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Title: The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria


Author: W. Scott-Elliot



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THE STORY OF ATLANTIS & THE LOST LEMURIA

by

W. SCOTT-ELLIOT

With Six Maps







The Theosophical Publishing House Ltd
68 Great Russell Street
London, W.C.2

THE STORY OF ATLANTIS _first printed_ 1896
THE LOST LEMURIA _first printed_ 1904




CONTENTS


THE STORY OF ATLANTIS

THE LOST LEMURIA

MAPS




THE STORY OF ATLANTIS




PREFACE.


For readers unacquainted with the progress that has been made in
recent years by earnest students of occultism attached to the
Theosophical Society, the significance of the statement embodied in
the following pages would be misapprehended without some preliminary
explanation. Historical research has depended for western civilisation
hitherto, on written records of one kind or another. When literary
memoranda have fallen short, stone monuments have sometimes been
available, and fossil remains have given us a few unequivocal, though
inarticulate assurances concerning the antiquity of the human race;
but modern culture has lost sight of or has overlooked possibilities
connected with the investigation of past events, which are independent
of fallible evidence transmitted to us by ancient writers. The world
at large is thus at present so imperfectly alive to the resources of
human faculty, that by most people as yet, the very existence, even as
a potentiality, of psychic powers, which some of us all the while are
consciously exercising every day, is scornfully denied and derided.
The situation is sadly ludicrous from the point of view of those who
appreciate the prospects of evolution, because mankind is thus
wilfully holding at arm's length, the knowledge that is essential to
its own ulterior progress. The maximum cultivation of which the human
intellect is susceptible while it denies itself all the resources of
its higher spiritual consciousness, can never be more than a
preparatory process as compared with that which may set in when the
faculties are sufficiently enlarged to enter into conscious
relationship with the super-physical planes or aspects of Nature.

For anyone who will have the patience to study the published results
of psychic investigation during the last fifty years, the reality of
clairvoyance as an occasional phenomenon of human intelligence must
establish itself on an immovable foundation. For those who, without
being occultists--students that is to say of Nature's loftier aspects,
in a position to obtain better teaching than that which any written
books can give--for those who merely avail themselves of recorded
evidence, a declaration on the part of others of a disbelief in the
possibility of clairvoyance, is on a level with the proverbial
African's disbelief in ice. But the experiences of clairvoyance that
have accumulated on the hands of those who have studied it in
connection with mesmerism, do no more than prove the existence in
human nature of a capacity for cognizing physical phenomena distant
either in space or time, in some way which has nothing to do with the
physical senses. Those who have studied the mysteries of clairvoyance
in connection with theosophic teaching have been enabled to realize
that the ultimate resources of that faculty range as far beyond its
humbler manifestations, dealt with by unassisted enquirers, as the
resources of the higher mathematics exceed those of the abacus.
Clairvoyance, indeed, is of many kinds, all of which fall easily into
their places when we appreciate the manner in which human
consciousness functions on different planes of Nature. The faculty of
reading the pages of a closed book, or of discerning objects
blindfold, or at a distance from the observer, is quite a different
faculty from that employed on the cognition of past events. That last
is the kind of which it is necessary to say something here, in order
that the true character of the present treatise on Atlantis may be
understood, but I allude to the others merely that the explanation I
have to give may not be mistaken for a complete theory of clairvoyance
in all its varieties.

We may best be helped to a comprehension of clairvoyance as related to
past events, by considering in the first instance the phenomena of
memory. The theory of memory which relates it to an imaginary
rearrangement of physical molecules of brain matter, going on at every
instant of our lives, is one that presents itself as plausible to no
one who can ascend one degree above the thinking level of the
uncompromising atheistical materialist. To every one who accepts, as
even a reasonable hypothesis, the idea that a man is something more
than a carcase in a state of animation, it must be a reasonable
hypothesis that memory has to do with that principle in man which is
super-physical. His memory in short, is a function of some other than
the physical plane. The pictures of memory are imprinted, it is clear,
on some non-physical medium, and are accessible to the embodied
thinker in ordinary cases by virtue of some effort he makes in as
much unconsciousness as to its precise character, as he is unconscious
of the brain impulse which actuates the muscles of his heart. The
events with which he has had to do in the past are photographed by
Nature on some imperishable page of super-physical matter, and by
making an appropriate interior effort, he is capable of bringing them
again, when he requires them, within the area of some interior sense
which reflects its perception on the physical brain. We are not all of
us able to make this effort equally well, so that memory is sometimes
dim, but even in the experience of mesmeric research, the occasional
super-excitation of memory under mesmerism is a familiar fact. The
circumstances plainly show that the record of Nature is accessible if
we know how to recover it, or even if our own capacity to make an
effort for its recovery is somehow improved without our having an
improved knowledge of the method employed. And from this thought we
may arrive by an easy transition at the idea, that in truth the
records of Nature are not separate collections of individual property,
but constitute the all-embracing memory of Nature herself, on which
different people are in a position to make drafts according to their
several capacities.

I do not say that the one thought necessarily ensues as a logical
consequence of the other. Occultists know that what I have stated is
the fact, but my present purpose is to show the reader who is not an
Occultist, how the accomplished Occultist arrives at his results,
without hoping to epitomize all the stages of his mental progress in
this brief explanation. Theosophical literature at large must be
consulted by those who would seek a fuller elucidation of the
magnificent prospects and practical demonstrations of its teaching in
many directions, which, in the course of the Theosophical development,
have been laid before the world for the benefit of all who are
competent to profit by them.

The memory of Nature is in reality a stupendous unity, just as in
another way all mankind is found to constitute a spiritual unity if we
ascend to a sufficiently elevated plane of Nature in search of the
wonderful convergence where unity is reached without the loss of
individuality. For ordinary humanity, however, at the early stage of its
evolution represented at present by the majority, the interior spiritual
capacities ranging beyond those which the brain is an instrument for
expressing, are as yet too imperfectly developed to enable them to get
touch with any other records in the vast archives of Nature's memory,
except those with which they have individually been in contact at their
creation. The blindfold interior effort they are competent to make, will
not, as a rule, call up any others. But in a flickering fashion we have
experience in ordinary life of efforts that are a little more effectual.
"Thought Transference" is a humble example. In that case "impressions on
the mind" of one person--Nature's memory pictures, with which he is in
normal relationship, are caught up by someone else who is just able,
however unconscious of the method he uses--to range Nature's memory
under favourable conditions, a little beyond the area with which he him
self is in normal relationship. Such a person has begun, however
slightly, to exercise the faculty of astral clairvoyance. That term may
be conveniently used to denote the kind of clairvoyance I am now
endeavouring to elucidate, the kind which, in some of its more
magnificent developments, has been employed to carry out the
investigations on the basis of which the present account of Atlantis has
been compiled.

There is no limit really to the resources of astral clairvoyance in
investigations concerning the past history of the earth, whether we
are concerned with the events that have befallen the human race in
prehistoric epochs, or with the growth of the planet itself through
geological periods which antedated the advent of man, or with more
recent events, current narrations of which have been distorted by
careless or perverse historians. The memory of Nature is infallibly
accurate and inexhaustibly minute. A time will come as certainly as
the precession of the equinoxes, when the literary method of
historical research will be laid aside as out of date, in the case of
all original work. People among us who are capable of exercising
astral clairvoyance in full perfection--but have not yet been called
away to higher functions in connexion with the promotion of human
progress, of which ordinary humanity at present knows even less than
an Indian ryot knows of cabinet councils--are still very few. Those
who know what the few can do, and through what processes of training
and self-discipline they have passed in pursuit of interior ideals, of
which when attained astral clairvoyance is but an individual
circumstance, are many, but still a small minority as compared with
the modern cultivated world. But as time goes on, and within a
measurable future, some of us have reason to feel sure that the
numbers of those who are competent to exercise astral clairvoyance
will increase sufficiently to extend the circle of those who are aware
of their capacities, till it comes to embrace all the intelligence and
culture of civilised mankind only a few generations hence. Meanwhile
the present volume is the first that has been put forward as the
pioneer essay of the new method of historical research. It is amusing
to all who are concerned with it, to think how inevitably it will be
mistaken--for some little while as yet, by materialistic readers,
unable to accept the frank explanation here given of the principle on
which it has been prepared--for a work of imagination.

For the benefit of others who may be more intuitive it may be well to
say a word or two that may guard them from supposing that because
historical research by means of astral clairvoyance is not impeded by
having to deal with periods removed from our own by hundreds of
thousands of years, it is on that account a process which involves no
trouble. Every fact stated in the present volume has been picked up
bit by bit with watchful and attentive care, in the course of an
investigation on which more than one qualified person has been
engaged, in the intervals of other activity, for some years past. And
to promote the success of their work they have been allowed access to
some maps and other records physically preserved from the remote
periods concerned--though in safer keeping than in that of the
turbulent races occupied in Europe with the development of
civilisation in brief intervals of leisure from warfare, and hard
pressed by the fanaticism that so long treated science as sacrilegious
during the middle ages of Europe.

Laborious as the task has been however, it will be recognized as amply
repaying the trouble taken, by everyone who is able to perceive how
absolutely necessary to a proper comprehension of the world as we find
it, is a proper comprehension of its preceding Atlantean phase.
Without this knowledge all speculations concerning ethnology are
futile and misleading. The course of race development is chaos and
confusion without the key furnished by the character of Atlantean
civilization and the configuration of the earth at Atlantean periods.
Geologists know that land and ocean surfaces must have repeatedly
changed places during the period at which they also know--from the
situation of human remains in the various strata--that the lands were
inhabited. And yet for want of accurate knowledge as to the dates at
which the changes took place, they discard the whole theory from their
practical thinking, and except for certain hypotheses started by
naturalists dealing with the southern hemisphere, have generally
endeavoured to harmonize race migrations with the configuration of the
earth in existence at the present time.

In this way nonsense is made of the whole retrospect; and the
ethnological scheme remains so vague and shadowy that it fails to
displace crude conceptions of mankind's beginning which still dominate
religious thinking, and keep back the spiritual progress of the age.
The decadence and ultimate disappearance of Atlantean civilisation is
in turn as instructive as its rise and glory; but I have now
accomplished the main purpose with which I sought leave to introduce
the work now before the world, with a brief prefatory explanation, and
if its contents fail to convey a sense of its importance to any
listeners I am now addressing, that result could hardly be
accomplished by further recommendations of mine.

A. P. SINNETT.




The Story of Atlantis

A Geographical, Historical and Ethnological Sketch.


The general scope of the subject before us will best be realized by
considering the amount of information that is obtainable about the
various nations who compose our great Fifth or Aryan Race.

From the time of the Greeks and the Romans onwards volumes have been
written about every people who in their turn have filled the stage of
history. The political institutions, the religious beliefs, the social
and domestic manners and customs have all been analyzed and
catalogued, and countless works in many tongues record for our benefit
the march of progress.

Further, it must be remembered that of the history of this Fifth Race
we possess but a fragment--the record merely of the last family races
of the Keltic sub-race, and the first family races of our own Teutonic
stock.

But the hundreds of thousands of years which elapsed from the time
when the earliest Aryans left their home on the shores of the central
Asian Sea to the time of the Greeks and Romans, bore witness to the
rise and fall of innumerable civilizations. Of the 1st sub-race of our
Aryan Race who inhabited India and colonial Egypt in prehistoric times
we know practically nothing, and the same may be said of the Chaldean,
Babylonian, and Assyrian nations who composed the 2nd sub-race--for
the fragments of knowledge obtained from the recently deciphered
hieroglyphs or cuneiform inscriptions on Egyptian tombs or Babylonian
tablets can scarcely be said to constitute history. The Persians who
belonged to the 3rd or Iranian sub-race have it is true, left a few
more traces, but of the earlier civilizations of the Keltic or 4th
sub-race we have no records at all. It is only with the rise of the
last family shoots of this Keltic stock, _viz._, the Greek and Roman
peoples, that we come upon historic times.

In addition also to the blank period in the past, there is the blank
period in the future. For of the seven sub-races required to complete
the history of a great Root Race, five only have so far come into
existence. Our own Teutonic or 5th sub-race has already developed many
nations, but has not yet run its course, while the 6th and 7th
sub-races, who will be developed on the continents of North and South
America, will have thousands of years of history to give to the world.

In attempting, therefore, to summarize in a few pages information
about the world's progress during a period which must have occupied at
least as great a stretch of years as that above referred to, it must
be realized how slight a sketch this must inevitably be.

A record of the world's progress during the period of the Fourth or
Atlantean Race must embrace the history of many nations, and register
the rise and fall of many civilizations.

Catastrophes, too, on a scale such as have not yet been experienced
during the life of our present Fifth Race, took place on more than one
occasion during the progress of the Fourth. The destruction of
Atlantis was accomplished by a series of catastrophes varying in
character from great cataclysms in which whole territories and
populations perished, to comparatively unimportant landslips such as
occur on our own coasts to-day. When the destruction was once
inaugurated by the first great catastrophe there was no intermission
of the minor landslips which continued slowly but steadily to eat
away the continent. Four of the great catastrophes stand out above the
rest in magnitude. The first took place in the Miocene age, about
800,000 years ago. The second, which was of minor importance, occurred
about 200,000 years ago. The third--about 80,000 years ago--was a very
great one. It destroyed all that remained of the Atlantean continent,
with the exception of the island to which Plato gave the name of
Poseidonis, which in its turn was submerged in the fourth and final
great catastrophe of 9,564 B.C.

Now the testimony of the oldest writers and of modern scientific
research alike bear witness to the existence of an ancient continent
occupying the site of the lost Atlantis.

Before proceeding to the consideration of the subject itself, it is
proposed cursorily to glance at the generally known sources which
supply corroborative evidence. These may be grouped into the five
following classes:

First, the testimony of the deep-sea soundings.

Second, the distribution of fauna and flora.

Third, the similarity of language and of ethnological type.

Fourth, the similarity of religious belief, ritual, and architecture.

Fifth, the testimony of ancient writers, of early race traditions, and
of archaic flood-legends.

In the first place, then, the testimony of the deep-sea soundings may
be summarized in a few words. Thanks chiefly to the expeditions of the
British and American gunboats, "Challenger" and "Dolphin" (though
Germany also was associated in this scientific exploration) the bed of
the whole Atlantic Ocean is now mapped out, with the result that an
immense bank or ridge of great elevation is shewn to exist in
mid-Atlantic. This ridge stretches in a south-westerly direction from
about fifty degrees north towards the coast of South America, then in
a south-easterly direction towards the coast of Africa, changing its
direction again about Ascension Island, and running due south to
Tristan d'Acunha. The ridge rises almost sheer about 9,000 feet from
the ocean depths around it, while the Azores, St. Paul, Ascension, and
Tristan d'Acunha are the peaks of this land which still remain above
water. A line of 3,500 fathoms, or say, 21,000 feet, is required to
sound the deepest parts of the Atlantic, but the higher parts of the
ridge are only a hundred to a few hundred fathoms beneath the sea.

The soundings too showed that the ridge is covered with volcanic
_debris_ of which traces are to be found right across the ocean to the
American coasts. Indeed the fact that the ocean bed, particularly
about the Azores, has been the scene of volcanic disturbance on a
gigantic scale, and that within a quite measurable period of geologic
time, is conclusively proved by the investigations made during the
above named expeditions.

Mr. Starkie Gardner is of opinion that in the Eocene times the British
Islands formed part of a larger island or continent stretching into
the Atlantic, and "that a great tract of land formerly existed where
the sea now is, and that Cornwall, the Scilly and Channel Islands,
Ireland and Brittany are the remains of its highest summits" (_Pop.
Sc. Review_, July, 1878).

_Second._--The proved existence on continents separated by great
oceans of similar or identical species of fauna and flora is the
standing puzzle to biologists and botanists alike. But if a link
between these continents once existed allowing for the natural
migration of such animals and plants, the puzzle is solved. Now the
fossil remains of the camel are found in India, Africa, South America
and Kansas: but it is one of the generally accepted hypotheses of
naturalists that every species of animal and plant originated in but
one part of the globe, from which centre it gradually overran the
other portions. How then can the facts of such fossil remains be
accounted for without the existence of land communication in some
remote age? Recent discoveries in the fossil beds of Nebraska seem
also to prove that the horse originated in the Western Hemisphere, for
that is the only part of the world where fossil remains have been
discovered, showing the various intermediate forms which have been
identified as the precursors of the true horse. It would therefore be
difficult to account for the presence of the horse in Europe except on
the hypothesis of continuous land communication between the two
continents, seeing that it is certain that the horse existed in a wild
state in Europe and Asia before his domestication by man, which may be
traced back almost to the stone age. Cattle and sheep as we now know
them have an equally remote ancestry. Darwin finds domesticated cattle
in Europe in the earliest part of the stone age, having long before
developed out of wild forms akin to the buffalo of America. Remains of
the cave-lion of Europe are also found in North America.

Turning now from the animal to the vegetable kingdom it appears that
the greater part of the flora of the Miocene age in Europe--found
chiefly in the fossil beds of Switzerland--exist at the present day in
America, some of them in Africa. But the noteworthy fact about America
is that while the greater proportion are to be found in the Eastern
States, very many are wanting on the Pacific coast. This seems to show
that it was from the Atlantic side that they entered the continent.
Professor Asa Gray says that out of 66 genera and 155 species found in
the forest east of the Rocky Mountains, only 31 genera and 78 species
are found west of these heights.

But the greatest problem of all is the plantain or banana. Professor
Kuntze, an eminent German botanist, asks, "In what way was this plant"
(a native of tropical Asia and Africa) "which cannot stand a voyage
through the temperate zone, carried to America?" As he points out, the
plant is seedless, it cannot be propagated by cuttings, neither has it
a tuber which could be easily transported. Its root is tree-like. To
transport it special care would be required, nor could it stand a long
transit. The only way in which he can account for its appearance in
America is to suppose that it must have been transported by civilized
man at a time when the polar regions had a tropical climate! He adds,
"a cultivated plant which does not possess seeds must have been under
culture for a _very long period_ ... it is perhaps fair to infer that
these plants were cultivated as early as the beginning of the Diluvial
period." Why, it may be asked, should not this inference take us back
to still earlier times, and where did the civilization necessary for
the plant's cultivation exist, or the climate and circumstances
requisite for its transportation, unless there were at some time a
link between the old world and the new?

Professor Wallace in his delightful _Island Life_ as well as other
writers in many important works, have put forward ingenious hypotheses
to account for the identity of flora and fauna on widely separated
lands, and for their transit across the ocean, but all are
unconvincing, and all break down at different points.

It is well known that wheat as we know it has never existed in a truly
wild state, nor is there any evidence tracing its descent from fossil
species. Five varieties of wheat were _already cultivated_ in Europe
in the stone age--one variety found in the "Lake dwellings" being
known as Egyptian wheat, from which Darwin argues that the Lake
dwellers "either still kept up commercial intercourse with some
southern people, or had originally proceeded as colonists from the
south." He concludes that wheat, barley, oats, etc., are descended
from various _species now extinct_, or so widely different as to
escape identification in which case he says: "Man must have
cultivated cereals from an enormously remote period." The regions
where these extinct species flourished, and the civilization under
which they were cultivated by intelligent selection, are both supplied
by the lost continent whose colonists carried them east and west.

_Third._--From the fauna and flora we now turn to man.

_Language._--The Basque language stands alone amongst European
tongues, having affinity with none of them. According to Farrar,
"there never has been any doubt that this isolated language,
preserving its identity in a western corner of Europe, between two
mighty kingdoms, resembles in its structure the aboriginal languages
of the vast opposite continent (America) and those alone" (_Families
of Speech_, p. 132).

The Phoenicians apparently were the first nation in the Eastern
Hemisphere to use a phonetic alphabet, the characters being regarded
as mere signs for sounds. It is a curious fact that at an equally
early date we find a phonetic alphabet in Central America amongst the
Mayas of Yucatan, whose traditions ascribe the origin of their
civilization to a land across the sea to the east. Le Plongeon, the
great authority on this subject, writes: "One-third of this tongue
(the Maya) is pure Greek. Who brought the dialect of Homer to America?
or who took to Greece that of the Mayas? Greek is the off-spring of
the Sanscrit. Is Maya? or are they coeval?" Still more surprising is
it to find thirteen letters out of the Maya alphabet bearing most
distinct relation to the Egyptian hieroglyphic signs for the same
letters. It is probable that the earliest form of alphabet was
hieroglyphic, "the writing of the Gods," as the Egyptians called it,
and that it developed later in Atlantis into the phonetic. It would be
natural to assume that the Egyptians were an early colony from
Atlantis (as they actually were) and that they carried away with them
the primitive type of writing which has thus left its traces on both
hemispheres, while the Phoenicians, who were a sea-going people,
obtained and assimilated the later form of alphabet during their
trading voyages with the people of the west.

One more point may be noticed, _viz._, the extraordinary resemblance
between many words in the Hebrew language and words bearing precisely
the same meaning in the tongue of the Chiapenecs--a branch of the Maya
race, and amongst the most ancient in Central America. A list of these
words is given in _North Americans of Antiquity_, p. 475.

The similarity of language among the various savages races of the
Pacific islands has been used as an argument by writers on this
subject. The existence of similar languages among races separated by
leagues of ocean, across which in historic time they are known to have
had no means of transport, is certainly an argument in favour of their
descent from a single race occupying a single continent, but the
argument cannot be used here, for the continent in question was not
Atlantis, but the still earlier Lemuria.

_Ethnological Types._--Atlantis as we shall see is said to have been
inhabited by red, yellow, white and black races. It is now proved by
the researches of Le Plongeon, De Quatrefages, Bancroft and others
that black populations of negroid type existed even up to recent times
in America. Many of the monuments of Central America are decorated
with negro faces, and some of the idols found there are clearly
intended to represent negros, with small skulls, short woolly hair and
thick lips. The Popul Vuh, speaking of the first home of the
Guatemalan race, says that "black and white men together" lived in
this happy land "in great peace," speaking "one language." (See
Bancroft's _Native Races_, p. 547.) The Popul Vuh goes on to relate
how the people migrated from their ancestral home, how their language
_became altered_, and how some went to the east, while other travelled
west (to Central America).

Professor Retzius, in his _Smithsonian Report_, considers that the
primitive dolichocephalae of America are nearly related to the Guanches
of the Canary Islands, and to the population on the Atlantic seaboard of
Africa, which Latham comprises under the name of Egyptian-Atlantidae. The
same form of skull is found in the Canary Islands off the African coast
and the Carib Islands off the American coast, while the colour of the
skin in both is that of a reddish-brown.

The ancient Egyptians depicted themselves as red men of much the same
complexion as exists to-day among some tribes of American Indians.

"The ancient Peruvians," says Short, "appear from numerous examples of
hair found in their tombs to have been an auburn-haired race."

