I have extracted what seem to me the most important quotes from The Secret Doctrine of H P Blavatsky, in the hope that these will give a clear picture of the Theosophical picture of the creation and evolution of man. This is strikingly different to the scientific picture.

What Science States.

To start, I will summarise the geological ages mentioned (with modern dating; mya = million years ago)

This summarises very briefly the scientific view. The main cornerstone of the scientific view is evolution, and central to that is Darwinism – one element of that is the belief that there is a “missing link”, that mankind and the apes have a common ancestor, and that over time, both man and apes have evolved from the same parent.

Theosophy disagrees entirely with this.

What Theosophy States regarding the origins of man are:-

Owing to the very type of his development man cannot descend from either an ape or an ancestor common to both, but shows his origin from a type far superior to himself. And this type is the “Heavenly man” . . . . . . .On the other hand, the pithecoids, the orang-outang, the gorilla, and the chimpanzee . . . . . descend from the animalized Fourth human Root-Race, being the product of man and an extinct species of mammal—whose remote ancestors were themselves the product of Lemurian bestiality—which lived in the Miocene age. The ancestry of this semi-human monster is explained in the Stanzas as originating in the sin of the “Mind-less” races of the middle Third Race period.

When it is borne in mind that all forms which now people the earth, are so many variations on basic types originally thrown off by the MAN of the Third and Fourth Round, such an evolutionist argument as that insisting on the “unity of structural plan” characterising all vertebrates, loses its edge. The basic types referred to were very few in number in comparison with the multitude of organisms to which they ultimately gave rise; but a general unity of type has, nevertheless, been preserved throughout the ages. The economy of Nature does not sanction the co-existence of several utterly opposed “ground plans” of organic evolution on one planet.

The fact is that . . . . the human type is the repertory of all potential organic forms, and the central point from which these latter radiate. In this postulate we find a true “Evolution” or “unfolding”—a sense which cannot be said to belong to the mechanical theory of natural selection ….. (all quotes, Secret Doctrine, p 683)

This needs quite a lot of explanation for anyone who is unfamiliar with the material:

• There may be many other theosophical books, but The Secret Doctrine should be treated as the primary source for all theosophical studies
• in the third round (a previous earth) man ‘threw off’ the forms which now constitute all the reptile species
• in the earlier parts of this, the fourth round (this earth now) man threw off the patterns that now constitute the animal kingdoms, and the monkeys and apes
• the fourth human Root-Race was the Atlantean – we are the fifth (Arian) root race. There is also a complex picture of seven sub races or each root race
• The third Root-Race was the Lemurian, and there were two previous races, of which little is known
• The Miocene was 23 to 5 mya

The Secret Doctrine (SD) then continues:-

• . . . . read for “into which Man degenerated,” “the prototypes which man shed in the course of his astral developments,” and an aspect of the true esoteric solution is before us.
• So far as our present Fourth Round terrestrial period is concerned, the mammalian fauna are alone to be regarded as traceable to prototypes shed by Man.
• The amphibia, birds, reptiles, fishes, etc., are the resultants of the Third Round, astral fossil forms stored up in the auric envelope of the Earth and projected into physical objectivity subsequent to the deposition of the first Laurentian rocks. (2500mya)
• “Evolution” has to deal with the progressive modifications, which palæontology shows to have affected the lower animal and vegetable kingdoms in the course of geological time. It does not, and from the nature of things cannot, touch on the subject of the pre-physical types which served as the basis for future differentiation.
• The mammalia, whose first traces are discovered in the marsupials of the Triassic rocks of the Secondary Period, were evolved from purely astral progenitors contemporary with the Second Race.
• They are thus post-Human, and, consequently, it is easy to account for the general resemblance between their embryonic stages and those of Man, who necessarily embraces in himself and epitomizes in his development the features of the group he originated. (all above quotes, SD p.684)
• . . . . . in this connection the esoteric teaching which tells us of Man having had in the Third Round a GIGANTIC APE - LIKE FORM on the astral plane. And similarly at the close of the Third Race in this Round. Thus it accounts for the human features of the apes, especially of the later anthropoids—apart from the fact that these latter preserve by Heredity a resemblance to their Atlanto-Lemurian sires. (SD p.688)

