(10) The writer above quoted from, says of the civilization of Atlantis: "The civilization of Atlantis was remarkable, and its people attained heights which seem almost incredible to even those familiar with the highest achievements of man of our own times. The Chosen Ones preserved from the cataclysm which destroyed Lemuria, and who lived to a remarkably old age, had stored up within their minds the wisdom and learning of the civilization which had been destroyed, and they thus gave the Atlanteans an enormous advantage at the start. They soon attained great advancement along all the lines of human endeavor. They perfected mechanical inventions and appliances, reaching far ahead of even our present attainments. In the field of electricity especially they reached the stages that our present race will reach not sooner than two or three hundred years from now. Along the line of occult attainment their progress was far beyond the dreams of the average man of our own race, and in fact from this arose one of the causes of their downfall, for they prostituted the power to base and selfish uses, and practiced black magic. And so the decline of Atlantis began. But the end did not come at once, or suddenly—it was gradual. The continent, and the surrounding islands gradually sunk beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, the process occupying 10,000 years. The Greeks and the Romans of our own cycle had traditions regarding the sinking of the continent, but their knowledge referred only to the disappearance of the small remainder—certain islands—the continent itself having disappeared thousands of years before their time. It is recorded that the Egyptian priests had traditions that the continent itself had disappeared nine thousand years before their time." As in the case of the Chosen Ones of Lemuria, so was it with the Elect Ones of Atlantis who were taken away from the doomed land some time prior to its destruction. These advanced individuals of the race left their Atlantean homes and "led by the spirit" migrated to portions of what are now known as South America and Central America, then but islands of the sea. These people left the traces of their civilization in these lands, and our scientists discovering these wonders greatly at the evidences of the high culture shown in them. When the Fifth Race appeared, these brave and advanced souls became the teachers of the new race, and were afterwards remembered as "gods," and the heroes of mythology. The Fifth Race evolved rapidly, owing to the urge of the souls of the Atlanteans pressing forward for reembodiment, and human forms were born to supply the demand, the fertility of the new race being marked.

(92) Timaeus: And the fourth kind, which lives in the water, came from the most utterly thoughtless and stupid of men, whom those that remolded them deemed no longer worthy even of pure respiration, seeing that they were unclean of soul through utter wickedness; wherefore in place of air, for refined and pure respiring, they thrust them into water, there to respire its turbid depths. Thence have come into being the tribe of fishes and of shellfish and all creatures of the waters, which have for their portion the extremest of all abodes in requital for the extremity of their witlessness. Thus, both then and now, living creatures keep passing

(11) The writer previously referred to says of the survival of members of a disappearing race, and their influence on the life of the new race: "By means of the cataclysms the races of each cycle were wiped out when their time came, but the few elect or chosen ones, that is those who had manifested the right to become torch-bearers, were carried away to some favorable environment, where they became as leaven to the mass—as gods' to the new races that quickly appeared. It must be noted, however, that the chosen or elect ones were not the only ones saved from the destruction that overtook the majority of the race in these cataclysms. On the contrary, a few survivors were preserved, although driven away from their former homes, and reduced to 'first principles of living' in order to become the parents of the new race. The new races springing from the fittest of the survivors quickly formed sub-races, being composed of the better adapted souls seeking reincarnation, while the less fit sank into barbarism and showed evidences of decay. A remnant of these degraded human creatures, however, persist in incarnation for thousands of years, being composed of those souls not sufficiently advanced to take part in the life of the new races. These 'left overs' are in evidence in our own times in the cases of the Australian savages, the African Bushmen, and the Digger Indians, and others of a similar low order of development. In order to understand the advance of each race it must be remembered that the more advanced souls, after passing out of the body, have a much longer period of rest in the higher planes, and consequently do not present themselves for reincarnation until a period quite late as compared with the hasty reincarnation of the less advanced souls who are hurried back to rebirth by reason of the strong earthly attachment and desires. In this way it happens that the earlier races of each cycle are more primitive folk than those who follow them as the years roll by. The soul of an earth-bound person reincarnates in a few years, and sometimes in a few days, while the soul of an advanced man may repose and rest on the higher planes for centuries—nay, even for thousands of years, until the earth has reached a stage in which the appropriate environment may be afforded it." At the beginning of the period of the Fifth Race (the present race of man) there were born not only the beginning of the new sub-races which always spring into existence at the beginning of a new cycle, but there were also born the descendants of the Elect, saved from the destruction of Atlantis by having been led away from the scene of danger. The new races were the descendants of the scattered survivors of the Atlantean peoples—that is, of the common run of those peoples. But the Elect few were superior individuals of their race, and imparted to their descendants their knowledge and wisdom. By an understanding of this distinction, we are able to comprehend the fact that at the same time there existed hordes of people of the new races—more or less primitive and ignorant—and at other places certain advanced peoples like the ancient Egyptians, Persians, Chaldeans, Hindus, etc. These advanced peoples represented the advanced souls—the old souls, of the advanced individuals of the Lemurian and Atlantean civilizations.

