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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2 [[Vol. 2, Page]] 316 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. STANZA XI. THE CIVILIZATION AND DESTRUCTION OF THE FOURTH AND FIFTH RACES. ------- §§ (43) The Lemuro-Atlanteans build cities and spread civilization. The incipient stage of anthropomorphism. (44) Their statues, witnesses to the size of the Lemuro-Atlanteans. (45) Lemuria destroyed by fire, Atlantis by water. The Flood. (46) The destruction of the fourth race and of the last antediluvian monster-animals. --------------------- 43. T HEY ( the Lemurians ) BUILT HUGE CITIES. O F RARE EARTHS AND METALS THEY BUILT. O UT OF THE FIRES ( lava ) VOMITED. O UT OF THE WHITE STONE OF THE MOUNTAINS ( marble ) AND THE BLACK STONE ( of the subterranean fires ) THEY CUT THEIR OWN IMAGES, IN THEIR SIZE AND LIKENESS, AND WORSHIPPED THEM ( a ). ( a ) As the History of the first two human races -- the last of the Lemurians and the first of the future Atlanteans -- proceeds, we have at this point to blend the two, and speak of them for a time collectively. Here reference is also made to the divine Dynasties, such as were claimed by the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Greeks, etc., to have preceded their human kings; they are still believed in by the modern Hindus, and are enumerated in their sacred books. But of these we shall treat in their proper place. What remains to be shown is, that our modern geologists are now being driven into admitting the evident existence of submerged continents. But to confess their presence is not to accept that there were men on them during the early geological periods;* -- [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * This is the reason why, perhaps, even Easter Island with its wondrous gigantic statues -- a speaking witness to a submerged continent with a civilized mankind on it -- is hardly mentioned anywhere in the modern Encyclopaedias. Its mention is carefully avoided except in some books of Travels; modem science has an undeniable predilection for forcing upon the cultured public hypotheses, built on personal hobbies, as well-established evidence, for offering it guesses instead of Knowledge, and calling them "scientific conclusions." Its specialists will evolve a thousand and one contradictory speculations rather than confess an awkward self-evident fact - - pre-eminent among such specialists being Haeckel and his English admirers and co-thinkers. Yet "they are authorities" -- we are sternly reminded. What of that? The Pope of Rome is also an AUTHORITY and an infallible one -- for his followers; whereas the remarkable fallibility of Scientific speculations is being proven periodically with every change of the moon. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 317 PRESENTMENTS OF TRUTHS. ay, men and civilized nations, not Palaeolithic savages only; who, under the guidance of their divine Rulers, built large cities, cultivated arts and sciences, and knew astronomy, architecture and mathematics to perfection. This primeval civilization did not, as one may think, immediately follow their physiological transformation. Between the final evolution and the first city built, many hundred thousands of years had passed. Yet, we find the Lemurians in their sixth sub-race building their first rock-cities out of stone and lava.* One of such great cities of primitive structure was built entirely of lava, some thirty miles west from where Easter Island now stretches its narrow piece of sterile ground, and was entirely destroyed by a series of volcanic eruptions. The oldest remains of Cyclopean buildings were all the handiwork of the Lemurians of the last sub-races; and an occultist shows, therefore, no wonder on learning that the stone relics found on the small piece of land called Easter Island by Captain Cook, are "very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac or the Ruins of Tia-Huanuco in Peru," ("The Countries of the World," by Robert Brown, Vol. 4, p. 43); and that they are in the C YCLOPEAN STYLE. The first large cities, however, appeared on that region of the continent which is now known as the island of Madagascar. There were civilized people and savages in [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Our best modern novelists, who are neither Theosophists nor Spiritualists, begin to have, nevertheless, very psychological and suggestively Occult dreams: witness Mr. Louis Stephenson and his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, than which no grander psychological essay on Occult lines exists. Has the rising novelist, Mr. Rider Haggard, also had a prophetic or rather a retrospective clairvoyant dream before he wrote " S HE"? His imperial Kor, the great city of the dead, whose surviving living men sailed northwards after the plague had killed almost a whole nation, seems to step out in its general outlines from the imperishable pages of the old archaic records. Ayesha suggests "that those men who sailed north may have been the fathers of the first Egyptians"; and then seems to attempt a synopsis of certain letters of a M ASTER quoted in "Esoteric Buddhism." For, she says, "Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away, and been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This (the nation of Kor) is but one of several; for time eats up the work of man unless, indeed, he digs in caves like the people of Kor, and then mayhap the sea swallows t hem, or the earthquake shakes them in . . . . . Yet were not these people utterly destroyed, as I think. Some few remained in the other cities, for their cities were many. But the barbarians . . . came down upon them, and took their women to wife, and the race of the Amahagger that is now is a bastard brood of the mighty sons of Kor, and behold it dwelleth in the tombs with its fathers' bones. . ." ( pp. 180, 181.) Here the clever novelist seems to repeat the history of all the now degraded and down-fallen races of humanity. The Geologists and Anthropologists would place at the head of humanity as descendants of Homo primigenius, the ape-man, of which "NO FOSSIL REMAINS ARE AS YET KNOWN TO US," but (which) "were PROBABLY akin to the gorilla and orang of the present day " ( Haeckel ) . In answer to whose "probably," occultists point to another and a greater probability -- the one given in our text. ( See above. ) [[Vol. 2, Page]] 318 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. those days as there are now. Evolution achieved its work of perfection with the former, and Karma -- its work of destruction on the latter.