and even Gods, having to pass through states which it was agreed to refer to as "Inmetallization, Inherbation, Inzoonization and finally Incarnation," and explains this by hinting at the necessity of failures even in the ethereal races of Dhyan Chohans. Concerning this it says:

"Still, as these 'failures' are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from Dhyan Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower kingdoms. After which only a hint is given about the mystery contained in the allegory of the fallen Asuras, which will be expanded and explained in Book II. When Karma has reached them at the stage of human evolution, "they will have to drink it to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an active force and commingle with the Elementals, the progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom, to develop little by little the full type of humanity."

These Dhyan Chohans, as we see, do not pass through the three kingdoms as do the lower Pitris; nor do they incarnate in man until the Third Root Race. Thus, as the teaching stands:

"Man in the First Round and First Race on Globe D, our Earth, was an ethereal being (a Lunar Dhyani, as man), non-intelligent but super-spiritual ; and correspondingly, on the law of analogy, in the First Race of the Fourth Round. In each of the subsequent races and sub-races

he

grows more

and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still preponderatingly ethereal. He is sexless, and, like the animal and vegetable, he develops monstrous bodies correspondential with his coarser surroundings.

"II. Round. He (Man) is still gigantic and ethereal but growing firmer and more condensed in body, a more physical man. Yet still less intelligent than spiritual (i), for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than is the physical frame

"III. Round. He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body, at first the form of a giant-ape, and now more intelligent, or rather cunning, than spiritual. For, on the doumward arc, he has now reached a point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent mentality (2). In the last half of the Third Round his gigantic stature decreases, and his body improves in texture, and he becomes a more rational being, though still more an ape than a

(All this is almost exactly repeated in the third Root-Race of

the Fourth Round.)

"IV. Round. Intellect has an enormous development in this Round. The (hitherto) dumb races acquire our (present) human speech on this globe, on which, from the Fourth Race, language is perfected and knowledge increases. At this half-way point of the Fourth Round (as of the Fourth Root, or Atlantean, race) humanity passes the axial point of the minor Manvantara cycle

the world teeming with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual decrease

This is from the authentic letter; what follows are the later remarks and additional explanations traced by the same hand in the form of footnotes.

(i.) " The original letter contained general teaching—a bird's-eye view-and particularized nothing.

To speak of physical man' while

limiting the statement to the early Rounds would be drifting back to the miraculous and instantaneous coats of skin.'

The first Nature,' the first body,' the first mind' on the first plane of perception, on the first Globe in the first Round, is what was meant. For Karma and evolution have—

centred in our make such strange extremes!

From different Natures* marvellously mixed

(2.) "Restore: he has now reached the point (by analogy, and as the Third Root Race in the Fourth Round) where his ("the angel "-man's) primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent human mentality, and you have the true version ou your thumb-nail.

These are the words of the Teacher—text, words and sentences in brackets, and explanatory footnotes. It stands to reason that there must be an enormous difference in such terms as " objectivity" and "subjectivity," "materiality" and "spirituality," when the same terms are applied to different planes of being and perception. All this must be taken in its relative sense. And therefore there is little to be wondered at, if, left to his own speculations, an author, however eager to learn, yet quite inexperienced in these abstruse teachings, has fallen

The Natures of the seven hierarchies or classes of Pitris and Dhyan Chohans which compose our nature and Bodies are here meant.

into an error. Neither was the difference between the " Rounds" and the "Races" sufficiently defined in the letters received, nor was there anything of the kind required before, as the ordinary Eastern disciple would have found out the difference in a moment. Moreover, to quote from a letter of the Master's (188-), "the teachings were imparted under protest. They were, so to say, smuggled goods . and when I remained face to face with only one correspondent, the other, Mr. had so far tossed all the cards into confusion, that little remained to be said without trespassing upon law." Theosophists, "whom it may concern," will understand what is meant.

The outcome of all this is that nothing had ever been said in the "letters" to warrant the assurance that the Occult doctrine has ever taught, or any Adept believed in, the preposterous modern theory of the descent of man from a common ancestor with the ape—an anthropoid of the actual animal kind, unless metaphorically. To this day the world is more full of "ape-like men" than the woods are of "men-like apes." The ape is sacred in India because its origin is well known to the Initiates, though concealed under a thick veil of allegory. Hanuman is the son of Pavana (Vayu, "the god of the wind ") by Anjana, a monster called Kesari, though his genealogy varies. The reader who bears this in mind will find in Book II. passim, the whole explanation of this ingenious allegory. The "Men" of the Third Race (who separated) were "Gods" by their spirituality and purity, though senseless, and as yet destitute of mind, as men.

