| 709 | 709 |
It seems, however, possible to calculate the approximate duration of the geological periods from the combined data of Science and Occultism now before us. Geology is, of course, able to determine almost with certainty one thing — 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 erosion of land and the sorting out of matter on to ocean beds has varied from age to age, and cataclysmic changes of various kinds break the “ uniformity ” of ordinary geological processes. Provided, however, we have some definite numerical basis on which to work, our task is rendered less difficult than it might at first sight appear to be. 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 70,000ft., the Primary 42,000ft., the Secondary 15,000ft., the Tertiary 5,000ft., and the Quaternary some 500ft. in thickness : —
“ Dividing into an 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
| 710 | 710 |
Secondary 11.5 ; to the Tertiary 2.3 ; to the Quaternary 0.5 or one-half per cent.” (“ Philosophy,” p. 481.)
Now, as it is certain, on occult data, that the time which has elapsed since the first sedimentary deposits = 320,000,000 years, we are able to infer that the : —
| Rough Approximations. | |||||
| Primordial |  Laurentian ... Cambrian ... Silurian ... |
 |
lasted | 171,200,000 | yrs. |
| Primary | Devonian ... Coal ... Permian ... |
|
„ | 103,040,000 | „ |
| Secondary | Triassic ... Jurassic ... Cretaceous ... |
|
„ | 36,800,000 | „ |
| Tertiary | Eocene ... Miocene ... Pliocene ... |
|
„ | 7,360,000
(probably in excess). |
„ |
| Quaternary | ... | „ | 1,600,000
(probably in excess). |
„ | |
Such estimates harmonise 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 3½ to four million years. If the duration of the Quaternary is not rather (as seems likely) overestimated, 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 only in favour of 100,000,000 years, let us compare our claims and teachings with those of exact science.
Mr. Edward Clodd, * in reviewing M. de Mortillet’s work “ Materiaux pour l’Histoire de l’Homme,” which places man in the mid-Miocene period, † remarks that “ it would be in defiance of all that the doctrine of evolu-
* Knowledge, March 31, 1882.
† And who yet, in another work, “ La Préhistorique Antiquité de l’Homme,” some twenty years ago, generously allowed only 230,000 years to our mankind. Since we learn now that he places man “ in the mid-Miocene period,” we must say that the much respected Professor of Prehistoric Anthropology (in Paris) is somewhat contradictory and inconsistent, if not naïf in his views.
| 711 | 711 |
tion 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, and Dr. Weismann, an ex-evolutionist in Germany, and many others, the ranks of the anti-Darwinists growing stronger with every year ; * 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 foundations of facts, and take its chances for recognition, when every prejudice in the way is disposed of. Though the question has been already fully considered in its main aspects, 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 divergences 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 divergences ; 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.
| 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. † | 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 —— |
* The root and basic idea of the origin and transformation of species — the heredity (of acquired faculties) seems to have found lately very serious opponents in Germany. Du Bois Reymond and Dr. Pflüger, the physiologists, besides other men of science as eminent as any, find insuperable difficulties and even impossibilities in the doctrine.
† History of Creation, p. 20.
| 712 | 712 |
The Primordial Epoch is, science tells us, 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., 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 ? |
The Esoteric Philosophy agrees with the statement made by science (see parallel column), demurring, however, in one particular. The 300,000,000 years of vegetable life (see “ Brahminical 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. | |||||
|
Divine Progenitors, secondary groups, and the 2½ races. “ Fern-forests, Sigillaria, Coniferæ, fishes, first trace of reptiles.” Thus saith modern science ; the esoteric doctrine repeats that which was said above. These are all relics of the preceding Round. § Once, however, the prototypes are projected out of the astral envelope of the earth, an indefinite amount of modification ensues. |
* The same names are retained as those given by science, to make the parallels clearer. Our terms are quite different.
† Let the student remember that the Doctrine teaches that there are seven degrees of Devas or “ Progenitors,” or seven classes, from the most perfect to the less exalted.
‡ It may be said that we are inconsistent in not introducing into this table a
| 713 | 713 |
This is the age of Reptiles, of the gigantic Megalosauri, Ichthyosauri, Plesiosauri, etc., etc. Science denies the presence of man in that period. If so, it has 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) mammals || — insectivorous, carnivorous, phytophagous ; and (as Prof. Owen thinks) an herbivorous hoofed mammal. Science does not admit the appearance of man before the close of the |
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, the Didelphia (or Marsupialia) and the placental Mammals, divided in their turn into three orders ¶ |
Primary-Age Man. The parallelism of Races and geological periods here adopted, is, so far as the origin of 1st and 2nd are concerned, purely tentative, no direct information being available. Having previously discussed the question of a possible Race in the Carboniferous Age, it is needless to renew the debate.
