China

79:8.16And so the an­cient civ­i­liza­tion of the yel­low race has per­sisted down through the cen­turies. It is al­most forty thou­sand years since the first im­por­tant ad­vances were made in Chi­nese cul­ture, and though there have been many ret­ro­gres­sions, the civ­i­liza­tion of the sons of Han comes the near­est of all to pre­sent­ing an un­bro­ken pic­ture of con­tin­ual pro­gres­sion right on down to the times of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. The me­chan­i­cal and re­li­gious de­vel­op­ments of the white races have been of a high or­der, but they have never ex­celled the Chi­nese in fam­ily loy­alty, group ethics, or per­sonal moral­ity.

79:2.4About 15,000 B.C. in­creas­ing pop­u­la­tion pres­sure through­out Tur­kes­tan and Iran oc­ca­sioned the first re­ally ex­ten­sive And­ite move­ment to­ward In­dia. For over fif­teen cen­turies these su­pe­rior peo­ples poured in through the high­lands of Baluchis­tan, spread­ing out over the val­leys of the In­dus and Ganges and slowly mov­ing south­ward into the Dec­can. This And­ite pres­sure from the north­west drove many of the south­ern and east­ern in­fe­ri­ors into Burma and south­ern China but not suf­fi­ciently to save the in­vaders from racial oblit­er­a­tion.

78:5.5The And­ites not only mi­grated to Eu­rope but to north­ern China and In­dia, while many groups pen­e­trated to the ends of the earth as mis­sion­ar­ies, teach­ers, and traders. They con­tributed con­sid­er­ably to the north­ern groups of the Sa­ha­ran San­gik peo­ples. But only a few teach­ers and traders ever pen­e­trated far­ther south in Africa than the head­wa­ters of the Nile. Later on, mixed And­ites and Egyp­tians fol­lowed down both the east and west coasts of Africa well be­low the equa­tor, but they did not reach Mada­gas­car.

78:5.6These And­ites were the so-called Dra­vid­ian and later Aryan con­querors of In­dia; and their pres­ence in cen­tral Asia greatly up­stepped the an­ces­tors of the Tu­ra­ni­ans. Many of this race jour­neyed to China by way of both Sinkiang and Ti­bet and added de­sir­able qual­i­ties to the later Chi­nese stocks. From time to time small groups made their way into Japan, For­mosa, the East In­dies, and south­ern China, though very few en­tered south­ern China by the coastal route.

79:1.1For over twenty-five thou­sand years, on down to nearly 2000 B.C., the heart of Eura­sia was pre­dom­i­nantly, though di­min­ish­ingly, And­ite. In the low­lands of Tur­kes­tan the And­ites made the west­ward turn­ing around the in­land lakes into Eu­rope, while from the high­lands of this re­gion they in­fil­trated east­ward. East­ern Tur­kes­tan (Sinkiang) and, to a lesser ex­tent, Ti­bet were the an­cient gate­ways through which these peo­ples of Mes­o­po­ta­mia pen­e­trated the moun­tains to the north­ern lands of the yel­low men. The And­ite in­fil­tra­tion of In­dia pro­ceeded from the Tur­kes­tan high­lands into the Pun­jab and from the Ira­nian graz­ing lands through Baluchis­tan. These ear­lier mi­gra­tions were in no sense con­quests; they were, rather, the con­tin­ual drift­ing of the And­ite tribes into west­ern In­dia and China.

79:6.5Twenty thou­sand years ago the an­ces­tors of the Chi­nese had built up a dozen strong cen­ters of prim­i­tive cul­ture and learn­ing, es­pe­cially along the Yel­low River and the Yangtze. And now these cen­ters be­gan to be re­in­forced by the ar­rival of a steady stream of su­pe­rior blended peo­ples from Sinkiang and Ti­bet. The mi­gra­tion from Ti­bet to the Yangtze val­ley was not so ex­ten­sive as in the north, nei­ther were the Ti­betan cen­ters so ad­vanced as those of the Tarim basin. But both move­ments car­ried a cer­tain amount of And­ite blood east­ward to the river set­tle­ments.

79:7.1About fif­teen thou­sand years ago the And­ites, in con­sid­er­able num­bers, were travers­ing the pass of Ti Tao and spread­ing out over the up­per val­ley of the Yel­low River among the Chi­nese set­tle­ments of Kansu. Pres­ently they pen­e­trated east­ward to Ho­nan, where the most pro­gres­sive set­tle­ments were sit­u­ated. This in­fil­tra­tion from the west was about half An­don­ite and half And­ite.