These "Men" of the Third Race—the ancestors of the Atlanteans— were just such ape-like, intellectually senseless giants as were those beings, who, during the Third Round, represented Humanity. Morally irresponsible, it was these third Race "men" who, through promiscuous connection with animal species lower than themselves, created that missing link which became ages later (in the tertiary period only) the remote ancestor of the real ape as we find it now in the pithecoid family.*

* And if this is found clashing with that other statement which shows the animal later than man, then the reader is asked to bear in mind that the flaccnlal mammal only is meant. In those days there were animals of which zoology does not even dream in our own; and the modes of reproduction mere not identical with the notions which modern physiology has upon the subject. It is not altogether convenient to touch upon such questions in public, but there is no contradiction or impossibility in this whatever.

THE PRELIMINARY CREATION OF MAN.

191

Thus the earlier teachings, however unsatisfactory, vague and fragmentary, did not teach the evolution of "man" from the "ape." Nor does the author of "Esoteric Buddhism" assert it anywhere in his work in so many words; but, owing to his inclination towards modern. science, he uses language which might perhaps justify such an inference. The man who preceded the Fourth, the Atlantean race, however much he may have looked physically like a "gigantic ape”—" the counterfeit of man who hath not the life of a man"—was still a thinking and already a speaking man. The "Lemuro-Atlantean" was a highly civilized race, and if one accepts tradition, which is better history than the speculative fiction which now passes under that name, he was higher than we are with all our sciences and the degraded civilization of the day: at any rate, the Lemuro-Atlantean of the closing Third Race was so.

And now we may return to the Stanzas.

STANZA VI.—Continued.

5. At The Fourth (Round, or revolution of life and being around "the seven smaller wheels") (a), The Sons Are Told To Create Their Images One Third Refuses. Two (thirds) Obey.

4

The full meaning of this sloka can be fully comprehended only after reading the detailed additional explanations in the "Anthropogenesis and its commentaries, in Book II. Between this Sloka and the last, Sloka in this same Stanza, extend long ages; and there now gleams the dawn and sunrise of another æon. The drama enacted on our planet is at the beginning of its fourth act, but for a clearer comprehension of the whole play the reader will have to turn back before he can proceed. onward. For this verse belongs to the general Cosmogony given in the archaic volumes, whereas Book II. will give a detailed account of the "Creation" or rather the formation, of the first human beings, followed by the second humanity, and then by the third; or, as they are called,. "the first, second, and the third Root-Races." As the solid Earth began by being a ball of liquid fire, of fiery dust and its protoplasmic phantom, so did man.

(a) That which is meant by the qualification the "Fourth" is explained as the "fourth Round" only on the authority of the Commentaries. It can equally mean fourth "Eternity" as "Fourth Round," or even the fourth (our) Globe. For, as will repeatedly be shown, it is the fourth Sphere on the fourth or lowest plane of material life. And it so happens that we are in the Fourth Round, at the middle point of which the perfect equilibrium between Spirit and Matter had to take place.* Says the Commentary explaining the verse :—

"The holy youths (the gods) refused to multiply and create species after their likeness, after their kind. They are not fit forms (rupas) for us. They have to grow. They refuse to enter the chhayas (shadows or images) of their inferiors. Thus had selfish feeling prevailed from the beginning, even among the gods, and they fell under the eye of the Karmic Lipikas."

They had to suffer for it in later births. How the punishment reached the gods will be seen in the second volume.

STANZA VI.—Continued.

6. THE CURSE IS PRONOUNCED (a): THEY WILL BE BORN IN THE FOURTH (Race), Suffer And Cause Suffering (b). This is The First War (c).

(a) It is a universal tradition that, before the physiological "Fall," propagation of one's kind, whether human or animal, took place through the Will of the Creators, or of their progeny. It was the Fall of Spirit into generation, not the Fall of mortal man. It has already been stated. that, to become a Self-Conscious Spirit, the latter must pass through every cycle of being, culminating in its highest point on earth in Man.

* It was, as we shall see, at this period-during the highest point of civilization and knowledge, as also of human intellectuality, of the fourth, Atlantean Race-that, owing to the final crisis of physiologico-spiritual adjustment of the races, humanity branched off into its two diametrically opposite paths: the RIGHT- and the LEFT-hand paths of knowledge or of Vidya. Thus were the germs of the White and the Black Magic sown in those days. The seeds lay latent for some time, to sprout only during the early period of the Fifth (our Race)." (Commentary.)