The Secret Doctrine, page 185
The Nineveh library contained mostly copies of older Babylonian texts, and the copyists pitched upon such tablets only as were of special interest to the Assyrian conquerors, belonging to a comparatively late epoch, this added much to the greatest of all our difficulties—namely, our being so often left in the dark as to the age of our documentary evidence, and the precise worth of our materials for history.
Thus one has a right to infer that some still fresher discovery may lead to a new necessity for pushing the Babylonian dates so far beyond the year 4,000 b.c., as to make them pre-cosmic in the judgment of every Bible worshipper.
How much more would Palæontology have learned had not millions of works been destroyed! We talk of the Alexandrian Library, which has been thrice destroyed, namely, by Julius Cæsar 48 b.c., in a.d. 390, and lastly in the year a.d. 640 by the general of Kaliph Omar. What is this in comparison with the works and records destroyed in the primitive Atlantean Libraries, wherein records are said to have been traced on the tanned skins of gigantic antediluvian monsters? Or again in comparison with the destruction of the countless Chinese books by command of the founder of the Imperial Tsin dynasty, Tsin Shi Hwang-ti, in 213 b.c.? Surely the brick-clay tablets of the Imperial Babylonian Library, and the priceless treasures of the Chinese collections, could never have contained such information as one of the aforesaid “Atlantean” skins would have furnished to the ignorant world.
But even with the extremely meagre data at hand, Science has been able to see the necessity of throwing back nearly every Babylonian date, and has done so quite generously. We learn from Professor Sayce that even the archaic statues at Tel-loh, in Lower Babylonia, have suddenly been assigned a date contemporary with the fourth dynasty in Egypt.1633 Unfortunately, dynasties and pyramids share the fate of geological periods; their dates are arbitrary, and depend on the whims of the respective men of Science. Archæologists know now, it is said, that the afore-mentioned statues are fashioned out of green diorite, that can only be got in the Peninsula of Sinai; and
They accord in the style of art, and in the standard of measurement employed, with the similar diorite statues of the pyramid builders of the third and fourth Egyptian dynasties.... Moreover, the only possible period for a Babylonian occupation of the Sinaitic quarries must be placed shortly after the close of the epoch at which the pyramids were built; and thus only can we understand how the name of Sinai could have been derived from that of Sin, the primitive Babylonian moon-god.
This is very logical, but what is the date fixed for these dynasties? Sanchuniathon's and Manetho's synchronistic tables—or whatever remained of these after holy Eusebius had the handling of them—have been rejected; and still we have to remain satisfied with the four or five thousand years b.c., so liberally allotted to Egypt. At all events one point is gained. There is, at last, a city on the face of the Earth which is allowed, at least, 6,000 years, and it is Eridu. Geology has discovered it. According to Professor Sayce again:
They are now also able to obtain time for the silting up of the head of the Persian Gulf, which demands a lapse of between 5,000 and 6,000 years since the period when Eridu, now twenty-five miles inland, was the seaport at the mouth of the Euphrates, and the seat of Babylonian commerce with Southern Arabia and India. More than all, the new chronology gives time for the long series of eclipses recorded in the great astronomical work called “The Observations of Bel”; and we are also enabled to understand the otherwise perplexing change in the position of the vernal equinox, which has occurred since our present zodiacal signs were named by the earliest Babylonian astronomers. When the Accadian calendar was arranged and the Accadian months were named, the sun at the vernal equinox was not, as now, in Pisces, or even in Aries, but in Taurus. The rate of the precession of the equinoxes being known, we learn that at the vernal equinox the sun was in Taurus from about 4,700 years b.c., and we thus obtain astronomical limits of date which cannot be impugned.1634
It may make our position plainer if we state at once that we use Sir C. Lyell's nomenclature for the ages and periods, and that when we talk of the Secondary and Tertiary age, of the Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene periods—this is simply to make our facts more comprehensible. Since these ages and periods have not yet been allowed fixed and determined durations, two-and-a-half and fifteen million years being assigned at different times to one and the same age (the Tertiary); and since no two Geologists or Naturalists seem to agree on this point—Esoteric Teachings may remain quite indifferent to the appearance of man in the Secondary or the Tertiary age. If the latter age may be allowed even so much as fifteen million years' duration—well and good; for the Occult Doctrine, jealously guarding its real and correct figures so far as concerns the First, Second, and two-thirds of the Third Root-Race, gives clear information upon one point only—the age of Vaivasvata Manu's humanity.1635
Another definite statement is that during the so-called Eocene period the Continent to which the Fourth Race belonged, and on which it lived and perished, showed the first symptoms of sinking, and that it was in the Miocene age that it was finally destroyed—save the small island mentioned by Plato. These points have now to be checked by scientific data.
