Section VII. Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Existence of Several Submerged Continents

It may not be amiss—for the benefit of those who resolve the tradition of a lost Miocene Atlantis into an “antiquated myth”—to append a few scientific admissions on this point. Science, it is true, is largely indifferent to such questions. But there are Scientists ready to admit that, in any case, a cautious agnosticism as to geological problems concerning the remote past is far more philosophical than à priori denial, or even hasty generalizations on insufficient data.

Meanwhile two very interesting instances, that have been lately met with, may be pointed out as “confirming” certain passages in the letter of a Master, published in Esoteric Buddhism. The eminence of the authorities will not be questioned (we italicize the corresponding passages):

Extract from Esoteric Buddhism, p. 70.

(1.)

The sinking of Atlantis (the group of continents and isles) began during the Miocene period ... and it culminated first in the final disappearance of the largest continent, an event coincident with the elevation of the Alps, and second with that of the last of the fair islands mentioned by Plato.

Extract from a Lecture by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S.

(1.)

Was there, as some have believed, an Atlantis—a continent or archipelago of large islands occupying the area of the North Atlantic? There is, perhaps, nothing unphilosophical in the hypothesis. For since, as geologists state, “The Alps have acquired 4,000 and even in some places more than 10,000 feet of their present altitude since the commencement of the Eocene epoch” (Lyell’s Principles, p. 256, 2nd Ed.)—a Post-Miocene depression might have carried the hypothetical Atlantis into almost abysmal depths.1824

Extract from Esoteric Buddhism, pp. 64, 65.

(2.)

Lemuria ... should no more be confounded with the Atlantis Continent than Europe with America. Both sank and were drowned with their high civilizations and “gods”; yet between the two catastrophes a period of about 700,000 years elapsed, Lemuria flourishing and ending her career just about that lapse of time before the early part of the Eoceneage, since its Race was the Third. Behold the relics of that once great nation in some of the flat-headed aborigines of your Australia.

Extract from an article in the Popular Science Review, v. 18, by Professor Seemann, Ph.D., F.L.S., V.-P.A.S.

(2.)

It would be premature to say, because no evidence has yet been adduced, that men may not have existed in the Eocene age, especially as it can be shown that a race of men, the lowest we know of, co-exists with that remnant of the Eocene flora which still survives on the continent and islands of Australia.

Extract from The Pedigree of Man, p. 81.

Hæckel, who fully accepts the reality of a former Lemuria, also regards the Australians as direct descendants of the Lemurians. Persistent forms of both [his Lemurian] stems are in all probability still surviving, of the former in the Papuans and Hottentots, of the latter in the Australians and in one division of the Malays.

With regard to a former civilization, of which a portion of these degraded Australians are the last surviving offshoot, the opinion of Gerland is strongly suggestive. Commenting upon the religion and mythology of the tribes, he writes:

The statement that Australian civilization [?] indicates a higher grade, is nowhere more clearly proved than here [in the province of religion] where everything resounds like the expiring voices of a previous and richer age.... The idea that the Australians have no trace of religion or mythology is thoroughly false. But this religion is certainly quite deteriorated.1825

As to Hæckel’s view of the relationship between the Australians and the Malays, as two branches of a common stock, he is in error when he classes the Australians with the rest. The Malays and Papuans are a mixed stock, resulting from the intermarriages of the low Atlantean sub-races with the seventh sub-race of the Third Root-Race. Like the Hottentots, they are of indirect Lemuro-Atlantean descent. It is a most suggestive fact—to those concrete thinkers who demand a physical proof of Karma—that the lowest races of men are now rapidly dying out; a phenomenon largely due to an extraordinary sterility setting in among the women, from the time that they were first approached by the Europeans. A process of decimation is taking place all over the Globe, among those races, whose “time is up”—among just those stocks, be it remarked, which Esoteric Philosophy regards as the senile representatives of lost archaic nations. It is inaccurate to maintain that the extinction of a lower race is invariably due to cruelties or abuses perpetrated by colonists. Change of diet, drunkenness, etc., have done much; but those who rely on such data as offering an all-sufficient explanation of the crux, cannot meet the phalanx of facts now so closely arrayed. Even the Materialist Lefèvre says:

Nothing can save those that have run their course. It would be necessary to extend their destined cycle.... The peoples that have been relatively most spared, those who have defended themselves most valiantly, Hawaiians or Maories, have been no less decimated than the tribes massacred or tainted by European intrusion.1826

True; but is not the phenomenon here confirmed, an instance of the operation of Cyclic Law, difficult to account for on materialist lines? Whence the “destined cycle” and the order here testified to? Why does this (Karmic) sterility attack and root out certain races at their “appointed hour”? The answer that it is due to a “mental disproportion” between the colonizing and aboriginal races is obviously evasive, since it does not explain the sudden “checks to fertility” which so frequently supervene. The dying out of the Hawaiians, for instance, is one of the most mysterious problems of the day. Ethnology will sooner or later have to recognize, with Occultists, that the true solution has to be sought for in a comprehension of the workings of Karma. As Lèfevre remarks:

The time is drawing near when there will remain nothing but three great human types.

