Band 2 Anthropogenesis - H.P. Blavatsky

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------------------------------------------------------------------------ [[Vol. 2, Page]] 671 HAECKEL CREATES SOULS. Mr. Herbert Spencer's song on Consciousness -- is sung, it seems, and may henceforth be safely stored up in the lumber room of obsolete speculations. Where, however, do Haeckel's "complex functions" of his scientific "nerve-cells" land him? Once more right into the Occult and mystic teachings of the Kabala about the descent of souls as conscious and unconscious atoms; among the Pythagorean MONAD and the monads of Leibnitz -- and the "gods, monads, and atoms" of our esoteric teaching;* into the dead letter of Occult teachings, left to the amateur Kabalists and professors of ceremonial magic. For this is what he says, while explaining his newly-coined terminology:-- "Plastidule-Souls; the plastidules or protoplasmic molecules, the smallest, homogeneous parts of the protoplasm are, on our plastic theory, to be regarded as the active factors of all life-functions. The plastidular soul differs from the inorganic molecular soul in that it possesses memory." ("Pedigree of Man," Note, p. 296.) This he develops in his mirific lecture on the "Perigenesis of the Plastidule, or the wave-motions of living particles." It is an improvement on Darwin's theory of "Pangenesis," and a further approach, a cautious move towards "magic." The former is a conjecture that certain of the actual and identical atoms which had belonged to ancestral bodies "are thus transmitted through their descendants for generation after generation, so that we are literally 'flesh of the flesh' of the primeval creature who has developed into man in the later . . . period" -- explains the author of "The Modern Zoroastrian" (in "Primitive Polarities," etc.). The latter (Occultism) teaches that -- (a) the life-atoms of our (Prana) life-principle are never entirely lost when a man dies. That the atoms best impregnated with the life-principle (an independent, eternal, conscious factor) are partially transmitted from father to son by heredity, and partially are drawn once more together and become the animating principle of the new body in every new incarnation of [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Those who take the opposite view and look upon the existence of the human soul, -- "as a supernatural, a spiritual phenomenon, conditioned by forces altogether different from ordinary physical forces," . . . "mock," he thinks, "in consequence, all explanation that is simply scientific." They have no right it seems, to assert that "psychology is, in part, or in whole, a spiritual science, not a physical one." . . . The new discovery by Haeckel (one taught for thousands of years in all the Eastern religions, however), that the animals have souls, will, and sensation, hence soul-functions, leads him to make of psychology the science of the zoologists. The archaic teaching that the "Soul" (the animal and human souls, or Kama and Manas) "has its developmental history" -- is claimed by Haekel as his own discovery and innovation on an "untrodden (?) path"! He (Haeckel) will work out the comparative evolution of the soul in man and in other animals. . . . "The comparative morphology of the soul-organs, and the comparative physiology of the soul-functions, both founded on Evolution, thus become the psychological (really materialistic) problem of the scientific man." (Cell-souls and Soul-cells, p. 137, "Pedigree of Man.") ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [[Vol. 2, Page]] 672 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. the Monads. Because (b), as the individual Soul is ever the same, so are the atoms of the lower principles (body, its astral, or life double, etc.), drawn as they are by affinity and Karmic law always to the same individuality in a series of various bodies, etc., etc.* To be just, and, to say the least, logical, our modern Haeckelians ought to pass a resolution that henceforth the "Perigenesis of the Plastidule," and like lectures, should be bound up with those on "Esoteric Buddhism," and "The Seven Principles in Man." Thus the public will have a chance, at any rate, of judging after comparison which of the two teachings is the most or the least ABSURD, even from the standpoint of materialistic and exact Science! Now the Occultists, who trace every atom in the universe, whether an aggregate or single, to One Unity, or Universal Life; who do not recognize that anything in Nature can be inorganic; who know of no such thing as dead matter -- the Occultists are consistent with their doctrine of Spirit and Soul when speaking of memory in every atom, of will and sensation. But what can a materialist mean by the qualification? The law of biogenesis, in the sense applied to it by the Haeckelians -- "is the result of the ignorance on the part of the man of science of occult physics." We know and speak of "life-atoms" -- and of "sleeping-atoms" -- because we regard these two forms of energy -- the kinetic and the potential -- as produced by one and the same force or the ONE LIFE, and regard the latter as the source and mover of all. But what is it that furnished with energy, and especially with memory, the "plastidular souls" of Haeckel? The "wave motion of living particles" becomes comprehensible on the theory of a Spiritual ONE LIFE, of a universal Vital principle independent of our matter, and manifesting as atomic energy only on our plane of consciousness. It is that which, individualized in the human cycle, is transmitted from father to son. Now Haeckel, modifying Darwin's theory, suggests "most plausibly," as the author of the "Modern Zoroastrian" thinks, "that not the identical atoms, but their peculiar motions and mode of aggregation have been thus transmitted" (by heredity). If Haeckel, or any other Scientist, knew more than any of them does of the nature of the atom, he would not have improved the occasion in this way. For he only states, in a more metaphysical language than Darwin, one and the same thing. The life-principle, or life energy, [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * (See "Transmigration of the Life Atoms," "Five years of Theosophy," p. 533-539). The collective aggregation of these atoms forms thus the Anima Mundi of our Solar system, the soul of our little universe, each atom of which is of course a soul, a monad, a little universe endowed with consciousness, hence with memory (Vol. I., Part III., "Gods, Monads and Atoms.")
