Clearly indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock whence man has proceeded, need no longer be sought by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development in the newest Tertiaries; but that they may be looked for in an epoch more distant from the age of the elephas primigenius than that is from us.[1630]
An untold antiquity for man is thus, then, the scientific sine quâ non in the question of Darwinian Evolution, since the oldest Palæolithic man shows as yet no appreciable differentiation from his modern descendant. It is only of late that Modern Science has with every year begun to widen the abyss that now separates her from ancient Science, as that of Pliny and Hippocrates; none of the old writers would have derided the Archaic Teachings with respect to the evolution of the human races and animal species, as the present day Scientist—Geologist or Anthropologist—is sure to do.
The pendulum of thought oscillates between extremes. Having now finally emancipated herself from the shackles of Theology, Science has embraced the opposite fallacy; and in the attempt to interpret Nature on purely materialistic lines, she has built up that most extravagant theory of the ages—the derivation of man from a ferocious and brutal ape. So rooted has this doctrine now become, in one form and another, that the most Herculean efforts will be needed to bring about its final rejection. The Darwinian Anthropology is the incubus of the Ethnologist, [pg 728] a sturdy child of modern Materialism, which has grown up and acquired increasing vigour, as the ineptitude of the theological legend of Man's “creation” became more and more apparent. It has thriven on account of the strange delusion that—as a Scientist of repute puts it:
All hypotheses and theories with respect to the rise of man can be reduced to two [the evolutionist and the biblical exoteric account].... There is no other hypothesis conceivable [!!].
The anthropology of the Secret Volumes is, however, the best possible answer to such a worthless contention.
The anatomical resemblance between man and the higher ape, so frequently cited by Darwinists as pointing to some former ancestor 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. We have given it as far as it was useful, by stating that the bestiality of the primeval mindless races resulted in the production of huge man-like monsters—the offspring of human and animal parents. As time rolled on, and the still semi-astral forms consolidated into the physical, the descendants of these creatures were modified by external conditions, until the breed, dwindling in size, culminated in the lower apes of the Miocene period. With these the later Atlanteans renewed the sin of the “Mindless”—this time with full responsibility. The resultants of their crime were the apes now known as anthropoid.
It may be useful to compare this very simple theory—and we are willing to offer it merely as a hypothesis to the unbelievers—with the Darwinian scheme, so full of insurmountable obstacles, that no sooner is one of them overcome by a more or less ingenious hypothesis, than ten worse difficulties are forthwith discovered behind the one disposed of.