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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2



         Theosophical University Press Online Edition  

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 180 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.



STANZA VIII.

EVOLUTION OF THE ANIMAL MAMMALIANS. -- THE

FIRST FALL.  

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         §§ (28) How the first mammals were produced. (29) A quasi-Darwinian Evolution. (30)           The animals get solid bodies. (31) Their separation into sexes. (32) The first sin of the           mindless men.  

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28. FROM THE DROPS OF SWEAT (a); FROM THE RESIDUE OF THE SUBSTANCE; MATTER  FROM DEAD BODIES AND ANIMALS OF THE WHEEL BEFORE (previous, Third Round ); AND  FROM CAST-OFF DUST; THE FIRST ANIMALS (of this Round) WERE PRODUCED.  

(a) The Occult doctrine maintains that, in this Round, the mammalians were a later work of evolution  than man. Evolution proceeds in cycles. The great Manvantaric cycle of Seven Rounds, beginning in  the First Round with mineral, vegetable, and animal, brings its evolutionary work on the descending  arc to a dead stop in the middle of the Fourth Race, at the close of the first half of the Fourth Round. It  is on our Earth, then, (the Fourth sphere and the lowest) and in the present Round, that this middle  point has been reached. And since the Monad has passed, after its "first inmetallization" on Globe A,  through the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds in every degree of the three states of matter, except  the last degree of the third or solid state, which it reached only at the "mid-point of evolution" it is but  logical and natural that at the beginning of the Fourth Round on Globe D, Man should be the first to  appear; and also that his frame should be of the most tenuous matter that is compatible with  objectivity. To make it still clearer: if the Monad begins its cycle of incarnations through the three  objective kingdoms on the descending curved line, it has necessarily to enter on the re-ascending  curved line of the sphere as a man also. On the descending arc it is the spiritual which is gradually  transformed into the material. On the middle line of the base, Spirit and Matter are equilibrized in  Man. On the ascending arc, Spirit is slowly re-asserting itself at the expense of the physical, or matter,  so that, at the close of the seventh Race of the Seventh Round, the Monad will find itself as



[[Vol. 2, Page]] 181 MEN, THE PROGENITORS OF ANIMALS.



free from matter and all its qualities as it was in the beginning; having gained in addition the  

  


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experience and wisdom, the fruition of all its personal lives, without their evil and temptations.  

This order of evolution is found also in Genesis (ch.  1 and 2) if one reads it in its true esoteric sense,  for chapter i. contains the history of the first Three Rounds, as well as that of the first Three Races of  the Fourth, up to that moment when Man is called to conscious life by the Elohim of Wisdom. In the  first chapter, animals, whales and fowls of the air, are created before the androgyne Adam.* In the  second, Adam (the sexless) comes first, and the animals only appear after him. Even the state of  mental torpor and unconsciousness of the first two races, and of the first half of the Third Race, is  symbolized, in the second chapter of Genesis, by the deep sleep of Adam. It was the dreamless sleep of  mental inaction, the slumber of the Soul and Mind, which was meant by that "sleep," and not at all the  physiological process of differentiation of sexes, as a learned French theorist (M. Naudin) imagined.  

The Puranas, the Chaldean and Egyptian fragments, and also the Chinese traditions, all show an  agreement with the Secret Doctrine as to the process and order of evolution. We find in them the  corroboration of almost all our teaching. For instance: the statement concerning the oviparous mode of  procreation of the Third Race, and even a hint at a less innocent mode of the procreation of the first  mammal forms, "gigantic, transparent, dumb and monstrous they were," says the Commentary. Study  the stories of the several Rishis and their multifarious progeny; e.g., Pulastya is the father of all the  Serpents and Nagas -- the oviparous brood; Kasyapa was grandsire, through his wife Tamra, of the  birds and of Garuda, king of the feathered tribe; while by his wife Surabhi, he was the parent of cows  and buffaloes, etc., etc.  

In the Secret Doctrine, the first Nagas -- beings wiser than Serpents -- are the "Sons of Will and  Yoga," born before the complete separation of the sexes, "matured in the man-bearing eggs**  produced by the power (Kriyasakti) of the holy sages" of the early Third Race.***  

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  

*An allegorical reference to the "Sacred Animals" of the Zodiac and other heavenly bodies. Some  Kabalists see in them the prototypes of the animals.  

** In "Hesiod," Zeus creates his third race of men out of ash-trees. In the "Popol Vuh" the Third Race  of men is created out of the tree Tzita and the marrow of the reed called Sibac. But Sibac means "egg"  in the mystery language of the Artufas  (or Initiation caves). In a report sent in 1812 to the Cortes by  Don Baptista Pino it is said: "All the Pueblos have their Artufas --  so the natives call subterranean  rooms with only a single door where they (secretly) assemble. . . . . These are impenetrable temples . . .  . and the doors are always closed to the Spaniards. . . . . They adore the Sun and Moon . . . . fire and  the great SNAKE (the creative power), whose eggs are called Sibac."  