A remarkable fact about the American Indians, and one which is a
standing puzzle to ethnologists, is the wide range of colour and
complexion to be found among them. From the white tint of the Menominee,
Dakota, Mandan and Zuni tribes, many of whom have auburn hair and blue
eyes, to the almost negro blackness of the Karos of Kansas and the now
extinct tribes of California, the Indian races run through every shade
of red-brown, copper, olive, cinnamon, and bronze. (See Short's _North
Americans of Antiquity_, Winchell's _Pre-Adamites_, and Catlin's
_Indians of North America_; see also _Atlantis_, by Ignatius Donnelly
who has collected a great mass of evidence under this and other heads.)
We shall see by and by how the diversity of complexion on the American
continent is accounted for by the original race-tints on the parent
continent of Atlantis.

_Fourth._--Nothing seems to have surprised the first Spanish
adventurers in Mexico and Peru more than the extraordinary similarity
to those of the old world, of the religious beliefs, rites, and
emblems which they found established in the new. The Spanish priests
regarded this similarity as the work of the devil. The worship of the
cross by the natives, and its constant presence in all religious
buildings and ceremonies, was the principal subject of their
amazement; and indeed nowhere--not even in India and Egypt--was this
symbol held in more profound veneration than amongst the primitive
tribes of the American continents, while the meaning underlying its
worship was identical. In the west, as in the east, the cross was the
symbol of life--sometimes of life physical, more often of life
eternal.

In like manner in both hemispheres the worship of the sun-disk or
circle, and of the serpent, was universal, and more surprising still
is the similarity of the word signifying "God" in the principal
languages of east and west. Compare the Sanscrit "Dyaus" or
"Dyaus-pitar," the Greek "Theos" and Zeus, the Latin "Deus" and
"Jupiter," the Keltic "Dia" and "Ta," pronounced "Thyah" (seeming to
bear affinity to the Egyptian Tau), the Jewish "Jah" or "Yah" and
lastly the Mexican "Teo" or "Zeo."

Baptismal rites were practised by all nations. In Babylon and Egypt
the candidates for initiation into the Mysteries were first baptized.
Tertullian in his _De Baptismo_ says that they were promised in
consequence "regeneration and the pardon of all their perjuries." The
Scandinavian nations practised baptism of new-born children; and when
we turn to Mexico and Peru we find infant baptism there as a solemn
ceremonial, consisting of water sprinkling, the sign of the cross, and
prayers for the washing away of sin (see Humboldt's _Mexican
Researches_ and Prescott's _Mexico_).

In addition to baptism, the tribes of Mexico, Central America and Peru
resembled the nations of the old world in their rites of confession,
absolution, fasting, and marriage before priests by joining hands. They
had even a ceremony resembling the Eucharist, in which cakes marked with
the Tau (an Egyptian form of cross) were eaten, the people calling them
the flesh of their God. These exactly resemble the sacred cakes of Egypt
and other eastern nations. Like these nations too, the people of the new
world had monastic orders, male and female, in which broken vows were
punished with death. Like the Egyptians they embalmed their dead, they
worshipped sun, moon, and planets, but over and above these adored a
Deity "omnipresent, who knoweth all things ... invisible, incorporeal,
one God of perfect perfection" (see Sahagun's _Historia de Nueva
Espana_, lib. vi.).

They too had their virgin-mother goddess, "Our Lady" whose son, the
"Lord of Light," was called the "Saviour," bearing an accurate
correspondence to Isis, Beltis and the many other virgin-goddesses of
the east with their divine sons.

Their rites of sun and fire worship closely resembled those of the
early Kelts of Britain and Ireland, and like the latter they claimed
to be the "children of the sun." An ark or argha was one of the
universal sacred symbols which we find alike in India, Chaldea,
Assyria, Egypt, Greece and amongst the Keltic peoples. Lord
Kingsborough in his _Mexican Antiquities_ (vol. viii. p. 250) says:
"As among the Jews the ark was a sort of portable temple in which the
deity was supposed to be continually present, so among the Mexicans,
the Cherokees and the Indians of Michoacan and Honduras, an ark was
held in the highest veneration and was considered an object too sacred
to be touched by any but the priests."

As to religious architecture, we find on both sides of the Atlantic
that one of the earliest sacred buildings is the pyramid. Doubtful as
are the uses for which these structures were originally intended, one
thing is clear, that they were closely connected with some religious
idea or group of ideas. The identity of design in the pyramids of
Egypt and those of Mexico and Central America is too striking to be a
mere coincidence. True some--the greater number--of the American
pyramids are of the truncated or flattened form, yet according to
Bancroft and others, many of those found in Yucatan, and notably those
near Palenque, are pointed at the top in true Egyptian fashion, while
on the other hand we have some of the Egyptian pyramids of the stepped
and flattened type. Cholula has been compared to the groups of
Dachour, Sakkara and the step pyramid of Medourn. Alike in
orientation, in structure, and even in their internal galleries and
chambers, these mysterious monuments of the east and of the west stand
as witnesses to some common source whence their builders drew their
plan.

The vast remains of cities and temples in Mexico and Yucatan also
strangely resemble those of Egypt, the ruins of Teotihuacan having
frequently been compared to those of Karnak. The "false
arch"--horizontal courses of stone, each slightly overlapping the
other--is found to be identical in Central America, in the oldest
buildings of Greece, and in Etruscan remains. The mound builders of
both eastern and western continents formed similar tumuli over their
dead, and laid the bodies in similar stone coffins. Both continents
have their great serpent-mounds; compare that of Adams Co., Ohio, with
the fine serpent-mound discovered in Argyleshire, or the less perfect
specimen at Avebury in Wilts. The very carving and decoration of the
temples of America, Egypt and India have much in common, while some of
the mural decorations are absolutely identical.

_Fifth._--It only remains now to summarize some of the evidence
obtainable from ancient writers, from early race traditions, and from
archaic flood-legends.

Aelian in his _Varia Historia_ (lib. iii. ch. xviii.), states that
Theopompus (400 B.C.) recorded an interview between the King of
Phrygia and Silenus, in which the latter referred to the existence of
a great continent beyond the Atlantic, larger than Asia, Europe and
Libya together.

Proclus quotes an extract from an ancient writer who refers to the
islands in the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of
Gibraltar), and says that the inhabitants of one of these islands had
a tradition from their ancestors of an extremely large island called
Atlantis, which for a long time ruled over all the islands of the
Atlantic Ocean.

Marcellus speaks of seven islands in the Atlantic, and states that
their inhabitants preserve the memory of a much greater island,
Atlantis, "which had for a long time exercised dominion over the
smaller ones."

Diodorus Siculus relates that the Phoenicians discovered "a large
island in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules several
days' sail from the coast of Africa."

But the greatest authority on this subject is Plato. In the _Timaeus_
he refers to the island continent, while the _Critias_ or _Atlanticus_
is nothing less than a detailed account of the history, arts, manners
and customs of the people. In the _Timaeus_ he refers to "a mighty
warlike power, rushing from the Atlantic sea and spreading itself with
hostile fury over all Europe and Asia. For at that time the Atlantic
sea was navigable and had an island before that mouth which is called
by you the Pillars of Hercules. But this island was greater than both
Libya and all Asia together, and afforded an easy passage to other
neighbouring islands, as it was likewise easy to pass from those
islands to all the continents which border on this Atlantic sea."

There is so much of value in the _Critias_ that it is not easy to
choose, but the following extract is given, as it bears on the
material resources of the country: "They had likewise everything
provided for them which both in a city and every other place is sought
after as useful for the purposes of life. And they were supplied
indeed with many things from foreign countries, on account of their
extensive empire; but the island afforded them the greater part of
everything of which they stood in need. In the first place the island
supplied them with such things as are dug out of mines in a solid
state, and with such as are melted: and orichalcum, which is now but
seldom mentioned, but then was much celebrated, was dug out of the
earth in many parts of the island, and was considered as the most
honourable of all metals except gold. Whatever, too, the woods
afforded for builders the island produced in abundance. There were
likewise sufficient pastures there for tame and savage animals;
together with a prodigious number of elephants. For there were
pastures for all such animals as are fed in lakes and rivers, on
mountains and in plains. And in like manner there was sufficient
aliment for the largest and most voracious kind of animals. Besides
this, whatever of odoriferous the earth nourishes at present, whether
roots, or grass, or wood, or juices, or gums, flowers or fruits--these
the island produced and produced them well."

The Gauls possessed traditions of Atlantis which were collected by the
Roman historian, Timagenes, who lived in the first century, B.C. Three
distinct peoples apparently dwelt in Gaul. First, the indigenous
population (probably the remains of a Lemurian race), second, the
invaders from the distant island of Atlantis, and third, the Aryan
Gauls (see _Pre-Adamites_, p. 380).

The Toltecs of Mexico traced themselves back to a starting-point
called Atlan or Aztlan; the Aztecs also claimed to come from Aztlan
(see Bancroft's _Native Races_, vol. v. pp. 221 and 321).

The Popul Vuh (p. 294) speaks of a visit paid by three sons of the
King of the Quiches to a land "in the east on the shores of the sea
whence their fathers had come," from which they brought back amongst
other things "a system of writing" (see also Bancroft, vol. v. p.
553).

Amongst the Indians of North America there is a very general legend
that their forefathers came from a land "toward the sun-rising." The
Iowa and Dakota Indians, according to Major J. Lind, believed that
"all the tribes of Indians were formerly one and dwelt together _on an
island_ ... towards the sunrise." They crossed the sea from thence "in
huge skiffs in which the Dakotas of old floated for weeks, finally
gaining dry land."

The Central American books state that a part of the American continent
extended far into the Atlantic Ocean, and that this region was
destroyed by a series of frightful cataclysms at long intervals apart.
_Three_ of these are frequently referred to (see Baldwin's _Ancient
America_, p. 176). It is a curious confirmation that the Kelts of
Britain had a legend that part of _their_ country once extended far
into the Atlantic and was destroyed. Three catastrophes are mentioned
in the Welsh traditions.

Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican Deity, is said to have come from "the
distant east." He is described as a white man with a flowing beard.
(N.B.--The Indians of North and South America are beardless.) He
originated letters and regulated the Mexican calendar. After having
taught them many peaceful arts and lessons he sailed away _to the
east_ in a canoe of serpent skins (see Short's _North Americans of
Antiquity_, pp. 268-271). The same story is told of Zamna, the author
of civilization in Yucatan.

The marvellous uniformity of the flood legends on all parts of the
globe, alone remains to be dealt with. Whether these are some archaic
versions of the story of the lost Atlantis and its submergence, or
whether they are echoes of a great cosmic parable once taught and held
in reverence in some common centre whence they have reverberated
throughout the world, does not immediately concern us. Sufficient for
our purpose is it to show the universal acceptation of these legends.
It would be needless waste of time and space to go over these flood
stories one by one. Suffice it to say, that in India, Chaldea,
Babylon, Media, Greece, Scandinavia, China, amongst the Jews and
amongst the Keltic tribes of Britain, the legend is absolutely
identical in all essentials. Now turn to the west and what do we find?
The same story in its every detail preserved amongst the Mexicans
(each tribe having its own version), the people of Guatemala,
Honduras, Peru, and almost every tribe of North American Indians. It
is puerile to suggest that mere coincidence can account for this
fundamental identity.

The following quotation from Le Plongeon's translation of the famous
Troano MS., which may be seen in the British Museum, will
appropriately bring this part of the subject to a close. The Troano
MS. appears to have been written about 3,500 years ago, among the
Mayas of Yucatan, and the following is its description of the
catastrophe that submerged the island of Poseidonis:--"In the year 6
Kan, on the 11th Muluc in the month Zac, there occurred terrible
earthquakes, which continued without interruption until the 13th
Chuen. The country of the hills of mud, the land of Mu was sacrificed:
being twice upheaved it suddenly disappeared during the night, the
basin being continually shaken by volcanic forces. Being confined,
these caused the land to sink and to rise several times and in various
places. At last the surface gave way and ten countries were torn
asunder and scattered. Unable to stand the force of the convulsions,
they sank with their 64,000,000 of inhabitants 8060 years before the
writing of this book."

But enough space has now been devoted to the fragments of
evidence--all more or less convincing--which the world so far has been
in possession of. Those interested in pursuing any special line of
investigation are referred to the various works above named or quoted.

The subject in hand must now be dealt with. Drawn as they have been
from contemporary records which were compiled in and handed down
through the ages we have to deal with, the facts here collected are
based upon no assumption or conjecture. The writer may have failed
fully to comprehend the facts, and so may have partially misstated
them. But the original records are open for investigation to the duly
qualified, and those who are disposed to undertake the necessary
training may obtain the powers to check and verify.

But even were _all_ the occult records open to our inspection, it
should be realized how fragmentary must be the sketch that attempts to
summarize in a few pages the history of races and of nations extending
over at least many hundreds of thousands of years. However, any
details on such a subject--disconnected though they are--must be new,
and should therefore be interesting to the world at large.

Among the records above referred to there are maps of the world at
various periods of its history, and it has been the great privilege of
the writer to be allowed to obtain copies--more or less complete--of
four of these. All four represent Atlantis and the surrounding lands
at different epochs of their history. These epochs correspond
approximately with the periods that lay between the catastrophes
referred to above, and into the periods thus represented by the four
maps the records of the Atlantean Race will naturally group
themselves.

Before beginning the history of the race, however, a few remarks may
be made about the geography of the four different epochs.

The first map represents the land surface of the earth as it existed
about a million years ago, when the Atlantean Race was at its height,
and before the first great submergence took place about 800,000 years
ago. The continent of Atlantis itself, it will be observed, extended
from a point a few degrees east of Iceland to about the site now
occupied by Rio de Janeiro, in South America. Embracing Texas and the
Gulf of Mexico, the Southern and Eastern States of America, up to and
including Labrador, it stretched across the ocean to our own
islands--Scotland and Ireland, and a small portion of the north of
England forming one of its promontories--while its equatorial lands
embraced Brazil and the whole stretch of ocean to the African Gold
Coast. Scattered fragments of what eventually became the continents of
Europe, Africa and America, as well as remains of the still older, and
once wide-spread continent of Lemuria, are also shown on this map. The
remains of the still older Hyperborean continent which was inhabited
by the Second Root Race, are also given, and like Lemuria, coloured
blue.

As will be seen from the second map the catastrophe of 800,000 years
ago caused very great changes in the land distribution of the globe.
The great continent is now shorn of its northern regions, and its
remaining portion has been still further rent. The now growing
American continent is separated by a chasm from its parent continent
of Atlantis, and this no longer comprises any of the lands now
existing, but occupies the bulk of the Atlantic basin from about 50
deg. north to a few degrees south of the equator. The subsidences and
upheavals in other parts of the world have also been considerable--the
British Islands for example, now being part of a huge island which
also embraces the Scandinavian peninsula, the north of France, and all
the intervening and some of the surrounding seas. The dimensions of
the remains of Lemuria it will be observed, have been further
curtailed, while Europe, Africa and America have received accretions
of territory.

The third map shows the results of the catastrophe which took place
about 200,000 years ago. With the exception of the rents in the
continents both of Atlantis and America, and the submergence of Egypt,
it will be seen how relatively unimportant were the subsidences and
upheavals at this epoch, indeed the fact that this catastrophe has
not always been considered as one of the great ones, is apparent from
the quotation already given from the sacred book of the
Guatemalans--three great ones only being there mentioned. The
Scandinavian island however, appears now as joined to the mainland.
The two islands into which Atlantis was now split were known by the
names of Ruta and Daitya.

The stupendous character of the natural convulsion that took place
about 80,000 years ago, will be apparent from the fourth map. Daitya,
the smaller and more southerly of the islands, has almost entirely
disappeared, while of Ruta there only remains the relatively small
island of Poseidonis. This map was compiled about 75,000 years ago,
and it no doubt fairly represents the land surface of the earth from
that period onwards till the final submergence of Poseidonis in 9564
B.C., though during that period minor changes must have taken place.
It will be noted that the land outlines had then begun to assume
roughly the same appearance they do to-day, though the British Islands
were still joined to the European continent, while the Baltic Sea was
non-existent, and the Sahara desert then formed part of the ocean
floor.

       *       *       *       *       *

Some reference to the very mystical subject of the Manus is a
necessary preliminary to the consideration of the origin of a Root
Race. In Transaction No. 26, of the London Lodge, reference was made
to the work done by these very exalted Beings, which embraces not only
the planning of the types of the whole Manvantara, but the
superintending the formation and education of each Root Race in turn.
The following quotation refers to these arrangements: "There are also
Manus whose duty it is to act in a similar way for each Root Race on
each Planet of the Round, the Seed Manu planning the improvement in
type which each successive Root Race inaugurates and the Root Manu
actually incarnating amongst the new Race as a leader and teacher to
direct the development and ensure the improvement."

The way in which the necessary segregation of the picked specimens is
effected by the Manu in charge, and his subsequent care of the growing
community, may be dealt with in a future Transaction. The merest
reference to the mode of procedure is all that is necessary here.

It was of course from one of the sub-races of the Third Root Race on
the continent which is spoken of as Lemuria, that the segregation was
effected which was destined to produce the Fourth Root Race.

Following where necessary the history of the Race through the four
periods represented by the four maps, it is proposed to divide the
subject under the following headings:

1. Origin and territorial location of the different sub-races.

2. The political institutions they respectively evolved.

3. Their emigrations to other parts of the world.

4. The arts and sciences they developed.

5. The manners and customs they adopted.

6. The rise and decline amongst them of religious ideas.

The names of the different sub-races must first be given--

1. Rmoahal.

2. Tlavatli.

3. Toltec.

4. First Turanian.

5. Original Semite.

6. Akkadian.

7. Mongolian.

Some explanation is necessary as to the principle on which these names
are chosen. Wherever modern ethnologists have discovered traces of one
of these sub-races, or even identified a small part of one, the name
they have given to it is used for the sake of simplicity, but in the
case of the first two sub-races there are hardly any traces left for
science to seize upon, so the names by which they called themselves
have been adopted.

Now the period represented by Map No. 1 shows the land surface of the
earth as it existed about one million years ago, but the Rmoahal race
came into existence between four and five million years ago, at which
period large portions of the great southern continent of Lemuria still
existed, while the continent of Atlantis had not assumed the
proportions it ultimately attained. It was upon a spur of this
Lemurian land that the Rmoahal race was born. Roughly it may be
located at latitude 7 deg. north and longitude 5 deg. west, which a
reference to any modern atlas will show to lie on the Ashanti coast of
to-day. It was a hot, moist country, where huge antediluvian animals
lived in reedy swamps and dank forests. The fossil remains of such
plants are to-day found in the coal measures. The Rmoahals were a dark
race--their complexion being a sort of mahogany black. Their height in
these early days was about ten or twelve feet--truly a race of
giants--but through the centuries their stature gradually dwindled, as
did that of all the races in turn, and later on we shall find they had
shrunk to the stature of the "Furfooz man." They ultimately migrated
to the southern shores of Atlantis, where they were engaged in
constant warfare with the sixth and seventh sub-races of the Lemurians
then inhabiting that country. A large part of the tribe eventually
moved north, while the remainder settled down and intermarried with
these black Lemurian aborigines. The result was that at the period we
are dealing with--the first map period--there was no pure blood left
in the south, and as we shall see it was from these dark races who
inhabited the equatorial provinces, and the extreme south of the
continent, that the Toltec conquerors subsequently drew their supplies
of slaves. The remainder of the race, however, reached the extreme
north-eastern promontories contiguous with Iceland, and dwelling there
for untold generations, they gradually became lighter in colour, until
at the date of the first map period we find them a tolerably fair
people. Their descendants eventually became subject, at least
nominally, to the Semite kings.

That they dwelt there for untold generations is not meant to imply
that their occupation was unbroken, for stress of circumstances at
intervals of time drove them south. The cold of the glacial epochs of
course operated alike with the other races, but the few words to be
said on this subject may as well come in here.

Without going into the question of the different rotations which this
earth performs, or the varying degrees of eccentricity of its orbit, a
combination of which is sometimes held to be the cause of the glacial
epochs, it is a fact--and one already recognized by some
astronomers--that a minor glacial epoch occurs about every 30,000
years. But in addition to these there were two occasions in the
history of Atlantis when the ice-belt desolated not merely the
northern regions, but, invading the bulk of the continent, forced all
life to migrate to equatorial lands. The first of these was in process
during the Rmoahal days, about 3,000,000 years ago, while the second
took place in the Toltec ascendency about 850,000 years ago.

With reference to all glacial epochs it should be stated that though
the inhabitants of northern lands were forced to settle during the
winter far south of the ice-belt, there yet were great districts to
which in summer they could return, and where for the sake of the
hunting they encamped until driven south again by the winter cold.

The place of origin of the Tlavatli or 2nd sub-race was an island off
the west coast of Atlantis. The spot is marked on the 1st map with
the figure 2. Thence they spread into Atlantis proper, chiefly across
the middle of the continent, gradually however tending northwards
towards the stretch of coast facing the promontory of Greenland.
Physically they were a powerful and hardy race of a red-brown colour,
but they were not quite so tall as the Rmoahals whom they drove still
further north. They were always a mountain-loving people, and their
chief settlements were in the mountainous districts of the interior,
which a comparison of Maps, 1 and 4 will show to be approximately
conterminous with what ultimately became the island of Poseidonis. At
this first map period they also--as just stated--peopled the northern
coasts, whilst a mixture of Tlavatli and Toltec race inhabited the
western islands, which subsequently formed part of the American
continent.

We now come to the Toltec or 3rd sub-race. This was a magnificent
development. It ruled the whole continent of Atlantis for thousands of
years in great material power and glory. Indeed so dominant and so
endowed with vitality was this race that intermarriages with the
following sub-races failed to modify the type, which still remained
essentially Toltec; and hundreds of thousands of years later we find
one of their remote family races ruling magnificently in Mexico and
Peru, long ages before their degenerate descendants were conquered by
the fiercer Aztec tribes from the north. The complexion of this race
was also a red-brown, but they were redder or more copper-coloured
than the Tlavatli. They also were a tall race, averaging about eight
feet during the period of their ascendency, but of course dwindling,
as all races did, to the dimensions that are common to-day. The type
was an improvement on the two previous sub-races, the features being
straight and well marked, not unlike the ancient Greek. The
approximate birthplace of this race may be seen, marked with the
figure 3, on the first map. It lay near the west coast of Atlantis
about latitude 30 deg. North, and the whole of the surrounding country,
embracing the bulk of the west coast of the continent, was peopled
with a pure Toltec race. But as we shall see when dealing with the
political organization, their territory eventually extended right
across the continent, and it was from their great capital on the
eastern coast that the Toltec emperors held their almost world-wide
sway.

These first three sub-races are spoken of as the "red races," between
whom and the four following there was not at first much mixture of
blood. These four, though differing considerably from each other, have
been called "yellow," and this colour may appropriately define the
complexion of the Turanian and Mongolian, but the Semite and Akkadian
were comparatively white.

The Turanian or 4th sub-race had their origin on the eastern side of
the continent, south of the mountainous district inhabited by the
Tlavatli people. This spot is marked 4 on Map No. 1. The Turanians
were colonists from the earliest days, and great numbers migrated to
the lands lying to the east of Atlantis. They were never a thoroughly
dominant race on the mother-continent, though some of their tribes and
family races became fairly powerful. The great central regions of the
continent lying west and south of the Tlavatli mountainous district
was their special though not their exclusive home, for they shared
these lands with the Toltecs. The curious political and social
experiments made by this sub-race will be dealt with later on.

