Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in the _Phædrus_, of a “winged” race of men. Aristophanes, in Plato’s _Banquet_, speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. In _Pymander_, all the animal kingdom even is double‐sexed. Thus it is said: The circuit having been accomplished, _the knot was loosened_ ... and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, were _untied_ [separated] _together with man_ ... [for] ... the causes had to produce effects on earth.(219) Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, the _Popol Vuh_—published by the late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg—the first men are described as a race “whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once”; thus showing the _divine knowledge of Gods_, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, correcting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts as they are recorded in the archaic symbols. (_b_) These “Shadows” were born “each of his own colour and kind,” each also “inferior to his Father,” or Creator, because the latter was a complete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. In _Pymander_, the Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the “Heavenly Man,” all partake of the qualities of the Seven “Governors,” or Rulers, who loved Man—their own reflection and synthesis. In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods, as also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and personifications woven into the popular “myths,” as in our Secret Doctrine; and we find them in the _Vedas_, the _Purânas_, the Mazdean Scriptures and the _Kabalah_. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the “Pillars of the World,” its “Supports,” are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, the seven “Workmen” or Rectors of _Pymander_, the seven Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldæan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of the slain giant Ymir; but they do not create MAN, but only his form from the Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes him with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses.(220) The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash‐tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root‐Race, and the Tzité tree of the _Popol Vuh_, out of which the Mexican _third_ race of men was created, are all one. This may be plainly seen by any reader. But the Occult reason why the Norse Yggdrasil, the Hindû Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and