The time is before the Sixth Root-Race dawns; the three types are the white (Âryan, Fifth Root-Race), the yellow, and the African negro—with their crossings (Atlanto-European divisions). Redskins, Eskimos, Papuans, Australians, Polynesians, etc.—all are dying out. Those who realize that every Root-Race runs through a gamut of seven sub-races with seven branchlets, etc., will understand the “why.” The tide-wave of incarnating Egos has rolled past them to harvest experience in more developed and less senile stocks; and their extinction is hence a Karmic necessity. Some extraordinary and unexplained statistics as to race extinction are given by de Quatrefages.1827 No solution, except on Occult lines, is able to account for these.

But we have digressed from our direct subject. Let us hear now what Professor Huxley has to say on the subject of former Atlantic and Pacific Continents.

He writes in Nature:

There is nothing, so far as I am aware, in the biological or geological evidence at present accessible, to render untenable the hypothesis that an area of the Mid-Atlantic or Pacific sea-bed as big as Europe, should have been upheaved as high as Mont Blanc, and have subsided again any time since the Palæozoic epoch, if there were any grounds for entertaining it.1828

That is to say, then, that there is nothing to militate against positive evidence of the fact; nothing, therefore, against the geological postulates of the Esoteric Philosophy. Dr. Berthold Seemann assures us in the Popular Science Review that:

The facts which botanists have accumulated for reconstructing these lost maps of the globe are rather comprehensive; and they have not been backward in demonstrating the former existence of several large tracts of solid land in parts now occupied by great oceans. The many striking points of contact between the present floras of the United States and Eastern Asia, induced them to assume that, during the present order of things, there existed a continental connection between South-Eastern Asia and Western America. The singular correspondence of the present flora of the Southern United States with that of the lignite flora of Europe induces them to believe that, in the Miocene period, Europe and America were connected by a land passage, of which Iceland, Madeira, and the other Atlantic islands are remnants; that, in fact, the story of an Atlantis, which an Egyptian priest told to Solon, is not purely fictitious, but rests upon a solid historical basis.... Europe of the Eocene period received the plants which spread over mountains and plains, valleys and river-banks (from Asia generally), neither exclusively from the South nor from the East. The West also furnished additions, and if at that period these were rather meagre, they show, at all events, that the bridge was already building, which, at a later period, was to facilitate communication between the two continents in such a remarkable manner. At that time some plants of the Western Continent began to reach Europe by means of the island of Atlantis, then probably just [?] just rising above the ocean.1829

And in another number of the same review1830 Mr. W. Duppa Crotch, M.A., F.L.S., in an article entitled “The Norwegian Lemming and its Migrations,” alludes to the same subject:

Is it probable that land could have existed where now the broad Atlantic rolls? All tradition says so: old Egyptian records speak of Atlantis, as Strabo and others have told us. The Sahara itself is the sand of an ancient sea, and the shells which are found upon its surface prove that, no longer ago than the Miocene period, a sea rolled over what is now desert. The voyage of the “Challenger” has proved the existence of three long ridges1831 in the Atlantic Ocean,1832 one extending for more than three thousand miles, and lateral spurs may, by connecting these ridges, account for the marvellous similarity of the fauna of the Atlantic islands.1833...

The submerged continent of Lemuria, in what is now the Indian Ocean, is considered to afford an explanation of many difficulties in the distribution of organic life, and, I think, the existence of a Miocene Atlantis will be found to have a strong elucidative bearing on subjects of greater interest [truly so!] than the migration of the lemming. At all events, if it can be shown that land existed in former ages where the North Atlantic now rolls, not only is a motive found for these apparently suicidal migrations, but also a strong collateral proof that what we call instincts are but the blind and sometimes even prejudicial inheritance of previously acquired experience.

At certain periods, we learn, multitudes of these animals swim to sea and perish. Coming, as they do, from all parts of Norway, the powerful instinct which survives throughout ages as an inheritance from their progenitors impels them to seek a continent, once existing but now submerged beneath the ocean, and to court a watery grave.

In an article containing a criticism of Mr. A. R. Wallace’s Island Life—a work devoted largely to the question of the distribution of animals, etc.—Mr. Starkie Gardiner writes:

By a process of reasoning supported by a large array of facts of different kinds, he arrives at the conclusion that the distribution of life upon the land as we now see it has been accomplished without the aid of important changes in the relative positions of continents and seas. Yet if we accept his views, we must believe that Asia and Africa, Madagascar and Africa, New Zealand and Australia, Europe and America, have been united at some period not remote geologically, and that seas to the depth of 1,000 fathoms have been bridged over; but we must treat as “utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed to all the evidences at our command” [! !], the supposition that temperate Europe and temperate America, Australia, and South America, have ever been connected, except by way of the Arctic or Antarctic Circles, and that lands now separated by seas of more than 1,000 fathoms depth have ever been united.

