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55 ←
- 6. The Water-Men, terrible and bad, she herself created from the remains of others.* From the dross and slime of her First, Second, and Third,† she formed them. The Dhyâni came and looked. . . . . the Dhyâni from the bright Father-Mother, from the White‡ Regions they§ came, from the Abodes of the Immortal Mortals (a).
(a) The explanations given in our Stanzas are far more clear than that which the legend of creation from the Cutha tablet would give, even were it complete. What is preserved on it, however, corroborates them. For, in the tablet, the “Lord of Angels” destroys the men in the abyss, when “there were not left the carcases and waste” after they were slaughtered. After which they, the Great Gods, create men with the bodies of birds of the desert, human beings, “seven kings, brothers of the same family,” etc., which is a reference to the locomotive qualities of the primary ethereal bodies of men, which could fly as well as they could walk,‖ but who “were destroyed” because they were not “perfect,” i.e., they “were sexless, like the Kings of Edom.”
Weeded of metaphors and allegories, what will Science say to this idea of a primordial creation of species? It will object to the “Angels” and “Spirits” having anything to do therewith; but if it be Nature and the physical law of evolution that are the creators of all there is now on Earth, why could there be “no such abyss,” when the Globe was covered with waters, in which numbers of monstrous beings were generated? Is it the “human beings” and animals with human heads and double faces, which are a point of the objection? But if man is only a higher animal and has evolved from the brute species by an infinite series of transformations, why could not the “missing links” have had human heads attached to the bodies of animals, or, being two-headed, have heads of beasts and vice versâ, in Nature's early efforts? Are we not shown, during the geological periods, in the ages
* From the mineral, vegetable, and animal remains.
† Rounds.
‡ Solar-lunar.
§ Gods and Planetary Spirits, especially the Ribhus. “The three Ribhus” who also become “thrice seven” in number of their gifts.
‖ Remember the “winged races” of Plato, and the Popol-Vuh accounts of the first human race, which could walk, fly, and see objects, however distant.
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of the reptiles and the mammalia, lizards with birds’ wings, and serpents’ heads on animal bodies?* And, arguing from the standpoint of Science, does not even our modern human race occasionally furnish us with monster-specimens: two-headed children, animal bodies with human heads, dog-headed babies, etc.? And this proves that, if Nature will still play such 56 ←freaks now that she has been settled for ages in the order of her evolutionary work, monsters, like those described by Berosus, were a possibility in her opening programme; a possibility which may even have existed once upon a time as a law, before she sorted out her species and began regular work upon them. And this indeed now admits of definite proof by the bare fact of “Reversion,” as Science puts it.
This is what the Doctrine teaches, and demonstrates by numerous proofs. But we shall not wait for the approval of either dogmatic Theology or Materialistic Science, but proceed with the Stanzas. Let these speak for themselves, with the help of the light thrown on them by the Commentaries and their explanations; the scientific aspect of these questions will be considered later on.
Thus Physical Nature, when left to herself in the creation of animal and man, is shown to have failed. She can produce the first two kingdoms, as well as that of the lower animals, but when it comes to the turn of man, spiritual, independent and intelligent powers are required for his creation, besides the “coats of skin” and the “breath of animal life.” The human Monads of preceding Rounds need something higher than purely physical materials with which to build their personalities, under the penalty of remaining even below any “Frankenstein” animal.†
* See Mythical Monsters, by Charles Gould.
† In the first volume of the lately published Introduction à l'Étude des Races Humaines, by M. de Quatrefages, there is proof that since the Post-Tertiary Period and even before that time—since many Races were already scattered during that Age on the face of the Earth—man has not altered one iota in his physical structure. And if man was surrounded for ages by a fauna that altered from one period or cycle to another, which died out, which was reborn in other forms—so that now there does not exist one single animal on Earth, large or small, contemporary with the man of that period—if, then, every animal has been transformed save man himself, this fact goes to prove not only his antiquity, but that he is a distinct Kingdom. Why should he alone have escaped transformation? Because, says de Quatrefages, the weapon used by him, in his struggle with Nature, and the ever-changing geological conditions and elements, was “his psychic force, not his physical strength or body,” as in the case of animals. Give man only that dose of intelligence and reason with which other mammalia are endowed, and with his present bodily organization he will show himself the most helpless of creatures of Earth. And as everything goes to prove that the human organism with all its characteristics, peculiarities and idiosyncrasies existed already on our Globe in those far distant geological periods when there was not yet one single specimen of the now-existing forms of mammalia, what is the unavoidable conclusion? Why this: Since all the human races are of one and the same species, it follows that this species is the most ancient of all the now-living mammalia. Therefore it is the most stable and persevering of all, and was already as fully developed as it is now when all the other mammalia now known had not made even their first approach to appearance on this Earth. Such is the opinion of the great French Naturalist, who gives thereby a terrible blow to Darwinism.