{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_14587/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_14587","id":"gutenberg_14587","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14587","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Other","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Theosophy"],"text":"THE CREST-WAVE OF EVOLUTION\n\nA Course of Lectures in History, Given to the Graduates' Class in the\nRaja-Yoga College, Point Loma, in the College-Year 1918-1919.*\n\nby\n\nKENNETH MORRIS\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n    I.  INTRODUCTION\n   II.  HOMER\n  III.  GREEKS AND PERSIANS\n   IV.  AESCHYLUS AND ATHENS\n    V.  SOME PERICLEAN FIGURES\n   VI.  SOCRATES AND PLATO\n  VII.  THE MAURYAS OF INDIA\n VIII.  THE BLACK-HAIRED PEOPLE\n   IX.  THE DRAGON AND THE BLUE PEARL\n    X.  \"SUCH A ONE\"\n   XI.  CONFUCIUS THE HERO\n  XII.  TALES FROM A TAOIST TEACHER\n XIII.  MANG THE PHILOSOPHER, AND BUTTERFLY CHWANG\n  XIV.  THE MANVANTARA OPENS\n   XV.  SOME POSSIBLE EPOCHS IN SANSKRIT LITERATURE\n  XVI.  THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME\n XVII.  ROME PARVENUE\nXVIII.  AUGUSTUS\n  XIX.  AN IMPERIAL SACRIFICE\n   XX.  CHINA AND ROME:  THE SEE-SAW\n  XXI.  CHINA AND ROME:  THE SEE-SAW (Continued)\n XXII.  EASTWARD HO!\nXXIII.  \"THE DRAGON, THE APOSTATE, THE GREAT MIND\"\n XXIV.  FROM JULIAN TO BODHIDHARMA\n  XXV.  TOWARDS THE ISLANDS OF THE SUNSET\n XXVI.  \"SACRED IERNE OF THE HIBERNIANS\"\nXXVII.  THE IRISH ILLUMINATION\n\n------------\n*  Serialized in _Theosophical Path_ in 27 Chapters from\nMarch, 1919 through July, 1921.\n-----------\n\n\n\nI.  INTRODUCTORY\n\nThese lectures will not be concerned with history as a record\nof wars and political changes; they will have little to tell\nof battles, murders, and sudden deaths.  Instead, we shall\ntry to discover and throw light on the cyclic movements of\nthe Human Spirit.  Back of all phenomena, or the outward show\nof things, there is always a noumenon in the unseen.  Behind\nthe phenomena of human history, the noumenon is the Human\nSpirit, moving in accordance with its own necessities and\ncyclic laws.  We may, if we go to it intelligently, gain some\ninkling of knowledge as to what those laws are; and I think\nthat would be, in its way, a real wisdom, and worth getting.\nBut for the most part historical study seeks knowledge only;\nand how it attains its aim, is shown by the falseness of what\npasses for history.  In most textbooks you shall find, probably,\na round dozen of lies on as many pages.  And these in themselves\nare fruitful seeds of evil; they by no means end with the\ntelling, but go on producing harvests of wrong life; which\nindeed is only the Lie incarnate on the plane of action.  The\nEternal _Right Thing_ is what is called in Sanskrit SAT, the\nTrue; it opposite is the Lie, in one fashion or another, always;\nand what we have to do, our mission and _raison d'etre_ as\nstudents of Theosophy, is to put down the Lie at every turn,\nand chase it, as far as we may, out of the field of life.\n\nFor example, there is the Superior-Race Lie:  I do not know\nwhere it shall not be found.  Races A, B, C, and D go on\npreaching it for centuries; each with an eye to its sublime\nself.  In all countries, perhaps, history is taught with that\nlie for mental background.  Then we wonder that there are wars.\nBut Theosophy is called onto provide a true mental background\nfor historical study; and it alone can do so.  It is the\nmission of Point Loma, among many other things, to float a\ntrue philosophy of history on to the currents of world-thought:\nand for this end it is our business to be thinkers, using the\ndivine Manasic light within us to some purpose.  H.P. Blavatsky\nsupplied something much greater than a dogma:  she--like Plato\n--gave the world a method and a spur to thought:  pointed for\nit a direction, which following, it might solve all problems\nand heal the wounds of the ages.\n\nA false and foolish notion in the western world has been,\ntacitly to accept the Greeks and Hebrews of old for the two\nfountains of all culture since; the one in secular matter,\nthe other in religion and morality.  Of the Hebrews nothing\nneed be said here; but that true religion and morality have\ntheir source in the ever-living Human Spirit, not in any sect,\ncreed, race, age, or bible.  I doubt there has been any new\ndiscovery in ethics since man was man; or rather, all discoveries\nhave been made by individuals for themselves; and each, having\ndiscovered anything, has found that that same principle was\ndiscovered a thousand times before, and written a thousand times.\n There is no platitude so platitudinous, but it remains to burst\nupon the perceptions of all who have not yet perceived it, as a\nnew and burning truth; and on the other hand, there is no\nstartling command to purity or compassion, that has not been\ngiven out by Teachers since the world began.--As for Greece,\nthere was a brilliant flaming up of the Spirit there in the\nFourth and Fifth Centuries B.C.; and its intensity, like the\nlights of an approaching automobile, rather obscures what lies\nbeyond.  It is the first of which we have much knowledge; so we\nthink it was the first of all.  But in fact civilization has been\ntraveling its cyclic path all the time, all these millions of\nyears; and there have been hundreds of ancient great empires and\ncultural epochs even in Europe of which we know nothing.\n\nI had intended to begin with Greece; but these unexplored eras\nof old Europe are too attractive, and this first lecture must go\nto them, or some of them.  Not to the antecedents of Greece, in\nCrete and elsewhere; but to the undiscovered North; and in\nparticular to the Celtic peoples; who may serve us as an example\nby means of which light may be thrown on the question of racial\ngrowth, and on the racial cycles generally.\n\nThe Celtic Empire of old Europe affects us like some mysterious\nundiscovered planet.  We know it was there by its effects on\nother peoples.  Also, like many other forgotten histories, it has\nleft indications of its achievement in a certain spirit, an\nuplift, the breath of an old traditional grandeur that has come\ndown.  But to give any historical account of it--to get a\ntelescope that will reach and reveal it--we have not to come to\nthat point yet.\n\nStill, it may be allowed us to experiment with all sorts of\nglasses.  To penetrate that gloom of ancient Europe may be quite\nbeyond us; but guessing is permitted.  Now the true art of\nguessing lies in an intuition for guiding indications.  There is\nsomething in us that knows things directly; and it may deign at\ntimes to give hints, to direct the researches, to flash some\nlittle light on that part of us which works and is conscious in\nthis world, and which we call our brain-minds.  So although\nmost or all of what I am going to say would be called by the\nscientific strictly empirical, fantastic and foolish, yet I shall\nventure; aware that their Aristotelio-Baconian method quite\nbreaks down when it comes to such a search into the unknown; and\nthat this guessing, guided by what seems to be a law, would not,\nperhaps, have been sneered at by Plato.\n\nGuided by what seems to be a law;--guided, at any rate, by the\nknowledge that there are laws; that \"God geometrizes,\" as Plato\nsays:  that which is within flows outward upon a design; that\nlife precipitates itself through human affairs as it does through\nthe forms of the crystals; that there is nothing more haphazard\nabout the sequence of empires and civilizations, than there is\nabout the unfolding of petals of a flower.  In both cases it is\nthe eternal rhythm, the Poetry of the Infinite, that manifests;\nour business is to listen so carefully as to hear, and apprehend\nthe fact that what we hear is a poetry, a vast music, not a\nchaotic cacophony:  catch the rhythms--perceive that there is a\ndesign--even if it takes us long to discover what the design\nmay be.\n\nYou know Plato's idea that the world is a dodecahedron or\ntwelve-sided figure.  Now in Plato's day, much that every\nschoolboy knows now, was esoteric--known only to the initiated.\nSo I think Plato would have known well enough that this physical\nearth is round; and that what he meant when he spoke of the\ndodecahedron, was something else.  This, for example: that on\nthe plane of causes--this outer plane being that of effects\n--there are twelve (geographical) centers, aspects, foci,\nfacets, or what you like to call them:  twelve _laya centers,_\nas I think the Secret Doctrine would say:  through which\nthe forces from within play on the world without.  You have\nread, too, in _The Secret Doctrine,_ Professor Crooke's theory,\nendorsed by H.P. Blavatsky, as to how the chemical elements\nwere deposited by a spiral evolutive force, a creative impulse\nworking outward in the form of a caduceus or lemniscate, or\nfigure '8.'  Now suppose we should discover that just as\nthat force deposited in space, in its spiral down-working,\nwhat Crookes calls the seeds of potassium, beryllium, boron,\nand the rest--so such another creative force, at work on the\nplanes of geographical space and time, rouses up or deposits\nin these, according to a definite pattern, this nation and that\nin its turn, this great age of culture after that one; and that\nthere is nothing hap-hazard about the configuration of continents\nand islands, national boundaries, or racial migrations?\n\nH.P. Blavatsky tells us that the whole past history of the race\nis known to the Guardians of the Secret Wisdom; that it is all\nrecorded, nothing lost; down to the story of every tribe since\nthe Lords of Mind incarnated.  And that these records are in the\nform of a few symbols; but symbols which, to those who can\ninterpret or disintegrate them, can yield the whole story.  What\nif the amount of the burden of history, which seems so vast to us\nwho know so very little of it, were in reality, if we could know\nit all, a thing that would put but slight tax on the memory; a\nthing we might carry with us in a few slight formulae, a few\nsimple symbols?  I believe that it is so; and that we may make a\nbeginning, and go some little way towards guessing what these\nformulae are.\n\nAs thus:  A given race flowered and passed; it had so many\ncenturies of history before its flowering; it died, and left\nsomething behind.  Greece, for example.  We may know very little\n--you and I may know very little--of the details of Greek history.\nWe cannot, perhaps, remember the date of Aegospotami, or what\nhappened at Plataea:  we may have the vaguest notion of the\nimport of Aeschylus, or Sophocles, or Plato.  But still there is\na certain color in our conscious perceptions which comes from\nGreece:  the 'glory that was Greece' means something, is a\ncertain light within the consciousness, to everyone of us.  The\nGreeks added something to the wealth of the human spirit, which\nwe all may share in, and do. An atmosphere is left, which\nsurrounds and adheres to the many tangible memorials; just as an\natmosphere is left by the glories of the Cinquecento in Italy,\nwith its many tangible memorials.\n\nBut indeed, we may go further, and say that an atmosphere is\nleft, and that we can feel it, by many ages and cultures\nwhich have left no tangible memorials at all; or but few and\nuninterpretable ones, like the Celtic.  And that each has\ndeveloped some mood, some indefinable inward color--which we\nperceive and inherit.  Each different: you cannot mistake the\nChinese or the Celtic color for the Greek; thought it might be\nhard to define your perception of either, or of their difference.\nIt would be hard to say, for instance, that this one was crimson,\nthe other blue; not quite so hard to say that this one affects\nus as crimson does, that other as blue does.   And  yet we can\nsee, I think, that by chasing our impressions to their source,\nthere might be some way of presenting them in symbolic form.\nThere might be some way of reducing what we feel from the Greeks,\nor Chinese, or Celts, into a word, a sentence; of writing it down\neven in  a single hieroglyph, of which the elements would be such\nas should convey to something in us behind the intellect just the\nindefinable feeling either of these people give us.\n\nIn the Chinese writing, with all its difficulty, there is\nsomething superior to our alphabets:  an element that appeals to\nthe soul directly, or to the imagination directly, I think.\nSuppose you found a Chinese ideogram--of course there is no such\na one--to express the forgotten Celtic culture; and it proved in\nanalysis, to be composed of the signs for twilight, wind, and\npine trees; or wind, night, and wild waters; with certain other\nelements which not the brain-mind, but the creative soul, would\nhave to supply.  In such a symbol there would be an appeal to the\nimagination--that great Wizard within us--to rise up and supply\nus with quantities of knowledge left unsaid.  Indeed, I am but\ntrying to illustrate an idea, possibilities.... I think there is\na power within the human soul to trace back all growths, the most\nprofuse and complex, to the simple seed from which they sprung;\nor, just as a single rose or pansy bloom is the resultant, the\nexpression, of the interaction and interplay of innumerable\nforces--so the innumerable forces whose interaction makes the\nhistory of one race, one culture, could find their ultimate\nexpression in a symbol as simple as a pansy or rose bloom--color,\nform and fragrance.  So each national great age would be a flower\nevolved in the garden of the eternal; and once evolved, once\nbloomed, it should never pass away; the actual blossom withers\nand falls; but the color, the form, the fragrance,--these remain\nin the world of causes.  And just as you might press a flower in\nan album, or make a painting of it, and preserve its scent by\nchemical distillation or what not--and thereby preserve the\nwhole story of all the forces that went to the production of\nthat bloom--and they are, I suppose, in number beyond human\ncomputation--so you might express the history of a race in a\nsymbol as simple as a bloom... And that there is a power, an\nunfolding faculty, in the soul, which, seeing such a symbol,\ncould unravel from it, by meditation, the whole achievement of\nthe race; its whole history, down to details; yes, even down to\nthe lives of every soul that incarnated in it:  their personal\nlives, with all successes, failures, attempts, everything.\nBecause, for example, the light which comes down to us as that of\nancient Greece is the resultant, the remainder of all the forces\nin all the lives of all individual Greeks, as these were played\non by the conditions of place and time.  Time:--at such and such\na period, the Mood of the Oversoul is such and such. Place:--the\ntemporal mood of the Oversoul, playing through that particular\nfacet of the dodecahedron, which is Greece.  The combinations and\ninterplay of these two, plus the energies for good or evil of the\nsouls there incarnate, give as their resultant the whole life of\nthe race.  There is perhaps a high Algebra of the Soul by which,\nif we understood its laws, we could revive the history of\nany past epoch, discover its thought and modes of living, as\nwe discover the value of the unknown factor in an equation.\nPythagoras must have his pupils understand music and geometry;\nand by music he intended, all the arts, every department of life\nthat came under the sway of the Nine Muses.  Why?--Because, as he\ntaught, God is Poet and Geometer.  Chaos is only on the outer rim\nof existence; as you get nearer the heart of thing, order and\nrhythm, geometry and poetry, are more and more found.  Chaos is\nonly in our own chaotic minds and perceptions:  train these\naright, and you shall hear the music of the spheres, perceive the\nreign of everlasting Law.  These impulses from the Oversoul, that\ncreate the great epochs, raising one race after another, have\nperfect rhythm and rhyme.  God sits harping in the Cycle of\nInfinity, and human history is the far faint echo of the tune he\nplays.  Why can we not listen, till we hear and apprehend the\ntune?  Or History is the sound heard from far, of the marching\nhosts of angels and archangels; the cyclic tread of their\nbattalions; the thrill and rumble and splendor of their drums and\nfifes:--why should we not listen till the whole order of their\ncohorts and squadrons is revealed?--I mean to suggest that there\nare laws, undiscovered, but discoverable--discoverable from the\nfragments of history we possess--by knowing which we might gain\nknowledge, even without further material discoveries, of the lost\nhistory of man.  Without moving from Point Loma, or digging up\nanything more important that hard-pan, we may yet make the most\nimportant finds, and throw floods of light on the whole dark\nproblem of the past.  H.P. Blavatsky gave us the clews; we owe it\nto her to use them.\n\nNow I want to suggest a few ideas along these lines that may\nthrow light on ancient Europe; of which orthodox history tells us\nof nothing but the few centuries of Greece and Rome.  As if the\npeople of three thousand years hence should know, of the history\nof Christendom, only that of Italy from Garibaldi onward, and\nthat of Greece beginning, say, at the Second Balkan War.  That is\nthe position we are in with regard to old Europe.  Very like\nSpain, France, Britain, Germany and Scandinavia played as great\nparts in the millennia B.C., as they have done in the times we\nknow about. All analogy from the other seats of civilization is\nfor it; all racial memories and traditions--tradition is racial\nmemory--are for it; and I venture to say, all reason and common\nsense are for it too.\n\nNow I have to remind you of certain conclusions worked out in an\narticle 'Cyclic Law in History,' which appeared some time back in\n_The Theosophical Path:_--that there are, for example, three\ngreat centers of historical activity in the Old World:  China and\nher surroundings; West Asia and Egypt; Europe.  Perhaps these are\nmajor facets of the dodecahedron.  Perhaps again, were the facts\nin our knowledge not so desperately incomplete, we should find,\nas in the notes and colors, a set of octaves: that each of these\ncenters was a complete octave, and each phase or nation a note.\nDo you see where these leads?  Supposing the note _China_ is\nstruck in the Far Eastern Octave; would there not be a vibration\nof some corresponding note in the octave Europe?  Supposing the\nOctave _West Asia_ were under the fingers of the Great Player,\nwould not the corresponding note in Europe vibrate?\n\nNow let us look at history.  Right on the eastern rim of the Old\nWorld is the Chino-Japanese field of civilization.  It has been,\nuntil lately, under pralaya, in a night or inactive period of its\nexistence, for something over six centuries:  a beautiful pralaya\nin the case of Japan; a rather ugly one, recently, in the case\nof China.  Right on the western rim of the Old World are the\nremnants of the once great Celtic people.  Europe at large has\nbeen very much in manvantara, a day or waking period, for a\nlittle over six hundred years.  Yet of the four racial roots or\nstocks of Europe, the Greco-Latin, Teutonic, Slavic, and Celtic,\nthe last-named alone has been under pralaya, sound asleep, during\nthe whole of this time.  Let me interject here the warning that\nit is no complete scheme that is to be offered; only a few facts\nthat suggest that such a scheme may exist, could we find it.\nBefore Europe awoke to her present cycle of civilization and\nprogress, before the last quarter of the thirteenth century, the\nChinese had been in manvantara, very much awake, for about\nfifteen hundred years.  When they went to sleep, the Celts\ndid also.\n\nI pass by with a mere note of recognition the two dragons, the\none on the Chinese, the other on the Welsh flag; just saying\nthat national symbols are not chose haphazard, but are an\nexpression of inner things; and proceed to give you the dates of\nall the important events in Chinese and Celtic, chiefly Welsh,\nhistory during the last two thousand years.  In 1911 the Chinese\nthrew off the Manchu yoke and established a native republic.  In\n1910 the British Government first recognized Wales as a separate\nnationality, when the heir to the throne was invested as Prince\nof Wales at Carnarvon.  Within a few years a bill was passed\ngiving Home Rule to Ireland; and national parliaments at Dublin\nand at Cardiff are said to be among the likelihoods of the near\nfuture.  The eighteenth century, for manvantara, was a singularly\ndead time in Europe; but in China, for pralaya, it was a\nsingularly living time, being filled with the glorious reigns of\nthe Manchu emperors Kanghu and Kien Lung.  In Wales it saw the\nreligious revival which put a stop to the utter Anglicization of\nthe country, saved the language from rapid extinction, and\nawakened for the first time for centuries a sort of national\nconsciousness.   Going back, the first great emperor we come to\nin China before the Manchu conquest, was Ming Yunglo, conqueror\nof half Asia.  His contemporary in Wales was Owen Glyndwr, who\nsucceeded in holding the country against the English for a number\nof years; there had been no Welsh history between Glyndwr and\nthe religious revival.  In 1260 or thereabouts the Mongols\ncompleted the conquest of China, and dealt her then flourishing\ncivilization a blow from which it never really recovered.  About\ntwenty years later the English completed the conquest of Wales,\nand dealt her highly promising literary culture a blow from which\nit is only now perhaps beginning to recover.  In the eleventh,\ntwelfth, and thirteenth centuries the great Sung artists of China\nwere painting infinity or their square feet of silk:  painting\nNatural Magic as it has never been painted or revealed since.  In\nthose same centuries the Welsh bards were writing the Natural\nMagic of the Mabinogion, one of the chief European repositories\nof Natural Magic; and filling a remarkable poetical literature\nwith the same quality:--and that before the rest of Europe\nhad, for the most part, awakened to the spiritual impulses\nthat lead to civilization.  In the seventh and eighth centuries,\nwhen continental Europe was in the dead vast and middle of\npralaya, Chinese poetry, under Tang Hsuan-tsong and his great\npredecessors, was in its Golden Age--a Golden Age comparable to\nthat of Pericles in Athens.  In the seventh and eighth centuries,\nIreland was sending out scholars and thinkers as missionaries to\nall parts of benighted Europe:  Ireland in her golden age, the\none highly cultured country in Christendom, was producing a\nglorious prose and poetry in the many universities that starred\nthat then by no means distressful island.  In 420, China, after a\ncouple of centuries of anarchy, began to re-establish her\ncivilization on the banks of the Yangtse.  In 410, the Britons\nfinally threw off the Roman yoke, and the first age of Welsh\npoetry, the epoch of Arthur and Taliesin, which has been the\nlight of romantic Europe ever since, began.\n\nDoes it not seem as if that great Far Eastern note could not\nbe struck without this little far western note vibrating in\nsympathy?  Very faintly; not in a manner to be heard clearly by\nthe world; because in historical times the Celtic note has been\nas it were far up on the keyboard, and never directly under the\nMaster-Musician's fingers.  And when you add to it all that this\nCeltic note has come in the minds of literary critics rather to\nstand as the synonym for Natural Magic--you all know what is\nmeant by that term;--and that now, as we are discovering the old\nChinese poetry and painting, we are finding that Natural Magic is\nreally far more Chinese than Celtic--that where we Celts have\nvibrated to it minorly, the great Chinese gave it out fully and\ngrandly--does it not add to the piquancy of the 'coincidence?'\n\nNow there is no particular reason for doubting the figures of\nChinese chronology as far back as 2350 B.C.  Our Western\nauthorities do doubt all before about 750; but it is hard to see\nwhy, except that 'it is their nature to.'  The Chinese give the\nyear 2356 as the date of the accession of the Emperor Yao, first\nof the three canonized rulers who have been the patriarchs,\nsaints, sages, and examples for all ages since.  In that decade a\nmanvantara of the race would seem to have begun, which lasted\nthrough the dynasties of Hia and Shang, and halfway through the\nChow, ending about 850.  During this period, then, I think\npresently we shall come to place the chief activities and\ncivilization of the Celts.  From 850 to 240--all these figures\nare of course approximations:  there was pralaya in China;\non the other side of the world, it was the period of Celtic\neruptions--and probably, disruption.  While Tsin Shi Hwangti,\nfrom 246 to 213, was establishing the modern Chinese Empire, the\nGauls made their last incursion into Italy.  The culmination of\nthe age Shi Hwangti inaugurated came in the reign of Han Wuti,\ntraditionally the most glorious in the Chines annals.  It\nlasted from 140 to 86 B.C.; nor was there any decline under his\nsuccessor, who reigned until 63.  In the middle of that time--the\nlast decade of the second century--the Cimbri, allied with the\nTeutones, made their incursion down into Spain.  Opinion is\ndivided as to whether this people was Celtic or Teutonic; but\nprobably the old view is the true one, that the word is akin to\nCimerii, Crimea, and Cymry, and that they were Welshmen in their\nday.  When Caesar was in Gaul, the people he conquered had much\nto say about their last great king.  Diviciacos, whose dominions\nincluded Gaul and Britain; they looked back to his reign as a\nperiod of great splendor and national strength.  He lived, they\nsaid, about a hundred years before Caesar's coming--or was\ncontemporary with Han Wuti.\n\nBut the empire of the Celtic Kings was already far fallen, before\nit was confined to Gaul, Britain, and perhaps Ireland.  When\nfirst we see this people they were winning a name for fickleness\nof purpose:  making conquests and throwing them away; which\nthings are the marks of a race declining from a high eminence it\nhad won of old through hard work and sound policy.  We shall come\nto see that personal or outward characteristics can never be\nposited as inherent in any race.  Such things belong to ages and\nstages in the race's growth.  Whatever you can say of Englishmen,\nFrenchmen, Germans, now, has been totally untrue of them at some\nother period.  We think of the Italians as passionate, subtle of\nintellect, above all things artistic and beauty-loving.  Now\nlook at them as they were three centuries B.C.:  plodding, self-\ncontained and self-mastered, square-dealing and unsubtle, above\nall things contemning beauty, wholly inartistic.  But a race may\nretain the same traits for a very long time, if it remains in a\nback-water, and is unaffected by the currents of evolution.\n\nSo we may safely say of the Celts that the fickleness for which\nthey were famed in Roman times was not a racial, but a temporal\nor epochal defect.  They were not fickle when they held out (in\nWales) for eight centuries against the barbarian onslaughts which\nbrought the rest of the Roman empire down in two or three; or\nwhen they resisted for two hundred years those Normans who had\nconquered the Anglo-Saxons in a decade.  This very quality, in\nold Welsh literature, is more than once given as a characteristic\nof extreme age; \"I am old, bent double; I am fickly rash.\" says\nLlywarch Hen.  I think that gives the clew to the whole position.\nThe race was at the end of its manvantaric period; the Race Soul\nhad lost control of the forces that bound its organism together;\ncentrifugalism had taken the place of the centripetal impulse\nthat marks the cycles of youth and growth.  It had eaten into\nindividual character; whence the tendency to fly off at\ntangents.  We see the same thing in any decadent people; by\nwhich I mean, any people at the end of one of its manvantaras,\nand on the verge of a pralaya.  And remember that a pralaya, like\na night's rest or the Devachanic sleep between two lives, is\nsimply a means for restoring strength and youth.\n\nHow great the Celtic nations had been in their day, and what\nsettled and civilized centuries lay behind them, one may gather\nfrom two not much noticed facts.  First: Caesar, conqueror of the\nRoman world and of Pompey, the greatest Roman general of the day,\nlanded twice in Britain, and spent a few weeks there without\naccomplishing anything in particular.  But it was the central\nseat and last stronghold of the Celts; and his greatest triumph\nwas accorded him for this feat; and he was prouder of it than\nanything else he ever did.  He set it above his victories over\nPompey. Second:  the Gauls, in the first century B.C., were able\nto put in the field against him three million men:  not so far\nshort of the number France has been able to put in the field\nin the recent war.  Napoleon could hardly, I suppose, have\nraised such an army--in France.  Caesar is said to have killed\nsome five million Gauls before he conquered them.  By ordinary\ncomputations, that would argue a population of some thirty\nmillions in the Gaulish half of the kingdom of Diviciacos a\ncentury after the latter's death; and even if that computation\nis too high, it leaves the fact irrefutable that there was a very\nlarge population; and a large population means always a long and\nsettled civilization.\n\nDiviciacos ruled only Gaul and Britain; possible Ireland as\nwell; he may have been a Gaul, a Briton, or an Irishman; very\nlikely there was not much difference in those days.  It will be\nsaid I am leaving out of account much that recent scholarship has\ndivulged; I certainly am leaving out of account a great many of\nthe theories of recent scholarship, which for the most part make\nconfusion worse confounded.  But we know that the lands held by\nthe Celts--let us boldly say, with many of the most learned, the\nCeltic empire--was vastly larger in its prime than the British\nIsles and France.  Its eastern outpost was Galatia in Asia Minor.\nYou may have read in _The Outlook_ some months ago an article by\na learned Serbian, in which he claims that the Jugo-Slavs of the\nBalkans, his countrymen, are about half Celtic; the product of\nthe fusion of Slavic in-comers, perhaps conquerors, with an\noriginal Celtic population.  Bohemia was once the land of the\nCeltic Boii; and we may take it as an axiom, that no conquest,\nno racial incursion, ever succeeds in wiping out the conquered\npeople; unless there is such wide disparity, racial and\ncultural, as existed, for example, between the white settlers in\nAmerica and the Indians.  There are forces in human nature itself\nwhich make this absolute.  The conquerors may quite silence the\nconquered; may treat them with infinite cruelty; may blot out\nall their records and destroy the memory of their race; but the\nblood of the conquered will go on flowing through all the\ngeneration of the children of the conquerors, and even, it seems\nprobable, tend ever more and more to be the prevalent element.\n\nThe Celts, then, at one time or another, have held the following\nlands:  Britain and Ireland, of course; Gaul and Spain;\nSwitzerland and Italy north of the Po; Germany, except perhaps\nsome parts of Prussia; Denmark probably, which as you know was\ncalled the Cimbric Chersonese; the Austrian empire, with the\nBalkan Peninsula north of Macedonia, Epirus and Thrace, and much\nof southern Russia and the lands bordering the Black Sea.\nFurther back, it seems probable that they and the Italic people\nwere one race; whose name survives in that of the province of\nLiguria, and in the Welsh name for England, which is Lloegr.  So\nthat in the reign of Diviciacos their empire had already shrunk\nto the meerest fragment of its former self.   It had broken and\nshrunk before we get the first historical glimpses of them;\nbefore they sacked Delphi in 279 B.C.:  before their ambassadors\nmade a treaty with Alexander; and replied to his question as to\nwhat they feared: \"Nothing except that the skies should fall.\"\nBefore they sacked Rome in 390.  All these historic eruptions\nwere the mere sporadic outburst of a race long past its prime and\nquerulous with old age, I think  Two thousand years of severe\npralaya, almost complete extinction, utter insignificance and\nterrible karma awaited them; and we only see them, pardon the\nexpression, kicking up their heels in a final plunge as a\npreparation for that long silence.\n\nSome time back I discussed these historical questions, particularly\nthe correspondence between Celtic and Chinese dates, with\nDr. Siren and Professor Fernholm; and they pointed out to\nme a similar correspondence between the dates of Scandinavian\nand West Asian history.  I can remember but one example now:\nGustavus Vasa, father of modern Sweden, founder of the present\nmonarchy, came to the throne in 1523 and died in 1560.  The last\ngreat epoch of the West Asian Cycle coincides, in the west, and\nreign of Suleyman the Magnificent in Turkey, from 1520 to 1566.\nAt its eastern extremity, Babar founded the Mogul Empire in India\nin 1526; he reigned until 1556.  On the death of Aurangzeb in\n1707, the Moguls ceased to be a great power; the Battle of\nPultowa, in 1709, put an end to Sweden's military greatness.\n\nIt is interesting to compare the earliest Celtic literature we\nhave, with the earliest literature of the race which was to be\nthe main instrument of Celtic bad karma in historical times--the\nTeutons.  Here, as usual, common impressions are false.  It is\nthe latter, the Teutonic, that is in the minor key, and full\nof wistful sadness.  There is an earnestness about it:  a\nrecognition of, and rather mournful acquiescence in, the\nmightiness of Fate, which is imagined almost always adverse.  I\nquote these lines from William Morris, who, a Celt himself by\nmere blood and race, lived in and interpreted the old Teutonic\nspirit as no other English writer has attempted to do, mush less\nsucceeded in doing:  he is the one Teuton of English literature.\nHe speaks of the \"haunting melancholy\" of the northern races--the\n\"Thought of the Otherwhere\" that\n\n     \"Waileth weirdly along through all music and song\n     From a Teuton's voice or string: ...\"\n\nWithal it was a brave melancholy that possessed them; they were\nequal to great deeds, and not easily to be discouraged; they\ncould make merry, too; but in the midst of their merriment, they\ncould not forget grim and hostile Fate:--\n\n     \"There dwelt men merry-hearted and in hope exceeding great,\n     Met the good days and the evil as they went the ways of fate.\"\n\nIt is literature that reveals the heart of a people who had\nsuffered long, and learnt from their suffering the lessons of\npatience, humility, continuity of effort:  those qualities which\nenable them, in their coming manvantaric period, to dominate\nlarge portions of the world.\n\nBut when we turn to the Celtic remains, the picture we find is\naltogether different.  Their literature tells of a people, in the\nBiblical phrase, \"with a proud look and a high stomach.\"  It is\nfull of flashing colors, gaiety, titanic pride.  There was no\ngrayness, no mournful twilight hue on the horizon of their mind;\ntheir 'Other-World' was only more dawn-lit, more noon-illumined,\nthan this one; Ireland of the living was sun-bright and\nsparkling and glorious; but the 'Great Plain' of the dead was\nfar more sun-bright and sparkling than Ireland.  It is the\nliterature of a people accustomed to victory and predominance.\nWhen they began to meet defeat they by no means acquiesced in\nit.  They regarded adverse fate, not with reverence, but with\ncontempt.  They saw in sorrow no friend and instructress of the\nhuman soul; were at pains to learn no lesson from her; instead,\nthey pitted what was their pride, but what they would have called\nthe glory of their own souls, against her; they made no terms,\nasked no truce; but went on believing the human--or perhaps I\nshould say the Celtic--soul more glorious than fate, stronger to\nendure and defy than she to humiliate and torment.  In many sense\nit was a fatal attitude, and they reaped the misery of it; but\nthey gained some wealth for the human spirit from it too.  The\naged Oisin has returned from Fairyland to find the old glorious\norder in Ireland fallen and passed during the three centuries of\nhis absence.  High Paganism has gone, and a religion meek,\ninglorious, and Unceltic has taken its mission thereto:  tells\nhim the gods are conquered and dead, and that the omnipotent God\nof the Christians reigns alone now.--\"I would thy God were set on\nyonder hill to fight with my son Oscar!\" replies Oisin.  Patrick\npaints for him the hell to which he is destined unless he accepts\nChristianity; and Oisin answers:\n\n     \"Put the staff in my hands! for I go to the Fenians, thou\n         cleric, to chant\n     The warsongs that roused them of old; they will rise,\n         making clouds with their breath.\n     Innumerable, singing, exultant; and hell underneath them\n         shall pant,\n     And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled beneath them\n         in death.\"\n\n\"No,\" says Patrick; \"none war on the masters of hell, who could\nbreak up the world in their rage\"; and bids him weep and kneel in\nprayer for his lost soul.  But that will not do for the old\nCeltic warrior bard; no tame heaven for him.  He will go to\nhell; he will not surrender the pride and glory of his soul to\nthe mere meanness of fate.  He will\n\n     \"Go to Caolte and Conan, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair\n     And dwell in the house of the Fenians, be they in flames or\nat feast.\"\n\nSo with Llywarch Hen, Prince of Cumberland, in his old age and\ndesolation.  His kingdom has been conquered; he is in exile in\nWales; his four and twenty sons, \"wearers of golden torques,\nproud rulers of princes,\"  have been slain; he is considerably\nover a hundred years old, and homeless, and sick; but no whit of\nhis pride is gone.  He has learnt no lesson from life excepts\nthis One:  that fate and Karma and sorrow are not so proud, not\nso skillful to persecute, as the human soul is capable of bitter\nresentful endurance. He is titanically angry with destiny; but\nnever meek or acquiescent.\n\nThen if you look at their laws of war, you come to know very well\nhow this people came to be almost blotted out. If they had a true\nspiritual purpose, instead of mere personal pride, I should say\nthe world would be Celtic-speaking and Celtic-governed now. Yet\nstill their reliance was all on what we must call spiritual\nqualities. The first notice we get in classical literature of\nCelts and Teutons--I think from Strabo--is this: \"The Celts\nfight for glory, the Teutons for plunder.\" Instead of plunder,\nlet us say material advantage; they knew why they were fighting,\nand went to get it. But the Celtic military laws--Don Quixote in\na fit of extravagance framed them! There must be no defensive\narmor; the warrior must go bare-breasted into battle. There are a\nthousand things he must fear more than defeat or death--all that\nwould make the glory of his soul seem less to him. He must make\nfighting his business, because in his folly it seemed to him that\nin it he could best nourish that glory; not for what material\nends he could gain. Pitted against a people--with a definite\npolicy, he was bound to lose in the long run. But still he\nendowed the human spirit with a certain wealth; still his folly\nhad been a true spiritual wisdom at one time. The French at\nFontenoy, who cried to their English enemies, when both were\nabout to open fire: _\"Apres vous, messieurs! \"_ were simply\npracticing the principles of their Gaulish forefathers; the\nthrill of honor, of _'Pundonor'_ as the Spaniard says, was much\nmore in their eyes than the chance of victory.\n\nNow, in what condition does a race gain such qualities? Not in\nsorrow; not in defeat, political dependence or humiliation. The\nvirtues which these teach are of an opposite kind; they are what\nwe may call the plebeian virtues which lead to success. But the\nothers, the old Celtic qualities, are essentially patrician. You\nfind them in the Turks; accustomed to sway subject races, and\nutterly ruthless in their dealings with them; but famed as clean\nand chivalrous fighters in a war with foreign peoples. See\nhow the Samurai, the patricians of never yet defeated Japan,\ndeveloped them. They are the qualities the Law teaches us through\ncenturies of domination and aristocratic life. They are developed\nin a race accustomed to rule other races; a race that does\nnot engage in commerce; in an aristocratic race, or in an\naristocratic caste within a race. Here is the point: the Law\ndesigns periods of ascendency for each people in its turn, that\nit may acquire these qualities; and it appoints for each people\nin its turn Periods of subordination, poverty and sorrow, that it\nmay develop the opposite qualities of patience, humility, and\norderly effort.\n\nWould it not appear then, that in those first centuries B. C.\nwhen Celts and Teutons were emerging into historical notice, the\nTeutons were coming out of a long period of subordination, in\nwhich they had learnt strength--the Celts out of a long period of\nascendency, in which they had learnt other things? The Teuton,\nfresh from his pralayic sleep, was unconquerable by Rome.\nThe Celt, old, and intoxicated with the triumphs of a long\nmanvantara, could not repel Roman persistence and order. Rome.\ntoo, was rising, or in her prime; had patience, and followed her\nmaterial plans every inch of the way to success. Where she\nconquered, she imposed her rule. But whatever material plan were\nset before the Celt, some spiritual red-herring, some notion in\nhis mind, was sure to sidetrack him before he had come half way\nto its accomplishment. He had enough of empire-building; and\nthirsted only after dreams. Brennus turned from a burnt Rome, his\npride satisfied. Vercingetorix, decked in all his gold, rode\nseven times--was it seven times?--round the camp of Caesar:\ndefeat had come to him; death was coming; but he would bathe his\nsoul in a little pomp and glory first. Whether you threw your\nsword in the scales, or surrendered to infamous Caesar, the main\nthing was that you should kindle the pride in your eye, and puff\nup the highness of your stomach. . . . So the practical Roman\ndespised him, and presently conquered him.\n\nHere is another curious fact: the greater number, if not all, of\nthe words in the Teutonic languages denoting social order and the\nmachinery of government, are of Celtic derivation. Words such as\n_Reich_ and _Amt,_ to give two examples I happen to remember out\nof a list quoted by Mr. T. W. Rollestone in one of his books.\n\nAnd now I think we have material before us wherewith to reconstruct\na sketch or plan of ancient European history. Let me remind you\nagain that our object is simply the discovery of Laws.  That, in\nthe eyes of the Law, there are no most favored nations.  That\nthere are no such things as permanent racial characteristics;\nbut that each race adopts the characteristics appropriate to\nits stage of growth.\n\nIt is a case of the pendulum swing, of ebb and flow. For two\nthousand years the Teutons have been pressing on and, dominating\nthe Celts. They started at the beginning of that time with the\nplebeian qualities--and have evolved, generally speaking, a large\nmeasure of the patrician qualities. The Celts, meanwhile, have\nbeen pushed to the extremities of the world; their history has\nbeen a long record of disasters. But in the preceding period the\ncase was just the reverse. Then the Celts held the empire. They\nruled over large Teutonic populations. Holding all the machinery\nof government in their hands, they imposed on the languages of\ntheir Teuton subjects the words concerned with that machinery;\njust as in Welsh now our words of that kind are mostly straight\nfrom the English.  It does not follow that there was any sudden\nrising of Teutons against dominant Celts; more probably the\nformer grew gradually stronger as the latter grew gradually\nweaker, until the forces were equalized.  We find the Cimbri and\nTeutones allied on equal terms against Rome.  According to an old\nWelsh history, the _Brut Tyssilio,_  there were Anglo-Saxons in\nBritain before Caesar's invasion; invited there by the Celts, and\nliving in peace under the Celtic kings.  To quote the _Brut\nTyssilio_ a short time ago would have been to ensure being\nscoffed at on all sides; but recently professor Flinders Petrie\nhas vindicated it as against both the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and\nCaesar himself.  English Teutonic was first spoken in Britain\nprobably, some two or three centuries B.C.; and it survived\nthere, probably, in remote places, through the whole of the Roman\noccupation; then, under the influence of the rising star of the\nTeutons, and reinforced by new incursions from the Continent,\nfinally extinguished the Latin of the roman province, and drove\nCeltic into the west.\n\nBut go back from those first centuries B.C. and you come at last\nto a time when the Celtic star was right at the zenith, the\nTeutonic very low.  Free Teutons you should hardly have found\nexcept in Scandinavia; probably only in southern Sweden:  for\nfurther north, and in most of Norway, you soon came to ice and\nthe Lapps and _terra incognita._  And even Sweden may have been\nunder Celtic influence--for the Celtic words survive there\n--but hardly so as to affect racial individuality; just as\nWales and Ireland are under English rule now, yet retain their\nCeltic individuality.\n\nAnd then go back a few more thousand years again, and you would\nprobably find the case again reversed; and Teutons lording it\nover Celts, and our present conditions restored.  It is by\nsuffering these poles of experience, now pride and domination,\nnow humiliation and adversity, that the races of mankind learn.\nEurope is not a new sort of continent.  Man, says one of the\nTeachers, has been much what he is any time these million years.\nHistory has been much what it is now, ebbing and flowing.\nKnowledge, geographical and other, has receded, and again\nexpanded.  Europe has been the seat of empires and civilizations,\nall Europe, probably, for not so far short of a million years;\nthere has been plenty of time for it to multiply terrible karma--\nwhich takes the occasion to expend itself sometimes--as now.  I\nmistrust the theory of recent Aryan in-pourings from Asia.  The\nHuns came in when the Chinese drove them; and the Turks and\nMongols have come in since; but there is nothing to show that\nthe Slavs, for example, when they first appear in history, had\ncome in from beyond the Urals and the Caspian.  Slavs and Greco-\nLatins, Teutons and Celts, I think they were probably in Europe\nany time these many hundreds of thousands of years.\n\nOr rather, I think there were Europeans--Indo-Europeans, Aryans,\ncall them what you will--where they are now at any time during\nsuch a period.  Because race is a thing that will not bear\nclose investigation.  It is a phase; an illusion; a temporary\nappearance taken on by sections of humanity.  There is nothing in\nit to fight about or get the least hot over.  It is a camouflage;\nthere you have the very word for it.  What we call Celts\nand Teutons are simply portions of the one race, humanity,\ncamouflaged up upon their different patterns.  So far as flood\nand ultimate physical heredity are concerned, I doubt there is\nsixpenny-worth of difference between any two of the lot.  \"Oi\nmesilf,\" said Mr. Dooley, speaking as a good American citizen,\n\"am the thruest and purest Anglo-Saxon that iver came out of\nAnglo-Saxony.\"  We call ourselves Anglo-Saxons because we speak\nEnglish (a language more than half Latin); when in reality we\nare probably Jews, Turks, infidels or heretics, if all were\nknown.  What is a Spaniard?  A Latin, you answer pat.  Yes; he\nspeaks a Latin-derived language; and has certain qualities of\ntemperament which seem to mark him as more akin to the French and\nItalians, than to those whom we, just as wisely, dub 'Teutonic'\nor 'Slavic.'  But in fact he may have in his veins not a drop of\nblood that is not Celtic, or not a drop that is not Teutonic, or\nMoorish, or Roman, or Phoenician, or Iberian, or God knows what.\n\nSuppose you have four laya centers in Europe:  four Foci through\nwhich psychic impulses from the Oversoul pour through into this\nworld.  A Mediterranean point, perhaps in Italy; a Teutonic\npoint in Sweden; a Celtic point in Wales-Ireland (formerly a\nsingle island, before England rose out of the sea); and a Slavic\npoint, probably in Russia.  The moment comes for such and\nsuch a 'race' to expand; the Mediterranean, for example.  The\nItalian laya center, Rome, quickens into life.  Rome conquers\nItaly, Gaul, Spain, Britain, the East; becomes _Caput Mundi._\nCountries that shortly before were Celtic in blood, become,\nthrough no material change in that blood, Latin; by language,\nand, as we say, by race.  The moment comes for a Teutonic\nexpansion.  The laya center in Sweden quickens; there is a\nSwedish or Gothic invasion of Celtic lands south of the Baltic;\nthe continental Teutons presently are freed.  It is the expansion\nof a spirit, of a psychic something.  People that were before\nCelts (just as Mr. Dooley is an Anglo-Saxon)  become somehow\nTeutons.  The language expands, and carries a tradition with it.\nHead measurements show that neither Southern Germany nor England\ndiffers very much towards Teutonicism from the Mediterranean\ntype; yet the one is thoroughly Teutonic, the other Anglo-Saxon.\nSometimes the blood may be changed materially; often, I suppose,\nit is changed to some extent; but the main change takes place in\nthe language and tradition; sometimes in tradition alone.  There\nwas a minor Celtic quickening in the twelfth century A. D.;\nthen Wales was in a fervor of national life.  She had not the\nresources, or perhaps the will, for outside conquest.  But her\nAuthurian legend went forth, and drove Beowulf and Child Horn out\nof the memory of the English, Charlemagne out of the memory of\nthe French; invaded Germany, Italy, even Spain:  absolutely\ninstalled Welsh King Arthur as the national hero of the people\nhis people were fighting; and infused chivalry with a certain\nuplift and mysticism through-out western Europe.  Or again, in\nthe Cinquecento and earlier, the Italian center quickened; and\nlearning and culture flowed up from Italy through France and\nEngland; and these countries, with Spain, become the leaders in\npower and civilization.\n\nEngland since that Teutonic expansion which made her English was\nspent, has grown less and less Teutonic, more and more Latin;\nthe Italian impulse of the Renaissance drove her far along that\npath.  In the middle of the eleventh century, her language was\npurely Teutonic; you could count on the fingers of your hand the\nwords derived from Latin or Celtic.  And now?  Sixty percent of\nall English words are Latin.  At the beginning of the fifth\ncentury, after nearly three hundred years of Roman occupation,\none can hardly doubt that Latin was the language of what is now\nEngland.  Celtic, even then I imagine, was mainly to be heard\namong the mountains.  See how that situation is slowly coming\nback.  And the tendency is all in the same direction.  You have\ntaken, indeed, a good few words from Dutch; and some two dozen\nfrom German, in all these centuries; but a Latin word has\nonly to knock, to be admitted and made welcome.  Teachers of\ncomposition must sweat blood and tears for it, alas, to get their\npupils to write English and shun Latin.  In a thousand years'\ntime, will English be as much a Latin language as French is?\nQuite likely.  The Saxon words grow obsolete; French ones come\npouring in.  And Americans are even more prone to Latinisms than\nEnglishmen are:  they 'locate' at such and such a place, where an\nEnglish man would just go and live there.\n\nBefore Latin, Celtic was the language of Britain.  Finally, says\nW.Q. Judge, Sanskrit will become the universal language.  That\nwould mean simply that the Fifth Root Race will swing back slowly\nthrough all the linguistic changes that it has known in the past,\ntill it reaches its primitive language condition.  Then the\ndescendants of Latins, Slavs, Celts, and Teutons will proudly\nboast their unadulterated Aryan-Sanscrit heredity, and exult\nover their racial superiority to those barbarous Teutons,\nCelts, Slavs, and Latins of old, of whom their histories will\nlie profusely.\n\n\n\n\nII.  Homer\n\n\nWhen the Law designs to get tremendous things out of a race of\nmen, it goes to work this way and that, making straight the road\nfor an inrush of important and awakened souls. Having in mind to\nget from Greece a startling harvest presently, it called one\nHomer, surnamed Maeonides, into incarnation, and endowed him with\nhigh poetic genius. Or he had in many past lives so endowed\nhimself; and therefore the Law called him in. This evening I\nshall work up to him, and try to tell you a few things about him,\nsome of which you may know already, but some of which may be new\nto you.\n\nWhat we may call a European manvantara or major cycle of\nactivity--the one that preceded this present one--should have\nbegun about 870 B. C. Its first age of splendor, _of which we\nknow anything,_ began in Greece about 390 years afterwards; we\nmay conveniently take 478, the year Athens attained the hegemony,\nas the date of its inception. Our present European manvantara\nbegan while Frederick II was forcing a road for civilization up\nfrom the Moslem countries through Italy; we may take 1240 as a\ncentral and convenient date. The first 390 years of it--from 1240\nto 1632--saw Dante and all the glories of the Cinquecento in\nItaly; Camoens and the era of the great navigators in Portugal;\nCervantes and his age in Spain; Elizabeth and Shakespeare in\nEngland. That will suggest to us that the Periclean was not the\nfirst age of splendor in Europe in that former manvantara; it\nwill suggest how much we may have lost through the loss of all\nrecords of cultural effort in northern and western Europe during\nthe four centuries that preceded Pericles. Of course we cannot\ncertainly say that there were such ages of splendor. But we shall\nsee presently that during every century since Pericles--during\nthe whole historical period--there has been an age of splendor\nsomewhere; and that these have followed each other with such\nregularity, upon such a definite geographical and chronological\nplan, that unless we accept the outworn conclusion that at a\ncertain time--about 500 B. C.--the nature of man and the laws of\nnature and history underwent radical change, we shall have to\nbelieve that the same thing had been going on--the recurrence of\nages of splendor--back into the unknown night of time.  And that\ngeographical and chronological plan will show us that such ages\nwere going on in unknown Europe during the period we are speaking\nof.  In the manvantara 2980 to 1480 B.C., did the Western Laya\nCenter play the part in Europe, that the Southern one did in the\nmanvantara 870 B.C. to 630 A.D.?  Was the Celtic Empire then,\nwhat the roman Empire became in the later time?  If so, their\nhistory after the pralaya 1480 to 870 may have been akin to that\nof the Latin, in this present cycle; no longer a united empire,\nthey may have achieved something comparable to the achievements\nof France, Spain, and Italy in the later Middle Ages. At least we\nhear the rumblings of their marches and the far shoutings of\ntheir aimless victories until within a century or two of the\nChristian era. Then, what was Italy like in the heyday of the\nEtruscans, or under the Roman kings? The fall of Tarquin--an\nEtruscan--was much more epochal, much more disastrous, than Livy\nguessed. There were more than seven kings of Rome; and their era\nwas longer than from 753 to 716; and Rome--or perhaps the\nEtruscan state of which it formed a part--was a much greater\npower then, than for several centuries after their fall. The\ngreat works they left are an indication.  But only the vaguest\ntraditions of that time came down to Livy.  The Celts sacked\nRome in 390 B.C., and all the records of the past were lost;\nyears of confusion followed; and a century and a half and\nmore before Roman history began to be written by Ennius in his\nepic _Annales._  It was a break in history and blotting out of\nthe past; such as happened in China in 214 B.C., when the ancient\nliterature was burnt.  Such things take place under the Law.\nRace-memory may not go back beyond a certain time; there is a\nlaw in Nature that keeps ancient history esoteric.  As we\ngo forward, the horizon behind follows us.  In the ages of\nmaterialism and the low places of racial consciousness, that\nhorizon probably lies near to us; as you see least far on a\nlevel plain.  But as we draw nearer to esotericism, and attain\nelevations nearer the spirit, it may recede; as the higher you\nstand, the farther you see.  Not so long ago, the world was but\nsix thousand years old in European estimation.  But ever since\nTheosophy has been making its fight to spiritualize human\nconsciousness, _pari passu_ the horizon of the past has been\npushed back by new and new discoveries.\n\nWhat comes down to us from old Europe between its waking and the\nage of Pericles?  Some poetry, legends, and unimportant history\nfrom Greece; some legends from Rome; the spirit or substance of\nthe Norse sagas; the spirit or substance of the Welsh Mabinogi\nand the Arthurian atmosphere; and of the Irish tales of the Red\nBranch and Fenian cycles.  The actual tales as we get them were\nno doubt retold in much later times; and it is these late\nrecensions that we have. What will remain of England in the\nmemory of three or four thousand years hence? Unless this\nTheosophical Movement shall have lifted human standards to the\npoint where that which has hitherto been esoteric may safely be\nkept public, this much:--an echo only of what  England has\nproduced of eternal truth;--something from Shakespeare; something\nfrom Milton; and as much else in prose and poetry from the rest.\nBut all the literature of this and all past ages is and will then\nstill be in being; in the hidden libraries of the Guardians of\nEsoteric Science, from which they loose fragments and hints on\nthe outer world as the occasion cyclically recurs, and as their\nwisdom directs.\n\nHow do they loose such fragments of old inspiration? It may be by\nputting some manuscript in the way of discovery; it may be by\nraising up some man of genius who can read the old records on\ninner planes, and reproduce in epic or drama something of a long\npast splendor to kindle the minds of men anew. In that way Greece\nwas kindled. Troy fell, says H. P. Blavatsky, nearly five\nthousand years ago. Now you will note that a European manvantara\nbegan in 2980 B. C.; which is very nearly five thousand years\nago. And that this present European manvantara or major cycle was\nlit up from a West Asian Cycle; from the Moors in Spain; from\nEgypt through Sicily and Italy; and, in its greatest splendor;\nwhen Constantinople fell, and refugees therefrom came to light\nthe Cinquecento in Italy. Now Constantinople is no great way from\nTroy; and, by tradition, refugees came to Italy from Troy, once.\nWas it they in part, who lit up that ancient European cycle of\nfrom 2980 to 1480 B. C.?\n\nIn the Homeric poems a somewhat vague tradition seems to come\ndown of the achievements of one of the European peoples in that\nancient cycle. Sometime then Greece had her last Pre-periclean\nage of greatness. What form it took, the details of it, were\nprobably as much lost to the historic Greeks as the details of\nthe Celtic Age are to us. But Homer caught an echo and preserved\nthe atmosphere of it. As the Celtic Age bequeaths to us, in the\nIrish and Welsh stories, a sense of style--which thing is the\nimpress of the human spirit triumphant over all hindrances to its\nexpression;--so that long past period bequeathed through Homer a\nsense of style to the later Greeks. It rings majestically through\nhis lines. His history is perhaps not actual history in any\nrecognizable shape.\n\nLegends of a long lost glory drifted down to a poet of mightiest\ngenius; and he embodied them, amplified them, told his message\nthrough them; perhaps reinvented half of them. Even so Geoffrey\nof Monmouth (without genius, however) did with the rumors that\ncame down to him anent the ancient story of his own people; and\nSpenser followed him in the _Faery Queen,_ Malory in his book,\nand Tennyson in the _Idylls of the King._  Even in that last,\nfrom the one poem _Morte D'Arthur_ we should get a sense of the\nold stylish magnificence of the Celtic epoch; for the sake of a\nscore of lines in it, we can forgive Tennyson the rest of the\nIdylls.  But Tennyson was no Celt himself; only, like Spenser\nand Malory, an anglicizer of things Celtic.  How much more\nof the true spirit would have come down to Homer, a Greek\nof genius, writing of traditional Greek glory, and thrilled\nwith racial uplift.\n\nWhere did he live?  Oh, Goodness knows!  When?  Goodness knows\nagain.  (Though we others may guess a little, I hope.)  We have\nHerodotus for it, that Homer lived about four hundred years\nbefore his own time; that is to say, to give a date, in 850;\nand I like the figure well; for if Dante came in as soon as\npossible after the opening of this present manvantara, why not\nHomer as soon as possible after the opening of the last one?  At\nsuch times great souls do come in; or a little before or a\nlittle after; because they have a work of preparation to do;\nand between Dante and Homer there is much parallelism in aims and\naspirations: what the one sought to do for Italy, the other\nsought to do for Greece.  But this is to treat Homer as if he had\nbeen one real man; whereas everybody knows 'it has been proved'\n(a) that there was no such person; (b) that there were dozens of\nhim; (c) that black is white, man an ape, and the soul a\nfiction.  Admitted.  A school of critics has cleaned poor old\nblind Maeonides up very tidily, and left not a vestige of him on\nGod's earth--just as they have, or their like have, cleaned up\nthe Human Soul.  But there is another school, who have preserved\nfor him some shreds at least of identity.  Briefly put, you can\n'prove up what may be classed as brain-mind evidence--grammar,\nmicroscopic examination of text and forms and so on--that Homer\nis a mere airy myth; but to do so you must be totally oblivious\nof the spiritual facts of style and poetry.  Take these into\naccount, and he rises with wonderful individuality from the grave\nand nothingness into which you have relegated him.  The Illiad\ndoes not read like a single poem; there are incompatibilities\nbetween its parts.  On the other hand, there is, generally\nspeaking, the impress of a single creative genius.  One master\nmade the Homeric style.  The Iliad, as we know it, may contain\npassages not his; but--_he wrote the Iliad._\n\nWhat does not follow is, that he ever sat down and said:  \"Now\nlet us write an epic.\"  Conditions would be against it.  A\nwandering minstrel makes ballads, not epics; for him Poe's law\napplies:  that is a poem which can be read or recited at a single\nsitting.  The unity of the Iliad is one not of structure, but of\nspirit; and the chances are that the complete works of any great\npoet will be a unity of spirit.\n\nWhy should we not suppose that in the course of a long life a\ngreat poet--whose name may not have been Homer--that may have\nbeen only _what he was called_--his real name may have been (if\nthe critics will have it so) the Greek for Smith, or Jones, or\nBrown, or Robinson--but he was _called_ Homer anyhow--why should\nwe not suppose that he, filled and fascinated always with one\ngreat traditionary subject, wrote now one incident as a complete\npoem; ten years later another incident; and again, after an\ninterval, another?  Each time with the intention to make a\ncomplete and separate poem; each time going to it influenced by\nthe natural changes of his mood; now preoccupied with one hero or\ngod, now with another.  The Tennyson in his twenties, who wrote\nthe fairylike _Lady of Shalott,_ was a very different man in mood\nand outlook from the Mid-Victorian Tennyson who wrote the\nexecrable _Merlin and Vivien;_  but both were possessed with the\nArthurian legend.  At thirty and at fifty you may easily take\ndifferent views of the same men and incidents.  The Iliad, I\nsuggest, may be explained as the imperfect fusion of many poems\nand many moods and periods of life of a single poet.  It was not\nuntil the time of Pisistratus, remember, that it was edited into\na single epic.\n\nNow these many poems, before Pisistratus took them in hand, had\nbeen in the keeping for perhaps three centuries of wandering\nminstrels--Rhapsodoi, Aoidoi, Citharaedi and Homeridae, as they\nwere called--who drifted about the Isles of Greece and Asiatic\nmainland during the long period of Greek insignificance and\nunculture.  The first three orders were doubtless in existence\nlong before Homer was born; they were the bards, trouveurs and\nminnesingers of their time; their like are the instruments of\nculture in any race during its pralayas.  So you find the\nprofessional story-tellers in the East today.  But the Homeridae\nmay well have been--as De Quincey suggests--an order specially\ntrained in the chanting of Homeric poems; perhaps a single\nschool founded in some single island by or for the sake of Homer.\nWe hear that Lycurgus was the first who brought Homer--the works,\nnot the man--into continental Greece; importing them from Crete.\nThat means, probably, that he induced Homeridae to settle\nin Sparta.  European continental Greece would in any case\nhave been much behind the rest of the Greek world in culture;\nbecause furthest from and the least in touch with West Asian\ncivilization.  Crete was nearer to Egypt; the Greeks of Asia\nMinor to Lydia; as for the islanders of the Cyclades and\nSporades, the necessity of gadding about would have brought them\ninto contact with their betters to the south and east, and so\nawakened them, much sooner than their fellow Greeks of Attica,\nBoeotia, and the Peloponnese.\n\nWhere did Homer live?  Naturally, as a wandering bard, all over\nthe place.  We know of the seven cities that claimed to be\nhis birthplace:\n\n     _Smyrna, Chias, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodos, Argos, Athenae\n          Orbis de patria certat, Homere, Tua._\n\nOf these Smyrna probably has the best chance of it; for he was\nMaeonides, the son of Maeon, and Maeon was the son of Meles; and\nthe Maeon and the Meles are rivers by Smyrna.  But De Quincey\nmakes out an excellent case for supposing he knew Crete better\nthan any other part of the world.  Many of the legends he\nrecords; many of the superstitions--to call them that;--many of\nthe customs he describes: have been, and are still, peculiar to\nCrete.  Neither the smaller islands, nor continental Greece, were\nvery suitable countries for horse-breeding; and the horse does\nnot figure greatly in their legends.  But in Crete the friendship\nof horse and man was traditional; in Cretan folk-lore, horses\nstill foresee the doom of their masters, and weep. So they\ndo in Homer.\n\nThere is a certain wild goat found only in Crete, of which he\ngive a detailed description; down the measurement of its horns;\nexact, as sportsmen have found in modern times.  He mentions the\n_Kubizeteres,_ Cretan tumblers, who indulge in a 'stunt' unknown\nelsewhere.  They perform in couples; and when he mentions them,\nit is in the dual number.  Preternatural voices are an Homeric\ntradition:  Stentor \"spoke loud as fifty other men\"; when\nAchilles roared at the Trojans, their whole army was frightened.\nIn Crete such voices are said to be still common:  shepherds\ncarry on conversations at incredible distances--speak to, and are\nanswered by, men not yet in sight.--Dequincey gives several other\nsuch coincidences; none of them, by itself, might be very\nconvincing; but taken all together, they rather incline one to\nthe belief that Smith, or Brown, or Jones, _alias_ Homer, must\nhave spent a good deal of his time in Crete;--say, was brought\nup there.\n\nNow Crete is much nearer Egypt than the rest of Greece is; and\nmay very likely have shared in a measure of Egyptian culture at\nthe very beginning of the European manvantara, and even before.\nOf course, in past cycles it had been a great center of culture\nitself; but that was long ago, and I am not speaking of it.  In\nthe tenth century A.D., three hundred years before civilization,\nin our own cycle, had made its way from the West Asian Moslem\nworld into Christendom, Sicily belonged to Egypt and shared in\nits refinement--was Moslem and highly civilized, while Europe\nwas Christian and barbarous; later it became a main channel\nthrough which Europe received enlightenment.  May not Crete\nhave played a like part in ancient times?  I mean, is it\nnot highly probable?  May it not have been--as Sicily was\nto be--a mainly European country under Egyptian influence,\nand a seat of Egyptianized culture?\n\nLet us, then, suppose Homer a Greek, born early in the ninth\ncentury B.C., taken in childhood to Crete, and brought up there\nin contact with cultural conditions higher than any that obtained\nelsewhere among his own people.\n\nBut genius stirs in him, and he is Greek altogether in the deep\nenthusiasms proper to genius: so presently he leaves Crete and\nculture, to wander forth among the islands singing.--\n\n     _En delo tote Proton ego Kai Homeros aoidoi\n     Melpomen,_\n\nsays Hesiod: \"Then first in Delos did I and Homer, two Aoidoi,\nperform as musical reciters.\" Delos, of course, is a small island\nin the Cyclades.\n\nHe would have had some training, it is likely, as an Aoidos: a\ngood founding in the old stories which were their stock in trade,\nand which all pointed to the past glory of his race. In Crete he\nhad seen the culture of the Egyptians; in Asia Minor, the\nstrength and culture of the Lydians; now in his wanderings\nthrough the isles he saw the disunion and rudeness of the Greeks.\nBut the old traditions told him of a time when Greeks acted\ntogether and were glorious:  when they went against, and\noverthrew, a great West Asian Power strong and cultured like the\nLydians and Egyptians.  Why should not he create again the glory\nthat once was Greece?\n\n     _Menin aeide, Thea, Peleiadeo Achileos!_\n\n--Goddess, aid me to sing the wrath (and grandeur) of a Greek\nhero!--Let the Muses help him, and he will remind his people of\nan ancient greatness of their own:  of a time when they were\nunited, and triumphed over these now so much stronger peoples!\nSo Dante, remembering ancient Rome, evoked out of the past and\nfuture a vision of United Italy; so in the twelfth century a\nhundred Welsh bards sand of Arthur.\n\nI think he would have created out of his own imagination\nthe life he pictures for his brazen-coated Achaeans.  It\ndoes not follow, with any great poet, that he is bothering\nmuch with historical or other accuracies, or sticking very\nclosely even to tradition.  Enough that the latter should give\nhim a direction; as Poet-creator, he can make the details\nfor himself.  Homer's imagination would have been guided,\nI take it, by two conditions:  what he saw of the life of\nhis semi-barbarous Greek country men; and what he knew of\ncivilization in Egyptianized Crete.  He was consciously picturing\nthe life of Greeks; but Greeks in an age traditionally more\ncultured than his own.  Floating legends would tell him much\nof their heroic deed, but little of their ways of living.\nSuch details he would naturally have to supply for himself.\nHow would he go to work?  In this way, I think.  The Greeks,\nsays he, were in those old ages, civilized and strong, not,\nas now, weak, disunited and half barbarous.  Now what is strength\nlike, and civilization?  Why, I have them before me here to\nobserve, here in Crete.  But Crete is Egyptianized; I want a\nGreek civilization; culture as it would appear if home-grown\namong Greeks.--I do not mean that he consciously set this plan\nbefore himself; but that naturally it would be the course that\nhe, or anyone, would follow.  Civilization would have meant for\nhim Cretan civilization:  the civilization he knew:  that part of\nthe proposition would inhere in his subconsciousness.  But in his\nconscious mind, in his intent and purpose, would inhere a desire\nto differentiate the Greek culture he wanted to paint, from the\nEgyptianized culture he knew.  So I think that the conditions of\nlife he depicts were largely the creation of his own imagination,\nworking in the material of Greek character, as he knew it, and\nCretan-Egyptian culture as he knew that.  He made his people\nessentially Greeks, but ascribed to them also non-Greek features\ndrawn from civilized life.\n\nOne sees the same thing in the old Welsh Romances:  tales from of\nold retold by men fired with immense racial hopes, with a view to\nfostering such hopes in the minds of their hearers.  The bards\nsaw about them the rude life and disunion of the Welsh, and the\nfar greater outward culture of the Normans; and their stock in\ntrade was a tradition of ancient and half-magical Welsh grandeur.\nWhen they wrote of Cai--Sir Kay the Seneschal--that so subtle was\nhis nature that when it pleased him he could make himself as tall\nas the tallest tree in the forest, they were dealing in a purely\nceltic element:  the tradition of the greatness of, and the\nmagical powers inherent in, the human spirit; but when they set\nhim on horseback, to ride tilts in the tourney ring, they were\nsimply borrowing from, to out do, the Normans.  Material culture,\nas they saw it, included those things; therefore they ascribed\nthem to the old culture they were trying to paint.\n\nLying was traditionally a Greek vice.  The Greek lied as\nnaturally as the Persian told the truth.  Homer wishes to set\nforth Ulysses, one of his heroes, adorned with all heroic\nperfections.  He was so far Greek as not to think of lying as a\nquality to detract; he proudly makes Ulysses a \"lord of lies.\"\nPerhaps nothing in Crete itself would have taught him better; if\nwe may believe Epimenides and Saint Paul.  On the other hand, he\nwas a great-hearted and compassionate man; compassionate as\nShakespeare was.  Now the position of women in historical Greece\nwas very low indeed; the position of women in Egypt, as we know,\nwas very high indeed.  This was a question to touch such a man to\nthe quick; the position he gives women is very high:  very much\nhigher than it was in Periclean Athens, with all the advance that\nhad been made by that time in general culture.  Andromache, in\nHomer, is the worthy companion and helpmeet of Hector; not a\nGreek, but Egyptian idea.\n\nHomer's contemporary, Hesiod, tells in his _Works and Days_ of\nthe plebeian and peasant life of his time.  Hesiod had not the\ngrace of mind or imagination to idealize anything; he sets down\nthe life of the lower orders with a realism comparable to that of\nthe English Crabbe.  It is an ugly and piteous picture he gives.\nHomer, confining himself in the main to the patrician side of\nthings, does indeed give hints that the lot of the peasant and\nslave was miserable; he does not quite escape some touches from\nthe background of his own day.  Nor did Shakespeare, trying to\npaint the life of ancient Athens, escape an English Elizabethan\nBackground; Bully Bottom and his colleagues are straight from\nthe wilds of Warwickshire; the Roman mob is made up of London\nprentices, cobblers and the like.  Learned Ben, on the other\nhand, contrives in his _Sejanus_ and his _Catiline,_ by dint and\nsheer intellect and erudition, to give us correct waxwork and\nclockwork Romans; there are no anachronisms in Ben Johnson;\nnever a pterodactyl walks down _his_ Piccadilly.  But Shakespeare\nrather liked to have them in his; with his small Latin and less\nGreek, he had to create his human beings--draw them from the\nlife, and from the life he saw about him.  The deeper you see\ninto life, the less the costumes and academic exactitudes matter;\nyou keep your imagination for the great things, and let the\nexternals worry about themselves.  Now Homer was a deal more\nlike Shakespeare than Ben; but there was this difference:\nhe was trying to create Greeks of a nobler order than his\ncontemporaries.  Men in those days, he says, were of huger\nstature than they are now.  And yet, when his imagination is not\nactually at work to heighten and ennoble the portrait of a hero,\nreal Greek life of his own times does not fail sometimes--to\nobtrude on him.  So he lets in bits now and again that belong to\nthe state of things Hesiod describes, and confirm the truth of\nHesiod's dismal picture.\n\nWell, he wandered the islands, singing; \"laying the nexus of his\nsongs,\" as Hesiod says in the passage from which I quoted just\nnow, \"in the ancient sacred hymns.\"  As Shakespeare was first an\nactor, then a tinkerer of other men's plays, then a playwright on\nhis own account; so perhaps Homer, from a singer of the old\nhymns, became an improver and restorer of them, then a maker\nof new ones.  He saw the wretched condition of his people,\ncontrasted it with the traditions he found in the old days, and\nwas spurred up to create a glory for them in his imagination.\nHis feelings were hugely wrought upon by compassion working as\nyoke-fellow with race-pride.  You shall see presently how the\nintensity of his pity made him bitter; how there must have been\nsomething Dantesque of grim sadness in his expression:  he had\nseen suffering, not I think all his own, till he could allow to\nfate no quality but cruelty.  Impassioned by what we may call\npatriotism, he attacked again and again the natural theme for\nGreek epic:  the story of a Greek contest with and victory over\nWest Asians; but he was too great not to handle even his West\nAsians with pity, and moves us to sympathy with Hector and\nAndromache often, because against them too was stretched forth\nthe hand of the great enemy, fate.  In different moods and at\ndifferent times, never thinking to make an epic, he produced a\nlarge number of different poems about the siege of Troy.\n\nAnd the Odyssey?  Well, the tradition was that he wrote it in his\nold age.  Its mood is very different from that of the Iliad; and\nmany words used in it are used with a different meaning; and\nthere are words that are not used in the Iliad at all.  Someone\nsays, it comes from the old age of the Greek epic, rather than\nfrom that of Homer.  I do not know.  It is a better story than\nthe Iliad; as if more nearly cast at one throe of a mind.  Yet\nit, too, must be said not to hang together; here also are\ndiscrepant and incompatible parts.\n\nThere is all tradition for it that the Homeric poems were handed\ndown unwritten for several centuries.  Well; I can imagine the\nAoidoi and Citharaoidoi and the rest learning poems from the\nverbal instruction of other Aoidoi and Citharaoidoi, and so\npreserving them from generation to generation to generation. But\nI cannot imagine, and I do think it is past the wit of man to\nimagine, long poems being composed by memory; it seems to me\nHomer must have written or dictated them at first.  Writing in\nGreece may have been an esoteric science in those times.  It is\nnow, anywhere, to illiterates.  In Caesar's day, as he tells us,\nit was an esoteric science among the Druids; they used it, but\nthe people did not.  It seems probable that writing was not in\ngeneral use among the Greeks until long after Homer; but, to me,\ncertain that Homer used it himself, or could command the services\nto those who did.  But there was writing in Crete long before the\nGreco-Phoenician alphabet was invented; from the time of the\nfirst Egyptian Dynasties, for example.  And here is a point to\nremember:  alphabets are invented; systems of writing are lost\nand reintroduced; but it is idle to talk of the invention of\nwriting.  Humanity has been writing, in one way or another, since\nLemurian days.  When the Manasaputra incarnated, Man became a\npoetizing animal; and before the Fourth Race began, his divine\nTeachers had taught him to set his poems down on whatever he\nchanced at the time to be using as we use paper.\n\nNow, what more can we learn about the inner and real Homer?  What\ncan I tell you in the way of literary criticism, to fill out the\npicture I have attempted to make?  Very little; yet perhaps\nsomething.  I think his historical importance is greater, for us\nnow, than his literary importance.  I doubt you shall find in him\nas great and true thinking, as much Theosophy or Light upon the\nhidden things, as there is in Virgil for example.  I doubt he was\nan initiate, to understand in that life and with his conscious\nmind the truths that make men free.  Plato did not altogether\napprove of him; and where Plato dared lead, we others need not\nfear to follow.  I think the great Master-Poets of the world have\nbeen such because, with supreme insight into the hidden, they\npresented a great Master-Symbol of the Human Soul.  I believe\nthat in the Iliad Homer gives us nothing of that sort; and that\ntherefore, in a certain sense, he is constantly over-rated.  He\npays the penalty of his over-whelming reputation:  his fame is\nchiefly in the mouths of those who know him not at all, and\nuse their hats for speaking-trumpets.  We have in English no\napproximately decent translation of him.  Someone said that Pope\nserved him as Puck served Bully Bottom, what time Peter Quince\nwas moved to cry:  \"Bless thee Bottom, how thou art translated!\"\nIt is not so; to call Pope an ass would be to wrong a faithful\nand patient quadruped; than which Pope was as much greater in\nintellect as he was less in all qualities that call for true\nrespect.  Yet often we applaud Homer, only upon a knowledge of\nPope; and it is safe to say that if you love Pope you would\nloathe Homer.  Pope held that water should manifest, so to say,\nthrough Kew or Versailles fountains; but it was essentially to\nbe from the Kitchen-tap--or even from the sewer.  Homer was more\nfamiliar with it thundering on the precipices, or lisping on the\nyellow sands of time-forgotten Mediterranean islands.  Which\npronunciation do you prefer for his often-recurring and famous\nsea-epithet:  the thunder-on-the-precipices of\n\n     _poluphloisboio thalasses,_\n\nor the lisping-on-the-sands of\n\n    _ poluphleesbeeo thalassace?_\n\n(pardon the attempted phonetics).--For truly there are advocates\nof either; but neither I suppose would have appealed much to\nMr. Pope.\n\nAs to his style, his manner or movement:  to summarize what\nMathew Arnold says of it (the best I can do):  it is as direct\nand rapid as Scott's; as lucid as Wordsworth's could be; but\nnoble like Shakespeare's or Milton's.  There is no Dantesque\nperiphrasis, nor Miltonian agnostic struggle and inversion; but\nhe calls spades, spades, and moves on to the next thing swiftly,\nclearly, and yet with exultation.  (Yet there is retardation\noften by long similes.)  And he either made a language for\nhimself, or found one ready to his hand, as resonant and sonorous\nas the loll and slap of billows in the hollow caverns of the sea.\nAs his lines swing in and roll and crash, they swell the soul in\nyou, and you hear and grow great on the rhythm of the eternal.\nThis though we really, I suppose, are quite uncertain as to the\npronunciation.  But give the vowels merely a plain English value,\ncertain to be wrong, and you still have grand music.  Perhaps\nsome of you have read Mathew Arnold's great essay _On Translating\nHomer,_ and know the arguments wherewith wise Matthew exalts him.\nA Mr. Newman had translated him so as considerably to out-Bottom\nBottom; and Arnold took up the cudgels--to some effect.  Newman\nhad treated him as a barbarian, a primitive; Arnold argued that\nit was Homer, on the contrary, who might have so looked on us.\nThere is, however, perhaps something to be said on Mr. Newman's\nside.  Homer's huge and age-long fame, and his extraordinary\nvirtues, were quite capable of blinding even a great critic to\ncertain things about him which I shall, with great timidity,\ndesignate imperfections:  therein following De Quincey, who read\nGreek from early childhood as easily as English, and who, as a\ncritic, saw things sometimes.  _Bonus dormitat Homerus,_ says\nHorace; like the elder Gobbo, he \"something smacked.\"  He was\nthe product of a great creative force; which did not however\nwork in a great literary age:  and all I am going to say is\nmerely a bearing out of this.\n\nFirst there is his poverty of epithets.  He repeats the same ones\nover and over again.  He can hardly mention Hector without\ncalling him _megas koruthaiolos Hector,_--\"great glittering-\nhelmeted Hector\"; or (in the genitive) _Hectoros hippodamoio_--\n\"of Hector the tamer of war-steeds.\"  Over and over again we have\n_anax andron Agamemnon;_ or \"swift-footed Achilles.\"  Over and\nover again is the sea _poluphloisbois-terous,_ as if he could say\nnothing new about it.  Having discovered one resounding phrase\nthat fits nicely into the hexameter, he seems to have been just\ncontent with the splendor of sound, and unwilling so to stir his\nimagination as to flash some new revelation on it.  As if Hamlet\nshould never be mentioned in the play, without some such epithet\nas \"the hesitating Dane.\"......  But think how the Myriad-minded\nOne positively tumbles over himself in hurling and fountaining up\nnew revelatory figures and epithets about everything:  how he\ncould not afford to repeat himself, because there were not enough\nhours in the day, days in the year, nor years in one human\nlifetime, in which to ease his imagination of its tremendous\nburden. He had Golconda at the root of his tongue: let him but\npass you the time of day, and it shall go hard but he will pour\nyou out the wealth of Ormus or of Ind. A plethora, some have\nsaid: never mind; wealth was nothing to him, because he had it\nall. Or note how severe Milton, almost every time he alludes to\nSatan, throws some new light of majestic gloom, inner or outer,\nwith a new epithet or synonym, upon his figure or his mind.\n\nEven of mere ancillaries and colorless lines, Homer will make you\na resounding glory. What means this most familiar one, think you:\n\n     _Ten d'apameibomenos prosephe koruthaiolos Hector?_\n\n--Surely here some weighty splendid thing is being revealed? But\nno; it means: \"Answering spake unto her great glittering-helmeted\nHector;\" or _tout simplement,_ 'Hector answered.' And hardly can\nanyone open his lips, but it must be brought in with some\nvariation of that sea-riding billow, or roll of drums:\n\n     _Ton d'emeibet epeita anax andron Agamemnon.\n     Hos phato.  Ten d'outi prosephe nephelegereta Zeus_\n\n--whereafter at seven lines down we get again:\n\n     _Ten de meg' ochthesas prosephe nephelegereta Zeus;_\n\n--in all of which I think we do get something of primitivism and\nunskill. It is a preoccupation with sound where there is no\nadequate excuse for the sound; after the fashion of some orators,\nwhom, to speak plainly, it is a weariness to hear. But you will\nremember how Shakespeare rises to his grandest music when he has\nfatefullest words to utter; and how Milton rolls in his supreme\nthunders each in its recurring cycle; leads you to wave-crest\nover wave-trough, and then recedes; and how the crest is always\nsome tremendous thing in vision, or thought as well as sound. So\nhe has everlasting variation; manages his storms and billows; and\nso I think his music is greater in effect than Homer's--would\nstill be greater, could we be sure of Homer's tones and vowel-\nvalues; as I think his vision goes deeper into the realm of the\nSoul and the Eternal.\n\nYet is Homer majestic and beautiful abundantly. If it is true\nthat his reputation gains on the principle of _Omne ignotum pro\nmagnifico_--because he is unknown to most that praise him--let\nnone imagine him less than a wonderful reservoir of poetry. His\nfaults--to call them that--are such as you would expect from his\nage, race, and peculiar historic  position; his virtues are\ndrawn out of the grandeur of his own soul, and the current from\nthe Unfathomable that flowed through him.  He had the high\nserious attitude towards the great things, and treated them\nhighly, deeply and seriously.  We may compare him to Dante:  who\nalso wrote, in an age and land not yet literary or cultured, with\na huge racial inspiration. But Dante had something more:  a\npurpose to reveal in symbol the tremendous world of the Soul.\nMatthew Arnold speaks of the Homeric poems as \"the most important\npoetical monument existing.\"  Well; cultured Tom, Dick and Harry\nwould say much the same thing; it is the orthodox thing to say.\nBut with great deference to Matthew, I believe they are really a\nless important monument than the poems of Aeschylus, Dante,\nShakespeare, or Milton, or I suppose Goethe--to name only poets\nof the Western World; because each of these created a Soul-\nsymbol; which I think the Iliad at any rate does not.\n\nHere, to me, is another sign of primitivism.  If there is paucity\nof imagination in his epithets, there is none whatever in his\nsurgery.  I do not know to what figure the casualty list in the\nIliad amounts; but believe no wound or death of them all was\ndealt in the same bodily part or in the same way.  Now Poetry\nessentially turns from these physical details; her preoccupations\nare with the Soul.\n\n\"From Homer and Polygnotus,\"  says Goethe, \"I daily learn more\nand more that in our life here above the ground we have, properly\nspeaking, to enact Hell.\"  A truth, so far as it goes:  this\nEarth is hell; there is no hell, says H.P. Blavatsky, but a man-\nbearing planet.  But we demand of the greatest, that they shall\nsee beyond hell into Heaven.  Homer achieves his grandeur\noftenest through swift glimpses of the pangs and tragedy of human\nfate; and I do not think he saw through the gloom to the\nbright Reality.  Watching the Greek host from the walls of Troy,\nHelen says:\n\n     \"Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia;\n     Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember;\n     Two, two only remain whom I see not among the commanders,\n     Castor, fleet in the car, Polydeukes, brave with the cestus--\n     Own dear brethren of mine,--one parent loved us as infants.\n     Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved\n         Lacedaimon?\n     Or, though they came with the rest in the ships that bound\n         through the waters,\n     Dare they not enter the fight, or stand in the council of heroes,\n     All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened?\"\n\nAnd then:\n\n     _Hos phato.  Tous d'ede kalechen phusizoos aia,\n     En Lakedaimoni authi, phile en patridi gaie._\n\n     \"--So spake she; but they long since under Earth were\n         reposing\n     There in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lacedaimon.\"\n\n                [From Dr. Hawtrey's translation, quoted by\nMatthew Arnold in _On Translating Homer._]\n\nThere it is the sudden antithesis from her gentle womanly inquiry\nabout her brothers to the sad reality she knows nothing, that\nstrikes the magical blow, and makes the grand manner.  Then there\nis that passage about Peleus and Cadmos:\n\n  \"Not even Peleus Aiacides, nor godlike Cadmos, might know\nthe happiness of a secure life; albeit the highest happiness\nknown to mortals was granted them:  the one on the mountain,\nthe other in seven-gated Thebes, they heard the gold-snooded\nMuses sing.\"\n\nYou hear the high pride and pathos in that.  To be a poet, he\nsays:  to have heard the gold-snooded Muses sing:  is the highest\nhappiness a mortal can know; he is mindful of the soul, the\nPoet-creator in every man, and pays it magnificent tribute; he\nacknowledges what glory, what bliss, have been his own; but not\nthe poet, he says, not even he, may enjoy the commonplace\nhappiness of feeling secure against dark fate.  It is the same\nfeeling that I spoke of last week as so characteristic of the\nearly Teutonic literature; but there it appears without the\nswift sense of tragedy, without the sudden pang, the grand\nmanner.  The pride is lacking quite:  the intuition for a\ndivinity within man.  But Homer sets the glory of soul-hood and\npet-hood against the sorrow of fate:  even though he finds the\nsorrow weighs it down.  Caedmon or Cynewulf might have said:  \"It\nis given to none of us to be secure against fate; but we have\nmany recompenses.\"  How different the note of Milton:\n\n     \"Those other two, equal with me in fate,\n     So were I equal with them in renown--\"\n\nor:\n\n     \"Unchanged, though fallen on evil days;\n     On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues,\n     In darkness, and by dangers compassed round.\"\n\nAnd Llywarch, or Oisin, would never have anticipated the blows\nof fate; when the blows fell, they would simply have been\nastonished at fate's presumption.\n\nWe might quote many instances of this proud pessimism in Homer:\n\n     _Kai se, geron, to prin men, akouomen, olbion einai_--\n\n     \"Thou to, we hear, old man, e'en thou was at once time happy;\"\n\n      _Hos gar epeklosanto theoi deiloisi brotoisin\n     Zoein achnumenous.  Autoi de l'akedees eisin_--\n\n     \"The Gods have allotted to us to live thus mortal and mournful,\n     Mournful; but they themselves live ever untouched by mourning.\"\n\nProud--no; it is not quite proud; not in an active sense;\nthere is a resignation in it; and yet it is a kind of haughty\nresignation.  As if he said:  We are miserable; there is nothing\nelse to be but miserable; let us be silent, and make no fuss\nabout.--It is the restraint--a very Greek quality--the depth\nhinted at, but never wailed over or paraded at all--that make in\nthese cases his grand manner.  His attitude is, I think, nearer\nthe Teutonic than the Celtic:--his countrymen, like the Teutons,\nwere accustomed to the pralaya, the long racial night.  But he\nand the Celts achieved the grand manner, which the Teutons did\nnot.  His eyes, like Llywarch's or Oisin's, were fixed on a past\nglory beyond the nightfall.\n\nBut where does this Homeric mood lead us?  To no height of truth,\nI think.  Katherine Tingley gave us a keynote for the literature\nof the future and the grandest things it should utter,--for the\nlife, the art, the poetry of a coming time that shall be\nTheosophical, that is, lit with the splendor and beauty of the\nSoul--when she spoke that high seeming paradox that \"Life is\nJoy.\"  Let us uncover the real Life; all this sorrow is only the\nveil that hides it.  God knows we see enough of the veil; but\nthe poet's business is to tear it down, rend it asunder, and show\nthe brightness which it hides.  If the personality were all, and\na man's whole history were bounded by his cradle and his grave;\nthen you had done all, when you had presented personalities in\nall their complexity, and made your page teem with the likenesses\nof living men, and only shown the Beyond, the Governance, as\nsomething unknowable, adverse and aloof.  But the Greater Part of\na man is eternal, and each of his lives and deaths but little\nincidents in a vast and glorious pilgrimage; and when it is\nunderstood that this is the revelation to be made, this grandeur\nthe thing to be shadowed forth, criticism will have entered upon\nits true path and mission.\n\nI find no such Soul-symbol in the Iliad:  the passion and\nspiritual concentration of whose author, I think, was only enough\nto let him see this outward world:  personalities, with their\nmotive-springs of action within themselves:  his greatness, his\nsympathy, his compassion, revealed all that to him; but he\nlacked vision for the Meanings.  I found him then less than\nShakespeare:  whose clear knowledge of human personalities--\nability to draw living men--was but incidental and an instrument;\nwho but took the tragedy of life by the way, as he went to set\nforth the whole story of the soul; never losing sight of Karma,\nand that man is his own adverse destiny; finishing all with the\ntriumph of the soul, the Magician, in _The Tempest._  And I count\nhim less than that Blind Titan in Bardism, who, setting out to\njustify the ways of God to men, did verily justify the ways of\nfate to the Soul; and showed the old, old truth, so dear to the\nCeltic bards, that in the very depths of hell the Soul has not\nyet lost all her original brightness; but is mightily superior\nto hell, death, fate, sorrow and the whole pack of them;--I count\nhim less than the \"Evening Dragon\" of _Samson Agonistes,_ whose\nlast word to us is\n\n     \"Nothing is here for tears; nothing to wail\n     Or knock the breast; no weakness or contempt.\"\n\nAnd I found him less that One with the grand tragic visage, whose\nwords so often quiver with unshed tears, who went forth upon his\njourney\n\n       .... _pei dolci pomi\n     Promessi a me per lo verace Duca;\n     Ma fino al centro pria convien ch'io tomi:_--\n\n\"to obtain those sweet apples (of Paradise) promised me by my\ntrue Leader; but first is\"--convien--how shall you translate the\npride and resignation of that word?--\"it behoves,\"  we must say,\n\"it convenes\"--\"first it is convenient that I should fall as far\nas to the center (of hell);\"--who must end the gloom and terror\nof that journey, that fall, with\n\n     _E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle,_\n\n\"And then we came forth to behold again the Stars;\"  and who came\nfrom his ascent through purifying Purgatory with\n\n     _Rifatto si, come piante novelle\n     Rinnovellate di novella fronda,\n     Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle_--\n\n\"So made anew, like young plants in spring with fresh foliage, I\nwas pure and disposed to come forth among the Stars;\"--and who\nmust end his _Paradiso_ and his life-work announcing\n\n     _L'amor che muove il sole e le altre stelle,_\n\n\"The Love that moves the sun and the other Stars.\"  Ah, glory\nto this Dante!  Glory to the man who would end nothing but\nwith the stars!\n\n\n\n\nIII.  GREEKS AND PERSIANS\n\n\nNow to consider what this Blind Maeonides did for Greece.\nSometime last Century a Black Potentate from Africa visited\nEngland, and was duly amazed at all he saw.  Being a very\nimportant person indeed, he was invited to pay his respects to\nQueen Victoria.  he told her of the many wonders he had seen;\nand took occasion to ask her, as the supreme authority, how such\nthings came to be.  What was the secret of England's greatness?\n--She rose to it magnificently, and did precisely what a large\nsection of her subjects would have expected of her.  She solemnly\nhanded him a copy of the Bible, and told him he should find his\nanswer in that.\n\nShe was thinking, no doubt, of the influence of Christian\nteaching; if called on for the exact passage that had worked the\nwonder, very likely she would have turned to the Sermon on the\nMount.  Well; very few empires have founded their material\ngreatness on such texts, as _The meek shall inherit the earth._\nThey take a shorter road to it.  If a man ask of thee thy coat,\nand thou give him thy cloak also, thou dost not (generally) build\nthyself a world-wide commerce.  When he smiteth thee on they left\ncheek, and thou turnest to him thy right for the complementary\nbuffet, thou dost not (as a rule) become shortly possessed of his\nterritories.  Queen Victoria lived in an age when people did not\nnotice these little discrepancies; so did Mr. Podsnap.  And yet\nthere was much more truth in her answer than you might think.\n\nKing James's Bible is a monument of mighty literary style; and\none that generations of Englishmen have regarded as divine, a\nmessage from the Ruler of the Stars.  They have been reading it,\nand hearing it read in the churches, for three hundred years.\nIts language has been far more familiar to them than that of any\nother book whatsoever; more common quotations come from it,\nprobably, than from all other sources combined.  The Puritans\nof old, like the Nonconformists now, completely identified\nthemselves with the folk it tells about:  Cromwell's armies saw\nin the hands of their great captain \"the sword of the Lord and of\nGideon.\"  When the Roundhead went into battle, or when the\nRevivalist goes to prayer meeting, he heard and hears the command\nof Jehovah to \"go up to Ramoth Gilead and prosper\"; to \"smite\nAmalek hip and thigh.\"  Phrases from the Old Testament are in the\nmouths of millions daily; and they are phrases couched in the\ngrand literary style.\n\nNow the grand style is the breathing of a sense of greatness.\nWhen it occurs you sense a mysterious importance lurking behind\nthe words.  It is the accent of the eternal thing in man, the\nSoul; and one of the many proofs of the Soul's existence.  So\nyou cannot help being reminded by it of the greatness of the\nsoul.  There are periods when the soul draws near its racial\nvehicle, and the veils grow thin between it and us:  through all\nthe utterances of such times one is apt to hear the thunder from\nbeyond.  Although the soul have no word to say, or although it\nmessage suffer change in passing through the brain-mind, so that\nnot high truth, but even a lie may emerge--it still comes, often,\nringing with the grand accents.  Such a period was that which\ngave us Shakespeare and Milton, and the Bible, and Brown, and\nTaylor, and all the mighty masters of English prose.  Even when\ntheir thought is trivial or worse, you are reminded, by the march\nand mere order of their words, of the majesty of the Soul.\n\nWhen Deborah sings of that treacherous murderess, Jael the wife\nof Heber the Kenite, that before she slew her guest and ally\nSisera, \"He asked water and she gave him milk; she brought\nforth butter in a lordly dish,\"--you are aware that, to the\nsinger, no question of ethics was implied.  Nothing common,\nnothing of this human daily world, inheres in it; but sacrosanct\ndestinies were involved, and the martialed might of the Invisible.\nIt was part of a tremendous drama, in which Omnipotence itself\nwas protagonist.  Little Israel rose against the mighty of\nthis world; but the Unseen is mightier than the mighty; and\nthe Unseen was with little Israel.  The application is false,\nunethical, abominable--as coming through brain-minds of that\nkind.  But you must go back behind the application, behind\nthe brain-mind, to find the secret of the air of greatness that\npervades it.  It is a far-off reflection of this eternal truth:\nthat the Soul, thought it speak through but one human being, can\nturn the destinies and overturn the arrogance of the world.  When\nDavid sang, \"Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered;\nyea, let all his enemies be scattered!\"  he, poor brain-mind, was\nthinking of his triumphs over Philistines and the like; with\nwhom he had better have been finding a way to peace;--but the\nSoul behind him was thinking of its victories over him and his\npassions and his treacheries.  So such psalms and stories,\nthough their substance be vile enough, do by their language\nyet remind us somehow of the grandeur of the Spirit.  That\nis what style achieves.\n\nUndoubtedly this grand language of the Bible, as that of Milton\nand Shakespeare in a lesser degree--lesser in proportion as they\nhave been less read--has fed in the English race an aptitude, an\ninstinct, for action on a large imperial scale.  It is not easy\nto explain the effect of great literature; but without doubt it\nmolds the race.  Now the ethic of the Old Testament, its moral\nimport, is very mixed.  There is much that is true and beautiful;\nmuch that is treacherous and savage.  So that its moral and\nethical effects have been very mixed too.  But its style, a\nsubtler thing than ethics, has nourished conceptions of a large\nand seeping sort, to play through what ethical ideas they might\nfind.  The more spiritual is any influence--that is, the less\nvisible and easy to trace--the more potent it is; so style in\nliterature may be counted one of the most potent forces of all.\nThrough it, great creative minds mold the destinies of nations.\nLet Theosophy have expression as noble as that of the Bible--as\nit will--and of that very impulse it will bite deep into the\nsubconsciousness of the race, and be the nourishment of grand\npublic action, immense conceptions, greater than any that have\ncome of Bible reading, because pure and true.  Our work is to\npurify the channels through which the Soul shall speak; the\nTeachers have devoted themselves to establishing the beginnings\nof this Movement in right thought and right life.  But the great\nliterary impulse will come, when we have learned and earned the\nright to use it.\n\nNow, what the Bible became to the English, Homer became to the\nGreeks--and more also.  They heard his grand manner, and were\nbilled by it with echoes from the Supermundane.  _Anax andron\nAgamemnon_--what Greek could hear a man so spoken of, and dream\nhe compounded of common clay?  Never mind what this king of men\ndid or failed to do; do but breathe his name and titles, and you\nhave affirmed immortality and the splendor of the Human Soul!\nThe _human_ Soul?\n\n\"Tush!\" said they, \"the Greek Soul! he was a Greek as we\nare!\".... And so Tomides, Dickaion and Harryotatos, Athenian\ntinkers and cobblers, go swaggering back to their shops, and\ndream grand racial dreams.  For this is a much more impressionable\npeople than the English; any wind from the Spirit blows\nin upon their minds quickly and easily.  Homer in Greece\n--once Solon, or Pisistratus, or Hopparchus, had edited and\ncanonized him, and arranged for his orderly periodical public\nreading (as the Bible in the churches)--had an advantage even\nover the Bible in England.  When Cromwell and his men grew mighty\nupon the deeds of the mighty men of Israel, they had to thrill to\nthe grand rhythms until a sort of miracle had been accomplished,\nand they had come to see in themselves the successors and living\nrepresentatives of Israel.  But the Greek, rising on the swell of\nHomer's roll and boom, had need of no such transformation.  The\nuplift was all for him; his by hereditary right; and no\npilfering necessary, from alien creed or race.  We have seen in\nHomer an inspired Race-patriot, a mighty poet saddened and\nembittered by the conditions he saw and his own impotence to\nchange them.--Yes, he had heard the golden-snooded sing; but\nGreeks were pygmies, compared with the giants who fought at\nIlion!  There was that eternal contrast between the glory he had\nwithin and the squalor he saw without.  Yes, he could sing; he\ncould launch great songs for love of the ancients and their\nmagnificence.  But what could a song do?  Had it feet to travel\nHellas; hands to flash a sword for her; a voice and kingly\nauthority to command her sons into redemption?--Ah, poor blind\nold begging minstrel, it had vastly greater powers and organs\nthan these!\n\nLycurgus, it is said, brought singers or manuscripts of your\npoems into Sparta; because, blind minstrel, he had a mind to\nmake Sparta great-souled; and he knew that you were the man to\ndo it, if done it could be.  Then for about two hundred and sixty\nyears, without much fuss to come into history, you were having\nyour way with your Greeks.  Your music was ringing in the ears of\nmothers; their unborn children were being molded to the long\nroll of your hexameters.  There came to be manuscripts of you in\nevery city:  corrupt enough, many of them, forgeries, many of\nthem; lays fudged up and fathered on you by venal Rhapsodoi,\nto chant in princely houses whose ancestors it was a good\nspeculation to praise.  You were everywhere in Greece:  a great\nand vague tradition, a formless mass of literature:  by the time\nSolon was making laws for Athens, and Pisistratus was laying the\nfoundations of her stable government and greatness.\n\nAnd then you were officially canonized.  Solon, Pisistratus, or\none of the Pisistratidae, determined that you should be, not a\nvague tradition and wandering songs any longer, but the Bible of\nthe Hellenes.  From an obscure writer of the Alexandrian period\nwe get a tale of Pisistratus sending to all the cities of Greece\nfor copies of Homeric poems, paying for them well; collating\nthem, editing them out of a vast confusion; and producing at\nlast out of the matter thus obtained, a single more or less\narticulate Iliad.  From Plato and others we get hints leading to\nthe supposition that an authorized state copy was prepared; that\nit was ordained that the whole poem should be recited at the\nPanathenaic Festivals by relays of Rhapsodoi; this state copy\nbeing in the hands of a prompter whose business it was to see\nthere should be no transgression by the chanters.* The wandering\nsongs of the old blind minstrel have become the familiar Sacred\nBook of the brightest-minded people in Greece.\n\n------\n* For a detailed account of all this see De Quincey's essay Homer\nand the Homeridae.\n------\n\nSome sixty years pass, and now look what happens.  A mighty Power\nin Asia arranges a punitive expedition against turbulent\nislanders and coast-dwellers on its western border.  But an old\nblind minstrel has been having his way with these:  and the\npunitive expedition is to be of the kind not where you punish,\nbut where you are punished;--has been suggesting to them, from\nthe Olympus of his sacrosanct inspiration, the idea of great\nracial achievement, till it has become a familiar thing, ideally,\nin their hearts.--The huge armies and the fleets come on; Egypt\nhas gone down; Lydia has gone down; the whole world must go\ndown before them.  But there is an old blind minstrel, long since\ngrown Olympian in significance, and throned aloft beside\nNephelegereta Zeus, chanting in every Greek ear and heart.\nGreeks rise in some sort to repel the Persian:  Athens and\nSparta, poles apart in every feeling and taste, find that under\nthe urge of archaic hexameters and in the face of this common\ndanger, they can co-operate after a fashion.  The world is in a\ntumult and threatens to fall; but behind all the noise and\nominous thunder, by heaven, you can hear the roll of hexameters,\nand an old blind sorrow-stricken bard chanting.  The soul of a\nnation is rising, the beat of her wings keeping time to the music\nof olden proud resounding lines.  Who led the Grecian fleet at\nSalamis?--Not Spartan Eurygiades, but an old blind man dead these\ncenturies.  Who led the victors at Marathon?  Not sly Athenian\nMiltiades, but an old dead man who had only words for his wealth:\nblind Maeonides chanting; and with his chanting marshaling on\nthe roll of his hexameters mightier heroes than ever a Persian\neye could see:  the host that fought at Ilion; the creatures of\nhis brain; Polymechanos Odysseus, and Diomedes and Aias;\nPodargos Achilles; Anas andron Agamemnon.\n\nThe story of the Persian Wars comes to us only from the Greek\nside; so all succeeding ages have been enthusiastically\nProhellene.  We are to think that Europe since has been great and\nfree and glorious, because free and cultured Greeks then held\nback a huge and barbarous Asian despotism.  All of which is great\nnonsense.  Europe since has not been great and free and glorious;\nvery often she has been quite the reverse.  She has, at odd\ntimes, been pottering around her ideal schemes of government;\nwhich Asia in large part satisfied herself that she had found\nlong ago.  As for culture and glory, the trumps have now been\nwith the one, now with the other.  And the Persians were not\nbarbarians by any means.  And when you talk of Asia, remember\nthat it is as far a cry from Persia to China, as from Persian to\nEngland.  Let us have not more of this preoccupation with\nexternals, and blind eyes to the Spirit of Man.  I suppose\nballot-boxes and referenda and recalls and the like were\nspecified, when it was said  _Of such is the kingdom of Heaven?_...\n\nBut Persia would not have flowed out over Europe, if  Marathon,\nSalamis, and Plataea had gone the other way. Empires wax and wane\nlike the moon; they ebb and flow like the tides; and are governed\nby natural law as these are; and as little depend, ultimately,\nupon battle, murder, and sudden death; which are but effects that\nwisdom would evitate; we are wrong in taking them for causes. Two\nthings you can posit about any empire: it will expand to its\nmaximum; then ebb and fall away. Though the daily sun sets not on\nits  boundaries, the sun of time will set on its decay; because\nall things born in time will die; and no elixer of life has been\nfound, nor ever will be. There is an  impulse from  the inner\nplanes; it strikes into the heart of a people; rises there, and\ncarries them forward upon an outward sweep; then recedes, and\nleaves them to their fall. Its cycle may perhaps be longer or\nshorter; but in the main its story is always the same, and bound\nto be so; you cannot vote down the cycles of time. What hindered\nRome from  mastery of Europe; absolute mastery; and keeping it\nforever?  Nothing--but the eternal Cyclic Law. So Persia.\n\nShe was the last phase of that West Asian manvantara which began\nin 1890 and was due to end in 590 B. C. As such a phase, a\nsplendor-day of thirteen decades should have been hers; that, we\nfind, being  always the length of a national illumination. She\nbegan under Cyrus in 558; flowed out under Cambyses and Darius to\nher maximum growth--for half the thirteen decades expanding\nsteadily. Then she touched Greece, where a younger cycle was\nrising, and recoiled. She should have been at high tide precisely\nthree years before-Marathon--a  half-cycle after the accession of\nCyrus, or in 493;--and was. Then the Law-pronounced its  _Thus\nfar and no further;_ and enforced it  with Homer's songs, and\nGreek valor, and Darius' death, and Xerxes' fickle childishness\n(he smacked the Hellespont because it was naughty). These things\ntogether brought to naught the might and ambition and bravery of\nIran; but had they been lacking, the Law would have found other\nmeans. Though Xerxes and Themistocles had both sat at home doing\nnothing, Alexander would still have  marched east in  his time,\nand  Rome conquered the world. So discount all talk of Greece's\nhaving saved  Europe, which was never in danger. But you may say\nPersia saved Greece: that her impact kindled the fires--was used\nby the Law for that purpose--which so brilliantly have illumined\nEurope since.\n\nPersia rose in the evening of that  West Asian manvantara; the\nempires of its morning and noon, as Assyria  chiefly, had been\nslower of growth, longer of life, smaller of expanse; and for her\none, had several periods of glory.  A long habit of empire\n-building had been formed there, which carried Persia rapidly and\neasily to her far limits.  Assyria, the _piece de resistance_ of\nthe whole manvantara, with huge and long effort had created, so\nto say, an astral mold; of which Persia availed herself, and\noverflowed its boundaries, conquering regions east and west\nAssyria never knew.  But if she found the mold and the habit\nthere to aid her, she came too late for the initial energies of\nthe morning, or the full forces of the manvantaric noon.  Those\nhad been wielded by the great Tiglath Pilesers and Assurbanipals\nof earlier centuries; fierce conquerors, splendid builders,\nruthless patrons of the arts.  What was left for the evening and\nPersia could not carry her outward her full thirteen decades, but\nonly half of them:  sixty-five years her tides were rising, and\nthen she touched Greece.  Thence-forward she remained stationary\nwithin her borders, not much troubled internally, until the four\n-twenties.  To a modern eye, she seems on the decline since\nMarathon; to a Persian of the time, probably, that failure on\nthe Greek frontier looked a small matter enough.  A Pancho Villa\nto chase; if you failed to catch him, pooh, it was nothing!\nXerxes is no Darius, true:  Artaxerxes I, no Cyrus, nor nothing\nlike.  But through both their reigns there is in the main good\ngovernment in most of the provinces; excellent law and order;\nand a belief still in the high civilizing mission of the\nPersians.  Peace, instead of the old wars of conquest; but you\nwould have seen no great falling off.  Hystaspes himself had\nbeen less conqueror than consolidator; the Augustus of the\nAchaemenids, greater at peace than at war;--though great at\nthat too, but not from land-frontiers; and indeed, had ample\nprovocation, as those things go, for his punitive expedition that\nfailed.  For the rest, he had strewn the coast with fine harbors,\nand reclaimed vast deserts with reservoirs and dikes; had\nexplored the Indus and the ocean, and linked Egypt and Persia by\na canal from the Red Sea to the Nile.  Well; and Xerxes carried\nit on; he too played the great Achaemenid game; did he not send\nships to sail round Africa?  If there was no more conquering, it\nwas because there was really nothing left to conquer; who would\nbother about that Greece?--Darius Hystaspes was the last strong\nkind, yes; but Datius Nothus was the first gloomy tyrant, or at\nleast his queen, bloodthirsty Parysatis, was; which was not til\n434.  So that Persia too had her good thirteen decades of\ncomfortable, even glorious, years.\n\n   Whereafter we see her wobbling under conflicting cyclic\nimpulses down to her final fall.  For lack of another to take her\nplace, she was still in many ways the foremost power; albeit\nhere and there obstreperous satraps were always making trouble.\nWhen Lysander laid Athens low in 404, it was Persian financial\nbacking enabled him to do it; but Cyrus might march in to her\nheart, and Xenophon out again, but two years later, and none to\nsay them effectually nay.  Had there been some other West Asian\npower, risen in 520 or thereabouts, to outlast Persia and finish\nits day with the end of the great cycle in 390, one supposes the\nAchaemenids would have fallen in the four-twenties, and left that\nother supreme during the remaining years.  But there was none.\nThe remains of Nineveh and Babylon slept securely in the Persian\ncentral provinces; there was nothing there to rise; they had\ntheir many days long since.  Egypt would have done something, if\nshe could; would have like to;--but her own cycles were against\nher.  She had the last of her cyclic days under the XXVIth\nDynasty.  In 655 Psamtik I reunited and resurrected her while his\noverlord Assurbanipal was wrecking his--Assurbanipal's--empire\nelsewhere; thirteen decades afterwards, in 525, she fell before\nCambyses.  Thirteen decades, nearly, of Persian rule followed,\nwith interruptions of revolt, before she regained her independence\nin 404;--stealing, you may say, the nine years short from\nthe weakness of Persia.  Then she was free for another half\n-cycle, less one year; a weak precarious freedom at best, lost to\nArtaxerxes Ochus in 340.  All but the first fourteen years of it\nfell beyond the limits of the manvantara; the West Asian forces\nwere spent.  Egypt was merely waiting til the Greek cycle should\nhave sunk low enough and on to the military plane; and had not\nlong to wait.  She paid back most of her nine years to Persia;\nthen hailed Alexander as her savior; and was brought by him, to\nsome extent, under the influence of European cycles; to share\nthen in what uninteresting twilight remained to Greece, and\npresently in the pomps and crimsons of Rome.\n\nPersia, too, was waiting for that Greek military cycle; until it\nshould rise, however, something had to be going on in West Asia.\nThe Athenian first half-cycle--sixty-five years from the\ninception of the hegemony--ended in 413, when the Peloponnesian\nWar entered its last, and for Athens, disastrous, phase.  Another\nhalf-cycle brings us to the rise of Philip; who about that time\nbecame dominant in Greece.  But not yet had a power consolidated,\nwhich could contest with Persia the hegemony of the world.\nHaving enabled Sparta to put down Athens, the western satraps\nturned their attention to finding those who should put down\nSparta.  Corinth, Thebes, Argos and Athens were willing; and\nPharnabazus financed them for war in 395.  A year after, he and\nConon destroyed the Spartan fleet.  In 387 came the Peace of\nAntalicidas, by which Persia won what Xerxes had fought for of\nold; the suzerainty of Greece.  But she was not strong; her\ncycle was long past; she stood upon the wealth and prestige of\nher better days, and the weakness of her contemporaries.\nInternally she was falling to pieces until Artaxerxes Ochus,\nbetween 362 and 338, wading through blood and cruelty, restored\nher unity, wore out her resources, and left her apparently as\ngreat as under Xerxes, but really ready to fall at a touch.  He\nprepared the way for Alexander.\n\nSo ended an impulse that began, who knows when? on a high\nspiritual plane in the pure religion of the Teacher we call\nZoroaster; a high system of ethics expressed in long generations\nof clean and noble lives.  From that spirituality the impulse\ndescending reached the planes of intellect and culture; with\nresults we cannot measure now; nothing remains but the splendor\nof a few ruins in the wilderness--the course the lion and the\nlizard keep.  It reached the plane of military power, and flowed\nover all the lands between the Indus and the Nile; covering them\nwith a well-ordered, highly civilized and wisely governed empire.\nThen it began to ebb; meeting a counter-impulse arising in\nEastern Europe.\n\nWhich, too, had it source on spiritual planes; in the heart and\non the lyre of blind Maeonides; and worked downward and outward,\ntill it had wrought on this plane a stable firmness in Sparta, an\nalertness in Athens.  It contacted then the crest of the Persian\nwave, and received from the impact huge accession of vigor.  It\nblossomed in the Age of Pericles on the plane  of mind and\ncreative imagination.  It came down presently on to the plane of\nmilitarism, and swelled out under Alexander as far as to the\neastern limits of the Persian Empire he overthrew.  Where it met\na tide beginning to rise in India; and receded or remained\nstationary before that.  And at last it was spent, and itself\noverthrown by a new impulse arisen in Italy; which took on\nimpetus from contact with Greece, as Greece had done from contact\nwith Persia.\n\nThe Greeks of Homer's and Hesiod's time, before the European\nmanvantara, elsewhere begun, had reached or quickened them, were\nuncouth and barbarous enough; they may have stood, to their\ngreat West Asian neighbors, as the Moors of today to the nations\nof Europe; they may have stood, in things cultural, to the\nunknown nations of the north or west already at that time\nawakened, as the Chinese now and recently to the Japanese.  Like\nMoors, like Chinese, they had behind them traditions of an\nancient greatness; but pralaya, fall, adversity, squalor, had\ndone their work on them, developing the plebeian qualities.  Now\nthat they have emerged into modern history, as then when\nthey were emerging into ancient, we find them with many like\ncharacteristics; a turn for democracy, for example; the which\nthey assuredly had not when they were passing into pralaya under\nthe Byzantine Empire.  A turn for democracy; plebeian qualities;\nthese are the things one would expect after pralaya, if that\npralaya had been at all disastrous.  With the ancient Greeks,\nthe plebeian qualities were not all virtues by any means;\nthey retained through their great age many of the vices of\nplebeianism.  They won their successes for the most part on\nsporadic impulses of heroism; shone by an extraordinary\nintellectual and artistic acumen. But taking them by and large,\nthey were too apt to ineffectualize those successes, in the\nfields of national and political life, by extraordinary venality\nand instability of character. I shall draw here deeply on\nProfessor Mahaffy, who very wisely sets out to restore the\nbalance as between Greeks and Persians, and burst bubble-notions\ncommonly held. Greek culture was extremely varied, and therein\nlay its strength; you can find all sorts of types there; and\nthere are outstanding figures of the noblest. But on the whole,\nsays Mahaffy--I think rightly--there was something sordid,\ngrasping, and calculating: _noblesse oblige_ made little appeal\nto  them--was rather foreign to their nature. Patricianism did\nexist; in Sparta; perhaps in Thebes. Of the two Thebans we know\nbest, Pindar was decidedly a patrician poet, and Epaminondas was\na very great gentleman; now Thebes, certainly, must have been\nmighty in foregone manvantaras, as witness her five cycles of\nmyths, the richest in Greece. In her isolation she had doubtless\ncarried something of that old life down; and then, too, she had\nPindar. Nor was Sparta any upstart;--of her we have only heard\nAthenians speak. But outside of these two, you hardly find a\nGreek  _gentleman_ in public life; hardly that combination of\npersonal honor, contempt of commerce, class-pride, leisured\nand cultured living;--with, very often, ultra-conservatism,\nnarrowness of outlook, political ineptitude and selfishness. The\nSpartans had many of these instincts, good and bad. They reached\ntheir cultural zenith in the seventh century or earlier;\nprobably Lycurgus had an eye to holding off that degeneration\nwhich follows on super-refinement; and hence the severe life he\nbrought in. My authority makes much of the adoration the other\nGreeks accorded them; who might hate and fight with Sparta, but\ntook infinite pride in her nonetheless. Thus they told those\ntales of the Spartan mothers, and the Spartan boy the fox\nnibbled; thus their philosophers, painting an Utopia, took\nalways most of its features from Lacedaemon.