Page 98 (part 3)

Coming, as they do, from all parts of Norway, the powerful instinct which survives throughout ages as an inheritance from their progenitors impels them to seek a continent, once existing but now submerged beneath the ocean, and to court a watery grave.) In an article containing a criticism of Mr. A. R. Wallace's "Island Life" -- a work devoted largely to the question of the distribution of animals, etc. -- Mr. Starkie Gardiner writes ("Subsidence and Elevation," Geological Magazine, June, 1881): -- "By a process of reasoning supported by a large array of facts of different kinds, he arrives at the conclusion that the distribution of life upon the land as we now see it, has been accomplished without the aid of important changes in the relative positions of continents and seas. Yet if we accept his views, we must believe that Asia and Africa, Madagascar and Africa, New Zealand and Australia, Europe and America, have been united at some period not remote geologically, and that seas to the depth of 1,000 fathoms have been bridged over; but we must treat as utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed to [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Cf. the published reports of the "Challenger" expedition; also Donnelly's "Atlantis," p. 468 and pp. 46-56, chap. " The Testimony of the Sea. " ** Even the cautious Lefevre speaks of the existence of Tertiary men on "upheaved lands, islands and continents then flourishing, but since submerged beneath the waters," and elsewhere introduces a " possible Atlantis" to explain ethnological facts. Cf. his " Philosophy, " Eng. Ed., pp. 478 and 504. Mr. Donnelly remarks with rare intuition that "modern civilization is Atlantean . . . . the ' inventive ' faculty of the present age is taking up the delegated work of Creation where Atlantis left it thousands of years ago " (Atlantis, p. 133). He also refers the origin of culture to the Miocene times. It is, however, to be sought for in the teachings given to the Third Race -men by their Divine Rulers -- at a vastly earlier period. *** An equally "curious" similarity is traced between some of the West Indian and West African fauna. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 783 ATLANTIS, NECESSARY TO ETHNOLOGY. all the evidences at our command (!!), the supposition that temperate Europe and temperate America, Australia, and South America, have ever been connected except by way of the Arctic or Antarctic circles and that lands now separated by seas of more than 1,000 fathoms depth have ever been united. Mr. Wallace, it must be admitted, has succeeded in explaining the chief features of existing life-distribution, without bridging the Atlantic or Pacific, except towards the Poles, yet I cannot help thinking that some of the facts might perhaps be more easily explained by admitting the former existence of the connection between the coast of Chile and Polynesia* and Great Britain and Florida, shadowed by the submarine banks which stretch between them. Nothing is urged that renders the more direct connection impossible, and no physical reason is advanced why the floor of the ocean should not be upheaved from any depth. The route by which (according to the anti-Atlantean and Lemurian hypotheses of Wallace) the floras of South America and Australia are supposed to have mingled, is beset by almost insurmountable obstacles, and the apparently sudden arrival of a number of sub-tropical American plants in our Eocene flora, necessitates a connection more to the south than the present 1,000 fathom line . . . . forces are unceasingly acting, and there is no reason why an elevating force once set in action in the centre of an ocean should cease to act until a continent is formed. They have acted and lifted out from the sea, in comparatively recent geological times, the loftiest mountains on earth. Mr. Wallace himself admits repeatedly that sea-beds have been elevated 1,000 fathoms and islands have risen up from the depths of 3,000 fathoms; and to suppose that the upheaving forces are limited in power, is, it seems to me, 'utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed to all the evidences at our command.' " The "Father" of English Geology -- Sir Charles Lyell -- was an Uniformitarian in his views of continental formation. On page 492 of his "Antiquity of Man" we find him saying: -- "Professor Unger (Die versunkene Insel Atlantis) and Heer (Flora Tertiaria Helvetiae) have admitted on botanical grounds the former existence of an Atlantic Continent during some part of the Tertiary Period , as affording the only plausible explanation that can be imagined of the analogy between the Miocene flora of central Europe, and the existing flora of Eastern America. Professor Oliver, on the other hand, after showing how many of the American types found fossil in Europe are common to Japan, inclines to the theory, first advanced by Dr. Asa Gray, that the migration of species, to which the community of types in the Eastern States of North America, and the Miocene flora of Europe is due, took place when there was an overland communication from America to central Asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth parallels of latitude, or south of Behring Straits, following the direction of the Aleutian islands. By this course they may have made their way, at any epoch, Miocene, Pliocene, or Pleistocene, antecedently to the Glacial Epoch, to Amoorland, on the East coast of North Asia." The unnecessary difficulties and complications here incurred in order to avoid the hypothesis of an Atlantic Continent, are really too [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The Pacific portion of the giant Lemurian Continent christened by Dr. Carter Blake, the anthropologist, "Pacificus." [[Vol. 2, Page]] 784 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. apparent to escape notice. If the botanical evidences stood alone, scepticism would be half legitimate; but in this case all branches of science converge to one point. Science has made blunders, and has exposed itself to greater errors than the admission of our two now invisible continents, would lay it open to. It has denied even the undeniable, from the days of the mathematician Laplace down to our own, and that only a few years ago.* We have Professor Huxley's authority for saying that there is no a priori improbability whatever against possible evidences supporting the belief. ( Vide supra. ) But now that the POSITIVE EVIDENCE is brought forward, will that eminent scientist admit the corollary? Touching on the problem in another place (" Principles of Geology, " pp. 12-13), Sir Charles Lyell tells us: "Respecting the cosmogony of the Egyptian priests, we gather much information from writers of the Grecian sects, who borrowed almost all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of the former successive destruction and renovation of the world.