*** There is a notable difference esoterically between the words Sarpa and Naga, [[Footnote  continued on next page]]  

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 182 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.



  


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". . . . . In these were incarnated the Lords of the three (upper) worlds, the various classes of Rudras,  who had been Tushitas, who had been Jayas, who are Adityas ;" for, as explained by Parasara, "There  are a hundred appellations of the immeasurably mighty Rudras."  

Some of the descendants of the primitive Nagas, the Serpents of Wisdom, peopled America, when its  continent arose during the palmy days of the great Atlantis, (America being the Patala or Antipodes of  Jambu-Dwipa, not of Bharata-Varsha). Otherwise, whence the traditions and legends -- the latter  always more true than history, as says Augustin Thierry -- and even the identity in the names of  certain "medicine men" and priests, who exist to this day in Mexico? We shall have to say something  of the Nargals and the Nagals and also of Nagalism, called "devil-worship" by the Missionaries.  

In almost all the Puranas, the story of the "Sacrifice of Daksha" is given, the oldest account of which is  to be found in  Vayu Purana. Allegorical as it is, there is more meaning and biological revelation in it  to a Naturalist, than in all the pseudo-scientific  vagaries, which are regarded as learned theories and  hypotheses.  

Daksha, who is regarded as the Chief Progenitor, is, moreover, pointed out as the creator of physical  man in the "fable," which makes him lose his head from his body in the general strife between the  gods and the Raumas. This head, being burnt in the fire, is replaced by the head of a ram (Kasi-

Khanda). Now the ram's head and horns are ever the symbol of generating power and of reproductive  force, and are phallic.  As we have shown, it is Daksha who establishes the era of men engendered by  sexual intercourse. But this mode of procreation did not occur suddenly, as one may think, and  required long ages before it became the one "natural" way. Therefore, his sacrifice to the gods is  shown as interfered with by Siva, the destroying deity, evolution and PROGRESS personified, who is  the regenerator at the same time; who destroys things under one form but to recall them to life under  another more perfect type. Siva-Rudra creates the terrible Virabhadra (born of his breath) the  "thousand-headed, thousand-armed" (etc.) monster, and commissions him to destroy the sacrifice  prepared by Daksha. Then Virabhadra, "abiding in the region of the ghosts (ethereal men) . . . .  

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  

[[Footnote continued from previous page]] though they are both used indiscriminately. Sarpa (serpent)  is from the root Srip, serpo to creep; and they are called "Ahi," from Ha, to abandon. "The sarpa was  produced from Brahma's hair, which, owing to his fright at beholding the Yakshas, whom he had  created horrible to behold, fell off from the head, each hair becoming a serpent. They are called Sarpa  from their creeping and Ahi because they had deserted the head" (Wilson). But the Nagas, their  serpent's tail notwithstanding, do not creep, but manage to walk, run and fight in the allegories.  

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 183 ARCHAIC ZOOLOGY.



created from the pores of the skin (Romakupas), powerful Raumas,* (or Raumyas)." Now, however  mythical the allegory, the Mahabharata, which is history as much as is the Iliad, shows** the Raumyas  and other races, as springing in the same manner from the Romakupas, hair or skin pores. This  allegorical description of the "sacrifice" is full of significance to the students of the Secret Doctrine  

  


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who know of the "Sweat-born."  

In the Vayu Purana's account of Daksha's sacrifice, moreover, it is said to have taken place in the  presence of creatures born from the egg, from the vapour, vegetation, pores of the skin, and, finally  only, from the womb.  

Daksha typifies the early Third Race, holy and pure, still devoid of an individual Ego, and having  merely the passive capacities. Brahma, therefore, commands him to create (in the exoteric texts);  when, obeying the command, he made "inferior and superior" (avara and vara) progeny (putra ),  bipeds and quadrupeds; and by his will, gave birth to females . . . . to the gods, the Daityas (giants of  the Fourth Race), the snake-gods, animals, cattle and the Danavas (Titans and demon Magicians) and  other beings."  

. . . . "From that period forward, living creatures were engendered by sexual intercourse. Before the  time of Daksha, they were variously propagated --  by the will, by sight, by touch, and by Yoga-

power. "*** And now comes the simply zoological teaching.  

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29. ANIMALS WITH BONES, DRAGONS OF THE DEEP AND FLYING SARPAS (serpents)  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 (a).  

(a) This is a point on which the teachings and modern biological speculation are in perfect accord. The  missing links representing this transition process between reptile and bird are apparent to the veriest  bigot, especially in the ornithoscelidae, hesperornis, and the archaeopteryx of Vogt.  

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30. DURING THE THIRD (Race), THE BONELESS ANIMALS GREW AND CHANGED: THEY  BECAME ANIMALS WITH BONES (a), THEIR CHHAYAS BECAME SOLID (also).  

