Laborious as the task has been however, it will be recognized as amplyrepaying the trouble taken, by everyone who is able to perceive howabsolutely necessary to a proper comprehension of the world as we findit, is a proper comprehension of its preceding Atlantean phase.Without this knowledge all speculations concerning ethnology arefutile and misleading. The course of race development is chaos andconfusion without the key furnished by the character of Atlanteancivilization and the configuration of the earth at Atlantean periods.Geologists know that land and ocean surfaces must have repeatedlychanged places during the period at which they also know--from thesituation of human remains in the various strata--that the lands wereinhabited. And yet for want of accurate knowledge as to the dates atwhich the changes took place, they discard the whole theory from theirpractical thinking, and except for certain hypotheses started bynaturalists dealing with the southern hemisphere, have generallyendeavoured to harmonize race migrations with the configuration of theearth in existence at the present time.