The latter “rule” only results in the still more puzzling, even if strictly scientific and correct, information, that:
Even to-day man is contemporary with the ice-age in the Alpine valleys and in the Finmark.[151]
Thus, had it not been for the lessons taught by the Secret Doctrine, and even by exoteric Hindûism and its traditions, we should to this day be left to float in perplexed uncertainty between the indefinite “Ages” of one school of Science, the “tens of thousands” of years of the other, and the 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is one [pg 075] of the several reasons why, with all the respect due to the conclusions of the men of learning of our modern day, we are forced to ignore them in all such questions of pre-historic antiquity.
Modern Geology and Anthropology must, of course, disagree with our views. But Occultism will find as many weapons against these two Sciences as it has against astronomical and physical theories, in spite of Mr. Laing's assurances that:
In [chronological] calculations of this sort, concerning older and later formations, there is no theory, they are based on positive facts, limited only by a certain possible [?] amount of error either way.[152]
Occultism will prove, scientific confessions in hand, that Geology is very much in error, and very often even more so than Astronomy. In this very passage by Mr. Laing, which gives to Geology preëminence for correctness over Astronomy, we find a passage in flagrant contradiction to the admissions of the best Geologists themselves. Says the author:
In short, the conclusions of Geology, at any rate up to the Silurian period[153] when the present order of things was fairly inaugurated, are approximate [truly so] factsand not theories, while the astronomical conclusions are theories based on data so uncertain, that while in some cases they give results incredibly short, ... in others they give results almost incredibly long.[154]
After which, the reader is advised that the “safest course”
Seems to be to assume that Geology really proves the duration of the present order of things to have been somewhere over 100 millions of years, and that Astronomy gives an enormous though unknown time beyond in the past, and to come in the future, for the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death of the solar system, of which our earth is a small planet now passing through the habitable phase.[155]
Judging from past experience, we do not entertain the slightest doubt that, once called upon to answer “the absurd unscientific and preposterous claims of exoteric (and Esoteric) Âryan chronology,” the Scientist of the “results incredibly short,” i.e., only 15,000,000 years, and the Scientist, who “would require 600,000,000 years,” together with those who accept Mr. Huxley's figures of 1,000,000,000[156] “since sedimentation began in Europe,” would all be as dogmatic the one as the [pg 076] other. Nor would they fail to remind the Occultist and the Brâhman, that it is the modern men of Science alone who represent exact Science, whose duty it is to fight “inaccuracy” and “superstition.”