\n\nAll of which I quote for the light's sake it throws on the past\nof Greece: the past of her past, and the ages before her history.\nOr really, on the whole history of the human race; for I think it\nis what you shall find always, or almost always. I spoke of the\nCeltic qualities as having been of old patrician; they are\nplebeian nowadays, after the long pralaya and renewal. As a\npebble is worn smooth by the sea, so the patrician type, with its\nrefinements and culture, is wrought out by the strong life\ncurrents that play through a race during its manvantaric periods.\nPralaya comes, with conquest, the overturning of civilization,\nmixture of blood; all the precious results obtained hurled back\ninto the vortex;--and then to be cast up anew with the new\nmanvantara, a new uncouth formless form, to be played on, shaped\nand infused by the life-currents again.  In Greece an old\nmanvantara had evolved patricianism and culture; which the\npralaya following swept all away, except some relics perhaps in\nThebes the isolated and conservative, certainly in Sparta.\nLycurgus was wise in his generation when he sought by a rigid\nsystem to impose the plebeian virtues on Spartan patricianism.\n\nWise in his generation, yes; but he could work no miracle.\nSpartan greatness, too, was ineffectual:  there is that about\npouring new wine into old bottles.  Sparta was old and conservative;\ncovered her patrician virtues with a rude uncultural exterior;\nwas inept politically--as old aristocracies so commonly are;\nshe shunned that love of the beautiful and the things of\nthe mind which is the grace, as Bushido--to use the best\nname there is for it--is the virtue, of the patrician.  You\nmay say she was selfish and short-sighted; true; and yet she\nbegan the Peloponnesian War not without an eye to freeing the\ncities and islands from the soulless tyranny an Athenian\ndemocracy had imposed on them:  when there is a war, some men\nwill always be found, who go in with unselfish high motives.--\nBeing the patrician state, and the admired of all, it was she\nnaturally who assumed the hegemony when the Persian came.  But\nshe had foregone the graces of her position, and her wits,\nthrough lack of culture, were something dull.  She lost that\nleadership presently to a young democratic Athens endowed\nwith mental acumen and potential genius; who, too, gained\nimmeasurably from Sparta, because she knew how to turn everything\nto the quickening of her wits--this having at her doors so\ncontrasting a neighbor, for example.--Young?  Well, yes; I\nsuspect if there had ever been an Athenian glory before, it was\nages before Troy fell.  She plays no great part in the legends of\nthe former manvantara; Homer has little to say about her.  She\nhad paid tribute at one time to Minos, king of Crete; her\ngreatness belonged not to the past, but to the future.\n\nAs all Greeks admired the Spartans--what we call a 'sneaking'\nadmiration--so too they admired the Persians; who were gentleman\nin a great sense, and in most moral qualities their betters.  Who\nwas _Ho Basileus, The King_ par excellence?  Always 'the Great\nKing, the King of the Persians.'  Others were mere kings of\nSparta, or where it might be.  And this Great King was a far-way,\ntremendous, golden figure, moving in a splendor as of fairy\ntales; palaced marvelously, so travelers told, in cities\ncompared with which even Athens seemed mean.  Greek drama sought\nits subjects naturally in the remote and grandiose; always in\nthe myths of prehistory, save once--when Aeschylus found a\nkindred atmosphere, and the material he wanted, in the palace of\nthe Great King.  To whom, as a matter of history, not unrecorded\nby Herodotus, his great chivalrous barons accorded a splendid\nloyalty,--and loyalty is always a thing that lies very near the\nheart of Bushido.  Most Greeks would cheerfully sell their native\ncity upon an impulse of chagrin, revenge, or the like.  Xerxes'\nships were overladen, and there was a storm; the Persian lords\ngaily jumped into the sea to lighten them.  Such Samurai action\nmight not have been impossible to Greeks,--Spartans especially;\nbut in the main their eyes did not wander far from the main\nchance.  You will think of many exceptions; but this comes as\nnear truth, probably, as a generalization may.  We should\nunderstand their temperament; quick and sensitive, capable of\ninspiration to high deeds; but, en masse, rarely founded on\nenduring principles.  That jumping into the seas was nothing to\nthe Persians; they were not sung to it; it was not done in\ndefense of home, or upon a motive of sudden passion, as hate or\nthe like; but permanent elements in their character moved them\nto it quietly, as to the natural thing to do.  But if Greeks\nhad done it, with what kudos, like Thermopylae, it would have\ncome down!\n\nThey were great magnificoes, very lordly gentlemen, those Persian\nnobles; _hijosdalgo,_ as they say in Spain; men of large lives,\nsplendor and leisure, scorning trade; mighty huntsmen before the\nLord.  Of the Greeks, only the Spartans were sportsmen; but\nwhere the Spartans hunted foxes and such-like small fry, The\nPersians followed your true dangerous wild-fowl:  lions,\nleopards, and tigers.  A great satrap could buy up Greece almost\nat any time; could put the Greeks to war amongst themselves, and\nfinance his favorite side out of his own pocket.  On such a scale\nthey lived; and travelers and mercenaries brought home news of\nit to Greece; and Greeks whose wealth might be fabulous strove\nto emulate the splendor they heard of.  The Greeks made better\nheavy armor--one cause of the victories; but for the most part\nthe Persian crafts and manufactures outshone the Greek by far.\nAll these things I take from Mahaffy, who speaks of their culture\nas \"an ancestral dignity for superior to, and different from, the\nsomewhat mercantile refinement of the Greeks.\"  The secret of the\ndifference is this:  the West Asian manvantara, to which the\nPersians belonged, was more than a thousand years older than the\nEuropean manvantara, to which the Greeks belonged; so the\nlatter, beside the former, had an air of _parvenu._  The Greeks\ndwelt on the Persian's borders; and fought him when they must;\nintrigued with or against him when they might; called him\nbarbarian for self-respect's sake--and admired and envied him\nalways.  Had he been really a barbarian, in contact with their\nsuperior civilization, he would have become degraded by the\ncontact; in such cases it always happens that the inferior sops\nup the vices only of his betters.  But Alexander found the\nPersians much the same courtly-mannered, lordly-living, mighty\nhuntsmen they had been when Herodotus described them; and was\nambitious that his Europeans should mix with them on equal terms\nand learn their virtues.\n\nWhere and when did this high tradition grow up?  There was not\ntime enough, I think, in that half cycle between the rise of\nCyrus and Marathon.  In truth we are to see in these regions\nvistas of empires receding back into the dimness, difficult to\nsort out and fix their chronology.  Cyrus overthrew the Assyrian;\nfrom whose yoke his people had freed themselves some fifteen\nyears or so before.  The Medes had been rising since the earlier\npart of that seventh century; sometime then they brought the\nkindred race of Persians under their sway.  Sometime then, too, I\nam inclined to think, lived the Teacher Zoroaster: about whose\ndate there is more confusion than about that of any other World\nReformer; authorities differ within a margin of 6000 years.  But\nTaoism, Confucianism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Pythagoreanism all\nhad their rise about this time; the age of religions began then;\nit was not a thing of chance, but marked a definite change in the\nspiritual climate of the world.  The _Bundahish,_ the Parsee\naccount of it, says that he lived 258 years before Alexander;\nalmost all scholars reject the figure--once more, \"it is their\nnature to.\"  But you will note that 258 is about as much as to\nsay 260, which is twice the cycle of thirteen decades; I think\nthe probabilities are strong that the _Bundahish_ is right.  The\nchief grounds for putting him much earlier are these:  Greek\naccounts say, six thousand years before the Greek time; and\nthere are known to have been kings in those parts, long before\nCyrus, by the name or title of Mazdaka,--which word is from\nMazda, the name of the God-Principle in Zoroastrianism.  The\nexplanation is this:  you shall find it in H.P. Blavatsky:  there\nwere many Zoroasters; this one we are speaking of was the last\n(as Gautama was the last of the Buddhas); and of course he\ninvented nothing, taught no new truth; but simply organized as a\nreligion ideas that had before belonged to the Mysteries.  Where\nthen did his predecessors teach?--Where Zal and Rustem thundered\nas they might; in the old Iran of the _Shah Nameh,_ the land of\nKaikobad the Great and Kaikhusru.  Too remote for all scholars\neven to agree that it existed; set by those who do believe in it\nat about 1100 B.C.--we hear of a \"Powerful empire in Bactria\"--\nwhich is up towards Afghanistan; I take it that it was from this\nthe Persian tradition came--last down to, and through, the period\nof the Achaemenidae.  What arts, what literature, these latter\nmay have had, are lost; nothing is known of their creative\nand mental culture; but, to quote Mahaffy once more, it is\nexceedingly unlikely they had none.  Dio Chrysostom, in the first\ncentury B.C., says that \"neither Homer nor Hesiod sang of the\nchariots and horses of Zeus so worthily as Zoroaster\"; which may\nmean, perhaps, that a tradition still survived in his time of a\ngreat Achaemenian poetry.  Why then is this culture lost, since\nif it existed, it was practically contemporary with that\nof the Greeks?  Because contemporaneity is a most deceiving\nthing; there is nothing in it.  Persia now is not contemporary\nwith Japan; nor modern China with Europe or America.  The\nAchaemenians are separated from us by two pralayas; while\nbetween us and the Greeks there is but one.  When our present\nEurope has gone down, and a new barbarism and Middle Ages have\npassed over France, Britain and Italy, and given place in turn to\na new growth of civilization--what shall we know of this Paris,\nand Florence, and London?  As much and as little as we know now\nof Greece and Rome.  We shall dig them up and reconstruct them;\nfound our culture on theirs, and think them very wonderful for\nmere centers of (Christian) paganism; we shall marvel at their\ngenius, as shown in the fragments that go under the names of\nthose totally mythological poets, Dante and Milton; and at their\nfoul cruelty, as shown by their capital punishment and their\nwars.  And what shall we know of ancient Athens and Rome?  Our\nscholars will sneer at the superstition that they ever existed;\nour theologians will say the world was created somewhat later.\n\nOr indeed, no; I think it will not be so.  I think we shall have\nestablished an abiding perception of truth:  Theosophy will have\nsmashed the backbone of this foolish Kali-Yuga as a little,\nbefore then.\n\nSo that Creasy is all out in his estimate of the importance\nof Marathon and the other victories.  Wars are only straws\nto show which way the current flows; and they do that only\nindifferently.  They are not the current themselves, and they do\nnot direct it; and were men wise enough to avoid them, better\nthan the best that was ever won out of war would be won by other\nmeans that the Law would provide.  And yet the Human Spirit will\nwin something out of all eventualities, even war, if Kama and the\nCycles permit.  In a non-political sense the Persian Wars bore\nhuge harvest for Greece; the Law used them to that end.  The\ngreat effort brought out all the latent resources of the Athenian\nmind:  the successes heightened Greek racial feeling to a pitch.\n--What! we could stand against huge Persia?--then we are not\nunworthy of the men that fought at Ilion, our fathers; the race\nand spirit of _anax andron Agamemnon_ is not dead!  Ha, we can do\nanything; there are no victories we may not win!  And here is the\ndead weight and terror of the war lifted from us; and there is\nno anxiety now to hold our minds.  We may go forth conquering and\nto conquer; we may launch our triremes on immaterial seas, and\nsubdue unknown empires of the spirit!--And here is Athens the\nquick-witted, hegemon of Greece; her ships everywhere on the\nwine-dark seas; her citizens everywhere; her natural genius\nswelled by an enormous sense of achievement; her soul, grown\ngreat under a great stress, now freed from the stress and at\nleisure to explore:--in contact with opposite-minded Sparta; in\ncontact with conservative and somewhat luxuriously-living slow\nThebes;--with a hundred other cities;--in contact with proud\nPersia; with Egypt, fallen, but retaining a measure of her old\nprofound sense of the Mysteries and the reality of the Unseen;\n--from all these contacts and sources a spirit is born in Athens\nthat is to astonish and illumine the world.  And Egypt is now in\nrevolt from the Persian; and intercourse with her is easier than\never before in historical times; and the triremes, besides what\nspiritual cargoes they may be bringing in from her, are bringing\nin cargoes of honest material papyrus to tempt men to write down\ntheir thoughts.--So the flowering of Greece became inevitable;\nthe Law intended it, and brought about all the conditions.\n\n\n\n\n\nIV--AESCHYLUS AND HIS ATHENS\n\n\nGreece holds such an eminence in history because the Crest-Wave\nrolled in there when it did. She was tenant of an epochal time;\nwhoever was great then, was to be remembered forever. But the\ntruth is, Greece served the future badly enough.\n\nThe sixth and fifth centuries B. C. were an age of transition, in\nwhich the world took a definite step downward. There had been\npresent among men a great force to keep the life of the nations\nsweet: that which we call the Mysteries of Antiquity. Whether\nthey had been active continuously since this Fifth Root Race\nbegan, who can say? Very possibly not; for in a million years\ncycles would repeat themselves, and I dare say conditions\nas desolate as our own have obtained. There may have been\nwithdrawals, and again expansions outward. But certainly they\nwere there at the dawn of history, and for a long time before.\nWhat their full effect may have been, we can only guess; for when\nthe history that we know begins, they were already declining:--we\nget no definite news, except of the Iron Age. The Mysteries were\nnot closed at Eleusis until late in the days of the Roman Empire;\nand we know that such a great man as Julian did not disdain to be\ninitiated. But they were only a remnant then, an ever-indrawing\nsource of inspiration; already a good century before Pericles\nthey must have ceased to rule life. Pythagoras--born, probably,\nin the five-eighties--had found it necessary, to obtain that with\nwhich spirituality might be reawakened, to travel and learn what\nhe could in India, Egypt, Chaldaea, and, according to Porphyry\nand tradition, among the Druids in Gaul--and very likely Britain,\ntheir acredited headquarters. From these countries he brought\nhome Theosophy to Greek Italy; and all this suggests that he--and\nthe race--needed something that Eleusis could no longer give.\nAbout the same time Buddha and the founder of Jainism in India,\nLaotse and Confucius in China, and as we have seen, probably also\nZoroaster in Persia, all broke away from the Official Mysteries,\nmore or less, to found Theosophical Movements of their own;\n--which would indicate that, at least from the Tyrrhenian to the\nYellow Sea, the Mysteries had, in that sixth century, ceased to\nbe the efficient instrument of the White Lodge. The substance of\nthe Ancient Wisdom might remain in them; the energy was largely\ngone.\n\nPisistratus did marvels for Athens; lifting her out of obscurity\nto a position which should invite great souls to seek birth in\nher. He died in  527; two years later a son was born to the\nEupatrid Euphorion at Eleusis; and I have no doubt there was some\nsuch stir over the event, on Olympus or on Parnassus, as happened\nover a birth at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564, and one in Florence\nin the May of 1265. In 510, Hippias, grown cruel since the\nassassination of his brother, was driven out from an Athens\nalready fomenting with the yeast of new things. About that time\nthis young Eleusinian Eupatrid was set to watch grapes ripening\nfor the vintage, and fell asleep. In his dream Dionysos, God of\nthe Mysteries, appeared to him and bade him write tragedies for\nthe Dionysian Festival. On waking, he found himself endowed with\ngenius: beset inwardly with tremendous thoughts, and words to\nclothe them in; so that the work became as easy to him as if he\nhad been trained to it for years.\n\nHe competed first in 499--against Choerilos and Pratinas, older\npoets--and was defeated; and soon afterwards sailed for Sicily,\nwhere he remained for seven years. The dates of Pythagoras are\nsurmised, not known; Plumptre, with a query, gives 497 for his\ndeath. I wonder whether, in the last years of his life, that\ngreat Teacher met this young Aeschylus from Athens; whether the\nyears the latter spent in Sicily on this his first visit there,\nwere the due seven years of his Pythagorean probation and\ninitiation? \"Veniat Aeschylus,\" says Cicero, \"non poeta solum,\nsed etiam Pythagoreus: sic enim accepimus \";--and we may accept\nit too; for that was the Theosophical Movement of the age;\nand he above all others, Pythagoras having died, was the great\nTheosophist. They had the Eleusinian Mysteries at Athens, and\nMost of the prominent Athenians must have been initiated\ninto them--since that was the State Religion; but Aeschylus\nalone in Athens went through life clothed in the living power\nof Theosophy.\n\nGo to the life of such a man, if you want big clues as to the\ninner history of his age;--the life of Aeschylus, I think, can\ninterpret for us that of Athens. There are times when the\nmovement of the cycles is accelerated, and you can see the\ngreat wheel turning; this was one.  Aeschylus had proudly\ndistinguished himself at Marathon; and Athens, as the highest\nhonor she could do him for that, must have his portrait appear in\nthe battle-picture painted for a  memorial of the victory.  He\nfought, too, at Artemisium and Salamis; with equal distinction.\nIn 484 he won the first of thirteen annual successes in the\ndramatic competitions.  These were the years during which Athens\nwas really playing the hero; the years of Aristides' ascendency.\n In 480 Xerxes burned the city; but the people fought on,\ngreat in faith. In 479 came Plataea, Aeschylus again fighting.\nThroughout this time, he, the Esotericist and Messenger of the\nGods, was wholly at one with his Athens--an Athens alive enough\nthen to the higher things to recognize the voice of the highest\nwhen it spoke to her--to award Aeschylus, year after year, the\nchief dramatic prize. Then in 478 or 477 she found herself in a\nnew position:  her heroism and intelligence had won their reward,\nand she was set at the head of Greece. Six years later Aeschylus\nproduced _The Persians,_ the first of the seven extant out of the\nseventy or eighty plays he wrote; in it he is still absolutely\nthe patriotic Athenian. In 471 came the  _Seven against Thebes;_\nfrom which drama, I think, we get a main current of light on the\nwhole future history of Athens.\n\nTwo men, representing two forces, had guided the city during\nthose decades. On the one hand there was Aristides, called the\nJust--inflexible, incorruptible, impersonal and generous; on the\nother, Themistocles--precocious and wild as a boy; profligate as\na youth and young man; ambitious, unscrupulous and cruel; a\ngenius; a patriot; without moral sense. The policy of Aristides,\ndespite his so-called democratic reforms, was conservative; he\npersuaded Greece, by sound arguments, to the side of Athens:  he\nwas for Athens doing her duty by Greece, and remaining content.\nThat of Themistocles was that she should aim at empire by any\nmeans: should make herself a sea-power with a view to dominating\nthe Greek world. Oh, to begin with, doubtless with a view to\nholding back the Persians; and so far his policy was sane enough;\nbut his was not the kind of mind in which an ambitious idea fails\nto develop in ambitious and greedy directions; and that of\nmastery of the seas was an idea that could not help developing\nfatally. He had been banished for his corruption in 471; but he\nhad set Athens on blue water, and bequeathed to her his policy.\nHenceforward she was to make for supremacy, never counting the\nmoral cost. She attacked the islands at her pleasure, conquered\nthem, and often treated the conquered with vile cruelty. The\n_Seven against Thebes_ was directed by Aeschylus against the\nThemistoclean, and in support of the Aristidean, policy.\nImperialistic ambitions, fast ripening in that third decade of\nthe fifth century, were opposed by the Messenger of the Gods.\n\nHis valor in four battles had set him among the national heroes;\nhe had been, in _The Persians,_ the laureate of Salamis; by the\nsheer grandeur of his poetry he had won the prize thirteen times\nin succession.--And by the bye, it is to the eternal credit of\nAthenian intelligence that Athens, at one hearing of those\nobscure, lofty and tremendous poems, should have appreciated\nthem, and with enthusiasm. Try to imagine _Samson Agonistes_ put\non the stage today; with no academical enthusiasts or eclat of\nclassicism to back it; but just put on before thirty thousand\nsight-seers, learned and vulgar, statesman and cobbler, tinker\nand poet; the mob all there; the groundlings far out-numbering\nthe elite:--and all not merely sitting out the play, but roused\nto a frenzy of enthusiasm; and Milton himself, present and\nacting, the hero of the day. That, despite Mr. Whistler and the\n_Ten O'Clock_--seems really to have been the kind of thing that\nhappened in Athens.  Tomides was there, with his companions--\nlittle Tomides, the mender of bad soles--and intoxicated by the\ngrand poetry; understanding it, and never finding it tedious;--\npoetry they had had no opportunity to study in advance, they\nunderstood  and appreciated wildly at first hearing. One cannot\nimagine it among moderns.--And Milton is clear as daylight beside\nremote and difficult Aeschylus. To catch the latter's thought, we\nneed the quiet of the study, close attention, reading and\nre-reading; and though of course time has made him more difficult;\nand we should have understood him better, with no more than our\npresent limited intelligence, had we been his countrymen and\ncontemporaries; yet it remains a standing marvel, and witness to\nthe far higher general intelligence of the men of Athens.  The\nhuman spirit was immensely nearer this plane; they were far more\ncivilized, in respect to mental culture, than we are. Why?--The\ncycles have traveled downward; our triumphs are on a more brutal\nplane; we are much farther from the light of the Mysteries than\nthey were.\n\nAnd yet they were going wrong:  the great cycle had begun\nits down-trend; they were already preparing the way for our\nfool-headed materialism.  In the _Seven against Thebes_ Aeschylus\nprotested against the current of the age. Three years later,\nAthens, impatient of criticism, turned on him.\n\nHe is acting in one of his own plays--one that been lost. He\ngives utterance, down there in the arena, to certain words--\ntremendous words, as always, we must suppose: words hurled out of\nthe heights of an angry eternity--\n\n     _\"Aeschylus' bronze-throat eagle-bark for blood,\"_\n\n--and Athens, that used to thrill and go mad to such tones when\nthey proclaimed the godlike in her own soul and encouraged her to\ngrand aspirations--goes mad now in another sense. She has grown\nused to hear warning in them, and something in alliance with her\nown stifled conscience protesting against her wrong courses;\nand such habituation rarely means acquiescence or soothed\ncomplacency. Now she is smitten and stung to the quick. A yell\nfrom the mob; uproar; from the tiers above tiers they butt,\nlurch, lunge, pour forward and down: the tinkers and cobblers,\ndemagogs and demagoged:  intent--yes--to kill. But he, having yet\nsomething to say, takes refuge at the altar; and there even a\nmaddened mob dare not molest him. But the prize goes to a rising\nstar, young Sophocles; and presently the Gods' Messenger is\nformally accused and tried for \"Profanation of the Mysteries.\"\n\nRevealing secrets pertaining to them, in fact. And now note this:\nhis defense is that he did not know that his lines revealed any\nsecret--was unaware that what he had said pertained to the\nMysteries. Could he have urged such a plea, had it not been known\nhe was uninitiated? Could he have known the teachings, had he not\nbeen instructed in a school where they were known? He, then, was\nan initiate of the Pythagoreans, the new Theosophical Movement\nupon the new method; not of Orthodox Eleusis, that had grown old\nand comatose rather, and had ceased to count.--Well, the judges\nwere something saner than the mob; memory turned again to\nwhat he had done at Marathon, what at Arternisium and Plataea;\nto his thirteen solid years of victory (national heroism on\npoetico-dramatic fields); and to that song of his that \"saved\nat Salamis\":\n\n     _\"O Sons of Greeks, go set your country free!\"_\n\n--and he was acquitted: Athens had not yet fallen so low as to\nprepare a hemlock cup for her teacher. But meanwhile he would do\nmuch better among his old comrades in Sicily than at home; and\nthither he went.\n\nHe returned in 458, to find the Age of Pericles in full swing;\nwith all made anew, or in the making; and the time definitely\nset on its downward course. 'Reform' was busy at abolishing\ninstitutions once held sacred; was the rage;--that funeral speech\nof Pericles, with its tactless vaunting of Athenian superiority\nto all other possible men and nations, should tell us something.\nWhen folk get to feel like that, God pity and forgive them!--it\nis hard enough for mere men to. Aeschylus smote at imperialism in\nthe _Agamemnon_--the first play of this last of  his trilogies;\nand at the mania for reforming away sacred institutions in the\n_Eumenides_--where he asserts the divine origin of the threatened\nAreopagus.  Popular feeling rose once more against him, and he\nreturned to Sicily to die.\n\nLike so many another of his royal line, apparently a failure.\nAnd indeed, a failure he was, so far as his Athens was concerned.\nTrue, Athenian artistic judgment triumphed presently over the\nAthenian spite.  Though it was the rule that no successful play\nshould be performed more than once, they decreed that 'revivals'\nof Aeschylus should always be in order.  And Aristophanes\ntestifies to his lasting popularity--when he shows little Tomides\nwith a bad grouch over seeing a play by Theognis, when he had\ngone to the theater \"expecting Aeschylus\";--and when he shows\nAeschylus and Euripides winning, because his poetry had died with\nhim, and so he had it there for a weapon--whereas Aeschylus's was\nstill alive and on earth.  Yes; Athens took him again, and\npermanently, into favor:  took the poet, but not the Messenger\nand his message.  For she had gone on the wrong road in spite of\nhim:  she had let the divine force, the influx of the human\nspirit which had come to her as her priceless cyclic opportunity,\nflow down from the high planes proper to it, on to the plane of\nimperialism and vulgar ambition; and his word had been spoken to\nthe Greeks in vain--as all Greek history and Karma since has been\nproclaiming.  But in sooth he was not merely for an age, but for\nall time; and his message, unlike Pindar's whom all Greece\nworshiped, and far more than Homer's or that of Sophocles--is\nvital today.  Aeschylus, and Plato, and Socrates who speaks\nthrough Plato, and Pythagoras who speaks through all of them, are\nthe Greeks whose voices are lifted forever for the Soul.\n\nEven the political aspect of his message--the only one I have\ntouched on--is vital.  It proclaims a truth that underlies all\nhistory:  one, I suspect, that remains for our Theosophical\nMovement to impress on the general world-consciousness so that\nwars may end:  namely, that the impulse of Nationalism is a holy\nthing, foundationed upon the human spirit:  a means designed by\nthe Law for humanity's salvation.  But like all spiritual forces,\nit must be kept pure and spiritual, or instead of saving, it will\ndamn.  In its inception, it is vision of the Soul:  of the Racial\nor National Soul--which is a divine light to lure us away from\nthe plane of personality, to obliterate our distressing and\nprivate moods; to evoke the divine actor in us, and merge us in\na consciousness vastly greater than out own.  But add to that\nsaving truth this damning corolary:  _I am better than thou; my\nrace than thine; we have harvests to reap at your expense, and\nour rights may be your wrongs:_--and you have, though it appear\nnot for awhile, fouled that stream from godhood:--you have\ndebased your nationalism and made it hellish. Upon your ambitions\nand your strength, now in the time of your national flowering,\nyou may win to your desire, if you _will;_  because now the\nspirit is quickening the whole fiber of your national self; and\nthe national will must become, under that pressure, almost\nirresistibly victorious. The Peoples of the earth shall kneel\nbefore your throne; you shall get your vulgar empire;--but you\nshall get it presently, as they say, \"where the chicken got the\naxe\": _Vengeance is mine, saith the Law; I will repay._ The\ncycle, on the plane to which you have dragged it down, will run\nits course; your high throne will go down with it, and yourself\nshall kneel to races you now sniff at for 'inferior.' You have\nbrought it on to the material plane, and are now going upward on\nits upward trend there gaily--\n\n     \"Ah, let no evil lust attack the host\n     Conquered by greed, to plunder what they ought not;\n     For yet they need return in safety home,\n     Doubling the goal to run their backward race\"\n                            [_Agamemnon,_ Plumtre's translation]\n\nThe downtrend of the cycle awaits you--the other half--just as\nthe runner in the foot-races to win, must round the pillar at the\nfar end of the course, and return to the starting-place.--That is\namong the warnings Aeschylus spoke in the  _Agamemnon_ to an\nAthens that was barefacedly conquering and enslaving the Isles of\nGreece to no end but her own wealth and power and glory. The\nobvious reference is of course to the conquerors of Troy.\n\nI have spoken of this Oresteian Trilogy as his _Hamlet;_ with the\n_Prometheus Bound_--another tremendous Soul-Symbol--it is\nwhat puts him in equal rank with the four supreme Masters of\nlater Western Literature. I suppose it is pretty certain that\nShakespeare knew nothing of him, and had never heard of the plot\nof his _Agamemnon._ But look here:--\n\nThere was one Hamlet King of Denmark, absent from control of his\nkingdom because sleeping within his orchard (his custom always of\nan afternoon). And there was one Agamemnon King of Men, absent\nfrom control of his kingdom because leading those same Men at the\nsiege of Troy. Hamlet had a wife Gertrude; Agamemnon had a wife\nClytemnestra. Hamlet had a brother Claudius; who became the lover\nof Gertrude. Agamemnon had a cousin Aegisthos, who became the\nparamour of Clytemnestra. Claudius murdered Hamlet, and thereby\ncame by his throne and queen. Clytemnestra and Aegisthos murdered\nAgamemnon, and Aegisthos thereby became possessed of his throne\nand queen. Hamlet and Gertrude had a son Hamlet, who avenged his\nfather's murder. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had a son Orestes,\nwho avenged  his father's murder.\n\nThere, however, the parallel ends. Shakespeare had to paint the\nhuman soul at a certain stage of its evolution: the 'moment of\nchoice,'  the entering on the path: and brought all his genius to\nbear on revealing that. He had, here, to teach Karma only\nincidentally; in _Macbeth,_ when the voice cried  'Sleep no\nmore!'  he is more Aeschylean in spirit. That dreadful voice\nrings through Aeschylus; who was altogether obsessed with the\nmajesty and awfulness of Karma.  It is what he cried to Athens\nthen, and to all ages since, reiterating _Karma_ with terrible\nsleep-forbidding insistency from dark heights.--I have quoted the\nwonderful line in which Browning, using similes borrowed from\nAeschylus himself, sums up the effect of his style:\n\n     'Aeschylus' bronze-throat eagle-bark for blood,'\n\nwhich compensates for the more than Greek--unintelligibility of\nBrowning's version of the _Agamemnon:_  it gives you some color,\nsome adumbration of the being and import of the man. How shall we\ncompare him with those others, his great compeers on the Mountain\nof Song?  Shakespeare--as I think--throned upon a peak where are\nstorms often, but where the sun shines mostly; surveying all\nthis life, and with an eye to the eternal behind:  Dante--a\nprophet, stern, proud, glad and sorrowful; ever in a great pride\nof pain or agony of bliss; surveying the life without,--only to\ncorrelate it with and interpret it by the vaster life within\nthat he knew better;--this Universe for him but the crust and\nexcoriata of the Universe of the Soul.  Milton--a Titan Soul\nhurled down from heaven, struggling with all chaos and the deep\nto enunciate--just to proclaim and put on everlasting record--\nthose two profound significant words, _Titan_ and _Soul,_ for a\nmemorial to Man of the real nature of Man.  Aeschylus--the\nbarking of an eagle--of Zeus the Thunderer's own eagle out of\nominous skies above the mountains: a thing unseen as Karma,\nmysterious and mighty as Fate, as Disaster, as the final Triumph\nof the Soul; sublime as death; a throat of bronze, superhumanly\nimpersonal; a far metallic clangor of sound, hoarse or harsh,\nperhaps, if your delicate ears must call him so; but grand;\nimmeasurably grand; majestically, ominously and terribly grand;--\nancestral voices prophesying war, and doom, and all dark\ntremendous destinies;--and yet he too with serenity and the\nProphecy of Peace and bliss for his last word to us:  he will not\nleave his avenging Erinyes until by Pallas' wand and will they\nare transformed into Eumenides, bringers of good fortune.\n\nSomething like that, perhaps, is the impression Aeschylus leaves\non the minds of those who know him.  They bear testimony to the\nfact that, however grand his style--like a Milton Carlylized in\npoetry--thought still seems to overtop it and to be struggling\nfor expression through a vehicle less than itself.\n\nSays Lytton, not unwisely perhaps:  \"His genius is so near the\nverge of bombast, that to approach his sublime is to rush into\nthe ridiculous\"; and he goes on to say that you might find the\nnearest echo of his diction in Shelley's _Prometheus;_ but of his\ndiction alone; for \"his power is in concentration--that of\nShelley in diffuseness.\" \"The intellectuality of Shelley,\" he\nsays, \"destroyed; that of Aeschylus only increased his command\nover the passions. The interest he excites is startling,\nterrible, intense.\" Browning tried to bring over the style; but\nleft the thought, in an English _Double-Dutched,_ far remoter\nthan he found it from our understanding. The thought demands in\nEnglish a vehicle crystal-clear; but Aeschylus in the Greek is\nnot crystal-clear:  so close-packed and vast are the ideas that\nthere are lines on lines of which the best scholars can only\nconjecture the meaning.--In all this criticism, let me say, one\nis but saying what has been said before; echoing Professor\nMahaffy; echoing Professor Gilbert Murray; but there is a need\nto give you the best picture possible of this man speaking from\nthe eternal.--Unless Milton and Carlyle had co-operated to make\nit, I think, any translation of the _Agamemnon_--which so many\nhave tried to translate--would be fatiguing and a great bore to\nread. It may not be amiss to quote three lines from George Peel's\n_David and Bethsabe,_ which have been often called Aeschylean\nin audacity:--\n\n     \"At him the thunder shall discharge his bolt,\n     And his fair spouse, with bright and fiery wings,\n     Sit ever burning on his hateful wings;\"\n\nHis--the thunder's--fair spouse is the lightning. Imagine\nimages as swift, vivid and daring as that, hurled and flashed out\nin language terse, sudden, lofty--and you may get an idea of what\nthis eagle's bark was like. And the word that came rasping and\nresounding on it out of storm-skies high over Olympus, for Athens\nthen and the world since to hear, was KARMA.\n\nHe took that theme, and drove it home, and drove it home, and\ndrove it home. Athens disregarded the rights and sufferings of\nothers; was in fact abominably cruel. Well; she should hear about\nKarma; and in such a way that she should--no, but she _should_--\ngive ear. Karma punished wrong-doing. It was wrong-doing that\nKarma punished. You could not do wrong with impunity.--The common\nthought was that any extreme of good fortune was apt to rouse the\njealousy of the Gods, and so bring on disaster. This was what\nPindar taught--all-worshiped prosperous Pindar, Aeschylus'\ncontemporary, the darling poet of the Greeks. The idea is\nillustrated by Herodotus' story of the Ring of Polycrates.\n\nYou remember how the latter, being tyrant of Samos, applied to\nAmasis of Egypt for an alliance.  But wary Amasis, noting his\ninvariable good luck, advised him to sacrifice something, lest\nthe Gods should grow jealous:  so Polycrates threw a ring into\nthe sea, with the thought thus to appease Nemesis cheaply; but\nan obliging fish allowed itself to be caught and served up for\nhis supper with the ring in its internal economy; on hearing of\nwhich, wary Amasis foresaw trouble, and declined the alliance\nwith thanks.  Such views or feelings had come to be Greek\northodoxy; you may take it that whatever Pindar said was not far\nfrom the orthodoxies--hence his extreme popularity:  we dearly\nlove a man who tells us grandly what we think ourselves, and\nthink it right to think.  But such a position would not do for\nAeschylus.  He noted his doctrine only to condemn it.\n\n     \"There live an old saw framed in ancient days\n      In memories of men, that high estate,\n      Full grown, brings forth its young, nor childless dies,\n      But that from good success\n      Springs to the race a woe insatiable.\n      But I, apart from all,\n      Hold this my creed alone:\n      Ill deeds along bring forth offspring of ill\n      Like to their parent stock.\"\n\nNeedless to say the translation--Dean Plumptre's in the main--\nfails to bring out the force of the original.\n\nWe must remember that for his audiences the story he had to tell\nwas not the important thing.  They knew it in advance; it was\none of their familiar legends.  What they went to hear was\nAeschylus' treatment of it; his art, his poetry, his preaching.\nThat was what was new to them:  the thing for which their eyes\nand ears were open.  We go to the theater, as we read novels, for\namusement; the Athenians went for aesthetic and religious ends.\nSo Aechylus had ready for him an efficient pulpit; and was not\nsuspect for using it.  We like Movies shows because they are\nentertaining and exciting; the Athenian would have damned them\nbecause they are inartistic.\n\nI said, he had a pulpit ready for him; yet, as nearly as such a\nstatement can come to truth, it was he himself who invented the\ndrama.  It was, remember, an age of transition:  things were\npassing out from the inner planes:  the Mysteries were losing\ntheir virtue.  The Egyptian Mysteries had been dramatic in\ncharacter; the Eleusinian, which were very likely borrowed or\ncopied or introduced from Egypt, were no doubt dramatic too.\nThen there had been festivals among the rustics, chiefly in\nhonor of Dionysos not altogether in his higher aspects, with\nrudimentary plays of a coarse buffoonish character.  By 499, in\nAthens, these had grown to something more important; in that\nyear the wooden scaffolding of the theater in which they were\ngiven broke down under the spectators; and this led to the\nbuilding of a new theater in stone. It was in 499 Aeschylus first\ncompeted; the show was still very rudimentary in character. Then\nhe went off to Sicily; and came back with the idea conceived of\nGreek Tragedy as an artistic vehicle or expression--and something\nmore. He taught the men who had at first defeated him, how to do\ntheir later and better work; and opened the way for all who came\nafter, from Sophocles to Racine. He took to sailing this new ship\nof the drama as near as he might to the shore-line of the\nMysteries themselves;--indeed, he did much more than this; for he\ninfused into his plays that wine of divine life then to be found\nin its purity and vigor only or chiefly in the Pythagorean\nBrotherhood.--And now as to this new art-form of his.\n\nDe Quincey, accepting the common idea that the Dionysian Theater\nwas built to seat between thirty and forty thousand spectators\n(every free Athenian citizen), argues that the formative elements\nthat made Greek Tragedy what it was were derived from these huge\ndimensions. In such a vast building (he asks) how could you\nproduce such a play as _Hamlet?_--where the art of the actor\nshows itself in momentary changes of expression, small byplay\nthat would be lost, and the like. The figures would be dwarfed by\nthe distances; stage whispers and the common inflexions of the\nspeaking voice would be lost. So none of these things belonged to\nGreek Tragedy. The mere physical scale necessitated a different\ntheory of art. The stature of the actors had to be increased, or\nthey would have looked like pygmies; their figures had to be\ndraped and muffled, to hide the unnatural proportions thus\ngiven them. A mask had to be worn, if only to make the head\nproportionate to the body; and the mask had to contain an\narrangement for multiplying the voice, that it might carry to the\nwhole audience. That implied that the lines should be chanted,\nnot spoken;--though in any case, chanted they would be, for they\nwere verse, not prose; and the Greeks had not forgotten, as we\nhave, that verse is meant to be chanted.  So here, to begin with,\nthe whole scheme implied something as unlike actual life as it\nwell could be. And then, too, there was the solemnity of the\noccasion--the religious nature of the whole festival.\n\nThus, in substance De Quincey; who makes too little, perhaps,\nof the matter of that last sentence; and too much of what\ngoes before. We may say that it was rather the grand impersonal\ntheory of the art that created the outward condition; not the\nconditions that created the theory. Mahaffy went to Athens and\nmeasured the theater; and found it not so big by any means. They\ncould have worked out our theories and practice in it, had they\nwanted to, so far as that goes. Coarse buffoonish country\nfestivals do not of themselves evolve into grand art or solemn\noccasions; you must seek a cause for that evolution, and find it\nin an impulse arisen in some human mind. Or minds indeed; for\nsuch impulses are very mysterious. The Gods sow their seed in\nseason; we do not see the sowing, but presently mark the\ngreening of the brown earth. The method of the Mysteries--drama\nserious and religious--had been drifting outwards:  things had\nbeen growing to a point where a great creative Soul could take\nhold of them and mold them to his wish. If Aeschylus was not an\nInitiate of Eleusis, he had learnt, with the Pythagoreans, the\nmethod of the Mysteries of all lands. He knew more, not less,\nthan the common pillars of the Athenian Church and State.  I\nimagine it was he, in those thirteen consecutive years of his\nvictories, who in part created, in part drew from his Pythagorean\nknowledge, those conventions and circumstances for Tragedy which\nsuited him--rather than that conventions already existing imposed\nformative limits on him.  His genius was aloof, impersonal,\nsevere, and of the substance of the Eternal; such as would need\nprecisely those conventions, and must have created them had they\nnot been there.  Briefly, I believe that this is what happened.\nSent by Pythagoras to do what he could for Athens and Greece, he\nforged this mighty bolt of tragedy to be his weapon.\n\nThe theory of modern drama is imitation of life.  It has\nnothing else and higher to offer; so, when it fails to imitate,\nwe call it trash.  But the theory of Aeschylean Tragedy\nis the illumination of life.  Illumination of life, through\na medium quite unlike life. Art begins on a spiritual plane,\nand works down to realism in its decadence; then it ceases\nto be art at all, and becomes merely copying what we imagine\nto be nature,--nature, often, as seen through a diseased liver\nand well-atrophied pineal gland.\n\nTrue art imitates nature only in a very selective and limited\nway. It chooses carefully what it shall imitate, and all to the\nend of illumination. It paints a flower, or a sunset, not to\nreproduce the thing seen with the eyes, but to declare and set\nforth that mood of the Oversoul which the flower or the sunset\nexpressed.  Flower-colors or sunset-colors cannot be reproduced\nin pigments; but you can do things with pigments and a brush that\ncan tell the same story. Or it can be done in words, in a poem;\nor with the notes of music;--in both of which cases the medium\nused is still more, and totally, unlike the medium through which\nthe Oversoul said its say in the sky or the blossom.\n\nNature is always expressing these moods of the Oversoul; but we\nget no news of them, as a rule, from our own sight and hearing;\nwe must wait for the poets and artists to interpret them.  Life\nis always at work to teach us life; but we miss the grand\nlessons, usually, until some human Teacher enforces them. His\nmethods are the same as those of the artists:  between whose\noffice and his there was at first no difference;--_Bard_\nmeans only, originally, an Adept Teacher.  Such a one selects\nexperiences out of life for his pupils, and illumines them\nthrough the circumstances under which they are applied; just as\nthe true artist selects objects from nature, and by his manner of\ntreating them, interprets the greatness that lies beyond.\n\nSo the drama-theory of Aeschylus.  He took fragments of possible\nexperience, and let them be seen through a heightened and\ninterpretative medium; with a light at once intense and somber-\nportentous thrown on them; and this not to reproduce the\nexternalia and appearance of life, but to illumine its inner\nrecesses; to enforce, in plays lasting an hour or so, the\nlessons life may take many incarnations to teach.  This cannot be\ndone by realism, imitation or reproduction of the actual; than\nwhich life itself is always better.\n\nWhat keeps us from seeing the meanings of life?  Personality.\nNot only our own, but in all those about us.  Personality dodges\nand flickers always between our eyes and the solemn motions, the\nadumbrations of the augustness beyond.  We demand lots of\npersonality in our drama; we call it character-drawing.  We want\nto see fellows like ourselves lounging or bustling about, and\nhear them chattering as we do;--fellows with motives (like our\nown) all springing from the personality.  Human life is what\ninterests us:  we desire to drink deep of it, and drink again and\nagain.  The music that we wish to hear is the \"still, sad music\nof humanity\";--that is, taking our theory at its best, and before\nyou come down to sheer 'jazz' and ragtime.  But what interested\nAeschylus was that which lies beyond and within life.  He said:\n'You can get life in the Agora, on the Acropolis, any day of the\nweek; when you come to the theater you shall have something\nelse, and greater.'\n\nSo he set his scenes, either in a vast, remote, and mysterious\nantiquity, or--in _The Persians_--at Susa before the palace of\nthe Great King:  a setting as remote, splendid, vast, and\nmysterious, to the Greek mind of the day, as the other.  Things\nshould not be as like life, but as unlike life, as possible.  The\nplays themselves, as acted, were a combination of poetry, dance,\nstatuesque poses and motions and groupings; there was no action.\nAll the action was done off the scenes.  They did not portray the\nevolution of character; they hardly portrayed character--in the\npersonal sense--at all.  The _dramatis personae_ are types,\nsymbols, the expression of natural forces, or principles in man.\nIn our drama you have a line, an extension forward in time; a\nprogression from this to that point in time;--in Greek Tragedy\nyou have a cross-section of time--a cutting through the atom of\ntime that glimpses may be caught of eternity.  There was no\nunfoldment of a story; but the presentation of a single mood.\nIn the chanted poetry and the solemn dance-movements a situation\nwas set forth; what led up to it being explained retrospectively.\nThe audience knew what was coming as well as the author did:\nthat Agamemnon, for instance, was to be murdered.  So all\nwas written to play on their expectations, not on their surprise.\nThere was a succession of perfect pictures; these and the\npoetry were to hold the interest, to work it up: to seize\nupon the people, and lead them by ever-heightening accessions\nof feeling into forgetfulness of their personal lives, and\nabsorption in the impersonal harmony, the spiritual receptivity,\nfrom which the grand truths are visible.  The actors' masks\nallowed only the facial expression of a single mood; and\nit was a single mood the dramatist aimed to produce:  a unity;\none great word.  There could be no grave-diggers; no quizzing\nof Polonious; no clouds very like a whale.  The whole drama\nis the unfoldment of a single moment:  that, say, in which\nHamlet turns on Caudius and kills him--rather, leads him out to\nkill him.  To that you are led by a little sparse dialog, ominous\nenough, and pregnant with dire significance, between two or three\nactors; many long speeches in which the story is told in\nretrospect; much chanting by the chorus--Horatio multiplied by a\ndozen or so--to make you feel Hamlet's long indecision, and to\nallow you no escape from the knowledge that Claudius' crime\nwould bring about its karmic punishment.  It is a unity:  one\nthunderbolt from Zeus;--first the growl and rumbling of the\nthunders; then the whirr of the dread missile,--and lo, the man\ndead that was to die.  And through the bolt so hurled, so\neffective, and with it--the eagle-bark--Aeschylus crying _Karma!_\nto the Athenians.\n\nSo it has been said that Aeschylean Tragedy is more nearly allied\nto sculpture; Shakespearean Tragedy to the Epic.\n\nThink how that unchanging mask, that frozen moment of expression,\nwould develop the quality of tragic irony. In it Clytemnestra\ncomes out to greet the returning Agamemnon.  She has her\nhandmaids carpet the road for him with purple tapestries; she\nmakes her speeches of welcome; she alludes to the old sacrifice\nof Iphigenia; she tells him how she has waited for his return;--\nand all the while the audience knows she is about to kill him.\nThey listen to her doubtful words, in which she reveals to them,\nwho know both already, her faithlessness and dire purpose; but\nto her husband, seems to reveal something different altogether.\nWith Agamemnon comes Cassandra from fallen Troy:  whose fate was\nto foresee all woes and horror, and to forthtell what she saw--\nand never to be believed; so now when she raises her dreadful\ncry, foreseeing what is about to happen, and uttering warning--\nnone believe her but the audience, who know it all in advance.\nAnd then there are the chantings of the chorus, a group of Argive\nelders.   They know or guess how things stand between the queen\nand her lover; they express their misgiving, gathering as the\nplay goes on; they recount the deeds of violence of which the\nHouse of Atreus has been the scene, and are haunted by the\nforeshadowings of Karma.  But they many not understand or\ngive credence to the warnings of Cassandra:  Karma disallows\nfore-fending against the fall of its bolts.  Troy has fallen, they\nsay:  and that was Karma; because Paris, and Troy in supporting\nhim, had sinned against Zeus the patron of hospitality,--to whom\nthe offense rose like vultures with rifled nest, wheeling in\nmid-heaven on strong oars of wings, screaming for retribution.\n--You may not that Aeschylus' freedom from the bonds of outer\nreligion is like Shakespeare's own:  here Zeus figures as symbol\nof the Lords of Karma; from him flow the severe readjustments\nof the Law;--but in the _Prometheus Bound_ he stands for the\nlower nature that crucifies the Higher.\n\nTroy, then, had sinned, and has fallen; but (says the Chorus)\nlet the conquerors look to it that they do not overstep the mark;\nlet there be no dishonoring the native Gods of Troy; (the\nAthenians had been very considerably overstepping the mark\nin some of their own conquests recently;)--let there be no\nplundering or useless cruelty; (the Athenians had been hideously\ngreedy and cruel;)--or Karma would overtake it own agents, the\nGreeks, who were not yet out of the wood, as we say--who had not\nyet returned home.  This was when the beacons had announced the\nfall of Troy, and before the entry of Agamemnon.\n\nClytemnestra is not like Gertrude, but a much grander and more\ntragical figure.  Shakespeare leaves you in no doubt as to his\nqueen's relation to Claudius; he enlarges on their guilty\npassion _ad lib._  Aeschylus never mentions love at all in\nany of his extant plays; only barely hints at it here.  It\nmay be supposed to exist; it is an accessory motive; it\nlends irony to Clytemnestra's welcome to Agamemnon--in which\nonly the audience and the Chorus are aware that the lady\ndoes protest too much.  But she stands forth in her own eyes\nas an agent of Karma-Nemesis; there is something very terrible\nand unhuman about her.  Early in the play she reminds the\nChorus how Agamemnon, is setting out for Troy, sacrificed\nhis and her daughter Iphigenia to get a fair wind:  a deed\nof blood whose consequences must be feared--something to\nadd to the Chorus's misgivings, as they chant their doubtful\nhope that the king may safely return.  In reality Artemis\nhad saved Igphigenia; and though Clytemnestra did not know\nthis, in assuming the position of her daughter's avenger\nshe put herself under the karmic ban.  And Agamemnon did\nnot know it:  he had intended the sacrifice:  and was therefore,\nand for his supposed ruthlessness at Troy, under the same ban\nhimself. Hence the fate that awaited him on his return; and\nhence because of  Clytemnestra's useless crime--when she and\nAegisthos come out from murdering him, and announce what they\nhave done, the Chorus's dark foretellings--to come true presently\n--of the Karma that is to follow upon it.\n\nAnd here we must guard ourselves against the error--as I think it\nis that Aeschylus set himself to create the perfect and final\nart-form as such. I think he was just intent on announcing Karma\nto the Athenians in the most effective way possible:  bent all\nhis energies to making that--and that the natural result\nof that high issue clear and unescapable; purpose was this\nmarvelous art-form--which Sophocles took up later, and in\nsome external ways perhaps perfected. Then came Aristotle after\na hundred years, and defining the results achieved, tried to make\nShakespeare impossible. The truth is that when you put yourself\nto do the Soul's work, and have the great forces of the Soul to\nback you therein, you create an art-form; and it only remains for\nthe Aristotelian critic to define it. Then back comes the Soul\nafter a thousand years, makes a new one, and laughs at the\nAristotles. The grand business is done by following the Soul--not\nby conforming to rules or imitating models. But it must be the\nSoul; rules and models are much better than personal whims;\nthey are a discipline good to be followed as long as one can.--\nYou will note how Aeschylus stood above the possibilities of\nactualism with which we so much concern ourselves; in the course\nof some sixteen hundred lines, and without interval or change of\nact or scene, he introduces the watchman on the house-top who\nfirst sees the beacons that announce the fall of Troy, on the\nvery night that Troy fell,--and the return of Agamemnon in his\nchariot to Argos.\n\nIn the  _Choephori_ or _Libation-Pourers,_ the second play of the\ntrilogy, Orestes returns from his Wittenberg, sent by Apollo to\navenge his father. The scene again is in front of the house of\nAtreus. Having killed Aegistlios within, Orestes comes out to\nthe Chorus; then Clytemnestra enters; he tells her what he has\ndone, and what he intends to do; and despite her pleadings,\nleads her in to die beside her paramour. He comes out again,\nbearing (for his justification) the blood-stained robe of\nAgamemnon;--but he comes out distraught and with the guilt of\nmatricide weighing on his soul. The Chorus bids him be of good\ncheer, reminding him upon what high suggestion he has acted; but\nin the background he, and he alone, sees the Furies swarming to\nhaunt him, \"like Gorgons, dark-robed, and all their tresses hang\nentwined with many serpents; and from their eyes is dropping\nloathsome blood.\"  He must wander the world seeking purification.\nIn the _Eumenides_ we find him in the temple of Loxias (the\nApollo) at Delphi, there seeking refuge with the god who had\nprompted him to the deed. But even there the Furies haunt him--\nthough for weariness--or really because it is the shrine of\nLoxias--they have fallen asleep.  From them even Loxias may not\nfree him; only perhaps Pallas at Athens may do that; Loxias\nannounces this to him and bids him go to Athens, and assures him\nmeanwhile of his protection.\n\nTo Athens then the scene changes, where Orestes' case is tried:\nApollo defends him; Pallas is the judge; the Furies the\naccusers; the Court of the Areopagus the jury. The votes of\nthese are equally divided; but Athene gives her casting vote in\nhis favor; and to compensate the Erinyes, turns them into\nEumenides--from Furies to goddesses of good omen and fortune.\nOrestes is free, and the end is  happy.\n\nNo doubt very pretty and feeble of the bronze-throated Eagle-\nbarker to make it so.  What! clap on an exit to these piled-up\nmiseries?--he  should have plunged us deeper in woe, and left us\nto stew in our juices; he Should have shunned this detestable\neffeminacy, worthy only of the Dantes and Shakespeares. But\nunfortunately he was an Esotericist, with the business of\nhelping, not plaguing, mankind:  he must follow the grand\nsymbolism of the story of the Soul, recording and emphasizing and\nshowing the way to its victories, not its defeats. He had the eye\nto see deep into realities, and was not to be led from the path\nof truth eternal by the cheap effective expedients of realism.\nHe must tell the whole truth:  building up, not merely destroying;\nand truth, at the end, is not bitter, but bright and glorious.\nIt is the triumph and purification of the soul; and to that\nhappy consummation all sorrow and darkness and the dread Furies\nthemselves, whom he paints with all the dark flame-pigments\nof sheerest terror, are but incidental and a means.\n\nAnd the meaning of it all? Well, the meaning is as vast as the\nscheme of evolution itself, I suppose.  It is _Hamlet_ over\nagain, and treated differently; that which wrote _Hamlet_\nthrough Shakespeare, wrote this Trilogy through Aeschylus. I\nimagine  you are to find in the _Agamemnon_ the symbol of the\nSpirit's fall into matter--of the incarnation (and obscuration)\nof the  Lords of Mind--driven thereto by ancient Karma, and the\nresult--of the life of past universes. Shakespeare deals with\nthis retrospectively, in the Ghost's words to Hamlet on the\nterrace. The 'death' of the Spirit is its fall into matter.\n\nAnd just as the ghost urges Hamlet to revenge, so Apollo urges\nOrestes; it is the influx, stir, or impingement of the Supreme\nSelf, that rouses a man, at a certain stage in his evolution,\nto lift himself above his common manhood. This is the most\ninteresting and momentous event in the long career of the soul:\nit takes the place, in that drama of incarnations, that the\nmarriage does in the modern novel.  Shakespeare, whose mental\ntendencies were the precise opposite of Aeschylus's--they ran to\ninfinite multiplicity and complexity, where the other's ran to\nstern unity and simplicity (of plot)--made two characters of\nPolonius and Gertrude:  Polonius,--the objective lower world,\nwith its shallow wisdom and conventions; Gertrude,--Nature, the\nlower world in it subjective or inner relation to the soul\nincarnate in it.  Aeschylus made no separate symbol for the former.\nShakespeare makes the killing of Polonius a turning-point;\nthenceforth Hamlet must, will he nill he, in some dawdling\nsort sweep to his revenge.  Aeschylus makes that same turning-point\nin the killing of Clytemnestra, whereafter the Furies are let\nloose on Orestes.  If you think well what it means, it is\nthat \"leap\" spoken of in _Light on the Path,_ by which a\nman raises himself \"on to the path of individual accomplishment\ninstead of mere obedience to the genii which rule our earth.\"\nHe can no longer walk secure like a sheep in the flock; he\nhas come out, and is separate; he has chosen a captain within,\nand must follow the Soul, and not outer convention.  That\nstep taken, and the face set towards the Spirit-Sun--the\nlife of the world forgone, that a way may be fought into\nthe Life of the Soul:--all his past lives and their errors\nrise against him; his passions are roused to fight for their\nlives, and easy living is no longer possible.  He must fly\nthen for refuge to Loxias the Sun-God, the Supreme Self, who can\nprotect him from these Erinyes--but it is Pallas, Goddess of the\nInner Wisdom, of the true method of life, that can alone set him\nfree.  And it is thus that Apollo pleads before her for Orestes\nwho killed his mother (Nature) to avenge his Father (Spirit):--a\nman, says he, is in reality the child of his father, not of his\nmother:--this lower world in which we are incarnate is not in\ntruth our parent or originator at all, but only the seed-plot in\nwhich we, sons of the Eternal, are sown, the nursery in which we\ngrow to the point of birth;--but we ourselves are in our essence\nflame of the Flame of God.  So Pallas--and you must think of all\nshe implied--Theosophy, right living, right thought and action,\ntrue wisdom--judges Orestes guiltless, sets him free, and\ntransforms his passions into his powers.\n\n\n\n\nV.  SOME PERICLEAN FIGURES\n\n\nYoshio Markino (that ever-delightful Japanese) makes an\nilluminating comparison between the modern western and the\nancient eastern civilizations. What he says amounts to this: the\none is of Science, the other of the Human Spirit; the one of\nintellect, the other of intuition; the one has learnt rules for\ncarrying all things through in some shape that will serve--the\nother worked its wonders by what may be called a Transcendental\nRule of Thumb. But in fact it was a reliance on the Human Spirit,\nwhich invited the presence thereof;--and hence results were\nattained quite unachievable by modern scientific methods. What\nYoshio says of the Chinese and Japanese is also true of all the\ngreat western ages of the past. We can do a number of things,--\nthat is, have invented machinery to do a number of things for\nus,--but with all our resources we could not build a Parthenon:\ncould not even reproduce it, with the model there before our eyes\nto imitate.*\n\n------\n* I quote Prof. Mahaffy in his _Problems of Greek History._  He\nalso points out that it is beyond the powers of modern science in\nnaval architecture to construct a workable model of a Greek trireme.\n------\n\nIt stands as a monument of the Human Spirit: as an age-long\nwitness to the presence and keen activity of that during the Age\nof Pericles in Athens. It was built at almost break-neck speed,\nyet remains a thing of permanent inimitable beauty, defying time\nand the deliberate efforts of men and gunpowder to destroy it.\nThe work in it which no eye could see was as delicate, as\nexquisite, as that which was most in evidence publicly; every\ndetail bore the deliberate impress of the Spirit, a direct\nspiritual creation. There is no straight line in it; no two\nmeasurements are the same; but by a divine and direct intuition,\nevery  difference is inevitable, and an essential factor in the\nperfection of the whole.  As if the same creative force had made\nit, as makes of the sea and  mountains an inescapable perfection\nof beauty.\n\nIt is one of the many mighty works wherewith Pericles and\nhis right-hand man Pheidias, and his architects Ictinus and\nCallicrates, adorned Athens.  It would serve no purpose to make a\nlist of the great names of the age; which you know well enough\nalready. The simple fact to note is this:  that at a certain\nperiod in the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. the Crest-Wave of\nEvolution was, so far as we can see, flowing through a very\nnarrow channel.  The Far Eastern seats of civilization were under\npralaya; the life-forces in West Asia were running towards\nexhaustion, or already exhausted; India, it is true, is hidden\nfrom us; we cannot judge well what was going on there; and so\nwas most of Europe. Any scheme of cycles that we can put forward\nas yet must necessarily be tentative and hypothetical; what we\ndo not know is, to what we do know, as a million to one; I may\nbe quite wrong in giving Europe as long a period for its\nmanvantaras as China; possibly there were no manvantaric\nactivities in Europe, in that period, before the rise of Greece.\nBut whether or no, this particular time belongs, of all European\ncountries, to Greece:  the genius of the world, the energy of the\nhuman spirit, was  mainly concentrated there; and of Greece, in\nthe single not too large city of Athens.  It is true I am rather\nenamored of the cycle of a hundred and thirty years; prejudiced,\nif you like, in its favor; it is also true that genius was\nspeaking through at least one world-important Athenian voice--\nthat of Aeschylus--before the age of Pericles began.  Still,\nthese dates are significant:  477, in which year Athens attained\nthe hegemony of Greece, and 347, in which Plato died. It was\nafter 477 that Aeschylus eagle-barked the grandest part of his\nmessage from the Soul, and that the great Periclean figures\nappeared; and though Athenians of genius out-lived Plato, he was\nthe last world-figure and great Soul-Prophet; the last Athenian\nequal in standing to Aeschylus. When those thirteen decades had\npassed, the Soul had little more to say through Athens.--\nAristotle?--I said, _the Soul_ had little more to say. . . .\n\nAbout midway through that cycle came Aegospotami, and the\ndestruction of the Long Walls and of the Empire; but these did\nnot put an end to Athenian significance.  Mahaffy very wisely\ngoes to work to dethrone the Peloponnesian War--as he does, too,\nthe Persian--from the eminence it has been given in the textbooks\never since.  As usual, we get a lopsided view from the historians:\nin this case from Thucydides, who slurred through a sort of\nsynopsis of the far more important and world-interesting\nmid-fifth century, and then dealt microscopically with these\ntwenty-five years or so of trumpery raidings, petty excursions\nand small alarms. That naval battle at Syracuse, which Creasy\nputs with Marathon in his famous fifteen, was utterly unimportant:\ntardy Nicias might have won all through, and still Athens\nwould have fallen.  Her political foundations were on the\nsand. Under Persia you stood a much better chance of enjoying\ngood government and freedom:  Persian rule was far less\noppressive and cruel. The states and islands subject to Athens\nhad no self-government, no representation; they were at the\nmercy of the Athenian mob, to be taxed, bullied, and pommeled\nabout as that fickle irresponsible tyranny might elect or be\nswayed to pommel, tax, and bully them.  Thucydides was a great\nmaster of prose style, and so could invest with an air of\nimportance all the matter of his tale.  Besides, he was the\nonly contemporary historian, or the only one that survives.\nSo the world ever since has been tricked into thinking this\nPeloponnesian War momentous; whereas really it was a petty\nfamily squabble among that most family-squabblesome of peoples,\nthe Greeks.--In most of which I am only quoting Mahaffy; who,\nwhether intentionally or not, deals with Greek history in such a\nway as to show the utter unimportance, irrelevance, futility,\nof war.\n\nGreek history is merely a phase of human history. We have looked\nfor its significance exclusively in political and cultural\nregions; but this is altogether a mistake. The Greeks did not\ninvent culture; there had been greater cultures before, only\nthey are forgotten. All that about the \"evolution of Political\nfreedom,\" of the city state, republicanism, etc., is just\nnonsense.  As far as I can see, the importance of Greece lies in\nthis:  human history, the main part of it, flowing in that age\nthrough the narrow channel of Greece, came down from sacred to\nsecular; from the last remnants of a state of affairs in which\nthe Lodge, through the Mysteries, had controlled life and\nevents, to the beginnings of one in which things were to muddle\nthrough under the sweet guidance of brain-minds and ordinary men.\nThe old order had become impossible; the world had drifted too\nfar from the Gods.  So the Gods tried a new method:  let loose a\nnew great force in the world; sent Teachers to preach openly\n(sow broadcast, and let the seed take its chances) what had\nbefore been concealed and revealed systematically within the\nEstablished  Mysteries.  What Athens did with that new force has\naffected the whole history of Europe since; apparently mostly\nfor weal; really, nearly altogether for woe.\n\nAristides, with convincing logic, had been able to persuade all\nGreece to act against a common danger under an Athens then\nmorally great, and feeling this new force from the God-world\nas a wine in the air, a mental ozone, an inspiration from the\nsubliminal to heroic endeavor.  But his policy perished when the\nvisible need for it subsided; it gave way to the Themistoclean,\nwhich passed into the Periclean policy; and that, says Mahaffy,\n\"was so dangerous and difficult that no cautious and provident\nthinker could have called it secure.\" Which also was Plato's view\nof it; who went so far as to say that Pericles had made the\nAthenians lazy, sensual, and frivolous. When we find Aeschylus at\nthe start at odds with it, and Plato at the end condemning it\nwholesale,--for my part I think we hardly need bother to argue\nabout it further. Both were men who saw from a standpoint above\nthe enlightenment of the common brain-mind.\n\nIt is not the present purpose to treat history as a matter of\nwars and politics; details of which you can get from any\ntextbook; our concern is with the motions of the human spirit,\nand the laws that work from behind. As to these motions, and the\ngrand influxes, there is this much we can rely on:  they come by\nlaw, in their regular cycles; and we can invite their coming,\nand insure their stability when they do come. The more I study\nhistory, the more the significance of my present surroundings\nimpresses me. We stand here upon a marvelous isthmus in time;\nbehind us lies a world of dreary commonplaces called the\ncivilization of Christendom; before us--who knows what possibilities?\nNothing is certain about the future--even the near future;--except\nthat it will be immensely unlike the past.  Whatever we have\nlearned or failed to learn, large opportunities are given us\ndaily for discovering those inward regions  whence all light\nshines down into the world. Genius is one method of the Soul's\naction; one aspect of its glory made manifest.  We are given\nopportunities to learn what invites and what hinders its outflow.\nTo all common thinking, it is a thing absolutely beyond control\nof the will; that cannot be called down, nor its coming\nin anywise foretold.  But we know that the Divine Self would act,\nwere the obstructions to its action removed; and that the\nobstructions are all in the lower nature of man.\n\nWorship the Soul in all thoughts and deeds, and sooner or later\nthe Soul will pour down through the channel thus made for it;\nand its inflow will not be fitful and treacherous, but sure,\nstable, equable and redeeming.\n\nThis is where all past ages of brilliance have failed. Cyclically\nthey were bound to come:  the fields ripened in due season;\nbut the wealth of the harvest depended on the reapers. The\nElizabethan Age, with all its splendid quickening of the English\nmind, was coarse and wicked to a degree. All through the\nwonderful Cinquecento, when each of a dozen or more little\nItalian city-states was  producing genius enough to furnish forth\na good average century in modern Europe or America, Italy was\nalso a hotbed of unnatural vices, lurid crimes, wickedness to\nstock the nine circles of Malebolge.  So too Athens at the top of\nher glory became selfish, grasping, conscienceless and cruel; and\nthose nameless vices grew up and grew common in her which\nprobably account for the long dark night that has spread itself\nover Greece ever since. It is a strange situation, that looks\nlike an anomaly:  that wherever the Human Spirit presses in most,\nand raises up most splendor of genius, there, and then the dark\nforces that undermine life are most at work. But we should have\nno difficulty in understanding it. At such times, by such\ninfluxes, the whole inner kingdom of man is roused and illumined;\nand not only the intellect and all noble qualities are quickened,\nbut the passions also. The race, and the individual, are stirred\nto the deepest depths, and no part of you may have rest. What\nthen will happen, unless you have the surest moral training for\nfoundation? The force which rouses up the highest in you, rouses\nup also the lowest; and there must be battle-royal and victory at\nlast, or surrender to hell. Through lack of training, and\nignorance of the laws of the inner life, the Higher will be\nhandicapped; the lower will have advantage through its own\nnatural impulse downward, increased by every success it is\nallowed to gain. And so all these ages of creative achievement\nexhaust themselves; every victory of the passions drawing down\nthe creative force from the higher planes, to waste  it on the\nlower; till at last what had been an attempt of the Spirit to\nlift humanity up on to nobler lines of evolution, and to open a\nnew order of ages, expires in debauchery, weakness, degeneracy,\nphysical and moral death. The worst fate you could wish a man is\ngenius without moral strength. It wrecks individuals, and it\nwrecks nations. I said we stand now on an isthmus of time;\nfifth-century Greece stood on  such another.  For reasons that we\nhave seen, there was to be a radical difference between the ages\nthat preceded, and the ages that followed it; its influence was\nnot to wear out, in the west, for twenty-five hundred years. It\nwas to give a keynote, in cultural effort, to a very long future.\nSo all western ages since have suffered because of its descent\nfrom lofty ideals to vulgar greed and ambition; from Aristides\nto Themistocles and Pericles.  We shall see this Athenian descent\nin literature, in art, in philosophy.  If Athens had gone up, not\ndown, European history would have been a long record of the\ntriumphs of the spirit:--not, as it has been in the main, one of\nsorrow and disaster.\n\nAt the beginning of the Greek age in literature, we find the\nstupendous figure of Aeschylus.  For any such a force as he was,\nthere is--how shall I say?--a twofold lineage or ancestry to be\ntraced:  there are no sudden creations.  Take Shakespeare, for\nexample.  There was what he found read to his hand in English\nliterature; and what he brought into England out of the Unknown.\nIn his outwardness, the fabric of his art--we can trace this\nbroad river back to a thinnish stream by the name of Chaucer; or\nhe was growth, recognizably, of the national tree of which\nChaucer was the root, or lay at the root.  The unity called\nEnglish poetry had grown naturally from that root to this\nglorious flower:  the sparkle, with, brightness, and above all\nlarge hold upon the other life that one finds in Shakespeare--one\nfinds at least the rudiments of them in Chaucer also.  But there\nis another, an exoteric element in him which one finds nowhere in\nEnglish literature before him:  the Grandeur from within, the\nhigh Soul Symbol.  In him suddenly that portentous thing appears,\nlike a great broad river emerging from the earth.--Of which we do\nnot say, however, that they have had no antecedent rills and\nfountain; we know that they have traveled long beneath the\nmountains, unseen; they sank under the earth-surface somewhere,\nand are not special new creations.  Looking back behind Shakespeare,\nfrom this our eminence in time, we can see beyond the intervening\nheights this broad water shine again over the plain in Dante;\nand beyond him some glimmer of it in Virgil; until at last\nwe see the far-off sheen of it in Aeschylus, very near the\nbackward horizon of time.  We can catch no glimpse of it\nfarther, because that horizon is there.\n\nWe can trace Aeschylus' outward descent--as Shakespeare's from\nChaucer--from the nascent Greek drama and the rudimentary plays\nat the rustic festivals; but the grand river of his esotericism\n--there it shines, as large and majestic, at least, as in\nShakespeare; and it was, no more than his, a special creation or\nnew thing.  Our horizon lies there, to prevent our vision going\nfurther; but from some higher time-eminence in the future,\nwe shall see it emerge again in the backward vastnesses of\npre-history; again and again. The grandeur of Aeschylus his no\nparent in Greek, or in western extant literature; or if we say\nthat it has a parent in Homer (which I doubt, because not seeing\nthe Soul Symbols in Homer), it is only putting matters one step\nfurther back.... But behind Greece, there were the lost literatures\nof Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, of which we know nothing; aye, and\nfor a guess, lost and mighty literatures from all parts of Europe\ntoo. If I could imagine it otherwise, I would say so.\n\nAlmost suddenly, during Aeschylus' lifetime, another Greek Art\ncame into being. When he was a boy, sculpture was still a very\ncrude affair; or perhaps just beginning to emerge from that\ncondition. The images that come down to us, say from Pisistratus'\ntime and earlier, are not greatly different from the 'primitive'\ncarvings of many so-called savage peoples of our own day. That\nstatement is loose and general; but near enough the mark to\nserve our purpose. You may characterize them as rude imitations\nof the human form, without any troublesome realism, and with a\nstrong element of the grotesque. Says the _Encyclopeadia\nBritannica_ (from which the illustration is taken):\n\n\"The statues of the gods began either with stiff and ungainly\nfigures roughly cut out of the trunk of a tree, or with the\nmonstrous and symbolical representations of Oriental art.... In\nearly decorations of vases and vessels one may find Greek deities\nrepresented with wings, carrying in their hands lions or\ngriffins, bearing on their heads lofty crowns.  But as Greek art\nprogressed it grew out of this crude symbolism... What the\nartists of Babylonia and Egypt express in the character of the\ngods by added attribute or symbol, swiftness by wings, control of\nstorms by the thunderbolt, traits of character by animal\nheads, the artists of Greece work more and more fully into the\nscultptural type; modifying the human subject by the constant\naddition of something which is above the ordinary levels of\nhumanity, until we reach the Zeus of Pheidias or the Dimeter of\nCnidus.  When the decay of the high ethical art of Greece sets\nin, the Gods become more and more warped to the merely human\nlevel.  They lose their dignity, but they never lose their charm.\"\n\nIn which, I think, much light is once more thrown on the inner\nhistory of the race, and the curious and fatal position Greece\nholds in it. For here we see Art emerging from its old Position\nas a hand-maid to the Mysteries and recognized instrument of the\nGods or the Soul; from sacred becoming secular; from impersonal,\npersonal. There is, perhaps, little enough in pre-Pheidian Greek\nsculpture that belongs to the history of Art at all (I do not\nspeak of old cycles and manvantaras, the ages of Troy and\nMycenae, but of historical times; I cast no glance now behind the\nyear 870 B. C.).  For the real art that came next before the\nPheidian Greek, we have to look to Egypt and Mesopotamia.\n\nTake Egypt first.  There the sculptor thinks of himself far less\nas artist than as priest and servant of the Mysteries:  that is,\nof the great Divine heart of Existence behind this manifested\nworld, and the official channel which connected It with the\nlatter.   The Gods, for him, are frankly unhuman--superhuman--\nunlike humanity.  We call them 'forces of Nature'; and think\nourselves mighty wise for having camouflaged our ignorance with\nthis perfectly meaningless term.  We have dealt so wisely with\nour thinking organs, that do but give us a sop of words, and\nthings in themselves we shall never bother about:--like the\nGrave-digger, who solved the whole problem of Ophelia's death and\nburial with his three branches of an act.  But the Egyptian, with\nmental faculties unrotted by creedal fatuities like our own,\nwould not so feed 'of the chameleon's dish,'--needed something\nmore than words, words, and words.  He knew also that there were\nelements in their being quite unlike any we are conscious of in\nours.  So he gave them purely symbolic forms:  a human body, for\nthat which he could posit as common to themselves and humanity;\nand an animal mask, to say that the face, the expression of their\nconsciousness, was hidden, and not to be expressed in terms of\nhuman personality.  While affirming that they were conscious\nentities, he stopped short of personalizing them.  What was\nbeneath the mask or symbol belonged to the Mysteries, and was not\nto be publicly declared.\n\nBut when he came to portraying men, especially great kings, he\nused a different method.  The king's statue was to remain through\nlong ages, when the king himself was dead and Osirified.  The\nartist knew--it was the tradition of his school--what the\nOsirified dead looked like.  Not an individual sculptor, but a\ntraditional wisdom, was to find expression.  What sculptor's name\nis known?  Who wrought the Vocal Memnon?--Not any man; but the\nSoul and wisdom and genius of Egypt.  The last things bothered\nabout were realism and personality.  There were a very few\nconventional poses; the object was not to make a portrait, but\nto declare the Universal Human Soul;--it was hardly artistic, in\nany modern acceptation of the word; but rather religious.\nArtistic it was, in the highest and truest sense:  to create, in\nthe medium of stone, the likeness or impression of the Human Soul\nin its grandeur and majesty; to make hard granite or syenite\nproclaim the eternal peace and aloofness of the Soul.--Plato\nspeaks of those glimpses of \"the other side of the sky\" which the\nsoul catches before it comes into the flesh;--the Egyptian artist\nwas preoccupied with the other side of the sky.  How wonderfully\nhe succeeded, you have only to drop into the British Museum to\nsee.  There is a colossal head there, hung high on the wall\nfacing the stairs at the end of the Egyptian Gallery; you may\nview it from the ground, or from any point on the stairs; but\nfrom whatever place you look at it, if you have any quality of\nthe Soul in you, you go away having caught large glimpses of the\nother side of the sky. You are convinced, perhaps unconsciously,\nof the grandeur and reality of the Soul.   Having watched\nEternity on that face many times, I rejoiced to find this\ndescription of it in De Quincey;--if he was not speaking of this,\nwhat he says fits it admirably:\n\n\"That other object which for four and twenty years in the British\nMuseum struck me as simply the sublimest sight which in this\nsight-seeing world I had seen.  It was the memnon's head, then\nrecently brought from Egypt.  I looked at it, as the reader must\nsuppose in order to understand the depth which I have here\nascribed to the impression, not as a human but as a symbolic\nhead; and what it symbolized to me were:  (1) the peace which\npasseth understanding. (2) The eternity which baffles and\nconfounds all faculty of computation--the eternity which had\nbeen, the eternity which was to be.  (3) The diffusive love, not\nsuch as rises and falls upon waves of life and mortality,\nnot such as sinks and swells by undulations of time, but a\nprocession, an emanation, from some mystery of endless dawn.  You\ndurst not call it a smile that radiated from those lips; the\nradiation was too awful to clothe itself in adumbrations of\nmemorials of flesh.\"\n\nArt can never reach higher than that,--if we think of it as a\nfactor in human evolution. What else you may say of Egyptian\nsculpture is of minor importance:  as, that it was stiff,\nconventional, or what not; that each figure is portrayed sitting\nbolt upright, hands out straight, palms down, upon the knees, and\neyes gazing into eternity. Ultimately we must regard Art in this\nEgyptian way: as a thing sacred, a servant of the Mysteries; the\nrevealer of the Soul and the other side of the sky.   You may\nhave enormous facility in playing with your medium; may be able\nto make your marble quite fluidic, and flow into innumerable\ngraceful forms; you may be past master of every intricacy,\nmultiplying your skill to the power of n;--but you will still in\nreality have made no progress beyond that unknown carver who\nshaped his syenite, or his basalt, into  the \"peace which passeth\nunderstanding\"--\"the eternity which baffles and confounds all\nfaculty of computation.\"\n\nIf we turn to Assyria, we find much the same thing. This was a\npeople far less spiritual than the Egyptians:  a cruel, splendid,\nluxurious civilization  deifying material power. But you cannot\nlook at the great Winged Bulls without knowing that there, too,\nthe motive was religious. There is an eternity and inexhaustible\npower in those huge carvings; the sculptors were bent on one\nend:--to make the stone speak out of superhuman heights, and\nproclaim the majesty of the Everlasting.--In the Babylonian\nsculptures we see the kings going into battle weaponless, but\ncalm and invincible; and behind and standing over, to protect and\nfight for them, terrific monsters, armed and tiger-headed or\nleopard-headed--the 'divinity that hedges a king' treated\nsymbolically. As always in those days, though many veils might\nhide from the consciousness of Assyria and later Babylon the\nbeautiful reality of the Soul of Things, the endeavor, the\n_raison d'etre,_ of Art was to declare the Might, Power, Majesty,\nand dominion which abide beyond our common levels of thought.\n\nNow then:  that great Memnon's head comes from behind the horizon\nof time and the sunset of the Mysteries; and in it we sample the\nkind of consciousness produced by the Teaching of the Mysteries.\nGo back step by step, from Shakespeare's\n\n     \"Glamis hath murdered Sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep\n         no more.\";\n\nto Dante's\n\n     \"The love that moves the Sun and the other Stars\";\n\nto Talesin's\n\n     \"My original country is the Region of the Summer Stars\";\n\nto Aeschylus's bronze-throat eagle-bark at blood;--and the next\nstep you come to beyond (in the West)--the next expression of the\nHuman Soul--marked with the same kind of feeling--the same\nspiritual and divine hauteur--is, for lack of literary remains,\nthis Egyptian sculpture. The Grand Manner, the majestic note of\nEsotericism, the highest in art and literature, is a stream\nflowing down to us from the Sacred Mysteries of Antiquity.\n\nIt is curious that a crude primtivism in sculpture--and in\narchitecture too--should have gone on side by side, in Greece,\nduring the seventh and sixth centuries B. C., with the very\nfinished art of the Lyricists from Sappho to Pindar; but\napparently it did.  (They had wooden temples, painted in bright\nreds and greens; I understand without pillared facades.)  I\nimagine the explanation to be something like this:   You are to\nthink of an influx of the  Human Spirit, proceeding downward from\nits own realms towards these, until it strikes some civilization\n--the Greek, in this case. Now poetry, because its medium is less\nmaterial, lies much nearer than do the plastic arts to the Spirit\non its descending course; and therefore receives the impulse of\nits descent much sooner. Perhaps music lies higher again; which\nis why music was the first of the arts to blossom at all in this\nnascent civilization of ours at Point Loma. Let me diverge a\nlittle, and take a glance round.--At any such time, the seeds\nof music may not be present in strength or in a form to be\nquickenable into a separately manifesting art; and this may be\ntrue of poetry too; yet where poetry is, you may say music has\nbeen; for every real poem is born out of a pre-existing music of\nits own, and is the _inverbation_ of it. The Greek Melic poets\n(the lyricists) were all musicians first, with an intricate\nmusical science, on the forms of which they arranged their\nlanguage; I do not know whether they wrote their music apart\nfrom the words. After the Greek, the Italian illumination was the\ngreatest in western history; there the influx, beginning in the\nthirteenth century, produced first its chief poetic splendor in\nDante before that century had passed; not raising an equal\ngreatness in painting and sculpture until the fifteenth.  In\nEngland, the Breath that kindled Shakespeare never blew down so\nfar as to light up a great moment in the plastic arts:  there\nwere some few figures of the second rank in painting presently;\nin sculpture, nothing at all (to speak of).  Painting, you see,\nworks in a little less material medium than sculpture does.\nDante's Italy had not quite plunged into that orgy of vice,\ncharacteristic of the great creative ages, which we find in the\nItaly of the Cinquecento.  But England, even in Shakespeare's\nday, was admiring and tending to imitate Italian wickedness.\nJames I's reign was as corrupt as may be; and though the Puritan\nreaction followed, the creative force had already been largely\nwasted:  notice had been served to the Spirit to keep off.\nPuritanism raised itself as a barrier against the creative force\nboth in its higher and lower aspects:  against art, and against\nvice;--probably the best thing that could happen under the\ncircumstances; and the reason why England recovered so much\nsooner than did Italy.--On the other hand, when the influx came\nto Holland, it would seem to have found, then, no opportunities\nfor action in the non-material arts:  to have skipped any grand\nmanifestation in music or poetry:  and at once to have hit the\nDutchman 'where he lived' (as they say),--in his paintbox.--But\nto return:-\n\nSculpture, then, came later than poetry to Greece; and in some\nways it was a more sudden and astounding birth. Unluckily nothing\nremains--I speak on tenterhooks--of its grandest moment. Progress\nin architecture seems to have begun in the reign of Pisistratus;\nsome time in the next sixty years or so the Soul first impressed\nits likeness on carved stone.  I once saw a picture--in a lantern\nlecture in London--of a pre-Pheidian statue of Athene; dating,\nI suppose, from the end of the sixth century B. C.  She is\nadvancing with upraised arm to protect--someone or something. The\nfigure is, perhaps, stiff and conventional; and you have no doubt\nit is the likeness of a Goddess. She is not merely a very fine\nand dignified woman; she is a Goddess, with something of\nEgyptian sublimity.  The artist, if he had not attained perfect\nmastery of the human form--if his medium was not quite plastic to\nhim--knew well what the Soul is like.--The Greek had no feeling,\nas the Egyptian had, for the _mystery_ of the Gods; at his very\nbest (once he had begun to be artistic) he personalized them; he\ntried to put into his representations of them, what the Egyptian\nhad tried to put into his representations  of men; and in that\nsense this Athene is, after all, only a woman;--but one in whom\nthe Soul is quite manifest.  I have never been able to trace this\nstatue since; and my recollections are rather hazy.  But it\nstands, for me, holding up a torch in the inner recesses of\nhistory.  It was the time when Pythagoras was teaching; it was\nthat momentous time when (as hardly since) the doors of the\nSpiritual were flung open, and the impulse of the six Great\nTeachers was let loose on the world.  Hithertoo Greek carvers had\nbeen making images of the Gods, symbolic indeed--with wings,\nthunderbolts and other appurtenances;--but trivially symbolic;\nmere imitation of the symbolism, without the dignity or religious\nfeeling, of the Egyptians and Babylonians; as if their gods and\nworship had been mere conventions, about which they had felt\nnothing deep;--now, upon this urge from the God-world, a sense of\nthe grandeur of the within comes on them; they seek a means of\nexpressing it:  throw off the old conventions; will carve the\nGods as men; do so, their aspiration leading them on to perfect\nmastery:  for a moment achieve Egyptian sublimity; but--have\npersonalized the Gods; and dear knows what that may lead\nto presently.\n\nThe came Pheidias, born about 496.  Nothing of his work remains\nfor us; the Elgin Marbles themselves, from the Parthenon, are\npretty certainly only the work of his pupils.  But there are two\nthings that tell us something about his standing:  (1) all\nantiquity bears witness to the prevailing quality of his\nconceptions; their sublimity.  (2) He was thrown into prison on a\ncharge of impiety, and died there, in 442.\n\nHere you will note the progress downward.  Aeschylus had been so\ncharged, and tried--but acquitted.  Pheidias, so charged, was\nimprisoned.  Forty-three years later Socrates, so charged, was\ncondemned to drink the hemlock.  Of Aeschylus and Socrates we can\nspeak with certainty:  they were the Soul's elect men.  Was\nPheidias too?  Athens certainly was turning away from the Soul;\nand his fate is a kind of half-way point between the fates of the\nothers.  He appears in good company.  And that note of sublimity\nin his work bears witness somewhat.\n\nWe have the work of his pupils, and know that in their hands the\nmarble--Pheidias himself worked mostly in gold and ivory--had\nbecome docile and obedient, to flow into whatever forms they\ndesigned for it.  We know what strength, what beauty, what\ntremendous energy, are in those Elgin marbles.  All the figures\nare real, but idealized:  beautiful men and horses, in fullest\nmost vigorous action, suddenly frozen into stone.  The men are\nmore beautiful than human; but they are human.  They are\nsplendid unspoiled human beings, reared for utmost bodily\nperfection; athletes whose whole training had been, you may say,\nto music:  they are music expressed in terms of the human body.\nYes; but already the beauty of the body outshone the majesty of\nthe Soul.  It was the beauty of the body the artists aimed at\nexpressing:  a perfect body--and a sound mind in it:  a perfectly\nhealthy mind in it, no doubt (be cause you cannot have a really\nsound and beautiful body without a sound healthy mind)--was the\nideal they sought and saw. Very well, so far; but, you see,\nArt has ceased to be sacred, and the handmaid of the Mysteries;\nit bothers itself no longer with the other side of the sky.\n\nIn Pheidias' own work we might have seen the influx at that\nmoment when, shining through the soul plane, its rays fell full\non the physical, to impress and impregnate that with the splendor\nof the Soul. We might have seen that it was still the Soul that\nheld his attention, although the body was known thoroughly and\nmastered:  that it was the light he aimed to express, not the\nthing it illumined.  In the work of his pupils, the preoccupation\nis with the latter; we see the physical grown beautiful under\nthe illumination of the Soul; not the Soul that illumines it.\nThe men of the Egyptian sculptors had been Gods. The Gods of\nthese Greek sculptors were men. Perfect, glorious, beautiful men\n--so far as externals were concerned. But men--to excite personal\nfeeling, not to quell it into nothingness and awe. The perfection,\neven at that early stage and in the work of the disciples of\nPheidias, was a quality of the personality.\n\nIt was indeed marvelously near the point of equilibrium:  the\nmoment when Spirit enters conquered matter, and stands there\nenthroned. In Pheidias himself I cannot but think we should have\nfound that moment as we find it in Aeschylus. But you see, it is\nwhen that has occurred:  when Spirit has entered matter, and\nmade the form, the body, supremely beautiful; it is precisely\nthen that the moment of peril comes--if there is not the\nwisdom present that knows how to avoid the peril. The next and\nthreatening step downward is preoccupation with, then worship of,\nthe body.\n\nThe Age of Pericles came to worship the body:  that was the\ndanger into which it fell; that was what brought about the ruin\nof Greece. That huge revelation of material beauty; and that\nabsence of control from above; the lost adequacy of the\nMysteries, and the failure of the Pythagorean Movement;--the\nimpatience of spiritual criticism, heedlessness of spiritual\nwarning;--well, we can see what a turning-point the time was in\nhistory.  On the side of politics, selfishness and ambition were\ngrowing; on the side of personal life, vice. . . . It is a thing\nto be pondered on, that what has kept Greece sterile these last\ntwo thousand years or so is, I believe, the malaria; which is a\nthing that depends for its efficacy on mosquitos.  Great men\nsimply will not incarnate in malarial territory; because\nthey would have no chance whatever of doing anything, with\nthat oppression and enervation sapping them. Greece has been\nmalarial; Rome, too, to some extent; the Roman Campagna\nterribly; as if the disease were (as no doubt it is) a Karma\nfallen on the sites of old-time tremendous cultural energies;\nwhere the energies were presently wrecked, drowned and sodden in\nvice.  Here then is a pretty little problem in the workings of\nKarma:  on what plane, through what superphysical links or\nchannels, do the vices of an effete civilization transform\nthemselves into that poor familiar singer in the night-time, the\nmosquito?  Greece and Rome, in their heyday, were not malarial;\nif they had been, no genius and no power would have shone\nin them.\n\nIn the Middle Ages, before people knew much about sanitary\nscience and antiseptics and the like, a great war quickly\ntranslated itself into a great pestilence. Then we made advances\nand discovered Listerian remedies and things, and said: Come now;\nwe shall fight this one; we shall have slaughtered millions\nlying about as we please, and get no plague out of it; we are\nwise and mighty, and Karma is a fool to us; we are the children\nof MODERN CIVILIZATION; what have Nature and its laws to do with\nus?  Our inventions and discoveries have certainly put them out\nof commission.--And sure enough, the mere foulness of the\nbattlefield, the stench of decay, bred no pest; our Science had\ncircumvented the old methods through which Natural Law (which is\nonly another way of saying Karma) worked; we had cut the\nphysical links, and blocked the material channels through which\nwrong-doing flowed into its own punishment.--Whereupon Nature,\nwrathful, withdrew a little; took thought for her astral and\ninner planes; found new links and channels there; passed through\nthese the causes we had provided, and emptied them out again\non the physical plane in the guise of a new thing, Spanish\nInfluenza;--and spread it over three continents, with greater\nscope and reach than had ever her old-fashioned stench-bred\nplagues that served her well enough when we were less scientific.\nWhereof the moral is:  _He laughs loudest who laughs last;_  and\njust now, and for some time to come, the laugh is with Karma.\nSay until the end of the Maha-Manvantara; until the end of\nmanifested Time.  When shall we stop imagining that any possible\ninventions or discoveries will enable us to circumvent the\nfundamental laws of Nature?  Not the printing-press, nor steam,\nnor electricity, nor aerial navigation, nor _vril_ itself when we\ncome to it, will serve to keep civilizations alive that have worn\nthemselves out by wrong-doing--or even that have come to old age\nand the natural time when they must die.  But their passings need\nnot be ghastly and disastrous, or anything but honorable and\nbeneficial, if in the prime and vigor of their lifetimes they\nwould learn decently to live.\n\nBut to return to our muttons, which is Greece; and now to the\nliterature again:--\n\nAfter Aeschylus, Sophocles.  The former, a Messenger of the Gods,\ncome to cry their message of _Karma_ to the world; and in doing\nso, incidentally to create a supreme art-form;--the latter, a\n\"good easy soul who lives and lets live, founds no anti-school,\nupsets no faith.\"--thus Browning sums him up.  A \"faultless\"\nartist enamored of his art; in which, thinks he (and most\nacademic critics with him) he can improve something on old\nAeschylus; a man bothered with no message; a beautiful youth; a\ngenial companion, well-loved by his friends--and who is not his\nfriend?--all through his long life; twenty times first-prize\nwinner, and never once less than second.--Why, solely on the\nstrength of his _Antigone,_ the Athenians appointed him a\nstrategos in the expedition against Samos; with the thought that\none so splendidly victorious in the field of drama, could not\nfail of victory in mere war.  But don't lose hope!--upon an\nafter-thought (perhaps) they appointed Pericles too; who\nsuggested to his poet-colleague that though master of them all in\nhis own line, he had better on the whole leave the sordid details\nof command to himself, Pericles, who had more experience of that\nsort.  What more shall we say of Sophocles?--A charming brilliant\nfellow in his cups--of which, as of some other more questionable\npleasures, report is he was too fond; a man worshiped during his\nlife, and on his death made a hero with semi-divine honors;--does\nthat sound like the story of a Messenger of the Gods?\n\nHe was born at Colonos in Attica, in 496; of his hundred or so\nof dramas, seven come down to us.  His age saw in him the very\nideal of a tragic poet; Aristotle thought so too; so did the\nAlexandrian critics, and most moderns with them.  \"Indeed,\" says\nMahaffy, \"it is no unusual practice to exhibit the defects of\nboth Aeschylus and Euripides by comparison with their more\nsuccessful rival.\"  Without trying to give you conclusions of my\nown, I shall read you a longish passage from Gilbert Murray, who\nis not only a great Greek scholar, but a fine critic as well,\nand a poet with the best translations we have of Greek tragedy to\nhis credit; he has made Euripides read like good English poetry.\nComparing the _Choephori_ of Aeschylus, the second play in the\nOreseian Trilogy, with the _Electra_ of Sophocles, which deals\nwith the same matter, he says:\n\n\"Aeschylus... had felt vividly the horror of his plot; he\ncarries his characters to the deed of blood on a storm of\nconfused, torturing, half-religious emotion; the climax is of\ncourse, the mother-murder, and Orestes falls into madness after\nit.  In the _Electra_ this element is practically ignored.\nElectra has no qualms; Orestes shows no signs of madness; the\nclimax is formed not by the culminating horror, the matricide,\nbut by the hardest bit of work, the slaying of Aegisthos!\nAeschylus has kept Electra and Clytemnestra apart; here we see\nthem freely in the hard unloveliness of their daily wrangles.\nAbove all, in place of the cry of bewilderment that closes the\n_Choephori_--'What is the end of all this spilling of blood for\nblood?'--the _Electra_ closes with an expression of entire\nsatisfaction... Aeschylus takes the old bloody saga in an earnest\nand troubled spirit, very different from Homer's, but quite as\ngrand.  His Orestes speaks and feels as Aechylus himself would...\nSophocles... takes the saga exactly as he finds it.  He knows\nthat those ancient chiefs did not trouble about their consciences;\nthey killed in the fine old ruthless way.  He does not try to\nmake them real to himself at the cost of making them false\nto the spirit of the epos...\n\n\"The various bits of criticism ascribed to him--'I draw men as\nthey ought to be drawn; Euripides draws them as they are';\n'Aeschylus did the right thing, but without knowing it'--all\nimply the academic standpoint... Even his exquisite diction,\nwhich is such a marked advance on the stiff magnificence of his\npredecessor, betrays the lesser man in the greater artist.\nAeschylus's superhuman speech seems like natural superhuman\nspeech.  It is just the language that Prometheus would talk, that\nan ideal Agamemnon or Atossa might talk in the great moments.\nBut neither Prometheus nor Oedipus nor Electra, nor anyone but an\nAttic poet of the highest culture, would talk as Sophocles makes\nthem.  It is this which has established Sophocles as the perfect\nmodel, not only for Aristotle, but in general for critics and\ngrammarians; while the poets have been left to admire Aeschylus,\nwho 'wrote in a state of intoxication,' and Euripedes, who broke\nhimself against the bars of life and poetry.\"\n\nYou must, of course, always allow for a personal equation in the\nviewpoint of any critic:  you must here weight the \"natural\nsuperhuman diction\" against the \"stiff magnificence\" Professor\nMurray attributes to Aeschylus; and get a wise and general view\nof your own.  What I want you to see clearly is, the descent of\nthe influx from plane to plane, as shown in these two tragedians.\nThe aim of the first is to express a spiritual message, grand\nthought.  That of the second is to produce a work of flawless\nbeauty, without regard to its spiritual import.  What was to\nAeschylus a secondary object; the purely artistic--was to\nSophocles the whole thing.  Aeschylus was capable of wonderful\npsychological insight.  Clytemnestra's speech to the Chorus, just\nbefore Agamemnon's return, is a perfect marvel in that way.  But\nthe tremendous movement, the August impersonal atmosphere as\n\n     \".... gorgeous Tragedy\n     In sceptered pall comes sweeping by.\"\n\n--divests it of the personal, and robes it in a universal symbolic\nsignificance:  because he has built like a titan, you do not at\nfirst glance note that he has labored like a goldsmith, as\nsomeone has said.  But in Sophocles the goldsmithry is plain to\nsee.  His character-painting is exquisite:  pathetic often; just\nand beautiful almost always.  I put in the almost in view of that\nabout the \"hard unloveliness\" of Electra's \"daily wrangles\"  with\nher mother.  The mantle of the religious Egyptians had fallen on\nAeschylus:  but Sophocles' garb was the true fashionable Athenian\nchiton of his day.  He was personal, where the other had been\nimpersonal; faultless, where the other had been sublime;\nconventionally orthodox, where through Aeschylus had surged the\nsuper-credal spirit of universal prophecy.\n\nAnd then we come to third of the trio:  Euripides, born in 480.\n\"He was,\"  says Professor Murray, \"essentially representative of\nhis age, yet apparently in hostility to it; almost a failure of\nthe stage--he won only four prizes in fifty years of production--\nyet far the most celebrated poet in Greece.\"  Athens hated,\njeered at, and flouted him just as much as she honored and\nadored Sophocles; yet you know what happened to those Athenian\ncaptives at Syracuse who could recite Euripides.  Where, in\nlater Greek writings, we come on quotations from the other\ntwo once or twice, we come on quotations from Euripides dozens\nof times.  The very fact that eighteen of his plays survive,\nto seven each of Aeschylus' and Sophocles', is proof of his\nlarger and longer popularity.\n\nHe had no certain message from the Gods, as Aeschylus had; his\nintensely human heart and his mighty intellect kept him from\nbeing the 'flawless artist' that Sophocles was.  He questioned\nall conventional ideas, and would not let the people rest in\ncomfortable fat acquiescence.  He came to make men 'sit up and\nthink.'   He did not solve problems, but raised them, and flung\nthem at the head of the world.  He must stir and probe things to\nthe bottom; and his recurrent unease, perhaps, mars the\nperfection of his poetry.  Admetus is to die, unless someone will\ndie for him; recollect that for the Greekish mob, death was the\nworst of all possible happenings.  Alcestis his wife will die for\nhim; and he accepts her sacrifice.  Now, that was the old saga;\nand in Greek conventional eyes, it was all right.  Woman was an\ninferior being, anyhow; there was nothing more fitting that\nAlcestis should die for her lord.--Here let me make a point\nplain:  you cannot look back through Greece to a Golden Age in\nGreece; it is not like Egypt, where the farther you go into\nthe past, the greater things you come to;--although in Egypt,\ntoo, there would have been rises and falls of civilization.  In\nHomer's days, in Euripides', they had these barbarous ideas about\nwomen; and these foolish exoteric ideas about death; historic\nGreece, like modern Europe from the Middle Ages, rises from a\nstate of comparative barbarism, lightlessness; behind which,\nindeed, there were rumors of a much higher Past.  These great\nGreeks, Aeschylus, Euripides, Plato, brought in ideas which were\nas old as the hills in Egypt, or in India; but which were new to\nthe Greece of their time--of historic times; they were, I think,\nas far as their own country was concerned, innovators and\nrevealers; not voicers of a traditional wisdom; it may have\nbeen traditional once, but that time was much too far back for\nmemory. I think we should have to travel over long, long ages, to\nget to a time when Eleusis was a really effective link with the\nLodge--to a period long before Homer, long before Troy fell.--But\nto return to the story of Alcestis:--\n\nYou might take it on some lofty impersonal plane, and find a\nsymbol in it; Aeschylus would have done so, somehow; though I\ndo not quite see how.  Sophocles would have been aware of nothing\nwrong in it; he would have taken it quite as a matter of course.\nEuripides saw clearly that Admetus was a selfish poltroon, and\nrubbed it in for all he was worth. And he could not leave\nit at that, either; but for pity's sake must bring in Hercules\nat the end to win back Alcestis from death.  So the play is\ngreat-hearted and tender, and a covert lash for conventional\ncallousness; and somehow does not quite hang together:--leaves\nyou just a little uncomfortable.  Browning calls him, in\n_Balaustion's Adventure,_\n\n     \".... Euripides\n     The human, with his droppings of warms tears\";\n\n--it is a just verdict, perhaps.  Without Aeschylus' Divine Wisdom,\nor Sophocles' worldly wisdom, he groped perpetually after some\nmeans to stay the downward progress of things; he could not\nthunder like the one, nor live easily and let live, like the\nother.--I do not give you these scraps of criticism (which are\nnot my own, but borrowed always I think), for the sake of\ncriticism; but for the sake of history;--understand them, and\nyou have the story of the age illumined. You can read the inner\nAthens here, in the aspirations and in the limitations of\nEuripides, and in the contempt in which Athens held him; as you\ncan read it in the grandeur of Aeschylus, and the Athenian\nacceptance of, and then reaction against, him; and in the\ncharacter of Sophocles and his easy relations with his age. When\nEuripides came, the light of the Gods had gone. He was blindish;\nhe would not accept the Gods without question. Yet was he on the\nside of the Gods whom he could not see or understand; we must\ncount him on their side, and loved by them. He was not panoplied,\nlike Aeschylus or Milton, in their grim and shining armor; yet\nwhat armor he wore bore kindred proud dints from the hellions'\nbatterings.  Or perhaps mostly he wore such marks as wounds upon\nhis own flesh. . . . Not even a total lack of humor, which I\nsuppose must be attributed to him, can make him appear less than\na most sympathetic, an heroic figure. He was the child and\nfruitage and outcast of his age, belonging as much to an Athens\ndeclining and inwardly hopeless, as did Aeschylus (at first) to\nAthens in her early glory. He was not so much bothered (like\nSophocles) with no message, as bothered with the fact that he had\nno clear and saving message. His realism--for compared with the\nother two, he was a sort of realist--was the child of his\ndespair; and his despair, of the atmosphere of his age.\n\nHe was, or had been, in close touch with Socrates (you might\nexpect it); lived a recluse somewhat, taking no part in affairs;\nmarried twice, unfortunately both times; and his family troubles\nwere among the points on which gentlemanly Athens sneered at him.\nA lovely lyricist, a restless thinker; tender-hearted; sublime\nin pity of all things weak and helpless and defeated:--women\nespecially, and conquered nations. Prof. Murray says:\n\n\"In the last plays dying Athens is not mentioned, but her death-\nstruggle  and her sins are constantly haunting us; the Joy of\nbattle is mostly gone; the horror of war is left. Well might old\nAeschylus pray, 'God grant that I may sack no city!'  if the\nreality of conquest is what it appears in the last plays of\nEuripides. The conquerors there are as miserable as the\nconquered; only more cunning, and perhaps more wicked.\"\n\nHe died the year before Aegospotami, at the court of Archelaus of\nMacedon. One is glad to think he found peace and honor at last.\nAthens heard with a laugh that some courtier there had insulted\nhim; and with astonishment that the good barbarous Archelaus had\nhanded said courtier over to Euripides to be scourged for his\nfreshness. I don't imagine that Euripides scourged him though-to\namount to anything.\n\n\n\n\nVI.  SOCRATES AND PLATO\n\n\nBy this time you should have seen, rather than any picture of\nGreece and Athens in their heyday, an indication of certain\nuniversal historical laws. As thus  (to go back a little): an\ninflux of the Spirit is approaching, and a cycle of high\nactivities is about to begin. A great war has cleared off what\nkarmic weight has been hanging over Athens;--Xerxes, you will\nremember, burnt the town. Hence there is a clearness in the inner\natmosphere; through which a great spiritual voice may, and does,\nspeak a great spiritual message. But human activities proceed,\never increasing their momentum, until the atmosphere is no longer\nclear, but heavy with the effluvia of by no means righteous\nthought and action. The Spirit is no more visibly present, but\nmust manifest if at all through a thicker medium; and who speaks\nnow, speaks as artist only,--not as poet--or artist-prophet. Time\ngoes on, and the inner air grows still thicker; till men live in\na cloud, through which truths are hardly to be seen.  Then those\nwho search for the light are apt to cry out in despair; they\nbecome realists struggling to break the terrible molds of\nthought:--and if you can hear the Spiritual in them at all, it is\nnot in a positive message they have for men, but in the greatness\nof their heart and compassion. They do not build; they seek only\nto destroy. There seems nothing else for them to do.\n\nSo in England, Wordsworth opened this last cycle of poetry;\ncoming when there was a clear atmosphere, and speaking more or\nless clearly through it his message from the Gods.  You hear a\nlike radiant note of hope in Shelley; and something of it in\nKeats, who stood on the line that divides the Poet-Prophet from\nthe Poet-Artist. Then you come to the ascendency of Tennyson,\nwhose business in life was to be the latter. He tried the role of\nprophet; he lived up to the highest he could: strove towards the\nlight much more gallantly than did Sophocles, his Athenian\nparadigm. But the atmosphere of his age made him something of a\nfailure at it:  no clear light was there for him to find, such as\ncould manifest through poetry. Then you got men like Matthew\nArnold with his cry of despair, and William Morris with his\nlonging for escape; then the influence of Realism.  So many\npoets recently have an element of Euripides in them; a will to\ndo well, but a despair of the light; a tendency to question\neverything, but little power to find answers to their questions.\nThen there were some few who, influenced (consciously or not) by\nH.P. Blavatsky, that great dawn-herald, caught glimpses of the\nsplendor of a dawn--which yet we wait for.\n\nEuripides, with the Soul stirring within and behind him, \"broke\nhimself on the bars of life and poetry,\" as Professor Murray\nsays.  He was so hemmed in by the emanations of the time that he\ncould never clearly enunciate the Soul.  Not, at any rate, in an\nunmixed way, and with his whole energies.  Perhaps his favorite\ndevice of a _Deus ex Machina_--like Hercultes in the _Alcestis_\n--is a symbolical enunciation of it, and intended so to be.\nPerhaps the cause of the unrest he makes us feel is this:  he\nknew that the highest artistic method was the old Aeschylean\nsymbolic one, and tried to use it; but at the same time was\ncompelled by the gross emanations of the age, which he was not\nquite strong enough to rise above, to treat his matter not\nsymbolically, but realistically.  He could not help saying:\n\"Here is the epos you Athenians want me to treat,--that my artist\nsoul forces me to treat; here are the ideas that make up your\nconventional religion;--now look at them!\"  And forth-with he\nshowed them, in there exoteric side, sordid, ugly and bloody;--\nand then, on the top of that showing, tried to twist them round\nto the symbolic impersonal plane again; and so left a discord\nnot properly solved, an imperfect harmony; a sense of loss\nrather than gain; of much torn down, and nothing built up to\ntake its place.  The truth was that the creative forces had\nflowed downward until the organs of spiritual vision were no\nlonger open; and poetry and art, the proper vehicles of the\nhigher teaching in any age approximately golden, could no longer\nact as efficient channels for the light.\n\nTo turn to England again:  Tennyson was, generally speaking, most\nsuccessful when most he was content to be merely the artist in\nwords, and least so when he assumed the office of Teacher;\nbecause almost all he found to teach was brain-mind scientific\nstuff; which was what the age called for, and the desired diet\nof Mid-Victorian England.  Carlyle, who was a far greater poet\nessentially, and a far greater teacher actually, fitted himself\nto an age when materialism had made unpoetic; and eschewed\npoetry and had no use for it; and would have had others eschew\nit also. In our own time we have realists like Mr. Masefield.\nThey are called realists because they work on the plane which has\ncome, in the absence of anything spiritual, to seem that of the\nrealities; the region of outside happenings, of the passions in\nall their ugly nakedness, of sorrow, misery, and despair.  Such\nmen may be essentially noble; we may read in them, under all the\nugliness and misery they write down, just one quality of the\nSoul;--its unrest in and distaste for those conditions; but the\nmischief of it is that they make the sordidness seem the reality;\nand the truth about them is that their outlook and way of writing\nare simply the result of the blindness of the Soul;--its\ntemporary blindness, not its essential glory.  But the true\nbusiness of Poetry never changes; it is to open paths into the\ninner, the beautiful, the spiritual world.\n\nJust when things were coming to this pass H. P. Blavatsky went to\nEngland; and though she did not touch the field of creative\nliterature herself, brought back as you know a gleam of light and\nbeauty into poetry that may yet broaden out and redeem it. She\nwas born when the century was thirty-one years old; and,\ncuriously enough, there was a man born in Attica about 469, or\nwhen _his_ century was thirty-one years old, who, though he did\nnot himself touch the field of literature, was the cause why that\nlight rose to shine in it which has shone most brilliantly since\nall down the ages; that light which we could not afford to\nexchange even for the light of Aeschylus. If one of the two were\nabout to be taken from us, and we had our choice which it should\nbe, we should have to cry, _Take Aeschylus, but leave us this!_\n--Ay, and take all other Greek literature into the bargain!--But\nto return to the man born in 469.\n\nHe was the son of humble people; his father was a stone-cutter\nin a small way of business; his mother a midwife. He himself\nbegan life as a sculptor,--a calling, in its lower reaches, not\nso far above that of his father.  A group of the Graces carved by\nhim was still to be seen on the road to the Acropolis two hundred\nyears after; and they did not adorn Athens with mean work, one\nmay guess; the Athens of Pericles and Pheidias.  But, successful\nor not, he seems soon to have given it up.  Of his youth we know\nvery little.  Spintharus, one of the few that knew him then and\nalso when he had become famous, said that he was a man of\nterrible passions:  anger hardly to be governed, and vehement\ndesires; \"though,\" he added, \"he never did anything unfair.\" *\nBy 'unfair' you may understand 'not fitting'--a transgression of\nright action.  He set out to master himself:  a tremendous and\ndifficult realm to master.\n\n------\n* Gilbert Murray: _Ancient Greek Literature_\n------\n\nWe hardly begin to know him till he was growing old; and then he\nwas absolute monarch of that realm.  We do not know when he\nabandoned his art; or how long it was before he had won some\nfame as a public teacher.  We catch glimpse of him as a soldier:\nfrom 432 to 429 he served at the siege of Potidaea; at Delium in\n424; and at Amphipolis in 422.  Thus to do the hoplite, carrying\na great weight of arms, at forty-seven, he needed to have some\nconstitution; and indeed he had;--furthermore, he played the\npart with distinguished bravery--though wont to fall at times\ninto inconvenient fits of abstraction.  Beyond all this, for the\noutside of the man, we may say that he was of fascinating,\nextreme and satyr-like ugliness and enormous sense of humor;\nthat he was a perpetual joke to the comic poets, and to himself;\nan old fellow of many and lovable eccentricities; and that you\ncannot pick one little hole in his character, or find any respect\nin which he does not call for love.\n\nAnd men did love him; and he them.  He saw in the youth of\nAthens, whose lives so often were being wasted, Souls with all\nthe beautiful possibilities of Souls; and loved them as such,\nand drew them towards their soulhood.  Such love and insight is\nthe first and strongest weapon of the Teacher:  who sees divinity\nwithin the rough-hewn personalities of men as the sculptor sees\nthe God within the marble; and calls it forth.  He was wont to\njoke over his calling; his mother, said he, had been a midwife,\nassisting at the birth of men's bodies; he himself was a midwife\nof souls.  How he drew men to him--of the power he had--let\nAlcibiades bear witness.  \"As for myself,\" says Alcibiades, \"were\nI not afraid you would think me more drunk than I am, I would\ntell you on oath how his words have moved me--ay, and how they\nmove me still.  When I listen to him my heart beats with a more\nthan Corybantic excitement; he has only to speak and my tears\nflow.  Orators, such as Pericles, never moved me in this way--\nnever roused my soul to the thought of my servile condition:  but\nthis man makes me think that life is not worth living so long as\nI am what I am.  Even now, if I were to listen, I could not\nresist.  So there is nothing for me but to stop my ears against\nthis siren's song and fly for my life, that I may not grow old\nsitting at his feet.  No one would ever think that I had shame in\nme; but I am ashamed in the presence of Socrates.\"\n\nPoor Alciabes! whom Socrates loved so well, and tried so hard to\nsave; and who could only preserve his lower nature for its own\nand for his city's destruction by stopping his ears against his\nTeacher!  Alcibiades, whose genius might have saved Athens...\nonly Athens would not be saved... and he could not have saved\nher, because he had stopped his ears against the man who made him\nashamed; and because his treacherous lower nature was always\nthere to thwart and overturn the efficacy of his genius;--what a\npicture of duality it is!\n\nSocrates gave up his art; because art was no longer useful as an\nimmediate lever for the age. He knew poetry well, but insisted,\nas Professor Murray I think says, on always treating it as the\nbaldest of prose. There was poetry about, galore; and men did\nnot profit by it:  something else was needed. His mission was to\nthe Athens of his day; he was going to save Athens if he could.