…man, in this Round, preceded every mammalian — the anthropoids included — in the animal kingdom. (The Secret Doctrine, 1888, II, p. 1.)

…he [man] and his highest faculties cannot be proved on any conclusive evidence to be “as much products of evolution as the humblest plant or the lowest worm.” (Isis Unveiled I, 153.)

… The antediluvian ancestors of the present elephant and lizard were, perhaps, the mammoth and plesiosaurus; why should not the progenitors of our [present] human race have been the “giants” of the Vedas, the Völuspa, and the Book of Genesis? (Isis Unveiled I, 153.)

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. (S.D., I, 190.)

The claim that physical man was originally a colossal pre-tertiary giant, and that he existed 18,000,000 years ago, must of course appear preposterous to admirers of, and believers in, modern learning. (S.D., II, 9.)

… The fact that the bones of the mammoth and mastodon, and, in one case, those of a gigantic salamander, have been mistaken for human bones, does not make away with the difficulty that, of all the mammalians, man is the only one whom science will not allow to have dwarfed down, like all other animals, from the giant homo diluvii to the creature between five and six feet that he is now. (S.D., II, 352.)

And, as the very existence of those gigantic ancestors of ours is now questioned — though in the Himavats, on the very territory belonging to you, we have a cave full of the skeletons of these giants — and their huge frames when found are invariably regarded as isolated freaks of nature, so the vril or Akás — as we call it — is looked upon as an impossibility, a myth. (Letter from a Mahatma, decade of 1888.)

BETWEEN the methods of Theosophy and the methods of science two radical differences exist. Theosophy teaches that attempted acquisition of knowledge in the absence of a true ethical attitude within the investigator is self-obstructive; and it upholds a moral standard undreamed-of by science. Whereas science teaches that knowledge has nothing to do with ethics.

Theosophy further teaches that the Universe, proceeding from an indivisible primal Existence, can no more contain divisions between forms of knowledge than can the ocean separate its drops. To this science renders lip-service and diverges from it in practice.

True synthesis resides in Theosophy alone; but cannot be found there by scientists whose pride and prejudice prevents their study therein. Thus operates Karma.

Whosoever denies the existence of Soul, in his heart, unfeelingly and without proof, condemns to despair every man whose physical life has not been a success. If immortality be a truth, it dwarfs all other truths which are, or are to be, discovered. Scientists who render it an a priori denial, without proof, by this wanton and selfish negation cut themselves off from ever determining as a fact whether it be true or false.

A noted biologist recently stated that he refused to accept the possibility of a vital principle because it would cut off hope of further knowledge through the methods of science. This attitude constitutes the sole “proof” of the soul’s non-existence possessed by science — and not a word from any colleague was heard in protest against this attitude. Thus there is no scientific “proof” of the soul. Since the axiom at the base of scientific methods is its denial, is there any means whereby such methods can prove or disprove, whatever the facts may be? Nevertheless, there can be made visible, even to the most hardened, the numerous and ineluctable difficulties arising from this denial.

Laying aside claim and pretense, and looking at facts undefiled, upon what base is the animal ancestry of man constructed? In truth, its material is the law of analogy; and its mortar, acceptance of man as a soulless animal. It is, nevertheless logical throughout, provided we are blind to any psychic difference between man and animal.

If we admit such an immaterial factor — and its proofs are legion — then we have to postulate, in accordance with the processes of Nature, a law governing its evolution. Theosophy has that law, and in addition presents a history of man’s physical evolution far more in accordance with analogy, with the proven modes of natural action, than any scientific theory.

Among the contradictions of the scientific theory is this: Either there is a mind, a soul in man, distinct from any possession of the animal kingdom, or there is not. If it does not exist, then everything in man is a development of a trait latent in the animal, and human mind is a sublimated animal mind. Then, since in all geological history the animal mind has undergone only such slight change as the difference between the highest and lowest animals, how could the human mind, that of — scientifically — the youngest of the animals, have undergone such vastly greater development?

