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The public has been notified by more than one eminent modern geologist and man of science, that “ all estimate of geological duration is not merely impossible, but necessarily imperfect ; for we are ignorant of the causes, though they must have existed, which quickened or retarded the progress of the sedimentary deposits.” † And now another man of Science, as well known (Croll), calculating that the tertiary age began either 15 or 21 million of years ago — the former being a more correct calculation, according to Esoteric doctrine, than the latter — there seems in this case, at least, no very great disagreement. Exact Science, refusing to see in man “ a special creation ” (to a certain degree the Secret Sciences do the same), is at liberty to ignore the first three, or rather two-and-a-half Races — the Spiritual, the semi-astral, and the
“ Physiology,” Lefèvre, p. 480.
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semi-human — of our teachings. But it can hardly do the same in the case of the Third at its closing period, the Fourth, and the Fifth Races, since it already divides mankind into Palæolithic and Neolithic man. * The geologists of France place man in the mid-miocene age (Gabriel de Mortillet), and some even in the Secondary period, as de Quatrefages suggests ; while the English savants do not generally accept such antiquity for their species. But they may know better some day. For “ If we consider,” says Sir Charles Lyell in “ Antiquity of Man,” p. 246 —
“ the absence or extreme scarcity of human bones and works of art in all strata, whether marine or fresh water, even in those formed in the immediate proximity of land inhabited by millions of human beings, we shall be prepared for the general dearth of human memorials in glacial formations, whether recent, pleistocene, or of more ancient date. If there were a few wanderers over lands covered with glaciers, or over seas infested with icebergs, and if a few of them left their bones or weapons in moraines or in marine drifts, the chances, after the lapse of thousands of years, of a geologist meeting with one of them must be infinitesimally small.”
The men of Science avoid pinning themselves down to any definite statement concerning the age of man, as indeed they hardly could, and thus leave enormous latitude to bolder speculations. Nevertheless, while the majority of the Anthropologists carry back the existence of man only into the period of the post-glacial drift, or what is called the Quaternary period, those of them who, as Evolutionists, trace man to a common origin with that of the monkey, do not show great consistency in their speculations. The Darwinian hypothesis demands, in reality, a far greater antiquity for man, than is even dimly suspected by superficial thinkers. This is proven by the greatest authorities on the question — Mr. Huxley, for instance. Those, therefore, who accept the Darwinian evolution, ipso facto hold very tenaciously to an antiquity
* We confess to not being able to see any good reasons for Mr. E. Clodd’s certain statement in Knowledge. Speaking of the men of Neolithic times, “ concerning whom Mr. Grant Allen has given . . . a vivid and accurate sketch,” and who are “ the direct ancestors of peoples of whom remnants yet lurk in out-of-the-way corners of Europe, where they have been squeezed or stranded,” he adds to this : “ but the men of Palæolithic times can be identified with no existing races ; they were savages of a more degraded type than any extant ; tall, yet barely erect, with short legs and twisted knees, with prognathous, that is, projecting ape-like jaws, and small brains. Whence they come we cannot tell, and their ‘ grave knoweth no man to this day.’ ”
Besides the possibility that there may be men who know whence they came and how they perished — it is not true to say that the Palæolithic men, or their fossils, are all found with “ small brains.” The oldest skull of all those hitherto found, the “ Neanderthal skull,” is of average capacity, and Mr. Huxley was compelled to confess that it was no real approximation whatever to that of the “ missing link.” There are aboriginal tribes in India whose brains are far smaller and nearer to that of the ape than any hitherto found among the skulls of Palæolithic man.
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of man so very great, indeed, that it falls not so far short of the Occultist’s estimate. * The modest thousands of years of the Encyclopædia Britannica and the 100,000 years, to which Anthropology in general limits the age of Humanity, seem quite microscopical when compared with the figures implied in Mr. Huxley’s bold speculations. The former, indeed, makes of the original race of men ape-like cave-dwellers. The great English biologist, in his desire to prove man’s pithecoid origin, insists that the transformation of the primordial ape into a human being must have occurred millions of years back. For in criticising the excellent average cranial capacity of the Neanderthal skull, notwithstanding his assertion that it is overlaid with “ pithecoid bony walls,” coupled with Mr. Grant Allen’s assurances that this skull “ possesses large bosses on the forehead, strikingly (?) suggestive of those which give the gorilla its peculiarly fierce appearance,” † (Fortnightly Review, 1882,) still Mr. Huxley is forced to admit that, in the said skull, his theory is once more defeated by the “ completely human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones, together with the fair development of the Engis skull.” In consequence of all this we are notified that those skulls, “ clearly indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock whence man has proceeded, need no longer be sought by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development in the newest Tertiaries ; but that they may be looked for in an epoch more distant from the age of the elephas primigenius than that is from us ” ‡ (Huxley).
