What came before? What was the Fourth Sub-race? Well: I imagine
we may have the relic, the _sishta_ or seed of it, in the Hamitic
peoples and languages: the Libyans, Numidians, Egyptians,
Iberians, and Pelasgians of old; the Somalis, Gallas, Copts,
Berbers, and Abyssinians of today. We are almost able to discern
a time--but have not guessed when it was--when this Iberian race,
having perhaps its central seat in Egypt, held all or most lands
as far as Ireland to the west, and Japan and New Zealand
eastward; we find them surviving, mixed with, but by no means
submerged under, Aryan Celts in Spain--which is Iberia; we find
their name (I imagine) in that of Iverne, Ierine, Hibernia, or
Ireland; we know that they gave the syntax of their language to
that of the Celts of the British Isles; and that the Celtic races
of today are mainly Iberian in blood--I daresay all Europe is
about half Iberian in blood, as a matter of fact;--that the
Greeks found them in Greece: I suspect that the main difference
between Sparta and Athens lay in the fact that Sparta was pure
Aryan, Athens mainly Iberian.--It seems to me then that we can
almost get a glimpse of the sub-race preceding our own. Some have
been puzzled by a seeming discrepancy between Katherine Tingley's
statement that Egypt is older than India, and H. P. Blavatsky's,
that Menes, founder of the Egyptian monarchy, went from India to
Egypt to found it. But now suppose that something like this
happened--would it not solve the problem?--In 158,000 B. C., or
at the time this present Aryan Sub-race began, Egypt, one state
in the huge Iberian series, was already a seat of civilization as
old as the Iberian race. There may have been an Iberian Empire,
almost world-wide; which again may have split into many
kingdoms; and as the star of the whole race was declining, we
may suppose Egypt in some degree of pralaya; or again, that it