§ During the interim from one Round to another, the globe and everything on it remains in statu quo. Remember, Vegetation began in its ethereal form before what is called the Primordial, running through the Primary, and condensing in it, and reaching its full physical life in the Secondary.
|| Geologists tell us that “ in the secondary epoch, the only mammals which have been (hitherto) discovered in Europe are the fossil remains of a small marsupial or pouch-bearer.” (Knowledge, March 31, 1882, p. 464.) Surely the marsupial or didelphis (the only surviving animal of the family of those who were on earth during the presence on it of androgyne man) cannot be the only animal that was then on earth ? Its presence speaks loudly for that of other (though unknown) mammals, besides the monotremes and marsupials, and thus shows the appellation of “ mammalian age ” given only to the Tertiary period to be misleading and erroneous ; as it allows one to infer that there were no mammals, but reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fishes alone in the Mesozoic times — the Secondary.
¶ These Placentalia of the third sub-class are divided, it appears, into Villiplacentalia (placenta composed of many separate scattered tufts), the Zonoplacentalia (girdle-shaped placenta), and the discoplacentalia (or discoid). Hæckel sees in the Marsupialia Didelphia, one of the connecting links genealogically between man and the Moneron ! !
| 714 | 714 |
Tertiary period. * 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 the geological periods, therefore, even accepted only as a hypothesis, the occult teaching is more logical and reasonable. |
like the First, Second, and Third Root-Races of men. † But this would require more space than can be now allotted to the subject. | |||
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.” |
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 before § the said cataclysm took place, perishes during the Miocene period, || when the Fifth (our Aryan race) had one million years of independent existence. ( See “ Esoteric Buddhism,” pp. 53-55. Fourth Ed. ) How much older it is from its origin — who knows ? As the “ Historical ” Period has begun, with the Indian Aryans, with their Vedas, for their multitudes, ¶ and far earlier in the Esoteric Records, it is useless to establish here any parallels. |
* Those who feel inclined to sneer at that doctrine of Esoteric Ethnology, which pre-supposes the existence of Man in the Secondary Age, will do well to note the fact that one of the most distinguished anthropologists of the day, M. de Quatrefages, seriously argues in that direction. He writes : “ There is nothing impossible in the supposition that he (Man) may have appeared on the globe with the first representatives of the type to which he belongs in virtue of his organism.” This statement approximates most closely to our fundamental assertion that man preceded the other mammalia.
Professor Lefèvre admits that the “ labours of Boucher de Perthes, Lartet, Christy, Bourgeois, Desnoyers, Broca, de Mortillet, Hamy, Gaudry, Capellini, and a hundred others, have overcome all doubts and clearly established the progressive development of the human organism and industries from the Miocene epoch of the Tertiary age.” (“ Philosophy,” p. 499, chapter on Organic Evolution.) Why does he reject the possibility of a Secondary-Age man ? Simply because he is involved in the meshes of the Darwinian Anthropology !! “ The origin of man is bound up with that of the higher mammals ; ” he appeared “ only with the last types of his class ” !! This is not
| 715 | 715 |
Geology has now divided the periods and placed man in the —
| Quaternary | Palæolithic man. Neolithic man, and Historical Period. |
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 * * is shown to be a remarkable artist, neolithic
argument, but dogmatism. Theory can never excommunicate fact ! Must everything give place to the mere working-hypotheses of Western Evolutionists ? Surely not.
† This inclusion of the First Race in the Secondary is necessarily only a provisional working-hypothesis — the actual chronology of the First, Second, and Early Third Races being closely veiled by the Initiates. For all that can be said on the subject, the First Root-Race may have been Pre-Secondary, as is, indeed, taught. (Vide supra.)
‡ The above parallels stand good only if Professor Croll’s earlier calculations are adopted, namely, of 15,000,000 years since the beginning of the Eocene period (see Charles Gould’s “ Mythical Monsters,” p. 84), not those in his “ Climate and Time,” which allow only 2½ million years’, or at the utmost three million years’ duration to the Tertiary age. This, however, would make the whole duration of the incrusted age of the world only 131,600,000 years according to Professor Winchell, whereas in the Esoteric doctrine, sedimentation began in this Round approximately over 320 million years ago. Yet h is calculations do not clash much with ours with regard to the epochs of glacial periods in the Tertiary age, which is called in our Esoteric books the age of the “ Pigmies.” With regard to the 320 millions of years assigned to sedimentation, it must be noted that even a greater time elapsed during the preparation of this globe for the Fourth Round previous to stratification.
