When the Western historian has finally and Unanswerably proven who were the Pelasgi, at least, and who the Etruscans, and the as mysterious Iapygians, who seem also to have had an earlier acquaintance with writing—­as proved by their inscriptions—­than the Phoenicians, then only may he menace the Asiatic into acceptance of his own arbitrary data and dogmas.  Then also may he tauntingly ask “how it is that no appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in the Past?”

“Is it supposed that the present European civilization with its offshoots .... can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration?” More easily than was many another civilization.  Europe has neither the titanic and Cyclopean masonry of the ancients, nor even its parchments, to preserve the records of its “existing arts and languages.”  Its civilization is too recent, too rapidly growing, to leave any positively indestructible relics of either its architecture, arts or sciences.  What is there in the whole Europe that could be regarded as even approximately indestructible, without mentioning the debacle of the geological upheaval that follows generally such cataclysms?  Is it its ephemeral Crystal Palaces, its theatres, railways, modern fragile furniture:  or its electric telegraphs, phonographs, telephones, and micrographs?  While each of the former is at the mercy of fire and cyclone, the last enumerated marvels of modern science can be destroyed by a child breaking them to atoms.  When we know of the destruction of the “Seven World’s Wonders,” of Thebes, Tyre, the Labyrinth, and the Egyptian pyramids and temples and giant palaces, as we now see slowly crumbling into the dust of the deserts, being reduced to atoms by the hand of Time—­lighter and far more merciful than any cataclysm—­the question seems to us rather the outcome of modern pride than of stern reasoning.  Is it your daily newspapers and periodicals, rags of a few days; your fragile books bearing the records of all your grand civilization, withal liable to become annihilated after a few meals are made on them by the white ants, that are regarded as invulnerable?  And why should European civilization escape the common lot?  It is from the lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers; and these know nothing of the arts, sciences, or languages except their own, and those very imperfectly.  The arts and sciences are like the phoenix of old:  they die but to revive.  And when the question found on page 58 of “Esoteric Buddhism” concerning “the curious rush of human progress within the last two thousand years,” was first propounded, Mr. Sinnett’s correspondent might have made his answer more complete by saying:  “This rush, this progress, and the abnormal rapidity with which one discovery follows the other, ought to be a sign to human intuition that what you look upon in the light of ‘discoveries’