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  

* Wilson translates the word as "demigods" (See his Vishnu Purana, p.  130); but Raurnas or Raumyas  are simply a race, a tribe.  

** xii. 10308.  

*** "Vishnu Purana"  

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31. THE ANIMALS SEPARATED THE FIRST (into mate and female) (b) . . . .  

(a) Vertebrates, and after that mammalians. Before that the animals were also ethereal proto-

organisms, just as man was.  

(b) The fact of former hermaphrodite mammals and the subsequent separation of sexes is now  indisputable, even from the stand-point of Biology. As Prof. Oscar Schmidt, an avowed Darwinist,  shows: "Use and disuse combined with selection elucidate (?) the separation of the sexes, and the  existence, totally incomprehensible, of rudimentary sexual organs. In the Vertebrata especially, each  sex possesses such distinct traces of the reproductive apparatus characteristic of the other, that even  antiquity assumed hermaphroditism as a natural primeval form of mankind. . . . The tenacity with  which the rudiments of sexual organs are inherited is remarkable. In the class of mammals, actual  hermaphroditism is unheard of, although through the whole period of their development they drag  along with them these residues born by their unknown ancestry, no one can say how long ago."*  

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31. . . . . THEY (the animals) BEGAN TO BREED. THE TWO-FOLD MAN (then) SEPARATED  ALSO. HE (man), SAID "LET US AS THEY; LET US UNITE AND MAKE CREATURES." THEY  DID. . . .  

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32. AND THOSE WHICH HAD NO SPARK (the "narrow-brained"** TOOK HUGE SHE-

ANIMALS UNTO THEM (a). THEY BEGAT UPON THEM DUMB RACES. DUMB THEY WERE  (the "narrow-brained") THEMSELVES. BUT THEIR TONGUES UNTIED (b). 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.****  

(a) The animals "separated the first," says Stanza 31. Bear in mind that at that period men were  different, even physiologically, from what  

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  

* "Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, " pp. 186-7. The "Unknown Ancestry" referred to are the  primeval  astral prototypes. Cf. § II., p. 260 (a).  

** See verse 24.  

*** These "animals," or monsters, are not the anthropoid or any other apes, but verily what the  Anthropologists might call the "missing link," the primitive lower man; see infra.  

**** The shame of their animal origin which our modern scientists would emphasize if they could.



  


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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 185 THE SIN OF THE MINDLESS MEN.



they are now, having passed the middle point of the Fifth Race. We are not told what the "huge she-

animals" were; but they certainly were as different from any we know now, as were the men.  

This was the first physical "fall into matter" of some of the then existing and lower races. Bear in mind  Stanza 24. The "Sons of Wisdom" had spurned the early Third Race, i.e., the non-developed, and are  shown incarnating in, and thereby endowing with intellect, the later Third Race. Thus the sin of the  brainless or "mindless" Races, who had no "spark" and were irresponsible, fell upon those who failed  to do by them their Karmic duty.  

(b) See later on concerning the beginning of human speech.  

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WHAT MAY BE THE OBJECTIONS TO THE FOREGOING.  

Thus Occultism rejects the idea that Nature developed man from the ape, or even from an ancestor  common to both, but traces, on the contrary, some of the most anthropoid species to the Third Race  man of the early Atlantean period. As this proposition will be maintained and defended elsewhere, a  few words more are all that are needed at present. For greater clearness, however, we shall repeat in  brief what was said previously in Book I., Stanza VI.  

Our teachings show that, while it is quite correct to say that nature had built, at one time, around the  human astral form an ape-like external shape, yet it is as correct that this shape was no more that of the  "missing link," than were the coverings of that astral form, during the course of its natural evolution  through all the kingdoms of nature. Nor was it, as shown in the proper place, on this Fourth Round  planet that such evolution took place, but only during the First, Second, and Third Rounds, when  MAN was, in turn, "a stone, a plant, and an animal" until he became what he was in the First Root-

Race of present humanity. The real line of evolution differs from the Darwinian, and the two systems  are irreconcilable, except when the latter is divorced from the dogma of "Natural Selection" and the  like. Indeed, between the Monera of Haeckel and the Sarisripa of Manu, there lies an impassable  chasm in the shape of the Jiva ; for the "human" Monad, whether immetallized in the stone-atom, or  invegetallized in the plant, or inanimalized in the animal, is still and ever a divine, hence also a  HUMAN Monad. It ceases to be human only when it becomes absolutely divine. The terms "mineral,"  "vegetable" and "animal" monad are meant to create a superficial distinction: there is no such thing as  a Monad (jiva)



[[Vol. 2, Page]] 186 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.



other than divine, and consequently having been, or having to become, human. And the latter term has