Mr. Wallace, it must be admitted, has succeeded in explaining the chief features of existing life distribution, without bridging the Atlantic or Pacific, except towards the Poles, yet I cannot help thinking that some of the facts might perhaps be more easily explained by admitting the former existence of the connection between the coast of Chili and Polynesia1834 and Great Britain and Florida, shadowed by the submarine banks which stretch between them. Nothing is urged that renders these more direct connections impossible, and no physical reason is advanced why the floor of the ocean should not be upheaved from any depth. The route by which [according to the Anti-Atlantean and Lemurian hypotheses of Wallace] the floras of South America and Australia are supposed to have mingled, is beset by almost insurmountable obstacles, and the apparently sudden arrival of a number of subtropical American plants in our Eocenes necessitates a connection more to the South than the present 1,000 fathom line. Forces are unceasingly acting, and there is no reason why an elevating force once set in action in the centre of an ocean should cease to act until a continent is formed. They have acted and lifted out from the sea, in comparatively recent geological time, the loftiest mountains on earth. Mr. Wallace himself admits repeatedly that sea-beds have been elevated 1,000 fathoms, and islands have risen up from the depths of 3,000 fathoms; and to suppose that the upheaving forces are limited in power, is, it seems to me, to again quote from Island Life, “utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed to all the evidences at our command.”1835

The “father” of English Geology—Sir Charles Lyell—was a uniformitarian in his views of continental formation. We find him saying:

Professors Unger (Die Versunkene Insel Atlantis) and Heer (Flora Tertiaria Helvetiæ) have advocated on botanical grounds the former existence of an Atlantic Continent during some part of the tertiary period, as affording the only plausible explanation that can be imagined of the analogy between the Miocene flora of Central Europe, and the existing flora of Eastern America. Professor Oliver, on the other hand, after showing how many of the American types found fossil in Europe are common to Japan, inclines to the theory, first advanced by Dr. Asa Gray, that the migration of species, to which the community of types in the Eastern States of North America, and the Miocene flora of Europe is due, took place when there was an overland communication from America to Eastern Asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth parallels of latitude, or south of Behring’s Straits, following the direction of the Aleutian islands. By this course they may have made their way, at any epoch, Miocene, Pliocene, or Postpliocene, antecedently to the Glacial epoch, to Amoorland, on the East coast of Northern Asia.1836

The unnecessary difficulties and complications here incurred in order to avoid the hypothesis of an Atlantic Continent, are really too apparent to escape notice. If the botanical evidences stood alone, scepticism would be partially reasonable; but in this case all branches of Science converge to one point. Science has made blunders, and has exposed itself to greater errors than it would be exposed to by the admission of our two now invisible Continents. It has denied even the undeniable, from the days of the Mathematician Laplace down to our own, and that only a few years ago.1837 We have Professor Huxley’s authority for saying that there is no à priori improbability whatever against possible evidences supporting the belief. But now that the positive evidence is brought forward, will that eminent Scientist admit the corollary?

Touching on the problem in another place Sir Charles Lyell tells us:

Respecting the cosmogony of the Egyptian priests, we gather much information from writers of the Grecian sects, who borrowed almost all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of the former successive destruction and renovation of the world [continental, not cosmic, catastrophes]. We learn from Plutarch that this was the theme of one of the hymns of Orpheus, so celebrated in the fabulous ages of Greece. It was brought by him from the banks of the Nile; and we even find in his verses, as in the Indian systems, a definite period assigned for the duration of every successive world. The returns of great catastrophes were determined by the period of the Annus Magnus, or great year, a cycle composed of the revolutions of the sun, moon, and planets, and terminating when these return together to the same sign whence they were supposed at some remote epoch to have set out.... We learn particularly from the Timæus of Plato that the Egyptians believed the world to be subject to occasional conflagrations and deluges. The sect of Stoics adopted most fully the system of catastrophes destined at certain intervals to destroy the world. These, they taught, were of two kinds—the cataclysm, or destruction by deluge, which sweeps away the whole human race, and annihilates all the animal and vegetable productions of nature, and the ecpyrosis, or conflagration, which destroys the globe itself [submarine volcanoes]. From the Egyptians they derived the doctrine of the gradual debasement of man from a state of innocence [nascent simplicity of the first sub-races of each Root-Race]. Towards the termination of each era the gods could no longer bear with the wickedness of men [degeneracy into magical practices and gross animality of the Atlanteans], and a shock of the elements, or a deluge, overwhelmed them; after which calamity, Astræa again descended on the earth to renew the golden age [dawn of a new Root-Race].1838