As regards the original Semite or 5th sub-race ethnologists have been
somewhat confused, as indeed it is extremely natural they should be
considering the very insufficient data they have to go upon. This
sub-race had its origin in the mountainous country which formed the
more southerly of the two north-eastern peninsulas which, as we have
seen, is now represented by Scotland, Ireland, and some of the
surrounding seas. The site is marked 5 in Map No. 1. In this least
desirable portion of the great continent the race grew and flourished,
for centuries maintaining its independence against aggressive southern
kings, till the time came for it in turn to spread abroad and
colonize. It must be remembered that by the time the Semites rose to
power hundreds of thousands of years had passed and the 2nd map period
had been reached. They were a turbulent, discontented race, always at
war with their neighbours, especially with the then growing power of
the Akkadians.

The birthplace of the Akkadian or 6th sub-race will be found on Map
No. 2 (marked there with the figure 6), for it was after the great
catastrophe of 800,000 years ago that this race first came into
existence. It took its rise in the land east of Atlantis, about the
middle of the great peninsula whose south-eastern extremity stretched
out towards the old continent. The spot may be located approximately
at latitude 42 deg. North and longitude 10 deg. East. They did not for
long, however, confine themselves to the land of their birth, but overran
the now diminished continent of Atlantis. They fought with the Semites
in many battles both on land and sea, and very considerable fleets
were used on both sides. Finally about 100,000 years ago they
completely vanquished the Semites, and from that time onwards an
Akkadian dynasty was set up in the old Semite capital, and ruled the
country wisely for several hundred years. They were a great trading,
sea-going, and colonizing people, and they established many centres of
communication with distant lands.

The Mongolian or 7th sub-race seems to be the only one that had
absolutely no touch with the mother-continent. Having its origin on
the plains of Tartary (marked No. 7 on the second map) at about
latitude 63 deg. North and longitude 140 deg. East, it was directly
developed from descendants of the Turanian race, which it gradually
supplanted over the greater part of Asia. This sub-race multiplied
exceedingly, and even at the present day a majority of the earth's
inhabitants technically belong to it, though many of its divisions are
so deeply coloured with the blood of earlier races as to be scarcely
distinguishable from them.

_Political Institutions._--In such a summary as this it would be
impossible to describe how each sub-race was further sub-divided into
nations, each having its distinct type and characteristics. All that
can be here attempted is to sketch in broad outline the varying
political institutions throughout the great epochs of the race.

While recognizing that each sub-race as well as each Root Race is
destined to stand in some respects at a higher level than the one
before it, the cyclic nature of the development must be recognized as
leading the race like the man through the various phases of infancy,
youth, and manhood back to the infancy of old age again. Evolution
necessarily means ultimate progress, even though the turning back of
its ascending spiral may seem to make the history of politics or of
religion a record not merely of development and progress but also of
degradation and decay.

In making the statement therefore that the 1st sub-race started under
the most perfect government conceivable, it must be understood that
this was owing to the necessities of their childhood, not to the
merits of their matured manhood. For the Rmoahals were incapable of
developing any plan of settled government, nor did they ever reach
even as high a point of civilization as the 6th and 7th Lemurian
sub-races. But the Manu who effected the segregation actually
incarnated in the race and ruled it as king. Even when he no longer
took visible part in the government of the race, Adept or Divine
rulers were, when the times required it, still provided for the infant
community. As students of Theosophy know, our humanity had not then
reached the stage of development necessary to produce fully initiated
Adepts. The rulers above referred to, including the Manu himself, were
therefore necessarily the product of evolution on other systems of
worlds.

The Tlavatli people showed some signs of advance in the art of
government. Their various tribes or nations were ruled by chiefs or
kings who generally received their authority by acclamation of the
people. Naturally the most powerful individuals and greatest warriors
were so chosen. A considerable empire was eventually established among
them, in which one king became the nominal head, but his suzerainty
consisted rather in titular honour than in actual authority.

It was the Toltec race who developed the highest civilization and
organized the most powerful empire of any of the Atlantean peoples,
and it was then that the principle of hereditary succession was for
the first time established. The race was at first divided into a
number of petty independent kingdoms, constantly at war with each
other, and all at war with the Lemurio-Rmoahals of the south. These
were gradually conquered and made subject peoples--many of their
tribes being reduced to slavery. About one million years ago, however,
these separate kingdoms united in a great federation with a recognized
emperor at its head. This was of course inaugurated by great wars, but
the outcome was peace and prosperity for the race.

It must be remembered that humanity was still for the most part
possessed of psychic attributes, and by this time the most advanced
had undergone the necessary training in the occult schools, and had
attained various stages of initiation--some even reaching to
Adeptship. Now the second of these emperors was an Adept, and for
thousands of years the Divine dynasty ruled not only all the kingdoms
into which Atlantis was divided but the islands on the west and the
southern portion of the adjacent land lying to the east. When
necessary, this dynasty was recruited from the Lodge of Initiates, but
as a rule the power was handed down from father to son, all being more
or less qualified, and the son in some cases receiving a further
degree at the hands of his father. During all this period these
Initiate rulers retained connection with the Occult Hierarchy which
governs the world, submitting to its laws, and acting in harmony with
its plans. This was the golden age of the Toltec race. The government
was just and beneficent; the arts and sciences were cultivated--indeed
the workers in these fields, guided as they were by occult knowledge,
achieved tremendous results; religious belief and ritual was still
comparatively pure--in fact the civilization of Atlantis had by this
time reached its height.

After about 100,000 years of this golden age the degeneracy and decay
of the race set in. Many of the tributary kings, and large numbers of
the priests and people ceased to use their faculties and powers in
accordance with the laws made by their Divine rulers, whose precepts
and advice were now disregarded. Their connection with the Occult
Hierarchy was broken. Personal aggrandisement, the attainment of
wealth and authority, the humiliation and ruin of their enemies became
more and more the objects towards which their occult powers were
directed: and thus turned from their lawful use, and practised for all
sorts of selfish and malevolent purposes, they inevitably led to what
we must call by the name of sorcery.

Surrounded as this word is with the odium which credulity on the one
hand and imposture on the other have during many centuries of
superstition and ignorance gradually caused it to be associated, let
us consider for a moment its real meaning, and the terrible effects
which its practice is ever destined to bring on the world.

Partly through their psychic faculties, which were not yet quenched in
the depths of materiality to which the race afterwards descended, and
partly through their scientific attainments during this culmination of
Atlantean civilization, the most intellectual and energetic members of
the race gradually obtained more and more insight into the working of
Nature's laws, and more and more control over some of her hidden
forces. Now the desecration of this knowledge and its use for selfish
ends is what constitutes sorcery. The awful effects, too, of such
desecration are well enough exemplified in the terrible catastrophes
that overtook the race. For when once the black practice was
inaugurated it was destined to spread in ever widening circles. The
higher spiritual guidance being thus withdrawn, the Kamic principle,
which being the fourth, naturally reached its zenith during the Fourth
Root Race, asserted itself more and more in humanity. Lust, brutality
and ferocity were all on the increase, and the animal nature in man
was approaching its most degraded expression. It was a moral question
which from the very earliest times divided the Atlantean Race into two
hostile camps, and what was begun in the Rmoahal times was terribly
accentuated in the Toltec era. The battle of Armageddon is fought over
and over again in every age of the world's history.

No longer submitting to the wise rule of the Initiate emperors, the
followers of the "black arts" rose in rebellion and set up a rival
emperor, who after much struggle and fighting drove the white emperor
from his capital, the "City of the Golden Gates," and established
himself on his throne.

The white emperor driven northward re-established himself in a city
originally founded by the Tlavatli on the southern edge of the
mountainous district, but which was now the seat of one of the
tributary Toltec kings. He gladly welcomed the white emperor and
placed the city at his disposal. A few more of the tributary kings
also remained loyal to him, but most transferred their allegiance to
the new emperor reigning at the old capital. These, however, did not
long remain faithful. Constant assertions of independence were made by
the tributary kings, and continual battles were fought in different
parts of the empire, the practice of sorcery being largely resorted
to, to supplement the powers of destruction possessed by the armies.

These events took place about 50,000 years before the first great
catastrophe.

From this time onwards things went from bad to worse. The sorcerers
used their powers more and more recklessly, and greater and greater
numbers of people acquired and practised these terrible "black arts."

Then came the awful retribution when millions upon millions perished.
The great "City of the Golden Gates" had by this time become a perfect
den of iniquity. The waves swept over it and destroyed its
inhabitants, and the "black" emperor and his dynasty fell to rise no
more. The emperor of the north as well as the initiated priests
throughout the whole continent had long been fully aware of the evil
days at hand, and subsequent pages will tell of the many priest-led
emigrations which preceded this catastrophe, as well as those of later
date.

The continent was now terribly rent. But the actual amount of
territory submerged by no means represented the damage done, for tidal
waves swept over great tracts of land and left them desolate swamps.
Whole provinces were rendered barren, and remained for generations in
an uncultivated and desert condition.

The remaining population too had received a terrible warning. It was
taken to heart, and sorcery was for a time less prevalent among them.
A long period elapsed before any new powerful rule was established. We
shall eventually find a Semite dynasty of sorcerers enthroned in the
"City of the Golden Gates," but no Toltec power rose to eminence
during the second map period. There were considerable Toltec
populations still, but little of the pure blood remained on the mother
continent.

On the island of Ruta however, in the third map period, a Toltec
dynasty again rose to power and ruled through its tributary kings a
large portion of the island. This dynasty was addicted to the black
craft, which it must be understood became more and more prevalent
during all the four periods, until it culminated in the inevitable
catastrophe, which to a great extent purified the earth of the
monstrous evil. It must also be borne in mind that down to the very
end when Poseidonis disappeared, an Intitiate emperor or king--or at
least one acknowledging the "good law"--held sway in some part of the
island continent, acting under the guidance of the Occult Hierarchy in
controlling where possible the evil sorcerers, and in guiding and
instructing the small minority who were still willing to lead pure and
wholesome lives. In later days this "white" king was as a rule elected
by the priests--the handful, that is, who still followed the "good
law."

Little more remains to be said about the Toltecs. In Poseidonis the
population of the whole island was more or less mixed. Two kingdoms
and one small republic in the west divided the island between them.
The northern portion was ruled by an Initiate king. In the south too
the hereditary principle had given way to election by the people.
Exclusive race-dynasties were at an end, but kings of Toltec blood
occasionally rose to power both in the north and south, the northern
kingdom being constantly encroached upon by its southern rival, and
more and more of its territory annexed.

Having dealt at some length with the state of things under the
Toltecs, the leading political characteristics of the four following
sub-races need not long detain us, for none of them reached the
heights of civilization that the Toltecs did--in fact the degeneration
of the race had set in.

It seems to have been some sort of feudal system that the natural bent
of the Turanian race tended to develop. Each chief was supreme on his
own territory, and the king was only _primus inter pares_. The chiefs
who formed his council occasionally murdered their king and set up one
of their own number in his place. They were a turbulent and lawless
race--brutal and cruel also. The fact that at some periods of their
history regiments of women took part in their wars is significant of
the last named characteristics.

But the strange experiment they made in social life which, but for its
political origin, would more naturally have been dealt with under
"manners and customs," is the most interesting fact in their record.
Being continually worsted in war with their Toltec neighbours, knowing
themselves to be greatly outnumbered, and desiring above all things
increase of population, laws were passed, by which every man was
relieved from the direct burden of maintaining his family. The State
took charge of and provided for the children, and they were looked
upon as its property. This naturally tended to increase the birth-rate
amongst the Turanians, and the ceremony of marriage came to be
disregarded. The ties of family life, and the feeling of parental love
were of course destroyed, and the scheme having been found to be a
failure, was ultimately given up. Other attempts at finding
socialistic solutions of economical problems which still vex us
to-day, were tried and abandoned by this race.

The original Semites, who were a quarrelsome marauding and energetic
race, always leant towards a patriarchal form of government. Their
colonists, who generally took to the nomadic life, almost exclusively
adopted this form, but as we have seen they developed a considerable
empire in the days of the second map period, and possessed the great
"City of the Golden Gates." They ultimately, however, had to give way
before the growing power of the Akkadians.

It was in the third map period, about 100,000 years ago, that the
Akkadians finally overthrew the Semite power. This 6th sub-race were a
much more law-abiding people than their predecessors. Traders and
sailors, they lived in settled communities, and naturally produced an
oligarchical form of government. A peculiarity of theirs, of which
Sparta is the only modern example, was the dual system of two kings
reigning in one city. As a result probably of their sea-going taste,
the study of the stars became a characteristic pursuit, and this race
made great advances both in astronomy and astrology.

The Mongolian people were an improvement on their immediate ancestors
of the brutal Turanian stock. Born as they were on the wide steppes of
Eastern Siberia, they never had any touch with the mother-continent,
and owing, doubtless, to their environment, they became a nomadic
people. More psychic and more religious than the Turanians from whom
they sprang, the form of government towards which they gravitated
required a suzerain in the background who should be supreme both as a
territorial ruler and as a chief high priest.

_Emigrations._--Three causes contributed to produce emigrations. The
Turanian race, as we have seen, was from its very start imbued with
the spirit of colonizing, which it carried out on a considerable
scale. The Semites and Akkadians were also to a certain extent
colonizing races.

Then, as time went on and population tended more and more to outrun
the limits of subsistence, necessity operated with the least
well-to-do in every race alike, and drove them to seek for a
livelihood in less thickly populated countries. For it should be
realized that when the Atlanteans reached their zenith in the Toltec
era, the proportion of population to the square mile on the continent
of Atlantis probably equalled, even if it did not exceed, our modern
experience in England and Belgium. It is at all events certain that
the vacant spaces available for colonization were very much larger in
that age than in ours, while the total population of the world, which
at the present moment is probably not more than twelve hundred to
fifteen hundred millions, amounted in those days to the big figure of
about two thousand millions.

Lastly, there were the priest-led emigrations which took place prior
to each catastrophe--and there were many more of these than the four
great ones referred to above. The initiated kings and priests who
followed the "good law" were aware beforehand of the impending
calamities. Each one, therefore, naturally became a centre of
prophetic warning, and ultimately a leader of a band of colonists. It
may be noted here that in later days the rulers of the country deeply
resented these priest-led emigrations, as tending to impoverish and
depopulate their kingdoms, and it became necessary for the emigrants
to get on board ship secretly during the night.

In roughly tracing the lines of emigration followed by each sub-race
in turn, we shall of necessity ultimately reach the lands which their
respective descendants to-day occupy.

For the earliest emigrations we must go back to the Rmoahal days. It
will be remembered that that portion of the race which inhabited the
north-eastern coasts alone retained its purity of blood. Harried on
their southern borders and driven further north by the Tlavatli
warriors, they began to overflow to the neighbouring land to the east,
and to the still nearer promontory of Greenland. In the second map
period no pure Rmoahals were left on the then reduced mother-continent,
but the northern promontory of the continent then rising on the west was
occupied by them, as well as the Greenland cape already mentioned, and
the western shores of the great Scandinavian island. There was also a
colony on the land lying north of the central Asian sea.

Brittany and Picardy then formed part of the Scandinavian island, while
the island itself became in the third map period part of the growing
continent of Europe. Now it is in France that remains of this race have
been found in the quaternary strata, and the brachycephalous, or
round-headed specimen known as the "Furfooz man," may be taken as a fair
average of the type of the race in its decay.

Many times forced to move south by the rigours of a glacial epoch,
many times driven north by the greed of their more powerful
neighbours, the scattered and degraded remnants of this race may be
found to-day in the modern Lapps, though even here there was some
infusion of other blood. And so it comes to pass that these faded and
stunted specimens of humanity are the lineal descendants of the black
race of giants who arose on the equatorial lands of Lemuria well nigh
five million years ago.

The Tlavatli colonists seem to have spread out towards every point of
the compass. By the second map period their descendants were settled
on the western shores of the then growing American continent
(California) as well as on its extreme southern coasts (Rio de
Janeiro). We also find them occupying the eastern shores of the
Scandinavian island, while numbers of them sailed across the ocean,
rounded the coast of Africa, and reached India. There, mixing with the
indigenous Lemurian population, they formed the Dravidian race. In
later days this in its turn received an infusion of Aryan or Fifth
Race blood, from which results the complexity of type found in India
to-day. In fact we have here a very fair example of the extreme
difficulty of deciding any question of race upon merely physical
evidence, for it would be quite possible to have Fifth Race egos
incarnate among the Brahmans, Fourth Race egos among the lower castes,
and some lingering Third Race among the hill tribes.

By the fourth map period we find a Tlavatli people occupying the
southern parts of South America, from which it may be inferred that
the Patagonians probably had remote Tlavatli ancestry.

Remains of this race, as of the Rmoahals, have been found in the
quaternary strata of Central Europe, and the dolichocephalous
"Cro-Magnon man"[1] may be taken as an average specimen of the race in
its decadence, while the "Lake-Dwellers" of Switzerland formed an even
earlier and not quite pure offshoot. The only people who can be cited
as fairly pure-blooded specimens of the race at the present day are
some of the brown tribes of Indians of South America. The Burmese and
Siamese have also Tlavatli blood in their veins, but in their case it
was mixed with, and therefore dominated by, the nobler stock of one of
the Aryan sub-races.

We now come to the Toltecs. It was chiefly to the west that their
emigrations tended, and the neighbouring coasts of the American
continent were in the second map period peopled by a pure Toltec race,
the greater part of those left on the mother-continent being then of
very mixed blood. It was on the continents of North and South America
that this race spread abroad and flourished, and on which thousands of
years later were established the empires of Mexico and Peru. The
greatness of these empires is a matter of history, or at least of
tradition supplemented by such evidence as is afforded by magnificent
architectural remains. It may here be noted that while the Mexican
empire was for centuries great and powerful in all that is usually
regarded as power and greatness in our civilization of to-day, it
never reached the height attained by the Peruvians about 14,000 years
ago under their Inca sovereigns, for as regards the general well-being
of the people, the justice and beneficence of the government, the
equitable nature of the land tenure, and the pure and religious life
of the inhabitants, the Peruvian empire of those days might be
considered a traditional though faint echo of the golden age of the
Toltecs on the mother-continent of Atlantis.

The average Red Indian of North or South America is the best
representative to-day of the Toltec people, but of course bears no
comparison with the highly civilized individual of the race at its
zenith.

Egypt must now be referred to, and the consideration of this subject
should let in a flood of light upon its early history. Although the
first settlement in that country was not in the strict sense of the
term a colony, it was from the Toltec race that was subsequently drawn
the first great body of emigrants intended to mix with and dominate
the aboriginal people.

In the first instance it was the transfer of a great Lodge of
initiates. This took place about 400,000 years ago. The golden age of
the Toltecs was long past. The first great catastrophe had taken
place. The moral degradation of the people and the consequent practice
of the "black arts" were becoming more accentuated and widely spread.
Purer surroundings for the White Lodge were needed. Egypt was isolated
and was thinly peopled, and therefore Egypt was chosen. The settlement
so made answered its purpose, and undisturbed by adverse conditions
the Lodge of Initiates for nearly 200,000 years did its work.

About 210,000 years ago, when the time was ripe, the Occult Lodge
founded an empire--the first "Divine Dynasty" of Egypt--and began to
teach the people. Then it was that the first great body of colonists
was brought from Atlantis, and some time during the ten thousand years
that led up to the second catastrophe, the two great Pyramids of Gizeh
were built, partly to provide permanent Halls of Initiation, but also
to act as treasure-house and shrine for some great talisman of power
during the submergence which the Initiates knew to be impending. Map
No. 3 shows Egypt at that date as under water. It remained so for a
considerable period, but on its re-emergence it was again peopled by
the descendants of many of its old inhabitants who had retired to the
Abyssinian mountains (shown in Map No. 3 as an island) as well as by
fresh bands of Atlantean colonists from various parts of the world. A
considerable immigration of Akkadians then helped to modify the
Egyptian type. This is the era of the second "Divine Dynasty" of
Egypt--the rulers of the country being again Initiated Adepts.

The catastrophe of 80,000 years ago again laid the country under
water, but this time it was only a temporary wave. When it receded the
third "Divine Dynasty"--that mentioned by Manetho--began its rule, and
it was under the early kings of this dynasty that the great Temple of
Karnak and many of the more ancient buildings still standing in Egypt
were constructed. In fact with the exception of the two pyramids no
building in Egypt predates the catastrophe of 80,000 years ago.

The final submergence of Poseidonis sent another tidal wave over
Egypt. This too, was only a temporary calamity, but it brought the
Divine Dynasties to an end, for the Lodge of Initiates had transferred
its quarters to other lands.

Various points here left untouched have already been dealt with in the
_Transaction of the London Lodge_, "The Pyramids and Stonehenge."

The Turanians who in the first map period had colonized the northern
parts of the land lying immediately to the east of Atlantis, occupied
in the second map period its southern shores (which included the
present Morocco and Algeria). We also find them wandering eastwards,
and both the east and west coasts of the central Asian sea were
peopled by them. Bands of them ultimately moved still further east,
and the nearest approximation to the type of this race is to-day to be
found in the inland Chinese. A curious freak of destiny must be
recorded about one of their western offshoots. Dominated all through
the centuries by their more powerful Toltec neighbours, it was yet
reserved for a small branch of the Turanian stock to conquer and
replace the last great empire that the Toltecs raised, for the brutal
and barely civilized Aztecs were of pure Turanian blood.

The Semite emigrations were of two kinds, first, those which were
controlled by the natural impulse of the race: second, that special
emigration which was effected under the direct guidance of the Manu;
for, strange as it may seem, it was not from the Toltecs but from this
lawless and turbulent though vigorous and energetic sub-race that was
chosen the nucleus destined to be developed into our great Fifth or
Aryan Race. The reason, no doubt, lay in the Manasic characteristic
with which the number five is always associated. The sub-race of that
number was inevitably developing its physical brain power and
intellect; although at the expense of the psychic perceptions, while
that same development of intellect to infinitely higher levels is at
once the glory and the destined goal of our Fifth Root Race.

Dealing first with the natural emigrations we find that in the second
map period while still leaving powerful nations on the mother-continent,
the Semites had spread both west and east--west to the lands now forming
the United States, and thus accounting for the Semitic type to be found
in some of the Indian races, and east to the northern shores of the
neighbouring continent, which combined all there then was of Europe,
Africa and Asia. The type of the ancient Egyptians, as well as of other
neighbouring nations, was to some extent modified by this original
Semite blood; but with the exception of the Jews, the only
representatives of comparatively unmixed race at the present day are the
lighter coloured Kabyles of the Algerian mountains.

The tribes resulting from the segregation effected by the Manu for the
formation of the new Root Race eventually found their way to the
southern shores of the central Asian sea, and there the first great
Aryan kingdom was established. When the Transaction dealing with the
origin of a Root Race comes to be written, it will be seen that many
of the peoples we are accustomed to call Semitic are really Aryan in
blood. The world will also be enlightened as to what constitutes the
claim of the Hebrews to be considered a "chosen people." Shortly it
may be stated that they constitute an abnormal and unnatural link
between the Fourth and Fifth Root Races.