Comments: It is difficult to accept the Theosophical Theory – because the Lemurians and Atlanteans lived in continents in the southern oceans (Pangaea and Gondwanaland ?), which are now submerged and which do not overlap any of the currently existing continents, then there are few if any fossils or remains which can be ascribed to them – they do not seem to have left a trace, except in some folk tales – floods and giants in the bible, for instance. There is insufficient evidence.

However, science has not found a missing link to prove evolution of man from the apes, so both theories have to be recorded as “unproven” at the moment

The Differences between Men and Apes

The Secret Doctrine (SD) also points out the following major ideas and differences

• Physical man, we say, existed before the first bed of the Cretaceous rocks was deposited. In the early part of the Tertiary Age, the most brilliant civilization the world has ever known flourished at a period when the Hæckelian man-ape is conceived to have roamed through the primeval forests, and Mr. Grant Allen’s putative ancestor to have swung himself from bough to bough with his hairy mates, the degenerated Liliths of the Third Race Adam. Yet there were no anthropoid apes in the brighter days of the civilization of the Fourth Race; but Karma is a mysterious law, and no respecter of persons. The monsters bred in sin and shame by the Atlantean giants, “blurred copies” of their bestial sires, and hence of modern man (SD p.670)
• . . . . . . . the size of the human skull and its brain, as well as the cavities, increase with the individual development of man. His intellect develops and increases with age, while his facial bones and jaws diminish and straighten, thus being more and more spiritualized: whereas with the ape it is the reverse. In its youth the anthropoid is far more intelligent and good-natured, while with age it becomes duller; and, as its skull recedes and seems to diminish as it grows, its facial bones and jaws develop, the brain being finally crushed, and thrown entirely back, to make with every day more room for the animal type. The organ of thought—the brain—recedes and diminishes, entirely conquered and replaced by that of the wild beast—the jaw apparatus. (SD p.682)
• Elsewhere, though I cannot find the quote, I have read that if you interbred congenital idiots for several generations, you would get simian or ape-like offspring, but you could selectively breed the apes for centuries or millennia, but you would never get a man.

Other evidence.

• flints of undeniably human making were excavated from Miocene strata. (byl’abbé Bourgeois) (SD p.675)
• When one finds that not only was the “primeval savage” (?) a reality in the Miocene times, but that, as de Mortillet shows, the flint relics he has left behind him were splintered by fire in that remote epoch; (SD p.678)
• The difficulty is this: the difference in structure between the lowest existing race of man and the highest existing ape is too great to admit of the possibility of one being the direct descendant of the other. (SD p.677)
• Still he is essentially a man, and separated by a wide gulf from the chimpanzee or the gorilla.Even the idiot or cretin, whose brain is no larger and intelligence no greater than that of the chimpanzee, is an arrested man, not an ape (SD p.678)
• …. . . . . . Lemuria, which was the cradle of mankind—of the physical sexual creature who materialized through long æons out of the ethereal hermaphrodites. (SD p.680)

