And if this is found clashing with the statement which shows the animal later than man, then the reader is asked to bear in mind that the _placental mammal_ only is meant. In those days, there were animals of which Zoölogy does not even dream in our own; _and the modes of reproduction were not identical_ with the notions which modern Physiology has upon the subject. It is not altogether convenient to touch upon such questions in public, but there is _no_ contradiction or impossibility in this whatever. Thus the earlier teachings, however unsatisfactory, vague and fragmentary, did not teach the evolution of “man” from the “ape.” Nor does the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_ assert it anywhere in his work in so many words; but, owing to his inclination towards Modern Science, he uses language which might perhaps justify such an inference. The man who preceded the Fourth, the Atlantean, Race, however much he may have looked physically like a “gigantic ape”—“the counterfeit of man who hath not the life of a man”—was still a thinking and already a speaking man. The Lemuro‐Atlantean was a highly civilized Race, and if one accepts tradition, which is better history than the speculative fiction which now passes under that name, he was higher than we are with all our sciences and the degraded civilization of the day: at any rate, the Lemuro‐Atlantean of the closing Third Race was so. And now we may return to the Stanzas. Stanza VI.—_Continued_. 5. AT THE FOURTH(297) (_a_), THE SONS ARE TOLD TO CREATE THEIR IMAGES. ONE THIRD REFUSES. TWO(298) OBEY. THE CURSE IS PRONOUNCED (_b_); THEY WILL BE BORN IN THE FOURTH,(299) SUFFER AND CAUSE SUFFERING. THIS IS THE FIRST WAR (_c_). The full meaning of this Shloka can only be fully comprehended after reading the additional detailed explanations, in the Anthropogenesis and its Commentaries, in Volume II. Between this Shloka and Shloka 4, extend long ages; and there now gleams the dawn and sunrise of another æon. The drama enacted on our planet is at the beginning of its fourth act; but for a clearer comprehension of the whole play the reader will have to turn back before he can proceed onward. For this verse belongs to the general Cosmogony given in the archaic volumes, whereas Volume II will give a detailed account of the “creation,” or rather formation, of the first human beings, followed by the second humanity, and then by the third; or, as they are called, the First, Second, and the Third Root‐Races. As the solid Earth began by being a ball of liquid fire, of fiery dust and its protoplasmic phantom, so did man.