------------------------------------------------------------------------ [[Vol. 2, Page 673]] THE MEANING OF SOUL WITH HAECKEL. which is omnipresent, eternal, indestructible, is a force and a PRINCIPLE as noumenon, atoms, as phenomenon. It is one and the same thing, and cannot be considered as separate except in materialism.* Further, Haeckel enunciates concerning the Atom Souls that which, at first sight, appears as occult as a Monad of Leibnitz. "The recent contest as to the nature of atoms, which we must regard as in some form or other the ultimate factors in all physical and chemical processes," he tells us -- "seems to be capable of the easiest settlement, by the conception that these very minute masses possess, as centres of force, a persistent soul, that every atom has sensation and the power of movement." He does not say a word concerning the fact that this is Leibnitz's theory, and one pre-eminently occult. Nor does he understand the term "Soul" as we do; for, with Haeckel it is simply, along with consciousness, the production of the grey matter of the brain, a thing which, as the "cell-soul, is as indissolubly bound up with the protoplasmic body as is the human soul with the brain and spinal cord." (Ibid.) He rejects the conclusions of Kant, Herbert Spencer, of du Bois- Reymond and Tyndall. The latter expresses the opinion of all the great men of science, as of the greatest thinkers of this and the past ages, in saying that "the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of Consciousness is unthinkable. Were our minds and senses so . . . illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings . . . electric discharges . . . we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem . . . The chasm between the two classes of Phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable." But the complex function of the nerve-cells of the great German EMPIRIC, or, in other words, his Consciousness, will not permit him to follow the conclusions of the greatest thinkers of our globe. He is greater than they. He asserts this, and protests against all. "No one has the right [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * In "The Transmigration of the Life-Atoms," we say, to explain better a position which is but too often misunderstood:-- "It is omnipresent . . . . though (on this plane of manifestation) often in a dormant state -- as in stone. The definition which states that when this indestructible force is disconnected with one set of atoms (molecules ought to have been said) it becomes immediately attracted by others, does not imply that it entirely abandons the first set (because the atoms themselves would then disappear), but only that it transfers its vis viva, or life power -- the energy of motion, to another set. But because it manifests itself in the next set as what is called Kinetic energy, it does not follow that the first set is deprived of it altogether; for it is still in it, as potential energy or life latent," etc., etc. Now what can Haeckel mean by his "not identical atoms but their peculiar motion and mode of aggregation," if it is not the same Kinetic energy we have been explaining? He must have read Paracelsus and studied "Five Years of Theosophy," without properly digesting the teachings, before evolving such theories. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [[Vol. 2, Page]] 674 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. to hold that in the future we (Haeckel) shall not be able to pass beyond those limits of our knowledge that to day seem impassable"; and he quotes from Darwin's introduction to the "Descent of Man" these words, which he modestly applies to his scientific opponents and himself: "It is always those who know little, and not those who know much, that positively affirm that this or that problem will never be solved by Science." The world may rest satisfied. That day is not far off when the "thrice great" Haeckel will have shown (to his own satisfaction) that the consciousness of Sir I. Newton was, physiologically speaking, but the reflex action (or minus consciousness) caused by the peri-genesis of the plastidules of our common ancestor and old friend, the Moneron Haeckelii. The fact that the said "Bathybius" has been found out and exposed as a pretender simulating the organic substance it was not; and since, among the children of men, Lot's wife alone (and even this, only after her disagreeable metamorphosis into a salt pillar) could claim the pinch of salt it is, as her forefather -- will not dismay him at all. He will go on asserting, as coolly as he has always done, that it was no more than the peculiar mode and motion of the ghost of the long-vanished atoms of our "Father Bathybius," which, transmitted across aeons of time into the cell-tissue of the grey matter of the brains of every great man, caused Sophocles and AEschylus, as well as Shakespeare, to write their tragedies, Newton, his "Principia," Humboldt, his "Cosmos," etc. etc. It prompted Haeckel to invent Graeco-Latin names three inches long, pretending to mean a good deal, and meaning -- nothing. Of course we are quite aware that the true, honest evolutionist agrees with us; and that he is the first to say that not only is the geological record imperfect, but that there are enormous gaps in the series of hitherto discovered fossils, which can never be filled. He will tell us, moreover, that "no evolutionist assumes that man is descended from any existing ape or any extinct ape either," but that man and apes originated probably aeons back, in some common root stock. Still, as de Quatrefages points out, he will claim as an evidence corroborating his (the evolutionist's) claim, even this wealth of absent proofs, saying that "all living forms have not been preserved in the fossil series, the chances of preservation being few and far between," even primitive man "burying or burning his dead" (A. Wilson). This is just what we ourselves claim. It is just as possible that future should have in store for us the discovery of the giant skeleton of an Atlantean, 30ft. high, as the fossil of a pithecoid "missing link": only the former is more probable. ------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [[Vol. 2, Page]] 675 DRYOPITHECUS, THE MISSING LINK. § III. THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE ANTHROPOID APE. -------
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THE SECRET DOCTRINE BY H. P. BLAVAT
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Various Deluges ... 141 The Arkite
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CONCLUSION ... 437 ------- BOOK II.
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The Seven Sabbaths ... 747 "Revelat
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* As it is now asserted that the Ch
