st of these
vicissitudes. There are analogies between the life of a nation, and
that of an individual, who, though he may be in one respect the maker
of his own fortunes, for happiness or for misery, for good or for evil,
though he remains here or goes there as his inclinations prompt, though
he does this or abstains from that as he chooses, is nevertheless held
fast by an inexorable fate--a fate which brought him into the world
involuntarily, so far as he was concerned, which presses him forward
through a definite career, the stages of which are absolutely
invariable,--infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old age, with all
their characteristic actions and passions,--and which removes him from
the scene at the appointed time, in most cases against his will. So
also is it with nations; the voluntary is only the outward semblance,
covering but hardly hiding the predetermined. Over the events of life
we may have control, but none whatever over the law of its progress.
There is a geometry that applies to nations an equation of their curve
of advance. That no mortal man can touch."

This remarkable passage, just quoted, shows how the close observers of
history note the rise and fall of the tides of human race progress,
although ignorant of the real underlying causing energy or force. A
study of the Occult Teachings alone gives one the hidden secret of
human actions and throws the bright light of Truth upon the dark
corners of phenomena.

At the beginning of the Fifth Cycle (which is the present one), there
were not only the beginnings of the new races which always spring up at
the beginning of each new cycle and which are the foundations for the
coming races which take advantage of the fresh conditions and
opportunities for growth and development--but there were also the
descendants of the Elect Saved from the destruction of Atlantis by
having been led away and colonized far from the scene of danger. The
new races were the descendant of the scattered survivors of the
Atlantean peoples, that is, the common run of people of the time. But
the Elect few were very superior people, and imparted to their
descendants their knowledge and wisdom. So that we see at the beginning
of the Fifth Cycle hordes of new, primitive people in certain lands,
and in other places advanced nations like the ancestors of the Ancient
Egyptians, Persians, Chaldeans, Hindus, etc.

These advanced races were old souls--advanced souls--the progressed and