The skull no longer surmounted that last nudity of man which instinct bids us conceal in the Earth. It was coated with a deposit of gravel and sand, that told of its lying in a river bed while mountains were worn to plains, and the decomposed quartz and loose gravel were plowed up by glacial erosion, and scattered over the hillsides. The skull was broken in its strongest part, an evidence of the force with which some torrent had dashed it against bowlders in the lapsing centuries. Some time during its wanderings in the river beds, or while resting on the banks, a snail had crawled under the malar bone and died. Its shell was found there, and no such species of snail has been known since the volcanoes ceased pouring lava over California. The skull[33] and the snail-shell have been the cause of great discussion among the scientists of our epoch: Its age is too great to agree with the preconceived idea of man’s existence. Footnote 14: Initiates were always considered hermaphrodites, but not in a sex sense. The name itself implies this, being a compound of Hermes (wisdom) and Aphrodite (love). When sex takes precedence over humanity it is hard to explain a divine mystery, because organs are mistaken attributes, and the whole world is sex mad. Nevertheless, activity and repose, positive and negative, equilibrium and discord, cause and effect, involution and evolution, differentiation and polarization of atoms, and the laws governing them are united in the one word—SEX. Footnote 15: Lares and penates—household gods. Footnote 16: H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine. Footnote 17: It is a mistake to suppose that the personality originates thought. The sphere called mind reflects thought, as the earth reflects the light of the sun. It is quite as mis-leading to assert that the spirit leaves the body at death as it would be to assume that the sun is actually in the earth, because this planet lives by its rays. The spirit never is in the body—therefore it has neither birth nor death. It contacts and vivifies the body in the same manner as does the sun and the earth. The photosphere of the earth, and the aura of man are universal exemplifications of the mysterious Bridge of Kinevat. Footnote 18: Sixteen hundred (Egyptian) feet long by five hundred feet wide. Footnote 19: Profane and blasphemous words were unknown to the native races in the Americas. These people believed that speech was given man to enable him to praise his Maker. To this day the Indian is chary of words—and in all the relations of life his language is circumspect, and dignified. He only speaks when it is necessary, and rightly has profound contempt for the human who talks too much. Footnote 20: The Breath of Life. Footnote 21: Co-ownership of property necessitated the institution of civil marriage, in order to define inheritance. Footnote 22: Egyptian Book of the Dead.