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, whose remains are found in the caves or strata that have been examined.  Of these the first has entirely disappeared:  no representatives of it are now to be found in any known part of the world.  The second was driven, apparently, from the north, by the invasions of the ice, during the glacial period and spread as far, at least, as the Straits of Gibraltar.  With the disappearance of the ice, they also traveled toward the pole, and are now existing in the northern regions of the earth, under the name of Esquimaux.  Following them came a race, the fragments of which were powerful within historic days in the Iberian peninsula,—­the Iberians of the Roman writers—­the Basques of to-day.  Then came from the east the Aryan race, hitherto the highest form of humanity.  These races do not, of course, begin existence as new creations.  They are developed from—­their first members must be born from—­the preceding race.  Query:  Is a fifth race now in the throes of nativity?  Have the different sub-races of the Aryan branch sent their contingents to the New World, that from the mixture of their boldest and most vigorous blood the fifth sub-race might have its origin?  “Westward the star of empire takes its way.”

Buddhism gives a peculiar explanation of the disappearance of inferior races.  Since the object of the incarnation of the human soul is its progress toward the perfect and divine man; since every human soul must dwell on earth as a member of each one of the sub-races, the time must come when all shall have passed through a given stage.  Then there can be no more births into that race.  There is, at this moment, a finite number of human souls whose existence is limited to this planet, and no other planet in our chain is at present the abode of humanity.  For the larger part of all these souls—­at least nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand—­are, at anyone instant, existing in “the world of effects,” in Devachan.  All will remain linked by their destiny to this planet, until the moment when all—­a few rare, unfortunate, negligent laggards excepted—­shall have passed through their last mortal probation, in the seventh root-race.  Then will the tide of