\nSo he went into the marketplace, the agora, and loafed about (so\nto say), and drew groups of young men and old about him, and\ntalked to them. The Delphic Oracle had made pronouncement:\n_Sophocles is wise; Euripides is wiser; but Socrates is the\nwisest of mankind._  Sometimes, you see, the Delphic Oracle could\nget off a distinctly good thing.  But Socrates, with his usual\nsense of humor, had never considered himself in that light at\nall; oldish, yes; and funny, and ugly, by all means;--but wise!\nHe thought at first, he used to say, that the Oracle must be\nmistaken, or joking; for Athens was full of reputed wise men,\nsophists and teachers of philosophy like Prodicus and Protagoras;\nwhereas he himself, heaven knew--. Well, he would go out and make\na trial of it. So he went, and talked, and probed the wisdom of\nhis fellow-citizens; and slowly came round to the belief that\nafter all the Delphic Oracle might not have been such a fool. For\nhe knew his ignorance; but the rest were ignorant without\nknowing it.  This was his own way of telling the story; and you\ncan never be sure how much camouflage was in it;--and yet, too,\nhe was a giant humorist. Anyhow, he did show men their ignorance;\nand you all know his solemn way of doing it.  He drew them on\nwith sly questionings to see what idiots they were; and then drew\nthem on with more sly questionings to perceive at least a few\nsound ethical truths.\n\nHe took that humble patient means of saving Athens:  by breaking\ndown false opinions and instilling true ones.  It was beginning\nquite at the bottom of things. Where we advertise a public\nlecture, he button-holed a passer-by; and by the great power of\nhis soul won a following presently.  To rouse up a desire for\nright living in the youth of Athens:  if he could do that,\nthought he, he might save Athens for the world.  I wonder what\nthe cycles of national glory would come to, how long they might\nlast, if only the Teachers that invade to save them could have\ntheir way. Always we see the same picture:  the tremendous effort\nof the Gods to redeem these nations in the times of their\ncreative greatness; to lift them on to a spiritual plane, that\nthe greatness may not wane and become ineffective. There is the\nfigure that stands before the world, about whose perfection or\nwhose qualities you may wrangle if you will; he is great; he is\nwonderful; he stirs up love and animosity;--but behind him are\nthe Depths, the Hierarchies, the Pantheons.  Socrates' warning\nVoice, the Daimon that counseled him in every crisis, has always\nbeen a hard nut for critics to crack. He was an impostor, was\nhe? Away with you for a double fool!  His life meets you so\nsquarely at every point; there was no atom in his being that\nknew how to fear or lie.... Well, no; but he was deluded; he\nmistook--.  Man, there is more value in the light word of\nSocrates affirming, than in a whole world full of evidence\ndenying, of such maunderers as you!  See here; he was the most\nsensible of men; balanced; keeping his head always;--a mind no\nmood or circumstances could deflect from rational self-control,\neither towards passion or ecstasy.  One explanation remains--as\nin the case of Joan, or of H.P. Blavatsky;--he was neither\ndeceiving nor deceived, but what he claimed to hear, he did hear;\nand it was the voice of One that stood behind him, and might not\nappear in history at all, or in the outer world at all:  a\ngreater than he, and his Teacher; whose bodily presence might\nhave been in Greece the while, or anywhere else.  How dare we\npretend, because we can do a few things with a piston or a\ncrucible, that we know the limits of natural and spiritual law?\n\nIt is a strange figure to find in Greece; drawn thither, one\nwould say, by the attraction of opposites.  He must have owed\nsome of his power to his being such a contrast to all things\nfamiliar.  Personal beauty was extremely common, and he was\ncomically ugly.  The Athenians were one of the best-educated\npopulations of ancient or modern times--far ahead of ourselves;\nand he was ill-educated, and acted as a public teacher.  He was\nhen-pecked at home, in an age when the place of woman was a very\nsubordinate and submissive one; and he was the butt of all\njoke-lovers abroad, and himself enjoyed the joke most of all.\nAnd he quietly stood alone, against the mob and his fellow-judges,\nfor the hapless victors of Arginusae in 406; and he quietly stood\nalone against the Thirty Tyrants during their reign of terror in\n404, disobeying them at peril of his life.  But Strip him of the\n\"thing of sinews and muscles,\" as he called his outer self;\nforget the queer old personality that appears in the _Clouds_ of\nAristophanes, or for that matter in the _Memorabilia_ of\nXenophon--and what kind of picture of Socrates should we see?\nThe humor would not go, for it is a universal quality; it has\nbeen said no Adept was ever without it; could you draw aside the\nveil of Mother Isis herself, and draw it suddenly, I suspect you\nshould surprise a laugh vanishing from her face.  So the humor\nwould remain; and with it there would be ... something calm,\naloof, unshakable, yet vitally affectioned towards Athens, the\nAthenians, humanity; something unsurprised at, far less hoping or\nfearing anything from, life or death; in possession of \"the\npeace which passeth understanding\"; native to \"the eternity that\nbaffles all faculty of computation\";--something that drew all\nsorts and conditions of Athenians to him, good and bad, Plato and\nAlcibiades, by \"that diffusive love, not such as rises and falls\nupon waves of life and mortality, not such as sinks and swells by\nundulations of time, but a procession, an emanation, from some\nmystery of endless dawn.\"--In point of fact, to get a true\nportrait of Socrates you have to look at the Memnon's head.  The\nEgyptian artists carved it to be the likeness of the Perfect Man,\nthe Soul, always in itself sublime, absolute master of its flesh\nand personality.  That was what Socrates was.\n\nWell; the century ended, with that last quarter of it in which\nthe Lodge makes always its outward effort. Socrates for the Lodge\nhad left no stone unturned; he had made his utmost effort dally.\nThe democracy had been reinstated, and he was understood to be a\nmoderate in politics. And the democracy was conventional-minded\nin religion; and he was understood to be irreligious, a\ndisturber and innovator.  And the democracy was still smarting\nfrom the wound; imposed on it by Critias and Charmides,\nunderstood to have been his disciples; and could not forget the\ntreacheries of Alcibiades, another.  And there were vicious\nyouths besides, whom he had tried and failed to save; they had\nruined themselves, and their reputable parents blamed and hated\nhim for the ruin, not understanding the position.  And he himself\nhad seen so many of his efforts come to nothing:  Alcibiades play\nthe traitor; Critias and Charmides, the bloody tyrant;--he had\nseen many he had labored for frustrate his labors; he had seen\nAthens fallen.  He had done all he could, quietly, unfailingly\nand without any fuss; now it was time for him to go. But going,\nhe might yet strike one more great blow for the Light.\n\nSo with quiet zest and humor he entered upon the plans of his\nadversaries, accepting his trial and sentence like--_like\nSocrates;_ for there is no simile for him, outside himself. He\nturned it all masterfully to the advantage of the Light he loved.\nYou all know how he cracked his grand solemn joke when the death\nsentence was passed on him. By Athenian law, he might suggest an\nalternative sentence; as, to pay a fine, or banishment. Well,\nsaid he; death was not certainly an evil; it might be a very\ngood thing; whereas banishment was certainly an evil, and so was\npaying a fine.  And besides, he had no money to pay it. So the\nonly alternative he could suggest was that Athens should support\nhim for the rest of his life in the Prytaneum as a public\nbenefactor. Not a smile from him; not a tremor. He elected\ndeliberately; he chose death; knowing well that, as things\nstood, he could serve humanity in no other way so well. So he put\naside Crito's very feasible plan for his escape, and at the last\ngathered his friends around him, and discoursed to them.\n\nOn Reincarnation. It was an old tradition, said he; and what\ncould be more reasonable than that the soul, departing to Hades,\nshould return again in its season:--the living born from the\ndead, as the dead are from the living?  Did not experience show\nthat opposites proceed from opposites?  Then life must proceed\nfrom, and follow, death. If the dead came from the living, and\nnot the living from the dead, the universe would at last be\nconsumed in death. Then, too, there was the doctrine that\nknowledge comes from recollection; what is recollected must have\nbeen previously known.  Our souls must have existed then,\nbefore birth. . . .\n\nWhy did he talk like that:  thus _reasoning_ about reincarnation,\nand not stating it as a positive teaching?  Well; there would be\nnothing new and startling about it, to the Greeks.  They knew of\nit as a teaching both of Pythagoras and of the Orphic Mysteries:\nthat is, those did who were initiates or Pythagoreans.  But it\nwas not public teaching, known to the multitude; and except\namong the Pythagoreans, sophistry and speculation had impaired\nits vitality as a matter of faith or knowledge.  (So scientific\ndiscovery and the spread of education have impaired the vitality\nnow of Christian presentations of ethics.)  So that to have\nannounced it positively, at that time, would have served his\npurpose but little:  men would have said, \"We have heard all that\nbefore; had he nothing better to give us than stale ideas from\nthe Mysteries or Pythagoras?\"  What he wanted to do was to take\nit out of the region of religion, where familiarity with it had\nbread an approach to contempt; and restate it robbed of that\nfamiliarity, and clothed anew in a garb of sweet reasonableness.\nSo once more, and as ususal, he assumed ignorance, and approached\nthe whole subject in a quiet and rational way, thus:  I do not\nsay that this is positively so; I do not announce it as a dogma.\nDogmas long since have lost their efficacy, and you must stand or\nfall now by the perceptions of your own souls, not by what I or\nany authority may tell you.  But as reasoning human beings, does\nit not appeal to you?\n\nAnd the very spirit in which he approached it and approached his\ndeath was precisely the one to engrave his last spoken ideas on\nthe souls of his hearers as nothing else could.  No excitement;\nno uplift or ecstasy of the martyr; quiet reasoning only; full,\nserene, and, for him, common-place command of the faculties of\nhis mind.  The shadow of death made no change in Socrates; how\nthen should they misunderstand or magnify the power of the shadow\nof death?--\"How shall we bury you?\"  asks Crito.  Socrates turns\nto the others present, and says:  \"I cannot persuade Crito that I\nhere am Socrates--I who am now reasoning and ordering discourse.\nHe imagines Socrates to be that other, whom he will see by and\nby, a corpse.\"--So the scene went on until the last moment, when\n\"Phaedo veiled his face, and Crito started to his feet, and\nApollodorus, who had never ceased weeping all the time, burst out\ninto a loud and angry cry which broke down everyone but Socrates.\"\n\nSomeone has said that there is nothing in tragedy or history so\nmoving as this death of Socrates, as Plato tells it.  And yet its\ntragic interest, its beauty, is less important, to my thinking,\nthan the insight it gives us into the methods and mental workings\nof an Adept.  Put ourselves into the mind of Socrates. He is\ngoing to his death; which to him is about the same as, to us,\ngoing to South Ranch or San Diego. You say I am taking the beauty\nand nobility out of it; but no; I am only trying to see what\nbeauty and nobility look like from within. To him, then, his\ndeath is in itself a matter of no personal moment. But the habit\nof his lifetime has been to turn every moment into a blow struck\nfor the Soul, for the Light, for the Cause of Sublime Perfection.\nAnd here now is the chance to strike the most memorable blow of\nall. With infinite calmness he arranges every detail, and\nproceeds to strike it. He continues to play the high part of\nSocrates,--that is all. You might go to death like a poet, in\nlove with Death's solemn beauty, you might go to her like a\nmartyr, forgetting the awe of her in forevision of the splendor\nthat lies beyond.  But this man broadly and publicly goes to her\nlike Socrates. He will allow her no fascination, no mystery; not\neven, nor by any means, equality with the Soul of Man. . . . And\nApollodorus might weep then, and burst into an angry cry; and\nCrito and Phaedo and the rest might all break down--_then;_ but\nwhat were they to think afterwards? When they remembered how they\nhad seen Death and Socrates, those two great ones, meet; and how\nthe meeting had been as simple, as unaffected, as any meeting\nbetween themselves and Socrates, any morning in the past, in the\nAthenian _agora?_ And when Death should come to them, what should\nthey say but this:  'There is nothing about you that can impress\nme; formerly I conversed with one greater than you are, and I\nsaw you pay your respects to Socrates.'\n\nCould he, could any man have proclaimed the Divinity in Man, its\nreal and eternal existence, in any drama, in any poem, in any\nglorious splendor of rhetoric with what fervor soever of mystical\necstasy endued--with such deadly effectiveness, such inevitable\nsuccess, as in this simple way he elected? There are men whose\nactions seem to spring from a source super-ethical:  it is cheap\nto speak of them as good, great, beautiful or sublime:  these are\nbut the appearances they assume as we look upwards at them. What\nthey are in themselves is: (1) Compassionate;--it is the law\nof their being to draw men upwards towards the Spirit; (2)\nImpersonal;--there is a non-being or vacuity in them where we\nhave our passions, likings, preferences, dislikes and desires.\nThey are, in the Chinese phrase, \"the equals of Heaven and Earth\";\n\n     \"Earth, heaven, and time, death, life and they\n     Endure while they shall be to be.\"\n\nSo Socrates, having failed in his life-attempt to save Athens,\nentered with some gusto on that great _coup de main_ of his\ndeath: to make it a thing which first a small group of his\nfriends should see; then that Greece should see; then that\nthirty coming centuries and more should see; presented it\nroyally to posterity, for what, as a manifestation of the Divine\nin man, it might be worth.\n\nAnd look! what is the result? Scarcely is the 'thing of muscles\nand sinews' cold:  scarcely has high Socrates forgone his queer\nsatyr-like embodiment:  when a new luminary has risen into the\nfirmament,--one to shine through thirty centuries certainly,\n\n     \"Brighter than Jupiter--a blazing star\n     Brighter than Hesper shining out to sea\"\n\n--one that is still to be splendid in the heavens wherever in\nEurope, wherever in America, wherever in the whole vast realm of\nthe future men are to arise and make question and peer up into\nthe beautiful skies of the Soul. A Phoenix in time has arisen\nfrom the ashes of Socrates:  from the glory and solemnity of his\ndeath a Voice is mystically created that shall go on whispering\n_The Soul_ wherever men think and strive towards spirituality.\n--Ah indeed, you were no failure, Socrates--you who were\ndisappointed of your Critias, your Charmides, your Alcibiades,\nyour whole Athens; you were not anything in the very least like\na failure; for there was yet one among your disciples--\n\nHe says, that one, that he was absent through illness during that\nlast scene of his Teacher's life.  I do not know; it has been\nthought that may have been merely a pretense, an artistic\nconvention, to give a heightened value of impersonality to his\nmarvelous prose:--for it was he who wrote down the account of the\ndeath of Socrates for us:  that tragedy so transcendent in its\nbeauty and lofty calm. But this much is certain: that day he was\nborn again: became, from a gilded youth of Athens, an eternal\nluminary in the heavens, and that which he has remained these\nthree-and-twenty hundred years:  the Poet-Philosopher of the\nSoul, the Beacon of the Spirit for the western world....\n\nHe had been a brilliant young aristocrat among the crowd\nthat loved to talk with Socrates: the very best thing that\nAthens could produce in the way of birth, charm, talent, and\nattainments;--it is a marvel to see one so worshiped of Fortune\nin this world, turn so easily to become her best adored in the\nheaven of the Soul. On his father's side he was descended from\nCodrus, last king of Athens; on his mother's, from Solon:  you\ncould get nothing higher in the way of family and descent. In\nhimself, he was an accomplished athlete; a brilliant writer of\nlight prose; a poet of high promise when the mood struck him--\nand he had ideas of doing the great thing in tragedy presently;\ntrained unusually well in music, and in mathematics; deeply\nread; with a taste for the philosophies; a man, in short, of\nculture as deep and balanced as his social standing was high. But\nit seemed as though the Law had brought all these excellencies\ntogether mainly to give the fashionable Athenian world assurance\nof a man; for here he was in his thirty-first year with nothing\nmuch achieved beyond--his favorite pursuit--the writing of\n_mimes_ for the delectation of his set: \"close studies of little\nsocial scenes and conversations, seen mostly in the humorous\naspect.\" *  He had consorted much with Socrates; at the trial,\nwhen it was suggested that a fine might be paid, and the hemlock\nevitated, it was he who had first subscribed and gone about to\nraise a sum. But now the death of his friend and Teacher struck\nhim like a great gale amidships; and he was transformed, another\nman; and the great Star Plato rose, that shines still; the\ngreat Voice Plato was lifted to speak for the Soul and to be\nunequaled in that speaking, in the west, until H.P. Blavatsky came.\n\n------\n* Murray:  _Ancient Greek Literature:_--whence all this as to\nPlato's youth.\n------\n\nBut note what a change had taken place with the ending of the\nfifth century. Hitherto all the great Athenians had been great\nAthenians. Aeschylus, witness of eternity, had cried his message\ndown to Athens and to his fellow-citizens; he had poured the\nwaters of eternity into the vial of his own age and place. I\nspeak not of Sophocles, who was well enough rewarded with the\nprizes Athens had to give him. Euripides again was profoundly\nconcerned with his Athens; and though he was contemned by and\nheld aloof from her, it was the problems of Athens and the time\nthat ate into his soul. Socrates came to save Athens; he did not\nseek political advancement, but would hold office when it came\nhis way; was enough concerned in politics to be considered a\nmoderate-one cause of his condemnation; but above all devoted\nhimself to raising the moral tone of the Athenian youth and\nclearing their minds of falsity. Finally, he gave loyalty to his\ncity and its laws as one reason for rejecting Crito's plan for\nhis escape. What he hoped and lived for was, to save Athens; and\nhe was the more content to die, when he saw that this was no\nlonger possible.\n\nBut Plato had no part nor lot in Athens. He loathed her doctrine\nof democracy, as knowing it could come to no good. He had\naffiliations, like Aeschylus, in Sicily, whither he made\ncertain journeys; and might have stayed there among his fellow\nPythagoreans, but for the irascible temper of Dionysius. But much\nmore, and most of all, his affiliations were in the wide Cosmos\nand all time:  as if he foresaw that on him mainly would devolve\nthe task of upholding spiritual ideas in Europe through the\nmillenniums to come. He dwelt apart, and taught in the Groves of\nAcademe outside the walls. Let Athens' foolish politics go\nforward as they might, or backward--he would meddle with nothing.\nIt has been brought against him that he did nothing to help his\ncity 'in her old age and dotage'; well, he had the business of\nthousands of coming years and peoples to attend to, and had no\ntime to be accused, condemned, and executed by a parcel of\nobstreperous cobblers and tinkers hot-headed over the petty\npolitics of their day. The Gods had done with Athens, and were to\nthink now of the great age of darkness that was to come. He was\nmindful of a light that should arise in Egypt, after some\nfive hundred years; and must prepare wick and oil for the\nNeo-Platonists. He was mindful that there should be a thing called\nthe Renaissance in Italy; and must attend to what claims Pico di\nMirandola and others should make on him for spiritual food. He\nmust consider Holland of the seventeenth century, and England:\nthe Platonists of Cambridge and Amsterdam;--must think of Van\nHelmont; and of a Vaughan who 'saw eternity the other night';\nof a Traherne, who should never enjoy the world aright without\nsome illumination from his star; of a young Milton, _penseroso,_\nout watching the Bear in some high lonely tower with thrice-great\nHermes, who should unsphere his spirit,\n\n     \"..... to unfold\n     What worlds and what vast regions hold\n     The immortal mind that hath forsook\n     Her mansion in this fleshy nook\";\n\n--no, but he must think of all times coming; and how, whenever\nthere should be any restlessness against the tyranny of\nmaterialism and dogma, a cry should go up for _Plato._--So let\nIsocrates, the 'old man eloquent,'--let a many-worded not\nunpeculant patriotic Demosthenes who knew nothing of the\nGod-world--attend to an Athens wherein the Gods were no longer\ngreatly interested;--the great Star Plato should rise up into\nmid-heaven, and shine not in, but high over Athens and quite\napart from her; drawing from her indeed the external elements of\nhis culture, but the light and substance from that which was\npotent in her no longer.\n\nI said Greece served the future badly enough. Consider what might\nhave been. The pivot of the Mediterranean world, in the sixth\ncentury, was not Athens, but in Magna Graecia: at Croton, where\nPythagoras had built his school. But the mob wrecked Croton, and\nsmashed the Pythagorean Movement as an organization; and that, I\ntake it, and one other which we shall come to in time, were the\nmost disastrous happenings in European history.  Yes; the causes\nwhy Classical civilization went down; why the Dark Ages were\ndark; why the God in Man his been dethroned, and suffered all\nthis crucifixion and ignominy the last two thousand years.\nAeschylus, truly, received some needed backing from the relics of\nthe Movement which he found still existent in Sicily; but what\nmight he not have written, and what of his writings might not\nhave come down to us, preserved there in the archives, had he had\nthe peace and elevation of a Croton, organized, to retire to?\nWhither, too, Socrates might have gone, and not to death, when\nAthens became impossible; where Plato might have dwelt and\ntaught; revealing, to disciples already well-trained, much more\nthan ever he did reveal; and engraving, oh so deeply! on the\nstuff of time, the truths that make men free. And there he should\nhave had successors and successors and successors; a line to\nlast perhaps a thousand or two thousand years; who never should\nhave let European humanity forget such simple facts as Karma and\nReincarnation.  But only at certain times are such great\npossibilities presented to mankind; and a seed-time once passed,\nthere can be no sowing again until the next season comes. It is\nno good arguing with the Law of Cycles. Plato may not have been\nless than Pythagoras; yet, under the Law, he might not attempt--\nit would have been folly for him to have attempted--that which\nPythagoras had attempted.  So he had to take another line\naltogether; to choose another method; not to try to prevent the\ndeluge, which was certain now to come; not even to build an ark,\nin which something should be saved; but, so to say, to strew the\nworld with tokens which, when the great waters had subsided,\nshould still remain to remind men of those things it is of most\nimportance they should know.\n\nThis is the way he did it. He advanced no dogma, formulated no\nsystem; but what he gave out, he gave rather as hypotheses.  His\naim was to set in motion a method of thinking which should lead\nalways back to the Spirit and Divine Truth. He started no world-\nreligion; founded no church--not even such a quite unchurchly\nchurch as that which came to exist on the teachings of Confucius.\nHe never had the masses practicing their superstitions, nor a\npriesthood venting its lust of power, in his name.  Instead, he\narranged things so, that wherever fine minds have aspired to the\nlight of the Spirit, Plato has been there to guide them on their\nway. So you are to see Star-Plato shining, you are to hear that\nvoice from the Spheres at song, when Shelley, reaching his\ntopmost note, sang:\n\n     \"The One remains, the many change and pass;\n          Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;\n     Life like a dome of many-coloured glass\n          Stains the white radiance of Eternity\";--\n\nand when Swinburne sings of Time and change that:\n\n     \"Songs they can stop that earth found meet,\n          But the Stars keep their ageless rhyme;\n      Flowers they can slay that Spring thought sweet,\n          But the Stars keep their Spring sublime,\n     Actions and agonies control,\n     And life and death, but not the Soul.\"\n\nIn a poetic age--in the time of Aeschylus, for example--Plato\nwould have been a poet; and then perhaps we should have had to\ninvent another class of poets, one above the present highest;\nand reserve it solely for the splendor of Plato.  Because\nPlatonism is the very Theosophic Soul of Poetry.  But he came,\nliving when he did, to loathe the very name of poetry:  as who\nshould say: \"God pity you! I give you the Way, the Truth, and the\nLife, and you make answer, 'Charming Plato, how exquisitely\npoetic is your prose!'\"  So his bitterness against poetry is\nvery natural.  Poetry is the inevitable vehicle of the highest\ntruth; spiritual truth is poetry.  But the world in general does\nnot know this.  Like Bacon, it looks on poetry as a kind of\npleasurable lying.  Plato went through the skies Mercury to the\nSun of Truth, its nearest attendant planet; and therefore was,\nand could not help being, Very-Poet of very-poets.  But Homer and\nothers had lied loudly about the Gods; and, thought Plato, the\nGods forbid that the truth he had to declare--a vital matter--\nshould be classed with their loud lying.\n\nHe masked the batteries of his Theosophy; camouflaged his great\nTheosophical guns; but fired them off no less effectively,\nlanding his splendid shells at every ganglionic point in the\nhistory of European thought since. Let a man soak his soul in\nPlato; and it shall go hard but the fair flower Theosophy shall\nspring up there presently and bloom.  He prepares the soil:\nsuggesting the way to, rather than precisely formulating, the\nhigh teachings.  The advantage of the grand Platonic camouflage\nhas been twofold:  on the one hand you could hardly dwarf your\nsoul with dogmatic acceptation of Platonism, because he gave all\nhis teachings--even Reincarnation--as hypotheses,--and men do not\nas a rule crucify their mental freedom on an hypothesis.  On the\nother hand, how was any Church eager to burn out heresy and\nheretics to deal with him?  He was not to be stamped out;\nbecause his influence depended on no continuity of discipleship,\nno organization; because he survived merely as a tendency of\nthought.  No churchly fulminations might silence his batteries;\nbecause he had camouflaged them, and they were not to be seen.\nOf course he did not invent his ideas; they are as old as\nTheosophy.  The Lodge sent him to proclaim them in the way he\ndid:  the best way possible, since the Pythagorean effort had\nfailed of its greatest success. What we owe to him--his genius\nand inestimable gift to the world--is precisely that matchless\ncamouflage.  It has been effective, in spite of efforts--\n\nThat, for instance, of a forward youth who came to Athens and\nstudied under him for twenty years, and whom Plato called the\nintellect of the school, saying that he spurned his Teacher as\ncolts do their mothers. A youth, it is said, who revered Plato\nalways; and only gradually grew away from thinking of himself as\na Platonist. But he never could have understood the inwardness\nof Plato or Platonism, for his mind turned as naturally to\nscientific or brain-mind methods, as Plato's did to mysticism and\nthe illumination of the Soul. He adopted much of the teaching,\nbut gave it a twist brain-mindwards; yet not such a twist,\neither, but that the Neo-Platonists in their day, and certain of\nthe Arab and Turkish philosophers after them, could re-Platonize\nit to a degree and admit him thus re-Platonized into their canon.\nI am not going to trouble you much with Aristotle; let this from\nthe Encyclopedia suffice:  \"Philosophic differences\" it says \"are\nbest felt by their practical effects: philosophically, Platonism\nis a philosophy of universal forms, Aristotelianism is a\nphilosophy of individual substances:  practically, Plato makes us\nthink first of the supernatural and the kingdom of heaven,\nAristotle of the natural and the whole world.\"\n\nOr briefly, Aristotle took what he could of Plato's inspiration,\nand turned it from the direction of the Soul to that of the\nBrain-mind. The most famous of Plato's disciples, he did what he\ncould, or what he could not help doing, to spoil Plato's message.\nBut Plato's method had guarded that, so that for mystics\nit should always be there, Aristotle or no.  But for mere\nphilosophers, seeming to improve on it, he had something tainted\nit.  It descended, as said, through the Neo-Platonists--who\nturned it back Plato-ward--to the Moslems:  through Avicenna, who\nAristotelianized, to Averroes, who Platonized it again; and from\nhim to Europe; where Bacon presently gave it another twist to\nout-Aristotle Aristotle (as someone said) to stagger the\nStagirite--and passed it on as the scientific method of today.\nAccording to Coleridge, every man is by nature either a Platonist\nor an Aristotelian; and there is some truth in it.\n\nAnd meanwhile, though the huge Greek illumination could die but\nslowly, Greece was growing uninteresting.  For Pheidias of the\nearlier century, we have in Plato's time Praxiteles, whose carved\ngods are lounging and pretty nincom--- well, mortals; \"they\nsink,\" says the Encyclopedia, \"to the human level, or indeed,\nsometimes almost below it. They have grace and charm in a supreme\ndegree, but the element of awe and reverence is wanting.\"--We\nhave an Aphrodite at the bath, a 'sweet young thing' enough, no\ndoubt; an Apollo Sauroctonos, \"a youth leaning against a tree,\nand idly striking with an arrow at a lizard.\"  A certain natural\nmagic has been claimed for Praxiteles and his school and\ncontemporaries; but if they had it, they mixed unholy elements\nwith it.--And then came Alexander, and carried the dying impetus\neastward with him, to touch India with it before it quite\nexpired; and after that Hellenism became Hellenisticism, and what\nremained of the Crest-Wave in Greece was nothing to lose one\nlittle wink of sleep over.\n\n\n\n\nVII.  THE MAURYAS OF INDIA\n\n\n\"Some talk of Alexander\" may be appropriate here; but not much.\nHe was Aristotle's pupil; and apart from or beyond his terrific\nmilitary genius, had ideas. Genius is sometimes, perhaps more\noften than we suspect, an ability to concentrate the mind into a\nkind of impersonality; almost non-existence, so that you have in\nit a channel for the great forces of nature to play through. We\nshall find that Mr. Judge's phrase 'the Crest-Wave of Evolution'\nis no empty one: words were things, with him and in fact, as he\nsays; and it is so here. For this Crest-Wave is a force that\nactually rolls over the world as a wave over the face of the sea,\nraising up splendors in one nation after another in order\n_geographically,_ and with no haphazard about it. Its first and\nlargest movement is from East to West; producing (as far as I\ncan see) the great manvantaric periods (fifteen hundred years\napiece) in East Asia, West Asia, and Europe; each of these being\ngoverned by its own cycles. But it has a secondary movement as\nwell; a smaller motion within the larger one; and this produces\nthe brilliant days (thirteen decades long for the most part) that\nrecur in the manvantaras. Thus: China seems to have been in\nmanvantara from 2300 to 850 B. C.; West Asia, from 1890 to 390;\nEurope, from 870 B. C. to 630 A. D.  So in the time of Alexander\nWest Asia was newly dead, and China waiting to be reborn. The\nCrest-Wave, in so far as it concerned the European manvantara,\nhad to roll westward from Greece (in its time) to awaken Italy;\nbut in its universal aspect--in its strongest force--it had to\nroll eastward, that its impulse might touch more important China\nwhen her time for awaking should come. It is an impetus, of which\nsometimes we can see the physical links and lines along which it\ntravels, and sometimes we cannot. The line from Greece to China\nlies through Persia and India. But Persia was dead, in pralaya;\nyou could expect no splendor, no mark of the Crest-Wave's\npassing, there. So Alexander, rising by his genius and towering\nideas to the plane where these great motions are felt, skips you\nlightly across dead Persia, knocks upon the doors of India to say\nthat it is dawn and she must be up and doing; and subsides. I\ndoubt he carried her any cultural impulse, in the ordinary sense;\nit is _our_ Euro-American conceit to imagine the Greek was the\nhighest thing in civilization in the world at that time.  We may\ntake it that Indian civilization was far higher and better in all\nesentials; certainly the Greeks who went there presently, and\nleft a record, were impressed with that fact.  You shall see;\nout of their own mouths we will convict them.  It is the very\nburden of Megasthenes' song.\n\nAlexander had certain larger than Greek conceptions, which one\nmust admire in him.  Though he overthrew the Persians, he never\nmade the mistake of thinking them an inferior race.  On the\ncontrary, he respected them highly; and proposed to make of them\nand his Greeks and Mecedoinians one homogeneous people, in which\nthe Persian qualities of aristocracy should supply a need  he\nfelt in Europeans.  The Law made use of his intention, partially,\nand to the furtherance of its own designs.--His method of\ntreating the conquered was (generally) far more Persian or\nAsiatic than Greek; that is to say, far more humane and decent\nthan barbarous.  He took a short cut to his broad ends, and\nmarried all his captains to Persian ladies, himself setting the\nexample; whereas most Greeks would have dealt with the captive\nwomen very differently.  So that it was a kind of enlightenment\nhe set out with, and carried across Persia, through Afghanistan,\nand into the Punjab,--which, we may note, was but the outskirts\nof the real India, into which he never penetrated; and it may\nyet be found that he went by no means so far as is supposed; but\nlet that be.  So now, at any rate, enough of him; he has brought\nus where we are to spend this evening.\n\nFor a student of history, there is something mysterious and even\n--to use a very vile drudge of a word--'unique' about India.  Go\nelse where you will, and so long as you can posit certainly a\nhigh civilization, and know anything of its events, you can make\nsome shift to arrange the history.  None need boggle really at\nany Chinese date after about 2350 B.C.; Babylon is fairly\nsettled back to about 4000; and if you cannot depend on assigned\nEgyptian dates, at least there is a reasonably know sequence of\ndynasties back through four or five millennia.  But come to\nIndia, and alas, where are you?  All out of it, chronologically\nspeaking; enough; very likely, the flotsam and jetsam of\nseveral hundred thousand years.  I have no doubt the Puranas are\ncrowded with history; but how much of what is related is to\nbe taken as plain fact; how much as 'blinds'; how much as\nsymbolism--only the Adepts know.  The three elements are mingled\nbeyond the wit of man to unravel them; so that you can hardly\ntell whether any given thing happened in this or that millennium,\nRoot-Race period, or Round of Worlds, or Day of Brahma.  You are\nin the wild jungles of fairyland; where there are gorgeous\nblooms, and idylls, dreamlit, beautiful and fantastical, all\nin the deep midwood lonliness; and time is not, and the\ncomputations of chronology are an insult to the spirit of your\nsurroundings. History, in India, was kept an esoteric science,\nand esoteric all the ancient records remain now; and I dare say\nany twice-born  Brahmin not Oxfordized knows far more about it\nthan the best Max Mullers of the west, and laughs at them\nquietly. Until someone will voluntarily lift that veil of\nesotericism, the speculations of western scholars will go for\nlittle.  Why it should be kept esoteric, one can only guess; I\nthink if it were known, the cycles and patterns of human history\nwould cease to be so abstruse and hidden from us:  we should know\ntoo much for our present moral or spiritual status.  As usual,\nour own _savants_ are avid to dwarf all dates, and bring\neverything within the scope of a few thousand years; as for the\nnative authorities, they simply try confusions with us; if you\nshould trust them too literally, or some of them, events such as\nthe Moslem conquest will not take place for a few centuries yet.\nThey do not choose that their ancient history should be known;\nso all things are in a hopeless muddle.\n\nOne thing to remember is this: it is a continent, like Europe;\nnot a country, like France. The population is even more\nheterogeneous than that of Europe. Only one sovereign, Aurangzeb\n--at least for many thousands of years--was ever even nominally\nmaster of the whole of it. There are two main divisions, widely\ndifferent: Hindustan or Aryavarta, north of the Vindhya Mountains\nand the River Nerbudda; and Dakshinapatha or the Deccan, the\npeninsular part to the south. The former is the land of the\nAryans; the people of the latter are mainly non-Aryan--a race\ncalled the Dravidians whom, apparently, the Aryans conquered in\nHindustan, and assimilated; but whom in the Deccan, though they\nhave influenced them largely, and in part molded their religion,\nthey never quite conquered or supplanted. Well; never is a long\nday; dear knows what may have happened in the long ages\nof pre-history.\n\nThe Aryans came down into India through its one open door--that\nin the northwest. But when?--Oh, from about 1400 to 1200 B.C.,\nsays western scholarship; which has spent too much ingenuity\naltogether over discovering the original seat of the Aryans, and\ntheir primal civilization.  After Sir William Jones and others\nhad introduce Sanskrit to western notice, and its affinity had\nbeen discovered to that whole chain of languages which is\nsometimes called Indo-European, the theory long held that\nSanskrit was the parent of all these tongues, and that all their\nspeakers had emigrated at different times from somewhere in\nCentral Asia.  But in the scientific orthodoxies fashion reigns\nand changes as  incontinently as in dress.  Scholars rose to\nlaunch a new name for the race: _Indogermanic;_  and to prove\nMiddle-Europe the Eden in which it was created.  Then others, to\ndodge that Eden about through every corner of Europe; which\nat least must have the honor;--it could not be conceded to\n_inferior_ Asia.  All the languages of the group were examined\nand worried for evidence. Men said, 'By the names of trees we\nshall run it to earth'; and this was the doxy that was ortho-for\nsome time.  Light on a tree-name common to all the languages, and\nfind in what territory that tree is indigenous:  that will\ncertainly be the place.  As thus; I will work out for you a\nsuggestion given in the encyclopaedia, that you may see what\nstrictly scientific methods of reasoning may lead to:--\n\nPerhaps the two plant names most universally met with in all\nAryan languages, European or Asiatic, are _potato_ and _tobacco._\n'From Greenland's icy mountains to Ceylon's sunny isle, Whereever\nprospect pleases, And only man is vile.'--you shall nearly always\nhear the vile ones calling the humble tuber of their mid-day\nmeal by some term akin to _potato,_ and the subtle weed that\ncompanions their meditations, by some word like _tobacco._\n_Argal,_ the Aryan race used these two words before their\nseparation; and if the two words, the two plants also.  You\nfollow the reasoning?--Now then, seek out the land where these\nplants are indigenous; and if haply it shall be found they both\nhave one original habitat, why, there beyond doubt you shall find\nthe native seat of the primitive Aryans.  And, glory be to\nScience! they do; both come from Virginia.  Virginia, then, is\nthe Aryan Garden of Eden.\n\nAh but, strangely enough, we do find one great branch of the\nrace--the Teutons--unacquainted with the word _potato._  You may\nargue that the French are too:  but luckily, Science has the\nseeing eye; Science is not to be cheated by appearances.  The\nFrench say _pomme de terre;_ but this is evidently only a\ncorruption--_potater, pomdeter_--twisted at some late period by\nfalse analogy into _pomme de terre,_ ('apple of the earth'.)  But\nthe Teuton has _kartoffel,_ utterly different; argal again, the\nTeutons must have separated from the parent stem before the\nAryans had discovered that the thing was edible and worth naming.\nThey, therefore, were the first to leave Virginia:  paddle their\nown canoes off to far-away Deutschland before ever the mild\nHindoo set out for Hindustan, the Greek for Greece, or the\nAnglo-Saxon for Anglo-Saxony.  But even the Teutons have the word\n_tobacco._  Come now, what a light we have here thrown on the\nprimitive civilization of our forefathers!  They knew, it seems,\nthe virtures of the weed or ever they had boiled or fried a single\nmurphy; they smoked first, and only ate long afterwards:  and\nthe Germans who led that first expedition out from the fatherland\nof the race, must have gone with full tobacco-pouches and empty\nlunch-bags.  What a life-like picture rises before our eyes!\nThese first Aryans were a dreamy contemplative people; tobacco\nwas the main item in their lives, the very basis of their\ncivilization.--Then presently, after the Teutons had gone,\nsomeone must have let his pipe go out for a few minutes--long\nenought to discover that he was hungry, and that a fair green\nplant was growing at his door, with a succulent tuber at the root\nof it which one could EAT.  Think of the joy, the wonder, of that\nmomentous discovery!  Did he hide it away, lest others should be\nas happy as himself?  Were ditectives set to watch him, to spy\nout the cause of a habit of sleek rotundity that was growing upon\nhim at last visibly?  We shall never know.  Or did he call in his\nneighbors at once and annouce it?  Did someone ask:  'What shall\nwe name this God-given thing?'--and did another reply:  'It looks\nto me like a _potato;_  let's call it that!'?  That at least must\nhave been how it came by it name.  They received the suggestion\nwith acclamations:  and all future out-going expeditions took\nsacks of it with them; and their descendants have continued to\ncall it _potato_ to this day.  For you must not that being the\nonly food with a name common to all the languages--or almost all\n--it must be supposed to have been the only food they knew of\nbefore their separation.  Even the words for _father, mother,\nfire, water,_ and the like, have a greater number of different\nroots in the Aryan languages than have these blessed two.\n\nTo say the truth, a dawning perception of the possibilities\nof this kind of reasoning chilled the enthusiasm of the\nAryan-hunters a good deal; it was the bare bodkin that did\nquietus make for much philological pother and rout.  No; if\nyou are to prove racial superiority or exclusiveness, you had\nmuch better avail yourself of the simplicity of a stout bludgeon,\nthan rely upon the subtleties of brain-mind argumentation; for\ntime past is long, and mostly hidden; and lots of things have\nhappened to account for your proofs in ways you would never\nsuspect.  The long and short of it is, that after pursuing\nthe primitive Aryans up hill and down dale through all parts\nof Europe, Science is forced to pronouce her final judgement\nthus:  _We really know nothing about it._\n\nThe ancestors of this Fifth Root-Race emigrated to Central Asia\nto escape the fate of Atlantis; whither too went several\nAtlantean peoples, such as the forefathers of the Chinese,--who\nwere not destined to be destroyed.  It is a vast region, and\nthere was room for them all.  That emigration may have been as\nlong a process as that of the Europeans in our own time to\nAmerica; probably it was; or longer.  But it happened, at any\nrate, a million years ago; and in a million years a deal of\nwater will flow under the bridges.  You may call English\na universal language now; it might conceivably become so\nabsolutely, after a few centuries.  But history will go on and\ntime, and the cyclic changes inherent in natural law.  These are\nnot to be dodged by railways, turbines, aeroplanes; you cannot\nevitate their action by inventing printing-presses;--which, I\nsuppose, have been invented and forgotten dozens of times 'since\ncreated man.'  In a million years from now the world will have\ncontracted and expanded often. We have seen, in our little period\ncalled historical, hardly anything but expansion; though there\nhave been contractions, too.  But contractions there will be,\nmajor ones; it is quite safe to foretell that; because action\nand reaction are equal and opposite:  it is a fundamental law.\nGeography will re-become, what it was in the times we call\nancient, an esoteric science; the races will be isolated, and\nthere will be no liners on the seas, and Europe and Asia\nwill be fabulous realms of faerie for our more or less remote\ndescendants. Then what will have become of the once universal\nEnglish language?--It will have split into a thousand fragment\ntongues, as unlike as Dutch and Sanskrit; and philology--the\ngreat expansion having happened again--will have as much\nconfusion to unravel in the Brito-Yankish, as it has now in the\nIndo-European.--In a million years?--Bless my soul, in a poor\nlittle hundred thousand!\n\nThe Aryan languages, since they began to be, have been spreading\nout and retreating, mixing and changing and interchanging; one\nimposed on another, hidden under another, and recrudescing\nthrough another; through ten or a hundred thousand years,--or\nhowever long it may be; just as they have been doing in\nhistorical times.  You find Persian half Arabicized; Armenian\ncome to be almost a dialect of Persian; Latin growing up through\nEnglish; Greek almost totally submerged under Latin, Slavonic,\nand Turkish, and now with a tendency to grow back into Greek;\nCeltic preserving in itself an older than Aryan syntax, and\nconveying that in its turn to the English spoken by Celts.\nLanguage is, to say the truth, a shifting kaleidoscopic thing:  a\nmomentary aspect of racial expression. In a thousand years it\nbecomes unintelligible; we are modifying ours every day, upon\nlaws whose nature can be guessed. Yet ultimately all is a\nsymphony and ordered progression, with regular rhythms recurring;\nit only seems a chaos, and unmusical, because we hear no more\nthan the fragment of a bar.\n\nYou all know the teaching of _The Secret Doctrine_ about the\nRoot-Races of Humanity, of which this present one, generally\ncalled the Aryan, is the fifth; and how each is divided into\nseven sub-races; each sub-race into seven family-races; and\neach family-race into innumerable nations and tribes. According\nto that work, this Fifth Root-Race has existed a million years.\nThe period of a sub-race is said to be about 210,000 years; and\nthat of a family-race, about 30,000. So then, four sub-races\nwould have occupied the first 840,000 years of the Fifth Race's\nhistory; and our present fifth sub-race would have been in being\nduring the last 160,000 years; in which time five family-races\nwould have flourished and passed; and this present sixth\nfamily-race would be about ten millenniums old.  Now, no single\nbranch of the Aryans:  by which term I mean the sixth family-race;\nI shall confine it to that, and not apply it to the Fifth Root-Race\nas a whole,--no single race among the Aryans has been universal,\nor dominant, or prominent even, during the whole of the last ten\nthousand years. The Teutons (including Anglo-Saxons), who loom so\nlargely now, cut a very small figure in the days when Latin was,\nin its world, something more universal than English is in ours;\nand a few centuries before that, you should have heard Celtic,\nand little else, almost anywhere in Europe.  This shows how\nfleeting a thing is the sovereignty of any language; within the\nthree thousand years we know about, three at least of the Aryan\nlanguage-groups have been 'universal'; within the last ten\nmilleniums there has been time enough, and to spare, for a\n'universality' each of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Slavonic, Latin,\nTeutonic, and Celtic. So evidently none of these is the language\nof the family-race:  we may speak of the Aryan Family-Race; not\nof the Celtic or Slavonic.\n\nBut it does not follow that the whole sub-race is not Aryan too.\nMr. Judge says somewhere that Sanskrit will be the universal\nlanguage again. Supposing that there were some such scheme of\nevolution here, as in the world-chain? You know the diagram in\n_The Secret Doctrine,_ with the teaching as to the seven rounds.\n_As above, so below;_  when H. P. Blavatsky seems to be giving\nyou a sketch of cosmic evolution, often she is at the same time,\nif you can read it, telling you about the laws that govern your\nown and the race's history. I suspect some such arrangement as\nthis:  when the sub-race began, 160,000 years ago, Sanskrit was\nits 'universal' language; spoken by all the Aryans that moved\nout over Europe and into India.  An unaccountable Sanskrit\ninscription has been found in Asia Minor;* and there is\nLithuania, a little  speech-island in northeastern Central\nEurope, where a nearly Sanskrit language, I believe, survives.\nThen Sanskrit changed imperceptibly (as American is changing from\nEnglish) into the parent language of the Persian group, which\nbecame the general speech of the sub-race except in India, where\nSanskrit survived as a _seed-speech_ for future resurrection.\nThen, perhaps _pari passu_  with further westward expansion,\nPersian changed into the parent of the Slavonic group, itself\nliving on as a seed-speech in Iran; and so on through all the\ngroups; in each case the type-language of a group remaining, to\nexpand again after the passage of ages and when its cycle should\nreturn, in or about its corresponding psychic center on the\ngeographical plane. Then this evolution, having  reached its\nfarthest limit, began to retrace its course; I would not attempt\nto say in what order the language groups come:  which is\nglobe A in the chain, which Globe D, and so on; but merely\nsuggest that a 'family race' may represent one round from\nSanskrit to Sanskrit; and the whole Fifth Sub-race, seven\nsuch complete rounds.\n\n------\n* _Ancient India,_ by E. J. Rapson\n------\n\nWhat came before? What was the Fourth Sub-race?  Well: I imagine\nwe may have the relic, the _sishta_ or seed of it, in the Hamitic\npeoples and languages: the Libyans, Numidians, Egyptians,\nIberians, and Pelasgians of old; the Somalis, Gallas, Copts,\nBerbers, and Abyssinians of today. We are almost able to discern\na time--but have not guessed when it was--when this Iberian race,\nhaving perhaps its central seat in Egypt, held all or most lands\nas far as Ireland to the west, and Japan and New Zealand\neastward; we find them surviving, mixed with, but by no means\nsubmerged under, Aryan Celts in Spain--which is Iberia; we find\ntheir name (I imagine) in that of Iverne, Ierine, Hibernia, or\nIreland; we know that they gave the syntax of their language to\nthat of the Celts of the British Isles; and that the Celtic races\nof today are mainly Iberian in blood--I daresay all Europe is\nabout half Iberian in blood, as a matter of fact;--that the\nGreeks found them in Greece:  I suspect that the main difference\nbetween Sparta and Athens lay in the fact that Sparta was pure\nAryan, Athens mainly Iberian.--It seems to me then that we can\nalmost get a glimpse of the sub-race preceding our own. Some have\nbeen puzzled by a seeming discrepancy between Katherine Tingley's\nstatement that Egypt is older than India, and H. P. Blavatsky's,\nthat Menes, founder of the Egyptian monarchy, went from India to\nEgypt to found it. But now suppose that something like this\nhappened--would it not solve the problem?--In 158,000 B. C., or\nat the time this present Aryan Sub-race began, Egypt, one state\nin the huge Iberian series, was already a seat of civilization as\nold as the Iberian race.  There may have been an Iberian Empire,\nalmost world-wide; which again may have split into many\nkingdoms; and as the star of the whole race was declining, we\nmay suppose Egypt in some degree of pralaya; or again, that it\nmay have been an outlying and little-considered province _at that\ntime._  In Central Asia the Sanskrit-speaking tribe begins to\nincrease and multiply furiously. They pour down into Iberian\nHindustan. They are strong, and the Gods are leading them; the\nIberians have grown world-weary with the habit of long empire.\nThe Iberian power goes down before them; the Iberians become a\nsubject people. But there is one Menes among the latter, of the\nroyal house perhaps, who will not endure subjection. He stands\nout as long as he may; then sails west with his followers for\nIberian lands that the Aryans have not disturbed, and are not\nlikely to.  In their contests with the invaders of India, they\nhave thrown off all world-weariness, and become strong; Prince\nMenes is hailed in Egypt (as the last of the Ommevads, driven out\nfrom the East by the Abbasids, was hailed in Spain); he wakens\nEgypt, and founds a new monarchy there.--I am telling the tale of\nvery ancient and unknown conditions in terms of historic\nconditions we know about and can understand; it is only the\nskeleton of the story I would stand for.\n\nAnd to put Menes back at 160,000 years ago--what an amusing idea\nthat will seem!--But the truth is we must wage war against this\nmischievous foreshortening of history. I have no doubt there have\nbeen empires going, from time to time, in Egypt, since before\nAtlantis fell; people have the empire-building instinct, and it\nis an eminently convenient place for empire-building.  I have no\ndoubt there have been dozens of different Meneses--that is,\nfounders of Egyptian monarchies,--with  thousands of years\nbetween each two.  But I think probably the one that came from\nIndia to do it, came about the time when the fifth sub-race rose\nto supplant the fourth as that section of humanity in which\nevolution was chiefly interested.\n\nWhich last phrase in itself is rank heresy, and smacks of the\n'white man's burden,' and all such nonsense as that. We might\nlearn a lesson here. Think:  since that time, during how many\nthousands of years, off and on, has not that old sub-race been\nthe darling of evolution, the seat of the Crest-Wave, and place\nwhere all things were doing?  All the Setis, the grand Rameseses\nand Thothmeses came since then; all the historic might and glory\nof Egypt.  You never know rightly when to say that the life of a\nsub-race is ended; the two-hundred-and-ten-century period\ncannot, I imagine, include it from birth to death; but can only\nmark the time between the rise of one, and the rise of another.--\nBut now to India.\n\nWe have no knowledge of the last time when Sanskrit was spoken:\nit has always been, in historic or quasi-historic ages, what it\nis now--literary language preserved by the high castes.  In the\ndays of the Buddha it had long given place to various vernaculars\ngrown out of it:  Pali, and what are called the Prakrits.--We\nhave lost memory of what I may call the archetypal languages of\nEurope:  the common ancestor of the Celtic group, for instance;\nor that Italian from which Latin and the lost Oscan and Savellian\nand the rest sprang.  No matter; they remain in the ideal world,\nand I doubt not in the course of our cyclic evolution we shall\nreturn to them, take them up, and pass through them again.  But\nit seems to me that in the land of Esoteric History, where Manu\nprovided in advance against the main destructiveness of war, the\narchetypal language of the whole sub-race has been preserved.\nThe Aryans went down into India, and there, at the extreme end of\nthe Aryan world, enjoyed some of the advantages of isolation:\nthey were in a backwater, over which the tides of the languages\ndid not flow. By esotericizing their history, I imagine they have\nreally kept it intact, continuous, and within human memory; as\nwe have not done with ours. As if that which is to be preserved\nforever, must be preserved in secret; and silence were the only\ndurable casket for truth.\n\nThe Greeks, they say, were very gifted liars; but I do not\nsee why we should suppose them lying, when they sang the\nsuperiorities of Indian things and people;--_as they did._ The\nIndians, says Megasthenes, were taller than other men, and of\ngreater distinction and prouder bearing. The air and water of\ntheir land were the purest in the world; so you would expect in\nthe people, the finest culture and skill in the arts.  Almost\nalways they gathered two harvests in the years; and  _famine had\nnever visited India._--You see, railways, quick communications,\nand all the appliances of modern science and invention cannot do\nas much for India in pralaya, as her own native civilization\ncould do for her in manvantara.--Then he goes on to show how that\ncivilization guarded against famine and many other things; and\nincidentally to prove it not only much higher than the Greek, but\nmuch higher than our own.  I said Manu provided in advance\nagainst the main destructiveness of war:  here was the custom,\nwhich may have been dishonored in the breach sometimes, but still\n_was the custom._--The whole continent was divided into any\nnumber of kingdoms; mutually antagonistic often, but with\ncertain features of homogeneity that made the name Aryavarta more\nthan a geographical expression.  I am speaking of the India\nMegasthenes saw, and as it had been then for dear knows how long.\nIt had made concessions to human weakness, yes; had fallen, as I\nthink, from an ancient unity; it had not succeeded in abolishing\nwar.  It was open to any king to make himself a Chakravartin, or\nworld-sovereign, if he disposed of the means for doing so:\nwhich means were military.  As this was a well-recognised\nprinciple, wars were by no means rare.  But with them all, what a\nUtopia it was, compared to  Christendom!  There was never a draft\nor conscription.  Of the four castes, the Kshatriya or warrior\nalone did the fighting.  While the conches brayed, and the war-\ncars thundered over Kurukshetra; while the pantheons held their\nbreath, watching Arjun and mightiest Karna at battle--the\npeasants in the next field went on hoeing their rice; they knew\nno one was making war on them.  They trusted Gandiva, the goodly\nbow, to send no arrows their way; their caste was inviolable, and\nsacred to the tilling of the soil.  Megasthenes notes it with\nwonder.  War implied no ravaging of the land, no destruction\nof crops, no battering down of buildings, no harm whatever\nto non-combatants.\n\nKshatriya fought Kshatriya. If you were a Brahmin: which is to\nsay, a theological student, or a man of letters, a teacher or\nwhat not of the kind--you were not even called up for physical\nexamination.  If you were a merchant, you went on quietly with\nyour 'business as usual.' A mere patch of garden, or a peddler's\ntray, saved you from all the horrors of a questionnaire.\nKshatriya fought Kshatriya, and no one else; and on the\nbattlefield, and nowhere else. The victor  became possessed of\nthe territory of the vanquished; and there was no more fuss or\nbotheration about it.\n\nAnd the vanquished king was not dispossessed, Saint Helenaed, or\nbeheaded. Simply, he acknowledged his conqueror as his overlord,\npaid him tribute; perhaps put his own Kshatriya army at his\ndisposal; and went on reigning as before. So Porus met Alexander\nwithout the least sense of fear, distrust, or humiliation at his\ndefeat. \"How shall I treat you?\" said the  Macedonian.  Porus\nwas surprised.--\"I suppose,\" said he in effect, \"as one king\nwould treat another\"; or, \"like a gentleman.\"  And Alexander rose\nto it; in the atmosphere of a civilization higher than anything\nhe knew, he had the grace to conform to usage.  Manu imposed his\nwill on him. Porus acknowledged him for overlord, and received\naccretions of territory.--This explains why all the changes of\ndynasty, and the many conquests and invasions have made so little\ndifference as hardly to be worth recording. They effected no\nchange in the life of the people. Even the British Raj has been,\nto a great degree, molded to the will of Manu.  Each strong\nnative state is ruled by its own Maharaja, who acknowledges the\nKaiser-i-Hind at London for his overlord, and lends him at need\nhis Moslem or Kshatriya army.--All of which proves, I think, the\nextreme antiquity of the svstem:  which is so firmly engraved in\nthe prototypal world--the astral molds are so strong--that no\noutside force coming in has been able materially to change it.\nThe Greek invasion goes wholy unnoticed in Indian literature.\n\nWhich brings us back to Alexander. If he got as far as to the\nIndus;--he got no farther. There were kingdoms up there in\nthe northwest--perhaps no further east than Afghanistan and\nBaluchistan--which had formed part of the empire of Darius\nHystaspes, and sent contingents to fight under Xerxes in Greece;\nand these now Alexander claimed as Darius Codomannus's successor.\nBut even in these outlying regions, he found conditions very\ndifferent from those in Persia:  there was no \"unquestionable\nsuperiority of the European to the Asiatic,\" nor nothing like.\nHad he gone further, and into the real India of the Ganges\nvalley, his name, it is likely, would not have come down\nsynonymous with victory; presentlv we will call Megasthenes to\nwitness again as to the \"unquestionable superiority of the\nAsiatic to the European.\"  But thither the Macedonians refused to\nfollow their king; and I suppose he wept rather over their\ninsubordination, than for any overwhelmment with a sense of\nterrene limits. For he knew well that there was plenty more world\nto conquer, could one conquer it:  rich and mighty kingdoms\nbeyond that Thar Desert his soldiers are said to have refused to\ncross. He knew, because there were many to tell him: exiled\nprinces and malcontents from this realm and that, each with his\nplan for self-advancement, and for using the Macedonia as a\ncatspaw. Among them one in particular:  as masterful a man as\nAlexander, and a potential world-conqueror himself.  He was\n(probably) a more or less illegitimate scion of the House of\nNanda, then reigning in Magadha; which country, now called\nBehar, had been growing at the expense of its Gangetic neighbors\nfor some centuries. King Suddhodana, the Buddha's father, had\nreigned over the Sakyas in Nepaul as a tributary under the king\nof Magadha; which statement I let pass, well aware that the\nlatest western scholarship has revolutionized the Sakyas into a\nrepublic--perhaps with soviets,--and King Suddhodana himself into\na mere ward politician.\n\nThis Sandrakottos, as the Greeks called him, had many tales to\ntell of the wealth of his kinsman's kingdom, and of the extreme\nunpopularity of its ruler:-and therefore of the ease with which\nAlexander might conquer it and hand it over to him. But two of a\ntrade seldom agree; both he and his host were born to rule\nempires; and presently he offended susceptibilities, and had to\nflee the camp. Whereupon he shortly sharked up a list of landless\nreprobates, Kshatriyas at a loose end, for food and diet; and\nthe enterprise with a stomach in't was, as soon as Alexander's\nback was turned, to drive out the Macedonian garrisons. This\ndone, he marched eastward as king of the Indus region, conquered\nMagadha, slew his old enemy the Nanda king with all male members\nof the family, and reigned in his stead as Chandragupta I, of\nthe house of Maurya.  That was in 321. Master then of a highly\ntrained army of about 700,000, he spread his empire over all\nHindustan. In 305, Seleucus Nicator, Alexander's successor in\nAsia, crossed the Indus with an army, and was defeated; and in\nthe treaty which followed, gave up to Chandragupta all claim to\nthe Indian provinces, together with the hand of his daughter in\nmarriage.--and received by way of compensation 500 elephants\nthat might come in useful in his wars elsewhere. Also he sent\nMegisthenes to be his ambassador at Pataliputra, Chandragupta's\ncapital; and Megasthenes wrote; and in a few quotations from\nhis lost book that remain, chiefly in Arrian,--we get a kind of\nwindow wherethrough to look into India:  the first, and perhaps\nthe only one until Chinese travelers went west discovering.\n\nHere let me flash a green lantern. If at some future time it\nshould be shown that the Chandragupta Maurya of the Sanskrit\nbooks was not the same person as the Sandacottos of  Megasthenes;\nnor his son Bindusara Amitraghata, the Amitrochidas of the\nGreeks; nor his son and successor, Asoka, the Devanampiya\nPiadasi whose rock-cut inscriptions remain scattered over\nIndia; nor the Amtiyako Yonaraja--the \"Ionian King Antiochus\"\napparently,--Atiochus Theos, Selecus Nicator's granson:  as is\nsupposed; nor yet the other four kings mentioned in the same\ninstricption in a Sanskrit disguise as contemporaries, Ptolemy\nPhiladelphos of Egypt (285-247); Magas of Cyrene (285-258);\nAntigonus Gonatas of Macedon (277-239), and Alexander of Epirus,\nwho began to reign in 272;--if all these identifications should\nfall to the ground, let no one be surprised.  There are passages\nin the writings of H. P. Blavatsky that seem to suggest there is\nnothing in them; and yet, after studying those passages, I do\nnot find that she says so positively:  her attitude seems rather\none of withholding information for the time being; she supplies\nnone of a contrary sort. The time may not have been ripe then for\nunveiling so much of Indian history; nor indeed, in those days,\nhad the pictures of these kings, and particularly of Asoka, so\nclearly emerged:  inscriptions have been deciphered since, which\nhave gone to fill out the outline; and the story, as it his been\npieced together now, has an air of verisimilitude, and hangs\ntogether.  Without the Greek identifications, and the consequent\npossibility of assigning dates to Chandragupta and his son, we\nshould know indeed that there was a great Maurya empire, which\nlasted a matter of thirteen decades and a few odd years; but we\nshould hardly know when to place it.  Accepting the Greek\nidentifications, and placing the Mauryas where we do in time--you\nshall see how beautifully the epoch fits into the universal\ncycles, and confirms the teaching as to Cyclic Law.  So,\nprovisionally, I shall accept them, and tell the tale.\n\nFirst a few more items from Megasthenes as to India under\nChandragupta.  There was no slavery, he notes; all Indians were\nfree, and not even were there aliens enslaved.  Crime of any kind\nwas rare; the people were thoroughly law-abiding.  Thievery was\nso little known, that doors went unlocked at all times; there\nwas no usury, and a general absence of litigation.  They told the\ntruth:  as a Greek, he could not help noticing that.  The men\nwere exceptionally brave; the women, chaste and virturous.\nBut \"in contrast to the general simplicity of their style,\nthey loved finery and ornaments.  Their robes were worked\nin gold, adorned with precious stones, and they wore flowered\ngarments of the finest muslin.  Attendants walking behind\nheld umbrellas over them....\"\n\nThe system of government was very highly and minutely evolved.\n\"Of the great officers of state, some have charge of the markets,\nothers of the city, others of the soldiers; others superintend\nthe canals, and measure the land, or collect the taxes; some\nconstruct roads and set up pillars to show the by-roads and\ndistances from place to place. Those who have charge of the city\nare divided into six boards of five members apiece:  The\nfirst looks after industrial art. The second attends to the\nentertainment of strangers, taking care of them, sound or sick,\nand in the event of their death, burying them and sending their\nproperty to their relatives.\" The third board registered births\nand deaths; the fourth, fifth and sixth had supervision of things\ncommercial.  Military affairs were as closely organized:  there\nwere Boards of Infantry, Cavalry, War Chariots, Elephants, Navy,\nand Bullock Transport.  And behind all these stood Chandragupta\nhimself, the superman, ruthless and terrifically efficient; and\nChanakya, his Macchiavellian minister:  a combination to hurry\nthe world into greatness. And so indeed they did.\n\nUnder Asoka, Chandragupta's grandson, the age culminated. H. P.\nBlavatsky says positively that he was born into Buddhism; this\nis not the general view; but one finds nothing in his edicts,\nreally, to contradict it. His father Bindusara, of whom we know\nnothing, may have been a Buddhist. But it would appear that Asoka\nin his youth was the most capable, and also the most violent and\npassionate of Bindusara's sons. During his father's lifetime, he\nheld one of the great vice-royalties into which the empire was\ndivided; he succeeded to the throne in 271.  His domains at that\ntime included all Aryavarta, with Baluchistan, and as much of\nAfghanistan as lies south of the Hindoo Koosh; and how much of\nthe Deccan it is difficult to determine. Nine years later he\nextended this realm still further, by the conquest of the\nKalingas, whose country lay along the coast northward from\nMadras. At the end of that war he was master of all India north\nof a line drawn from Pondicherry to Cannanore in the south;\nwhile the tip of the Deccan and Ceylon lay at least within his\nsphere of influence.\n\nHe was easily the strongest monarch of his day. In China--between\nwhich country and India there was no communication:  they had not\ndiscovered each other, or they had lost sight of each other for\nages--an old order was breaking to pieces, and all was weakness\nand decay. In the West, Greek civilization was in decadence, with\nthe successors of Alexander engaged in profitless squabbles.\nRome, a power only in Italy, was about to begin her long struggle\nwith Carthage; overseas nobody minded her. The Crest-Wave was in\nIndia, the strongest power and most vigorous civilization, so far\nas we can tell, in the world, and at the head of India stood this\nChakravartin, victorious Asoka, flushed with conquest, and a\nwhole world tempting him out to conquer.--\n\nHe never went to war again. For twenty-nine years after that\nconquest of the Kalingas, until his death in 233, he reigned in\nunbroken peace. He left his heart to posterity in many edicts and\ninscriptions cut on rocks and pillars; thirty-five of these\nremain, or have so far been discovered and read. In 257, or five\nyears after the Kalinga War, he published this:\n\n     \"Devanamipiya Piadasi\"--\n\nIt means literally 'the Beloved of the Gods, the Beautiful of\nCountenance'; but it is really a title equivalent to \"His\nGracious Majesty,' and was borne by all the Maurya kings;--\n\n\"Devanampiya Piadasi feels remorse on account of the conquest of\nthe Kalingas; because, during the subjugation of a preciously\nunconquered country slaughter, death, and taking away captives of\nthe people necessarily occur; whereat His Majesty feels profound\nsorrow and regret...\"\n\nIt would be in keeping with the Southern Buddhist tradition as to\nthe ungovernable violence of Asoka's youth, that he should have\nintroduced into war horrors quite contrary to Manu and Indian\ncustom; but here I must say that H. P. Blavatsky, though she\ndoes not particularize, says that there were really two Asokas,\ntwo 'Devanampiya Piadasis,' the first of whom was Chandragupta\nhimself, from whose life the tradition of the youthful violence\nmay have been drawn; and there remains the possibility that this\nKalinga War was waged by Chandragupta, not Asoka; and that it\nwas he who made this edict, felt the remorse, and became a\nBuddhist. However, to continue (tentatively):--\n\n\"The loss of even the hundredth or the thousandth part of the\npersons who were then slain, carried away captive, or done to\ndeath in Kalinga would now be a matter of deep regret to His\nMajesty.  Although a man should do him any injury, Devanampiya\nPiadasi holds that it must patiently be borne, so far as it\npossibly can be borne... for His Majesty desires for all animate\nbeings security, control over the passions, peace of mind, and\njoyousness.  And this is the chief of conquests, in His Majesty's\nopinion:  the Conquest of Duty.\"\n\nSome time later he took the vows of a Buddhist monk, 'entered the\nPath'; and, as he says, 'exerted himself strenuously.'\n\nHe has been called the 'Constantine of Buddhism'; there is much\ntalk among the western learned, about his support of that\nmovement having contributed to its decay.  They draw analogy from\nConstantine; even hint that Asoka embraced Buddhism, as the\nlatter did Christianity, from political motives. But the analogy\nis thoroughlv false.  Constantine was a bad man, a very far-gone\ncase; and there was little in the faith he adopted, or favored,\nas it had come to be at that time, to make him better;--even if\nhe had really believed in it.  And it was a defined religio-\npolitical body, highly antagonistic to the old state religion of\nRome, that he linked his fortunes with.  But no sovereign so\nmighty in compassion is recorded in history as having reigned, as\nthis Asoka. He was the most unsectarian of men. Buddhism as it\ncame to him, and as he left it, was not a sect, but a living\nspiritual movement. For what is a sect?--Something _cut off_--\nfrom the rest of humanity, and the sources of inner life. But for\nAsoka, as for the modern Theosophical Movement, there was no\nreligion higher than--_Dharma_--which word may be translated,\n'the (higher) Law,' or 'truth.' or 'duty.' He never ceased to\nprotect the holy men of Brahminism. Edict after edict exhorts his\npeople to honor them. He preached the Good Law; he could not\ninsist too often that different men would have different\nconceptions as to this _Dharma._ Each, then, must follow his own\nconception, and utterly respect his neighbors'.  The Good Law,\nthe Doctrine of the Buddhas, was universal; because the\nobjective of all religions was the conquest of the passions and\nof self.  All religions must manifest on this plane as right\naction and life; and that was the evangel he proclaimed to the\nworld. There was no such sharp antagonism of sects and creeds.\n\nThere is speculation as to how he managed, being a world-sovereign\n--and a highly efficient one--to carry out the vows of a\nBuddhist monk.  As if the begging bowl would have been anything\nof consequence to such an one!  It is a matter of the status of\nthe soul; not of outward paraphernalia. He was a practical man;\nintensely so; and he showed that a Chakravartin could tread the\nPath of the Buddhas as well as a wandering monk. One can imagine\nno Tolstoyan playing at peasant in him. His business in life was\nmomentous. \"I am never satisfied with my exertions and my\ndispatch of business,\" he says.\n\n\"Work I must for the public benefit,--and the root of the matter\nis in exertion and dispatch of business, than which nothing is\nmore efficacious for the public welfare. And for what end do I\ntoil? For no other end than that I may discharge my debt to\nanimate beings.\"\n\nAnd again:\n\n\"Devanampiya Piadasi desires that in all places men of all\nreligions may abide, for they all desire purity of mind and\nmastery over the senses.\"\n\nWell; for nine and twenty years he held that vast empire warless;\neven though it included within its boundaries many restless and\nsavage tribes. Certainly only the greatest, strongest, and wisest\nof rulers could do that; it has not been done since (though\nAkbar came near it). We know nothing as to how literature may\nhave been enriched; some think that the great epics may have\ncome from this time. If so, it would only have been recensions of\nthem, I imagine. But in art and architecture his reign was\neverything. He built splendid cities, and strewed the land with\nwonderful buildings and monoliths. Patna, the capital, in\nMegasthenes' time nine miles long by one and a half wide, and\nbuilt of wood, he rebuilt in stone with walls intricately\nsculptured. Education was very widespread or universal.  His\nedicts are sermons preached to the masses: simple ethical\nteachings touching on all points necessary to right living.\nHe had them carved on rock, and set them up by the roadsides\nand in all much-frequented places, where the masses could\nread them; and this proves that the masses could read. They\nare all vibrant with his tender care, not alone for his human\nsubjects, but for all sentient beings. \"Work I must.... that\nI may discharge my debt to all things animate.\" And how he\ndid work without one private moment in the day or night, as his\ndecrees show, in which he should be undisturbed by the calls of\nthose who needed help. He specifies; he particularizes; there\nwas no moment to be considered private, or his personal own.\n\nAnd even then he was not content. There were foreign lands; and\nthose, too, were entitled to his care.  I said that the southern\ntip of India, with Ceylon, were within his sphere of influence:\nhis sphere of influence was much wider than that, however. Saying\nthat a king's sphere of influence is wherever he can get his will\ndone, Asoka's extended westward over the whole Greek world. Here\nwas a king whose will was benevolence; who sought no rights but\nthe right to do good; whose politics were the service of\nmankind:--it is a sign of the Brotherhood of Man, that his writ\nran, as you may say--the writ of his great compassion,--to the\nMediterranean shore:--\n\n\"Everywhere in the dominions of Devanampiya Piadasi, and likewise\nin the neighboring realms, such as those of the Chola, Pandya,\nSatiyaputra and Keralaputra, in Ceylon, in the dominions of the\nGreek king Antiochus, and in those of the other kings subordinate\nto that Antiochus--everywhere, on behalf of His Majesty, have two\nkinds of hospitals been founded:  hospitals for men, and\nhospitals for beasts.  Healing herbs, medicinal for man and\nmedicinal for beasts, wherever they were lacking, have been\nimported and planted.  On the roads, trees have been planted, and\nwells have been dug for the use of men and beasts.\"\n\nAnd everywhere, in all those foreign realms, he had his\nmissionaries preaching the Good Law. And some of these came to\nPalestine, and founded there for him an order at Nazareth called\nthe Essenes; in which, some century or two later, a man rose to\nteach the Good Law--by name, Jesus of Nazareth.--Now consider the\nprestige, the moral influence, of a king who might keep his\nagents, unmolested, carrying out his will, right across Asia, in\nSyria, Greece, Macedonia, and Egypt; the king of a great, free,\nand mighty people, who, if he had cared to, might have marched\nout world-conquering; but who preferred that his conquests\nshould be the conquests of duty.  Devanampiya Piadasi:  the\nGracious of  Mien, the Beloved of the Gods:  an Adept King like\nthem of old time, strayed somehow into the scope and vision of\nhistory.\n\n\n\n\nVIII.  THE BLACK-HAIRED PEOPLE\n\n\nGreece shone between 478 and 348,--to give the thirteen decades\nof her greatest spiritual brightness. Then came India in 321; we\nlose sight of her after the death of Asoka in the two-thirties,\nbut know the Maurya Empire lasted its thirteen decades (and six\nyears) until 185.  Then China flamed up brilliantly under the\nWestern House of Han from 194 to 64;--at which time, however, we\nshall not arrive for a few weeks yet.\n\nBetween these three national epochs there is this difference:\nthe Greek Age came late in its manvantara; which opened (as I\nguess), roughly speaking, some three hundred and ninety years\nbefore:--three times thirteen decades, with room for three\nnational flowerings in Europe--among what peoples, who can say?--\nWe cannot tell where in its manvantara the Indian Age may have\ncome: whether near the beginning, or at the middle.  But in China\nwe are on firm ground, and the firmest of all. A manvantara, a\nfifteen-century cycle, began in the two-forties B. C.; this Age\nof Han was its first blossom and splendid epoch; and we need feel\nno surprise that it was not followed by a night immediately, but\nonly by a twilight and slight dimming of the glories for about\nthirteen decades again, and then the full brilliance of another\nday. Such things are proper to peoples new-born after their long\npralaya; and can hardly happen, one would say, after the morning\nof the manvantara has passed. Thus in our own European cycle,\nItaly the first-born was in full creative energy from about 1240\nto 1500: twenty-six decades;--whereas the nations that have held\nhegemony since have had to be content each with its thirteen.\n\nAnd now to take bird's-eye views of China as a whole; and to be\nat pains to discover what relation she bears, historically, to\nourselves and the rest of the globe.\n\nDo you remernber how Abraham haggled with the Lord over the\nCities of the Plain?  Yahveh was for destroying them off hand for\ntheir manifold sins and iniquities; but Abraham argued and\nbargained and brought him down till if peradventure there should\nbe found ten righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah, the Lord promised\nhe would spare them. But ten righteous there were not, nor\nnothing near; so the Cities of the Plain went down.\n\nI suppose the Crest-Wave rarely passes from a race without\nleaving a wide trail of insanity in its wake. The life forces are\nstrong; the human organisms through which they play are but--as\nwe know them. Commonly these organisms are not directed by the\nDivine Soul, which has all too little of the direction of life in\nits hands; so the life-currents drift downward, instead of\nfountaining up; and exhaust these their vehicles, and leave them\nplayed out and mentally--because long since morally--deficient.\nSo come the cataclysmic wars and reigns of terror that mark the\nend of racial manvantaras:  it is a humanity gone collectively\nmad. On the other hand, none can tell what immense safeguarding\nwork may be done by the smallest sane co-ordinated effort\nupwards.  If peradventure the ten righteous shall be found--but\nthey must be righteous, and know what they are doing--I will\nspare, and not destroy, saith the Lord.\n\n(He said nothing about respectabilities. I dare say there was\nquite a percentage of respectable chapel-going Sabbath-observing\nfolk in the Cities of the Plain.)\n\nAnd yet there must be always that dreadful possibility--which\nperhaps has never become actual since the fall of Atlantis--that\na whole large section of mankind should go quite mad, and become\nunfit to carry on the work of evolution.  It is a matter of\ncorrupting the streams of heredity; which is done by vice,\nexcess, wrong living; and these come of ignorance.  Heaven knows\nhow near it we may be today; I do not think Christendom stands,\nor has stood, so very far, from the brink.  And yet it is from\nthe white race, we have supposed, that the coming races will be\nborn; this is the main channel through which human evolution is\nintended to flow.--We are in kall-yuga; the Mysteries are dead,\nand the religions have taken their place:  there has been no sure\nand certain link, organized on this plane, between the world and\nits Higher Self.  Each succeeding civilization, under these\ncircumstances, has run a greater risk.\n\nOf what race are we?  I say, of no race at all, but can view the\nmatter as Human Souls, reincarnating egos, prepared to go where\nthe Law bids us.  Races are only temporary institutions set up\nfor the convenience of the Host of Souls.\n\nWe see, I suppose, the results of such a breakdown in Africa.\nAtlanteans were segregated there; isolated; and for a million\nyears degenerated in that isolation to what they are.  But their\nancestors, before that segregation began, had better airships\nthan we have; were largely giants, in more respects than the\nphysical, were we are pygmies.  Now they are--whatever may be\ntheir potentialities, whatever they may become--actually an\ninferior reace.  And it is a racial stock that shows no signs of\ndying out.  What then?--I suppose indeed there must be backward\nraces, to house backward egos;--though for that matter you would\nthink that our Londons and Chicagos and the rest, with their\nslums, would provide a good deal of accommodation.\n\nOr consider the Redskins, here and in South America:  whether\nAtlanteans, or of some former subrace of the Fifth, at least not\nAryans.  Take the finest tribes among them, such as the Navajos.\nHere is a very small hereditary stream, kept pure and apart:  of\nfine physique; potentially of fine mentality; unsullied with\nvices of any sort:  a people as much nearer than the white man to\nnatural spirituality, as to natural physical health.  It is no\nuse saying they are so few.  Two millenniums ago, how many were\nthe Anglo-Saxons?  Three millenniums ago, how many were the\nLatins?  Supposing the white race in America failed.  The\nstatistics of lunacy--of that alone--are a fearful _Mene, Tekel\nUpharsin_ written on our walls, for any Daniel with vision\nto read.  I think Naure must also take into account these\npossibilities.  Does she keep in reserve hereditary streams and\nracial stocks other than her great and main ones, _in case of\naccidents?_  Are the Redskins among these?\n\n_The Secret Doctrine_ seems to hint sometimes that the founders\nof our Fifth Root Race were of Lemurian rather than Atlantean\ndescent.  Nowhere is it actually said so; but there are a number\nof passages that read, to me, as if they were written with that\nidea, or theory, or fact, in mind.  Is it, possibly, that a small\npure stream of Lemurian heredity had been kept aloof through all\nthe years of Atlantis, in reserve;--some stream that may have\nbeen, at one time, as narrow as the tribe of Navajos?--This may\nbe a very bold conclusion to draw from what is said in _The\nSecret Doctrine;_  it may have no truth in it whatever:  other\npassages are to be found, perhaps, that would at least appear to\ncontradict it.  But if it is true, it would account for what\nseems like a racial anomaly--or more than one.  Science leans to\nthe conclusion that the Australian aborigines are Aryan:  they\nare liker Aryans than anything else.  But we know from _The\nSecret Doctrine_ that they are among the few last remnants of the\nLemurians.  Again, the Ainos of Japan are very like Europeans:\nthey have many physical features in common with the Caucasians,\nand none in common with the peoples of East Asia.  Yet they are\nvery low down in the scale of evolution:--not so low as the\nAustralian Blackfellow, but without much occasion for giving\nthemselves airs.  A thousand years of contact with the much-\nwashing Japanese have never suggested to them why God made soap\nand water.  Like many other people, they have the legend of the\nflood:  remember, as you may say, the fall of Atlantis; but\nunlike us upstarts of the Fourth and Fifth Races, they have also\na legend of a destruction of the world by fire and earthquake--a\ncataclysm that lasted, they say, a hundred days. Is it a memory\nof the fate of Lemuria?\n\nIs a new Root-Race developed, not from the one immediately\npreceding it, but from the one before?  Is Mercury's caduceus,\nhere too, a symbol of the way evolution is done?  Did the Law\nkeep in reserve a Sishta or Seed-Race from Lemuria, holding it\nback from Atlantean development during the whole period of the\nAtlanteans;--holding it, all that while, in seclusion and purity\n--and therefore in a kind of pralaya;--at the right moment, to\npush its development, almost suddenly, along a new line, not\nparallel to the Atlantean, but _sui generis,_ and to be Aryan\nFifth presently?--Is the Law keeping in reserve a _Sishta_ or\nSeed-Race of Atlantean stock, holding that in reserve and apart\nall through our Aryan time, to develop from it at last the\nbeginnings of the Sixth, on the new continent that will appear?\nOr to do so, at any rate, should the main Aryan stock fail at one\nof the grand crises in its evolution, and become of too corrupt\nheredity to produce fitting vehicles for the egos of the Sixth\nto inhabit?\n\nWhen we have evolved back to Sanskrit for the last time:  when\nthe forces of civilization have played through and exhausted for\nthe last time the possibilities of each of the groups of Aryan\nlanguages, so that it would be impossible to do anything more\nwith them--for languages do become exhausted:  we cannot write\nEnglish now as they could in the days of Milton and Jeremy\nTaylor; not necessarily because we are smaller men, but because\nthe fabric of our speech is worn much thinner, and will no longer\ntake the splendid dyes;--and when that final flowering of\nSanskrit is exhausted too--will the new Sixth Race language, as a\ntype, be a derivation from the Aryan?  Then how?--Or will it,\npossibly, be as it were a new growth sprung out of the grave of\nFourth Race Chinese, or of one of that Atlantean group through\nwhich, during all these millions of years, such great and main\nbrain-energies have not on the whole been playing as they have\nbeen through the Aryans; and which might therefore, having\nlain so long fallow, then be fit for new strange developments\nand uses?\n\nAll of which may be, and very likely is, extremely wide of the\nmark. Such ideas may be merest wild speculation, and have no\ntruth in them at all. And yet I think that if they were true,\nthey would explain a thing to me otherwise inexplicable: China.\n\nWe are in the Fifth Root-Race, and the fifth sub-race thereof:\nthat is, beyond the middle point. And yet one in every four of\nthe inhabitants of the globe is a Fourth Race Chinaman; and I\nsuppose that if you took all the races that are not Caucasian, or\nFifth Race, you would find that about half the population of the\nworld is Atlantean still.\n\nTake the languages. A Sanskrit word, or a Greek, or Old Gothic,\nor Latin, is a living organism, a little articulate being. There\nis his spine, the root; his body, the stem; his limbs and head,\nthe formative elements, prefixes and suffixes, case-endings and\nwhat not. Let him loose in the sentence, and see how he wriggles\ngaily from state to state:  with a flick of the tail from\nnominative to genitive, from singular to plural:  declaring his\nmeaning, not by means of what surroundings you put about him, but\nby motions, changes, volitions so to say, of his own. 'Now,' says\nhe, 'I'm _pater,_ and the subject; set me where you will, and I\nam still the subject, and you can make nothing else of me.'  Or,\n'Now,' says he, 'I'm _patrem,_ and the object; go look for my\nlord the verb, and you shall know what's done to me; be he next\ndoor, or ten pages away, I am faithful to him.'  _Patrem filius\namat,_ or _filius amat patrem,_ or in whatever order it may be,\nthere is no doubt who does, and who (as they say) _suffers_ the\nloving.--But now take a word in English. You can still recognise\nhim for the same creature that was once so gay and jumpy-jumpy:\n_father_ is no such far cry from _pater:_--but oh what a change\nin sprightliness of habits is here!  Time has worn away his head\nand limbs to almost unrecognisable blunt excrescences. Bid him\nmove off into the oblique cases, and if he can help it, he will\nnot budge; you must shove him with a verb; you must goad him\nwith a little sharp preposition behind; and then he just _lumps_\nbackward or forward, and there is no change for the better in\nhim, as you may say. No longer will he declare his meaning of\nhimself; it must depend on where you choose to put him in the\nsentence.--Among the mountains of Europe, the grand Alps are the\nparvenus; the Pyrenees look down on them; and the Vosges on the\nPyrenees; and--pardon me!--the little old time-rounded tiny\nWelsh mountains look down on them all from the heights of a much\ngreater antiquity. They are the smallest of all, the least jagged\nand dramatic of all; time and the weather have done most to\nthem.  The storm, like the eagle of Gwern Abwy in the story, has\nlighted on their proud peaks so often, that that from which once\nshe could peck at the stars in the evening, rises now but a few\nthousand feet from the level of the sea. Time and springs and\nsummers have silenced and soothed away the startling crags and\nchasms, the threatening gestures of the earth at infinity, and\nclothed them over with a mantle of quietness and green fern and\nheather and dreams. When the Fifth Race was younger, its language\nwas Alpine: in Gothic, in Sanskrit, in Latin, you can see the\ncrags and chasms.  French, Spanish and Italian are Pyrenean, much\nworn down. English is the Vosges. Chinese is hardly even the\nWelsh mountains. Every word is worn perfectly smooth and round.\nThere is no sign left at all of prefix or suffix, root or stem.\nThere are no parts of speech:  any word without change can do\nduty for any part of speech. There is no sign of case or number:\nall has been reduced to an absolute simplicity, beyond which\nthere is no going. Words can end with no consonant but the most\nrounded of all, the nasal liquids _n_ and _ng._ There is about as\nmuch likeness to the Aryan and Semitic languages--you can trace\nabout as much analogy between them--as you can between a\ncentipede and a billiard-ball.\n\nThere are definite laws governing the changes of language. You\nknow how the Latin _castrum_ became in English _ciaster_ and then\n_chester;_  the change was governed by law. The same law makes\nour present-day vulgar say _cyar_ for _car;_  that word, in the\nAmerican of the future, will be something like chair. The same\nlaw makes the same kind of people say _donchyer_ for _don't you;_\nsome day, alas! even that will be classical and refined American.\nWell; we know that that law has been at work in historic times\neven on the Chinese billiard-ball:  where Confucius said _Ts'in_\nlike a gentleman, the late Yuan Shi Kai used to say _Ch'in._  So\ndid the Dowager Empress; it was eminently the refined thing to\ndo. So we ourselves have turned _Ts'in_ into _China._--And that\nis the one little fact--or perhaps one of the two or three little\nfacts--that remain to convince us that Chinese and its group of\nkindred languages grew up on the same planet, and among the same\nhumankind, that produced Sanskrit and Latin.\n\nBut does not that suggest also the possibility that Alpine Aryan\nmight some day--after millions of years--wear down or evolve back\neven into billiard-ball Chinese?  That human language is _one\nthing;_  and all the differences, the changes rung on that\naccording to the stages of evolution?\n\nIn the Aryan group of languages, the bond of  affinity is easily\nrecognisable:  the roots of the words are the same:  _Pitri,\npater, vater,_  are clearly but varying pronunciations of the\nsame word.  In the Turanic group, however--Finnish, Hungarian,\nTurkish, Tatar, Mongol and Manchu--you must expect no such\nwell-advertised first-cousinship.  They are grouped together,\nnot because of any likeness of roots:  not because you could\nfind one single consonant the same in the Lappish or Hungarian,\nsay, and in the Mongol or Manchu words for _father_--you\nprobably could not;--but because there may be syntactical\nlikenesses, or the changes and assimilations of sounds may\nbe governed by the same laws.  Thus in Turkic--I draw upon\nthe _Encyclopaedia Britannica_--there is a suffix z, preceded\nby a vowel, to mean your:  _pederin_ is 'father'; 'your father'\nbecomes _pederiniz;_  _dostun_ means 'friend'; 'your friend'\nbecomes not _dostuniz,_ but _dostunus;_  and this trick of\nassimilating the vowel of the suffix is the last one in the\nstem is an example of the kind of similarities which establish\nthe relationship of the group.  As for likeness of roots,\nhere is a specimen:  _gyordunus_ is the Turkish for the Finnish\n_naikke._--So here you see a degree of kinship much more\nremote than that you find in the Aryan.  Where, say, Dutch\nand Gaelic are brothers--at least near relations and bosom\nfriends,--Turkish and Mongol are about fifteenth cousins by\nmarriage twice removed, and hardly even nod to each other in\npassing.  And yet Turks and Mongols both claim descent from the\nsons of a common father:  according to legends of both peoples,\nthe ancestor of the Turks was the brother of the ancestor of the\nMongols.  (Always remember that in speaking of Turks thus\nscientifically, one does not mean the Ottomans, who inherit\ntheir language, but are almost purely Caucasian or even Aryan,\nin blood.)\n\nNow take the Monosyllabic or South-Eastern Asiatic Group:\nChinese, Burmese, Siamese, Annamese, and Tibetan.  Here there\nare only negatives, you might say, to prove a relationship.\nThey do not meet on the street; they pass by on the other side,\nnoses high in the air; each sublimely unaware of the other's\nexistence.  They suppose they are akin--through Adam; but whould\ntell you that much has happened since then.  Their kinship\nconsists in this:  the words are each are billiard-balls--and\nyet, if you will allow the paradox, of quite different shapes.\nThus I should call a Tibetan name like _nGamri-srong-btsan_ a\ngood jagged angular sort of billiard-ball; and a Chinese one\nlike _T'ang Tai-tsong_ a perfectly round smooth one of the kind\nwe know.--The languages are akin, because each say, where we\nshould say 'the horse kicked the man,'  _horse agent man kicking\ncompletion,_ or words to that effect,--dapped out nearly in\nspherical or angular disconnected monosyllables.  But the words\nfor _horse_ and _man,_ in Chinese and Tibetan, have respectively\nas much phonetic likeness as _geegee_ and _equus,_ and _Smith_\nand _Jones._  As to the value and possibilities of such\nlanguages, I will quote you two pronouncements, both from writers\nin the _Encyclopaedia Britannica._  One says:  \"Chinese has the\ngreatest capacity of any language ever invented\"; the other,\n\"The Chinese tongue is of unsurpass jejuneness.\"\n\nIn the whole language there are only about four or five hundred\nsounds you could differentiate by spelling, as to say, _shih,_\npronounced like the first three letters in the word _shirt_ in\nEnglish.  That vocable may mean:  _history,_ or _to employ,_ or\n_a corpse, a market, a lion, to wait on, to rely upon, time,\npoetry, to bestow, to proclaim, a stone, a generation, to eat, a\nhouse,_ and all such things as that;--I mention a few out of the\nlist by way of example.*  Now of course, were that all to be said\nabout it, Chinamen would no doubt sometimes get confused:  would\nthink you meant a corpse, when you were really talking about\npoetry, and so on. But there is a way of throwing a little\nbreathing in, a kind of hiatus: thus _Ts'in_ meant one country,\nand _Tsin_ another one altogether; and you ought not to mix them,\nfor they were generally at war, and did not mix at all well. That\nwould potentially extend the number of sounds, or words, or\nbilliard-balls, from the four hundred and twenty in modern polite\nPekinese, or the twelve hundred or so in the older and less\ncultured Cantonese, to twice as many in each case. Still that\nwould be but a poor vocabulary for the language with the vastest\nliterature in the world, as I suppose the Chinese is. Then you\ncome to the four tones, as a further means of extending it. You\npronounce _shih_ one tone--you sing it on the right note, so to\nsay, and it means _poetry;_ you take that tone away, and give\nit another, the dead tone, and very naturally it becomes _a\ncorpse:_--as, one way, and another I have often tried to impress\non you it really does.--Of course the hieroglyphs, the written\nwords, run into hundreds of thousands; for the literature, you\nhave a vocabulary indeed. But you see that the spoken language\ndepends, to express its meaning, upon a different kind of\nelements from those all our languages depend on. We have solid\nwords that you can spell:  articles built up with the bricks of\nsound-stuff we call letters: _c-a-t_ cat, _d-o-g_ dog, and so\non;--but their words, no; nothing so tangible:  all depends on\nlittle silences, small hiatuses in the vocalizition,--and above\nall, _musical tones._   Now then, which is the more primitive?\nWhich is nearer the material or intellectual, and which, the\nspiritual, pole?\n\n-------\n* _Encyclopaedia Britannica:_ article, China: Language.\n-------\n\nMore primitive--I do not know. Only I think when the Stars of\nMorning sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy;\nwhen primeval humanity first felt stirring within it the Divine\nfire and essence of the Lords of Mind; when the Sons of the Fire\nmist came down, and found habitation for themselves in the bodies\nof our ancestors; when they saw the sky, how beautiful and\nkindly it was; and the wonder of the earth, and that blue jewel\nthe sea; and felt the winds of heaven caress them, and were\naware of the Spirit, the Great Dragon, immanent in the sunlight,\nquivering and scintillant in the dim blue diamond day;\n\n     \"They prayed, but their worship was only\n          The wonder of nights and of days,\"\n\n--when they opened their lips to speak, and the first of all the\npoems of the earth was made:--it was song, it was tone, it was\nmusic they uttered, and not brute speech such as we use, it was\nintoned vowels, as I imagine, that composed their language:\nseven little vowels, and seven tones or notes to them perhaps:\nand with these they could sing and tell forth the whole of the\nGlory of God. And then--was it like this?--they grew material,\nand intellectual, and away from the child-state of the Spirit;\nand their tones grew into words; and consonants grew on to the\nvowels, to make the vast and varied distinctions the evolving\nintellect needed for its uses; and presently you had Atlantis\nwith its complex civilization--its infinitely more complex\ncivilization even than our own; and grammar came ever more into\nbeing, ever more wonderful and complex, to correspond with the\ngrowing curves and involutions of the ever more complex-growing\nhuman brain; and a thousand languages were formed--many of them\nto be found still among wild tribes in mid-Africa or America--as\nmuch more complex than Sanskrit, as Sanskrit is than Chinese:\nhighly declensional, minutely syntactical, involved and worked up\nand filigreed beyond telling;--and that was at the midmost point\nand highest material civilization of Atlantis.  And then the\nFourth Race went on, and its languages evolved; back, in the\nseventh sub-race, to the tonalism, the chanted simplicity of\nthe first sub-race;--till you had something in character not\nintellectual, but spiritual:--Chinese.  And meanwhile--I am\nthrowing out the ideas as they come, careless if the second\nappears to contradict the first:  presently a unity may come of\nthem;--meanwhile, for the purposes of the Fifth Root-Race, then\nnascent, a language-type had grown up, intellectual as any in\nAtlantis, because this Fifth Race was to be intellectual too,--\nbut also spiritual:  not without tonalistic elements:  a thing to\nbe chanted, and not dully spoken:--and there, when the time came\nfor, it to be born, you had the Sanskrit.\n\nBut now for the Sixth Root-Race: is that to figure mainly on the\nplane of intellect? Or shall we then take intellectual things\nsomewhat for granted, as having learnt them and passed on to\nsomething higher? Look at those diagrams of the planes and globes\nin _The Secret Doctrine,_ and see how the last ones, the sixth\nand seventh, come to be on the same level as the first and\nsecond. Shall we be passing, then, to a time when, in the\nseventh, our languages will have no need for complexity:  when\nour ideas, no longer personal but universal and creative, will\nflow easily from mind to mind, from heart to heart on a little\ntone, a chanted breath of music; when mere billiard-balls of\nsyllables will serve us, so they be rightly sung:--until\npresently with but seven pure vowel sounds, and seven tones to\nsing them to, we shall be able to tell forth once more the whole\nof the Glory of God?\n\nNow then, is Chinese primitive, or is it an evolution far away\nand ahead of us?  Were there first of all billiard-balls; and\ndid they acquire a trick of coalescing and running together;\nthis one and that one, in the combination, becoming subordinate\nto another; until soon you had a little wriggling creature of a\nword, with his head of prefix, and his tail of suffix, to look or\nflicker this way or that according to the direction in which he\nwished to steer himself, the meaning to be expressed;--from\nmonosyllabic becoming agglutinative, synthetic, declensional,\ncomplex--Alpine and super-Sanskrit in complexity;--then Pyrenean\nby the wearing down of the storms and seasons; then Vosges, with\ncrags forest-covered; then green soft round Welsh mountains;\nand then, still more and more worn down by time and the phonetic\nlaws which decree that men shall (in certain stages of their\ngrowth) be always molding their languages to an easier and easier\npronunciation,--stem assimilating prefix and suffix, and growing\nintolerant of changes within itself;--fitting itself to the\nweather, rounding off its angles, coquetting with euphony;--\ndropping harsh consonants; tending to end words with a vowel, or\nwith only the nasal liquids n and ng, softest and roundest sounds\nthere are;--till what had evolved from a billiard-ball to an\nAlpine crag, had evolved back to a billiard-ball again, and was\nChinese?  Is it primitive, or ultimate?  I am almost certain of\nthis, at any rate:  that as a language-type, it stands somewhere\nmidway between ours and spiritual speech.\n\nHow should that be; when we are told that this people is of the\nFourth, the most material of the Races; while we are on the\nproud upward arc of the Fifth? And how is it that H. P. Blavatsky\nspeaks of the Chinese civilization as being younger than that of\nthe Aryans of India, the Sanskrit speakers,--Fifth certainly?  Is\nthis, possibly, the explanation:  that the ancestors of the\nChinese, a colony from Atlantis some time perhaps long before the\nAtlantean degeneration and fall, were held under major pralaya\napart from the world-currents for hundreds of thousands of years,\nuntil some time later than 160,000 years ago--the time of the\nbeginning our our sub-race?  A pralaya, like sleep, is a period\nof refreshment, spiritual and physical; it depends upon your\nmood as you enter it, to what degree you shall reap its benefits:\nwhether it shall regenerate you; whether you shall arise from it\nspiritually cleansed and invigorated by contact with the bright\nImmortal Self within.  Africa entered such a rest-period from an\norgy of black magic, and her night was filled with evil dreams\nand sorceries, and her people became what they are.  But\nif China entered it guided by white Atlantean Adepts, it\nwould have been for her Fairyland; it would have been the\nFortunate Islands; it would have been the Garden of Siwang Mu,\nthe paradise of the West; and when she came forth it would\nhave been--it might have been--with a bent not towards intellectual,\nbut towards spiritual achievements.\n\nCompare her civilization, in historic times, with that of the\nWest.  Historic times are very little to go by, but they are all\nwe have at present.--She attained marvelous heights; but they\nwere not the same kind of heights the West has attained.  Through\nher most troublous, stirring, and perilous times, she carried\nwhole provinces of Devachan with her.  It was while she was\nfalling to pieces, that Ssu-K'ung T'u wrote his divinely delicate\nmeditations.  When the iron most entered her soul, she would\nweep, but not tear her hair or rage and grow passionate; she\nwould condescend to be heart-broken, but never vulgar.  In her\ngayest moments, wine-flushed and Spring-flushed, she never forgot\nherself to give utterance to the unseemly.  There is no line in\nher poetry to be excused or regretted on that score.  She\nworshipped Beauty, as perhaps only Greece and France in the West\nhave done; but unlike Greece or France, she sought her divinity\nonly in the impersonal and dispassionate:  never mistook for its\nvoice, the voices of the flesh.  She sinned much, no doubt; but\nnot in her pursuit of the Beautiful; not in her worship of Art\nand Poetry.  She was faithful to the high Gods there.  She never\nproduced a figure comparable to, nor in the least like, our\nHomers and Aeschyluses, Dantes and Miltons and Shakespeares.  But\nthen, the West has never, I imagine, produced a figure comparable\nto her Li Pos, Tu Fus, Po Chu-is or Ssu-k'ung T'us:  giants in\nlyricism--one might name a hundred of them--beside whom our Hugos\nand Sapphos and Keatses were pygmies.  Nor have we had any to\ncompare with her masters of landscape-painting:  even the\n_Encyclopaedia Britannica_ comes down flat-footed with the\nstatement that Chinese landscape-painting is the highest the\nworld has seen.--And why?--Because it is based on a knowledge of\nthe God-world; because her eyes were focused for the things 'on\nthe other side of the sky'; because this world, for her, was a\nmere reflexion and thin concealment of the other, and the mists\nbetween her and the Divine 'defecate' constantly, in Coleridge's\ncurious phrase, 'to a clear transparency.'  Things seen were an\nopen window into the Infinite; but with us, heaven knows, that\nwindow is so thick filthy with selfhood, so cobwebbed and\nbegrimed with passion and egotism and individualism and all the\nsmoke and soot of the brain-mind, that given an artist with a\nnatural tendency to see through, he has to waste half his life\nfirst in cleaning it with picks and mattocks and charges of\ndynamite.  So it becomes almost inevitable that when once you\nknow Chinese painting, all western painting grows to look rather\ncoarse and brutal and materialistic to you.\n\nBut, you say, no Aeschylus or Shakespeare?  No Dante or Homer? No\nepic--no great drama!   Pooh! you say, where is the great\ncreative energy?  Where is the sheer brain force?--\n\nIt is to us a matter of course that the type of our great ones is\nthe highest possible type. Well; it may be:  but the deeper you\ngo into thinking it over, the less certain you are likely to\nbecome as to the absoluteness of standards. The time to award the\nprizes is not yet; all we can do is to look into the nature of\nthe differences. Warily let us go to work here!\n\nWhere, you asked, are the great creative energies?  Well; in the\nWest, certainly, they have flowed most where they can most be\nseen  as _energies._  I think, through channels nearer this\nmaterial plane:  nearer the plane of intellect, at any rate.--No:\nthere is no question where the sheer brain force has been:  it\nhas been in the West.  But then, where was it more manifest, in\nPope or in Keats?  In Pope most emphatically. But off with your\nhead if you say he gave the greater gift.--Or I will leave Pope,\nand go to his betters; and say that Keats, when he caught in his\nnet of words the fleeting beauty of the world, was far nearer the\nSpirit than was Bacon when with tremendous intellectual energy he\ndevised his philosophy:  there was a much longer evolution behind\nthe ease and effortless attainment of the one, than behind the\nother's titanic brain-effort. Yet, so far as the putting forth of\nbrain energies is concerned, there is no question:  Bacon was\nmuch the greater man.\n\nSo in all creative work, in all thought, we must call the West\nincomparably greater in brain energy.  And I am not making such a\nfoolish comparison as between modern or recent conditions in the\ntwo races. You see it if you set the greatest Eastern ages, the\nHan, the T'ang, the Sung, or the Fujiwara, against the Periclean,\nAugustan, Medicean, Elizabethan, or Louis Quatorze.  In the West,\nthe spiritual creative force came down and mingled itself more\nforcefully with the human intellect:  had a much more vigorous\nbasis in that, I think, to work in and upon.  It has reached\nlower into the material, and played on matter more powerfully--\nand, be it said, on thought and intellection too.\n\nWe are so accustomed to thinking of spirituality as something\nthat, outside the plane of conduct, can only play through thought\nand intellection, or perhaps religious emotion, that to speak of\nthe high spirituality of China will sound, to most, absurd. On\nthe whole, you must not go to China for thought or intellection.\nLeast of all you must go there for what we commonly understand by\nreligious emotion;--they don't readily gush over a personal god.\nIt will seem entirely far-fetched to say that in China the\ncreative forces have retained much more of their spirituality:\nhave manifested perhaps not less greatly than in the West, but on\nplanes less material, nearer their spiritual source. It will\nseem so the more because until very recently China has been\nconstantly misrepresented to us.  And yet I think it is pretty\nmuch the truth.\n\nIn all their creative art the Spirit has been busy suggesting\nitself, not through ideas, or the forms of intellection, but\nthrough the more subtle perceptions and emotions that lie behind.\nIt gives us, if we are at all gifted or educated to see, pure\nvistas of Itself. Compare Michelangelo's Moses with the Dai Butsu\nat Kamakura:--as I think Dr. Siren does in one of his lectures.\nThe former is a thing of titanic, even majestic energies; but\nthey are energies physical and mental:  a grand triumph on what\nis called in Sanskrit philosophy the Rajasic plane.  The second\nsuggests, not energy and struggle, but repose and infinite calm.\nIn the Moses, we sense warfare, with victory, to attain and to\nhold its attainment; in the Dai Butsu, something that has passed\nthrough all that aeons ago.  In which is the greater sum of\nenergies included? In the Dai Butsu certainly; wherein we see no\nsign of what we commonly call energies at all. The one is human\nstruggling up towards  Godhood; the other, Godhood looking down\nwith calm limitless compassion upon man.  Such need no engines\nand dynamics to remove the mountains:  they bid them rise up, and\nbe cast into the sea; and are obeyed.\n\nOr take a great Chinese landscape and a great Western one:  a Ma\nYuan, say, and a--whom you please.  To the uninstructed it seems\nridiculous to compare them.  This took a whole year to paint; it\nis large; there is an enormous amount of hard work in it; huge\ncreative effort, force, exertion, went to make it.  That--it was\ndone perhaps in an hour.  That mountain is but a flick of the\nbrush; yonder lake but a wash and a ripple.  It is painted on a\nlittle trumpery fan--a mere square foot of silk.  Yes; but on\nthat square foot, by the grace of the Everlasting Spirit, are 'a\nthousand miles of space':  much more--there is Infinity itself.\nWatch; and that faint gray or sepia shall become the boundless\nblue; and you shall see dim dragons wandering:  you shall see\nEternal Mystery brooding within her own limitless home.  Far, far\nmore than in the western work, there is an open window into the\nInfinite:  that which shall remind us that we are not the poor\nclay and dying embers we seem, but a pat of the infinite\nMystery.  The Spirit is here; not involved in human flesh and\nintellection, but impersonal and universal.  What do you\nwant:--to be a great towering personality; or to remember\nthat you are a flame of the Fire which is God?  Oh, out upon\nthese personal deities, and most ungodly personalities of\nthe West!  I thank China for reminding me that they are cheap\nand nasty nothingnesses at the best!\n\nWe rather demand of our art, at its highest, that it shall be a\nstimulant, and call to our minds the warfare in which we are\nengaged:  the hopeless-heroic gay and ever mournful warfare of\nthe soul against the senses.  Well; that battle has to be\nfought; there is nothing better than fighting it--until it is\nwon. Let us by all means hear the snarling of the trumpets; let\nus heed the battle-cries of the Soul. But let us not forget that\nsomewhere also the Spirit is at peace:  let us remember that\nthere is Peace, beyond the victory. In Chinese art and poetry we\ndo not hear the war-shouts and the trumpets:  broken, there, are\nthe arrow and the bow; the shield, the sword, the sword and the\nbattle.--But--_the Day-Spring from on high hath visited us._\n\nWhat element from the Divine is in it, does not concern itself\nwith this earth-life; tells you nothing in criticism of life.\nThere is naught in it of the Soul as Thinker, nor of the Soul as\nWarrior.  But surely it is something for us, immersed here in\nthese turbid Rajasika regions, to be reminded sometimes that the\nSattvic planes exist; it is something for us to be given\nglimpses of the pure quietudes of the Spirit in its own place.  I\nam the better, if I have been shown for an instant the delicate\nimperishable beauty of the Eternal.\n\n     \"We are tired who follow after\n          Truth, a phantasy that flies;\n      You with only look and laughter\n          Stain our hearts with richest dyes.\"--\n\nThey do indeed; with look and laughter--or it may be tears.\n\nNow, what does it all mean?  Simply this, I think:  that the West\nbrings down what it can of the Spirit into the world of thought\nand passion; brings it down right here upon this bank and\nshoal of time; but China rises with you into the world of\nthe Spirit.  We do not as a rule allow the validity of the\nChinese method. We sometimes dub Keats, at his best a thorough\nChinaman, 'merely beautiful.'\n\nI have rather put the case for China; because all our hereditary\ninstincts will rise with a brief for the West.  But the truth is\nthat the Spirit elects its own methods and its own agents, and\ndoes this through the one, that through the other. When I read\n_Hamlet,_ I have no doubt Shakespeare was the greatest poet that\never lived.  When I read Li Po, I forget Shakespeare, and think\nthat among those who sing none was ever so wonderful as this\nBanished Angel of the Hills of Tang. I forget the Voice that\ncried 'Sleep no more!' and Poetry seems to me to have spoken her\nfinal word in what you would perhaps call trivialities about the\nCold Clear Spring or the White Foam Rapid:  she seems to me\nto have accomplished all she can in such bits of childlike\ndetachment and wonder as this:\n\n\"The song-birds, the pleasure-seekers, have flown long since;\nbut this lonely cloud floats on, drifting round in a circle.  He\nand Ching-ting Mountain gaze and gaze at each other, and never\ngrow weary of gazing\";\n\n--the 'lonely cloud' being, of course, Li Po himself. He has shown\nme Man the brother of the Mountains, and I ask no more of him.\nThe mountains can speak for themselves.\n\nHe had no moral purpose, this Banished Angel for whose sake the\nHills of T'ang are a realm in the Spirit, inerasible, and a\nbeautiful dream while the world endures. Po Chu-i, says Mr.\nArthur  Waley, blamed him for being deficient in _feng_ and\n_ya,_--by which we may understand, for present purposes, much\nwhat Matthew Arnold meant by 'criticism of life.'  But does it\nnot serve a spiritual purpose that our consciousness should be\nlifted on to those levels where personality is forgotten:  that\nwe should be made to regain, while reading, the child-state we\nhave lost?  Li Po died a child at sixty:  a magical child:\nalways more or less naughty, if we are to believe all accounts,\nespecially his own; but somehow never paying the penalty we pay\nfor our naughtiness,--exile from the wonder-world, and submersion\nin these intolerable personalities. You read Milton, and are\ncleaned of your personality by the fierce exaltation of the\nSpirit beating through.  You read Li Po-type of hundreds of\nothers his compatriots--and you are also cleaned of your\npersonality; but by gentle dews, by wonderment, by being carried\nup out of it into the diamond ether.  It seems to me that both\naffirmed the Divine Spirit.  Milton waged grand warfare in his\naffirmation.  Li Po merely said what he saw.\n\nSo I think that among the Aryans the Spirit has been fighting in\nand into the great turbid current of evolution; and that among\nthe Chinese it has not been so much concerned with that stream,\nbut rather to sing its own untrammeled expression. A great drama\nor epic comes of the presence and energy of the Spirit working\nin a human mind.  A great lyric comes of the escape of the\nconsciousness from the mind, and into the Spirit.  The West has\nproduced all the great dramas and epics, and will persist in the\nview that the Spirit can have no other expression so high as in\nthese forms.  Very likely the West is right; but I shall not\nthink so next time I am reading Li Po or Ssu-k'ung T'u--or Keats.\n\nAnd I have seen small mild Japanese jujitsu men 'put it all\nover,' as they say, big burly English wrestlers without seeming\nto exert themselves in any way, or forgoing their gentle methods\nand manner; and if you think of jujitsu rightly, it is, to our\nwrestling and boxing, much what Wu Taotse and Ku Kai-chih are to\nRembrandt and Michelangelo, or the Chinese poets to ours.\n\nIf we go into the field of philosophy, we find much the same\nthing. Take Confucianism. It is inappropriate, in some ways, to\ncall Confucius a great thinker (but we shall see that he was\nsomething very much more than that). He taught no religion;\nilluminated in nowise the world of mind; though he enabled\nmillions to illumine it for themselves. He made hardly a ripple\nin his own day; and yet, so far as I can see, only the Buddha\nand Mohammed, of the men whose names we know, have marshaled\nfuture ages as greatly as he did.  _Flow his way!_ said he to\nhistory; and, in the main, it did.  He created an astral mold\nfor about a quarter of humanity, which for twenty-four centuries\nhas endured.  He did it by formulating a series of rules for the\nconduct of personal and national life; or rather, by showing\nwhat kind of rules they should be, and leaving others to\nformulate them;--and so infused his doctrine with his will and\nexample, that century after century flowed into the matrix he had\nmade for them. To create such a stable matrix, the Aryan mind, in\nIndia, worked through long spiritual-intellectual exploration of\nthe world of metaphysics:  an intensive culture of all the\npossibilities of thought. We in the West have boggled towards the\nsame end through centuries of crass political experiment.\nConfucius, following his ancient models, ignored metaphysics\naltogether:  jumped the life to come, and made his be-all and his\nend-all here:--in what was necessary, in deeds and thought and\nspeech, to make individual, social, and political life staid,\nsincere, orderly, quiet, decent, and happy.  He died a broken-\nhearted failure; than whom perhaps no man except the Lord Buddha\never succeeded more highly.\n\nLaotse is his complement.  Laotse's aim is not the activity, but\nthe quiescence of mind, self, intellect:  \"in the NO THING\nseeking the lonely Way.\" You forgo everything--especially\nselfhood;--you give up everything; you enter upon the heritage\nof No Thing;--and you find yourself heir to the Universe, to\nwonder, to magic.  You do with all your complicated egoity as the\ncamel did with his cameltiness before he could enter the needle's\neye; then--heigh presto!--it is the Elixir of Life you have\ndrunk; it is freedom you have attained of the roaming-place\nof Dragons!--It amounts, truly, to the same thing as Aryan\nTheosophy; but where the latter travels through and illuminates\nimmense realms of thought and metaphysic, Taoism slides gently\ninto the Absolute; as who should laugh and say, _You see how\neasy it is!_ And you do not hear of the Path of Sorrow, as with\nthe Aryans; Tao is a path of sly laughter and delight.\n\nThen from Japan we get Shinto; still less a system of metaphysics\nor dogma.  The Shinto temple, empty but for air, is symbolic\nof the creed whose keynotes are purity and simplicity.  Taoism,\nConfucianism, and Shinto are the three great native creations,\nin religion, of what I shall call the Altaic mind.  There\nhave been, indeed, profound thinkers and metaphysicians both\nin Japan and China; but their mental activities have been\nfor the most part fruitage from the Aryan seed of Buddhism.\n\nA word here as to that phrase 'Altaic mind.'  What business has\none to class the Chinese and Japanese together, and to speak of\nthem (as I shall) as 'Altaic'--the _Altaic Race?_ In the first\nplace this term, like 'Latin' or 'Anglo-Saxon,' has the virtue of\nbeing quite meaningless.  It is utterly silly and inappropriate\nfrom every standpoint; but as I need a term to include China and\nall the peoples that have derived their historic culture from\nher, I shall beg leave to use it.  