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Page 7
"[Greek: To pyr to ai�nion:--eis x��n ai�nion.]"
The Buddhist denial of the eternity of the condition next following the
separation of soul and body cannot, I think, be pronounced a subversion
of Christian doctrine by any one who will admit that the Greek word
[Greek: ai�nios] _may_ mean something less than endless.
Of the antiquity of Buddhistic philosophy, I have already spoken
indirectly. Buddha came upon the earth only 643 B.C. But he was not the
founder of the system. His purpose in reincarnating himself at that time
was to reform the lives of men. Doubtless he made many explanations of
doctrine, perhaps gave some new teaching; but the philosophy comes down
to us from, at least, the times of the fourth root-race, the men of
Atlantis.
However we may regard a claim to so great age, a little reflection will
convince us that the Buddhistic view of what may fairly be called the
natural history of the human soul is very old, for it seems to have been
essentially the doctrine of Pythagoras, who was not its founder, but who
may have got it either from Egypt or from India, since he visited and
studied in both those countries. If, as Sinnett asserts, the true
Chinese belong to the fourth root-race, as appears not improbable, did
not the system come into India from China? Plato was a Buddhist, says
our author. Quintilian, perhaps getting his idea from Cicero, says of
Plato that he learned his philosophy from the Egyptian priests. It is
much more probable that the latter received it from the Atlantids--if we
are to believe in them--than that it came from India. Indeed, when we
seem to trace the same teachings to the Indians, on the one side, and to
the Egyptians on the other, putting the one, through Thibet,--the land,
above all others, of occult science,--into communication with the true
Chinese, and the other, through their tradition, with the lost race of
the Atlantic, the asserted history of the fourth root-race of humanity
assumes a very attractive degree of reasonableness.
That Cicero held to the Buddhist doctrines at points so important as to
make it improbable that he did not have esoteric teaching in the system,
any one will, I believe, admit, who will read the last chapter of the
Somnium Scipionis. And Cicero's ideas must have been those of the
students and scholars of his day. He puts them forward in a manner too
commonplace, too much as if they were things of course, for us to
suppose that there was anything unusual in them. On this subject of the
wide extension of that philosophy which in India we call Buddhism, I
will make only one other suggestion. It is the guess that it lay at the
foundation of the famous Eleusinian Mysteries.
Let me now come back to the idea that the succession of human races upon
this earth is, like that of animal races, a development. Sinnett tells
us that what we recognize as language began with the third root-race. I
imagine that the preceding races had, in progressive development, some
vocal means of communication; for we find that even the lower animals
have that, and the lowest man of the first race was superior to the
highest possible animal, by the very fact that he had developed a human
soul. Now, we are told that the home of the third race was on the
continent "Lemuria," which stretched across the Indian Ocean. I imagine
the Tasmanians, the Papuans, and the degraded races of that part of the
world to be fragments of the third race. Query: Is the famous click of
the Zulu a remainder of the gradual passage from animal noise to human
articulation in speech?
Again, the true Chinese belong to the fourth root-race. They have
reached the height of their possible intellectual advance. They have
been stationary for untold centuries. Query: Does this account for their
apparent inability to develop their language beyond the monosyllable?
There are, have been, or will be, seven branches to each of the seven
great races. These branches must originate at long intervals of time,
one after the other, though several may be running their course at the
same moment. For instance, the second race could not come into the
world, until some human souls had passed at least twice, as we are told,
through "the world of effects." This would occupy at least sixteen
thousand years, according to our author's calculation, though he does
not claim to have on this point exact information. He says, only, that
the initiated know exactly the periods of time: but they are withheld
from him. Now, according to a French savant, geological investigation
proves that the Aryan race--branch-race, I will call it--was preceded in
Europe by at least three others, whose remains are found in the caves
or strata that have been examined. Of these the first has entirely
disappeared: no representatives of it are now to be found in any known
part of the world. The second was driven, apparently, from the north, by
the invasions of the ice, during the glacial period and spread as far,
at least, as the Straits of Gibraltar. With the disappearance of the
ice, they also traveled toward the pole, and are now existing in the
northern regions of the earth, under the name of Esquimaux. Following
them came a race, the fragments of which were powerful within historic
days in the Iberian peninsula,--the Iberians of the Roman writers--the
Basques of to-day. Then came from the east the Aryan race, hitherto the
highest form of humanity. These races do not, of course, begin existence
as new creations. They are developed from--their first members must be
born from--the preceding race. Query: Is a fifth race now in the throes
of nativity? Have the different sub-races of the Aryan branch sent their
contingents to the New World, that from the mixture of their boldest and
most vigorous blood the fifth sub-race might have its origin? "Westward
the star of empire takes its way."
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