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to remain meaningless unless the difference is well understood. The Monad is a drop out of the  shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, within the plane of primeval differentiation. It is divine in its  higher and human in its lower condition -- the adjectives "higher" and "lower" being used for lack of  better words -- and a monad it remains at all times, save in the Nirvanic state, under whatever  conditions, or whatever external forms. As the Logos reflects the Universe in the Divine Mind, and the  manifested Universe reflects itself in each of its Monads, as Leibnitz put it, repeating an Eastern  teaching, so the MONAD has, during the cycle of its incarnations, to reflect in itself every root-form  of each kingdom. Therefore, the Kabalists say correctly that "MAN becomes a stone, a plant, an  animal, a man, a Spirit, and finally God. Thus accomplishing his cycle or circuit and returning to the  point from which he had started as the heavenly MAN." But by "Man" the divine Monad is meant, and  not the thinking Entity, much less his physical body. While rejecting the immortal Soul, the men of  Science now try to trace the latter through a series of animal forms from the lowest to the highest;  whereas, in truth, all the present fauna are the descendants of those primordial monsters of which the  Stanzas speak. The animals -- the creeping beasts and those in the waters that preceded man in this  Fourth Round, as well as those contemporary with the Third Race, and again the mammalia that are  posterior to the Third and Fourth Races -- all are either directly or indirectly the mutual and correlative  product (physically) of man. It is correct to say that the man of this Manvantara, i.e., during the three  preceding Rounds, has passed through all the kingdoms of nature. That he was "a stone, a plant, an  animal." But (a) these stones, plants, and animals were the prototypes, the filmy presentments of those  of the Fourth Round; and (b) even those at the beginning of the Fourth Round were the astral shadows  of the present, as the Occultists express it. And finally the forms and genera of neither man, animal,  nor plant were what they became later. Thus the astral prototypes of the lower beings of the animal  kingdom of the Fourth Round, which preceded  (the chhayas of) Men, were the consolidated, though  still very ethereal sheaths of the still more ethereal forms or models produced at the close of the Third  Round on Globe D.* "Produced from the residue of the substance matter; from dead bodies of men  and (other extinct) animals of the wheel before," or the previous Third Round -- as Stanza 24 tells us.  Hence, while the nondescript "animals"  

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  

* Vide "Esoteric Buddhism. "  

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 187 THE DARWINISTS MISTAKEN.



that preceded the astral man at the beginning of this life-cycle on our Earth were still, so to speak, the  progeny of the man of the Third Round, the mammalians of this Round owe their existence, in a great  measure, to man again. Moreover, the "ancestor" of the present anthropoid animal, the ape, is the  direct production of the yet mindless Man, who desecrated his human dignity by putting himself  physically on the level of an animal.  

The above accounts for some of the alleged physiological proofs, brought forward by the  anthropologists as a demonstration of the descent of man from the animals.  

The point most insisted upon by the Evolutionists is that, "The history of the embryo is an epitome of  

  


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that of the race." That "every organism, in its development from the egg, runs through a series of  forms, through which, in like succession, its ancestors have passed in the long course of Earth's  history.* The history of the embryo . . . . is a picture in little, and outline of that of the race. This  conception forms the gist of our fundamental biogenetic law, which we are obliged to place at the  head of the study of the fundamental law of organic development."**  

This modern theory was known as a fact to, and far more philosophically expressed by, the Sages and  Occultists from the remotest ages. A passage from "Isis Unveiled " may here be cited to furnish a few  points of comparison. In Vol. I., pp. 388-9, it was asked why, with all their great learning,  physiologists were unable to explain teratological phenomena? Any anatomist who has made the  development and growth of the embryo "a subject of special study," can tell, without much brain-

work, what daily experience and the evidence of his own eyes show him, viz., that up to a certain  period, the human embryo is facsimile of a young batrachian in its first remove from the spawn --  tadpole. But no physiologist or anatomist seems to have had the idea of applying to the development  of the human being -- from the first  

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  

* "A very strong argument in favour of variability is supplied by the science of Embryology. Is not a  man in the uterus . . . . . a simple cell, a vegetable with three or four leaflets, a tadpole with branchiae,  a mammal with a tail, lastly a primate (?) and a biped? It is scarcely possible not to recognise in the  embryonic evolution a rapid sketch, a faithful summary, of the entire organic series." (Lefevre,  Philosophy, p. 484).  

The summary alluded to is, however, only that of the store of types hoarded up in man, the microcosm.  This simple explanation meets all such objections, as the presence of the rudimentary tail in the foetus -

- a fact triumphantly paraded by Haeckel and Darwin as conclusively in favour of the Ape-Ancestor  theory. It may also be pointed out that the presence of a vegetable with leaflets in the embryonic stages  is not explained on ordinary evolutionist principles. Darwinists have not traced man through the  vegetable, but Occultists have.  Why then this feature in the embryo, and how do the former explain it?  

