proves that the Aryan race--branch-race, I will call it--was preceded in
Europe by at least three others, whose remains are found in the caves
or strata that have been examined. Of these the first has entirely
disappeared: no representatives of it are now to be found in any known
part of the world. The second was driven, apparently, from the north, by
the invasions of the ice, during the glacial period and spread as far,
at least, as the Straits of Gibraltar. With the disappearance of the
ice, they also traveled toward the pole, and are now existing in the
northern regions of the earth, under the name of Esquimaux. Following
them came a race, the fragments of which were powerful within historic
days in the Iberian peninsula,--the Iberians of the Roman writers--the
Basques of to-day. Then came from the east the Aryan race, hitherto the
highest form of humanity. These races do not, of course, begin existence
as new creations. They are developed from--their first members must be
born from--the preceding race. Query: Is a fifth race now in the throes
of nativity? Have the different sub-races of the Aryan branch sent their
contingents to the New World, that from the mixture of their boldest and
most vigorous blood the fifth sub-race might have its origin? "Westward
the star of empire takes its way."

Buddhism gives a peculiar explanation of the disappearance of inferior
races. Since the object of the incarnation of the human soul is its
progress toward the perfect and divine man; since every human soul must
dwell on earth as a member of each one of the sub-races, the time must
come when all shall have passed through a given stage. Then there can be
no more births into that race. There is, at this moment, a finite number
of human souls whose existence is limited to this planet, and no other
planet in our chain is at present the abode of humanity. For the larger
part of all these souls--at least nine hundred and ninety-nine in a
thousand--are, at anyone instant, existing in "the world of effects," in