A. Modern Scientific Speculations About The Ages Of The Globe, Animal Evolution, And Man.
May we not be permitted to throw a glance at the works of specialists? The work on World-Life: Comparative Geology, by Prof. A. Winchell, furnishes us with curious data. Here we find an opponent of the nebular theory smiting with all the force of the hammer of his odium theologicum on the rather contradictory hypotheses of the great stars of Science, in the matter of sidereal and cosmic phenomena based on their respective relations to terrestrial durations. The “too imaginative physicists and naturalists” do not fare very easily under this shower of their own speculative computations placed side by side, and cut rather a sorry figure. Thus he writes:
Sir William Thompson, on the basis of the observed principles of cooling, concludes that no more than 10 million years (elsewhere he makes it 100,000,000) can have elapsed since the temperature of the earth was sufficiently reduced to sustain vegetable life.1636 Helmholz calculates that 20 million years would suffice for the original nebula to condense to the present dimensions of the sun. Prof. S. Newcomb requires only 10 millions to attain a temperature of 212° Fahr.1637 Croll estimates 70 million years for the diffusion of the heat....1638 Bischof calculates that 350 million years would be required for the earth to cool from a temperature of 2,000° to 200° Centigrade. Reade, basing his estimate on observed rates of denudation, demands 500 million years since sedimentation began in Europe.1639 Lyell ventured a rough guess of 240 million years; Darwin thought 300 million years demanded by the organic transformations which his theory contemplates, and Huxley is disposed to demand 1,000 millions (!!).... Some biologists ... seem to close their eyes tight and leap at one bound into the abyss of millions of years, of which they have no more adequate estimate than of infinity.1640
Then he proceeds to give what he takes to be more correct geological figures: a few will suffice.
According to Sir William Thompson “the whole incrusted age of the world is 80,000,000 years”; and agreeably with Prof. Houghton's calculations of a minimum limit for the time since the elevation of Europe and Asia, three hypothetical ages for three possible and different modes of upheaval are given, varying from the modest figure of 640,730 years, through 4,170,000 years to the tremendous figure of 27,491,000 years!!
This is enough, as one can see, to cover our claims for the four Continents and even the figures of the Brâhmans.
Further calculations, the details of which the reader may find in Prof. Winchell's work,1641 bring Houghton to an approximation of the sedimentary age of the globe—11,700,000 years. These figures are found too small by the author, who forthwith extends them to 37,000,000 years.
Again, according to Croll,1642 2,500,000 years “represents the time since the beginning of the Tertiary age” in one work; and according to another modification of his view, 15,000,000 only have elapsed since the beginning of the Eocene period,1643 this, being the first of the three Tertiary periods, leaves the student suspended between two-and-a-half and fifteen millions. But if one has to hold to the former moderate figures, then the whole incrusted age of the world would be 131,600,000 years.1644
As the last Glacial period extended from 240,000 to 80,000 years ago (Prof. Croll's view), therefore, man must have appeared on Earth from 100,000 to 120,000 years ago. But, as says Prof. Winchell with reference to the antiquity of the Mediterranean race:
It is generally believed to have made its appearance during the later decline of the continental glaciers. It does not concern, however, the antiquity of the Black and Brown races, since there are numerous evidences of their existence in more southern regions, in times remotely pre-glacial.1645
As a specimen of geological certainty and agreement, these figures also may be added. Three authorities—Messrs. T. Belt, F.G.S., Robert Hunt, F.R.S., and J. Croll, F.R.S.,—in estimating the time that has elapsed since the Glacial epoch, give figures that vary to an almost incredible extent:
Belt: 20,000 years.