** "The Proofs of Evolution," a lecture by Haeckel.  

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instant of its physical appearance as a germ to its ultimate formation and birth -- the Pythagorean  esoteric doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously interpreted by critics. The meaning of the axiom:  "A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; a beast, a man, etc." was mentioned in another place in  relation to the spiritual and physical evolution of men on this Earth. We will now add a few more  words to make the matter clearer.  

What is the primitive shape of the future man? A grain, a corpuscle, say some physiologists; a  molecule, an ovum of the ovum, say others. If it could be analysed -- by the microscope or otherwise --  of what ought we to expect to find it composed? Analogically, we should say, of a nucleus of  

  


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inorganic matter, deposited from the circulation at the germinating point, and united with a deposit of  organic matter. In other words, this infinitesimal nucleus of the future man is composed of the same  elements as a stone -- of the same elements as the Earth, which the man is destined to inhabit. Moses is  cited by the Kabalists as authority for the remark that it required earth and water to make a living  being, and thus it may be said that man first appears as a stone.  

At the end of three or four weeks the ovum has assumed a plant-like appearance, one extremity having  become spheroidal and the other tapering like a carrot. Upon dissection it is found to be composed,  like an onion, of very delicate laminae or coats, enclosing a liquid. The laminae approach each other at  the lower end, and the embryo hangs from the root of the umbilicus almost like the fruit from the  bough. The stone has now become changed, by "metempsychosis," into a plant. Then the embryonic  creature begins to shoot out, from the inside outward, its limbs, and develops its features. The eyes are  visible as two black dots; the ears, nose, and mouth form depressions, like the points of a pineapple,  before they begin to project. The embryo develops into an animal-like foetus -- the shape of a tadpole --  and, like an amphibious reptile, lives in water and develops from it. Its Monad has not yet become  either human or immortal, for the Kabalists tell us that this only occurs at the "fourth hour." One by  one the foetus assumes the characteristics of the human being, the first flutter of the immortal breath  passes through its being; it moves; and the divine essence settles in the infant frame, which it will  inhabit until the moment of physical death, when man becomes a spirit.  

This mysterious process of a nine-months' formation, the Kabalists call the completion of the  "individual cycle of evolution." As the foetus develops amidst the liquor amnii in the womb, so the  Earths germinate in the universal ether, or astral fluid, in the womb of the Universe. These cosmic  children, like their pigmy inhabitants, are at first nuclei; then ovules; then gradually mature; and  becoming



[[Vol. 2, Page]] 189 NATURALISTS INVENTING LINKS.



mothers, in their turn, develop mineral, vegetable, animal, and human forms. From centre to  circumference, from the imperceptible vesicle to the uttermost conceivable bounds of the Kosmos,  those glorious thinkers, the Occultists, trace cycle merging into cycle, containing and contained in an  endless series. The embryo evolving in its pre-natal sphere, the individual in his family, the family in  the state, the state in mankind, the Earth in our system, that system in its central universe, the universe  in the Kosmos, and the Kosmos in the ONE CAUSE . . . thus runs their philosophy of evolution,  differing as we see, from that of Haeckel: --  

         "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

         Whose body Nature is, and (Parabrahm) the soul . . ."  

These are the proofs of Occultism, and they are rejected by Science. But how is the chasm between the  mind of man and animal to be bridged in this case? How, if the anthropoid and Homo primigenius had,  argumenti gratia, a common ancestor (in the way modern speculation puts it), did the two groups  diverge so widely from one another as regards mental capacity? True, the Occultist may be told that in  every case Occultism does what Science repeats; it gives a common ancestor to ape and man, since it  

  


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makes the former issue from primeval man. Ay, but that "primeval man" was man only in external  form. He was mindless and soulless at the time he begot, with a female animal monster, the forefather  of a series of apes. This speculation -- if speculation it be -- is at least logical, and fills the chasm  between the mind of man and animal. Thus it accounts for and explains the hitherto unaccountable and  inexplicable. The fact that, in the present stage of evolution, Science is almost certain that no issue can  follow from the union of man and animal, is considered and explained elsewhere.  

Now what is the fundamental difference between the accepted (or nearly so) conclusions, as  enunciated in "The Pedigree of Man," viz., that man and ape have a common ancestor; and the  teachings of Occultism, which deny this conclusion and accept the fact that all things and all living  beings have originated from one common source? Materialistic science makes man evolve gradually to  what he is now, and, starting from the first protoplasmic speck called Moneron (which we are told has,  like the rest, "originated in the course of immeasurable ages from a few, or from one simple,  spontaneously arising original form, that has obeyed one law of evolution"), pass through "unknown  and unknowable" types up to the ape, and thence to the human being. Where the transitional shapes are  discoverable we are not told; for the simple reason that no "missing links" between man and the apes  have ever yet been found, though this fact in no way prevents men like Haeckel from inventing them  ad libitum.  

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 190 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.