Neither Japanese nor Corean\nbelong to the billiard-ball group of languages.  There is a\nsyntactical likeness between these two, but none in vocabulary;\nwhere the Japanese vocabulary came from, Omniscience perhaps may\nknow.--A syntax outlasts a vocabulary by many ages:  you may hear\nCelts now talk English with a syntax that comes from the sub-race\nbefore our own: Iberian, and not Aryan.  So we may guess here a\nrace akin to the Coreans conquered at some time by a race whose\nvocables were Japanese--whence they came, God knows.  Only one\nhears that in South America the Japanese pick up the Indian\nlanguages a deal more easily than white folk do, or than they do\nSpanish or English.  But this is a divergence; we should be a\nlittle more forward, perhaps, if we knew who were the Coreans,\nor whence they came.  But we do not. They are not Turanic--of the\nFinno-Turko-Mongol stock (by language); they are not speakers of\nbilliard-balls, allied to the Chinese, Burmese, and Tibetans.\nBut the fact is that neither blood-affinity nor speech-affinity\nis much to the purpose here; we have to do with affinities of\nculture.  During the period 240 B. C.--1260 A. D. a great\ncivilization rose, flowered, and waned in the Far East; it had\nits origin in China, and spread out to include in its scope\nJapan, Corea, and Tibet; probably also Annam and Tonquin, though\nwe hear less of them;--while Burma, Assam, and Siam, and those\nsoutherly regions, though akin to China in language, seem\nto have been always more satellite to India.  Mongols and\nManchus, though they look rather like Chinese, and have lived\nrather near China, belong by language and traditionally by\nrace to another group altogether--to that, in fact, which\nincludes the very Caucasian-looking Turks and Hungarians;\nas to what culture they have had, they got it from China\nafter the Chinese manvantara had passed.\n\nThe Chinese themselves are only homogeneous in race in the sense\nthat Europe might be if the Romans had conquered it all, and\nimposed their culture and language on the whole continent. The\nstaid, grave, dignified, and rather stolid northern Chinaman\ndiffers from the restless and imaginative Cantonese not much less\nthan the Japanese does from either. This much you can say:\nChinese, Japanese, and Coreans have been molded into a kind of\nloose unity by a common culture; the peoples of China into a\ncloser homogeneity by a common culture-language, written and\nspoken,--and by the fact that they have been, off and on during\nthe last two thousand years, but most of the time, under the same\ngovernment.  As to Corea, though in the days of Confucius it was\nunknown to the Chinese, the legends of both countries ascribe the\nfounding of its civilization and monarchy to a Chinese minister\nexiled there during the twelfth century B. C. Japanese legendary\nhistory goes back to 600 B. C.;--that is, to the closing of the\nAge of the Mysteries, and the opening of that of the Religions:--\nI imagine that means that about that time a break with history\noccurred, and the past was abolished:  a thing we shall see\nhappen in ancient China presently.  But I suppose we may call\nShotoku Daishi the Father of historical Japan;--he who, about the\nend of the sixth century A. D., brought in the culture impetus\nfrom the continent. About that time, too, Siam rose to power; and\nsoon afterwards T'ang Taitsong imposed civilization on Tibet.--So\nthere you have the 'Altaic' Race; Altaic, as Mr. Dooley is\nAnglo-Saxon.  To speak of them as 'Mongolian' or 'Mongoloid,' as\nis often done, is about as sensible as to speak of Europeans and\nAmericans as 'Hunnoid,'  because the Huns once conquered part of\nEurope.  It conveys derogation--which Altaic does not.\n\nI have compared their achievement with that of the West:  we have\none whole manvantara and a pralaya of theirs to judge by, as\nagainst two fragments of western manvantaras with the pralaya\nintervening.  It is not much; and we should remember that there\nare cycles and epicycles; and that Japan, or old China herself,\nwithin our own lifetime, may give the lie to everything.\nBut from the evidence at hand one is inclined to draw this\nconclusion:  That in the Far East you have a great section of\nhumanity in reserve;--in a sense, in a backwater of evolution:\nnearer the Spirit, farther from the hot press and conflict of the\nmaterial world;--even in its times of highest activity, not in\nthe van of the down-rush of Spirit into matter, as the western\nraces have been in theirs;--but held apart to perform a different\nfunction. As if the Crest-Wave of Evolution needed what we might\ncall Devachanic cycles of incarnation, and found them there\nduring the Altaic manvantaras of manifestation.  Not that their\nhistory has been empty of tragedies; it has been very full of\nthem; and wars--some eight or nine Napoleons in their day have\nsat on the Dragon Throne.  But still, the worlds of poetry,\ndelight, wonder, have been nearer and more accessible to the\nChinaman, in his great ages, than to us in ours; as they have\nbeen, and probably are now, nearer to the Japanese.  And I do\nnot know how that should be, unless the Law had taken those\nAtlanteans away, kept them apart from the main stream--not\nfighting the main battle, but in reserve--for purposes that the\nlong millenniums of the future are to declare.\n\n\n\n\nIX.  THE DRAGON AND THE BLUE PEARL\n\n\nThe horizon of Chinese history lies near the middle of the third\nmillennium B. C. The first date sinologists dare swear to is 776;\nin which year an eclipse of the sun is recorded, that actually\ndid happen:  it is set down, not as a thing interesting in\nitself, but as ominous of the fall of wicked kings.  Here, then,\nin the one place where there is any testing the annals, it\nappears they are sound enough; which might be thought to speak\nwell for them. But our scholars are so damnebly logical, as Mr.\nMantalini would say, that to them it only proves this:  you are\nto accept no date earlier. One general solar indorsement will not\ndo; you must have an eclipse for everything you believe, and\ntrust nothing unless the stars in their courses bear witness.\n\nWell; we have fortunately Halley's Comet in the Bayeux Tapestry\nfor our familiar 1066; but beware! everything before that is to\nbe taken as pure fudge!\n\nThe fact is there is no special reason for doubting either\nchronology or sequence of events up to about 2357 B. C., in which\nyear the Patriarch Yao came to the throne. He was the first of\nthose three, Yao, Shun, and Yu, who have been ever since\nthe patterns for all Chinese rulers who have aspired to be\nConfucianly good. \"Be like Yao, Shun, and Yu; do as they did\";--\nthere you have the word of Confucius to all emperors and\ngovernors of states.\n\nYao, it is true, is said to have reigned a full century, or but\none year short of it. This is perhaps the first improbability we\ncome to; and even of this we may say that some people do live a\nlong time. None of his successors repeated the indiscretion.\nBefore him came a line of six sovereigns with little historic\nverisimilitude:  they must be called faint memories of epochs,\nnot actual men. The first of them, Fo-hi (2852-2738), was half\nman, half dragon; which is being interpreted, of course, an\nAdept King;--or say a line of Adept Kings. As for the dates given\nhim, I suppose there is nothing exact about them; that was all\ntoo far back for memory; it belongs to reminiscence.  Before Fo-\nhi came the periods of the Nest-Builders, of the Man-Kings, the\nEarth-Kings, and the Heaven-Kings; then P'an K'u, who built the\nworlds; then, at about two and a quarter million years before\nConfucius, the emanation of Duality from the Primal One.  All\nthis, of course, is merely the exoteric account; but it shows at\nleast that--the Chinese never fell into such fatuity as we of the\nWest, with our creation six trumpery millenniums ago.\n\nThis much we may say:  about the time when Yao is said to have\ncome to the throne a manvantara began, which would have finished\nits course of fifteen centuries in 850 or so B. C.  It is a\nperiod we see only as through a glass darkly: what is told about\nit is, to recent and defined history, as a ghost to a living man.\nThere is no reason why it should not have been an age of high\ncivilization and cultural activities; but all is too shadowy to\nsay what they were. To its first centuries are accredited works\nof engineering that would make our greatest modern achievements\nlook small: common sense would say, probably the reminiscence of\nsomething actual. Certainly the Chinese emerged from it, and into\ndaylight history, not primitive but effete:  senile, not\nchildlike. That may be only a racial peculiarity, a national\nprejudice, of course.\n\nAnd where should you look, back of 850 B. C., to find actual\nhistory--human motives, speech and passions--or what to our eyes\nshould appear such? As things near the time-horizon, they lose\ntheir keen outlines and grow blurred and dim. The Setis and\nThothmeses are names to us, with no personality attaching;\nthough we have discovered their mummies, and know the semblance\nof their features, our imagination cannot clothe them with life.\nWe can hear a near Napoleon joking, but not a far-off Rameses. We\ncan call Justinian from his grave, and traverse the desert with\nMohammed; but can bold no converse with Manu or Hammurabi;--\nbecause these two dwell well this side of the time-horizon, but\nthe epochs of those are far beyond it. The stars set:  the summer\nevenings forget Orion, and the nights of winter the beauty of\nFomalhaut:  though there is a long slope between the zenith _Now_\nand the sea-rim, what has once gone down beyond the west of time\nwe cannot recall or refashion. So that old Chinese manvantara is\ngone after the Dragon Fo-hi and the Yellow Emperor, after the\nMan-Kings and the Earth-Kings and the Heaven-Kings; and Yao,\nShun, and Yu the Great, and the kings of Hia, and Shang, and even\nChow, are but names and shadows,\n\n     _Quo pater, Aeneas, quo dires Tullus et Ancus,_\n\n--we cannot make them interestingly alive. But it does not follow\nthat they did not live when they are supposed to have lived, or\ndo the things attributed to them. Their architecture was\nephemeral, and bears no witness to them; they built no pyramids\nto flout time; they raised no monument but a people, a culture,\nan idea, that still endures.\n\nThen, too, we shall see that at the beginning of the last Chinese\nmanvantara a conscious attempt was made to break wholly with the\npast,--to wipe it from human memory, and begin all anew.  Such a\nthing happened in Babylon once; there had been a Sargon in\nremote antiquity with great deeds to his credit; thousands\nof years after, another Sargon arose, who envied his fame;\nand, being a kind, and absolute, decreed that all the years\nintervening should never have existed--merged his own in the\npersonality of his remote predecessor, and so provided a good\ndeal of muddlement for archaeologists to come.  Indeed, such a\nthing almost happened in France at the Revolution.  It is said\nthat in some French schools now you find children with a vague\nidea that things more or less began with the taking of the\nBastille:  that there was a misty indefinable period between the\n12th of October  (or on whatever day it was Eve's apple ripened)\nand the glorious 14th of July:--an age of prehistory, wandered\nthrough by unimportant legendary figures such as Jeanne Darc,\nHenri Quatre, Louis Quatorze, which we may leave to the\nsuperstitious--and come quickly to the real flesh and blood of M.\nde Mirabeau and Citizen Danton.--Even so, in our own time, China\nherself, wearied with the astral molds and inner burdens of two\nmillenniums, has been writhing in a fever of destruction:  has\nburnt down the Hanlin College, symbol and center of a thousand\nyears of culture; destroyed old and famous cities; sent up\npriceless encyclopaedias in smoke; replaced the Empire with a\nrepublic, and the Dragon of wisdom with five meaningless\nstripes;--breaking with all she was in her brilliant greatness,\nand all she has been since in her weakness and squalid decline.--\nWe ask why history is not continuous; why there are these\nstrange hiatuses and droppings out?--the answer is simple enough.\nIt is because Karma, long piled up, must sometime break out upon\nthe world.  The inner realms become clogged with the detritus of\nages and activity, till all power to think and do is gone:  there\nis no room nor scope left for it.  The weight of what has been\nthought and done, of old habit, presses down on men, obstructs\nand torments them, till they go mad and riot and destroy.  The\nmanvantara opens:  the Crest-Wave, the great tide of life, rushes\nin.  It finds the world of mind cluttered up and encumbered;\nthere is an acute disparity between the future and the past,\nwhich produces a kind of psychic maelstrom.  Blessed is that\nnation then, which has a man at its head who can guide things, so\nthat the good may not go with the bad, the useful with the\nuseless!  The very facts that Ts'in Shi Hwangti, when the\nmanvantara opened at the beginning of the third century B.C., was\ndriven (you may say) to do what ruthless drastic things he did.--\nand that his action was followed by such wonderful results--are\nproof enough that a long manvantara crowded with cultureal and\nnational activities had run it course in the past, and clogged\nthe astral, and made progress impossible.  But what he did do,\nthrows the whole of that past manvantara, and to some extent the\npralaya that followed it, into the realm of shadows.--He burnt\nthe literature.\n\nIn a few paragraphs let me summarize the history of that past age\nwhose remnants Ts'in Shi Hwangti thus sought to sweep away.--Yao\nadopted Shun for his successor; in whose reign for nine years\nChina's Sorrow, that mad bull of waters, the Hoangho, raged\nincessantly, carrying the world down towards the sea.  Then Ta\nYu, who succeeded Shun on the throne presently, devised and\ncarried through those great engineering works referred to above:\n--cut through mountains, yoked the mad bull, and saved the world\nfrom drowning.  He was, says H. P. Blavatsky, an Adept; and had\nlearnt his wisdom from the Teachers in the snowy Range of SiDzang\nor Tibet.  His dynasty, called the Hia, kept the throne until\n1766; ending with the downfall of a cruel weakling.  Followed\nthen the House of Shang until 1122; set up by a wise and\nmerciful Tang the Completer, brought to ruin by a vicious tyrant\nChousin.  It was Ki-tse, a minister of this last, and a great\nsage himself, who, fleeing from the persecutions of his royal\nmaster, established monarchy, civilization, and social order\nin Corea.\n\nAnother great man of the time was Won Wang, Duke of the\nPalatinate of Chow, a state on the western frontier whose\nbusiness was to protect China from the Huns.  Really, those Huns\nwere a thing to marvel at:  we first hear of them in the reign of\nthe Yellow emperor, two or three centuries before Yao; they were\ngiving trouble then, a good three millenniums before Attila.  Won\nWang, fighting on the frontier, withstood these kindly souls;\nand all China looked to him with a love he deserved.  Which of\ncourse roused King Chousin's jealousy; and when a protest came\nfrom the great soldier against the debaucheries and misgovernment\nat the capital, the king roused himself and did what he could;\nimprisoned the protestant, as he dared not kill him.  During the\nthree years of his imprisonment Won Wang compiled the mysterious\nI-King, of Book of Changes; of which Confucius said, that were\nanother half century added to his life, he would spend them all\nin studying it.  No western scholar, one may safely say, has ever\nfound a glimmer of meaning in it; but all the ages of China have\nheld it profounder than the profound.\n\nHis two sons avenged Won Wang; they roused the people, recruited\nan army in their palatinate--perhaps enlisted Huns too--and swept\naway Chousin and his dynasty.  They called their new royal house\nafter their native land, Chow; Wu Wang, the elder of the two,\nbecoming its first king, and his brother the Duke of Chow, his\nprime minister.  I say _king;_  for the title was now _Wang_\nmerely; though there had been _Hwangtis_ or Emperors of old.\nWon Wang and his two sons are the second Holy Trinity of China;\nYao, Shun, and Ta Yu being the first.  They figure enormously in\nthe literature:  are stars in the far past, to which all eyes,\nfollowing the august example of Confucius, are turned.  There is\na little  to be said about them:  they are either too near the\nhorizon, or too little of their history has been Englished, for\nus to see them in their habit as they lived; yet some luster of\nreal greatness still seems to shine about them.  It was the Duke\nof Chow, apparently, who devised or restored that whole Chinese\nreligio-political system which Confucius revivified and impressed\nso strongly on the stuff of the ideal world--for he could get no\nruler of his day to establish it in the actualities--that it\nlasted until the beginning of a new manvantara is shatter it now.\nThat it was based on deep knowledge of the hidden laws of life\nthere is this (among a host of other things) to prove:  Music was\nan essential part of it.  When, a few years ago, the tiny last of\nthe Manchu emperors came to the throne, an edict was published\ndecreeing that, to fit him to govern the empire, the greatest\ncare should be taken with his education in music.  A wisdom,\ntruly, that the west has forgotten!\n\nWhen William of Normandy conquered England, he rewarded his\nfollowers with fiefs:  in England, while English land remained so\nto be parceled out; afterwards (he and his successors) with\nunconquered lands in Wales, and then in Ireland.  they were to\ncarve out baronies and earldoms for themselves; and the Celtic\nlands thus stolen became known as the Marches:  their rulers,\nmore or less independent, but doing homage to the king, as Lords\nMarchers.  The kings of Chow adopted the same plan.  Their old\nduchy palatinate became the model for scores of others.  China\nitself--a very small country then--southern Shansi, northern\nHoman, western Shantung--was first divided up under the feudal\nsystem; the king retaining a domain, known as Chow, in Homan,\nfor his own.  Then princes and nobles--some of the blood royal,\nsome of the old shang family, some risen from the ranks--were\ngiven warrant to conquer lands for themselves from the barbarians\nbeyond the frontier:  so you go rid of the ambitious, and\nprovided Chow with comfortable buffers.  They went out, taking a\nmeasure of Chinese civilization with them, and conquered or\ncajoled Huns, Turks, Tatars, Laos, shans, Annamese, and all that\nkind of people, into accepting them for their rulers.  It was a\nwork, as you may imagine, of centuries; with as much history\ngoing forward as during any centuries you might name.  The states\nthus formed were young, compared to China; and as China grew old\nand weak, they grew into their vigorous prime.  The infinity of\nhuman activities that has been!  These Chow ages seem like the\nwinking of an eye; but they were crowded with great men and\nsmall, great deeds and trivialities, like our own.  The time will\ncome when our 'Anglo-Saxon' history will be written thus:\nEngland sent out colonies, and presently the colonies grew\nstronger and more populous than England;--and it will be enough,\nwithout mention of the Pitts and Lincolns, the Washingtons and\nGladstones, that now make it seem so full and important.\n\nBy 850 the balance of power had left or was leaving the Chow king\nat Honanfu.  His own subjects had grown unwarlike, and he could\nhardly command even their allegiance; for each man's feudal duty\nwas first to his own duke, marquis, earl, viscount, or baron;--\nstrangely enough, there were those five degrees of nobility in\nancient China as in modern England.  Of these nobles, each with\nhis court and feudal dominion, there were in what we may call\nChina Proper some unascertainable number between thirteen and a\nhundred and fifty:  mostly small and insignificant, but mostly,\ntoo, full of schemes and ambitions.\n\nBut it was the Lords Marchers that counted.  One after another of\nthem had wrested from the Chow the title of _Wang_ or King; it\nwas not enough for them to be dukes and marquises.  Then came a\ntime when a sort of Bretwalda-ship was established; to be\nwielded by whichever of them happened to be strongest--and\ngenerally to be fought for between whiles:  a glorious and\nperpetual bone of contention.  International law went by the\nboard.  The Chow domain, the duchies and marquisates, lay right\nin the path of the contestants--midmost of all, and most to be\ntrampled.  Was Tsin to march all round the world, when a mere\nscurry across neutral (and helpless) Chow would bring it at the\ndesired throat of Ts'u?--A question not to be asked!--there at\nHonanfu sat the Chow king, head of the national religion, head of\nthe state with its feudatories, receiving (when it suited them\nto pay it)  the annual homage of all those loud and greedy\npotentates, who for the rest kicked him about as they pleased,\nand ordered each other to obey him,--for was he not still the son\nof Heaven, possessor of the Nine Tripods of sovereignty, the\ntripods of Ta Yu?--So the centuries passed, growing worse and\nworse ever, from the ninth to the sixth:  an age of anarchy, bad\ngovernment, disorder, crime and clash of ambitions:  when there\nwas a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice\nin the world;--and we know what manner of incarnation, at such\ntimes, is likely to happen.\n\nConditions had outgrown the astral molds made for them in the\nlast manvantara:  the molds that had been made for a small\nhomogeneous China.  The world had expanded, and was no longer\nhomogeneous:  China herself was not homogeneous; and she found\non all sides of her very heterogeneous Ts'ins, Tsins, Ts'is,\nTs'us, Wus and Yuehs; each of whom, like so many Great Powers of\nour own times, had the best of intentions to partake of her\nsacramental body when God's will so should be.--Indeed, the\nsituation was very much as we have seen it.\n\nThen, as now (or recently), China was old, inert, tired, and\nunwarlike; must depend on her cunning, and chiefly on their\ndivisions, for what protection she might get against the\nrapacious and strong.  She was dull, sleepy and unimaginative,\nand wanted only to be left alone; yet teemed, too, with\nambitious politicians, each with his sly wires to pull.  Her\nculture, ancient and decrepit, was removed by aeons from all\nglamor of beginnings.--For a good European parallel, in this\nrespect, you might go to Constantinople in the Middle Ages, when\nit hung ripe on the bough, so to say, and waiting to fall into\nLatin, Turkish, Bulgar, or even Russian jaws, whichever at the\npsychic moment should be gaping and ready beneath. There too was\nthe sense of old age and sterility; of disillusionment; of all\nfountains and inspirations run dry.--In ancient Grecce, it was no\nsuch far cry back from the essential modernity of Pericles' or of\nPlato's time to the antiquity of Homer's.  In India, the faery\nlight of an immemorial dawn mingles so with the facts of history\nthat there is no disentangling myth from matter-of-fact; if you\nshould prove almost any king to have reigned quite recently, his\nthrone would still be somehow set in the mellow past and near the\nfountains of time.  Augustan Rome, modern in all its phases,\nstands not so far in front of a background peopled with nymphs\nand Sibyls:  a past in which the Great Twin Brothers might fight\nat Lake Regillus, and stern heroes make fantastic sacrifices for\nRome.  Even modern Europe is much less modern than  Medieval\nConstantinople or Chow China.  We can breathe still the\nmysterious atmosphere of the Middle Ages; you shall find\nstill, and that not in remote countries only, fairy-haunted\nvalleys; a few hours out from London, and you shall be in\nthe heart of druidry, and among peoples whose life is very\nnear to Poetry.  But China, in those first pre-Confucian centuries,\nwas desperately prosaic:  not so much modern, as pertaining to an\nugly not impossible future. Antiquity was far, far away. The dawn\nwith its glow and graciousness; noon and the prime with their\nsplendor, were as distant and unimaginable as from our Amercan\nselves the day when Charlemain with all his peers went down.  If\nyou can imagine an American several hundred years from now--one\nin which Point Loma had never been; several hundred years more\nunromantic than this one; an America fallen and grown haggard\nand toothless; with all impulse to progress and invention gone;\nwith centrifugal tendencies always loosening the bond of union;\nadvancing, and having steadily advanced, further from all\nreligious sanctions, from anything she may retain of the\natmosphere of mystery and folklore and the poetry of racial\nchildhood; you may get a picture of the mental state of that\nChina. A material civilization, with (except in war areas)\nreasonable security of life and goods, remained to her. Her\npeople lived in good houses, wore good clothes, used chairs and\ntables, chopsticks, plates and dishes of pottery; had for\ntransit boats, carts and chariots,* wheelbarrows I suppose, and\n\"cany wagons light.\" They had a system of writing, the origin of\nwhich was lost in remote antiquity; a large literature, of which\nfragments remain. They were home-loving, war-hating, quiet,\nstagnant, cunning perhaps, quite un-enterprising; they lived in\nthe valley of the Hoangho, and had not discovered, or had\nforgotten, the Yangtse to the south of them, and the sea to the\neast. They might have their local loyalties and patriotism of the\npork-barrel, and a certain arrogance of race:  belief in\nthe essential superiority of the Black-haired People to the\nbarbarians on their borders; but no high feeling for Chu Hia--\nAll the Chinas;--no dream of a possible national union and\ngreatness. Some three hundred of their folk-ballads come down to\nus, which are as unlike the folk-ballads of Europe as may be.\nThey do not touch on the supernatural; display no imagination;\nthere are no ghosts or fairies; there is no glory or delight in\nwar; there is no glory in anything;--but only an intense\ndesirability in _home,_--in staying at home with your family, and\ndoing your I work in the fields. And nothing of what we should\ncall romance, even in this home-love:  the chief tie is that\nbetween parents and children, not that between husband and wife,\nand still less that between lovers. There is much moralizing and\nwistful sadness.--Such was the life of the peasants; at the\nother pole was the life of the courts:  intrigue and cunning, and\nwhat always goes with cunning--ineptitude; a good measure of\ndebauchery; some finicking unimportant refinement; each man for\nself and party, and none for Gods and Men.  We have to do, not\nwith the bright colors of the childhood of a race, but with the\ngrayness of its extreme old age. Those who will may argue that\nyou can have old age with never a prime, youth, or childhood\nbehind it. Some say that Laotse was born at sixty-one, or\nseventy, or eighty-two years old--a few decades more or less are\nnot worth bothering about--whence his name _lao tse,_ the _old\nson_ (but _tse_ may also mean Teacher or Philosopher). But I\nmisdoubt the accuracy of such accounts, myself. I think it likely\nhe was a baby to begin with, like the majority of us. And I\nimagine his country had been young, too, before she grew old;--as\nyoung as America, and as vigorous.\n\n------\n* _Chinese Literature:_ Giles;--whence also much else in\nthese articles.\n------\n\nAmong such a people, how much should you expect to find of the\nSacred Mysteries?--There were the Nine Tripods of Ta Yu with the\nking at Honanfu, to say that his kinghood had behind it symbolic\nsanctions; there was the Book of Changes; there was the system\nof the Duke of Chow, more dishonored in the breach than honored\nin the observance.... For the rest, you might as well look for\nthe Eleusinia in Chicago. Who could believe in religion, those\ndays?--Well; it was the pride of some of the little duchies and\nmarquisates to keep up a reputa-tion for orthodoxy:  there\nwas Lu in Shantung, for example,-very strict.*  (As strictness\nwent, we may say.) And if you wished to study ritual, you\nwent up to Honanfu to do so; where, too, was the National\nor Royal Library, where profitable years might be spent. But\nwho, except enthusiasts, was to treat religion seriously?\n--when one saw the doddering Head of Religion yearly flouted,\nkicked about and hustled in his own capital by his Barbarian\nHighness the 'King'--so he must now style himself and be\nstyled, where in better days 'Count Palatine' or 'Lord Marcher'\nwould have served his turn well enough--of Ts'in or Tsin\nor Ts'i or Ts'u, who would come thundering down with his\nchariots when he pleased, and without with-your-leave or\nby-your-leave, march past the very gates of Honanfu;--and\nlucky if he did march past, and not come in and stay awhile;\n--on his way to attacking his Barbarian Highness the 'King'\nof somewhere else. The God that is to be sincerely worshiped\nmust, as this world goes, be able now and then to do some\nlittle thing for his vicegerent on earth; and Heaven did\nprecious little in those days for the weakling King-pontiff\npuppets at Honanfu. A mad world, my masters!\n\n------\n* _Ancient China Simplified:_ E. Harper Parker;--also much\ndrawn on.\n------\n\nWherein, too, we had our symbols:--the Dragon, the Sky-wanderer,\nwith something heavenly to say; but alas! the Dragon had been\nlittle visible in our skies of Chu Hia these many years or\ncenturies;--the Tiger, brute muscularity, lithe terrible limbs,\nfearful claws and teeth,--we knew him much better! This, heaven\nknew, was the day of the Tiger of earthly strength and passions;\nwere there not those three great tigers up north, Ts'in, Tsin,\nand Ts'i; and as many more southward; and all hungry and\nstrong?--And also, some little less thought of perhaps, the\nPhoenix, Secular Bird, that bums itself at the end of each cycle,\nand arises from its ashes young and dazzling again:  the Phoenix\n--but little thought of, these days; for was not the world old\nand outworn, and toppling down towards a final crash?  The days\nof Chu Hia were gone, its future all in the long past; no one\ndared dream of a time when there should be something better than\nYen diddling Lu, or Ts'u beating Ts'i at a good set-to with these\nnew sixty-warrior-holding chariots. Who should think of the\nPhoenix--and of a new age to come when there should be no more\nYen and Lu and Chow and Tsin and Ts'in, but one broad and\nmighty realm, a Middle, a Celestial Kingdom,--such a Chu\nHia as time had no memory of;--to whose throne the Hun himself\nshould bow, or whose hosts should drive him out of Asia;--a\nChu Hia to whom tribute should come from the uttermost ends\nof the earth? Who should dream of the Secular Bird now,--\nas improbable a creature, in these dark days of the Tiger,\nas that old long-lost Sky-wanderer the Dragon himself?\n\nLet be; let three little centuries pass; let the funeral pyre\nbut be kindled, and quite burn itself out; and let the ashes\ngrow cold--\n\nAnd behold you now, this Phoenix of the World, bright and\ndazzling, rising up from them! Behold you now this same\nBlack-haired People, young, strong, vigorous, gleaming with\nall the rainbow hues of romance and imagination; conquering\nand creative, and soon to strew the jewels of faerie over\nall the Eastern World. . . .\n\nBut this is to anticipate:  to take you on to the second century\nB. C.; whereas I want you now in the sixth.--I said that you\nshould find better chances for study in the Royal Library at\nHonanfu, could you get together the means for journeying thither,\nthan anywhere else in Chu Hia. That was particularly true in the\nlatter part of that sixth century:  because there was a man by\nthe name of Li Urh, chief librarian there, from whom, if you\ncared to, you might hear better things than were to be found in\nthe books in his charge. His fame, it appears, has gone abroad\nthrough the world; although his chief aim seems to be to keep in\nthe shadows and not be talked about. Scholars resort to him from\nfar and near; one of them, the greatest of all, who came to him\nin the year 517 and was (if we are to believe accounts) treated\nwithout too much mercy, came out awestruck, and said: \"Today I\nhave seen the Dragon.\"--What! that little old man with the bald\nhead and straggly lank Chirese beard?--Like enough, like enough!\n--they are not all, as you look at them with these physical eyes,\nto be seen winged and wandering the heavens. . . .\n\nBut wandering the heavens, this one, yes!  He has the blue ether\nabout him, even there in the Library among the books.--He has a\nway of putting things in little old quiet paradoxes that seem to\nsolve all the problems,--to take you out of the dust and clatter\nof this world, into the serenity of the Dragon-world where all\nproblems are solved, or non-existent. Chu Hia is all a fuss and\nturmoil, and running the headlong Gadarene road; but the Old\nPhilosopher--as he has come to be called--has anchorage right\noutside of and above it, and speaks from the calmness of the\npeaks of heaven. A kind of school forms itself around him; his\nwisdom keeps provincials from returning home, and the young men\nof the capital from commonplace courses. Though he has been\naccredited with much authorship, I think he wrote nothing;\nliving among books, he had rather a contempt for them,--as things\nat the best for patching up and cosseting life, new windings and\nwrappings for its cocoon;--whereas he would have had the whole\ncocoon stripped away, and the butterfly beautifully airing its\nwings.  Be that as it may, there are, shall we say, stenographers\namong his disciples, and his sayings come down to us.  They have\nto do with the Way, the Truth, and the Life; which things, and\nmuch else, are included in Chinese in the one word _Tao._\n\n\"The main purpose of his studies\" says Ssema Tsien (the 'Father\nof Chinese History'), \"was to keep himself concealed and\nunknown.\"  In this he succeeded admirably, so far as all future\nages were to concerned; for Ssema himself, writing in the reign\nof Han Wuti some four centuries later, could be by no means sure\nof his identity.  He tells us all we know, or think we know,\nabout Laotse:--that he was born in a village in southern Honan;\nkept the Royal Library at Honanfu; met Confucius there in 517;\nand at last rode away on his ox into the west, leaving the _Tao\nTeh King_ with the Keeper of the Pass on the frontier;--and then\ngoes on to say that there were two other men \"whom many regarded\nas having been the real Laotse\"; one of the Lao Lai, a\ncontemporary of Confucius, who wrote fifteen treatises on\nthe practices of the school of Tao; the other, a \"Grand\nHistoriographer of Chow,\" Tan by name, who lived some century and\na quarter later.  To me this is chiefly interesting as a\nsuggestion that the 'School of Tao' was a thing existent and\nwell-established at that time, and with more than one man writing\nabout it.\n\nIt may we'll have been. Taoists ascribe the foundation of their\nreligion to the Yellow Emperor, twenty-eight centuries B. C.;\nbut there never was time Tao was not; nor, I suppose, when there\nwas quite no knowledge of it, even in China.  In the old\nmanvantara, past now these three hundred years, the Black-haired\nPeople had wandered far enough from such knowledge;--with the\naccumulation of complexities, with the piling up of encumberments\nof thought and deed during fifteen hundred busy years of\nintensive civilization. As long as that piling up had not\nentirely covered away Tao, the Supreme Simplicity, the Clear\nAir;--as long as men could find scope to think and act and\naccomplish things;--so long the manvantara lasted; when nothing\nmore that was useful could be accomplished, and action could no\nlonger bring about its expectable results (because all that old\ndead weight was there to interpose itself between new causes set\nin motion and their natural outcome)--then the pralaya set in.\nYou see, that is why pralayas do set in; why they must;--why no\nnation can possibly go on at a pitch of greatness and high\nactivity beyond a certain length of time.--And all that activity\nof the manvantara--all that fuss and bustle to achieve greatness\nand fortune--it had all been an obscuration of and moving away\nfrom Tao.\n\nThe Great Teachers come into this world out of the Unknown,\nbringing the essence of their Truth with them. We know well what\nthey will teach:  in some form or another it will be Theosophy;\nit will be the old self-evident truths about Karma and the two\nnatures of man.  But how they will teach it:  what kind of\nsugar-coating or bitter aloes they will prescribe along with it:\n--that, I think, depends on reactions from the age they come in\nand the people whom they are to teach.  It is almost certain, as\nI said, that Li Urh the Old Philosopher left no writings. \"Who\nknows, does not tell,\" said he; and Po Chu-i quotes this, and\npertinently adds:  \"What then of his own five thousand words and\nmore.--the _Tao Teh King._\" That book was proved centuries ago, in\nChina, not to have come, as it stands, even from Laotse's age;\nbecause there are characters in it that were invented long\nafterwards. The wisest thing to believe is that it is made up\nmostly of his sayings, taken down by his disciples in the Pitman\nof the time; and surviving, with accretions and losses perhaps,\nthrough the disquiet of the next two centuries, and the burning\nof the books, and everything. Because whatever vicissitudes may\nhave befallen it, one does hear in its maxims the tones of\na real voice:  one man's voice, with a timbre in it that\nbelongs to the Lords of Wisdom. And to me, despite Lao Lai\nand Tan the Grand Historiographer, it is the voice of an\nold man in the seclusion of the Royal Library:  a happy little\nbald-headed straggly-bearded old man anxious to keep himself\nunknown and unapplauded; it is a voice attuned to quietness,\nand to mental reactions from the thunder of the armies, the\ndrums and tramplings and fuss and insolence of his day. I\nthoroughly believe in the old man in the Royal Library, and\nthe riding away on oxback at last into the west,--where was\nSi Wang Mu's Faery Garden, and the Gobi Desert, with sundry\noases therein whereof we have heard.  I can hear that voice,\nwith childlike wonder in it, and Adept-like seriousness, and\nchildlike and Adept-like laughter not far behind, in such sayings\nas these:  \"Tao is like the emptiness of a vessel; and the use\nof it, we may say, must be free from all self-sufficiency. How\ndeep and mysterious it is, as if it were the author of all things!\nWe should make our sharpness blunt, and unravel the complications\nof things. . . . How still and clear is Tao, a phantasm with\nthe semblance of permanence!  I do not know whose son it is.\nIt might appear to have been before God.\"\n\nWe see in Christendom the effects of belief in a personal God,\nand also the inefficacy of mere ethics.  Believers make their God\nin their own image, and nourish their personalities imitating an\nimitation of themselves.  At the best of times they take their\nNew Testament ethics, distil from these every virtue and\nexcellent quality, and posit the result as the characteristics of\ntheir Deity:--the result, plus a selfhood; and therefore the\ngreat delusion and heresy, Separateness, is the link that binds\nthe whole together.  It is after all but a swollen personality;\nand whether you swell your personalitv with virtues or vices, the\nresult is an offense. There is a bridge, razor-edged, between\nearth and heaven; and you can never carry that load across it.\nLaotse, supremely ethical in effect, had a cordial detestation--\ntake this gingerly!--of un-re-enforced ethics. \"When the great\nTao is lost,\" says he, \"men follow after charity and duty to\none's neighbor.\" Again: \"When Tao is lost, virtue takes its\nplace. When virtue is lost, benevolence succeeds to it. When\nbenevolence is lost, justice ensues. When justice is lost, then\nwe have expediency.\"  He does not mean, of course, that these\nthings are bad; but simply that they are the successive stages\nof best, things left when Tao is lost sight of; none of them in\nitself a high enough aim. They are all included in Tao, as the\nless in the greater. He describes to you the character of the man\nof Tao; but your conduct is to be the effect of following Tao;\nand you do not attain Tao by mere practice of virtue; though you\nnaturally practise virtue, without being aware of it, while\nfollowing Tao.  It all throws wonderful light on the nature of\nthe Adept; about whom you have said nothing at all when you have\naccredited him with all the virtues.  Joan was blemishless; but\nnot thereby did she save France;--she could do that because, as\nLaotse would have said, being one with Tao, she flowed out into\nher surroundings, accomplishing absolutely her part in the\nuniversal plan. No compilation of virtues would make a Teacher\n(such as we know):  it is a case of the total absence of\neverything that should prevent the natural Divine Part of man\nfrom functioning in this world as freely and naturally as the sun\nshines or the winds blow. The sun and the stars and the tides and\nthe wind and the rain--there is that perfect glowing simplicity\nin them all:  the Original, the Root of all things, Tao.  _Be\nlike them,_ says Laotse, impersonal and simple.  \"I hold fast to\nand cherish Three Precious Things,\" he says:  \"Gentleness,\nEconomy, Humility.\"  Why?  So, you would say, do the ethics of\nthe New Testament; such is the preaching of the Christian\nChurches. But (in the latter case) for reasons quite unlike\nLaotse's.  For we make of them too often virtues to be attained,\nthat shall render us meek and godly, acceptable in the eyes of\nthe Lord, and I know not what else:  riches laid up in heaven; a\npamperment of satisfaction; easily to become a cloak for self-\nrighteousness and, if worse can be, worse.  But _tut!_  Laotse\nwill not be bothered with riches here or elsewhere.  With him\nthese precious things are simply absences that come to be when\nobstructive presences are thrown off.  No sanctimoniousness for\nthe little Old Man in the Royal Library!\n\nHe would draw minds away to the silence of the Great Mystery,\nwhich is the fountain of laughter, of life, the unmarred; and he\nwould have them abide there in absolute harmony.  Understand him,\nand you understand what he did for China.  It is from that Inner\nThing, that Tao, that all nourishment comes and all greatness.\nYou must go out with your eyes open to search for it:  watch for\nDragons in the sky; for the Laugher, the Golden Person, in the\nSun:  watch for Tao, ineffably sparkling and joyous--and quiet--\nin the trees; listen for it in the winds and in the sea-roar;\nand have nothing in your own heart but its presence and\nomnipresence and wonder-working joy.  How can you flow out to the\nmoments, and capture the treasure in them; how can you flow out\nto Tao, and inherit the stars, and have the sea itself flowing in\nyour veins;--if you are blocked with a desire, or a passion for\nthings mortal, or a grudge against someone, or a dislike?  Beauty\nis Tao:  it is Tao that shines in the flowers:  the rose, the\nbluebell, the daffodil--the wistaria, the chrysanthemum, the\npeony--they are little avatars of Tao; they are little gateways\ninto the Kingdom of God.  How can you know them, how can you go\nin through them, how can you participate in the laughter of the\nplanets and the angelic clans, through their ministration, if you\nare preoccupied with the interests or the wants of contemptible\nyou, the personality?  Laotse went lighting little stars for the\nBlack-haired People:  went pricking the opacity of heaven, that\nthe Light of lights might filter through.  If you call him a\nphilosopher, you credit him with an intellectualism that really\nhe did not bother to possess.  Rather he stood by the Wells of\nPoetry, and was spiritual progenitor of thousands of poets.\nThere is no way to Poetry but Laotse's Way. You think you must go\nabroad and see the world; you must not; that is only a\nhindrance:  a giving the eyes too many new externals, to hinder\nthem from looking for that which you may see, as he says,\n'through your own window.'  If you traverse the whole world\nseeking, you will never come nearer to the only thing that\ncounts, which is Here, and Now.  Seek to feed your imagination on\noutward things, on doings and events, and you will perhaps\nexcite, but surely soon starve it.  But at the other pole, the\ninner \"How deep and mysterious is Tao, as if it were the author\nof all things!\"  And then I hear someone ask him whence it\noriginated--someone fishing for a little metaphysics, some dose\nof philosophy. What! catch Laotse?  \"I know,\" said Confucius,\n\"how birds fly, beasts run, fishes swim. But the runner may be\nsnared, the swimmer hooked, the flyer shot with an arrow. But\nthere is the Dragon; I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind\nthrough the clouds and rises into heaven.\"  No; you cannot hook,\nsnare, or shoot the Dragon.  \"I do not know whose son Tao is,\"\nsays Laotse.  \"It might appear to have been before God.\"\n\nSo I adhere to the tale of the old man in the Royal Library,\nholding  wonderful quiet conversations there; that \"it might\nappear to have been before God\" is enough to convince me.  There\nwas a man once*--I forget his name, but we may call him Cho Kung\nfor our purposes; he was of affable demeanor, and an excellent\nflautist; and had an enormous disbelief in ghosts, bogies,\ngoblins, and 'supernatural' beings of every kind.  It seized\nhim with the force of a narrow creed; and he went forth to\nmissionarize, seeking disputants.  He found one in the chief\nLibrarian of some provincial library; who confessed to a\ncredulousness along that line, and seemed willing to talk.  Here\nthen were grand opportunities--for a day's real enjoyment, with\nperchance a creditable convert to be won at the end of it.\nBehold them sitting down to the fray, in the shadows among the\nbooks:  the young Cho Kung, affable  (I like the word well),\nvoluble and earnest; the old Librarian, mild, with little to say\nbut _buts_ and _ifs,_ and courteous even beyond the wont in that\n\"last refuge of good manners,\" China.  All day long they sat; and\naffable Cho, like Sir Macklin in the poem,\n\n     \"Argued high and argued low,\n     And likewise argued round about him\";\n\n--until by fall of dusk the Librarian was fairly beaten.  So\ncogent were Cho's arguments, so loud and warm his eloquence,\nso entirely convincing his facts adduced--his modern instances,\nas you may say--that there really was nothing for the old\nman to answer.  Ghosts were not; genii were ridiculously\nunthinkable; supernatural beings could not exist, and it\nwas absurd to think they could.  The Librarian had not a\nleg to stand on; that was flat.  Accordingly he rose to\nhis feet--and bowed.--\"Sir,\" said he, with all prescribed\nhonorifics, \"undoubtedly you are victorious.  The contemptible\npresent speaker sees the error of his miserable ways.  He\nis convinced.  It remains for him only to add\"--and here\nsomething occurred to make Cho rub his eyes--\"that he is\nhimself a supernatural being.\"--And with that his form and\nlimbs distend, grow misty--and he vanishes in a cloud up through\nthe ceiling.--You see, those old librarians in China had a way of\ndoing things which was all their own.\n\n------\n* The story is told in Dr. H. H. Giles' _Dictionary of Chinese\nBiography._\n------\n\nSo Li Urh responded to the confusions of his day.  Arguments?--\nYou could hardly call them so; there is very little arguing,\nwhere Tao is concerned.  The Tiger was abroad, straining all\nthose lithe tendons,--a tense fearful symmetry of destruction\nburning bright through the night-forests of that pralaya:\ngrossest and wariest energies put forth to their utmost in a race\nbetween the cunning for existence, a struggle of the strong for\npower.--\"It is the way of Tao to do difficult things when they\nare easy; to benefit and not to injure; to do and not to\nstrive.\"  Come out, says Laotse, from all this moil and topsey-\nturveydom; stop all this striving and botheration; give things\na chance to right themselves.  There is nothing flashy or to make\na show about in Tao; it vies with no one.  Let go; let be;\nfind rest of the mind and senses; let us have no more of these\nfooleries, war, capital punishment, ambition; let us have self-\nemptiness.  Just be quiet, and this great Chu Hia will come right\nwithout aid of governing, without politics and voting and\ncanvassing and such.--_Here and Now_ and _What comes by_ were his\nprescriptions. He was an advocate of the Small State.  Aristotle\nwould have had no government ruling more than ten thousand\npeople; Laotse would have had his State of such a size that the\ninhabitants could all hear the cocks crowing in foreign lands;\nand he would have had them quite uneager to travel abroad.  What\nhe taught was a total _bouleversement_ of the methods of his age.\n\"It is the way of Tao not to act from personal motives, to\nconduct affairs--without feeling the trouble of them, to\ntaste without being aware of the flavor, to account the\ngreat as the small and the small as the great, to recompense\ninjury with kindness.\"\n\nThe argument went all against him. Their majesties of Ts'in\nand Tsin and Ts'i and Ts'u were there with their drums and\ntramplings; the sixty warrior-carrying chariots were thundering\npast;--who should hear the voice of an old quiet man in the Royal\nLibrary?  Minister This and Secretary That of Lu and Chao and\nCheng were at it with their wire-pullings and lobbyings and petty\ndiddlings and political cheateries--(it is all beautifully\nmodern); what had the world to do with self-emptiness and Tao?\nThe argument was all against him; he hadn't a leg to stand on.\nThere was no Tao; no simplicity; no magic; no Garden of Si\nWang Mu in the West; no Azure Birds of Compassion to fly out\nfrom it into the world of men.  Very well then; he, being one\nwith that non-existent Tao, would ride away to that imaginary\nGarden; would go, and leave--\n\nA strand torn out of the rainbow to be woven into the stuff of\nChinese life. You could not tell it at the time; you never would\nhave guessed it--but this old dull tired squalid China, cowering\nin her rice-fields and stopping her ears against the drums and\ntramplings, had had something--some seed of divinity, thrown down\ninto her mind, that should grow there and be brooded on for three\ncenturies or so, and then--\n\nThere is a Blue Pearl, Immortality; and the Dragon, wandering\nthe heavens, is forever in pursuit or quest of it. You will see\nthat on the old flag of China, that a foolish republicanism cast\naway as savoring too much of the Manchu. (But it was Laotse and\nConfucius, Han Wuti and Tang Taitsong, and Wu Taotse and the\nBanished Angel that it savored of really.) Well, it was this Blue\nPearl that the Old Philosopher, riding up through the pass to the\nWestern Gate of the world, there to vanish from the knowledge of\nmen;--it was this Blue Pearl that, stopping and turning a moment\nthere so high up and near heaven, he tossed back and out into the\nfields of China;--and the Dragon would come to seek it in his\ntime.--You perhaps know the picture of Laotse riding away on his\nox.  I do not wonder that the beast is smiling.\n\nFor it really was the Blue Pearl:  and the Lord knew what it was\nto do in China in its day.  It fell down, you may say, from the\nclear ether of heaven into the thick atmosphere of this world;\nand amidst the mists of human personality took on all sorts of\niridescences; lit up strange rainbow tints and fires to glow and\nglisten more and more wonderfully as the centuries should pass;\nand kindle the Chinese imagination into all sorts of opal\nglowings and divine bewilderments and wonderments;--and by and by\nthe wonder-dyed mist-ripples floated out to Japan, and brought to\npass there all sorts of nice Japanese cherry-blossomy and plum-\nblossomy and peonyish things, and Urashima-stories and Bushido-\nish and Lafcadioish and badger-teakettle things:--reawakened, in\nfact, the whole of the faery glow of the Eastern World.\n\nIt is not to be thought that here among the mists and personalities\nthe Pearl could quite retain all its pure blueness of the ether.\nIt is not to be thought that Taoism, spread broadcast among\nthe people, could remain, what it was at the beginning, an\nundiluted Theosophy. The lower the stratum of thought into\nwhich it fell, the less it could be Thought-Spiritual, the\nstuff unalloyed of Manas-Taijasi.  Nevertheless, it was the\nPearl Immortality, with a vigor and virtue of its own, and\na competence for ages, on whatever plane it might be, to work\nwonders.  Among thinking and spiritual minds it remained a true\nWay of Salvation.  Among the masses it came to be thought of\npresently as personal immortality and the elixir of life.\nRegrettable, you may say; but this is the point: nothing was\never intended to last forever.  You must judge Taoism by what it\nwas in its day, not by what it may be now.  Laotse had somehow\nflashed down into human consciousness a vision of Infinity:  had\nconfronted the Chinese mind with a conviction of the Great\nMystery, the Divine Silence.  It is simply a fact that that is\nthe fountain whose waters feed the imagination and make it grow\nand bloom.  Search for the Secret in chatter and outward sights\nand deeds, and you soon run to waste and nothingness; but seek\nhere, and you shall find what seemed a void, teeming with lovely\nforms.  He set the Chinese imagination, staggered and stupefied\nby the so long ages of manvantara, and then of ruin, into a glow\nof activity, of grace, of wonder; men became aware of the vast\nworld of the Within; as if a thousand Americas had been\ndiscovered. It supplied the seed of creation for all the poets\nand artists to come. It made a new folklore; revivified the\ninner atmosphere of mountains and forests; set the fairies\ndancing; raised Yellow Crane Pagodas to mark the spot where Wang\nTzu-chiao flew on the Crane to heaven in broad daylight.  It sent\nout the ships of Ts'in Shi Hwangti presently to seek the Golden\nIslands of Peng-lai, where the Immortals give cups of the elixir\nto their votaries; in some degree it sent the armies of Han Wuti\nin search of the Garden of Si Wang Mu.  The ships found (perhaps)\nonly the Golden Islands of Japan; the armies found certainly\nPersia, India, and even the borders of Rome;--and withal, new\ncurrents, awakening and inter-national, to flow into China and\nmake splendid the Golden Age of Han.\n\n\n\n\nX.  \"SUCH A ONE\"\n\n\n\"I produce myself among creatures, O son of Bharata, whenever\nthere is a decline of Virtue and an insurrection of vice and\ninjustice in the world:  and thus I incarnate from age to age for\nthe preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and\nthe establishment of righteousness.\"--_Bhagavad-Gita_\n\n\"The world had fallen into decay, and right principles had\nperished.  Perverse discourses and oppressive deeds had grown\nrife; ministers murdered their rulers and sons their fathers.\nConfucius was frightened at what he saw, and undertook the work\nof reformation.\"--Mencius\n\n\nMen were expecting an avatar in old Judaea; and, sure enough,\none came.  But they were looking for a national leader, a\nMessiah, to throw off for them the Roman yoke; or else for an\nascetic like their prophets of old time: something, in any case,\nout of the way;--a personality wearing marks of avatarship easily\nrecognisable. The one who came, however, so far from leading them\nagainst the Romans, seemed to have a good deal of sympathy with\nthe Romans. He consorted with centurions and tax-gatherers, and\nadvised the Jews to render unto Roman Caesar the things which\nwere his:  which meant, chiefly, the tribute. And he was not an\nascetic, noticeably; bore no resemblance to their prophets of\nold time; but came, as he said, 'eating and drinking'; even\nwent to marriage-feasts, and that by no means to play killjoy;--\nand they said, 'Behold, a gluttonous man and a winebibber!'\n(which was a lie).--Instead of supporting the national religion,\nas anyone with half an eye to his interests would have done, he\ndid surprising things in the temple with a whip of small cords.--\n\"Here,\" said they, \"let us crucify this damned fellow!\"  And\nthey did.\n\nAftertimes, however, recognised him as an avatar; and then so\nperverse is man!--as the one and only possible avatar.  If ever\nanother should appear, said our western world, it could but be\nthis one come again; and, because the doctrine of avatars is a\nfundamental instinct in human nature, they expected that he would\ncome again.  So when the pressure of the times and the intuition\nof men warned them that a great incarnation was due, they began\nto look for his coming.\n\nThat was in our own day, say in the last half-century; during\nwhich time a mort of books have been written about a mysterious\nfigure turning up in some modern city, whom you could not fail\nto recognise by certain infallible signs. Generally speaking,\nthe chief of these were:  long hair, and a tendency to make\nlugubrious remarks beginning with _Verily, verily I say unto\nyou._  In actual life, too, lots of men did grow their hair long\nand cultivate the _verily-verily_ habit; hoping that, despite\ntheir innate modesty, their fellow-men might not fail to take the\nhint and pierce the disguise afforded, often by a personal\nmorality you might call _oblique._\n\nBut if an avatar had come, it is fairly certain that he or she\nwould have followed modern fashions in hair and speech; first,\nbecause real avatars have a sense of humor; and secondly,\nbecause his or her business would have been to reform, not the\nlanguage or style of hair-dressing, but life.--'He or she' is a\nvery vile phrase; for the sake of novelty, let us make the\nfeminine include the masculine, and say 'she' simply.--Her\nconversation, then, instead of being peppered with archaic\n_verilies_ and _peradventures,_ would have been in form much like\nthat of the rest of us.  It is quite unlikely she would have\nshone at Pleasant Sunday Afternoons, or Bazaars of the Young\nWomen's Christian Association; quite unlikely that she would\nhave been in any sense whatever a pillar of the orthodoxies.  As\nshe would have come to preach _Truth,_ you may suppose Truth\nneeded, and therefore lacking; and so, that her teachings\nwould have been at once dubbed vilest heterodoxy, and herself\na charlatan.\n\n     \"Below with eddy and flow the white tides creep\n          On the sands.\"\n\nSays Ssu-k'ung T'u,--\n\n     \"..... in no one form may Tao abide.\n          But changes and shifts like the wide wing-shadows asweep\n               On the mountainside\";\n\n--the sea is one, but the tides drift and eddy; the roc, or maybe\nthe dragon, is one, but the shadow of his wings on the mountain\nsward shifts and changes and veers.  When you think you have set\nup a standard for Tao:  when you imagine you have grasped it in\nyou hands:--how fleet it is to vanish!  \"The man of Tao,\"  said\nthe fisherman of the Mi-lo to Ch'u Yuan, \"does not quarrel with\nhis surroundings, but adapts himself to them\";--and perhaps there\nyou have the best possible explanation of the nature of those\nGreat souls who come from time to time to save the world.\n\nI think we take the Buddha as the type of them; and expect not\nonly a life and character that _we can recognise_ as flawless,\nbut also a profundity of revelation in the philosophy and ethics.\nBut if no two blades of grass are alike, much less are two human\nSouls; and in these Great Ones, it is the picture of Souls we\nare given.  When we think that if all men were perfect, all would\nbe alike, we err with a wide mistake.  The nearer you get to the\nSoul, and the more perfect is the expression of it, the less is\nthere monotony or similarity; and almost the one thing you may\nposit about any avatar is, that he will be a surprise. Tom and\nDick and Harry are alike:  'pipe and stick young men'; 'pint and\nsteak young men'; they get born and marry and die, and the grass\ngrows over them with wondrous alikeness; but when the Masters of\nMen come, all the elements are cast afresh.\n\nEveryone has a place to fill in the universal scheme; he has a\nfunction to perform, that none else can perform; a _just what he\ncan do,_--which commonly he falls far short of doing.  When he\ndoes it, fully and perfectly, then he is on the road of progress;\nthat road opens up to him; and presently, still exercising the\nfulness of his being, he becomes a completeness, like Heaven and\nEarth; their 'equal,' in the Chinese phrase; or as we say, a\nPerfect Man or Adept.  Does anyone know what place in history he\nis to fill?  I cannot tell; I suppose an Adept, incarnated,\nwould be too busy filling it to have time or will to question.\nBut here perhaps we have the nearest thing possible to a standard\nfor measuring them; and here the virtue of Taoism, and one\ngreatest lesson we may learn from it.  Are we to judge by the\nimpressiveness of the personality?  No; the Man of Tao is not a\npersonality at all.  He makes one to use, but is not identified\nwith it; his personality will not be great or small, or\nenchanting or repellent, but simply adapted to the needs.--Is it\nthe depth and fulness of the philosophv he gives out? No; it may\nbe wiser and also more difficult to keep silent on main points,\nthan to proclaim them broadcast; and for this end he may elect\neven not to know (with conscious brain-mind) too much;--not to\nhave the deep things within his normal consciousness.  But he\ncomes into the world to meet a situation; to give the course of\nhistory a twist in a desired direction; and the sign and measure\nof his greatness is, it seems to me, his ability to meet the\nsituation at all points, and to do just what is necessary for the\ngiving of the twist,--no more and no less.  And then, of course,\nit takes a thousand years or so before you can judge.  One\nis not speaking of common statesmen, who effect quick changes\nthat are no changes at all, but of the Men who shepherd the\nHost of Souls.\n\nI like to imagine, before the birth of Such a One, a consultation\nof the Gods upon the Mountain of Heaven.  A synod of the kind\n(for China) would have taken place in the sixth century B. C.,\nno doubt; because in those days certainly there was a \"decline\nof virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the\nworld.\"  Transport yourselves then, say in the year 552, to the\npeaks of Tien Shan of Kuen Lun, or high Tai-hsing, or the grand\nSouth Mountain; and see the Pantheon assembled.\n\nThey look down over Chu Hia; they know that in three centuries\nor so a manvantara will be beginning there, and grow anxious lest\nanything has been left undone to insure its success. They note\nLaotse (whom they sent some fifty years earlier) at his labors;\nand consider, what those labors would achieve for the Black-\nhaired People.  He would bring light to the most excellent minds;\nthe God of Light said, \"I have seen to that.\"  He would in time\nwaken the lute-strings of the Spirit, and set Chu Hia all a-song;\nthe God of Music said, \"I have seen to that.\"  They foresaw Wu\nTaotse and Ma Yuan; they foresaw Ssu-k'ung T'u and the Banished\nAngel; and asked \"Is it not enough?\"  And the thought grew\non them that it was not enough, till they sighed with the\napprehensions that troubled them.  Only a few minds among the\nmillions, they foresaw, would have proper understanding of Tao.\n\nNow, Gods of whatever land they may be, there are those three\nBardic Brothers amongst them:  He of Light, who awakens vision;\nHe of Song, who rouses up the harmonies and ennobling vibrations;\nand He of Strength, whose gloves hold all things fast, and\nneither force nor slipperiness will avail against them.  It was\nthis third of them, Gwron, who propounded the plan that satisfied\nthe Pantheon.  I will send one among them, with the \"Gloves for\nhis treasure,\" said he.\n\nThey considered how it would be with Such a One:  going among\nmen as the Gods' Messenger, and with those two Gloves for his\ntreasure.--\"This way will it be,\" they said.  \"Not having the\ntreasure of the God of Light, he will seem as one without vision\nof the God-world or remembrance whence he came. Not having the\ntreasure of the God of Music, he will awaken little song with the\nBards. But having the Gloves, he will hold the gates of hell\nshut, so far as shut they may be, through all the cycle that\nis coming.\"\n\nWith that the council ended. But Plenydd God of Light and Vision\nthought:  \"Though my treasure has gone with the Old Philosopher,\nand I cannot endow this man with it, I will make him Such a One\nas can be seen by all men; I will throw my light on him, that he\nmay be an example through the age of ages.\" And Alawn God of\nMusic thought:  \"Though my lute has gone with Laotse, I will\nconfer boons on this one also. Such a One he shall be, as draws\nno breath but to tunes of my playing; the motions of his mind,\nto my music, shall be like the motions of the ordered stars.\"--\nAnd they both thought:  \"It will be easy for me to do as much as\nthis, with his having the Gloves of Gwron on his hands.\"\n\nAt that time K'ung Shuhliang Heih, Commander of the district\nof Tsow, in the Marquisate of Lu in Shantung, determined\nto marry again.\n\nNow China is a vast democracy:  the most democratic country in\nthe world.  Perhaps I shall come to proving that presently; for\nthe moment I must ask you to let it pass on the mere statement,\nsatisfied that it is true.  Despite this radical democracy, then,\nshe has had two noble families.  One is descended from a famous\nPatriot-Pirate of recent centuries, known to Westerners as\nKoxinga; with it we have no concern.  The other is to be found\nin the town of K'iuh-fow in Shantung, in the ancient Marquisate\nof Lu.  There are about fifty thousand members of it, all bearing\nthe surname K'ung; its head has the title of 'Duke by Imperial\nAppointment and hereditary right'; and, much prouder still,\n'Continuator of the Sage.'\n\nDukes of England sometimes trace their descent from men who came\nover with William the Conqueror:  a poor eight centuries is a\nthing to be proud of.  There may be older families in France,\nItaly, and elsewhere.  Duke K'ung traces his, through a line of\nwhich every scion appears more of less in history, to the son of\nthis K'ung Shuhliang Heih in the sixth century B.C.; who in turn\ntraced his, through a line of which every scion appeared in\nhistory, and all, with one possible exception, very honorably, to\na member of the Imperial House of Shang who, in 1122 B.C., on the\nfall of that house, was created Duke of Sung in Honan by the\nfirst of the Chows.  The House of Shang held the throne for some\nfive centuries, beginning with Tang the Comnpleter in 1766, who\ntraced his descent from the Yellow Emperor in mythological\ntimes.  Duke K'ung, then, is descended in direct male line from\nsovereigns who reigned beyond the horizon of history,--at the\nlatest, near the beginning of the third millennium B.C.  The\nfamily has been distinguished for nearly five thousand years.\n\nThe matter is not unimportant; since we are to talk of a member\nof this family.  We shall understand him better for remembering\nthe kind of heredity that lay behind him:  some seventy\ngenerations of nobility, all historic.  Only one royal house in\nthe world now is as old as his was then:  that of Japan.\n\nSome generations before, the K'ung family had lost their duchy of\nSung and emigrated to Lu; where, in the early part of the sixth\ncentury, its head, this Shuhliang Heih, had made a great name for\nhimself as a soldier.  He was now a widower, and seventy years\nold; and saw himself compelled to make a second marriage, or the\nseventy illustrious generations of his ancestors would be\ndeprived of a posterity to offer them sacrifices.  So he\napproached a gentlman of the Yen family, who had three eligible\ndaughters.  To these Yen put the case, leaving to them to decide\nwhich should marry K'ung.--\"Though old and austere,\"  said he,\n\"he is of the high descent, and you need have no fear of him.\"\nChingtsai, the youngest, answered that it was for their father to\nchoose.--\"Then you shall marry him,\" said Yen.  She did; and\nwhen her son was to be born, she was warned in a dream to make\npilgrimage to a cave on Mount Ne.  There the spirits of the\nmountain attended; there were signs and portents in the heavens\nat the nativity.  The _k'e-lin,_ a beast out of the mythologies,\nappeared to her; and she tied a white ribbon about its single\nhorn.  It is a creature that appears only when things of splendid\nimport are to happen.\n\nThree years after, the father died, leaving his family on the\nborders of poverty. At six, Ch'iu, the child, a boy of serious\nearnest demeanor, was teaching his companions to play at\narranging, according to the rites, toy sacrificial vessels on a\ntoy altar.  Beyond this, and that they were poor, and that he\ndoted on his mother--who would have deserved it,--we know little\nof his boyhood.  \"At fifteen,\"  he tells us himself, \"his mind\nwas bent on learning.\"  Nothing in the way of studies, seems to\nhave come amiss to him; of history, and ritual, and poetry, he\ncame to know all that was to be known.  He loved music, theory\nand practice; held it to be sacred:  \"not merely one of the\nrefinements of life, but a part of life itself.\"  It is as well\nto remember this; and that often, in after life, he turned\ndangerous situations by breaking into song; and that his lute\nwas his constant companion.  He used to say that a proper study\nof poetry--he was not himself a poet, though he compiled a great\nanthology of folk-poems later--would leave the mind without a\nsingle depraved thought.  Once he said to his son:  \"If you do\nnot learn the Odes, you will not be fit to talk to.\"  \"Poetry\nrouses us,\" said he, \"courtesy upholds us; music is our crown.\"\nYou are, then, to see in him no puritan abhorring beauty, but a\nman with artistic perceptions developed. At what you might call\nthe other pole of knowledge, he was held to know more about the\nscience of war than any man living; and I have no doubt he did.\nIf he had consented to use or speak about or let others use that\nknowledge, he might have been a great man in his day; but he\nnever would.\n\nAt nineteen, according to the custom, he married; and soon\nafterwards accepted minor official appointments:  Keeper of the\nGranaries, then Superintendent of the Public Parks in his native\ndistrict.  He made a name for himself by the scrupulous discharge\nof his duties, that came even to the ears of the Marquis; who,\nwhen his son was born, sent the young father a complimentary\npresent of a carp.--It would have been two or three years before\nthe beginning of the last quarter of the century when he felt the\ntime calling to him, and voices out of the Eternal; and threw up\nhis superintendentship to open a school.\n\nNot an ordinary school by any means.  The Pupils were not\nchildren, but  young men of promise and an inquiring mind; and\nwhat he had to teach them was not the ordinary curriculum, but\nright living, the right ordering of social life, and the right\ngovernment of states.  They were to pay; but to pay according to\ntheir means and wishes; and he demanded intelligence from them;\n--no swelling of the fees would serve instead.--\"I do not open the\ntruth,\" said he, \"to one not eager after knowledge; nor do I\nteach those unanxious to explain themselves.  When I have\npresented one corner of a subject, and the student cannot learn\nfrom it the other three for himself, I do not repeat the lesson.\"\nHe lectured to them, we read, mainly on history and poetry,\ndeducing his lessons in life from these.\n\nHis school was a great success.  In five years he had acquired\nsome two thousand pupils:  seventy or eighty of them, as he said,\n\"men of extraordinary ability.\"  It was that the Doors of the\nLodge had opened, and its force was flowing through him in Lu, as\nit was through the Old Philosopher in Honanfu.--By this time he\nhad added archery to his own studies, and (like William Q. Judge)\nbecome proficient.  Also he had taken a special course in music\ntheory under a very famous teacher.  \"At thirty he stood firm.\"\n\nTwo of his disciples were members of the royal family; and\nMarquis Chao regarded him with favor, as the foremost educationist\nin the state.  He had an ambition to visit the capital (of\nChina); where, as no where else, ritual might be studied;\nwhere, too, was Laotse, with whom he longed to confer.  Marquis\nChao, hearing of this, provided him with the means; and he\nwent up with a band of his pupils.  There at Loyang, which is\nHonanfu, we see him wandering rapt through palaces and temples,\nexamining the sacrificial vessels, marveling at the ancient art\nof Shang and Chow.  But for a few vases, it is all lost.\n\nHe did interview Laotse; we cannot say whether only once or more\noften.  Nor, I think, do we know what passed; the accounts we\nget are from the pen of honest _Ben Trovato; Vero,_ the modest,\nhad but little hand in them.  We shall come to them later.\n\nAnd now that he stands before the world a Teacher, we may drop\nhis personal name, K'ung Ch'iu, and call him by the title to\nwhich paeans of praise have been swelling through all the ages\nsince:  K'ung Futse, K'ung the Master; latinized, Confucius.  It\nis a name that conveys to you, perhaps, some associations of\npriggishness and pedantry:  almost whereever you see him written\nof you find suggestions of the sort.  Forgo them at once:  they\nare false utterly.  Missionaries have interpreted him to the\nWest; who have worked hard to show him something less than the\nNazarene.  They have set him in a peculiar light; and others\nhave followed them.  Perhaps no writer except and until Dr.\nLionel Giles (whose interpretation, both of the man and his\ndoctrine, I shall try to give you), has shown him to us as he\nwas, so that we can understand why he has stood the Naional Hero,\nthe Savior and Ideal Man of all those millions through all\nthese centuries.\n\nWe have been told again and again that his teaching was wholly\nunspiritual; that he knew nothing of the inner worlds; never\nmentions the Soul, or 'God'; says no word to lighten for you the\n\"dusk within the Holy of holies.\"  He was all for outwardness,\nthey say:  a thorough externalist; a ritualist cold and\nunmagnetic.--It is much what his enemies said in his own day;\nwho, and not himself, provide the false-interpreters with their\nweapons.  But think of the times, and you may understand.  How\nwould the missionaries feel, were Jesus translated to the Chinese\nas a fine man in some respects--considering--but, unfortunately!\ntoo fond of the pleasures of the table; \"a gluttonous man\nand a winebibber \"?\n\nThey were stirring times, indeed; when all boundaries were in\nflux, and you needed a new atlas three times a year.  Robbers\nwould carve themselves new principalities overnight; kingdoms\nwould arise, and vanish with the waning of a moon.  What would\nthis, or any other country, become, were law, order, the police\nand every restraining influence made absolutely inefficient?\nWere California one state today; a dozen next week; in July six\nor seven, and next December but a purlieu to Arizona?--Things,\nheaven knows, are bad enough as they are; there is no dearth of\ncrime and cheatery.  Still, the police and the legal system do\nstand between us and red riot and ruin.  In China they did not;\nthe restraints had been crumbling for two or three centuries.\nHuman nature, broadly speaking, is much of a muchness in all\nlands and ages:  I warrant if you took the center of this world's\nrespectability, which I should on the whole put in some suburb of\nLondon;--I warrant that if you relieved Clapham,--whose crimes,\nsays Kipling very wisely, are 'chaste in Martaban,'--of police\nand the Pax Britannica for a hundred years or so, lurid Martaban\nwould have little pre-eminence left to brag about.  The class\nthat now goes up primly and plugly to business in the City day by\nday would be cutting throats a little; they would be making life\nquite interesting.  Their descendants, I mean.  It would take\ntime; Mother Grundy would not be disthroned in a day.  But it\nwould come; because men follow the times, and not the Soul; and\nare good as sheep are, but not as heroes. So in Chow China.\n\nBut the young Confucius knew his history.  He looked back from\nthat confusion to a wise Wu Wang and Duke of Chow; to a Tang the\nCompleter, whose morning bath-tub was inscribed with this motto\nfrom _The New Way:_  \"If at any time in his life a man can make a\nnew man of himself, why not every morning?\" Most of all he\nlooked back to the golden and sinless age of Yao and Shun and Yu,\nas far removed from him, nearly, as pre-Roman Britain is from us:\nhe saw them ruling their kingdom as a strong benevolent father\nrules his house.  In those days men had behaved themselves:\nnatural virtue had expressed itself in the natural way.  In good\nmanners; in observation of the proprieties, for example.--In\nthat wild Martaban of Chow China, would not a great gentleman of\nthe old school (who happened also to be a Great Teacher) have\nseen a virtue in even quiet Claphamism, that we cannot?  It was\nnot the time for Such a One to slight the proprieties and\n'reasonable conventions of life.'  The truth is, the devotion of\nhis disciples has left us minute pictures of the man, so that we\nsee him ... particular as to the clothes he wore; and from this\ntoo the West gathers material for its charge of externalism.\nWell; and if he accepted the glossy top-hats and black Prince\nAlbert coats;--only with him they were caps and robes of azure,\ncarnation, yellow, black, or white; this new fashion of wearing\nred he would have none of:--I can see nothing in it but this:\nthe Great Soul had chosen the personality it should incarnate in,\nwith an eye to the completeness of the work it should do; and\nseventy generations of noble ancestry would protest, even in the\nmatter of clothing, against red riot and ruin and Martaban.\n\nHe is made to cite the 'Superior Man' as the model of excellence;\nand that phrase sounds to us detestably priggish.  In the\n_Harvard Classics_ it is translated (as well as may be) 'true\ngentleman,'  or  'princely man'; in which is no priggish ring\nat all.  Again, he is made to address his disciples as \"My\nChildren,\"  at which, too, we naturally squirm a little:  what he\nreally called them was 'My boys,'  which sounds natural and\naffectionate enough.  Supposing the Gospels were translated into\nChinese by someone with the gluttonous-man-and-winebibber bias;\n--what, I wonder, would he put for _Amen, amen lego humin?_  Not\n\"Verily, verily I say unto you\"!\n\nBut I must go on with his life.\n\nThings had gone ill in in Lu during his absence:  threee great\nclan chieftains had stopped fighting among themselves to fight\ninstead against their feudal superior, and Marquis Chao had been\nexiled to Ts'i.  It touched Confucius directly; his teaching on\nsuch matters had been peremptory:  he would 'rectify names':\nhave the prince prince, and the people his subjects:--he would\nhave law and order in the state, or the natural harmony of things\nwas broken.  As suggested above, he was very much a man of mark\nin Lu; and a protest from him,--which should be forth-coming--\ncould hardly go unnoticed.  With a band of disciples he followed\nhis marquis into Ts'i:  it is in Chihli, north of Lu, and was\nfamous then for its national music.  On the journey he heard Ts'i\nairs sung, and 'hurried forward.'   One of the first things he\ndid on arriving at the capital was to attend a concert (or\nsomething equivalent); and for three months thereafter, as a\nsign of thanksgiving, he ate no flesh.  \"I never dreamed,\" said\nhe, \"that music could be so wonderful.\"\n\nThe fame of his Raja-Yoga School (that was what it was) had gone\nabroad, and Duke Ching of Ts'i received him well;--offered him a\ncity with its revenues; but the offer was declined.  The Duke\nwas impressed; half inclined to turn Confucianist; wished to\nretain him with a pension, to have him on hand in case of need;--\nbut withal he was of doubtful hesitating mind about it, and\nallowed his prime minister to dissuade him.  \"These scholars,\"\nsaid the latter, \"are impractical, and cannot be imitated.\nThey are haughty and self-opinionated, and will never rest\ncontent with an inferior position. Confucius has a thousand\npeculiarities\";--this is the gluttonous-man-and-winebibber\nsaying, which the missionary interpreters have been echoing\nsince;--\"it would take ages to exhaust all he knows about the\nceremonies of going up and down. This is not the time to examine\ninto his rules of propriety; your people would say you were\nneglecting them.\"--When next Duke Ching was urged to follow\nConfucius, he answered:  \"I am too old to adopt his doctrines.\"\nThe Master returned to Lu; lectured to his pupils, compiled the\nBooks of Odes and of History; and waited for the disorders\nto pass.\n\nWhich in time they did, more or less.  Marquis Ting came to the\nthrone, and made him chief magistrate of the town of Chungtu.\n\nNow was the time to prove his theories, and show whether he was\nthe Man to the core, that he had been so assiduously showing\nhimself, you may say, on the rind.  Ah ha! now surely, with hard\nwork before him, this scholar, theorist, conventional formalist,\nritualist, and what else you may like to call him, will be put to\nshame,--shown up empty and foolish before the hard-headed men of\naction of his age.  Who, indeed,--the hard-headed men of action--\nhave succeeded in doing precisely nothing but to make confusion\nworse confounded; how much less, then, will this Impractical One\ndo!  Let us watch him, and have our laugh...--On the wrong side\nof your faces then; for lo now, miracles are happening!  He\ntakes control; and here at last is one city in great Chu Hia\nwhere crime has ceased to be.  How does he manage it?  The\nmiracle looks but the more miraculous as you watch.  He frames\nrules for everything; insists on the proprieties; morning,\nnoon, and night holds up an example, and, says he, relies on the\npower of that.--Example?  Tush, he must be beheading right\nand left!--Nothing of the sort; he is all against capital\npunishment, and will have none of it.  But there is the fact:\nyou can leave your full purse in the streets of Chung-tu, and\npick it up unrifled when you pass next; you can pay your just\nprice, and get your just measure for it, fearing no cheateries;\nHigh Cost of Living is gone; corners in this and that are no\nmore; graft is a thing you must go elsewhere to look for;--there\nis none of it in Chung-tu.  And graft, let me say, was a thing as\nproper to the towns of China then, as to the graftiest modern\ncity you might mention.  The thing is inexplicable--but perfectly\nattested.  Not quite inexplicable, either:  he came from the\nGods, and had the Gloves of Gwron on his hands:  he had the\nwisdom you cannot fathom, which meets all events and problems as\nthey come, and finds their solution in its superhuman self, where\nthe human brain-mind finds only dense impenetrability.--Marquis\nTing saw and wondered.--\"Could you do this for the whole state?\"\nhe asked.--\"Surely; and for the whole empire,\" said Confucius.\nThe Marquis made him, first Assistant-Superintendent of Works,\nthen Minister of Crime.\n\nAnd now you shall hear Chapter X of the _Analects,_ to show you\nthe outer man.  All these details were noted down by the love of\nhis disciples, for whom nothing was too petty to be recorded;\nand if we cannot read them without smiling, there is this to\nremember:  they have suffered sea-change on their way to us:\nsea-change and time-change.  What you are to see really is:  (1)\na great Minister of State, utterly bent on reproving and\ncorrecting the laxity of his day, performing the ritual duties of\nhis calling--as all other duties--with a high religious sense of\ntheir antiquity and dignity; both for their own sake, and to set\nan example.  what would be thought of an English Archbishop of\nCanterbury who behaved familiarly or jocularly at a Coronation\nService?--(2) A gentleman of the old school, who insists on\ndressing well and quietly, according to his station.  That is\nwhat he would appear now, in any grade of society, and among men\nthe least capable of recognising his inner greatness:  'race' is\nwritten in every feature of his being; set him in any modern\ncourt, and with half an eye you would see that his family was a\nthousand years or so older than that of anyone else present, and\nhad held the throne at various times.  Here is a touch of the\ngreat gentleman:  he would never fish with a net, or shoot at a\nbird on the bough; it was unsportsmanlike.  (3) A very natural\njovial man, not above \"changing countenance\" when fine meats were\nset on his table:--a thing that directly contradicts the idea of\na cold, ever play-acting Confucius.  A parvenu must be very\ncareful; but a scion of the House of Shang, a descendant of the\nYellow Emperor, could unbend and be jolly without loss of\ndignity;--and, were he a Confucius, would.  \"A gentleman,\" said\nhe, \"is calm and spacious\"; he was himself, according to the\n_Analects,_  friendly, yet dignified; inspired awe, but not\nfear; was respectful, but easy. He divided mankind into three\nclasses:  Adepts or Sages; true Gentlemen; and the common run.\nHe never claimed to belong to the first, though all China knows\nwell that he did belong to it.  He even considered that he fell\nshort of the ideal of the second; but as to that, we need pay no\nattention to his opinion.  Here, then, is Chapter X:\n\n\"Amongst his own countryfolk Confucius wore a homely look, like\none who has no word to say.  In the ancestral temple and at court\nhis speech was full, but cautious.  At court he talked frankly to\nmen of low rank, winningly to men of high rank.  In the Marquis's\npresence he looked intent and solemn.\n\n\"When the Marquis bade him receive guests, his face seemed to\nchange, his knees to bend. He bowed left and right to those\nbehind him, straightened his robes in front and behind, and sped\nforward, his elbows spread like wings. When the guest had left,\nhe always reported it, saying:  'The guest has ceased to\nlook back.'\n\n\"Entering the palace gate he stooped, as though it were too low\nfor him. He did not stand in the middle of the gate, nor step on\nthe threshold.  Passing the throne, his face seemed to change,\nhis knees to bend; and he spoke with bated breath.  Mounting the\nroyal dais, he lifted his robes, bowed his back and masked his\nbreathing till it seemed to stop.  Coming down, his face relaxed\nbelow the first step, and bore a pleased look.  From the foot of\nthe steps he sped forward, his elbows spread like wings; and\nwhen again in his seat, he looked intent as before.  He held his\nhands not higher than in bowing, nor lower than in giving a\npresent.  He wore an awed look and dragged his feet, as though\nthey were fettered.\"\n\nWhich means that he felt the royal office to be sacred, as the\nseat of authority and government, the symbol and representative\nof heaven, the fountain of order:  in its origin, divine.  He\ntreated Marquis Ting as if he had been Yao, Shun, or Yu; or\nrather, the Marquis's throne and office as if one of these had\nheld them.  There is the long history of China to prove he was\nwise in the example he set.\n\n\"When presenting royal gifts his manner was formal; but he was\ncheerful at the private audience.--This gentleman was never\narrayed in maroon or scarlet; even at home he would not wear red\nor purple.  In hot weather he wore unlined linen clothes, but\nalways over other garments.  Over lambskin he wore black; over\nfawn he wore white; over fox-skin he wore yellow.  At home he\nwore a long fur robe with the right sleeve short.  He always had\nhis night-gown half as long again as his body.  In the house he\nwore fox- or badger-skin for warmth.  When out of mourning there\nwas nothing wanting from his girdle.  Except for court-dress, he\nwas sparing of stuff.  He did not wear lamb's wool, or a black\ncap, on a visit of condolence.  On the first day of the moon he\nalways went to court in court dress.  On fast days he always\ndonned clothes of pale hue, changed his food, and moved from his\nwonted seat.  He did not dislike his rice cleaned with care, nor\nhis hash copped small.  He would not eat sour or mouldy rice,\nputrid fish, or tainted meat.  Aught discolored or high, badly\ncooked, or out of season, he would not eat.  He would not eat\nwhat was badly cut, or a dish with the wrong sauce.  A choice of\nmeats could not tempt him to eat more than he had a relish for.\nTo wine alone he set no limit; but he never drunk more than\nenough.  He did not drink brought wine, or eat ready-dried meat.\nHe did not eat much.  Ginger was never missing at his table.\n\n\"After sacrifice at the palace he would not keep the meat\nover-night; at home, not more than three days.  If kept longer,\nit was not eaten.  He did not talk at meals, nor in bed.  Though\nthere were but coarse rice and vegetables, he made his offering\nwith all reverence.  If his mat were not straight, he would not\nsit down.  When drinking with the villagers, when those with\nslaves left, he left too.  At the village exorcisms he donned\ncourt dress, and stood on the eastern steps.\n\n\"When sending inquiries to another land, he bowed twice and saw\nhis messenger out.  On K'ang's making him a present of medicine,\nhe accepted it with a low bow, saying:  'I do not know; I dare\nnot taste it.'  His stables having been burnt, the Master, on his\nreturn from court, said:  'Is anyone hurt?'  He did not ask after\nthe horses.\"\n\nSet down in perfect good faith to imply that his concern was for\nthe sufferings of others, not for his personal loss:  and without\nperception of the fact that it might imply callousness as to the\nsuffering of the horses.  We are to read the recorder's mind, and\nnot the Master's, in that omission.--\n\n\"When the marquis sent him baked meat, he set his mat straight,\nand tasted it first.  When the Marquis sent him raw meat, he had\nit cooked for sacrifice.  When the Marquis sent him a living\nbeast, he had it reared.  When dining in attendance on the\nMarquis, the latter made the offering; Confucius ate of things\nfirst.  On the Marquis coming to see him in sickness, he turned\nhis face to the east and had his court dress spread across him,\nwith the girdle over it.  When summoned by the Marquis, he\nwalked, without waiting for his carriage.  On entering the Great\nTemple, he asked how each thing was done.  When a friend died who\nhad no home, he said:  'It is for me to bury him.'  When a friend\nsent a gift, even of a carriage and horses, he did not bow.  He\nonly bowed for sacrificial meat.  He would not lie in a bed like\na corpse.  At home he unbent.\n\n\"On meeting a mourner, were he a friend, his face changed.  Even\nin every-day clothes, when he met anyone in full dress, or a\nblind man, his face grew staid.  When he met men in mourning, he\nbowed over the cross-bar.  Before choice meats he rose with a\nchanged look.  At sharp thunder or fierce wind, his countenance\nchanged.  In mounting his chariot he stood straight and grasped\nthe cord.  When in his chariot, he did not look round, speak\nfast, or point.\"\n\nThere you have one side of the outer man; and the most has\nbeen made of it.  \"Always figuring, always posturing,\" we\nhear.  I merely point to the seventy noble generations, the\npersonality made up of that courtly heredity, whose smallest quite\nspontaneous acts and habits seemed to men worth recording, as\nshowing how the perfect gentleman behaved:  a model.  Another\nside is found in the lover of poetry, the devotee of music, the\nman of keen and intense affections.  Surely, if a _poseur,_ he\nmight have posed when bereavement touched him; he might have\nassumed a high philosophic calm.  But no; he never bothered to;\neven though reproached for inconsistency.  His mother died when\nhe was twenty-four; and he broke through all rites and customs\nby raising a mound over her grave; that, as he said, he might\nhave a place to turn to and think of as his home whereever he\nmight be on his wanderings.  He mourned for her the orthodox\ntwenty-seven months; then for five days longer would not touch\nhis lute.  On the sixth day he took it and began to play; but\nwhen he tried to sing, broke down and wept.  One is surprised;\nbut there is no posing about it.  Yen Hui was his saint John, the\nBeloved disciple.  \"When Yen Hui died,\" we read, \"the Master\ncried, 'Woe is me!  I am undone of Heaven!  I am undone of\nHeaven!'  When Yen Hui died the Master gave way to grief.  The\ndisciples said:  'Sir, you are giving way.'--'Am I giving way?'\nsaid he.  'If for this man I do not give way, for whom shall I\ngive way?... Hui treated me as a son his father; I have failed\nto treat him as a father his son.'\"  Confucius was old then, and\nnear his own death...  But what I think you will recognise in his\nspeech, again and again, is the peculiarly spontaneous... indeed\nimpetuous ... ring of it.  He had that way of repeating a\nsentence twice that marks a naturally impetuous man.--Of his\nsense of humor I shall speak later.\n\nHe dearly loved his disciples, and was homesick when away from\nthem.--\"My batch of boys, ambitious and hasty--I must go home to\nthem! I must go home to them!\"  said he.  Once when he was very\nill, Tse Lu \"moved the disciples to act as ministers\":--to behave\nto him as if he were a king and they his ministers.--\"I know, I\nknow!\" said Confucius; \"Tse Lu has been making believe. This show\nof ministers, when I have none,--whom will it deceive? Will it\ndeceive Heaven?  I had rather die in your arms, my boys, than be\na king and die in the arms of my ministers.\"--\"Seeing the\ndisciple Min standing at his side in winning strength, Tse Lu\nwith warlike front, Jan Yu and Tse Kung fresh and strong, the\nMaster's heart was glad,\" we read.  He considered what he calls\n'love' the highest state,--the condition of the Adept or Sage;\nbut that other thing that goes by the same name,--of that he\nwould not speak;--nor of crime,--nor of feats of strength,\n--nor of doom,--nor of ghosts and spirits. Anything that\nimplied a forsaking of middle lines, a losing of the balance,\nextravagance,--he abhorred.--And now back to that other side of\nhim again:  the Man of Action.\n\nThe task that lay before him was to reform the state of Lu.\nSomething was rotten in it; it needed some reforming.--The\nrotten thing, to begin with, was Marquis Ting himself; who was\nof such stuff as Confucius referred to when he said:  \"You cannot\ncarve rotten wood.\"  But brittle and crumbling as it was, it\nwould serve his turn for the moment; it would give him the\nchance to show twenty-five Chinese centuries the likeness of an\nAdept at the head of a state.  So it should be proved to them\nthat Such a One--they call him _Such a One_ generally, I\nbelieve, to avoid the light repetition of a name grown sacred--is\nno impractical idealist merely, but a Master of Splendid\nSuccesses here in this world:  that the Way of Heaven is the way\nthat succeeds on earth--if only it be honestly tried.\n\nTing was by no means master in his own marquisate.  As in England\nunder Stephen, bold bad robber barons had fortified their castles\neverywhere, and from these strongholds defied the government.\nThe mightiest magnate of all was the Chief of Clan Chi, who\nordered things over his royal master's head, and was very much a\npower for the new Minister of Crime to reckon with.  A clash came\nbefore long.  Ex-marquis Chao--he that had been driven into\nexile--died in Ts'i; and his body was sent home for burial with\nhis ancestors.  Chi, who had been chief among those responsible\nfor the dead man's exile, by way of insulting the corpse, gave\norders that it should be buried outside the royal cemetery; and\nhis orders were carried out.  Confucius heard of it, and was\nindignant.  To have had the corpse exhumed and reburied would\nhave been a new indignity, I suppose; therefore he gave orders\nthat the cemetery should be enlarged so as to include the grave;\n--and went down and saw it done.--\"I have done this on your\nbehalf,\"  he informed Chi, \"to hide the shame of your disloyalty.\nTo insult the memory of a dead prince is against all decency.\"\nThe great man gnashed his teeth; but the Minister of Crime's\naction stood.\n\nHe turned his attention to the robber-barons, and reduced them.\nI do not know how; he was entirely against war; but it is\ncertain that in a very short time those castles were leveled with\nthe ground, and the writ of the Marquis ran through Lu.  He\nhated capital punishment; but signed the death warrant for the\nworst of the offenders;--and that despite the protest of some of\nhis disciples, who would have had him consistent above all\nthings.  But his back was up, and the man was executed.  One\nmakes no excuse for it; except perhaps, to say that such an\naction, isolated, and ordained by Such a One, needs no excuse.\nHe was in the habit of fulfilling his duty; and duty may at times\npresent itself in strange shapes.  It was a startling thing to\ndo; and Lu straight-way, as they say, sat right up and began to\ntake concentrated notice of a situation the like of which had not\nbeen seen for centuries.\n\nHe had the final decision in all legal cases. A father brought a\ncharge against his son; relying on the bias of the Minister\nwhose life had been so largely given to preaching filial piety.\n\"If you had brought up your son properly,\" said Confucius, \"this\nwould not have happened\"; and astounded plaintiff, defendant,\nand the world at large by putting both in prison for three\nmonths.  In a year or so he had done for Lu what he had done for\nChung-tu during his magistracy.\n\nBy this time Ts'i and Sung and Wei and the whole empire were\ntaking notice too.  There was actually a state where crime was\nunknown; where law ruled and the government was strong, and yet,\nthe people more than contented; a state--and such a state!--\nlooming ahead as the probable seat of a Bretwalda.  Lu with the\nhegemony!  This old orthodox strict Lu!--this home of lost\ncauses!--this back number, and quaint _chinoiserie_ to be laughed\nat!--As if Morgan Shuster had carried on his work in Persia until\nPersia had become of a strength to threaten the world.  Lu was\ngrowing strong; and Ts'i--renowned military Ts'i--thought she\nought to be doing something.  Thus in our own time, whenever\nsomnolent obsolete Turkey tried to clean her house, Russia,\nland-hungry and looking to a Thanksgiving Dinner presently, felt\na call to send down emissaries, and--see that the cleaning should\nnot be done.\n\nDuke Ching of Ts'i, at the first attempt, bungled his plans\nbadly.  He would not strike at the root of things, Confucius;\nperhaps retained too much respect for him; perhaps simply did\nnot understand; but at that harmless mutton Marquis Ting who\nConfucius had successfully camouflaged up to look like a lion.\nTo that end he formally sought an alliance with Lu, and the Lu\nMinister of Crime concurred.  He intended that there should be\nmore of these alliances.\n\nAn altar was raised on the frontier, where the two princes were\nto meet and sign the treaty.  Duke Ching had laid his plans; but\nthey did not include the presence of Confucius at the altar as\nMaster or the Ceremonies on the side of Lu.  There he was,\nhowever; and after all, it could hardly make much difference.\nThe preliminary rites went forward.  Suddenly, a roll of drums;\na rush of 'savages' out of ambush;--there were savage tribes in\nthose parts;--confusion; the Marquis's guard, as the Duke's, is\nat some little distance; and clearly it is for the Marquis that\nthese 'savages' are making.  But Confucius is there.  He steps\nbetween the kidnappers and his master, \"with elbows spread like\nwings\" hustles the latter off into safety; takes hold of the\nsituation; issues sharp orders to the savages--who are of course\nTs'i troops in disquise:  _Attention!  About face!--Double\nmarch!_--snaps out the words of command in right military style,\nright in the presence of their own duke, who stands by amazed and\nhelpless;--and off they go.  Then spaciously clears the matter\nup.  Finds, no doubt, that it is all a mistake; supplies, very\nlikely, an easy and acceptable explanation to save Ching's face;\nshortly has all things peaceably _in status quo._  Then brings\nback his marquis, and goes forward with the treaty; but now as\nMaster of the Ceremonies and something more.  There had been a\nland question between Lu and Ts'i:  Lu territory seized some time\nsince by her strong neighbor, and the cause of much soreness on\nthe one hand and exultation on the other.  By the time that\ntreaty had been signed Duke Ching of Ts'i had ceded back the land\nto Marquis Ting of Lu,--a thing assuredly he had never dreamed of\ndoing; and an alliance had been established between the two\nstates.  Since the Duke of Chow's time, Lu had never stood\nso high.\n\nWas our man a prig at all?  Was he a pedant?  have those who have\nsedulously spread that report of him in the West told the truth\nabout him?  Or--hath a pleasant little lie or twain served\ntheir turn?\n\nDuke Ching went home and thought things over.  He had learned his\nlesson:  that ting was but a camouflage lion, and by no means the\none to strike at, if business was to be done.  He devised a plan,\nsweet in it simplicity, marvelous in its knowledge of what we are\npleased to call 'human' nature.  He ransacked his realm for\nbeautiful singing and dancing girls, and sent the best eighty he\ncould find to his dear friend and ally of Lu.  Not to make the\nthing too pointed, he added a hundred and twenty fine horses--\nwith their trappings. What could be more appropriate than\nsuch a gift?\n\nIt worked.  Ting retired to his harem, and day after day passed\nover a Lu unlighted by his countenance.  Government was at a\nstandstill; the great Minister of Crime could get nothing done.\nThe Annual Sacrifice was at hand; a solemnity Confucius hoped\nwould remind Ting of realities and bring him to his  right mind.\nAccording to the ritual, a portion of the offering should be sent\nto each high official of the state:  none came to Confucius.  Day\nafter day he waited; but Ting's character was quite gone:  the\nlion-skin had fallen off, and the native egregious muttonhood or\nworse stood revealed.--\"Master,\" said Tse Lu, \"it is time you\nwent.\"  But he was very loath to go.  At last he gathered his\ndisciples, and slowly went out from the city.  He lingered much\non the way, looking back often, still hoping for sight of the\nmessenger who should recall him.  But none came.  That was\nin 497.\n\nThe old century had ended about the time he took office; and\nwith it, of course, the last quarter in which, as always, the\nDoors of the Lodge were open, and the spiritual influx pouring\ninto the world.  So the effort of that age had its consummation\nand fine flower in the three years of his official life:  to be\nconsidered a triumph.  Now, Laotse had long since ridden away\ninto the West; the Doors were shut; the tides were no longer\nflowing; and the God's great Confucius remained in a world that\nknew him not.  As for holding office and governing states, he had\ndone all that was necessary.\n\n\n\n\nXI.  CONFUCIUS THE HERO\n\n\nHe had done enough in the way of holding office and governing\nstates.  Laotse had taught that of old time, before Tao was lost,\nthe Yellow Emperor sat on his throne and all the world was\ngoverned without knowing it.  Confucius worked out the doctrine\nthus:  True government is by example; given the true ruler, and\nhe will have the means of ruling at his disposal, and they will\nbe altogether different from physical force.  'Example' does not\ncovey it either:  his thought was much deeper.  There is a word\n_li_--I get all this from Dr. Lionel Giles--which the egregious\nhave been egregiously translating 'the rules of propriety'; but\nwhich Confucius used primarily for a state of harmony within the\nsoul, which should enable beneficent forces from the Infinite to\nflow through into the outer world;--whereof a result would also\nbe, on the social plane, perfect courtesy and politeness, these\nthe most outward expression of it.  On these too Confucius\ninsisted which is the very worst you can say about him.--Now, the\nruler stands between Gods and men; let his _li_ be perfect--let\nthe forces of heaven flow through him unimpeded,--and the people\nare regenerated day by day:  the government is by regeneration.\nHere lies the secret of all his insistence on loyalty and\nfilial piety:  the regeneration of society is dependent on the\nmaintenance of the natural relation between the Ruler who rules--\nthat is, lets the _li_ of heaven flow through him--and his\npeople.  They are to maintain such an attitude towards him as\nwill enable them to receive the _li._  In the family, he is the\nfather; in the state, he is the king.  In very truth, this is\nthe Doctrine of the Golden Age, and proof of the profound occult\nwisdom of Confucius:  even the (comparatively) little of it that\nwas ever made practical lifted China to the grand height she has\nheld.  It is hinted at in the _Bhagavad-Gita:_--\"whatsoever is\npractised by the most excellent men\"; again, it is the Aryan\ndoctrine of the Guruparampara Chain.  The whole idea is so remote\nfrom modern practice and theory that it must seem to the west\nutopian, even absurd; but we have Asoka's reign in India, and\nConfucius's Ministry in Lu, to prove its basic truth.  During\nthat Ministry he had flashed the picture of such a ruler\non to the screen of time:  and it was enough.  China could\nnever forget.\n\nBut if, knowing it to have been enough,--knowing that the hour of\nthe Open Door had passed, and that he should never see success\nagain,--he had then and there retired into private life, content\nto teach his disciples and leave the stubborn world to save or\ndamn itself:--enough it would not have been.  He had flashed the\npicture on to the screen of time, but it would have faded.\nTwenty years of wandering, of indomitability, of disappointment\nand of ignoring defeat and failure, lay before him:  in which to\nmake his creation, not a momentary picture, but a carving in jade\nand granite and adamant.  It is not the ever-victorious and\nsuccessful that we take into the adyta of our hearts.  It is the\npoignancy of heroism still heroism in defeat,--\n\n     \"unchanged, though fallen on evil years,\"\n\n--that wins admittance there.  Someone sneered at Confucius, in his\nlatter years, as the man who was always trying to do the\nimpossible.  He was; and the sneerer had no idea what high\ntribute he was paying him.  It is because he was that:  the hero,\nthe flaming idealist:  that his figure shines out so clear and\nsplendidly.  His outer attempts--to make a Man of Marquis This\nor Duke That, and a model state of Lu or Wei--these were\nbut carvings in rotten wood, foredoomed to quick failure.\nAll the material of the world was rotten wood:  he might have\nlearned that lesson;--only there are lessons that Such a One\nnever learns.  Well; we in turn may learn a lesson from him:\napplicable now.  The rotten wood crumbled under his hands time\nand again:  under his bodily hands;--but it made no difference to\nhim.  He went on and on, still hoping to begin his life's work,\nand never recognising failure; and by reason and virtue of that,\nthe hands of his spirit were carving, not in rotten wood, but in\nprecious jade and adamant spiritual, to endure forever.  On those\ninner planes he was building up his Raja-Yoga; which time saw to\nit should materialize and redeem his race presently.  Confucius\nin the brief moment of his victory illuminated the world indeed;\nbut Confucius in the long years of his defeat has bowed the\nhearts of twenty-five centuries of the Black-haired People.  We\ncan see this now; I wonder did he see it then?  I mean, had that\ncertain knowledge and clear vision in his conscious mind, that\nwas possessed in the divinity of his Soul--as it is in every\nSoul.  I imagine not; for in his last days he--the personality--\ncould give way and weep over the utter failure of his efforts.\nOne loves him the more for it:  one thinks his grandeur only the\nmore grand.  It is a very human and at last a very pathetic\nfigure--this Man that did save his people.\n\nDue west from Lu, and on the road thence to Honanfu the Chow\ncapital, lay the Duchy of Wei; whither now he turned his steps.\nHe had no narrow patriotism:  if his own Lu rejected him, he\nmight still save this foreign state, and through it, perhaps, All\nthe Chinas.  He was at this time one of the most famous men\nalive; and his first experience in Wei might have been thought\nto augur well. On the frontier he was met by messengers from a\nlocal Wei official, begging for their master an interview:--\n\"Every illustrious stranger has granted me one; let me not ask\nit of you, Sir, in vain.\"  Confucius complied; was conducted to\nthe yamen, and went in, leaving his disciples outside.  To these\nthe magistrate came out, while the Master was still resting\nwithin.--\"Sirs,\" said he, \"never grieve for your Teacher's fall\nfrom office.  His work is but now to begin.  These many years the\nempire has been in perilous case; but now Heaven has raised up\nConfucius, its tocsin to call the people to awakenment.\"--A wise\nman, that Wei official!\n\nAt the capital, Duke Ling received him with all honor, and at\nonce assigned him a pension equal to the salary he had been paid\nas Minister of Crime in Lu.  He even consulted him now and again;\nbut reserved to himself liberty to neglect the advice asked for.\nHowever, the courtiers intrigued; and before the year was out,\nConfucius had taken to his wanderings again:  he would try the\nstate of Ch'in now, in the far south-east.  \"If any prince would\nemploy me,\" said he, \"within a twelvemonth I should have done\nsomething considerable; in three years the government would\nbe perfect.\"\n\nHe was to pass through the town of Kwang, in Sung; it had lately\nbeen raided by a robber named Yang Hu, in face and figure\nresembling himself. Someone who saw him in the street put it\nabroad that Yang Hu was in the town, and followed him to the\nhouse he had taken for the night. Before long a mob had gathered,\nintent on vengeance. The situation was dangerous; the mob in no\nmood to hear reason;--and as to that, Yang Hu also would have\nsaid that he was not the man they took him for,--very likely\nwould have claimed to be the renowned Confucius.  The disciples,\nas well they might be, were alarmed:  the prospect was, short\nshrift for the whole party.--\"Boys,\" said the Master, \"do you\nthink Heaven entrusted the Cause of Truth to me, to let me be\nharmed by the towns-men of Kwang? \"--The besiegers looked for\nprotests, and then for a fight.  What they did not look for was\nto hear someone inside singing to a lute;--it was that great\nmusician Confucius.  When he sang and played you stopped to\nlisten; and so did the Kwang mob now.  They listened, and\nwondered, and enjoyed their free concert; then made reasonable\ninquiries, and apologies,--and went their ways in peace.\n\nIn those South-eastern states there was no prospect for him,\nand after a while he returneci to Wei.  He liked Duke Ling\npersonally, and the liking was mutual; time and again he went\nback there, hoping against hope that something might be done,--or\nseeing no other horizon so hopeful.  Now Ling had a consort of\nsome irregular kind:  Nantse, famed for her beauty and brilliance\nand wickedness.  Perhaps _ennuyee,_ and hoping for contact with a\nmind equal to her own, she was much stirred by the news of\nConfucius' return, and sent to him asking an interview.  Such a\nrequest was a characteristic flouting of the conventions on her\npart; for him to grant it would be much more so on his.  But he\ndid grant it; and they conversed, after the custom of the time,\nwith a screen between, neither seeing the other.  Tse Lu was much\ndisturbed; considering it all a  very dangerous innovation,\ninconsistent in Confucius, and improper.  So in the eyes of the\nworld it would have seemed.  But Nantse held the Duke, and\nConfucius might influence Nantse.  He never let conventions stand\nin his way, when there was a chance of doing good work by\nbreaking them.\n\nOne suspects that the lady wished to make her vices respectable\nby giving them a seeming backing by incarnate virtue; and that\nto this end she brought about the sequel.  Duke Ling was to make\na Progress through the city; and requested Confucius to follow\nhis carriage in another.  He did so; not knowing that Nantse had\nseen to it that she was to be sitting at the Duke's side.\nHer position and reputation even in those days needed some\nregularizing; and she had chosen this means to do it.  But to\nthe people, the spectacle was highly symbolic; and Confucius\nheard their jeers as he passed:--Flaunting Vice in front,\nSlighted Virtue in the rear.--\"I have met none,\" said he, \"who\nloves virtue more than women.\"  It was time for him to go; and\nnow he would try the south again.  In reality, perhaps, it matter\nlittle whither he went or where he stayed:  there was no place\nfor him anywhere. All that was important was, that he should keep\nup the effort.\n\nAn official in Sung, one Hwan Tuy, held the roads against him,\naccusing him of \"a proud air and many desires; an insinuating\nhabit and a wild will.\"  From this time on he was subject to\npersecution.  The \"insinuating habit\" reminds one of an old\nparrot-cry one has heard:  \"She hypnotizes them.\"  He turned\nwestward from this opposition, and visited one state, and then\nanother; in neither was there any disposition to use him.  He\nhad found no more likely material than Duke Ling of Wei, who at\nleast was always glad to see and talk with him:--might not be\njade to carve, but was the wood least rotten at hand.  But at\nWei, as usual, there was nothing but disappointment in store.\n\nPih Hsih, a rebel, was holding a town in Tsin, modern Shansi,\nagainst the king of that state; and now sent messengers inviting\nConfucius to visit him.  Tse Lu protested:  had he not always\npreached obedience to the Powers that Were, and that the True\nGentleman did not associate with rebels?--\"Am I a bitter gourd,\"\nsaid Confucius, \"to be hung up out of the way of being eaten?\"\nHe was always big enough to be inconsistent.  He had come to see\nthat the Powers that Were were hopeless, and was for catching at\nany straw.  But something delayed his setting out; and when he\nreached the Yellow River, news came of the execution of Tsin of\ntwo men whom he admired.  \"How beautiful they were!\"  said he;\n\"how beautiful they were!  This river is not more majestic!  And\nI was not there to save them!\"\n\nThe truth seems to be that he would set out for any place where\nthe smallest opening presented itself; and while that opening\nexisted, would not be turned aside from his purpose; but if it\nvanished, or if something better came in sight, he would turn and\nfollow that.  Thus he did not go on into Tsin when he heard of\nthese executions; but one, when he was on the road to Wei and a\nband of roughs waylaid him and made him promise never to go there\nagain, he simply gave the promise and went straight on.\n\nAt Wei now Duke Ling was really inclined to use him;--but as his\nmilitary adviser.  It was the last straw; he left, and would not\nreturn in Ling's lifetime.  He was in Ch'in for awhile; and then\nfor three years at Ts'ae, a new state built of the rebellion of\ncertain subjects or vassals of the great sourthern kingdom of\nTs'u.  On hearing of his arrival, the Duke of Ts'ae had the idea\nto send for Tse Lu, who had a broad reputation of his own as a\nbrave and practical man, and to inquire of him what kind of man\nthe master really was.  But Tse Lu, as we have seen, was rigid as\nto rebels, and vouchsafed no answer.--\"You might have told him,\"\nsaid Confucius, \"that I am simply one who forgets his food in the\npursuit of wisdom, and his sorrows in the joys of attaining it,\nand who does not perceive old age coming on.\"\n\nMissionary writers have cast it at him, that were of old he had\npreached against rebellion, now he was willing enough to \"have\nrebels for his patrons\";--\"adversity had not stiffened his back,\nbut had made him pliable.\"  Which shows how blind such minds are\nto real greatness.  \"They have nothing to draw with, and this\nwell is deep.\"  He sought no \"patrons,\"  now or at another time;\nbut tools with which to work for the redemption of China; and he\nwas prepared to find them anywhere, and take what came to hand.\nHis keynote was _duty._  The world went on snubbing, ignoring,\ninsulting, traducing, and persecuting him; and he went on with\nthe performance of his duty;--rather, with the more difficult\ntask of searching for the duty he was to perform.  This resorting\nto rebels, like that conversing with Nantse, shows him clearly\nnot the formalist and slave of conventions he has been called,\nbut a man of highest moral courage.  What he stood for was not\nforms, conventions, reules, proprieties, or anything of the sort;\nbut the liens of least resistance in his high endeavor to lift\nthe world:  lines of least resistance; middle lines; common\nsense.--As ususal, there was nothing to be done with the Duke\nof Ts'ae.\n\nWandering from state to state, he came on recluses in a field by\nthe river, and sent Tse Lu forward to ask one of them the way to\nthe ford.  Said the hermit:--\"You follow one who withdraws from\ncourt to court; it would be better to withdraw from the world\naltogether.\"--\"What!\"  said Confucius when it was told him;\n\"shall I not associate with mankind?  If I do not associate with\nmankind, with whom shall I associate?\"\n\nIn which answer lies a great key to Confucianism; turn it once\nor twice, and you get to the import of his real teaching.  He\nnever would follow the individual soul into its secrecies; he\nwas concerned with man only as a fragment of humanity.  He was\nconcerned with man _as_ humanity.  All that the West calls\n(personal) religion he disliked intensely.  Any desire or scheme\nto save your own soul; any right-doing for the sake of a reward,\neither here or hereafter, he would have bluntly called wrong-\ndoing, anti-social and selfish.  (I am quoting in substance from\nDr. Lionel Giles.)  He tempted no one with hopes of heaven;\nfrightened none with threats of hell.  It seemed to him that he\ncould make a higher and nobler appeal,--could strike much more\nforcibly at the root of evil (which is selfishness), by saying\nnothing about rewards and punishments at all.  The one inducement\nto virtue that he offered was this:  By doing right, you lead the\nworld into right-doing.  He was justified in saying that Man is\ndivine; because this divine appeal of his was effective; not\nlike the West's favorite appeal to fear, selfish desire, and the\nbrutal side of our nature.  \"Do right to escape a whipping, or a\nhanging, or hell-fire,\"  says Christendom; and the nations\nreared on that doctrine have risen and fallen, risen and fallen;\na mad riot of people struggling into life, and toppling back into\ndeath in a season; so that future ages and the far reaches of\nhistory will hardly remember their names, too lightly graven upon\ntime.  But China, nourished on this divine appeal, however far\nshe may have fallen short of it, has stood, and stood, and stood.\nIn the last resort, it is the only inducement worth anything;\nthe only lever that lifts.--There is that _li,_--that inevitable\nrightness and harmony that begins in the innermost _when there is\nthe balance_ and duty is being done, and flows outward healing\nand preserving and making wholesome all the phases of being;--let\nthat harmony of heaven play through you, and you are bringing\nmankind to virtue; you are pouting cleansing currents into the\nworld.  How little of the tortuosity of metaphysics is here;--but\nwhat grand efficacity of super-ethics!  You remember what _Light\non the Path_ says about the man who is a link between the noise\nof the market-place and the silence of the snow-capped Himalayas;\nand what it says about the danger of seeking to sow good karma\nfor oneself,--how the man that does so will only be sowing the\ngiant weed of selfhood.  In those two passages you find the\nessence of Confucianism and the wisdom and genius of Confucius.\nIt is as simple as A B C; and yet behind it lie all the truths\nof metaphysics and philosophy.  He seized upon the pearl\nof Theosophic thought, the cream of all metaphysics, where\nmetaphysics passes into action,--and threw his strength into\ninsisting on that:  Pursue virtue because it is virtue, and that\nyou may (as you will,--it is the only way you can)  bring the\nworld to virtue; or negatively, in the words of _Light on the\nPath:_  \"Abstain (from vice) because it is right to abstain--not\nthat yourself shall be kept clean.\"  And now to travel back\ninto the thought behind, that you may see if Confucius was a\nmaterialist; whether or not he believed in the Soul;--and that\nif he was not a great original thinker, at least he commanded the\nends of all great, true and original thinking.  Man, he says, is\nnaturally good.  That is, collectively.  _Man_ is divine and\nimmortal; only _men_ are mortal and erring.  Were there a true\nbrotherhood of mankind established, a proper relation of the\nparts to the whole and to each other,--you would have no\ndifficulty with what is evil in yourself.  The lower nature with\nits temptations would not appear; the world-old battle with the\nflesh would be won.  But separate yourself in yourself,--consider\nyourself as a selfhood, not as a unit in society;--and you find,\nthere where you have put yourself, evil to contend with a-plenty.\nVirtue inheres in the Brotherhood of Man; vice in the separate\npersonal and individual units.  Virtue is in That which is no\nman's possession, but common to all:  namely, the Soul--though he\ndoes not enlarge upon it as that; perhaps never mentions it as\nthe Soul at all;--vice is in that which each has for himself\nalone:  the personality.  Hence his hatred of religiosity, of\npersonal soul-saving.  You were to guard against evil in the\nsimplest way:  by living wholly in humanity, finding all you\nmotives and sources of action there.  If you were, in the highest\nsense, simply a factor in human society, you were a good man.  If\nyou lived in yourself alone,--having all evil to meet there, you\nwere likely to succumb to it; and you were on the wrong road\nanyway.  Come out, then; think not of your soul to be saved, nor\nof what may befall you after death.  You, as you, are of no\naccount; all that matters is humanity as a whole, of which you\nare but a tiny part.--Now, if you like, say that Confucius did\nnot teach Theosophy, because, _so far as we know,_ he said\nnothing about Karma or Reincarnation.  I am inclined to think him\none of the two or three supreme historical Teachers of Theosophy;\nand to say that his message, so infinitely simple, is one of the\nmost wonderful presentations of it ever given.\n\nIt is this entire purity from all taint of personal religion;\nthis distaste for prayer and unrelish for soul-salvation; this\nsweet clean impersonality of God and man, that makes the\nmissionary writers find him so cold and lifeless.  But when you\nlook at him, it is a marvelously warm-hearted magnetic man you\nsee:  Such a One as wins hearts to endless devotion.  Many of the\ndisciples were men who commanded very much the respect of\nthe world.  The king of Ts'u proposed to give Confucius an\nindependent duchy:  to make a sovereign prince of him, with\nterritories absolutely his own.  But one of his ministers\ndissuaded him thus:  \"Has your majesty,\" said he, \"any diplomatist\nin your service like Tse Kung?  Or anyone so fitted to be prime\nminister as Yen Huy?  Or a general to compare with Tse Lu? . . .\nIf K'ung Ch'iu were to acquire territory, with such men as these\nto serve him, it would not be to the prosperity of Ts'u.\"--And\nyet those three brilliant men were content--no, proud--to follow\nhim on his hopeless wanderings, sharing all his long sorrow;\nthey were utterly devoted to him. Indeed, we read of none of his\ndisciples turning against him;--which also speaks mighty well for\nthe stuff that was to be found in Chinese humanity in those days.\n\nTse Kung was told that some prince or minister had said that he,\nTse Kung, was a greater man than Confucius.  He answered:  \"The\nwall of my house rises only to the height of a man's shoulders;\nanyone can look in and see whatever excellence is within.  But\nthe Master's wall is many fathoms in height; so that who fails to\nfind the gateway cannot see the beauties of the temple within nor\nthe rich apparel of the officiating priests.  It may be that only\na few will find the gate.    Need we be surprised, then, at His\nExcellency's remark?\"  Yen Huy said:--\"The Master knows how to\ndraw us after him by regular steps.  He broadens our outlook\nwith polite learning, and restrains our impulses by teaching\nus self-control.\"\n\nOnly once, I think, is he recorded to have spoken of prayer.  He\nwas very ill, and Tse Lu proposed to pray for his recovery.  Said\nConfucius: \"What precedent is there for that?