile the inconsistencies and fill the gap. “ If thou wilt know the invisible, open thine eye wide on the visible,” says a Talmudic axiom.
In the “ Descent of Man ” * occurs the following passage ; which shows how near Darwin came to the acceptance of this ancient teaching.
“ It has been known that in the vertebrate kingdom one sex bears rudiments of various accessory parts appertaining to the reproductive system, which properly belong to the opposite sex. . . . Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to have been hermaphrodite or androgynous † . . . But here we encounter a singular difficulty. In the mammalian class the males possess rudiments of a uterus with the adjacent passages in the Vesiculæ prostaticæ ; they bear also rudiments of mammæ, and some male marsupials have traces of a marsupial sac. Other analogous facts could be added. Are we then to suppose that some extremely ancient mammal continued androgynous after it had acquired the chief distinctions of its class, and therefore after it had diverged from the lower classes of the vertebrate kingdom ? This seems very improbable, ‡ for we have to look to fishes, the lowest of all the classes, to find any still existent androgynous forms.”
Mr. Darwin is evidently strongly disinclined to adopt the hypothesis which the facts so forcibly suggest, viz., that of a primeval androgynous
* Second Edition, p. 161.
† And why not all the progenitive first Races, human as well as animal ; and why one “ remote progenitor ” ?
‡ Obviously so, on the lines of Evolutionism, which traces the mammalia to some amphibian ancestor.
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stem from which the mammalia sprang. His explanation runs : — “ The fact that various accessory organs proper to each sex, are found in a rudimentary condition in the opposite sex may be explained by such organs having been gradually acquired by the one sex and then transmitted in a more or less imperfect condition to the other.” He instances the case of “ spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired for battle or for ornament by male birds ” and only partially inherited by their female descendants. In the problem to be dealt with, however, the need of a more satisfactory explanation is evident, the facts being of so much more prominent and important a character than the mere superficial details with which they are compared by Darwin. Why not candidly admit the argument in favour of the hermaphroditism which characterises the old fauna ? Occultism proposes a solution which embraces the facts in a most comprehensive and simple manner. These relics of a prior androgyne stock must be placed in the same category as the pineal gland, and other organs as mysterious, which afford us silent testimony as to the reality of functions which have long since become atrophied in the course of animal and human progress, but which once played a signal part in the general economy of primeval life.
The occult doctrine, anyhow, can be advantageously compared with that of the most liberal men of science, who have theorised upon the origin of the first man.
Long before Darwin, Naudin, who gave the name of Blastema to that which the Darwinists call protoplasm, put forward a theory half occult and half scientifico-materialistic. He made Adam, the a-sexual, spring suddenly from the clay, as it is called in the Bible, the Blastema of Science. “ It is from this larval form of mankind that the evolutive force effected the completion of species. For the accomplishment of this great phenomenon, Adam had to pass through a phase of immobility and unconsciousness, very analogous to the nymphal state of animals undergoing metamorphosis,” explains Naudin. For the eminent botanist, Adam was not one man, however, but mankind, “ which remained concealed within a temporary organism . . . . distinct from all others and never contracting alliance with any of these.” He shows the differentiation of sexes accomplished by “ a process of germination similar to that of Medusæ and Ascidians.” Mankind, thus constituted physiologically, “ would retain a sufficient evolutive force for the rapid production of the various great human races.”
De Quatrefages criticises this position in the “ Human Species.” It is unscientific, he says, or, properly speaking, Naudin’s ideas “ do not form a scientific theory,” inasmuch as primordial Blastema is connected
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in his theory with the First Cause, which is credited with having made potentially in the Blastema all past, present, and future beings, and thus of having in reality created these beings en masse ; moreover, Naudin does not even consider the secondary Causes, or their action in this evolution of the organic world. Science, which is only occupied with Secondary Causes, has thus “ nothing to say to the theory of Naudin ” (p. 125).
Nor will it have any more to say to the occult teachings, which are to some extent approached by Naudin. For if we but see in his “ primordial Blastema ” the Dhyan-Chohanic essence, the Chhaya or double of the Pitris, which contains within itself the potentiality of all forms, we are quite in accord. But there are two real and vital differences between our teachings. M. Naudin declares that evolution has progressed by sudden leaps and bounds, instead of extending slowly over millions of years ; and his primordial Blastema is endowed only with blind instincts — a kind of unconscious First Cause in the manifested Kosmos — which is an absurdity. Whereas it is our Dhyan Chohanic essence — the causality of the primal cause which creates physical man — which is the living, active and potential matter, pregnant per se with that animal consciousness of a superior kind, such as is found in the ant and the beaver, which produces the long series of physiological differentiations. Apart from this his “ ancient and general process of creation ” from proto-organisms is as occult as any theory of Paracelsus or Khunrath could be.
Moreover, the Kabalistic works are full of the proof of this. The Zohar, for instance, says that every type in the visible has its prototype in the invisible Universe. “ All that which is in the lower (our) world is found in the upper. The Lower and the Upper act and react upon each other.” (Zohar, fol. 186.) Vide infra, Part II., “ Esoteric Tenets corroborated in every Scripture.”