My Library

We of the fifth root race ought to have evolve^ beyond the possibility of meeting such a ghastly fate as vindicated by either of the two headings of thi% sub-section, and we have so nearly done it that these creatures are commonly 1 regarded as mere mediaeval fables; yet therein’examples to be found occasionally even now, though chiefly in countries where there is a considerable strain ol fourth-race blood, 1 such as Russia or Hungary. The popular legends about them are probably often considerably exaggerated, but there is nevertheless a terribly serious substratum of truth beneath the eerie stories which pass from mouth to mouth among the peasantry of Central Europe. The general characteristics of such tales are too well known to need more than a passing reference; a fairly typical specimen of the vampire story, though it does not profess to be more than the merest fiction, is Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla, while a very remarkable account of an unusual form of this creature is to be foundt in Isis Unveiled , vol. i., p. 454.
Readers of Theosophical literature will be aware that it is just possible for a man to live <1 life so absdlutely degraded and selfish, so utterly wicked and brutal, that the whole of his