This is how Occult Science explains the absence of any link between ape and man, and shows the former evolving from the latter.
A Panoramic View Of The Early Races.
There is a period of a few millions of years to cover between the first “mindless” race and the highly intelligent and intellectual later Lemurians; there is another between the earliest civilization of the Atlanteans and the historic period.
As witnesses to the Lemurians but a few silent records in the shape of half a dozen broken colossi and old cyclopean ruins are left. These are not allowed a hearing, as they are “productions of blind natural forces,” we are assured by some; “quite modern” we are told by others. Tradition is left contemptuously unnoticed by Sceptic and Materialist, and made subservient to the Bible in every case by the too zealous Churchman. Whenever a legend, however, refuses to fit in with the Noachian Deluge theory, it is declared by the Christian clergy to be “the insanely delirious voice of old superstition.” Atlantis is denied, when not confused with Lemuria and other departed Continents, because, perhaps, Lemuria is half the creation of Modern Science, and has, therefore, to be believed in; while Plato's Atlantis is regarded by most of the Scientists as a dream.
Atlantis is often described by believers in Plato as a prolongation of Africa. An old continent is also suspected to have existed on the Eastern coast. But Africa, as a continent, was never part and parcel of either Lemuria or Atlantis, as we have agreed to call the Third and [pg 276] Fourth Continents. Their archaic appellations are never mentioned in the Purânas, nor anywhere else. But with only one of the Esoteric keys in hand, it becomes an easy task to identify these departed lands in the numberless “Lands of the Gods,” Devas and Munis described in the Purânas, in their Varshas, Dvîpas, and Zones. Their Shveta-dvîpa, during the early days of Lemuria, stood out like a giant-peak from the bottom of the sea; the area between Atlas and Madagascar being occupied by the waters till about the early period of Atlantis, after the disappearance of Lemuria, when Africa emerged from the bottom of the ocean, and Atlas was half-sunk.
It is of course impossible to attempt, within the compass of even several volumes, a consecutive and detailed account of the evolution and progress of the first three Races-except so far as to give a general view of it, as will be done presently. Race the First had no history of its own. Of Race the Second the same may be said. We shall have, therefore, to pay careful attention to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans only, before the history of our own Race, the Fifth, can be attempted.
What is known of other Continents, besides our own, and what does history know or accept of the early Races? Everything outside the repulsive speculations of Materialistic Science is daubed with the contemptuous term “superstition.” The wise men of to-day will believe nothing. Plato's “winged” and “hermaphrodite” races, and his Golden Age, under the reign of Saturn and the Gods, are quietly brought back by Hæckel to their new place in Nature; our Divine Races are shown to be the descendants of Catarrhine apes, and our ancestor, a piece of “sea slime”!
Nevertheless, as expressed by Faber:
The fictions of ancient poetry ... will be found to comprehend some portion of historical truth.