§ Though we apply the term “ truly human,” only to the Fourth Atlantean Root-Race, yet the Third Race is almost human in its latest portion, since it is during its fifth sub-race that mankind separated sexually, and that the first man was born according to the now normal process. This “ first man ” answers in the Bible (Genesis) to Enos or Henoch, son of Seth (ch. iv.).
|| Geology records the former existence of a universal ocean, sheets of marine sediments uniformly present everywhere testifying to it ; but, it is not even the epoch referred to in the allegory of Vaivasvata Manu. The latter is a Deva-Man (or Manu) saving in an ark (the female principle) the germs of humanity, and also the seven Rishis — who stand here as the symbols for the seven human principles — of which allegory we have spoken elsewhere. The “ Univer sal Deluge ” is the watery abyss of the Primordial Principle of Berosus. ( See Stanzas from 2 to 8 in Part I.). How, if Croll allowed fifteen million years to have elapsed since the Eocene period (which we state on the authority of a Geologist, Mr. Ch. Gould) only 60 millions are assigned by him “ since the beginning of the Cambrian period, in the Primordial Age ” — passes comprehension. The Secondary strata are twice the thickness of the Tertiary, and Geology thus shows the Secondary age alone to be of twice the length of the Tertiary. Shall we then accept only 15 million years for both the Primary and the Primordial ? No wonder Darwin rejected the calculation.
¶ We hope that we have furnished all the Scientific data for it elsewhere.
** It is conceded by Geology to be “ beyond doubt that a considerable period must have supervened after the departure of Palæolithic man and before the arrival of his Neolithic successor.” (See James Geikie’s “ Prehistoric Europe,” and Ch. Gould’s “ Mythical Monsters,” p. 98).
| 716 | 716 |
man is made out almost an abject savage, his lake dwellings notwithstanding. * 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., etc.
Yet, though “ Implements of horn, bone, and wood were in common use among both races . . . 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 ability † on the part of Neolithic man.” Let us give the reasons for it.
(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 ” (“ Modern Science,” p. 181).
(2) As to the so-called Palæolithic hâches . . . “ 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 ” (Ibid, p. 112). 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.
* Resembling in a manner the pile-villages of Northern Borneo.
† “ The most clever sculptor of modern times would probably not succeed very much better, if his graver were a splinter of flint and stone and bone were the materials to be engraved ” !! (Prof. Boyd Dawkins’ “ Cave-Hunting,” p. 344.) It is needless after such a concession to further insist on Huxley’s, Schmidt’s, Laing’s, and others’ statements to the effect that Palæolithic man cannot be considered to lead us back in any way to a pithecoid human race ; thus demolishing the fantasies of many superficial evolutionists. The relic of artistic merit here re-appearing in the Chipped-Stone-Age men, is traceable to their Atlantean ancestry. Neolithic man was a fore-runner of the great Aryan invasion, and immigrated from quite another quarter — Asia, and in a measure Northern Africa. (The tribes peopling the latter towards the North-West, were certainly of an Atlantean origin — dating back hundreds of thousands of years before the Neolithic Period in Europe, — but they had so diverged from the parent type as to present no longer any marked characteristic peculiar to it.) As to the contrast between Neolithic and Palæolithic Man, it is a remarkable fact that, as Carl Vogt remarks, the former was a cannibal, the much earlier man of the Mammoth era not. Human manners and customs do not seem to improve with time, then ? Not in this instance at any rate.
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(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 to get transformed from the “ missing link ” into what he is known to have been even during that remote geological time, i.e., even a finer specimen 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, * than tending to show that man descends from a pithecoid ancestor. The theory cuts both ways.