Nor will they ever be met with; simply, again, because that link which unites man with his real  ancestry is searched for on the objective plane and in the material world of forms, whereas it is safely  hidden from the microscope and dissecting knife within the animal tabernacle of man himself. We  repeat what we have said in Isis Unveiled: --  

". . . . . . . All things had their origin in spirit -- evolution having originally begun from above and  proceeded downward, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory. In other words, there  has been a gradual materialization of forms until a fixed ultimate of debasement is reached. This point  is that at which the doctrine of modern evolution enters into the arena of speculative hypothesis.  Arrived at this period we will find it easier to understand Haeckel's Anthropogeny, which traces the  pedigree of man 'from its protoplasmic root, sodden in the mud of seas which existed before the oldest  of the fossiliferous rocks were deposited,' according to Professor Huxley's exposition. We may believe  the man (of the Third Round) evolved 'by gradual modification of an (astral) mammal of ape-like  organization' still easier when we remember that (though in a more condensed and less elegant, but  still as comprehensible, phraseology) the same theory was said by Berosus to have been taught many  thousands of years before his time by the man-fish Oannes or Dagon, the semi-demon of Babylonia*  (though on somewhat modified lines).  

"But what lies back of the Darwinian line of descent? So far as he is concerned nothing but  'unverifiable hypotheses.' For, as he puts it, he views all beings 'as the lineal descendants of some few  beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited.'** He does not  attempt to show us who these 'few beings' were. But it answers our purpose quite as well, for, in the  admission of their existence at all, resort to the ancients for corroboration and elaboration of the idea  

  


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  The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, part 1, stanza 8  

receives the stamp of scientific approbation. . . . "  

Truly, as also said in our first work: "If we accept Darwin's theory of the development of species, we  find that his starting-point is placed in front of an open door. We are at liberty with him, to either  remain within, or cross the threshold, beyond which lies the limitless and the incomprehensible, or  rather the  Unutterable. If our mortal language is inadequate to express what our spirit dimly foresees  in the great 'Beyond' -- while on this earth -- it must realize it at some point in the timeless Eternity."  But what lies "beyond" Haeckel's theory? Why Bathybius Haeckelii, and no more!  

A further answer is given in Part III. Addenda.  

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  

* Cory: "Ancient Fragments."  

** "Origin of Species," pp. 448, 489, first edition.  

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Next Section  

Contents

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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2



         Theosophical University Press Online Edition  

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 191 THE CAUSE OF DEGENERATION.



STANZA IX.

THE FINAL EVOLUTION OF MAN.



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         §§ (33) The creators repent. (34) They atone for their neglect. (35) Men become           endowed with minds. (36) The fourth race develops perfect speech. (37) Every           androgynous unit is separated and becomes bisexual.  

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33. SEEING WHICH (the sin committed with the animals), THE LHAS (the spirits, the "Sons of  Wisdom") WHO HAD NOT BUILT MEN (who had refused to create), WEPT, SAYING: --  

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34. "THE AMANASA (the 'mindless') HAVE DEFILED OUR FUTURE ABODES (a). THIS IS  KARMA. LET US DWELL IN THE OTHERS. LET US TEACH THEM BETTER, LEST WORSE  SHOULD HAPPEN." THEY DID. . . .  

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35. THEN ALL BECAME ENDOWED WITH MANAS (minds). THEY SAW THE SIN OF THE  MINDLESS.  

But they had already separated before the ray of divine reason had enlightened the dark region of their  hitherto slumbering minds, and had sinned. That is to say, they had committed evil unconsciously, by  producing an effect which was unnatural. Yet, like the other six primitive brother or fellow races, even  so this seventh, henceforth degenerated race, which will have to bide its time for its final development  on account of the sin committed, -- even this race will find itself on the last day  on one of the seven  paths. For "the wise* guard the home of nature's order, they assume excellent forms in secret."** But  we must see whether the "animals" tampered with, were of the same kind as those known to zoology.  

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  

* This verse in the Veda (X. 5-6), "The seven wise ones (rays of wisdom, Dhyanis) fashion seven  paths (or lines as also Races in another sense). To one of these may the distressed mortal come" --

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which is interpreted solely from the astronomical and cosmic aspect -- is one of the most pregnant in  occult meaning. The "paths" may mean lines (maryadah), but they are primarily beams of light falling  on the paths leading to wisdom. (See Rig Veda IV. 5-13.) It means "ways" or paths. They are, in short,  the seven Rays which fall free from the macrocosmic centre, the seven principles in the metaphysical,  the seven Races in the physical sense. All depends upon the key used.  

** "Rig Veda, " X. 10, 5, 2.



[[Vol. 2, Page]] 192 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.