Astræa, the Goddess of Justice, is the last of the deities to forsake the Earth, when the Gods are said to abandon it and to be taken up again into heaven by Jupiter. But, no sooner does Zeus carry from Earth Ganymedes—the object of lust, personified—than the Father of the Gods throws down Astræa on the Earth again, on which she falls upon her head. Astræa is Virgo, the constellation of the Zodiac. Astronomically it has a very plain significance, and one which gives the key to the occult meaning. But it is inseparable from Leo, the sign that precedes it, and from the Pleiades and their sisters, the Hyades, of which Aldebaran is the brilliant leader. All these are connected with the periodical renovations of the Earth, with regard to its continents—even Ganymedes, who in astronomy is Aquarius. It has already been shown that while the South Pole is the “Pit” (or the infernal regions figuratively and cosmologically), the North Pole is geographically the First Continent; while astronomically and metaphorically the Celestial Pole, with its Pole Star in Heaven, is Meru, or the Seat of Brahmâ, the Throne of Jupiter, etc. For in the age when the Gods forsook the Earth and were said to ascend into Heaven, the ecliptic had become parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac appeared to descend from the North Pole to the north horizon. Aldebaran was in conjunction then with the Sun, as it was 40,000 years ago, at the great festival in commemoration of that Annus Magnus, of which Plutarch spoke. Since that Year—40,000 years ago—there has been a retrograde motion of the equator, and about 31,000 years ago Aldebaran was in conjunction with the vernal equinoctial point. The part assigned to Taurus, even in Christian Mysticism, is too well known to need repetition. The famous Orphic Hymn on the great periodical cataclysm divulges the whole Esotericism of the event. Pluto, in the Pit, carries off Eurydice, bitten by the Polar Serpent. Then Leo, the Lion, is vanquished. Now, when the Lion is “in the Pit,” or below the South Pole, then Virgo, as the next sign, follows him, and when her head, down to the waist, is below the southern horizon—she is inverted. On the other hand, the Hyades are the rain or Deluge constellations; and Aldebaran—he who follows, or succeeds the daughters of Atlas, or the Pleiades—looks down from the eye of Taurus. It is from this point of the ecliptic that the calculations of the new cycle were commenced. The student has to remember also, that when Ganymedes—Aquarius—is raised to heaven—or above the horizon of the North Pole—Virgo or Astræa, who is Venus-Lucifer, descends head downwards below the horizon of the South Pole, or the Pit; which Pit, or the Pole, is also the Great Dragon, or the Flood. Let the student exercise his intuition by placing these facts together; no more can be said. Lyell remarks:

The connection between the doctrine of successive catastrophes and repeated deteriorations in the moral character of the human race, is more intimate and natural than might at first be imagined. For, in a rude state of society, all great calamities are regarded by the people as judgments of God on the wickedness of man.... In like manner in the account given to Solon by the Egyptian priests of the submersion of the island of Atlantis under the waters of the ocean, after repeated shocks of an earthquake, we find that the event happened when Jupiter had seen the moral depravity of the inhabitants.1839

True; but was it not owing to the fact that all Esoteric truths were given out to the public by the Initiates of the temples under the guise of allegories? “Jupiter,” is merely the personification of that immutable Cyclic Law, which arrests the downward tendency of each Root-Race after attaining the zenith of its glory.1840 We must admit allegorical teaching, unless we hold with Prof. John Fiske’s singularly dogmatic opinion that a myth:

Is an explanation by the uncivilized mind, of some natural phenomenon; not an allegory, not an esoteric symbol, for the ingenuity is wasted [!!] which strives to detect in myths the remnants of a refined primeval science—but an explanation. Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of allegory [how does Mr. Fiske know?], nor were they such sorry pedants as to talk in riddles when plain language would serve their purpose.1841

We venture to say the language of the initiated few was far more “plain,” and their Science-Philosophy far more comprehensive and satisfying alike to the physical and spiritual wants of man, than even the terminology and system elaborated by Mr. Fiske’s master—Herbert Spencer. What, however, is Sir Charles Lyell’s “explanation” of the “myth”? Certainly, he in no way countenances the idea of its “astronomical” origin, as asserted by some writers.

The two interpreters are entirely at variance with one another. Lyell’s solution is as follows. A disbeliever in cataclysmal changes from the absence (?) of any reliable historical data on the point, as well as from a strong bias to the uniformitarian conceptions of geologic changes,1842 he attempts to trace the Atlantis “tradition” to the following sources:

(1) Barbarous tribes connect catastrophes with an avenging God, who is assumed in this way to punish immoral races.

(2) Hence the commencement of a new race is logically a virtuous one.

(3) The primary source of the geologic basis of the tradition was Asia—a continent subject to violent earthquakes. Exaggerated accounts would thus be handed down the ages.

(4) Egypt, being herself free from earthquakes, nevertheless based her not inconsiderable geologic knowledge on these cataclysmal traditions.

An ingenious “explanation,” as all such are! But proving a negative is proverbially a difficult task. Students of Esoteric Science, who know what the resources of the Egyptian priesthood really were, need no such laboured hypothesis. Moreover, while an imaginative theorist is always able to furnish a reasonable solution of problems which, in one branch of Science, seem to necessitate the hypothesis of periodical cataclysmic changes on the surface of our planet, the impartial critic who is not a specialist, will recognize the immense difficulty of explaining away the cumulative evidences—namely, the archaeological, ethnological, geological, traditional, botanical, and even biological—in favour of former continents now submerged. When each science is fighting for its own hand, the cumulative force of the evidence is almost invariably lost sight of.

