ve seen, were under no karmic impulse. They came as
men to live and work among them, but they were not required to assume
their physical limitations, being in a position to provide appropriate
vehicles for themselves.

The Lhas on the other hand had actually to be born in the bodies of
the race as it then existed. Better would it have been both for them
and for the race if there had been no hesitation or delay on their
part in taking up their Karmic task, for the sin of the mindless and
all its consequences would have been avoided. Their task, too, would
have been an easier one, for it consisted not only in acting as guides
and teachers, but in improving the racial type--in short, in evolving
out of the half-human, half-animal form then existing, the physical
body of the man to be.

It must be remembered that up to this time the Lemurian race consisted
of the second and third groups of the Lunar Pitris. But now that they
were approaching the level reached on the Lunar chain by the first
group of Pitris, it became necessary for these again to return to
incarnation, and this they did all through the fifth, sixth and
seventh sub-races (indeed, some did not take birth till the Atlantean
period), so that the impetus given to the progress of the race was a
cumulative force.

The positions occupied by the divine beings from the Venus chain were
naturally those of rulers, instructors in religion, and teachers of
the arts, and it is in this latter capacity that a reference to the
arts taught by them comes to our aid in the consideration of the
history of this early race.

[Sidenote: The Arts continued.]

Under the guidance of their divine teachers the people began to learn
the use of fire, and the means by which it could be obtained, at first
by friction, and later on by the use of flints and iron. They were
taught to explore for metals, to smelt and to mould them, and instead
of spears of sharpened wood they now began to use spears tipped with
sharpened metal.

They were also taught to dig and till the ground and to cultivate the
seeds of wild grain till it improved in type. This cultivation carried
on through the vast ages which have since elapsed has resulted in the
evolution of the various cereals which we now possess--barley, oats,
maize, millet, etc. But an exception must here be noted. Wheat was not
evolved upon this planet like the other cereals. It was a gift of the
divine beings who brought it from Venus ready