The Akkadians, though eventually becoming supreme rulers on the
mother-continent of Atlantis, owed their birthplace as we have seen in
the second map period, to the neighbouring continent--that part
occupied by the basin of the Mediterranean about the present island of
Sardinia being their special home. From this centre they spread
eastwards, occupying what eventually became the shores of the Levant,
and reaching as far as Persia and Arabia. As we have seen, they also
helped to people Egypt. The early Etruscans, the Phoenicians,
including the Carthaginians and the Shumero-Akkads, were branches of
this race, while the Basques of to-day have probably more of the
Akkadian than of any other blood which flows in their veins.

A reference to the early inhabitants of our own islands may
appropriately be made here, for it was in the early Akkadian days,
about 100,000 years ago, that the colony of Initiates who founded
Stonehenge landed on these shores--"these shores" being, of course,
the shores of the Scandinavian part of the continent of Europe, as
shown in Map No. 3. The initiated priests and their followers appear
to have belonged to a very early strain of the Akkadian race--they
were taller, fairer, and longer headed than the aborigines of the
country, who were a very mixed race, but mostly degenerate remnants of
the Rmoahals. As readers of the _Transaction of the London Lodge_ on
the "Pyramids and Stonehenge," will know, the rude simplicity of
Stonehenge was intended as a protest against the extravagant ornament
and over-decoration of the existing temples in Atlantis, where the
debased worship of their own images was being carried on by the
inhabitants.

The Mongolians, as we have seen, never had any touch with the
mother-continent. Born on the wide plains of Tartary, their
emigrations for long found ample scope within those regions; but more
than once tribes of Mongol descent have overflowed from northern Asia
to America, across Behring's Straits, and the last of such
emigrations--that of the Kitans, some 1,300 years ago--has left traces
which some western savants have been able to follow. The presence of
Mongolian blood in some tribes of North American Indians has also been
recognized by various writers on ethnology. The Hungarians and Malays
are both known to be offshoots of this race, ennobled in the one case
by a strain of Aryan blood, degraded in the other by mixture with the
effete Lemurians. But the interesting fact about the Mongolians is
that its last family race is still in full force--it has not in fact
yet reached its zenith--and the Japanese nation has still got history
to give to the world.

_Arts and Sciences._--It must primarily be recognized that our own
Aryan race has naturally achieved far greater results in almost every
direction than did the Atlanteans, but even where they failed to reach
our level, the records of what they accomplished are of interest as
representing the high water mark which their tide of civilization
reached. On the other hand, the character of the scientific
achievements in which they did outstrip us are of so dazzling a
nature, that bewilderment at such unequal development is apt to be the
feeling left.

The arts and sciences, as practised by the first two races, were, of
course, crude in the extreme, but we do not propose to follow the
progress achieved by each sub-race separately. The history of the
Atlantean, as of the Aryan race, was interspersed with periods of
progress and of decay. Eras of culture were followed by times of
lawlessness, during which all artistic and scientific development was
lost, these again being succeeded by civilizations reaching to still
higher levels. It must naturally be with the periods of culture that
the following remarks will deal, chief among which stands out the
great Toltec era.

Architecture and sculpture, painting and music were all practised in
Atlantis. The music even at the best of times was crude, and the
instruments of the most primitive type. All the Atlantean races were
fond of colour, and brilliant hues decorated both the insides and the
outsides of their houses, but painting as a fine art was never well
established, though in the later days some kind of drawing and
painting was taught in the schools. Sculpture on the other hand, which
was also taught in the schools, was widely practised, and reached
great excellence. As we shall see later on under the head of
"Religion" it became customary for every man who could afford it to
place in one of the temples an image of himself. These were sometimes
carved in wood or in hard black stone like basalt, but among the
wealthy it became the fashion to have their statues cast in one of the
precious metals, aurichalcum, gold or silver. A very fair resemblance
of the individual usually resulted, while in some cases a striking
likeness was achieved.

Architecture, however, was naturally the most widely practised of
these arts. Their buildings were massive structures of gigantic
proportions. The dwelling houses in the cities were not, as ours are,
closely crowded together in streets. Like their country houses some
stood in their own garden grounds, others were separated by plots of
common land, but all were isolated structures. In the case of houses
of any importance four blocks of building surrounded a central
courtyard, in the centre of which generally stood one of the fountains
whose number in the "City of the Golden Gates" gained for it the
second appellation of the "City of Waters." There was no exhibition of
goods for sale as in modern streets. All transactions of buying and
selling took place privately, except at stated times, when large
public fairs were held in the open spaces of the cities. But the
characteristic feature of the Toltec house was the tower that rose
from one of its corners or from the centre of one of the blocks. A
spiral staircase built outside led to the upper stories, and a pointed
dome terminated the tower--this upper portion being very commonly used
as an observatory. As already stated the houses were decorated with
bright colours. Some were ornamented with carvings, others with
frescoes or painted patterns. The window-spaces were-filled with some
manufactured article similar to, but less transparent than, glass. The
interiors were not furnished with the elaborate detail of our modern
dwellings, but the life was highly civilized of its kind.

The temples were huge halls resembling more than anything else the
gigantic piles of Egypt, but built on a still more stupendous scale.
The pillars supporting the roof were generally square, seldom
circular. In the days of the decadence the aisles were surrounded with
innumerable chapels in which were enshrined the statues of the more
important inhabitants. These side shrines indeed were occasionally of
such considerable size as to admit a whole retinue of priests whom
some specially great man might have in his service for the ceremonial
worship of his image. Like the private houses the temples too were
never complete without the dome-capped towers, which of course were of
corresponding size and magnificence. These were used for astronomical
observations and for sun-worship.

The precious metals were largely used in the adornment of the temples,
the interiors being often not merely inlaid but plated with gold. Gold
and silver were highly valued, but as we shall see later on when the
subject of the currency is dealt with, the uses to which they were put
were entirely artistic and had nothing to do with coinage, while the
great quantities that were then produced by the chemists--or as we
should now-a-days call them alchemists--may be said to have taken them
out of the category of the precious metals. This power of
transmutation of metals was not universal, but it was so widely
possessed that enormous quantities were made. In fact the production
of the wished-for metals may be regarded as one of the industrial
enterprises of those days by which these alchemists gained their
living. Gold was admired even more than silver, and was consequently
produced in much greater quantity.

_Education._--A few words on the subject of language will fitly
prelude a consideration of the training in the schools and colleges of
Atlantis. During the first map period Toltec was the universal
language, not only throughout the continent but in the western islands
and that part of the eastern continent which recognized the emperor's
rule. Remains of the Rmoahal and Tlavatli speech survived it is true
in out-of-the-way parts, just as the Keltic and Cymric speech survives
to-day among us in Ireland and Wales. The Tlavatli tongue was the
basis used by the Turanians, who introduced such modifications that an
entirely different language was in time produced; while the Semites
and Akkadians, adopting a Toltec ground-work, modified it in their
respective ways, and so produced two divergent varieties. Thus in the
later days of Poseidonis there were several entirely different
languages--all however belonging to the agglutinative type--for it was
not till Fifth Race days that the descendants of the Semites and
Akkadians developed inflectional speech. All through the ages,
however, the Toltec language fairly maintained its purity, and the
same tongue that was spoken in Atlantis in the days of its splendour
was used, with but slight alterations, thousands of years later in
Mexico and Peru.

The schools and colleges of Atlantis in the great Toltec days, as well
as in subsequent eras of culture, were all endowed by the State.
Though every child was required to pass through the primary schools,
the subsequent training differed very widely. The primary schools
formed a sort of winnowing ground. Those who showed real aptitude for
study were, along with the children of the dominant classes who
naturally had greater abilities, drafted into the higher schools at
about the age of twelve. Reading and writing, which were regarded as
mere preliminaries, had already been taught them in the primary
schools.

But reading and writing were not considered necessary for the great
masses of the inhabitants who had to spend their lives in tilling the
land, or in handicrafts, the practice of which was required by the
community. The great majority of the children therefore were at once
passed on to the technical schools best suited to their various
abilities. Chief among these were the agricultural schools. Some
branches of mechanics also formed part of the training, while in
outlying districts and by the sea-side hunting and fishing were
naturally included. And so the children all received the education or
training which was most appropriate for them.

The children of superior abilities, who as we have seen had been
taught to read and write, had a much more elaborate education. The
properties of plants and their healing qualities formed an important
branch of study. There were no recognized physicians in those
days--every educated man knew more or less of medicine as well as of
magnetic healing. Chemistry, mathematics and astronomy were also
taught. The training in such studies finds its analogy among
ourselves, but the object towards which the teachers' efforts were
mainly directed, was the development of the pupil's psychic faculties
and his instruction in the more hidden forces of nature. The occult
properties of plants, metals, and precious stones, as well as the
alchemical processes of transmutation, were included in this category.
But as time went on it became more and more the personal power, which
Bulwer Lytton calls vril, and the operation of which he has fairly
accurately described in his _Coming Race_, that the colleges for the
higher training of the youth of Atlantis were specially occupied in
developing. The marked change which took place when the decadence of
the race set in was, that instead of merit and aptitude being regarded
as warrants for advancement to the higher grades of instruction, the
dominant classes becoming more and more exclusive allowed none but
their own children to graduate in the higher knowledge which gave so
much power.

In such an empire as the Toltec, agriculture naturally received much
attention. Not only were the labourers taught their duties in
technical schools, but colleges were established in which the
knowledge necessary for carrying out experiments in the crossing both
of animals and plants, were taught to fitting students.

As readers of Theosophic literature may know, _wheat_ was not evolved
on this planet at all. It was the gift of the Manu who brought it from
another globe outside our chain of worlds. But oats and some of our
other cereals are the results of crosses between wheat and the
indigenous grasses of the earth. Now the experiments which gave these
results were carried out in the agricultural schools of Atlantis. Of
course such experiments were guided by high knowledge. But the most
notable achievement to be recorded of the Atlantean agriculturists was
the evolution of the plantain or banana. In the original wild state it
was like an elongated melon with scarcely any pulp, but full of seeds
as a melon is. It was of course only by centuries (if not thousands of
years) of continuous selection and elimination that the present
seedless plant was evolved.

Among the domesticated animals of the Toltec days were creatures that
looked like very small tapirs. They naturally fed upon roots or
herbage, but like the pigs of to-day, which they resembled in more
than one particular, they were not over cleanly, and ate whatever came
in their way. Large cat-like animals and the wolf-like ancestors of
the dog might also be met about human habitations. The Toltec carts
appear to have been drawn by creatures somewhat resembling small
camels. The Peruvian llamas of to-day are probably their descendants.
The ancestors of the Irish elk, too, roamed in herds about the hill
sides in much the same way as our Highland cattle do now--too wild to
allow of easy approach, but still under the control of man.

Constant experiments were made in breeding and cross-breeding
different kinds of animals, and, curious though it may seem to us,
artificial heat was largely used to force their development, so that
the results of crossing and interbreeding might be more quickly
apparent. The use, too, of different coloured lights in the chambers
where such experiments were carried on were adopted in order to obtain
varying results.

This control and moulding at will by man of the animal forms brings us
to a rather startling and very mysterious subject. Reference has been
made above to the work done by the Manus. Now it is in the mind of
the Manu that originates all improvements in type and the
potentialities latent in every form of being. In order to work out in
detail the improvements in the animal forms, the help and co-operation
of man were required. The amphibian and reptile forms which then
abounded had about run their course, and were ready to assume the more
advanced type of bird or mammal. These forms constituted the inchoate
material placed at man's disposal, and the clay was ready to assume
whatever shape the potter's hands might mould it into. It was
specially with animals in the intermediate stage that so many of the
experiments above referred to were tried, and doubtless the
domesticated animals like the horse, which are now of such service to
man, are the result of these experiments in which the men of those
days acted in co-operation with the Manu and his ministers. But the
co-operation was too soon withdrawn. Selfishness obtained the upper
hand, and war and discord brought the Golden Age of the Toltecs to a
close. When instead of working loyally for a common end, under the
guidance of their Initiate kings, men began to prey upon each other,
the beasts which might gradually have assumed, under the care of man,
more and more useful and domesticated forms, being left to the
guidance of their own instincts naturally followed the example of
their monarch, and began to prey upon each other. Some indeed had
actually already been trained and used by men in their hunting
expeditions, and thus the semi-domesticated cat-like animals above
referred to naturally became the ancestors of the leopards and
jaguars.

One illustration of what some may be tempted to call a fantastic
theory, though it may not elucidate the problem, will at least point
the moral contained in this supplement to our knowledge regarding the
mysterious manner in which our evolution has proceeded. The lion it
would appear might have had a gentler nature and a less fierce aspect
had the men of those days completed the task that was given them to
perform. Whether or not he is fated eventually "to lie down with the
lamb and eat straw like the ox," the destiny in store for him as
pictured in the mind of the Manu has not yet been realized, for the
picture was that of a powerful but domesticated animal--a strong
level-backed creature, with large intelligent eyes, intended to act as
man's most powerful servant for purposes of traction.

The "City of the Golden Gates" and its surroundings must be described
before we come to consider the marvellous system by which its
inhabitants were supplied with water. It lay, as we have seen, on the
east coast of the continent close to the sea, and about 15 deg. north
of the equator. A beautifully-wooded park-like country surrounded the
city. Scattered over a large area of this were the villa residences of
the wealthier classes. To the west lay a range of mountains, from
which the water supply of the city was drawn. The city itself was
built on the slopes of a hill, which rose from the plain about 500
feet. On the summit of this hill lay the emperor's palace and gardens,
in the centre of which welled up from the earth a never-ending stream
of water, supplying first the palace and the fountains in the gardens,
thence flowing in the four directions and falling in cascades into a
canal or moat which encompassed the palace grounds, and thus separated
them from the city which lay below on every side. From this canal four
channels led the water through four quarters of the city to cascades
which in their turn supplied another encircling canal at a lower
level. There were three such canals forming concentric circles, the
outermost and lowest of which was still above the level of the plain.
A fourth canal at this lowest level, but on a rectangular plan,
received the constantly flowing waters, and in its turn discharged
them into the sea. The city extended over part of the plain, up to
the edge of this great outermost moat, which surrounded and defended
it with a line of waterways extending about twelve miles by ten miles
square.

It will thus be seen that the city was divided into three great belts,
each hemmed in by its canals. The characteristic feature of the upper
belt that lay just below the palace grounds, was a circular
race-course and large public gardens. Most of the houses of the court
officials also lay on this belt, and here also was an institution of
which we have no parallel in modern times. The term "Strangers' Home"
amongst us suggests a mean appearance and sordid surroundings, but
this was a palace where all strangers who might come to the city were
entertained as long as they might choose to stay--being treated all
the time as guests of the Government. The detached houses of the
inhabitants and the various temples scattered throughout the city
occupied the other two belts. In the days of the Toltec greatness
there seems to have been no real poverty--even the retinue of slaves
attached to most houses being well fed and clothed--but there were a
number of comparatively poor houses in the lowest belt to the north,
as well as outside the outermost canal towards the sea. The
inhabitants of this part were mostly connected with the shipping, and
their houses though detached were built closer together than in other
districts.

It will be seen from the above that the inhabitants had thus a
never-failing supply of pure clear water constantly coursing through
the city, while the upper belts and the emperor's palace were
protected by lines of moats, each one at a higher level as the centre
was approached.

Now it does not require much mechanical knowledge in order to realize
how stupendous must have been the works needed to provide this supply,
for in the days of its greatness the "City of the Golden Gates"
embraced within its four circles of moats over two million
inhabitants. No such system of water supply has ever been attempted in
Greek, Roman or modern times--indeed it is very doubtful whether our
ablest engineers, even at the expenditure of untold wealth, could
produce such a result.

A description of some of its leading features will be of interest. It
was from a lake which lay among the mountains to the west of the city,
at an elevation of about 2,600 feet, that the supply was drawn. The
main aqueduct which was of oval section, measuring fifty feet by
thirty feet, led underground to an enormous heart-shaped reservoir.
This lay deep below the palace, in fact at the very base of the hill
on which the palace and the city stood. From this reservoir a
perpendicular shaft of about 500 feet up through the solid rock gave
passage to the water which welled up in the palace grounds, and thence
was distributed throughout the city. Various pipes from the central
reservoir also led to different parts of the city to supply drinking
water and the public fountains. Systems of sluices of course also
existed to control or cut off the supply of the different districts.

From the above it will be apparent to any one possessed of some little
knowledge of mechanics that the pressure in the subterranean aqueduct
and the central reservoir from which the water naturally rose to the
basin in the palace gardens, must have been enormous, and the
resisting power of the material used in their construction
consequently prodigious.

If the system of water supply in the "City of the Golden Gates" was
wonderful, the Atlantean methods of locomotion must be recognised as
still more marvellous, for the air-ship or flying-machine which Keely
in America, and Maxim in this country are now attempting to produce,
was then a realized fact. It was not at any time a common means of
transport. The slaves, the servants, and the masses who laboured with
their hands, had to trudge along the country tracks, or travel in rude
carts with solid wheels drawn by uncouth animals. The air-boats may be
considered as the private carriages of those days, or rather the
private yachts, if we regard the relative number of those who
possessed them, for they must have been at all times difficult and
costly to produce. They were not as a rule built to accommodate many
persons. Numbers were constructed for only two, some allowed for six
or eight passengers. In the later days when war and strife had brought
the Golden Age to an end, battle ships that could navigate the air had
to a great extent replaced the battle ships at sea--having naturally
proved far more powerful engines of destruction. These were
constructed to carry as many as fifty, and in some cases even up to a
hundred fighting men.

The material of which the air boats were constructed was either wood
or metal. The earlier ones were built of wood--the boards used being
exceedingly thin, but the injection of some substance which did not
add materially to the weight while it gave leather-like toughness,
provided the necessary combination of lightness and strength. When
metal was used it was generally an alloy--two white-coloured metals
and one red one entering into its composition. The resultant was
white-coloured, like aluminium, and even lighter in weight. Over the
rough framework of the air-boat was extended a large sheet of this
metal which was then beaten into shape and electrically welded where
necessary. But whether built of metal or wood their outside surface
was apparently seamless and perfectly smooth, and they shone in the
dark as if coated with luminous paint.

In shape they were boat-like, but they were invariably decked over,
for when at full speed it could not have been convenient, even if
safe, for any on board to remain on the upper deck. Their propelling
and steering gear could be brought into use at either end.

But the all-interesting question is that relating to the power by
which they were propelled. In the earlier times it seems to have been
personal vril that supplied the motive power--whether used in
conjunction with any mechanical contrivance matters not much--but in
the later days this was replaced by a force which, though generated in
what is to us an unknown manner, operated nevertheless through
definite mechanical arrangements. This force, though not yet
discovered by science, more nearly approached that which Keely in
America is learning to handle than the electric power used by Maxim.
It was in fact of an etheric nature, but though we are no nearer to
the solution of the problem, its method of operation can be described.
The mechanical arrangements no doubt differed somewhat in different
vessels. The following description is taken from an air-boat in which
on one occasion three ambassadors from the king who ruled over the
northern part of Poseidonis made the journey to the court of the
southern kingdom. A strong heavy metal chest which lay in the centre
of the boat was the generator. Thence the force flowed through two
large flexible tubes to either end of the vessel, as well as through
eight subsidiary tubes fixed fore and aft to the bulwarks. These had
double openings pointing vertically both up and down. When the journey
was about to begin the valves of the eight bulwark tubes which pointed
downwards were opened--all the other valves being closed. The current
rushing through these impinged on the earth with such force as to
drive the boat upwards, while the air itself continued to supply the
necessary fulcrum. When a sufficient elevation was reached the
flexible tube at that end of the vessel which pointed away from the
desired destination, was brought into action, while by the partial
closing of the valves the current rushing through the eight vertical
tubes was reduced to the small amount required to maintain the
elevation reached. The great volume of the current, being now directed
through the large tube pointing downwards from the stern at an angle
of about forty-five degrees, while helping to maintain the elevation,
provided also the great motive power to propel the vessel through the
air. The steering was accomplished by the discharge of the current
through this tube, for the slightest change in its direction at once
caused an alteration in the vessel's course. But constant supervision
was not required. When a long journey had to be taken the tube could
be fixed so as to need no handling till the destination was almost
reached. The maximum speed attained was about one hundred miles an
hour, the course of flight never being a straight line, but always in
the form of long waves, now approaching and now receding from the
earth. The elevation at which the vessels travelled was only a few
hundred feet--indeed, when high mountains lay in the line of their
track it was necessary to change their course and go round them--the
more rarefied air no longer supplying the necessary fulcrum. Hills of
about one thousand feet were the highest they could cross. The means
by which the vessel was brought to a stop on reaching its
destination--and this could be done equally well in mid-air--was to
give escape to some of the current force through the tube at that end
of the boat which pointed towards its destination, and the current
impinging on the land or air in front, acted as a drag, while the
propelling force behind was gradually reduced by the closing of the
valve. The reason has still to be given for the existence of the eight
tubes pointing upwards from the bulwarks. This had more specially to
do with the aerial warfare. Having so powerful a force at their
disposal, the warships naturally directed the current against each
other. Now this was apt to destroy the equilibrium of the ship so
struck and to turn it upside down--a situation sure to be taken
advantage of by the enemy's vessel to make an attack with her ram.
There was also the further danger of being precipitated to the ground,
unless the shutting and opening of the necessary valves were quickly
attended to. In whatever position the vessel might be, the tubes
pointing towards the earth were naturally those through which the
current should be rushing, while the tubes pointing upwards should be
closed. The means by which a vessel turned upside down might be
righted and placed again on a level keel, was accomplished by using
the four tubes pointing downwards at one side of the vessel only,
while the four at the other side were kept closed.

The Atlanteans had also sea-going vessels which were propelled by some
power analogous to that above mentioned, but the current force which
was eventually found to be most effective in this case had a denser
appearance than that used in the air-boats.

_Manners and Customs._--There was doubtless as much variety in the
manners and customs of the Atlanteans at different epochs of their
history, as there has been among the various nations which compose our
Aryan race. With the fluctuating fashion of the centuries we are not
concerned. The following remarks will attempt to deal merely with the
leading characteristics which differentiate their habits from our own,
and these will be chosen as much as possible from the great Toltec
era.

With regard to marriage and the relations of the sexes the experiments
made by the Turanians have already been referred to. Polygamous
customs were prevalent at different times among all the sub-races, but
in the Toltec days while two wives were allowed by the law, great
numbers of men had only one wife. Nor were the women--as in countries
now-a-days where polygamy prevails--regarded as inferiors, or in the
least oppressed. Their position was quite equal to that of the men,
while the aptitude many of them displayed in acquiring the vril-power
made them fully the equals if not the superiors of the other sex. This
equality indeed was recognised from infancy, and there was no
separation of the sexes in schools or colleges. Boys and girls were
taught together. It was the rule, too, and not the exception, for
complete harmony to prevail in the dual households, and the mothers
taught their children to look equally to their father's wives for love
and protection. Nor were women debarred from taking part in the
government. Sometimes they were members of the councils, and
occasionally even were chosen by the Adept emperor to represent him in
the various provinces as the local sovereigns.