In the Theosophist we wrote:

We have as evidence the most ancient traditions of various and wide-separated peoples—legends in India, in ancient Greece, Madagascar, Sumatra, Java, and all the principal isles of Polynesia, as well as the legends of both Americas. Among savages, and in the traditions of the richest literature in the world—the Sanskrit literature of India—there is an agreement in saying, that, ages ago, there existed in the Pacific Ocean, a large Continent, which by a geological upheaval was engulfed by the sea1843 [Lemuria]. And it is our firm belief ... that most, if not all, of the islands from the Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia, are fragments of that once immense submerged Continent. Both Malacca and Polynesia, which lie at the two extremities of the ocean, and which, since the memory of man, never had nor could have any intercourse with, or even a knowledge of each other, have yet a tradition common to all the islands and islets, that their respective countries extended far, far into the Sea; that there were in the world but two immense continents, one inhabited by yellow, the other by dark men; and that the Ocean, by command of the Gods, and to punish them for their incessant quarrelling, swallowed them up. Notwithstanding the geographical fact that New Zealand, and Sandwich and Easter Islands, are at a distance from each other of between 800 and 1,000 leagues, and that, according to every testimony, neither these nor any other intermediate islands, for instance, the Marquesan, Society, Fiji, Tahitian, Samoan, and other islands, could, since they became islands, ignorant as their people were of the compass, have communicated with each other before the arrival of Europeans; yet they one and all maintain that their respective countries extended far toward the West, on the Asian side. Moreover with very small differences, they all speak dialects evidently of the same language, and understand each other with little difficulty, have the same religious beliefs and superstitions, and pretty much the same customs. And as few of the Polynesian islands were discovered earlier than a century ago, and the Pacific Ocean itself was unknown to Europe until the days of Columbus, and these islanders have never ceased repeating the same old traditions since the Europeans first set foot on their shores, it seems to us a logical inference that our theory is nearer to the truth than any other. Chance would have to change its name and meaning, were all this due but to chance alone.1844

Professor Schmidt, writing in defence of the hypothesis of a former Lemuria, declares:

A great series of animal-geographical facts is explicable only on the hypothesis of the former existence of a Southern Continent of which the Australian mainland is a remnant.... [The distribution of species] points to the vanished land of the south, where perhaps the home of the progenitors of the Maki of Madagascar may also be looked for.1845

Mr. A. R. Wallace, in his Malay Archipelago, arrives at the following conclusion after a review of the mass of evidence at hand:

The inference that we must draw from these facts is undoubtedly that the whole of the islands eastwards beyond Java and Borneo do essentially form a part of a former Australian or Pacific Continent, although some of them may never have been actually joined to it. This continent must have been broken up not only before the Western Islands were separated from Asia, but probably before the extreme south-eastern portion of Asia was raised above the waters of the ocean, for a great part of the land of Borneo and Java is known to be geologically of quite recent formation.1846

According to Hæckel:

Probably Southern Asia itself was not the earliest cradle of the human race; but Lemuria, a continent that lay to the South of Asia, and sank later on beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean.1847

In one sense Hæckel is right as to Lemuria—the “cradle of the human race.” That Continent was the home of the first physical human stock—the later Third-Race Men. Previous to that epoch the Races were far less consolidated and physiologically quite different. Hæckel makes Lemuria extend from Sunda Island to Africa and Madagascar and eastwards to Upper India.

Professor Rütimeyer, the eminent Palæontologist, asks:

Need the conjecture that the almost exclusively graminivorous and insectivorous marsupials, sloths, armadilloes, ant-eaters and ostriches, once possessed an actual point of union in a Southern Continent of which the present flora of Terra del Fuego and Australia must be the remains—need this conjecture raise difficulties at a moment when, from their fossil remains, Heer restores to our sight the ancient forests of Smith’s Sound and Spitzbergen?1848

Having now dealt generally with the broad scientific attitude on the two questions, it will, perhaps, conduce to an agreeable brevity, if we sum up the more striking isolated facts in favour of that fundamental contention of Esoteric Ethnologists—the reality of Atlantis. Lemuria is so widely accepted, that further pursuit of the subject is unnecessary. With regard, however, to the former, it is found that:

(1) The Miocene floræ of Europe have their most numerous and striking analogues in the floræ of the United States. In the forests of Virginia and Florida are found the magnolias, tulip-trees, evergreen oaks, plane trees, etc., which correspond with European Tertiary flora, term for term. How was the migration effected, if we exclude the theory of an Atlantic Continent bridging the ocean between America and Europe? The proposed “explanation” to the effect that the transition was by way of Asia and the Aleutian Islands is a mere uncalled-for theory, obviously upset by the fact that a large number of these floræ only appear East of the Rocky Mountains. This also negatives the idea of a Trans-Pacific migration. They are now superseded by European continents and islands to the North.

(2) Skulls exhumed on the banks of the Danube and Rhine bear a striking similarity to those of the Caribs and Old Peruvians (Littré). Monuments have been exhumed in Central America, which bear representations of undoubted negro heads and faces. How are such facts to be accounted for except on the Atlantean hypothesis? What is now N.W. Africa was once connected with Atlantis by a network of islands, few of which now remain.

(3) According to Farrar the “isolated language” of the Basques has no affinities with the other languages of Europe,1849 but with:

The aboriginal languages of the vast opposite continent [America] and those alone.1850

Professor Broca is also of the same opinion.

Palæolithic European man of the Miocene and Pliocene times was a pure Atlantean, as we have previously stated. The Basques are, of course, of a much later date than this, but their affinities, as here shown, go far to prove the original extraction of their remote ancestors. The “mysterious” affinity between their tongue and that of the Dravidian races of India will be understood by those who have followed our outline of continental formations and shiftings.