Hunt: 80,000 years
Croll: 240,000 years1646
No wonder that Mr. Pengelly confesses that:
It is at present and perhaps always will be impossible to reduce, even approximately, geological time into years or even into millenniums.
A wise word of advice from the Occultists to the gentlemen Geologists; they ought to imitate the cautious example of Masons. As chronology, they say, cannot measure the era of the creation, therefore, their “Antient and Primitive Rite” uses 000,000,000 as the nearest approach to reality.
The same uncertainty, contradictions and disagreement reign on all other subjects.
The scientific authorities on the Descent of Man are again, for all practical purposes, a delusion and a snare. There are many Anti-Darwinists in the British Association, and Natural Selection begins to lose ground. Though at one time the saviour, which seemed to rescue the learned theorists from a final intellectual collapse into the abyss of fruitless hypothesis, it begins to be distrusted. Even Mr. Huxley is showing signs of truancy, and thinks “natural selection not the sole factor”:
We greatly suspect that she (Nature) does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms.1647
Again, C. R. Bree, M.D., argues in this wise in considering the fatal gaps in Mr. Darwin's theory:
It must be again called to mind that the intermediate forms must have been vast in numbers.... Mr. St. George Mivart believes that change in evolution may occur more quickly than is generally believed; but Mr. Darwin sticks manfully to his belief, and again tells us “natura non facit saltum.”1648
Herein the Occultists are at one with Mr. Darwin.
Esoteric teaching fully corroborates the idea of Nature's slowness and dignified progression. “Planetary impulses” are all periodical. Yet this Darwinian theory, correct as it is in minor particulars, agrees no more with Occultism than with Mr. Wallace, who, in his Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, shows pretty conclusively that something more than Natural Selection is requisite to produce physical man.
Let us, meanwhile, examine the scientific objections to this scientific theory, and see what they are.
Mr. St. George Mivart is found arguing that:
It will be a moderate computation to allow 25,000,000 for the deposit of the strata down to and including the Upper Silurian. If, then, the evolutionary work done during this deposition only represents a hundredth part of the sum total, we shall require 2,500,000,000 (two thousand five hundred million) years for the complete development of the whole animal kingdom to its present state. Even one quarter of this, however, would far exceed the time which physics and astronomy seem able to allow for the completion of the process.
Finally, a difficulty exists as to the reason of the absence of rich fossiliferous deposits in the oldest strata—if life was then as abundant and varied, as, on the Darwinian theory, it must have been. Mr. Darwin himself admits “the case at present must remain inexplicable; and this may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views” entertained in his book.
Thus, then, we find a remarkable (and on Darwinian principles all but inexplicable) absence of minutely graduated transitional forms. All the most marked groups—bats, pterodactyles, chelonians, ichthyosaurians, amoura, etc.—appear at once upon the scene. Even the horse, the animal whose pedigree has been probably best preserved, affords no conclusive evidence of specific origin by significant fortuitous variations; while some forms, as the labyrinthodonts and trilobites, which seemed to exhibit gradual change, are shown by further investigation to do nothing of the sort.... All these difficulties are avoided if we admit that new forms of animal life of all degrees of complexity appear from time to time with comparative suddenness, being evolved according to laws in part depending on surrounding conditions, in part internal—similar to the way in which crystals (and, perhaps from recent researches, the lowest forms of life) build themselves up according to the internal laws of their component substance, and in harmony and correspondence with all environing influences and conditions.1649
“The internal laws of their component substance.” These are wise words, and the admission of the possibility is prudent. But how can these internal laws be ever recognized, if Occult teaching be discarded? As a friend writes, while drawing our attention to the above speculations:
In other words, the doctrine of Planetary Life-Impulses must be admitted. Otherwise, why are species now stereotyped, and why do even domesticated breeds of pigeons and many animals relapse into their ancestral types when left to themselves?
