Page 94 (part 4)

The "Universal Deluge" is the watery abyss of the Primordial Principle of Berosus. ( See Stanzas from 2 to 8 in Part I.). How, if Croll allowed fifteen million years to have elapsed since the Eocene period (which we state on the authority of a Geologist, Mr. Ch. Gould) only 60 millions are assigned by him "since the beginning of the Cambrian period, in the Primordial Age " -- passes comprehension. The Secondary strata are twice the thickness of the Tertiary, and Geology thus shows the Secondary age alone to be of twice the length of the Tertiary. Shall we then accept only 15 million years for both the Primary and the Primordial? No wonder Darwin rejected the calculation. ****** We hope that we have furnished all the Scientific data for it elsewhere. ******* It is conceded by Geology to be "beyond doubt that a considerable period must have supervened after the departure of Palaeolithic man and before the arrival of his Neolithic successor." (See James Geikie's "Prehistoric Europe," and Ch. Gould's "Mythical Monsters," p. 98). [[Vol. 2, Page]] 716 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. man is made out almost an abject savage, his lake dwellings notwithstanding.* For see what a learned geologist, Mr. Charles Gould, tells the reader in his "Mythical Monsters": -- "Palaeolithic men were unacquainted with pottery and the art of weaving, and apparently had no domesticated animals or system of cultivation; but the Neolithic lake-dwellers of Switzerland had looms, pottery, cereals, sheep, horses," etc., etc. Yet, though "Implements of horn, bone, and wood were in common use among both races . . . those of the older are frequently distinguished by their being sculptured with great ability, or ornamented with life-like engravings of the various animals living at the period ; whereas there appears to have been a marked absence of any similar artistic ability** on the part of Neolithic man." Let us give the reasons for it. (1) The oldest fossil man, the primitive cave-men of the old Palaeolithic period, and of the Pre-glacial period (of whatever length, and however far back), is always the same genus man, and there are no fossil remains proving for him "what the Hipparion and Anchitherium have proved for the genus horse -- that is, gradual progressive specialization from a simple ancestral type to more complex existing forms" (" Modern Science, " p. 181). (2) As to the so-called Palaeolithic hatchet . . . "when placed side by side with the rudest forms of stone hatchets actually used by the Australian and other savages, it is difficult to detect any difference" ( Ibid, p . 112). This goes to prove that there have been savages at all times ; and the inference would be that there might have been civilized people in those days as well, cultured nations contemporary with those rude savages. We see such a thing in Egypt 7,000 years ago. [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Resembling in a manner the pile-villages of Northern Borneo. ** "The most clever sculptor of modern times would probably not succeed very much better, if his graver were a splinter of flint and stone and bone were the materials to be engraved"!! (Prof. Boyd Dawkins' "Cave-Hunting," p. 344.) It is needless after such a concession to further insist on Huxley's, Schmidt's, Laing's, and others' statements to the effect that Palaeolithic man cannot be considered to lead us back in any way to a pithecoid human race; thus demolishing the fantasies of many superficial evolutionists. The relic of artistic merit here re-appearing in the Chipped-Stone-Age men, is traceable to their Atlantean ancestry. Neolithic man was a fore-runner of the great Aryan invasion, and immigrated from quite another quarter -- Asia, and in a measure Northern Africa. (The tribes peopling the latter towards the North-West, were certainly of an Atlantean origin -- dating back hundreds of thousands of years before the Neolithic Period in Europe, -- but they had so diverged from the parent type as to present no longer any marked characteristic peculiar to it.) As to the contrast between Neolithic and Palaeolithic Man, it is a remarkable fact that, as Carl Vogt remarks, the former was a cannibal, the much earlier man of the Mammoth era not. Human manners and customs do not seem to improve with time, then? Not in this instance at any rate. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 717 ONE SALVATION FOR SCIENCE. (3) An obstacle which is the direct consequence of the two preceding: Man, if no older than the Palaeolithic period, could not possibly have had the actual time to get transformed from the "missing link" into what he is known to have been even during that remote geological time, i.e. , even a finer specimen than many of the now existing races. The above lends itself naturally to the following syllogism: (1) The primitive man (known to Science) was, in some respects, even a finer man of his genus than he is now. (2) The earliest monkey known, the lemur, was less anthropoid than the modern pithecoid species. (3) Conclusion : even though a missing link were found, the balance of evidence would remain more in favour of the ape being a degenerated man made dumb by some fortuitous circumstances,* than tending to show that man descends from a pithecoid ancestor. The theory cuts both ways. On the other hand, if the existence of Atlantis is accepted, and the statement is believed that in the Eocene Age "even in its very first part, the great cycle of the fourth race men, the Atlanteans had already reached its highest point . . . ." (Esoteric Buddhism, p. 64) then some of the present difficulties of science might be easily made to disappear. The rude workmanship of the Palaeolithic tools proves nothing against the idea that, side by side with their makers, there lived nations highly civilized. We are told that "only a very small portion of the earth's surface has been explored, and of this a very small portion consists of ancient land surfaces or fresh water formations, where alone we can expect to meet with traces of the higher forms of animal life," . . . and that "even these have been so imperfectly explored, that where we now meet with thousands and tens of thousands of undoubted human remains lying almost under our feet, it is only within the last thirty years that their existence has even been suspected" (p. 98). It is very suggestive also that along with the rude haches of the lowest savage, explorers meet with specimens of workmanship of such artistic merit as could hardly be found, or expected, in a modern peasant belonging to any European country -- unless in exceptional cases.