Page 40 - Gnosis volume 2

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ter than the former. This difference is accentuated by the fact that every creative

process, which goes through a normal evolution, gains speed as it progresses. Though
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the growth of the human species has lasted, sixty or even a hundred million years ,
starting from the tertiary period, man of the contemporary physical type, that is, homo

sapiens fossilis, a type which is very primitive still, must have made his appearance only

about forty thousand years ago, during the later paleolithic period. And the psychic type
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of modern man, of the man without , that is homo sapiens recens, can be traced back
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about 14,000 years .
If we want to represent the entire growth and development of man by means of a

diagram in which time will be the axis of the abscises, it will be necessary to draw the

line of growth two thousand times longer than the line of development. And the upward
sweep of this graph, in accordance with the axis of the ordinates, which is insignificant

during the period of growth, becomes very rapid at the period of development, as

shown in T. II, fig. 2, p. 74 in the French original version; p. 97, in the English manuscript.
This exposé corresponds integrally with the biblical account given in the Book of

Genesis, and according to which, the creation of man took place in two distinct stages:

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the first human group being pre-adamic, men and women, created in the image of the
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Creator ; then came the creation of Adam, followed by that of Eve, bone of his bones
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and flesh of his flesh .
It is after Adam that man received the faculty, in

5 T. I, p. 145 French original version; p. 150 English manuscript.
6 Mark, IV, 11.
7
T. I, chap. XIII.
8 Genesis, II, 7.
9
Genesis, I, 27.
10
Genesis, II, 21-23.