In our era this science crumbled into magic and charlatanry.

But even wisdom crumbles.
I believe that this great science previous to ours and quite different in constitution and nature from our science once was universal, established all over the then-existing globe.

I believe it was esoteric, invested in a large priesthood.

Just as mathematics and mechanics and physics are defined and expounded in the same way in the universities of China or Bolivia or London or Moscow to-day, so, it seems to me, in the great world previous to ours a great science and cosmology were taught esoterically in all countries of the globe, Asia, Polynesia, America, Atlantis and Europe.

Belt's suggestion of the geographical nature of this previous world seems to me most interesting.