The Secret Doctrine

It does not seem difficult to perceive what is meant by the Maruts obtaining “four times seven” emancipations in every Manvantara, and by those persons who are re‐born in that character, viz., of the Maruts in their Esoteric meaning, and who “fill up their places.” The Maruts represent (a) the passions that storm and rage within every Candidate’s breast, when preparing for an ascetic life—this mystically; (b) the Occult potencies concealed in the manifold aspects of Âkâsha’s lower principles—her body, or Sthûla Sharîra, representing the terrestrial, lower atmosphere of every inhabited Globe—this mystically and sidereally; (c) actual conscious existences, beings of a cosmic and psychic nature.

At the same time, Marut in Occult parlance is one of the names given to those Egos of great Adepts who have passed away, and are known also as Nirmânakâyas; of those Egos for whom—since they are beyond illusion—there is no Devachan, who, having either voluntarily renounced Nirvâna for the good of mankind, or who not yet having reached it, remain invisible on Earth. Therefore are the Maruts(1480) shown, firstly, as the sons of Shiva‐Rudra, the Patron Yogî, whose Third Eye (mystically) must be acquired by the Ascetic before he becomes an Adept; then, in their cosmic character, as the subordinates of Indra and his opponents, under various characters. The “four times seven” emancipations have a reference to the four Rounds, and the four Races that preceded ours, in each of which Maruta‐Jîvas (Monads) have been re‐born, and would have obtained final liberation, if only they had chosen to avail themselves of it. But instead of this, out of love for the good of mankind, which would struggle still more hopelessly in the meshes of ignorance and misery were it not for this extraneous help, they are re‐born over and over again “in that character,” and thus “fill up their own places.” Who they are, “on Earth”—every student of Occult Science knows. And he also knows that the Maruts are Rudras, among whom also the family of Tvashtri, a synonym of Vishvakarman, the great Patron of the Initiates, is included. This gives us an ample knowledge of their true nature.

The same for the septenary division of cosmos and the human principles. The Purânas, along with other sacred texts, teem with allusions to this. First of all, the Mundane Egg which contained Brahmâ, or the Universe, was externally invested with seven natural elements, at first loosely enumerated as Water, Air, Fire, Ether, and three secret elements; then the “World” is said to be “encompassed on every side” by seven elements, also within the Egg—as explained: The world is encompassed on every side, and above, and below, by the shell of the egg (of Brahmâ) [Andakatâha].(1481)

Around the shell flows Water, which is surrounded with Fire; Fire by Air; Air by Ether; Ether by the Origin of the Elements (Ahamkâra); the latter by Universal Mind, or “Intellect,” as Wilson translates. It relates to Spheres of Being as much as to Principles. Prithivî is not our Earth but the World, the Solar System, and means the “broad,” the “wide.” In the Vedas—the greatest of all authorities, though needing a key to be read correctly—three terrestrial and three celestial Earths are mentioned as having been called into existence simultaneously with Bhûmi, our Earth. We have often been told that six, not seven, appears to be the number of spheres, principles, etc. We answer that there are, in fact, only six principles in man; since his body is no principle, but the covering, the shell of a principle. So with the Planetary Chain; therein, speaking Esoterically, the Earth—as well as the seventh, or rather fourth plane, one that stands as the seventh, if we count from the first triple kingdom of the Elementals that begin its formation—may be left out of consideration, being (to us) the only distinct body of the seven. The language of Occultism is varied. But supposing that three Earths only, instead of seven, are meant in the Vedas, what are those three, since we still know of but one? Evidently there must be an Occult meaning in the statement under consideration. Let us see. The “Earth that floats” on the Universal Ocean of Space, which Brahmâ divides in the Purânas into seven Zones, is Prithivî, the World divided into seven principles—a cosmic division, looking metaphysical enough, but, in reality, physical in its Occult effects. Many Kalpas later, our Earth is mentioned, and again, in its turn, is divided into seven Zones according to the law of analogy which guided ancient Philosophers. After which we find on it seven Continents, seven Isles, seven Oceans, seven Seas and Rivers, seven Mountains, seven Climates, etc.(1482)

Furthermore, it is not only in the Hindû scriptures and philosophy that one finds references to the seven Earths, but in the Persian, Phœnician, Chaldæan, and Egyptian cosmogonies, and even in Rabbinical literature. The Phœnix(1483)—called by the Hebrews Onech ענק, from Phenoch, Enoch, the symbol of a secret cycle and initiation, and by the Turks, Kerkes—lives a thousand years, after which, kindling a flame, it is self‐consumed; and then, reborn from itself, it lives another thousand years, up to seven times seven,(1484) when comes the Day of Judgment. The “seven times seven,” or forty‐nine, are a transparent allegory, and an allusion to the forty‐nine Manus, the seven Rounds, and the seven times seven human Cycles in each Round on each Globe. The Kerkes and the Onech stand for a Race Cycle, and the mystical Tree Ababel, the “Father Tree” in the Kurân, shoots out new branches and vegetation at every resurrection of the Kerkes or Phœnix; the “Day of Judgment” meaning a minor Pralaya. The author of the Book of God and the Apocalypse believes that:

The Phœnix is ... very plainly the same as the Simorgh of Persian romance; and the account which is given us of this last bird yet more decisively establishes the opinion that the death and revival of the Phœnix exhibit the successive destruction and reproduction of the world, which many believed to be effected by the agency of a fiery deluge [and also a watery one in its turn]. When the Simorgh was asked her age, she informed Caherman that this world is very ancient, for it has been already seven times replenished, with beings different from men, and seven times depopulated:(1485) that the age of the human race in which we now are, is to endure seven thousand years, and that she herself had seen twelve of these revolutions, and knew not how many more she had to see.(1486) The above, however, is no new statement. From Bailly, in the last century, down to Dr. Kenealy, in the present, these facts have been noticed by a number of writers; but now a connection can be established between the Persian oracle and the Nazarene prophet. Says the author of the Book of God:

The Simorgh is in reality the same as the winged Singh of the Hindûs, and the Sphinx of the Egyptians. It is said that the former will appear at the end of the world ... [as a] monstrous lion‐bird.... From these the Rabbins have borrowed their mythos of an enormous Bird, sometimes standing on the earth, sometimes walking in the ocean ... while its head props the sky; and with the symbol, they have also adopted the doctrine to which it relates. They teach that there are to be seven successive renewals of the globe; that each reproduced system will last seven thousand years [?]; and that the total duration of the Universe will be 49,000 years. This opinion, which involves the doctrine of the preëxistence of each renewed creature, they may either have learned during their Babylonian captivity, or it may have been part of the primeval religion which their priests had preserved from remote times.(1487) It shows rather that the initiated Jews borrowed, and their non‐ initiated successors, the Talmudists, lost, the sense, and applied the seven Rounds, and the forty‐nine Races, etc., wrongly.

Not only their priests, but those of every other country. The Gnostics, whose various teachings are the many echoes of the one primitive and universal doctrine, put the same numbers, under another form, in the mouth of Jesus in the very occult Pistis Sophia. We say more: even the Christian editor or author of Revelation has preserved this tradition and speaks of the seven Races, four of which, with part of the fifth, are gone, and two have to come. It is stated as plainly as can be. Thus saith the angel: And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings; five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come.(1488) Who, in the least acquainted with the symbolical language of old, will fail to discern in the five Kings that have fallen, the four Root‐Races that were, and part of the Fifth, the one that is; and in the other, that “is not yet come,” the Sixth and Seventh coming Root‐Races, as also the sub‐races of this, our present Race? Another still more forcible allusion to the seven Rounds and the forty‐nine Root‐Races in Leviticus, will be found elsewhere, Part III.(1489) E. Seven In Astronomy, Science, And Magic.

Again, number seven is closely connected with the Occult significance of the Pleiades, those seven daughters of Atlas, “the six present, the seventh hidden.” In India they are connected with their nursling, the war God, Kârttikeya. It was the Pleiades (in Sanskrit, Krittikâs) who gave this name to the God, Kârttikeya being the planet Mars, astronomically. As a God he is the son of Rudra, born without the intervention of a woman. He is a Kumâra, a “virgin youth” again, generated in the fire from the Seed of Shiva—the Holy Spirit—hence called Agni‐bhû. The late Dr. Kenealy believed that, in India, Kârttikeya is the secret symbol of the Cycle of the Naros, composed of 600, 666, and 777 years, according to whether solar or lunar, divine or mortal, years are counted; and that the six visible, or the seven actual sisters, the Pleiades, are needed for the completion of this most secret and mysterious of all the astronomical and religious symbols. Therefore, when intended to commemorate one particular event, Kârttikeya was shown, of old, as a Kumâra, an Ascetic, with six heads—one for each century of the Naros. When the symbolism was needed for another event, then, in conjunction with the seven sidereal sisters, Kârttikeya is seen accompanied by Kaumârî, or Senâ, his female aspect. He is then riding on a peacock, the bird of Wisdom and Occult Knowledge, and the Hindû Phœnix, whose Greek relation with the 600 years of the Naros is well known. A six‐rayed star (double triangle), a Svastika, a six and occasionally seven‐pointed crown, is on his brow; the peacock’s tail represents the sidereal heavens; and the twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden on his body; for which he is also called Dvâdasha‐kara, the “twelve‐handed,” and Dvâdashâksha, “twelve‐eyed.” It is as Shakti‐dhara, however, the “spear‐holder,” and the conqueror of Târaka, Târaka‐jit, that he is shown to be most famous.

As the years of the Naros are, in India, counted in two ways, either by one hundred “years of the gods” (divine years), or one hundred “mortal years,” we can see the tremendous difficulty the non‐initiated have in arriving at a correct comprehension of this cycle, which plays such an important part in St. John’s Revelation. It is the truly apocalyptic cycle, because of its being of various lengths and relating to various pre‐historic events, and in none of the numerous speculations about it have we found any but a few approximate truths.

Against the duration claimed by the Babylonians for their divine ages, it has been urged that Suidas shows the Ancients counting days for years, in their chronological computations. It is to Suidas and his authority that Dr. Sepp appeals in his ingenious plagiarism—which we have already exposed—of the Hindû figures 432. These they give in thousands and millions of years, the duration of their Yugas, but Sepp dwarfed them to 4,320 lunar years,(1490) “before the birth of Christ,” as “foreordained” in the sidereal, in addition to the invisible, heavens, and proved “by the apparition of the Star of Bethlehem.” But Suidas had no other warrant for this assertion than his own speculations, and he was not an Initiate. He cites, as a proof, Vulcan, and shows him reigning 4,477 years, or 4,477 days, as he thinks, or again rendered in years, 12 years, 3 months, and 7 days; he has, however, 5 days in his original—thus committing an error even in such an easy calculation.(1491) True, there are other ancient writers guilty of like fallacious speculations; Calisthenes, for instance, who assigns to the astronomical observations of the Chaldæans only 1,903 years, whereas Epigenes recognizes 720,000 years.(1492) The whole of these hypotheses made by profane writers are due to a misunderstanding. The chronology of the Western peoples, ancient Greeks and Romans, was borrowed from India. Now, it is said in the Tamil edition of Bagavadam that 15 solar days make a Paccham; two Pacchams, or 30 days, make a month of mortals, which is only one day of the Pitara Devatâ or Pitris. Again, 2 of these months constitute a Rûdû, 3 Rûdûs make an Ayanam, and 2 Ayanams a year of mortals, which is only a day of the Gods. It is from such misunderstood teachings that some Greeks have imagined that all the initiated priests had transformed days into years!