(a) The "Fall" occurred, according to the testimony of ancient Wisdom and the old records, as soon as  Daksha (the reincarnated Creator of men and things in the early Third Race) disappeared to make  room for that portion of mankind which had "separated." This is how the Commentary explains the  details that preceded the "Fall": --  

"In the initial period of man's Fourth evolution, the human kingdom branched off in several and  various directions. The outward shape of its first specimens was not uniform, for the vehicles (the egg-

like, external shells, in which the future fully physical man gestated) were often tampered with, before  they hardened, by huge animals, of species now unknown, and which belonged to the tentative efforts  of Nature. The result was that intermediate races of monsters, half animals, half men, were produced.  But as they were failures, they were not allowed to breathe long and live, though the intrinsically  paramount power of psychic over physical nature being yet very weak, and hardly established, the  'Egg-Born' Sons had taken several of their females unto themselves as mates, and bred other human  monsters. Later, animal species and human races becoming gradually equilibrized, they separated  and mated no longer. Man created no more -- he begot. But he also begot animals, as well as men in  days of old. Therefore the Sages (or wise men), who speak of males who had no more will-begotten  offspring, but begat various animals along with Danavas (giants) on females of other species --  animals being as (or in a manner of) Sons putative to them; and they (the human males) refusing in  time to be regarded as (putative) fathers of dumb creatures  -- spoke truthfully and wisely. Upon  seeing this (state of things), the kings and Lords of the Last Races (of the Third and the Fourth) placed  the seal of prohibition upon the sinful intercourse. It interfered with Karma, it developed new  (Karma).* They (the divine Kings) struck the culprits with sterility. They destroyed the Red and Blue  Races. **  

In another we find: --  

"There were blue and red-faced animal-men even in later times; not from actual intercourse (between  the human and animal species), but by descent."  

And still another passage mentions: --  

"Red-haired, swarthy men going on all-fours, who bend and unbend (stand erect and fall on their  hands again) who speak as their forefathers, and run on their hands as their giant fore-mothers."

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Perchance in these specimens, Haeckelians might recognize, not the  

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  

* It is next to impossible to translate verbally some of these old Commentaries. We are often obliged  to give the meaning only, and thus retranslate the verbatim translations.  

** Rudra, as a Kumara, is Lilalohita -- red and blue.  

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 193 THE BONELESS RACE.



Homo primigenius, but some of the lower tribes, such as some tribes of the Australian savages.  Nevertheless, even these are not descended from the anthropoid apes, but from human fathers and  semi-human mothers, or, to speak more correctly, from human monsters -- those "failures" mentioned  in the first Commentary. The real anthropoids, Haeckel's Catarrhini and Platyrrhini, came far later, in  the closing times of Atlantis. The orang-outang, the gorilla, the chimpanzee and cynocephalus are the  latest and purely physical evolutions from lower anthropoid mammalians. They have a spark of the  purely human essence in them; man on the other hand, has not one drop of pithecoid* blood in his  veins. Thus saith old Wisdom and universal tradition.  

How was the separation of sexes effected? it is asked. Are we to believe in the old Jewish fable of the  rib of Adam yielding Eve? Even such belief is more logical and reasonable than the descent of man  from the Quadrumana without any reservation; as the former hides an esoteric truth under a fabulous  version, while the latter conceals no deeper fact than a desire to force upon mankind a materialistic  fiction. The rib is bone, and when we read in Genesis that Eve was made out of the rib, it only means  that the Race with bones was produced out of a previous Race and Races, which were "boneless." This  is an esoteric tenet spread far and wide, as it is almost universal under its various forms. A Tahitian  tradition states that man was created out of Araea,  "red  

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  

* This, regardless of modern materialistic evolution, which speculates in this wise: "The primitive  human form, whence as we think all human species sprang, has perished this long time." (This we  deny; it has only decreased in size and changed in texture.) "But many facts point to the conclusion  that it was hairy and dolichocephalic." (African races are even now dolichocephalic in a great  measure, but the palaeolithic Neanderthal skull, the oldest we know of, is of a large size, and no nearer  to the capacity of the gorilla's cranium than that of any other now-living man). "Let us, for the time  being, call this hypothetical species Homo primigenius . . . . This first species, or the Ape-man, the  ancestor of all the others, PROBABLY arose in the tropical regions of the old world from  ANTHROPOID APES." Asked for proofs, the evolutionist, not the least daunted, replies: "Of these  NO FOSSIL REMAINS ARE AS YET KNOWN TO US, BUT THEY WERE probably  AKIN TO  THE GORILLA AND ORANG OF THE PRESENT DAY." And then the Papuan negro is mentioned  as the probable descendant in the first line (Pedigree of Man, p . 80).

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Haeckel holds fast to Lemuria, which with East Africa and South Asia also, he mentions as the  possible cradle of the primitive Ape-men; and so do many geologists. Mr. A. R. Wallace admits its  reality, though in a rather modified sense, in his "Geographical Distribution of Animals." But let not  Evolutionists speak so lightly of the comparative size of the brains of man and the ape, for this is very  unscientific, especially when they pretend to see no difference between the two, or very little at any  rate. For Vogt himself showed that, while the highest of the Apes, the gorilla, has a brain of only 30 to  51 cubic inches, the brain of the lowest of the Australian aborigines amounts to 99.35 cubic inches.  The former is thus "not half of the size of the brain of a new-born babe," says Pfaff.