* The actual time required for such a theoretical transformation is necessarily enormous. “ If,” says Professor Pfaff, “ in the hundreds of thousands of years which you (the Evolutionists) accept between the rise of palæolithic man and our own day, a greater distance of man from the brute is not demonstrable, (the most ancient man was just as far removed from the brute as the now living man ), what reasonable ground can be advanced for believing that man has been developed from the brute, and has receded further from it by infinitely small gradations.” . . . . “ The longer the interval of time placed between our times and the so-called palæolithic men, the more ominous and destructive for the theory of the gradual development of man from the animal kingdom is the result stated.” Huxley states (“ Man’s Place in Nature,” p. 159) that the most liberal estimates for the antiquity of Man must be still further extended.
† The baselessness of this assertion, as well as that of many other exaggerations of the imaginative Mr. Grant Allen, was ably exposed by the eminent anatomist, Professor R. Owen, in “ Longman’s Magazine,” No. 1. Must it be repeated, moreover, that the Cro-Magnon Palæolithic type is superior to a very large number of existing races ?
‡ It thus stands to reason that science would never dream of a pre-tertiary man, and that de Quatrefages’ secondary man makes every Academician and “ F.R.S.” faint with horror because, to preserve the ape-theory, science must make man post-secondary. This is just what de Quatrefages has twitted the Darwinists with, adding, that on the whole there were more scientific reasons to trace the ape from man than man from the anthropoid. With this exception science has not one single valid argu-
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An untold antiquity for man is thus, then, the scientific sine quâ non in the question of Darwinian Evolution, since the oldest Palæolithic man shows as yet no appreciable differentiation from his modern descendant. It is only of late that modern Science began to widen with every year the abyss that now separates her from old Science, that of the Plinies and Hippocrateses, none of whom would have derided the archaic teachings with respect to the evolution of the human races and animal species, as the present day Scientist — geologist or anthropologist — is sure to do.
Holding, as we do, that the mammalian type was a post-human Fourth Round product, the following diagram — as the writer understands the teaching — may make the process clear : —
The unnatural union was invariably fertile, because the then mammalian types were not remote enough from their Root-type * — Primeval Astral
ment to offer against the antiquity of man. But in this case modern Evolution demands far more than the fifteen million years of Croll for the Tertiary period, for two very simple but good reasons : (a) No anthropoid ape has been found before the Miocene period : (b) man’s flint relics have been traced to the Pliocene and their presence suspected, if not accepted by all, in the Miocene strata. Again, where is the “ missing link ” in such case ? And how could even a Palæolithic Savage, a “ Man of Canstadt,” evolve into thinking men from the brute Dryopithecus of the Miocene in so short a time. One sees now the reason why Darwin rejected the theory that only 60,000,000 years had elapsed since the Cambrian period. “ He judges from the small amount of organic changes since the glacial epoch, and adds that the previous 140 million years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the development of the varied forms of life which certainly existed toward the close of the Cambrian period.” (Ch. Gould.)
* Let us remember in this connection the esoteric teaching which tells us of Man having had in the Third Round a gigantic ape-like form on the astral plane. And similarly at the close of the Third Race in this Round. Thus it accounts for the human features of the apes, especially of the later anthropoids — apart from the fact that these latter preserve by Heredity a resemblance to their Atlanto-Lemurian sires.
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Man — to develop the necessary barrier. Medical science records such cases of monsters, bred from human and animal parents, even in our own day. The possibility is, therefore, only one of degree, not of fact. Thus it is that Occultism solves one of the strangest problems presented to the consideration of the anthropologist.
The pendulum of thought oscillates between extremes. Having now finally emancipated herself from the shackles of theology, Science has embraced the opposite fallacy ; and in the attempt to interpret Nature on purely materialistic lines, she has built up that most extravagant theory of the ages — the derivation of man from a ferocious and brutal ape. So rooted has this doctrine, in one form or another, now become, that the most Herculean efforts will be needed to bring about its final rejection. The Darwinian anthropology is the incubus of the ethnologist, a sturdy child of modern Materialism, which has grown up and acquired increasing vigour, as the ineptitude of the theological legend of Man’s “ creation ” became more and more apparent. It has thriven on account of the strange delusion that — as a scientist of repute puts it — “ All hypotheses and theories with respect to the rise of man can be reduced to two (the Evolutionist and the Biblical exoteric account). . . There is no other hypothesis conceivable . . .” ! ! The anthropology of the secret volumes is, however, the best possible answer to such a worthless contention.
The anatomical resemblance between Man and the higher Ape, so frequently cited by Darwinists as pointing to some former ancestor common to both, presents an interesting problem, the proper solution of which is to be sought for in the esoteric explanation of the genesis of the pithecoid stocks. We have given it as far as was useful, by stating that the bestiality of the primeval mindless races resulted in the production of huge man-like monsters — the offspring of human and animal parents. As time rolled on, and the still semi-astral forms consolidated into the physical, the descendants of these creatures were modified by external conditions, until the breed, dwindling in size, culminated in the lower apes of the Miocene period. With these the later Atlanteans renewed the sin of the “ Mindless ” — this time with full responsibility. The resultants of their crime were the species of apes now known as Anthropoid.
It may be useful to compare this very simple theory — and we are willing to offer it even as a hypothesis to the unbelievers — with the Darwinian scheme, so full of insurmountable obstacles, that no sooner is one of these overcome by a more or less ingenious hypothesis, than ten worse difficulties are forthwith discovered behind the one disposed of.