79:7.2The north­ern cen­ters of cul­ture along the Yel­low River had al­ways been more pro­gres­sive than the south­ern set­tle­ments on the Yangtze. Within a few thou­sand years af­ter the ar­rival of even the small num­bers of these su­pe­rior mor­tals, the set­tle­ments along the Yel­low River had forged ahead of the Yangtze vil­lages and had achieved an ad­vanced po­si­tion over their breth­ren in the south which has ever since been main­tained.

79:7.3It was not that there were so many of the And­ites, nor that their cul­ture was so su­pe­rior, but amal­ga­ma­tion with them pro­duced a more ver­sa­tile stock. The north­ern Chi­nese re­ceived just enough of the And­ite strain to mildly stim­u­late their in­nately able minds but not enough to fire them with the rest­less, ex­ploratory cu­rios­ity so char­ac­ter­is­tic of the north­ern white races. This more lim­ited in­fu­sion of And­ite in­her­i­tance was less dis­turb­ing to the in­nate sta­bil­ity of the San­gik type.

79:7.4The later waves of And­ites brought with them cer­tain of the cul­tural ad­vances of Mes­o­po­ta­mia; this is es­pe­cially true of the last waves of mi­gra­tion from the west. They greatly im­proved the eco­nomic and ed­u­ca­tional prac­tices of the north­ern Chi­nese; and while their in­flu­ence upon the re­li­gious cul­ture of the yel­low race was short-lived, their later de­scen­dants con­tributed much to a sub­se­quent spir­i­tual awak­en­ing. But the And­ite tra­di­tions of the beauty of Eden and Dala­ma­tia did in­flu­ence Chi­nese tra­di­tions; early Chi­nese leg­ends place “the land of the gods” in the west.

79:7.5The Chi­nese peo­ple did not be­gin to build cities and en­gage in man­u­fac­ture un­til af­ter 10,000 B.C., sub­se­quent to the cli­matic changes in Tur­kes­tan and the ar­rival of the later And­ite im­mi­grants. The in­fu­sion of this new blood did not add so much to the civ­i­liza­tion of the yel­low man as it stim­u­lated the fur­ther and rapid de­vel­op­ment of the la­tent ten­den­cies of the su­pe­rior Chi­nese stocks. From Ho­nan to Shensi the po­ten­tials of an ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tion were com­ing to fruit. Met­al­work­ing and all the arts of man­u­fac­ture date from these days.

79:7.6The sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween cer­tain of the early Chi­nese and Mes­o­po­ta­mian meth­ods of time reck­on­ing, as­tron­omy, and gov­ern­men­tal ad­min­is­tra­tion were due to the com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships be­tween these two re­motely sit­u­ated cen­ters. Chi­nese mer­chants trav­eled the over­land routes through Tur­kes­tan to Mes­o­po­ta­mia even in the days of the Sume­ri­ans. Nor was this ex­change one-sided—the val­ley of the Eu­phrates ben­e­fited con­sid­er­ably thereby, as did the peo­ples of the Gangetic plain. But the cli­matic changes and the no­madic in­va­sions of the third mil­len­nium be­fore Christ greatly re­duced the vol­ume of trade pass­ing over the car­a­van trails of cen­tral Asia.

79:1.4When cli­matic con­di­tions made hunt­ing un­prof­itable for the mi­grat­ing And­ites, they did not fol­low the evo­lu­tion­ary course of the older races by be­com­ing herders. Com­merce and ur­ban life made their ap­pear­ance. From Egypt through Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Tur­kes­tan to the rivers of China and In­dia, the more highly civ­i­lized tribes be­gan to as­sem­ble in cities de­voted to man­u­fac­ture and trade. Ado­nia be­came the cen­tral Asian com­mer­cial metropo­lis, be­ing lo­cated near the pres­ent city of Ashkhabad. Com­merce in stone, metal, wood, and pot­tery was ac­cel­er­ated on both land and wa­ter.

94:9.1Bud­dhism pros­pered be­cause it of­fered sal­va­tion through be­lief in the Bud­dha, the en­light­ened one. It was more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Mel­chiz­e­dek truths than any other re­li­gious sys­tem to be found through­out east­ern Asia. But Bud­dhism did not be­come wide­spread as a re­li­gion un­til it was es­poused in self-pro­tec­tion by the low-caste monarch Asoka, who, next to Ikh­na­ton in Egypt, was one of the most re­mark­able civil rulers be­tween Mel­chiz­e­dek and Mi­chael. Asoka built a great In­dian em­pire through the pro­pa­ganda of his Bud­dhist mis­sion­ar­ies. Dur­ing a pe­riod of twenty-five years he trained and sent forth more than sev­en­teen thou­sand mis­sion­ar­ies to the far­thest fron­tiers of all the known world. In one gen­er­a­tion he made Bud­dhism the dom­i­nant re­li­gion of one half the world. It soon be­came es­tab­lished in Ti­bet, Kash­mir, Cey­lon, Burma, Java, Siam, Ko­rea, China, and Japan. And gen­er­ally speak­ing, it was a re­li­gion vastly su­pe­rior to those which it sup­planted or up­stepped.