This mistake of the ancient Greek and Latin writers became pregnant with results in Europe. At the close of the past and the beginning of the present century, Bailly, Dupuis, and others, relying upon the purposely mutilated accounts of Hindû chronology, brought from India by certain unscrupulous and too zealous missionaries, built quite a fantastic theory on the subject. Because the Hindûs had made of half a revolution of the moon a measure of time; and because a month composed of only fifteen days, of which Quintus Curtius speaks,(1493) is found mentioned in Hindû literature, therefore, it becomes a verified fact that their year was only half a year, when it was not called a day! The Chinese, also, divided their Zodiac into twenty‐four parts, and hence their year into twenty‐four fortnights, but such computation did not, nor does it, prevent them having an astronomical year just the same as ours. They also have a period of 60 days—the Southern Indian Rûdû—to this day in some provinces. Moreover, Diodorus Siculus(1494) calls “thirty days an Egyptian year,” or that period during which the moon performs a complete revolution. Pliny and Plutarch(1495) both speak of it; but does it stand to reason that the Egyptians, who knew Astronomy as well as any other nation, made the lunar month consist of 30 days, when it is only 28 days with fractions? This lunar period had an Occult meaning surely as well as had also the Ayanam and the Rûdû of the Hindûs.

The year of 2 months’ duration, and the period of 60 days also, was a universal measure of time in antiquity, as Bailly himself shows in his Traité de l’ Astronomie Indienne et Orientale. The Chinamen, according to their own books, divided their year into two parts, from one equinox to the other;(1496) the Arabs anciently divided the year into six seasons, each composed of two months; in the Chinese astronomical work called Kioo‐tche, it is said that two moons make a measure of time, and six measures a year; and to this day the aborigines of Kamschatka have their years of six months, as they had when visited by Abbé Chappe.(1497) But is all this any reason for claiming that when the Hindû Purânas say a solar year, they mean one solar day!

It was the knowledge of the natural laws which make of seven the root nature‐number, so to say, in the manifested world, or at any rate in our present terrestrial life‐cycle, and the wonderful comprehension of its workings, that unveiled to the Ancients so many of the mysteries of Nature. It is these laws, again, and their processes on the sidereal, terrestrial, and moral planes, which enabled the old Astronomers to calculate correctly the duration of the cycles and their respective effects on the march of events; to record beforehand—to prophesy, it is called—the influence which they would have on the course and development of the human races. The Sun, Moon, and Planets being the never‐erring time‐measurers, whose potency and periodicity were well known, became thus respectively the great ruler and rulers of our little system in all its seven domains, or “spheres of action.”(1498) This has been so evident and remarkable, that even many of the modern men of Science, Materialists as well as Mystics, have had their attention called to this law. Physicians and Theologians, Mathematicians and Psychologists, have repeatedly drawn the attention of the world to this fact of periodicity in the behaviour of “Nature.” These numbers are explained in the Commentaries in the following words: _The Circle is not the __“__One__”__ but the __“__All.__”_

In the higher [Heaven], the impenetrable Rajah,(1499) it [the Circle] becomes One, because [it is] the indivisible, and there can be no Tau in it. _In the second [of the three Rajamsi, or the three __“__Worlds__”__], the One becomes Two [male and female], and Three [with the Son or Logos], and the Sacred Four [the Tetraktys, or Tetragrammaton]._ _In the third [the lower World or our Earth], the number becomes Four, and Three, and Two. Take the first two, and thou wilt obtain Seven, the sacred number of life; blend [the latter] with the middle Rajah, and thou wilt have Nine, the sacred number of Being and Becoming._(1500) When the Western Orientalists have mastered the real meaning of the Rig Vedic divisions of the World—the two‐fold, three‐fold, six‐ and seven‐ fold, and especially the nine‐fold division—the mystery of the cyclic divisions applied to Heaven and Earth, Gods and Men, will become clearer to them than it is now. For:

_There is a harmony of numbers in all nature; in the force of gravity, in the planetary movements, in the laws of heat, light, electricity, and chemical affinity, in the forms of animals and plants, in the perceptions of the mind._ The direction, indeed, of modern natural and physical science is towards a generalization which shall express the fundamental laws of all, by one simple numerical ratio. We would refer to Professor Whewell’s Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, and to Mr. Hay’s researches into the laws of harmonious colouring and form. _From these it appears that the number seven is distinguished in the laws regulating the harmonious perception of forms, colours, and sounds_, and probably of taste also, if we could analyze our sensations of this kind with mathematical accuracy.(1501) So much so, indeed, that more than one Physician has stood aghast at the septenary periodical return of the cycles in the rise and fall of various complaints, and Naturalists have felt themselves at an utter loss to explain this law. The birth, growth, maturity, vital functions, healthy revolutions of change, diseases, decay and death, of insects, reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals, and even of man, are more or less controlled by a law of completion in weeks [or seven days].(1502)

Dr. Laycock, writing on the “Periodicity of Vital Phenomena,”(1503) records a “most remarkable illustration and confirmation of the law in insects.”(1504) To all of which Mr. Grattan Guinness remarks very pertinently, as he defends biblical chronology: And man’s life ... is a week, a week of decades. “The days of our years are three‐score years and ten.” Combining the testimony of all these facts, we are bound to admit that there prevails in organic nature a law of septiform periodicity, a law of completion in weeks.(1505) Without accepting the conclusions, and especially the premises of the learned founder of “The East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions,” the writer accepts and welcomes his researches in the Occult chronology of the Bible; just as, while rejecting the theories, hypotheses, and generalizations of Modern Science, we bow before its great achievements in the world of the Physical, or in all the minor details of material Nature.

There is most assuredly an Occult “chronological system in Hebrew scripture,” the Kabalah being its warrant; moreover there is in it “a system of weeks,” based on the archaic Indian system, which may still be found in the old Jyotisha.(1506) And there are in it cycles of the “week of days,” of the “week of months,” of years, of centuries, and even of millenniums, and more, of the “week of years of years.”(1507) But all this can be found in the Archaic Doctrine. And if the common source of the chronology in every scripture, however veiled, is denied in the case of the Bible; then it will have to be shown how, in face of the six days and the seventh (a Sabbath), we can escape connecting the Genetic with the Paurânic Cosmogonies. For the first “week of creation” shows the septiformity of its chronology and thus connects it with Brahmâ’s “seven creations.” The able volume from the pen of Mr. Grattan Guinness, in which he has collected in some 760 pages every proof of this septiform calculation, is good evidence. For if the biblical chronology is, as he says, “regulated by the law of weeks,” and if it is septenary, whatever the measures of the creation week and the length of its days may be, and if, finally, “the Bible system includes weeks on a great variety of scales,” then this system is shown to be identical with all the Pagan systems. Moreover, the attempt to show that 4,320 years, in lunar months, elapsed between the “Creation” and the “Nativity,” is a clear and unmistakable connection with the 4,320,000 years of the Hindû Yugas. Otherwise, why make such efforts to prove that these figures, which are preëminently Chaldæan and Indo‐Âryan, play such a part in the New Testament? This we shall now prove still more forcibly.

Let the impartial critic compare the two accounts—the Vishnu Purâna and the Bible—and he will find that the “seven creations” of Brahmâ are at the foundation of the “week of creation” in Genesis. The two allegories are different, but the systems are both built on the same foundation‐ stone. The Bible can be understood only by the light of the Kabalah. Take the Zohar, the “Book of Concealed Mystery,” however now disfigured, and compare. The seven Rishis and the fourteen Manus, of the seven Manvantaras, issue from Brahmâ’s head; they are his “Mind‐born Sons,” and it is with them that begins the division of mankind into its Races from the Heavenly Man, the manifested Logos, who is Brahmâ Prajâpati. Speaking of the “Skull” (Head) of Macroprosopus, the Ancient One(1508) (in Sanskrit Sanat is an appellation of Brahmâ), the Ha Idra Rabba Qadisha, or “Greater Holy Assembly,” says that in every one of his hairs is a hidden fountain issuing from the concealed brain. And it shineth and goeth forth through that hair unto the hair of Microprosopus, and from it [which is the manifest Quaternary, the Tetragrammaton] is his brain formed; and thence that brain goeth forth into thirty and two paths [or the Triad and the Duad, or again 432]. And again:

Thirteen curls of hair exist on the one side and on the other of the skull [i.e., six on one and six on the other, the thirteenth being also the fourteenth, as it is male‐female]; ... and through them commenceth the division of the hair [the division of things, of mankind and the races].(1509) “We six are lights which shine forth from a seventh (light),” saith Rabbi Abba; “thou art the seventh light”—the synthesis of us all—he adds, speaking of Tetragrammaton and his seven “companions,” whom he calls the “eyes of Tetragrammaton.”(1510) Tetragrammaton is Brahmâ Prajâpati, who assumed four forms, in order to create four kinds of supernal creatures, i.e., made himself four‐ fold, or the manifest Quaternary;(1511) after that, he is re‐born in the seven Rishis, his Mânasaputras, “Mind‐born Sons,” who became later, nine, twenty‐one, and so on, and who are all said to be born from various parts of Brahmâ.(1512)

There are two Tetragrammatons: the Macroprosopus and the Microprosopus. The first is the absolute perfect Square, or the Tetraktys within the Circle, both abstract conceptions, and is therefore called Ain—Non‐being, i.e., illimitable or absolute “Be‐ness.” But when viewed as Microprosopus, or the Heavenly Man, the Manifested Logos, he is the Triangle in the Square—the sevenfold Cube, not the fourfold, or the plane Square. For it is written in “The Greater Holy Assembly”: And concerning this, the children of Israel wished to inquire in their hearts [know in their minds], like as it is written, Exod. xvii. 7: “Is the Tetragrammaton in the midst of us, or the Negatively Existent One?”(1513) —where they distinguished between Microprosopus, who is called Tetragrammaton, and between Macroprosopus, who is called Ain, the Negatively Existent.(1514) Therefore, Tetragrammaton is the Three made four and the Four made three, and is represented on this Earth by his seven “Companions,” or “Eyes”—the “seven eyes of the Lord.” Microprosopus is, at best, only a secondary manifested Deity. For “The Greater Holy Assembly” elsewhere says: We have learned that there were ten (Rabbis) [Companions] entered into (the Assembly) [the Sod, “mysterious assembly or mystery”] and that seven came forth(1515) [i.e., ten for the unmanifested, seven for the manifested Universe].