(9) A writer says of the character of the civilization of Lemuria: "Life in Lemuria is described as being principally concerned with the physical senses and sensual enjoyment, only a few developed souls having broken through the fetters of materiality and reached the beginnings of the mental and spiritual planes of life. Some few indeed made great progress and were saved from the general wreck in order to become the leaven which would lighten the mass of mankind during the next great cycle. These developed souls were the teachers of the new races, and were looked upon by the latter as gods and supernatural beings, and legends and traditions concerning them are still existent among the ancient peoples of our present day. Many of the myths of the ancient peoples arose in this way. The traditions are that just prior to the great cataclysm which destroyed the people of the Third Race, there was a body of the Chosen Ones which migrated from Lemuria to certain islands of the sea which are now part of the main land of India. These people formed the nucleus of the Occult Teachers of Lemuria, and they kept alight the Flame of Truth with which was lighted the torches of the Fourth Race—the Race of the Atlanteans." With the passing away of Lemuria—the home of the Third Race—there arose from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean the future home of the people of the Fourth Race—the continent of Atlantis. Atlantis was situated in the space now occupied by a portion of the Atlantic Ocean, beginning at what is now known as the Caribbean Sea, and extending over to the region now known as Africa. What we now know as Cuba and the West Indies were the highest points of the continent of Atlantis, the lower portions being now buried beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

(5) "The secret teaching explains the reason for this reference by the symbolism of the prehistoric races. The 'First Cause' had no name in the beginnings. Later, it was pictured in the fancy of the thinkers as an ever invisible Bird that dropped an Egg into Chaos, which Egg became the Universe. Hence, Brahm was called 'Kalahansa,' the Swan of Eternity which laid at the beginning of each Mahamanvantara a 'Golden Egg.' It typifies the great Circle, or O, itself a symbol for the universe and its spherical bodies. * * * The first manifestation of the Kosmos in the form of an egg was the most widely diffused belief of antiquity. It was a symbol adopted among the Greeks, the Syrians, Persians, and Egyptians. In the Egyptian Ritual, Seb, the god of Time and of the Earth, is spoken of as having laid an egg, or the Universe. Ra is shown like Brahma gestating in the Egg of the Universe. With the Greeks the Orphic Egg was a part of the Dionysiac and other mysteries, during which the Mundane Egg was consecrated and its significance explained. The Christians—especially the Greek and Latin Churches—have fully adopted this symbol, and see in it a commemoration of life eternal, or salvation and resurrection. This is found in and corroborated by the custom of 'Easter Eggs.' From the 'Egg' of the pagan Druids, to the red Easter Egg of the Slav, a cycle has passed. And, yet, whether in civilized Europe, or among the abject savages of Central America, we find the same archaic, primitive thought; if we only search for it and do not disfigure—in the haughtiness of our fancied mental and physical superiority—the original idea of the symbol." The concept of the World Soul, in some form of interpretation and under some one of many names, may be said to be practically universal. Among many of the ancient schools of philosophy it was taught that there was an Anima Mundi, or World Soul, of which all the individual souls were but apparently separated (though not actually separated) units. The conviction that Life was One is expressed through nearly all of the best of ancient philosophies; and, in fact, in subtly disguised forms, may be said to rest at the base of the best of modern philosophies.

(4) And from the time of Inachus to the Trojan war twenty generations or more are reckoned; let us say, four hundred years and more. And if Ctesias says that the Assyrian power is many years older than the Greek, the exodus of Moses from Egypt will appear to have taken place in the forty-second year of the Assyrian empire, in the thirty-second year of the reign of Belochus, in the time of Amosis the Egyptian, and of Inachus the Argive. And in Greece, in the time of Phoroneus, who succeeded Inachus, the flood of Ogyges occurred; and monarchy subsisted in Sicyon first in the person of Ægialeus, then of Europs, then of Telches; in Crete, in the person of Cres. For Acusilaus says that Phoroneus was the first man. Whence, too, the author of Phoronis said that he was "the father of mortal men." Thence Plato in the Timaeus, following Acusilaus, writes: "And wishing to draw them out into a discussion respecting antiquities, he said that he ventured to speak of the most remote antiquities of this city respecting Phoroneus, called the first man, and Niobe, and what happened after the deluge."