The writing material of the Atlanteans consisted of thin sheets of
metal, on the white porcelain-like surface of which the words were
written. They also had the means of reproducing the written text by
placing on the inscribed sheet another thin metal plate which had
previously been dipped in some liquid. The text thus graven on the
second plate could be reproduced at will on other sheets, a great
number of which fastened together constituted a book.

A custom which differs considerably from our own must be instanced
next, in their choice of food. It is an unpleasant subject, but can
scarcely be passed over. The flesh of the animals they usually
discarded, while the parts which among us are avoided as food, were by
them devoured. The blood also they drank--often hot from the
animal--and various cooked dishes were also made of it.

It must not, however, be thought that they were without the lighter,
and to us, more palatable, kinds of food. The seas and rivers provided
them with fish, the flesh of which they ate, though often in such an
advanced stage of decomposition as would be to us revolting. The
different grains were largely cultivated, of which were made bread and
cakes. They also had milk, fruit and vegetables.

A small minority of the inhabitants, it is true, never adopted the
revolting customs above referred to. This was the case with the Adept
kings and emperors and the initiated priesthood throughout the whole
empire. They were entirely vegetarian in their habits, but though many
of the emperor's counsellors and the officials about the court
affected to prefer the purer diet, they often indulged in secret their
grosser tastes.

Nor were strong drinks unknown in those days. Fermented liquor of a
very potent sort was at one time much in vogue. But it was so apt to
make these who drank it dangerously excited that a law was passed
absolutely forbidding its consumption.

The weapons of warfare and the chase differed considerably at
different epochs. Swords and spears, bows and arrows sufficed as a
rule for the Rmoahals and the Tlavatli. The beasts which they hunted
at that very early period were mammoths with long woolly hair,
elephants and hippopotami. Marsupials also abounded as well as
survivals of intermediate types--some being half reptile and half
mammal, others half reptile and half bird.

The use of explosives was adopted at an early period, and carried to
great perfection in later times. Some appear to have been made to
explode on concussion, others after a certain interval of time, but in
either case the destruction to life seems to have resulted from the
release of some poisonous vapour, not from the impact of bullets. So
powerful indeed must have become these explosives in later Atlantean
times, that we hear of whole companies of men being destroyed in
battle by the noxious gas generated by the explosion of one of these
bombs above their heads, thrown there by some sort of lever.

The monetary system must now be considered. During the first three
sub-races at all events, such a thing as a State coinage was unknown.
Small pieces of metal or leather stamped with some given value were,
it is true, used as tokens. Having a perforation in the centre they
were strung together, and were usually carried at the girdle. But each
man was as it were his own coiner, and the leather or metal token
fabricated by him, and exchanged with another for value received, was
but a personal acknowledgment of indebtedness, such as a promissory
note is among us. No man was entitled to fabricate more of these
tokens than he was able to redeem by the transfer of goods in his
possession. The tokens did not circulate as coinage does, while the
holder of the token had the means to estimate with perfect accuracy
the resources of his debtor by the clairvoyant faculty which all then
possessed to a greater or less degree, and which in any case of doubt
was instantly directed to ascertain the actual state of the facts.

It must be stated, however, that in the later days of Poseidonis, a
system approximating to our own currency was adopted, and the triple
mountain visible from the great southern capital was the favourite
representation on the State coinage.

But the system of land tenure is the most important subject under this
heading. Among the Rmoahal and Tlavatli, who lived chiefly by hunting
and fishing, the question naturally did not arise, though some system
of village cultivation was recognized in the Tlavatli days.

It was with the increase of population and civilization in the early
Toltec times that land first became worth fighting for. It is not
proposed to trace the system or want of system prevalent in the
troublous times anterior to the advent of the Golden Age. But the
records of that epoch present to the consideration, not only of
political economists, but of all who regard the welfare of the race, a
subject of the utmost interest and importance.

The population it must be remembered had been steadily increasing,
and under the government of the Adept emperors it had reached the very
large figure already quoted; nevertheless poverty and want were things
undreamt of in those days, and this social well-being was no doubt
partly due to the system of land tenure.

Not only was all the land and its produce regarded as belonging to the
emperor, but all the flocks and herds upon it were his as well. The
country was divided into different provinces or districts, each
province having at its head one of the subsidiary kings or viceroys
appointed by the emperor. Each of these viceroys was held responsible
for the government and well-being of all the inhabitants under his
rule. The tillage of the land, the harvesting of the crops, and the
pasturage of the herds lay within his sphere of superintendence, as
well as the conducting of such agricultural experiments as have been
already referred to.

Each viceroy had round him a council of agricultural advisers and
coadjutors, who had amongst their other duties to be well versed in
astronomy, for it was not a barren science in those days. The occult
influences on plant and animal life were then studied and taken
advantage of. The power, too, of producing rain at will was not
uncommon then, while the effects of a glacial epoch were on more than
one occasion partly neutralized in the northern parts of the continent
by occult science. The right day for beginning every agricultural
operation was of course duly calculated, and the work carried into
effect by the officials whose duty it was to supervise every detail.

The produce raised in each district or kingdom was as a rule consumed
in it, but an exchange of agricultural commodities was sometimes
arranged between the rulers.

After a small share had been put aside for the emperor and the central
government at the "City of the Golden Gates," the produce of the whole
district or kingdom was divided among the inhabitants--the local
viceroy and his retinue of officials naturally receiving the larger
portions, but the meanest agricultural labourer getting enough to
secure him competence and comfort. Any increase in the productive
capacity of the land, or in the mineral wealth which it yielded, was
divided proportionately amongst all concerned--all, therefore, were
interested in making the result of their combined labour as lucrative
as possible.

This system worked admirably for a very long period. But as time went
on negligence and self-seeking crept in. Those whose duty it was to
superintend, threw more and more responsibility on their inferiors in
office, and in time it became rare for the rulers to interfere or to
interest themselves in any of the operations. This was the beginning
of the evil days. The members of the dominant class who had previously
given all their time to the state duties began to think about making
their own lives more pleasant. The elaboration of luxury was setting
in.

There was one cause in particular which produced great discontent
amongst the lower classes. The system under which the youth of the
nation was drafted into the technical schools has already been
referred to. Now it was always one of the superior class whose psychic
faculties had been duly cultivated, to whom the duty was assigned of
selecting the children so that each one should receive the training,
and ultimately be devoted to the occupation, for which he was
naturally most fitted. But when those possessed of the clairvoyant
vision, by which alone such choice could be made, delegated their
duties to inferiors who were wanting in such psychic attributes, the
results ensuing were that the children were often thrust into wrong
grooves, and those whose capacity and taste lay in one direction often
found themselves tied for life to an occupation which they disliked,
and in which, therefore, they were rarely successful.

The systems of land tenure which ensued in different parts of the
empire on the breaking up of the great Toltec dynasty were many and
various. But it is not necessary to follow them. In the later days of
Poseidonis they had, as a rule, given place to the system of
individual ownership which we know so well.

Reference has already been made, under the head of "Emigrations," to
the system of land tenure which prevailed during that glorious period
of Peruvian history when the Incas held sway about 14,000 years ago. A
short summary of this may be of interest as demonstrating the source
from which its ground-work was doubtless derived, as well as
instancing the variations which had been adopted in this somewhat more
complicated system.

All title to land was derived in the first instance from the Inca, but
half of it was assigned to the cultivators, who of course constituted
the great bulk of the population. The other half was divided between
the Inca and the priesthood who celebrated the worship of the sun.

Out of the proceeds of his specially allotted lands the Inca had to
keep up the army, the roads throughout the whole empire, and all the
machinery of government. This was conducted by a special governing
class all more or less closely related to the Inca himself, and
representing a civilization and a culture much in advance of the great
masses of the population.

The remaining fourth--"the lands of the sun"--provided not only for
the priests who conducted the public worship throughout the empire,
but for the entire education of the people in schools and colleges,
for all sick and infirm persons, and finally, for every inhabitant
(exclusive, of course, of the governing class for whom there was no
cessation of work) on reaching the age of forty-five, that being the
age arranged for the hard work of life to cease, and for leisure and
enjoyment to begin.

_Religion._--The only subject that now remains to be dealt with is the
evolution of religious ideas. Between the spiritual aspiration of a
rude but simple race and the degraded ritual of an intellectually
cultured but spiritually dead people, lies a gulf which only the term
religion, used in its widest acceptation, can span. Nevertheless it is
this consecutive process of generation and degeneration which has to
be traced in the history of the Atlantean people.

It will be remembered that the government under which the Rmoahals
came into existence, was described as the most perfect conceivable,
for it was the Manu himself who acted as their king. The memory of
this divine ruler was naturally preserved in the annals of the race,
and in due time he came to be regarded as a god, among a people who
were naturally psychic, and had consequently glimpses of those states
of consciousness which transcend our ordinary waking condition.
Retaining these higher attributes, it was only natural that this
primitive people should adopt a religion, which, though in no way
representative of any exalted philosophy, was of a type far from
ignoble. In later days this phase of religious belief passed into a
kind of ancestor-worship.

The Tlavatli while inheriting the traditional reverence and worship
for the Manu, were taught by Adept instructors of the existence of a
Supreme Being whose symbol was recognized as the sun. They thus
developed a sort of sun worship, for the practice of which they
repaired to the hill tops. There they built great circles of upright
monoliths. These were intended to be symbolical of the sun's yearly
course, but they were also used for astronomical purposes--being
placed so that, to one standing at the high altar, the sun would rise
at the winter solstice behind one of these monoliths, at the vernal
equinox behind another, and so on throughout the year. Astronomical
observations of a still more complex character connected with the
more distant constellations were also helped by these stone circles.

We have already seen under the head of emigrations how a later
sub-race--the Akkadians--in the erection of Stonehenge, reverted to
this primitive building of monoliths.

Endowed though the Tlavatli were with somewhat greater capacity for
intellectual development than the previous sub-race, their cult was
still of a very primitive type.

With the wider diffusion of knowledge in the days of the Toltecs, and
more especially with the establishment later on of an initiated
priesthood and an Adept emperor, increased opportunities were offered
to the people for the attainment of a truer conception of the divine.
The few who were ready to take full advantage of the teaching offered,
after having been tried and tested, were doubtless admitted into the
ranks of the priesthood which then constituted an immense occult
fraternity. With these, however, who had so outstripped the mass of
humanity, as to be ready to begin the progress of the occult path, we
are not here concerned, the religions practised by the inhabitants of
Atlantis generally being the subject of our investigation.

The power to rise to philosophic heights of thought was of course
wanting to the masses of those days, as it is similarly wanting to the
great majority of the inhabitants of the world to-day. The nearest
approach which the most gifted teacher could make in attempting to
convey any idea of the nameless and all-pervading essence of the
Kosmos was necessarily imparted in the form of symbols, and the sun
naturally enough was the first symbol adopted. As in our own days too
the more cultivated and spiritually minded would see through the
symbol, and might sometimes rise on the wings of devotion to the
Father of our spirits, that

    "Motive and centre of our soul's desire,
    Object and refuge of our journey's end"

while the grosser multitude would see nothing but the symbol, and
would worship it, as the carved Madonna or the wooden image of the
crucified one is to-day worshipped throughout Catholic Europe.

Sun and fire worship then became the cult for the celebration of which
magnificent temples were reared throughout the length and breadth of
the continent of Atlantis, but more especially in the great "City of
the Golden Gates"--the temple service being performed by retinues of
priests endowed by the State for that purpose.

In those early days no image of the Deity was permitted. The sun-disk
was considered the only appropriate emblem of the godhead, and as such
was used in every temple, a golden disk being generally placed so as
to catch the first rays of the rising sun at the vernal equinox or at
the summer solstice.

An interesting example of the almost unalloyed survival of this
worship of the sun-disk may be instanced in the Shinto ceremonies of
Japan. All other representation of Deity is in this faith regarded as
impious, and even the circular mirror of polished metal is hidden from
the vulgar gaze save on ceremonial occasions. Unlike the gorgeous
temple decorations of Atlantis however, the Shinto temples are
characterized by an entire absence of decoration--the exquisite finish
of the plain wood-work being unrelieved by any carving, paint or
varnish.

But the sun-disk did not always remain the only permissible emblem of
Deity. The image of a man--an archetypal man--was in after days placed
in the temples and adored as the highest representation of the divine.
In some ways this might be considered a reversion to the Rmoahal
worship of the Manu. Even then the religion was comparatively pure,
and the occult fraternity of the "Good Law" of course did their utmost
to keep alive in the hearts of the people the spiritual life.

The evil days, however, were drawing near when no altruistic idea
should remain to redeem the race from the abyss of selfishness in
which it was destined to be overwhelmed. The decay of the ethical idea
was the necessary prelude to the perversion of the spiritual. The hand
of every man fought for himself alone, and his knowledge was used for
purely selfish ends, till it became an established belief that there
was nothing in the universe greater or higher than themselves. Each
man was his own "Law, and Lord and God," and the very worship of the
temples ceased to be the worship of any ideal, but became the mere
adoration of man as he was known and seen to be. As is written in the
_Book of Dzyan_, "Then the Fourth became tall with pride. We are the
kings it was said; we are the Gods.... They built huge cities. Of rare
earths and metals they built, and out of the fires vomited, out of the
white stone of the mountains and of the black stone, they cut their
own images in their size and likeness, and worshipped them." Shrines
were placed in temples in which the statue of each man, wrought in
gold or silver, or carved in stone or wood, was adored by himself. The
richer men kept whole trains of priests in their employ for the cult
and care of their shrines, and offerings were made to these statues as
to gods. The apotheosis of self could go no further.

It must be remembered that every true religious idea that has ever
entered into the mind of man, has been consciously suggested to him by
the divine Instructors or the Initiates of the Occult Lodges, who
throughout all the ages have been the guardians of the divine
mysteries, and of the facts of the supersensual states of
consciousness.

Mankind generally has but slowly become capable of assimilating a few
of these divine ideas, while the monstrous growths and hideous
distortions to which every religion on earth stands as witness, must
be traced to man's own lower nature. It would seem indeed that he has
not always even been fit to be entrusted with knowledge as to the mere
symbols under which were veiled the light of Deity, for in the days of
the Turanian supremacy some of this knowledge was wrongfully divulged.

We have seen how the life and light giving attributes of the sun were
in early times used as the symbol to bring before the minds of the
people all that they were capable of conceiving of the great First
Cause. But other symbols of far deeper and more real significance were
known and guarded within the ranks of the priesthood. One of these was
the conception of a Trinity in Unity. The Trinities of most sacred
significance were never divulged to the people, but the Trinity
personifying the cosmic powers of the universe as Creator, Preserver,
and Destroyer, became publicly known in some irregular manner in the
Turanian days. This idea was still further materialized and degraded
by the Semites into a strictly anthropomorphic Trinity consisting of
father, mother and child.

A further and rather terrible development of the Turanian times must
still be referred to. With the practice of sorcery many of the
inhabitants had, of course, become aware of the existence of powerful
elementals--creatures who had been called into being, or at least
animated by their own powerful wills, which being directed towards
maleficent ends, naturally produced the elementals of power and
malignity. So degraded had then become man's feelings of reverence and
worship, that they actually began to adore these semi-conscious
creations of their own malignant thought. The ritual with which these
beings were worshipped was blood-stained from the very start, and of
course every sacrifice offered at their shrine gave vitality and
persistence to these vampire-like creations--so much so, that even to
the present day in various parts of the world, the elementals formed
by the powerful will of these old Atlantean sorcerers still continue
to exact their tribute from unoffending village communities.

Though inaugurated and widely practised by the brutal Turanians, this
blood-stained ritual seems never to have spread to any extent among
the other sub-races, though human sacrifices appear to have been not
uncommon among some branches of the Semites.

In the great Toltec empire of Mexico the sun-worship of their
forefathers was still the national religion, while the bloodless
offerings to their beneficent Deity, Quetzalcoatl, consisted merely of
flowers and fruit. It was only with the coming of the savage Aztecs
that the harmless Mexican ritual was supplemented with the blood of
human sacrifices, which drenched the altars of their war-god,
Huitzilopochtli, and the tearing out of the hearts of the victims on
the summit of the Teocali may be regarded as a direct survival of the
elemental-worship of their Turanian ancestors in Atlantis.

It will be seen then that as in our own days, the religious life of
the people embraced the most varied forms of belief and worship. From
the small minority who aspired to initiation, and had touch with the
higher spiritual life--who knew that good will towards all men,
control of thought, and purity of life and action were the necessary
preliminaries to the attainment of the highest states of consciousness
and the widest realms of vision--innumerable phases led down through
the more or less blind worship of cosmic powers, or of anthropomorphic
gods, to the degraded but most widely extended ritual in which each
man adored his own image, and to the blood-stained rites of the
elemental worship.

It must be remembered throughout that we are dealing with the
Atlantean race only, so that any reference would be out of place that
bore on the still more degraded fetish-worship that even then
existed--as it still does--amongst the debased representatives of the
Lemurian peoples.

All through the centuries then the various rituals composed to
celebrate these various forms of worship were carried on, till the
final submergence of Poseidonis, by which time the countless hosts of
Atlantean emigrants had already established on foreign lands the
various cults of the mother-continent.

To trace the rise and follow the progress in detail of the archaic
religions, which in historic times have blossomed into such diverse
and antagonistic forms, would be an undertaking of great difficulty,
but the illumination it would throw on matters of transcendent
importance may some day induce the attempt.

In conclusion, it would be vain to attempt to summarize what is
already too much of a summary. Rather let us hope that the foregoing
may lend itself as the text from which may be developed histories of
the many offshoots of the various sub-races--histories which may
analytically examine political and social developments which have been
here touched on in the most fragmentary manner.

One word, however, may still be said about that evolution of the
race--that progress which all creation, with mankind at its head, is
ever destined to achieve century by century, millennium by millennium,
manvantara by manvantara, and kalpa by kalpa.

The descent of spirit into matter--these two poles of the one eternal
substance--is the process which occupies the first half of every
cycle. Now the period we have been contemplating in the foregoing
pages--the period during which the Atlantean race was running its
course--was the very middle or turning point of this present
manvantara.

The process of evolution which in our present Fifth Race has now set
in--the return, that is, of matter into spirit--had in those days
revealed itself in but a few isolated individual cases--forerunners of
the resurrection of the spirit.

But the problem, which all who have given the subject any amount of
consideration must have felt to be still awaiting a solution, is the
surprising contrast in the attributes of the Atlantean race. Side by
side with their brutal passions, their degraded animal propensities,
were their psychic faculties, their godlike intuition.

Now the solution of this apparently insoluble enigma lies in the fact
that the building of the bridge had only then been begun--the bridge
of Manas, or mind, destined to unite in the perfected individual the
upward surging forces of the animal and the downward cycling spirit of
the God. The animal kingdom of to-day exhibits a field of nature where
the building of that bridge has not yet been begun, and even among
mankind in the days of Atlantis the connection was so slight that the
spiritual attributes had but little controlling power over the lower
animal nature. The touch of mind they had was sufficient to add zest
to the gratification of the senses, but was not enough to vitalize the
still dormant spiritual faculties, which in the perfected individual
will have to become the absolute monarch. Our metaphor of the bridge
may carry us a little further if we consider it as now in process of
construction, but as destined to remain incomplete for mankind in
general for untold millenniums--in fact, until Humanity has completed
another circle of the seven planets and the great Fifth Round is half
way through its course.

Though it was during the latter half of the Third Root Race and the
beginning of the Fourth that the Manasaputra descended to endow with
mind the bulk of Humanity who were still without the spark, yet so
feebly burned the light all through the Atlantean days that few could
be said to have attained to the powers of abstract thought. On the
other hand the functioning of the mind on concrete things came well
within their grasp, and as we have seen it was in the practical
concerns of their every-day life, especially when their psychic
faculties were directed towards the same objects, that they achieved
such remarkable and stupendous results.

It must also be remembered that Kama, the fourth principle, naturally
obtained its culminating development in the Fourth Race. This would
account for the depths of animal grossness to which they sank, whilst
the approach of the cycle to its nadir inevitably accentuated this
downward movement, so that there is little to be surprised at in the
gradual loss by the race of the psychic faculties, and in its descent
to selfishness and materialism.

Rather should all this be regarded as part of the great cyclic process
in obedience to the eternal law.

We have all gone through those evil days, and the experiences we then
accumulated go to make up the characters we now possess.

But a brighter sun now shines on the Aryan race than that which lit
the path of their Atlantean forefathers. Less dominated by the
passions of the senses, more open to the influence of mind, the men of
our race have obtained, and are obtaining, a firmer grasp of
knowledge, a wider range of intellect. This upward arc of the great
Manvantaric cycle will naturally lead increasing numbers towards the
entrance of the Occult Path, and will lend more and more attraction to
the transcendent opportunities it offers for the continued
strengthening and purification of the character--strengthening and
purification no longer directed by mere spasmodic effort, and
continually interrupted by misleading attractions, but guided and
guarded at every step by the Masters of Wisdom, so that the upward
climb when once begun should no longer be halting and uncertain, but
lead direct to the glorious goal.

The psychic faculties too, and the godlike intuition, lost for a time
but still the rightful heritage of the race, only await the individual
effort of re-attainment, to give to the character still deeper insight
and more transcendent powers. So shall the ranks of the Adept
instructors--the Masters of Wisdom--be ever strengthened and
recruited, and even amongst us to-day there must certainly be some,
indistinguishable save by the deathless enthusiasm with which they are
animated, who will, before the next Root Race is established on this
planet, stand themselves as Masters of Wisdom to help the race in its
upward progress.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Students of geology and palaeontology will know that these
sciences regard the "Cro-Magnon man" as prior to the "Furfooz," and
seeing that the two races ran alongside each other for vast periods of
time, it may quite well be that the individual "Cro-Magnon" skeleton,
though representative of the second race, was deposited in the
quaternary strata thousands of years before the individual Furfooz man
lived on the earth.]




THE LOST LEMURIA




FOREWORD.


The object of this paper is not so much to bring forward new and
startling information about the lost continent of Lemuria and its
inhabitants, as to establish by the evidence obtainable from geology
and from the study of the relative distribution of living and extinct
animals and plants, as well as from the observed processes of physical
evolution in the lower kingdoms, the facts stated in the "Secret
Doctrine" and in other works with reference to these now submerged
lands.




The Lost Lemuria.


It is generally recognised by science that what is now dry land, on
the surface of our globe, was once the ocean floor, and that what is
now the ocean floor was once dry land. Geologists have in some cases
been able to specify the exact portions of the earth's surface where
these subsidences and upheavals have taken place, and although the
lost continent of Atlantis has so far received scant recognition from
the world of science, the general concensus of opinion has for long
pointed to the existence, at some prehistoric time, of a vast southern
continent to which the name of Lemuria has been assigned.