\"--There was great\nstuff in that Tse Lu:  a bold warriorlike nature; not very\npliable; not too easy to teach, I imagine, but wonderfully\npaying for any lesson taught and learned.  He figures often as\nthe one who clings to the letter, and misses vision of the spirit\nof the teaching; so now the Master plays him a little with this\nas to precedent,--which weighed always more strongly with Tse Lu\nthan with Confucius.--\"In the _Eulogies,\"_ said Tse Lu, (it is a\nlost work), \"it is written:  'We pray to you, O Spirits of\nHeaven and Earth.\"--\"Ah!\" said Confucius, \"my prayers began long,\nlong ago.\"  But he never did pray, in the Western sense.  His\n_life_ was one great intercession and petition for his people.\n\nAs to his love of ritual:  remember that there are ceremonies and\nceremonies, some with deep power and meaning.  Those that\nConfucius upheld came down to him from Adept Teachers of old;\nand he had an eye to them only as outward signs of a spiritual\ngrace, and means to it.  \"Ceremonies indeed!\" said he once; \"do\nyou think they are a mere matter of silken robes and jade\nomaments?  Music forsooth!  Can music be a mere thing of drums\nand bells?\"--Or of harps, lutes, dulcimers, sackbuts, psalteries,\nand all kinds of instruments, he might have added; all of which,\ntogether with all rites, postures, pacings, and offerings, were\nnothing to him unless channels through which the divine _li_\nmight be induced to flow.  Yet on his wanderings, by the\nroadside, in lonely places, he would go through ceremonies with\nhis disciples.  Why?--Why is an army drilled?  If you go to the\nroot of the matter, it is to make _one_ the consciousness of the\nindividual soldiers.  So Confucius, as I take it, in his\nceremonies sought to unify the consciousness of his disciples,\nthat the _li_ might have passage through them.  I say boldly it\nwas a proof of that deep occult knowledge of his,--which he never\ntalked about.\n\nThey asked him once if any single ideogram conveyed the whole law\nof life.--\"Yes,\" he said; and gave them one compounded of two\nothers, which means 'As heart':--the missionaries prefer to\nrender it 'reciprocity.'  His teaching--out of his own mouth we\nconvict him--was the Doctrine of the Heart.  He was for the glow\nin the heart always; not as against, but as the one true cause\nof, external right action.  But the Heart doctrine cannot be\ndefined in a set of rules and formulae; so he was always urging\nmiddle lines, common sense.  That is the explanation of his\nfamous answer when they asked him whether injuries should be\nrepaid with kindness.  What he said amounts to this:  \"For\ngoodness sake, use common sense!  I have given you 'as heart' for\nyour rule.\"--We know Katherine Tingley's teaching:  not one of us\nbut has been helped and saved by it a thousand times.  I can only\nsay that, in the light of that, the more you study Confucius, the\ngreater he seems; the more extraordinary the parallelisms you\nsee between her method and his.  Perhaps it is because his method\nhas been so minutely recorded.  We do not find here merely\nethical precepts, or expositions of philosophic thought:  what we\nsee is a Teacher guiding and adjusting the lives of his disciples.\n\nWhen he had been three years at Ts'ae, the King of Ts'u invited\nhim to his court.  Ts'u, you will remember, lay southward towards\nthe Yangtse, and was, most of the time, one of the six Great\nPowers.*  Here at last was something hopeful; and Confucius set\nout.  But Ts'ae and Ch'in, though they had neglected him, had not\ndone so through ignorance of his value; and were not disposed to\nsee his wisdom added to the strength of Ts'u.  They sent out a\nforce to waylay him; which surrounded him in the wilderness and\nheld him besieged but unmolested for seven days.  Food ran out,\nand the Confucianists were so enfeebled at last that they could\nhardly stand.  We do not hear that terms were offereed, as that\nthey should turn back or go elsewhere:  the intention seems\nto have been to make an end of Confucius and Confucianism\naltogether,--without bloodshed.  Even Tse Lu was shaken.--\"Is it\nfor the Princely Man,\"  said he, \"to suffer the pinch of\nprivation?\"--\"Privation may come his way,\"  Confucius answered;\n\"but only the vulgar grow reckless and demoralized under it.\"  So\nsaying he took his lute and sang to them, and hearing him they\nforgot to fear.  Meanwhile one of the party had won through the\nlines, and brought word to Ts'u of the Master's plight; whereat\nthe king sent a force to his relief, and came out from the\ncapital to receive him in state.  The king's intentions were\ngood; but we have seen how his ministers intrigued and diverted\nthem.  In the autumn of that year he died, having become somewhat\nestranged from the Master.  His successor was one from whom no\ngood could be expected, and Confucius returned to Wei.\n\n-------\n* _Ancient China Simplified:_  by Prof. E. Harper Parker; from\nwhich book the account of the political condition and divisions\nof the empire given in these lectures is drawn.\n------\n\nDuke Ling was dead, and his grandson, Chuh, was on the throne.\nThere had been a complication of family crimes plottings:  Chuh\nhad driven out his father, who in turn had attempted the life of\nhis own mother, Nantse.  Chuh wished to employ Confucius, but not\nto forgo his evil courses:  it was a situation that could not be\nsanctioned.  For six years the Master lived in retirement in Wei,\nwatching events, and always sanguine that his chance would come.\nHe was not sixty-nine years old; but hoped to begin his life's\nwork presently.\n\nThen suddenly he was in demand,--in two quarters.  There was a\nsort of civil war in Wei, and the chief of one of the factions\ncame to him for advice as to the best means of attacking the\nother.  Confucius was disgusted.  Meanwhile Lu had been at war\nwith Ts'i; and Yen Yu, a Confucianist, put in command of the Lu\ntroops, had been winning all the victories in sight.  Marquis\nTing now slept with his fathers, and Marquis Gae reigned in his\nstead; also there was a new Chief of Clan Chi to run things:--\nGae to reign, Chi to rule.  They asked Yen Yu where he had\nlearned his so victorious generalship; and he answered, \"from\nConfucius.\"--If a mere disciple could do so much, they thought,\nsurely the Master himself could do much more:  as, perhaps, lead\nthe Lu armies to universal victory.  So they sent him a cordial\ninvitation, with no words as to the warlike views that prompted\nit. High in hope, Confucius set out; these fourteen years his\nnative country had been pulling at his heart-strings, and\nlatterly, more insistently than ever.  But on his arrival he\nsaw how the land lay.  Chi consulted him about putting down\nbrigandage:  Chi being, as you might say, the arch-brigand of\nLu.--\"If you, Sir, were not avaricious,\"  said Confucius, \"though\nyou offered men rewards for stealing, they would cleave to their\nhonesty.\"  There was nothing to be done with such men as these;\nhe went into retirement, having much literary work to finish.\nThat was in 483.\n\nIn 482 his son Li died; and a year later Yen Huy, dearest of his\ndisciples. We have seen how he gave way to grief.  There is that\nstrange mystery of the dual nature; even in Such a One.  There\nis the human Personality that the Great Soul must work through.\nHe had performed his function; he had fulfilled his duty; all\nthat he owed to the coming ages he had paid in full.  But the\nevidence goes to show that he was still looking forward for a\nchance to begin, and that every disappointmtnt hurt the outward\nman of him:  that it was telling on him:  that it was a sad, a\ndisappointed, even a heart-broken old man that wept over Yen\nHuy.--In 481, we read, a servant of the Chief of Clan Chi caught\na strange one-horned aninial, with a white ribbon tied to its\nhorn.  None had seen the like of it; and Confucius, being the\nmost learned of men, was called in to make pronouncement.  He\nrecognised it at once from his mother's description:  it was the\n_k'e-lin,_ the unicorn; that was the ribbon Chingtsai had decked\nit with in the cave on Mount Ne the night of his birth.  He burst\ninto tears. \"For whom have you come?\"  he cried; \"for whom have\nyou come?\"  And then:  \"The course of my doctrine is run, and\nwisdom is still neglected, and success is still worshiped.  My\nprinciples make no progress:  how will it be in the after ages?\"\n--Ah, could he have know!--I mean, that old weary mind and body;\nthe Soul which was Confucius knew.\n\nYen Huy, Tse Lu, and Tse Kung:  those were the three whom he had\nloved and trusted most.  Yen Huy was dead; Tse Lu, with Tse Kao,\nanother disciple, he had left behind in Wei holding office under\nthe duke.  Now news came that a revolution had broken out there.\n\"Tse Kao will return,\"  said he; \"but Tse Lu will die.\"  So it\nfell.  Tse Kao, finding the duke's cause hopeless, made his\nescape; but Tse Lu fought the forlorn hope to the end, and died\nlike a hero.  Only Tse Kung, of the three, was left to him.  Who\none morning, when he went to the Master's house, found him\nwalking to and fro before the door crooning over this verse:\n\n     \"The great mountain must crumble,\n     The strong beam must break.\n     The wise man must wither like a flower.\"\n\nHeavy-hearted, Tse Kung followed him in.--\"What makes you so\nlate?\"  said Confucius; and then:  \"According to the rites of\nHia, the dead lay in state at the top of the eastern steps, as if\nhe were the host.  Under the Shangs, it was between the two\npillars he lay, as if he were both host and guest.  The rite of\nthe Chows is for him to lie at the top of the western steps,\nas if he were the guest.  I am a man of Shang,\"--it will be\nremembered that he was descended from that royal house; \"and\nlast night I dreamed that I was sitting between the pillars, with\nofferings set out before me.  No intelligent monarch arises; no\nprince will make me his teacher.  My time has come to die.\"--That\nday he took to his bed; his passing was a week later.\n\nOn the banks of the Sze his disciples buried him; and for three\nyears mourned at his grave.  But Tse Kung built himself a cabin\nat the graveside, and remained there three years longer.  \"All my\nlife,\"  said he, \"I have had heaven above my head, but I do not\nknow its height.  I have had earth beneath my feet, but I have\nnot known its magnitude.  I served Confucius:  I was like a\nthirsty man going with his pitcher to the river.  I drank my\nfill, but I never knew the depth of the water.\"\n\nAnd Tse Kung was right; and what he felt then, one feels now.\nYou read Boswell, and have your Johnson in the hollow of\nyour hand:  body, soul, and spirit:  higher triad and lower\nquaternary.  Of Confucius we have a picture in some respects even\nmore detailed than Boswell's of Johnson; but when we have said\neverything, we still feel that nothing has been said.  Boswell\nlets you in through his master's church-door; shows you nave and\naisle, vault and vestry; climbs with you to the belfry; stands\nwith you at the altar and in the pulpit; till you have seen\neverything there is to see.  But with Confucius as with every\nAdept the case is quite different.  \"The Master's wall is\nfathomless,\"  said Tse Kung; but he and the other disciples\ntook care that China at least should find the gate of entry;\nand it is still possible for us to go in, and \"see the beauty\nof the temple, the richness of the robes of the officiating\npriests.\"  You go through everything; see him under all sorts of\ncircumstances; and ask at last:  \"Is this all?\"--No, says your\nguide; \"see here!\"  and flings one last door open.  And that,\nlike the door in Lord Dunsaney's play, opens on to the vastness\nof the stars.  What is it that baffles us and remains undefined\nand undefinable?  Just this:  TAO:  the Infinite Nature.  You can\nsurvey the earth, and measure it with chains; but not Space, in\nwhich a billion leagues is nowise different from an inch or two,\n--it bears the same proportion to the whole.\n\nThere was his infinite trust;--and his unbroken silence as to the\nThings he trusted in.  Time and the world went proving to him\nyear by year that his theories were all impracticable, all wrong;\nthat he was a failure; that there was not anything for him to\ndo, and never would be a chance for him to do it;--and all their\narguments, all the sheer dreadful tyranny of fact, had no weight\nwith him at all:  he went on and on.  What was his sword of\nstrength?  Where were the Allies in whom he trusted?  How dared\nhe pit K'ung Ch'iu of Lu against time and the world and me?--The\nUnseen was with him, and the Silence; and he (perhaps) lifted no\nveil from the Unseen, and kept silent as to the silence;--and yet\nmaintained his Movement, and held his disciples together, and\nsaved his people,--as if he himself had been the Unseen made\nvisible, and the Silence given a voice to speak.\n\nAnd with it all there was the human man who suffered.  I think\nyou will love him the more for this, from the _Analects:_\n\n\"The Minister said to Tse Lu, Tseng Hsi, Jan Yu, and Kung-hsi Hua\nas they sat beside him:  'I may be a day older than you are, but\nforget that.  You are wont to say, \"We are unknown.\"  Well; had\nye a name in the world, what would ye do?'\"\n\n\"Tse Lu answered lightly:  'Give me charge of a land of a\nthousand chariots, crushed between great neighbors, overrun by\nsoldiery and oppressed by famine; in three years' time I should\nhave put courage and high purpose into the people.'\"\n\n\"The Master smiled,--'What wouldst thou do, Ch'iu?' he said.\"\n\n\"Jan Yu answered:  'Had I charge of sixty or seventy square\nmiles, or from fifty to sixty, in three years' time I would give\nthe people plenty.  As for courtesy, music and the like, they\ncould wait for these for the rise of a Princely Man.'\"\n\n\"'And what wouldst thou do, Chih?' said the Master.\"\n\n\"Kung-hsi Hua answered:  'I would speak of the things I fain\nwould learn, not of what I can do.  At service in the Ancestral\nTemple, or at the Grand Audience, clad in black robe and cap, I\nfain would fill a small part.'\"\n\n\"'And thou, Tien?' said the Master.\"\n\n\"Tseng Hsi stopped playing, pushed away his still sounding lute,\nrose up, and made answer:  'My choice would be unlike those of\nthe other three.'\"\n\n\"'What harm in that?' said the Master.  'Each but speaks his mind.'\"\n\n\"Tseng Hsi said:  'In the last days of Spring, and clad for the\nseason, with five or six grown men and six or seven lads, I would\nbathe in the waters of Yi, all fanned by the breeze in the Rain\nGod's Glade, and wander home with song.'\"\n\n\"The Master sighed.--'I hold with Tien,' said he.\"\n\nVery, very human, I say; very Chinese.  But here is that which\nwas not human but divine:  he never turned from his path to\nsatisfy these so human and Chinese longings; the breeze in the\nRain God's Glade never blew for him.  It is just as well to\nremember, when you read of the ceremonies, the body bent under\nthe load of the scepter, the carefully chosen (as it may seem)\nand habitually worn expression of face on passing or approaching\nthe throne, the \"elbows spread like wings\":--all the formal round\nof proprieties;--that it was the last days of Spring, and the\nwaters of Yi, and the breeze in the Rain God's Glade, that were\ncalling to his Chinese heart.\n\nYes; he was very human; listen to this:--Yuan Jang awaited the\nMaster squatting on the ground.  \"The Master said:--'Unruly when\nyoung, unmentioned as man, undying when old,--this spells\n_Good-for-nothing';_  and hit him on the leg with his staff.\"\n\nWhich brings one naturally to his sense of humor.\n\nOnce he was passing through a by-street when a man of the\ndistrict shouted:--\"Great is Confucius the Philosopher! Yet for\nall his wide learning he has nothing which can bring him fame!\"\nThe Master turned to his disciples and said:--\"What shall I take\nup? Shall I take up charioteering?--or archery?--I must certainly\ntake up charioteering!\"\n\nHis disciples once were expecting him at the city of Ch'ing; and\nTse Kung asked a man who was coming from the east gate if he had\nseen him there.--\"Well,\" said the man, \"there is a man there with\na forehead like Yao, a neck like Kao Yao, his shoulders on a\nlevel with those of Tse-ch'an, but wanting below the waist three\ninches of the height of Yu;--and altogether having the forsaken\nappearance of a stray dog.\"  Tse Kung recognised the description\nand hurried off to meet the Master, to whom he reported it\n_verbatim._  Confucius was hugely delighted. \"A stray dog!\" said\nhe; \"fine! fine!\"  Unluckily, no contemporary photographs of Yao\nand Yu and the others have come down; so the description is not\nas enlightening now as it may have been then.\n\n\"Tse Kung,\" we read, \"would compare one man with another.\" The\nMaster said:--\"What talents Tse has! Now I have no time for\nsuch things!\"\n\nI keep on hearing in his words accents that sound familiar.\n\nWhen he was at Loyang--Honanfu--one of the things that struck him\nmost was a bronze statue in the Temple of the Imperial Ancestors,\nwith a triple, clasp on its mouth.  One does not wonder.  A Great\nSoul from the God World, he kept his eyes resolutely on the world\nof men; as if he remembered, nothing of the splendor, and\nnothing foresaw. . . . Indeed, I cannot tell; one would give\nmuch to know what really passed between him and Laotse.  If you\nsay that no word of his lightens, for you that 'dusk within the\nHoly of holies',--at least he gives you the keys, and leaves you\nto find and open the 'Holy of holies' for yourself if you can.\nThere are lost chapters, that went at the Burning of the Books;\nand an old-fashioned Chinaman would often tell you of any Western\nidea or invention his countrymen may not have known, that you\nshould have found all in the lost chapters of Confucius.  It may\nbe;--and that you should have found there better things, too,\nthan Western ideas and inventions. There is a passage in the\n_Analects_ that tells how the disciples thought he was 'keeping\nback from them some part of his doctrine:   \"No, no,\" he\nanswered; \"if I should not give it all to you, to whom should I\ngive it?\"  Distinctly, then, this suggests that there was an\nesotericism, a side not made public; and there is no reason to\nsuppose that it has been made public since.  But it is recorded\nthat he would lift no veils from the Other-worlds.  \"If you do\nnot understand life,\" said he, \"how can you understand death?\"\n\nWell; we who are stranded here, each on his desert island of\nselfhood, thrust out after knowledge:  peer for signs at all the\nhorizons;--are eager to inquire, and avid of the Unknown--which\nalso we imagine to be something outside of our own being.  But\nsuppose a man, as they say one with Tao, in which all knowledge\nrests in solution:  what knowledge would he desire?  After what\nwould he be inquisitive?  And how much, desiring it, would he\npossess? What is the end of being, after all?  To perform your\nfunction, your duty; what men and the world,--ay, and the far\nsuns and stars,--are requiring of you:--that is all.  Not to gain\ninfinite knowledge; but to have at, every step what knowledge\nyou need; that so you may fill your place in the Universe,\nmeeting all contours and flowing into them; restoring and\nmaintaining the Harmony of Things.  So we hear much about this\nperformance of duty.  But in reality, to do one's duty is to sing\nwith the singing spheres; to have the Top of Infinity for the\nroof of one's skull, and the bottom of the Great Deep for\none's footsoles: to be a compendium, and the Equal, of Heaven\nand Earth.  The password into the Tao of Laotse is Silence;\nConfucius kept the great Silence more wonderfully than Laotse\ndid--or so it seems to me now.  Laotse said:  _Sing with the\nsinging spheres, and behold, your duty is doing itself uder your\nhands._ The password into the Tao of Confucius is _Duty:_  he\nsaid merely _Do that, and,_--the rest is silence.  He may have\nplayed that _rest_ on his lute; we are not to hear it in his\nwords.  There was a knowledge that Laotse, enthroned in his\nsilence, had no means of using; that Confucius riding the\nchariot of duty, had no occasion to possess.\n\nNow whether you call Tao _duty,_ or _silence,_--what should the\nMan of Tao desire beyond the fulness of it?  All the light is\nthere for him; all the suns are kindled for him;--why should he\nlight wax candles?  That is, for himself:  he will light them\nfast enough where others may be in need.  To us, a great poem may\nbe a great thing:  but to them who have the fulness of which the\ngreatest poem is but a little glimpse--what should it matter to\nthem?  And of the infinite knowledge at his disposal, would the\nMan of Tao choose to burden himself with one little item of which\nthere was no present need?\n\nSo when they say, \"Confucius was nobody; there is no evidence\nthat he knew the great secrets\"; answer them:--\"Yes, there is.\nHe knew that supreme secret, how to _teach,_ which is the\noffice of a Teacher:  he knew how to build up the inner life\nof his disciples; to coax, train, lure the hidden god into\nmanifestation in them.\"  And for evidence you can give them this:\nTse Kung--who, you remember, was always comparing this man with\nthat--asked which was the better, Shih or Shang.  (They were two\ndisciples.)  Confucius answered:  \"Shih goes too far; Shang not\nfar enough.\"  Said Tse Kung (just as you or I would have done):--\n\"Then Shih is the better man?\"--\"Too far,\" replied Confucius, \"is\nnot better than not far enough.\"--To my ears there is more\noccultism in that than in a thousand ethical injunctions.--Or\nanswered;--\"Whilst thy father and they elder brother are alive,\nhow canst thou do all thou art taught?\"  Jan Yu said:--\"Shall I\ndo all I am taught?\"  The Master said:--\"Do all thou art taught.\"\nKung-hsi Hua said:  \"Yu asked, 'Shall I do all I am taught?'\nand you spoke, Sir, of father and elder brother.  Ch'iu asked,\n'Shall I do all I am taught?'  and you answered:  'Do all thou\nart taught.'  I am puzzled, and make bold to ask you, Sir.\"  The\nMaster said:--\"Ch'iu is bashful, so I egged him on.  Yu has the\npluck of two, so I held him back.\"\n\nThink it over!  Think it over!\n\nThis though occurs to me:  Was that sadness of his last days\ncaused by the knowledge that the School could not continue after\nhis death; because the one man who might have succeeded him as\nthe Teacher, Yen Huy, was dead?  So far as I know, it did not go\non; there was no one to succeed him.  That supreme success, that\ngrand capture of future ages for the Gods, was denied him; or I\ndaresay our own civilization might have been Confucian--BALANCED\n--now.  But short of that--how sublime a figure he stands!  If\nhe had known that for twenty-five centuries or so he was to\nshine within the vision of the great unthinking masses of his\ncountrymen as their supreme example; their anchor against the\ntides of error, against abnormalities, extravagances, unbalance;\na bulwark against invading time and decay; a check on every bad\nemperor, so far as check might be set at all; a central idea to\nmold the hundred races of Chu Hia into homogeneity; a stay, a\nprop, a warning against headlong courses at all times of cyclic\ndowntrend;--if he had known all this, he would, I think, have\nordered his life precisely as he did.  Is there no strength\nimplied, as of the Universal, and not of any personal, will,\nhowever titanic, in the fact that moment after moment, day after\nday, year after year, he built up this picture, gave the world\nthis wonderful assurance of a man?  In his omissions, no less\nthan in his fulfilments.  He taught,--so far as we know,--nothing\nbut what the common mind might easily accept; nothing to miss\nthe mark of the intelligence of dull Li or Ching toiling in the\nrice-field;--nor yet too paltry for the notice of the Hwangti on\nthe Dragon Throne.  Laotse had come in the spirit of Plenydd the\nLight-bringer; in the spirit of Alawn, to raise up presently\nsweet profusions of song. He illuminated the inner worlds; his\nwas the urge that should again and again, especially later when\nreinforced by Buddhism, prick up the Black-haired People to\nheights of insight and spiritual achievement.--But the cycles of\ninsight and spiritual achievement, these too, must always run\ntheir course and fall away; there is no year when it is always\nSpring.  Dark moments and seasons come; and the Spirit becomes\nhidden; and what you need most is not illumination,--which you\ncannot get; or if you could, it would be hell, and not heaven,\nthat would be illuminated for you; not a spur to action,--for as\nthings are constituted, any spur at such a time would drive  you\nto wrong and exorbitant action:--what you need is not these, but\nsimply stability to hold on; simply the habit of propriety, the\npower to go on at least following harmless conventions and doing\nharmless things; not striking out new lines for yourself, which\nwould certainly be wrong lines, but following as placidly as may\nbe lines that were laid down for you, or that you yourself laid\ndown, in more righteous and more luminous times.  A strong\ngovernment, however tyrannical, is better than an anarchy in\nwhich the fiend in every man is let loose to run amuck.  Under\nthe tyranny, yes, the aspiring man will find himself hindered and\nthwarted; but under the anarchy, since man is no less hell than\nheaven, the gates of hell will be opened, and the Soul, normally\nspeaking, can only retire and wait for better times:--unless it\nbe the Soul of a Confucius, it can but wait till Karma with\nruthless hands has put down the anarchy and cleared things up.\nUnless it be the Soul of a Confucius; and even Such a One is\nbound to be a failure in his own day.\n\nBut see what he did.  The gates of hell were swung wide, and for\nthe time being, not the hosts of the Seraphim and Cherubim,--not\nthe armed Bodhisatvas and Dhyanis,--could have forced them back\non their hinges:  \"the ripple of effect,\" we read, \"thou shalt\nlet run its course.\"  But in the ideal world he erected a barrier\nagainst them.  He set up a colossal statue with arms outthrown to\nbar the egress; the statue of Confucius preaching the Balanced\nLife.  With time it materialized, so to say, and fell into place.\nYou can never certainly stop the gates of hell,--in this stage of\nour evolution.  But perhaps as nearly as it can be done, he did\nit. Rome fell, and Christendom made a mess of things; it has\nnever yet achieved that union which is the first condition of\ntrue civilization.  But China, older than Rome, despite her sins\nand vicissitudes, has made a shift to stand.  I shall come to\ncomparing the two histories presently; then you will see.\nWhen the pralaya came on her, and the forces of life all went\nelsewhere--as they do and must from every civilization in their\nseason,--China lost two of her treasures:  Plenydd's vision, and\nAlawn's gift of song, were taken from her.  But this stability;\nthese Gloves of Gwron; this instinct for middle courses and the\nbalance, this Doctrine of the Mean and love of plain sane doings:\nshe has retained enough of this to keep her in being.  And it was\nK'ung Ch'iu of Lu that gave it to her.  Shall we not call him\nSuch a One as only the Gods send?\n\nSomeone told me the other day what he had seen a couple of\nChinamen do in a Californian garden.  They had a flower-bed\nto plant, about forty feet long; and each a basket of seedlings\nto plant it with, and a slip of wood for a model, with mystic\nunintelligible signs inscribed thereon:  WELCOME HOME in English\ncapitals.  One went to one end of the bed and the other to the\nother, and they began their planting.  They made no measurements\nor calculations; used no rod or line; but just worked ahead\ntill they met in the middle.  When that happened, and the job was\ndone, the bed was inscribed, in perfectly formed and proportioned\nEnglish capitals made of young plants, WELCOME HOME.  There was\nno crowding or omission.  To account for it you have twenty-four\ncenturies of Confucianism,--of Katherine Tingley's doctrine of\nMiddle Lines, the Balanced Life.\n\nIt is a very small thing; but it may help us to understand.\n\n\n\n\nXII.  TALES FROM A TAOIST TEACHER\n\n\nConfucius died in 478:  the year, it may be noted, in which\nAthens attained her hegemony:  or just when the Greek Cycle\nthirteen decades was opening.  Looking backward thirteen decades\nfrom that, we come to 608 B.C.; four years after which date,\naccording to the usually accepted tradition, Laotse was born.\nThus we find the cycle preceding that of Greece mainly occupied,\nin China, by the lives of the two great Teachers.\n\nWe should have seen by this time that these two lives were, so to\nsay, parts of a single whole:  co-ordinated spiritually, if not\nin an organization on this plane.  Laotse, like H.P. Blavatsky,\nbrought the Teachings; he illuminated the inner worlds.  That\nwas his work.  We can see little of him as he accomplished it:\nand only the smallest fragment of his doctrine remains:--five\nthousand words, out of his whole long life.  But since we have\nhad in our own time an example of how these things are done, we\nmay judge him and his mission by this analogy; also by the\nresults.  Then came Confucius, like Katherine Tingley, to link\nthis wisdom with individual and national life.  The teachings\nwere there; and he had no need to restate them:  he might take\nthe great principles as already enounced.  But every Teacher has\nhis own method, and his need to accentuate this or that:  so time\nand history have had most to say about the differences between\nthese two.  What Confucius had to do, and did, was to found his\nschool, and show in the lives of his disciples, modeled under his\nhands, how the wisdom of the Ages (and of Laotse) can be made a\nliving power in life and save the world.\n\nContrasting the efforts of that age and this, we may say that\nthen, organization, such as we have now, was lacking.  Confucius\ndid not come as the official successor of Laotse; Laotse,\nprobably, had had no organized school that he could hand over to\nConfucius.  He had taught, and his influence had gone far and\nwide, affecting the thought of the age; but he had had no\ntrained and pledged body of students to whom he could say:\n'Follow this man when I am gone; he is my worthy successor.'--\nAll of which will be laughed at:  I firmly believe, however, that\nit is an accurate estimate of things.  When you come to think of\nit, it was by the narrowest margine that H. P. Blavatsky, through\nMr. Judge--and his heroism and wisdom alone to be thanked\nfor it!--had anything beyond the influence of her ideas and\nrevelation to hand on to Katherine Tingley. In the way of an\norganization, I mean.   Very few among her disciples had come to\nhave any glimmering of what discipleship means, or were prepared\nto follow her accredited successors.\n\nAnd Confucius, in his turn, had no established center for\nhis school; it was a thing that wandered the world with\nhim, and ceased, as in organization (however hazy) to exist\nwhen he died.  Nothing remained, then, of either Teacher\nfor posterity except the ideas and example.  And yet I have\nhinted, and shall try to show, that tremendous results for\ngood followed:  that the whole course of history was turned\nin an upward direction.  You may draw what inferences you will.\nThe matter is profoundly significant.\n\nThirteen decades after the death of Confucius, Plato died in\nGreece; and about that time two men arose in China to carry\nforward, bring down, and be the expositors of, the work of\nthe two great Teachers of the  sixth and seventh centuries.\nThese were Chwangtse for  Taoism, and  Mangtse or Mencius for\nConfucius:  the one, the channel through which spiritual thought\nflowed to the quickening of the Chinese imagination; the other,\nthe man who converted the spiritual thought of Confucius into the\nChinese Constitution.  Alas! they were at loggerheads:  a wide\nbreach between the two schools of thought had come to be by their\ntime; or perhaps it was they who created it.  We shall arrive at\nthem next week; tonight, to introduce you to Liehtse, a Taoist\nteacher who came sometime between Laotse and Chwangtse;--perhaps\nin the last quarter of the fifth century, when Socrates was\nactive in Greece.\n\nProfessor De Groot, of Holland, speaks  boldly of Confucius as a\nTaoist; and though I dislike many of this learned Dutchman's\nideas, this one is excellent. His thesis is that Laotse was no\nmore an innovator than Confucius; that both but gave a new\nimpulse to teachings as old as the race.  Before Laotse there had\nbeen a Teacher Quan, a statesman-philosopher of the seventh\ncentury, who had also taught the Tao.  The immemorial Chinese\nidea had been that the Universe is made of the interplay of two\nforces, _Yang_ and _Yin,_ positive and negative;--or simply the\nHigher and the Lower natures.  To the Yang, the Higher, belong\nthe _Shen_ or gods,--all conscious beneficent forces within and\nwithout man.  To the Yin or lower belong the _kwei,_ the opposite\nof gods:  _fan_ means foreign; and _Fan Kwei_ is the familiar\nChinese term for white men.  From Shen and Tao we get the term\n_Shentao,_ which you know better as _Shinto,_--the Way of the\nGods; or as well, the Wisdom of the Gods; as good an equivalent\nof our term _Theosophy_ as you should find; perhaps indeed\nbetter than _Theosophy_ itself; for it drives home the idea that\nthe _Wisdom_ is a practical _Way of Life._  Shentao, the Taoism\nof the Higher Nature, then, was the primeval religion of the\nChinese;--Dr. De Groot arrives at this, though perhaps hardly\nsees how sensible a conclusion he has reached.  In the sixth\ncentury B.C. it was in a fair way to becoming as obsolete as\nNeoplatonism or Gnosticism in the nineteenth A.D.; and Laotse\nand Confucius simply restated some aspects of it with a new force\nand sanction;--just as H.P. Blavatsky, in the _Key to Theosophy,_\nbegins, you will remember, with an appeal to and restatement of\nthe Theosophy of the Gnostics and Neoplatonists of Alexandria.\n\nIt may seem a kind of divergence from our stream of history, to\nturn aside and tell stories from the _Book of Liehtse;_  but\nthere are excuses.  Chinese history, literature, thought--\neverything--have been such a closed book to the West, that those\nscholars who have opened a few of its pages are to be considered\npublic benefactors; and there is room and to spare for any who\nwill but hold such opened pages up;--we are not in the future to\ndwell so cut off from a third of mankind.  Also it will do us\ngood to look at Theosophy from the angle of vision of another\nrace.  I think Liehtse has much to show us as to the difference\nbetween the methods of the Chinese and Western minds:  the latter\nthat must bring most truths down through the brain-mind, and set\nthem forth decked in the apparel of reason; the former that is,\nas it seems to me, often rather childlike as to the things of the\nbrain-mind; but has a way of bringing the great truths down and\npast the brain-mind by some circuitous route; or it may be only\nby a route much more direct than ours.  The West presents its\nilluminations so that they look big on the surface; you say,\nThis is the work of a great mind. A writer in the _Times Literary\nSupplement_ brought out the idea well, in comparing the two\npoetries.  What he said was, in effect, as follows:--the Western\npoet, too often, dons his singing robe before he will sing;\nworks himself up; expects to step out of current life into the\nGrand Manner;--and unless the Soul happens to be there and vocal\nat the time, achieves mostly _pombundle._  The Chinaman presents\nhis illumination as if it were nothing at all,--just the simplest\nchildish-foolish thing; nothing in the world for the brain-mind\nto get excited about.  You take very little notice at the time:\nmore of their quaint punchinello _chinoiserie,_ you say.  Three\nweeks after, you find that it was a clear voice from the\nsupermundane, a high revelation.  The Chinese poet saunters along\nplaying a common little tune on his Pan-pipes.  Singing robes?--\nNone in the world; just what he goes to work in. Grand Manner?--\n'Sir,' says he, 'the contemptible present singer never heard of\nit; wait for that till the coming of a Superior Man.'--'Well,'\nyou say, 'at least there is no danger of _pombundle';_   and\nindeed there is not.  But you rather like the little tune, and\nstop to listen . . . and then . . . Oh God! the Wonder of wonders\nhas happened, and the Universe will never be quite the dull,\nfool, ditchwater thing it was to you before . . .\n\nLiehtse gives one rather that kind of feeling.  We know\npractically nothing about him.--I count three stages of growth\namong the sinologists:  the first, with a missionary bias; the\nsecond, with only the natural bias of pure scholarship and\ncritical intellectualism, broad and generous, but rather running\nat times towards tidying up the things of the Soul from off the\nface of the earth; the third, with scholarship plus sympathy,\nunderstanding, and a dash of mystical insight.  The men of the\nfirst stage accepted Liehtse as a real person, and called him a\ndegenerator of Taoism, a teacher of immoral doctrine;--in the\n_Book of Liehtse,_ certainly, such doctrine is to be found.  The\nmen of the second stage effectually tidied Liehtse up:  Dr. H. A.\nGiles says he was an invention of the fertile brain of Chwangtse,\nand his book a forgery of Han times.  Well; people did forge\nancient literature in those days, and were well paid for doing\nso; and you cannot be quite certain of the complete authenticity\nof any book purporting to have been written before Ts'in Shi\nHwangti's time.  Also Chwangtse's brain was fertile enough for\nanything;--so that there was much excuse for the men of the\nsecond stage.  But then came Dr. Lionel Giles* who belongs to the\nthird stage, and perhaps _is_ the third stage.  He shows that\nthough there is in the _Book of Liehtse_ a residue or scum of\nimmoral teaching, it is quite in opposition to the tendency of\nthe teaching that remains when this scum is removed; and deduces\nfrom this fact the sensible idea that the scum was a later\nforgery; the rest, the authentic work of a true philosopher with\nan original mind and a style of his own.  Such a man, of course,\nmight have lived later than Chwangtse, and taken his nom de plume\nof Liehtse from the latter's book; but against this there is the\nfact that Liehtse's teaching forms a natural link between\nChtangtse's and that of their common Master Laotse; and above\nall--and herein lies the real importance of him--the real Liehtse\ntreats Confucius as a Teacher and Man of Tao.  But by Chwangtse's\ntime the two schools had separated:  Confucius was Chwangtse's\nbutt;--we shall see why. And in the scum of Liehtse he is\nmade fun of in Chwangtse's spirit, but without Changtse's wit\nand style.\n\n------\n* Whose translation of parts of the _Book of Liehtse,_ with an\ninvaluable preface, appears in the _Wisdom of the East Series;_\nfrom which translation the passages quoted in this lecture are\ntaken;--as also are many ideas from the preface.\n------\n\nSo that whoever wrote this book,--whether it was the man referred\nto by Chwangtse when he says:  \"There was Liehtse again; he could\nride upon the wind and go wheresoever he wished, staying away as\nlong as thirteen days,\"--or someone else of the same name, he did\nnot take his non de plume from that passage in Chwangtse, because\nhe was probably dead when Chwangtse wrote it.  We may, then,\nsafely call him a Taoist Teacher of the fifth century,--or at\nlatest of the early fourth.\n\nThe book's own account of itself is, that it was not written by\nLiehtse, but compiled from his oral teaching by his disciples.\nThus it begins:\n\n\"Our Master Liehtse live in the Cheng State for forty years, and\nno man knew him for what he was.  The prince, his ministers, and\nthe state officials looked upon him as one of the common herd.  A\ntime of dearth fell upon the state, and he was preparing to\nemigrate to Wei, when his disciples said to him:  'Now that our\nMaster is going away without any prospect of returning, we have\nventured to approach him, hoping for instruction.  Are there no\nwords from the lips of Hu-Ch'iu Tsu-lin that you can impart to\nus?'--Lieh the Master smiled and said:  'Do you suppose that Hu\nTzu dealt in words?  However, I will try to repeat to you what my\nTeacher said on one occasion to Po-hun Moujen.  I was standing by\nand heard his words, which ran as follows.'\"\n\nThen come some rather severe metaphysics on cosmogony:  really, a\nmore systematic statement of the teaching thereon which Laotse\nreferred to, but did not (in the _Tao Teh King_) define.  'More\nsystematic,'--and yet by no means are the lines laid down and the\nplan marked out; there is no cartography of cosmogenesis; . . .\nbut seeds of meditation are sown.  Of course, it is meaningless\nnonsense for the mind to which all metaphysics and abstract\nthought are meaningless nonsense.  Mystics, however, will see in\nit an attempt to put the Unutterable into words.  One paragraph\nmay be quoted:\n\n\"There is life, and That which produces life; form, and That\nwhich imparts form; sound, and That which causes color; taste,\nand That which causes taste.  The source of life is death; but\nThat which produces life never comes to an end.\"\n\nRemember the dying Socrates:  'life comes from death, as death\nfrom life.'  We appear, at birth, out of that Unseen into which\nwe return at death, says Liehtse; but that which produces life,\n--which is the cause of this manifestation (you can say, the\nSoul),--is eternal.\n\n\"The origin of form is matter; but That which imparts form has\nno material existence.\"\n\nNo; because it is the down-breathing spirit entering into\nmatter; matter being the medium through which it creates, or to\nwhich it imparts, form.  \"The form to which the clay is modeled\nis first united with\"--or we may say, projected from--\"the\npotter's mind.\"\n\n\"The genesis of sound lies in the sense of hearing; but That\nwhich causes sound is never audible to the ear.  The source of\ncolor\"--for 'source' we might say, the 'issuing-point'--\"is\nvision; but That which produces color never manifests to the\neye.  The origin of taste lies in the palate; but That which\ncauses taste is never perceived by that sense.  All these\npehnomena are functions of the Principle of Inaction--the inert\nunchanging Tao.\"\n\nOne is reminded of a passage in the _Talavakara-Upanishad:_\n\n\"That which does not speak by speech, but by which speech is\nexpressed:  That alone shalt thou know as Brahman, not that which\nthey here adore.\n\n\"That which does not think by mind, but by which mind is itself\nthought:  That alone shalt thou know as Brahman, not that which\nthey here adore.\"\n\nAnd so it continues of each of the sense-functions.\n\nAfter this, Liehtse for the most wanders from story to story; he\ntaught in parables; and sometimes we have to listen hard to\ncatch the meaning of them, he rarely insists on it, or drives it\nwell home, or brings it down to levels of plain-spokenness at\nwhich it should declare itself to a westem mind.  Here, again, is\nthe Chinese characteristic:  the touch is lighter; more is left\nto the intuition of the reader; the lines are less heavily\ndrawn.  They rely on a kind of intelligence in the readers, akin\nto the writers', to see those points at a glance, which we must\nsearch for carefully.  Where each word has to be drawn, a\nlittle picture taking time and care, you are in no danger of\noverlavishness; you do not spill and squander your words,\n\"intoxicated,\" as they say, \"with the exuberance of your\nverbosity.\"  Style was forced on the Chinese; ideograms\nare a grand preventive against pombundle.--I shall follow\nLiehtse's method, and go from story to story at random; perhaps\ninterpreting a little by the way.\n\nWe saw how Confucius insisted on balance:  egging on Jan Yu, who\nwas bashful, and holding back Tse Lu, who had the pluck of two;--\ndeclaring that Shih was not a better man than Shang, because too\nfar is not better than not far enough.  The whole Chinese idea is\nthat this balance of the faculties is the first and grand\nessential. Your lobsided man can make no progress really;--he\nmust learn balance first.  An outstanding virtue, talent, or\naptitude, is a deterrent, unless the rest of the nature is\nevolved up to it;--that is why the Greatest Men are rarely the\nmost striking men; why a Napoleon catches the eye much more\nquickly than a Confucius; something stands out in the one,--and\ncompels attention; but all is even in the other.  You had much\nbetter not have genius, if you are morally weak; or a very\nstrong will, if you are a born fool.  For the morally weak genius\nwill end in moral wreck; and the strong-willed fool--a plague\nupon him!  This is the truth, knowledge of which has made China\nso stable; and ignorance of which has kept the West so brilliant\nand fickle,--of duality such poles apart,--so lobsided and, I\nthink, in a true sense, so little progressive.  For see how many\ncenturies we have had to wait while ignorance, bigotry, wrong\nideas, and persecution, have prevented the establishment on any\nlarge scale of a Theosophical Movement--and be not too ready\nto accept  a whirl of political changes, experiment after\nexperiment,--and latterly a spurt of mechanical inventions,--for\nTrue Progress:  which I take to mean, rightly considered, the\ngrowth of human egos, and freedom and an atmosphere in which they\nmay grow. But these they had in China abundantly while China was\nin manvantara; do not think I am urging as our example the\nfallen China of these pralayic times.  Balance was the truth\nConfucius impressed on the Chinese mentality:  the saving Truth\nof truths, I may say; and it is perhaps the truth which most of\nall will stand connected with the name of Katherine Tingley in\nthe ages to come:--the saving  Truth of truths, which will make\na new and better world for us.  You must have it, if you are to\nbuild solidly; it is the foundation of any true social order;\nthe bedrock on which alone a veritable civilization can be built.\nOh, your unbalanced genius can produce things of startling\nbeauty; and they have their value, heaven knows.  The Soul\nwatches for its chances, and leaps in at surprising moments:  the\narm clothed in white samite may reach forth out of the bosom of\nall sorts of curious quagmires; and when it does, should be held\nin reverence as still and always a proof of the underlying\ndivinity of man. But--there where the basis of things is not\nfirmly set:  where that mystic, wonderful reaching out is not\nfrom the clear lake, but from turbidity and festering waters--\nwhere the grand balance has not been acquired:--You must look to\ncome on tragedy.  The world has gained something from the speech\nof the Soul there; but the man through whom It spoke;--it has\nproved too much for him.  The vibrations were too strong, and\nshattered him.  Think of Keats . . . and of thousands of others,\npoets, musicians, artists.  Where you get the grand creations,\nthe unfitful shining,--there you get evidence of a balance:  with\ngenius--the  daimonic force--no greater than, perhaps not so keen\nas, that of those others, you find a strong moral will.  Dante\nand Milton suffered no less than others from those perils to\nwhich all creative artists are subject:  both complain bitterly\nof inner assailments and torment; but they had, to balance their\ngenius, the strong moral urge to fight their weaknesses all\nthrough life.  It could not save their personalities from\nsuffering; but it gave the Soul in each of them a basis on which\nto build the grand steadfast creations.--All of which Chinese\nLiehtse tells you without comment, and with an air of being too\nchildish-foolish for this world, in the following story:--\n\nKung-hu and Chi-ying fell ill, and sought the services of the\nrenowned doctor, Pien-chiao.  He cured them with his drugs; then\ntold them they were also suffering from diseases no drugs could\nreach, born with them at their birth, and that had grown up with\nthem through life.  \"Would you have me grapple with these?\" said\nhe.--\"Yes,\" said they; but wished first to hear the diagnosis.--\n\"You,\"  he said to kung-hu, \"have strong mental powers, but are\nweak in character; so, though fruitful in plans, you are weak in\ndecision.\"  \"You,\" he said to Chi-ying, \"are stong of will,\nthough stupid; so there is a narrowness in your aims and a want\nof foresight.  Now if I can effect an exchange of hearts between\nyou, the good will be equally balanced in both.\"\n\nThey agreed at once:  Kung-hu, with the weaker will, was to get\nthe smaller mental powers to match it; Chi-ying was to get a\nmentality equal to his firm will.  We should think Kung-hu got\nvery much the worst of the bargain; but he, and Dr. Pien-chiao,\nand Liehtse, and perhaps Chinamen generally, thought and would\nthink nothing of the kind.  To them, to have balanced faculties\nwas far better than to have an intellect too big for one's\nwill-power; because such balance would afford a firm basis from\nwhich will and intellect might go forward in progress harmoniously.\nSo Pien-chiao put both under a strong anaesthetic, took out their\nhearts, and made the exchange (the heart being, with the Chinese,\nthe seat of mentality); and after that the health of both was\nperfect.--You may laugh; but after all there is a grandeur in\nthe recognition implied, that the intellect is not the man,\nbut only one of his possessions.  The story is profoundly\ncharacteristic:  like Ah Sin's smile in the poem, \"childlike and\nbland\"; but hiding wonderful depths of philosophy beneath.\n\nLaotse showed his deep Occult wisdom when he said that the Man of\nTao  \"does difficult things while they are still easy.\"  Liehtse\ntells you the story of the Assitant to the Keeper of the Wild\nBeasts at Loyang.  His name was Lian yang, and his fame went\nabroad for having a wonderful way with the creatures in his\ncharge.  Hsuan Wang, the Chow king, heard of it; and sent orders\nto the Chief Keeper to get the secret from Liang, lest it should\ndie with him.--\"How is it,\" said the Keeper, \"that when you feed\nthem, the tigers, wolves, eagles, and ospreys all are tame and\ntractable?  That they roam at large in the park, yet never claw\nand bite one another?   That they propagate their species\nfreely, as if they were wild?  His Majesty bids you reveal to\nme the secret.\"\n\nA touch of nature here:  all zoologists know how difficult it is\nto get wild beasts to breed in captivity.\n\nLian Yang answered:  \"I am only a humble servant, and have really\nno secret to tell.  I fear the king has led you to expect\nsomething mysterious.  As to the tigers:  all I can say is that,\nlike men, when yielded to they are pleased and when opposed they\nare angry.  Nothing gives way either to pleasure or to anger\nwithout a cause; and anger, by reaction, will follow pleasure,\nand pleasure anger.  I do not excite the tigers' joy by giving\nthem live creatures to kill, or whole carcasses to tear up.  I\nneither rouse their anger by opposing them, nor humor them to\nmake them pleased.  I time their periods of hunger and anticipate\nthem.  It is my aim to be neither antagonistic nor compliant; so\nthey look upon me as one of themselves.  Hence they walk about\nthe parks without regretting the tall forests and broad marshes,\nand rest in the enclosure without yearning for lonely mountain or\ndark vale.  It is merely using common sense.\"\n\nAnd there Liehtse leaves it in all its simplicity; but I shall\nventure to put my spoke in, and add that he has really given you\na perfect philosophy for the conduct of life:  for the government\nof that other and inner tiger, the lower nature, especially; it\nis always that, you will remember, for which the Tiger stands in\nChinese symbology;--and also for education, the government of\nnations--everything.  Balance,--Middle lines,--Avoidance of\nExtremes,--Lines of Least Resistance:--by whom are we hearing\nthese things inculcated daily?  Did they not teach Raja-Yoga in\nancient China?  Have not our school and its principles a Chinese\nsmack about them?  Well; it was these principles made China\nsupremely great; and kept her alive and strong when all her\ncontemporaries had long passed into death; and, I hope, have\ningrained something into her soul and hidden being, which will\nmake her rise to wonderful heights again.\n\nYou can hear Laotse in them; it is the practical application of\nLaotse's doctrine.  But can you not equally hear the voice of\nConfucius:  \"too far is not better than not far enough\"?  Western\nethical teaching has tended towards inculcating imitation of the\nsoul's action:  this Chinese teaching takes the Soul for granted;\nsays very little about it; but shows you how to provide the soul\nwith the conditions through and in which it may act.  \"Love your\nenemies;\"--yes; that is fine; it is what the Soul, the Divine\nPart of us, does;--but we are not in the least likely to do it\nwhile suffering from the reaction from an outburst of emotion;\nethics grow rather meaningless to us when, for example, we have\ntoppled over from our balance into pleasure, eaten not wisely but\ntoo well, say; and then toppled back into the dumps with an\nindigestion.  But where the balance is kept you need few ethical\ninjunctions; the soul is there, and may speak; and sees to\nall that.\n\nHu-Chiu Tzu-lin, we read, taught Liehtse these things.  Said he:\n\"You must familiarize yourself with the Theory of Consequents\nbefore you can talk of regulating conduct.\"  Liehtse said:--\"Will\nyou explain what you mean by the Theory of Consequents?\"  \"Look at\nyour shadow,\" said his teacher; \"and you will know.\"  Liehtse\nturned his head and looked at his shadow.  When his body was bent\nthe shadow was crooked; when upright, it was straight.  Thus it\nappeared that the attributes of straightness and crookedness were\nnot inherent in the shadow, but corresponded to certain positions\nin the body . . . . \"Holding this Theory of Consequents,\"\nsays Liehtse, \"is to be at home in the antecedent.\"  Now the\nantecedent of the personality is the Soul; the antecedent of the\naction is the motive; the antecedent of the conduct of life is\nthe relation in which the component faculties of our being stand\nto each other and to the Soul.  If the body is straight, so is\nthe shadow; if the inner harmony or balance is attained and held\nto--well; you see the point.  \"The relative agrees with its\nantecedent,\" say the grammar books, very wisely.  It is karma\nagain:  the effect flowing from the cause.  \"You may consider the\nvirtues of Shennung and Yuyen,\"  says Liehtse; \"you may examine\nthe books of Yu, Kia, Shang, and Chow,\"--that is, the whole of\nhistory;--\"you may weight the utterances of the great Teachers\nand Sages; but you will find no instance of preservation or\ndestruction, fulness or decay, which has not obeyed this supreme\nLaw of Causality.\"\n\nWhere are you to say that Liehtse's Confucianism ends, and his\nTaoism begins?  It is very difficult to draw a line. Confucius,\nremember, gave _\"As-the-heart\"_ for the single character that\nshould express his whole doctrine.  Liehtse is leading you\ninward, to see how the conduct of life depends upon Balance,\nwhich also is a word that may translate _Tao._  Where the balance\nis, there we come into relations with the great Tao.  There is\nnothing supra-Confucian here; though soon we may see an\ninsistence upon the Inner which, it may be supposed, later\nConfucianism, drifting toxards externalism, would hardly have\nenjoyed.--A man in Sung carved a mulberry-leaf in jade for his\nprince.  It took three years to complete, and was so well done,\nso realistic in its down and glossiness, that if placed in a heap\nof real mulberry-leaves, it could not be distinguished from them.\nThe State pensioned him as a reward; but Liehtse, hearing of it,\nsaid:  \"If God Almighty took three years to complete a leaf,\nthere would be very few trees with leaves on them.  The Sage will\nrely less on human skill and science, than on the evolution\nof Tao.\"\n\nLung Shu came to the great doctor Wen Chih, and said to him:\n\"You are the master of cunning arts.  I have a disease; can you\ncure it, Sir?\"  \"So far,\" said Wen Chih, \"you have only made\nknown your desire.  Please let me know the symptoms of your\ndisease.\"  They were, utter indifference to the things and events\nof the world.  \"I hold it no honor to be praised in my own\nvillage, nor disgrace to be decried in my native State.  Gain\nbrings me no joy, loss no sorrow.  I dwell in my home as if it\nwere a mere caravanserai, and regard my native district as though\nit were one of the barbarian kingdoms.  Honors and rewards fail\nto rouse me, pains and penalties to overawe me, good or bad\nfortune to influence me; joy or grief to move me.  What disease\nis this?  What remedy will cure it?\" *\n\n------\n* I may say here that though I am quoting the speeches more or\nless directly from Dr. Lionel Giles' translation, too many\nliberties are being taken, verbally, with the narative parts of\nthese stories, to allow quotation marks and small type.  One\ncontracts and expands (sparingly, the latter); but gives\nthe story.\n------\n\nWen Chih examined his heart under X-rays;--really and truly that\nis in effect what Liehtse says.--\"Ah,\" said he, \"I see that a\ngood square inch of your heart is hollow; you are within a\nlittle of being a true Sage.  Six of the orifices are open and\nclear, and only the seventh is blocked up.  This last is\ndoubtless due to the fact that you are mistaking for a disease\nwhat is in reality an approach to divine enlightenment. It is a\ncase in which my shallow art is of no avail.\"\n\nI tell this tale, as also that other about the exchange of\nhearts, partly to suggest that Liehtse's China may have had the\nactuality, or at least a reminiscence, of scientific knowledge\nsince lost there, and only discovered in Europe recently.  In the\nsame way one finds references to automatic oxen, self-moving\nchariots, traveling by air, and a number of other things which,\nas we read of them, sound just like superstitious nonsense.\nThere are old Chinese drawings of pterodactyls, and suchlike\nunchancey antediluvian wild fowl.  _Argal,_ (you would say) the\nChinese knew of these once; although Ptero and his friends have\nbeen extinct quite a few million years, one supposes.  Or was it\nsuperstition again?  Then why was it not superstition in\nProfessor So-and-so, who found the bones and reconstructed the\nbeastie for holiday crowds to gaze upon at the Crystal Palace\nor the Metropolitan Museum?  Knowledge does die away into\nreminiscence, and then into oblivion; and the chances are that\nLiehtse's time retained reminiscences which have since become\noblivion-hidden;--then rediscovered in the West.--But I tell the\ntale also for a certain divergence marked in it, between Taoist\nand Confucian thought.  Laotse would have chuckled over it, who\nbrooded much on 'self-emptiness' as the first step towards\nillumination.  Confucius would have allowed it; but it would not\nhave occurred to him, unsuggested.\n\nNow here is something still further from Confucianism; something\nprophetic of later Taoist developments, though it still contains\nLaotse's thought, and--be it said--deep wisdom.\n\nFan Tsu Hua was a bully and a charlatan, who by his trickery\nhad won such hold over the king of Tsin that anyone he might\nrecommend was surely advanced to office, and anyone he cried down\nwould lose his all.  So it was said he had magic to make the rich\npoor and the poor rich.  He had many disciples, who were the\nterror of the peaceably disposed.\n\nOne day they saw an old weak man approaching, 'with weather-beaten\nface and clothes of no particular cut.'  A chance for sport\nnot to be neglected, they thought; and began to hustle him\nabout in their usual fashion, 'slapping him on the back, and what\nnot.'  But he--Shang Ch'iu K'ai was his name--seemed only full of\njoy and serenity, and heeded nothing.  Growing tired of their fun\nat last, they would make an end of it; and led him to the top of\na high cliff.  \"Whoever dares throw himself over,\"  said one of\nthem, \"will find a hundred ounces of silver,\" which certainly he\nhad not had with him at the top, and none of them had put there.\n\nIt was a wonder; and still more a wonder his being unhurt; but\nyou can make chance account for most things, and they meant to\nget rid of him.  So they brought him to the banks of the river,\nsaying:  \"A pearl of great price is here, to be had for the\ndiving.\"  In he went without a word, and disappeared duly; and\nso, thought they, their fun had come to a happy end.  But no:  as\nthey turned to go, up he came, serene and smiling, and scrambled\nout.  \"Well; did you find the pearl?\" they asked.  \"Oh yes,\"\nsaid Shang; \"it was just as your honors said.\"  He showed it to\nthem; and it was indeed a pearl of great price.\n\nHere was something beyond them; the old man, clearly, was a\nfavorite of Fortune; Fan their master himself must deal with\nhim.  So they sent word ahead, and brought him to the palace of\nFan.  Who understood well the limitations of quack magic:  if he\nwas to be beaten at these tricks, where would his influence be?\nSo he heaped up riches in the courtyard, and made a great fire\nall round.--\"Anyone can have those things,\" he announced, \"who\nwill go in and get them.\"  Shang quietly walked through the\nflames, and came out with his arms full; not a hair of his head\nwas singed.\n\nAnd now they were filled with consternation; they had been\nmaking a mock of Tao these years; and here evidently was a real\nMaster of Tao, come to expose them.--\"Sir,\" they said, \"we did\nnot know that you posessed the Secret, and were playing you\ntricks.  We insulted you, unaware that you were a divine man.\nBut you have leaped from the cliff, dived into the Yellow River,\nand walked through the flames without injury; you have shown us\nour stupidity, blindness, and deafness.  We pray you to forgive\nus, and to reveal to us the Secret.\"\n\nHe looked at them in blank amazement.--\"What is this you are\ntelling me?\" said he.  \"I am only old Shang Ch'iu K'ai the\npeasant.  I heard that you, Sir, by your magic could make the\npoor rich.  I wanted to be rich, so I came to you.  I believed in\nyou absolutely, and in all your disciples said; and so my mind\nwas made one; I forgot my body; I saw nothing of cliffs or fire\nor water.  But now you say you were decieving me, my soul returns\nto its perplexity, and my eyes and ears to their sight and\nhearing.  What terrible dangers I have escaped!  My limbs freeze\nwith horror to think of them.\"\n\nTsai Wo, continues Liehtse, told this story to Confucius.--\"Is\nthis so strange to you?\"  said the latter.  \"The man of perfect\nfaith can move heaven and earth, and fly to the six cardinal\npoints without hindrance.  His powers are not confined to walking\nin perilous places and passing through water and fire.  If Shang\nCh'iu K'ai, whose motive was greed and whose belief was false,\nfound no obstacle in external things, how much more certainly\nwill it be so when the motive is pure and both parties sincere?\"\n\nI will finish it with what is really another of Liehtse's\nstories,--also dealing with a man who walked through fire\nuninjured, unconscious of it because of the one-pointedness of\nhis mind.\n\nThe incident came to the ears of Marquis Wen of Wei, who spoke to\nTsu Hsia, a disciple of Confucius, about it.--\"From what I have\nheard the Master say,\" said Tsu Hsia, \"the man who achieves\nharmony with Tao enters into close relations with outer objects,\nand none of them has power to harm or hinder him.\"--\"Why, my\nfriend,\" said the Marquis, \"cannot you do all these marvels?\"--\"I\nhave not yet succeeded,\" said Tsu Hsia, \"in cleansing my heart\nfrom impurities and discarding brainmind wisdom.\"--\"And why,\"\nsaid the Marquis, \"cannot the Master himself\" (Confucius, of course)\n\"perform such feats?\"--\"The Master,\" said Tsu Hsia, \"is able to\nperform them; but _he is also able to refrain from performing\nthem.\"_--which, again, he was.  Here is another example:\n\nHui Yang went to visit Prince K'ang of Sung.  The prince,\nhowever, stamped his foot, rasped his throat, and said angrily:--\n\"The things I like are courage and strength.  I am not fond of\nyour good and virtuous people.  What can a stranger like you have\nto teach me?\"\n\n \"I have a secret,\" said Hui Yang, \"whereby my opponent,\nhowever brave or strong, can be prevented from harming me\neither by thrust or blow.  Would not Your Highness care to\nknow that secret?\"\n\n\"Capital!\" said the Prince; \"that is certainly something I\nshould like to hear about.\"\n\n\"True,\" said Hui yang, \"when you render his stabs or blows\nineffectual, you cover your opponent with shame.  But my secret\nwill make him, however brave or strong, afraid to stab or strike\nat all.\"\n\n \"Better still,\" said the Prince; \"let me hear about it.\"\n\n\"It is all very well for him to be afraid to do it.\" said Hui\nYang; \"but that does not imply he has no will to do it.  Now, my\nsecret would deprive him even of the will.\"\n\n\"Better and better,\" said Prince K'ang; \"I beseech you to reveal\nit to me.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Hui Yang; \"but this not having the will to injure\ndoes not necessarily connote a desire to love and do good.  But\nmy secret is one whereby every man, woman, and child in the\nempire shall be inspired with the friendly desire to love and do\ngood to each other.  This is much better than the possession of\nmere courage and strength.  Has Your Highness no mind to acquire\nsuch a secret as this?\"\n\nThe Prince confessed that, on the contray, he was most anxious to\nlearn it.\n\n\"It is nothing else than the teachings of Confucius and Mo Ti,\"\nsaid Hui Yang.\n\nA main idea of Taoism--one with which the Confucius of orthodox\nConfucianism did not concern himself--is the possibility of\ncreating within one's outer and mortal an inner and immortal\nself; by subduing desire, by sublimating away all impurities, by\nconcentration.  The seed of that Immortality is hidden in us;\nthe seed of mastery of the inner and outer worlds.  Faith is the\nkey.  Shang Ch'iu K'ai, whose \"faith had made him whole,\" walked\nthrough fire.  \"Whoso hath faith as a grain of mustard-seed,\"\nsaid Jesus, can move mountains.  It sounds as if he had been\nreading the _Book of Liehtse;_  which is at pains to show how the\nthing is done.  T'ai-hsing and Wang-wu, the mountains, stood not\nwhere they stand now, but in the south of the Chi district and\nnorth of Ho-yang.  I like the tale well, and shall tell it for\nits naive Chinesity.  The Simpleton of the North Mountain, an old\nman of ninety, dwelt opposite to them, and was vexed in spirit\nbecause their northern flanks blocked the way for travelers, who\nhad to go round.  So he called his family together and broached a\nplan.--\"Let us put forth our utmost strength and clear away this\nobstacle,\"  said he; \"let us cut right through the mountains\ntill we come to Han-yin.\"  All agreed except his wife.  \"My\ngoodman,\"  said she, \"has not the strength to sweep away a\ndung-hill, let alone such mountains as T'ai-hsing and Wang-wu.\nBesides, where will you put the earth and stones?\"  They answered\nthat they would throw them on the promontory of P'o-hai.  So the\nold man, followed by his son and grandson, sallied forth with\ntheir pickaxes, and began hewing away at the rocks and cutting up\nthe soil, and carting it away in baskets to the promontory.  A\nwidow who lived near by had a little boy who, though he was only\njust shedding his milk-teeth, came skipping along to give them\nwhat help he could.  Engrossed in their toil they never went home\nexcept once at the turn of the season.\n\nThe Wise Old Man of the River-bend burst out laughing and urged\nthem to stop.  \"Great indeed is your witlessness!\"  said he.\n\"With the poor remaining strength of your declining years you\nwill not succeed in removing a hair's-breadth of the mountains,\nmuch less the whole vast mass of rock and soil.\"  With a sigh the\nSimpleton of the North Mountain answered:--\"Surely it is you who\nare narrow-minded and unreasonable.  You are not to be compared\nwith the widow's son, despite his puny strength.  Though I myself\nmust die, I shall leave my son behind me, and he his son.  My\ngrandson will beget sons in his turn, and those sons also will\nhave sons and grandsons.  With all this posterity my line will\nnot die out; while on the other hand the mountains will receive\nno increment or addition.  Why then should I despair of leveling\nthem to the ground at last?\"--The Wise Old Man of the River-bend\nhad nothing to say in reply.\n\nChinese!  Chinese!--From whatever angle you look at it, it smacks\nof the nation that saw Babylon fall, and Rome, and may yet--\n\nBut look now, at what happened.  There was something about the\nproject and character of the Simpleton of the North Mountain,\nthat attracted the attention of the Serpent-Brandishing deities.\nThey reported the matter to Almighty God; who was interested;\nand perhaps was less patient than the simpleton.--I do not quite\nknow who this person translated 'Almighty God' may be; I think\nhe figures in the Taoist hierarchy somewhere below Laotse and the\nother Adepts.  At any rate he was in a position to order the two\nsons of K'ua O--and I do not know who K'ua O and his sons were--\nto expedite matters.  So the one of them took up T'ai-hsing, and\nthe other Wu-wang, and transported them to the positions where\nthey remain to this day to prove the truth of Liehtse's story.\nFurther proof:--the region between Ts'i in the north and Han in\nthe south--that is to say, northern Homan--is still and has been\never since, an unbroken plain.\n\nAnd perhaps, behind this naive Chinesity, lie grand enunciations\nof occult law. . . .\n\nI will end with what is probably Liehtse's most famous story--\nand, from a purely literary standpoint, his best.  It is worthy\nof Chwangtse himself; and I tell it less for its philosophy than\nfor its fun.\n\nOne morning a fuel-gatherer--we may call him Li for convenience,\nthough Liehtse leaves him nameless--killed a deer in the forest;\nand to keep the carcass safe till he went home in the evening,\nhid it under a pile of brushwood.  His work during the day took\nhim far and when he looked for the deer again, he could not find\nit.  \"I must have dreamed the whole thing,\" he said;--and\nsatisfied  himself with that explanation.  He made a verse about\nit as he trudged home through the woods, and went crooning:\n\n     At dawn in the hollow, beside the stream,\n     I hid the deer I killed in the dream;\n     At eve I sought for it far and near;\n     And found 'twas a dream that I killed the deer.\n\nHe passed the cottage of Yen the woodman--Yen we may call him,\nthough Liehtse calls him nothing.--who heard the song, and\npondered.  \"One might as well take a look at the place,\" thought\nhe; it seemed to him it might be such and such a hollow, by such\nand such a stream.  Thither he went, and found the pile of\nbrushwood; It looked to him a likely place enough to hide a deer\nunder.  He made search, and there the carcass was.\n\nHe took it home and explained the matter to his wife.  \"Once upon\na time,\" said he, \"a fuel-gatherer dreamed he had killed a deer\nand forgotten where he had hidden it.  Now I have got the deer,\nand here it is; so his dream came true, in a way.\"--\"Rubbish!\"\nshe answered.  \"It was you must have dreamed the fuel-gatherer\nand his dreim.  You must have killed the deer yourself, since you\nhave it there; but where is your fuel-gatherer?\"\n\nThat night Li dreamed again; and in his dream saw Yen fetch the\ndeer from its hiding-place and bring it home.  So in the morning\nhe went to Yen's house and there, sure enough, the deer was.\nThey argued the matter out, but to no purpose.  Then they took it\nbefore the magistrate, who gave judgment as follows:\n\n\"The plaintiff began with a real deer and an alleged dream; and\nnow comes forward with a real dream and an alleged deer.  The\ndefendant has the deer the plaintiff dreamed, and wants to keep\nit.  According to his wife, however, the plaintiff and the deer\nare both but figments of the defendant's dream. Meanwhile, there\nis the deer; which you had better divide between you.\"\n\nThe case was reported to the Prince of Cheng, whose opinion was\nthat the magistrate had dreamed the whole story, himself.  But\nhis Prime Minister said:  \"If you want to distinguish between\ndream and waking, you would have to go back to the Yellow Emperor\nor Confucius.  As both are dead, you had better uphold the\nmagistrate's decision.\" *\n\n------\n* The tale is told both in Dr. Lionel Giles's translation\nmentioned above, and also, with verbal differences, in Dr. H. A.\nGiles's work on _Chinese Literature._  The present telling\nfollows now one, now the other version, now goes its own way;--\nand pleads guilty to adding the verse the woodman crooned.\n------\n\n\n\n\nXIII.  MANG THE PHILOSOPHER, AND BUTTERFLY CHWANG\n\n\nLiehtse's tale of the Dream and the Deer leads me naturally to\nthis characteristic bit from Chwangtse:*--\n\n\"Once upon a time, I, Chwangtse, dreamed I was a butterfly\nfluttering hither and thither; to all intents and purposes a\nveritable butterfly.  I followed my butterfly fancies, and was\nunconscious of my individuality as a man.  Suddenly I awoke, and\nthere I lay, a man again.  Now how am I to know whether I was\nthen, Chwangtse dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a\nbutterfly dreaming I am Chwang?\"\n\n------\n* Which, like nearly all the other passages from him in this\nlecture, is quoted from Dr. H. A. Giles's _Chinese Literature,_\nin the Literatures of the World series; New York, Appleton.\n------\n\nFor which reason he is, says Dr. Giles, known to this day as\n\"Butterfly Chwang\"; and the name is not all inappropriate.  He\nflits from fun to philosophy, and from philosoply to fun, as if\nthey were dark rose and laughing pansy; when he has you in the\ngravest depths of wisdom and metaphysic, he will not be content\ntill with a flirt of his wings and an aspect gravely solemn he\nhas you in fits of laughter again.  His is really a book that\nbelongs to world-literature; as good reading, for us now, as for\nany ancient Chinaman of them all.  I think he worked more\nstrenuously in the field of sheer intellect--stirred the thought\nstuff more--than most other Chinese thinkers,--and so is more\nakin to the Western mind; he carves his cerebrations more\ndefinitely, and leaves less to the intuition. The great lack in\nhim is his failure to appreciate Confucius; and to explain that,\nbefore I go further with Butterfly Chwang, I shall take a glance\nat the times he lived in.\n\nThey were out of joint when Confucius came; they were a couple\nof centuries more so now.  Still more was the Tiger stalking\nabroad:  there were two or three tigers in particular, among the\nGreat Powers, evidentlv crouching for a spring--that should\nsettle things.  Time was building the funeral pyre for the\nPhoenix, and building it of the debris of ruined worlds.  In the\nearly sixth century, the best minds were retiring in disgust to\nthe wilds;--you remember the anchorite's rebuke to Tse-Lu. But\nnow they were all coming from their retirement--the most active\nminds, whether the best or not--to shout their nostrums and make\nconfusion worse confounded.  All sorts of socialisms were in the\nair, raucously bellowed by would-be reformers.  A \"loud barbarian\nfrom the south\" (as Mencius called him--I do not know who he was)\nwas proclaiming that property should be abolished, and all goods\nheld in common.  One Yang Chu was yelling universal egoism:\n\"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.\"  Against him, one Mo\nTi had been preaching universal altruism;--but I judge, not too\nsensibly, and without appeal to philosophy or mysticism.  Thought\nof all kinds was in a ferment, and the world filled with the\nconfused noise of its expression; clear voices were needed, to\nrestate the message of the Teachers of old.\n\nThen Mencius arose to speak for Confucius in this China so much\nfurther progressed along the Gadarene road.  A strong and\nbrilliant man, he took the field strongly and brilliantly, and\nfilled the courts of dukes and kings with a roll of Confucian\ndrums.  Confucius, as I have tried to show you, had all Mysticism\ndivinely behind and backing him, though he said little about it;\nMencius, I think, had none.  Mencius remade a Confucius of his\nown, with the mystical elements lacking.  He saw in him only a\nsocial reformer and teacher of ethics; and it is the easiest\nthing in the world to see Confucius only through Mencian spectacles.\n\nI would not fall into the mistake of undervaluing Mencius.  He\nwas a very great man; and the work he did for China was\nenormous, and indispensable.  You may call him something between\nthe St. Paul and the Constantine of Confucianism.  Unlike\nConstantine, he was not a sovereign, to establish the system;\nbut he hobnobbed with sovereigns, and never allowed them to think\nhim their inferior; and it was he who made of Confucianism a\nsystem that could be established.  Unlike St. Paul, he did not\ndevelop the inner side of his Master's teachings; but he so\npopularized them as to ensure their triumph.  He took the ideas\nof Confucius, such of them as lay within his own statesmanlike\nand practical scope of vision, restated and formulated them, and\nmade of them what became the Chinese Constitution.  A brave and\nhonest thinker, essentially a man of action in thought, he never\nconsciously deteriorated or took away from Confucius' doctrine.\nIt is more as if some great President or Prime Minister, at some\nfuture time, should suddenly perceive that H.P. Blavatsky had\nbrought that which would save his nation; and proceed to apply\nthat saving thing, as best he might, in the field of practical\npolitics and reform--or rather to restate it in such a way that\n(according to his view) it might be applied.\n\nHe put the constituents parts of society in order of importance\nas follows:  the People; the Gods; the Sovereign:  and this has\nbeen a cardinal principle in Chinese polity.  He saw clearly that\nthe Chow dynasty could never be revived; and arrived at the\nconclusion that a dynasty was only sacred while it retained the\n\"mandate of heaven.\"  Chow had lost that; and therefore it was\nwithin the rights of Heaven, as you may say, to place its mandate\nelsewhere;--and within the rights of the subject--as the logic of\nevents so clearly proved Chow had lost the mandate--to rebel.\nConfucius had hoped to revivify Chow--had begun with that hope,\nat any rate:  Mencius hoped to raise up some efficient sovereign\nwho should overturn Chow.  The Right of Rebellion, thus taught by\nhim, is another fundamental Chinese principle.  It works this\nway:  if there was discontent, there was misrule; and it was the\nfault of the ruler.  If the latter was a local magistrate,\nor a governor, prefect, or viceroy, you had but to make a\ndemonstration, normally speaking, before his yamen:  this was\ntechnically a 'rebellion' within Mencius' meaning; and the\noffending authority must report it to Pekin, which then commonly\nreplaced him with another.  (It would get to Pekin's ears anyway;\nso you had better--and ususally did--report it yourself.)  If the\noffender was the Son of Heaven, with all his dynasty involved--\nwhy, then one had to rebel in good earnest; and it was to be\nsupposed that if Heaven had really given one a mandate, one would\nwin.  The effect was that, although nominally absolute, very few\nemperors have dared or cared to fly quite in the face of\nConfucius, or Mencius, of their religio-political system, of the\nBoard of Censors whose business it was to criticize the Throne,\nand of a vast opinion.\n\nThere was the tradition an emperor ruled for the people.  The\noffice of ruler was divine; the man that held it was kept an\nimpersonality as much as possible.  He changed his name on coming\nto the throne, and perhaps several times afterwards:  thus we\nspeak of the great emperors Han Wuti and Tang Taitsong; who\nmight, however, be called more exactly, Liu Ch'e, who was emperor\nduring the period _Wuti_ of the Han Dynasty; Li Shihmin, who\nfilled the throne during the T'ang period called _Taitsong._\nAgain, there was the great idea, Confucio-Mencian, that the son\nof Heven must be 'compliant':  leading rather than driving.  He\npromulgated edicts, but they were never rigidly enforced; a\ncertain voluntaryism was allowed as to the carrying out of them:\nif one of them was found unsuccessful, or not to command popular\napproval, another could be--and was--issued to modify or change\nit.  So that the whole system was far removed from what we think\nof as an 'Oriental Despotism'; on the contrary, there was always\na large measure of freedom and self-government.  You began with\nthe family:  the head of that was its ruler, and responsible\nfor order in his little realm.  But he governed by consent\nand affection, not by force.  Each village-community was\nself-governing; the headman in it taking the place of the father\nin the family; he was responsible for order, so it was his\nbusiness to keep the people happy;--and the same principle was\nextended to fit the province, the viceroyalty, the empire.\nFurther, there was the absence of any aristocracy or privileged\nclass; and the fact that all offices were open to all Chinamen\n(actors excepted)--the sole key to open it being merit, as attested\nby competitive examinations.\n\nThe system is Mencian; the inspiration behind it from Confucius.\nIt is the former's working out of the latter's superb idea of\nthe _li._\n\nThe Mencian system has broken down, and been abolished.  It had\ngrown old, outworn and corrupt.  But it was established a couple\nof centuries before that of Augustus, and has been subject to the\nsame stress of time and the cycles; and only broke down the\nother day.  Time will wear out anything made by man.  There is no\ngarment, but the body will out-grow or out-wear it; no body, but\nthe soul will outlive it and cast it away.  Mencius, inspired by\nhis Master Confucius, projected a system that time took two\nthousand years and more to wear out in China.  It was one that\ndid much or everything to shield the people from tyranny.\nWhether a better system has been devised, I do not know; but\nshould say not--in historical times.  As to the inspiration\nbehind it--well, lest you should doubt the value of Confucius,\ncompare the history of Europe with that of China.  We have\ndisproportioned ideas, and do not see these things straight.  The\nChinese Empire was founded some two centuries before the Roman:\nboth composed of heterogeneous elements.  Both, after about four\ncenturies, fell; but China, after about four centuries more,\ncame together and was great again.  Fifteen hundred years after\nTs'in Shi Hwangti had founded China, her manvantara then having\nended, and her whole creative cycle run through, she fell to the\nMongols.  Fifteen hundred years after Julius Caesar had founded\nhis empire, the last wretched remnant of it fell to the Turks.\nBut China first compelled her conquerors to behave like Chinamen,\nand then, after a century, turned them out.  The Turks never\nbecame Greek or Roman, and so far have not quite been turned out.\nThe roman empire disappeared, and never reunited;--that is what\nhas been the matter with Europe ever since.  Europe, in her\nmanvantara, has wasted three parts of her creative force in wars\nand disunion.  But China, even in her pralaya, became a strong,\nunited power again under the Mings (1368-1644)--the first of\nthem--a native dynasty.  Conquered again, now by the Manchus, she\nmader her conquerors behave like Chinamen,--imposed on them her\nculture;--and went forth under their banners to conquer.  The\nEuropean pralaya (630-1240) was a time barren of creation in art\nand literature, and in life uttterly squalid and lightless The\nChinese pralaya, after the Mongol Conquest, took a very long time\nto sink into squalidity.  The arts, which had died in Europe long\nbefore Rome fell, lived on in China, though with ever-waning\nenergy, through the Mongol and well into the Ming time:  the\nnational stability, the force of custom, was there to carry them\non.  What light, what life, what vigor was there in Rome or\nConstantinople a century and a half after Alaric or Heraclius?\nBut Ming Yunglo, a century and a half after the fall of Sung,\nreigned in great splendor; sent his armies conquering to the\nCaspian, and his navies to the conquest of Ceylon, the discovery\nof Africa, the gathering in of the tribute of the Archipelago and\nthe shores of the Indian Ocean.  Until the end of the eighteenth\ncentury the minor arts and crafts--pottery and bronzes--of which\nthere was nothing to speak of in Europe in the corresponding\nEuropean age--were flourishing wonderfully; and in the\nseventeenth and eighteeenth centuries, under Kanghi and Kienlung,\nChina was once more a great military power.  She chased and\nwhipped the Goorkhas down through the Himalays and into India,\nonly twenty years before England fought difficult and doubtful\ncampaigns with those fierce little mountaineers.  You may even\nsay she has been better off in her pralaya, in many ways, and\nuntil recently, than most of Europe has been in most of _her_\nmanvantara.  In Kienlung's reign, for example (1735-1795) there\nwere higher standards of life, more security, law, and order,\nthan in the Europe of Catherine of Russia, Frederick the Great,\nLouis XV and the Revolution, and the English Georges.  There was\nfar less ferment of the Spirit, true; less possibility of\nprogress;--but that is merely to say that China was in pralaya,\nEurope in high manvantara.  The explanation is that a stability\nhad been imparted to that Far Eastern civilization, which Europe\nhas lacked altogether; whose history, for all its splendid high-\nlights, has had thousands of hideous shadows; has not been so\nnoble a thing as we tacitly and complacently assume; but a long\nrecord of wars, confusions, disorder, and cruelities, with only\ndawning now the possibility of that union which is the first\ncondition of true progress, as distinguished from the riot of\nmaterial inventions and political experiments that has gone by\nthat name.--But now, back to Mencius again.\n\nIn all things he tried to follow Confucius; beginning early by\nbeing born in the latter's own district of Tsow in Shantung, and\nhaving a woman in ten thousand for his mother;--she has been the\nmodel held up to all Chinese mothers since.  He grew up strong in\nbody and mind, thoughtful and fearless; a tireless student of\nhistory, poetry, national institutions, and the lives of great\nmen.  Like Confucius, he opened a school, and gathered disciples\nabout him:  but there was never the bond of love here, that there\nhad been between Confucius and Tse Lu, Yen Huy, and the others.\nThese may have heard from their Master the pure deep things of\nTheosophy; one would venture the statement that none of Mencius'\nfollowing heard the like from him.  He saw in Confucius that\nwhich he himself was fitted to be, and set out to become.  He\nwent from court to court, and everywhere, as a great scholar, was\nreceived with honor.  (You will note as one more proof of an\nimmemorial culture, that then, as now the scholar, as such, was\nat the very top of the social scale.  There was but one word for\n_scholar_ and _official._)--He proposed, like Confucius, that\nsome king should make him his minister; and like Confucius, he\nwas always disappointed.  But in him we come on none of the soft\nlights and tones that endear Confucius to us; he fell far short\nof being Such a One.  A clear, bold mind, without _atmosphere,_\nwith all its lines sharply defined.... he made free to lecture\nthe great ones of the earth, and was very round with them,\neven ridiculing them at his pleasure.  He held the field for\nConfucius--not the Taoist, but the Mencian Confucius--against all\ncomers; smote Yang Chu the Egotist hip and thigh; smote gentle\nMo Ti, the Altruist; preached fine and practical ethics; and\nhad no patience with those dreamers of the House of Laotse.--A\nman sent from the Gods, I should say, to do a great work;\neven though--\n\nAnd then there was that dreamer of dreams, of Butterfly dreams,--\nsubtle mystical humorous Chwangtse:  how could it be otherwise\nthan that clear-minded clarion-throated Philosopher Mang should\nafford him excellent play?  Philosopher Mang (Philosopher of the\nSecond Class, so officially entitled), in the name of his Master\nK'ung Ch'iu, fell foul of Dreamer Chwang; how could it be\notherwise than that Dreamer Chwang should aim his shafts, not a\nMang merely, but (alas!) at the one whose name was always on\nMang's lips?--\"Confucius says, Confucius says, Confucius says\"--\ncries Philosopher Mang.--\"Oh hang your Confucius!\" thinks Chwang\nthe Mystic; \"let us have a little of the silence and splendor of\nthe Within!\"  (Well, Confucius would have said the same thing, I\nthink.)  \"Let me tell you a tale,\" says Chwang; and straight\ngoes forward with it.\n\n\"It was the time of the autumn floods.  Every stream poured into\nthe river, which swelled in its turbid course.  The banks were so\nfar apart that from one to the other you could not tell a cow\nfrom a horse.\n\n\"Then the Spirit of the River laughed for joy that all the beauty\nof the earth was gathered to himself.  Down with the current he\njourneyed east, until he reached the Ocean.  There looking\neastward, and seeing no limit to its expanse of waves, his\ncountenance changed.  As he gazed out, he sighed, and said to the\nSpirit of the Ocean:  'A vulgar proverb says that he who has\nheard but a part of the truth thinks no one equal to himself.\nSuch a one am I.\n\n\"'When formerly I heard people detracting from the learning of\nConfucius, or underrating the heroism of Po I.  I did not\nbelieve.  But now that I have looked on your inexhaustibility--\nalas for me had I not reached your abode!  I should have been\nforever a laughing-stock to those of comprehensive enlightenment.'\n\n\"To which the Spirit of the Ocean answered:  'You cannot speak of\nocean to a well-frog,--the creature of a narrower sphere.  You\ncannot speak of ice to a summer insect,--the creature of a\nseason.  You cannot speak of Tao to a pedant; his scope\nis too restricted.  But now that you have emerged from your\nnarrow sphere, and have seen the great sea, you know your own\ninsignificance, and I can speak of great principles.\n\n\"Have you never heard of the Frog of the Old Well?  The Frog\nsaid to the Turtle of the Eastern Sea, 'Happy indeed am I!  I\nhop on the rail around the well.  I rest in the hollow of some\nbroken brick.  Swimming, I gather the water under my arms and\nshut my mouth tight.  I plunge into the mud, burying my feet and\ntoes.  Not one of the cockles, crabs, or tadpoles I see around me\nis my match.  Why do you not come, Sir, and pay me a visit?'\"\n\n\"Now the Turtle of the Eastern Sea had not got its left leg down\nere its right leg had stuck fast, so it shrank back and begged to\nbe excused.  It then described the sea, saying, 'A thousand\nleagues would not measure its breadth, nor a thousand fathoms its\ndepth.  In the days of Yu the Great there were nine years of\nflood out of ten; but this did not add to its contents.  In the\ndays of T'ang there were seven years of drought out of eight, but\nthis did not narrow its span.  Not to be affected by volume of\nwater, not to be affected by duration of time--this is the\nhappiness of the Eastern Sea.'  At this the Frog of the Old Well\nwas considerably astonished, and knew not what to say next.  And\nfor one whose knowledge does not reach to the positive-negative\ndomain the attempt to understand me is like a mosquito trying to\ncarry a mountain, or an ant to swim the Yellow River,--they\ncannot succeed.\"\n\nIf Chwangtse had lived before Mencius, or Mencius after Chwangtse,\nChwangtse could have afforded to see Confucius in his true\nlight, as Liehtse did; but the power and influence of the\nmind of Mencius were such that in his time there was no looking\nat the Master except through his glasses.  We do not know what\nhappened when Laotse and Confucius met; but I suspect it was\nvery like what happened when Mr. Judge met Madame Blavatsky.  But\nButterfly Chwang, the rascal, undertook to let us know; and\nwrote it out in full.  He knew well enough what would happen if\nhe met Mencius; and took that as his model.  He wanted Mencius\nto know it too.  He itched to say to him, \"Put away, sir, your\nflashy airs,\" and the rest; and so made Laotse say it to\nConfucius.  It shows how large Philosopher Mang had come to loom,\nthat anyone could attribute \"flashy airs\" to that great-hearted\nsimple Gentleman K'ung Ch'iu.  One thing only I believe in about\nthat interview:  Confucius' reputed speech on coming forth from\nit to his disciples:--\"There is the Dragon; I do not know how he\nmounts upon the wind and rises about the clouds.  Today I have\nseen Laotse, and can only compare him to the Dragon.\"  He _would\nhave said_ that; it has definite meaning; the Dragon was the\nsymbol of the spirit, and so universally recognised.--Confucius\nappears to have taken none of his disciples into the Library;\nand Confucianist writers have had nothing to say about the\nincident, except that it occurred, I believe.  Chwangtse, and all\nTaoist writers after him, show Confucius taking his rating very\nquietly;--as indeed, he would have done, had Laotse been in a\nmood for quizzing.  For Confucius never argued or pressed his\nopinions; where his words were not asked for and listened to, he\nretired.  But it is not possible the recognition should have been\nother than mutual:  the great Laotse would have known a Man\nwhen he saw him.  I like the young imperturbable K'ung Jung,\nprecocious ten-year-old of some seven centuries later.  His\nfather took him up to the capital when the Dragon Statesman Li\nYing was the height of his power; and the boy determined on\ngaining an interview with Li.  He got admission to the latter's\nhouse by claiming blood-relationship.  Asked by the great man\nwherein it lay, says he very sweetly:  \"Your ancestor Laotse and\nmy ancestor Confucius were friends engaged in the search for\ntruth; may we not then be said to be of the same family?\"--\n\"Cleverness in youth,\" sneered a bystander, \"does not mean\nbrilliancy in later life.\"--\"You, Sir,\" says Ten-years-old,\nturning to him, \"must have been a very remarkable boy.\" *\n\n-------\n* Giles:  _Chinese Literature._\n-------\n\nThe truth is, both Mencius and Chwangtse stood a step lower and\nnearer this world than had the two they followed:  whose station\nhad been on the level platform at the top of the altar.  But\nMencius descending had gone eastward; Chwangtse towards\nthe west.\n\nHe was all for getting at the Mean, the Absolute Life, beyond the\npairs of opposites;--which is, indeed, the central Chinese\nthought, Confucian or Taoist, the _raison d'etre_ of Chinese\nlongevity, and the saving health of China.  But unfortunately he\n--Chwangtse--did not see that his own opposite, Philosopher Mang,\nwas driving him an inch or two away from the Middle Line.  So,\nwith a more brilliant mind (a cant phrase that!)  he stands well\nbelow Laotse; just as Mencius stands below K'ung Ch'iu.  The\nspiritual down-breathing had reached a lower plane:  soon the\nmanvantara was to begin, and the Crest-Wave to be among the\nblack-haired People.  For all these Teachers and Half-Teachers\nwere but early swallows and forerunners.  Laotse and Confucius\nhad caught the wind at its rising, on the peaks where they stood\nvery near the Spirit; Chwangtse and Mangtse caught it in the\nregion of the intellect:  the former in his wild valley, the\nlatter on his level prosaic plain.  They are both called more\ndaring thinkers than their predecessors; which is merely to say\nthat in them the Spirit figured more on the intellectual, less on\nits own plane.  They were lesser men, of course.  Mencius had\nlost Confucius' spirituality; Chwangtse, I think, something of\nthe sweet sanifying influence of Laotse's universal compassion.\n\nWell, now:  three little tales from Chwangtse, to illustrate his\nwit and daring; and after then, to the grand idea he bequeathed\nto China.\n\n\"Chwangtse one day saw an empty skull, bleached, but still\npreserving its shape.  Striking it with his riding-whip, he said:\n'Was thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings\nbrought him to this pass?--some statesman who plunged his country\nin ruin, and perished in the fray?--some wretch who left behind\nhim a legacy of shame?--some beggar who died in the pangs of\nhunger and cold?  Or didst thou reach this state by the natural\ncourse of old age?'\n\n\"He took the skull home, and slept that night with it under his\nhead for a pillow, and dreamed.  The skull appeared to him in his\ndream, and said:  'You speak well, Sir; but all you say has\nreference to the life of mortals, and to mortal troubles.  In\ndeath there are none of these things.  Would you like to hear\nabout death?'\n\n\"Cwangtse, however, was not convinced, and said:  'Were I to\nprevail upon God to let your body be born again, and your bones\nand flesh be renewed, so that you could return to your parents,\nto your wife and to the friends of your youth--would you\nbe willing?'\n\n\"At this the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows\nand said:  'How should I cast aside happiness greater than\nthat of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles\nof mortality?'\"\n\nHere is the famous tale of the Grand Augur and the Pigs:--\n\n\"The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, approached the\nshambles and thus addressed the Pigs:--\n\n\"'Why,' said he, 'should you object to die?  I shall fattan you\nfor three months.  I shall discipline myself for ten days and\nfast for three.  I shall strew fine grass, and place you bodily\nupon a carved sacrificial dish.  Does not this satisfy you?\n\n\"'Yet perhaps after all,' he continued, speaking from the pigs'\npoint of view, 'it is better to live on bran and escape the\nshambles...\n\n\"'No,' said he; speaking from his own point of view again.  'To\nenjoy honor when alive one would readily die on a war-shield or\nin the haeadsman's basket.'\n\n\"So he rejected the pigs' point of view and clung to his own.  In\nwhat sense, then, was he different from the pigs?\"\n\nAnd here, the still more famous tale of the Sacred Tortoise:--\n\n\"Chwantse was fishing in the river P'u when the Prince of Ch'u\nsent two high officials to ask him to take charge of the\nadministration.\n\n\"Chwangtse went on fishing, and without turning his head said:\n'I have heard that in Ch'u there is a sacred tortoise which has\nbeen dead now some three thousand years.  And that the prince\nkeeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a chest on the altar of\nhis ancestral temple.  Now if this tortoise had its choice, which\nwould it prefer:  to be dead, and have its remains venerated; or\nto be alive, and wagging its tail in the mud?'\n\n\"'Sir,' replied the two officials, 'it would rather be alive, and\nwagging its tail in the mud.'\n\n\"'Begone!' cried Chwangtse.  'I too will wag my tail in the mud!'\"\n\nWell; so much for _Butterfly;_  now for _Chwang_--and to\nintroduce you to some of his real thought and teaching.  You will\nnot have shot so wide of the mark as to see in his story of the\nskull traces of pessimism:  Chwantse had none of it; he was a\nvery happy fellow; like the policeman in the poem,\n\n     \".....a merry genial wag\n     Who loved a mad conceit.\"\n\nBut he was by all means and anyhow for preaching the Inner as\nagainst the outer.  Yet he did not dismiss this world, either, as\na vain delusion and sorrowful mockery;--the gist of his teaching\nis this:  that men bear a false relation to the world; and he\ndesired to teach the true relation.  He loved the Universe, and\nhad a sublime confidence in it as the embodiment and expression\nof Tao; and would apply this thought as a solvent to the one\nfalse thing in it:  the human personality, with its heresy of\nseparateness.  Dissolve that,--and it is merely an idea; in the\nwords of a modern philosopher, _all in the  mind,_--and you have\nthe one true elixir flowing in your veins, the universal harmony;\nare part of the solemn and glorious pageant of the years.  The\nmotions of the heavenly bodies, the sweetness of Spring and the\nwistfulness of Autumn, flaunting Summer and Winter's beauty of\nsnow--all are parcel of yourself, and within the circle of your\nconsciousness.  Often he rises to a high poetic note;--it is\nlargely the supreme beauty of his style which keeps his book, so\nthouroughly unorthodox, still alive and wagging its tail among\nhis countrymen.  Chwangtse will not help you through the\nexaminations; but he is mighty good to read when your days of\ncompeting are over; as I think it is Dr. Giles who says.\n\nLike his contemporary Diogenes, he would have his dead body cast\nout to the vultures; but the spirit of his wish was by no\nmeans cynical.  \"When Chwangtse was about to die,\" he writes\n(anticipating things pleasantly), \"his disciples expressed a wish\nto give him a splendid funeral.  But he said:  'With heaven and\nearth for my coffin and shell, and the sun, moon, and stars for\nmy burial regalia; with all creation to escort me to the grave--\nis not my funeral already prepared?'\"\n\nHe speaks of the dangers of externalism, even in the pursuit of\nvirtue; then says:  \"The man who has harmony within, though he\nsit motionless like the image of a dead man at a sacrifice, yet\nhis Dragon Self will appear; though he be absorbed in silence,\nhis thunder will be heard; the divine power in him will be at\nwork, and heaven will follow it; while he abides in tranquillity\nand inaction, the myriads of things and beings will gather under\nhis influence.\"--\"Not to run counter to the natural bias of\nthings,\" he says, \"is to be perfect.\"  It is by this running\ncounter--going aginst the Law, following our personal desires and\nso forth,--that we create karma,--give the Universe something to\nreadjust,--and set in motion all our troubles.  \"He who fully\nunderstands this, by storing it within enlarges the heart, and\nwith this enlargement brings all creation to himself.  Such a man\nwill bury gold on the hillside, and cast pearls into the sea.\"--\nsink a plummet into that, I beseech you; it is one of the grand\nutterances of wonder and wisdom.--\"He will not struggle for\nwealth or strive for fame; rejoice over longevity, or grieve at\nan early death.  He will get no elation from success, nor chagrin\nfrom failure; he will not account the throne his private gain,\nno look on the empire of the world as glory personal.  His glory\nis to know that all thigns are one, and life and death but phases\nof the same existence.\"\n\nWhy call that about burying gold and casting pearls into the sea\none of the supreme utterances?--Well; Chwangtse has a way of\nputting a whole essay into a sentence; this is a case in point.\nWe have discussed Natural Magic together many times; we know how\nthe ultimate beauty occurs when something human has flowed out\ninto Nature, and left its mysterious trace there, upon the\nmountains, or by the river-brink,\n\n     \"By paved fountain, or by rushy brook.\n     Or on the beached margent of the sea.\"\n\nTu Fu saw in the blues and purples of the morning-glory the\ncolors of the silken garments of the lost poet Ssema Hsiangju, of\na thousand years before--that is, of the silken garments of his\nrich emotion and adventures.  China somehow has understood this\ndeep connexion between man and Nature; and that it is human\nthought molds the beauty and richness, or hideousness and\nsterility of the world.   Are the mountains noble?  They store\nthe grandeur and aspirations of eighteen millions of years of\nmankind.  Are the deserts desolate and terrible?  It was man made\nthe deserts:  not with his hands, but with his thought.  Man is\nthe fine workshop and careful laboratory wherein Nature prepares\nthe most wonderful of her wonders.  It is an instinct for this\ntruth that makes Chinese poetry the marvel that it is.--So the\nman of Tao is enriching the natural world:  filling the hills\nwith gold, putting pearls in the sea.\n\nI do not know where there is a more pregnant passage than this\nfollowing,--a better acid (of words) to corrode the desperate\nmetal of selfhood; listen well, for each clause is a volume.\n\"Can one get Tao to possess it for one's own?\"  asks Chwangtse;\nand answers himself thus:  \"Your very body is not your own; how\nthen should Tao be?--If my body is not my own, whose is it,\npray?--It is the delegated image of God.  Your posterity is not\nyour own; it is the delegated exuviae of God.  You move, but\nknow not how; you are at rest, but know not why; you taste, but\nknow not the cause; these are the operations of universal law.\nHow then should you get Tao so as to possess it for your own?\"\n\nNow then, I want to take one of those clauses, and try to see\nwhat Chwangtse really meant by it.  \"Your individuality is not\nyour own, but the delegated adaptability of God.\"--There is a\ncertain position in the Scheme of Things Entire,--a point, with a\nrelation of its own to the rest of the Scheme, to the Universe;--\nas the red line has a relation of its own to the rest of the\nspectrum and the ray of light as a whole..... From that point,\nfrom that position, there is a work to be done, which can be done\nfrom no other.  The Lonely Eternal looks out through these eyes,\nbecause it must see all things; and there are things no eyes can\nsee but these, no other hands do.  This point is an infinitesimal\npart of the whole; but without its full and proper functioning,\nthe Whole falls short in that much:--because of your or my petty\nomissions, the Universe limps and goes lame.--Into this position,\nas into all others impartially, the One Life which is Tao flows,\nadapting itself through aeons to the relations which that point\nbears to the Whole:  and the result and the process of this\nadaptation is--your individuality or mine.\n\n_You_ are not the point, the position:  because it is merely that\nwhich you hold and through which you function; it is yours, but\nnot you.  What then are _you?_  That which occupies and adapts\nitself to the point?  But that is Tao, the Universal.  You can\nonly say it is you, if from _you_ you subtract all _you_-ness.\nYour individuality, then, is a temporary aspect of Tao in a\ncertain relation to the totality of Tao, the One Thing which is\nthe No Thing:--or it is the \"delegated adaptability of God.\"\n\nHow and wherein adaptable?--The Infinite, occupying this\nposition, has formed therein all sorts of attachments and\ndislikes; and each one of them hinders it adaptability.  Your\nsurroundings have reflected themselves on you:  and the sum of\nthe reflexions is your personality,--the little cage of I-am-ness\nfrom which it is so hard to escape.  Every reflected image\nengraves itself on the stuff of yourself by the sensation of\nattachment or repulsion which it arouses.  When it says, \"The\nOne becomes the Two\"--which is the way in one form or another all\nancient philosophy sums up the beginning of things;--this is what\nis meant:  the 'One' is Tao; the 'Two' is this conditioned\nworld, whose nature and essence is to appear as pairs of\nopposites--to be attractive, or to repel.  The pigs' point of\nview was that it was better to live on bran and escape the\nshambles; the Grand Augur's, that the pomp and ceremony of the\nsacrifice, the public honor, ought more than to compensate them\nfor the momentary inconvenience of being killed.  Opposite ways\nof thinking; points of view:  which cherishing, Grand Augur and\npigs alike dwelt on the plane of externals; and so there was no\nreal difference between them.  When you stand for you, and I for\nmyself, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other; but when\neither of us stand for That which is both of us, and all else,--\nthen we touch reality; then there is no longer conflict, or\nopposites; no longer false appearances,--but the presence and\ncognition of the True.\n\nHere let me note what seems to me a radical superiority in\nChinese methods of thought.  You may take the _Bhagavad-Gita,_\nperhaps, as the highest expression of Aryan religio-philosophic\nthinking.  There we have the Spirit, the One, shown as the self\nof the Universe, but speaking through, and as, Krishna, a human\npersonality.  Heaven forbid that I should suggest there is\nanthropomorphism in this.  Still, I think our finest mystical and\npoetic perceptions of the Light beyond all lights do tend to\ncrystallize themselves into the shape of a _Being;_  we do tend\nto symbolize and figure that Wonder as ..... an Individuality\n.....in some indefinable splendid sort.  Often you find real\nmystics, men who have seen with their own eyes so to say, talking\nabout _God, the Lord,_ the _Great King,_ and what not of the\nlike; and though you know perfectly well what they mean, there\nwas yet that necessity on them to use those figures of speech.\nBut in China, no.  There, they begin from the opposite end.\nNeither in Laotse nor in Confucius, nor in their schools, can you\nfind a trace of personalism. Gods many, yes; as reason and\ncommon sense declare; but nothing you can call a god is so\nancient, constant, and eternal as Tao, \"which would appear to\nhave been before God.\"  Go to their poets, and you find that the\nrage is all for Beauty as the light shining through things.  The\ngrass-blade and the moutain, the moonlit water and the peony, are\nlit from within and utterly adorable:  not because God made them;\nnot as reminding you of the Topmost of any Hierarchy of Being;\nbut, if you really go to the bottom of it, because there is no\npersonality in them,--and so nothing to hinder the eternal\nwonder, impersonal Tao, from shining through.--As if _we_ came\nthrough our individuality to a conception of the Divine;\nbut _they,_ through a perception of the divine, to a right\nunderstanding of their individuality.  It amounts to _us_ to fall\ninto gross hideous anthropomorphism; the worst of them into\nsuperstitions of their own.--When one quotes Chwangtse as\nspeaking of \"the delegated adaptability of _God,_\"  one must\nremember that one has to use some English word for his totally\nimpersonal _Tao_ or _Tien,_ or even _Shangti,_ or whatever it\nmay be.\n\nThis Tao, you say, something far off,--a principle in philosophy\nor a metaphysical idea,--may be very nice to discuss in a lecture\nor write poetry about; but dear me! between whiles we have a\ngreat deal to do, and really--But no! it is actually, as Mohammed\nsaid, \"nearer to thee than thy jugular vein.\"  It is a simple\nadjustment of oneself to the Universe,--of which, after all, one\ncannot escape being a part; it is the attainment of a true\nrelationship to the whole.  What obscures and hinders that, is\nsimply our human brain-mind consciousness.  \"Consider the lilies\nof the field,\"  that attain a perfection of beauty.  The thing\nthat moves us, or ought to move us, in flowers, trees, seas and\nmountains, is this:  that lacking this fretting, gnawing sense of\nI-am-ness, their emanations are pure Tao, and may reach us along\nthe channel we call beauty:  may flood our being through \"the\ngateway of the eyes.\"  Beauty is Tao made visible.  The rose and\npeony do not feel themselves 'I,' distinct from 'you' and the\nrest; they are in opposition to nothing; they do not fall in\nlove, and have no aversions:  they simply worship Heaven and are\nunanxious, and so beautiful.  When we know this, we see what\nbeauty means; and that it is not something we can afford to\nignore and treat with stoic indifference or puritan dislike.  It\nis Tao visible; I call every flower an avatar of God.  Now you\nsee how Taoism leads to poetry; is the philosophy of poetry; is\nindeed _Poetics,_ rather than _Metephysics._  Think of all the\nlittle jewels you know in Keats, in Shelley, or Wordsworth:\nthe moments when the mists between those men and the divine\n\"defecated to a thin transparency\";--those were precisely the\nmoments when the poets lost sight of their I-am-ness and entered\ninto true relations with the Universe.  A daffodil, every second\nof its life, holds within itself all the real things poets have\never said, or will ever say, about it; and can reach our souls\ndirectly with edicts from the Dragon Throne of the Eternal.--I\nwatched the linarias yesterday, and their purple delicacy assured\nme that all the filth, all the falsehood and tragedy of the\nworld, should pass and be blown away; that the garden was full\nof dancing fairies, joy moving them to their dancing; that it\nwas my own fault if I could not see Apollo leaning down out of\nthe Sun; and my own fatuity, and that alone, if I could not hear\nthe Stars of Morning singing together, and all the sons of God\nshouting for you.  And it was the truth they were telling; the\nplain, bald, naked truth;--they have never learned to lie, and do\nnot know what it means.  There is no sentimentalism in this;\nonly science.  We live in a Universe absolutely soaked through\nwith God,--or with Poetry, which is perhaps a better name for It;\na Universe peopled thick with Gods.  But it is all very far from\nour common thoughts and conceptions; that is why it sounds to\nmost people like sentimental nonsense and 'poetry.'  No wonder\nPlato hated that word;--since it is made a hand-grenade, in the\npopular mind, to fling at every truth.  And yet Poetry 'gets in\non us,' too, occasionally, and accomplishes for\n\n     \"the woods and waters wild\"\n\nthe work they cannot do for themselves;--the work they cannot do,\ncause we will not look at them, cannot see them, and have\nforgotten their ancient language, being too much immersed in a\nrubbishing gabble of our own.\n\nWhat Toism, and especially Chwangtse as I think, did for the\nChinese was to publish the syntax and vocabulary of that ancient\nlanguage; to make people understand how to take these grand\nprotagonists of Tao; how to communicate familiarly with these\nselfless avatars of the Most High.  Listen to this: the thought\nis close-packed, but I think you will follow it:--\n\n\"The true Sage rejects all distinction of this and that,\" that is\nto say, of subjective, or that which one perceives within one's\nown mind and consciousness, and objective, or that which is\nperceived as existing outside of them;--he does not look upon the\nmountain or the daffodil as things different or apart from his\nown conscious being.  \"He takes his refuge in Tao, and places\nhimself in subjective relations with all things\"; he keeps the\nmountain within him; the scent of the daffodil, and her yellow\ncandle-flame of beauty, are within the sphere and circle of\nhimself;\n\n     \"...the little wave of Breffny goes stumbling through his\nsoul.\"\n\n\"Hence it is said\"--this is Chwangtse again--\"that there is\nnothing like the light of Nature.\n\n\"Only the truly intelligent understand this principle of the\nidentity of things.  They do not view things as apprehended by\nthemselves, but transfer themselves into the position of the\nthings viewed.\"--And there, I may say, you have it:  the last is\nthe secret of the wonder-light in all Far Eastern Poetry and Art;\nmore, it is the explanation of all poetry everywhere.  It is the\ndoctrine, the archeus, the _Open Sesame,_ the thyme- and\nlavender- and sweetwilliam-breathed Secret Garden of this old\nwizardly Science of Song;--who would go in there, and have the\ndark and bright blossoms for his companions, let him understand\nthis.  For Poetry is the revelation of the Great Life beyond the\nlittle life of this human personality; to tap it, you must evict\nyourself from the personal self; \"transfer yourself into the\nposition of the things viewed,\" and not see, but _be,_ the little\nstumbling wave or the spray of plum-blossom, thinking its\nthoughts.--\"Viewing things thus,\" continues our Chwangtse, \"you\nare able to comprehend and master them.  So it is that to place\noneself in inner relation with externals, without consciousness\nof their objectivity,--this is Tao.  But to wear out one's\nintellect in an obstinate adherence to the objectivity--the\napartness--of things, not recognizing that they are all one--this\nis called _Three in the Morning._--'What do you mean by _Three in\nthe Morning?'_ asked Tse Yu.--'A keeper of monkeys,' Tse Chi\nreplied, 'said with regard to their daily ration of chestnuts\nthat each monkey should have three in the morning and four at\nnight.  At this the monkeys were very angry; so he said that\nthey might have four in the morning and three at night; whereat\nthey were well pleased.  The number of nuts was the same; but\nthere was an adaptation to the feelings of those concerned.'\"--\nwhich, again, means simply that to follow Tao and dodge until it\nis altogether sloughed off the sense of separateness, is to\nfollow the lines of least resistance.\n\nAll these ideas are a natural growth from the teachings of\nLaotse; but Butterfly Chwang, in working them out and stating\nthem so brilliantly, did an inestimable service to the ages that\nwere to come.\n\n\n\n\nXIV.  THE MANVANTARA OPENS\n\n\nLaotse's Blue Pearl was already shining into poetry.  Ch'u Yuan,\nthe first great poet, belongs to this same fourth century; it is\na long step from the little wistful ballads that Confucius\ngathered to the \"wild irregular meters,\" * splendid imagery, and\nbe it said, deep soul symbolism of his great poem the Li Sao\n(Falling into Trouble).   The theme of it is this:  From earliest\nchildhood Ch'u Yuan had sought the Tao, but in vain.  At last,\nbanished by the prince whose minister he had been, he retired\ninto the wilds, and was meditating at the tomb of Shun in Hupeh,\nin what was then the far south.  There the Phoenix and the Dragon\ncame to him, and bore him aloft, past the West Pole, past the\nMilky Way, past even the Source of the Hoangho, to the Gates of\nHeaven.  Where, however, there was no admittance for him; and\nfull of sorrow he returned to earth.\n\n------\n* _Chinese Literature,_ by Dr. H. A. Giles.  What is said about\nthe _Li Sao_ here comes from that work--except the suggestions as\nto its inner meaning.\n------\n\nOn the banks of the Mi-lo a fisherman met him, and asked him the\ncause of his trouble.--\"All the world is foul,\" answered Ch'u\nYuan, \"and I alone am clean.\"--\"If that is so,\" said the\nfisherman, \"why not plunge into the current, and make its\nfoulness clean with the infection of your purity?  The Man of Tao\ndoes not quarrel with his surroundings, but adjusts himself to\nthem.\"  Ch'u Yuan took the hint:  leaped into the Mi-lo;--and\nyearly since then they have held the Dragon-boat Festival on the\nwaters of Middle China to commemorate the search for his body.--\nJust how much of this is in the _Li Sao,_--where the poem ends,--\nI do not clearly gather from Professor Giles's account; but the\nwhole story appears to me to be a magnificent Soul Symbol:  of\nthat Path which leads you indeed on dragon flights to the borders\nof the Infinite, but whose end, rightly considered, is in this\nworld, and to be as it were drowned in the waters of this world,\nwith your cleanness infecting them to be clean,--and lighting\nthem for all future ages with beauty, as with little dragon-boats\nluminous with an inner flame.  Ch'u Yuan had followers in that\nand the next century; but perhaps his greatness was hardly to be\napproached for a thousand years.\n\nBut we were still in Tiger-time, and with quite the worst of it\nto come.  Here lay the Blue Pearl scintillating rainbows up\nthrough the heavy atmosphere; but despite its flashing and\nup-fountaining those strange dying-dolphin hues and glories, you\ncould never have told, in Tiger-time, what it really was.  The\nDragon was yet a long way off; though indeed it must be allowed\nthat flight, when Chwangtse wrote and Ch'u Yuan sung, was\nsurprised with the far churr of startling wings under the stars.\nEars intent to listen were surprised; but only for a moment;--\nthere was that angry howling again from the northern hills and\nthe southern forests:  the two great Tigers of the world face to\nface, tails lashing;--and between them and in their path, Chow\nquite prone,--the helpless Black-haired People trembling or\nchattering frivolously.  Not for such an age as that Chwangtse\nand Ch'u Yuan wrote, but indeed you may say for all time.  What\nlight from the Blue Pearl could then shine forth and be seen,\nwould, in the thick fog and smoke-gloom, take on wild fantastic\nguise; which, as we shall see, it did:--but what Chwangtse had\nwritten remained, pure immortality, to kindle up better ages to\ncome.  When China should be ready, Chwangtse and the Pearl would\nbe found waiting for her.  The manvantara had not yet dawned;\nbut we may hurry on now to its dawning.\n\nThe Crest-Wave was still in India when China plunged into the\nabyss from which her old order of ages never emerged.  Soon after\nAsoka came to the throne of Magadha, in 284 B.C., Su Tai, wise\nprime minister to the Lord of Chao, took occasion to speak--\nseriously to his royal master as to the latter's perennial little\nwars with Yen.*  \"This morning as I crossed the river,\" said\nhe, \"I saw a mussel open its shell to the sun.  Straight an\noyster-catcher thrust in his bill to eat the mussel; which\npromptly snapped the shell to and held the bird fast.--'If it\ndoesn't rain today or tomorrow,' said the oyster-catcher, 'there'll\nbe a dead mussel here.'--'And if you don't get out of this by\ntoday or tomorrow,'  said the mussel, 'there'll be a dead\noyster-catcher.'  Meanwhile up came a fisherman and carried\nthem both off.  I fear Ts'in will be our fisherman.\"\n\n------\n* The tale is taken from Dr. H.A. Gile's _Chinese Literature._\n------\n\nWhich duly came to pass. Even in Liehtse's time Ts'in characteristics\nwere well understood:  he tells a sly story of a neighboring\nstate much infested by robbers.  The king was proud of a great\ndetective who kept them down; but they soon killed the Pinkerton,\nand got to work again.  Then he reformed himself,--and the\nrobbers found his kingdom no place for them.  In a body they\ncrossed the Hoangho into Ts'in;--and bequeathed to its policy\ntheir tendencies and aptitudes.\n\nTs'in had come to be the strongest state in China.  Next neighbor\nto the Huns, and half Hun herself, she had learned warfare in a\nschool forever in session.  But she had had wise rulers also,\nafter their fashion of wisdom:  who had been greatly at pains to\neducate her in all the learning of the Chinese.  So now she\nstood, an armed camp of a nation, enamored of war, and completely\ncivilized in all external things.  Ts'u, her strongest rival,\nstretching southward to the Yangtse and beyond, had had to deal\nwith barbarians less virile than the Huns; and besides, dwelling\nas Ts'u did among the mountains and forests of romance, she had\nsome heart in her for poetry and mysticism, whereas Ts'in's was\nall for sheer fighting.  Laotse probably had been a Ts'u man;\nand also Chwangtse and Ch'u Yuan; and in after ages it was\nnearly always from the forests of Ts'u that the great winds of\npoetry were blown.  Still--he had immense territories and\nresources, and the world looked mainly to her for defense against\nthe northern Tiger Ts'in.  Soon after Su Tai told his master the\nparable of the mussel and the oyster-catcher the grand clash\ncame, and the era of petty wars and raidings was over.  Ts'u\ngathered to herself most of the rest of China for her allies, and\nthere was a giant war that fills the whole horizon, nearly, of\nthe first half of the third century B. C.  New territories were\ninvolved:  the world had expanded mightily since the days of\nConfucius.  \"First and last,\" says Ssema Tsien, \"the allies\nhurled a million men against Ts'in.\"  But to no purpose; one\nnation after another went down before those Hun-trained half-Huns\nfrom the north-west.  In 257 Chau Tsiang king of Ts'in took the\nChow capital, and relieved Nan Wang, the last of the Chows, of\nthe Nine Tripods of Ta Yu, the symbols of his sacred sovereignty;\n--the mantle of the Caliphate passed from the House of Wen Wang\nand the Duke of Chow.\n\nThe world had crumbled to pieces:  there had been changes of\ndynasty before, but never (in known history) a change like this.\nThe Chows had been reigning nearly nine hundred years; but their\nsystem had been in the main the same as that of the Shangs and\nHias, and of Yao, Shun, and Ta Yu:  it was two millenniums, a\ncentury, and a decade old.  A Chinaman, in Chau Tsiang's place,\nwould merely have reshaped the old order and set up a new\nfeudal-pontifical house instead of Chow; which could not\nhave lasted, because old age had worn the old system out.\nBut these barbarians came in with new ideas.  A new empire,\na new race, a new nation was to be born.\n\nChau Tsiang died in 251; and even then one could not clearly\nforesee what should follow.  In 253 he had performed the significant\nsacrifice to Heaven, a prerogative of the King-Pontiff:  but he\nhad not assumed the title.  Resistance was still in being.\nHis son and successor reigned three days only; and _his_\nson, another nonentity, five years without claiming to be\nmore than King of Ts'in.  But when this man died in 246, he left\nthe destinies of the world in the hands of a boy of thirteen;\nwho very quickly showed the world in whose hands its destinies\nlay.  