(7) The Rosicrucian teachings have but comparatively little to say concerning the history of the peoples of the First Race and the Second Race, but from what is taught it may be gathered that these peoples were of a very low order of humanity—the types which we know as the Cave Dwellers, the Stone-age people, and the Fire-people, give us the nearest possible idea of what these First Race and Second Race people must have been like. There was apparently little or nothing of what we call "civilization" among these people, and they were apparently about on a level with the very lowest types known among mankind on earth today. The teachings, however, state that there were a few comparatively highly advanced souls in the latter days of the Second Race, who acted as the leaven for the great improvement which came with the Third Race.

(6) The period during which each great root race of the human race flourishes on earth is sharply marked off from that of the one succeeding it by great convulsions of Nature which destroy practically all traces of the preceding civilization, and which leave but few survivors thereof. A writer has said of this point of the occult teaching: "The periods of the great root races are divided from each other by great convulsions of Nature and by great geological changes. Europe was not in existence as a continent at the time the fourth race flourished. The continent on which the fourth race lived was not in existence at the time the third race flourished, and neither of the continents which were the great vortices of the civilizations of those two races are in existence now. Seven great continental cataclysms occur during the occupation of the earth by the human life-wave for one round period. Each race is cut off in this way at its appointed time, some survivors remaining in parts of the world, not the proper home of their race; but these, invariably in such cases, exhibiting a tendency to decay, and relapsing into barbarism with more or less rapidity." The individuals of the First Race of the present (fourth) round of the human race on earth ranged from a gross type scarcely above the brutes up to a very barbarous type. These higher types reincarnated later as the higher individuals of the Second Race, the lower types of the First Race constituting the lower subdivisions of the Second Race; the rule being that the less advanced souls of any race incarnate as the lowest types of the next and higher race.

(50) It must not be forgotten that the lowest races of Man known to us today are as far removed in degree of intelligence from the highest known types of mankind as from the highest apes or man-apes. In fact, many think that evolution from the highest apes to the Kaffir, Hottentot, or Digger Indian is no more difficult than would be the evolution of those lowly types of human life up to the types of Emerson, Shakespeare, Huxley, Darwin, Edison and other high types of cultured man. Huxley has shown us that the brain structure of Man as compared with the Chimpanzee shows differences but slight as compared to the differences between that of the Chimpanzee and that of the Lemur. He also shows us that in the important feature of the deeper brain-furrows, and intricate convolutions, the chasm between the highest civilized man and the lowest savage is far greater than between the lowest savage and the highest man-ape. Darwin, in his description of the very low type of human beings found among the Fuegian savages, says: "Their very signs and expressions are less intelligible to us than those of the domesticated animal. They are men who do not possess the instinct of those animals, nor yet appear to boast of human reason, or at least of the arts consequent upon that reason." Professor Clodd, in his description of the Primitive Man says: "Doubtless he was lower than the lowest of the savages of today—a powerful, cunning biped, with keen sense organs always sharper, by virtue of constant exercise, in the savage than in the civilized man (who supplements them by science), strong instincts, uncontrolled and fitful emotions, small faculty of wonder, and nascent reasoning power; unable to forecast tomorrow, or to comprehend yesterday, living from hand to mouth on the wild products of Nature, clothed in skin and bark, or daubed with clay, and finding shelter in trees and caves; ignorant of the simplest arts, save to chip a stone missile, and perhaps to produce fire; strong in his needs of life and vague sense of right to it and to what he could get, but slowly impelled by common perils and passions to form ties, loose and haphazard at the outset, with his kind, the power of combination with them depending on sounds, signs and gestures." The consideration of that characteristic phase of Consciousness known as the Self-Consciousness of Man will be pursued further in the succeeding chapter, in which chapter will also be taken up the consideration of the two still higher Planes of Consciousness known as "The Plane of the Demi-Gods," and "The Plane of the Gods," respectively.

(18) Finally, primitive man was evolved. Then man began to improve in mind and feeling. And he is still making progress along these lines. But man (of today) is merely a high stage of the evolutionary process, and he, in turn, will be succeeded by the Super-Men of the future, and these in turn by the god-like angelic creatures, the like of whom are in existence on other and high spheres even this day.