81:4.14In North China there is a cer­tain blend­ing of Cau­ca­soid and Mon­goloid types; in the Lev­ant the Cau­ca­soid and Ne­groid have in­ter­min­gled; in In­dia, as in South Amer­ica, all three types are rep­re­sented. And the skele­tal char­ac­ter­is­tics of the three sur­viv­ing types still per­sist and help to iden­tify the later an­ces­try of pres­ent-day hu­man races.

94:11.1Bud­dhism en­tered China in the first mil­len­nium af­ter Christ, and it fit­ted well into the re­li­gious cus­toms of the yel­low race. In an­ces­tor wor­ship they had long prayed to the dead; now they could also pray for them. Bud­dhism soon amal­ga­mated with the lin­ger­ing rit­u­al­is­tic prac­tices of dis­in­te­grat­ing Tao­ism. This new syn­thetic re­li­gion with its tem­ples of wor­ship and def­i­nite re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial soon be­came the gen­er­ally ac­cepted cult of the peo­ples of China, Ko­rea, and Japan.

79:6.1Some­time af­ter driv­ing the red man across to North Amer­ica, the ex­pand­ing Chi­nese cleared the An­don­ites from the river val­leys of east­ern Asia, push­ing them north into Siberia and west into Tur­kes­tan, where they were soon to come in con­tact with the su­pe­rior cul­ture of the And­ites.

79:6.2In Burma and the penin­sula of Indo-China the cul­tures of In­dia and China mixed and blended to pro­duce the suc­ces­sive civ­i­liza­tions of those re­gions. Here the van­ished green race has per­sisted in larger pro­por­tion than any­where else in the world.

79:6.3Many dif­fer­ent races oc­cu­pied the is­lands of the Pa­cific. In gen­eral, the south­ern and then more ex­ten­sive is­lands were oc­cu­pied by peo­ples car­ry­ing a heavy per­cent­age of green and in­digo blood. The north­ern is­lands were held by An­don­ites and, later on, by races em­brac­ing large pro­por­tions of the yel­low and red stocks. The an­ces­tors of the Japanese peo­ple were not driven off the main­land un­til 12,000 B.C., when they were dis­lodged by a pow­er­ful south­ern-coast­wise thrust of the north­ern Chi­nese tribes. Their fi­nal ex­o­dus was not so much due to pop­u­la­tion pres­sure as to the ini­tia­tive of a chief­tain whom they came to re­gard as a di­vine per­son­age.

79:6.4Like the peo­ples of In­dia and the Lev­ant, vic­to­ri­ous tribes of the yel­low man es­tab­lished their ear­li­est cen­ters along the coast and up the rivers. The coastal set­tle­ments fared poorly in later years as the in­creas­ing floods and the shift­ing courses of the rivers made the low­land cities un­ten­able.

79:6.6The su­pe­ri­or­ity of the an­cient yel­low race was due to four great fac­tors:

79:6.71. Ge­netic. Un­like their blue cousins in Eu­rope, both the red and yel­low races had largely es­caped mix­ture with de­based hu­man stocks. The north­ern Chi­nese, al­ready strength­ened by small amounts of the su­pe­rior red and An­donic strains, were soon to ben­e­fit by a con­sid­er­able in­flux of And­ite blood. The south­ern Chi­nese did not fare so well in this re­gard, and they had long suf­fered from ab­sorp­tion of the green race, while later on they were to be fur­ther weak­ened by the in­fil­tra­tion of the swarms of in­fe­rior peo­ples crowded out of In­dia by the Dra­vid­ian-And­ite in­va­sion. And to­day in China there is a def­i­nite dif­fer­ence be­tween the north­ern and south­ern races.

79:6.82. So­cial. The yel­low race early learned the value of peace among them­selves. Their in­ter­nal peace­able­ness so con­tributed to pop­u­la­tion in­crease as to in­sure the spread of their civ­i­liza­tion among many mil­lions. From 25,000 to 5000 B.C. the high­est mass civ­i­liza­tion on Uran­tia was in cen­tral and north­ern China. The yel­low man was first to achieve a racial sol­i­dar­ity—the first to at­tain a large-scale cul­tural, so­cial, and po­lit­i­cal civ­i­liza­tion.

79:6.9The Chi­nese of 15,000 B.C. were ag­gres­sive mil­i­tarists; they had not been weak­ened by an over­rev­er­ence for the past, and num­ber­ing less than twelve mil­lion, they formed a com­pact body speak­ing a com­mon lan­guage. Dur­ing this age they built up a real na­tion, much more united and ho­mo­ge­neous than their po­lit­i­cal unions of his­toric times.

