Page 98 (part 5)

John Fiske's singularly dogmatic opinion** that every myth "is an explanation by the uncivilized mind, of some natural phenomenon; not an allegory, not an esoteric symbol, for the ingenuity is wasted (! !) which strives to detect in myths the remnants of a refined primeval science -- but an explanation. Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of allegory [How does Mr. Fiske know?], nor were they such sorry pedants as to talk in riddles when plain language would serve their purpose." We venture to say the language of the Initiated few was far more "plain," and their science-philosophy far more com- [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The Cyclic Law of Race-Evolution is most unwelcome to scientists. It is sufficient to mention the fact of "primeval civilization" to excite the frenzy of Darwinians; it being obvious that the further culture and science is pushed back, the more precarious becomes the basis of the ape-ancestor theory. But as Jacolliot says: -- "Whatever there may be in these traditions (submerged continents, etc.), and whatever may have been the place where a civilization more ancient than that of Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India, was developed, it is certain that this civilization did exist, and it is highly important for Science to recover its traces, however feeble and fugitive they be." ( Histoire des Vierges ; les peuples et les continents disparus, p. 15 . ) Donnelly has proved the fact from the clearest premises, but the Evolutionists will not listen. A Miocene civilization upsets the "universal stone-age" theory, and that of a continuous ascent of man from animalism! And yet Egypt, at least, runs counter to current hypotheses. There is no stone-age visible there, but a more glorious culture is apparent, the further back we are enabled to carry our retrospect. (Verb. Sap.) ** "Myths and Myth-Makers," p. 21. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 787 INGENIOUS EXPLANATIONS. prehensive and satisfying alike to the physical and spiritual wants of man, than even the terminology and system respectively elaborated by Mr. Fiske's Master -- Herbert Spencer. What, however, is Sir Charles Lyell's "explanation" of the "myth"? Certainly, he in no way countenances the idea of its "astronomical" origin, as asserted by some writers. The two interpreters are entirely at variance with one another. Lyell's solution is as follows. A disbeliever in cataclysmal changes, from the absence (?) of any reliable historical data on the point, as well as from a strong bias to the Uniformitarian conceptions of geologic changes,* he attempts to trace the Atlantis "tradition" to the following sources: -- (1) Barbarous tribes connect catastrophes with an avenging God, who is assumed in this way to punish immoral races. (2) Hence the commencement of a new race is logically a virtuous one. (3) The primary source of the geologic basis of the tradition was Asia -- a continent subject to violent earthquakes. Exaggerated accounts would thus be handed down the ages. (4) Egypt, being herself free from earthquakes, nevertheless based her not inconsiderable geologic knowledge on these cataclysmal traditions. An ingenious "explanation," as all such are. But proving a negative is proverbially a difficult task. Students of esoteric science, who know what the resources of the Egyptian priesthood really were, need no such laboured hypothesis. Moreover, while an imaginative theorist is always able to furnish a reasonable solution of problems which, in one branch of science, seem to necessitate the hypothesis of periodical cataclysmic changes on the surface of our planet, the impartial critic, who is not a [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Violent minor cataclysms and colossal earthquakes are recorded in the annals of most nations -- if not of all. Elevation and subsidence of continents is always in progress. The whole coast of South America has been raised up 10 to 15 feet and settled down again in an hour. Huxley has shown that the British islands have been four times depressed beneath the ocean and subsequently raised again and peopled. The Alps, Himalayas and Cordilleras were all the result of depositions drifted on to sea-bottoms and upheaved by Titanic forces to their present elevation. The Sahara was the basin of a Miocene sea. Within the last five or six thousand years the shores of Sweden, Denmark and Norway have risen from 200 to 600 feet; in Scotland there are raised beaches with outlying stacks and skerries surmounting the shore now eroded by the hungry wave. The North of Europe is still rising from the sea and South America presents the phenomenon of raised beaches of over 1,000 miles in length, now at a height varying from 100 to 1,300 feet above the sea-level. On the other hand, the coast of Greenland is sinking fast, so much so that the Greenlander will not build by the shore. All these phenomena are certain. Why may not a gradual change have given place to a violent cataclysm in remote epochs? -- such cataclysms occurring on a minor scale even now ( e.g ., the case of Sunda island with 80,000 Malays). [[Vol. 2, Page]] 788 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. specialist, will recognise the immense difficulty of explaining away the cumulative evidences, -- namely, the archaeological, ethnological, geological, traditional, botanical, and even biological -- in favour of former continents now submerged. When each science is fighting for its own hand, the cumulative force of the evidence in its collectivity is almost invariably lost sight of. In the " Theosophist " (August, 1880), we wrote: "We have as evidences the most ancient traditions of various and wide-separated peoples -- legends in India, in ancient Greece, Madagascar, Sumatra, Java, and all the principal isles of Polynesia, as well as the legends of both Americas. Among savages; and in the traditions of the richest literature in the world -- the Sanskrit literature of India -- there is an agreement in saying, that, ages ago, there existed in the Pacific Ocean, a large Continent, which by a geological cataclysm was engulfed by the sea,* (Lemuria). And it is our firm belief . . . that most, if not all, of the islands from the Malayan archipelago to Polynesia, are fragments of that once immense submerged Continent.