(4) Stones have been found in the Canary Islands bearing sculptured symbols similar to those found on the shore of Lake Superior. Berthollet was induced by such evidence to postulate the unity of race of the early men of the Canary Islands and America.1851

The Guanches of the Canary Islands were lineal descendants of the Atlanteans. This fact will account for the great stature evidenced by their old skeletons, as well as by those of their European congeners, the Cro-Magnon Palæolithic men.

(5) Any experienced mariner has but to navigate the fathomless ocean along the Canary Islands to ask himself the question when or how that group of volcanic and rocky little islands has been formed, surrounded on every side by that vast watery space. Frequent questions of this kind led finally to the expedition of the famous Leopold von Buch, which took place in the first quarter of the present century. Some Geologists maintained that the volcanic islands had been raised right from the bottom of the ocean, the depth of which in the immediate vicinity of the island varies from 6,000 to 18,000 feet. Others were inclined to see in these groups—including Madeira, the Azores, and the islands of Cape de Verde—the remnants of a gigantic but submerged continent which had once united Africa with America. The latter men of Science supported their hypothesis by a mass of evidence in its favour, drawn from ancient “myths.” Hoary “superstitions,” such as the fairy-like Atlantis of Plato, the Garden of the Hesperides, Atlas supporting the world on his shoulders, all of them mythoi connected with the Peak of Teneriffe, did not go far with sceptical Science. The identity of animal and vegetable species, showing either a previous connection between America and the remaining groups of the islands—the hypothesis of their having been drifted from the New to the Old World by the waves was too absurd to stand long—found more serious consideration. But it is only quite lately, and after Donnelly’s book had been published several years, that the theory has had a greater chance than ever of becoming an accepted fact. Fossils found on the Eastern Coast of South America have now been proved to belong to the Jurassic formations, and are nearly identical with the Jurassic fossils of Western Europe and Northern Africa. The geological structure of both coasts is also almost identical; the resemblance between the smaller marine animals dwelling in the more shallow waters of the South American, the Western African, and the South European coasts, is also very great. All such facts are bound to bring Naturalists to the conclusion that there has been, in distant pre-historic ages, a continent which extended from the coast of Venezuela, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the Canarese Islands and North Africa, and from Newfoundland nearly to the coast of France.

(6) The great resemblance between the Jurassic fossils of South America, North Africa, and Western Europe is a striking enough fact in itself, and admits of no explanation, unless the ocean is bridged with an Atlantis. But why, also, is there so marked a similarity between the fauna of the (now) isolated Atlantic islands? Why did the specimens of Brazilian fauna dredged up by Sir C. Wyville Thompson resemble those of Western Europe? Why does a resemblance exist between many of the West African and West Indian animal groups? Again:

When the animals and plants of the Old and New World are compared, one cannot but be struck with their identity; all, or nearly all, belong to the same genera, while many, even of the species, are common to both continents ... indicating that they radiated from a common centre [Atlantis].1852

The horse, according to Science, originated in America. At least, a large proportion of the once “missing links” connecting it with inferior forms have been exhumed from American strata. How did the horse penetrate into Europe and Asia, if no land communication bridged the oceanic interspaces? Or if it is asserted that the horse originated in the Old World, how did such forms as the hipparion, etc., get into America in the first instance on the migration hypothesis?

Again:

Buffon had ... remarked the repetition of the African in the American fauna, how, for example, the llama is a juvenescent and feeble copy of the camel, and how the puma of the New represents the lion of the Old World.1853

(7) The following quotation runs with No. 2, but its significance is such and the writer cited is so authoritative, that it deserves a place to itself:

With regard to the primitive dolichocephalæ of America, I entertain a hypothesis still more bold, namely, that they are nearly related to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and to the Atlantic populations of Africa, the Moors, Tuaricks, Copts, which Latham comprises under the name of Egyptian-Atlantidæ. We find one and the same form of skull in the Canary Islands, in front of the African coast, and in the Carib islands, on the opposite coast which faces Africa. The colour of the skin on both sides of the Atlantic is represented in these populations as being of a reddish-brown.1854

If, then, Basques and Cro-Magnon Cave-Men are of the same race as the Canarese Guanches, it follows that the former are also allied to the aborigines of America. This is the conclusion necessitated by the independent investigations of Retzius, Virchow, and de Quatrefages. The Atlantean affinities of these three types become patent.

(8) The sea-soundings undertaken by H.M.S. “Challenger” and the “Dolphin,” have established the fact that a huge elevation some 3,000 miles in length, projecting upwards from the abysmal depths of the Atlantic, extends from a point near the British Islands southwards, curving round near Cape de Verde, and running in a south-easterly direction along the West African coast. This elevation averages some 9,000 feet in height, and rises above the waves at the Azores, Ascension, and other places. In the ocean depths around the neighbourhood of the former the ribs of a once massive piece of land have been discovered.1855

The inequalities, the mountains and valleys of its surface could never have been produced in accordance with any known laws for the deposition of sediment, nor by submarine elevation; but, on the contrary, must have been carved by agencies acting above the water-level.1856

It is most probable that necks of land formerly existed knitting Atlantis to South America, somewhere above the mouth of the Amazon, to Africa near Cape de Verde, while a similar point of juncture with Spain is not unlikely, as contended for by Donnelly.1857 Whether the latter existed or not, is of no consequence, in view of the fact that what is now N.W. Africa was—before the elevation of the Sahara and the rupture of the Gibraltar connection—an extension of Spain. Consequently no difficulty can be raised as to how the migration of the European fauna, etc., took place.

