Band 2 Anthropogenesis - H.P. Blavatsky

others, PROBABLY arose in the tropical regions of the old world from ANTHROPOID APES." Asked for proofs, the
evolutionist, not the least daunted, replies: "Of these NO FOSSIL REMAINS ARE AS YET KNOWN TO US, BUT THEY
WERE probably AKIN TO THE GORILLA AND ORANG OF THE PRESENT DAY." And then the Papuan negro is
mentioned as the probable descendant in the first line (Pedigree of Man, p. 80).
Haeckel holds fast to Lemuria, which with East Africa and South Asia also, he mentions as the possible cradle of the
primitive Ape-men; and so do many geologists. Mr. A. R. Wallace admits its reality, though in a rather modified sense, in
his "Geographical Distribution of Animals." But let not Evolutionists speak so lightly of the comparative size of the brains
of man and the ape, for this is very unscientific, especially when they pretend to see no difference between the two, or
very little at any rate. For Vogt himself showed that, while the highest of the Apes, the gorilla, has a brain of only 30 to 51
cubic inches, the brain of the lowest of the Australian aborigines amounts to 99.35 cubic inches. The former is thus "not
half of the size of the brain of a new-born babe," says Pfaff.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 194 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Earth." Taaroa, the creative power, the chief god, "put man to sleep for long years, for several lives," which means racial
periods, and is a reference to his mental sleep, as shown elsewhere. During that time the deity pulled an Ivi (bone) out of
man and she became a woman.*
Nevertheless, whatever the allegory may mean, even its exoteric meaning necessitates a divine Builder of man -- "a
Progenitor." Do we then believe in such "supernatural" beings? We say, No. Occultism has never believed in anything,
whether animate or inanimate, outside nature. Nor are we Cosmolators or Polytheists for believing in "Heavenly Man" and
divine men, for we have the accumulated testimony of the ages, with its unvarying evidence on every essential point, to
support us in this; the Wisdom of the Ancients and UNIVERSAL tradition. We reject, however, every groundless and
baseless tradition, which, having outgrown strict allegory and symbolism, has found acceptance in exoteric creeds. But
that which is preserved in unanimous traditions, only the wilfully blind could reject. Hence we believe in races of beings
other than our own in far remote geological periods; in races of ethereal, following incorporeal, "Arupa," men, with form
but no solid substance, giants who preceded us pigmies; in dynasties of divine beings, those Kings and Instructors of the
Third Race in arts and sciences, compared with which our little modern science stands less chance than elementary
arithmetic with geometry.
No, certainly not. We do not believe in the supernatural but only in the superhuman, or rather interhuman, intelligences.
One may easily appreciate the feeling of reluctance that an educated person would have to being classed with the
superstitious and ignorant; and even realize the great truth uttered by Renan when he says that: "The supernatural has
become like the original sin, a blemish that every one seems ashamed of -- even those most religious persons who refuse
in our day to accept even a minimum of Bible miracles in all their crudeness, and who, seeking to reduce them to the
minimum, hide and conceal it in the furthermost corners of the past."**
But the "supernatural" of Renan belongs to dogma and its dead letter. It has nought to do with its Spirit nor with the reality
of facts in Nature. If theology asks us to believe that four or five thousand years ago men lived 900 years and more, that a
portion of mankind, the enemies of the people of Israel exclusively, was composed of giants
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Polynesian Researches," Ellis. Vol.II., p. 38.
Missionaries seem to have pounced upon this name Ivi and made of it Eve. But, as shown by Professor Max Muller, Eve
is not the Hebrew name but an European transformation of [[hebrew]], chavah, "life," or mother of all living; "while the
Tahitian Ivi and the Maori Wheva meant bone and bone only." ("False Analogies.")
** Chaire d'Hebreu au college de France, p. 20.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 195 THE HAIRY MEN OF CHINA.
and monsters, we decline to believe that such a thing existed in Nature 5,000 years back. For Nature never proceeds by
jumps and starts, and logic and common sense, besides geology, anthropology and ethnology, have justly rebelled
against such assertions. But if that same theology, giving up her fantastic chronology, had claimed that men lived 969
years -- the age of Methuselah -- five million years ago, we would have nothing to say against the claim. For in those days
the physical frame of men was, compared to the present human body, as that of a megalosaurus to a common lizard.
A naturalist suggests another difficulty. The human is the only species which, however unequal in its races, can breed
together. "There is no question of selection between human races," say the anti-Darwinists, and no evolutionist can deny
the argument -- one which very triumphantly proves specific unity. How then can Occultism insist that a portion of the
Fourth Race humanity begot young ones from females of another, only semi-human, if not quite an animal, race, the
hybrids resulting from which union not only bred freely but produced the ancestors of the modern anthropoid apes?
Esoteric science replies to this that it was in the very beginnings of physical man. Since then, Nature has changed her
ways, and sterility is the only result of the crime of man's bestiality. But we have to this day proofs of this. The Secret
Doctrine teaches that the specific unity of mankind is not without exceptions even now. For there are, or rather still were a
few years ago, descendants of these half-animal tribes or races, both of remote Lemurian and Lemuro-Atlantean origin.
The world knows them as Tasmanians (now extinct), Australians, Andaman Islanders, etc. The descent of the
Tasmanians can be almost proved by a fact, which struck Darwin a good deal, without his being able to make anything of
it. This fact deserves notice.
Now de Quatrefages and other naturalists, who seek to prove Monogenesis by the very fact of every race of mankind
being capable of crossing with every other, have left out of their calculations exceptions, which do not in this case confirm
the rule. Human crossing may have been a general rule from the time of the separation of sexes, and yet that other law