ho 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, wh