Enough has now been said from the purely scientific standpoint, and it is needless, in view of the manner in which the subject has already been developed on the lines of Esoteric Knowledge, to swell the mass of testimony further. In conclusion, the words of one of the most intuitive writers of the day may be cited as admirably illustrative of the opinions of the Occultist, who awaits in patience the dawn of the coming day:

We are but beginning to understand the past; one hundred years ago the world knew nothing of Pompeii or Herculaneum; nothing of the lingual tie that binds together the Indo-European nations; nothing of the significance of the vast volume of inscriptions upon the tombs and temples of Egypt; nothing of the meaning of the arrow-headed inscriptions of Babylon; nothing of the marvellous civilizations revealed in the remains of Yucatan, Mexico, and Peru. We are on the threshold. Scientific investigation is advancing with giant strides. Who shall say that one hundred years from now, the great museums of the world may not be adorned with gems, statues, arms, and implements from Atlantis, while the libraries of the world shall contain translations of its inscriptions, throwing new light upon all the past history of the human race, and all the great problems which now perplex the thinkers of to-day.1858

And now to conclude.

We have concerned ourself with the ancient records of the nations, with the doctrine of chronological and psychic cycles, of which these records are the tangible proof; and with many other subjects, which may, at first sight, seem out of place in this Volume. But they are necessary in truth. In dealing with the secret annals and traditions of so many nations, whose very origins have never been ascertained on more secure grounds than inferential suppositions, in giving out the beliefs and philosophy of more than pre-historic races, it is not quite as easy to deal with the subject matter as it would be if only the philosophy and evolution of one special race, were concerned. The Secret Doctrine was the common property of the countless millions of men born under various climates, in times with which history refuses to deal, and to which Esoteric Teachings assign dates incompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology. The birth and evolution of the Sacred Science of the Past are lost in the very night of Time, and that even which is historic—i.e., that which is found scattered hither and thither throughout ancient classical literature—is, in almost every case, attributed by modern criticism to lack of observation in the ancient writers, or to superstition born out of the ignorance of antiquity. It is, therefore, impossible to treat this subject as one would the ordinary evolution of an art or science in some well-known historical nation. It is only by bringing before the reader an abundance of proofs all tending to show that in every age, under every condition of civilization and knowledge, the educated classes of every nation made themselves the more or less faithful echoes of one identical system and its fundamental traditions—that he can be made to see that so many streams of the same water must have had a common source from which they started. What was this source? If coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past events cannot fail to leave their impress behind them. It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their fantastic silhouettes on the external screen of every Religion and Philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along and comparing them, trace out finally the body that produced them. There must be truth and fact in that which every people of antiquity accepted and made the foundation of its religions and its faith. Moreover, as Haliburton said:

Hear one side, and you will be in the dark; hear both sides, and all will be clear.

The public has hitherto had access to, and has heard but one side, or rather the one-sided views of two diametrically opposed classes of men, whose primâ facie propositions or respective premises differ widely, but whose final conclusions are the same—the men of Science and Theology. And now our readers have an opportunity of hearing the other, and so of learning the defendants’ justification and the nature of our arguments.

If the public is to be left to its old opinions—namely, on one side, that Occultism, Magic, the legends of old etc., are all the outcome of ignorance and superstition; and on the other, that everything outside the orthodox groove is the work of the devil—what will be the result? In other words, had no theosophical and mystic literature obtained a hearing for the last few years, the present work would have had but a poor chance of impartial consideration. It would have been proclaimed—and by many will still be proclaimed—a fairy tale woven out of abstruse problems, poised in, and based on the air; built of soap-bubbles, bursting at the slightest touch of serious reflection, with no foundation to stand upon. Even the ancient “superstitious and credulous” classical writers have no word of reference to it in clear and unmistakable terms, and the symbols themselves fail to yield a hint of the existence of such a system. Such would be the verdict of all. But when it becomes undeniably proven that the claim of the modern Asiatic nations to a Secret Science and an Esoteric History of the world is based on fact; that though hitherto unknown to the masses and a veiled mystery even to the learned—because they have never had the key to a right understanding of the abundant hints thrown out by the ancient classics—it is still no fairy tale, but an actuality; then the present work will become but the pioneer of many more such books. The statement that hitherto even the keys discovered by some great scholars have proved too rusty for use, and that they are but the silent witnesses that there do exist mysteries behind the veil which are unreachable without a new key, is borne out by too many proofs to be easily dismissed. An instance may be given as an illustration out of the history of Freemasonry.