1158. And when Rabbi Schimeon revealed the Arcana, there were found none present there save those [seven] (companions). And Rabbi Schimeon called them the seven eyes of Tetragrammaton, like as it is written, Zach. iii. 9: “These are the seven eyes [or principles] of Tetragrammaton” [—i.e., the four‐fold Heavenly Man, or pure Spirit, is resolved into septenary man, pure Matter and Spirit].(1516) Thus the Tetrad is Microprosopus, and the latter is the male‐female Chokmah‐Binah, the second and third Sephiroth. The Tetragrammaton is the very essence of number seven, in its terrestrial significance. Seven stands between four and nine—the basis and foundation, astrally, of our physical world and man, in the kingdom of Malkuth. For Christians and believers, this reference to Zechariah and especially to the Epistle of Peter,(1517) ought to be conclusive. In the old symbolism, “man,” chiefly the Inner Spiritual Man is called a “stone.” Christ is the corner‐stone, and Peter refers to all men as “lively” (living) stones. Therefore a “stone with seven eyes” on it can only mean a man whose constitution (i.e., his “principles”) is septenary.

To demonstrate more clearly the seven in Nature, it may be added that not only does the number seven govern the periodicity of the phenomena of life, but that it is also found dominating the series of chemical elements, and equally paramount in the world of sound and in that of colour as revealed to us by the spectroscope. This number is the factor, sine quâ non, in the production of occult astral phenomena. It is needless to refer in detail to the number of vibrations constituting the notes of the musical scale; they are strictly analogous to the scale of chemical elements, and also to the scale of colour as unfolded by the spectroscope, although in the latter case we deal with only one octave, while both in music and chemistry we find a series of seven octaves represented theoretically, of which six are fairly complete and in ordinary use in both sciences. Thus, to quote Hellenbach:

It has been established that, from the standpoint of phenomenal law, upon which all our knowledge rests, the vibrations of sound and light increase regularly, that they divide themselves into seven columns, and that the successive numbers in each column are closely allied; i.e., that they exhibit a close relationship which not only is expressed in the figures themselves, but also is practically confirmed in chemistry as in music, in the latter of which the ear confirms the verdict of the figures.... The fact that this periodicity and variety is governed by the number seven is undeniable, and it far surpasses the limits of mere chance, and must be assumed to have an adequate cause, which cause must be discovered. Verily, then, as Rabbi Abba said: We are six lights which shine forth from a seventh (light); thou [Tetragrammaton] art the seventh light (the origin of) us all. For assuredly there is no stability in those six, save (what they derive) from the seventh. For all things depend from the seventh.(1518)

The ancient and modern Western American Zuñi Indians seem to have entertained similar views. Their present‐day customs, their traditions and records, all point to the fact that, from time immemorial, their institutions, political, social and religious, were, and still are, shaped according to the septenary principle. Thus all their ancient towns and villages were built in clusters of six, around a seventh. It is always a group of seven, or of thirteen, and always the six surround the seventh. Again, their sacerdotal hierarchy is composed of six “Priests of the House” seemingly synthesized in the seventh, who is a woman, the “Priestess Mother.” Compare this with the “seven great officiating priests” spoken of in the Anugîtâ, the name given to the “seven senses,” exoterically, and to the seven human principles, Esoterically. Whence this identity of symbolism? Shall we still doubt the fact of Arjuna going over to Pâtâla, the Antipodes, America, and there marrying Ulûpî, the daughter of the Nâga, or rather Nargal, king? But to the Zuñi priests.

These receive, to this day, an annual tribute of corn of seven colours. Undistinguished from other Indians during the rest of the year, on a certain day they come out—six priests and one priestess—arrayed in their priestly robes, each of a colour sacred to the particular God whom the priest serves and personifies; each of them representing one of the seven regions, and each receiving corn of the colour corresponding to that region. Thus, the white represents the East, because from the East comes the first sun‐light; the yellow corresponds to the North, from the colour of the flames produced by the Aurora Borealis; the red, the South, as from that quarter comes the heat; the blue stands for the West, the colour of the Pacific Ocean, which lies to the West; black is the colour of the nether underground region—darkness; corn with grains of all colours on one ear represents the colours of the upper region—of the firmament, with its rosy and yellow clouds, shining stars, etc. The “speckled” corn, each grain containing all the colours, is that of the “Priestess‐Mother”—woman containing in herself the seeds of all races past, present and future; Eve being the mother of all living.

Apart from these was the Sun—the Great Deity—whose priest was the spiritual head of the nation. These facts were ascertained by Mr. F. Hamilton Cushing, who, as many are aware, became a Zuñi, lived with them, was initiated into their religious mysteries, and has learned more about them than any other man now living. Seven is also the great magic number. In the Occult Records the weapon mentioned in the Purânas and the Mahâbhârata—the Âgneyâstra or “fiery weapon” bestowed by Aurva upon his Chelâ Sagara—is said to be constructed of seven elements. This weapon—supposed by some ingenious Orientalists to have been a “rocket” (!)—is one of the many thorns in the side of our modern Sanskritists. Wilson exercises his penetration over it, on several pages in his Specimens of the Hindû Theatre, and finally fails to explain it. He can make nothing out of the Âgneyâstra, for he argues: These weapons are of a very unintelligible character. Some of them are occasionally wielded as missiles; but, in general, they appear to be mystical powers exercised by the individual—such as those of paralyzing an enemy, or locking his senses fast in sleep, or bringing down storm, and rain, and fire, from heaven.(1519)... They are supposed to assume celestial shapes, endowed with human faculties.... The Râmâyana calls them the sons of Krishâshva.(1520)

The Shastra‐devatâs, “Gods of the divine weapons,” are no more Âgneyâstras, the weapons, than the gunners of modern artillery are the cannon they direct. But this simple solution did not seem to strike the eminent Sanskritist. Nevertheless, as he himself says of the armiform progeny of Krishâshva, “the allegorical origin of the Âgneyâstra weapons is, undoubtedly, the more ancient.”(1521) It is the fiery javelin of Brahmâ. The seven‐fold Âgneyâstra, like the seven senses and the seven principles, symbolized by the seven priests, are of untold antiquity. How old is the doctrine believed in by Theosophists, the following Section will tell. F. The Seven Souls Of The Egyptologists. If one turns to those wells of information, The Natural Genesis and the Lectures of Mr. Gerald Massey, the proofs of the antiquity of the doctrine under analysis become positively overwhelming. That the belief of the author differs from ours can hardly invalidate the facts. He views the symbol from a purely natural standpoint, one perhaps a trifle too materialistic, because too much that of an ardent Evolutionist and follower of the modern Darwinian dogmas. Thus he shows that: The student of Böhme’s books finds much in them concerning these Seven “Fountain Spirits,” and primary powers, treated as seven properties of Nature in the alchemistic and astrological phase of the mediæval mysteries....

The followers of Böhme look on such matter as the divine revelation of his inspired Seership. They know nothing of the natural genesis, the history and persistence of the “Wisdom”(1522) of the past (or of the broken links), and are unable to recognize the physical features of the ancient “Seven Spirits” beneath their modern metaphysical or alchemist mask. A second connecting link between the theosophy of Böhme and the physical origins of Egyptian thought, is extant in the fragments of Hermes Trismegistus.(1523) No matter whether these teachings are called Illuminatist, Buddhist, Kabalist, Gnostic, Masonic, or Christian, the elemental types can only be truly known in their beginnings.(1524) When the prophets or visionary showmen of cloudland come to us claiming original inspiration, and utter something new, we judge of its value by what it is in itself. But if we find they bring us the ancient matter which they cannot account for, and we can, it is natural that we should judge it by the primary significations rather than the latest pretensions.(1525) It is useless for us to read our later thought into the earliest types of expression, and then say the ancients meant that!(1526) Subtilized interpretations which have become doctrines and dogmas in theosophy have now to be tested by their genesis in physical phenomena, in order that we may explode their false pretensions to supernatural origin or supernatural knowledge.(1527)

But the able author of The Book of the Beginnings and of The Natural Genesis does—very fortunately, for us—quite the reverse. He demonstrates most triumphantly our Esoteric (Buddhist) teachings, by showing them identical with those of Egypt. Let the reader judge from his learned lecture on “The Seven Souls of Man.”(1528) Says the author: The first form of the mystical Seven was seen to be figured in heaven by the seven large stars of the Great Bear, the constellation assigned by the Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the seven Elemental Powers.(1529) Just so, for the Hindûs place their seven primitive Rishis in the Great Bear, and call this constellation the abode of the Saptarshi, Riksha and Chitra‐shikhandinas. And their Adepts claim to know whether it is only an astronomical myth, or a primordial mystery having a deeper meaning than it bears on its surface. We are also told that: The Egyptians divided the face of the sky by night into seven parts. The primary Heaven was sevenfold.(1530) So it was with the Âryans. One has but to read the Purânas about the beginnings of Brahmâ and his Egg, to see this. Have the Âryans then, taken the idea from the Egyptians? But, as the lecturer proceeds:

The earliest forces recognized in Nature were reckoned as seven in number. These became Seven Elementals, devils [?], or later divinities. Seven properties were assigned to Nature—as matter, cohesion, fluxion, coagulation, accumulation, station, and division—and seven elements or souls to man.(1531) All this was taught in the Esoteric Doctrine, but it was interpreted and its mysteries unlocked, as already stated, with seven, not two or, at the utmost, three keys; hence the causes and their effects worked in invisible or mystic as well as in psychic Nature, and were made referable to Metaphysics and Psychology as much as to Physiology. As the author says: A principle of sevening, so to say, was introduced, and the number seven supplied a sacred type that could be used for manifold purposes.(1532) And it was so used. For: The seven souls of the Pharaoh are often mentioned in the Egyptian texts.... Seven souls, or principles in man were identified by our British Druids.... The Rabbins also ran the number of souls up to seven: so, likewise, do the Karens of India.(1533) And then, the author, with several misspellings, tabulates the two teachings—the Esoteric and the Egyptian—and shows that the latter had the same series and in the same order.

[Esoteric] Indian. Egyptian. 1. Rûpa, body or element of 1. Kha, body. form. 2. Prâna, the breath of life. 2. Ba, the soul of breath. 3. Astral body. 3. Khaba, the shade. 4. Manas, or 4. Akhu, intelligence or intelligence.(1534) perception. 5. Kâma Rûpa, or animal soul. 5. Seb, ancestral soul. 6. Buddhi, or spiritual soul. 6. Putah, the first intellectual father. 7. Âtmâ, pure spirit. 7. Atmu, a divine, or eternal soul.(1535) Further on, the lecturer formulates these seven (Egyptian) Souls, as (1) The Soul of Blood—the formative; (2) The Soul of Breath—that breathes; (3) The Shade or Covering Soul—that envelopes; (4) The Soul of Perception—that perceives; (5) The Soul of Pubescence—that procreates; (6) The Intellectual Soul—that reproduces intellectually; and (7) The Spiritual Soul—that is perpetuated permanently.

