BACK TO THEBIBLE 309
task of leading humanity was a comparatively easy one, for
man was then without mind, but when that disturbing
element came in during the first part of the Atlantean Epoch,
he developed Cunning, which is the product of the mind
unchecked by the spirit. Cunning acts as an aid to desire,
regardless of whether the desire is good or bad, whether it
will bring joy or sorrow.
In the middle of the Atlantean Epoch the spirit had
drawn completely into its vehicles and commenced to work
in the mind to produce Thought and Reason: the ability to
trace a given cause to its inevitable effect, and to deduce
from a given effect the cause which produced it. This faculty
of Reasoning or Logic was to become more fully developed
in the Aryan Epoch, and therefore the Original Semites (the
fifth race of the Atlantean Epoch) were a “chosen people,”
to bring out that germinal faculty to such a ripeness that it
would be impregnated into the very fiber of their
descendants, who would thus become the New Race.
To transmute Cunning into Reason proved no easy task.
The earlier changes in man's nature had been easily brought
about. He could then be led without difficulty because he
had no conscious desires, nor mind to guide him, but by the
time of the Original Semites he had become cunning enough
to resent limitations of his liberty and to circumvent
repeatedly the measures taken to hold him in line. The task
of guiding him was all the more difficult because it was
necessary he should have some liberty of choice, that he
might in time learn self-government. Therefore a law was
enacted which decreedimmediate rewards for obedience
andinstant punishment for disregard of its provisions. Thus
was man taught, coaxed and coerced into reasoning in a
limited manner that “the way of the transgressor is hard,”