Not now a King of Ts'in; not a King-Pontiff of Chow;--not,\nif you please, a mere _wang_ or king at all;--but Hwangti, like\nthat great figure of mythological times, the Yellow Emperor, who\nhad but to sit on his throne, and all the world was governed and\nat peace.  The child began by assuming that astounding title:\n_Ts'in Shi Hwangti,_ the First August Emperor:   peace to the\nages that were past; let them lie in their tomb; time now\nshould begin again!--Childish boyish swank and braggadocio, said\nthe world; but very soon the world found itself mistaken.\n_Hwangti;_--but no sitting on his throne in meditation, no\nletting the world be governed by Tao, for him!\n\nIf you have read that delightful book _Through Hidden Shensi,_ by\nMr. F. A. Nichols, the city of Hienfang, or Changan, or, by its\nmodern name, Singanfu or Sian-fu in Shensi, will be much more\nthan a name to you.  Thither it was that the Dowager Empress fled\nwith her court from Pekin at the time of the Boxer Rebellion;\nthere, long ago, Han Wuti's banners flew; there Tang Taitsong\nreigned in all his glory and might; there the Banished Angel sang\nin the palace gardens of Tang Hsuantsong the luckless:  history\nhas paid such tribute of splendor to few of the cities of the\nworld.  At Hienfang now this barbarian boy and Attila-Napoleon\namong kings built his capital;--built it right splendidly,\nafter such ideas of splendor as a young half-Hun might cherish.\nFor indeed, he had but little and remote Chinese heredity\nin him; was of the race of Attila and Genghiz, of Mahmoud\nof Ghazna, Tamerlane, and all the world-shaking Turkish conquerors.\n--Well, but these people, though by nature and function destroyers,\nhave been great builders too:  building hugely, monumentally,\nand to inspire awe, and not with the faery grace and ephemeral\nloveliness of the Chinese;--though they learned the trick\nof that, too,--as they learned in the west kindred qualities\nfrom the Saracens.  Grand Pekin is of their architecture;\nwhich is Chinese with a spaciousness and monumental solemnity\nadded.  Such a capital Ts'in She Hwangti built him at Hien\nfang or Changan.  In the Hall of audience of his palace within\nthe walls he set up twelve statues, each (I like this barbarian\ntouch) weighing twelve thousand pounds.  Well; _we_ should\nsay, each costing so many thousand dollars; you need not\nlaugh; I am not sure but that the young Hun had the best of\nit.  And without the walls he built him, too, a Palace of\nDelight with many halls and courtyards; in some of which\n(I like this too) he could drill ten thousand men.\n\nAll of this was but the trappings and the suits of his sovereignty:\nhe let it be known he had the substance as well.  No great\nstrategist himself, he commanded the services of mighty generals:\none Meng-tien in especial, a bright particular star in the\nWar-God's firmament.  An early step to disarm the nations,\nand have all weapons sent to Changan; then, with these, to\nfurnish forth a great standing army, which he sent out under\nMeng-tien to conquer.  The Middle Kingdom and the quondam Great\nPowers were quieted; then south of the Yangtse the great soldier\nswept, adding unknown regions to his master's domain. Then rorth\nand west, till the Huns and their like had grown very tame and\nwary;--and over all these realms the Emperor spread his network\nof fine roads and canals, linking them with Changan:  what the\nRomans did for Europe in road-building, he did for China.\n\nHe had, of course, a host of relatives; and precedent loomed\nlarge to tell him what to do with them:  the precedent of the\ndynasty-founders of old.  Nor were they themselves likely to have\nbeen backward in reminding him.  Wu Wang had come into possession\nof many feudal dominions, and had made of the members of his\nfamily dukes and marquises to rule them. Ts'in Shi Hwangti's\nempire was many times the size of Wu Wang's; so he was in a much\nbetter position to reward the deserving.  We must remember that\nhe was no heir to a single sovereignty, but a Napoleon with a\nEurope at his feet.  Ts'in and Ts'u and Tsin and the others were\nold-established kingdoms, with as long a history behind them as\nFrance or England has now; and that history had been filled with\nwars, mutual antagonisms and hatreds.  Chow itself was like an\nItaly before Garibaldi;--with a papacy more inept, and holding\nvaguer sway:--it had been at one time the seat of empire, and it\nwas the source of all culture.  He had to deal, then, with a\nheterogeneity as pronounced as that which confronted Napoleon;\nbut he was not of the stuff for which you prepare Waterloos.  No\none dreamed that he would treat the world other than as such a\nheterogeneity.  His relations expected to be made the Jeromes,\nEugenes, and Murats of the Hollands, Spains, and Sicilies to\nhand.  The world could have conceived of no other way of dealing\nwith the situation.  But Ts'in Shi Hwangti could, very well.\n\nHe abolished the feudal system.  He abolished nationalities and\nnational boundaries.  There should be no more Ts'in and Tsin and\nTs'u; no more ruling dukes and marquises.  Instead, there should\nbe an entirely new set of provinces, of which he would appoint\nthe governors, not hereditary; and they should be responsible to\nhim:  promotable when good, dismissable and beheadable on the\nfirst sign of naughtiness.  It was an idea of his own; he had no\nforeign history to go to for models and precedents, and there had\nbeen nothing like it in Chinese History.  Napoleon hardly\nconceived such a tremendous idea, much less had he the force\nto carry it out.  Even the achievement of Augustus was smaller;\nand Augustus had before him models in the history of many\nancient empires.\n\nNow what was the ferment behind this man's mind;--this barbarian\n--for so he was--of tremendous schemes and doings?  The answer is\nastonishing, when one thinks of the crude ruthless human dynamo\nhe was.  It was simply _Taoism:_  it was Laotse's Blue Pearl;--\nbut shining, of course, as through the heart of a very London\nParticular of Hunnish-barbarian fogs.  No subtleties of\nmysticism; no Chwangtsean spiritual and poetry-breeding ideas,\nfor him!--It has fallen, this magical Pearl, into turbid and\ntremendous waters, a natural potential Niagara; it has stirred,\nit has infected their vast bulk into active Niagarahood.  He was\non fire for the unknown and the marvelous; could conceive of no\nimpossible--it should go hard, he thought, but that the subtler\nworlds that interpenetrate this one should be as wonderful as\nthis world under Ts'in Shi Hwangti.  Don't argue with him; it is\ndangerous!--certainly there was an Elixir of Life, decantable\ninto goblets, from which Ts'in Shi Hwangti might drink and become\nimmortal,--the First August Emperor, and the only one forever!\nCertainly there were those Golden Islands eastward, where Gods\ndispensed that nectar to the fortunate;--out in your ships, you\nthere, and search the waves for them!  And certainly, too, there\nwere God knew what of fairylands and paradises beyond the western\ndesert; out, you General Meng-tien, with your great armies and\nfind them!  He did tremendous things, and all the while was thus\ndreaming wildly.  From the business of state he would seize hours\nat intervals to lecture to his courtiers on Tao;--I think _not_\nin a way that would have been intelligible to Laotse or Chwangtse.\nThose who yawned were beheaded, I believe.\n\nHow would such a prodigy in time appear to his own age?  Such\ncataclysmic wars as Ts'in had been waging for the conquest of\nChina take society first, so to say, upon its circumference,\nsmash that to atoms, and then go working inwards.  The most\nconservative and stable elements are the last and least affected.\nThe peasant is killed, knocked about, transported, enclaved; but\nwhen the storm is over, and he gets back to his plough and hoe\nand rice-field again, sun and wind and rain and the earth-breath\nsoothe him back to and confirm in what he was of old:  only some\nnew definite spiritual impulse or the sweep of the major cycles\ncan change him much,--and then the change is only modification.\nAt the other end of society you have the Intellectuals.  In\nEngland, Oxford is the home and last refuge of lost causes.  A\nliterary culture three times as old as modern Oxford's, as\nChina's was then, will be, you may imagine, fixed and conservative.\nIt is a mental mold petrified with age; the minds participating\nmust conform to it, solidify, and grow harder in the matrix\nit provides than granite or adamant.  We have seen how in\nrecent times the Confucian literati resisted the onset of\nwesternism.  All these steam-engines and telegraphs seemed to\nthem fearfully crude and vulgar in comparison with the niceties\nof literary style, the finesses of time-taking ceremonious\ncourtesies, that had been to them and to their ancestors time out\nof mind the true refinements of life, and even the realities.\nChina rigid against the West was not a semi-barbarism resisting\ncivilization, but an excessively perfected culture resisting the\nraw energies of one still young and, in its eyes, still with the\ntaint of savagery:  brusque manners, materialistic valuations.\n\nTs'in Shi Hwangti in his day had to meet a like opposition.  The\nwars had broken up the structure of society, but not the long\ntradition of refined learning.  That had always seemed the\nquarter from which light and leading must come; but it had long\nceased to be a quarter from which light or leading could come.\nMencius had been used to rate and ridicule the ruling princes;\nand scholars now could not understand that Mencius and his ruling\nprinces and all their order were dead.  They could not understand\nthat they were not Menciuses, nor Ts'in Shi Hwangti a kinglet\nsuch as he had dealt with.  Now Mencius had been a great man,--a\nMan's son, as they say;--and very likely he and Ts'in Shi Hwangti\nmight have hit it off well enough.  But there was no Mencius, no\nMan's son, among the literati now.  The whole class was wily,\npolite, sarcastic, subtle, unimaginative, refined to a degree,\nimmovable in conservatism.  The Taoist teachers had breathed in a\nnew spirit, but it had not reached them. How would Ts'in Shi\nHwangti, barbarian, wild Taoist, and man of swift great action,\nappear to them?\n\nOf course they could not abide him; and had not the sense to\nfear.  They were at their old game of wire-pulling:  would have\nthe feudal system back, with all the old inefficiency; in the\nname of Ta Yu and the Duke of Chow they would do what they might\nto undo the strivings of this Ts'in upstart.  So all the\nsubtleties of the old order were arrayed against him,--pull\ndevil, pull baker.\n\nHe knew it; and knew the extreme difficulty of striking any\nordinary blow to quiet them.  He had challenged Time Past to the\nconflict, and meant to win.  Time Future was knocking at the\ndoors of the empire, and he intended it should come in and find a\nhome.  His armies had crossed the Gobi, and smelt out unending\npossibilities in the fabulous west; they had opened up the\nfabulous south, the abode of Romance and genii and dragons.  It\nwas like the discovery of the Americas:  a new world brought over\nthe horizon.  His great minister, Li Ssu had invented a new\nscript, the Lesser Seal, easier and simpler than the old one;\nMeng-tien, conqueror of the Gobi, had invented the camel's-hair\nbrush wherewith to write gracefully on silk or cloth, instead of\ndifficultly with stylus on bamboo-strips as of old.  It was the\nmorning stir of the new manvantara; and little as the emperor\nmight care for culture, he heard the Future crying to him.  He\nheard, too, the opposing murmur of the still unconquered Past.\nThe literati stood against him as the Papacy against Frederick II\nof Sicily:  a less open opposition, and one harder to meet.\n\nHe did not solve the problem till near the end of his reign.  In\n213 he called a great meeting in the Hall of Audience at Changan.\nSee the squat burly figure enthroned in grand splendor; the\ntwelve weighty statues arranged around; the chief civil and\nmilitary officers of the empire, thorough Taoists like himself,\ngathered on one side; the Academies and Censorates, all the\nleaders of the literati, on the other.  The place was big enough\nfor a largish meeting.  Minister Li Ssu rises to describe the\nwork of the Emperor; whereafter the latter calls for expressions\nof opinion.  A member of his household opines that he \"surpasses\nthe very greatest of his predecessors\":  which causes a subdued\nsneer to run through the ranks of scholars.  One of them takes\nthe floor and begins to speak.  Deprecates flattery guardedly, as\nbad for any sovereign; considers who the greatest of these\npredecessors were:--Yao, Shun, and Yu, 'Tang the Completer, Wu\nWang; and--implies a good deal.  Warms to his work at last, and\ngrows bitter; almost openly pooh poohs all modern achievements;\nrespectfully--or perhaps not too respectfully--advocates a return\nto the feudal--\n\n\"Silence!\" roars Attila-Napoleon from his throne; and motions Li\nSsu to make answer.  The answer was predetermined, one imagines.\nIt was an order that five hundred of the chief literati present\nshould retire and be beheaded, and that thousands more should be\nbanished.  And that all books should be burned. Attila-Napoleon's\norders had a way of being carried out.  This was one.\n\nHe had meanwhile been busy with the great material monument of\nhis reign:  the Wall of China; and with cautious campaigns\nyearly to the north of it; and with personal supervision of the\nCommissariat Department of all his armies everywhere; and with\ndaily long _hikes_ to keep himself in trim.  Now the Wall came in\nuseful.  To stretch its fifteen hundred miles of length over wild\nmountains and valleys in that bleak north of the world, some\nlittle labor was needed; and scholars and academicians were\nmany and, for most purposes, useless; and they needed to be\nbrought into touch with physical realities to round out their\ncharacters;--then let them go and build the wall.  He buried\nenough of them--alive, it is to be feared:  an ugly Ts'in\ncustom, not a Chinese,--to make melons ripen in mid-winter\nover their common grave; the rest he sentenced to four years\nof wall-building,--which meant death.  That, too, was the penalty\nfor concealing books.  He was now in dead earnest that the Past\nshould go, and history begin again; to be read forever afterwards\nin this order,--the Creation, the Reign of Ts'in Shi Hwangti.\n\nBut he spared books on useful subjects:  that is to say, on\nMedicine, Agriculture, and Magic.\n\nSo ancient China is to be seen now only as through a glass\ndarkly; if his great attempt had been quite successful, it would\nnot be to be seen at all.  His crimes made no karma for China;\nthey are not a blot on her record;--since they were done by an\noutside barbarian,--a mere publican and Ts'inner.  From our\nstandpoint as students of history, he was a malefactor of the\nfirst order; even when you take no account of his ruthless\ncruelty to men;--and so China has considered him ever since.  Yet\nKarma finds ruthless agents for striking its horrible and\nbeneficial blows; (and woe unto them that it finds!).  It seems\nthat Ts'in Shi Hwangti did draw the bowstring back--by this very\nwickedness,--far back--that sent the arrow China tearing and\nblazing out through the centuries to come.  The fires in which\nthe books were burned were the pyre of the Phoenix,--the burning\nof the astral molds,--the ignition and annihilation of the weight\nand the karma of two millenniums.  The Secular Bird was to burn\nand be consumed to the last feather, and be turned to ashes\nutterly, before she might spring up into the ether for her new\nflight of ages.\n\nOne wonders what would happen if a Ts'in Shi Hwangti were to\narise and do by modern Christendom what this one did by ancient\nChina.  I say nothing about the literati, but only about the\nliterature.  Would burning it be altogether an evil?  Nearly all\nthat is supremely worth keeping would live through; and its\nvalue would be immensely enhanced.  First the newspapers would\ngo, that sow lies broadcast, and the seeds of national hatreds.\nThe light literature would go, that stands between men and\nthought.  The books of theology would go, and the dust of\ncreedalism that lies so thick on men's minds.  A thousand bad\nprecedents that keep us bound to medievalism would go with the\nlaw-books:  there would be a chance to pronounce, here and now as\nhuman beings, on such things as capital punishment;--which\nremains, though we do not recognise the fact, solely because it\nhas been in vogue all these centuries, and is a habit hard to\nbreak with.  History would go; yes;--but a mort of pernicious\nlies would go with it.  Well, well; one speaks of course in jest\n(partly).  But when all is said, China was not unfortunate in\nhaving a strong giant of a man, a foreigner withal, at her head\nduring those crucial decades.  Ts'in Shi Hwangti guarded China\nthrough most of that perilous intermission between the cycles.\nIt was the good that he did that mostly lived after him.\n\nIn 210 he fell ill, took no precautions, and died,--in his\nfiftieth year.  A marvelous mausoleum was built for him:  a\npalace, with a mountain heaped on top, and the floor of it a map\nof China, with the waters done in quicksilver.  Whether his evil\ndeeds were interred with his bones, who can say?--certainly his\nliving wives were, and the thousands of living workmen who had\nbuilt the mausoleum.  Ts'innish doings, not Chinese.  In the\n_Book of Odes,_ Confucius preserved a Ts'in ballad mourning over\nmen so buried alive with their dead king.\n\nThe strong hand lifted, rebellion broke out, and for awhile it\nlooked as if Chu Hia must sink into the beast again.  His feeble\nson got rid of Meng-tien, poisoned Li Ssu, offered the feeblest\nresistance to the rebels, and then poisoned himself.  After four\nyears of fighting,--what you might call \"unpleasantness all\nround,\"--one Liu Pang achieved the throne.  He had started life\nas a beadle; joined Ts'in Shi Hwangti's army, and risen to be a\ngeneral; created himself after the emperor's death Prince of\nHan; and now had the honor to inaugurate, as Emperor Kaotsu, the\ngreatest of the Chinese dynasties.\n\nIn the two-fifties strong barbarous Ts'in had swallowed unmanly\nworn-out China, and for half a century had been digesting the\nfeast.  Then--to mix my metaphors a little--China flopped up to\nthe surface again, pale, but smiling blandly.  In the sunlight\nshe gathered strength and cohesion, and proceeded presently to\nswallow Ts'in and everything else in sight; and emerged soon\nyoung, strong, vigorous, and glowing-hearted to the conquest of\nmany worlds in the unknown.  What was Ts'in, now is Shensi\nProvince, the very Heart of Han:  the Shensi man today is the Son\nof Han, _Ts'in_ Englished; but in Shensi, the old Ts'in, in\ntheir tenderest moods, they call it _Han_ still,--the proudest\nmost patriotic name there is for it.\n\nNot at once was the Golden Age of Han to dawn:   half a\nthirteen-decade cycle from the opening of the manvantara in\nthe two-forties had to pass first.  Ts'in Shi Hwangti had mapped\nout a great empire; it fell to the Hans to consolidate it.\nHan Kaotsu followed somewhat in the footsteps of his predecessor,\nless the cruelty and barbarism, and most of the strength.\nThe sentiment of the empire was Chinese, not Ts'innish; so,\nthough not a brilliant or always a fortunate soldier, he\nwas able to assert his sway over the greater part of China\nProper.  Chinesism had spread over territories never before\nChinese, and wherever it had spread, the people were glad\nof a Chinese dynasty; besides, his rule was tactful and\nkindly.  They were glad that the Gods of the Soil of Han\nwere to be worshipped now, and those of Ts'in disthroned;\nand that the Ts'in edicts were annulled;--as they were with\none important exception:  those relating to literature.  A\ncultureless son of the proletariat himself.  Han Kaotsu felt no\nurge towards resurrecting that; and perhaps it was as well that\nthe sleeping dogs should be let lie awhile.  The wonder is that\nthe old nationalities did not reassert themselves; but they did\nnot, to any extent worth mentioning; and perhaps this is the\nbest proof of Han Kaotsu's real strength.  Ts'in Shi Hwangti had\ndealt soundly with the everlasting Hun in his time; but when he\ndied, the Hun recovered.  They kept Han Kaotsu busy, so that his\nsaddle, as he said, was his throne.   They raided past the\ncapital and down into Ssechuan; once very nearly captured the\nemperor; and had to be brought out at last with a Chinese\nprincess for the Hun king.  Generally speaking, the Hans would\nhave lived at peace with them if they could, and were ready to\ntry better means of solving the problem than war.  But it\ncertainly was a problem; for in these Huns we find little traces\nof human nature that you could work upon.  But China was a big\ncountry by that time, and only a part of it, comparatively small,\nsuffered from the Huns.  For the rest, Han Kaotsu was popular,\nhis people were happy, and his reign of twelve years was a\nbreathing-time in which they gathered strength.  He kept a\nhundred thousand workmen busy on public works, largely road- and\nbridge-building:  a suspension bridge that he built, a hundred\nand fifty yards long, and crossing a valley five hundred feet\nbelow, is still in use,--or was during the last century.  He died\nin 194.\n\nHe was succeeded, nominally, by his son Han Hweiti; really by\nhis widow, the empress Liu Chi:  one of the three great women who\nhave ruled China.  At this time the Huns, under their great Khan\nMehteh, were at the height of their power.  Khan Mehteh made\nadvances to the Empress:  \"I should like,\" said he, \"to exchange\nwhat I have for what I have not.\"  You and I may think he meant\nmerely a suggestion for mutual trade; but she interpreted it\ndifferently, thanked him kindly, but declined the flattering\nproposal on the score of her age and ugliness.  Her hair and\nteeth, she begged him to believe, were quite inadequate, and made\nit impossible for her to think of changing her condition.--I do\nnot know whether it was vanity or policy.\n\nBut it was she, or perhaps her puppet son the emperor, who\nstarted the great Renaissance.  A commission was appointed for\nrestoring the literature:  among its members, K'ung An-kuo,\ntwelfth in descent from Confucius.  Books were found, that\ndevotion had hidden in dry wells and in the walls of houses; one\nFu Sheng, ninety years old, repeated the Classics word for word\nto the Commissioner, all from his memory. The restrictions gone,\na mighty reaction set in; and China was on fire to be her\nliterary self again.  A great ball was set rolling; learning\nwent forward by leaps and bounds. The enthusiasm, it must be\nsaid, took directions legitimate and the reverse;--bless you, why\nshould any written page at all be considered lost, when there\nwere men in Han with inventive genius of their own, and a pretty\nskill at forgery?  The Son of Heaven was paying well; to it,\nthen, minds and calligraphic fingers!\n\nSo there are false chapters of Chwangtse, while many true ones\nhave been lost.  And I can never feel sure of Confucius' own\n_Spring and Autumn Annals,_ wherein he thought lay his highest\nclaim to human gratitude, and the composition of which the really\nbrilliant-minded Mencius considered equal to the work of Ta Yu in\nbridling China's Sorrow;--but which, as they come down to us,\nare not impressive.--The tide rolled on under Han Wenti, from 179\nto 156:  a poet himself, a man of peace, and a reformer of the\nlaws in the direction of mercy.  Another prosperous reign\nfollowed; then came the culmination of the age in the Golden\nReign of Han Wuti, from 140 to 86.\n\nThe cyclic impulse had been working mainly on spiritual and\nintellectual planes:  Ssema Tsien, the Father of Chinese History,\ngives gloomy pictures of things economic.*\n\n\"When the House of Han arose,\" says Ssema, \"the evils of their\npredecessors had not passed away.  Husbands still went off to the\nwars; old and young were employed in transporting food,\nproduction was almost at a standstill, and money was scarce.  The\nSon of Heaven had not even carriage horses of the same color;\nthe highest civil and military authorities rode in bullock carts;\nthe people at large knew not where to lay their heads.  The\ncoinage was so heavy and cumbersome that the people themselves\nstarted a new issue at a fixed standard of value.  But the laws\nwere lax, and it was impossible to prevent the grasping from\ncoining largely, buying largely, and then holding for a rise in\nthe market.  Prices went up enormously:\"--it sounds quite modern\nand civilized, doesn't it?--\"rice sold at a thousand cash per\npicul; a horse cost a hundred ounces of silver.\"\n\n------\n* The passages quoted are taken from Dr. Giles's work on\n_Chinese Literature._\n------\n\nUnder the Empress Liu Chi and her successors these conditions\nwere bettered; until, when a half cycle had run its course, and\nHan Wuti had been some twenty years on the throne, prosperity\ncame to a culmination.  Says Ssema Tsien:\n\n\"The public granaries were well-stocked; the government\ntreasuries full... The streets were thronged with the horses of\nthe people, and on the highroads, whole droves were to be seen,\nso that it became necessary to forbid the public use of mares.\nVillage elders ate meat and drank wine.  Petty government\nclerkships lapsed from father to son, and the higher offices of\nstate were treated as family heirlooms.  For a spirit of\nself-respect and reverence for the law had gone abroad, and a\nsense of charity and duty towards one's neighbor kept men\naloof from disgrace and crime.\"\n\nThere had been in Kansuh, the north-westernmost province of China\nProper, a people called the Yueh Chi or White Scythians, whom the\nHuns had driven into the far west; by this time they were\ncarving themselves an empire out of the domains of the Parthians,\nand penetrating into north-west India, but Han Wuti knew nothing\nof that.  All that was known of them was, that somewhere on the\nlimits of the world they existed, and were likely to be still at\nloggerheads with their ancient foes the Huns.  Han Wuti had now\nbeen on the throne seven years, and was and had been much\ntroubled by the Hun problem:  he thought it might help to solve\nit if those lost Yueh Chi could be raked up out of the unknown\nand made active allies.  To show the spirit of the age, I will\ntell you the story of Chang Ch'ien, the general whom he sent to\nfind them.\n\nChang Ch'ien set out in 139; traversed the desert, and was duly\ncaptured by the Huns.  Ten years they held him prisoner; then he\nescaped.  During those ten years he had heard no news from home:\na new emperor might be reigning, for aught he knew; or Han Wuti\nmight have changed his plans.  Such questions, however, never\ntroubled him:  he was out to find the Yueh Chi for his master,\nand find them he would.  He simply went forward; came presently\nto the kingdom of Tawan, in the neighborhood of Yarkand; and\nthere preached a crusade against the Huns.  Unsuccessfully:  the\nmen of Tawn knew the Huns, but not Han wuti, who was too far away\nfor a safe ally; and they proposed to do nothing in the matter.\nChang Ch'ien considered.  Go back to China?--Oh dear no! there\nmust be real Yueh C'hi somewhere, even if these Tawanians were\nnot they.  On he went, and searched that lonely world until he\ndid find them.  They liked the idea of Hun-hurting; but again,\nconsidered China too far away for practical  purposes.  He struck\ndown into Tibet; was captured again; held prisoner a year;\nescaped again,--and got back to Changan in 126.  A sadder and a\nwiser man, you might suppose; but nothing of the kind!  Full, on\nthe contrary, of brilliant schemes; full of the wonder and rumor\nof the immense west.  These he poured into Han Wuti's most\nsympathetic ears; and the emperor started now in real earnest\nupon his Napoleonic career.\n\nThe frontier was no longer at the Great Wall.  Only the\nother day Sir Aurel Stein discovered, in the far west, the\nlong straight furrows traced by the feet of Han Wuti's sentinels\non guard; the piles of reed-stalks, at regular intervals,\nset along the road for fire-signals; documents giving details\nas to the encampments, the clothes and arrows served out\nto the soldiers, the provisions made for transforming armies\nof conquest into peaceful colonies.  All these things the\nsands covered and preserved.\n\nAnd behind these outposts was a wide empire full of splendor\noutward and inward; full of immense activities, in literature,\nin engineering, in commerce.  New things and ideas came in from\nthe west:  international influences to reinforce the flaming up\nof Chinese life.\n\nThe moving force was still Taoism; the Blue Pearl, sunk deep in\nthe now sunlit waters of the common consciousness, was flashing\nits rainbows.  Ts'in Shi Hwangti, for all his greatness, had been\nan uncouth barbarian; Han Wuti was a very cultured gentleman of\nliterary tastes,--a poet, and no mean one.  He too was a Taoist;\nan initiate of the Taoism of the day; which might mean in part\nthat he had an eye to the Elixir of Life; but it also meant\n(at least) that he had a restless, exorbitant, and gorgeous\nimagination.  Such, indeed, inflamed the whole nation; which was\nrich, prosperous, energetic, progressive, and happy.  Ts'in ideas\nof bigness in architecture had taken on refinement in Chinese\nhands; the palaces and temples of Han Wuti are of course all\nlost, but by all accounts they must have been wonderful and\nsplendid.  Very little of the art comes down:  there are some\nbas-reliefs of horses, fine and strong work, realistic, but with\nredeeming nobleness.  How literature had revived may be gathered\nfrom this:  in Han Wuti's Imperial Library there were 3123\nvolumes of the Classics and commentaries thereupon; 2705 on\nPhilosophy; 1318 of Poetry; 2528 on Mathematics; 868 on\nMedicine; 790 on the Science of War.  His gardens at Changan\nwere famous; he had collectors wandering the world for new and\nornamental things to stock them; very likely we owe many of our\ngarden plants and shrubs to him.  He consecrated mountains and\nmagnificent ceremonies; and for the sake of the gods and genii\nappeared as flaming splendors over Tai-hsing and the other sacred\nheights.  For the light of Romance falls on him; he is a shining\nhalf faery figure.--Outwardly there was pomp, stately manners,\npageantry, high magnificence; inwardly, a burning-up of the\nnational imagination to ensoul it.  The Unseen, with all its\nmystery and awe or loveliness, was the very nearly visible:  not\na pass nor lake nor moor nor forest but was crowded with the\nthings of which wonder is made.  Muh Wang, the Chow king, eight\ncenturies before, had ridden into the West and found the garden\nof that Faery Queen whose Azure Birds of Compassion fly out into\nthis world to sweeten the thoughts of men.  Bless you, Han Wuti\nmarried the lady, and had her to abide peaceably in his palace,\nand to watch with him\n\n     \"The lanterns glow vermeil and gold,\n          Azure and green, the Spring nights through,\n          When loud the pageant galeons drew\n     To clash in mimic combating,\n          And their dark shooting flames to strew\n     Over the lake at Kouen Ming.\"\n\nFrom about 130 to 110 Han Wuti was Napoleonizing:  bringing\nin the north-west; giving the Huns a long quietus in 119;\nconquering the south with Tonquin; the southern coast provinces,\nand the lands towards Tibet.  Ssema Tsien tells us that \"mountains\nwere hewn through for many miles to establish a trade-route\nthrough the south-west and open up those remote regions\";\nthat was a scheme of Chang Ch'ien's, who had ever an eye to\npenetrating to India.\n\nThere was a dark side to it.  Vast sums of money were eaten up,\nand estravagance in private life was encouraged.  Says Ssema:\n\n\"From the highest to the lowest, everyone vied with his neighbor\nin lavishing money on houses and appointments and apparel,\naltogether beyond his means.  Such is the everlasting law of the\nsequence of prosperity and decay.... Merit had to give way to\nmoney; shame and scruples of conscience were laid aside; laws\nand punishments were administered with severer hand.\"\n\nIt is a very common thing to see signs of decline and darkness in\none's own age; and Ssema himself had no cause to love the\nadministration of Han Wuti; under which he had been punished\nrather severely for some offense.  Still, what he says is more or\nless what you would expect the truth to be.  And you will note\nhim historian of the life of the people; not mere recounter of\ncourt scandals and chronicler of wars:  conscious, too, of the\nlaw of cycles;--all told, something a truer historian than we\nhave seen too much of in the West.--Where, indeed, we are wedded\nto politics, and must have our annalists chronicle above all\nthings what we call political growth; not seeing that it is but\na circle, and squirreling round valiantly in a cage to get\nperpetually in high triumph to the place you started from; a\nfoolish externality at best.  But real History mirrors for us the\nmotions of the Human Spirit and the Eternal.\n\nI said that what Ssema tells us is what you would expect the\ntruth to be; this way:--After half a cycle of that adventurous\nand imaginative spirit, eyes jaundiced a little would surely find\nexcuse enough for querulous vision.  There is, is there not,\nsomething Elizabethan in that Chang Ch'ien, taking the vast void\nso gaily, and not to be quenched by all those fusty years\nimprisoned among the Huns, but returning only the more fired and\nheady of imagination?  If he was a type of Han Wuti's China, we\nmay guess Ssema was not far out, and that vaulting ambition was\noverleaping itself a little; that men were buying automobiles\nwho by good rights should have ridden in a wheelbarrow.  Things\ndid not go quite so well with the great emperor after his twenty\nflaming Napoleonic years; his vast mountain-cleaving schemes\nwere left  unfinished; Central Asia grew more troublesome again,\nand he had to call off Chang Ch'ien from an expedition into India\nby way of Yunnan and Tibet and the half-cleaved mountains, to\nfight the old enemy in the north-west.  But until the thirteen\ndecades were passed, and Han Chaoti, his successor, had died in\n63 B.C., the vast designs were still upspringing; high and\ndaring enterprise was still the characteristic of the Chinese\nmind.  The thirteen decades, that is, from the accession of Han\nHueiti and the beginning of the Revival of Literature in 194.\n\n\n\n\nXV.  SOME POSSIBLE EPOCHS IN SANSKRIT LITERATURE\n\n\nHan Chaoti died in 63 B.C.; his successor is described as a\n\"boor of low tastes\";--from that time the great Han impetus goes\nslowing down and quieting.  China was recuperating after Han\nWuti's flare of splendor; we may leave her to recuperate, and\nlook meanwhile elsewhere.\n\nAnd first to that most tantalizing of human regions, India;\nwhere you would expect something just now from the cyclic\nbackwash.  As soon as you touch this country, in the domain of\nhistory and chronology, you are certain, as they say, to get\n'hoodooed.'  Kali-Yuga began there in 3102 B.C., and ever since\nthat unfortunate event, not a single soul in the country seems to\nhave had an idea of keeping track of the calendar.  So-and-so,\nyou read, reigned.  When?--Oh, in 1000 A.D.  Or in 213 A.D.  Or\nin 78 A.D.  Or in a few million B.C., or 2100 A.D.  Or he did\nnot reign at all.  After all, what does it matter?--this is\nKali-Yuga, and nothing can go right.--You fix your eyes on a\ncertain spot in time, which, according to your guesses at\nthe cycles, should be important.  Nothing doing there, as\nwe say.  Oh no, nothing at all:  this is Kali-Yuga, and what\nshould be doing? .... Well, if you press the point, no doubt\nsomebody was reigning, somewhere.--But, pardon my insistence,\nif seems--.  Quite so, quite so! as I said, somebody must\nhave been reigning.--You scrutinze; you bring your lenses\nto bear; and the somebody begins to emerge.  And proves\nto be, say, the great Samundragupta, emperor of all India\n(nearly); for power and splendor, almost to be mentioned\nwith Asoka.  And it was the Golden Age of Music, and perhaps\nsome other things.--Yes, certainly; the Guptas were reigning\nthen, I forgot.  But why bother about it?  This is Kali-Yuga,\nand what does anything matter?--And you come away with the\nimpression that your non-informant could reveal enough and\nplenty, if he had a mind to.\n\nWhich is, indeed, probably the case.  All this nonchalant\nindefiniteness means nothing more, one suspects, than that the\nBrahmans have elected to keep the history of their country\nunknown to us poor Mlechhas.  Then there are Others, too:  the\nGuardians of Esotericism in a greater sense; who have not chosen\nso far that Indian history should be known.  So we can only take\ndim foreshadowings, and make guesses.\n\nWe saw the Maurya dynasty,--that one seemingly firm patch to set\nyour feet on in the whole morass of the Indian past,--occupy the\nthirteen decades from 320 to 190 B.C., (or we thought we did);\nnow the question is, from that _pied-a-terre_ whither shall we\njump?  If you could be sure that the ebb of the wave would be\nequal in length to its inrush,--the night to the day:--that the\nminor pralaya would be no longer or shorter than the little\nmanvantara that preceded it--why, then you might leap out\nsecurely for 60 B.C., with a comfortable feeling that there would\nbe some kind of turning-point in Indian history there or\nthereabouts.  Sometimes things do happen so, beautifully, as if\narranged by the clock.  But unfortunately, enough mischief may be\ndone in thirteen decades to take a much longer period to\ndisentangle; and again, it is only when you strike an average\nfor the whole year, that you can say the nights are equal to the\ndays.  We are trying to see through to the pattern of history;\nnot to dogmatize on such details as we may find, nor claim on the\npetty strength of them to be certain of the whole.  So, our\npresent leap (for we shall make it), while not quite in the dark,\nmust be made in the dusk of an hour or so after sunset.  There\nmust be an element of faith in it:  very likely we shall splash\nand sink gruesomely.\n\nWell, here goes then!  From 190 B.C. thirteen decades forward to\n60 B.C., and,--squish!  But, courage! throw out your arm and\nclutch--at this trailing root, _57 B. C.,_ here within easy\nreach; and haul yourself out.  So; and see, now you are\nstanding on something.  What it is, _Dios lo sabe!_  But there is\nan Indian era that begins in 57 B.C.; for a long time, dates\nwere counted from that year.  That era rises in undefined\nlegendary splendor, and peters out ineffectually you don't just\nknow where.  There is nothing to go upon but legends, with never\na coin nor monument found to back them;--never mind; dates you\ncount eras from are generally those in which important cycles\nbegin.  The legends relate to Vikramaditya king of Ujjain,--which\nkingdom is towards the western side of the peninsula, and about\nwhere Hindoostan and the Deccan join.  He is the Arthur-Charlemain\nof India, the Golden Monarch of Romance.  In the lakes of his\npalace gardens the very swans sang his praises daily--\n\n     \"Glory be to Vikramajeet\n     Who always gives us pearls to eat\";\n\nand when he died, the four pillars that supported his throne rose\nup, and wandered away through the fields and jungle disconsolate:\nthey would not support the dignity of any lesser man.*  Such\ntales are told about him by every Indian mother to her children\nat this present day, and have been, presumably, any time these\nlast two thousand years.\n\n------\n* _India through the Ages,_ by Mrs. Flora Annie Steel.\n------\n\nOf his real existence Historical Research cannot satisfy itself\nat all;--or it half guesses it may have discovered his probable\noriginal wandering in disguise through the centuries of a\nthousand years or so later.   But you must expect that sort of\nthing in India.\n\nAt his court, says tradition, lived the \"Nine Gems of Literature,\"\n--chief among them the poet-dramatist Kalidasa; whom Historical\nResearch (western) rather infers lived at several widely\nseparated epochs much nearer our own day.  Well; for the\ntime being let us leave Historical Research (western) to stew in\nits own (largely poisonous) juices, and see how it likes it,--and\nsay that there are good cyclic chances of something large here,\nin the half-cycle between the Ages of Han Wuti and Augustus.\n\nWe may note that things Indian must be dealt with differently\nfrom things elsewhere.  You take, for example, the old story\nabout the Moslem conquerors of Egypt burning the Alexandrian\nLibrary.  The fact that this is mentioned for the first time by a\nChristian who lived six hundred years after the supposed event,\nwhile we have many histories written during those six hundred\nyears which say nothing about it at all,--is evidence amounting\nto proof that it never happened; especially when you take into\naccount the known fact that the Alexandrian Library had already\nbeen thoroughly burnt several times.   But you can derive no such\nnegativing certainty, in India, from the fact that Vikramaditya\nand Ujjain and Kalidasa may never have been mentioned together,\nnot associated with the era of 57 B.C., in any extant writing\nknown to the west that comes from before several centuries later.\nBecause the Brahman were a close corporation that kept the\nrecords of history, and kept them secret; and gave out bits\nwhen it suited them.  Say that in 1400 (or whenever else it\nmay have been) they first allowed it to be published that\nKalidasa flourished at Vikrmaditya's court:--they may have been\nconsciously lying, but at least they were talking about what\nthey knew.  They were not guessing, or using their head-gear\nwrongfully, their lying was intentional, or their truth warranted\nby knowledge.  And no motive for lying is apparent here.--It\nwould be very satisfactory, of course, were a coin discovered\nwith King Vikrmaditya's image and superscription nicely engraved\nthereon:  _Vikramaditya De Gratia:  Uj. Imp.; Fid. Def.; 57 B.C._\nBut in this wicked world you cannot have everything; you must be\nthankful for what you can get.\n\nYou may remember that Han Wuti, to solve the Hun problem, sent\nChang Ch'ien out through the desert to discover the Yueh Chi'\nand that Chang found them at last in Bactria, which they had\nconquered from Greeks who had held it since Alexander's time.  He\nfound them settled and with some fair degree of civilization;\nspoke of Bactria under their sway as a \"land of a thousand\ncities\";--they had learned much since they were nomads driven out\nof Kansuh by the Huns.  Also they were in the midst of a career\nof expansion.  Within thirty years of his visit to them, or by\n100 B.C., they had spread their empire over eastern Persia, at\nthe expense of the Parthians; and thence went down into India\nconquering.  By 60 B.C. they held the Punjab and generally the\nwestern parts of Hindoostan; then, since they do not seem to\nhave got down into the Deccan, I take it they were held up.  By\nwhom?--Truly this is pure speculation.  But the state of Malwa,\nof which Ujjain was the capital, lay right in their southward\npath; if held up they were, it would have been, probably, by\nsome king of Ujjain.  Was this what happened?--that the peril of\nthese northern invaders roused Malwa to exert its fullest\nstrength; the military effort spurring up national feeling; the\nnational feeling, creative energies spiritual, mental and\nimaginative;--until a great age in Ujjain had come into being.\nIt is what we often see.  The menace of Spain roused England to\nElizabethanism; the Persian peril awakend Athens.  So King\nVikramaditya leads out his armies, and to victory; and the Nine\nGems of Literature sing at his court.  It is a backwash from Han\nWuti's China, that goes west with Chang Ch'ien to the Yueh Chi,\nand south with them into India.  And we can look for no apex of\nliterary creation at this time, either in China or Europe.  In\nthe Roman literature of that cycle it is the keen creative note\nwe miss:  Virgil, the nearest to it, cannot be said to have\npossessed quite; and Han literature was probably its first\nculmination under Han Wuti, and its second under the Eastern\nHans.  One suspects that great creation is generally going on\nsomewhere, and is not displeased to find hints of its presence in\nIndia; is inclined to think this may have been, after all,\nthe Golden Age of the Sanskrit Drama.--At which there can be\nat any rate no harm in taking a glance at this point; and,\nretrospectively, at Sanskrit literature as a whole;--a desperately\ninadequate glance, be it said.\n\nI ask you here to remember the three periods of English Poetry,\nwith their characteristics; and you must not mind my using my\nWelsh god-names in connexion with them.  First, then, there was\nthe Period of Plenydd,--of the beginnings of _Vision;_  when the\neyes of Chaucer and his lyricist predecessors were opened to the\nworld out-of-doors; when they began to see that the skies were\nblue, fields and forests green; that there were flowers in\nthe meadows and woodlands; and that all these things were\ndelectable.  Then there was the Period of Gwron, Strength; when\nMarlowe and Shakespeare and Milton evolved the Grand Manner;\nwhen they made the great March-Music, unknown in English before,\nand hardly achieved by anyone since:--the era of the great\nWarrior-poetry of the Tragedies and of _Paradise Lost._  Then\ncame, with Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley, the Age of Alawn,\nlasting on until today; when the music of intonation brought\nwith it romance and mystery and Natural Magic with its rich glow\nand wizard insight.  And you will remember how English Poetry, on\nthe uptrend of a major cycle, is a reaching from the material\ntowards the spiritual, a growth toward that.  Though Milton and\nShakespeare made their grand Soul-Symbols,--by virtue of a cosmic\nforce moving them as it has moved no others in the language,--you\ncannot find in their works, or in any works of that age, such\nclear perceptions or statements of spiritual truth as in\nSwinburne's _Songs before Sunrise;_  nor was the brain-mind of\neither of those giants of the Middle Period capable of such\nconscious mystic thought as Wordsworth's.  There was an evolution\nupward and inward; from Chaucer's school-boy vision, to\nSwinburne's (in that one book) clear sight of the Soul.\n\nWe appear to find in Sanskrit literature,--I speak in a very\ngeneral sense,--also such great main epochs or cycles.  First a\nreign of Plenydd, of Vision,--in the Age of the Sacred Books.\nThen a reign of Gwron,--in the Age of the heroic Epics.  Then a\nreign of Alawn, in the Age of the Drama.\n\nBut the direction is all opposite.  The cycle is not upward, from\nthe sough of a beastly Iron Age towards the luminance of a coming\nGolden; but downward from the peaks and splendors of the Age of\nGold to where the outlook is on to this latter hell's-gulf\nof years.  Plenydd, when he first touched English eyes, he\nwas Plenydd the Lord of Spiritual vision, the Seer into the\nEternities.  Wordsworth at his highest only approaches,--\nSwinburne in _Hertha_ halts at the portals of, the Upanishads.\n\nNow, what may this indicate?  To my mind, this:  that you are not\nto take these Sanskrit Sacred Books as the fruitage of a single\nliterary age.  They do not correspond with, say, the Elizabethan,\nor the Nineteenth-Century, poetry of England; but are rather the\ncream of the output of a whole period as long (at least) as that\nof all English literature; the blossoming of a Racial Mind\nduring (at least) a manvantara of fifteen hundred years.  I do\nnot doubt that the age that gave birth to the _Katha-Upanishad,_\ngave birth to all manner of other things also; flippancies and\ntrivialities among the rest;--just as in the same England, and in\nthe same years, Milton was dictating _Samson Agonistes,_ and\nButler was writing the stinging scurrilities of _Hudibras._  But\nthe Sanskrit Hudibrases are lost; as the English one will be,\neven if it takes millenniums to lose it.  Full-flowing time has\nwashed away the impermanencies of that ancient age, and left\nstanding but the palaces built upon the rock of the Soul.  The\nSoul made the Upanishads, as it mide _Paradise Lost;_  it made\nthe former in the Golden Age, and the latter in this Age of Iron;\nthe former through men gifted with superlative vision; the\nlatter through a blind old bard.  Therein lies the difference:\nall our bards, our very greatest, have been blind,--Dante and\nShakespeare, no less than Milton.  Full-flowing Time washed away\nthe impermanencies of that ancient age, and left standing but the\nrock-built palaces of the Soul; and these,--not complete,\nperhaps;--repaired to a degree by hands more foolish;--a little\nruinous in places,--but the ruins grander and brighter than all\nthe pomps, all the new-fangled castles of genii, of later times,\n--come down to us as the Sacred Books of India, the oldest extant\nliterature in the world.  How old?  We may put their epoch well\nbefore the death of Krishna in 3102 B. C.,--well before the\nopening of the Kali-Yuga; we may say that it lasted a very long\ntime;--and be content that if all scholarship, all western and\nmodern opinion, laughs at us now,--the laugh will probably be\nwith us when we have been dead a long time.  Or perhaps sooner.\n\nThey count three stages in this Vedic or pre-classical literature,\nwherefrom also we may infer that it was the output of a great\nmanvantara, not of a mere day of literary creation.  These\nthree, they say, are represented by the Vedas, the Brahmanas,\nand the Upanishads.  The Vedas consist of hymns to the Gods;\nand in a Golden Age you might find simple hymns to the Gods\na sufficient expression of religion.  Where, say, Reincarnation\nwas common knowledge; where everybody knew it, and no one\ndoubted it; you would not bother to make poems about it:\n--you do not make poems about going to bed at night and getting up\nin the morning--or not as a rule.  You make poems upon a reaction\nof surprise at perceptions which seem wonderful and beautiful,--\nand in a Golden Age, the things that would seem wonderful and\nBeautiful would be, precisely, the Sky, the Stars, Earth, Fire,\nthe Winds and Waters.  Our senses are dimmed, or we should see in\nthem the eternally startling manifestations of the Lords of\nEternal Beauty.  It is no use arguing from the Vedic hymns, as\nsome folk do, a 'primitive' state of society; we have not the\nkeys now to the background, mental and social, of the people\namong whom those hymns arose.  Poetry in every succeeding age has\nhad to fight harder to proclaim the spiritual truth proper to her\nnative spheres:  were all spiritual truth granted, she would need\ndo nothing more than mention the Sky, or the Earth, and all the\nwonder, all the mystery and delight connoted by them would\nflood into the minds of her hearers.  But now she must labor\ndifficultly to make those things cry through; she gains in glory\nby the resistance of the material molds she must pierce.  So the\nVedas tell us little unless we separate ourselves from our\npreconceptions about 'primitive Aryans'; whose civilization may\nhave been at once highly evolved and very spiritual.\n\nThe _Brahmanas_ are priest-books; the _Upanishads,_ it is\nreasonable to say are Kshattriya-books;--you often find in them\nBrahmans coming to Kshattriyas to learn the Inner Wisdom.  The\n_Brahmanas_ are books of ritual; the _Upanishads_ came much\nlater that the _Brahmanas:_  that they represent a reaction\ntowards spirituality from the tyranny of a priestly caste.  But\nprobably the day of the Kshattriyas was much earlier than that of\nthe priests.  The Marlow-Shakespear-Milton time was the\nKshattriya period in English poetry; also the period during\nwhich the greatest souls incarnated, and produced the greatest\nwork.  So, perhaps, in this manvantara of the pre-classical\nSanskrit literature, the Rig-Veda with its hymns represents the\nfirst, the Chaucerian period; but a Golden Age Chaucerian,\nsimple and pure,--a time in which the Mysteries really ruled\nhuman life, and when to hymn the Gods was to participate in the\nwonder and freeddom of their being.  Think, perhaps, as the cycle\nmounted to its hour of noon, esotericism opened its doors to pour\nforth an illumination yet stronger and more saving:  mighty egos\nincarnated, and put in writing the marvelous revelations of the\n_Upanishads:_  there may have been a descent towards matter, to\ncall forth these more explicit declarations of the Spirit.  The\nexclusive caste-system had not been evolved by any means, nor was\nto be for many ages:  the kings are at the head of things; and\nthey, not the priests, the chief custodians of the Deeper\nWisdom.--And then, later, the Priest-cast made its contribution,\nevolving in the _Brahmanas_ the ritual of their order; with an\nimplication, ever growing after the beginning of the Kali-Yuga,\nthat only by this ritual salvation could be attained.  Not that\nit follows that this was the idea at first.  Ritual has its\nplace:  hymns and chantings, so they be the right ones, performed\nrightly, have their decided magical value; we can understand\nthat in its inception and first purity, this Brahmana literature\nmay have been a growth or birth, under the aegis of Alawn of the\nHarmonies, of the magic of chanted song.\n\nAnd having said all this, and reconsidering it, one feels that\nto attribute these three branches of literature to a single\nmanvantara is a woeful foreshortening.  I suppose the Rig-Veda\nis as old as the Aryan Sub-race, which, according to our\ncalculations, must have begun some 160,000 years ago.\n\nThe _Upanishads_ affect us like poetry; even in Max Muller's\ntranslation, which is poor prose, they do not lose altogether\ntheir uplift and quality of song.  They sing the philosophy of\nthe divine in Man; I suppose we may easily say they are the\nhighest thing in extant literature.  They do not come to us whole\nor untainted.  We may remember what the Swami Dayanand Sarasvati\nsaid to H. P. Blavatsky:  that he could show the excellent \"Moksh\nMooller\" that \"what crossed the Kalapani from India to Europe\nwere only the bits of rejected copies of some passages from our\nsacred books.\"  Again, Madame Blavatsky says that the best part\nof the Upanishads was taken out at the time Buddha was preaching;\nthe Brahmans took it out, that he might not prove too clearly the\ntruth of his teachings by appeals to their sacred books.  Also\nthe Buddha was a Kshattriya; so the ancient eminence of the\nKshattriyas had to be obscured a little;--it was the Brahmans, by\nthat time, who were monopolizing the teaching office.  And no\ndoubt in the same way from time to time much has been added:\nthe Brahmans could do this, being custodians of the sacred\nliterature.  Yet in spite of all we get in them a lark's song,--\nbut a spiritual lark's song, floating and running in the golden\nglories of the Spiritual Sun; a song whose verve carries us\nopenly up into the realms of pure spirit; a wonderful radiance\nand sweetness of dawn, of dawn in its fresh purity, its\nholiness,--haunted with no levity or boisterousness of youth, but\nwith a wisdom gay and ancient,--eternal, laughter-laden,\ntriumphant,--at once hoary and young,--like the sparkle of snows\non Himalaya, like the amber glow in the eastern sky.  Here almost\nalone in literature we get long draughts of the Golden Age:  not\na Golden Age fought for and brought down into our perceptions\n(which all true poetry gives us), but one actually existing, open\nand free;--and not merely the color and atmosphere of it, but the\nwisdom.  One need not wonder that Madame Blavatsky drew so freely\non India for the nexus of her teachings.  That country has\nperformed a marvelous function, taking all its ages together, in\nthe life of humanity; in preserving for us the poetry and wisdom\nof an age before the Mysteries had declined; in keeping open for\nus, in a semi-accessible literature, a kind of window into the\nGolden Age.--Well; each of the races has some function to\nfulfil.  And it is not modern India that has done this; she has\nnot done it of her own good will,--has had no good will to do it.\nIt is the Akbars the Anquetil Duperrons and Sir William Joneses,\n--and above all, and far above all, H. P. Blavatsky,--whom we\nhave to thank.\n\nSo much, then, for the age of the Vedic literature.  It passed,\nand we come to an age when that literature had become sacred.  It\nseems to me that in the natural course of things it would take a\nvery long time for this to happen.  You may say that in the one\nanalogy we have whose history is well known,--the _Koran,_--we\nhave an example of a book sacred as soon as written.   But I do\nnot believe the analogy would hold good here.  The _Koran_ came\nas the rallying-standard of a movement which was designed to work\nquick changes in the outer fabric of the world; it came when the\ncycles had sunk below any possibility of floating spiritual\nwisdom on to the world-currents;--and there were the precedents\nof Judaism and Christianity, ever before the eyes of Mohammed,\nfor making the new religious movement center about a Book.  But\nin ancient India, I take it, you had some such state of affairs\nas this:  classes there would be, according to the natural\ndifferences of egos incarnating; but no castes; religion there\nwas,--that is to say, an attention to, an aspiration towards, the\nspiritual side of life; but no religions,--no snarling sects and\njangling foolish creeds.  Those things (a God's mercy!) had not\nbeen invented then, nor were to be for thousands of years.  The\nforemost souls, the most spiritual, gravitated upward to the\nheadship of tribes and nations; they were the _kings,_ as was\nproper they should be:  King-Initiates, Teachers as well as\nRulers of the people.  And they ordained public ceremonies in\nwhich the people, coming together, could invoke and participate\nin the Life from Above.  So we read in the Upanishads of those\ngreat Kshattriya Teachers to whom Brahmans came as disciples.\nPoets made their verses; and what of these were good, really\ninspired, suitable--what came from the souls of Poet-Initiates,--\nwould be used at such ceremonies:  sung by the assembled\nmultitudes; and presently, by men specially trained to sing\nthem.  So a class rose with this special function; and there\nwere other functions in connexion with these ceremonies, not\nproper to be performed by the kings, and which needed a special\ntraining to carry out.  Here, then, was an opening in life for\nmen of the right temperament;--so a class arose, of _priests:_\namong whom many might be real Initiates and disciples of the\nAdept-Kings.  They had the business of taking care of the\nliterature sanctioned for use at the sacrifices,--for convenience\nwe may call all the sacred ceremonies that,--at which they\nperformed the ritual and carried out the mechanical and formal\nparts.  It is very easy to imagine how, as the cycles went on and\ndown, and the Adept-Kings ceased to incarnate continuously, these\nreligious officials would have crystallized themselves into a\nclose corporation, an hereditary caste; and what power their\ncustodianship of the sacrificial literature would have given\nthem;--how that literature would have come to be not merely\nsacred in the sense that all true poetry with the inspiration of\nthe Soul behind it really is;--but credited with an extra-human\nsanction.  But it would take a long time.  When modern creeds are\ngone, to what in literature will men turn for their inspiration?\n--To whatever in literature contains real inspiration, you may\nanswer.  They will not sing Dr. Watts's doggerel in their\nchurches; but such things perhaps as Wordsworth's _The World is\ntoo much with us,_ or Henley's _I am the Captain of my Soul._\nAnd then, after a long time and many racial pralayas, you can\nimagine such poems as these coming to be thought of as not merely\nfrom the Human Soul, an ever-present source of real inspiration,\n--but as revelations by God himself, from which not one jot or\ntittle should be taken without blasphemy; given by God when he\nfounded his one true religion to mankind.  We lose sight of the\nspirit, and exalt the substance; then we forget the substance,\nand deify the shadow.  We crucify our Saviors when they are with\nus; and when they are gone, we crucify them worse with our\nunmeaning worship and dogmas made on them.\n\nWell, the age of the Vedas passed, and pralayas came, and new\nmanvantaras; and we come at last to the age of Classical\nSanskrit; and first to the period of the Epics.  This too is a\nKshattriya age.  Whether it represents a new ascendency of the\nKshattriyas, or simply a continuance of the old one:  whether the\npriesthood had risen to power between the Vedas and this, and\nsomewhat fallen from it again,--or whether their rise was still\nin progress, but not advanced to the point of ousting the kings\nfrom their lead,--who can say?  But this much, perhaps, we may\nventure without fear:  the Kshattriyas of the Epic age were not\nthe same as those of the Upanishads.  They were not Adept-Kings\nand Teachers in the same way.  By Epic age, I mean the age in\nwhich the epics were written, not that of which they tell.  And\nneither the _Mahabharata_ nor the _Ramayana_ was composed in a\nday; but in many centuries;--and it is quite likely that on them\ntoo Brahmanical hands have been tactfully at work.  Some parts of\nthem were no doubt written in the centuries after Christ; there\nis room enough to allow for this, when you think that the one\ncontains between ninety and a hundred thousand, the other about\ntwenty-four thousand couplets;--the _Mahabharata_ being about\nseven times, the _Ramayana_ about twice as long as the _Iliad_\nand the _Odyssey_ combined.  So the Age of the Epics must be\nnarrowed down again, to mean the age that gave birth to the\nnuclei of them.\n\nAs to when it may have been, I do not know that there is any clue\nto be found.  Modern criticism has been at work, of course, to\nreduce all things to as commonplace and brain-mind a basis as\npossible; but its methods are entirely the wrong ones.  Mr.\nRomesh Dutt, who published abridged translations of the two poems\nin the late nineties, says of the _Mahabharata_ that the great\nwar which it tells of \"is believed to have been fought in the\nthirteenth or fourteenth century before Christ\"; and of the\n_Ramayana,_ that it tells the story of nations that flourished in\nNorthern India about a thousand years B. C.--Is believed by whom,\npray?  It is also believed, and has been from time immemorial, in\nIndia, that Krishna, who figures largely in the _Mahabharata,_\ndied in the year 3102 B.C.; and that he was the eighth avatar of\nVishnu; and that Rama, the hero of the _Ramayana,_ was the\nseventh.  Now brain-mind criticism of the modern type is the most\nuntrustworthy thing, because it is based solely on circumstantial\nevidence; and when you work upon that, you ought to go very\nwarily;--it is always likely that half the circumstances remain\nun-discovered; and even if you have ninety and nine out of the\nhundred possible, the hundredth, if you had it, might well change\nthe whole complexion of the case.  And this kind of criticism\nleads precisely nowhere, does not build anything, but pulls down\nwhat was built of old.  So I think we must be content to wait for\nreal knowledge till those who hold it may choose to reveal it;\nand meanwhile get back to the traditional starting-point;\n--say that the War of the Kuravas and Pandavas happened in the\nthirty-second century B.C.; Rama's invasion of Lanka, ages earlier;\nand that the epics began to be written, as they say, somewhere\nbetween the lives of Krishna and Buddha,--somewhere between 2500\nand 5000 years ago.\n\nWhy before Buddha?--Because they are still Kshattriya works;\nwritten before the Brahman ascendency, though after the time when\nthe Kshattriyas were led by their Adept-Kings;--and because\nBuddha started a spiritual revolt (Kshattriya) against a Brahman\nascendency well established then,--a revolt that by Asoka's time\nhad quite overthrown the Brahman power.  Why, then, should we not\nascribe the epics to this Buddhist Kshattriya period?  To Asoka's\nreign itself, for example?--Well, it has been done; but probably\nnot wisely.  Panini in his _Grammar_ cites the Mahabharata as an\nauthority for usage; and even the westernest of criticism is\ndisinclined, on the evidence, to put Panini later than 400 B.C.\nGoldstucker puts him in the seventh century B.C.  _En passant,_\nwe may quote this from the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ as to\nPanini's _Grammar:_  \"For a comprehensive grasp of linguistic\nfacts, and a penetrating insight into the structure of the\nvernacular language, this work stands probably unrivalled\nin the literature of any language.\"--Panini, then, cites the\n_Mahabharata;_  Panini lived certainly before Asoka's time; the\ngreatness of his work argues that he came in a culminating period\nof scholarship and literary activity, if not of literary\ncreation; the reign of Asoka we may surmise was another such\nperiod;--and from all this I think we may argue without much fear\nthat the the nucleus and original form of it, was written long\nbefore the reign of Asoka.  Besides, if it had been written\nduring the Buddhist ascendency, one fancies we should find more\nBuddhism in it than we do.  There is some;--there are ideas that\nwould be called Buddhist; but that really only prove the truth\nof the Buddha's claim that he taught nothing new.  But a Poem\nwritten in Asoka's reign, one fancies, would not have been\nstructurally and innately, as the _Mahabharata_ is, martial.\n\nThere is this difference between the two epics,--I speak of the\nnucleus-poems in each case;--the _Mahabharata_ seems much more a\nnatural growth, a national epic,--the work not of one man, but of\nmany poets celebrating through many centuries a tradition not\nfaded from the national memory;--but the _Ramayana_ is more a\nstructural unity; it bears the marks of coming from one creative\nmind:  even western criticism accepts Valmiki (whoever he may\nhave been) as its author.  To him it is credited in Indian\ntradition; which ascribes the authorship of the _Mahabharata_\nto Vyasa, the reputed compiler of the _Vedas;_--and this last is\nmanifestly not to be taken literally; for it is certain that a\ngreat age elapsed between the _Vedas_ and the Epics.  So I think\nthat the _Mahabharata_  grew up in the centuries, many or few,\nthat followed the Great War,--or, say, during the second\nmillennium B.C.; that in that millennium, during some great\n'day' of literary creation, it was redacted into a single poem;--\nand that, the epic habit having thus been started, a single poet,\nValmiki, in some succeeding 'day,' was prompted to make another\nepic, on the other great traditional saga-cycle, the story of\nRama.  But since that time, and all down through the centuries,\nboth poems have been growing _ad lib._\n\nThis is an endeavor to take a bird's-eye view of the whole\nsubject; not to look at the evidence through a microscope, in\nthe modern critical way.  It is very unorthodox, but I believe it\nis the best way:  the bird's eye sees most; the microscope sees\nleast; the former takes in whole landscapes in proportion;\nthe latter gets confused with details that seem, under that\nexaggeration, too highly important,--but which might be negatived\naltogether could you see the whole thing at once.  A telescope\nfor that kind of seeing is not forthcoming; but the methods of\nthought that H. P. Blavatsky taught us supply at least the first\nindications of what it may be like:  they give us the first\nlenses.  As our perceptions grow under their influence, doubtless\nnew revelations will be made; and we shall see more, and\nfurther.  All we can do now is to retire from the confusion\nbrought about by searching these far stars with a microscope; to\nlook less at the results of such searching, than at the old\ntraditions themselves, making out what we can of them through\nwhat Theosophic lenses we have.  We need not be misled by the\nridiculous idea that civilization is a new thing.  It is only the\nbias of the age; the next age will count it foolishness.--But to\nreturn to our epics.--\n\nFirst to the  _Mahabharata._  It is, as it comes down to us,\nnot one poem, but a large literature.  Mr. Dutt compares it,\nboth for length and variety of material, to the sermons of\nJeremy Taylor and Hooker, Locke's and Hobbes's books of Philosophy,\nBlackstone's _Commentaries,_ Percy's Ballads, and the writings\nof Newman, Pusey, and Keble,--all done into blank verse and\nincorporated with _Paradise Lost._  You have a martial poem like\nthe _Iliad,_ full of the gilt and scarlet and trumpetings and\nblazonry of war;--and you find the _Bhagavad-Gita_ a chapter in\nit.  Since it was first an epic, there have been huge accretions\nto it:  Whosever fancy it struck would add a book or two, with\nnew incidents to glorify this or that locality, princely house,\nor hero.  And it is hard to separate these accretions from the\noriginal,--from the version, that is, that first appeared as an\nepic poem.  Some are closely bound into the story, so as to be\nalmost integral; some are fairly so; some might be cut out and\nnever missed.  Hence the vast bulk and promiscuity of material;\nwhich might militate against your finding in it, as a whole, any\nconsistent Soul-symbol.  And yet its chief personages seem all\nreal men; they are clearly drawn, with firm lines;--says Mr.\nDutt, as clearly as the Trojan and Achaean chiefs of Homer.\nYudhishthira and Karna and Arjuna; Bhishma and Drona and the\nwild Duhsasan, are very living characters;--as if they had been\nactual men who had impressed themselves on the imagination of the\nage, and were not to be drawn by anyone who drew them except from\nthe life.  That might imply that poets began writing about them\nnot so long after they lived, and while the memory of them and of\ntheir deeds was fresh.  We are to understand, however,--all India\nhas so understood, always,--that the poem is a Soul-symbol,\nstanding for the wars of Light and Darkness; whether this\nsymbol was a tradition firmly in the minds of all who wrote it,\nor whether it was imposed by the master-hand that collated their\nwritings into an epic for the first time.\n\nFor it would seem that of the original writers, some had been on\nthe Kurava, some on the Pandava side; though in the symbol as it\nstands, it is the Pandavas who represent the Light, the Kurava,--\nthe darkness.  There are traces of this submerged diversity of\nopinion.  Just as in the _Iliad_ it is the Trojan Hector who is\nthe most sympathetic character, so in the _Mahabharata_ it is\noften to some of the Kurava champions that our sympathies\nunavoidably flow.  We are told that the Kurava are thoroughly\ndepraved and villainous; but not seldom their actions belie the\nassertion,--with a certain Kshattriya magnamity for which they\nare given no credit.  Krishna fights for the sons of Pandu; in\nthe _Bhagavad-Gita_ and elsewhere we see him as the incarnation\nof Vishnu,--of the Deity, the Supreme Self.  As such, he does\nneither good nor evil; but ensures victory for his protegees.\nPhilosophically and symbolically, this is sound and true, no\ndoubt, but one wonders whether the poem (or poems) ran so\noriginally; whether there may not be passages written at first\nby Kuravist poets; or a Brahminical superimposition of motive on\na poem once wholly Kshattriya, and interested only in showing\nforth the noble and human warrior virtues of the Kshattriya\ncaste.  I imagine that in that second millennium B. C., in the\nearly centuries of Kali-Yuga, you had a warrior class with their\nbards, inspired with high Bushido feeling,--with chivalry and all\nthat is fine in patricianism--but no longer under the leadership\nof Adept Princes;--the esoteric knowledge was now mainly in the\nhands of the Priest-class.  The Kshattriya bards made poems about\nthe Great War, which grew and coalesced into a national epic.\nThen in the course of the centuries, as learning in its higher\nbranches became more and more a possession of the Brahmans,--and\nsince there was no feeling against adding to this epic whatever\nmaterial came handy,--Brahmin esotericists manipulated it with\ngreat tact and finesse into a symbol of the warfare of the Soul.\n\nThere is the story of the death of the Kurava champion Bhishma.\nThe Pandavas had been victorious; and Duryodhana the Kurava king\nappealed to Bhishma to save the situation.  Bhishma loved the\nPandava princes like a father; and urged Duryodhana to end the\nwar by granting them their rights,--but in vain. So next day,\nowing his allegiance to Duryodhana, he took the field; and\n\n     \"As a lordly tusker tramples on a field of feeble reeds,\n     As a forest conflagration on the parched woodland feeds,\n     Bhishma rode upon the warriors in his mighty battle car.\n     God nor mortal chief could face him in the gory field of war.\" *\n\n------\n* The quotations are from Mr. Romesh Dutt's translation.\n------\n\nThus victorious, he cried out to the vanquished that no appeal\nfor mercy would be unheard; that he fought not against the\ndefeated, the worn-out, the wounded, or \"a woman born.\"  Hearing\nthis, Krishna advised Arjuna that the chance to turn the tide had\ncome. The young Sikhandin had been born a woman, and changed\nafterwards by the Gods into a man.  Let Sikhandin fight in the\nforefront of the battle, and the Pandavas would win, and Bhishma\nbe slain.--Arjuna, who loved Bhishma as dearly as Bhishma loved\nhim and his brothers, protested; but Krishna announced that\nBhishma was so doomed to die, and on the following day; a fate\ndecreed, and righteously to be brought about by the stratagem.\nSo it happened:\n\n     \"Bhishma viewed the Pandav forces with a calm unmoving face;\n     Saw not Arjun's bow Gandiva, saw not Bhima's mighty mace;\n     Smiled to see the young Sikhandin rushing to the battle's\n          fore\n     Like the white foam on the billow when the mighty storm\n          winds roar;\n     Thought upon the word he plighted, and the oath that he had\n          sworn,\n     Dropt his arms before the warrior that was, but a woman\n          born;\"\n\n--and so, was slain.... and the chiefs of both armies gathered\nround and mourned for him.--Now it seems to me that the poets who\nviewed sympathetically the magnanimity of Bhishma, which meets\nyou on the plane of simple human action and character, would not\nhave viewed sympathetically, or perhaps conceived, the strategem\nadvised by Krishna,--which you have to meet, to find it acceptable,\non the planes of metaphysics and symbolism.\n\nThere is a quality in it you do not find in the _Illiad._  Greek\nand Trojan champions, before beginning the real business of their\ncombats, do their best to impart to each other a little valuable\nself-knowledge:  each reveals carefully, in a fine flow of\nhexameters, the weak points in his opponent's character.  They\nare equally eloquent about their own greatnesses, which stir\ntheir enthusiasm highly;--but as to faults, neither takes thought\nfor his own; each concentrates on the other's; and a war of\nwords is the appetiser for the coming banquet of deeds.  Before\nfighting Hector, Achilles reviled him; and having killed him,\ndragged his corpse shamefully round the walls of Troy.  But\nBhishma, in his victorious career, has nothing worse to cry to\nhis enemies than--_Valiant are ye, noble princes!_ and if you\nthink of it on the unsymbolic plane, there is a certain nobility\nin the Despondency of Arjuna in the _Bhagavad-Gita._\n\nSays the _Encyclopaedia Brittanica:_\n\n\"To characterize the Indian Epics in a single word:  though often\ndisfigured by grotesque fancies and wild exaggerations, they are\nyet noble works, abounding in passages of remarkable descriptive\npower; and while as works of art they are far inferior to the\nGreek epics, in some respects they appeal far more strongly to\nthe romantic mind of europe, namely, by the loving appreciation\nof natural beauty, their exquisite delineation of womanly love\nand devotion, and their tender sentiment of mercy and forgiveness.\"\n\n--Precisely because they come from a much higher civilization\nthat the Greek.  From a civilization, that is to say, older and\nmore continuous.  Before Rome fell, the Romans were evolving\nhumanitarian and compassionate ideas quite unlike their old-time\ncallousness.  And no, it was not the influence of Christianity;\nwe see it in the legislation of Hadrian for example, and\nespecially in the anti-Christian Marcus Aurelius.  These feeling\ngrow up in ages unscarred by wars and human cataclysms; every\nwar puts back their growth.  The fall of Rome and the succeeding\npralaya threw Europe back into ruthless barbarity.  In the\neighteenth and nineteenth centuries humanism began to grow again;\nand has been gaining ground especially since H. P. Blavatsky\nbegan her teaching.  But not much more than a century ago they\nwere publicly hanging, drawing, and quartering people in England;\ncrowds were gathering at Tyburn or before the Old Bailey to enjoy\nan execution.  We have hardly had four generations in Western\nEurope in which men have not been ruthless and brutal barbarians\nwith a sprinkling of fine spirits incarnate among them; no\nEuropean literature yet has had time to evolve to the point where\nit could portray a Yudhishthira, at the end of a national epic,\narriving at the gates of heaven with his dog,--and refusing to\nenter because the dog was not to be admitted.  There have been,\nwith us, too great ups and downs of civilization; too little\ncontinuity.  We might have grown to it by now, had that medieval\npralaya been a quiet and natural thing, instead of what it was:--\na smash-up total and orgy of brutalities come as punishment for\nour sins done in the prime of manvantara.\n\nA word or two as to the _Ramayana._  Probably Valmiki had the\nother epic before his mental vision when he wrote it; as Virgil\nhad Homer.  There are parallel incidents; but his genius does\nnot appear in them;--he cannot compete in their own line with the\nold Kshattriya bards.  You do not find here so done to the life\nthe chargings of lordly tuskers, the gilt and crimson, the\nscarlet and pomp and blazonry, of war.  The braying of the battle\nconches is muted:  all is cast in a more gentle mold.  You get\ninstead the forest and its beauty; you get tender idylls of\ndomestic life.--This poem, like the _Mahabharata,_ has come\nswelling down the centuries; but whereas the latter grew by the\naddition of new incidents, the _Ramayana_ grew by the re-telling\nof old ones.  Thus you may get book after book telling the same\nstory of Rama's life in the forest-hermitage by the Godavari;\neach book by a new poet in love with the gentle beauty of\nthe tale and its setting, and anxious to put them into his\nown language.  India never grows tired of these Ramayanic\nrepetitions.  Sita, the heroine, Rama's bride, is the ideal of\nevery good woman there; I suppose Shakespeare  has created no\ntruer or more beautiful figure.  To the _Mahabharata,_ the\n_Ramayana_ stands perhaps as the higher Wordsworth to Milton;\nit belongs to the same great age, but to another day in it.\nBoth are and have been wonderfully near the life of the people:\nchildren are brought up on them; all ages, castes, and\nconditions make them the  staple of their mental diet.  Both are\nsemi-sacred; neither is quite secular; either relates the deeds\nof an avatar of Vishnu; ages have done their work upon them, to\nlift them into the region of things sacrosanct.\n\nAnd now at last we come to the age of King Vikramaditya of\nUjjain,--to the Nine Gems of Literature,--to a secular era of\nliterary creation,--to the Sanskrit Drama, and to Kalidisa, its\nShakespeare;--and to his masterpiece, _The Ring of Sakoontala._\n\nThere is a tendency with us to derive all things Indian from\nGreek sources.  Some Greek writer says the Indians were familiar\nwith Homer; whereupon we take up the cry,--The _Ramayana_ is\nevidently a plagiarism from the _Iliad;_  the abduction of Sita\nby Ravan, of the abduction of Helen by Paris; the siege of\nLanka, of the siege of Troy.  And the _Mahabharata_ is too;\nbecause,--because it must be; there's a deal of fighting in\nboth.  (So Macedon plagiarized its river from Monmouth.) We\nbelieve a Greek at all times against an Indian; forgetting that\nthe Greeks themselves, when they got to India, were astounded at\nthe truthfulness of the people they found there.  Such strained\navoidance of the natural lie,--the harmless, necessary lie\nthat came so trippingly to a Greek tongue,--seemed to them\nextraordinary.--So too our critics naturally set out from the\nposition that the Indian Drama must have been an offshoot or\nimitation of the Greek.  But fortunately that position had to be\nquitted _toute de suite;_  for the Indian theory is much nearer\nthe English than the Greek;--much liker Shakespeare's than\nAeschylus's.  _Sakoontal_ is romantic; it came in a Third or\nAlawn Period; of all Englishmen, Keats might most easily have\nwritten it; if _Endymion_ were a play, _Endymion_ would be the\nlikest thing to it in English.  You must remember that downward\ntrend in the Great Cycle; that make each succeeding period in\nSanskrit literature a descent from the heights of esotericism\ntowards the personal plane.  That is what brings Kalidasa on to a\nlevel with Keats.\n\nBehind _Sakoontala,_ as behind _Endymion,_ there is a Soul-symbol;\nonly Kalidasa, like Keats, is preoccupied in his outer mind\nmore with forest beauty and natural magic and his romantic\ntale of love.  It marks a stage in the descent of literature from\nthe old impersonal to the modern personal reaches:  from tales\ntold merely to express the Soul-Symbol, to tales told merely for\nthe sake of telling them.  The stories in the _Upanishads_ are\nglyphs pure and simple.  In the epics, they have taken on much\nmore human color, though still exalting and ennobling,--and all\nembodying, or molded to, the glyph.  Now, in _The Ring of\nSakoontala,_--and it is typical of its class,--we have to look a\nlittle diligently for the glyph; what impresses us is the\nstillness and morning beauty of the forest, and,--yes, it must be\nsaid.--the emotions, quite personal, of King Dushyanta and\nSakoontala, the hero and heroine.\n\nShe is a fairy's child, full beautiful; and has been brought up\nby her foster-father, the yogi Kanwa, in his forest hermitage.\nWhile Kanwa is absent, Dushyanta, hunting, follows an antelope\ninto that quiet refuge; finds Sakoontala, loves and marries her.\nHere we are amidst the drowsy hum of bees, the flowering of large\nIndian forest blossoms, the scent of the jasmine in bloom; it is\nwhat Keats would have written, had his nightingale sung in an\nIndian jungle.--The king departs for his capital, leaving with\nSakoontala a magical ring with power to reawaken memory of her in\nhis heart, should he ever forget.  But Durvasas, a wandering\nascetic, passes by the hermitage; and Sakoontala, absorbed in\nher dreams, fails to greet him; for which he dooms her to be\nforgotten by her husband.  She waits and waits, and at last seeks\nthe unreturning Dushyanta at his court; who, under the spell of\nDurvasas, fails to recognise her.  If what she claims is true,\nshe can produce the ring?--But no; she has lost it on her\njourney through the forest.  He repudiates her; whereupon\nshe is caught up by the Gods into the Grove of Kasyapa beyond\nthe clouds.\n\nBut the ring had fallen into a stream in the forest, and a fish\nhad swallowed it, and a fisherman had caught the fish, and the\npolice had caught the fisherman .... and so it came into the\nhands of Dushyanta again; who, at sight of it, remembered all,\nand was plunged in grief over his lost love.\n\nYears pass, and Indra summons him at last to fight a race of\ngiants that threaten the sovereignty of the Gods.  In the course\nof that warfare, mounting to heaven in the car of Indra,\nDushyanta comes to the Grove of Kasyapa, and is reunited with\nSakoontala and with their son, now grown into an heroic boy.\n\nAs in _The Tempest_ a certain preoccupation with the magical\nbeauty of the island dims the character-drawing a little,\nand perhaps thereby makes the symbol more distinct,--so in\nSakoontala.  It is a faery piece:  begining in the morning calm\nand forest magic; then permitting passion to rise, and sadness\nto follow; ending in the crystal and blue clearness of the upper\nair.  In this we see the basic form of the Soul-Symbol, which is\nworked out in the incidents and characters.  Dushyanta, hunting\nin the unexplored forest, comes to the abode of holiness, finds\nand loves Sakoontala;--and from their union is born the perfect\nhero,--Sarva-Damana, the 'All-tamer.'--Searching in the\nimpersonal and unexplored regions within us, we do at some time\nin our career of lives come to the holy place, get vision of our\nImmortal Self; from the union of which with this, our human\npersonality is to be born some time that new being we are to\nbecome,--the Perfect Man or Adept.  But that first vision may be\nlost; I suppose almost always is;--and there are wanderings and\nsorrows, forgetfulness and above all heroic services to be\nperformed, before the final reunion can be attained.\n\n\n\n\nXVI.  THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME\n\n\nWe have seen an eastward flow of cycles:  which without too much\nProcrusteanizing may be given dates thus:--Greece, 478 to 348;\nMaurya India, 320 to 190; Western Han China, 194 to 63; in this\ncurrent, West Asia, being then in long pralaya, is overleaped.\nWe have also seen a tide in the other direction; it was first\nPersia that touched Greece to awakenment; and there is that\nproblematical Indian period (if it existed), thirteen decades\nafter the fall of the Mauryas, and following close upon the\nwaning of the first glory of the Hans.  So we should look for the\nGreek Age to kindle something westward again, sooner or later;--\nwhich of course it did.  478 to 348; 348 to 218; 218 to\n88 B.C.; 88 B.C. to 42 A. D.:  we shall see presently the\nsignificance of those latter dates in Roman history.  Meanwhile\nto note this:  whereas Persia woke Greece at a touch, thirteen\ndecades elapsed before Greece began to awake Italy.  It waited to\ndo so fully until the Crest-Wave had sunk a little at the eastern\nend of the world; for you may note that the year 63 B.C., in\nwhich Han Chaoti died, was the year in which Augustus was born.\n\nWith him in the same decade came most of the luminaries that made\nhis age splendid:  Virgil in 70; Horace in 65; Vipsanius\nAgrippa in 63; Cilnius Maecenas in what precise year we do not\nknow.  The fact is that the influx of vigorous light-bearing\negos, as it decreased in China, went augmenting in Italy:  which\nno doubt, if we could trace it, we should find to be the kind of\nthing that happens always.  For about four generations the\nforemost souls due to incarnate crowd into one race or quarter of\nthe globe; then, having exhausted the workable heredity to be\nfound there,--_used up_ that racial stream,--they must go\nelsewhere.  There you have the _raison d'etre,_ probably, of\nthe thirteen-decade period.  It takes as a rule about four\ngenerations of such high life to deplete the racial heredity for\nthe time being,--which must then be left to lie fallow.  So now,\nAmerica not being discovered, and there being no further eastward\nto go, we must jump westward the width of two continents\n(nearly), and (that last lecture being parenthetical as it were)\ncome from Han Chaoti's death to Augustus' birth, from China\nto Rome.\n\nBut before dealing with Augustus and the Roman prime, we must get\nsome general picture of the background out of which he and it\nemerged:  this week and next we must give to early and to\nRepublican Rome.  And here let me say that these two lectures\nwill be, for the most part, a very bare-faced plagiarism;\nsummarizing facts and conclusions taken from a book called _The\nGrandeur that was Rome,_ by Mr. J. C. Stobart, of the English\nCambridge.  One greatest trouble about historical study is, that\nit allows you to see no great trends, but hides under the record\nof innumerable fidgety details the real meanings of things.  Mr.\nStobart, with a gift of his own for taking large views, sees this\nclearly, and goes about to remedy it; he does not wander with\nyou through the dark of the undergrowth, labeling bush after\nbush; but leads you from eminence to eminence, generalizing, and\ngiving you to understand the broad lie of the land:  he makes you\nsee the forest in spite of the trees.  As this is our purpose,\ntoo, we shall beg leave to go with him; only adding now and\nagain such new light as Theosophical ideas throw on it;--and for\nthe most part, to avoid a tautology of acknowledgments, or a\nplethora of footnotes in the PATH presently, letting this one\nconfession of debt serve.  The learning, the pictures, the\nmarshaling of facts, are all Mr. Stobart's.\n\nIn the fifth and sixth centuries A. D., when the old manvantara\nwas closing, Europe was flung into the Cauldron of Regeneration.\nNations and fragments of nations were thrown in and tossing and\nseething; the broth of them was boiling over, and,--just as the\nthe Story of Taliesin, flooding the world with poison and\ndestruction:  and all that a new order of ages might in due time\ncome into being.  One result that a miscellany of racial\nheterogeneities was washed up into the peninsular and island\nextremities of the continent.  In the British you had four Celtic\nand a Pictish remnant,--not to mention Latins galore,--pressed on\nby three or four sorts of Teutons.  In Spain, though it was less\nan extremity of Europe than a highway into Africa, you had a fine\nassortment of odds and ends:  Suevi, Vandals, Goths and what not;\nsuperimposed on a more or less homogenized collection of\nIberians, Celts, Phoenicians, and Italians;--and in Italy you had\nItalians broken up into numberless fragments, and overrun by all\nmanner of Lombards, Teutons, Slavs, and Huns.  Welded by cyclic\nstress, presently first England, then Spain, and lastly Italy,\nbecame nations; in all three varying degrees of homogeneity\nbeing attained.  But the next peninsula, the Balkan, has so far\nreached no unity at all; it remains to this day a curious museum\nof racial  oddments, to the sorrow of European peace; and each\nof them represents some people strong in its day, and perhaps\neven cultured.\n\nWhat the Balkan peninsula has been in our own time, the Apennine\npeninsula was after the fall of Rome, and also before the rise of\nRome:  a job-lot of race-fragments driven into that extremity of\nEurope by the alarms and excursions of empires in dissolution\nwhose history time has hidden.  The end of a manvantara, the\nbreak-up of a great civilization and the confusion that followed,\nmade the Balkans what they are now, and Italy what she was in the\nMiddle Ages.  The end of an earlier manvantara, the break-up of\nolder and forgotten civilizations, made Italy what she was in the\nsixth century B.C.  Both peninsulas, by their mere physical\ngeography, seem specially designed for the purpose.\n\nItaly is divided into four by the Apennines, and is mostly\nApennines.  Everyone goes there:  conquerors, lured by the _dono\nfatale,_ and for the sake of the prizes to be gathered; the\nconquered, because it is the natural path of escape out of\nCentral Europe.  The way in is easy enough; it is only the way\nout that is difficult.  The Alps slope up gently on the northern\nside; but sharply fall away in grand precipices on the southern.\nThere, too, they overlook a region that would always tempt\ninvaders:  the great rich plain the Po waters; a land no\nrefugees could well hope to hold.  It has been in turn Cisalpine\nGaul, the Plain of the Lombards, and the main part of Austrian\nItaly; this thrice a possession of conquerors from the north.\nIt is the first of the four divisions.\n\nThere never would be safety in it for refugees; you would not\nfind in it a great diversity of races living apart; conquerors\nand conquered would quickly homogenize,--unless the conquerors\nhad their main seat in, and remained in political union with,\ntransalpine realms.  Refugees would still and always have to move\non, if they desired to keep their freedom.  Three ways would be\nopen to them, and three destinies, according to which way they\nchose.  They might go down into the long strip of Adriatic\ncoastland, where there are no natural harbors--and remain\nisolated and unimportant between the mountain barrier and the\nsea.  Those who occupied this _cul de sac_ have played no great\npart in history:  the isolated never do.--Or they might cross the\nApennines and pour down into the lowlands of Etruria and\nLatium, where are rich lands, some harbors, and generally, fine\nopportunities for building up a civilization.  Draw-backs also,\nfor a defeated remnant:  Etruria is not too far from Lombardy to\ntempt adventurers from the north, the vanguard of the conquering\npeople;--although again, the Apennine barrier might make their\nhold on that middle region precarious.  They might come there\nconquering; but would form, probably, no very permanent part of\nthe northern empire:  they would mix with the conquered, and at\nany weakening northward, the mixture would be likely to break\naway.  So Austria had influence and suzerainty and various crown\nappanages in Tuscany; but not such settled sway as over the\nLombard Plain.  Then, too, this is a region that, in a time of\nWest Asian manvantara and European pralaya, might easily tempt\nadventurers from the Near East.\n\nBut the main road for true refugees is the high Apennines; and\nthis is the road most of them traveled.  Their fate, taking it,\nwould be to be pressed southward along the backbone of Italy by\nnew waves and waves of peoples; and among the wild valleys to\nlose their culture, and become highlandmen, bandit tribes and\nraiding clans; until the first comers of them had been driven\ndown right into the hot coastlands of the heel and toe of Italy.\nGreat material civilizations rarely originate among mountains:\noutwardly because of the difficulty of communications; inwardly,\nI suspect, because mountain influences pull too much away from\nmaterial things.  Nature made the mountains, you may say, for the\nspecial purpose of regenerating effete remnants of civilizations.\nSabellians and Oscans, Samnites and Volscians and Aequians and\ndear knows what all:--open your Roman Histories, and in each one\nof the host of nation-names you find there, you may probably see\nthe relic of some kingdom once great and flourishing north or\nsouth of the Alps;--just as you can in the Serbians, Roumanians,\nBulgars, Vlachs, and Albanians in the next peninsula now.\n\nOne more element is to be considered there in the far south. Our\nLucanian and Bruttian and Iapygian refugees,--themselves, or some\nof them, naturally the oldest people in Italy, the most original\ninhabitants,--would find themselves, when they arrived there,\nvery much de-civilized; but, because the coast is full of fine\nharbors, probably sooner or later in touch with settlers from\nabroad.  It is a part that would tempt colonists of any cultured\nor commercial peoples that might be spreading out from Greece or\nthe West Asian centers or elsewhere; and so it was Magna Graecia\nof old, and a mixing-place of Greek and old Italian blood; and\nso, since, has been held by Saracens, Normans, Byzantines, and\nSpaniards.\n\nThe result of all this diversity of racial elements would be that\nItaly could only difficultly attain national unity at any time;\nbut that once such unity was attained, she would be bound to play\nan enormous part.  No doubt again and again she has been a center\nof empire; it is always your ex-melting-pot that is.\n\nWho were the earliest Italians?  The earliest, it least, that we\ncan guess at?--Once on a time the peninsula was colonized by folk\nwho sailed in through the Straits of Gibraltar from Ruta and\nDaitya, those island fragments of Atlantis; and (says Madame\nBlavatsky) you should have found a pocket of these colonists\nsurviving in Latium, strong enough for the most part to keep the\nwaves of invaders to the north of them, and the refugees to the\nhigh Apennines.  Another relic of them you would have found,\nprobably, driven down into the far south; and such a relic, I\nunderstand, the Iapygians were.\n\nOne more ethnic influence,--an important one.  Round about the\nyear 1000 B.C., all Europe was in dead pralaya, while West Asia\nwas in high manvantara:  under which conditions, as I suggested\njust now, such parts as the Lombard Plain and Tuscany might tempt\nWest Asians of enterprise;--as Spain and Sicily tempted the\nMoslems long afterwards.  Supposing such a people came in; they\nwould be, while the West Asian manvantara was in being, much more\ncultured and powerful than their Italian neighbors; but the\nwaning centuries of their manvantara would coincide with the\nfirst and orient portion of the European one; so, as soon as\nthat should begin to touch Italy, things would begin to equalize\nthemselves; till at last, as Europe drew towards noon and West\nAsia towards evening, these West Asians of Etruria would go the\nway of the Spanish Moors.  There you have the probable history of\nthe Etruscans.\n\nAll Roman writers say they came from Lydia by sea; which\nstatement could only have been a repetition of what the Etruscans\nsaid about themselves.  The matter is much in dispute; but most\nlikely there is no testimony better than the ancient one.  Some\nauthorities are for Lydia; some are for the Rhaetian Alps; some\nare for calling the Etruscans 'autochthonous,'--which I hold to\nbe, like  _Mesopotamia,_ a 'blessed word.'  Certainly the Gauls\ndrove them out of Lombardy, and some of them, as refugees, up\ninto the Rhaetian Alps,--sometime after the European manvantara\nbegan in 870.  We cannot read their language, and do not know\nenough about it to connect it even with the Turanian Group; but\nwe know enough to exclude it, perhaps, from every other known\ngroup in the Old World,--certainly from the Aryan.  There is\nsomething absolutely un-Aryan (one would say) about their art,\nthe figures on their tombs.  Great finish; no primitivism; but\nsomething queer and grotesque about the faces.... However, you\ncan get no racial indications from things like that.  There is a\nstate of decadence, that may come to any race,--that has perhaps\nin every race cycles of its own for appearing,--when artists go\nfor their ideals and inspiration, not to the divine world of the\nSoul, but to vast elemental goblinish limboes in the sub-human:\nrealms the insane are at home in, and vice-victims sometimes, and\ndrug-victims I suppose always.  Denizens of these regions, I take\nit, are the models for some of our cubists and futurists. . . . I\nseem to see the same kind of influence in these Etruscan faces.\nI think we should sense something sinister in a people with\nart-conventions like theirs;--and this accords with the popular\nview of antiquity, for the Etruscans had not a nice reputation.\n\nThe probability appears to be that they became a nation\nin their Italian home in the tenth or eleventh century B.C.;\nwere at first war-like, and spread their power considerably,\nholding Tuscany, Umbria, Latium, with Lombardy until the Gauls\ndispossessed them, and presently Corsica under a treaty with\nCarthage that gave the Carthaginians Sardinia as a _quid pro\nquo._  Tuscany, perhaps, would have been the original colony;\nwhen Lombardy was lost, it was the central seat of their power;\nthere the native population became either quite merged in them,\nor remained as plebeians; Umbria and Latium they possessed\nand ruled as suzerains.  The Tuscan lands are rich, and the\n_Rasenna,_ as they called themselves, made money by exporting the\nproduce of their fields and forests; also crude metals brought\nin from the north-west,--for Etruria was the clearing-house for\nthe trade between Gaul and the lands beyond, and the eastern\nMediterranean.  From Egypt, Carthage, and Asia, they imported in\nexchange luxuries and objects of art; until in time the old\nterror of their name,--as pirates, not unconnected with something\nof fame for black magic; one finds it as early as in Hesiod, and\nagain in the _Medea _of Euripides,--gave place to an equally ill\nrepute for luxurious living and sensuality.  We know that in war\nit was a poor thing to put your trust in Etruscan alliances.\n\nAccording to their own account of it, they were destined to\nendure as a distinct people for about nine centuries; which is\nprobably what they did.  Their power was at its height about 600\nB.C. As they began to decline, certain small Italian cities that\nhad been part of their empire broke away and freed themselves;\nparticularly in Latium, where lived the descendants of those\nold-time colonists from Ruta and Daitya,--priding themselves still\non their ancient descent, and holding themselves Patricians or\nnobles, with a serf population of conquered Italians to look down\nupon.  Or, of course, it may have been _vice versa:_  that the\nAtlanteans were the older stock, nearer the soil, and Plebeians;\nand that the Patricians were later conquerors lured or driven\ndown from Central Europe.\n\nAt any rate, as their empire diminished, Etruria stood like some\nalien civilized Granada in the midst of surrounding medieval\nbarbarism; for Italy, in 500 B.C., was simply medieval.  Up in\nthe mountains were war-like highlanders:  each tribe with its\ncentral stronghold,--like Beneventum in Samnium, which you could\nhardly call a city, I suppose:  it was rather a place of refuge\nfor times when refuge was needed, than a group of homes to live\nin; in general, the mountains gave enough sense of security, and\nyou might live normally in your scattered farms.--But down in the\nlowlands you needed something more definitely city-like:  at once\na group of homes and a common fortress.  So Latium and Campania\nwere strewn with little towns by river and seashore, or hill-top\nbuilt with more or less peaceful citadel; each holding the lands\nit could watch, or that its citizen armies could turn out quickly\nto defend.  Each was always at war or in league with most of the\nothers; but material civilization had not receded so far as\namong the mountaineers.  The latter raided them perpetually, so\nthey had to be tough and abstemious and watchful; and then again\nthey raided the mountaineers to get their own back, (with\nreasonable interest); and lastly, lest like Hotspur they should\nfind such quiet life a plague, and want work, it was always\ntheir prerogative, and generally their pleasure, to go to war\nwith each other.--A hard, poor life, in which to be and do right\nwas to keep in fit condition for the raidings and excursions and\nalarms; ethics amounted to about that much; art or culture, you\nmay say, there was none.  Their civilization was what we know as\nBalkanic, with perpetual Balkanic eruptions, so to speak.  Their\nconception of life did not admit of the absence of at least one\ngood summer campaign.  Mr. Stobart neatly puts it to this effect:\nno man is content to live ambitionless on a bare pittance and the\nnecessaries; he must see some prospect, some margin, as well;\nand for these folk, now that they had freed themselves from the\nEtruscans, the necessaries were from their petty agriculture, the\nmargin was to be looked for in war.\n\nAmong these cities was one on the Tiber, about sixteen miles up\nfrom the mouth.  It had had a great past under kings of its own,\nbefore the Etruscan conquest; very likely had wielded wide\nempire in its day.  A tradition of high destiny hung about it,\nand was ingrained in the consciousness of its citizens; and I\nbelieve that this is always what remains of ancient greatness\nwhen time, cataclysms, and disasters have wiped all actual\nmemories thereof away.  But now, say in 500 B.C., we are to think\nof it as a little peasant community in an age and land where\nthere was no such wide distinction between peasant and bandit.\nIt had for its totem, crest, symbol, what you will, very\nappropriately, a she-wolf....\n\nArt or culture, I said, there was none;--and yet, too, we might\npride ourselves on certain great possessions to be called\n(stretching it a little), _in that line;_  which had been left to\nus by our erstwhile Etruscan lords, or executed for us by\nEtruscan artists with their tongues in their cheeks and sides\nquietly shaking.--Ha, you men of Praeneste! you men of Tibur!\nsing small, will you?  _We_ have our grand Jupiter on the\nCapitoline, resplendent in vermilion paint; what say you to\nthat?  Paid for him, too, (a surmise, this!) with cattle raided\nfrom your fields, my friends!\n\nEverything handsome about us, you see; but not for this must you\naccuse us of the levity of culture. We might patronize; we did\nnot dabble.--One seems to hear from those early ages, echoes of\ntones familiar now.  Ours is the good old roast beef and common\nsense of--I mean, the grand old _gravitas_ of Rome.  What! you\nmust have a Jupiter to worship, mustn't you?  No sound as by\nParliament-Established-Religion of Numa Pompilius, Sir, and the\nworld would go to the dogs!  And, of course, vermilion paint.  It\nwears well, and is a good bloody color with no levity about it;\nbesides, can be seen a long way off--whereby it serves to keep\nyou rascals stirred up with jealousy, or should.  So: we have our\nvermilion Jupiter and think of ourselves very highly indeed.\n\nYes; but there is a basis for our boasting, too;--which\nboasting, after all, is mainly a mental state; we aim to be\ntaciturn in our speech, and to proclaim  our superiority with\nsound thumps, rather than like wretched Greeks with poetry and\nphilosophy and such.  We do possess, and love,--at the very least\nwe aim at,--the thing we call _gravitas;_ and--there are points\nto admire in it.  The legends are full of revelation; and what\nthey reveal are the ideals of Rome.  Stern discipline; a rigid\nsense of duty to the state; unlimited sacrifice of the\nindividual to it; stoic endurance in the men; strictest\nchastity in the women:--there were many and great qualities.\nSomething had come down from of old, or had been acquired in\nadversity:  a saving health for this nation.  War was the regular\nannual business; all the male population of military age took\npart in it; and military age did not end too early.  It was an\norder that tended to leave no room in the world but for the\nfittest, physically and morally, if not mentally.  There was\ndiscipline, and again and always discipline:  _paterfamilias_\nking in his household, with power of life and death over his\nchildren.  It was a regime that gave little chance for loose\nliving. A sterile and ugly regime, Nevertheless; and, later,\nthey fell victims to its shortcomings.  Vice, that wrecks every\ncivilization in its turn, depend upon it had wrecked one here:\nthat one of which we get faint reminiscences in the stories of\nthe Roman kings.  Then these barren and severe conditions ensued,\nand vice was (comparatively speaking) cleaned out.\n\nWhat were the inner sources of this people's strength?  What\nlight from the Spirit shone among them?  Of the Sacred Mysteries,\nwhat could subsist in such a community?--Well; the Mysteries\nhad, by this time, as we have seen, very far declined.  Pythagoras\nhad made his effort in this very Italy; he died in the first\nyear of the fifth century soon after the expulsion of the\nkings, according to the received chronology;--in reality,\nlong before there is dependable history of Rome at all.  There\nhad been an Italian Golden Age, when Saturn reigned and the\nMysteries ruled human life.  There were reminiscences of a long\npast splendor; and an atmosphere about them, I think, more\nmellow and peace-lipped than anything in Hesiod or Homer.  I\nsuppose that from some calmer, firmer, and more benignant Roman\nEmpire manvantaras back, when the Mysteries were in their flower\nand Theosophy guided the relations of men and nations, some thin\nstream of that divine knowledge flowed down into the pralaya;\nthat an echo lingered,--at Cumae, perhaps, where the Sibyl was,--\nor somewhere among the Oscan or Sabine mountains.  Certainly\nnothing remained, regnant and recognised in the cities, to\nsuggest a repugnance to the summer campaigns, or that other\nnations had their rights.  Yet there was something to make life\nsweeter than it might have been.\n\nThey said that of old there had been a King in Rome who was a\nMessenger of the Gods and link between earth and heaven; and\nthat it was he had founded their religion.  Was Numa Pompilius, a\nreal person?--By no means, says modern criticism.  I will quote\nyou Mr. Stobart:--\n\n  \"The Seven Kings of Rome are for the most part mere names\nwhich have been fitted by rationalizing historians, presumably\nGreek, with inventions appropriate to them.  Tomulus is simply\nthe patron hero of Rome called by her name.  Numa, the second,\nwhose name suggests _numen,_ was the blameless Sabine who\noriginated most of the old Roman cults, and received a complete\nbiography largely borrowed from that invented for Solon.\"\n\n--He calls attention, too, to the fact that Tarquin the Proud is\nmade a typical Greek Tyrant, and is said to have been driven out\nof Rome in 510,--the very year in which that other typical Greek\nTyrant, Hippias, was driven out of Athens;--so that on the whole\nit is not a view for easy unthinking rejection.  But Madame\nBlavatsky left a good maxim on these matters:  that tradition\nwill tell you more truth than what goes for history will; and\nshe is quite positive that there is much more truth in the tales\nabout the kings than in what comes down about the early Republic.\nOnly you must interpret the traditions; you must understand\nthem.  Let us go about, and see if we can arrive at something.\n\nBefore the influx of the Crest-Wave began, Rome was a very petty\nprovincial affair, without any place at all in the great sweep of\nworld-story.  Her annals are about as important as those of the\nSamnium of old, of which we know nothing; or those, say, of\nAndorra now, about which we care less.  Our school histories\ncommonly end at the Battle of Acium; which is the place where\nRoman history becomes universal and important:  a point wisely\nmade and strongly insisted on by Mr. Stobart.  I shows how\nthoroughly we lack any true sense of what history is and is for.\nWe are so wrapped up in politics that our vision of the motions\nof the Human Spirit is obscured.  There were lots of politics in\nRepublican Rome, and you may say none in the empire; so we make\nfor the pettiness that obsesses us, and ignore the greatness\nwhose effects are felt yet.  Rome played at politics:  old-time\nconqueror-race Patricians against old-time conquered-race\nPlebians:  till the two were merged into one and she grew tired\nof the game.  She played at war until her little raidings and\nconquests had carried her out of the sphere of provincial\npolitics, and she stood on the brink of the great world.  Then\nthe influx of important souls began; she entered into history,\npresently threw up politics forever, and performed, so far as it\nwas in her to do so, her mission in the world.  What does History\ncare for the election results in some village in Montenegro?  Or\nfor the passage of the Licinian Rogations, or the high exploits\nof Terentilius Harsa?\n\nYet, too, we must get a view of this people in pralaya, that we\nmay understand better the workings of the Human Spirit in its\nfulness.  But we must see the forest, and not lose sight and\nsense of it while botanizing over individual trees.  We must\nforget the interminable details of wars and politics that amount\nto nothing; that so we may apprehend the form, features, color,\nof this aspect of humanity.\n\nHere is a mighty river:  the practical uses of mankind are mainly\nconcerned with it as far up as it may be navigable; or at most,\nas far up as it may be turning mills and watering the fields of\nagriculture.  There may be regions beyond when poets and\nmythologists may bring great treasures for the Human Spirit; but\ndo you do well to treat such treasures as plug material for\nexchange and barter?  They call for another kind of treatment.\nThe sober science of history may be said to start where the\nnations become navigable, and begin to affect the world.  You can\nsail your ships up the river Rome to about the beginning of the\nthird century B.C., when she began to ermerge from Italian\nprovincialism and to have relations with foreign peoples:\nPyrrhus came over to fight her in 280.  What is told of the\ncentury before may be true or not; as a general picture it is\nprobably true enough, and only as a general picture does it\nmatter; its details are supremely unimportant.  The river here\nis pouting through the gorges, or shallowly meandering the meads.\nIt is watering Farmer Balbus's fields; Grazier Ahenobarbus's\ncows drink at it; idle Dolabell angles in its quiet reaches:\nthere are bloody tribal affrays yearly at its fords.  It is\nimportant, certainly, to Babbus and Dolabella, and the men slain\nin the forays;--but to us others--.\n\nAnd then at 390 there are falls and dangerous rapids; you will\nget no ships beyond these.  The Gauls poured down and swept away\neverything:  the records were burnt; and Rome, such as it was,\nhad to be re-founded.  Here is a main break with the past;\nsomething like Ts'in Shi Hwangti's Book-burning; and it serves\nto make doubly uncertain all that went before.  Go further now,\nand you must take to the wild unmapped hills.  There are no\nfields beyond this; the kine keep to the lush lowland meadows;\nrod and line must be left behind,--and angler too, unles he is\nprepared for stiff climbing, and no marketable recompense.  Nor\nyet, perhaps, for some time, much in things unmarketable:  I will\nnot say there is any great beauty of scenery in these rather\nstubborn and arid hills.\n\nAs to the fourth century, then (or from 280 to 390)--we need not\ncare much which of Ahenobarbus's cows was brindled, or which had\nthe crumpled horn, or which broke off the coltsfoot bloom with\nlazy ruthless hoof.  As to the fifth,--we need not try to row the\nquinqueremes of history beyond that Gaulish waterfall.  We need\nnot bother with the weight Dolabella claims for the trout he says\nhe caught up there:  that trout has been cooked and eaten these\ntwenty-three hundred years.  Away beyond, in the high mountains,\nthere may be pools haunted by the nymphs; you cannot sail up to\nthem, that is certain; but there may be ways round.....\n\nHere, still in the foot-hills, is a pool that does look, if not\n_nymphatic,_ at least a little fishy, as they say; the story\nof Rome's dealings with Lars Porsenna.  It even looks as if\nsomething historical might be caught in it.  The Roman historians\nhave been obviously camouflaging:  they do not want you to\nexamine this too closely.  Remember that all these things came\ndown by memory, among a people exceedingly proud, and that had\nbeen used to rely on records,--which records had been burnt by\nthe Gauls.  Turn to your English History, and you shall probably\nlook in vain in it for any reference to the Battle of Patay; you\nshall certainly find Agincourt noised and trumpted _ad lib._  Now\nbattles are never decisive; they never make history; the very\nbest of them might just as well not have been fought.  But at\nPatay the forces which made it inevitable France should be a\nnation struck down into the physical plane and made themselves\nmanifest:  as far as that plane is concerned, the centuries of\nFrench history flow from the battlefield of Patay.  But what made\ntrumpery Agincourt was only the fierce will of a cruel, ambitious\nfighting king; and what flowed from it was a few decades of war\nand misery.  That by way of illustration how history is envisaged\nand taught:  depend upon it, by every people; it is not peculiar\nto this one or that.--Well then, the fish we are at liberty to\ncatch in this particular Roman pool is a period during which Rome\nwas part of the Etruscan Empire.\n\nThe fact is generally accepted, I believe; and is, of course,\nthe proposition we started from.  How long the period was, we\ncannot say.  The Tarquins were from Tarquinii in Etruria;\nperhaps a line of Etruscan governors.  The gentleman from Clusium\nwho swore by the Nine Gods was either a king who brought back a\nrebellious Rome to temporary submission, or the last Etruscan\nmonarch in whose empire it was included.  But here is the point:\nwhether fifty or five hundred years long--and perhaps more likely\nthe former than the latter--this period of foreign rule was long\nenough to make a big break in the national tradition, and to\nthrow all preceding events out of perspective.\n\nAt the risk of _longueurs_--and other things--let me take an\nillustration from scenes I know.  I have heard peasants in Wales\ntalking about events before the conquest;--people who have never\nlearnt Welsh history out of books, and have nothing to go on but\nlocal legends;--and placing the old unhappy far-off things and\nbattles long ago at \"over a hundred years back, I shouldn'\nwonder.\"  It is the way of tradition to foreshorten things like\nthat,--Nothing much has happened in Wales since those ancient\nbattles with the English; so the six or seven centuries of\nEnglish rule are dismissed as \"over a hundred years.\"  Rome under\nthe Etruscans, like Wales under the English, would have had no\nhistory of her own:  there would have been nothing to impress\nitself on the race-memory.  Such times fade out easily:  they\nseem to have been very short, or are forgotten altogether.  But\nthis same Welsh peasant, who thus forgets and foreshortens recent\nhistory, always remembers that there were kings of Wales once.\nPerhaps, if he were put to it to write a history, with no books\nto guide him, he would name you as many as seven of them, and\nsupply each with more or less true stories.  In reality, of\ncourse, there were eight centuries of Welsh kings; and before\nthem, the Roman occupation,--which he also remembers, but very\nvaguely; and before that, he has the strongest impression that\nthere were ages of wide sovereignty and splendor.  The kings he\nwould name, naturally, are the ones that made the most mark.--I\nthink the Romans, in constructing or making Greeks construct for\nthem their ancient history, did very much the same kind of thing.\nThey remembered the names of seven kings, with tales about them,\nand built on those.  There were the kings who had stood out and\nstood for most; and the Romans remembered what they stood for.\nSo here I think we get real history; whereas in the stories of\nrepublican days we may see the efforts of great families to\nprovide themselves with a great past.  But I doubt we could take\nanything _aupied de la lettre;_  or that it would profit us to do\nso if we could.  Here is a pointer:  we have seen how in India\na long age of Kshattriya supremacy preceded the supremacy\nof the Brahmins.  Now observe Kshattriya Romulus followed\nby Brahmin Numa.\n\nI do not see why Madame Blavatsky shold have so strongly insisted\non the truth of the story of the roman Kings unless there were\nmore in it than mere pralayic historicity.  Unless it were of\nbigger value, that is, than Andorran or Montenegrin annals.\nRome, after the Etruscan domination, was a meanly built little\ncity; but there were remains from pre-Etruscan times greater\nthan anything built under the Republic.  Rome is a fine modern\ncapital now; but there were times in the age of papal rule, when\nit was a miserable depopulated village of great ruins, with\nwolves prowling nightly through the weed-grown streets.  Yet even\nthen the tradition of _Roma Caput Mundi_ reigned among the\nwretched inhabitants,--witness Rienzi:  it was the one thing,\nbesides the ruins, to tell of ancient greatness.  Some such\nfeeling, borne down out of a forgotten past, impelled Republican\nRome on the path of conquest.  It was not even a tradition, at\nthat time; but the essence of a tradition that remained as a\nsense of high destinies.\n\nWho, then, was Romulus?--Some king's son from Ruta or Daitya, who\ncame in his lordly Atlantean ships, and builded a city on the\nTiber?  Very likely.  That would be, at the very least, as far\nback as nine or ten thousand B.C.; which is contemptibly modern,\nwhen you think of the hundred and sixty thousand years of our\npresent sub-race.  The thing that is in the back of my mind is,\nthat Rome is probably as old as that sub-race, or nearly so; but\nwild horses should not drag from me a statement of it.  Rome,\nLondon, Paris,--all and any of them, for that matter.--But a\nhundred and sixty thousand or ten thousand, no man's name could\nsurvive so long, I think, as a peg on which to hang actual\nhistory.  It would pass, long before the ten millenniums were\nover, into legend; and become that of a God or demigod,--whose\ncult, also, would need reviving, in time, by some new avatar.\nNow (as remarked before)  humanity has a profound instinct for\navatars; and also (as you would expect)  for Reincarnation.  The\nsixth-century Britons were reminded by one of their chieftains of\nsome mighty king or God of prehistory; the two got mixed, and\nthe mixture came down as the Arthur of the legend.  This is what\nI mean by 'reviving the cult.'  Now then, who was Romulus?--Some\nnear or remote descendant of heroic refugees from fallen Troy,\nwho rebuilt Rome or reestablished its sovereignty?--Very likely,\nagain;--I mean, very likely both that and the king's son from\nRuta or Daitya.   And lastly, very likely some tough little\npeasant-bandit restorer, not so long before the Etruscan\nconquest, whom the people came to mix up witl mightier figures\nhalf forgotten. . . . .\n\nWe see his history, as the Romans did, through the lens of a\ntough little peasant-bandit city; through the lens of a pralaya,\nwhich makes pralayic all objects seen.  It is like the Irish\npeasant-girl who has seen the palace of the king of the fairies;\nshe describes you something akin to the greatest magnificence she\nknows,--which happens to be the house of the local _squireen._\nNow the Etruscan domination, as we have noted, could probably\nnot have begun before 1000 B.C.; at which time, to go by our\nhypothesis as to the length and recurrence of the cycles, Europe\nwas in dead pralaya, and had been since 1480. So that, possibly,\nyou would have had between 1480 and 1000 a Rome in pralaya, but\nindependent--like Andorra now, or Montenegro.  The stories we get\nabout the seven kings would fit such a time admirably.  They tell\nof pralayic provincials; and Rome, during that second half of\nthe second millennium B.C., would have been just that.\n\nBut again, if the seven kings had been just that and nothing\nmore, I cannot see why H. P. Blavatsky should have laid such\nstress on the essential truth of their stories.  She is\nparticular, too, about the Arthurian legend:--saying that it is\nat once symbolic and actually historical,--which latter, as\nconcerns the sixth-century Arthur, it is not and she would not\nhave considered it to be:  no Briton prince of that time went\nconquering through Europe.  So there must be some further value\nto the tales of the Roman kings; else why are they so much\nbetter than the Republican annals?  Why?--unless all history\nexcept the invented kind or the distorted-by-pride-or-politics\nkind is symbolic; and unless we could read in these stories the\nrecord, not merely of some pre-Etruscan pralayic centuries, but\nof great ages of the past and of the natural unfoldment of the\nHuman Spirit in history through long millenniums?  Evolution is\nupon a pattern; understand the drift of any given thousand years\nin such a way that you could reduce it to a symbol, and probably\nyou have the key to all the past.\n\nSo I imagine there would be seven interpretations to these kings,\nas to all other symbols.  Romulus may represent a Kshattriya, and\nNuma a Brahmin domination in the early ages of the sub-race.\nActual men, there may yet be mirrored in them the history--shall\nwe say of the whole sub-race?  Or Root-race?  Or the whole\nnatural order of human evolution?  It is business for imaginative\nmeditation,--which is creative or truth-finding meditation.  But\nnow let us try, diffidently, to search out the last, the\nhistoric, pre-Etruscan Numa.\n\nIf you examined the Mohammedan East, now in these days of its\nmid-pralaya and disruption:  Turkey especially, or Egypt:  you\nshould find constantly the tradition of Men lifted by holiness\nand wisdom and power above the levels of common humanity:  Unseen\nGuardians of the race,--a Great Lodge or Order of them.  In\nChristendom, in its manvantara, you find no trace of this\nknowledge; but it may surprise you to know that it is so common\namong the Moslems, that according to the Turkish popular belief,\nthere is always a White Adept somewhere within the mosque of St.\nSophia,--hidden under a disguise none would be likely to\npenetrate.  There are hundreds of stories. The common thought is\nthat representatives of this Lodge, or their disciples, often\nappear; are not so far away from the world of men; may be\nteaching, quite obscurely, or dropping casual seeds of the Secret\nWisdom, in the next village.  Well; I imagine pralayic\nconditions may allow benign spiritual influences to be at work,\nsometimes, nearer the surface of life than in manvantara.  The\nbrain-mind is less universally dominant; there is not the same\ndense atmosphere of materialism.  