From the exoteric and physiological standpoint this may be very correct; it becomes less so from the Esoteric point of view. To maintain this, does not at all mean that the “Esoteric Buddhists” resolve men into a number of elementary spirits, as Mr. G. Massey, in the same lecture, accuses them of maintaining. No “Esoteric Buddhist” has ever been guilty of any such absurdity. Nor has it been ever imagined that these shadows “become spiritual beings in another world,” or “seven potential spirits or elementaries of another life.” What is maintained is simply that every time the immortal Ego incarnates it becomes, as a total, a compound unit of Matter and Spirit, which together act on seven different planes of being and consciousness. Elsewhere, Mr. Gerald Massey adds: The seven souls [our “principles”] ... are often mentioned in the Egyptian texts. The moon‐god, Taht‐Esmun, or the later sun‐god, expressed the seven nature‐powers that were prior to himself, and were summed up in him as his seven souls [we say “principles”].... The seven stars in the hand of the Christ in Revelation, have the same significance.(1536)

And a still greater one, as these stars represent also the seven keys of the Seven Churches or the Sodalian Mysteries, kabalistically. However, we will not stop to discuss, but add that other Egyptologists have also discovered that the septenary constitution of man was a cardinal doctrine with the old Egyptians. In a series of remarkable articles in the Sphinx, of Munich, Herr Franz Lambert gives incontrovertible proof of his conclusions from the Book of the Dead and other Egyptian records. For details the reader must be referred to the articles themselves. Böhme, the prince of all the mediæval seers, says: We find seven especial properties in nature whereby this only Mother works all things [which he calls fire, light, sound (the upper three) and desire, bitterness, anguish, and substantiality, thus analyzing the lower in his own mystic way]; whatever the six forms are spiritually, that the seventh [the body or substantiality], is essentially. These are the seven forms of the Mother of all Beings, from whence all that is in this world is generated.(1537) And again:

The Creator hath, in the body of this world, generated himself as it were creaturely in his qualifying or Fountain Spirits, and all the stars are ... God’s powers, and the whole body of the world consisteth in the seven qualifying or fountain spirits.(1538) This is rendering in mystical language our theosophical doctrine. But how can we agree with Mr. Gerald Massey when he states that: The Seven Races of Men that have been sublimated and made Planetary [?] by Esoteric Buddhism,(1539) may be met with in the Bundahish as (1) the earth‐men; (2) water‐men; (3) breast‐eared men; (4) breast‐eyed men; (5) one‐legged men; (6) bat‐winged men; (7) men with tails.(1540)

Each of these descriptions, allegorical and even perverted in their later form, is, nevertheless, an echo of the Secret Doctrine teaching. They all refer to the pre‐human evolution of the “Water‐men terrible and bad” by unaided Nature through millions of years, as previously described. But we deny point‐blank the assertion that “these were never real races,” and point to the Archaic Stanzas for our answer. It is easy to infer and to say that our “instructors have mistaken these shadows of the Past, for things human and spiritual”; but that “they are neither, and never were either,” it is less easy to prove. The assertion must ever remain on a par with the Darwinian claim that man and the ape had a common pithecoid ancestor. What the lecturer takes for a “mode of expression” and nothing more, in the Egyptian Ritual, we take as having quite another and an important meaning. Here is one instance. Says the Ritual, the Book of the Dead: “I am the mouse.” “I am the hawk.” “I am the ape.”... “I am the crocodile whose soul comes from MEN.”... “I am the soul of the gods.”(1541)

The last sentence but one is explained by the lecturer, who says parenthetically, “that is, as a type of intelligence,” and the last as meaning, “the Horus, or Christ, as the outcome of all.” The Occult Teaching answers: It means far more. It gives first of all a corroboration of the teaching that, while the human Monad has passed on Globe A and others, in the First Round, through all the three kingdoms—the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal—in this our Fourth Round, every mammal has sprung from Man, if the semi‐ethereal, many‐shaped creature with the human Monad in it, of the first two Races, can be regarded as Man. But it must be so called; for, in the Esoteric language, it is not the form of flesh, blood, and bones, now referred to as man, which is in any way the Man, but the inner divine Monad with its manifold principles or aspects.

The lecture referred to, however, much as it opposes Esoteric Buddhism and its teachings, is an eloquent answer to those who have tried to represent the whole as a new‐fangled doctrine. And there are many such, in Europe, America, and even India. Yet, between the Esotericism of the old Arhats, and that which has now survived in India among the few Brâhmans who have seriously studied their Secret Philosophy, the difference does not appear so very great. It seems centred in, and limited to, the question of the order of the evolution of cosmic and other principles, more than anything else. At all events it is no greater divergence than the everlasting question of the filioque dogma, which since the eighth century has separated the Roman Catholic from the older Greek Eastern Church. Yet, whatever the differences in the forms in which the septenary dogma is presented, the substance is there, and its presence and importance in the Brâhmanical system may be judged by what one of India’s learned meta‐physicians and Vedântic scholars says of it:

The real esoteric seven‐fold classification is one of the most important, if not the most important classification, which has received its arrangement from the mysterious constitution of this eternal type. I may also mention in this connection that the four‐ fold classification claims the same origin. The light of life, as it were, seems to be refracted by the treble‐faced prism of Prakriti, having the three Gunams for its three faces, and divided into seven rays, which develop in course of time the seven principles of this classification. The progress of development presents some points of similarity to the gradual development of the rays of the spectrum. While the four‐fold classification is amply sufficient for all practical purposes, this real seven‐fold classification is of great theoretical and scientific importance. It will be necessary to adopt it to explain certain classes of phenomena noticed by occultists; and it is perhaps better fitted to be the basis of a perfect system of psychology. It is not the peculiar property of the “Trans‐Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine.” In fact, it has a closer connection with the Brâhmanical Logos than with the Buddhist Logos. In order to make my meaning clear I may point out here that the Logos has seven forms. In other words, there are seven kinds of Logoi in the Cosmos. Each of these has became the central figure of one of the seven main branches of the ancient Wisdom‐Religion. This classification is not the seven‐fold classification we have adopted.

I make this assertion without the slightest fear of contradiction. The real classification has all the requisites of a scientific classification. It has seven distinct principles, which correspond with seven distinct states of Prajñâ or consciousness. It bridges the gulf between the objective and subjective, and indicates the mysterious circuit through which ideation passes. The seven principles are allied to seven states of matter, and to seven forms of force. These principles are harmoniously arranged between two poles, which define the limits of human consciousness.(1542)

The above is perfectly correct, save, perhaps, on one point. The “seven‐ fold classification” in the Esoteric System has never (to the writer’s knowledge) been claimed by any one belonging to it, as “the peculiar property of the ‘Trans‐Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine’ ”; but only as having survived in that old School alone. It is no more the property of the Trans‐, than it is of the Cis‐Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine, but is simply the common inheritance of all such Schools, left to the Sages of the Fifth Root‐Race by the great Siddhas(1543) of the Fourth. Let us remember that the Atlanteans became the terrible sorcerers, now celebrated in so many of the oldest MSS. of India, only toward their “Fall,” whereby the submersion of their Continent was brought on. What is claimed is simply that the Wisdom imparted by the “Divine Ones”—born through the Kriyâshaktic powers of the Third Race before its Fall and separation into sexes—to the Adepts of the early Fourth Race, has remained in all its pristine purity in a certain Brotherhood. The said School or Fraternity being closely connected with a certain island of an inland sea—believed in by both Hindûs and Buddhists, but called “mythical” by Geographers and Orientalists—the less one talks of it, the wiser he will be. Nor can one accept the said “seven‐ fold classification” as having “a closer connection with the Brâhmanical Logos than with the Buddhist Logos,” since both are identical, whether the one Logos is called Îshvara or Avalokiteshvara, Brahmâ or Padmapâni.

These are, however, very small differences, more fanciful than real, in fact. Brâhmanism and Buddhism, both viewed from their orthodox aspects, are as inimical and as irreconcilable as water and oil. Each of these great bodies, however, has a vulnerable place in its constitution. While even in their esoteric interpretation both can agree but to disagree, once that their respective vulnerable points are confronted, every disagreement must fall, for the two will find themselves on common ground. The “Achilles’ heel” of orthodox Brâhmanism is the Advaita philosophy, whose followers are called by the pious “Buddhists in disguise”; as that of orthodox Buddhism is Northern Mysticism, as represented by the disciples of the philosophies of the Yogâchârya School of Âryâsangha and the Mahâyâna, who are twitted in their turn by their co‐religionists as “Vedântins in disguise.” The Esoteric Philosophy of both these can be but one if carefully analyzed and compared, as Gautama Buddha and Shankarâchârya are most closely connected, if one believes tradition and certain Esoteric Teachings. Thus every difference between the two will be found one of form rather than of substance.

A most mystic discourse, full of septenary symbology, may be found in the Anugita(1544) There the Brâhmana narrates the bliss of having crossed beyond the regions of illusion: In which fancies are the gadflies and mosquitoes, in which grief and joy are cold and heat, in which delusion is the blinding darkness, in which avarice is the beasts of prey and reptiles, in which desire and anger are the obstructors. The sage describes the entrance into and exit from the forest—a symbol for man’s life‐time—and also that forest itself:(1545) In that forest are seven large trees [the senses, mind and understanding, or Manas and Buddhi, included], seven fruits, and seven guests; seven hermitages, seven (forms of) concentration, and seven (forms of) initiation. This is the description of the forest. That forest is filled with trees producing splendid flowers and fruits of five colours. The senses, says the commentator:

Are called trees, as being producers of the fruits ... pleasures and pains ...; the guests are the powers of each sense personified—they receive the fruits above described; the hermitages are the trees ... in which the guests take shelter; the seven forms of concentration are the exclusion from the self of the seven functions of the seven senses, etc., already referred to; the seven forms of initiation refer to the initiation into the higher life, by repudiating as not one’s own the actions of each member out of the group of seven.(1546) The explanation is harmless, if unsatisfactory. Says the Brâhmana, continuing his description:

That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of four colours. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of three colours, and mixed. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of two colours, and of beautiful colours. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of one colour, and fragrant. That forest is filled [instead of with seven] with two large trees producing numerous flowers and fruits of undistinguished colours [mind and understanding—the two higher senses, or theosophically, Manas and Buddhi]. There is one fire [the Self] here, connected with the Brahman,(1547) and having a good mind [or true knowledge, according to Arjuna Mishra]. And there is fuel here, (namely) the five senses [or human passions]. The seven (forms of) emancipation from them are the seven (forms of) initiation. The qualities are the fruits.... There ... the great sages receive hospitality. And when they have been worshipped and have disappeared, another forest shines forth, in which intelligence is the tree, and emancipation the fruit, and which possesses shade (in the form of) tranquillity, which depends on knowledge, which has contentment for its water, and which has the Kshetrajña(1548) within for the sun.

Now, all the above is very plain, and no Theosophist, even among the least learned, can fail to understand the allegory. And yet, we see great Orientalists making a perfect mess of it in their explanations. The “great sages” who “receive hospitality” are explained as meaning the senses, “which, having worked as unconnected with the self are finally absorbed into it.” But one fails to understand, if the senses are “unconnected” with the “Higher Self,” in what manner they can be “absorbed into it.” One would think, on the contrary, that it is just because the personal senses gravitate and strive to be connected with the impersonal Self, that the latter, which is Fire, burns the lower five and purifies thereby the higher two, “mind and understanding,” or the higher aspects of Manas(1549) and Buddhi. This is quite apparent from the text. The “great sages” disappear after having “been worshipped.” Worshipped by whom if they (the presumed senses) are “unconnected with the self”? By Mind, of course; by Manas (in this case merged in the sixth sense) which is not, and cannot be, the Brahman, the Self, or Kshetrajña—the Soul’s Spiritual Sun. Into the latter, in time, Manas itself must be absorbed. It has worshipped “great sages” and given hospitality to terrestrial wisdom; but once that “another forest shone forth” upon it, it is Intelligence (Buddhi, the seventh sense, but sixth principle) which is transformed into the Tree—that Tree whose fruit is emancipation—which finally destroys the very roots of the Ashvattha tree, the symbol of life and of its illusive joys and pleasures. And therefore, those who attain to that state of emancipation have, in the words of the above‐cited Sage, “no fear afterwards.” In this state “the end cannot be perceived because it extends on all sides.”

