duly appreciated their most recent developments. I have
just finished studying the magnificent Anthropogenesis of Haeckel,
and have carefully discussed in my own mind his logical, scientific
explanations of the origin of man from inferior animal forms through
transformation. And what is this transformation, pray, if not the
transmigration of the ancient and modern Hindus, and the metempsychosis
of the Greeks?"

We had nothing to say against the identity, and even ventured to observe
that, according to Haeckel, it does look like it.

"Exactly!" exclaimed he joyfully. "This shows that our conceptions are
neither silly nor superstitious, as is maintained by some opponents
of Manu. The great Manu, anticipated Darwin and Haeckel. Judge for
yourself; the latter derives the genesis of man from a group of
plastides, from the jelly-like moneron; this moneron, through the
ameoba, the ascidian, the brainless and heartless amphioxus, and so on,
transmigrates in the eighth remove into the lamprey, is transformed, at
last, into a vertebrate amniote, into a premammalian, into a marsupial
animal.... The vampire, in its turn, belongs to the species of
vertebrates. You, being well read people all of you, cannot contradict
this statement." He was right in his supposition; we did not contradict
it.

"In this case, do me the honor to follow my argument...."

We did follow his argument with the greatest attention, but were at a
loss to foresee whither it tended to lead us.

"Darwin," continued Sham Rao, "in his Origin of Species, re-established
almost word for word the palin-genetic teachings of our Manu. Of this I
am perfectly convinced, and, if you like, I can prove it to you book in
hand. Our ancient law-giver, amongst other sayings, speaks as follows:
'The great Parabrahm commanded man to appear in the universe, after
traversing all the grades of the animal kingdom, and springing primarily
from the worm of the deep sea mud.' The worm be-came a snake, the snake
a fish, the fish a mammal, and so on. Is not this very idea at the
bottom of Darwin's theory, when he maintains that the organic forms have
their origin in more simple species, and says that the structureless
protoplasm born in the mud of the Laurentian and Silurian periods--the
Manu's 'mud of the seas,' I dare say--gradually transformed itself into
the anthropoid ape, and then finally into the human being?"

We said it looked very like it.

"But, in spite of all my respec