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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2 [[Vol. 2, Page]] 742 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. § VI. GIANTS, CIVILIZATIONS, AND SUBMERGED CONTINENTS TRACED IN HISTORY. W HEN statements such as are comprised in the above heading are brought forward, the writer is, of course, expected to furnish historical instead of legendary evidence in support of such claims. Is this possible? Yes; for evidence of this nature is plentiful, and has simply to be collected and brought together to become overwhelming in the eyes of the unprejudiced. Once the sagacious student gets hold of the guiding thread he may find it out for himself. We give facts and show land-marks: let the wayfarer follow them. What is given here is amply sufficient for THIS Century. In a letter to Voltaire, Bailly finds it quite natural that the sympathies of the "grand old invalid of Ferney" should be attracted to the "representatives of knowledge and wisdom, the Brahmans of India." He then adds a curious statement. "But," he says, "your Brahmans are very young in comparison with their ancient instructors."* Bailly, who knew nought of the esoteric teachings, nor of Lemuria, believed, nevertheless, unreservedly in the lost Atlantis, and also in several pre-historic and civilized nations which had disappeared without leaving any undeniable trace. He had studied the ancient classics and traditions extensively, and he saw that the arts and sciences known to those we now call the "ancients," were "not the achievements of any of the now or even then existing nations, nor of any of the historical peoples of Asia." And that, notwithstanding the learning of the Hindoos, their undeniable priority in the antiquity of their race had to be referred to a people or a race still more ancient and more learned than were even the Brahmans themselves.** Voltaire, the greatest sceptic of his day, the materialist par excellence, shared Bailly's belief. He thought it quite likely " that long before the empires of China and India, there had been nations cultured, learned, and powerful, which a deluge of barbarians overpowered and thus replunged into their primitive state of ignorance and savagery, or what they call the state of pure nature. " (" Lettres sur l ' Atlantide, " p. 15) .*** [[Footnote(s)]] ----------------------------------------------- * Lettres sur l ' Atlantide. ** Histoire de l ' Astronomie Ancienne, p. 25, et seq. *** This conjecture is but a half-guess. There were such "deluges of barbarians" in the Fifth Race. With regard to the Fourth, it was a bond fide deluge of water which swept it away. Neither Voltaire nor Bailly, however, knew anything of the Secret Doctrine of the East. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 743 A MYSTERIOUS NATION. That which with Voltaire was the shrewd conjecture of a great intellect, was with Bailly "a question of historical facts." For "I make great case of ancient traditions preserved through a long series of generations," he wrote. ( Ibid. ) It was possible, he thought, that a foreign nation should, after instructing another nation, so disappear that it should leave no traces behind. When asked how it could have happened that this ancient, or rather archaic, nation should not have left at least some recollection in the human mind, he answered that Time was a pitiless devourer of facts and events. But, the history of the Past was never entirely lost, for the Sages of old Egypt had preserved it, and "it is so preserved to this day elsewhere." "You do not know which was the best and most handsome generation of men which has ever lived on this earth," said the priests of Sais to Solon, according to Plato. "Only a weak seed of it, of which you (Greeks) are the descendants,* is all that remains." "Their books," they added, "preserved the records of a great nation, which emerging from the Atlantic sea had invaded Europe and Asia ( Timaeus ) . The Greeks were but the dwarfed and weak remnant of that once glorious nation. . . ."** What was this nation? The secret doctrine teaches that it was the latest, seventh sub-race of the Atlanteans, already swallowed up in one of the early sub-races of the Aryan stock, one that had been gradually spreading over the continent and islands of Europe, as soon as they had begun to emerge from the seas. Descending from the high plateaux of Asia, where the two Races had sought refuge in the days of the agony of Atlantis, it had been slowly settling and colonizing the freshly emerged lands. The emigrant sub-race had rapidly increased and multiplied on that virgin soil; had divided into many families, which in their turn divided into nations. Egypt and Greece, the Phoenicians, and the Northern stocks, had thus proceeded from that one sub-race. Thousands of years later, other races -- the remnants of the Atlanteans -- "yellow and red, brown and black," began to invade the new continent. There were wars in which the new comers were defeated; and they fled, some to Africa, others to remote countries. Some of these lands became in course of time -- owing to new geological convulsions -- islands. Being thus forcibly [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * For a full discussion of the relations between the old Greeks and Romans, and the Atlantean colonists, cf. "Five Years of Theosophy." ** The story about Atlantis and all the traditions thereon were told, as all know, by Plato in his " Timaeus and Critias. " Plato, when a child, had it from his grand-sire Critias, aged ninety, who in his youth had been told of it by Solon, his father Dropidas' friend -- Solon, one of the Grecian Seven Sages. No more reliable source could be found, we believe. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 744 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. separated from the continents, the result was that the undeveloped tribes and families of the Atlantean stock fell gradually into a still more abject and savage condition. Did not the Spaniards in the Cibola expeditions meet with WHITE savage chiefs; and has not the presence of African negro types in Europe in the pre-historic ages been now ascertained? It is this presence of a type associated with that of the negro, and also with that of the Mongolian, which is the stumbling-block of anthropology. The individual who lived at an incalculably distant period at La Naulette, in Belgium ( Vide Dr. Carter Blake's paper " On the Naudette Jaw, " Anthrop. Review, Sept., 1867), is an example.