Page 57 (part 13)

That man was not the last member in the mammalian family, but the first in this Round, is something that science will be forced to acknowledge one day. A similar view also has already been mooted in France on very high authority. That man can be shown to have lived in the mid-Tertiary period, and in a geological age when there did not yet exist one single specimen of the now known species of mammals, is a statement that science cannot deny and which has now been proven by de Quatrefages.* But even supposing his existence in the Eocene period is not yet demonstrated, what period of time has elapsed since the Cretaceous period? We are aware of the fact that only the boldest geologists dare to place man further back than the Miocene age. But how long, we ask, is the duration of those ages and periods since the Mesozoic time? On this, after a good deal of speculation and wrangling, science is silent, the greatest authorities upon the subject being compelled to answer to the question: "We do not know." This ought to show that the men of science are no greater authorities in this matter than are the profane. If, according to Prof. Huxley, "the time represented by the coal formation would be six millions of years,** how many more millions would be required to cover [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * " Introduction a l'Etude des Races Humaines ." ** " Modern Science and Modern Thought ," by S. Laing, p. 32. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 156 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. the time from the Jurassic period, or the middle of the so-called "Reptilian" age (when the Third Race appeared), up to the Miocene, when the bulk of the Fourth Race was submerged?* The writer is well aware that those specialists, whose computations of the ages of the globe and man are the most liberal, always had the shyer majority against them. But this proves very little, since the majority rarely, if ever, turns out to be right in the long run. Harvey stood alone for many years. The advocates for crossing the Atlantic with steamers were in danger of ending their days in a lunatic asylum. Mesmer is classed to this day (in the Encyclopaedias) along with Cagliostro, and St. Germain, as a charlatan and impostor. And now that Messrs. Charcot and Richet have vindicated Mesmer's claims, and that "Mesmerism" under its new name of Hypnotism -- a false nose on a very old face -- is accepted by science, it does not strengthen one's respect for that majority, when one sees the ease and unconcern with which its members treat of "Hypnotism," "Telepathic Impacts," and its other phenomena. They speak of it, in short, as if they had believed in it since the days of Solomon, and had never called its votaries, only a few years ago, "lunatics and impostors!"** The same revulsion of thought is in store for the long period of years, claimed by esoteric philosophy as the age of sexual and physiological mankind. Therefore even the Stanza which says: -- "The mind-born, the boneless, gave being to the will-born with bones"; adding that this took place in the middle of the Third Race 18,000,000 years ago -- has yet a chance of being accepted by future scientists. As far as XIX th century thought is concerned, we shall be told, even by some personal friends who are imbued with an abnormal respect for the shifting conclusions of science, that such a statement is absurd. How much more improbable will appear our further assertion, to the effect that the antiquity of the First Race dates back millions of years beyond this again. For, although the exact figures are withheld, and it is out of the question to refer the incipient evolution of the primeval Divine [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * " Esoteric Buddhism, " p. 70. ** The same fate is in store for spiritualistic phenomena and all the other psychological manifestations of the inner Man. Since the days of Hume, whose researches culminated in a nihilistic idealism, Psychology has gradually shifted its position to one of crass materialism . Hume is regarded as a psychologist, and yet he denied a priori the possibility of phenomena in which millions now believe, including many men of science. The Hylo-idealists of to-day are rank Annihilationists. The schools of Spencer and Bain are respectively positivist and materialist, and not metaphysical at all. It is psychism and not psychology; it reminds one as little of the Vedantic teaching as the pessimism of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann recalls the esoteric philosophy, the heart and soul of true Buddhism. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 157 THE SLEIGHT-OF-HAND OF SCIENCE. Races with certainty to either the early Secondary, or the Primary ages of geology, one thing is clear: that the figures 18,000,000 of years, which embrace the duration of sexual, physical, man, have to be enormously increased if the whole process of spiritual, astral and physical development is taken into account. Many geologists, indeed, consider that the duration of the Quaternary and Tertiary Ages demands the concession of such an estimate; and it is quite certain that no terrestrial conditions whatever negative the hypothesis of an Eocene Man, if evidence for his reality is forthcoming. Occultists, who maintain that the above date carries us far back into the secondary or "Reptilian" age, may refer to M. de Quatrefages in support of the possible existence of man in that remote antiquity. But with regard to the earliest Root-Races the case is very different. If the thick agglomeration of vapours, charged with carbonic acid, that escaped from the soil or was held in suspension in the atmosphere since the commencement of sedimentation, offered a fatal obstacle to the life of human organisms as now known, how, it will be asked, could the primeval men have existed? This consideration is, in reality, out of court. Such terrestrial conditions as were then operative had no touch with the plane on which the evolution of the ethereal astral races proceeded. Only in relatively recent geological periods, has the spiral course of cyclic law swept mankind into the lowest grade of physical evolution -- the plane of gross material causation. In those early ages, astral evolution was alone in progress, and the two planes, the astral and the physical,* though developing on parallel lines, had no direct point of contact with one another. It is obvious that a shadow-like ethereal man is related by virtue of his organization -- if such it can be called -- only to that plane from which the substance of his Upadhi is derived. There are things, perhaps, that may have escaped the far-seeing -- but not all-seeing -- eyes of our modern naturalists; yet it is Nature herself who undertakes to furnish the missing links.