More about man and the apes:-

• If the Darwinian theory is not the true one—we are told—if man and ape do not descend from a common ancestor, then we are called upon to explain the reason of:—
  (I.) The similarity of structure between the two; the fact that the higher animal world—man and beast—is physically of one type or pattern.
  (II.) The presence of rudimentary organs in man,i.e., traces of former organs now atrophied by disuse. Some of these organs, it is asserted, could not have had any scope for employment, except for a semi-animal, semi-arboreal monster. Why, again, do we find in Man those “rudimentary” organs (as useless as its rudimentary wing is to the Apteryx of Australia), the vermiform appendix of the cœcum, the ear muscles,* the “rudimentary tail” (with which children are still sometimes born), etc., etc.? (SD p.680-1)
• “Now man and ape present a very striking contrast in respect to type. Their organs... correspond almost exactly term for term: but these are arranged after a very different plan. In man they are so arranged that he is essentially a walker, while in apes they necessitate his being a climber.... There is here an anatomical and mechanical distinction.... A glance at the page where Huxley has figured side by side a human skeleton and the skeletons of the most highly developed apes is a sufficiently convincing proof.” (SD p.666-7)
• The Dryopithecus, for instance, is found more perfect anatomically, more fit for a greater development of brain power, than the modern gorilla or gibbon? How is this, then? Are we to believe that the constitution of all those colossal land and sea-dragons, of the gigantic flying reptiles, was not far more developed and complex than the anatomy of the lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and even of the whales—in short, all those animals we are acquainted with? (SD p.733)
• It is just as possible that future should have in store for us the discovery of the giant skeleton of an Atlantean, 30 ft. high, as the fossil of a pithecoid “missing link”: only the former is more probable. (SD p.674)

Other Aspects of Evolution

A theory of evolution must cover ALL OF :-

1. evolution of skeleton and organs
2. evolution of methods of sexual reproduction
3. evolution of language
4. evolution of brain and mind
5. the development of the human foetus
6. the problem of gigantism

For these issues, the relevant passages from the Secret Doctrine are:-

1. has already been covered extensively above
   
2. Is it …. an Evolution which starts from the beginning with sexual propagation? Or …. which shows the gradual development of organs; their solidification, and the procreation of each species,
   - at first by simple easy separation from one into two or even several individuals
   - then follows a fresh development—the first step to a species of separate distinct sexes—the hermaphrodite condition;
   - then again, a kind of Parthenogenesis, “virginal reproduction,” when the egg-cells are formed within the body, issuing from it in atomic emanations and becoming matured outside of it;
   - until, finally, after a definite separation into sexes, the human beings begin procreating through sexual connection? (SD p.657)
   
3. Languages have their phases of growth, etc., like all else in nature. It is almost certain that the great linguistic families pass through three stages.
   ( 1 ) All words are roots and merely placed in juxtaposition (Radical languages).
   ( 2 ) One root defines the other, and becomes merely a determinative element (Agglutinative).
   ( 3 ) The determinative element (the determinating meaning of which has longed lapsed) unites into a whole with the formative element (Inflected).
   The problem then is: Whence these ROOTS ? Max Müller argues that the existence of these ready-made materials of speech is a proof that man cannot be the crown of a long organic series. This potentiality of forming roots is the great crux which materialists almost invariably avoid. (SD p.662)
   
4. …… and Tyndall. The latter expresses the opinion of all the great men of science, as of the greatest thinkers of this and the past ages, in saying that “the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of Consciousnessis unthinkable. Were our minds and senses so ... illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings ... electric discharges ... we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem ...The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable.” But the complex function of the nerve-cells of the great German EMPIRIC , or, in other words, his Consciousness, will not permit him to follow the conclusions of the greatest thinkers of our globe.He is greater than they. He asserts this, and protests against all. (SD p.673)
   
5. This shows to us that every living creature and thing on earth, including man, evolved from one common primal form. Physical man must have passed through the same stages of the evolutionary process in the various modes of procreation as other animals have: he must have divided himself; then, hermaphrodite, have given birth parthenogenetically (on the immaculate principle) to his young ones; the next stage would be the oviparous—at first “without any fructifying element,” then “with the help of the fertilitary spore”; and only after the final and definite evolution of both sexes, would he become a distinct “male and female,” when reproduction through sexual union would grow into universal law. So far, all this is scientifically proven. There remains but one thing to be ascertained: the plain and comprehensively described processes of such ante-sexual reproduction. This is done in the Occult books, a slight outline of which was attempted by the writer in Part I. of this Volume. (SD p.659-60)
   