But the teaching about Planetary Life-Impulses has to be clearly defined and as clearly understood, if present confusion is not to be made still more perplexing. All these difficulties would vanish as the shadows of night disappear before the light of the rising Sun, if the following Esoteric Axioms were admitted:
(a) The existence and the enormous antiquity of our Planetary Chain;
(b) The actuality of the Seven Rounds
(c) The separation of human Races (outside the purely anthropological division) into seven distinct Root-Races, of which our present European Humanity is the Fifth;
(d) The antiquity of man in this (Fourth) Round; and finally
(e) That as these Races evolve from ethereality to materiality, and from the latter back again into relative physical tenuity of texture, so every living (so-called) organic species of animals, with vegetation included, changes with every new Root-Race.
Were this admitted, if even only along with other, and surely, on maturer consideration, no less absurd, suppositions—if Occult theories have to be considered “absurd” at present—then every difficulty would be made away with. Surely Science ought to try and be more logical than it now is, as it can hardly maintain the theory of man's descent from an anthropoidal ancestor, and deny in the same breath any reasonable antiquity to such a man! Once Mr. Huxley talks of “the vast intellectual chasm between the ape and man,” and “the present enormous gulf between them,”1650 and admits the necessity of extending scientific allowances for the age of man on Earth for such slow and progressive development, then all those men of Science who are of his way of thinking, at any rate, ought to come to at least some approximate figures, and agree upon the probable duration of those Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene periods of which so much is said, and about which nothing definite is known—even if they dare not venture beyond. But no two Scientists seem to agree. Every period seems to be a mystery in its duration, and a thorn in the side of the Geologists; and, as just shown, they are unable to harmonize their conclusions even with regard to the comparatively recent geological formations. Thus, no reliance can be placed on their figures when they do give any, for with them it is all either millions or simply thousands of years!
That which is said may be strengthened by the confessions made by themselves and the synopsis of these, to be found in that “Circle of Sciences,” the Encyclopædia Britannica, which shows the mean accepted in the geological and anthropological riddles. In that work the cream of the most authoritative opinions is skimmed off and presented; nevertheless, we find in it a refusal to assign any definite chronological date, even to such comparatively speaking late epochs as the Neolithic era, though, for a wonder, an age is established for the beginnings of certain geological periods; at any rate for some few, the duration of which could hardly be any more shortened, without an immediate conflict with facts.
Thus, it is surmised in the great Encyclopædia that:
One hundred million years have passed ... since the solidification of our earth, when the earliest form of life appeared upon it.1651
But it seems quite as hopeless to try to convert the modern Geologists and Ethnologists, as it is to make Darwinian Naturalists perceive their mistakes. About the ryan Root-Race and its origins, Science knows as little as of the men from other Planets. With the exception of Flammarion, and of a few Mystics among Astronomers, even the habitableness of other Planets is mostly denied. Yet such great Adept Astronomers were the Scientists of the earliest races of the ryan stock, that they seem to have known far more about the races of Mars and Venus than the modern Anthropologist knows of those of the early stages of the Earth.
Let us leave Modern Science aside for a moment and turn to Ancient Knowledge. As we are assured by Archaic Scientists that all such geological cataclysms—from the upheaval of oceans, deluges, and shifting of continents, down to the present year's cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, and even the extraordinary weather and seeming shifting of seasons which are perplexing all European and American Meteorologists—are due to, and depend on the Moon and Planets; aye, that even modest and neglected constellations have the greatest influence on the meteorological and cosmical changes, over, and within our Earth—let us give one moment's attention to our sidereal despots, the rulers of our globe and men. Modern Science denies any such influence; Archaic Science affirms it. We will see what both say with regard to this question.
