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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2 [[Vol. 2, Page]] 690 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. § IV. DURATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL PERIODS, RACE CYCLES, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. M ILLIONS of years have dropped into Lethe, leaving no more recollection in the memory of the profane than the few millenniums of the orthodox Western chronology as to the origin of Man and the history of the primeval races. All depends on the proofs found for the antiquity of the Human Race. If the still-debated man of the Pliocene or even the Miocene period was the Homo primigenius, then science may be right ( argumenti causa ) in basing its present anthropology -- as to the date and mode of origin of "Homo sapiens" -- on the Darwinian theory.* But if the skeletons of man should, at any time, be discovered in the Eocene strata, but no fossil ape, thereby proving the existence of man prior to the anthropoid -- then Darwinians will have to exercise their ingenuity in another direction. And it is said in well-informed quarters that the XX th century will be yet in its earliest teens, when such undeniable proof of Man's priority will be forthcoming. Even now evidence is brought forward that the dates for the foundations of cities, civilizations and various other historical events have been absurdly curtailed. This was done as a peace-offering to Biblical chronology. "No date," writes the well-known Palaeontologist, Ed. Lartet, "is to be found in Genesis, which assigns a time for the birth of primitive humanity"; but chronologists have for fifteen centuries endeavoured to force the Bible facts into agreement with their systems. Thus, no less than one hundred and forty different opinions have been formed about the single date of "Creation"; "and between the extreme variations there is a discrepancy of 3,194 years, in the reckoning of the period between the beginning of the world and the birth of Christ.** Within the last few years, archaeologists have had to throw back by nearly 3,000 years also the beginnings of Babylonian civilization. On the [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * It may here be remarked that those Darwinians, who with Mr. Grant Allen, place our "hairy arboreal" ancestors so far back as the Eocene Age, are landed in rather an awkward dilemma. No fossil anthropoid ape -- much less the fabulous common ancestor assigned to Man and the Pithecoid -- appears in Eocene strata. The first presentment of an anthropoid ape is Miocene. ** Ed. Lartet, "Nouvelles Recherches sur la co-existence de l'homme et des Grands Mammiferes Fossils de la derniere periode Geologique." Annales des Soc. Nat., t. XV ., p. 256. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 691 PROFESSOR SAYCE SKETCHES OUT CHRONOLOGY. foundation cylinder deposited by Nabonidus, the Babylonian king, conquered by Cyrus -- are found the records of the former, in which he speaks of his discovery of the foundation stone that belonged to the original temple built by Naram-Sin, son of Sargon, of Accadia, the conqueror of Babylonia, who, says Nabonidus, lived 3,200 years before his own time." We have shown in Isis that those who based history on the Jewish Chronology (a race which had none of its own and rejected the Western till the XII th century) would lose themselves, for the Jewish account could only be followed through Kabalistic computation, and with a key to it in the hand. . . We had characterised the late George Smith's chronology of the Chaldeans and Assyrians, made by him to fit in with that of Moses, as quite fantastic. And now, in this respect at least, later Assyriologists have corroborated our denial. For, whereas G. Smith makes Sargon I. (the prototype of Moses in his legend) reign in the city of Akkad about 1600 B.C . -- probably out of a latent respect for Moses, whom the Bible makes to flourish 1571 B.C . -- we now learn from the first of the six Hibbert lectures delivered by Professor A. H. Sayce, of Oxford, in 1887, that: "Old views of the early annals of Babylonia and its religions have been much modified by recent discovery. The first Semitic Empire, it is now agreed, was that of Sargon of Accad, who established a great library, patronized literature, and extended his conquests across the sea into Cyprus. It is now known that he reigned as early as B.C . 3750." "The Accadian monuments found by the French at Tel-loh must be even older, reaching back to about B.C . 4,000," in other words, to the fourth year of the World's creation agreeably with Bible chronology, and when Adam was in his swaddling clothes. Perchance, in a few years more, the 4,000 years may be further extended. The well-known Oxford lecturer remarked during his disquisitions upon " The origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Babylonian Religion " that: "The difficulties of systematically tracing the origin and history of the Babylonian Religion were considerable. The sources of our knowledge of the subject were almost wholly monumental, very little help being obtainable from classical or Oriental writers. Indeed, it was an undeniable fact that the Babylonian priesthood intentionally swaddled up the study of the religious texts in coils of almost insuperable difficulty." That they have confused the dates, and especially the order of events "intentionally," is undeniable, and for a very good reason: their writings and records were all esoteric. The Babylonian priests did no more than the Priests of other ancient nations. Their records were meant only for the Initiates and their disciples, and it is only the latter who were furnished with the keys to the true meaning. But Professor [[Vol. 2, Page]] 692 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. Sayce's remarks are promising. For he explains the difficulty by saying that as -- "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-Kosmic in the judgment of every Bible worshipper. How much more would paleontology have learned had not millions of works been destroyed! We talk of the Alexandrian literary lore, which has been thrice destroyed, namely, by Julius Caesar B.C . 48, in A.D .