“There always dwell seven females there,” he goes on to say, carrying out the imagery. These females—who, according to Arjuna Mishra, are the Mahat, Ahamkâra and five Tanmâtras—have always their faces turned downwards, as they are obstacles in the way of spiritual ascension. In that same [Brahman, the Self] the seven perfect sages, together with their chiefs, ... abide, and again emerge from the same. Glory, brilliance and greatness, enlightenment, victory, perfection and power—these seven rays follow after this same sun [Kshetrajña, the Higher Self].... Those whose wishes are reduced [the unselfish]; ... whose sins [passions] are burnt up by penance, merging the self in the self,(1550) devote themselves to Brahman. Those people who understand the forest of knowledge [Brahman, or the Self], praise tranquillity. And aspiring to that forest, they are [re‐] born so as not to lose courage. Such, indeed, is this holy forest.... And understanding it, they [the sages] act (accordingly), being directed by the Kshetrajña.

No translator among the Western Orientalists has yet perceived in the foregoing allegory anything higher than mysteries connected with sacrificial ritualism, penance, or ascetic ceremonies, and Hatha Yoga. But he who understands symbolical imagery, and hears the voice of Self within Self, will see in this something far higher than mere ritualism, however often he may err in minor details of the Philosophy.

And here we must be allowed a last remark. No true Theosophist, from the most ignorant up to the most learned, ought to claim infallibility for anything he may say or write upon Occult matters. The chief point is to admit that, in many a way, in the classification of either cosmic or human principles, in addition to mistakes in the order of evolution, and especially on metaphysical questions, those of us who pretend to teach others more ignorant than ourselves—are all liable to err. Thus mistakes have been made in Isis Unveiled, in Esoteric Buddhism, in Man, in Magic: White and Black, etc., and more than one mistake is likely to be found in the present work. This cannot be helped. For a large or even a small work on such abstruse subjects to be entirely exempt from error and blunder, it would have to be written from its first to its last page by a great Adept, if not by an Avatâra. Then only should we say, “This is verily a work without sin or blemish in it!” But so long as the artist is imperfect, how can his work be perfect? “Endless is the search for truth!” Let us love it and aspire to it for its own sake, and not for the glory or benefit a minute portion of its revelation may confer on us. For who of us can presume to have the whole truth at his fingers’ ends, even upon one minor teaching of Occultism?

Our chief point in the present subject, however, has been to show that the septenary doctrine, or division of the constitution of man, was a very ancient one, and was not invented by us. This has been successfully done, for we are supported in this, consciously and unconsciously, by a number of ancient, mediæval, and modern writers. What the former said, was well said; what the latter repeated, has generally been distorted. An instance: Read the Pythagorean Fragments, and study the septenary man as given by the Rev. G. Oliver, the learned Mason, in his Pythagorean Triangle, who speaks as follows: The Theosophic Philosophy ... counted seven properties [or principles] in man—viz.: (1) The divine golden man. (2) The inward holy body from fire and light, like pure silver. (3) The elemental man. (4) The mercurial ... paradisiacal man. (5) The martial soul‐like man. (6) The venerine, ascending to the outward desire. (7) The solar man, [a witness to and] an inspector of the wonders of God [the Universe]. They had also seven fountain spirits or powers of nature.(1551) Compare this jumbled account and distribution of Western Theosophic Philosophy with the latest Theosophic explanations by the Eastern School of Theosophy, and then decide which is the more correct. Verily:

Wisdom hath builded her house, She hath hewn out her seven pillars.(1552) As to the charge that our School has not adopted the sevenfold classification of the Brâhmans, but has confused it, this is quite unjust. To begin with, the “School” is one thing, its exponents (to Europeans) quite another. The latter have first to learn the A B C of practical Eastern Occultism, before they can be made to understand correctly the tremendously abstruse classification based on the seven distinct states of Prajñâ or Consciousness; and, above all, to realize thoroughly what Prajñâ is, in Eastern metaphysics. To give a Western student that classification is to try to make him suppose that he can account for the origin of consciousness, by accounting for the process by which a certain knowledge, though only one of the states of that consciousness, came to him; in other words, it is to make him account for something he knows on this plane, by something he knows nothing about on the other planes; i.e., to lead him from the spiritual and the psychological, direct to the ontological. This is why the primary, old classification was adopted by the Theosophists—of which classifications in truth there are many.

To busy oneself, after such a tremendous number of independent witnesses and proofs have been brought before the public, with an additional enumeration from theological sources, would be quite useless. The seven capital sins and seven virtues of the Christian scheme are far less philosophical than even the seven liberal and the seven accursed sciences—or the seven arts of enchantment of the Gnostics. For one of the latter is now before the public, pregnant with danger in the present as for the future. The modern name for it is Hypnotism; used as it is by scientific and ignorant Materialists, in the general ignorance of the seven principles, it will soon become Satanism in the full acceptation of the term.

The knowledge of this nether world— Say, friend, what is it, false or true? The false, what mortal cares to know? The true, what mortal ever knew?

Whenever the question of the Origin of Man is offered seriously to an unbiassed, honest, and earnest man of Science, the answer comes invariably: “We do not know.” De Quatrefages with his agnostic attitude is one of such Anthropologists.

This does not imply that the rest of the men of Science are neither fair‐ minded nor honest, as such a remark would be questionably discreet. But it is estimated that 75 per cent. of European Scientists are Evolutionists. Are these representatives of Modern Thought all guilty of flagrant misrepresentation of the facts? No one says this—but there are a few very exceptional cases. However, the Scientists, in their anti‐clerical enthusiasm and in despair of any alternative theory to Darwinism except that of “special creation,” are unconsciously insincere in “forcing” a hypothesis the elasticity of which is inadequate, and which resents the severe strain to which it is now subjected. Insincerity on the same subject is, however, patent in ecclesiastical circles. Bishop Temple has come forward as a thorough‐going supporter of Darwinism in his Religion and Science. This clerical writer goes so far as to regard Matter—after it has received its “primal impress”—as the unaided evolver of all cosmic phenomena. This view only differs from that of Hæckel, in postulating a hypothetical Deity at “the back of beyont,” a Deity which stands entirely aloof from the interplay of forces. Such a metaphysical entity is no more the Theological God than is that of Kant. Bishop Temple’s truce with materialistic Science is, in our opinion, impolitic—apart from the fact that it involves a total rejection of the biblical cosmogony. In the presence of this display of flunkeyism before the materialism of our “learned” age, we Occultists can but smile. But how about loyalty to the Master such theological truants profess to serve—Christ, and Christendom at large?

However, we have no desire, for the present, to throw down the gauntlet to the clergy, our business being now with materialistic Science alone. The latter, in the person of its best representatives, answers to our question, “We do not know;” yet the majority of them act as though Omniscience were their heirloom, and they knew all things. For, indeed, this negative reply has not prevented the majority of Scientists from speculating on the question, each seeking to have his own special theory accepted to the exclusion of all others. Thus, from Maillet in 1748, down to Hæckel in 1870, theories on the origin of the human race have differed as much as the personalities of their inventors themselves. Buffon, Bory de St. Vincent, Lamarck, E. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Gaudry, Naudin, Wallace, Darwin, Owen, Hæckel, Filippi, Vogt, Huxley, Agassiz, etc., each has evolved a more or less scientific hypothesis of genesis. De Quatrefages arranges these theories in two principal groups—one based on a rapid, and the other on a very gradual transmutation; the former favouring a new type (man) produced by a being entirely different, the latter teaching the evolution of man by progressive differentiations.

Strangely enough, it is from the most scientific of these authorities that has emanated the most unscientific of all the theories upon the subject of the Origin of Man. This is now so evident, that the hour is rapidly approaching when the current teaching about the descent of man from an ape‐like mammal will be regarded with less respect than the formation of Adam out of clay, and of Eve out of Adam’s rib. For It is evident, especially after the most fundamental principles of Darwinism, that an organized being cannot be a descendant of another whose development is in an inverse order to its own. Consequently, in accordance with these principles, man cannot be considered as the descendant of any simian type whatever.(1553) Lucae’s argument versus the Ape‐theory, based on the different flexures of the bones constituting the axis of the skull in the cases of man and the anthropoids, is fairly discussed by Schmidt. He admits that: The ape as he grows becomes more bestial; man ... more human— and seems, indeed, to hesitate a moment before he passes on:

This flexure of the cranial axis may, therefore, still be emphasized as a human character, in contradistinction to the apes; the peculiar characteristic of an order can scarcely be elicited from it; and especially as to the doctrine of descent, this circumstance seems in no way decisive.(1554) The writer is evidently not a little disquieted by his own argument. He assures us that it upsets any possibility of the present apes having been the progenitors of mankind. But does it not also negative the bare possibility of the man and the anthropoid having had a common—though, so far, an absolutely theoretical—ancestor? Even “Natural Selection” itself is with every day more threatened. The deserters from the Darwinian camp are many, and those who were at one time its most ardent disciples are, owing to new discoveries, slowly but steadily preparing to turn over a new leaf. In the Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society for October, 1886, we may read as follows:

PHYSIOLOGICAL SELECTION.—Mr. G. J. Romanes finds certain difficulties in regarding natural selection as a theory for the origin of species, as it is rather a theory of the origin of adaptive structures. He proposes to replace it by what he calls physiological selection, or segregation of the fit. His view is based on the extreme sensitiveness of the reproductive system to small changes in the conditions of life, and he thinks that variations in the direction of greater or less sterility must frequently occur in wild species. If the variation be such that the reproductive system, while showing some degree of sterility with the parent form, continues to be fertile within the limits of the varietal form, the variation would neither be swamped by intercrossing nor die out on account of sterility. When a variation of this kind occurs, the physiological barrier must divide the species into two parts. The author, in fine, regards mutual sterility, not as one of the effects of specific differentiation, but as the cause of it.(1555)

An attempt is made to show the above to be a complement of, and sequence to, the Darwinian theory. This is a clumsy attempt at best. The public will soon be asked to believe that Mr. C. Dixon’s Evolution without Natural Selection is also Darwinism—expanded, as the author certainly claims it to be! But it is like splitting the body of a man into three pieces, and then maintaining that each piece is the identical man he was before, only—expanded. Yet the author states: Let it be clearly understood that not one single syllable in the foregoing pages has been written antagonistic to Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. All I have done is to explain certain phenomena ... the more one studies Darwin’s works, the more one is convinced of the truth of his hypothesis [! !].(1556) And before this, he alludes to: The overwhelming array of facts which Darwin gave in support of his hypothesis, and which triumphantly carried the theory of Natural Selection over all obstacles and objections.(1557) This does not prevent the learned author, however, from upsetting this theory as “triumphantly,” and from even openly calling his work Evolution without Natural Selection, or, in so many words, with Darwin’s fundamental idea knocked to atoms in it.