79:6.103. Spir­i­tual. Dur­ing the age of And­ite mi­gra­tions the Chi­nese were among the more spir­i­tual peo­ples of earth. Long ad­her­ence to the wor­ship of the One Truth pro­claimed by Singlang­ton kept them ahead of most of the other races. The stim­u­lus of a pro­gres­sive and ad­vanced re­li­gion is of­ten a de­ci­sive fac­tor in cul­tural de­vel­op­ment; as In­dia lan­guished, so China forged ahead un­der the in­vig­o­rat­ing stim­u­lus of a re­li­gion in which truth was en­shrined as the su­preme De­ity.

79:6.11This wor­ship of truth was provoca­tive of re­search and fear­less ex­plo­ration of the laws of na­ture and the po­ten­tials of man­kind. The Chi­nese of even six thou­sand years ago were still keen stu­dents and ag­gres­sive in their pur­suit of truth.

79:6.124. Ge­o­graphic. China is pro­tected by the moun­tains to the west and the Pa­cific to the east. Only in the north is the way open to at­tack, and from the days of the red man to the com­ing of the later de­scen­dants of the And­ites, the north was not oc­cu­pied by any ag­gres­sive race.

79:6.13And but for the moun­tain bar­ri­ers and the later de­cline in spir­i­tual cul­ture, the yel­low race un­doubt­edly would have at­tracted to it­self the larger part of the And­ite mi­gra­tions from Tur­kes­tan and un­ques­tion­ably would have quickly dom­i­nated world civ­i­liza­tion.

79:8.1While the red man suf­fered from too much war­fare, it is not al­to­gether amiss to say that the de­vel­op­ment of state­hood among the Chi­nese was de­layed by the thor­ough­ness of their con­quest of Asia. They had a great po­ten­tial of racial sol­i­dar­ity, but it failed prop­erly to de­velop be­cause the con­tin­u­ous driv­ing stim­u­lus of the ever-pres­ent dan­ger of ex­ter­nal ag­gres­sion was lack­ing.

79:8.2With the com­ple­tion of the con­quest of east­ern Asia the an­cient mil­i­tary state grad­u­ally dis­in­te­grated—past wars were for­got­ten. Of the epic strug­gle with the red race there per­sisted only the hazy tra­di­tion of an an­cient con­test with the archer peo­ples. The Chi­nese early turned to ag­ri­cul­tural pur­suits, which con­tributed fur­ther to their pa­cific ten­den­cies, while a pop­u­la­tion well be­low the land-man ra­tio for agri­cul­ture still fur­ther con­tributed to the grow­ing peace­ful­ness of the coun­try.

79:8.3Con­scious­ness of past achieve­ments (some­what di­min­ished in the pres­ent), the con­ser­vatism of an over­whelm­ingly ag­ri­cul­tural peo­ple, and a well-de­vel­oped fam­ily life equaled the birth of an­ces­tor ven­er­a­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in the cus­tom of so hon­or­ing the men of the past as to bor­der on wor­ship. A very sim­i­lar at­ti­tude pre­vailed among the white races in Eu­rope for some five hun­dred years fol­low­ing the dis­rup­tion of Greco-Ro­man civ­i­liza­tion.

79:8.4The be­lief in, and wor­ship of, the “One Truth” as taught by Singlang­ton never en­tirely died out; but as time passed, the search for new and higher truth be­came over­shad­owed by a grow­ing ten­dency to ven­er­ate that which was al­ready es­tab­lished. Slowly the ge­nius of the yel­low race be­came di­verted from the pur­suit of the un­known to the preser­va­tion of the known. And this is the rea­son for the stag­na­tion of what had been the world’s most rapidly pro­gress­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

79:8.5Be­tween 4000 and 500 B.C. the po­lit­i­cal re­uni­fi­ca­tion of the yel­low race was con­sum­mated, but the cul­tural union of the Yangtze and Yel­low river cen­ters had al­ready been ef­fected. This po­lit­i­cal re­uni­fi­ca­tion of the later tribal groups was not with­out con­flict, but the so­ci­etal opin­ion of war re­mained low; an­ces­tor wor­ship, in­creas­ing di­alects, and no call for mil­i­tary ac­tion for thou­sands upon thou­sands of years had ren­dered this peo­ple ul­tra­peace­ful.