[Sidenote: Evidence supplied by Geology and by the relative
distribution of living and extinct Animals and Plants.]

"The history of the earth's development shows us that the distribution
of land and water on its surface is ever and continually changing. In
consequence of geological changes of the earth's crust, _elevations_
and _depressions_ of the ground take place everywhere, sometimes more
strongly marked in one place, sometimes in another. Even if they
happen so slowly that in the course of centuries the seashore rises or
sinks only a few inches, or even only a few lines, still they
nevertheless effect great results in the course of long periods of
time. And long--immeasurably long--periods of time have not been
wanting in the earth's history. During the course of many millions of
years, ever since organic life existed on the earth, land and water
have perpetually struggled for supremacy. Continents and islands have
sunk into the sea, and new ones have arisen out of its bosom. Lakes
and seas have been slowly raised and dried up, and new water basins
have arisen by the sinking of the ground. Peninsulas have become
islands by the narrow neck of land which connected them with the
mainland sinking into the water. The islands of an archipelago have
become the peaks of a continuous chain of mountains by the whole floor
of their sea being considerably raised.

"Thus the Mediterranean at one time was an inland sea, when in the
place of the Straits of Gibraltar, an isthmus connected Africa with
Spain. England even during the more recent history of the earth, when
man already existed, has repeatedly been connected with the European
continent and been repeatedly separated from it. Nay, even Europe and
North America have been directly connected. The South Sea at one time
formed a large Pacific Continent, and the numerous little islands
which now lie scattered in it were simply the highest peaks of the
mountains covering that continent. The Indian Ocean formed a continent
which extended from the Sunda Islands along the southern coast of Asia
to the east coast of Africa. This large continent of former times
Sclater, an Englishman, has called _Lemuria_, from the monkey-like
animals which inhabited it, and it is at the same time of great
importance from being the probable cradle of the human race, which in
all likelihood here first developed out of anthropoid apes.[2] The
important proof which Alfred Wallace has furnished, by the help of
chorological facts, that the present Malayan Archipelago consists in
reality of two completely different divisions, is particularly
interesting. The western division, the Indo-Malayan Archipelago,
comprising the large islands of Borneo, Java and Sumatra, was
formerly connected by Malacca with the Asiatic continent, and probably
also with the Lemurian continent just mentioned. The eastern division
on the other hand, the Austro-Malayan Archipelago, comprising Celebes,
the Moluccas, New Guinea, Solomon's Islands, etc., was formerly
directly connected with Australia. Both divisions were formerly two
continents separated by a strait, but they have now for the most part
sunk below the level of the sea. Wallace, solely on the ground of his
accurate chorological observations, has been able in the most accurate
manner to determine the position of this former strait, the south end
of which passes between Balij and Lombok.

"Thus, ever since liquid water existed on the earth, the boundaries of
water and land have eternally changed, and we may assert that the
outlines of continents and islands have never remained for an hour,
nay, even for a minute, exactly the same. For the waves eternally and
perpetually break on the edge of the coast, and whatever the land in
these places loses in extent, it gains in other places by the
accumulation of mud, which condenses into solid stone and again rises
above the level of the sea as new land. Nothing can be more erroneous
than the idea of a firm and unchangeable outline of our continents,
such as is impressed upon us in early youth by defective lessons on
geography, which are devoid of a geological basis."[3]

The name Lemuria, as above stated, was originally adopted by Mr.
Sclater in recognition of the fact that it was probably on this
continent that animals of the Lemuroid type were developed.

"This," writes A. R. Wallace, "is undoubtedly a legitimate and highly
probable supposition, and it is an example of the way in which a study
of the geographical distribution of animals may enable us to
reconstruct the geography of a bygone age....

"It [this continent] represents what was probably a primary zoological
region in some past geological epoch; but what that epoch was and what
were the limits of the region in question, we are quite unable to say.
If we are to suppose that it comprised the whole area now inhabited by
Lemuroid animals, we must make it extend from West Africa to Burmah,
South China and Celebes, an area which it possibly did once
occupy."[4]

"We have already had occasion," he elsewhere writes, "to refer to an
ancient connection between this sub-region (the Ethiopian) and
Madagascar, in order to explain the distribution of the Lemurine type,
and some other curious affinities between the two countries. This view
is supported by the geology of India, which shows us Ceylon and South
India consisting mainly of granite and old-metamorphic rocks, while
the greater part of the peninsula is of tertiary formation, with a few
isolated patches of secondary rocks. It is evident, therefore, that
during much of the tertiary period,[5] Ceylon and South India were
bounded on the north by a considerable extent of sea, and probably
formed part of an extensive Southern Continent or great island. The
very numerous and remarkable cases of affinity with Malaya, require,
however, some closer approximation with these islands, which probably
occurred at a later period. When, still later, the great plains and
tablelands of Hindostan were formed, and a permanent land
communication effected with the rich and highly developed
Himalo-Chinese fauna, a rapid immigration of new types took place, and
many of the less specialised forms of mammalia and birds became
extinct. Among reptiles and insects the competition was less severe,
or the older forms were too well adapted to local conditions to be
expelled; so that it is among these groups alone that we find any
considerable number of what are probably the remains of the ancient
fauna of a now submerged Southern Continent."[6]

After stating that during the whole of the tertiary and perhaps during
much of the secondary periods, the great land masses of the earth were
probably situated in the Northern Hemisphere, Wallace proceeds, "In
the Southern Hemisphere there appear to have been three considerable
and very ancient land masses, varying in extent from time to time, but
always keeping distinct from each other, and represented more or less
completely by Australia, South Africa and South America of our time.
Into these flowed successive waves of life as they each in turn became
temporarily united with some part of the Northern land."[7]

Although, apparently in vindication of some conclusions of his which
had been criticised by Dr. Hartlaub, Wallace subsequently denied the
necessity of postulating the existence of such a continent, his
general recognition of the facts of subsidences and upheavals of great
portions of the earth's surface, as well as the inferences which he
draws from the acknowledged relations of living and extinct faunas as
above stated, remain of course unaltered.

The following extracts from Mr. H. F. Blandford's most interesting
paper read before a meeting of the Geological Society deals with the
subject in still greater detail:--[8]

"The affinities between the fossils of both animals and plants of the
Beaufort group of Africa and those of the Indian Panchets and Kathmis
are such as to suggest the former existence of a land connexion
between the two areas. But the resemblance of the African and Indian
fossil faunas does not cease with Permian and Triassic times. The
plant beds of the Uitenhage group have furnished eleven forms of
plants, two of which Mr. Tate has identified with Indian Rajmahal
plants. The Indian Jurassic fossils have yet to be described (with a
few exceptions), but it has been stated that Dr. Stoliezka was much
struck with the affinities of certain of the Cutch fossils to African
forms; and Dr. Stoliezka and Mr. Griesbach have shown that of the
Cretaceous fossils of the Umtafuni river in Natal, the majority (22
out of 35 described forms) are identical with species from Southern
India. Now the plant-bearing series of India and the Karoo and part of
the Uitenhage formation of Africa are in all probability of
fresh-water origin, both indicating the existence of a large land area
around, from the waste of which these deposits are derived. Was this
land continuous between the two regions? And is there anything in the
present physical geography of the Indian Ocean which would suggest its
probable position? Further, what was the connexion between this land
and Australia which we must equally assume to have existed in Permian
times? And, lastly, are there any peculiarities in the existing fauna
and flora of India, Africa and the intervening islands which would
lend support to the idea of a former connexion more direct than that
which now exists between Africa and South India and the Malay
peninsula? The speculation here put forward is no new one. It has long
been a subject of thought in the minds of some Indian and European
naturalists, among the former of whom I may mention my brother [Mr.
Blandford] and Dr. Stoliezka, their speculations being grounded on the
relationship and partial identity of the faunas and floras of past
times, not less than on that existing community of forms which has led
Mr. Andrew Murray, Mr. Searles, V. Wood, jun., and Professor Huxley to
infer the existence of a Miocene continent occupying a part of the
Indian Ocean. Indeed, all that I can pretend to aim at in this paper
is to endeavour to give some additional definition and extension to
the conception of its geological aspect.

"With regard to the geographical evidence, a glance at the map will
show that from the neighbourhood of the West Coast of India to that of
the Seychelles, Madagascar, and the Mauritius, extends a line of coral
atolls and banks, including Adas bank, the Laccadives, Maldives, the
Chagos group and the Saya de Mulha, all indicating the existence of a
submerged mountain range or ranges. The Seychelles, too, are mentioned
by Mr. Darwin as rising from an extensive and tolerably level bank
having a depth of between 30 and 40 fathoms; so that, although now
partly encircled by fringing reefs, they may be regarded as a virtual
extension of the same submerged axis. Further west the Cosmoledo and
Comoro Islands consist of atolls and islands surrounded by barrier
reefs; and these bring us pretty close to the present shores of Africa
and Madagascar. It seems at least probable that in this chain of
atolls, banks, and barrier reefs we have indicated the position of an
ancient mountain chain, which possibly formed the back-bone of a tract
of later Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, and early Tertiary land, being related
to it much as the Alpine and Himalayan system is to the
Europaeo-Asiatic continent, and the Rocky Mountains and Andes to the
two Americas. As it is desirable to designate this Mesozoic land by a
name, I would propose that of Indo-Oceana. [The name given to it by
Mr. Sclater, _viz._, Lemuria, is, however, the one which has been most
generally adopted.] Professor Huxley has suggested on palaeontological
grounds that a land connexion existed in this region (or rather
between Abyssinia and India) during the Miocene epoch. From what has
been said above it will be seen that I infer its existence from a far
earlier date.[9] With regard to its depression, the only present
evidence relates to its northern extremity, and shows that it was in
this region, later than the great trap-flows of the Dakhan. These
enormous sheets of volcanic rock are remarkably horizontal to the east
of the Ghats and the Sakyadri range, but to the west of this they
begin to dip seawards, so that the island of Bombay is composed of the
higher parts of the formation. This indicates only that the depression
to the westward has taken place in Tertiary times; and to that extent
Professor Huxley's inference, that it was after the Miocene period, is
quite consistent with the geological evidence."

After proceeding at some length to instance the close relationship of
many of the fauna in the lands under consideration (Lion, Hyaena,
Jackal, Leopard, Antelope, Gazelle, Sand-grouse, Indian Bustard, many
Land Molusca, and notably the Lemur and the Scaly Anteater) the writer
proceeds as follows:--

"Palaeontology, physical geography and geology, equally with the
ascertained distribution of living animals and plants, offer thus
their concurrent testimony to the former close connexion of Africa and
India, including the tropical islands of the Indian Ocean. This
Indo-Oceanic land appears to have existed from at least early Permian
times, probably (as Professor Huxley has pointed out) up to the close
of the Miocene epoch;[10] and South Africa and Peninsular India are
the existing remnants of that ancient land. It may not have been
absolutely continuous during the whole of this long period. Indeed,
the Cretaceous rocks of Southern India and Southern Africa, and the
marine Jurassic beds of the same regions, prove that some portions of
it were, for longer or shorter periods, invaded by the sea; but any
break of continuity was probably not prolonged; for Mr. Wallace's
investigations in the Eastern Archipelago have shown how narrow a sea
may offer an insuperable barrier to the migration of land animals. In
Palaeozoic times this land must have been connected with Australia, and
in Tertiary times with Malayana, since the Malayan forms with African
alliances are in several cases distinct from those of India. We know
as yet too little of the geology of the eastern peninsula to say from
what epoch dates its connexion with Indo-Oceanic land. Mr. Theobald
has ascertained the existence of Triassic, Cretaceous, and Nummulitic
rocks in the Arabian coast range; and Carboniferous limestone is known
to occur from Moulmein southward, while the range east of the Irrawadi
is formed of younger Tertiary rocks. From this it would appear that a
considerable part of the Malay peninsula must have been occupied by
the sea during the greater part of the Mesozoic and Eocene periods.
Plant-bearing rocks of Raniganj age have been identified as forming
the outer spurs of the Sikkim Himalaya; the ancient land must
therefore have extended some distance to the north of the present
Gangetic delta. Coal both of Cretaceous and Tertiary age occurs in the
Khasi hills, and also in Upper Assam, but in both cases associated
with marine beds; so that it would appear that in this region the
boundaries of land and sea oscillated somewhat during Cretaceous and
Eocene times. To the north-west of India the existence of great
formations of Cretaceous and Nummulitic age, stretching far through
Baluchistan and Persia, and entering into the structure of the
north-west Himalaya, prove that in the later Mesozoic and Eocene ages
India had no direct communication with western Asia; while the
Jurassic rocks of Cutch, the Salt range, and the northern Himalaya,
show that in the preceding period the sea covered a large part of the
present Indus basin; and the Triassic, Carboniferous, and still more
recent marine formations of the Himalaya, indicate that from very
early times till the upheaval of that great chain, much of its present
site was for ages covered by the sea.

"To sum up the views advanced in this paper.

"1st. The plant-bearing series of India ranges from early Permian to
the latest Jurassic times, indicating (except in a few cases and
locally) the uninterrupted continuity of land and fresh water
conditions. These may have prevailed from much earlier times.

"2nd. In the early Permian, as in the Postpliocene age, a cold climate
prevailed down to low latitudes, and I am inclined to believe in both
hemispheres simultaneously. With the decrease of cold the flora and
reptilian fauna of Permian times were diffused to Africa, India, and
possibly Australia; or the flora may have existed in Australia
somewhat earlier, and have been diffused thence.

"3rd. India, South Africa and Australia were connected by an
Indo-Oceanic Continent in the Permian epoch; and the two former
countries remained connected (with at the utmost only short
interruptions) up to the end of the Miocene period. During the latter
part of the time this land was also connected with Malayana.

"4th. In common with some previous writers, I consider that the
position of this land was defined by the range of coral reefs and
banks that now exist between the Arabian sea and East Africa.

"5th. Up to the end of the Nummulitic epoch no direct connexion
(except possibly for short periods) existed between India and Western
Asia."

In the discussion which followed the reading of the paper, Professor
Ramsay "agreed with the author in the belief in the junction of Africa
with India and Australia in geological times."

Mr. Woodward "was pleased to find that the author had added further
evidence, derived from the fossil flora of the mesozoic series of
India, in corroboration of the views of Huxley, Sclater and others as
to the former existence of an old submerged continent ('Lemuria')
which Darwin's researches on coral reefs had long since foreshadowed."

"Of the five now existing continents," writes Ernst Haeckel, in his
great work "The History of Creation,"[11] "neither Australia, nor
America, nor Europe can have been this primaeval home [of man], or the
so-called 'Paradise,' the 'cradle of the human race.' Most
circumstances indicate Southern Asia as the locality in question.
Besides Southern Asia, the only other of the now existing continents
which might be viewed in this light is Africa. But there are a number
of circumstances (especially chorological facts) which suggest that
the primeval home of man was a continent now sunk below the surface of
the Indian Ocean, which extended along the south of Asia, as it is at
present (and probably in direct connection with it), towards the east,
as far as Further India and the Sunda Islands; towards the west, as
far as Madagascar and the south-eastern shores of Africa. We have
already mentioned that many facts in animal and vegetable geography
render the former existence of such a South Indian continent very
probable. Sclater has given this continent the name of Lemuria, from
the semi-apes which were characteristic of it. By assuming this
Lemuria to have been man's primaeval home, we greatly facilitate the
explanation of the geographical distribution of the human species by
migration."

In a subsequent work, "The Pedigree of Man," Haeckel asserts the
existence of Lemuria at some early epoch of the earth's history as an
acknowledged fact.

The following quotation from Dr. Hartlaub's writings may bring to a
close this portion of the evidence in favour of the existence of the
lost Lemuria:--[12]

"Five and thirty years ago, Isidore Geoffrey St. Hilaire remarked
that, if one had to classify the Island of Madagascar exclusively on
zoological considerations, and without reference to its geographical
situation, it could be shown to be neither Asiatic nor African, but
quite different from either, and almost a fourth continent. And this
fourth continent could be further proved to be, as regards its fauna,
much more different from Africa, which lies so near to it, than from
India which is so far away. With these words the correctness and
pregnancy of which later investigations tend to bring into their full
light, the French naturalist first stated the interesting problem for
the solution of which an hypothesis based on scientific knowledge has
recently been propounded, for this fourth continent of Isidore
Geoffrey is Sclater's 'Lemuria'--that sunken land which, containing
parts of Africa, must have extended far eastwards over Southern India
and Ceylon, and the highest points of which we recognise in the
volcanic peaks of Bourbon and Mauritius, and in the central range of
Madagascar itself--the last resorts of the almost extinct Lemurine
race which formerly peopled it."

[Sidenote: Evidence obtained from Archaic Records.]

The further evidence we have with regard to Lemuria and its
inhabitants has been obtained from the same source and in the same
manner as that which resulted in the writing of the _Story of
Atlantis_. In this case also the author has been privileged to obtain
copies of two maps, one representing Lemuria (and the adjoining
lands) during the period of that continent's greatest expansion, the
other exhibiting its outlines after its dismemberment by great
catastrophes, but long before its final destruction.

It was never professed that the maps of Atlantis were correct _to a
single degree_ of latitude, or longitude, but, with the far greater
difficulty of obtaining the information in the present case, it must
be stated that still less must these maps of Lemuria be taken as
absolutely accurate. In the former case there was a globe, a good
bas-relief in terra-cotta, and a well-preserved map on parchment, or
skin of some sort, to copy from. In the present case there was only a
broken terra-cotta model and a very badly preserved and crumpled map,
so that the difficulty of carrying back the remembrance of all the
details, and consequently of reproducing exact copies, has been far
greater.

We were told that it was by mighty Adepts in the days of Atlantis that
the Atlantean maps were produced, but we are not aware whether the
Lemurian maps were fashioned by some of the divine instructors in the
days when Lemuria still existed, or in still later days of the
Atlantean epoch.

But while guarding against over-confidence in the absolute accuracy of
the maps in question, the transcriber of the archaic originals
believes that they may in all important particulars, be taken as
approximately correct.

[Sidenote: Probable Duration of the Continent of Lemuria.]

A period--speaking roughly--of between four and five million years
probably represents the life of the continent of Atlantis, for it is
about that time since the Rmoahals, the first sub-race of the Fourth
Root Race who inhabited Atlantis, arose on a portion of the Lemurian
Continent which at that time still existed. Remembering that in the
evolutionary process the figure four invariably represents not only
the nadir of the cycle, but the period of shortest duration, whether
in the case of a Manvantara or of a race, it may be assumed that the
number of millions of years assignable as the life-limit of the
continent of Lemuria must be very much greater than that representing
the life of Atlantis, the continent of the Fourth Root Race. But in
the case of Lemuria no dates can be stated with even approximate
accuracy. Geological epochs, so far as they are known to modern
science, will be a better medium for contemporary reference, and they
alone will be dealt with.

[Sidenote: The Maps.]

But not even geological epochs, it will be observed, are assigned to
the maps. If, however, an inference may be drawn from all the evidence
before us, it would seem probable that the older of the two Lemurian
maps represented the earth's configuration from the Permian, through
the Triassic and into the Jurassic epoch, while the second map
probably represents the earth's configuration through the Cretaceous
and into the Eocene period.

From the older of the two maps it may be seen that the equatorial
continent of Lemuria at the time of its greatest expansion nearly
girdled the globe, extending as it then did from the site of the
present Cape Verd Islands a few miles from the coast of Sierra Leone,
in a south-easterly direction through Africa, Australia, the Society
Islands and all the intervening seas, to a point but a few miles
distant from a great island continent (about the size of the present
South America) which spread over the remainder of the Pacific Ocean,
and included Cape Horn and parts of Patagonia.

A remarkable feature in the second map of Lemuria is the great length,
and at parts the extreme narrowness, of the straits which separated
the two great blocks of land into which the continent had by this time
been split, and it will be observed that the straits at present
existing between the islands of Bali and Lomboc coincide with a
portion of the straits which then divided these two continents. It
will also be seen that these straits continued in a northerly
direction by the west, not by the east coast of Borneo, as conjectured
by Ernst Haeckel.

With reference to the distribution of fauna and flora, and the
existence of so many types common to India and Africa alike, pointed
out by Mr. Blandford, it will be observed that between parts of India
and great tracts of Africa there was direct land communication during
the first map period, and that similar communication was partially
maintained in the second map period also; while a comparison of the
maps of Atlantis with those of Lemuria will demonstrate that
continuous land communication existed, now at one epoch, and now at
another, between so many different parts of the earth's surface, at
present separated by sea, that the existing distribution of fauna and
flora in the two Americas, in Europe and in Eastern lands, which has
been such a puzzle to naturalists, may with perfect ease be accounted
for.

The island indicated in the earlier Lemurian map as existing to the
north-west of the extreme promontory of that continent, and due west
of the present coast of Spain, was probably a centre from which
proceeded, during long ages, the distribution of fauna and flora above
referred to. For--and this is a most interesting fact--it will be seen
that this island must have been the nucleus, from first to last, of
the subsequent great continent of Atlantis. It existed, as we see, in
these earliest Lemurian times. It was joined in the second map period
to land which had previously formed part of the great Lemurian
continent; and indeed, so many accretions of territory had it by this
time received that it might more appropriately be called a continent
than an island. It was the great mountainous region of Atlantis at its
prime, when Atlantis embraced great tracts of land which have now
become North and South America. It remained the mountainous region of
Atlantis in its decadence, and of Ruta in the Ruta and Daitya epoch,
and it practically constituted the island of Poseidonis--the last
remnant of the continent of Atlantis--the final submergence of which
took place in the year 9564 B.C.

A comparison of the two maps here given, along with the four maps of
Atlantis, will also show that Australia and New Zealand, Madagascar,
parts of Somaliland, the south of Africa, and the extreme southern
portion of Patagonia are lands which have _probably_ existed through
all the intervening catastrophes since the early days of the Lemurian
period. The same may be said of the southern parts of India and
Ceylon, with the exception in the case of Ceylon, of a temporary
submergence in the Ruta and Daitya epoch.

It is true there are also remains still existing of the even earlier
Hyperborean continent, and they of course are the oldest known lands
on the face of the earth. These are Greenland, Iceland, Spitzbergen,
the most northerly parts of Norway and Sweden, and the extreme north
cape of Siberia.

Japan is shown by the maps to have been above water, whether as an
island, or as part of a continent, since the date of the second
Lemurian map. Spain, too, has doubtless existed since that time. Spain
is, therefore, with the exception of the most northerly parts of
Norway and Sweden, _probably_ the oldest land in Europe.

The indeterminate character of the statements just made is rendered
necessary by our knowledge that there _did_ occur subsidences and
upheavals of different portions of the earth's surface during the ages
which lay between the periods represented by the maps.

For example, soon after the date of the second Lemurian map we are
informed that the whole Malay Peninsula was submerged and remained so
for a long time, but a subsequent upheaval of that region must have
taken place before the date of the first Atlantean map, for, what is
now the Malay Peninsula is there exhibited as part of a great
continent. Similarly there have been repeated minor subsidences and
upheavals nearer home in more recent times, and Haeckel is perfectly
correct in saying that England--he might with greater accuracy have
said the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, which were then joined
together--"has repeatedly been connected with the European continent,
and been repeatedly separated from it."