As to Natural Selection itself, the utmost misconception prevails among many present‐day thinkers, who tacitly accept the conclusions of Darwinism. It is, for instance, a mere device of rhetoric to credit Natural Selection with the power of originating species. Natural Selection is no entity; it is merely a convenient phrase for describing the mode in which the survival of the fit and the elimination of the unfit among organisms are brought about by the Struggle for Existence. Every group of organisms tends to multiply beyond the means of subsistence; the constant battle for life—the “struggle to obtain enough to eat and to escape being eaten” added to the environmental conditions—necessitates a perpetual weeding out of the unfit. The élite of any stock, thus sorted out, propagate the species and transmit their organic characteristics to their descendants. All useful variations are thus perpetuated, and a progressive improvement is effected. But Natural Selection—in the writer’s humble opinion, “Selection, as a Power”—is in reality a pure myth; especially when it is resorted to as an explanation of the Origin of Species. It is merely a representative term expressive of the manner in which “useful variations” are stereotyped when produced. Of itself, “it” can produce—nothing, and only operates on the rough material presented to “it.” The real question at issue is: What cause—combined with other secondary causes—produces the “variations” in the organisms themselves? Many of these secondary causes are purely physical—climatic, dietary, etc. Very well.

But beyond the secondary aspects of organic evolution, a deeper principle has to be sought for. The Materialist’s “spontaneous variations,” and “accidental divergencies” are self‐contradictory terms in a universe of “Matter, Force and Necessity.” Mere variability of type, apart from the supervisory presence of a quasi‐intelligent impulse, is powerless to account for the stupendous complexities and marvels of the human body, for instance. The insufficiency of the Darwinists’ mechanical theory has been exposed at length by Dr. Von Hartmann among other purely negative thinkers. It is an abuse of the reader’s intelligence to write, as does Hæckel, of blind indifferent cells, “arranging themselves into organs.” The Esoteric solution of the origin of animal species is given elsewhere.

Those purely secondary causes of differentiation, grouped under the head of sexual selection, natural selection, climate, isolation, etc., mislead the Western Evolutionist and offer no real explanation whatever of the “whence” of the “ancestral types” which served as the starting point for physical development. The truth is that the differentiating “causes” known to Modern Science only come into operation after the physicalization of the primeval animal root‐types out of the astral. Darwinism only meets Evolution at its midway point—that is to say, when astral evolution has given place to the play of the ordinary physical forces with which our present senses acquaint us. But even here the Darwinian Theory, even with the “expansions” recently attempted, is inadequate to meet the facts of the case. The cause underlying physiological variation in species—one to which all other laws are subordinate and secondary—is a sub‐conscious intelligence pervading matter, ultimately traceable to a reflection of the Divine and Dhyân‐Chohanic wisdom.(1558) A not altogether dissimilar conclusion has been arrived at by so well known a thinker as Ed. von Hartmann, who, despairing of the efficacy of unaided Natural Selection, regards Evolution as being intelligently guided by the Unconscious—the Cosmic Logos of Occultism. But the latter acts only mediately through Fohat, or Dhyân‐Chohanic energy, and not quite in the direct manner which the great pessimist describes.

It is this divergence among men of Science, their mutual, and often their self‐contradictions, that gives the writer of the present volumes the courage to bring to light other and older teachings—if only as hypotheses for future scientific appreciation. So evident, even to the humble recorder of this archaic teaching, though not in any way very learned in Modern Sciences, are the scientific fallacies and gaps, that she has determined to touch upon all these, in order to place the two teachings on parallel lines. For Occultism, it is a question of self‐defence, and nothing more.

So far, The Secret Doctrine has concerned itself with metaphysics, pure and simple. It has now landed on Earth, and finds itself within the domain of physical Science and practical Anthropology, or those branches of study which materialistic Naturalists claim as their rightful domain, coolly asserting, furthermore, that the higher and more perfect the working of the Soul, the more amenable it is to the analysis and explanations of the Zoologist and the Physiologist alone.(1559) This stupendous pretension comes from one, who, to prove his pithecoid descent, has not hesitated to include the Lemuridæ among the ancestors of man; these have been promoted by him to the rank of Prosimiæ, indeciduate mammals, to which he very incorrectly contributes a decidua and a discoidal placenta.(1560) For this Hæckel was taken severely to task by de Quatrefages, and criticised by his own brother Materialists and Agnostics—Virchow and du Bois‐Reymond, as great, if not greater authorities than himself.(1561)

Such opposition notwithstanding, Hæckel’s wild theories are, to this day, still called by some scientific and logical. The mysterious nature of Consciousness, of Soul, of Spirit in Man being now explained as a mere advance on the functions of the protoplasmic molecules of the lively Protista, and the gradual evolution and growth of human mind and “social instincts” toward civilization having to be traced back to their origin in the civilization of ants, bees, and other creatures—the chances left for an impartial hearing of the doctrines of Archaic Wisdom are few indeed. The educated profane are told that: The social instincts of the lower animals have, of late, been regarded for various reasons as clearly the origin of morals, even of those of man [?], ... —and that our divine consciousness, our soul, intellect, and aspirations have worked their “way up from the lower stages of the simple cell‐soul” of the gelatinous Bathybius—(1562) and they seem to believe it. For such men, the Metaphysics of Occultism must produce the effect that our grandest oratorios produce on the Chinaman—sounds that jar upon their nerves.

Yet, are our Esoteric teachings about “Angels,” the first three pre‐animal human Races, and the downfall of the Fourth, on a lower level of fiction and self‐delusion than the Hæckelian “plastidular,” or the inorganic “molecular souls of the Protista”? Between the evolution of the spiritual nature of man from the above amœbian souls, and the alleged development of his physical frame from the protoplastic dweller in the ocean slime, there is an abyss which will not easily be crossed by any man in the full possession of his intellectual faculties. Physical Evolution, as Modern Science teaches it, is a subject for open controversy; spiritual and moral development on the same lines is the insane dream of a crass Materialism. Furthermore, past as well as present daily experience teaches that no truth has ever been accepted by learned bodies unless it has dovetailed with the habitually preconceived ideas of their professors. “The crown of the innovator is a crown of thorns”—said Geoffroy St. Hilaire. It is only that which fits in with popular hobbies and accepted notions that as a general rule gains ground. Hence the triumph of the Hæckelian ideas, notwithstanding that they are proclaimed by Virchow, du Bois‐Reymond, and others as the “testimonium paupertatis of Natural Science.”

Diametrically opposed as may be the materialism of the German Evolutionists to the spiritual conceptions of Esoteric Philosophy, radically inconsistent as is their accepted anthropological system with the real facts of Nature—the pseudo‐idealistic bias now colouring English thought is almost more pernicious. The pure Materialistic Doctrine admits of a direct refutation and an appeal to the logic of facts. The Idealism of the present day, not only contrives to absorb, on the one hand, the basic negations of Atheism, but lands its votaries in a tangle of unreality, which culminates in a practical Nihilism. Argument with such writers is almost out of the question. Idealists, therefore, will be still more antagonistic than even the Materialists to the Occult teachings now given. But as no worse fate can befall the exponents of Esoteric Anthropogenesis at the hands of their foes than being openly called by their old and time‐honoured names of “lunatics” and “ignoramuses,” the present archaic theories may be safely added to the many modern speculations, and bide their time for their full or even partial recognition. Only, as the very existence of these archaic theories will probably be denied, we have to give our best proofs and stand by them to the bitter end.

In our race and generation the one “temple in the universe” is in rare cases—within us; but our body and mind have been too defiled by both “sin” and “science” to be outwardly anything better now than a fane of iniquity and error. And here our mutual position—that of Occultism and Modern Science—ought to be once for all defined.

We, Theosophists, are willing to bow before such men of learning as the late Prof. Balfour Stewart, Messrs. Crookes, de Quatrefages, Wallace, Agassiz, Butlerof, and others, though, from the stand‐point of the Esoteric Philosophy, we may not agree with all they say. But nothing will make us consent to even a show of respect for the opinions of such other men of Science as Hæckel, Carl Vogt, or Ludwig Büchner, in Germany, or even Mr. Huxley and his co‐thinkers in Materialism in England—the colossal erudition of the first named, notwithstanding. Such men are simply the intellectual and moral murderers of future generations; especially Hæckel, whose crass Materialism often rises to the height of idiotic naivetés in his reasonings. One has but to read his Pedigree of Man, and Other Essays (Aveling’s Translation) to feel a desire that, in the words of Job, his remembrance should perish from the Earth, and that he “shall have no name in the streets.” Hear the creator of the mythical Sozura deriding the idea of the origin of the human race “as a supernatural [?] phenomenon,” as one—

That could not result from simple mechanical causes, from physical and chemical forces, but requires the direct intervention of a creative personality.... Now the central point of Darwin’s teaching ... lies in this, that it demonstrates the simplest mechanical causes, purely physico‐chemical phenomena of nature, as wholly sufficient to explain the highest and most difficult problems. Darwin puts in the place of a conscious creative force, building and arranging the organic bodies of animals and plants on a designed plan, a series of natural forces working blindly (as we say) without aim, without design. In place of an arbitrary act of operation, we have a necessary law of Evolution.... [So had Manu and Kapila, and, at the same time, guiding, conscious and intelligent Powers]. Darwin very wisely ... had put on one side the question as to the first appearance of life. But very soon that consequence, so full of meaning, so wide‐reaching, was openly discussed by able and brave scientific men, such as Huxley, Carl Vogt, Ludwig Büchner. A mechanical origin of the earliest living form was held as the necessary sequence to Darwin’s teaching ... we are at present only concerned with a single consequence of the theory, the natural origin of the human race through almighty Evolution.(1563)

To this, unabashed by such a scientific farrago, Occultism replies: In the course of Evolution, when the physical triumphed over the spiritual and mental evolution, and nearly crushed it under its weight, the great gift of Kriyâshakti remained the heirloom of only a few elect men in every age. Spirit strove vainly to manifest itself in its fulness in purely organic forms (as has been explained in Part I of this Volume), and the faculty, which had been a natural attribute in the early humanity of the Third Race, became one of the class regarded as simply phenomenal by Spiritualists and Occultists, and as scientifically impossible by Materialists.

In our modern day the mere assertion that there exists a power which can create human forms—ready‐made Sheaths within which can incarnate the conscious Monads or Nirmânakâyas of past Manvantaras—is, of course, absurd, ridiculous! That which is regarded as quite natural, on the other hand, is the production of a Frankenstein’s monster, plus moral consciousness, religious aspirations, genius, and a feeling of his own immortal nature within himself—by “physico‐chemical forces,” guided by blind “Almighty Evolution.” As to the origin of that man, not ex nihilo, cemented by a little red clay, but from a living divine Entity consolidating the Astral Body with surrounding materials—such a conception is too absurd even to be mentioned, in the opinion of the Materialists. Nevertheless, Occultists and Theosophists are ready to have their claims and theories compared as to their intrinsic value and probability with those of the modern Evolutionists—however unscientific and superstitious these theories may at the first glance appear. Hence the Esoteric teaching is absolutely opposed to the Darwinian evolution, as applied to man, and partially so with regard to other species.