6. How is it that, on the dictum of authoritative science, one can trace the animal life from the mollusc up to the great Sea Dragon, from the smallest land-worm up again to the gigantic animals of the Tertiary Period; and that the latter were once crossed is shown by the fact of all those species decreasing, dwindling down and being dwarfed. If the seeming process of development working from the less to the more perfect, and from the simpler to the more complex, were a universal law indeed, instead of being a very imperfect generalization of a mere secondary nature in the great Cosmic process, and if there were no such cycles as those claimed, then the Mesozoic fauna and flora ought to change places with the latest Neolithic. It is the Plesiosauri and the Ichthyosauri that we ought to find developing from the present sea and river reptiles, instead of giving place to their dwarfed modern analogies. (SD p.732-3)

Modern science struggles to solve all of these problems individually, and the prospect of it answering them all at once seems slight.

The Theosophical System

Theosophy has a coherent system, which, once one accepts the theosophical structure of the world (physical, etheric, astral, mental, buddhic, etc.) can be derived from reason (to some extent). However, the system has largely been laid out before the discovery of DNA, and it is difficult to incorporate this discovery into the system.

However, the theosophical system also requires (or involves) many ranks of other beings and systems which have led up to and maintain our present reality. This is off-putting for many, but the simple theist position is clearly untenable (that God created the world more-or-less-exactly as we see it now)

A useful ‘spiritual archetype’ system is to see man as composed of (say) 100 words. The remainder of the earth beings are derived from these 100 words – the great apes have 95 of the words, the elephant 80, the mouse 70, a bee 40, the rose 25, a mineral 10, each according to their nature. These 100 words describe the physical and essential nature of man, but his task is now to acquire another 100 words through the evolution of consciousness. This system does not require complex structures of creation or external hierarchies for a person to proceed …..

However, the question remains of how man got these initial 100 words - here are some more passages with details of the theosophical system of evolution

