And its work has
but commenced: it will continue until it lifts man to a plane as much
higher than the present as the present is above the barbaric condition;
and in the future it will be said that between the birth of civilization
in Atlantis and the new civilization there stretches a period of many
thousands of years, during which mankind did not invent, but simply
perpetuated.
Herodotus tells us ("Euterpe," cxlii.) that, according to the
information he received from the Egyptian priests, their written history
dated back 11,340 years before his era, or nearly 14,000 years prior to
this time. They introduced him into a spacious temple, and showed him
the statues of 341 high-priests who had in turn succeeded each other;
and yet the age of Columbus possessed no arts, except that of printing
(which was ancient in China), which was not known to the Egyptians; and
the civilization of Egypt at its first appearance was of a higher order
than at any subsequent period of its history, thus testifying that it
drew its greatness from a fountain higher than itself. It was in its
early days that Egypt worshipped one only God; in the later ages this
simple and sublime belief was buried under the corruptions of
polytheism.
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