It would be interesting to obtain a glimpse of the mental representation of Evolution in the scientific brain of a Materialist. What is Evolution? If asked to define the full and complete meaning of the term, neither Huxley nor Hæckel will be able to do so any better than does Webster: The act of unfolding; the process of growth, development; as the evolution of a flower from a bud, or an animal from the egg.

Yet the bud must be traced through its parent‐plant to the seed, and the egg to the animal or bird that laid it; or at any rate to the speck of protoplasm from which it expanded and grew. And both the seed and the speck must have the latent potentialities in them for the reproduction and gradual development, the unfolding of the thousand and one forms or phases of evolution, through which they must pass before the flower or the animal is fully developed? Hence, the future plan—if not a design—must be there. Moreover, that seed has to be traced, and its nature ascertained. Have the Darwinians been successful in this? Or will the Moneron be cast in our teeth? But this atom of the Watery Abysses is not homogeneous matter; and there must be something or somebody that had moulded and cast it into being.

Here Science is once more silent. But since there is no self‐consciousness as yet in speck, seed, or germ, according to both Materialists and Psychologists of the modern school—Occultists agreeing in this for once with their natural enemies—what is it that guides the force or forces so unerringly in this process of Evolution? “Blind force”? As well call “blind” the brain which evolved in Hæckel his Pedigree of Man and other lucubrations. We can easily conceive that the said brain lacks an important centre or two; for whoever knows anything of the anatomy of the human, or even of any animal, body, and is still an Atheist and a Materialist, must be “hopelessly insane,” according to Lord Herbert, who rightly sees in the frame of man’s body and the coherence of its parts, something so strange and paradoxical that he holds it to be the “greatest miracle of nature.” Blind forces and “no design” in anything under the Sun! When no sane man of Science would hesitate to say that, even from the little he knows and has hitherto discovered of the forces at work in Kosmos, he sees very plainly that every part, every speck and atom, are in harmony with their fellow atoms, and these with the whole, each having its distinct mission throughout the life‐cycle. But, fortunately,

the greatest, the most eminent Thinkers and Scientists of the day are now beginning to rise against this “Pedigree,” and even against Darwin’s Natural Selection theory, though its author had never, probably, contemplated such widely stretched conclusions. The Russian scientist N. T. Danilevsky, in his remarkable work, Darwinism, a Critical Investigation of the Theory, upsets such Darwinism completely and without appeal, and so does de Quatrefages in his last work. Our readers are recommended to examine the learned paper by Dr. Bourges, a member of the Paris Anthropological Society, read by its author at a recent meeting of that society and called “Evolutionary Psychology; the Evolution of Spirit, etc.” In it he completely reconciles the two teachings—namely of physical and spiritual evolution. He explains the origin of the variety of organic forms—which are made to fit their environments with such evidently intelligent design—by the existence and the mutual help and interaction of two Principles in manifested Nature, the inner conscious Principle adapting itself to physical Nature and the innate potentialities of the latter. Thus the French scientist has to return to our old friend Archæus, or the Life‐Principle—without naming it—as Dr. Richardson has done in England in his Nerve‐Force. The same idea was recently developed in Germany by Baron Hellenbach, in his remarkable work, _Individuality in the Light of Biology

We find the same conclusions arrived at in yet another excellent volume by a deep thinking Russian, N. N. Strachof, who says in his Fundamental Conceptions of Psychology and Physiology: The most clear, as the most familiar, type of development may be found in our own mental or physical evolution, which has served others as a model to follow.... If organisms are entities ... then it is only just to conclude and assert that the organic life strives to beget psychic life; but it would be still more correct and in accordance with the spirit of these two categories of evolution to say, that the true cause of organic life is the tendency of spirit to manifest in substantial forms, to clothe itself in substantial reality. It is the highest form which contains the complete explanation of the lowest, never the reverse. This is admitting, as Bourges does in the Mémoire above mentioned, the identity of this mysterious, integrally acting and organizing Principle with the Self‐Conscious and Inner Subject, which we call the Ego and the world at large the Soul. Thus all the best Scientists and Thinkers are gradually approaching the Occultists in their general conclusions.

But such metaphysically inclined men of Science are out of court and will hardly be listened to. Schiller, in his magnificent poem on the Veil of Isis, makes the mortal youth who dared to lift the impenetrable covering fall down dead, after beholding the naked Truth in the face of the stern Goddess. Have some of our Darwinians, so tenderly united in natural selection and affinity, also gazed at the Saïtic Mother bereft of her veils? One might almost suspect it after reading their theories. Their great intellects must have collapsed while gauging too closely the uncovered face of Nature, leaving only the grey matter and ganglia in their brains to respond to “blind” physico‐chemical forces. At any rate Shakspere’s lines apply admirably to our modern Evolutionist, who symbolizes that “proud man,” who— Drest in a little brief authority; Most ignorant of what he’s most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, As make the angels weep!(1564)

These have nought to do with the “Angels.” Their only concern is with the human ancestor, the pithecoid Noah who gave birth to three sons—the tailed Cynocephalus, the tailless Ape, and the “arboreal” Palæolithic man. On this point, they will not be contradicted. Every doubt expressed is immediately set down as an attempt to cripple scientific enquiry. The insuperable difficulty at the very foundation of the Evolution theory, namely, that no Darwinian is able to give even an approximate definition of the period at which, and the form in which, the first man appeared, is smoothed down to a trifling impediment, which is “really of no account.” Every branch of knowledge is in the same predicament, we are informed. The Chemist bases his most abstruse calculations simply Upon a hypothesis of atoms and molecules, of which not one has ever been seen, isolated, weighed, or defined. The electrician speaks of magnetic fluids which have never tangibly revealed themselves. No definite origin can be assigned either to molecules or magnetism. Science cannot and does not pretend to any knowledge of the beginnings of law, matter, or life.(1565) And, withal, to reject a scientific hypothesis, however absurd, is to commit the one unpardonable sin! We risk it.

The question of questions for mankind—the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other—is the ascertainment of the place which man occupies in Nature, and of his relations to the universe of things.(1566) The world stands divided this day and hesitates between Divine Progenitors—be they Adam and Eve or the Lunar Pitris—and Bathybius Hæckelii, the gelatinous hermit of the briny deep. Having explained the Occult theory, it may now be compared with that of Modern Materialism. The reader is invited to choose between the two after having judged them on their respective merits. We may derive some consolation for the rejection of our Divine Ancestors, in finding that the Hæckelian speculations receive no better treatment at the hands of strictly exact Science than do our own. Hæckel’s Phylogenesis is no less laughed at by the foes of his fantastic evolution, by other and greater Scientists, than our primeval Races will be. As du Bois‐Reymond puts it, we may believe him easily when he says that the Ancestral trees of our race sketched in the Schöpfungsgeschichte are of about as much value as are the pedigrees of the Homeric heroes in the eyes of the historical critic.

This settled, everyone will see that one hypothesis is as good as another. And as we find Hæckel himself confessing that neither Geology in its history of the past nor the ancestral history of organisms will ever “rise to the position of a real ‘exact’ science,”(1567) a large margin is thus left to Occult Science to make its annotations and lodge its protests. The world is left to choose between the teachings of Paracelsus, the “father of modern chemistry,” and those of Hæckel, the “father of the mythical Sozura.” We demand no more. Without presuming to take part in the quarrel of such very learned Naturalists as du Bois‐Reymond and Hæckel à propos of our blood relationship to Those ancestors [of ours] which have led up from the unicellular classes, Vermes, Acrania, Pisces, Amphibia, Reptilia to the Aves —we may put a brief question or two, for the information of our readers. Availing ourselves of the opportunity, and bearing in mind Darwin’s theories of Natural Selection, etc., we would ask Science—with regard to the origin of the human and animal species—which theory of Evolution of the two herewith described is the more scientific, or the more unscientific, if so preferred. (1) Is it that of an Evolution which starts from the beginning with sexual propagation?

(2) Or that teaching which shows the gradual development of organs; their solidification, and the procreation of each species, at first by simple easy separation from one into two or even several individuals; then a fresh development—the first step to a species of separate distinct sexes—the hermaphrodite condition; then again, a kind of parthenogenesis, “virginal reproduction,” when the egg‐cells are formed within the body, issuing from it in atomic emanations and becoming matured outside of it; until, finally, after a definite separation into sexes, the human beings begin procreating through sexual connection? Of these two, the first “theory”—or rather, a “revealed fact”—is enunciated by all the exoteric Bibles, except the Purânas, preëminently by the Jewish Cosmogony. The second is that which is taught by the Occult Philosophy, as has been explained. An answer is found to our question in a volume just published by Mr. Samuel Laing—the best lay exponent of Modern Science.(1568) In Chapter viii of his latest work, A Modern Zoroastrian, the author begins by twitting “all ancient religions and philosophies” for “assuming a male and female principle for their gods.” At first sight, he says:

This distinction of sex appears as fundamental as that of plant and animal.... The Spirit of God brooding over Chaos and producing the world is only a later edition, revised according to monotheistic ideas, of the far older Chaldean legend which describes the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos by the coöperation of great gods, male and female.... Thus, in the orthodox Christian creed we are taught to repeat “begotten, not made,” a phrase which is absolute nonsense, or non‐sense—that is, an instance of using words like counterfeit notes, which have no solid value of an idea behind them. For “begotten” is a very definite term, which implies the conjunction of two opposite sexes to produce a new individual.(1569)

However we may agree with the learned author as to the inadvisability of using wrong words, and the terrible anthropomorphic and phallic element in the old Scriptures—especially in the orthodox Christian Bible—nevertheless, there may be two extenuating circumstances in the case. Firstly, all these “ancient philosophies” and “modern religions” are—as has been sufficiently shown in these two Volumes—an exoteric veil thrown over the face of Esoteric Truth; and—as the direct result of this—they are allegorical, i.e., mythological in form; but still they are immensely more philosophical in essence than any of the new scientific theories, so‐called. Secondly, from the Orphic Theogony down to Ezra’s last remodelling of the Pentateuch, every old Scripture, having in its origin borrowed its facts from the East, has been subjected to constant alterations by friend and foe, until of the original version there has remained but the name, a dead shell from which the spirit had been gradually eliminated. This alone ought to show that no religious work now extant can be understood without the help of the Archaic Wisdom, the primitive foundation on which they were all built.

But to return to the direct answer expected from Science to our direct question. It is given by the same author, when, following his train of thought on the unscientific euhemerization of the powers of Nature in ancient creeds, he pronounces a condemnatory verdict upon them in the following terms: Science, however, makes sad havoc with this impression of sexual generation being the original and only mode of reproduction, and the microscope and dissecting knife of the naturalist introduce us to new and altogether unsuspected [?] worlds of life. So little “unsuspected,” indeed, that the original a‐sexual “modes of reproduction” must have been known to the ancient Hindûs, at any rate—Mr. Laing’s assertion to the contrary notwithstanding. In view of the statement in the Vishnu Purâna, quoted by us elsewhere, that Daksha “established sexual intercourse as the means of multiplication,” only after a series of other “modes,” which are all enumerated therein,(1570) it becomes difficult to deny the fact. This assertion, moreover, is found, note well, in an exoteric work. Next, Mr. Laing goes on to tell us that: By far the larger proportion of living forms, in number at any rate if not in size, have come into existence, without the aid of sexual propagation.