[[Vol. 2, Page]] 194 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.



Earth." Taaroa, the creative power, the chief god, "put man to sleep for long years, for several lives,"  which means racial periods, and is a reference to his mental sleep, as shown elsewhere. During that  time the deity pulled an Ivi (bone) out of man and she became a woman.*  

Nevertheless, whatever the allegory may mean, even its exoteric meaning necessitates a divine Builder  of man -- "a Progenitor." Do we then believe in such "supernatural" beings? We say, No. Occultism  has never believed in anything, whether animate or inanimate, outside nature. Nor are we Cosmolators  or Polytheists for believing in "Heavenly Man" and divine men, for we have the accumulated  testimony of the ages, with its unvarying evidence on every essential point, to support us in this; the  Wisdom of the Ancients and UNIVERSAL tradition. We reject, however, every groundless and  baseless tradition, which, having outgrown strict allegory and symbolism, has found acceptance in  exoteric creeds. But that which is preserved in unanimous traditions, only the wilfully blind could  reject. Hence we believe in races of beings other than our own in far remote geological periods; in  races of ethereal, following incorporeal, "Arupa, " men, with form but no solid substance, giants who  preceded us pigmies; in dynasties of divine beings, those Kings and Instructors of the Third Race in  arts and sciences, compared with which our little modern science stands less chance than elementary  arithmetic with geometry.  

No, certainly not. We do not believe in the supernatural but only in the superhuman, or rather  interhuman, intelligences. One may easily appreciate the feeling of reluctance that an educated person  would have to being classed with the superstitious and ignorant; and even realize the great truth  uttered by Renan when he says that: "The supernatural has become like the original sin, a blemish that  every one seems ashamed of -- even those most religious persons who refuse in our day to accept even  a minimum of Bible miracles in all their crudeness, and who, seeking to reduce them to the minimum,  hide and conceal it in the furthermost corners of the past."**  

But the "supernatural" of Renan belongs to dogma and its dead letter. It has nought to do with its  Spirit nor with the reality of facts in Nature. If theology asks us to believe that four or five thousand  years ago men lived 900 years and more, that a portion of mankind, the enemies of the people of Israel  exclusively, was composed of giants  

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

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* "Polynesian Researches, " Ellis. Vol.II., p. 38.  

Missionaries seem to have pounced upon this name Ivi and made of it Eve . But, as shown by Professor  

Max Muller, Eve is not the Hebrew name but an European transformation of                                , chavah, "life," or  mother of all living; "while the Tahitian Ivi and the Maori  Wheva meant bone and bone only." ("False  Analogies. ")  

** Chaire d'Hebreu au college de France, p. 20.



[[Vol. 2, Page]] 195 THE HAIRY MEN OF CHINA.



and monsters, we decline to believe that such a thing existed in Nature 5,000 years back. For Nature  never proceeds by jumps and starts, and logic and common sense, besides geology, anthropology and  ethnology, have justly rebelled against such assertions. But if that same theology, giving up her  fantastic chronology, had claimed that men lived 969 years -- the age of Methuselah -- five million  years ago, we would have nothing to say against the claim. For in those days the physical frame of  men was, compared to the present human body, as that of a megalosaurus to a common lizard.

Now de Quatrefages and other naturalists, who seek to prove Monogenesis by the very fact of every  race of mankind being capable of crossing with every other, have left out of their calculations  exceptions, which do not in this case confirm the rule. Human crossing may have been a general rule  from the time of the separation of sexes, and yet that other law may assert itself, viz., sterility between  two human races, just as between two animal species of various kinds, in those rare cases when a  European, condescending to see in a female of a savage tribe a mate, happens to chose a member of  such mixed tribes.* Darwin notes such  

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

But we have to this  day proofs of this. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the specific unity of mankind is not without  exceptions even now. For there are, or rather still were a few years ago, descendants of these half-

animal tribes or races, both of remote Lemurian and Lemuro-Atlantean origin. The world knows them  as Tasmanians (now extinct), Australians, Andaman Islanders, etc. The descent of the Tasmanians can  be almost proved by a fact, which struck Darwin a good deal, without his being able to make anything  of it. This fact deserves notice.

A naturalist suggests another difficulty. The human is the only species which, however unequal in its  races, can breed together. "There is no question of selection between human races," say the anti-

Darwinists, and no evolutionist can deny the argument -- one which very triumphantly proves specific  unity.

How then can Occultism insist that a portion of the Fourth Race humanity begot young ones  from females of another, only semi-human, if not quite an animal, race, the hybrids resulting from  which union not only bred freely but produced the ancestors of the modern anthropoid apes?

Esoteric  science replies to this that it was in the very beginnings of physical man.