On the other hand, if the existence of Atlantis is accepted, and the statement is 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 . . . .” (Esoteric Buddhism, p. 64) then some of the present difficulties of science might be easily 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 that “ 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 ” (p. 98). It is very suggestive also that along with the rude hâches 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 horse’s heads sketched close to him — a work of the Reindeer period, i.e., at least 50,000 years ago — are pronounced by Mr. Laing not only exceedingly well done, but, especially the reindeer feeding, as one that “ would do credit to any modern animal painter ”
* On the data furnished by modern science, physiology, and natural selection, and without resorting to any miraculous creation, two negro human specimens of the lowest intelligence — say idiots born dumb — might by breeding produce a dumb Pastrana species, which would start a new modified race, and thus produce in the course of geological time the regular anthropoid ape.
| 718 | 718 |
— by no means exaggerated praise, as anyone may see (Vide infra). Now, since 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., we have our greatest painters of Europe, 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 extremely suggestive as showing that every new geological discovery is made to fit in with current theories, instead of the reverse. Yes ; Mr. Huxley is right in saying, “ Time will show.” It will, and 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, who believes that “ the germs for the higher animals could only be the eggs of the lower animals ” ; who thinks that “ 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. — thinks also that “ 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 ” ; (Anfänge zu einer Physiologischen Schöpfungs-geschichte der Pflanzen und Thierwelt, 1885). Therefore, when we read “ Force and Matter,” and find that Emperor of Materialists, Büchner, repeating after Manu and Hermes, that “ the plant passes imperceptibly into the animal, and the animal into man ” (p. 85), we need only add “ and man into a spirit,” to complete the Kabalistic axiom. The more so, since on page 82 of the same work we read the following admission : . . . “ Produced in the way of spontaneous generation . . . it is by the aid of intense natural forces and endless periods of time (that) there has progressively arisen that rich and infinitely modified organic world by which we are at present surrounded.”. . . And (page 84) “ Spontaneous generation played, no doubt,
| 719 | 719 |
a more important part in the primeval epoch than at present ; nor can it be denied that in this way beings of a higher organization were produced than now,” * for this is the claim of Occultism.
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 W. Thomson, 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 progressive development is correct, we must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of the antiquity of man.” But when we are told that this man is a product of the natural forces inherent in matter, force, according to modern views, being but a quality of matter, a “ mode of motion,” etc. ; and when we find Sir W. Thomson 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 the 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 in which to shoot facts, so much the worse for the facts.”
As 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 sometime in the history of our planet : and there’s an end of it. This seems to look more natural than Sir W. Thomson’s hypothesis just quoted, that the germs of organic life fell on our earth in some meteor ; or that other
* “ Force and Matter,” by Dr. Louis Büchner, translated and edited by J. Frederick Collingwood, F.R.S., F.G.S., 1864.
| 720 | 720 |
scientific hypothesis coupled to 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.” (“ Origin of the World,” p. 39, by Sir W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S.)
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. It is expected to be discovered 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, this is a specimen of an engraving made by a Palæolithic “ savage ” : Palæolithic meaning the “ earlier Stone-age ” man, one supposed to have been as savage and brutal as the brutes he lived with.
| 721 | 721 |
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. 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 that the evolution of the races has ever proceeded in a series of rises and falls, that man, perhaps, is as old as incrustated Earth, and — if we can call his Divine ancestor “ Man ” — 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.” (“ Prehist. Antiq. of Man,” 1883.) 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.” (“ Antiq. of Man,” p. 25.) 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 the 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 ? ” (Cf. 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. . . . How have they 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 Hindus, the Greeks and Romans (far older). . . .
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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.” (“ India,” 1883, F. Max Müller.)
“ The primeval savage is a familiar term in modern literature,” remarks Professor Rawlinson, “ but there is no evidence that the primeval savage ever existed. Rather all the evidence looks the other way.” (“ Antiq. of Man Historically Considered.”) In his “ Origin of Nations,” pp. 10-11, 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.” 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 have 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 ’? ”
Another strange inconsistency in scientific knowledge is that Neolithic man is shown as being far more of a primitive savage than the Palæolithic one. Either Lubbock’s “ Pre-historic 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, from gracefully shaped and polished instruments, rude lumbering makeshifts. Pottery, etc., 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 also, * 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 hâches, to the relatively graceful stone celts of that part of the Neolithic period immediately preceding the use of metals. But this is in Europe, a few portions only of which were barely rising from the waters in the days
* In such a case Palæolithic man must have been endowed in his day with thrice Herculean force and magic invulnerability, or else the lion was as weak as a lamb at that period, for both to share the same dwelling. We may as well be asked to believe next that it is that lion or hyæna which has engraved the deer on the antler, as be told that this bit of workmanship was done by a savage of such a kind.
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of the highest Atlantean civilizations. 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 to maintain 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 from 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 . . . . altogether disappear in the age of the mammoth and the reindeer.” (“ Mod. Science and Mod. Thought,” p. 164.)
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, &c.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols ; all the modern Hindu writings do.
“ In the early Egyptian tombs, and in the remains of the pre-historic 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 . . . . 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 ” . . . . (p. 199 Ibid.)