79:8.6De­spite fail­ure to ful­fill the prom­ise of an early de­vel­op­ment of ad­vanced state­hood, the yel­low race did pro­gres­sively move for­ward in the re­al­iza­tion of the arts of civ­i­liza­tion, es­pe­cially in the realms of agri­cul­ture and hor­ti­cul­ture. The hy­draulic prob­lems faced by the agri­cul­tur­ists in Shensi and Ho­nan de­manded group co-op­er­a­tion for so­lu­tion. Such ir­ri­ga­tion and soil-con­ser­va­tion dif­fi­cul­ties con­tributed in no small mea­sure to the de­vel­op­ment of in­ter­de­pen­dence with the con­se­quent pro­mo­tion of peace among farm­ing groups.

79:8.7Soon de­vel­op­ments in writ­ing, to­gether with the es­tab­lish­ment of schools, con­tributed to the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge on a pre­vi­ously un­equaled scale. But the cum­ber­some na­ture of the ideo­graphic writ­ing sys­tem placed a nu­mer­i­cal limit upon the learned classes de­spite the early ap­pear­ance of print­ing. And above all else, the pro­cess of so­cial stan­dard­iza­tion and re­li­gio-philo­sophic dogma­ti­za­tion con­tin­ued apace. The re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment of an­ces­tor ven­er­a­tion be­came fur­ther com­pli­cated by a flood of su­per­sti­tions in­volv­ing na­ture wor­ship, but lin­ger­ing ves­tiges of a real con­cept of God re­mained pre­served in the im­pe­rial wor­ship of Shang-ti.

79:8.8The great weak­ness of an­ces­tor ven­er­a­tion is that it pro­motes a back­ward-look­ing phi­los­o­phy. How­ever wise it may be to glean wis­dom from the past, it is folly to re­gard the past as the ex­clu­sive source of truth. Truth is rel­a­tive and ex­pand­ing; it lives al­ways in the pres­ent, achiev­ing new ex­pres­sion in each gen­er­a­tion of men—even in each hu­man life.

79:8.9The great strength in a ven­er­a­tion of an­ces­try is the value that such an at­ti­tude places upon the fam­ily. The amaz­ing sta­bil­ity and per­sis­tence of Chi­nese cul­ture is a con­se­quence of the paramount po­si­tion ac­corded the fam­ily, for civ­i­liza­tion is di­rectly de­pen­dent on the ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the fam­ily; and in China the fam­ily at­tained a so­cial im­por­tance, even a re­li­gious sig­nif­i­cance, ap­proached by few other peo­ples.

79:8.10The fil­ial de­vo­tion and fam­ily loy­alty ex­acted by the grow­ing cult of an­ces­tor wor­ship in­sured the build­ing up of su­pe­rior fam­ily re­la­tion­ships and of en­dur­ing fam­ily groups, all of which fa­cil­i­tated the fol­low­ing fac­tors in the preser­va­tion of civ­i­liza­tion:

79:8.111. Con­ser­va­tion of prop­erty and wealth.

79:8.122. Pool­ing of the ex­pe­ri­ence of more than one gen­er­a­tion.

79:8.133. Ef­fi­cient ed­u­ca­tion of chil­dren in the arts and sci­ences of the past.

79:8.144. De­vel­op­ment of a strong sense of duty, the en­hance­ment of moral­ity, and the aug­men­ta­tion of eth­i­cal sen­si­tiv­ity.

79:8.15The for­ma­tive pe­riod of Chi­nese civ­i­liza­tion, open­ing with the com­ing of the And­ites, con­tin­ues on down to the great eth­i­cal, moral, and semire­li­gious awak­en­ing of the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ. And Chi­nese tra­di­tion pre­serves the hazy rec­ord of the evo­lu­tion­ary past; the tran­si­tion from mother- to fa­ther-fam­ily, the es­tab­lish­ment of agri­cul­ture, the de­vel­op­ment of ar­chi­tec­ture, the ini­ti­a­tion of in­dus­try—all these are suc­ces­sively nar­rated. And this story pre­sents, with greater ac­cu­racy than any other sim­i­lar ac­count, the pic­ture of the mag­nif­i­cent as­cent of a su­pe­rior peo­ple from the lev­els of bar­barism. Dur­ing this time they passed from a prim­i­tive ag­ri­cul­tural so­ci­ety to a higher so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion em­brac­ing cities, man­u­fac­ture, met­al­work­ing, com­mer­cial ex­change, gov­ern­ment, writ­ing, math­e­mat­ics, art, sci­ence, and print­ing.

79:8.17This an­cient cul­ture has con­tributed much to hu­man hap­pi­ness; mil­lions of hu­man be­ings have lived and died, blessed by its achieve­ments. For cen­turies this great civ­i­liza­tion has rested upon the lau­rels of the past, but it is even now reawak­en­ing to en­vi­sion anew the tran­scen­dent goals of mor­tal ex­is­tence, once again to take up the un­remit­ting strug­gle for never-end­ing prog­ress.