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upheaval of the continent, changed
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Beauteous Daughter of the Ether, Pa
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VI. 22. THEN THE SECOND EVOLVED THE
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(b) This expression shows in plain
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Wake. "This animal was the especial
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first pp. of Book I) and fallen int
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(c) Number Seven, the fundamental f
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"Now light," explains the author, "
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mysticism Adam was not a man but a
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ate of the forbidden fruit. The for
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 51 WHAT THE EARTH-
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Continuing to create, Brahma assume
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evolution of life on Earth, there m
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tribes and people are also represen
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passage by Mr. Laing, which gives t
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exact period of the lunar year and
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in its spiritual aspects and emanat
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What is Binah Understanding? But wh
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of termination required to express
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* Whence the subsequent assertions
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love the science, and where the god
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possess an intelligence of their ow
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 107 BATH-KOL, DAUG
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correlatives and contraries inhabit
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(Omoroka) who presided over the mon
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The occult doctrine, anyhow, can be
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** Schol. Eurip. "Orestes," 463, Di
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and Adam is the collective name for
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This is a very curious statement as
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dissociated matter in the critical
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Vaivasvata produces a daughter and
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 144 THE SECRET DOC
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have declared that "Ila was primari
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In the same letter, "The Evolution
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As far as XIXth century thought is
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------- §§ (24) The higher creato
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3. The Third Root-Race, the "Two-fo
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generally) larger by one cubic inch
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Darwinism," p. 159.) Apart from suc
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who after refusing to "create proge
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* An allegorical reference to the "
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WHAT MAY BE THE OBJECTIONS TO THE F
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eason that no "missing links" betwe
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others, PROBABLY arose in the tropi
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the same conditions and by the same
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The above is suggestive. We will se
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** "Science Occulte," p. 646. *** "
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originals, who were symbolized by s
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** Vide infra, "The Septenary," in
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In other words, they were the Lemur
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Panini (!); that the Hindus had all
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 230 THE SECRET DOC
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**** The "dynasties of the kings" w
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to Hades (the cave of Initiation) t
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To close this rather lengthy commen
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When reading of "the last transform
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Mankind -- MAN was on earth in this
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to distinguish them. Even at the ag
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As witnesses to the Lemurians but a
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traditions about Hermes (of whom Eg
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(a) Such were the first truly physi
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Happily for the human race the "Ele
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a physical nature and spiritual att
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This period is the one described in
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A few more occult teachings must no
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a Spirit, or Deva; and the "Bird's
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VI R. R. 6 1/2 VII ROOT RACE theref
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evolve, and that our humanity is ju
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Thus, if we are to believe esoteric
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Here reference is also made to the
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II. The several meanings of the wor
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 325 ATLANTIS -- OC
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Which means again, that our globe i
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When it is maintained that no large
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De Mirville -- who seeks to justify
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Snakes). The eminent scholar saw in
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--------------------- 47. FEW (men)
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eing regarded as a direct denunciat