You get on the one hand a\nfranker play of the passions, and no curbs imposed either by a\nsound police system or a national conscience; in pralaya\ntime there is no national conscience, or, I think, national\nconsciousness,--no feeling of collective entity, of being a\nnation,--at all; perhaps no public opinion.  As it is with a man\nwhen he sleeps:  the soul is not there; there is nothing in that\nbody that feels then 'I am I'; nothing (normally) that can\ncontrol the disordered dreams. . . . Hence, in the sleeping\nnation, the massacres, race-wars, mob-murders, and so on; which,\nwe should remember, affect parts, not the whole, of the race.\nBut on the other hand that very absence of brain-mind rule may\nimply Buddhic influences at work in quiet places; and one cannot\ntell what unknown graciousnesses may be happening, that our\nmanvantaric livelinesses and commercialism quite forbid. . . .\nBelieve me, if we understood the laws of history, we should waste\na deal less time and sanity in yelling condemnations.\n\nItaly then was something like Turkey is now.  Dear knows whom you\nmight chance on, if you watched with anointed eyes . . . in St.\nSophia . . . or among the Sabine hills.  Somewhere or other, as I\nsaid just now, reminiscences of the Mysteries would have\nsurvived.  I picture an old wise man, one of the guardians of\nthose traditions, coming down from the mountains, somewhere\nbetween 1500 and 1000 B. C., to the little city on the Tiber;\ntouching something in the hearts of the people there, and\nbecoming,--why not?--their king.  For I guess that this one was\nnot so different from a hundred little cities you should have\nfound strewn over Italy not so long ago.  The ground they\ncovered,--and this is still true,--would not be much larger than\nthe Academy Garden; their streets but six or seven feet across.\nTheir people were a tough, stern, robberish set; but with a\nside, too, to which saintliness (in a high sense) could make\nquick appeal.  Intellectual culture they had none; the brain-mind\nwas the last thing you should look for (in ancient Rome at\nleast);--and just because it was dormant, one who knew how to go\nabout it could take hold upon the Buddhic side.  That was perhaps\nwhat this Numa Pompilius achieved doing.  There would be nothing\nextraordinary in it. The same thing may be going on in lots of\nlittle cities today, in pralayic regions:  news of the kind does\nnot emerge.  We have a way of dividing time into _ancient and\nmodern;_  and think the one forever past, the other forever to\nendure.  It is quite silly. There are plenty of places now where\nit is 753 B.C.; and no doubt there were plenty then where it was\npompous 1919.--Can anyone tell me, by the bye, what year it\nhappens to be in Europe now?\n\nHow much Numa may have given his Romans, who can say?  Most of it\nmay have worn away, before historic times, under the stress of\ncenturies of summer campaigns.  But something he did ingrain into\ntheir being; and it lasted, because not incompatible with the\nlife they knew.  It was the element that kept that life from\ncomplete vulgarity and decay.\n\nYou have to strip away all Greekism from your conceptions, before\nyou can tell what it was.  The Greek conquest was the one Rome\ndid not survive.  Conquered Greece overflowed her, and washed her\nout; changed her traditions, her religion, the whole color of\nher life.  If Greece had not stepped in, myth-making and\neuhemerizing, who would have saved the day at Lake Regillus?\n_Not_ the Great Twin Brothers from lordly Lace-daemon, be sure.\nWho then?  Some queer uncouth Italian nature-spirit gods?  One\nshakes one's head in doubt:  the Romans did not personalize their\ndeities like the Greeks.  Cato gives the ritual to be used at\ncutting down a grove; says he--\"This is the proper Roman way to\ncut down a grove. Sacrifice with a pig for a peace-offering.\nThis is the verbal formula:  'Whether thou art a god or a goddess\nto whom that grove is sacred,' \"--and so on.  Their gods were\nmostly like that:  potentialities in the unseen, with whom good\nrelations must be kept by strict observance of an elaborate\nritual.  There were no stories about them; they did not marry\nand have families like the good folk at Olympus.\n\nWhich is perhaps a sign of this:  that Numa's was a religion, the\nteaching of a (minor) Teacher who came long after the Mysteries\nhad disappeared.  Because in the Mysteries, cosmogenesis was\ntaught through dramas which were symbolic representations of its\nevents and processes; and out of these dramas grew the stories\nabout the gods.  But when the real spiritual teaching has ceased\nto flow through the Mysteries, and the stones are accepted\nliterally, and there is nothing else to maintain the inner life\nof the people,--a Teacher of some kind must come to state things\nin plainer terms.  This, I take it, is what happened here; and\nthe very worn-outness of conditions that this implies, implies\nalso tremendous cultural and imperial activities in forgotten\ntime; I imagine Italy, then, at two or three thousand B.C.,\nwas playing a part as much greater outwardly than Greece\nwas, as her part now is greater than Greece's, and has been\nduring recent centuries.\n\nThis, then, is what Numa's religion did for Rome:--it peopled the\nwoods and fields and hills with these impersonal divinities; it\npeopled the moments of the day with them; so that nothing in\nspace or time, no near familiar thing or duty, was material\nwholly, or pertained to this world alone;--there was another side\nto it, connected with the unseen and the gods.  There were Great\nGods in the Pantheon; but your early Roman had no wide-traveling\nimagination; and they seemed to him remote and uncongenial\nrather,--and quickly took on Greekishness when the Greek\ninfluence began.  Minerva, vaguely imagined, assumed soon the\nattributes of the very concretely imagined Pallas; and so on.\nBut he had nearer and Numaish divinities much more a part of his\nlife,--which indeed largely consisted of rituals in their honor.\nThere were Lares and Penates and Manes, who made his home a kind\nof temple, and the earth a kind of altar; there were deities\npresiding over all homely things and occasions; formless\nimpersonal deities; presences to be felt and remembered, not\nclothed imaginatively with features and myths:--Cuba, who gave\nthe new-born child its first breath; Anna Perenna of the\nrecurring year; hosts of agricultural gods without much\ndefinition, and the unseen genii of wood, field, and mountain.\nEverything, even each individual man, had a god-side:  there was\nsomething in it or him greater, more subtle, more enduring, than\nthe personality or outward show.--To the folk-lorist, of course,\nit is all 'primitive Mediterranean' religion or superstition;\nbut the inner worlds are wonderful and vast, if you begin to have\nthe smallest inkling of an understanding of them.  I think\nwe may recognise in all this the hand of a wise old Pompilius\nfrom the Sabine hills, at work to keep the life of his Romans,\npeasant-bandits as they were, clean in the main and sound.  Yes,\nthere were gross elements:  among the many recurring festivals,\nsome were gross and saturnalian enough.  The Romans kept near\nNature, in which are, both animal and cleansing forces; but\nthe high old _gravitas_ was the virtue they loved. And supposing\nNuma established their religion, it does not follow that he\nestablished what there came to be of grossness in it.\n\nThey kept near Nature; very near the land, and the Earth Breath,\nand the Earth Divinities, and the Italian soil,--and that\nsouthern laya center and gateway into the inner world which,\nI am persuaded, is in Italy.  There are many didactic poems in\nworld-literature,--poems dealing with the operations of agriculture;--\nand they are mostly as dull as you would expect, with that for\ntheir subject; but one of them, and one only, is undying poetry.\nThat one is the Roman one.  Its author was a Celt, and his models\nwere Greek; and he was rather a patient imitative artist than\ngreatly original and creative;--but he wrote for Rome, and with\nthe Italian soil and weather for his inspiration; and their\nforces pouring through him made his didactics poetry, and poetry\nthey remain after nineteen centuries.  Nothing of the kind comes\nfrom Greece.  As if whenever you broke the Italian soil, a voice\nsang up to you from it:  _Once Saturn reigned in Italy!_\n\nIt is this that brings Cincinnatus back to his cabbage-field from\nthe war,--and politics, as to something sacred, a fountain at\nwhich life may be renewed. Plug souls; no poetry in them;--but\nthe Earth Breath cleanses and heals and satisfies them.  In place\nof a literature, they have wild unpoetical chants to their Mayors\nto raise as they go into battle; for art and culture, they have\nthat bright vermilion Jove; nothing from the Spirit to comfort\nthem in these!  But put the ex-dictator to hoe his turnips, and\nhe is in a dumb sort of way in communication at once with the\nSpirit and all deepest sources of comfort.--What is Samnite gold\nto me, when I have my own radishes to toast,--sacred things out\nof my own sacred soil?  The Italian sun shines down on me, and\nwarms more than my physicality and limbs.  See, I strike my hoe\ninto Italy, and the sacred essences of Earth our Mother flow up\nto me, and quiet my mind from anxious and wasting thought, and\nfill me with calmness and vigor and Italy, and her old quaint\nimmemorial gods!\n\nNot that the Roman had any conception, patriotically speaking,\nabout Italy; it was simply the soil he was after,--which\nhappened to be Italian.  Not for him, in the very slightest,\nFilicaia's or Mazzini's dream!  Good practical soul, what would\nhe have done with dreaming?--But he had his feet on the ground,\nand was soaked through, willy nilly, with its forces; he lived\nin touch with realities, with the seasons and the days and\nnights,--how we do forget those great, simple, life-giving,\ncleansing things!--and his mind was molded to what he owed to the\nsoil, to the realities, to _Dea Roma;_--and Duty became a great\nthing in his life.  Out of all this comes something that makes\nthis narrow little cultureless bandit city almost sympathetic to\nus,--and very largely indeed admirable.\n\nThey knew how to keep their heads.  There were those two races\namong them,--races or orders;--and a mort of politics between the\ntwo.  Greek cities, in like manner but generally less radically\ndivided, knew no method but for one side to be perpetually\nbanishing the other, turn and turn about, and wholesale; but\nthese spare, tough Romans effect compromise after compromise,\ntill Patricians and Plebs are molten down into one common type.\nThey are not very brilliant, even at their native game of war:\ngiven a good general, their enemies are pretty sure to trounce\nthem.  Pyrrhus, a fine tactician but no great strategist, does so\nseveral times;--and then they reply to his offers of peace, that\nthey make no peace with enemies still camped on Italian soil.--\nComes next a real master-strategist, Hannibal; and senate and\npeople, time after time, are forced (like Balbus in the poem)\n\n     \"With a frankness that I'm sure will charm ye\n     To own it is all over with the army.\"\n\nHe wipes them out in a most satisfactory and workmanlike manner.\nTheir leading citizens, _ipso facto_ their generals (amateur\nsoldiers always cabbage-hoers at heart) afford him a good deal of\namusement; as if you should send out the mayor of Jonesville,\nArkansaw, against a Foch or a Hindenburg.  One of them, a fool of\na fellow, blunders into a booby-trap and loses the army which is\nalmost the sole hope of Rome; and comes home, utterly defeated,\n--to be gravely thanked by the Senate for not committing suicide\nafter his defeat:  \"for not despairing of the Republic.\"  Ah,\nthere is real Great Stuff in that; they are admirable peasant\nbandits after all!  Most people would have straight court\nmartialed and beheaded the man; as England hanged poor Admiral\nByng _pour encourager les autres._  And all the while they have\nbeen having the sublime impudence to keep an army in Spain\nconquering there.  How to account for this unsubduability?  Well;\nthere is Numa's teaching; and what you might call a latent habit\nof _Caput-Mundi-ship:_  imperial seeds in the soil.\n\nThere is that indestructible god-side to everything; especially,\nbehind and above this city on the seven hills, there is divine\neternal ROME.  So, after the Gaulish conquest, they rejected\nproffered and more desirable Etruscan sites, and came back and\nprovided _Dea Roma_ with a new out-ward being; the imperial\nseeds, molds of empire, were on the Seven Hills, not at Veii.\nSo, when this still greater peril of Hannibal so nearly submerged\nthem, they took final victory for granted,--could conceive of no\nother possibility,--and placidly went forward while being whipped\nin Italy with the adventure in Spain.  There was one thing they\ncould not imagine:  ultimate defeat.  It was a kind of stupidity\nwith them.  They were a stupid people.  You might thrash them;\nyou might give them their full deserts (which were bad), and\nfairly batter them to bits; all the world might think them dead;\ndozens of doctors might write death-certificates; you might have\nRome coffined and nailed down, and be riding gaily to the\nfuneral;--but you could not convince _her_ she was dead; and at\nthe very graveside, sure enough, the 'pesky critter' (as they\nsay) would be bursting open the coffin lid; would finish the\nceremony with you for the corpse, and then ride home smiling to\nenjoy her triumph, thank God for his mercies,--and get back to\nher hoe and her cabbages as quickly as might be.\n\nIt is this that to my mind makes it philosophically certain that\nshe had had a vast antiquity as the seat of empire; I mean,\nbefore the Etruscan domination.  _Dea Roma,_--the Idea of Rome,--\nwas an astral mold almost cast in higher than astral stuff:  it\nwas so firmly fixed, so unalterably there, that I cannot imagine\na few centuries of peasant-bandits building it,--unimaginative\ntough creatures at the best.  No; it was a heritage; it was\nbuilt in thousands of years, and founded upon forgotten facts.\nThere was something in the ideal world, the deposit of long ages\nof thinking and imagining.  How, pray, are nations brought\ninto being?\n\nBy men thinking and willing and imagining them into being.  Such\nmen create an astral matrix; with walls faint and vague at\nfirst, but ever growing stronger as more and more men reinforce\nthem with new thought and will and imagination.  But in Rome we\nsee from the first the astral mold so strong that the strongest\nparty feelings, the differences of a conqueror and a conquered\nrace, are shaped by it into compromise after compromise.  And\nthen, too, an instinct among those peasant-bandits for empire:\nan instinct that few European peoples have possessed; that it\ntook the English, for example, a much longer time to learn than\nit took the Romans.  For let us note that even in those early\ndays it was not such a bad thing to come under Roman sway; if\nyou took it quietly, and were misled by no patriotic notions.\nThat is, as a rule. Unmagnanimous always to men, Rome was not\nwithout justice, and even at times something quite like\nmagnanimity, to cities and nations.  She was no Athens, to\nexploit her subject peoples ruthlessly with never a troubling\nthought as to their rights.  She had learned compromise and horse\nsense in her politics it home:  if her citizens owed her a duty,\n--she assumed a responsibility towards them.  It took her time to\nlearn that; but she learned it.  She went conquering on the same\nprinciple.  Her plebeians had won their rights; in other towns,\nmostly, the plebeians had not.\n\nRoman dominion meant usually a betterment of the conditions of\nthe plebs in the towns annexed, and their entering in varying\ndegrees upon the rights the plebs had won at Rome.  She went\nforward taking things as they came, and making what arrangements\nseemed most feasible in each case.  She made no plans in advance;\nbut muddled trough like an Englishman.  She had no Greek or\nFrench turn for thinking things out beforehand; her empire grew,\nin the main, like the British, upon a subconscious impulse to\nexpand.  She conquered Italy because she was strong; much\nstronger inwardly in spirit than outwardly in arms; and because\n(I do but repeat what Mr. Stobart says:  the whole picture really\nis his) what should she do with her summer holidays, unless go on\na campaign?--and because while she had still citizens without\nland to hoe cabbages in, she must look about and provide them\nwith that prime necessity.  All of which amounts to saying that\nshe began with a habit of empire-winning,--which must have been\ncreated in the past.  On her toughness the spirited Gaul broke\nas a wave, and fell away.  On her narrow unmagnanimity the\nchivalrous mountain Samnite bore down, and like foam vanished.\nShe had none of the spiritual possibilities of the Gaul; but the\nCrest-Wave was coming, and the future was with Italy.  She had\nnone of the high-souled chivalry of the Samnite; but she was the\nheart of Italy, and the point from which Italy must expand.  She\nwas hard, tough, and based on the soil; and that soil, as it\nhappened, the laya center,--a sort of fire-fountain from within\nand the unseen.  You stood on the Seven Hills, and let heaven and\nhell conspire together, you _could not_ be defeated.  Gauls,\nSamnites, Latins,--all that ever attacked her,--were but taking a\nhouse-cloth to dry up a running spring.  The Crest-Wave was\ncoming to Italy; whose vital forces, all centrifugal before,\nmust now be made to turn and flow towards the center.  That was\nRome; and as they would not flow to her of their own good will,\nout she must go and gather them in.  Long afterwards, when the\nCaesars and Augusti of the West left her for Milan and Ravenna,\nit was because the Crest-Wave was departing, the forces turning\ncentrifugal, and Italy breaking to pieces; long afterwards\nagain, in the eighteen-seventies, when the Crest-Wave was\nreturning, Italy must flow in centripetally to Rome; no Turin,\nno Florence would do.\n\nSo, by 264 B.C., she had conquered Italy.  Then, still land-hungry,\nshe stepped over into Sicily, invited by certain rascals in\nMessana, and light-heartedly challenged the Mistress of the\nWestern Seas.  At this point the stream is leaving Balbus's\nfields and Ahenobarbus's cattle, and coming to the broad waters,\nwhere the ships of the world ride in.\n\n\n\n\nXVII.  ROME PARVENUE *\n\n\nThe Punic War was not forced on Rome. She had no good motive for\nit; not even a decent excuse.  It was simply that she was\naccustomed to do the next thing; and Carthage presented itself\nas the next thing to fight,--Sicily, the next thing to be\nconquered.  The war lasted from 264 to 241; and at the end of it\nRome found herself out of Italy; mistress of Sicily, Sardinia,\nand Corsica.  The Italian laya center had expanded; Italy had\nboiled over.  It was just the time when Ts'in at the other end of\nthe world was conquering China, and the Far Eastern Manvantara\nwas beginning.  Manvantaras do not begin or end anywhere, I\nimagine, without some cyclic event marking it in all other parts\nof the world.\n\n---------\n* This lecture, like the preceding one, is based on Mr. J. H.\nStobart's, _The  Grandeur that was Rome._\n---------\n\nWe have heard much talk of how disastrous the result would have\nbeen if Carthage, not Rome, had won.  But Carthage was a far and\nbelated outpost of West Asia and of a manvantara that had ended\nover a century before:--there was no question of her winning.\nThough we see her only through Roman eyes, we may judge very well\nthat no possibility of expansion was left in her.  There was no\nexpansive force.  She threw out tentacles to suck in wealth and\ntrade, but was already dead at heart.  All the greatness of old\nWest Asia was concentrated, in her, in two men:  Hamilcar Barca\nand his son:  they shed a certain light and romantic glory over\nher, but she was quite unworthy of them.  Her prowess at any time\nwas fitful:  where money was to be made, she might fight like a\ndemon to make it; but she was never a fighting power like Rome.\nShe won her successes at first because her seat was on the sea,\nand the war was naval, and sea-battles were won not by fighting\nbut by seamanship.  If Carthage had won, they say;--but Carthage\ncould not have won, because the cycles were for Rome.  You will\nnote how that North African rim is tossed between European and\nWest Asian control, according to which is in the ascendant.  Now\nthat Europe's up, and West Asia down, France, Italy, and England\nhold it from Egypt to the Atlantic; and in a few centuries'\ntime, no doubt it will be quite Europeanized.  But West Asia,\nearly in its last manvantara, flowed out over it from Arabia,\ndrove out all traces of Europeanism, and made it wholly Asiatic.\nBefore that, while a European manvantara was in being, it was\nEuropean, no less Roman than Italy; and before that again, while\nthe Crest-Wave was in West Asia, it was West Asian, under Egypt\nand Phoenician colonies.  As for its own native races, they\nbelong, I suppose, to the fourth, the Iberian Sub-race; and now\nin the days of our fifth Sub-race (the Aryan), seem out of the\nrunning for wielding empires of their own.\n\nSo if Carthage had won then, things would only have been delayed\na little; the course of history would have been much the same.\nRome might have been destroyed by Hannibal; she would have been\nrebuilt when Hannibal had departed; then gone on with her\nexpansion, perhaps in other directions,--and presently turned,\nand come on Carthage from elsewhere; or absorbed her quietly,\nand let her do the carrying trade of the Mediterranean 'under the\nRoman flag' as you might say,--or something of that sort.  Rome\neradicated Carthage for the same reason that the Spaniards\neradicated the Moors:  because the West Asian tide, to which\nMoors and Carthaginians belonged, had ebbed or was ebbing, and\nthe European tide was flowing high.  Hamilcar indeed, and\nHannibal, seem to have been touched by cyclic impulses, and to\nhave felt that a Spanish Empire might have received the influx\nwhich a West Asian town in Africa could not.  But Italy's turn\ncame before Spain's; and all Hamilcar's haughty heroism, and\nHannibal's magnanimous genius, went for nothing; and Rome, the\nadmirable and unlovely, that had suffered the Caudine Forks, and\nthen conquered Samnium and beheaded that noble generous Samnite\nGaius Pontius, conquered in turn the conqueror at Cannae, and did\nfor his reputation what she had done with the Samnite hero's\nperson:  chopped its head off, and dubbed him in perfect\nsincerity 'perfidus Hannibal.'  Over that corpse she stood, at\nthe end of the third century B.C., mistress of Italy and the\nItalian islands; with proud Carthage at her feet; and the old\ncultured East, that had known of her existence since the time of\nAristotle at least, now keenly aware of her as the strongest\nthing in the Mediterranean world.\n\nNow while she had been a little provincial town in an Italy deep\nin pralaya, Numa's religion, what remained of it, had been enough\nto keep her life from corruption.  Each such impulse from the\nheaven-world's, in its degree, an elixiral tincture to sweeten\nlife and keep it wholesome; some, like Buddhism, being efficient\nfor long ages and great empires; some only for tiny towns like\nearly Rome.  What we may call the exoteric basis of Numaism\nwas a ritual of many ceremonies connected with home-life and\nagriculture, and designed to keep alive a feeling for the\nsacredness of these.  It was calculated for its cycle:  you could\nhave given no high metaphysical system to peasant-bandits of\nthat type;--you could not take the Upanishads to Afghans or\nAbyssinians today.  But as soon as that cycle was ended, and Rome\nwas called on to come out into the world, there was need of a new\nforce and a new sanction.\n\nHas it occurred to you to wonder why, in that epochal sixth\ncentury B.C., when in so many lands the Messengers of Truth\nwere turning away from the official Mysteries, and preaching\ntheir Theosophy upon a new plan broadcast among the peoples,\nPythagoras, after wandering the east and west to gather up the\nthreads of wisdom, should have elected not to return to Greece,\nbut to settle in Italy and found his Movement there?  I suppose\nthe reason was this:  He knew in what direction the cycles should\nflow, and that the greatest need of the future ages would be for\na redeemed Italy; he foresaw, or Those who sent him foresaw,\nthat it was Italy should mold the common life of Europe for a\ncouple of thousand years.  Greece was rising then, chiefly on the\nplanes of intellect and artistic creation; but Italy was to rise\nafter a few centuries on planes much more material, and therefore\nwith a force much more potent and immediate in its effects in\nthis world. The Age of Greece was nearer to the Mysteries; which\nmight be trusted to keep at least some knowledge of Truth alive;\nthe Age of Italy, farther away and on a lower plane, would be in\nneed of a Religion.  So he chose Croton, a Greek city, because if\nhe had gone straight to the barbarous Italians, he could have\nsaid nothing much at that time,--and hoped that from a living\ncenter there, the light might percolate up through the whole\npeninsula, and be ready for Rome when Rome was ready for it.  He\nleft Athens to take care of itself;--much as H. P. Blavatsky\nchose New York at first, and not immediately the then world-capitals\nParis and London;--I suppose we may say that Magna Graecia\nstood to old Greece in his time as America did to western\nEurope forty years ago.  Had his Movement succeeded; had it\nstruck well up into the Italian lands; how different the whole\nafter-history of Europe might have been!  Might?--certainly\nwould have been!  But we know that a revolution at Croton\ndestroyed, at the end of the sixth century, the Pythagorean\nSchool; after which the hope and messengers of the Movement--\nAeschylus, Plato--worked in Greece; and that although the\nPythagorean individual Lucanians, Iapygians, and even Samnites--\nthat noble Gaius Pontius of the Caudin Forks was himself a\nPythagorean and a pupil of the Pythagorean Archytas,--it was, in\nthe Teacher's own lifetime, practically broken up and driven out\ninto Sicily, where those two great Athenians contacted it.  We\nhave seen that it was not effectless; and, what glimmer of it\ncame down, through Plato, into the  Middle Ages.  But its main\npurpose:  to supply nascent Italy with a saving World-Religion;\nhad been defeated.  Of all the Theosophical Movements of the\ntime, this so far as we know was the only one that failed.\nBuddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, each lasted on as a grand force\nfor human upliftment; but Pythagoreanism, as an organized\ninstrument of the Spirit, passed.  When Aeschylus made his\nprotests in Athens, the Center of the Movement to which he\nbelonged had already been smashed.  Plato did marvels; but the\ncycle had gone by and gone down, and it was too late for him to\nattempt that which Pythagoras had failed to accomplish.\n\nSo Rome, when she needed it most, lacked divine guidance; so\ndrifted out on to the high seas of history pilotless and\nrudderless;--so _Weltpolitik_ only corrupted and vulgarized her.\nShe had no Blue Pearl of Laotse to render her immortal; no\nConfucian Doctrine of the Mean to keep her sober and straight;\nand hence it came that, though later a new start was made, and\ngreat men arose, once, twice, three times, to do their best for\nher, she fell to pieces at last, a Humpty-Dumpty that all the\nking's horses and all the king's men could never reweld into\none;--and the place she should have filled in history as Unifier\nof Europe was only filled perfunctorily and for a time; and her\ngreat duty was never rightly done. _Hinc lacrimae aetatum_--hence\nthe darkness and miseries of the Christian Era!\n\nTake your stand here, at the end of the Punic War, on the brink\nof the Age of Rome; and you feel at once how fearfully things\nhave gone down since you stood, with Plato, looking back\nover the Age of Grecce.  There is nothing left now of the\nhigh possibilities of artistic creation.  Of the breath of\nspirituality that still remained in the world then, now you can\nfind hardly a trace.  A Cicero presently, for a Socrates of old;\nit is enough to tell you how the world has fallen.  Some fall, I\nsuppose, was implied in the cycles; still Rome might have gone\nto her more material duties with clean heart, mind, and hands;\nshe might have built a structure, as Ts'in Shi Hwangti and Han\nWuti did, to endure.  It would not be fair to compare the Age of\nHan with the Augustan; the morning glory of the East Asian, with\nthe late afternoon of the European manvantara; and yet we cannot\nbut see, if we look at both dispassionately and with a decent\namount of knowledge, how beneficently, the Eastern Teachers had\naffected their peoples, and what a dire thing it was for Europe\nthat the work of the Western Teacher had failed.  Chow China and\nRepublican Rome fell to pieces in much the same way: in a long\norgy of wars and ruin;--but the rough barbarian who rebuilt China\nfound bricks to his hand far better than he knew he was using,--\nmaterial with a true worth and vitality of its own,--a race with\nelements of redemption in its heredity; whereas the great\nstatesman, the really Great Soul who rebuilt Rome, had to do it,\nif the truth should be told, of materials little better than\nstubble and rottenness.  Roman life, when Augustus came to work\nwith it for his medium, was fearfully infected with corruption;\none would have said that no power human or divine could have\nsaved it.  That he did with it as much as he did, is one of the\nstanding wonders of time.\n\nBut now back to the place where we left Rome: in 200 B.C., at the\nend of the Carthaginian War.  No more now of Farmer Balbus's\nfields; no more of the cows of Ahenobarbus; Dolabella's rod and\nline, and his fish-stories, shall not serve us further.  It is\nthe navigable river now; on which we must  sail down and out on\nto the sea.\n\nAlready the little Italian city is being courted by fabulously\nrich Egypt, the doyen of culture since Athens declined; and soon\nshe is to be driven by forces outside her control into conquest\nof all the old seats of Mediterranean civilization;--and withal\nshe is utterly unfitted for the task in any spiritual or cultural\nsense:  she is still little more than the same narrow little\nprovincial half-barbarous Rome she has always been.  No grand\nconceptions have been nourished in her by a literature of her own\nwith high lights couched in the Grand-Manner; no olden Homer has\nsung to her, with magnificent roll of hexameters to set the wings\nof her soul into magnificent motion.  Beyond floating folk\nballads she has had no literature at all; though latterly, she\nis trying to supply the place of one with a few slave-made\ntranslations from the Greek, and a few imitations of the decadent\nGreek comedy of Alexandria;--also there has been a poet Naevius,\nwhom--she found altogether too independent to suit her tastes;\nand a Father Ennius,--uncouth old bone of her bone, (though he\ntoo Greek by race) who is struggling to mold her tough inflexible\nprovincial dialect into Greek meter of sorts,--and thereby doing\na real service for poets to come.  And there is a Cato the\nCensor, writing prose; Cato, typical of Roman breadth of view;\nwith, for the sum of a truly national political wisdom, yelping\nat Rome continually that fool's jingo cry of his:--your finest\nmarket in the western seas, your richest potential commercial\nasset, must be destroyed.  There you have the high old Roman\nconception of _Weltpolitik;_  whereby we may understand how\nlittle fitted Rome was for _Weltpolitik_ at all; how hoeing\ncabbages and making summer campaigns,--as Mr. Stobart says, with\na commissariat put up for each soldier in a lunch-bag by his\nwife,--were still her metier,--the Italian soil, whether in\nactual or only potential possession--held already, or by the\ngrace of God soon to be stolen--still her inspiration.  And this\nItalian soil she was now about to leave forever.\n\nThe forces that led her to world-conquest were twofold, inner and\nouter.  The inner one was the summer campaign habit, formed\nduring several centuries; and the fact that she could form no\nconception of life that did not include it:  the impulse to\nmaterial expansion was deep in her soul, and ineradicable.  She\nmight have followed it, perhaps, north and westward; finished\nwith Spain; gone up into Gaul (though in Gaul she might have\nfound, even at that time, possibly, an unmanageable strength);\nshe might even have carried her own ultimite salvation up into\nGermany.  But we have seen Darius flow victorious eastward\ntowards India, but unsuccessful when he tried the passes of the\nwest; and Alexander follow him in the same path, and not turn\nwestward at all.  So you may say an eastward habit had been\nformed, and inner-channels were worn for conquest in that\ndirection, but none in the other.  Besides,--and this was the\nouter of the two forces,--the East was crying out to Rome.  There\nwere pirates on the other side of the Adriatic; and for the\nsafety of her own eastern littoral she had been dealing with\nthem, as with Spain, during and before the terrible Hannibalic\ntime.  To sit securely at home she must hold the Illyrian coast:\nand, she thought, or events proved it to her, to hold that coast\nsafely, she must go conquering inland.  Then again Egypt had\ncourted her alliance, for regions.  The Ptolemy of the time was a\nboy; and Philip of Macedon ind Antiochus of Syria had hatched a\nplan to carve up his juicy realm for their own most delectable\nfeasting.  It was the very year after peace--to call it that--had\nbeen forced on prostrate Carthage; and you might think an\nexhausted Rome would have welcomed a breathing time, even at the\nexpense of losing her annual outing.  And so indeed the people\nwere inclined to do.  But the summer was icumen in; and\nwhat were consuls and Senate for?  Should they be as these\nirresponsibles of the comitia?  Should they fail to look about\nthem and take thought?--As if someone should offer you a cottage\n(with all modern appointments) by the seaside, or farmhouse among\nthe mountains, free of rent for July and August, here were all\nthe respectabilities of the East cooingly inviting Rome to spend\nher summer with them; they to provide all accessories for a\nreally enjoyable time.\n\nIn this way eastern politics assorted themselves,--thus was the\nLevant divided:   on the one hand you had the traditional seats\nof militariasm; on the other, famous names--and the heirs to the\nglory (a good deal tarnished now) that once had been Greece.  The\nformer were Macedon and Syria, or Macedon with Syria in the\nbackground; what better could you ask that a good square se-to\nwith these?  Oh, one at a time; that was the fine old Roman way;\n_divide et impera;_  Mecedon now, and, a-grace of God, Syria--But\nlet be; we are talking of this summer; for next, the Lord\n(painted bright vermilion) it may be hoped will provide.  So for\nthe present Philip of Mecedon figures as the desired enemy.--As\nto the other side, the famous names to be our allies, they are:\nEgypt, chief seat in recent centuries of culture and literature,\nand incidentally the Golconda of the time, endowed past dreaming\nof with commerce, wealth, and industries; and Rhodes, rich and\nrepublican, and learned too; and the sacred name of Athens; and\nPergamum in Asia, cultured Attalus's kingdom.  Are we not to ally\nourselves with the arts and humanities, with old fame, with the\nmost precious of traditions?--For Rome, it must be said, was not\nall Catos:  there was something in her by this time that could\nthrill to the name of Greece.  And Philip had been in league with\nHannibal, though truly he had left him shamefully unsupported.\n_Philip had been in league with Hannibal--with Hannibal!_--Why,\nit was a glorious unsought fight, such as only fortune's favored\nsoldiers might attain.  The comitia vote against it?  They say\nHannibal has made them somewhat tired?--Nonsense! let 'em vote\nagain! let 'em vote again!--They do so; assured pithily that it\nis only a question whether we fight Philip in Macedon, or he us\non our own Italian soil.  Of course, if you put it that way, it\nis Hobson's choice:  the voting goes all right this time.  So we\nare embarked on the great Eastern Adventure; and Flamininus sets\nout for Greece.\n\nNow your simple savage is often a gentleman.  I don't mean your\nCongo Quashi or Borria Bungalee from the back-country blocks of\nNew South Wales--our Roman bore no resemblance to them; but say\nyour Morocco kaid, your desert chieftain from Tunis or Algiers.\nThough for long generations he has lost his old-time civilized\nattainments, he retains in full his manners, his native dignity,\nhis wild Saharan grace.  But banish him to Paris, and see what\nhappens.  He buys up automobiles,--and poodles,--and astrolabes,\n--and patent-leather boots,--and a number of other things he were\nmuch better without.  He exchanges his soul for a pass into the\n_demi-monde;_  and year by year sees him further sunk into depths\nof vulgarism.  This is precisely what in a few generations\nhappened to Rome.\n\nBut meanwhile she was at an apex; touched by some few luminous\nideals here and there, and producing some few great gentlemen.\nUnprovincial egos; like Scipio Africanus had been edging their\nway into Roman incarnation; they were swallows of a still\nfar-off summer; they stood for Hellenization, and the modification\nof Roman rudeness with a little imported culture.  Rome had\nconquered Magna Graccia, and had seen something there; had felt\na want in herself, and brought in slaves like Livius Andronicus\nto supply it.  Flamininus himself was really a very great\ngentleman:  a patrician, type of the best men there were in Rome.\nHe went to Greece thrilled with generous feelings, as to a sacred\nland.  When he restored to the Greek cities their freedom,--\nhanded them back to their own uses and devices, after freeing\nthem from Philip,--it was with an infinite pride and a high\nsimplicity. We hear of him overcome in his speech to their\nrepresentatives on that occasion, and stopping to control the\nlump in his throat:  conqueror and master of the whole peninsula\nand the islands, he was filled with reverence, as a great\nsimple-hearted gentleman might be, for the ancient fame and genius\nof the peoples at his feet.  He and his officers were proud to be\nadmitted to the Games and initiated at Eleusis.  I think this is\nthe finest chapter in early Roman history.  There is the\nsimplicity, pride, and generosity of the Roman gentleman,\nconfronted with a culture he was able to admire, but conscious he\ndid not possess;--and on the other hand the fine flow of Greek\ngratitude to the liberator of Greece, in whom the Greeks\nrecognised that of old time, and which had been so rare in their\nown life.  At this moment Rome blossomed:  a beautiful bloom,\nwe may say.\n\nBut it was a fateful moment for her, too.  The Greeks had long\nlost what capacity they had ever had for stable politics.\nFlamininus might hand them back their liberties with the utmost\ngenuineness of heart; but they were not in a condition to use\nthe gift.  Rome soon found that she had no choice but to annex\nthem, one way or another.  They were her proteges; and Antiochus\nattacked them;--so then Antiochus had to be fought and conquered.\nThat fool had great Hannibal with him, and resources with which\nHannibal might have crushed Rome; but it did not suit Antiochus\nthat the glory should be Hannibal's.  Then presently Attalus\nbequeathed Pergamum to the Senate; which involved Rome in Asia\nMinor.  So step by step she was compelled to conquer the East.\n\nNow there was a far greater disparity of civilization between\nRome and this Hellenistic Orient and half-orientalized Greece,\nthan appeared afterwards between the Romans and Spaniards and\nGauls.  Spain, very soon after Augustus completed its conquest,\nwas producing most of the brightest minds in Latin literature:\nthe influx of important egos had hardly passed from Italy before\nit began to appear in Spain.  Had not Rome become the world\nmetropolis, capable of attracting to herself all elements of\ngreatness from every part of the Mediterranean world, we should\nthink of the first century A.D., as a great Spanish Age.  Gaul,\ntoo, within a couple of generations of Ceasar's devastating\nexploits there, had become another Egypt for wealth and\nindustries.  The grandson's of the Vercingetorixes and Dumnorixes\nwere living more splendidly, and as culturedly, in larger and\nbetter villas than the patricians of Italy; as Ferrero shows.\nWe may judge, too, that there was a like quick rise of manvantaric\nconditions in Britain after the Claudian conquest:  we have\nnews of Agricola's speaking of the \"labored studies of the\nGauls,\"  as if that people were then famed for learning,--to\nwhich, he said, he preferred the \"quick wits and natural genius\nof the Britons.\"  And here I may mention that, even before the\nconquest of Gaul, Caesar's own tutor was a man of that nation, a\nmaster of Greek and Latin learning;--but try to imagine a Roman\ntutoring Epaminondas or Pelopidas!  So we may gather that a touch\nfrom Italy--by that time highly cultured,--was enough to light up\nthose Celtic countries at once; and infer from that that no such\nlong pralayic conditions had obtained in them as had obtained in\nItaly during the centuries preceding the Punic Wars.  Spain at\nthirteen decades before Scipio, Gaul at as much before Caesar,\nBritain at as much before Caesar or Claudius, may well have\nbeen strong and cultured countries:  because you wake quickly\nafter the thirteen decade period of rest, but slowly after\nthe long pralayas.\n\nRoman Italy woke very slowly at the touch of Greece; and woke,\nnot like Spain and Gaul afterwards at Rome's touch, to culture;\nnot to learning or artistic fertility.  What happened was what\nalways does happen when a really inferior civilization comes\nin contact with a really superior one.  Rome did not become\ncivilized in any decent sense:  she simply forwent Roman virtues\nand replaced them with Greek vices; and made of these, not the\nvices of a degenerate culture, but the piggishness of cultureless\nboors.--Behold her Gadarene stations, after Flamininus's return:--\n\nMillions of money, in indemnities, loot, and what not,--in bribes\nbefore very long,--are flowing in to her.  Where not so long\nsince she was doing all her business with stamped lumps of bronze\nor copper, a pound or so in weight, in lieu of coinage, nor\nfeeling the need of anything more handy,--now she is receiving\nyearly, monthly, amounts to be reckoned in millions sterling;\nand has no more good notion what to do with them than ever she\nhad of old.  If the egos (of Crest-Wave standing) had come in as\nquickly as did the shekels, things might have gone manageably;\nbut they did not by any means.  Her great misfortune was to enter\nthe world-currents only on the material plane; to find her poor\nlittle peasant-bandit-souled self mistress of the world and its\nmoney, and still provincial to the core and with no ideas of\nbigness that were not of the earth earthy; with nothing whatever\nthat was both spiritual and Roman to thrill to life the higher\nside of her;--a multimillionaire that could hardly read or write,\nand knew no means of spending her money that was not essentially\nvulgar.  She had given up her sole means of salvation--which was\nhoeing cabbages; her slaves did all that for her now;--and so\nwas at a loss for employment; and Satan found plenty of mischief\nfor her idle hands to do.  There were huge all-day-long banquets,\nwhere you took your emetic from time to time to keep you going.\nThere were slaves,--armies of them; to have no more than a dozen\npersonal attendants was poverty.  There were slaves from the East\nto minister to your vices; some might cost as much as five\nthousand dollars; and there were dirt-cheap Sardinians and\n'barbarians' of all sorts to run your estates and farms.  All the\nwork of Italy was done by slave labor; and the city swarmed with\nan immense slave population; the country slaves with enough of\nmanhood left in them to rise and butcher and torture their\nmasters when they could; the city slaves, one would say, in no\ncondition to keep the semblance of a soul in them at all,--living\ndead.  For the most part both were shamefully treated; Cato,--\nhigh old Republican Cato, type of the free and nobly simple\nRoman--used to see personally to the scourging of his slaves\ndaily after dinner, as a help to his digestion.--So the rich\nwasted their money and their lives.  They bought estates galore,\nand built villas on them; Cicero had--was it eighteen?--\ncountry-houses.  They bought up Greek art-treasures, of which\nthey had no appreciation whatever,--and which therefore only helped\nto vulgarize them.  Such things were costly, and thought highly of\nin Greece; so Rome would have them for her money, and have them\n_en masse._  Mummius brought over a shipload; and solemnly\nwarned his sailors that they would have to replace any they might\nbreak or lose.  The originals, or such substitutes as the sailors\nmight supply,--it was all one to him. As to literature,--well, we\nhave seen how it began with translations made by a Greek slave,\nLivius Andronicus, who put certain Hellenistic comedies and the\nOdyssey into Latin ballad meters; the kind of verse you would\nexpect from a slave ordered promiscuously by his master to get\nbusy and do it.  Then came Father Ennius; and here I shall\ndiverge a little to try to show you what (as I think) really\nhappened to the soul of Rome.\n\nIt was a queer set-out, this job that Ennius attempted,--of\nmaking a real Roman poem, an epic of Roman history.  Between old\nLatin and Greek there was the same kind of difference as between\nFrench and English:  one fundamental in the rhythm of the\nlanguages.  I am giving my own explanation of a very puzzling\nproblem; and needless to say, it may be wrong.  The ancient\nRoman ballads were in what is called Saturnian meter, which\ndepends on stress and accent; it is not unlike the meter of the\nScotch and English ballads.  That means that old Latin was spoken\nlike English is, with syllabic accent.  But Greek was not.  In\nthat, what counted, what made the meters, was tone and quantity.\nNow we have that in English too; but it is a subtler and more\noccult influence in poetry than accent is.  In English, the\nrhythm of a line of verse depends on the stresses; but where\nthere is more than rhythm,--where there is music,--quantity is a\nvery important factor.  For example, in the line\n\n     \"That carried the take to Sligo town to be sold,\"\n\nyou can hear how the sound is held up on the word _take,_ because\nthe _k_ is followed by the _t_ in _to;_  and what a wonderful\nmusical effect is given thereby to the line.  All the swing and\nlilt and rhythm of Greek poetry came in that way; there were no\nstresses, no syllabic accents; the accents we see written were\nto denote the tones the syllables should be--shall I say _sung\non?_  Now French is an example of a language without stresses;\nyou know how each syllable falls evenly, all taking an unvarying\namount of time to enounce.  I imagine the basic principle of\nGreek was the same; only that you had to add to the syllables a\nlength of sound where two consonants combining after a vowel\nretarded the flow of tone, as in _take to_ in the line quoted\njust now.\n\nNow if you try to write a hexameter in English on the Greek\nprinciple, you get something without the least likeness either to\na Greek hexameter or to music; because the language is one of\nstresses, not, primarily, of tones.\n\n     \"This is the forest pimeval; the murmuring pines and\nthe hemlocks.\"\n\nwill not do at all; there is no Greek spondee in it but--_rest\nprime_--; and Longfellow would have been surprised if you had\naccused that of spondeeism.  What you would get would be\nsomething like these--I forget who was responsible for them:\n\n     \"Procession, complex melodies, pause, quantity, accent,\n     After Virgilian precedent and practice, in order.\"\n\nLines like these could never be poetry; poetry could never be\ncouched in lines like these;--simply because poetry is an\narrangement of words upon a frame-work of music:  the poet has to\nhear the music within before his words can drop naturally into\nthe places in accordance with it.  You could not imitate a French\nline in English, because each of the syllables would have to be\nequally stressed; you could not imitate an English line in\nFrench, because in that language there are none of the stresses\non which an English line depends for its rhythm.\n\nBut when I read Chaucer I am forced to the conclusion that what\nhe tried to do was precisely that:  to imitate French music; to\nwrite English without regard to syllabic accent.  The English\nlyrics of his time and earlier depend on the principle of accent:\n\n     Sum'--mer is'--i-cum'--en in,\n          Loud'--e sing'--cuccu';\n\n--but time and again in Chaucer's lines we find that if we allow\nthe words their natural English stresses, we break up the music\naltogether; whereas if we read them like French, without\nsyllabic accent, they make a very reasonable music indeed.  Now\nFrench had been in England the language of court and culture; it\nwas still spoken in polite circles at Stratforde-at-le-Bowe; and\nChaucer was a courtier, Anglo-French, not Anglo-Saxon; and he\nhad gone to France for his first models, and had translated a\ngreat French poem; and Anglo-Saxon verse-methods were hardly\nusable any longer.  So it may well have appeared to him that\nserious poetry was naturally French in meter and method.  There\nwas no model for what he wanted to do in English; the English\nfive-iambic line had not been invented, and only the popular\nlyricists, of the proletariat, sang in stresses.  And anyhow, as\nthe upper classes, to which he belonged more or less, were only\ngrowing out of French into English, very likely they pronounced\ntheir English with a good deal of French accent.\n\nNow it seems to me that something of the same kind, with a\ndifference, is what happened with Ennius.  You are to understand\nhim as, though Greek by birth, _Romanior ipsis Romanis:_  Greek\nbody, but ultra-Roman ego.  One may see the like thing happen\nwith one's own eyes at any time:  men European-born, who are\nquite the extremest Americans.  In his case, the spark of his\nGreek heredity set alight the Roman conflagration of his nature.\nHe was born in Calabria, a Roman subject, in 239; and had fought\nfor Rome before Cato, then quaestor, brought him in his train\nfrom Sardinia in 204.\n\nA glance at the cycles, and a measuring-up of things with our\nthirteen-decade yardstick, will suggest the importance of the\ntime he lived in.  The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ gives A.D. 42\nas the date for the end of the golden Age of Latin Literature.\nIts first great names are those of Cicero, Caesar, and Lucretius.\nThirteen decades before 42 A.D., or in 88 B.C., these three were\nrespectively eighteen, fourteen, and eight years old; so we may\nfairly call that Golden Age thirteen decades long, and beginning\nin 88.  Thirteen decades back from that bring us to 218; and as\nmuch more from that, to 348.  You will remember 348 as the year\nof the death of Plato, which we took as marking the end of the\nGolden Age of Greek.  In 218 Ennius was twenty-one.  He was the\nFather of Latin Poetry; as Cato the Censor, seven years his\njunior, was the Father of Latin Prose.  So you see, he came right\nupon a Greek cycle; right upon the dawn of what should have been\na new Greek day, with the night of Hellenisticism in between.\nAnd he took, how shall I put it?--the forces of that new day, and\ntransmuted them, in himself as crucible, from Greek to Roman... A\nsort of Channel through which the impulse was deflected from\nGreek to Latin...\n\nI think that, thtilled with a patriotism the keener-edged because\nit was acquired, he went to work in this way:--He was going to\nmake one of these long poems, like those (inferior) Greek fellows\nhad; and he was going to make it in Latin.  (I do not know which\nwas his native language, or which tradition he grew up in.)  He\ndidn't see why we Romans should not have our ancient greatness\nsung in epic; weren't we as good as Homer's people, anyhow?\nCertainly we were; and a deal better!  Well, of course there was\nour old Saturnian meter; but that wasn't the kind of way serious\npoetry was written.  Serious poetry was written in hexameters. If\nGreek was his native tongue, he may have spoken Latin all his\nlife, of course, with a Greek accent; and the fact that he was\nsitting down to make up his 'poem' in a meter which no native-born\nLatin speaker could hear as a meter at all, may have been\nsomething of which he was profoundly unconscious.  But that is\nwhat he did.  He ignored (mostly) the stresses and accents\nnatural to Latin, and with sweet naivete made a composition that\nwould have scanned if it had been Greek, and that you could make\nscan by reading with a Greek rhythm or accent. The Romans\naccepted it.  That perhaps is to say, that he had no conception\nat all of poetry as words framed upon an inner music.  I think he\nwas capable of it; that most Romans of the time, supposing they\nhad had the conviction of poethood, would have been capable of\nit.  It was the kind of people they were.\n\nBut that was not all there was to Ennius, by any means.  A\npoet-soul had incarnated there; he had the root of the matter\nin him; it was only the racial vehicle that was funny, as you\nmay say.  He was filled with a high conception of the stern\ngrandeur Romans admired; and somehow or other, his lines\ncarry the impress of that grandeur at times:  there is inspiration\nin them.\n\nAnd now comes the point I have fetched all this compass to arrive\nat.  By Spenser's time, or earlier, in England, all traces of\nChaucer's French accent had gone; the language and the poetry\nhad developed on lines of their own, as true expressions of the\nnational soul.  But in Rome, not so.  Two centuries later great\nRoman poetry was being written:  a major poet was on the scenes,\n--Virgil.  He, I am certain, wrote with genuine music and\ninspiration.  We have accounts of his reading of his own poems;\nhow he was carried along by the music, chanting the lines in a\ngrand voice that thrilled all who heard.  He chanted, not spoke,\nthem; poets always do.  They formed themselves, grew in his\nmind, to a natural music already heard there, and existent before\nthe words arose and took shape to it.  That music is the creative\nforce at work, the whirr of the loom of the Eternal; it is the\ngolden-snooded Muses at song.  And therefore he was not, like\nEnnius, making up his lines on an artificial foreign plan; to my\nmind that is unthinkable;--he was writing in the Latin spoken by\nthe cultured; in Latin as all cultured Romans spoke it.  But,\n_mirabile dictu,_ it was Latin as Ennius had composed it:  he was\nwriting in Ennius' meter.  I can only understand that Greek had\nso swamped the Latin soul, that for a century or more cultured\nLatin had been spoken in quantity, not in accent; in the Greek\nmanner, and with the Greek rhythm.  Ennius had come to be\nappreciable as meter and music to Roman ears; which he certainly\ncould not have been in his own day.\n\nSo we may say that there is in a sense no Roman literature at\nall.  Nothing grew out of the old Saturnian ballad-meter,--except\nperhaps Catullus, who certainly had no high inspiring impersonal\nsong to sing.  The Roman soul never grew up, never learned to\nexpress itself in its own way; before it had had time to do so,\nthe Greek impulse that should have quickened it, swamped it.  You\nmay think of Japan, swamped by Chinese culture in the sixth\ncentury A.D., as a parallel case; but no; there Buddhism, under\nreal spiritual Teachers, came in at the same time, and fostered\nall that was noblest in the Japanese soul, so that the result was\nfair and splendid.  A more cognate case is that of the Turks, who\nsuffered through suddenly conquering Persia while they were still\nbarbarous, and taking on, outwardly, Persian culture wholesale;\nTurkish and Latin literature are perhaps on a par for originality.\nBut if the Greek impulse had touched and wakened Rome under\nthe aegis of Pythagoreanism,--Rome might have become, possibly,\nas fine a thing as Japan.  True, the Crest-Wave had to roll\nin to Rome presently, and to raise up a great literature\nthere.  But whose is the greatest name in it?  A Gaul's, who\nimitated Greek models.  There is something artificial in the\ncombination; and you guess that whatever most splendid effort\nmay be here, the result cannot be supreme.  The greatest name in\nLatin prose, too,--Livy's--was that of a Gaul.\n\nAnd herefrom we may gather what mingling of forces is needed to\nproduce the great ages and results in literature.  You have a\ncountry; a tract of earth with the Earth-breath playing up\nthrough the soil of it; you have the components or elements of a\nrace mixed together on that soil, and molded by that play of the\nEarth-breath into homogeneity, and among them, from smallest\nbeginnings in folk-verse, the body of a literature must grow up.\nThen in due season it must be quickened:  on the outer plane by\nan impulse from abroad,--intercourse with allies, or resistance\nto an invader; and on the inner, by an inrush of Crest-Wave\negos.  There must be that foreign torch applied,--that spark of\ninter-nationalism; and there must be the entry of the vanguard\nof the Host of Souls with its great captains and marshals,\nbringing with them, to exhibit once more in this world, the loot\nof many lands and ages and old incarnations; which thing they\nshall do through a sudden efflorescence of the literature that\nhas grown up slowly to the point of being ready for them.  Such\nnatural growth happened in Greece, in China; in our own cycle,\nin France, Italy, England:  where the trees of the nation\nliteratures received buddings and manurings from abroad, but\nproduced always their own natural national fruit:--Shakespeare\nwas your true English apple, grown from the Chaucer stock;\nalthough in him flower for juices the sweetness and elixir of all\nthe world and the ancient ages.  But in Rome, before the stock\nwas more than a tiny seedling, a great branch of Greece was\ngrafted on it,--and a degenerate Greece at that--and now we do\nnot know even what kind of fruit-tree that Roman stock should\nhave grown to be.\n\nHow, then, did this submersion and obliteration of the Roman soul\ncome to pass?  It is not difficult to guess.  Greek meant\nculture:  if you wanted culture you learnt Greek.  All education\nwas in Greek hands.  The Greek master spoke Latin to his boys;\nno doubt with a Greek accent.  So cultured speech, cultured\nLatin, came to mean Latin without its syllabic stresses; spoken,\nas nearly as might be, with Greek evenness and quantity.--As if\nFrench should so submerge us, that we spoke our United States\ndapping out syllable by syllable like Frenchmen.  But it is a\nfearful thing for a nation to forgo the rhythm evolved under the\nstress of its own Soul,--especially when what it takes on instead\nis the degenerate leavings of another:  Alexandria, not Athens.\nThis Rome did.  She gained the world, and lost her own soul; and\nthe exchange profited her as little as you might expect.\n\nImitation of culture is often the last touch that makes the\nparvenu unbearable; it was so in Rome.  One likes better in some\nways Cato's stult old Roman attitude:  who scorned Greek all his\nlife for sheer foppery, while he knew of nothing better written\nin it than such trash as poetry and philosophy; but at eighty\ncame on a Greek treatise on manure and straightway learned the\nlanguage that he might read and enjoy something profitable and\nthoroughly Roman in spirit.--Greek artists flocked to Rome; and\ndoubtless the more fifth-rate they were the better a thing they\nmade of it:  but it was risky for good men to rely on Roman\nappreciations.  Two flute-players are contending at a concert;\nGreek and perhaps rather good.  Their music is soon drowned in\ncatcalls:  What the dickens do we Romans want with such _footling\ntootlings?_  Then the presiding magistrate has an idea.  He calls\non them to quit that fooler and get down to business:--Give us\nour money's worth, condemn you to it, ye naughty knaves:\n_fight!_--And fight they must, poor things, while the audience,\nthat but now was bored to death, howls with rapture.\n\nSo Rome passed away.  Where now is the simple soul who, while\nhis feet were on his native soil and he asked nothing better\nthan to hoe his cabbages and turn out yearly for patriotic\nthroat-cuttings, was reputable--nay, respect-worthy,--and above\nall, not a little picturesque?  Alas! he is no more.--You remember\nKelly,--lovable Kelly, who in his youth, trotting the swate ould\nbogs of Cohhacht, heard poetry in every sigh of the wind,--saw\nthe hosts of the Danaan Sidhe riding their flamey steeds\nthrough the twilight,--listened, by the cabin peat-fire in\nthe evenings, to tales of Finn MacCool and Cuculain and the\nancient heroes and Gods of Ireland?--Behold this very Kelly\nnow!--What! is this he?--this raucous, pushing, red-haired,\nhuge-handed, green-necktied vulgarian who has made his pile\nbricklaying in Chicago;--this ward-politician; this--Well,\nwell; _Sic transit gloria mundi!_ And the Roman cad of the\nsecond century B.C. was worse than a thousand Kellys.  He\nhad learned vice from past-masters in the Levant; and added\nto their lessons a native brutality of his own.  His feet\nwere no longer on the Italian soil; _that_ was nothing sacred\nto him now.  His moral went as his power grew.  His old tough\npolitical straightforwardness withered at the touch of Levantine\ntrickery; his subjects could no longer expect a square deal\nfrom him.  He sent out his gilded youth to govern the provinces,\nwhich they simply fleeced and robbed shamelessly; worse\nthan Athens of old, and by much.  The old predatory instinct\nwas there still:  Hellenisticism had supplied no civilizing\ninfluence to modify that.  But it was there minus whatever\nof manliness and decency had once gone with it.\n\nKarma travels by subtle and manifold links from the moral cause\nto the physical effect.  There are historians who will prove to\nyou that the ruin of Rome came of economic causes:  which were,\nin fact, merely some of the channels through which Karma flowed.\nThey were there, of course; but we need not enlarge on them too\nmuch.  The secret of it all is this:  a people without the\nBalance of the Faculties, without the saving doctrine of the\nMean, with but one side of their character developed, was called\nby cyclic law, while still semi-barbarian, to assume huge\nresponsibilities in the world.  Their qualities were not equal to\nthe task.  The sense of the Beautiful, their feeling for Art and\nPoetry, had not grown up with their mateial strength.  Why should\nit? some may ask; are not strength and moral enough?--No; they\nare not:  because it is only the Balance which can keep you on\nthe right path; strength without the beauty sense,--yes, even\nfortitude, strength of will,--turns at the touch of quickening\ntime and new and vaster conditions, into gaucherie, disproportion,\nbrutality; ay, it is not strength:--the saving quality of\nstrength, morale, dribbles out and away from it:  only the\nBalance is true strength.  The empires that were founded upon\nuncompassion, through they swept the world in a decade, within a\npoor century or so were themselves swept away.  Rome, because she\nwas only strong, was weak; her virtues found no exit into life\nexcept in things military; the most material plane, the farthest\nfrom the Spirit.  Her people were not called, like the Huns\nor Mongols, to be a destroyer race:  the Law designed them\nfor builders.  But to build you must have the Balance, the\nproportionate development spiritual, moral, mental, and physical:\nit is the one foundation.  Rome's grand assets at the start were\na sense of duty, a natural turn for law and order:  grand assets\nindeed, if the rest of the nature be not neglected or atrophied.\nIn Rome it was, largely.\n\nTo be strong-willed and devoted to duty, and without compassion:\n--that means that you are in train to grow a gigantic selfhood,\nwhich Nature abhors; emptiness of compassion is the vacuum\nnature most abhors.  You see a strong man with his ambitions:\nscorning vices, scorning weakness; scorning too, and lashing\nwith his scorn, the weak and vicious; bending men to his will\nand purposes.  Prophesy direst sorrow for that man!  Nature will\nnot be content that he shall travel his chosen path till\na master of selfishness and a great scourge for mankind has\nbeen evolved in him.  She will give him rope; let him multiply\nhis wrong-doings; because, paradoxically, in wrong-doing is\nits own punishment and cure. His selfishness sinks by its own weight\nto the lowest levels; prophesy for him that in a near life he shall\nbe the slave of his body and passions, yet keeping the old desire\nto excel;--that common vice shall bring him down to the level of\nthose he scorned, while yet he forgets not the mountain-tops\nhe believed his place of old.  Then he shall be scourged with\nself-contempt, the bitterest of tortures; and the quick natural\npunishments of indulgence shall be busy with him, snake-locked\nErinyes with whips of wire.  In that horrible school, struggling\nto rise from it, he shall suffer all that a human being can in\nignominy, sorrow and shame;--and at last shall count it all well\nworth the while, if it has but taught him That which is no\natribute, but Alaya's self,--Compassion.  So Karma has its\nministrants within ourselves; and the dreadful tyrants within\nare to be disthroned by working and living, not for self, but for\nman.  This is why Brotherhood is the doctrine and practice that\ncould put a stop to the awful degeneratioin of mankind.\n\nRome was strong without compassion; so her strength led her on\nto conquests, and her conquests to vices, and her vices to\nhideous ruin and combustion.  She loved her _gravitas,_--which\nimplied great things;--but contemned the Beautiful; and so, when\na knowledge of the Beautiful would have gone far to save her, by\nmaintaining in her a sense of proportion and the fitness of\nthings--she lost her morale and became utterly vulgarian.  But\nthink of China, taking it as a matter of course that music was an\nessential part of government; or of France, with her _Ministre\ndes Beaux Arts_ in every cabinet.  Perhaps; these two, of all\nhistorical nations, have made the greatest achievements; for you\nmust say that neither India nor Greece was a nation.--As for\nRome, with all her initial grandeur, it would be hard to find\nanother nation of her standing that made such an awful mess of it\nas she did; one refers, of course, to Republican Rome; when\nAugustus had had his way with her, it was another matter.\n\nShe took the Gadarene slope at a hand-gallop; and there you have\nher history during the second century B.C.  Not till near the end\nof that century did the egos of the Crest-Wave begin to come in\nin any numbers.  From the dawn of the last quarter, there or\nthereabouts, all was an ever-growing rout and riot; the hideous\ntoppling of the herd over the cliff-edge.  It was a time of wars\ncivil and the reverse; of huge bloody conscriptions and\nmassacre; reforms and demagogism and murder of the Gracchi:--\nMarius and Sulla cat and dog;--the original Spartican movement,\nthat wrecked Italy and ended with six thousand crucifixions along\nthe road to Capua;--ended so, and not with a slave conquest\nand wiping-out of Rome, simply because Spartacus's revolted\nslave-army was even less disciplined than the legions that\nBeast-Crassus decimated into a kind of order and finally conquered\nthem with.  It was decade after decade of brutal devasting wars,\n--wars chronic and incurable, you would say:  the untimely wreck\nand ruin of the world.\n\nIt is a strange gallery of portraits that comes down to us from\nthis time: man after notable man arising without the qualities\nthat could save Rome.  Here are a few of the likenesses, as they\nare given Dr. Stobart:  there were the Gracchi, with so much that\nwas fine in them, but a ruining dash of the demagog,--an idea\nthat socialism could accomplish anything real;--and no wisdom to\nsee through to ultimite causes.  There was Marius, simple peasant\nwith huge military genius:  a wolf of a soldier and foolish lamb\nof a politician; a law-maker who, captured by  the insinuations\nand flatteries of the opposite side, swears to obey his own laws\n\"so far as they may be legal.\"  There was Sulla, of the class\nof men to which Alcibiades and Alexander belonged, but an\ninferior specimen of the class and unscrupulous rip, and a brave\nsuccessful commander; personally beautiful, till his way of\nliving made his face \"like a mulberry sprinkled with flour\";--\nwith many elements of greatness always negatived by sudden\nfatuities; much of genius, more of fool, and most of rake-helly\ndemirep; highly cultured, and plunderer of Athens and Delphi;\ngreat general, who maintained his hold on his troops by unlimited\ntolerance of undiscipline.  There was Crassus the millionaire,\nand all his millions won by cheatery and ugly methods; the man\nwith the slave fire-brigade, with which he made a pretty thing\nout of looting at fires.  There was Cicero, with many noble and\nRoman qualities and a large foolish vanity:  thundering orator\nwith more than a _soupcon_ of the vaudeville favorite in him:  a\nHamlet who hardly showed his real fineness until he came to die.\n\nAnd there was Pompey;--real honesty in Pompey, perhaps the one\ntrue-hearted gentleman of the age:  a man of morale, and a\ngreat soldier,--who might have done something if his general\nintelligence had been as great as his military genius and his\nsense of honor:--surely Pompey was the best of the lot of them;\nonly the cursed spite was that the world was out of joint, and it\nneeded something more than a fine soldier and gentleman to set it\nright.--And then Caesar--could he not do it?  Caesar, the\nSuperman,--the brilliant all-round genius at last,--the man of\nscandalous life--scandalous even in that cesspool Rome,--the\nepileptic who dreamed of world-dominion,--the conqueror of Gaul,\nsays H.P. Blavatsky, because in Gaul alone the Sacred Mysteries\nsurvived in their integrity, and it was his business, on behalf\nof the dark forces against mankind, to quench their life and\nlight for ever;--could not this Caesar do it?  No; he had the\ngenius; but not that little quality which all greatest\npersonalities,--all who have not passed beyond the limits of\npersonality:  tact, impersonality, the power that the disciple\nshall covet, to make himself as nothing in the eyes of men:--\nand because he lacked that for armor, there were knives\nsharpened which should reach his heart before long.--And then,\nin literature, two figures mentionable:  Lucretius, thinker and\nphilosopher in poetry:  a high Roman type, and a kind of\nmaterialist, and a kind of God's warrior, and a suicide.  And\nCatullus:  no noble type; neither Roman nor Greek, but Italian\nperhaps; singing in the old Saturnian meters with a real lyrical\nfervor, but with nothing better to sing than his loves.--And\nthen, in politics again, Brutus:  type, in sentimental history of\nthe Republican School, of the high old roman and republican\nvirtues; Brutus of the \"blood-bright splendor,\"  the tyrant-slayer\nand Roman Harmodios-Aristogeiton; the adored of philosophic\nFrench liberty-equality-fraternity adorers; Shakespeare's\n\"noblest Roman of them all\";--O how featly Cassius might\nhave answered, when Brutus accused him of the \"itching palm,\"\nif he had only been keeping _au fait_ with the newspapers\nthrough the preceding years!  _\"Et tu, Brute,\"_ I hear him say,\nquoting words that should have reminded his dear friend of the\nsacrd ties of friendship,--\n\n     \"Art thou the man will rate thy Cassius thus?\n     This is the most unkindest cut of all;\n     For truly I have filched a coin or two:--\n     Have been, say, _thrifty;_  gathered here and there\n     _Pickings,_ we'll call them; but, my Brutus, thou--\n     Didst thou not shut the senators of Rhodes\n     (I think 'twas Rhodes) up in their senate-house,\n     And keep them there unfoddered day by day.\n     Until starvation forced them to disgorge\n     All of their million to thee?  Didst not thou--\"\n\nBrutus is much too philosophical, much to studious, to listen\nto qualities of that kind, and cuts the conversation short right\nthere.  Cassius was right:  that about starving the senators of\nhis province that surrendered their wealth was precisely what our\nBrutus did.--Then there was Anthony, the rough brave soldier,--a\nkind of man of the unfittest when the giants Pompey and Caesar\nhad been in; Anthony, master of Rome for awhile,--and truly, God\nknows Rome will do with bluff Mark Anthony for her master!--It is\na very interesting list; most of them queer lobsided creatures,\nfighting with own hands or for nothing in particular; most with\nsome virtues:  Then that might have saved Rome, if, as Mrs Poyser\nsaid, \"they are hatched again, and hatched different.\"\n\n\n\n\nXVIII.  AUGUSTUS\n\n\nWe left Rome galloping down the Gadarene slope, and scrimmaging\nfor a vantage point whence to hurl herself headlong.  Down she\ncame; a riot and roaring ruin:  doing those things she ought not\nto have done, and leaving undone those things she ought to have\ndone, and with no semblance of health in her.  There was nothing\nfor it but the downfall of the world; good-bye civilization and\nall that was ever upbuilded of old.  Come now; we should become\ngood Congo forester in our time, with what they call 'long pig'\nfor our daintiest diet.  It is a euphemism for your brother man.\n\nBut supposing this mist-filled Gadarene gulf were really\nbridgable:  supposing there were another side beyond the roar of\nhungry waters and the horror; and that mankind,--European\nmankind,--might pass over, and be saved, were there but staying\nthe rout for a moment, and affording a means to cross?\n\nThere is a bardic proverb in the Welsh:  _A fo Ben, bydded\nBont:_--'He who is Chief, let him be the bridge':  Bran the\nBlessed said it, when he threw down his giant body over the gulf,\nso that the men of the Island of the Mighty might pass over into\nIreland.  And the end of an old cycle, and the beginning of a\nnew, when there is--as in our Rome at that time--a sort of\npsychic and cyclic impasse, a break-down and terrible chasm in\nhistory, if civilization is to pass over from the old conditions\nto the new, a man must be found who can be the bridge.  He must\nsolve the problems within himself; he must care so little for,\nand have such control of, his personality, that he can lay it\ndown, so to speak, and let humanity cross over upon it.  History\nmay get no news of him at all; although he is then the Chief of\nMen, and the greatest living;--or it may get news, only to\nbelittle him.  His own and the after ages may think very little\nof him; he may possess no single quality to dazzle the\nimagination:--he may seem cold and uninteresting, a crafty\ntyrant;--or an uncouth old ex-rail-splitter to have in the White\nHouse;--or an illiterate peasant-girl to lead your armies; yet\nbecause he is the bridge, he is the Chief; and you may suspect\nsomeone out of the Pantheons incarnate in him.\n\nFor the truth of all which, humanity has a sure instinct.  When\nthere is a crisis we say, _Look for the Man._  Rome thought (for\nthe most part) that she had found him when Caesar, having\nconquered Pompey, came home master of the world.  If this phoenix\nand phenomenon in time, now with no competitor above the\nhorizons, could not settle affairs, only Omnipotence could.\nEvery thinking (or sane) Roman knew that what Rome needed was a\nhead; and now at last she had got one.  Pompey, the only\npossible alternative, was dead; Caesar was lord of all things.\nPharsalus, the deciding battle, was fought in 48; he returned\nhome in 46.  From the year between, in which he put the finishing\ntouches to his supremacy, you may count the full manvantara of\nImperial Rome:  fifteen centuries until 1453 and the fall of\nthe Eastern Empire.\n\nAll opinion since has been divided as to the character of Caesar.\nTo those whose religion is democracy, he is the grand Destroyer\nof Freedom; to the worshipers of the Superman, he is the chief\navatar of their god.  Mr. Stobart,* who deals with him sanely,\nbut leaning to the favorable view, says he was \"not a bad man,\nfor he preferred justice and mercy to tyranny and cruelty, and\nhad a passion for logic and order\"; and adds, \"he was a man\nwithout beliefs or illusions or scruples.\"  He began by being a\nfop and ultra-extravagant; and was always, if we may believe\naccounts, a libertine of the first water.  He was, of course, an\nepileptic.  In short, there is nothing in history to give an\nabsolutely sure clue to his real self.  But there is that passage\nin Madame Blavatsky, which I have quoted before, to the effect\nthat he was an agent of the dark forces, and conquered Gaul for\nthem, to abolish the last effective Mysteries; and I think in\nthe light of that, his character, and a great deal of history\nbesides, becomes intelligible enough.--I will be remembered that\nhe stood at the head of the Roman religion, as Potifex Maximus.\n\n------\n* On whose book, _The Grandeur that was Rome,_ this paper also\nlargely leans.\n------\n\nBut it was not the evil that he did that (obviously) brought\nabout his downfall.  Caesar was fortified against Karma by the\nimmensity of his genius.  Whom should he fear, who had conquered\nPompeius Magnus?  None in the roman world could reach so high as\nto his elbow;--for sheer largeness of mind, quickness and daring,\nhe stoood absolutely the Superman among pygmies.  He knew his\naim, and could make or wait for it; and it was big and real.\nOther men crowed or fumbled after petty and pinch-beck ends;\nimpossible rhetorical republicanisms; vain senatorial prestiges;\n--or pleasure pure and simple--say rather, very complex and\nimpure.  Let them clack, let them fumble!  Caesar would do\nthings and get things done.  He wore the whole armor of his\ngreatness, and could see no chink or joint in it through which a\nhostile dagger might pierce.  Even his military victories were\nwon by some greater than mere military greatness.--Karma,\nperhaps, remembering the Mysteries at Gaulish Bibracte, and the\nworld left now quite lightless, might have a word to say; might\neven be looking round for shafts to speed.  But what, against a\nman so golden-panoplied?  \"Tush!\" saith Caesar, \"there are no\narrows now but straws.\"\n\nOne such straw was this:  (a foolish one, but it may serve)--\n\nRome for centuries has been amusing herself on all public\noccasions with Fourth of July rhetoric against kings, and in\npraise of tyrannicides.  Rome for centuries has been cherishing\nin her heart what she calls a love of Freedom,--to scourge your\nslaves, steal from your provincials, and waste your substance in\nriotous living.  All of which Julius Caesar,--being a real man,\nmind you,--holds in profoundest contempt for driveling unreality;\nwhich it certainly is.  But unrealities are awfully real\nat times.\n\nUnluckily, with all his supermannism, he retained some traces of\npersonality.  He was bald, and sensitive about it; he always had\nbeen a trifle foppish.  So when they gave him a nice laurel\nwreath for his triumph over Pompey, he continued, against all\nprecedent, to wear it indefinitely,--as hiding certain shining\nsurfaces from the vulgar gaze....  \"H'm,\" said Rome, \"he goes\nabout the next thing to crowned!\"  And here is his statue, set up\nwith those of the Seven Kings of antiquity; he allowing it, or\nnot protesting.--They remembered their schoolboy exercises, their\nspoutings on many Latins for Glorious Fourth; and felt very\nbadly indeed.  Then it was unlucky that, being too intent on\nrealities, he could not bother to rise when those absurd old\nPiccadilly pterodactyls the Senators came into his presence;\nthat he filled up their ridiculous house promiscuously with\nlow-born soldiers and creatures of his own.  And that there was a\ncrowd of foolish prigs and pedants in Rome to take note of these\nso trivial things, and to be more irked by them than by all the\nrealities of his power:--a lean hungry Cassius; an envious\nbrusque detractor Casca; a Brutus with a penchant for being\nconsidered a philosopher, after a rather maiden-auntish sort\nof conception of the part,--and for being considered a true\ndescendant of his well-known ancestor:  a cold soul much\nfired with the _ignis fatuus_ of Republican slave-scourging\nprovince-fleecing freedom.  An unreal lot, with not the ghost\nof a Man between them;--what should the one Great Man of the\nage find in them to disturb the least ofhis dreams?\n\nCame, however, the Ides of March in B.C. 44; and the laugh once\nmore was with Karma,--the one great final laugher of the world.\nCaesar essayed to be Chief of the Romans:  he who is chief, let\nhim be the bridge;--this one, because of a few ludicrous personal\nfoibles, has broken down now under the hurry and thunder of the\nmarching cycles.  The fact being that your true Chief aspires\nonly to the bridgehood; whereas this one overlooked that part of\nit, intent on the chieftaincy.--And now, God have mercy on us!\nthere is to be all the round of wars and proscriptions and\nmassacres over again:  _Roma caput mundi_ herself piteously\ndecapitate; and with every booby and popinjay rising in turn to\nkick her about at his pleasure;--and here first comes Mark\nAnthony to start the game, it seems.\n\nWell; Mark Anthony managed wisely enough at that crisis; you\nwould almost have said, hearing him speak at Caesar's funeral,\nthat there was at least a ha'porth of brains hidden somewhere\nwithin that particularly thick skull of his.  Half an hour\nchanges him from a mere thing alive on sufferance--too foolish to\nbe worth bothering to kill--into the master of Rome.  And yet\nprobably it was not brains that did it, but the force of genuine\nfeeling:  he loved dead Caesar; he was trying now to be\ncautious, for his own skin's sake:  was repressing himself;--but\nhis feelings got the better of him,--and were catching,--\nand set the mob on fire.  Your lean and hungry ones; your\nenvious detractors; your thin maiden-auntish prig republican\nphilosophers:--all very wisely sheer off.  Your grand resounding\nCicero,--_vox et praeterea almost nihil_ (he had yet to die and\nshow that it was _almost,_ not _quite,_) sheers off too, into the\ncountry, there to busy himself with an essay on the _Nature of\nthe Gods_ (to contain, be sure, some fine eloquence), and with\nmaking up his mind to attack Anthony on behalf of Republican\nFreedom.--Anthony's next step is wise too:  he appoints himself\nCaesar's executor, gets hold of the estate, and proceeds to\nsquander it right and left buying up for himself doubtful\nsupport.--All you can depend on is the quick coming-on of final\nruin and dismay:  of all impossibilities, the most impossible is\nto imagine Mark Anthony capable of averting it.  As to Caesar's\nheir, so nominated in the will--the persona from whom busy\nAnthony has virtually stolen the estate,--no one gives him a\nthought.  Seeing who he was, it would be absurd to do so.\n\nAnd then he turned up in Rome, a sickly youth of eighteen;\ndemanded his moneys from Anthony; dunned him till he got some\nfragment of them;--then borrowed largely on his own securities,\nand proceeded to pay--what prodigal Anthony had been much too\nthrifty to think of doing--Ceasar's debts.  Rome was surprised.\n\nThis was Caesar's grand-nephew, Octavius; who had been in camp\nat Apollonia in Illyricum since he had coolly proposed to his\ngreat-uncle that the latter, being Dictator, and about to start\non his Parthian campaign, should make him his Master of the\nHorse.  He had been exempted from military service on account of\nill-health; and Julius had a sense of humor; so he packed him\noff to Apollonia to 'finish' a military training that had never\nbegun.  There he had made a close friend of a rising young\nofficer by the name of Vipsanius Agrippa; a man of high\ncapacities who, when the news came of Caesar's death, urged him\nto lose no time, but rouse the legions in their master's name,\nand march on Rome to avenge his murder.--\"No,\" says Octavius, \"I\nshall go there alone.\"\n\nLanding in Italy, he heard of the publication of the will, in\nwhich he himself had been named heir.  That meant, to a very vast\nfortune, and to the duty of revenge.  Of the fortune, since it\nwas now in Mark Anthony's hands, you could predict nothing too\nsurely but its vanishment; as to the duty, it might also imply a\nlabor for which the Mariuses and Sullas, the Caesars and Pompeys,\nalbeit with strong parties at their backs, had been too small\nmen.  And Octavius had no party, and he was no soldier, and he\nhad no friends except that Vipsanius back in Apollonia.\n\nHis mother and step-father, with whom he stayed awhile on his\njourney, urged him to throw the whole matter up:  forgo the\nimprobably fortune and very certain peril, and not rush in where\nthe strongest living might fear to tread.  Why, there was Mark\nAnthony, Caesar's lieutenant--the Hercules, mailed Bacchus, Roman\nAnthony--the great dashing captain whom his soldiers so adored--\neven he was shilly-shallying with the situation, and not daring\nto say _Caesar shall be avenged._  And Anthony, you might be\nsure, would want no competitor--least of all in the boy named\nheir in Caesar's will.--\"Oh, I shall go on and take it up,\" said\nOctavius; and went.  And paid Caesar's debts, as we have\nseen, presently:  thereby advertising his assumption of all\nresponsibilities.  Anthony began to be uneasy about him; the\nSenatorial Party to make advances to him; people began to\nsuspect that, possibly, this sickly boy might grow into a man to\nbe reckoned with.\n\nI am not going to follow him in detail through the next thirteen\nyears.  It is a tortuous difficult story; to which we lack the\ntrue clues, unless they are to be found in the series of\nprotrait-busts of him taken during this period.  The makers of\nsuch busts were the photographers of the age; and, you may say,\nas good as the best photographers.  Every prominent Roman availed\nhimself of their services.  Mr. Baring-Gould, in his _Tragedy of\nthe Caesars,_ arranges, examines, and interprets these portraits\nof Augustus; I shall give you the gist of his conclusions,\nwhich are illuminating.--First we see a boy with delicate and\nexceedingly beautiful features, impassive and unawakend:\nOctavius when he came to Rome.  A cloud gathers on his face,\ndeepening into a look of intense anguish; and with the anguish\ngrows firmness and the clenched expression of an iron will:  this\nis Octavian in the dark days of the thirties.--the anguish\npasses, but leaves the firmness behind:  the strength remains,\nthe beauty remains, and a light of high serenity has taken the\nplace of the aspect of pain:  this is Augustus the Emperor.  The\nsame writer contrasts this story with that revealed by the busts\nof Julius:  wherein we see first a gay insouciant dare-devil\nyouth, and at last a man old before his time; a face sinister (I\nshould say) and haunted with ugly sorrow.\n\nWe get no contemporary account of Augustus; no interpeting\nbiography from the hand of any one who knew him.  We have to read\nbetween the lines of history, and with what intuition we can\nmuster:  and especially the story of that lonely soul struggling\nthrough the awful waters of the years that followed Caesar's\ndeath.  We see him allying himself first with one party, then\nwith another; exercising (apparently) no great or brilliant\nqualities, yet by every change thrown nearer the top; till with\nAnthony and Lepidus he is one of the Triumvirate that rules the\nworld.  Then came those cruel proscriptions.  This is the picture\ncommonly seen:--a cold keen intellect perpetually dissembling;\nkeen enough to deceive Anthony, to decieve the senate, to decieve\nCicero and all the world; cruel for policy's sake, without ever\na twinge of remorse or compunciton:  a marble-cold impassive\n_mind,_ and no heart al all, with master-subtlety achieving\nmastery of the world.--Alas! a boy in his late teens and early\ntwenties, so nearly friendless, and with enemies so many and so\ngreat...  A boy \"up aginst\" so huge and difficult circumstances\nalways, that (you would say) there was no time, no possibility,\nfor him to look ahead:  in every moment the next agonizing\nperilous step that must be taken vast enough to fill the whole\nhorizon of his mind, of any human mind perhaps;--ay, so vast and\ncompelling that every day with wrenches and torsion that horizon\nmust be pushed back and back to contain them,--a harrowing\npainful process, as we may read on his busts... As to the\nproscriptions, Dio, a writer, as Mr. Baring-Gould says, \"never\nwilling to allow a good quality to one of the Caesars, or to put\ntheir conduct in other than an unfavorable light,\"  says that\nthey were brought about mainly--\"by Lepidus and Anthony, who,\nhaving been long in honor under Julius Caesar, and having held\nmany offices in state and army, had acquired many enemies.  But\nas Octavian was associated with them in power, an appearance of\ncomplicity attached to him.  But he was not cruel by nature, and\nhe had no occasion for putting many to death; moreover, he had\nresolved to imitate the example of his adoptive father.  Added to\nthis, he was young, was just entering on his career, and sought\nrather to gain hearts than to alienate them.  No sooner was he in\nsole power than he showed no signs of severity, and at that time\nhe caused the death of very few, and saved very many.  He\nproceeded with the utmost severity against such as betrayed their\n[proscribed?] masters or friends; but was most favorable to such\nas helped the proscribed to escape.\"\n\nIt was that \"appearance of complicity\" that wrote the anguish on\nhis face:  the fact that he could not prevent, and saw no way but\nto have a sort of hand in, things his nature loathed.  In truth\nhe appears to us now rather like a pawn, played down the board by\nsome great Chess-player in the Unseen:  moving by no volition or\ninitiative of its own through perils and peace-takings to\nQueenhood on the seventh square.  But we know that he who would\nenter the Path of Power must use all the initiative, all the\nvolition, possible in any human being, to attain the balance, to\nmaster the personality, to place himself wholly and unreservedly\nin the power, under the control, of the Higher thing that is\n\"within and yet without him\"'  The Voice of his Soul, that speaks\nalso through the lips of his Teacher; whether that Teacher be\nembodied visibly before men or not.  He obeys; he follows the\ngleam; he sufferes, and strives, and makes no question; and his\nstriving is all for more power to obey and to follow.  In this, I\nthink, we have our clue to the young Octavian.--'Luck' always\nfavored him; not least when, in dividing the world, Anthony\nchose the East, gave Lepidus Africa, and left the most difficult\nand dangerous Italy to the youngest partner of the three.\n\nHe had two friends, men of some genius both:  Vipsanius Agrippa\nthe general, and Cilnius Maecenas the statesman.  Both appear to\nus as great personalities; the master whom they served so\nloyally and splendidly remains and Impersonality,--which those\nwho please may call a 'cold abstraction.'  While Octavian was\naway campaigning, Maecenas, with no official position, ruled Rome\non his behalf; and so wisely that Rome took it and was well\ncontent.  As for those campaigns, 'luck' or Agrippa won them for\nhim; in Octavian himself we can see no qualities of great\ngeneralship.  And indeed, it is likely he had none; for he\nwas preeminently a man of peace.  But they always were won.\nSuetonius makes him a coward; yet he was one that, when occasion\narose, would not think twice about putting to sea in an open boat\nduring a storm; and once, when he heard that Lepidus was\npreparing to turn against him, he rode alone into that general's\ncamp, and took away the timid creature's army without striking a\nblow:  simply ordered the soldiers to follow him, and they did.\nIf he seems now a colorless abstraction, he could hardly have\nseemed so then to Lepidus' legions, who deserted their own\ngeneral--and paymaster--at his simple word of command.  Or to\nAgrippa, or to Maecenas, great men who desired nothing better\nthan to serve him with loyal affection.  Maecenas was an\nEtruscan; a man of brilliant mind and culture; reputed somewhat\nluxurious when he had nothing to do, but a very dynamo when there\nwas work.--A man, be it said, of great ideals on his own account:\nwe see it in his influence on Virgil and Horace.  In his last\nyears some coldness, unexplained, sprung up between him and his\nmaster; yet when Maecenas died, it was found he had made\nAugustus his sole heir.--But now Augustus is still only Octavian,\nmoving impassively and impersonally to his great destiny; as if\nno thing of flesh and blood and common human impulses, but a\ncosmic force acting;--which indeed the Impersonal Man always is.\n\nWhat he did, seems to have done, or could not help doing, always\nworked out right, whether it carries for us an ethical look or\nno.  The problems and difficulties that lay between that time and\nPeace flowed to him:  and as at the touch of some alchemical\nsolvent, received their solution.  We get one glimpse of the\ninner man of him, of his beliefs or religion.  He believed\nabsolutely in his _Genius_ (in the Roman sense); his luck, or\nhis Karma, or--and perhaps chiefly--that God-side of a man which\nNumaism taught existed:--what we should call, the Higher Law, the\nWarrior, and the Higher Self.  There, as I think, you have the\nheart of his mystery; he followed that, blindly,--and made no\nmistakes.  In the year 29 B.C. it led him back to Rome in\nTriumph, having laid the world at his feet.  He had been the\nbridge over that chasm in the cycles; the Path through all the\ntortuosities of that doubtful and wayward time; over which the\nPurposes of the Gods had marched to their fulfilment.  He had\nbeen strong as destiny, who seemed to have little strength in his\ndelicate body.  With none of Caesar's dash and brilliance, he had\nrepeated Caesar's achievement; and was to conquer further in\nspiritual\n\n     \"regions Caesar never knew.\"\n\nWith none of Anthony's soldiership, he had easily brought Anthony\ndown.--Why did Cleopatra lose Actium for Anthony?\n\nWe face the almost inexplicable again in the whole story of\nOctavian's dealings with Cleopatra.  She is one of the characters\nhistory has most venomously lied about.  Mr. Wiegand has shown\nsome part of the truth about her in his biography; but I do not\nthink he has solved the whole problem; for he takes the easy\nroad of making Octavian a monster.  Now Augustus, beyond any\nquestion, was one of the most beneficent forces that ever\nappeared in history; and no monster can be turned, by the mere\ncircumstance of success achieved, into that.  Cleopatra had made\na bid to solve the world-problem on an Egyptian basis:  first\nthrough Caesar, then through Anthony.  We may dismiss the idea\nthat she was involved in passionate attachments; she had a grand\ngame to play, with World-stakes at issue.  The problem was not to\nbe solved through Caesar, and it was not to be solved through\nAnthony; but it had been solved by Octavian.  There was nothing\nmore for her to do, but step aside and be no hindrance to the man\nwho had done that work for the Gods that she had tried and been\nunable to do.  So she sailed away from Actium.\n\nJulius Caesar in his day had married her; and young Caesarion\ntheir son was his heir by Egyptian, but not by Roman, law.  When,\nin the days of Caesar's dictatorship, she brought the boy to\nRome, Caesar refused to recognise her as his wife, or to do the\nright thing by Caesarion.  To do either would have endangered his\nposition in Rome; where by that time he had another wife, the\nfourth or fifth in the series.  He feared the Romans; and they\nfeared Egypt and its Queen.  It seemed very probably at that time\nthat the headship of the world might pass to Egypt; which\nwas still a sovereign power, and immensely rich, and highly\npopulated, and a compact kingdom;--whereas the Roman state was\neverywhere ill-defined, tenebrous, and falling to pieces.  At\nthis distance it is hard to see in Egypt anything of strength or\nmorale that would have enable it to settle the world's affairs;\nas hard, indeed, as it is to see anything of the kind in Rome.\nBut Rome was haunted with the bogey idea; and terribly angry,\naftewards, with Anthony for his Egyptian exploits; and hugely\nrelieved when Actium put an end to the Egyptian peril.  Egypt, it\nwas thought, if nothing else, might have starved Italy into\nsubmission.  But in truth the cycles were all against it:\nCleopatra was the only Egyptian that counted,--the lonely\nSpacious Soul incarnate there.\n\nWhen Octavian reached Alexandria, all he did was to refuse to be\ninfluenced by the queen's wonderfully magnetic personality.  He\nappears to me to have been uncertain how to act:  to have been\nwaiting for clear guidance from the source whence all his\nguidance came.  He also seems to have tried to keep her from\ncommitting suicide.  It is explained commonly on the supposition\nthat he intended she should appear in his triumph in Rome; and\nthat she killed herself to escape that humiliation.  I think it\nis one of those things whose explanation rests in the hands of\nthe Gods, and is not known to men.  You may have a mass of\nevidence, that makes all humanity certain on some point; and yet\nthe Gods, who have witnessed the realities of the thing, may know\nthat those realities were quite different.\n\nThen her two elder children were killed; and no one has\nsuggested, so far as I know, that it was not by Octavians's\norders.  It is easy, even, to supply him with a motive for it;\none in keeping with accepted ideas of his character:--as he was\nCaesar's heir, he would have wished Caesar's own children out of\nthe way;--and Caesar's children by that (to Roman ideas) loathed\nEgyptian connexion.  His family honor would have been touched....\n\nUp to this point, then, such a picture as this might be the true\nportrait of him:--a sickly body, with an iron will in it; a\nyouth with no outstanding brilliancies, who never lost his nerve\nand never made mistakes in policy; with no ethical standars\nabove those of his time:--capable of picking his names coldly on\nthe proscription lists; capable of having Cleopatra's innocent\nchildren killed;--one, certainly, who had followed the usual\ncustom of divorcing one wife and marrying another as often as\nexpediency suggested.  Above all, following the ends of his\nambition unerringly to the top of success.\n\nThe ends of his ambition?--That is all hidden in the intimate\nhistory of souls.  How should we dare say that Julius was\nambitious, Augustus not?  Both apparently aimed at mastery of the\nworld; from this human standpoint of the brain-mind there is\nnothing to choose, and no means of discrimination.  But what\nabout the standpoint of the Gods?  Is there no difference, as\nseen from their impersonal altitudes, between reaching after a\nplace for your personality, and supplying a personality to fill a\nplace that needs filling?  There is just that difference, I\nthink, between the brilliant Julius and the staid Octavian.  The\nformer might have settled the affairs of the world,--as its\ncontroller and master and the dazzling obvious mover of all the\npieces on the board.  I do not believe Octavian looked ahead at\nall to see any shining pinnacle or covet a place on it; but time\nand the Law hurled one situation after another at him, and he\nmastered and filled them as they came because it was the best\nthing he could do.... If we say that the two men were as the\npoles apart, there are but tiny indications of the difference:\nthe tactlessness and small vanities that advertise personality in\nthe one; the supreme tact and balance that affirm impersonality\nin the other.  The personality of Julius must tower above the\nworld; that of Augustus was laid down as a bridge for the world\nto pass over.  Julius gave his monkeys three chestnuts in the\nmorning and four at night;--you remember Chwangtse's story;--and\nso they grew angry and killed him.  Augustus adjusted himself;\ndecreed that they should have their four in the morning. His\npersonality was always under command, and he brought the world\nacross on it.  It never got in the way; it was simply the\ninstrument wherewith he (or the Gods) saved Rome.  He--we may say\nhe--did save Rome.  She was dead, this time; dead as Lazarus,\nwho had been three days in the tomb, etc.  He called her forth;\ngave her two centuries of greatness; five of some kind of life\nin the west; fifteen, all told, in west and east.  Julius is\nalways bound to make on the popular eye the larger impression of\ngreatness.  He retains his personality with all its air of\nsupermanhood; it is easy to see him as a live human being, to\nimagine him in his habit as he lived,--and to be astounded by his\ngreatness.  But Augustus is hidden; the real man is covered by\nthat dispassionate impersonality that saved Rome.  If all that\ncomes down about the first part of his life is true, and has been\ntruly interpreted, you could not call him _then_ even a good man.\nBut the record of his reign belies every shadow that has been\ncast on that first part.  It is altogether a record of beneficence.\n\nH.P. Blavatsky speaks of Julius as an agent of the dark forces.\nElsewhere she speaks of Augustus as an Initiate.\n\nDid she mean by that merely an initiate of the Official Mysteries\nas they still existed at Eleusis and elsewhere?  Many men, good,\nbad and indifferent, were that:  Cicero,--who was doubtless, as\nhe says, a better man for his initiation:  Glamininus and his\nofficers; most of the prominent Athenians since the time of\nPericles and earlier.  I dare say it had come to mean that though\nyou might be taught something about Karma and Reincarnation, you\nwere not taught to make such teachings a living power in your own\nlife or that of the world.  There is nothing of the Occultists,\nnothing of the Master Soul, in the life and actions of Cicero;\nbut there was very much, as I shall try to show, in the life and\nactions of Augustus.  And, we gather from H.P. Blavatsky, the\nonly Mysteries that survived in their integrity to anything like\nthis time had been those at Bibracte which Caesar destroyed.\n(Which throws light, by the bye, on Lucan's half-sneering remark\nabout the Druids,--that they alone had real knowledge about the\nGods and the things beyond this life.)  So it seems to me that\nAugustus' initiation implied something much more real,--much more\na high status of the soul,--than could have been given him by any\nsemi-public organized body within the Roman world.\n\nVirgil, in the year 40 B.C., being then a pastoral poet imitating\nTheocritus,--nothing very serious,--wrote a strange poem that\nstands in dignity and depth of purpose far above anything in his\nmodel.  This was the Fourth Eclogue of his Bucolics, called the\n_Pollio._  In it he invokes the \"Sicilian Muse\" to inspire him to\nloftier strains; and proceeds to sing of the coming of a new\ncycle, the return of a better age, to be ushered in, supposedly,\nby a 'child' born in that year:--\n\n     _Ultima Cumaci venit jam carminis aetas;\n     Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo;\n     Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;\n     Jam nora progenies coelo demittitur alto._\n\nThis was taken in the Middle Ages as referring to the birth of\nJesus; and on the strength of having thus prophesied, Virgil\ncame to be looked on as either a true prophet or a black\nmagician.  Hence his enormous reputation all down the centuries\nas a master of the secret sciences.  The chemist is the successor\nto the alchemist; and in Wales we still call a chemist\n_fferyll,_ which is _Virgil_ Cymricized.  Well; his reputation\nwas not altogether undeserved; he did know much; you can\nfind Karma, Reincarnation, Devachan, Kama-loka--most of the\nTheosophical teachings as to the postmortem-prenatal states,--\ntaught in the Sixth Book of the _Aeneid._  But as to this\n_Pollio_ Eclogue:  even in modern textbooks one often sees it\nasserted that he must have been familiar with the Hebrew\nScriptures;--because in the Book of Isaiah the coming of a\nMessiah to the Jews is prophesied in terms not very unlike those\nhe used.  To my mind this is far-fetched:  Virgil had Gaul behind\nhim, if you must look for explanations in outside things; and at\nleast in after ages Celtic Messianism was as persistent a\ndoctrine as Jewish.  A survival, of course; in truth the\ninitiated or partly initiated among all ancient peoples knew that\navatars come.  Virgil, if he understood as much about Theosophy\nas he wrote into the Sixth Aeneid, would also have known, from\nwhatever source he learnt it, the truth about cycles and\nAdept Messengers.\n\nThere has been much speculation as to who the child born in the\nyear of Pollio's consulship, who was to bring in the new order of\nages, could have been.  But we may note that in the language of\nOccultism (and think of Virgil as an Occultist), the 'birth of a\nchild' had always been a symbolical way of speaking of the\ninititation of a candidate into the (true) Mysteries.  So that it\ndoes not follow by any means that he meant an actual baby born in\nthat year; he may have intended, and probably did intend, some\nAdept then born into his illumination,--or that, according to\nVirgil's own ideas, might be thought likely soon to be.  One\ncannot say; he was a very wise man, Virgil.  At least it\nindicates a feeling,--perhaps peculiar to himself, perhaps\ngeneral,--that the world stood on the brink of a great change in\nthe cycles, and that an Adept Leader might be expected, who\nshould usher the new order in.\n\nHis eyes may have been opened to the possibilities of the young\nOctavian.  It is possible that the two were together at school in\nRome, studying rhetoric under Epidius, in the late fifties; and\ncertainly Virgil had recently visited Rome and there interviewed\nthe Triumvir Octavian; and had obtained from him an order for\nthe restitution of his parental farm near Mantua, which had been\ngiven to one of the soldiers of Philippi after that battle.  Two\nor three of the Eclogues are given to the praises of Octavian;\nwhom, even as early as that, Virgil seems to have recognised as\nthe future or potential savior of Rome.  The points to put side\nby side are these:  Virgil, a Theosophist, expected the coming of\nan avatar, an Initiate who should save Rome;--H.P. Blavatsky\nspeaks of Augustus as an Initiate;--Augustus did save Rome.\n\nWhen did he become an Initiate?  Was there, at some time, such a\nchange in his life that it was as if a new Soul had come in to\ntake charge of that impersonal unfailing personality?  There are\ntremendous mysteries connected with incarnation; the possibility\nof a sudden accession of entity, so to say,--a new vast increment\nof being.  As Octavius and Octavian, the man seems like one\nwithout will or desires of his own, acting in blind obedience to\nimpersonal forces that aimed at his supremacy in the Roman\nworld.  As Augustus, he becomes another man altogether, almost\nfathomlessly wise and beneficient; a Master of Peace and Wisdom.\nHe gave Rome Peace, and taught her to love peace.  He put _Peace_\nfor a legend on the coinage; and in the west _Pax,_ in the east\n_Irene,_ became favorite names to give you children.  He did what\nhe could to clean Roman life; to give the people high ideals;\nto make the empire a place,--and in this he succeeded,--where\ndecent egos could incarnate and hope to progress; which,\ngenerally speaking, they cannot in a chaos.  His fame as a\nbenefactor of the human race spread marvelously:  in far-away\nIndia (where at that time the Secret Wisdom and its Masters were\nmuch more than a tradition), they knew of him, and struck coins\nin his honor; coins bearing the image and superscription of this\nRoman Caesar.\n\nI said that he went to work like an Occultist:  like one with an\nunderstanding of the inner laws of life, and power to direct\noutward things in accordance with that knowledge.  Thus:--the\ntask that lay before him was to effect a complete revolution.\nRome could not go on under the old system any longer.  That\nsystem had utterly broken down; and unless an efficient\nexecutive could be evolved, there was nothing for it but that\nthe world should go forward Kilkenny-catting itself into\nnon-existence.  Now an efficient executive meant one-man rule; or\na king, by whatsoever name he might be called.  But the tradition\nof centureis made a king impossible.  There were strongly formed\nastral molds; and whoever should attempt to break them would,\nlike Caesar, ensure his own defeat.  Whoever actually should\nbreak them,--well, the result of breaking astral molds is always\nabout the same.  H.P. Blavatsky said that she came to break molds\nof mind; and so she did; but it was not in politics; and the\nwhile she was laying her trains of thought-dynamite, and\nexploding them gloriously, she was also building up fair and\nglorious mansions of thought to house those made homeless.  The\nsituation we are looking at here is on a different plane, the\npolitical.  You break the astral molds there; and they may be\nquite worthless, quite effete and contemptible,--yet they are the\nthings which alone keep the demon in man under restraint.  It is\nthe old peril of Revolutions.  They may be started with the best\nof intentions, in the name of the highest ideals; but, unless\nthere be super-human strength (like Ts'in Shi Hwangti's) or\nsuperhuman wisdom (like Augustus') to guide them, as surely as\nthey succeed in breaking the old molds, they degenerate into\norgies,--blood, vice, and crime.\n\nAugustus effected his revolution and kept all that out; he\nsubstituted peace and prosperity for the blood and butchery of a\ncentury.  And it was because he went to work with the knowledge\nof an Occultist that he was able to do so.\n\nHe carefully abstained from breaking the molds.  He labored to\nkeep them all intact,--for the time being, and until new ones\nshould have been formed. Gently and by degrees he poured a new\nforce and meaning into them; which, in time, would necessarily\ndestroy them; but mean-while others would have been growing.\nHe took no step without laboriously ascertaining that there\nwere precedents for it.  Rome had been governed by Consuls\nand Tribunes; well, he would accept the consulate, and the\ntribuniciary power; because it was necessary now, for the time\nbeing at any rate, that Rome should be governed by Augustus.  It\nis as well to remember that it was the people who insisted\non this last.  The Republican Party might subsist among the\naristocracy, the old governing class; but Augustus was the hero\nand champion of the masses.  Time and again he resigned:  handed\nback his powers to the senate, and what not;--whether as a matter\nof form only, and that he might carry opinion along with him; or\nwith the real hope that he had taught things at last to run\nthemselves.  In either case his action was wise and creditable;\nyou have to read into him mean motives out of your own nature, if\nyou think otherwise.  Let there be talk of tyrants, and plots\narising, with danger of assassination,--and what was to become of\nre-established law, order, and the Augustan Peace?  The fact was\nthat the necessities of the case always compelled the senate to\nreinstate him:  it was too obvious that things could not run\nthemselves.  If there had been any practicable opposition, it\ncould always have made those resignations effectual; or at least\nit could have driven him to a show of illegalism, and so,\nprobably, against the point of some fanatic theorist's dagger.\nIn 23 B.C. there was a food shortage; and the mob besieged the\nsenate house, demanding that new powers should be bestowed on the\nCaesar:  they knew well what mind and hands could save them.\n\nBut he would run up no new (corrugated iron or reinforced\nconcrete) astral molds, nor smash down any old ones.  There\nshould be no talk of a king, or, perpetual dictator.  Chief\ncitizen, as you must have a chief,--since a hundred years had\nshown that haphazard executives would not work.  _Primus inter\nPares_ in the senate:  _Princeps,_--not a new title, nor one that\nimplied royalty,--or meant anything very definite; why define\nthings, anyhow, now while the world was in flux?  Mr. Stobart,\nwho I think comes very near to showing Augustus as he really was,\nstill permits himself to speak of him as \"chilly and statuesque.\"\nBut can you imagine the mob so in love with a chilly and\nstatuesque--tyrant, or statesman, or politician,--as to besiege\nthe senate-house and clamor for an extension of his powers?  And\nthis chilly statuesque person was the man who delighted in\nsharing in their games with children!\n\nAnother reason why there was no talk of a king:  he was no Leader\nof  a spiritual movement, but merely dealing with politics, with\nwhich the cycles will have their way:  a world of ups and downs,\nnot stable because linked to the Heart of Things.  Supposing he\nshould find one to appoint as his worthy successor:  with the\nrevolutions of the cycles, could that one hope to find another to\nsucceed him?  Political affairs move and have their being at best\nin a region of flux, where the evils, and especially the duties,\nof the day are sufficient therefor.  In attending to these,--\nperforming the duties, fighting the evils,--Augustus laid down\nthe lines for the future of Rome.\n\nHe tried to revive the patriciate; he wanted to have, cooperating\nwith him, a governing class with the ancient sense of responsibility\nand turn for affairs.  But what survived of the old aristocracy\nwas wedded to the tradition of Republicanism, which meant\noligarchy, and doing just what you liked or nothing at all.\nThe one thing they were not prepared to do was to cooperate\nin saving Rome.  At first they showed some eagerness to flatter\nhim; but found that flattery was not what he wanted.  Then\nthey were inclined to sulk, and he had to get them to pass a\nlaw making attendance at the senate compulsory.  Mean views as to\nhis motives have become traditional; but the only view the facts\nwarrant is this:  he lent out his personality, not ungrudgingly,\nto receive the powers and laurels that must fall upon the central\nfigure in the state, while ever working to vitalize what lay\noutward from that to the circumference, that all Romans might\nshare with him the great Roman responsibility of running and\nregenerating the world.  Where there was talent, he opened a way\nfor it.  He made much more freedom than had ever been under the\nRepublic; gave all classes functions to perform; and curtailed\nonly the freedom of the old oligarchy to fleece the provinces and\nmisdirect affairs.\n\nAnd meanwhile the old Rome that he found on his return in 29,--\nbrick-built ignobly at best, and now decaying and half in ruins,\n--was giving place to a true imperial city.  In 28, eighty-two\ntemples were built or rebuilt in marble; among the rest, one to\nApollo on the Palatine, most magnificent, with a great public\nlibrary attached.  The first public library in Rome had been\nbuilt by Asinius Pollio nine years before; soon they became\ncommon.  Agrippa busied himself building the Pantheon; also\npublic baths, of which he was responsible for a hundred and\nseventy within the limits of the city.  Fair play to the Romans,\nthey washed.  All classes had their daily baths; all good houses\nhad hot baths and swimming-tanks.  The outer Rome he found in\nbrick and left in marble:--but the inner Rome he had to rebuild\nwas much more ruinous than the outer; as for the material he\nfound it built of--well, it would be daring optimism and\neuphemism to call those Romans _bricks_--says someone.\n\nTime had brought southern Europe to the point where national\ndistinctions were disappearing.  No nation could now stand apart.\nGreek or Egyptian or Gaul, all were, or might be, or soon would\nbe, Romans; and if any ego with important things to say should\nincarnate anywhere, what he said should be heard all round the\nMiddle Sea.  This too is a part of the method of natural Law;\nwhich now splits the world into little fragments, the nations,\nand lets them evolve apart, bringing to light by the intensive\nculture of their nationalisms what hidden possibilities lie\nlatent in their own soils and atmospheres;--an anon welds them\ninto one, that all these accomplished separate evolutions may\nplay upon each other, interact,--every element quickening and\nquickened by the contact.  In the centrifugal or heterogenizing\ncycles national souls are evolved; in the centripetal or\nhomogenizing they are given freedom to affect the world.  We have\nseen what such fusion meant for China; perhaps some day we may\nsee what such fusion may mean for the world entire.  In Augustus'\ntime, fusion was to do something for the Mediterranean basin.  If\nhe had been an Occultist, to know it, his great cards lay in\nItaly and Spain:  the former with her cycle of productiveness due\nto continue, shall we say until about 40 A.D.?--the latter with\nhers due soon to begin.\n\nWell, it does look rather as if he knew it.  We shall see\npresently how he dealt with Italy; within two years of his\ntriumph he was turning his attention to Spain, still only\npartly conquered.  We may picture that country, from its first\nappearance in history until this time we are speaking of, as in\nsomething like modern Balkan conditions.  Hamilcar Barca, a great\nproud gentlman, the finest fruit of an ancient culture, had\nthought no scorn to marry a Spanish lady; as a king of Italy\nnowadays found it nowise beneath him to marry a Montenegrin\nprincess.  In either case it meant no unbridgable disparity in\nculture.  Among any of the Spanish people you should have found\nmen who would have been at home in Greek or Carthaginian\ndrawing-rooms, so to say; though the break-up of a forgotten\ncivilization there had left the country in fragments and small\nwarfares and disorder.  If you read the earliest Spanish accounts\nof their conquests in the new world, you cannot escape the\nfeeling that, no such long ages ago, Spain was in touch with\nAmerica; not so many centuries, say, before Hamilcar went to\nSpain.  Such accounts are no doubt unscientific; but may be the\nmore intuitional and true and indicative for that.  When Augustus\nturned his eyes on Spain, Basque and Celtic chieftains in\nthe northern mountains and along the shores of Biscay, the\nsemi-decivilized _membra disjecta_ of past civilizations, were\nalways disposed to make trouble for the Roman south. He could not\nhave left them alone, except at the cost of keeping huge garrisons\nalong the border, with perpetual alarms for the province. So he\nwent there in person, and began the work of conquering those\nmountains in B.C. 27.  It was a long and difficult war with\nhideous doings on both sides:  the Romans crucified the\nSpaniards, and the Spaniards jeered at them from their crosses.\nThis because Augustus was too sick to attend to things himself;\nhalf the time he was at death's door. Not till he could afford to\ntake Agrippa from work elsewhere was any real progress made.  But\nat one point we see his own hand strike into it; and the\nincident is very instructive.\n\nSpain had her Vercingetorix in one Corocotta, a Celt who kept all\nRoman efforts useless and all Roman commanders tantalized\nand nervous till a reward of fifty thousand dollars was offered\nfor his capture.  Augustus, recovered a little, was in camp;\nand things were going ill with the Spainiards.  One day an\nimportant-looking Celt walked in, and demanded to see the Caesar\nupon business connected with the taking of Corocotta.  Led into\nthe Caesar's presence, he was asked what he wanted.--\"Fifty-thousand\ndollars,\" said he; \"I am Corocotta.\"  Augustus laughed long and\nloud; shook hands with him  heartily; paid him the money down,\nand gave him his liberty into the bargain; whereafter soon this\n_Quijote espanol_ married a Roman wife, and as Caius Julius\nCorocottus \"lived happily ever after.\"  It was a change from the\n'generous' Julius' treatment of Vercingetorix; but that Rome\nprofited by the precedent thus established, we may judge from\nClaudius' treatment of the third Celtic hero who fell into Roman\nhands,--Caradoc of Wales.\n\nSpain was only one of the many places where the frontier had to\nbe settled.  The empire was a nebulous affair; you could not say\nwhere it began and ended; and to bring all out of this\nnebulosity was one of the labors that awaited Augustus.  Even a\nMessenger of the Gods is limited by the conditions he finds in\nthe world; and is as great as his age will allow him to be.\nThough an absolute monarch, he cannot change human nature.  He\nmust concentrate on points attackable, and do what he can;\ndeflect currents in the right direction; above all, sow ideals,\nand wait upon the ministrations of time.  He must take conditions\nas he finds them, following the lines of least resistance.  It is\nnothing to him that posterity may ask, Why did he not change this\nor that?--and add he was no better than he should be.  At once to\nchange outer things and ways of feeling that have grown up\nthrough centuries is not difficult but impossible; and sometimes\nright courses, violently taken, are wronger than wrong ones.\nAugustus was a man of peace, if anybody ever was, yet (as in\nSpain) made many wars.  The result of this Spanish conquest was\nthat the Pax Romana came into Spain, bringing with it severa\ncenturies of high prosperity; the world-currents flowed in there\nat once and presently the light of Spain, such as it was at that\ntime, shone out over the Roman world.  Most of the great names of\nthe first century A.D. are those of Spaniards.\n\nAfter Spain, the most immediate frontier difficulty was with\nParthia; and there Augustus won his greatest victory.  At\nCarrhae the Parthians had routed Crassus and taken the Roman\neagles.  Rome was responsible for the provinces of Asia; and she\nwas nominally at war with Parthia,--so those provinces were in\ntrim to be overrun at any time.  The war, then, must be finished;\nand could Rome let it end on terms of a Parthian victory?  Where\n(it would be argued) would then be Roman prestige?  Where Roman\nauthority (a more real and valuable thing)?  Where the Pax\nRomana?--All very true and sound; everybody knew that for the\nwar to reopen was only a question of time;--Julius had been on\nthe point of marching east when the liberators killed him.  Yes,\nsaid Augustus; the matter must be attended to.  But Parthia was\na more of less civilized power:  a state at least with an\nestablished central government; and when you have that, there is\ngenerally the chance to settle things by tact instead of by\nfighting.  He found a means.  He opened negotiations, and brought\nall his tact to bear.  He was the chief, and a bridge again.\nOver which presently came Phraates king of Parthia, amenable and\nwell-disposed, to return the eagles and such of the prisoners as\nwere still alive.  Rome had won back her prestige; Parthia was\nundegraded; peace had won a victory that war would have spent\nitself in vain striving after.\n\nBut the frontier was enormous, and nowhere else marched with that\nof an established power.  There was no winning by peace along\nthat vast northern line from the Black to the North Sea, at the\nmost vital spot of which an unlucky physical geography makes\nItaly easily invadable and rather hard to defend.  Negotiations\nwould not work here, since there was no union to negotiate with;\nonly ebullient German tribes whose game was raiding and whose\ntrade plunder.  So the Alps had to be held, and a line drawn\nsomewhere north of them,--say along the Danube and the Rhine or\nElbe; a frontier that could be made safe with a minimum of\nsoldiers.  All this he did; excluding adventurous schemes:\nleaving Britain, for example, alone;--and was able to reduce the\narmy, before he died, to a mere handful of 140,000 men.--Varus\nand his lost legions?  Well; there is something to be said about\nthat.  Augustus was old, and the generals of the imperial family,\nwho knew their business, were engaged elsewhere.  And Germany was\nbeing governed by a good amiable soul by the name of Quintilius\nVarus, who persisted in treating the Germans as if they had been\ncivilized Italians.  And there was a young Cheruscan who had\nbecome a Roman citizen, spoke Latin fluently, and had always been\na good ally of Rome.  His Latin cognomen was Arminius; of which\nGerman patriotism has manufactured a highly improbable _Hermann._\nThe trustful Varus allowed himself to be lured by this seemingly\nso good friend into the wilds of the Saltus Teutobergiensis,\nwhere the whole power of the Cheruscans fell on and destroyed\nhim.  Then Tiberius came, and put the matter right; but there\nwas an ugly half hour of general panic first.  There had been no\nthought of adding Germany to the empire but only as to whether\nthe frontier should be on the Elbe or the Rhine.   Varus' defeat\ndecided Augustus for the Rhine.