79:8.18[Pre­sented by an Arch­an­gel of Neb­a­don.]

134:5.9Po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty is cre­ated out of the sur­ren­der of self-de­ter­min­ism, first by the in­di­vid­ual within the fam­ily and then by the fam­i­lies and clans in re­la­tion to the tribe and larger group­ings. This pro­gres­sive trans­fer of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion from the smaller to ever larger po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tions has gen­er­ally pro­ceeded un­abated in the East since the es­tab­lish­ment of the Ming and the Mogul dy­nas­ties. In the West it ob­tained for more than a thou­sand years right on down to the end of the World War, when an un­for­tu­nate ret­ro­grade move­ment tem­porar­ily re­versed this nor­mal trend by re-es­tab­lish­ing the sub­merged po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty of nu­mer­ous small groups in Eu­rope.

92:6.15In­dia is di­vided among Hindu, Sikh, Mo­hammedan, and Jain, each pic­tur­ing God, man, and the uni­verse as these are var­i­ously con­ceived. China fol­lows the Taoist and the Con­fu­cian teach­ings; Shinto is revered in Japan.

59:1.17360,000,000 years ago the land was still ris­ing. North and South Amer­ica were well up. West­ern Eu­rope and the British Isles were emerg­ing, ex­cept parts of Wales, which were deeply sub­merged. There were no great ice sheets dur­ing these ages. The sup­posed glacial de­posits ap­pear­ing in con­nec­tion with these strata in Eu­rope, Africa, China, and Aus­tralia are due to iso­lated moun­tain glaciers or to the dis­place­ment of glacial de­bris of later ori­gin. The world cli­mate was oceanic, not con­ti­nen­tal. The south­ern seas were warmer then than now, and they ex­tended north­ward over North Amer­ica up to the po­lar re­gions. The Gulf Stream coursed over the cen­tral por­tion of North Amer­ica, be­ing de­flected east­ward to bathe and warm the shores of Green­land, mak­ing that now ice-man­tled con­ti­nent a ver­i­ta­ble tropic par­a­dise.

59:4.7Fol­low­ing these sub­mer­gences, many of the shore lines were con­sid­er­ably el­e­vated so that the ear­lier de­posits were cov­ered by mud or shale. There is also a red sand­stone stra­tum which char­ac­ter­izes one of the De­vo­nian sed­i­men­ta­tions, and this red layer ex­tends over much of the earth’s sur­face, be­ing found in North and South Amer­ica, Eu­rope, Rus­sia, China, Africa, and Aus­tralia. Such red de­posits are sug­ges­tive of arid or semi­arid con­di­tions, but the cli­mate of this epoch was still mild and even.

59:5.20180,000,000 years ago brought the close of the Car­bonif­er­ous pe­riod, dur­ing which coal had been formed all over the world—in Eu­rope, In­dia, China, North Africa, and the Amer­i­cas. At the close of the coal-for­ma­tion pe­riod North Amer­ica east of the Mis­sis­sippi val­ley rose, and most of this sec­tion has ever since re­mained above the sea. This land-el­e­va­tion pe­riod marks the be­gin­ning of the mod­ern moun­tains of North Amer­ica, both in the Ap­palachian re­gions and in the west. Vol­ca­noes were ac­tive in Alaska and Cal­i­for­nia and in the moun­tain-form­ing re­gions of Eu­rope and Asia. East­ern Amer­ica and west­ern Eu­rope were con­nected by the con­ti­nent of Green­land.

60:2.6The same po­lar sea that ex­tended so far down over North Amer­ica like­wise cov­ered all of South Amer­ica ex­cept the soon ap­pear­ing An­des Moun­tains. Most of China and Rus­sia was in­un­dated, but the wa­ter in­va­sion was great­est in Eu­rope. It was dur­ing this sub­mer­gence that the beau­ti­ful litho­graphic stone of south­ern Ger­many was laid down, those strata in which fos­sils, such as the most del­i­cate wings of olden in­sects, are pre­served as of but yes­ter­day.

81:3.1The cli­matic de­struc­tion of the rich, open grass­land hunt­ing and graz­ing grounds of Tur­kes­tan, be­gin­ning about 12,000 B.C., com­pelled the men of those re­gions to re­sort to new forms of in­dus­try and crude man­u­fac­tur­ing. Some turned to the cul­ti­va­tion of do­mes­ti­cated flocks, oth­ers be­came agri­cul­tur­ists or col­lec­tors of wa­ter-borne food, but the higher type of And­ite in­tel­lects chose to en­gage in trade and man­u­fac­ture. It even be­came the cus­tom for en­tire tribes to ded­i­cate them­selves to the de­vel­op­ment of a sin­gle in­dus­try. From the val­ley of the Nile to the Hindu Kush and from the Ganges to the Yel­low River, the chief busi­ness of the su­pe­rior tribes be­came the cul­ti­va­tion of the soil, with com­merce as a side line.