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It is the Kabiri who are credited w
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"Now," says Panadoras, "it is befor
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fourth book of Laws, says that, lon
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through the pen of Biblical scholar
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Rahu, mythologically is a Daitya --
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Dragon of absolute Wisdom -- that W
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Satan represents metaphysically sim
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The Noachian Deluge, as described i
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In the same tradition that wise pri
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the abode of the wicked (the Atlant
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Thus, we believe we know that, thou
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islands beyond, which are not far f
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"Supreme Deity" bears, in every anc
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that she must travel eastward, afte
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Brahminical and Buddhistic legends,
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the physical brain may forget event
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"The waters arose, and covered the
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some still older records -- to whic
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Thus let it be. No disbeliever who
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ecause while the evolution of the F
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is born from Asat, and ASAT is bego
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less entitled to a hearing, or less
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THE "HOLY OF HOLIES." ITS DEGRADATI
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Now Eustathius declares that ([IO])
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Measures," 159). Besides the same a
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in his supposed monotheism over the
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help half a dozen volumes full of s
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This "pagan" view was accepted from
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since man appeared on earth, and ma
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Perchance, this is justified on tha
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cherub . . . thou hast walked up an
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In the exoteric works, however, the
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[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------
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Whether Milton's grandiose descript
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anthropomorphic deity, and adopt fr
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Thus, esoteric philosophy shows tha
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Melia, Decharme thinks, is the pers
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"This process, such as it is minute
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From all that has been said in this
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symbolized by the strong, powerful
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Nevertheless, one thing is patent:
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as Cornutus*** shows, was sometimes
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called Venus' Looking-Glass, becaus
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* Nanda is the first Buddhist Sover
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genuine philosophers and students o
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Again, let the reader read the Hind
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Page 279 and 280: Kapila, the great sage and philosop
Page 281 and 282: But the true esoteric sense of the
Page 283 and 284: god; and history will not recognize
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Page 291 and 292: * The Adwaitee Vedantic philosophy
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Page 295 and 296: (the Sun) are made therein parallel
Page 297 and 298: "Yes! . . . yes, I will rule and wa
Page 299 and 300: Puranas, their mother, Diti -- the
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Page 303 and 304: When the Western Orientalists have
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Page 311 and 312: ** I propose to follow here the tex
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Page 315 and 316: An attempt is made to show the abov
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Page 323 and 324: only in speaking thus demonstrate t
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Page 329 and 330: tidal wave of "science-adulation."
Page 331 and 332: against the too sanguine expectatio
Page 333 and 334: * Those who with Haeckel regard the
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Page 339 and 340: texture, so every living (so-called
Page 341 and 342: But this is the limit beyond which
Page 343 and 344: founder of modern philosophy; the p
Page 345 and 346: Quaternary lasted 1,600,000 years (
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Page 351 and 352: woolly rhinoceros), whom some over-
Page 353 and 354: It is time the Occultists should di
Page 355 and 356: portions should not be dredged from
Page 359 and 360: IS Science against those who mainta
Page 361 and 362: *** This conjecture is but a half-g
Page 363 and 364: in the arena, breaking a lance with
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Page 367 and 368: neolithic flints in the Jordan vall
Page 369 and 370: Strabo speaks of an island near to
Page 371 and 372: There are those Orientalists and hi
Page 373 and 374: shown to claim the same descent lik
Page 375 and 376: So much so, that all ancient writin
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Atlantis. So, also, the war between
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True; but is not the phenomenon her
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Touching on the problem in another
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800 and 1,000 leagues, and that, ac
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of the skin on both sides of the At
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periods of history and tradition. B
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