It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without [pg 387] such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.
Occultists believe in “spirits,” because they feel—and some see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.[837] Materialists do not. They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.[838]
Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned Jesuit, who in his Œdipus Ægyptiacus, writes:
I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fables (meras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.[839]
As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in his Meropis, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting, [pg 388] warrior race, and a pious, meditative race[840]—which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities.[841] The pious “city” was continually visited by the Gods: the belligerent “city” was inhabited by various beings invulnerable by iron, who could be mortally wounded only by stone and wood.[842] De Rougemont treats this as a pure fiction of Theopompus and even sees a fraud (supercherie) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:
A supercherie which was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity; a supposition which yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus, the great transoceanic land situated beyond that Atlantis and which “is reached,” it said, “by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits,” εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition can well be nothing else but a universal chimera![843]
It is certain that, whether “chimera” or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,[844] a Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a “fiction”? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of a Holy Island beyond the sun, Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands of Immortal Men?[845] Do they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?
As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:
If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi-gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, which we accept no longer because we no longer understand them, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of his Laws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth a certain form of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce this fable into a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old, in heaven and on earth, and the present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn's reign, and of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory; but one never hears anything of the evil which has produced these revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them. Yet ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.[846]
That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd, i.e., a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii (δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”