134:5.1[While the Mas­ter’s teach­ing con­cern­ing the sov­er­eignty of God is a truth—only com­pli­cated by the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of the re­li­gion about him among the world’s re­li­gions—his pre­sen­ta­tions con­cern­ing po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty are vastly com­pli­cated by the po­lit­i­cal evo­lu­tion of na­tion life dur­ing the last nine­teen hun­dred years and more. In the times of Je­sus there were only two great world pow­ers—the Ro­man Em­pire in the West and the Han Em­pire in the East—and these were widely sep­a­rated by the Parthian king­dom and other in­ter­ven­ing lands of the Caspian and Tur­kes­tan re­gions. We have, there­fore, in the fol­low­ing pre­sen­ta­tion de­parted more widely from the sub­stance of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings at Ur­mia con­cern­ing po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty, at the same time at­tempt­ing to de­pict the im­port of such teach­ings as they are ap­pli­ca­ble to the pe­cu­liarly crit­i­cal stage of the evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury af­ter Christ.]

130:3.4By the fourth hour af­ter land­ing they were set­tled near the east­ern end of the long and broad av­enue, one hun­dred feet wide and five miles long, which stretched on out to the west­ern lim­its of this city of one mil­lion peo­ple. Af­ter the first sur­vey of the city’s chief at­trac­tions—uni­ver­sity (mu­seum), li­brary, the royal mau­soleum of Alexan­der, the palace, tem­ple of Nep­tune, the­ater, and gym­na­sium—Gonod ad­dressed him­self to busi­ness while Je­sus and Ga­nid went to the li­brary, the great­est in the world. Here were as­sem­bled nearly a mil­lion manuscripts from all the civ­i­lized world: Greece, Rome, Pales­tine, Parthia, In­dia, China, and even Japan. In this li­brary Ga­nid saw the largest col­lec­tion of In­dian lit­er­a­ture in all the world; and they spent some time here each day through­out their stay in Alexan­dria. Je­sus told Ga­nid about the trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek at this place. And they dis­cussed again and again all the re­li­gions of the world, Je­sus en­deav­or­ing to point out to this young mind the truth in each, al­ways adding: “But Yah­weh is the God de­vel­oped from the rev­e­la­tions of Mel­chiz­e­dek and the covenant of Abra­ham. The Jews were the off­spring of Abra­ham and sub­se­quently oc­cu­pied the very land wherein Mel­chiz­e­dek had lived and taught, and from which he sent teach­ers to all the world; and their re­li­gion even­tu­ally por­trayed a clearer rec­og­ni­tion of the Lord God of Is­rael as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in heaven than any other world re­li­gion.”

64:4.1The Ne­an­derthalers were ex­cel­lent fight­ers, and they trav­eled ex­ten­sively. They grad­u­ally spread from the high­land cen­ters in north­west In­dia to France on the west, China on the east, and even down into north­ern Africa. They dom­i­nated the world for al­most half a mil­lion years un­til the times of the mi­gra­tion of the evo­lu­tion­ary races of color.

64:6.5About eighty-five thou­sand years ago the com­par­a­tively pure rem­nants of the red race went en masse across to North Amer­ica, and shortly there­after the Bering land isth­mus sank, thus iso­lat­ing them. No red man ever re­turned to Asia. But through­out Siberia, China, cen­tral Asia, In­dia, and Eu­rope they left be­hind much of their stock blended with the other col­ored races.

130:2.3While the east­ern branch of the early Chris­tian church, hav­ing its head­quar­ters at Phil­a­del­phia, held more faith­fully to the teach­ings of Je­sus than did the Je­ru­sa­lem breth­ren, it was re­gret­table that there was no one like Pe­ter to go into China, or like Paul to en­ter In­dia, where the spir­i­tual soil was then so fa­vor­able for plant­ing the seed of the new gospel of the king­dom. These very teach­ings of Je­sus, as they were held by the Philadel­phi­ans, would have made just such an im­me­di­ate and ef­fec­tive ap­peal to the minds of the spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry Asi­atic peo­ples as did the preach­ing of Pe­ter and Paul in the West.

130:3.3And again we re­mark that the early teach­ers of the Chris­tian re­li­gion made a great mis­take when they so ex­clu­sively turned their at­ten­tion to the west­ern civ­i­liza­tion of the Ro­man world. The teach­ings of Je­sus, as they were held by the Mes­o­po­ta­mian be­liev­ers of the first cen­tury, would have been read­ily re­ceived by the var­i­ous groups of Asi­atic re­li­gion­ists.