In his Maçonnerie Occulte, Ragon, an illustrious and learned Belgian Mason, rightly or wrongly reproaches the English Masons with having materialized and dishonoured Masonry, once based upon the Ancient Mysteries, by adopting, owing to a mistaken notion of the origin of the craft, the name of “Free Masonry” and “Free Masons.” The mistake is due, he says, to those who connect Masonry with the building of Solomon’s Temple. He derides the idea, and says:

The Frenchman knew well, when he adopted the title of Freemason, that it was no question of building the smallest wall, but that, initiated into the Mysteries veiled under the name of Freemasonry, which could only be the continuation or the renovation of the ancient Mysteries, he was to become a “Mason” after the manner of Apollo or Amphion. And do not we know that the ancient initiated poets, when speaking of the foundation of a city, meant thereby the establishment of a doctrine? Thus Neptune, God of reasoning, and Apollo, God of hidden things, presented themselves as masons before Laomedon, Priam’s father, to help him to build the city of Troy—that is to say, to establish the Trojan religion.1859

Such veiled sentences with double meaning abound in ancient classical writers. Therefore, if an attempt had been made to show that, for instance, Laomedon was the founder of a branch of Archaic Mysteries, in which the earth-bound material soul, the Fourth Principle, was personified in Menelaus’ faithless wife, the fair Helen, and if Ragon had not come to corroborate what we asserted, we might have been told that no classical author speaks of it, and that Homer shows Laomedon building a city, not founding an Esoteric Worship or Mysteries. Who are those left now, save a few Initiates, who understand the language and correct meaning of such symbolical terms?

But though we have pointed to many a misconceived symbol bearing on our thesis, there still remains more than one difficulty to be overcome. Most important among several such obstacles is that of chronology. But this could hardly be helped. Wedged in between theological chronology and that of the Geologists, backed by all the materialistic Anthropologists, who assign dates to man and nature which fit in with their own theories alone—what could the writer do except what she has done? Since Theology places the Deluge 2448 b.c., and the World’s Creation only 5890 years ago; and since the accurate researches by the methods of “exact” Science, have led the Geologists and Physicists to assign to the incrusted age of our Globe between ten million and one thousand million of years1860 (a trifling difference, verily!); and since the Anthropologists, to vary their divergence of opinion as to the appearance of man, ask for between 25,000 and 500,000 years—what can one who studies the Occult Doctrine do, but bravely present the Esoteric calculations before the world?

But to do this, corroboration by even a few “historical” proofs has been necessary, though all know the real value of the so-called “historical evidence.” For, whether man appeared on Earth 18,000 or 18,000,000 years ago, can make no difference to profane history, since it only begins about a couple of thousand years before our era, and since, even then, it grapples hopelessly with the clash and din of contradictory and mutually-destroying opinions around it. Nevertheless, in view of the respect in which the average reader has been brought up for exact Science, even that short Past would remain meaningless, unless the Esoteric Teachings were corroborated and supported on the spot—whenever possible—by references to historical names of a so-called historical period. This is the only guide that can be given to the beginner before he is permitted to start among the, to him, unfamiliar windings of that dark labyrinth called the pre-historic ages. This necessity has been complied with. It is only hoped that the desire to do so, which has led the writer to be constantly bringing ancient and modern evidence as a corroboration of the archaic and quite unhistoric Past, will not bring on her the accusation of having sorely jumbled up, without order or method, the various and widely-separated periods of history and tradition. But literary form and method had to be sacrificed to the greater clearness of the general exposition.

To accomplish the proposed task, the writer has had to resort to the rather unusual means of dividing each Volume into three Parts; the first of which only is the consecutive, though very fragmentary, history of the Cosmogony and the Evolution of Man on this Globe. In treating of Cosmogony and then of the Anthropogenesis of mankind, it was necessary to show that on religion, from the very earliest, has ever been based entirely on fiction, that none was the object of special revelation, and that it is dogma alone which has ever been killing primeval truth; finally, that no human-born doctrine, no creed, however sanctified by custom and antiquity, can compare in sacredness with the religion of Nature. The Key of Wisdom that unlocks the massive gates leading to the arcana of the innermost sanctuaries can be found hidden in her bosom only; and that bosom is in the countries pointed to by the great seer of the past century, Emanuel Swedenborg. There lies the Heart of Nature, that shrine whence issued the early races of primeval humanity, and which is the cradle of physical man.

Thus far have proceeded the rough outlines of the beliefs and tenets of the archaic, earliest Races, contained in their hitherto secret scriptural Records. But our explanations are by no means complete, nor do they pretend to give out the full text, or to have been read by the help of more than three or four keys out of the sevenfold bunch of Esoteric interpretation; and even this has only been partially accomplished. The work is too gigantic for any one person to undertake, far more to accomplish. Our main concern has been simply to prepare the soil. This, we trust we have done. These two Volumes only constitute the work of a pioneer who has forced his way into the well-nigh impenetrable jungle of the virgin forests of the Land of the Occult. A commencement has been made in felling and uprooting the deadly upas trees of superstition, prejudice, and conceited ignorance, so that these two Volumes should form for the student a fitting prelude for other works. Until the rubbish of the ages is cleared away from the minds of the Theosophists to whom these pages are dedicated, it is impossible that the more practical teaching contained in the Third Volume should be understood. Consequently, it entirely depends upon the reception with which Volumes I and II shall meet at the hands of Theosophists and Mystics, whether the last Volume will ever be published.

Satyât nâsti paro dharmah.

THERE IS NO RELIGION HIGHER THAN TRUTH.

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