xvii. The Life of Earth

During a certain period, this was in fact the case. The immediate consequence of the splitting-off of the sun was the arising of the third principal condition of the ancestors of man, which in theosophical literature is designated as the third principle race, the Lemurian. Again, the designation “race” for this condition of development is not an especially fortunate one. For in a real sense, the human ancestors of that time cannot be compared with what today one designates as “race.” One must be completely clear about the fact that the evolutionary forms of the distant past as well as of the future are so entirely different from those of today that our present appellations can only serve as makeshifts, and really lose all meaning in relation to these remote epochs.