93:7.2The de­scen­dants of Adam­son, clus­tered about the shores of the lake of Van, were will­ing lis­ten­ers to the Hit­tite teach­ers of the Salem cult. From this one­time And­ite cen­ter, teach­ers were dis­patched to the re­mote re­gions of both Eu­rope and Asia. Salem mis­sion­ar­ies pen­e­trated all Eu­rope, even to the British Isles. One group went by way of the Faroes to the An­don­ites of Ice­land, while an­other tra­versed China and reached the Japanese of the east­ern is­lands. The lives and ex­pe­ri­ences of the men and women who ven­tured forth from Salem, Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and Lake Van to en­lighten the tribes of the East­ern Hemi­sphere pre­sent a heroic chap­ter in the an­nals of the hu­man race.

94:5.1As the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies passed through Asia, spread­ing the doc­trine of the Most High God and sal­va­tion through faith, they ab­sorbed much of the phi­los­o­phy and re­li­gious thought of the var­i­ous coun­tries tra­versed. But the teach­ers com­mis­sioned by Mel­chiz­e­dek and his suc­ces­sors did not de­fault in their trust; they did pen­e­trate to all peo­ples of the Eurasian con­ti­nent, and it was in the mid­dle of the sec­ond mil­len­nium be­fore Christ that they ar­rived in China. At See Fuch, for more than one hun­dred years, the Salemites main­tained their head­quar­ters, there train­ing Chi­nese teach­ers who taught through­out all the do­mains of the yel­low race.

94:5.2It was in di­rect con­se­quence of this teach­ing that the ear­li­est form of Tao­ism arose in China, a vastly dif­fer­ent re­li­gion than the one which bears that name to­day. Early or proto-Tao­ism was a com­pound of the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

94:5.31. The lin­ger­ing teach­ings of Singlang­ton, which per­sisted in the con­cept of Shang-ti, the God of Heaven. In the times of Singlang­ton the Chi­nese peo­ple be­came vir­tu­ally mono­the­is­tic; they con­cen­trated their wor­ship on the One Truth, later known as the Spirit of Heaven, the uni­verse ruler. And the yel­low race never fully lost this early con­cept of De­ity, al­though in sub­se­quent cen­turies many sub­or­di­nate gods and spir­its in­sid­i­ously crept into their re­li­gion.

94:5.42. The Salem re­li­gion of a Most High Cre­ator De­ity who would be­stow his fa­vor upon man­kind in re­sponse to man’s faith. But it is all too true that, by the time the Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies had pen­e­trated to the lands of the yel­low race, their orig­i­nal mes­sage had be­come con­sid­er­ably changed from the sim­ple doc­trines of Salem in the days of Ma­chi­venta.

94:5.53. The Brah­man-Ab­so­lute con­cept of the In­dian philoso­phers, cou­pled with the de­sire to es­cape all evil. Per­haps the great­est ex­tra­ne­ous in­flu­ence in the east­ward spread of the Salem re­li­gion was ex­erted by the In­dian teach­ers of the Vedic faith, who in­jected their con­cep­tion of the Brah­man—the Ab­so­lute—into the sal­va­tion­is­tic thought of the Salemites.

94:5.6This com­pos­ite be­lief spread through the lands of the yel­low and brown races as an un­der­ly­ing in­flu­ence in re­li­gio-philo­sophic thought. In Japan this proto-Tao­ism was known as Shinto, and in this coun­try, far-dis­tant from Salem of Pales­tine, the peo­ples learned of the in­car­na­tion of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, who dwelt upon earth that the name of God might not be for­got­ten by man­kind.

94:5.7In China all of these be­liefs were later con­fused and com­pounded with the ever-grow­ing cult of an­ces­tor wor­ship. But never since the time of Singlang­ton have the Chi­nese fallen into help­less slav­ery to priestcraft. The yel­low race was the first to emerge from bar­baric bond­age into or­derly civ­i­liza­tion be­cause it was the first to achieve some mea­sure of free­dom from the ab­ject fear of the gods, not even fear­ing the ghosts of the dead as other races feared them. China met her de­feat be­cause she failed to pro­gress be­yond her early eman­ci­pa­tion from priests; she fell into an al­most equally calami­tous er­ror, the wor­ship of an­ces­tors.

94:5.8But the Salemites did not la­bor in vain. It was upon the foun­da­tions of their gospel that the great philoso­phers of sixth-cen­tury China built their teach­ings. The moral at­mo­sphere and the spir­i­tual sen­ti­ments of the times of Lao-tse and Con­fu­cius grew up out of the teach­ings of the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies of an ear­lier age.