In order to bring the subject more dearly before the mind, a tabular
statement is here annexed which supplies a condensed history of the
animal and plant life on our globe, bracketed--according to
Haeckel--with the contemporary rock strata. Two other columns give the
contemporary races of man, and such of the great cataclysms as are
known to occult students.

[Sidenote: Reptiles and Pine Forests.]

From this statement it will be seen that Lemurian man lived in the age
of Reptiles and Pine Forests. The amphibious monsters and the gigantic
tree-ferns of the Permian age still flourished in the warm damp
climates. Plesiosauri and Icthyosauri swarmed in the tepid marshes of
the Mesolithic epoch, but, with the drying up of many of the inland
seas, the Dinosauria--the monstrous land reptiles--gradually became
the dominant type, while the Pterodactyls--the Saurians which
developed bat-like wings--not only crawled on the earth, but flew
through the air. The smallest of these latter were about the size of a
sparrow; the largest, however, with a breadth of wing of more than
sixteen feet, exceeding the largest of our living birds of to-day;
while most of the Dinosauria--the Dragons--were terrible beasts of
prey, colossal reptiles which attained a length of from forty to fifty
feet.[13] Subsequent excavations have laid bare skeletons of an even
larger size. Professor Ray Lankester, at a meeting of the Royal
Institution on 7th January, 1904, is reported to have referred to a
brontosaurus skeleton of sixty-five feet long, which had been
discovered in the Oolite deposit in the southern part of the United
States of America.

                         |Depth of|                  |                       |              |                  |
        Rock Strata.     | Strata.|   Races of Men.  |       Cataclysms.     |   Animals.   |      Plants.     |
                         |  Feet. |                  |                       |              |                  |
-------------------------+--------+------------------+-----------------------+--------------+------------------|
Laurentian }             |        |First Root Race   |                       |              |                  |
           } Archilithic |        |which being Astra |                       |Skull-less    |Forest of gigantic|
Cambrian   }     or      |  70,000|could leave       |                       |Animals.      |Tangle and other  |
           } Primordial  |        |no fossil remains.|                       |              |Thallus Plants.   |
Silurian   }             |        |                  |                       |              |                  |
                         |        |                  |                       |              |                  |
Devonian   }             |        |                  |                       |              |                  |
           }Palaeolithic |        |Second Root Race  |                       |              |                  |
Coal       }     or      |  42,000|which was Etheric.|                       |Fish.         |Fern Forests.     |
           } Primary.    |        |                  |                       |              |                  |
Permian    }             |        |                  |                       |              |                  |
                         |        |                  |                       |              |                  |
Triassic   }             |        |                  |Lemuria is said to have|              |                  |
           } Mesolithic  |        |Third Root Race   |perished before the    |              |Pine and Palm     |
Jurassic   }     or      |  15,000|or Lemurian.      |beginning of the Eocene|Reptiles.     |Forests.          |
           } Secondary   |        |                  |age.                   |              |                  |
Cretaceous }             |        |                  |                       |              |                  |
                         |        |                  |The main Continent of  |              |                  |
Eocene     }             |        |                  |Atlantis was destroyed |              |                  |
           } Cenolithic  |        |Fourth Root Race  |in the Miocene period  |              |                  |
Miocene    }     or      |   5,000|or Atlantean.     |about 800,000 years    |Mammals.      |Forests of        |
           } Tertiary.   |        |                  |ago.  Second great     |              |Deciduous Trees.  |
Pliocene   }             |        |                  |catastrophe? about     |              |                  |
                         |        |                  |200,000 years ago.     |              |                  |
Diluvial or}             |        |                  |Third great catastrophe|              |                  |
Pleistocene} Quarternary |        |Fifth Root Race   |about 80,000 years ago.|More          |Cultivated        |
           }     or      |     500|or Aryan.         |Final submergence of   |differentiated|Forests.          |
Alluvial   }Anthopolithic|        |                  |Poseidonis 9564 B.C.   |Mammals.      |                  |

As it is written in the stanzas of the archaic Book of Dzyan, "Animals
with bones, dragons of the deep, and flying sarpas were added to the
creeping things. They that creep on the ground got wings. They of the
long necks in the water became the progenitors of the fowls of the
air." Modern science records her endorsement. "The class of birds as
already remarked is so closely allied to Reptiles in internal
structure and by embryonal development that they undoubtedly
originated out of a branch of this class.... The derivation of birds
from reptiles first took place in the Mesolithic epoch, and this
moreover probably during the Trias."[14]

In the vegetable kingdom this epoch also saw the pine and the
palm-tree gradually displace the giant tree ferns. In the later days
of the Mesolithic epoch, mammals for the first time came into
existence, but the fossil remains of the mammoth and mastodon, which
were their earliest representatives, are chiefly found in the
subsequent strata of the Eocene and Miocene times.

[Sidenote: The Human Kingdom.]

Before making any reference to what must, even at this early date, be
called the human kingdom, it must be stated that none of those who, at
the present day, can lay claim to even a moderate amount of mental or
spiritual culture _can_ have lived in these ages. It was only with the
advent of the last three sub-races of this Third Root Race that the
least progressed of the first group of the Lunar Pitris began to
return to incarnation, while the most advanced among them did not take
birth till the early sub-races of the Atlantean period.

Indeed, Lemurian man, during at least the first half of the race, must
be regarded rather as an animal destined to reach humanity than as
human according to our understanding of the term; for though the
second and third groups of Pitris, who constituted the inhabitants of
Lemuria during its first four sub-races, had achieved sufficient
self-consciousness in the Lunar Manvantara to differentiate them from
the animal kingdom, they had not yet received the Divine Spark which
should endow them with mind and individuality--in other words, make
them truly human.

[Sidenote: Size and Consistency of Man's Body.]

The evolution of this Lemurian race, therefore, constitutes one of the
most obscure, as well as one of the most interesting, chapters of
man's development, for during this period not only did he reach true
humanity, but his body underwent the greatest physical changes, while
the processes of reproduction were twice altered.

In explanation of the surprising statements which will have to be made
in regard to the size and consistency of man's body at this early
period it must be remembered that while the animal, vegetable and
mineral kingdoms pursued the normal course, on this the fourth globe,
during the Fourth Round of this Manvantara, it was ordained that
humanity should run over in rapid succession the various stages
through which its evolution had passed during the previous rounds of
the present Manvantara. Thus the bodies of the First Root Race in
which these almost mindless beings were destined to gain experience,
would have appeared to us as gigantic phantoms--if indeed we could
have seen them at all, for their bodies were formed of astral matter.
The astral forms of the First Root Race were then gradually enveloped
in a more physical casing. But though the Second Root Race may be
called physical--their bodies being composed of ether--they would have
been equally invisible to eyesight as it at present exists.

It was, we are told, in order that the Manu, and the Beings who aided
him, might take means for improving the physical type of humanity
that this epitome of the process of evolution was ordained. The
highest development which the type had so far reached was the huge
ape-like creature which had existed on the three physical planets,
Mars, the Earth and Mercury in the Third Round. On the arrival of the
human life-wave on the Earth in this the Fourth Round, a certain
number, naturally, of these ape-like creatures were found in
occupation--the residuum left on the planet during its period of
obscuration. These, of course, joined the in-coming human stream as
soon as the race became fully physical. Their bodies may not then have
been absolutely discarded; they may have been utilized for purposes of
reincarnation for the most backward entities, but it was an
improvement on this type which was required, and this was most easily
achieved by the Manu, through working out on the astral plane in the
first instance, the architype originally formed in the mind of the
Logos.

From the Etheric Second Race, then, was evolved the Third--the
Lemurian. Their bodies had become material, being composed of the
gases, liquids and solids which constitute the three lowest
sub-divisions of the physical plane, but the gases and liquids still
predominated, for as yet their vertebrate structure had not solidified
into bones such as ours, and they could not, therefore, stand erect.
Their bones in fact were pliable as the bones of young infants now
are. It was not until the middle of the Lemurian period that man
developed a solid bony structure.

To explain the possibility of the process by which the etheric form
evolved into a more physical form, and the soft-boned physical form
ultimately developed into a structure such as man possesses to-day, it
is only necessary to refer to the permanent physical atom.[15]
Containing as it does the essence of all the forms through which man
has passed on the physical plane, it contained consequently the
potentiality of a hard-boned physical structure such as had been
attained during the course of the Third Round, as well as the
potentiality of an etheric form and all the phases which lie between,
for it must be remembered that the physical plane consists of four
grades of ether as well as the gases, liquids and solids which so many
are apt to regard as alone constituting the physical. Thus, every
stage of the development was a natural process, for it was a process
which had been accomplished in ages long past, and all that was needed
was for the Manu and the Beings who aided him, to gather round the
permanent atom the appropriate kind of matter.

[Sidenote: Organs of Vision.]

The organs of vision of these creatures before they developed bones
were of a rudimentary nature, at least such was the condition of the
two eyes in front with which they sought for their food upon the
ground. But there was a third eye at the back of the head, the
atrophied remnant of which is now known as the _pineal gland_. This,
as we know, is _now_ a centre solely of astral vision, but at the
epoch of which we are speaking it was the chief centre not only of
astral but of physical sight. Referring to reptiles which had become
extinct, Professor Ray Lankester, in a recent lecture at the Royal
Institution, is reported to have drawn special attention "to the size
of the parietal foramen in the skull which showed that in the
ichthyosaurs the parietal or pineal eye on the top of the head must
have been very large." In this respect he went on to say mankind were
inferior to these big sea lizards, "for we had lost the third eye
which might be studied in the common lizard, or better in the great
blue lizard of the South of France."[16]

Somewhat before the middle of the Lemurian period, probably during the
evolution of the third sub-race, the gigantic gelatinous body began
slowly to solidify and the soft-boned limbs developed into a bony
structure. These primitive creatures were now able to stand upright,
and the two eyes in the face gradually became the chief organs of
physical sight, though the third eye still remained to some extent an
organ of physical sight also, and this it did till the very end of the
Lemurian epoch. It, of course, remained an actual organ, as it still
is a potential focus, of psychic vision. This psychic vision continued
to be an attribute of the race not only throughout the whole Lemurian
period, but well into the days of Atlantis.

A curious fact to note is that when the race first attained the power
of standing and moving in an upright position, they could walk
backwards with almost as great ease as forwards. This may be accounted
for not only by the capacity for vision possessed by the third eye,
but doubtless also by the curious projection at the heels which will
presently be referred to.

[Sidenote: Description of Lemurian Man.]

The following is a description of a man who belonged to one of the
later sub-races--probably the fifth. "His stature was gigantic,
somewhere between twelve and fifteen feet. His skin was very dark,
being of a yellowish brown colour. He had a long lower jaw, a
strangely flattened face, eyes small but piercing and set curiously
far apart, so that he could see sideways as well as in front, while
the eye at the back of the head--on which part of the head no hair, of
course, grew--enabled him to see in that direction also. He had no
forehead, but there seemed to be a roll of flesh where it should have
been. The head sloped backwards and upwards in a rather curious way.
The arms and legs (especially the former) were longer in proportion
than ours, and could not be perfectly straightened either at elbows or
knees; the hands and feet were enormous, and the heels projected
backwards in an ungainly way. The figure was draped in a loose robe of
skin, something like rhinoceros hide, but more scaly, probably the
skin of some animal of which we now know only through its fossil
remains. Round his head, on which the hair was quite short, was
twisted another piece of skin to which were attached tassels of bright
red, blue and other colours. In his left hand he held a sharpened
staff, which was doubtless used for defence or attack. It was about
the height of his own body, _viz._, twelve to fifteen feet. In his
right hand was twisted the end of a long rope made of some sort of
creeping plant, by which he led a huge and hideous reptile, somewhat
resembling the Plesiosaurus. The Lemurians actually domesticated these
creatures, and trained them to employ their strength in hunting other
animals. The appearance of the man gave an unpleasant sensation, but
he was not entirely uncivilised, being an average common-place
specimen of his day."

Many were even less human in appearance than the individual here
described, but the seventh sub-race developed a superior type, though
very unlike any living men of the present time. While retaining the
projecting lower jaw, the thick heavy lips, the flattened face, and
the uncanny looking eyes, they had by this time developed something
which might be called a forehead, while the curious projection of the
heel had been considerably reduced. In one branch of this seventh
sub-race, the head might be described as almost egg-shaped--the small
end of the egg being uppermost, with the eyes wide apart and very near
the top. The stature had perceptibly decreased, and the appearance of
the hands, feet and limbs generally had become more like those of the
negroes of to-day. These people developed an important and
long-lasting civilisation, and for thousands of years dominated most
of the other tribes who dwelt on the vast Lemurian continent, and even
at the end, when racial decay seemed to be overtaking them, they
secured another long lease of life and power by inter-marriage with
the Rmoahals--the first sub-race of the Atlanteans. The progeny,
while retaining many Third Race characteristics, of course, really
belonged to the Fourth Race, and thus naturally acquired fresh power
of development. Their general appearance now became not unlike that of
some American Indians, except that their skin had a curious bluish
tinge not now to be seen.

But surprising as were the changes in the size, consistency, and
appearance of man's body during this period, the alterations in the
process of reproduction are still more astounding. A reference to the
systems which now obtain among the lower kingdoms of nature may help
us in the consideration of the subject.

[Sidenote: Processes of Reproduction.]

After instancing the simplest processes of propagation by self-division,
and by the formation of buds (Gemmatio), Haeckel proceeds, "A third mode
of non-sexual propagation, that of the formation of germ-buds
(Polysporogonia) is intimately connected with the formation of buds. In
the case of the lower, imperfect organisms, among animals, especially in
the case of the plant-like animals and worms, we very frequently find
that in the interior of an individual composed of many cells, a small
group of cells separates itself from those surrounding it, and that this
small isolated group gradually develops itself into an individual, which
becomes like the parent and sooner or later comes out of it.... The
formation of germ buds is evidently but little different from real
budding. But, on the other hand, it is connected with a fourth kind of
non-sexual propagation, which almost forms a transition to sexual
reproduction, namely, the formation of germ cells (Monosporogonia). In
this case it is no longer a group of cells but a single cell, which
separates itself from the surrounding cells in the interior of the
producing organism, and which becomes further developed after it has
come out of its parent.... Sexual or amphigonic propagation
(Amphigonia) is the usual method of propagation among all higher animals
and plants. It is evident that it has only developed at a very late
period of the earth's history, from non-sexual propagation, and
apparently in the first instance from the method of propagation by
germ-cells.... In all the chief forms of non-sexual propagation
mentioned above--in fission, in the formation of buds, germ-buds, and
germ-cells--the separated cell or group of cells was able by itself to
develop into a new individual, but in the case of sexual propagation,
the cell must first be fructified by another generative substance. The
fructifying sperm must first mix with the germ-cell (the egg) before the
latter can develop into a new individual. These two generative
substances, the sperm and the egg, are either produced by one and the
same individual hermaphrodite (Hermaphroditismus) or by two different
individuals (sexual-separation).

"The simpler and more ancient form of sexual propagation is through
double-sexed individuals. It occurs in the great majority of plants,
but only in a minority of animals, for example, in the garden snails,
leeches, earth-worms, and many other worms. Every single individual
among hermaphrodites produces within itself materials of both
sexes--eggs and sperm. In most of the higher plants every blossom
contains both the male organ (stamens and anther) and the female organ
(style and germ). Every garden snail produces in one part of its
sexual gland eggs, and in another part sperm. Many hermaphrodites can
fructify themselves; in others, however, reciprocal fructification of
both hermaphrodites is necessary for causing the development of the
eggs. This latter case is evidently a transition to sexual separation.

"Sexual separation, which characterises the more complicated of the
two kinds of sexual reproduction, has evidently been developed from
the condition of hermaphroditism at a late period of the organic
history of the world. It is at present the universal method of
propagation of the higher animals.... The so-called virginal
reproduction (Parthenogenesis) offers an interesting form of
transition from sexual reproduction to the non-sexual formation of
germ-cells which most resembles it.... In this case germ-cells which
otherwise appear and are formed exactly like egg-cells, become capable
of developing themselves into new individuals without requiring the
fructifying seed. The most remarkable and the most instructive of the
different parthenogenetic phenomena are furnished by those cases in
which the same germ-cells, according as they are fructified or not,
produce different kinds of individuals. Among our common honey bees, a
male individual (a drone) arises out of the eggs of the queen, if the
egg has not been fructified; a female (a queen, or working bee) if the
egg has been fructified. It is evident from this, that in reality
there exists no wide chasm between sexual and non-sexual reproduction,
but that both modes of reproduction are directly connected."[17]

Now, the interesting fact in connection with the evolution of Third
Race man on Lemuria, is that his mode of reproduction ran through
phases which were closely analogous with some of the processes above
described. Sweat-born, egg-born and Androgyne are the terms used in
the Secret Doctrine.

"Almost sexless, in its early beginnings, it became bisexual or
androgynous; very gradually, of course. The passage from the former to
the latter transformation required numberless generations, during
which the simple cell that issued from the earliest parent (the two in
one), first developed into a bisexual being; and then the cell,
becoming a regular egg, gave forth a unisexual creature. The Third
Race mankind is the most mysterious of all the hitherto developed
five Races. The mystery of the 'How' of the generation of the distinct
sexes must, of course, be very obscure here, as it is the business of
an embryologist and a specialist, the present work giving only faint
outlines of the process. But it is evident that the units of the Third
Race humanity began to separate in their pre-natal shells, or eggs,
and to issue out of them as distinct male and female babes, ages after
the appearance of its early progenitors. And, as time rolled on its
geological periods, the newly born sub-races began to lose their natal
capacities. Toward the end of the fourth _sub-race_, the babe lost its
faculty of walking as soon as liberated from its shell, and by the end
of the fifth, mankind was born under the same conditions and by the
same identical process as our historical generations. This required,
of course, millions of years."[18]

[Sidenote: Lemurian Races still Inhabiting the Earth.]

It may be as well again to repeat that the almost mindless creatures
who inhabited such bodies as have been above described during the
early sub-races of the Lemurian period can scarcely be regarded as
completely human. It was only after the separation of the sexes, when
their bodies had become densely physical, that they became human even
in appearance. It must be remembered that the beings we are speaking
of, though embracing the second and third groups of the Lunar Pitris,
must also have been largely recruited from the animal kingdom of that
(the Lunar) Manvantara. The degraded remnants of the Third Root Race
who still inhabit the earth may be recognised in the aborigines of
Australia, the Andaman Islanders, some hill tribes of India, the
Tierra-del-Fuegans, the Bushmen of Africa, and some other savage
tribes. The entities now inhabiting these bodies must have belonged to
the animal kingdom in the early part of _this_ Manvantara. It was
probably during the evolution of the Lemurian race and before the
"door was shut" on the entities thronging up from below, that these
attained the human kingdom.

[Sidenote: Sin of the Mindless.]

The shameful acts of the mindless men at the first separation of the
sexes had best be referred to in the words of the stanzas of the
archaic Book of Dzyan. No commentary is needed.

"During the Third Race the boneless animals grew and changed, they
became animals with bones, their chayas became solid.

"The animals separated first. They began to breed. The two-fold man
separated also. He said, 'Let us as they; let us unite and make
creatures.' They did.

"And those that had no spark took huge she-animals unto them. They
begat upon them dumb races. Dumb they were themselves. But their
tongues untied. The tongues of their progeny remained still. Monsters
they bred. A race of crooked red-hair-covered monsters going on all
fours. A dumb race to keep the shame untold." (And an ancient
commentary adds 'when the Third separated and fell into sin by
breeding men-animals, these (the animals) became ferocious, and men
and they mutually destructive. Till then, there was no sin, no life
taken.').

"Seeing which the Lhas who had not built men, wept, saying. 'The
Amanasa [mindless] have defiled our future abodes. This is Karma. Let
us dwell in the others. Let us teach them better lest worse should
happen.' They did.

"Then all men became endowed with Manas. They saw the sin of the
mindless."

[Sidenote: Origin of the Pithecoid and the Anthropoid Apes.]

The anatomical resemblance between Man and the higher Ape, so
frequently cited by Darwinists as pointing to some ancestors common to
both, presents an interesting problem, the proper solution of which is
to be sought for in the esoteric explanation of the genesis of the
pithecoid stocks.

Now, we gather from the Secret Doctrine[19] that the descendants of
these semi-human monsters described above as originating in the sin of
the "mindless," having through long centuries dwindled in size and
become more densely physical, culminated in a race of Apes at the time
of the Miocene period, from which in their turn are descended the
pithecoids of to-day. With these Apes of the Miocene period, however,
the Atlanteans of that age renewed the sin of the "mindless"--this
time with full responsibility, and the resultants of their crime are
the species of Apes now known as Anthropoid.

We are given to understand that in the coming Sixth Root Race, these
anthropoids will obtain human incarnation, in the bodies doubtless of
the lowest races then existing upon earth.

That part of the Lemurian continent where the separation of the sexes
took place, and where both the fourth and the fifth sub-races
flourished, is to be found in the earlier of the two maps. It lay to
the east of the mountainous region of which the present Island of
Madagascar formed a part, and thus occupied a central position around
the smaller of the two great lakes.

[Sidenote: Origin of Language.]

As stated in the stanzas of Dzyan above quoted, the men of that epoch,
even though they had become completely physical, still remained
speechless. Naturally the astral and etherial ancestors of this Third
Root Race had no need to produce a series of sounds in order to convey
their thoughts, living as they did in astral and etherial conditions,
but when man became physical he could not for long remain dumb. We are
told that the sounds which these primitive men made to express their
thoughts were at first composed entirely of vowels. In the slow course
of evolution the consonant sounds gradually came into use, but the
development of language from first to last on the continent of Lemuria
never reached beyond the monosyllabic phase. The Chinese language of
to-day is the sole great lineal descendant of ancient Lemurian
speech[20] for "the whole human race was at that time of one language
and of one lip."[21]

In Humboldt's classification of language, the Chinese, as we know, is
called the _isolating_ as distinguished from the more highly evolved
_agglutinative_, and the still more highly evolved _inflectional_.
Readers of the _Story of Atlantis_ may remember that many different
languages were developed on that continent, but all belonged to the
_agglutinative_, or, as Max Mueller prefers to call it, the
_combinatory_ type, while the still higher development of
_inflectional_ speech, in the Aryan and Semitic tongues, was reserved
for our own era of the Fifth Root Race.

[Sidenote: The First Taking of Life.]

The first instance of sin, the first taking of life--quoted above from
an old commentary on the stanzas of Dzyan, may be taken as indicative
of the attitude which was then inaugurated between the human and the
animal kingdom, and which has since attained such awful proportions,
not only between men and animals, but between the different races of
men themselves. And this opens up a most interesting avenue of
thought.

