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The whole issue of the quarrel between the profane and the esoteric sciences depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an astral body within the physical, the former independent of the latter. Paul d'Assier, the Positivist, seems to have proven the fact pretty plainly,* not to speak of the accumulated testimony of the ages, and that of the modern spiritualists and mystics. It will be found difficult to reject this fact in our age of proofs, tests, and ocular demonstrations. The Secret Doctrine maintains that, notwithstanding the general cataclysms and disturbances of our globe, which -- owing to its being the period of its greatest physical development, for the Fourth Round is the middle-point of the life allotted to it -- were far more terrible and intense than during any of the three preceding Rounds (the cycles of its earlier psychic and spiritual life and of its semi-ethereal conditions) physical Humanity has existed upon it for the last 18,000,000 years.** This period was preceded by 300,000,000 years of the mineral and vegetable development. To this, all those who refuse to accept the theory of a "boneless," purely ethereal, man, will object. Science, which knows only of physical organisms, will feel indignant; and materialistic theology still more so. The first will object on logical and reasonable grounds, based on the preconception that all animate organisms have always existed on the same plane of materiality in all the ages; the last on a tissue of most absurd fictions. The ridiculous claim usually brought forward by theologians, is based on the virtual assumption that mankind (read Christians) on this planet have the honour of being the only human beings in the whole Kosmos, who dwell on a globe, and that they are consequently, the best of their kind.*** [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * " Posthumous Humanity " - - translated by H. S. Olcott, London, 1887. ** Professor Newcomb says: "The heat evolved by contraction would last only 18,000,000 years" (" Popular Astronomy, " p. 500) ; but "a temperature permitting the existence of water could not be reached earlier than 10,000,000 years ago" ( Winchell's "World-Life," p. 356). But Sir W. Thomson says that the whole age of the incrustation of the Earth is 18,000,000 years, though, this year, he has again altered his opinion and allows only 15,000,000 years as the age of the Sun. As will be shown in the Addenda, the divergence of scientific opinions is so great that no reliance can ever be placed upon scientific speculation. *** The essay on " The Plurality of Worlds " (1853) -- an anonymous work, yet well known to have been the production of Dr. Whewell -- is a good proof of this. No Christian ought to believe in either the plurality of worlds or the geological age of the globe, argues the Author; because, if it is asserted that this world is only one among the many of its kind, which are all the work of God, as it is itself; that all are the seat [[Footnote continued on next page]] [[Vol. 2, Page]] 150 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. The Occultists, who believe firmly in the teachings of the mother-philosophy, repel the objections of both theologians and scientists. They maintain, on their side, that, during those periods when there must have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, successive floods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters and seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human life and organization, such as is assigned by them to the early mankind. Neither the heterogeneity of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases, nor the perils of a crust hardly consolidated, could prevent the First and Second Races from making their appearance even during the Carboniferous, or the Silurian age itself. Thus the Monads destined to animate future Races were ready for the new transformation. They had passed their phases of immetalization, of plant and animal life, from the lowest to the highest, and were waiting for their human, more intelligent form. Yet, what could the plastic modellers do but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature? Could they, as claimed by the Biblical dead-letter, form "Lord-God"-like, or as Pygmalion in the Greek allegory, Adam-Galatea out of volcanic dust, and breathe a living soul into Man? No: because the soul was already there, latent in its Monad, and needed but a coating. Pygmalion, who fails to animate his statue, and Bahak-Zivo of the Nazarean Gnostics, who fails to construct "a human soul in the creature," are, as conceptions, far more philosophical and scientific than Adam, taken in the dead-letter sense, or the Biblical Elohim-Creators. Esoteric philosophy, which teaches spontaneous generation -- after the Sishta and Prajapati have thrown the seed of life on the Earth -- shows the lower angels able to construct physical man only, even with the help of Nature, after having evolved the ethereal form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form to evolve gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called, protoplasmic model. This will again be objected to: "Spontaneous Generation" is an exploded theory, we shall be told. Pasteur's experiments disposed of it twenty years ago, and Professor Tyndall is against it. Well, suppose he is? He ought to know that, should spontaneous generation [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Footnote continued from previous page]] of life, all the realm and dwelling of intelligent creatures endowed with will, subject to law and capable of free-will; then, it would become extravagant to think that our world should have been the subject of God's favours and His special interference, of His communications and His personal visit . . . . . . . Can the Earth presume to be considered the centre of the moral and religious Universe, he asks, if it has not the slightest distinction to rely upon in the physical Universe? Is it not as absurd to uphold such an assertion (of the plurality of inhabited worlds), as it would be to-day to uphold the old hypothesis of Ptolemy, who placed Earth in the centre of our system? . . . The above is quoted from memory, yet almost textually. The author fails to see that he is bursting his own soap-bubble with such a defence. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 151 SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. be indeed proven impossible in our present world-period and actual conditions -- which the Occultists deny -- still it would be no demonstration that it could not have taken place under different cosmic conditions, not only in the seas of the Laurentian period, but even on the then convulsed Earth. It would be interesting to know how Science could ever account for the appearance of species and life on Earth, especially of Man, once that she rejects both the Biblical teachings and spontaneous generation.