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 warning * — seems to point to the truth of another esoteric statement,
* More than twenty specimens of fossil monkeys have been found in one locality alone, in Miocene strata (Pikermi, near Athens), If man was not then, the period is
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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 reappeared while their predecessors formed the floors of new Oceans — deserted that which is now Europe and parts of Asia and Africa for the summits of gigantic mountains, the seas that surrounded some of the latter 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 mould into the red earth, which, of course, itself once for med 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, point to a very low type of Humanity. But they may sometimes point also to something besides ; to a race of men quite distinct from our (Fifth Race) Humanity.
too short for him to have been transformed — stretch it as you may. And if he was, and if no monkey is found earlier, what follows ?
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As said by an anthropologist in “ Modern Thought ” (art. “ The Genesis of Man ”) : “ 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 recognised 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 Afer on the level of being as good a distinct species as many of the kinds of finches. I shall abstain on the present occasion from mentioning the facts of hybridity, whereon the late Professor Broca has so exhaustively 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 ” (Dr. C. Carter Blake). 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 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 the hypotheses of the Scientists at any rate. As to the proof for the antiquity which they claim for man, they have, moreover, Darwin himself and Lyell. 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.” * 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 the 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 (also Races) are periodically destroyed by fire (volcanoes and earthquakes) and water, in turn, and renewed, is a doctrine as old as man. Manu, Hermes, the Chaldees, all antiquity believed in this. Twice already
* “ Antiquity of Man,” p. 530.
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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. 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 (New Series in Vol. I. p. 115), Art. : “ Evidences of the Age of Ice.” . . . . “ If it be necessary to call in extramundane 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 is essential to our cosmical condition as a unit in the great solar system.”
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. It is a quotation in the body of the Lecture : — “ 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.
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“ 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. . . . 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 Himalaya 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 fu rther that the present Atlantic Islands’ Flora affords no substantial evidence of a former direct communication with the main-land of the New World. . . . The consideration of these facts leads 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.) See, however, “ 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 (“ Fallacies of Darwinism ”), no missing links between man and ape having been discovered in various gravels and formations above the tertiaries, if they had gone down with the continents now covered with the sea, they
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might still be found “ in those beds of contemporary geological strata which have not gone down to the bottom of the sea.” Yet they are as fatally absent from the latter as from the former. Were not preconceptions to fasten vampire-like on man’s mind, the author of “ Antiquity of Man ” would have found a clue to the difficulty in that same work of his, by going ten pages back (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 our 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 the still gigantic (in our modern sense) stature of their primeval ancestors, to about half of that size at present.
Man is certainly no special creation, and 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 Man,” Sir C. Lyell quotes — perhaps in rather a mocking spirit — what Hallam says (in Vol. iv., p. 162) 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 forest of Sumatra. Thus standing on the frontier land between animal and angelic natures, what wonder that he should partake of both ? ”
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 Dhyan Chohan ; while the wanderer of the forest of Sumatra was made in the image of man, since the frame-
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work of the ape, we say again, is the revival, the resuscitation by abnormal means of the actual form of the Third-Round, and of the Fourth-Round Man as well, later on. Nothing is lost in nature, not an atom : this latter 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 : —
“ It is significant,” says Sir W. Dawson, F.R.S., “ 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 that Hæckel has to admit that the penultimate link in his phylogeny, the ape-like man, is absolutely unknown (‘ History of Creation.’) . . . . The so-called ‘ nallies ’ 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 writings were already in possession of the oldest race of men known to archæology or geology.” (See Wilson’s “ Prehistoric Man,” op. cit., vol. ii., p. 54. “ Origin of the World,” p. 393.)
Again in Dr. C. R. Bree’s “ Fallacies of Darwinism,” on page 160, 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 monkey. * 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, nor the drift-clay, nor the fresh-water beds, 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 not gone 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 gravels and drift ! . . . . . . the celebrated Neanderthal skull, about which so much has been said, belongs confessedly to this remote epoch (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.”
* And how much more “ enormous ” if we reverse the subjects and say during the monkey’s development from the Third Race Man
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Our globe being convulsed each time that it reawakens 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 having formed the present vegetation ; the astral relics of previous vegetation and fauna having been utilized in the formation of the lower animals, and 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 Soph on his 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 on 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 premises will be — no one can tell. Meanwhile, the present theories, as any one can see, clash together far more discordantly among themselves than even 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 now 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 a few words, in which Mr. Herbert Spencer has defined “ special creation ” . . . “ it is 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.” (Principles of Biology, Vol. I., p. 345.)