If there is a soul, a psychic difference between man and animal, whence its origin? If he has always possessed it, has it not set him apart from the whole line of animal evolution; directed for him a different destiny then as now?

Theosophy, seeing no break in natural processes, solves the whole difficulty and reconciles both views logically. In truth, the human soul is latent in the animal; in truth, it is in him separate, distinct, and independent in action, and was developed by precisely the endless process, in vast and distant periods, called for by logic and analogy. Thus Man is the heir of the ages, in his physical body antedating the mammals, in his soul antedating the solar system. On a day which will be seen by many a reader, science will be forced to recognize the meganthropos, the co-dweller with the giant animals.

Thirty odd years ago, a Mr. Hull was led to a remarkable discovery by Indians of the Grand Canyon, Arizona. Samuel Hubbard, Curator of the Oakland Museum, fell heir to this discovery, and for these three decades has found himself a martyr seething in the fires of scientific contempt and derision.

In the Autumn of 1924, Mr. Hubbard at last succeeded in obtaining backing, and even the company of an orthodox scientist, Dr. Charles W. Gilmore, of the United States National Museum. In the course of the expedition the discoveries described in this magazine in June, 1924, were photographed, casts were taken, moving pictures of the casting process secured, and the whole discovery amplified. [Note: To read what the Editors are pointing to here, and much more, when you finish this article read “The Return of the Giants”, which is the 99th article in the 103-article “Science and The Secret Doctrine” series on this web site. I have placed a link to the article at the end of this one. Copies of specific portions of four different issues of THEOSOPHY magazine’s “On the Lookout” section follow that article, on the same page — all on the subject of “Giants”; the above June, 1924 reference is one of them.–Compiler.]

The points in the discovery now made scientifically “respectable” are the actual existence of the ibex in America — which confounds present theories; (note well that the Ibex is found associated in Europe with those cave-men who were the remnants of Atlantis); carvings of mammoths, dinosaurs, and ostriches; symbols of the Wisdom-Religion; a vast number of carvings and drawings admittedly confusing and unexplainable to science; and dinosaur tracks in the same slab of rock with tracks of a feline animal of apparently modern type. This last discovery upsets the whole scientific relation of the animal periods. And, as in the “Cascadia” discovery, many of the carvings are covered with “desert varnish,” which betokens an age out of all relation to accepted theories as to human descent. [Note: “Cascadia” is the 4th article in the 8-part series that you are now reading; this one is the 6th. –Compiler.]

Dr. Gilmore acknowledges the tremendous scientific importance of these discoveries, over his own signature, in a manner which lifts Mr. Hubbard from the ranks of the charlatan to which he has so long been relegated.

Dr. Gilmore saw the sandstone tracks of giant human beings. He saw a petrified body also. But Dr. Gilmore sees in the body precisely “an isolated freak of nature.” As to the tracks, after trying to explain them as the remains of some kind of peculiar shellfish — certainly an improvement on the “ground-sloth” usually advanced in such cases — he frankly threw up his hands and left them as “unexplained.” However, they do not present quite so much difficulty to the Theosophist; and to him, likewise, there is no mystery in the appearance of dotted inscriptions of the kind described by H. P. Blavatsky as the written records of the earlier races. Some day the “rosetta stone” for these ancient runes, so widely distributed over the world, will be found. And then will be seen a true Ragnarok of the gods of science.

The times move, even though to impatient enthusiasm for truth their pace seems dream-like; and the day is not far off when, as H. P. Blavatsky predicted, Darwinism will form but a modified part of the true and all-inclusive view, which sees spiritual power and spiritual intelligence as the dominating factors behind every manifestation.

What will be the effect of such a change, whenever it may come? Visualize a state of things wherein men will know themselves to be timeless and ageless, will know that physical being is worthless except insofar as it serves the far-off aims of Soul; wherein they will know that, as the body lives by food, the Soul lives by the practice of the virtues, by altruism on the highest plane — the altruism which reckons metes of no limits, and bears in its action no taint of self-centering.

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