• Limiting the teaching strictly to this, our earth, it may be shown that, as the ethereal forms of the first Men are first projected on seven zones by seven Dhyan-Chohanic centresof Force, so there are centres of creative power for every ROOT or parent species of the host of forms of vegetable and animal life. This is, again, no “special creation,” nor is there any “Design,” except in the general “ground-plan” worked out by the universal law. But there are certainly “designers,” though these are neither omnipotent nor omniscient in the absolute sense of the term. They are simply Builders, or Masons, working under the impulse given them by the ever-to-be-unknown (on our plane) Master Mason—the O NE L IFE and Law. Belonging to this sphere, they have no hand in, or possibility of working on any other, during the present Manvantara, at any rate. That they work in cycles and on a strictly geometrical and mathematical scale of progression, is what the extinct animal species amply demonstrate; that they act by design in the details of minor lives (of side animal issues, etc.) is what natural history has sufficient evidence for. In the creation of new species, departing sometimes very widely from the Parent stock, as in the great variety of the genus Felis—like the lynx, the tiger, the cat, etc.—it is the “designers” who direct the new evolution by adding to, or depriving the species of certain appendages, either needed or becoming useless in the new environments. Thus, when we say that Nature provides for every animal and plant, whether large or small, we speak correctly. For, it is those terrestrial spirits of Nature, who form the aggregated Nature; which, if it fails occasionally in its design, is neither to be considered blind, nor to be taxed with the failure; since, belonging to a differentiated sum of qualities and attributes, it is in virtue of that alone conditioned and imperfect. (SD p.732)
• But even in this domain the sub-conscious workings of the Dhyan-Chohanic wisdom are at the root of all the “ceaseless striving towards perfection,” though its influence is vastly modified by those purely material causes which de Quatrefages terms the “milieux” and Spencer the “Environment.” The “midway point of evolution” is that stage where the astral prototypes definitely begin to pass into the physical, and thus become subject to the differentiating agencies now operative around us Physical causation supervenes immediately on the assumption of “coats of skin”—i.e., the physiological equipment in general. The forms of Men and mammalia previous to the separation of sexes* are woven out of astral matter, and possess a structure utterly unlike that of the physical organisms, which eat, drink, digest, etc., etc., etc. The known physiological contrivances in organisms were almost entirely evolved subsequently to the incipient physicalization of the 7 Root-Types out of the astral—during the “midway halt” between the two planes of existence. (SD p.736)
• The line of demarcation between ethero-spiritual, astral and physical evolution must be drawn. …… At present the admitted chasm between the systems of reproduction of the oviparous vertebrates and mammalia, constitutes a hopeless crux to those thinkers who, with the Evolutionists, seek to link all existing organic forms in a continuous line of descent. (SD p.735)
• …….. represents the domain of the purely astral prototypes previous to their descent into (gross) matter. Astral matter, it must be noted, is fourth state matter, having, like our gross matter, its own “protyle.” There are several “protyles” in Nature, corresponding to the various planes of matter. The two sub-physical elemental kingdoms, the plane of mind (manas, the fifth state matter), as also that of Buddhi (sixth state matter), are each and all evolved from one of the six “protyles” which constitute the basis of the Object-Universe. (SD p.737)
• But it claims that in this cycle (the fourth), the frame having already existed among the types and models of nature from the preceding Rounds—that it was quite ready for man from the beginning of thisRound.* The Monad had but to step into the astral body of the progenitors, in order that the work of physical consolidation should begin around the shadowy prototype.† (SD p.660)
• The latter (Occultism) teaches that—(a) the life-atoms of our (Prâna) life-principle are never entirely lost when a man dies. That the atoms best impregnated with the life-principle (an independent, eternal, conscious factor) are partially transmitted from father to son by heredity, and partially are drawn once more together and become the animating principle of the new body in every new incarnation of the Monads. (SD p.671-2)
• As to the former reality of the descent into the physical, which culminated in physiological man and animal, we have a palpable testimony in the fact of the so-called spiritualistic “materializations.” In all these instances a complete temporary mergence of the astral into the physical takes place. (SD p.737)
• * Theosophists will remember that, according to Occult teaching, Cyclic pralayas so-called are but obscurations, during which periods Nature,i.e., everything visible and invisible on a resting planet—remains in statu quo. Nature rests and slumbers, no work of destruction going on on the globe even if no active work is done. All forms, as well as their astral types, remain as they were at the last moment of its activity. The “night” of a planet has hardly any twilight preceding it. It is caught like a huge mammoth by an avalanche, and remains slumbering and frozen till the next dawn of its new day—-a very short one indeed in comparison to the “Day of Brahmâ.” (SD footnote p.660)

It is fair to say that many pages of The Secret Doctrine have not stood the test of time. The discovery of DNA is not anticipated, and the controversies of the 1880’s are irrelevant to the modern reader. The style of writing is not helpful - one has to ‘dig out’ the relevant bits. The excavation process hardly seems worth it sometimes.

Throughout these passages, the SD insists on the existence of 30ft tall human beings in the Atlantean (Miocene) times. No conclusive evidence of this has yet been found. Your author confesses that he feels little sense of kinship with these beings, perhaps because it is very hard to imagine anything except our present humans – Theosophy might describe this as a “ring-pass-not” imposed on our thoughts.

Both Theosophy and Science must remain NON-PROVEN for now.

Most authors on Theosophy try to explain – I have taken an alternative approach: to extract what appear to be the most important passages from the SD, and then to try and piece them together like a jigsaw, with a minimum of my own interpretation. The resulting picture has its positive elements, and there are also gaps and faults. I apologise if the fault is with me - my selection and arrangement of the passages may be faulty, and my interpretations may be misleading – I would be grateful for any references to passages I have missed, and any other corrections.

The Theosophical Society 2006