EXPLANATION OF TABLES 67 



start the germ of veneration by selecting their fittest as leaders 

 in their effort to supplant the kingdom of angels or other 

 animals of mammoth creation more powerful than themselves. 



This is the first step of man's upward rise, made probably 

 about the end of the 6th Day, to which our Table has now 

 brought us, and which is ultimately to create that spirit of 

 emulation that is to make him the king of beasts or the 

 Lucifer of this the age of Lucifers or of human beasts or 

 devils. When on this, the 6th Day, he learns to use his 

 dawning self-will to kill for the love of killing, for hate and 

 for amusement, not for food or self-defence, and so murders 

 his fellow-animals, and this evolves to its highest degree the 

 art of sinning by becoming first a murderer and then a canni- 

 bal, and so obtains superiority over the rest of creation by 

 excelling in the arts of sin, for it is by learning to sin in 

 temperance, justice and moderation that man is to achieve his 

 redemption at the end of evolution. So perfection in this 

 epoch means perfection in vice and crime, and can there be 

 any greater perfections in the arts of crime and vice than 

 those of murder and cannibalism, the two animal crimes that 

 now make mankind become tfye most perfect animal in creation 

 by becoming a human " devil " (for mankind, not God, made 

 the only devil that has ever existed) ; and in this way the 

 mammoth animals (who are the angels of Genesis) fell from 

 the high estate of their early magnificent creation, to be sup- 

 planted by the comparatively insignificant creature man, 

 whom, in their strength and might they had cast out of their 

 earthly paradise of plenty and compelled to take refuge in 

 the limbs of the trees above their reach. So mankind, having 

 now taken the advice of the serpent, that is to say, followed its 

 example by becoming carnivorous, and so eating of the fruit 

 of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that is to say of 

 meat instead of fruit, the natural food of other apes. 



It also appears probable that religion is to be ultimately 

 supplanted by man's perfect knowledge of the truths of God's 

 revelations when he shall have so far developed as to be able 

 to walk in the perfect Understanding and Comprehension of 

 the knowledge of the truths of revelation, instead of, as at 

 present, having to be led by the hand of religion in Faith, 

 Fear, Love and Obedience. And at the same time it enables 

 our Table to point out that when he shall in future gain 