He then instances Hæckel’s Moneron, “multiplying by self‐division.” The next stage the author shows in the nucleated cell, “which does exactly the same thing.” The following stage is that in Which the organism does not divide into two equal parts, but a small portion of it swells out ... and finally parts company and starts on a separate existence, which grows to the size of the parent by its inherent faculty of manufacturing fresh protoplasm from surrounding inorganic materials.(1571) This is followed by a many‐celled organism which is formed by

Germ‐buds reduced to spores, or single cells, which are emitted from the parent.... We are now at the threshold of that system of sexual propagation, which has [now] become the rule in all the higher families of animals.... This organism, having advantages in the struggle for life, established itself permanently ... and special organs developed to meet the altered conditions. Thus at length the distinction would be firmly established of a female organ or ovary containing the egg or primitive cell from which the new being was to be developed, and a male organ supplying the fertilizing spore or cell.... This is confirmed by a study of embryology, which shows that in the human and higher animal species the distinction of sex is not developed until a considerable progress has been made in the growth of the embryo.... In the great majority of plants, and in some of the lower families of animals ... the male and female organs are developed within the same being, and they are what is called hermaphrodites. Another transition form is Parthenogenesis, or virginal reproduction, in which germ‐cells, apparently similar in all respects to egg‐cells, develop themselves into new individuals, without any fructifying element.(1572)

Of all this we are as perfectly well aware as we are aware that the above was never applied by the very learned English popularizer of Huxley‐ Hæckelian theories to the genus homo. He limits this to specks of protoplasm, plants, bees, snails, and so on. But if he would be true to the theory of descent, he must be as true to ontogenesis, in which the fundamental biogenetic law, we are told, runs as follows: The development of the embryo (ontogeny) is a condensed and abbreviated repetition of the evolution of the race (phylogeny). This repetition is the more complete, the more the true original order of evolution (palingenesis) has been retained by continual heredity. On the other hand, this repetition is the less complete, the more by varying adaptations the later spurious development (cænogenesis) has obtained.(1573)

This shows us that every living creature and thing on Earth, including man, evolved from one common primal form. Physical man must have passed through the same stages of the evolutionary process in the various modes of procreation as other animals have done; he must have divided himself; then, hermaphrodite, have given birth parthenogenetically (on the immaculate principle) to his young ones; the next stage would be the oviparous—at first “without any fructifying element,” then “with the help of the fertilitary spore”; and only after the final and definite evolution of both sexes, would he become a distinct “male and female,” when reproduction through sexual union would grow into universal law. So far, all this is scientifically proven. There remains but one thing to be ascertained; viz., the plain and comprehensively described processes of such ante‐sexual reproduction. This is done in the Occult books, a slight outline of which has been attempted by the writer in Part I of this Volume.

Either this, or—man is a distinct being. Occult Philosophy may call him that, because of his distinctly dual nature. Science cannot do so, once that it rejects every interference save mechanical laws, and admits of no principle outside Matter. The former—Archaic Science—allows the human physical frame to have passed through every form, from the lowest to the very highest, its present one, or from the simple to the complex—to use the accepted terms. But it claims that in this Cycle, the Fourth, the frame having already existed among the types and models of Nature from the preceding Rounds—it was quite ready for man from the beginning of this Round.(1574) The Monad had but to step into the Astral Body of the Progenitors, in order that the work of physical consolidation should begin around the shadowy prototype.(1575)

What would Science say to this? It would answer, of course, that as man appeared on Earth as the latest of the mammalians, he had no need, any more than these mammals, to pass through the primitive stages of procreation as above described. His mode of procreation was already established on Earth when he appeared. In this case, we may reply: Since to this day not the remotest sign of a link between man and the animal has yet been found, then (if the Occult Doctrine is to be repudiated) he must have sprung miraculously in Nature, like a fully armed Minerva from Jupiter’s brain; and in such case the Bible is right, along with other national “revelations.” Hence the scientific scorn, so freely lavished by the author of A Modern Zoroastrian upon ancient philosophies and exoteric creeds, becomes premature and uncalled for. Nor would the sudden discovery of a “missing‐link”‐like fossil mend matters at all. For neither one such solitary specimen nor the scientific inductions therefrom, could insure its being the long‐sought‐for relic, i.e., that of an undeveloped, still a once‐speaking, Man. Something more would be required as a final proof. Besides this, even Genesis takes up man, her Adam of dust, only where the Secret Doctrine leaves her “Sons of God and Wisdom” and picks up the physical man of the Third Race. Eve is not “begotten,” but is extracted out of Adam in the manner of “Amœba A,” contracting in the middle and splitting into Amœba B—by division.(1576)

Nor has human speech developed from the various animal sounds. Hæckel’s theory that “speech arose gradually from a few simple, crude animal sounds,” as such “speech still remains amongst a few races of lowest rank,”(1577) is altogether unsound, as argued by Professor Max Müller, among others. He contends that no plausible explanation has yet been given as to how the “roots” of language came into existence. A human brain is necessary for human speech. And figures relating to the size of the respective brains of man and ape show how deep is the gulf which separates the two. Vogt says that the brain of the largest ape, the gorilla, measures no more than 30·51 cubic inches; while the average brains of the flat‐headed Australian natives—the lowest now of the human races—amount to 99·35 cubic inches! Figures are awkward witnesses and cannot lie. Therefore, as truly observed by Dr. F. Pfaff, whose premises are as sound and correct as his biblical conclusions are silly: The brain of the apes most like man does not amount to quite a third of the brain of the lowest races of men: it is not half the size of the brain of a new‐born child.(1578)

From the foregoing it is thus very easy to perceive that in order to prove the Huxley‐Hæckelian theories of the descent of man, it is not one, but a great number of “missing links”—a true ladder of progressive evolutionary steps—that would have to be first found and then presented by Science to thinking and reasoning humanity, before it would abandon belief in Gods and the immortal Soul for the worship of quadrumanic ancestors. Mere myths are now greeted as “axiomatic truths.” Even Alfred Russel Wallace maintains with Hæckel that primitive man was a speechless ape‐creature. To this Prof. Joly answers: Man never was, in my opinion, this pithecanthropus alalus whose portrait Hæckel has drawn as if he had seen and known him, whose singular and completely hypothetical genealogy he has even given, from the mere mass of living protoplasm to the man endowed with speech and a civilization analogous to that of the Australians and Papuans.(1579)

Hæckel, among other things, often comes into direct conflict with the “science of languages.” In the course of his attack on Evolutionism(1580) Prof. Max Müller stigmatized the Darwinian theory as “vulnerable at the beginning and at the end.” The fact is, that only the partial truth of many of the secondary “laws” of Darwinism is beyond question—M. de Quatrefages evidently accepting natural selection, the struggle for existence, and transformation within species, as proven not once and for ever, but only pro tempore. But it may not be amiss, perhaps, to condense the linguistic case against the “ape ancestor” theory: Languages have their phases of growth, etc., like all else in Nature. It is almost certain that the great linguistic families pass through three stages. (1) All words are roots and are merely placed in juxtaposition (Radical languages). (2) One root defines the other, and becomes merely a determinative element (Agglutinative). (3) The determinative element (the determinating meaning of which has long lapsed) unites into a whole with the formative element (Inflected). The problem then is: Whence these roots? Prof. Max Müller argues that the existence of these ready‐made materials of speech is a proof that man cannot be the crown of a long organic series. This potentiality of forming roots is the great crux which Materialists almost invariably avoid.

Von Hartmann explains it as a manifestation of the “Unconscious,” and admits its cogency versus mechanical Atheism. Hartmann is a fair representative of the Metaphysician and Idealist of the present age. The argument has never been met by the non‐pantheistic Evolutionists. To say with Schmidt: “Forsooth we are to halt before the origin of language!”—is an avowal of dogmatism and of speedy defeat.(1581) We respect those men of Science who, wise in their generation, say: The Prehistoric Past being utterly beyond our powers of direct observation, we are too honest, too devoted to the truth—or what we regard as truth—to speculate upon the unknown, giving out our unproven theories along with facts absolutely established in Modern Science. The borderland of [metaphysical] knowledge is, therefore, best left to time, which is the best test as to truth.(1582)

This is a wise and an honest sentence in the mouth of a Materialist. But when a Hæckel, after just saying that “historical events of past time,” having “occurred many millions of years ago,(1583) ... are for ever removed from direct observation,” and that neither Geology nor Phylogeny(1584) can or will “rise to the position of a real ‘exact’ science,” then insists on the development of all organisms—“from the lowest vertebrate to the highest, from amphioxus to man”—we ask for a weightier proof than he can give. Mere “empirical sources of knowledge,” so extolled by the author of Anthropogeny—when he has to be satisfied with the qualification for his own views—are not competent to settle problems lying beyond their domain; nor is it the province of exact Science to place any reliance on them.(1585) If “empirical”—and Hæckel himself declares so repeatedly—then they are no better, nor any more reliable, in the sight of exact research, when extended into the remote past, than are our Occult teachings of the East, both having to be placed on the same level. Nor are his phylogenetic and palingenetic speculations treated any more favourably by the real Scientists, than are our cyclic repetitions of the evolution of the great in the minor races, and the original order of Evolution. For the province of exact, real

Science, materialistic though it be, is to carefully avoid anything like guess‐ work, speculation which cannot be verified; in short, all suppressio veri and all suggestio falsi. The business of the men of exact Science is to observe, each in his chosen department, the phenomena of Nature; to record, tabulate, compare and classify the facts, down to the smallest minutiæ which are presented to the observation of the senses with the help of all the exquisite mechanism that modern invention supplies, not by the aid of metaphysical flights of fancy. All that he has a legitimate right to do, is to correct by the assistance of physical instruments the defects or illusions of his own coarser vision, auditory powers, and other senses. He has no right to trespass on the grounds of Metaphysics and Psychology. His duty is to verify and to rectify all the facts that fall under his direct observation; to profit by the experiences and mistakes of the Past in endeavouring to trace the working of a certain concatenation of cause and effect, which—but only by its constant and unvarying repetition—may be called a Law. This it is which a man of Science is expected to do, if he would become a teacher of men and remain true to his original programme of natural or physical Sciences.

Any side path from this royal road becomes speculation.

Instead of keeping to this, what does many a so‐called man of Science do in these days? He rushes into the domain of pure Metaphysics, while deriding them. He delights in rash conclusions and calls them “a deductive law from the inductive law” of a theory based upon and drawn out of the depths of his own consciousness—that consciousness being perverted by, and honeycombed with, one‐sided Materialism. He attempts to explain the “origin” of things, which are yet embosomed only in his own conceptions. He attacks spiritual beliefs and religious traditions millenniums old, and denounces everything, save his own hobbies, as superstition. He suggests theories of the Universe, a cosmogony developed by blind, mechanical forces of Nature alone, far more miraculous and impossible than even one based upon the assumption of fiat lux ex nihilo—and tries to astonish the world by his wild theory; and this theory, being known to emanate from a scientific brain, is taken, on blind faith, as very scientific and as the outcome of Science.