The fact that Kings and Emperors consider it necessary or appropriate,
on all state occasions, to appear in the garb of one of the fighting
branches of their service, is a significant indication of the
apotheosis reached by the combative qualities in man! The custom
doubtless comes down from a time when the King was the warrior-chief,
and when his kingship was acknowledged solely in virtue of his being
the chief warrior. But now that the Fifth Root Race is in ascendency,
whose chief characteristic and function is the development of
intellect, it might have been expected that the dominant attribute of
the Fourth Root Race would have been a little less conspicuously
paraded. But the era of one race overlaps another, and though, as we
know, the leading races of the world all belong to the Fifth Root
Race, the vast majority of its inhabitants still belong to the Fourth,
and it would appear that the Fifth Root Race has not yet outstripped
Fourth Race characteristics, for it is by infinitely slow degrees that
man's evolution is accomplished.

It will be interesting here to summarise the history of this strife
and bloodshed from its genesis during these far-off ages on Lemuria.

From the information placed before the writer it would seem that the
antagonism between men and animals was developed first. With the
evolution of man's physical body, suitable food for that body
naturally became an urgent need, so that in addition to the antagonism
brought about by the necessity of self-defence against the now
ferocious animals, the desire of food also urged men to their
slaughter, and as we have seen above, one of the first uses they made
of their budding mentality was to train animals to act as hunters in
the chase.

The element of strife having once been kindled, men soon began to use
weapons of offence against each other. The causes of aggression were
naturally the same as those which exist to-day among savage
communities. The possession of any desirable object by one of his
fellows was sufficient inducement for a man to attempt to take it by
force. Nor was strife limited to single acts of aggression. As among
savages to-day, bands of marauders would attack and pillage the
communities who dwelt at a distance from their own village. But to
this extent only, we are told, was warfare organised on Lemuria, even
down to the end of its seventh sub-race.

It was reserved for the Atlanteans to develop the principle of strife
on organised lines--to collect and to drill armies and to build
navies. This principle of strife was indeed the fundamental
characteristic of the Fourth Root Race. All through the Atlantean
period, as we know, warfare was the order of the day, and battles were
constantly fought on land and sea. And so deeply rooted in man's
nature during the Atlantean period did this principle of strife
become, that even now the most intellectually developed of the Aryan
races are ready to war upon each other.

[Sidenote: The Arts.]

To trace the development of the Arts among the Lemurians, we must
start with the history of the fifth sub-race. The separation of the
sexes was now fully accomplished, and man inhabited a completely
physical body, though it was still of gigantic stature. The offensive
and defensive war with the monstrous beasts of prey had already begun,
and men had taken to living in huts. To build their huts they tore
down trees, and piled them up in a rude fashion. At first each
separate family lived in its own clearing in the jungle, but they soon
found it safer, as a defence against the wild beasts, to draw together
and live in small communities. Their huts, too, which had been formed
of rude trunks of trees, they now learnt to build with boulders of
stone, while the weapons with which they attacked, or defended
themselves against the Dinosauria and other wild beasts, were spears
of sharpened wood, similar to the staff held by the man whose
appearance is described above.

Up to this time agriculture was unknown, and the uses of fire had not
been discovered. The food of their boneless ancestors who crawled on
the earth were such things as they could find on the surface of the
ground or just below it. Now that they walked erect many of the wild
forest trees provided them with nuts and berries, but their chief
article of food was the flesh of the beasts and reptiles which they
slew, tore in pieces, and devoured.

[Sidenote: Teachers of the Lemurian Race.]

But now there occurred an event pregnant with consequences the most
momentous in the history of the human race. An event too full of
mystical import, for its narration brings into view Beings who
belonged to entirely different systems of evolution, and who
nevertheless came at this epoch to be associated with our humanity.

The lament of the Lhas "who had not built men" at seeing their future
abodes defiled, is at first sight far from intelligible. Though the
descent of these Beings into human bodies is not the chief event to
which we have to refer, some explanation of its cause and its result
must first be attempted. Now, we are given to understand that these
Lhas were the highly evolved humanity of some system of evolution
which had run its course at a period in the infinitely far-off past.
They had reached a high stage of development on their chain of worlds,
and since its dissolution had passed the intervening ages in the bliss
of some Nirvanic condition. But their karma now necessitated a return
to some field of action and of physical causes, and as they had not
yet fully learnt the lesson of compassion, their temporary task now
lay in becoming guides and teachers of the Lemurian race, who then
required all the help and guidance they could get.

But other Beings also took up the task--in this case voluntarily.
These came from the scheme of evolution which has Venus as its one
physical planet. That scheme has already reached the Seventh Round of
its planets in its Fifth Manvantara; its humanity therefore stands at
a far higher level than ordinary mankind on this earth has yet
attained. They are "divine" while we are only "human." The Lemurians,
as we have seen, were then merely on the verge of attaining true
manhood. It was to supply a temporary need--the education of our
infant humanity--that these divine Beings came--as we possibly, long
ages hence, may similarly be called to give a helping hand to the
beings struggling up to manhood on the Jupiter or the Saturn chain.
Under their guidance and influence the Lemurians rapidly advanced in
mental growth. The stirring of their minds with feelings of love and
reverence for those whom they felt to be infinitely wiser and greater
than themselves naturally resulted in efforts of imitation, and so the
necessary advance in mental growth was achieved which transformed the
higher mental sheath into a vehicle capable of carrying over the human
characteristics from life to life, thus warranting that outpouring of
the Divine Life which endowed the recipient with individual
immortality. As expressed in the archaic stanzas of Dzyan, "Then all
men became endowed with Manas."

A great distinction, however, must be noted between the coming of the
exalted Beings from the Venus scheme and that of those described as
the highly evolved humanity of some previous system of evolution. The
former, as we have seen, were under no karmic impulse. They came as
men to live and work among them, but they were not required to assume
their physical limitations, being in a position to provide appropriate
vehicles for themselves.

The Lhas on the other hand had actually to be born in the bodies of
the race as it then existed. Better would it have been both for them
and for the race if there had been no hesitation or delay on their
part in taking up their Karmic task, for the sin of the mindless and
all its consequences would have been avoided. Their task, too, would
have been an easier one, for it consisted not only in acting as guides
and teachers, but in improving the racial type--in short, in evolving
out of the half-human, half-animal form then existing, the physical
body of the man to be.

It must be remembered that up to this time the Lemurian race consisted
of the second and third groups of the Lunar Pitris. But now that they
were approaching the level reached on the Lunar chain by the first
group of Pitris, it became necessary for these again to return to
incarnation, and this they did all through the fifth, sixth and
seventh sub-races (indeed, some did not take birth till the Atlantean
period), so that the impetus given to the progress of the race was a
cumulative force.

The positions occupied by the divine beings from the Venus chain were
naturally those of rulers, instructors in religion, and teachers of
the arts, and it is in this latter capacity that a reference to the
arts taught by them comes to our aid in the consideration of the
history of this early race.

[Sidenote: The Arts continued.]

Under the guidance of their divine teachers the people began to learn
the use of fire, and the means by which it could be obtained, at first
by friction, and later on by the use of flints and iron. They were
taught to explore for metals, to smelt and to mould them, and instead
of spears of sharpened wood they now began to use spears tipped with
sharpened metal.

They were also taught to dig and till the ground and to cultivate the
seeds of wild grain till it improved in type. This cultivation carried
on through the vast ages which have since elapsed has resulted in the
evolution of the various cereals which we now possess--barley, oats,
maize, millet, etc. But an exception must here be noted. Wheat was not
evolved upon this planet like the other cereals. It was a gift of the
divine beings who brought it from Venus ready for the food of man. Nor
was wheat their only gift. The one animal form whose type has not been
evolved on our chain of worlds is that of the bee. It, too, was
brought from Venus.

The Lemurians now also began to learn the art of spinning and weaving
fabrics with which to clothe themselves. These were made of the coarse
hair of a species of animal now extinct, but which bore some
resemblance to the llamas of to-day, the ancestors of which they may
possibly have been. We have seen above that the earliest articles of
clothing of Lemurian man were robes of skin stripped from the beasts
he had slain. These skins he still continued to wear on the colder
parts of the continent, but he now learnt to cure and dress the skin
in some rude fashion.

One of the first things the people were taught was the use of fire in
the preparation of their food, and whether it was the flesh of animals
they slew or the pounded grains of wheat, their modes of cooking were
closely analogous to those we hear of as existing to-day among savage
communities. With reference to the gift of wheat so marvellously
brought from Venus, the divine rulers doubtless realised the
advisability of at once procuring such food for the people, for they
must have known that it would take many generations before the
cultivation of the wild seeds could provide an adequate supply.

Rude and barbarous as were the people during the period of the fifth
and sixth sub-races, such of them as had the privilege of coming in
contact with their divine teachers were naturally inspired with such
feelings of reverence and worship as helped to lift them out of their
savage condition. The constant influx, too, of more intelligent beings
from the first group of the Lunar Pitris, who were then beginning to
return to incarnation, helped the attainment of a more civilised
state.

[Sidenote: Great Cities and Statues.]

During the later part of the sixth, and the seventh sub-race they
learnt to build great cities. These appear to have been of cyclopean
architecture, corresponding with the gigantic bodies of the race. The
first cities were built on that extended mountainous region of the
continent which included, as will be seen in the first map, the
present Island of Madagascar. Another great city is described in the
"Secret Doctrine"[22] as having been entirely built of blocks of lava.
It lay some 30 miles west of the present Easter Island, and it was
subsequently destroyed by a series of volcanic eruptions. The gigantic
statues of Easter Island--measuring as most of them do about 27 feet
in height by 8 feet across the shoulders--were probably intended to be
representative not only of the features, but of the height of those
who carved them, or it may be of their ancestors, for it was probably
in the later ages of the Lemuro-Atlanteans that the statues were
erected. It will be observed that by the second map period, the
continent of which Easter Island formed a part had been broken up and
Easter Island itself had become a comparatively small island, though
of considerably greater dimensions than it retains to-day.

Civilisations of comparative importance arose on different parts of
the continent and the great islands where the inhabitants built cities
and dwelt in settled communities, but large tribes who were also
partially civilised continued to lead a nomadic and patriarchial life;
while other parts of the land--in many cases the least accessible, as
in our own times--were peopled by tribes of extremely low type.

[Sidenote: Religion.]

With so primitive a race of men, at the best, there was but little in
the shape of religion that they could be taught. Simple rules of
conduct and the most elementary precepts of morality were all that
they were fitted to understand or to practise. During the evolution of
the seventh sub-race, it is true that their divine instructors taught
them some primitive form of worship and imparted the knowledge of a
Supreme Being whose symbol was represented as the Sun.

[Sidenote: Destruction of the Continent.]

Unlike the subsequent fate of Atlantis, which was submerged by great
tidal waves, the continent of Lemuria perished by volcanic action. It
was raked by the burning ashes and the red-hot dust from numberless
volcanoes. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, it is true, heralded
each of the great catastrophes which overtook Atlantis, but when the
land had been shaken and rent, the sea rushed in and completed the
work, and most of the inhabitants perished by drowning. The Lemurians,
on the other hand, met their doom chiefly by fire or suffocation.
Another marked contrast between the fate of Lemuria and Atlantis was
that while four great catastrophes completed the destruction of the
latter, the former was slowly eaten away by internal fires, for, from
the time when the disintegrating process began towards the end of the
first map period, there was no cessation from the fiery activity, and
whether in one part of the continent or another, the volcanic action
was incessant, while the invariable sequence was the subsidence and
total disappearance of the land, just as in the case of Krakatoa in
1883.

So closely analogous was the eruption of Mount Pelee, which caused the
destruction of St. Pierre, the capital of Martinique, about two years
ago, to the whole series of volcanic catastrophes on the continent of
Lemuria, that the description of the former given by some of the
survivors may be of interest. "An immense black cloud had suddenly
burst forth from the crater of Mont Pelee and rushed with terrific
velocity upon the city, destroying everything--inhabitants, houses and
vegetation alike--that it found in its path. In two or three minutes
it passed over, and the city was a blazing pyre of ruins. In both
islands [Martinique and St. Vincent] the eruptions were characterised
by the sudden discharge of immense quantities of red-hot dust, mixed
with steam, which flowed down the steep hillsides with an
ever-increasing velocity. In St. Vincent this had filled many valleys
to a depth of between 100 feet and 200 feet, and months after the
eruptions was still very hot, and the heavy rains which then fell
thereon caused enormous explosions, producing clouds of steam and dust
that shot upwards to a height of from 1500 feet to 2000 feet, and
filled the rivers with black boiling mud." Captain Freeman, of the
"Roddam," then described "a thrilling experience which he and his
party had at Martinique. One night, when they were lying at anchor in
a little sloop about a mile from St. Pierre, the mountain exploded in
a way that was apparently an exact repetition of the original
eruption. It was not entirely without warning; hence they were enabled
to sail at once a mile or two further away, and thus probably saved
their lives. In the darkness they saw the summit glow with a bright
red light; then soon, with loud detonations, great red-hot stones were
projected into the air and rolled down the slopes. A few minutes later
a prolonged rumbling noise was heard, and in an instant was followed
by a red-hot avalanche of dust, which rushed out of the crater and
rolled down the side with a terrific speed, which they estimated at
about 100 miles an hour, with a temperature of 1000 deg. centigrade. As
to the probable explanation of these phenomena, no lava, he said, had
been seen to flow from either of the volcanoes, but only steam and
fine hot dust. The volcanoes were, therefore, of the explosive type;
and from all his observations he had concluded that the absence of
lava-flows was due to the material within the crater being partly
solid, or at least highly viscous, so that it could not flow like an
ordinary lava-stream. Since his return this theory had received
striking confirmation, for it was now known that within the crater of
Mont Pelee there was no lake of molten lava, but that a solid pillar
of red-hot rock was slowly rising upwards in a great conical,
sharp-pointed hill, until it might finally overtop the old summit of
the mountain. It was nearly 1000 feet high, and slowly grew as it was
forced upwards by pressure from beneath, while every now and then
explosions of steam took place, dislodging large pieces from its
summit or its sides. Steam was set free within this mass as it cooled,
and the rock then passed into a dangerous and highly explosive
condition, such that an explosion must sooner or later take place,
which shivered a great part of the mass into fine red-hot dust."[23]

A reference to the first Lemurian map will show that in the lake lying
to the south-east of the extensive mountainous region there was an
island which consisted of little more than one great mountain. This
mountain was a very active volcano. The four mountains which lay to
the south-west of the lake were also active volcanoes, and in this
region it was that the disruption of the continent began. The seismic
cataclysms which followed the volcanic eruptions caused such
wide-spread damage that by the second map period a large portion of
the southern part of the continent had been submerged.

A marked characteristic of the land surface in early Lemurian times
was the great number of lakes and marshes, as well as the innumerable
volcanoes. Of course, all these are not shown on the map. Only some of
the great mountains which were volcanoes, and only some of the largest
lakes are there indicated.

Another volcano on the north-east coast of the continent began its
destructive work at an early date. Earthquakes completed the
disruption, and it seems probable that the sea shown in the second map
as dotted with small islands to the south-east of the present Japan,
indicates the area of seismic disturbance.

In the first map it will be seen that there were lakes in the centre
of what is now the island-continent of Australia--lakes where the land
is at present exceedingly dry and parched. By the second map period
those lakes had disappeared, and it seems natural to conjecture that
the districts where those lakes lay, must, during the eruptions of the
great volcanoes which lay to the south-east (between the present
Australia and New Zealand), have been so raked with red-hot volcanic
dust that the very water-springs were dried up.

[Sidenote: Founding of the Atlantean Race.]

In concluding this sketch, a reference to the process by which the
Fourth Root Race was brought into existence, will appropriately bring
to an end what we know of the story of Lemuria and link it on to that
of Atlantis.

It may be remembered from previous writings on the subject that it was
from the _fifth_ or Semitic sub-race of the Fourth Root Race that was
chosen the nucleus destined to become our great Fifth or Aryan Root
Race. It was not, however, until the time of the _seventh_ sub-race on
Lemuria that humanity was sufficiently developed physiologically to
warrant the choice of individuals fit to become the parents of a new
Root Race. So it was from the seventh sub-race that the segregation
was effected. The colony was first settled on land which occupied the
site of the present Ashantee and Western Nigeria. A reference to the
second map will show this as a promontory lying to the north-west of
the island-continent which embraced the Cape of Good Hope and parts of
western Africa. Having been guarded for generations from any admixture
with a lower type, the colony gradually increased in numbers, and the
time came when it was ready to receive and to hand on the new impulse
to physical heredity which the Manu was destined to impart.

Students of Theosophy are aware that, up to the present day, no one
belonging to our humanity has been in a position to undertake the
exalted office of Manu, though it is stated that the founding of the
coming Sixth Root Race will be entrusted to the guidance of one of our
Masters of Wisdom--one who, while belonging to our humanity, has
nevertheless reached a most exalted level in the Divine Hierarchy.

In the case we are considering--the founding of the Fourth Root
Race--it was one of the Adepts from Venus who undertook the duties of
the Manu. Naturally he belonged to a very high order, for it must be
understood that the Beings who came from the Venus system as rulers
and teachers of our infant humanity did _not_ all stand at the same
level. It is this circumstance which furnishes a reason for the
remarkable fact that may, in conclusion, be stated--namely, that there
existed in Lemuria a Lodge of Initiation.

[Sidenote: A Lodge of Initiation.]

Naturally it was not for the benefit of the Lemurian race that the
Lodge was founded. Such of them as were sufficiently advanced were, it
is true, taught by the Adept Gurus, but the instruction they required
was limited to the explanation of a few physical phenomena, such as
the fact that the earth moves round the sun, or to the explanation of
the different appearance which physical objects assumed for them when
subjected alternately to their physical sight and their astral vision.

It was, of course, for the sake of those who, while endowed with the
stupendous powers of transferring their consciousness from the planet
Venus to this our earth, and of providing for their use and their work
while here appropriate vehicles in which to function, were yet
pursuing the course of their own evolution.[24] For their sake it
was--for the sake of those who, having entered the Path, had only
reached the lower grades, that this Lodge of Initiation was founded.

Though, as we know, the goal of normal evolution is greater and more
glorious than can, from our present standpoint, be well imagined, it
is by no means synonymous with that expansion of consciousness which,
combined with and alone made possible by, the purification and
ennoblement of character, constitute the heights to which the Pathway
of Initiation leads.

The investigation into what constitutes this purification and
ennoblement of character, and the endeavour to realise what that
expansion of consciousness really means are subjects which have been
written of elsewhere.

Suffice it now to point out that the founding of a Lodge of Initiation
for the sake of Beings who came from another scheme of evolution is an
indication of the unity of object and of aim in the government and the
guidance of _all_ the schemes of evolution brought into existence by
our Solar Logos. Apart from the normal course in our own scheme, there
is, we know, a Path by which He may be directly reached, which every
son of man in his progress through the ages is privileged to hear of,
and to tread, if he so chooses. We find that this was so in the Venus
scheme also, and we may presume it is or will be so in all the schemes
which form part of our Solar system. This Path is the Path of
Initiation, and the end to which leads is the same for all, and that
end is Union with God.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Haeckel is correct enough in his surmise that Lemuria was
the cradle of the human race as it now exists, but it was not out of
Anthropoid apes that mankind developed. A reference will be made later
on to the position in nature which the Anthropoid apes really occupy.]

[Footnote 3: Ernst Haeckel's "Hist. of Creation," 2nd ed., 1876, Vol.
1., pp. 360-62.]

[Footnote 4: Alfred Russell Wallace's "The Geographical Distribution
of Animals--with a study of the relations of living and extinct Faunas
as elucidating the past changes of the Earth's Surface." London:
Macmillan & Co., 1876. Vol. 1., pp. 76-7.]

[Footnote 5: Ceylon and South India, it is true, have been bounded on
the north by a considerable extent of sea, but that was at a much
earlier date than the Tertiary period.]

[Footnote 6: Wallace's "Geographical Distribution, etc." Vol. 1., pp.
328-9.]

[Footnote 7: Wallace's "Geographical Distribution, etc.," Vol. ii., p.
155.]

[Footnote 8: H. F. Blandford "On the age and correlations of the
Plant-bearing series of India and the former existence of an
Indo-Oceanic Continent," see Quarterly Journal of the Geological
Society, Vol. xxxi., 1875, pp. 534-540.]

[Footnote 9: A reference to the maps will show that Mr. Blandford's
estimate of date is the more correct of the two.]

[Footnote 10: Parts of the continent of course endured, but the
dismemberment of Lemuria is said to have taken place before the
beginning of the Eocene Age.]

[Footnote 11: Vol ii., pp. 325-6.]

[Footnote 12: Dr. G. Hartlaub "On the Avifauna of Madagascar and the
Mascarene Islands," see "The Ibis," a Quarterly Journal of
Ornithology. Fourth Series, Vol. i., 1877, p. 334.]

[Footnote 13: Ernst Haeckel's "History of Creation," Vol. ii., pp.
22-56.]

[Footnote 14: Ernst Haeckel's "History of Creation," Vol. ii., pp.
226-7.]

[Footnote 15: For a further account of the permanent atoms on all the
planes, and the potentialities contained in them with reference to the
processes of death and re-birth, see "Man's Place in Universe." pp.
76-80.]

[Footnote 16: The "Standard," 8th Jan., 1904.]

[Footnote 17: Ernst Haeckel's "The History of Creation," 2nd ed., Vol.
i., pp. 193-8.]

[Footnote 18: "The Secret Doctrine," Vol. ii., p. 197.]

[Footnote 19: Vol. ii., pp. 683 and 689.]

[Footnote 20: It must, however, be noted that the Chinese _people_ are
mainly descended from the fourth or Turanian sub-race of the Fourth
Root Race.]

[Footnote 21: "Secret Doctrine," Vol. ii., p. 198.]

[Footnote 22: Vol. ii., p. 317.]

[Footnote 23: The "Times," 14th Sept., 1903.]

[Footnote 24: The heights reached by them will find their parallel
when our humanity will, countless aeons hence, have reached the Sixth
Round of our chain of worlds, and the same transcendent powers will be
the possession of ordinary mankind in those far-off ages.]




MAPS


[Illustration: NO. 1 THE WORLD ABOUT 1,000,000 YEARS AGO, DURING MANY
PREVIOUS AGES, AND UP TO THE CATASTROPHE OF ABOUT 800, 000 YEARS AGO.

ATLANTIS AT ITS PRIME]

[Illustration: NO 2 THE WORLD AFTER THE CATASTROPHE OF 800,000 YEARS AGO
AND UP TO THE CATASTROPHE OF ABOUT 200,000 YEARS AGO.

ATLANTIS IN ITS DECADENCE]

[Illustration: NO 3 THE WORLD AFTER THE CATASTROPHE OF 200,000 YEARS AGO
AND UP TO THE CATASTROPHE OF ABOUT 80,000 YEARS AGO.

RUTA & DAITYA]

[Illustration: NO 4 THE WORLD AFTER THE CATASTROPHE OF 80000 YEARS AGO
AND UP TO THE FINAL SUBMERGENCE OF POSEIDONIS IN 9,564 B.C.

POSEIDONIS]

[Illustration: No.1 LEMURIA at its greatest extent.]

[Illustration: No.2 LEMURIA at a later period.]



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LEMURIA***


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