Yet Plato must have known, as would any other initiated Adept, about the history of the Third Race after its “Fall,” though as one pledged to silence and secrecy he never showed his knowledge in so many words. Nevertheless, it may become easier now, after acquainting oneself with even the approximate chronology of the Eastern nations—all of which was based upon, and followed the early Âryan calculations—to realize the immense periods of time that must have elapsed since the separation of the sexes, without mentioning the First or even the Second Root‐Races. As these must remain beyond the comprehension of minds trained in Western thought, it is found useless to speak in detail of the First and Second, and even of the Third Race in its earliest stage.(599) It is only when the latter has reached its full human period that a beginning can be made, without the uninitiated reader finding himself hopelessly bewildered. The Third Race _fell_—and created no longer; it _begat_ its progeny. Being still mindless at the period of separation, it begat, moreover, anomalous offspring, until its physiological nature had adjusted its instincts in the right direction. Like the “Lords Gods” of the _Bible_, the “Sons of Wisdom,” the Dhyân Chohans, had warned it to leave alone the fruit forbidden by Nature; but the warning proved of no value. Men realized the unfitness—we must not say sin—of what they had done, only when too late; after the Angelic Monads from higher Spheres had incarnated in, and endowed them with understanding. To that day they had remained simply physical, like the animals generated from them. For what is the distinction? The Doctrine teaches that the only difference between animate and inanimate objects on Earth, between an animal and a human frame, is that in some the various “Fires” are latent, and in others they are active. The _Vital_ Fires are in all things and not an atom is devoid of them. But no animal has the three higher “principles” awakened in him; they are simply potential, latent, and thus _non‐existing_. And so would the animal frames of men be to this day, had they been left as they came out from the bodies of their Progenitors, whose Shadows they were, to grow, unfolded only by the powers and forces immanent in Matter. But as said in _Pymander_: This is a Mystery that to this day was sealed and hidden. Nature(600) being mingled with Man(601) brought forth a wondrous miracle; the harmonious commingling of the _essence of the Seven_ [Pitris, or Governors] and her own; the _Fire_ and the _Spirit_ and _Nature_ [the Noumenon of Matter]; which [commingling] forthwith brought forth seven men of opposite sexes [negative and positive] according to the essences of the Seven Governors.(602)