\n\nNow we come to what he did for Italy:  his second trump card, if\nwe call Spain his first.  Spain belonged to the future, Italy to\nthe present.  Her cycle was half over, and she had done nothing\n(in B.C. 29) very worthy with it.  First, an effort should be\nmade towards the purificatior of family-life:  a pretty hopeless\ntask, wherein at last he was forced to banish his own daughter\nfor notorious evil-living.  He made laws; and it may be supposed\nthat they had some effect _in time._  A literary impulse towards\nhigh dignified ideals, however, may be much more effective than\nlaws.  He had Maecenas with his circle of poets.\n\nOf course, poetry written to order, or upon imperial suggestion,\nis not likely to be of the highest creative kind.  But the high\ncreative forces were not flowing in that age; and we need not\nblame Augustan patronage for the limitations of Augustan\nliterature.  There is no time to argue the question; this much\nwe may say:  the two poets who worked with the emperor, and wrote\nunder his influence and sometimes at his suggestion, left work\nthat endures in world-literature; that is noble and beautiful,\nand still interesting.  I mean Virgil and Horace, of course.\nOvid, who was not under that influence, but of the faction\nopposed to it, wrote stuff that it would be much better were\nlost entirely.\n\nThe poet's was the best of pulpits, in those days:  poets stood\nmuch nearer the world then than for all the force of the\nprinting-press they can hope to do now.  So, if they could preach\nback its sacredness to the soil of Italy; if they could recreate\nthe ideal of the old agricultural life; something might be done\ntowards (among other things) checking the unwholesome crowding to\nthe capital,--as great an evil then as now.  Through Maecenas and\ndirectly Augustus influenced Virgil, the laureate; who responded\nwith his _Georgics._\n\nIt is a wonderful work.  Virgil was a practical farmer; he tells\nyou correctly what to do.  But he makes a work of art of it all\npoetical.  He suffuses his directions for stock-raising and\ncabbage-hoeing with the light of mythology and poetry.  He gives\nyou the Golden Age and Saturn's Italy, and makes the soil seem\nsacred.  He had the Gaul's feeling for grace and delicacy, and\nbrought in Celtic beauty to illumine the Italian world.  The\nlines are impregnated with the soul, the inner atmosphere, of the\nItalian land; full of touches such as that lovely\n\n     _Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba,_\n\nof violets and popies and narcissus; quinces and chestnut trees.\nAll that is of loveliness in rural (and sacred) Italy is there;\nthe landscapes are there, still beautiful; and the dignity and\nsimplicity of the old agricultural life.  It is a practial\ntreatise on farming; yet a living poem.\n\nHorace too played up for his friend Maecenas and for Caesar.\nMaecenas gave him that Sabine farm; and Horace made Latin songs\nto Greek meters about it:  made music that is a marvel to this\nday, so that it remains a place of pilgrimage, and you can still\nvisit, I believe, that\n\n     _fons Bandusia splendidiot vitro_\n\nthat he loved so well and set such sweet music to.  He give you\nthat country as Virgil gives you the valley vistas, not unfringed\nwith mystery, of Appenines and the north.  Between them, Italy is\nthere, as it had never been interpreted before.  If--in Virgil at\nleast--there is a direct practical purpose, there is no less\nmarvelous art and real vision of Nature.\n\nAnd then Augustus set both of them to singing the grandeur of\nRome; to making a new patriotism with their poetry; to\ninspiring Roman life with a sense of dignity,--a thing it needed\nsorely:  Virgil in the _Aeneid_ (where also, as we have seen, he\ntaught not a little Theosophy); Horace in the _Carmen Saeculare_\nand some of the great Odes of the third and fourth books.  The\nlilt of his lines is capable of ringing, and does so again and\nagain, into something very like the thrill and resonance of the\nGrand Manner.  Listen for it especially in the third and fourth\nlines of this:\n\n     _Quid debeas, o Roma, Neronibus\n     Testis Metaurum flumen et Hasdrubal\n          Devictus, et pulcher fugatis\n               Ille dies Latio tenebris._\n\nI am not concerned here to speak of his limitations; nor of\nVirgil's; who, in whatever respect the _Aeneid_ may fall short,\ndoes not fail to cry out in it to the Romans.  Remember the\ndignity and the high mission of Rome!--By all these means\nAugustus worked towards the raising of Roman ideals.\n\nTo that end he wrote, he studied, he made orations.  He searched\nthe Latin and Greek literatures; and any passage he came on that\nillumined life or tended towards upliftment, he would copy out\nand send to be read in the senate; or he would read it there\nhimself to the senators; or publish it as an edict.  There is a\ntouch of the Teacher in this, I think.  He has given Rome Peace;\nhe is master of the world, and now has grown old.  He enjoys no\nregal splendor, no pomp or retinue; his life is as that of any\nother senator, but simpler than most.  And his mind is ever\nbrooding over Rome, watchful for the ideas that may purify Roman\nlife and raise it to higher levels.\n\nMany things occurred to sadden his old age.  His best friends\nwere dead; Varus was lost with his legions; there had been the\ntragedy of Julia, whom he had loved well, and the deaths of the\nyoung princes, her sons.  He was a man of extraordinarily keen\naffections, and all these losses came home to him sorely.\n\nBut against every sadness he had his own achievements to set.\nThere was Rome in its marble visibly about him, that he had found\nin brick and in ruins; Rome now capable of centuries of life,\nthat had been, when he came to it, a ghastly putridity.\n\n\n\n\nXIX.  AN IMPERIAL SACRIFICE\n\n\n\"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's\"\n\n\nThis is the secret of writing:  look at the external things until\nyou see pulsating behind them the rhythm and beauty of the\nEternal.  Only look for it, and persist in your search, and\npresently the Universal will be revealed shining through the\nparticular, the sweep of everlasting Law through the little\nobject, and happenings of a day.\n\nCome to history with the same intent and method, and at last\nthings appear in their true light.  Here, too, as in a landscape,\nis the rhythm of the Eternal; here are the Basic Forms.  I doubt\nif the evidence of the annalists is ever worth much, unless\nthey had an eye to penetrate to these.  When one sees behind\nthe supposed fact narrated and the judgments pronounced the\nglimmering up of a basic form, one guesses one is dealing with a\ntrue historian.\n\nRecently I read a book called _The Tragedy of the Caesars,_ by\nthe novelist Baring-Gould; and in it the life of a certain man\npresented in a sense flatly contradictory to the views of\nnineteen centuries anent that man; but it seemed to me at last\nan account that had the rhythm, the basic form, showing through.\nSo in this lecture what I shall try to give you will be Mr.\nBaring-Gould's version of this man's life, with efforts of my\nown to go further and make quite clear the basic form.\n\nWhat does one mean by 'basic form'?  In truth it is hard to\ndefine.  Only, this world, that seems such a heterogeneous\nhelter-skelter of mournful promiscuities, is in fact the pattern\nthat flows from the loom of an Eternal Weaver:  a beautiful\npattern, with its rhythms and recurrences; there is no haphazard\nin it; it is not mechanical,--yet still flawless as the\nconfiguarations of a crystal or the petals of a perfect flower.\n\nThe name of the man we are to think of tonight has come down as a\nsynonym for infamy:  we imagine him a gloomy and bloodthirsty\ntyrant; a morose tiger enthroned; a gross sensualist;--well, I\nshall show you portraits of him, to see whether you can accept\nhim for that.  The truth is that aristocratic Rome, degenerate\nand frivolous, parrot-cried out against the supposed deneracy of\nthe imperial, and for the glories of the old republican, regime;\nfor the days when Romans were Romans, and 'virtuous.'  One came\nto them in whom the (real) ancient Roman honor more appeared than\nin another man in Italy, perhaps before or since;--and they could\nnot understand the honor, and hated the man.  They captured his\nname in a great net of lies; they breathed a huge fog of lies\nabout him, which come down to us as history.  Now to see whether\na plain tale may not put them down.\n\nOnce more take your stand, please, on the Mountain of the Gods:\nthe time, in or about the year 39 B.C.:--and thence try to\nenvisage the world as Those do who guide but are not involved in\nthe heats and dusts of it.  The Western World; in which\nRome, _caput mundi,_ was the only thing that counted.  _Caput\nmundi;_  but a kind of idiot head at that:  inchoate, without\nco-ordination; maggots scampering through what might have been\nthe brain; the life fled, and that great rebellion of the many\nlives which we call decay having taken its place.  And yet, it\nwas no true season for Rome to be dead; it was no natural\ndeath; not so much decent death at all as the death in life\nwe call madness.  For the Crest-Wave men were coming in; it\nwas the place where they should be.  The cycle of Italy had\nbegun, shall we say, in 94 B.C., and would end in 36 A.D.;\n--for convenience one must give figures, though one means\nonly approximations by them;--and not until after that latter\ndate would souls of any caliber cease to be incarnate in\nRoman bodies.  Before that time, then, the madness had to\nbe cured and Rome's mission had to be fulfilled.\n\nThe mission was, to homogenize the world.  That was the task the\nLaw had in mind for Rome; and it had to be done while the\nCrest-Wave remained in Italy and important egos were gathered\nin Rome.  Some half dozen strong souls, under the Gods' special\nagent Octavian, had gone in there to do the work; but the\nCrest-Wave had flowed into Rome when Rome was already vice-rotten;\nand how could she expect to run her whole thirteen decades a great\nand ruling people?  None of those strong souls could last out the\nwhole time.  Octavian himself, should he live to be eighty, would\ndie and not see the cycle finished:  twenty years of it would\nremain--to be filled by one worthy to succeed him, or how\nshould his work escape being undone?  The world must be made\nhomogensous, and Rome not its conqueror and cruel mistress, but\nits well-respected heart and agreed-on center; and all this must\nbe accomplished, and established firmly, before her cyclic\ngreatness had gone elsewhere:--that is, before 37 A.D.\n\nThe Republic, as we have seen, had had its method of ruling the\nprovinces:  it was to send out young profligates to fleece and\nexploit them, and make them hate Rome. This must be changed, and\na habit formed of ruling for the benefit of the subject peoples.\nTwo or three generations of provincials must have grown up in\nlove with Rome before the end of the cycle, or the Empire would\nthen inevitably break.   By 37 A.D., the Crest-Wave would have\nleft Italy, and would be centering in Spain.  Spain, hating Rome,\nwould shake off the Roman yoke; she would have the men to do\nit;--and the rest of the world would follow suit.  Even if Spain\nshould set herself to the Gods' work of union-making, what path\nshould she take towards it?  Only that of conquest would be open;\nand how should she hope to conquer, and then wipe out the evil\ntraces of her conquering, and create a homogeneity, all within\nher possible cycle of thirteen decades?  Rome's great opportunity\ncame, simply because Rome had done the conquering before ever the\nCrest-Wave struck her; in days when the Crest-Wave was hardly in\nEurope at all.  Even so, it would be a wonder if all could be\nfinished in the few years that remained.\n\nBy  Rome it never could have been done at all:  it was the office\nof a Man, not of a state or nation.  The Man who should do it,\nmust do it from Rome:  and Rome had first to be put into such\ncondition as to be capable of being used.  It devolved upon\nAugustus to do that first, or his greater work would be\nimpossible.  He had to win Rome to acquiescence in himself as\nPrinceps.  So his primary need was a personality of infinite\ntact; and _that_ he possessed.  He was the kind of man everybody\ncould like; that put everyone at ease; that was friendly and\nfamiliar in all sorts of society; so he could make that\ntreacherous quagmire Rome stable enough to be his _pied-a-terre._\nThat done, he could stretch out his arms thence to the provinces,\nand begin to weld them into unity.  For this was the second\npart and real aim of his work:  to rouse up in the Empire a\ncentripetalism, with Rome for center, before centripetalism, in\nRome itself, should have given place to the centrifugal forces of\nnational death.\n\nRome ruled the world, and Augustus Rome, by right of conquest;\nand that is the most precarious right of all, and must always\nvanish with a change in   the cycles.  He had to, and did,\ntransmute it into a stable right:  first with respect to his own\nstanding in Rome,--which might be done, with _tact_ for weapon,--\nin a few years; then with respect to Rome's standing in the\nworld,--which could not be done in less than a couple of\nlifetimes, and with the best of good government as means.   If\nthe work should be interrupted too early it would all fall to\npieces.  So then he must have one successor at least, a soul of\nstanding equal to his own:  one that could live and reign until\n37 A.D.  Let the Empire until that year be ruled continuously\nfrom Rome in such a manner as to rouse up Roman--that is, World,\n--patriotism in all its provinces, and the appearance of the\nCrest-Wave in a new center would not be the signal for a new\nbreak-up of the world. The problem was, then, to find the man\nable to do this.\n\nThe child:  for he must not be a man yet.  And seeing what was at\nstake, he must be better equipped than Augustus:  he must be\ntrained from childhood by Augustus.  Because he was to work in\nthe midst of much more difficult conditions.  Augustus had real\nmen to help him:  the successor probably would have none.  When\nthe Crest-Wave struck it, Rome was already mean and corrupt and\ndegenerate.  Augustus, not without good human aid, might hope to\nknock it into some kind of decency during the apex-time of the\nthirteen decades.  His reign would fall, roughly, in the third\nquarter of the cycle, which is the best time therein; but his\nsuccessor would have to hold out through the last quarter, which\nis the very worst.  The Crest-Wave would then be passing from\nItaly:  Rome would be becoming ever a harder place for a Real Man\nto live and work in.  Meaner and meaner egos would be sneaking\ninto incarnation; decent gentlemanly souls would be growing ever\nmore scarce.  By 'mean egos' I intend such as are burdened with\ningrate personalities:  creatures on whom sensuality has done its\ndisintegrating work; whose best pleasure is to exempt themselves\nfrom any sense of degradation caused by fawning on the one strong\nenough to be their master, by tearing down as they may his work\nand reputation, circulating lies about him, tormenting him in\nevery indirect way they can.  Among such as these, and probably\nquite lonely among the, the successor of Augustus would lave to\nlive, fulfilling Heaven's work in spite of them.  Where to find a\nSoul capable, or who would dare undertake the venture?  Well;\nsince it was to be done, and for the Gods,--no doubt the Gods\nwould have sent their qualified man into incarnation.\n\nIn B.C. 39 Octavian proclaimed a general amnesty; and among\nthese who profited by it was a certain member of the Claudian\ngens,--one of that Nero family to which Rome owed so much--\n\n     _Testis Metaurum flumen et Hasdrubal\n     Devictus_\n\nHe had been a friend of Caesar's and an enemy of Octavian's; and\nhad been spending his time recently in fleeing from place to\nplace in much peril; as had also his wife, aged eighteen, and\ntheir three-year-old son.  On one occasion this lady was hurrying\nby night through a forest, and the forest took fire; she\nescaped, but not until the heat singed the cloak in which the\nbaby boy in her arms was wrapped.  Now they returned, and\nsettled in their house on the Palatine not far from the house\nof Octavian.\n\nIn Rome at that time marriage was not a binding institution.  To\njudge by the lives of those prominent enough to come into\nhistory, you simply married and divorced a wife whenever\nconvenient.  Octavian some time before had married Scribonia, to\npatch up an alliance with her kins-man Sextus Pompey, then\nprominent on the high seas in the role--I think the phrase is Mr.\nStobart's--of gentleman-pirate. As she was much older than\nhimself, and they had nothing in common, it occurred to no one\nthat, now the utility of the match had passed, he would not\nfollow the usual custom and divorce her.  He met Livia, the wife\nof this Tiberius Claudius Nero, and duly did divorce Livia.  A\nnew wedding followed, in which Claudius Nero acted the part of\nfather to his ex-wife, and gave her away to Octavian.  It all\nsounds very disgraceful; but this must be said:  the great\nAugustus could never have done his great work so greatly had he\nnot had at his side the gracious figure of the empress Livia,--\nduring the fifty-two years that remained to him his serenest\ncounselor and closest friend.\n\nAnd then--there was the boy:  I believe the most important\nelement in the transaction.\n\nHis father died soon afterwards, and he came to live in the\npalace, under the care of his mother,--and of Augustus; who had\nnow within his own family circle the two egos with whom he was\nmost nearly concerned, and without whom his work would have been\nimpossible.  So I think we may put aside the idea that the\nmarriage with Livia was an 'affair of the heart,' as they call\nit:--a matter of personal and passional atraction.  He was guided\nto it, as always, by his _Genius,_ and followed the promptings of\nthe Gods.\n\nBut,--Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.  The divorced\nScribonia never forgave Augustus.  She became the center of a\nfaction in society that hated him, hated Livia, loathed and\ndetested the whole Claudian line.  There must have been bad blood\nin Scribonia.  Her daughter Julia became profligate.  Of Julia's\nfive children, Agrippa Postumus went mad through his vices;\nJulia inherited her mother's tendencies, and came to a like end.\nAgrippina, a bitter and violent woman, became the evil genius of\nthe next reign.  Of this Agrippina's children, Drusus and\nCaligula went mad and her daughter was the mother of the madman\nNero.  To me the record suggest this:  that the marriage with,\nnot the divorce of, Scribonia was a grave mistake on the part of\nOctavian; bringing down four generations of terible karma.  He\nwas afloat in dangerous seas at that time, and a mere boy to take\narms against them:  did he, trusting in material alliances and\nthe aid of Sextus Pirate, forget for once to trust in his\n_Genius_ within?  We have seen how the lines of pain became\ndeeply graven on his face during the years that followed Caesar's\ndeath.  A high soul, incarnating, must take many risks; and\nbefore it has found itself and tamed the new personality, may\nhave sown griefs for itself to be reaped through many lives.  The\ndescendants of Augustus and Scribonia were the bane of Augustus\nand of Rome.  But Livia was his good star, and always added to\nhis peace.\n\nBut now, back to the household on the Palatine, in the thirties B.C.\n\nJulia (Scribonia's daughter), pert, witty, bold, and daring, was\nthe darling of her father, whom she knew well how to amuse.\nDrusus, the younger son of Livia and Claudius Nero, was a bold\nhandsome boy of winning manners and fine promise, generally\nnoticed and loved.  To these two you may say Augustus stood in\nonly human relations: the loving, careful, and _jolly_ father,\nsharing in all their games and merriment.  He always liked\nplaying with children: as emperor, would often stop in his walks\nthrough the streets to join in a game with the street-boys.  But\nwith Livia's elder son, Tiberius, he was different.  Tiberius had\nno charm of manner:  Drusus his brother quite put him in the\nshade.  He carried with him the scars of his babyhood's perilous\nadventures, and the terror of that unremembered night of fire.\nHe was desperately shy and sensitive; awkward in company;\nreserved, timid, retiring, silent.  Within the nature so pent up\nwere tense feelings; you would say ungovernable, only that he\nalways did govern them.  He went unnoticed; Drusus was the pet\nof all; under such conditions how much harmony as a rule exists\nbetween two brothers?  But Tiberius loved Drusus with his whole\nheart; his thoughts knew no color of jealousy; unusual harmony\nwas between them until Drusus died.--The world said Augustus\ndisliked the boy:  we shall see on what appearances that opinion\nwas based.  But Tiberius, then and ever afterwards, held for\nAugustus a feeling deeper and stronger than human or filial\naffection:  it was that, with the added reverence of a disciple\nfor his Teacher.--You shall find these intense feelings sometimes\nin children of his stamp; though truly children of the stamp of\nTiberius are rare enough; for with all his tenderness, his\nover-sensitiveness and timidity, put him to some task, whisper\nto him _Duty!_--and the little Tiberius is another child altogether:\nunflinching, silent, determined, pertinacious, ready to die\nrather than give in before the thing is most whole-souledly done.\n\nAugustus, merriest and most genial of men, never treated him as\nhe did Julia and Drusus:  there were no games and rompings with\nTiberius.  Let this grave child come into the room, and all\nended; as if the Princeps were a school-boy caught at it by some\nstern prowling schoolmaster.  Indeed, it was common talk that\nAugustus, until the last years of his life, never smiled in\nTiberius' presence; that his smile died always on his stepson's\nentry; the joke begun went unfinished; he became suddenly grave\nand restrained;--as, I say, in the presence of a soul not to be\ntreated with levity, but always upon a considered plan.\n\nThe children grew up, and people began to talk of a successorship\nto Augustus in the Principate.  It would be, of course, through\nJulia, his daughter.  He married her to Marcellus, aged\nseventeen, his sister Octavia's son, who he adopted.  Marcellus\nand Julia, then, would succeed him; no one thought of retiring\nTiberius.  Marcellus, however, died in a couple of years; and\nfolk wondered who would step into his place.  Augustus gave Julia\nto Vipsanius Agrippa, the man who had won so many campaigns for\nhim.  Agrippa was as old as the Princeps, but of much stronger\nconstitution; and so, likely to outlive him perhaps a long\nwhile.  Very appropriate, said Rome:  Agrippa will reign next:\nan excellent fellow.  No one thought of shy Tiberius.--Agrippa,\nby the way, was a strong man and a strict disciplinarian,--with\nsoldiers, at any rate:  it might be hoped also with wives.  It\nwas just as well for lady Julia to be under a firm hand.\n\nTen years later Agrippa died, and the heirship presumptive passed\nto his two eldest children by Julia:  the princes Caius and\nLucius.  Augustus adopted them in due course.  Heirship\npresumptive means here, that they were the ones Rome presumed\nwould be the heirs:  a presumption which Augustus, without being\ntoo definite, encouraged.  The Initiate Leaders and Teachers of\nthe world do not, as a rule, as far as one can judge, advertise\nwell beforehand the identity of their successors.--As for\nTiberius;--why, said Rome, his stepfather does not even like\nhim.  Drusus, now, and _his_ children,--ah, that might be\na possibility.\n\nFor the marriages of the two brothers told a tale.  Drusus had\nmarried into the sacred Julian line:  a daughter of Octavia and\nMark Anthony; his son Germanicaus was thus a grand-nephew of\nAugustus, and a very great pet.  But Tiberius had made a\nlove-match, with a mere daughter of Agrippa by some former wife:\nan alliance that could not advance him in any way.  Her name was\nVipsania; the whole intensity of his pent-up nature went into\nhis feeling for her; he was remarkably happily married;--that\nis, for the human, the tender, sensitive, and affectionate\nside of him.\n\nMeanwhile both brothers had proved their worth.  At twenty-two,\nTiberius set up a kind in Armenia, and managed for Augustus the\nParthian affair, whereby the standards of Crassus were returned.\nThere were Swiss and German campaigns:  in which Drusus was\nrather put where he might shine,--and he did shine;--and Tiberius\na little in the shade.  But Drusus in Germany fell from his\nhorse, and died of his injuries; and then Tiberius was without\nquestion the first general of his age, and ablest man under the\nPrinceps.  As a soldier he was exceedingly careful of the welfare\nof his men; cautious in his strategy, yet bold; reserved; he\nmade his own plans, and saw personally to their carrying out;--\nabove all, he never made mistakes and never lost a battle.  His\nnatural shyness and timidity and awkwardness vanished as soon as\nthere was work to be done: in camp, or on the battlefield, he was\na very different man from the shy Tiberius of Roman society.\n\nGossip left his name untouched.  It took advantage of Augustus;\nnatural _bonhomie,_ and whispered tales agains _him_ galore:\neven said that Livia retained her hold on him by taking his\nindiscretions discreetly;--which is as much as to say that an\nutterly corrupt society judged that great man by its own corrupt\nstandards.  But Tiberius was too austere; his life chilled even\nRoman gossip into silence.  There was also his patent devotion to\nVipsania..... You could only sneer at him, if at all, for\nlack of spirit.\n\nHe had, then, great and magnificent qualities; but the scars of\nhis babyhood peril remained.  There was that timid and clinging\ndisposition; that over-sensitiveness that came out when he was\naway from camp, or without immediate business to transact, or in\nany society but that of philosophers and occultists:--for we do\nknow that he was a student of Occult Philosophy.  He had grand\nqualities; but felt, beneath his reserve, much too strongly;\nhad a heart too full of pent-up human affections.  But it\nis written:\n\n     _\"Before the Soul can stand in the prescence of the Masters,\nits feet must be washed in the blood of the heart.\"_\n\nIt devolved upon his Teacher to break that heart for him; so\nthat he might stand in the presence of the Masters.\n\nAgrippa had died; and for Julia's sake it was wise and better to\nprovide her with a husband.  Augustus hesitated long before he\ndared take the tremendous step he did:  as one doubtful whether\nit would accomplish what he hoped, or simply kill at once the\ndelicate psychic organism to be affected by it.  Then he struck,\n--hurled the bolt.  Let Tiberius put away Vipsania and marry Julia.\n\nPut away that adored Vipsania:--marry that Julia,--whom every\nsingle instinct in his nature abhorred!  Incompatible:--that is\nthe very least and mildest thing you can say about it;--but he\nmust say nothing, for he is speaking to her father.  He resists a\nlong time, in deep anguish; but there is one word that for\nTiberius was ever a clarion call to his soul.\n\nWhat, cries he, is this terrible thing you demand of me?--and his\nTeacher answers:  _Duty._  Duty to Rome, that the Julian and\nClaudian factions may be united; duty to the empire, that my\nsuccessors, Caius and Lucius, may have, after I am gone, a strong\nman for their guardian.--You will note that, if you please.\nAugustus had just adopted these two sons of Julias; they were,\nostensibly, to be his successors; there was no bait for ambition\nin this sacrifice Tiberius was called on to make; he would not\nsucceed to the Principate; the marriage would not help him;\nthere was to be nothing in it for him but pure pain.  In the name\nof duty he was called on to make a holocaust of himself.\n\nHe did it; and the feet of his soul were indeed washed in the\nblood of his heart.  He said no word; he divorced Vipsania and\nexplained nothing.  But for months afterwards, if he should\nchance to meet her, or see her in the street far off, he could\nnot hide the fact that his eyes filled with tears.--Then Rome in\nits own kindly way took upon itself the duty or pleasure of\nhelping him out a little:  gossip got to work to soothe the ache\nof his wound.  \"Vipasania,\" said gossip;--\"you are well rid of\nher; she was far from being all that you thought her.\"  Probably\nhe believed nothing of it; but the bitterness lay in its being\nsaid.  A shy man is never popular.  His shyness passes for pride,\nand people hate him for it.  Tiberius was very shy.  So society\nwas always anxious to take down his pride a little.  The truth\nwas, he was humble to the verge of self-distrust.\n\nHe did his best for Julia:  lived under the same roof with her\nfor a few agonized months, and discovered what everyone knew or\nsuspected about her.  The cup of his grief was now quite full;\nand indeed, worse things a man could hardly suffer.  Austere,\nreserved, and self-controlled as he was, at sight of Vipsania he\ncould not hide his tears.  But it is written:\n\n     _\"Before the eyes can see, they must become incapable of\ntears.\"_\n\n--He was the butt of Roman gossip:  in all rancorous mouths\nbecause of the loved Vipsania; in all tattling mouths because of\nthe loathed Julia; laughed at on both accounts; sympathized\nwith by nobody; hearing all whispers, and fearfully sensitive to\nthem.  But\n\n     _\"Before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness.\"_\n\nThe storm was upon him; the silence was ahead; he was rocked\nand shaken and stunned by the earthquakes and thunders of\nInitiation:  when a man has to be hopeless, and battered, and\nstripped of all things:  a naked soul afflicted with fiery rains\nand torments; and to have no pride to back him; and no ambition\nto back him; and no prospect before him at all, save such as can\nbe seen with the it may be unopened eyes of faith.  This is the\nway Tiberius endured his trials:--\n\nAll Rome knew what Julia was, except Augustus.  So it is said;\nand perhaps truly; for here comes in the mystery of human\nduality:  a thing hard enough to understand in ourselves, that\nare common humanity; how much harder the variety that appears in\none such as Augustus!  You may say, He must have known.  Well,\nthere was the Adept Soul; that, I doubt not, would have known.\nBut perhaps it is that those who have all knowledge at their beck\nand call, have the power to know or not know what they will?--to\nknow what shall help, not to know what shall hinder their work?\nJulia was not to be saved:  was, probably, tainted with madness\nlike so many of her descendants:--then what the Adept Soul could\nnot forfend, why would the human personality, the warn-hearted\nfather, be aware of?   Had that last known, how should he escape\nbeing bowed down with grief:  then in those years when all his\npowers and energies were needed?  Octavian had gone through storm\nand silence long since:  in the days of the Triumvirate, and his\nenforced partnership in its nefarious deeds;--now his personal\nmind and his hands were needed to guide the Empire:  and needed\nclear and untrammeled with grief... Until Tiberius should be\nready; at least until Tiberius.... So I imagine it possible that\nthe soul of Augustus kept from its personality that wounding\nknowledge about Julia.\n\nTiberius was not the one to interfere with its purposes.  Why did\nhe not get a divorce?  The remedy was clear and easy; and he\nwould have ceased to be the laughing stock of Rome.  He did not\nget a divorce; or try to; he said no word; he would not\nlighten his own load by sharing it with the Teacher he loved.  He\nwould not wound that Teacher to save himself pain or shame.\nAugustus had made severe laws for punishing such offenses as\nJulia's; and--well, Tiberius would bear his griefs alone.  No\nsound escaped him.\n\nBut, as no effort of his could help or save her, live with Julia,\nor in Rome, he could not.  His health broke down; he threw up\nall offices, and begged leave to retire to Rhodes.  Augustus was\n(apparently) quite unsympathetic; withheld the permission until\n(they say) Tiberius had starved himself for four days to show it\nwas go or die with him.  And no, he would not take Julia; and he\nwould give no reason for not taking her.  Well; what was\nAugustus to do, having to keep up human appearances, and suit his\naction to the probabilities?  What, but appear put out, insulted,\nangry?  Estrangement followed; and Tiberius went in (apparent)\ndisgrace.  I find the explanation once more in _Light on the\nPath;_  thus--\n\n\"In the early state in which a man is entering upon the silence\nhe loses knowledge of his friends, of his lovers, of all\nwho have been near and dear to him:  _and also loses sight of\nhis teachers._\"\n\nSo in this case.  \"Scarce one passes through,\" we read, \"without\nbitter complaint.\"  But I think Tiberius did.\n\nHow else to explain the incident I cannot guess.  Or indeed, his\nwhole life.  Tacitus' account does not hang together at all; the\ncontraditions trip each other up, and any mud is good enough to\nfling.  Mr. Baring-Gould's version goes far towards truth; but\nthe well is deep for his tackle, and only esotericism, I think,\ncan bring up the clear water.  Whether Augustus knew all\npersonally, or was acting simply on the promptings of his inner\nnature, or of Those who stoood behind him,--he took the course,\nit seems to me, which as an Occult Teacher he was bound to take.\nHis conduct was framed in any case to meet the needs of his\ndisciple's initiation.  He, for the Law, had to break that\ndisciple's outer life; and then send him lonely into the silence\nto find the greater life within.  Truly these waters are deep;\nand one may be guessing with the utmost presumption.  But hear\n_Light on the Path_ again; and judge whether the picture that\nemerges is or is not consistent.  It says:\n\n\"Your teacher or your predecessor, may hold your hand in his, and\ngive you the utmost sympathy the human heart is capable of.  But\nwhen the silence and the darkness come, you lose all knowledge of\nhim:  you are alone, and he cannot help you; not because his\npower is gone, but because you have invoked your great enemy.\"\n\n--Tiberius was alone, and Augustus could not help him; and\nhe went off, apparently quite out of favor, to seven years\nof voluntary exile in Rhodes, there to don the robe of a\nphilosopher, and study philosophy and \"astrology,\" as they say.\nLet us put it, the Esoteric Wisdom; I think we may.\n\nThe truth about Julia could not be kept from Augustus forever.\nIt came to his ears at last; when his work was by so much nearer\ncompletion, and when Tiberius was by so much nearer his\nillumination.  The Princeps did his duty, thought it made an old\nman of him:  he banished Julia according to his own law.  Then it\nwas the wronged husband who stepped in and interceded; who wrote\npleading letters to his stepfatehr, imploring him to have mercy\non the erring woman:  to lighten her punishment; to let her\nmother, at least, be with her in her exile.  He knew well what\ntales Julia had been telling her father about him; and how\nAugustus had seemed to believe them; but \"a courageous endurance\nof personal injustice\" is demanded of the disciple; and very\nsurely it was found in him.  Rome heard of his intercession,\nand sneered at him for his weak-spiritedness; as kindly\nletter-writers failed not to let him know.\n\n     \"Look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows\nthe storm, not till then.\"\n\nThe flower bloomed in this case during those seven years at\nRhodes; then Tiberius was fit to return.  Outer events shaped\nthemseves to fit inner needs and qualifications:  here now at\nlast was the Man who was to succeed Augustus, duly and truly\nprepared, worthy and well-qualified:  initiated, and ready to be\nnamed before the world Heir to the Principate.  Within a few\nmonths of each other Caius and Lucius, the hitherto supposed\nsuccessors designate, died; their brother Agrippa Postumus was\nalready showing signs of incipient madness.  True, there\nwere many of the Julian line still alive and available, were\nAugustus (as had been thought) bent on making Julian blood the\nqualification necessary:  there was Germanicus, married to\nAgrippina; he the son of Drusus and Antonia, Octavia's\ndaughter; she the daughter of Julia, and so grand-daughter of\nAugustus himself:  there were these two with their several\nchildren.  But all else might wait upon the fact that Tiberius,\nthe real man, was now ready.  The Princeps adopted him, and no\none was left to doubt who was to be the successor.  The happiest\nyears in Tiberius's life began:  he had at last the full,\nunreserved, and undisguised friendship of his Teacher.  His\nportarait-busts taken at this period show for the fist and only\ntime a faint smile on his gravely beautiful face.\n\nAlso he was given plenty of work.  His great German campaigns\nfollowed quickly; and the quelling of the Pannanian insurrection\nthat called him back from the Rhine; and Varus' defeat while\nTiberius was in Pannonia; and Tiberius's triumphant saving of\nthe situation.  It was then, when the frontier was broken and all\nthe world aquake with alarm, that he consulted his generals; the\nonly time he ever did so.  Says Velleius Paterculus, who served\nuner him:--\"There was no ostentation in his conduct; it was\nmarked by solid worth, practicality, humaneness.  He took as much\ncare of any one of us who happened to be sick, as if that one's\nhealth were the main object of his concern.\"  Ambulances, he\ncontinues, were always in attendance, with a medical staff, warm\nbaths, suitable food, etc., for the sick.  \"The general often\nadmonished, rarely punished; taking a middle part, dissembling\nhis knowledge of most faults, and preventing the commission of\nothers.... He preferred the approval of his own conscience to the\nacquisition of renown.\"\n\nHe returned to Rome in triumph in the autumn of A.D. 12; and\ndismissed his chief captives with present, instead of butchering\nthem in the fine old Roman way.  He was at the height of his\nfame; undeniably Rome's savior, and surely to be Princeps on his\nTeacher's death.  Augustus, in letters that remain, calls him\n\"the only strength and stay of the Empire.\"  \"All who were with\nyou,\" says he, \"admit that this verse suits you:\"\n\n     'One man by vigilance has restored the state.'\n\nWhenever anything happens that requires more than ordinary\nconsideration, or when I am out of humor, then, by Hercules, I\nlong for the presence of my dear Tiberius; and Homer's lines\nrise in my mind:\n\n     'Bold from his prudence, I could e'en aspire\n     To dare with him the burning rage of fire.'\n\n\"When I hear that you are worn out with incessant fatigue, the\nGods confound me  if I am not all in a quake.  So I entreat you\nto spare yourself, lest, should we hear of your being ill, the\nnews prove fatal to your mother and myself, and the Roman people\nbe alarmed for the safety of the Empire.  I pray heaven to\npreserve you for us, and bless you with health now and ever,--if\nthe Gods care a rush for the Roman people.  ....Farewell, my\ndearest Tiberius; may good success attend you, you best of all\ngenerals, in all that you undertake for me and for the Muses.\"\n\nTwo years later Augustus died, and Tiberius became emperor; and\nthe persecution broke out that was not to end till his death.\nLet us get the whole situation firmly in mind.  There was that\nclique in high society of men who hated the Principate because it\nhad robbed them of the spoils of power.  It gathered first round\nScribonia, because she hated Augustus for divorcing her; then\nround Julia, because she was living in open contempt of the\nprinciples her father stood for.  Its chief bugbear of all\nwas Tiberius, because he was the living embodiment of those\nprinciples; and because Julia, the witty and brilliant, hated\nhim above all things and made him in the salons the butt for her\nshafts.  Its darling poet was Ovid; whose poetic mission was, in\nMr. Stobart's phrase, \"to gild uncleannes with charm.\"  Presently\nAugustus sent him into exile:  whiner over his own hard lot.  But\nenough of unsavory him:  the clique remained and treasured his\ndoctrine.  When Caius and Lucius died, it failed not to whisper\nthat of course Tiberius had poisoned them; and during the next\ntwenty-five years you could hardly die, in Rome, without the\nclique's buzzing a like tale over your corpse.--A faction that\nlasted on, handing down its legends, until Suetonius and Tacitus\ntook them up and immortalized them; thus creating the Tiberius\nof popular belief and \"history,\" deceiving the world for\ntwenty centuries.\n\nThe Augustan system implied no tyranny; not even absolutism:--it\nwas through no fault of its founder, or of his successor, that\nthe constitutional side of it broke down.  Remember the divine\naim behind it all:   to weld the world into one.  So you must\nhave the provinces, the new ones that retaineed their national\nidentity, under Adept rule; there must be no monkeying by\nincompetents there.  Those provinces were, absolutely all in the\nhands of Caesar.  But in Rome, and Italy, and all quiet and\nlong-settled parts, the senate was to rule; and Augustus' effort,\nand especially Tiberius' effort, was to make it do so.  But by\nthis time, you may say, there was nothing resembling a human ego\nleft among the senators:  when the Manasaputra incarnated, these\nfellows had been elsewhere.  They simply could not rule.\nAugustus had had constantly to be intervening to pull them out of\nscrapes; to audit their accounts for them, because they could\nnot do the sums themselves; to send down men into their\nprovinces to put things right whenever they went wrong.  Tiberius\nwas much more loath to do this.  At times one almost suspects him\nof being at heart a republican, anxious to restore the Republic\nthe first moment it might be practicable.  That would be, when\nthe whole empire was one nation and some few souls to guide\nthings should have appeared.  At any rate (in his latter years)\nit must have seemed still possible that the Principate should\ncontinue:  there was absolutely no one to follow him in it.  So\nthe best thing was to leave as much as possible the senate's duty\nto the senate, that responsibility might be aroused in them.  For\nhimself, he gave his whole heart and mind to governing the\nprovinces of Caesar.  He went minutely into finances; and would\nhave his sheep sheared, not flayed. His eyes and hands were\neverywhere, to bring about the Brotherhood of Man.  There is,\nperhaps, evidence in the Christian Evangels:  where we see the\nJewish commonalty on excellent good terms with the Roman soldier,\nand Jesus consorting freindily with Tiberius' centurions and\ntax-gatherers; but the Jewish national leaders as the enemies of\nboth--of the Romans, and of the democratic Nazarene.  If this\nemperor's life had come down through provincial, and not\nmetropolitan, channels, we should have heard of him as the most\nbeneficent of men.  Indeed, Mr. Baring-Gould argues that among\nthe Christians a tradition came down of him as of one \"very near\nthe Kingdom of God.\"  It may be so; and such a view may even be\nthe reflexion of the Nazarene Master's own opinion as to\nTiberius.  At any rate, we must suppose that at that time the\nChristian Movement was still fairly pure:   its seat was in the\nprovinces, far from Rome; and its strength among humble people\nseeking to live the higher life.  But those who were interested\nto lie against Tiberius, and whose lies come down to us for\nhistory, were all metropolitans, and aristocrats, and apostles\nof degeneracy.  I do not mean to include Tacitus under the last\nhead; but he belonged to the party, and inherited the tradition.\n\n\nIt was on the provinces that Tiberius had his hand, not on the\nmetropolis.  He hoped the senators would do their duty, gave them\nevery chance to; he rather turned his eyes away from their\nsphere, and kept them fixed on his own.  We must understand this\nwell:  the histories give but accounts of Roman and home affairs;\nwith which, as they were outside his duty, Tiberius concerned\nhimself as little as he might.\n\nBut the senate's conception of duty-doing was this:   flatter the\nCaesar in public with all the ingenuity and rhetoric God or the\ndevil has given you; but for the sake of decency slander him in\nprivate, and so keep your self-respect.--I abased my soul to\nCaesar, I?  Yes, I know I licked his shoes in the senate house;\nbut that was merely camouflage.  At Agrippina's _at home_ I made\nup for it; was it not high-souled I who told that filthy story\nabout him?--which, (congratulate me!) I invented myself.  How\ndare you then accuse me of being small-spirited, or one to\nreverence any man soever?--So these maggots crawled and tumbled;\nuntill they brought down their own karma on their heads like the\nAssyrian in the poem, or a thousand of bricks.  Constitutuionalism\nbroke down, and tyranny came on awfully in its place; and those\nwho had not upheld the constitution suffered from the tyranny.\nBut it was not heroic Tiberius who was the tyrant.\n\nHe was unpopular with the crowd, because austere and taciturn;\nhe would not wear the pomps and tinsels, or swagger it in public\nto their taste.  He was too reserved; he was not a good mixer:\nif you fell on your knees to him, he simply recoiled in disgust.\nHe would not witness the gladiatorial games, with their sickening\nsenseless bloodshed; nor the plays at the theatre, with their\nimproprieties.  In these things he was an anomaly in his age, and\nfelt about them as would any humane gentleman today.  So it was\neasy for his enemies to work up popular feeling aginst him.\n\nAt the funeral of Augustus he had to read the oration.  A lump in\nhis throat prevented him getting through with it, and he handed\nthe paper to his son Drusus to finish.  \"Oh!\" cried his enemies\nthen and Tacitus after them, \"what dissimulation!  what rank\nhypocrisy!  when in reality he must be overjoyed to be in the\ndead man's shoes.\"  When that same Drusus (his dear son and sole\nhope) died some years later, he so far controlled his feelings\nthat none saw a muscle of his face moved by emotion while he read\nthe oration.  \"Oh!\" cried his enemies then and Tacitus after\nthem, \"what a cold unfeeling monster!\"  Tiberius, with an\nabsolute eye for reading men's thoughts, knew well what was being\nsaid on either occasion.\n\nWhen Augustus died, his one surviving grandson, Agrippa Postumus,\nwas mad and under restraint in the island of Planasia, near Elba.\nA plot was hatched to spirit him away to the Rhine, and have him\nthere proclaimed as against Tiberius by the legions.  One Clemens\nwas deputed to do this; but when Clemens reached Planasia, he\nfound Agrippa murdered.  Says Suetonius:\n\n\"It remained doubtful whether Augustus left the order (for the\nmurder) in his last moments, to prevent any public disturbance\nafter his death; or whether Livia issued it in the name of\nAugustus, or whether it was issued with or without the knowledge\nof Tiberius.\"--Tacitus in the right,--though truly this Agrippa\nPostumus was a peculiarly violent offensive idiot, and Augustus\nknew well what the anti-Claudian faction was capable of.  Nor can\none credit that gracious lady Livia with it; though it was she\nwho persuaded Tiberius to hush the thing up, and rescind his\norder for a public senatorial investigation.  For an order to\nthat effect he issued; and Tacitus, _more suo,_ puts it down to\nhis hypocrisy.  Tacitus' method with Tiberius is this:  all his\nacts of mercy are to be attributed to weak-spiritedness; all his\nacts of justice, to blood-tyranny; everything else to hypocrisy\nand dissimulation.\n\nNeither Augustus, nor yet Livia, then, had Agrippa killed; must\nwe credit it to Tiberius?  Less probably, I think, it was he than\neither of the others:  I can just imagine Augustus taking the\nresponsibility for the sake of Rome, but not Tiberius criminal\nfor his own sake.  Here is an explanation which incriminates\nneither:  it may seem far-fetched; but then many true things do.\nWe know how the children of darkness hate the Messengers of\nLight.  Tiberius stood for private and public morality; the\nJulian-republican clique for the opposite.  He stood for the\nnations welded into one, the centuries to be, and the high\npurposes of the Law.  They stood for anarchy, civil war, and the\nold spoils system.--Down him then! said they.  And how?--Fish up\nmad Postumus, and let's have a row with the Legions of the\nRhine.--Yes; that sounds pretty--for you who are not in the deep\nknow of the thing.  But how far do you think the Legions of the\nRhine are going to support this young revolting-habited madman\nagainst the first general of the age?  You are green; you are\ncrude, my friends;--but go to it; your plot shall do well. But\nwe, the cream and innermost of the party,--we have another.  Let\nthe madman be murdered,--and who shall be called the murderer?\n\nI believe they argued that way;--and very wisely; for Tiberius\nstill carries the odium of the murder of Agrippa Postumus.\n\nWhy did he allow himself to be dissuaded from the public\ninvestigation?  Was it weakness?  His perturbation when he heard\nof the murder, and his orders for the investigation, were natural\nenough.  One can perhaps understand Livia, shaken with the grief\nof her great bereavement, fearing the unknown, fearing scandal,\nfearing to take issue with the faction whose strength and\nbitterness she knew, pleading with her son to let the matter be.\nWas it weakness on his part, that he concurred?  This much must\nbe allowed:  Tiberius was always weak at self-defense.  Had he\ntaken prompt steps against his personal enemies, it might have\nbeen much better for him, in a way.  But then and always his eyes\nwere upon the performance of his duty; which he understood to be\nthe care of the empire, not the defense of himself.  We called\nAugustus the bridge; Tiberius was the shield.  He understood the\nbusiness of a shield to be, to take shafts, and make no noise\nabout it.  Proud he was; with that sublime pride that argues\nitself capable of standing all things, so that the thing it cares\nfor--which is not its own reputation--is unhurt.  You shall see.\nWe might call it unwisdom, if his work had suffered by it; but\nit was only his peace, his own name--and eventually his enemies--\nthat suffered.  He brought the world through.\n\nDetail by detail, Mr. Baring-Gould takes the incidents of his\nreign, and show how the plot was worked up against him, and every\nhappening, all his deeds and motives, colorless or finely\ncolored, given a coat of pitch.  We can only glance at one or two\npoints here:  his relations with Germanicus, and with Agrippina;\nthe rise and fall of Sejanus.\n\nGermanicus, his nephew, was fighting on the Rhine when Tiberius\ncame to the throne.  There was a mutiny; which Germanicus\nquelled with much loss of dignity and then with much bloodshed.\nTo cover the loss of dignity, he embarked on gay adventures\nagainst the Germans; and played the fool a little, losing some\nfew battles.  Tiberius, who understood German affairs better than\nany man living, wanted peace in that quarter; and recalled\nGermanicus; then, lest there should be any flavor of disgrace in\nthe recall, sent him on a mission to the East.  Your textbooks\nwill tell you he recalled him through jealousy of his brilliant\nexploits.  Germanicus being something flighty of disposition, the\nemperor sent with him on his new mission a rough old fellow by\nthe name of Calpurnius Piso to keep a weather eye open on him,\nand neutralize, as far as might be, extravagant actions.  The\nchoice, it must be said, was a bad one; for the two fought like\ncat and dog the better part of the time.  Then Germanicus died,\nsupposing that Piso had poisoned him; and Agrippina his wife\ncame home, an Ate shrieking for revenge.  She had exposed her\nhusband's naked body in the marketplace at Antioch, that all\nmight see he had been poisoned; which shows the kind of woman\nshe was.  Germanicus was given a huge funeral at Rome; he\nwas the darling of the mob, and the funeral was really a\ndemonstration against Tiberius.  then Piso was to be tried for\nthe murder:  a crabbed but honest old plebeian of good and\nancient family, who Tiberius knew well enough was innocent.\nThere were threats of mob violence if he should be acquitted;\nand the suggestion studiously sown that Piso, guilty, had been\nset on to the murder by the Princeps.  Tiberius, knowing the\npopular feeling, did not attend the funeral of his nephew.  It\nwas a mistake in policy, perhaps; but his experience had been\nunpleasant enought at the funeral of Augustus.  Tacitus says he\nstayed away fearing lest the public, peering into his face thus\nfrom close to, might see the marks of dissimulation in it, and\nrealize that his grief was hypocrisy.  How the devil did Tacitus\nknow?  Yet what he says comes down as gospel.\n\nThis sort of thing went on continually, and provided him a poor\natmosphere in which to do his great and important work.  As he\ngrew older, he retired more and more.  He trusted in his minister\nSejanus who had once heroically save his life:  an exceedingly\nable, but unfortunately also an exceedingly wicked man.  Sejanus\nbecame his link with Rome and the senate; and used that\nposition, and the senate's incompetence, to gather into his own\nhands a power practically absolute in home affairs.  Home\naffairs, be it always remembered, were what the Princeps expected\nthe senate to attend to:  their duty, under the constitution.\nInstead, however, they fawned on Sejanus _ad lib._  Sejanus\nmurdered Tiberius' son Drusus, and aspired to the hand of\nLivilla, his widow:  she was the daughter of Germanicus and\nAgrippina; and she certainly, and Agrippina probably, were\naccessories to the murder of Drusus.  For Agrippina was obsessed\nwith hatred for Tiberius:  with the idea that he had murdered her\nhusband, and with thirst for revenge.  Sejanus was thus in a fair\nway to the ends of his ambition:  to be named the successor to\nthe Principate.\n\nThen Tiberius found him out; and sent a message to a senate\nengaged in Sejanus-worship, demanding the punishment of the\nmurderers of Drusus.\n\nSejanus had built up his power by fostering the system of\ndelation.  There was no public prosecutor in the Roman system:\nwhen any wrong had been done, it was anyone's business to\nprosecute.  The end of education was rhetoric, that you might get\non in life.  The first step was to bring an accusation against\nsome public man, and support it with a mighty telling speech.  If\nyou succeeded, and killed your man,--why, then your name was\nmade.  On this system, with developments of his own, Sejanus had\nbuilt; had employed one half of Rome informing against the\nother.  It took time to bring about; but he had worked up by\ndegrees a state of things in which all went in terror of him;\nand the senate was eager perpetually to condemn any one he might\nrecommend for condemnation.  When Tiberius found him out, they\nlost their heads entirely, and simply tumbled over themselves\nin their anxiety to accuse, condemn, and execute each other.\nEveryone was being informed against as having been a friend of\nSejanus, and therefore an enemy of their dear Princeps; who was\naway at Capri attending to his duty; and whose ears, now Sejanus\nwas gone, they might hope to reach with flatteries.  You supped\nwith your friend overnight; did your best to diddle him into\nsaying something over the wine-cups;--then rose betimes in the\nmorning to accuse him of saying it:  only too often to find that\nhe, (traitorly wretch!) had risen half an hour earlier and\naccused you; so you missed your breakfast for nothing; and\ndined (we may hope) in a better world.  Thus during the last\nyears of the reign there was a Terror in Rome:  in the senate's\nsphere of influence; the senatorial class the sufferers and\ninflictors of the suffering.  Meanwhile Tiberius in his\nretirement was still at his duty; his hold on his provinces\nnever relaxed. When the condemned appealed to him, the records\nshow that in nearly every case their sentences were commuted.\nTiberius' enemies were punishing themselves; but the odium of it\nhas been fastened on Tiberius.  He might have interfered, you\nsay?--What! with Karma?  I doubt.\n\nHis sane, balanced, moderate character comes out in his own words\nagain and again:  he was a wonderful anomaly in that age.  Rome\nwas filled with slanders against him; and the fulsome senate\nimplored him to punish the slanderers.  \"We have not much time to\nspare,\" Tiberius answered; \"we need not involve ourselves in\nthis additional business.\"  \"If any man speaks ill of me, I shall\ntake care so to behave as to be able to give a good accound of my\nwords and acts, and so confound him.  If he speaks ill of me\nafter that, it will be time enough for me to think about hating\nhim.\"  Permission was asked to raise a temple to him in Spain;\nhe refused to grant it, saying that if every emperor was to be\nworshiped, the worship of Augustus would lose its meaning.  \"For\nmyself, a mere mortal, it is enough for me if I do my duties as a\nmortal; I am content if posterity recognises that... This is the\nonly temple I desire to have raised in my honor,--and this only\nin men's hearts.\"--the senate, in a spasm of flattery, offered to\nswear in advance to all his acts.  He forbade it, saying in\neffect that he was doing and proposed to do his best; but all\nthings human were liable to change, and he would not have them\nendorsing the future acts of one who by the mere failure of his\nfaculties might do wrong.\n\nIn those sayings, I think, you get the man:  perhaps a disciple\nonly, and never actually a Master; perhaps never absolutely sure\nof himself, but only of his capacity and determination to do his\nduty day by day:  his own duty, and not other men's:--never\nsetting himself on a level with his Teacher; or thinking himself\nable, of his own abilities, to run the world, as Augustus had had\nthe power and the mission to do,--but as probably no man might\nhave had the power to do in Tiberius' time;--and by virtue of\nthat faith, that high concentration on duty, carrying the world\n(but not Rome) through in spite of Rome, which had become then a\nthing incurable, nothing more than an infection and lamentable scab.\n\nHe left it altogether in his last years; its atmosphere and\nbitterness were too much for him.  Form the quiet at Capri he\ncontinued to rule his provinces until the end; ever hoping that\nif he did his duty, someone or some spirit might arise in the\nsenate to do theirs.  Tacitus explains his retirement--as Roman\nsociety had explained it when it happened,--thus:  Being then\nseventy-two years old, Tiberius, whose life up to that time had\nbeen irreproachable and untouched by gossip, went to Capri to\nhave freedom and privacy for orgies of personal vice.  But why\ndid he not stay at Rome for his orgies:  doing at Rome as the\nRomans did, and thereby perhaps earning a measure of popularity?\n\nOver the bridge Augustus, western humanity had made the crossing;\nbut on the further shore, there had to be a sacrifice to the\nFates.  Tiberius was the sacrifice.  And that sacrifice was not\nin vain.  We get one glimpse through provincial (and therefore\nundiseased) eyes of the empire he built up in the provinces.  It\nis from Philo Judaeus, a Jewish Theosophist of Alexandria, who\ncame to Rome in the reign of Caligula, Tiberius' successor.\n(Tiberius, it must be said, appointed no successor; there was\nnone for him to appoint.)  Caligula, says Philo,\n\n\"....succeeded to an empire that was well organized, tending\neverywhere to conceed--north, south, east, and west brought into\nfriendship; Greeks and barbarians routed, soldiers and civilians\nlinked together in the bonds of a happy peace.\"\n\nThat was the work of Tiberius.\n\nIn the Gospel narrative, Jesus is once made to allude to him;\nin the words quoted at the head of this paper:  \"Render unto\nCaesar\"--who was Tiberius--\"the things which are Caesar's\"  I\nthink it is about time it should be done:  that the wreath of\nhonor should at last be laid on the memory of this brave, just,\nsane, and merciful man; this silent duty-doer, who would speak\nno word in his own defense; this Agent of the Gods, who endured\nall those years of crucifixion, that he might build up the Unity\nof Mankind.\n\nSays Mr. Baring-Gould:\n\n\"In the galleries of Rome, of Naples, Florence, Paris, one sees\nthe beautiful face of Tiberius, with that intellectual brow and\nsensitive mouth, looking pleadingly at the passer-by, as though\nseeking for someone who would unlock the secret of his story and\nvindicate his much aspersed memory.\"\n\n\n\n\nXX.  CHINA AND ROME:  THE SEE-SAW\n\n\nThat mankind is a unit;--that the history of the world, however\nits waters divide,--whatever islands and deltas appear,--is one\nstream;--how ridiculous it is to study the story of one nation or\ngroup of nations, and leave the rest ignored, coming from your\nstudy with the impression (almost universal,) that all that\ncounts of the history of the world is the history of your own\nlittle corner of it:--these are some of the truths we should have\ngathered from our survey of the few centuries we have so far\nglanced at.  For take that sixth century B.C.  The world seems\nall well split up.  No one in China has ever heard of Greece; no\none in Italy of India.  What do the Greeks know about Northern\nEurope, or the Chinese about the Indians or Persians?--And yet we\nfind in Italy, in Persia, in India, in China, men appearing,--\nphenomenal births,--evolved far above their fellows:  six\nof them, to do the same work:  Founders of Religions, all\ncontemporary more or less; all presenting to the world and\nposterity the same high passwords and glorious countersigns.  Can\nyou conceive that their appearance, all in that one epoch, was a\nmatter of chance?  Is not some prearrangement suggested,--a\n_put-up job,_ as they say:  a definite plan formed, and a definite\nend aimed at?  Then by whom?  Can you escape the conclusion that,\nbehind all this welter of races and separate histories aloof or\nbarking at each other, there is yet somewhere, within the\nringfence of humankind, incarnate or excarnate, One Center from\nwhich all the threads and currents proceed, and all the great\nupward impulses are directed?\n\nThose Six Teachers came, and did their work; then two or three\ncenturies passed; time enough for the seeds they sowed to sprout\na little; and we come to another phase of history, a new region\nin time.  High spiritual truth has been ingeminated in all parts\nof the world where the ancient vehicle of truth-dissemination\n(the Mysteries) has declined; A Teacher, a Savior, has failed to\nappear only in the lands north and west of Italy, because there\namong the Celts, and there alone, the Mysteries are still\neffective:--so you may say the seeds of spirituality have been\nwell sown along a great belt stretching right across the Old\nWorld.  Why?  In preparation for what?  For something, we may\nsuppose.  Certainly for something: for example, for the next two\nthousand five hundred years,--the last quarter, I would say, of a\nten-millennium cycle, which was to end with a state of things\nin which every part of the world should be know to, and in\ncommunication with, every other part.  So now in the age that\nfollowed that of the Six Teachers, in preparation for that\ncoming time (our own), the attempt must be made to weld nations\ninto unities.  Nature and Law compel it:  whose direction now is\ntowards grand centripetalism, where before they had ordained\nheterogeneity and the scattering and aloofness of peoples.\n\nBut Those who sent out the great six Teachers have a hand to play\nhere:  they have to put the welding process through upon their\nown designs.  They start at the fountain of the cyclic impulses,\non the eastern rim of the world:  as soon as the cycle rises\nthere, they strike for the unification of nations.  Then they\nfollow the cycle westward.  To West Asia?--Nothing could be done\nthere, because this was the West Asian pralaya; those parts must\nwait for Mohammed.  In Europe then,--Greece?--No; its time and\nvigor had passed; and the Greeks are not a building people.\nThey must bide their time, then, till the wave hits Italy, and\nwhat they have done in China, attempt to do there.\n\nOnly, what they had done in China was a mere Ts'in Shi Hwangti,--\nbecause Laotse and Confucius had not failed spiritually to\nprepare the ground,--they must send forth Adept-souled Augustus\nand Tiberius to do,--if human wisdom and heroism could do it,--in\nItaly;--because Pythagoras' Movement had failed.\n\nThe Roman Empire was the European attempt at a China; China was\nthe Asiatic creation of a Rome.   We call the Asiatic creation,\n_China, Ts'in-a;_  it may surprise you to know that they called\nthe European attempt by the same name:  Ta _Ts'in,_ 'the Great\nTs'in.'  Put the words _Augustus Primus Romae_ into Chinese, and\nwithout much straining they might read, _Ta Ts'in Shi Hwangti._\nThe whole period of the Chinese manvantara is, from the\ntwo-forties B.C. to the twelve-sixties A.D., fifteen centuries.\nThe whole period of the Roman Empire, Western and Eastern, is from\nthe forties B.C. to the Fourteen-fifties A.D., fifteen centuries.\nThe first phase of the Chinese Empire, from Ts'in Shi Hwangti to\nthe fall of Han, lasted about 460 years; the Western Roman\nEmpire, from Pharsalus to the death of Honorius, lasted about as\nlong.  Both were the unifications of many peoples; both were\noverturned by barbarians from the north:  Teutons in the one\ncase, Tatars in the other.  But after that overturnment, China,\nunlike Rome, rose from her ashes many times, and still endures.\nThank the success of Confucius and Laotse; and blame the failure\nof Pythagoreanism, for that!\n\nBut come now; let me draw up their histories as it were in\nparallel columns, and you shall see the likeness clearly; you\nshall see also, presently, how prettily time and the laws that\ngovern human incarnation played battledore and shuttlecock with\nthe two:  what a game of see-saw went on between the East and West.\n\nFrom 300 to 250 B.C. there was an orgy of war in which old Feudal\nChina passed away forever, and from which Ts'in emerged Mistress\nof the world.  From 100 to 50 B. C. there was an orgy of war in\nwhich Republican Rome passed away forever, and out of which\nCaesar emerged World-Master. Caesar's triumph came just two\ncenturies after Ts'in Shi Hwangti's accession; Kublai Khan the\nTuranian, who smashed China, came just about as much before\nMohammed II the Turanian, who swept away the last remnant of Rome.\n\nIn the first cycles of the two there is a certain difference in\nprocedure.  In China, a dawn twilight of half a cycle, sixty-five\nyears, from the fall of Chow to the Revival of Literature under\nthe second Han, preceded the glorious age of the Western Hans.\nIn Rome, the literary currents were flowing for about a half-cycle\nbefore the accession of Augustus:  that half-cycle formed a\ndawn-twilight preceding the glories of the Augustan Age.\n\nIt was just when the reign of Han Wuti was drawing towards a\nsunset a little clouded,--you remember Ssema Ts'ien's strictures\nas to the national extravagance and its results,--that the\nCrest-Wave egos began to come in in Rome.  Cicero, eldest of\nthe lights of the great cycle of Latin literature, would have\nbeen about twenty when Han Wuti died in 86.  We counted the\nfirst \"day\" of the Hans as lasting from 194 (the Revival of\nthe Literature) to the death of Han Wuti's successor in 63;\nin which year, as we saw, Augustus was born.  During the next\ntwenty years the Crest-Wave was rolling more and more into\nRome:  where we get Julius Caesar's career of conquest;--\nit was a time filled with wine of restlessness, and, you may\nsay, therewith 'drunk and disorderly.'  Meanwhile (from 61\nto 49) Han Suenti the Just was reigning in China.  His \"Troops\nof justice\" became, after a while, accustomed to victory;\nbut in defensive wars.  Here it was a time of sanity and order,\nas contrasted with the disorder in Rome; of pause and reflexion\ncompared with the action and extravagance of the preceding\nChinese age.  It was Confucian and ethical; no longer Taoist\nand daringly imaginative; Confucianism began to consolidate\nits position as the state system.  So in England Puritan\nsobriety followed Elizabethanism.  Han Wuti let nothing impede\nthe ferment of his dreams:  Han Suenti retrenched, and walked\nquietly and firmly.  His virtues commanded the respect of Central\nAsia:  the Tatars brought him their disputes for arbitration,\nand all the regions west of the Caspian sent him tribute.\nChina forwent her restless and gigantic designs, and took\nto quietude and grave consideration.--So we may perhaps distribute\nthe characteristics of these two decades thus between the\nthree great centers of civilization:  in China, the stillness\nthat follows an apex time; in India, creation at its apex; in\nRome, the confusion caused by the first influx of Crest-Wave Souls.\n\nAs Octavian rose to power, the House of Han declined.  We hear of\na gorging Vitellius on the throne in the thirties; then of\nseveral puppets and infants during the last quarter of the\ncentury; in A.D. 1, of the dynasty overthrown by a usurper, Mang\nWang, who reigned until A.D. 25.  Thus the heyday of Augustan\nRome coincides with the darkest penumbra of China.  Then\nKwang-wuti, the eldest surviving Han prince, was reinstated; but\nuntil two years before the death of Tiberius, he had to spend his\ntime fighting rebels.  Now turn to Rome.\n\nWhile Han Kwang-wuti was battling his way towards the restitution\nof Han glories, Tiberius, last of the Roman Crest-Wave Souls, was\nholding out grimly for the Gods until the cycle should have been\ncompleted, and he could say that his and their work was done.\nFor sixty-five years he and his predecessor had been welding the\nempire into one:  now, that labor had been so far accomplished\nthat what dangerous times lay ahead could hardly imperil it.  So\nfar it had been a case of Initiate appointing Initiate to succeed\nhim:  Augustus, Tiberius;--but whom should Tiberius appoint?\nThere was no one.  The cycle was past, and for the present Rome\nwas dead; and on the brink of that unfortunate place to which\n(they say) the wicked dead must go.  Tiberius finally had had to\nbanish Agrippina, her mischief having become too importunate.\nYou remember she was the daughter of Julia and Agrippa, and\nGermanicus' widow.  His patience with her had been marvelous.\nOnce, at a public banquet, to do her honor he had picked a\nbeautiful apple from the dish, and handed it to her:  with a\nscowl and some ostentation, she gave it to the attendant behind\nher, as who should say:  'I know your designs; but you do not\npoison me this time'; all present understood her meaning well.\nOnce, when he met her in the palace, and she passed him with some\ncovert insult, he stopped, laid a hand on her shoulder, and said:\n\"My little woman, it is no hurt to you that you do not reign.\"\nBut his patience only encouraged her in her machinations; and at\nlast he was compelled to banish her.  Also to keep one of her\nsons in strictest confinement; of which the historians have made\ntheir for him discreditable tale:  the truth is, it was an heroic\neffort on his part to break the boy of his vices by keeping him\nunder close and continuous supervision.  But that is more easily\nsaid than done, sometimes; and this Drusus presently died a\nmadman.  He then took the youngest son of Agrippina to live with\nhim at Capri; that he, Tiberius, might personally do the best\nwith him that was to be done; for he foresaw that this youth\nCaius would succeed him; his own grandson, Tiberius Gemellus,\nbeing much younger.  He foresaw, too, that Caius, once on the\nthrone, would murder Gemellus; which also happened.  But there\nwas nothing to be done.  Had he named his grandson his successor,\na strong regent would have been needed to carry things through\nuntil that successor's majority, and to hold the Empire against\nthe partisans of Caius.  There was no such strong man in sight;\nso, what had to come, had to come.  _Apres lui le deluge:_\nTiberius knew that.  _Le deluge_ was the four years' terror of\nthe reign of Caius, known as Caligula; who, through no good will\nof his own, but simply by reason of his bloodthirsty mania, amply\nrevenged the wrongs done his pedecessor.  Karma put Caligula on\nthe throne to punish Rome.\n\nThe reign was too short, even if Caligula had troubled his head\nwith the provinces, for him to spoil the good work done in them\nduring the preceding half-cycle.  He did not so trouble his head;\nbeing too busy murdering the pillars of Roman society.  Then a\ngentleman who had been spending the afternoon publicly kissing\nhis slippers in the theater, experienced, as they say, a change\nof heart, and took thought to assassinate him on the way home;\nwhereupon the Praetorians, let loose and having a thoroughly good\ntime, happened on a poor old buffer of the royal house by the\nname of Claudius; and to show their sense of humor, made him\nemperor _tout de suite._  The senate took a high hand, and\nasserted _its_ right to make those appointments; but Claudius\nand the Praetorians thought otherwise; and the senate, after\nblustering, had to crawl.  They besought him to allow them the\nhonor of appointing him.--what a difference the mere turn of a\ncycle had made:  from Augustus bequeathing the Empire to\nTiberius, ablest man to ablest man, and all with senatoral\nratification; to the jocular appointment by undisciplined\nsoldiery of a sad old laughingstock to succeed a raging maniac.\n\nClaudius was a younger brother of Germanicus; therefore\nTiberius' nephew, Caligula's uncle, and a brother-in-law to\nAgrippina.  Mr. Baring-Gould says that somewhere deep in him was\na noble nature that had never had a chance: that the soul of him\nwas a jewel, set in the foolish lead of a most clownish\npersonality.  I do not know; certainly some great and fine\nthings came from him; but whether they were motions of his own\nsoul (if he had one), or whether the Gods for Rome's sake took\nadvantage of his quite negative being, and prompted it to their\nown purposes, who can say?--Sitting down, and keeping still, and\nsaying nothing, the old man could look rather fine, even\nmajestic; one saw traces in him of the Claudian family dignity\nand beauty.  But let hm walk a few paces, and you noted that his\nfeet dragged and his knees knocked together, and that he had a\npaunch; and let him get interested in a conversation, and you\nheard that he first spluttered, and then roared.  Physical\nwakness and mental backwardness had made him the despair of\nAugustus:  he was the fool of the family, kept in the background,\nand noticed by none.  Tiberius, in search of a successor, had\nnever thought of him; had rather let things go to mad Caligula.\nHe had never gone into society; never associated with men of his\nown rank; but chose his companions among small shopkeepers and\nthe 'Arries and 'Arriets of Rome, who, 'tickled to death' at\nhaving a member of the reigning family to hobnob with them in\ntheir back-parlors, would refrain from making fun of his\npeculiatities.  Caligula had enjoyed using him as a butt, and so\nhad spared his life.  He had never even learned to behave at\ntable:  and so, when he came to the throne, made a law that\ntable-manners should no longer be incumbent on a Roman gentleman.\nAll this is recorded of him; one would hardly believe it, but\nthat his portraits bear it out.*\n\n------\n* The accounts of Claudius and Nero are from _The Tragedy of the\nCaesars,_ by S. Baring-Gould.\n------\n\nFor all that he did well at first.  He made himself popular with\nthe mob, cracking poor homely jokes with them at which they\nlaughed uproariously.  He paid strict attention to business:\nmade some excellent laws; wisely extended Roman citizenship\namong the subject peoples; undertook and pushed through useful\npublic works.  Rome was without a decent harbor:  corn from Egypt\nhad to be transshipped at sea and brought up the Tiber in\nlighters; which resulted in much inconvenience, and sometimes\nshortage of food in the city.  Claudius went down to Ostia and\nlooked about him; and ordered a harbor dredged out and built\nthere on a large scale.  The best engineers of the day said it\nwas impossible to do, and would not pay if done.  But the old\nfool stuck to his views and made them get to work; and they\nfound it, though difficult and costly, quite practicable; and\nwhen finished, it solved the food problem triumphantly.  This is\nby way of example.--Poor old fool! it was said he never forgot a\nkindness, or remembered an injury.  He came soon, however, to be\nmanaged by various freedmen and rascals and wives; all to the\nend that aristocratic Rome should be well punished for its sins.\nOne day when he was presiding in the law courts, someone cried\nout that he was an old fool,--which was very true.--and threw a\nlarge book at him that cut his face badly,--which was very\nunkind.  And yet, all said, through him and through several fine\nand statesmanlike measures he put through, the work of Augustus\nand Tiberius in the empire at large was in many ways pushed\nforward:  he did well by the provinces and the subject races, and\ncarried on the grand homogenization of the world.\n\nHe reigned thirteen years; then came Nero.  If one accepts the\ntraditional view of him, it is not without evidence.  His\nportraits suggest one ensouled by some horrible elemental; one\nwith no human ego in him at all.  The accounts given of his moods\nand actions are quite credible in the light of the modern medical\nknowledge as to insanity; you would find men like Tacitus Nero\nin most asylums.  Neither Tacitus nor Suetonius was in the habit\nof taking science as a guide in their transcriptions; they did\nnot, in dealing with Tiberius for example, suit their facts to\nthe probabilities, but just set down the worst they had heard\nsaid.  What they record of him is unlikely, and does not fit in\nwith his known actions.  But in drawing Nero, on the contrary,\nthey made a picture that would surprise no alienist.  Besides,\nTacitus was born some seventeen years after Tiberius died; but\nhe was fourteen years old at the death of Nero, and so of an age\nto have seen for himself, and remembered.  Nero did kill his\nmother, who probably tried to influence him for good; and he did\nkill Seneca, who certainly did.  His reign is a monument to the\nrottenness of Rome; his fall, a proof, perhaps, of the soundness\nof the provinces.  For when _they_ felt the shame of his conduct,\nthey rose and put him down; Roman Gaul and Germany and Spain and\nthe East did.  Here is a curious indication:  Galba, Otho, and\nVitellius, who made such a sorry thing of the two years (68 and\n69) they shared in the Principate, had each done well as a\nprovincial governor.  In the provinces, then, the Tiberian\ntradition of honest efficient government suffered not much, if\nany, interruption.  The fact that Rome itself stood the nine\nyears of Nero's criminal insanity,--and even, so far as the mob\nwas concerned, liked it (for his grave was long kept strewn with\nflowers)--shows what a people can fall to, that the Crest-Wave\nhad first made rotten, and then left soulless.\n\nBy the beginning of 70, things were comfortably in the hands of\nVespasian, another provincial governor; under whom, and his son\nTitus after him, there were twelve years of dignified government;\nand seven more of the same, and then seven or eight of tyranny,\nunder his second son, Domitian.  Against the first two of these\nFlavians nothing is to be said except that the rise of their\nhouse to the Principate was by caprice of the soldiery.\nVespasian was an honest Sabine, fond of retiring to his native\nfarm; he brought in much good provincial blood with him into\nRoman society.--Then in 96 came a revolution which placed the\naged senator Nerva on the throne; who set before himself the\ndefinite policy--as it was intended he should--of replacing\npersonal caprice by legality and constitutionalism as the\ninstrument of government.  He  reigned two years, and left the\nempire to Trajan; who was strong enough as a general to hold his\nposition, and as a statesman, to establish the principles of\nNerva.  And so things began to expand again; and a new strength\nbecame evident, the like of which had not been seen since (at\nleast) the death of Tiberius.\n\nOctavian returned to Rome, sole Master of the world, in B.C. 29.\nA half-cycle on from that brings us to 36 A.D., the year before\nTiberius died:  that half-cycle was one, for the Empire all of\nit, and for Rome most of it, of bright daylight.  The next\nhalf-cycle ends in 101, in the third year of Trajan:  a time,\nfor the most part, of decline, of twilight.  You will notice\nthat the Han day lasted the full thirteen decades before twilight\ncame; the Roman, but six decades and a half.\n\nWe ought to understand just how far this second Roman half-cycle\nwas an age of decline:  just how much darkneww suffused the\ntwilight it was.  We talk of representative government; as\nif any government were ever really anything else.  Men get\nthe government that represents them; that represent their\nintelligence, or their laxity, or their vices:--whether it be\nsent in by the ballot or by a Praetorian Guard with their caprice\nand spears.  In a pralayic time there is no keen national\nconsciousness, no centripetalism.  There was none in Rome in\nthose days; or not enough to counteract the centrifugalism that\nsimply did not care.  The empire held together, because Augustus\nand Tiberius had created a centripetalism in the provinces; and\nthese continued in the main through it all to enjoy the good\ngovernment the first two emperors had made a tradition in them,\nand felt but little the hands of the fools or madmen reigning in\nRome.  And then, blood from the provinces was always flowing into\nRome itself; particularly in the Flavian time; and supplied or\nfed a new centripetalism there which righted things in the next\nhalf-cycle.  It was Rome, not the provinces, that Nero and\nCaligula represented in their day; the time was transitional;\nyou may call Otho and Vitellius the first bungling shots of the\nprovinces at having a hand in things at the center; wholesome\nVespasian was their first representative emperor:  Nerva and\nthose that followed him represented equally the provinces and a\nregenerated Rome.--This tells you what Nero's Rome was, and how\nit came to tolerate Nero; when Vitellius came in with his band\nof ruffians from the Rhine, and the streets flowed with blood day\nafter day, the places of low resort were as full as ever through\nit all; while carnage reigned in the forums, riotous vice\nreigned within doors.\n\nBut look outside of Rome, and the picture is very different.  The\nSpaniard, Gaul, Illyrian, Asiatic and the rest, were enjoying the\nRoman Peace.  There was progress; if not at the center,\neverywhere between that and the periphery of civilization. Life,\neven in Italy (in the country parts) was growing steadily more\ncultured, serious, and dignified; and in all remote regions was\nassimilating its standards to the best in Italy.  From the\nScottish Lowlands to the Cataracts of the Nile a single people\nwas coming into being; it was a wide and well-tilled field in\nwhich incarnate souls might grow. The satirists make lurid\npictures of the evils Rome; and the evils were there, with\nperhaps not much to counter-balance them, _in Rome._  Paris has\nbeen latterly the capital of civilization; and one of its phases\nas such has been to be the capital of the seven deadly sins.  The\nsins are or were there:  Paris provided for the sinners of the\nworld, in her capacity of world-metropolis; just as she provided\nfor the artists, the _litteratuers,_ and so on.  Foolish people\ndrew from that the conclusion that therefore Frenchmen were more\nwicked than other people:  whereas in truth the life of\nprovincial France all along has probably been among the soundest\nof any.  So we must offset Martial's and Juvenal's pictures of\nthe calm and gracious life in the country:  virtuous life, often,\nwith quiet striving after usefulness and the higher things.  He\nreveals to us, in the last quarter of the century, interiors in\nnorthern Italy, by Lake Como; you should have found the like\nanywhere in the empire.  And where, since Rome fell, shall you\ncome on a century in which Britain, Gaul, Spain, Italy, the\nBalkans, Asia and Africa, enjoyed a Roman or any kind of peace?\nBe not deceived:  there has been no such success in Europe since\nas the empire that Augustus the Initiate made, and for which\nTiberius his disciple was crucified.\n\nYet they captured it, as I find things, out of the jaws of\nfailure and disaster.  Failure:  that of Pythagoreanism six\ncenturies before;--disaster:  Caesar's conquest of Gaul and\ndestruction of the Mysteries there.  Men come from the Masters of\nthe World to work on this plane or on that:  to found an empire\nperhaps, or to start a spiritual movement.  Augustus came\ncommissioned to the former, not to the latter, work.  Supposing\nin his time the Gaulish Mysteries had been intact.  We may trust\nhim to have established relations somehow:  he would have had\nclose and friendly relations with the Gaulish hierophants; even\nif he had conquered the people, he would not have put out their\nlight.  But I imagine he would have found a means to union\nwithout conquest.  Then what would have happened?  We have seen\nthat the cyclic impulse did touch Gaul at that time; it made her\nvastly rich, hugely industrial;--as Ferero says, the Egypt of the\nWest.  That, and nothing better than that, because she had lost\nher spiritual center, and might not figure as the world Teacher\namong nations.  But, you say, Augustus proscribed Druidism--which\nsounds like carrying on Julius' nefarious work.  He did, I\nbelieve;--but why?  Because Julius had seen to it that the\nwhite side of Druidism had perished.  The Druids were magicians;\nand now it was the dark magic and its practitioners that remained\namong them,--at least in Gaul.  So of course Augustus proscribed it.\n\nRemember how France has stood, these last seven centuries, as the\nteacher of the arts and civilization to Europe; and this idea\nthat she might have been, and should have been, something far\nhigher to the Roman world, need not seem at all extravagant.  I\nthink it was a possibility; which Caesar had been sent by the\nkings of night to forestall.  And so, that Augustus lacked that\nreinforcement by which he might have secured for Europe a unity\nas enduring as the Chinese Teachers secured for the Far East.\n\nAnd yet the Lodge did not leave Rome lightless; there was much\nspiritual teaching in the centuries of the Empire; indeed, a new\nout-breathing in each century, as an effort to retrieve the great\ndefeat;--and this has been the inner history of europe ever\nsince.  This:  raidings from the Godworld:  swift cavalry\nraidings, that took no towns as a rule, nor set up strongholds\nhere on hell's border; yet did each time, no doubt, carry off\ncaptives.  Set up no strongholds;--that is, until our own times;\nso what we have missed is the continuous effort; the established\nbase 'but here upon this bank and shoal,' from which the shining\nsquadrons of the Gods might ride.  Such a base was lost when\nCaesar conquered Gaul; then some substitute for Gaul had to be\nfound.  It was Greece and the East; where, as you may say,\nabjects and orts of truth came down; not the live Mysteries, but\nthe _membra disjecta_ of the vanished Mysteries of a vanished\nage.  With these the Teachers of the Roman world had to work,\ndistilling out of them what they might of the ancient Theosophy.\nSo latterly H.P. Blavasky must gather up fragments in the East\nfor the nexus of her teaching; she must find seeds in old\nsarcophagi, and plant and make them grow in this soil so\nuncongenial; because there was no well-grown Tree patent to the\nworld, with whose undeniable fruitage she might feed the nations.\nThis was one great difficulty in her way; whe had to introduce\nTheosphy into a world that had forgotten it ever existed.\n\nSo,--but with a difference,--in that first century.  The\ndifference was that Pythagoreanism, the nexus, was only six\nhundrd years away, and the memory of it fairly fresh.  Stoicism\nwas the most serious living influence within the empire; a\nsystem that concerned itself with right and brave living, and was\nso far spiritual; but perhaps not much further.  The best in men\nreacted against the sensuality of the mid-century, and made\nStoicism strong; but this formed only a basis of moral grit for\nthe higher teaching; of which, while we know it was there,\nthere is not very much to say.  I shall come to it presently;\nmeanwhile, to something else.--In literature, this was the cycle\nof Spain:  the Crest-Wave was largely there during the first\nthirteen decades of the Christian era.  Seneca was born in\nCordova about 3 B. C.; Hadrian, the last greatman of Spanish\nbirth (though probably of Italian race), died in 138.  Seneca was\na Stoic:  a man with many imperfections, of whom history cannot\nmake up its mind wholly to approve.  He was Nero's tutor and\nminister during the first five golden years of the reign; his\ngovernment was wise and beneficent, though, it is said, sometimes\nupheld by rather doubtful means.  In the growing gloom and horror\nof the nightmare reign of Nero, he wrote many counsels of\nperfection; his notes rise often, someone has said, to a sort of\nfalsetto shriek; but then, the wonder is he could sing at all in\nsuch a hell's cacophony.  A man with obvious weaknesses, perhaps;\nbut fighting hard to be brave and hopeful where there was nothing\nin sight to encourage bravery or foster hope; when every moment\nwas pregnant with ghastly possibilities; when death and\nabominable torture hobnobbed in the Roman streets with riots of\ndisgusting indulgence, abnormal lusts, filthiness parading\nunabashed.  He speaks of the horrors, the gruesome impalings;\ndeprecating them in a general way; not daring to come down to\nparticulars, and rebuke Nero.  Well; Nero commanded the legions,\nand was kittle cattle to rebuke.  If sometimes you see tinsel and\ntawdriness about poor Seneca, look a little deeper, and you seem\nto see him writing it in agony and bloody sweat. . . . He was\namong the richest men in Rome, when riches were a deadly peril:\nhe might even, had he been another man, have made himself\nemperor; perhaps the worst thing against him is that he did\nnot.  His counsels and aspirations were much better than his\ndeeds;--which is as  much as to say his Higher Self than his\nlower.  He stood father-confessor to Roman Society:  a Stoic\nphilosopher in high, luxurious, and most perilous places:  he\ncannot escape looking a little unreal.  Someone in some seemingly\npetty difficulties, writes asking him to sue his influence on his\nbehalf; and he replies with a dissertation on death, and what\ngood may lie in it, and the folly of fearing it.  Cold comfort\nfor his correspondent; a tactless, strained, theatrical thing to\ndo, we may call it.  But what strain upon his nerves, what\nhideous knowledge of the times and of evils he did not see his\nway to prevent, what haunting sense of danger, must have driven\nhim to that fervid hectic eloquence that now seems so unnatural!\nOne guesses there may be a place in the Pantheons or in Valhalla\nof the heroes for this poor not untawdry not unheroic Seneca.\nOne sees in him a kind of Hamlet, hitting in timorous indecision\non the likely possibility of converting his Claudius by a string\nof moral axioms and eloquence to a condition that should satisfy\nthe Ghost and undo the something rotten in the state.... Yet the\nGods must have been grateful to him for the work he did in\nholding for Stoicism and aspiration a center in Rome during that\ndreadful darkness.  Perhaps only the very strongest, in his\nposition, could have done better; and then perhaps only by\nkilling Nero.*\n\n------\n* Dill:  _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius._\n------\n\nBut there was a greater than Seneca in Rome, even in Nero's\nreign;--there intermittently, and not to abide:  Appollonius of\nTyana, presumably the real Messenger of the age:--and by the\nchange that had come over life by the second century, we may\njudge how great and successful.  But there is not getting at the\nreality of the man now.  We have a _Life_ of him, written about a\nhundred years after his death by Philostratus, a Greek sophist,\nfor the learned Empress Julia Domna, Septimius Severus' wife;\nwho, no doubt, chose for the work the best man to hand; but the\nage of great literature was past, and Philostratus resurrects no\nliving soul.  The account may be correct enough in outline; the\nauthor was painstaking; visited the sites of his subject's\nexploits, and pressed his inquiries; he claims to have based his\nstory on the work of Damis of Neneveh, a disciple of Apollonius\nwho accompanied him everywhere.  But much is fabulous:  there is\na gorgeous account of dragons' in India, and the methods used in\nhunting them; and you know nothing of the real Apollonius when\nyou have read it all.  Here, in brief, is the outline of the\nstory:  Apollonius was born at Tyana in Cappodocia somewhere\nabout the year 1 A.D., and died in the reign of Nerva at nearly a\nhundred:  tradition ascribed to his birth its due accompaniment\nof signs and portents.  At sixteen he set himself under Pythagorean\ndiscipline; kept silence absolute for five years; traveled,\nhealing and teaching, and acquired a great renown throughout\nAsia Minor.  He went by Babylon and Parthia to India; spent\nsome time there as the pupil of certain Teachers on a sacred\nmountain; they, it appears, expected his coming, received\nhim and taught him; ever afterwards he spoke of himself as a\ndisciple of the Indian Master Iarchus.  Nothing in the book is\nmore interesting than the curious light it throws on popular\nbeliefs of the time in the Roman World as to the existence of\nthese Indian masters of the Secret Wisdom;--India, of course,\nincluded the region north of the Himalayas.  Later he visited the\nGymnosophists of the Tebaid in Egypt; according to the account,\nthese were of a lower standing than the Indian Adepts; and\nApollonius came among them not as a would-be disciple, but as an\nequal, or superior.--He was persecuted in Rome by Nero; but over\nawed Tigellinus, Nero's minister, and escaped.  He met Vespasian\nand Titus at Alexandria, soon after the fall of Jerusalem; and\nwas among those who urged Vespasian to take the throne.  He was\narrested in Rome by Domitian, and tried on charges of sorcery and\ntreason; and is said to have escaped his sentence and execution\nby the simple expedient of vanishing in broad daylight in court.\nOne wonders why this from his defense before Domitian, as\nPhilostratus gives it, has not attracted more comment; he says:\n\"All unmixed blood is retained by the heart, which through the\nblood-vessels sends it flowing as if through canals over the\nentire body.\"--According to tradition, he rose from the dead,\nappeared to several to remove their doubts as to a life beyond\ndeath, and finally bodily ascended into heaven.  Reincarnation\nwas a very cardinal point in his teaching; perhaps the name of\nNeo-Pythagoreanism, given to his doctrine, is enough to indicate\nin what manner it illuminated the inner realms and laws which\nStoicism, intent only on brave conduct and the captaincy of one's\nown soul, was unconcerned to inquire into.  Another first century\nNeo-Pythagorean Teacher was Moderatus of Gades in Spain.  The\nperiod of Apollonius's greatest influence would have corresponded\nwith the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, from 69 to 83; the\nformer, when he came to the throne, checked the orgies of vice\nand brought in an atmosphere in which the light of Thesophy might\nhave more leave to shine.  The certainty is that the last third\nof the first century wrought an enormous change:  the period that\npreceded it was one of the worst, and the age that followed it,\nthat of the Five Good Emperors, was the best, in known European\nhistory.--Under the Flavians, from 69 to 96,--or roughly, during\nthe last quarter,--came the Silver Age, the second and last great\nday of Latin literature:  with several Spanish and some Italian\nnames,--foam of the Crest-Wave, these latter, as it passed over\nfrom Spain to the East.  It will, by the way, help us to a\nconception of the magnitude of the written material at the\ndisposal of the Roman world, to remember that Pliny the Elder, in\npreparing his great work on Natural History, consulted six\nthousand published authorities.  That was in the reign of Nero;\nit makes one feel that those particular ancients had not so much\nless reading matter at their command than we have today.\n\nOf the great Flavian names in literature, we have Tacitus;\nPliny the Younger, with his bright calm pictures of life;\nJuvenal, with his very dark ones:  these were Italians.  Juvenal\nwas a satirist with a moral purpose; the Spaniard Martial,\ncontemporary, was a satirist without one.  Martial drew from\nlife, and therefore his works, though coarse, are still interesting.\nWe learn from him what enormous activity in letters was to be\nfound in those days in his native Spain; where every town\nhad its center of learning and apostles and active propaganda\nof culture.  Such things denote an ancient cultural habit,\nlapsed for a time, and then revived.\n\nAnother great Spainiard, and the best man in literature of the\nage, was Quintilian:  gracious, wise, and of high Theosophic\nideals, especially in education.  He was born in A.D. 35; and\nwas probably the greatest literary critic of classical antiquity.\nFor twenty years, from 72 until his death, he was at the head of\nthe teaching profession in Rome.  The \"teaching\" was, of course,\nin rhetoric.  Rome resounded with speech-makings; and Gaul,\nSpain, and Africa were probably louder with it than Rome.  Though\nthe end of education then was to turn out speech-makers,--as it\nis now to turn out money-makers,--I do not see but that the\nRomans had the best of it,--Quintilian saw through all to\nfundamental truths; he taught that your true speech-maker must\nbe first a true man.  He went thoroughly into the training of the\norator,--more thoroughly, even from the standpoint of pure\ntechnique, than any other Greek or Roman writer;--but would base\nit all upon character, balance of the faculties,--in two words,\nRaja-Yoga.  Pliny the Younger was among his pupils, and owed much\nto him; also is there to prove the value of Quintilian's\nmethod;--for Quintilian turned out Pliny a true gentlman.  Prose\nin those days,--that is, rhetoric,--was tending ever more to\nflamboyancy and extravagance:  a current which Quintilian stood\nagainst valiantly.  We find in him, as critic, just judgment,\nsane good taste, wide and generous sympathies;--a tendency to\ngive the utmost possible credit even where compelled in the main\nto condemn;--as he was in the case of Senaca.  He had the faculty\nof hitting off in a phrase the whole effect of a man's style; as\nwhen he speaks of the \"milky richness of Livy,\" and the \"immortal\nswiftness of Sallust.\" *\n\n------\n* _Encyclopaedia Britannica;_ article 'Quintilian'\n------\n\nSo then, to sum up a little:  I think we gain from these times a\ngood insight into cyclic workings.  First, we shall see that the\ncycles are there, and operative:  action and reaction regnant in\nthe world,--a tide in the affairs of men; and strong souls\ncoming in from time to time, to manipulate reactions, to turn the\ncurrents at strategic points in time; making things, despite\nwhat evils may be ahead, flow on to higher levels than their own\nweight would carry them to:  thus did Augustus and Tiberius;\n--or throwing them down, as the merry Julius did, from bright\npossibilities to a sad and lightless actuality.  For perhaps we\nhave been suffering because of Julius' exploit ever since; and\ncertainly, no matter what Neros and Caligulas followed them, the\nworld was a long time the better for the ground the great first\ntwo Principes captured from hell.--And next, we shall learn to\nbeware of being too exact, precise, and water-tight with out\ncomputations and conceptions of these cycles:  we shall see that\nnature works in curves and delicate wave-lines, not in broken off\nbits and sudden changes.  Rome was going down in Tiberius' reign:\nshe was bad enough then, heaven knows; though we may put\nher passing below the meridian at or near the end of it;--\nconveniently, in the year 36.  And then, what with (1) the\ntenseness of the gloom and the severity of suffering in the\nreigns of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian;--and (2) the inflow of\nnew and cleaner blood from the provinces at all times but\nespecially under Vespasian; and above all, (3) the Theosophic\nimpulse whose outward visible sign is the mission of Apollonius\nand Moderatus:--we find her ready to emerge into light in 96,\nwhen Nerva came to the throne, instead of having to wait the five\nmore years for the end of the half-cycle;--although we may well\nsuppose it took that time at least for Nerva and Trajan to clear\nthings up and settle them.  So we may keep this scheme of dates\nin memory as indicative:  a (rough) half-cycle before 29 B.C.,\nthat of dawn and darkest hour preceding it; 29 B.C. to 36 A.D.\ndaylight; 36 to 101, night and the beginnings of a new dawn.\n\nAnd now we must turn to China.\n\nDusk came on in Rome with the death of Tiberius in A.D. 37; but\nwhat is dusk in the west is dawn in the east of the world.  In 35\nHan Kwang-wuti had put down the Crimson-Eyebrow rebellion, and\nseated himself firmly on the throne.  The preceding half-cycle,\ngreat in Rome under Augustus and Tiberius, had been a time, first\nof puppet emperors, then of illegalism and usurpation, then of\ncivil war.  Han Kwang-wuti put an end to all that, and opened, in\n35, a new cycle of his own.\n\nBut there is also an old cycle to be taken into account:  the\noriginal thirteen-decade period of the Hans, that began in 194,\nand ended its first \"day\" in 63 or so,--to name convenient dates.\nI should, if I believed in this cyclic law, look for a recurrence\nof that:  a new day to dawn, under its influence, in 66 or 67\nA.D., thirteen decades after the old one ended,--and to last\nuntil 196 or 197.  But on the other hand, here is Han Kwang-wuti\nstarting things going in 35, a matter of thirty-two years ahead\nof time,--catching the flow of force just as it diminished in\nRome.--And this thirty-two years, you may note, with what odd\nmonths we may suppose thrown in, is in itself a quarter-cycle.\n\nNow cyclic impulses waste; a second day of splendor will\ncommonly be found a Silver Age, where the first was Golden:  it\nwill often be more perfect and refined, but much less vigorous,\nthan the first.  So I should look for the second \"day\" of the\nHans to come on the whole with less light to shine and less\nstrength to endure than its predecessor; I should expect a\ngentleness as of late afternoon in place of the old noontide\nglory.  But then there is the complication induced by Han\nKwang-wuti, who started his cycle in 35.... or more probably\nhis half-cycle;--I should look for it to be no more than that,\non account of this same wastage of the forces;--this also has\nto be taken into consideration.\n\nBrooding over the whole situation, I should foretell the history\nof this second Han Dynasty in this way:  from 35 to 67,--the\nlatter date the point where the old and new cycles intersect,--\nwould be a static time:  of consolidation rather than expansion;\nof the gathering of the wave, not of its outburst into any\nsplendor of foam.  Between 67 and 100, or when the two cycles\ncoincide, I should look for great things and doings; for some\necho or repetition of the glories of Han Wuti,--perhaps for a\nfinishing and perfecting of his labors.  From then on till 197 I\nshould expect static, but weakening conditions:  static mainly\ntill 165, weakening rapidly after.  Advise me, please, if this is\nclear.--Well, if you have followed so far, you have a basis for\nunderstanding what is to come.\n\nThe dynasty, as thus re-established by Kwang-wuti, is known as\nthat of the Eastern Hans; for this reason:--just as late in the\ndays of the Roman empire, Diocletian was stirred by cyclic\nflowing east-ward to move his capital from Rome to Nicomedia,--\nConstantine changed it afterwards to Byzantium,--so was Han\nKwang-wuti to move his from Changan in Shensi, in the west,\neastward to Loyang or Honanfu,--the old Chow capital,--in Honan.\n\nWhile Rome was weltering under Caligula, Claudius, and Nero,\nChina was recovering herself, getting used to a calm equanimity,\nunder Haii Kwang-wuti:  the conditions in the two were as\nopposite as the poles.  She dwelt in quietness at home, and held\nher own, and a little more, on the frontiers.  In 57, two years\nbefore Nero went mad and took the final plunge into infamy, Han\nKwang-wuti died, and Han Mingti succeeded him.  As Nero went\ndown, Han Mingti went up.  His ninth or tenth year, remember, was\nto be that of the recurrence of the old Han cycle.  It was the\nyear in which the provinces rose against Nero,--the lowest point\nof all in Rome.  I do not know that it was marked by anything\nspecial in China; the fact being that all the Chinese sixties\nwere momentous.\n\nIn the third Year of his reign Han Mingti dreamed a dream:  he\nsaw a serene and \"Golden Man\" descending towards him out of the\nwestern heavens.  It would mean, said his brother, to whom he\nspoke of it, the Golden God worshiped in the West,--the Buddha.\nBuddhism had first come into China in the reign of Tsin Shi\nHwangti; but that imperial ruffian had made short work of it:--\nhe threw the missionaries into prison, and might have dealt worse\nwith them, but that a \"Golden Man\" appeared in their cell in\nthe night, and opened all doors for their escape.  Buddhist\nscriptures, probably, were among the books destroyed at the great\nBurning.  So there may have been Buddhists in China all through\nthe Han time; but if so, they were few, isolated and inconspicuous;\nit is Han Mingti's proper glory, to have brought Buddhism in.\n\nHe liked well his brother's interpretation, and sent inquirers\ninto the west.  In 65 they returned, with scriptures, and an\nIndian missionary, Kashiapmadanga,--who was followed shortly by\nGobharana, another.  A temple was built at Loyang, and under the\nemperor's patronage, the work of translating the books began.--We\nhave seen before how some touch from abroad is needed to quicken\nan age into greatness:  such a touch came now to China with these\nIndian Buddhists;--who, in all likelihood, may also have been in\ntheir degree Messengers of the Lodge.\n\nIn the usual vague manner of Indian chronology, the years 57 and\n78 A.D. are connected with the name of a great king of the Yueh\nChi, Kanishka, whose empire covered Northern India.  Almost every\nauthority has a favorite point in time for his habitat; but\nthese dates, not so far apart but that he may well have been\nreigning in both, will do as well as another.  You will note that\n72 A.D. (which falls between them) is a matter of thirteen\ndecades from 58 B.C., the date sometimes ascribed to that\nmuch-legended Vikramaditya of Ujjain.  Or, if we go back to the\n(fairly) settled 321 B.C. of Chandragupta Maurya, and count\nforward thirteen-decade periods from that, we get 191 for the end\nof the Mauryas (it happened about then); 61 for Vikramaditya\n(which may well be); 69 for Kanishka,--which also is likely\nenough, and would make him contemporary with Han Mingti.  As the\nyears 57 and 78 are both ascribed to him, it may possibly be that\nthey mark the beginning and end of his reign respectively.\n\nWe know very little about him, except that he was a very great\nking, a great Buddhist, a man of artistic tastes, and a great\nbuilder; that he loved the beautiful hills and valleys of\nCashmere; and that his reign was a wonderful period in sculptue,\n--that of the Gandhara or Greco-Buddhist School.  Again,\nhe is credited (by Hiuen Tsang) with convening the Fourth\nBuddhist Council:  following in this, as in other matters, the\nexample of Asoka.  We are at liberty I suppose, if we like, to\nassign that cyclic year 69 to the meeting of this Council:  this\nyear or its neighborhood.  So that all this may have had\nsomething to do with the missionary activity that responded to\nHan Mingti's appeal.  But there is something else to remember;\nsomething of far higher importance; namely, that during all this\nperiod of her most uncertain chronology, India was in a peculiar\nposition:  the Successors of the Buddha were more or less openly\nat work there;--a long line of Adept leaders and teachers that\ncan be traced (I believe) through some thirteen centuries from\nSakya-muni's death.  We may suppose, not unreasonably, that\nKashiapmadanga and Gobharana were disciples and emissaries of the\nthen Successor.\n\nIt is, so far, and with so little translated, extremely hard to\nget at the undercurrents in these old Chinese periods; but I\nsuspect a strong spiritual influence, Buddhist at that, in the\ngreat events of the years that followed.  For China proceeded to\nstrike into history in such a way that the blow resounded, if not\nround the world, at least round as much of it as was discovered\nbefore Columbus; and she did it in such a nice, clean, artistic\nand quiet way, and withal so thoroughly, that I cannot help\nfeeling that that glorious warriorlike Northern Buddhism of the\nMahayana had something to do with it.\n\nIt was not Han Mingti himself who did it, but one of his sevants;\nof whom, it is likely, you have never heard; although east or\nwest there have been, probably, but one or two of his trade so\ngreat as he, or who have mattered so much to history.  His name\nwas Pan Chow; his trade, soldiering.  He began his career of\nconquest about the time the major Han Cycle was due to recur,--in\nthe sixties; maintained it through three reigns, and ended it at\nhis death about when the Eastern Han half-cycle, started in 35,\nwas due to close;--somewhere, that is, about 100 A.D., while\nTrajan was beginning a new day and career of conquest in Rome.\n\n\n\n\nXXI.  CHINA AND ROME: THE SEE-SAW (CONTINUED)\n\n\nDuring the time of Chinese weakness Central Asia had relapsed\nfrom the control the great Han Wuti had imposed on it, and that\nHan Suenti had maintained by his name for justice; and the Huns\nhad recovered their power.  One wonders what these people were;\nof whom we first catch sight in the reign of the Yellow Emperor,\nnearly 3000 B.C.; and who do not disappear from history until\nafter the death of Attila.  During all those three millenniums\nodd they were predatory nomads, never civilized:  a curse to\ntheir betters, and nothing more.  And their betters were, you may\nsay, every race they contacted.\n\nIt seems as if, as in the human blood, so among the races of\nmankind, there were builders and destroyers.  I speculate as to\nthe beginnings of the latter:  they cannot be . . . races apart,\nof some special creation;--made by demons, where it was the Gods\nmade men. . . . \"To the Huns,\" says Gibbon, \"a fabulous origin\nwas assigned worthy of their form and manners,--that the witches\nof Scythia, who for their foul and deadly practices had been\ndriven from society, had united in the desert with infernal\nspirits, and that the Huns were the offspring of this execrable\nconjunction.\"  But it seems to me that it is in times of\nintensive civilization, and in the slums of great cities, that\nNature--or anti-Nature--originates noxious human species.  I\nwonder if their forefathers were, once on a time, the hooligans\nand yeggmen of some very ancient Babylon Bowery or the East End\nof some pre-Nimrodic Nineveh?  Babylon was a great city,--or\nthere were great cities in the neighborhood of Babylon, before\nthe Yellow Emperor was born.  One of these may have had, God\nknows when, its glorious freedom-establishing revolution, its\nup-fountaining of sansculottes,--patriots whose predatory\nproclivities had erstwhile been checked of their free brilliance\nby busy-body tyrannical police;--and then this revolution may\nhave been put down, and the men of the underworld who made turned\nout now from their city haunts, driven into the wilderness and\nthe mountains,--may have taken,--would certainly have taken, one\nwould say,--not to any industry, (they knew none but such as are\nwrought by night unlawfully in other men's houses); not to\nagriculture, which has ever had, for your free spirit, something\nof degradation in it;--but to pure patriotism, freedom and\nliberty, as their nature was:  first to cracking such desultory\ncribs as offered,--knocking down defenseless wayfarers and the\nlike:  then to bolder raidings and excursions;--until presently,\nlo, they are a great people; they have ridden over all Asia like\na scirocco; they have thundered rudely at the doors of proud\nprinces,--troubling even the peace of the Yellow Emperor on\nhis throne.\n\nWell,--but isn't the stature stunted, physical, as well as mental\nand moral, when life is forced to reproduce itself, generation\nafter generation, among the unnatural conditions of slums and\nindustrialism? . . . Can you nourish men upon poisons century by\ncentury, and expect them to retain the semblance of men?\n\nThey had bothered Han Kwang-wuti; who could do little more than\nhold his own against them, and leave them to his successor to\ndeal with as Karma might decree.  Karma, having as you might\nsay one watchful eye on Rome and Europe, and what need of\nchastisement should arise after awhile at that western end of the\nworld, provided Han Mingti with this Pan Chow; who, being a\nsoldier of promise, was sent upon the Hun war-path forthwith.\nThen the miracles began to happen.  Pan Chow strolled through\nCentral Asia as if upon his morning's constitutional:   no fuss;\nno hurry; little fighting,--but what there was, remarkably\neffective, one gathers.  Presently he found himself on the\nCaspian shore; and if he had left any Huns behind him, they were\nhardly enough to do more than pick an occasional pocket.  He\nstarted out when the Roman provinces were rising to make an end\nof Nero; in the last year of Domitian, from his Caspian\nheadquarters he determined to discover Rome; and to that end\nsent an emissary down through Parthia to take ship at the port of\nBabylon for the unknown West.  The Parthians (who were all\nagainst the two great empires becoming acquainted, because they\nare making a good thing of it as middle-men in the Roman-Chinese\ncaravan trade), knew better, probably, than to oppose Pan Chow's\ndesigns openly; but their agents haunted the quays at Babylon,\ntampered with west-going skippers, and persuaded the Chinese\nenvoy to go no farther.  But I wonder whether some impulse\nachieved flowing across the world from east to west at that\ntime, even though its physical link or channel was thus left\nincomplete?  It was in that very year that Nerva re-established\nconstitutionalism and good government in Rome.\n\nPan Chow worked as if by magic:  seemed to make no effort, yet\naccomplished all things.  For nearly forty years he kept that\nvast territory in order, despite the huge frontier northward, and\nthe breeding-place of nomad nations beyond.  All north of Tibet\nis a region of marvels.  Where you were careful to leave only the\nvillage blacksmith under his spreading chestnut-tree, or the\ninnkeeper and his wife, for the sake of future travelers, let a\ncentury or two pass, and their descendants would be as the\nsea-sands for multitude; they would have founded a power, and be\nthundering down on an empire-smashing raid in Persia or China or\nIndia:  Whether Huns, Sienpi, Jiujen, Turks, Tatars, Tunguses,\nMongols, Manchus:  God knows what all, but all destroyers.  But\nas far as the old original Huns were concerned, Pan Chow settled\ntheir hash for them.  Bag and baggage he dealt with them; and\npractically speaking, the land of their fathers knew them no\nmore.  Dry the starting tear! here your pity is misplaced.  Think\nof no vine-covered cottages ruined; no homesteads burned; no\nfields laid waste.  They lived mainly in the saddle; they were\nas much at home fleeing before the Chinese army as at another\ntime.  A shunt here; a good kick off there:  so he dealt with\nthem.  It is in European veins their blood flows now;--and prides\nitself on its pure undiluted Aryanism and Nordicism, no doubt.  I\nsuppose scarcely a people in continental Europe is without some\nmixture of it; for they enlisted at last in all foraying armies,\nand served under any banner and chief.\n\nPan Chow felt that they belonged to the (presumably) barbarous\nregions west of the Caspian.  Ta Ts'in in future might deal with\nthem; by God's grace, Han never should.  He gently pushed them\nover the brink; removed them; cut the cancer out of Asia.  Next\ntime they appeared in history, it was not on the Hoangho, but on\nthe Danube.  Meanwhile, they established themselves in Russia;\nmoved across Central Europe, impelling Quadi and Marcomans\nagainst Marcus Aurelius, and then Teutons of all sorts against\nthe whole frontier of Rome.  In the sixties, for Han Mingti, Pan\nChow set that great wave in motion in the far east of the world.\nThree times thirteen decades passed, and it broke and wasted in\nfoam in the far west:  in what we may call the Very First Battle\nof the Marne, when Aetius defeated Attila in 451.  I can but\nthink of one thing better he might have done:  shipped them\neastward to the remote Pacific Islands; but it is too late to\nsuggest that now.  But I wonder what would have happened if Pan\nChow had succeeded in reaching his arm across, and grasping hands\nwith Trajan?  He had not died; the might of China had not begun\nto recede from its westward limits, before the might of Rome\nunder that great Spaniard had begun to flow towards its limits\nin the east.\n\nThrough the bulk of the second century China remained static, or\nweakening.  Her forward urge seems to have ended with the death\nof Pan Chow, or at the end of the half-cycle Han Kwang-wuti began\nin 35.  We might tabulate the two concurrent Han cycles, for the\nsake of clearness, and note their points of intersection, thus:\n\n--Western Han Cycle, 130 years\n\n--Eastern Han Half-Cycle, 65 yrs\n\n--35 A.D. Opened by Han Kwang-wuti.\n\n--A static and consolidating time until 67 A.D., thirteen decades\nfrom the death of Han Chaoti.  Introduction of Buddhism in 65.\n\n--The period of Pan Chao's victories; the Golden Age of the\nEastern Hans, lasting until (about):\n\n--100 A. D. the end of the Eastern Han 'Day'; death of Pan Chow.\n\n--Continuance of Day under this, and supervention of Night under\nthis Cycle, produce:\n\n--A static, but weakening period until:\n\n--165, the year in which a new Eastern Han Day should begin.  A\nweak recrudescence should be seen.\n\n--197: the year in which the main or original Han Cycle should\nend.  We should expect the beginnings of a downfall.  By or before:\n\n--230, the end of the second, feeble, Eastern Han Day, the\ndownfall would have been completed.\n\nNow to see how this works out.\n\nThe first date we have to notice is 165.  Well; in the very\nscant notices of Chinese history I have been able to come on, two\nevents mark this date; or rather, one marks 165, and the other\n166.  To take the latter first:  we saw that at a momentous point\nin Roman history,--in the year of Nerva's accession, 96,--China\ntried to discover Rome.  In 166 Rome actually succeeded in\ndiscovering China.  This year too, as we shall see, was momentous\nin Roman history.  You may call it a half cycle after the other;\nfor probably the ambassadors of King An-Tun of Ta Ts'in who\narrived at the court of Han Hwanti at Loyang in 166, had been a\nfew years on their journey.  You know King An-tun better by his\nLatin name of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.\n\nThe event for 165 is the foundation of the Taoist Church, under\nthe  half-legendary figure of its first Pope, Chang Taoling;\nwhose lineal descendants and successors have reigned Popes of\nTaoism from their Vatican on the Dragon-Tiger Mountain in Kiangsi\never since.  They have not adverertised their virtues in their\nnames, however:  we find no Innocents and Piuses here:  they are\nall plain Changs; his reigning Holiness being Chang the\nSixth-somethingth.  It was from Buddhism that the Taoists took\nthe idea of making a church of themselves.  Taoism and Buddhism\nfrom the outset were fiercely at odds; and yet the main\nsplendor of China was to come from their inner coalescence.\nChu Hsi, the greatest of the Sung philosophers of the brilliant\ntwelfth century A.D., says that \"Buddhism stole the best\nfeatures of Taoism; Taoism stole the worst features of Buddhism:\nas if the one took a jewel from the other, and the other\nrecouped the loss with a stone.\" *  This is exact:  the jewel\nstolen by Buddhism was Laotse's Blue Pearl,--Wonder and Natural\nMagic; the stone that Taoism took instead was the priestly\nhierarchy and church organization, imitated from the Buddhists,\nthat grew up under the successors of Chang Taoling.\n\n------\n* _Chinese Literature:_  H.A. Giles\n------\n\nIf Laotse founded any school or order at all, it remained quite\nsecret.  I imagine his mission was like Plato's, not Buddha's:\nto start ideas, not a brotherhood.  By Ts'in Shi Hwangti's time,\nany notions that were wild, extravagant, and gorgeous were\nTaoism; which would hardly have been, perhaps, had there been a\nTaoist organization behind them;--although it is not safe to\ndogmatize.  It was, at any rate, mostly an inspiration to the\nheights for the best minds, and for the masses (including Ts'in\nShi Hwangti) a rumor of tremendous things.  After Han Wuti's next\nsuccessor, the best minds took to thinking Confucianly:  which\nwas decidedly a good thing for China during the troublous times\nbefore and after the fall of the Western Hans.  Then when\nBuddhism came in, Taoism came to the fore again, spurred up to\nemulation by this new rival.  I take it that Chang Taoling's\nactivities round about this year 165 represent an impulse of the\nnational soul to awakenment under the influence of the recurrence\nof the Eastern Han Day half-cycle.  What kind of reality Chang\nTaoling represents, one cannot say:  whether a true teacher in\nhis degree, sent by the Lodge, around whom legends have gathered;\nor a mere dabbler in alchemy and magic.  Here is the story told\nof him; you will note an incident or two in it that suggest the\nformer possibility.\n\nHe retired to the mountains of the west to study magic, cultivate\npurity of life, and engage in meditation; stedfastly declining\nthe offers of emperors who desired him to take office.  Laotse\nappeared to him in a vision, and gave him a treatise in which\nwere directions for making the 'Elixir of the Dragon and the\nTiger.'  While he was brewing this, a spirit came to him and\nsaid:  \"On the Pesung Mountain is a house of stone; buried\nbeneath it are the Books of the Three Emperors (Yao, Shun, and\nYu).  Get these, practise the discipline they enjoin, and you\nwill attain the power of ascending to heaven.\"  He found the\nPesung Mountain; and the stone house; and dug, and discovered\nthe books; which taught him how to fly, to leave his body at\nwill, and to hear all sounds the most distant.  During a thousand\ndays he disciplined himself; a goddess came to him, and taught\nhim to walk among the stars; then he learned to cleave the seas\nand the mountains, and command the thunder and the winds.  He\nfought the king of the demons, whose hosts fled before him\n\"leaving no trace of their departing footsteps.\"  So great\nslaughter he wrought in that battle that, we are told, \"various\ndivinities came with eager haste to acknowledge their faults.\"\nIn nine years he gained the power of ascending to heaven.  His\nlast days were spent on the Dragon-Tiger Mountain; where, at the\nage of a hundred and twenty-three, he drank the elixir, and\nsoared skyward in broad daylight;--followed (I think it was he)\nby all the poultry in his barnyard, immortalized by the drops\nthat fell from the cup as he drank.  He left his books of magic,\nand his magical sword and seal, to his descendants; but I think\nthe Dragon-Tiger Mountain did not come into their possession\nuntil some centuries later.\n\nI judge that the tales of the Taoist _Sennin_ or Adepts, if told\nby some Chinese-enamored Lafcadio, would be about the best\ncollection of fairy-stories in the world; they reveal a\nuniverse so deliciously nooked and crannied with bewildering\npossibilities:--as indeed this our universe is;--only not all its\nbyways are profitable traveling.  It is all very well to cry out\nagainst superstition; but we are only half-men in the West:  we\nhave lost the faculty of wonder and the companionship of\nextrahuman things.  We walk our narrow path to nowhere safely\ntrussed up in our personal selves:  or we not so much walk at\nall, as lie still, chrysalissed in them:--it may be just as well,\nsince for lack of the quality of balance, we are about as capable\nof walking at ease and dignity as is a jellyfish of doing Blondin\non the tight-rope.  China, in her pralaya and dearth of souls,\nmay have fallen into the perils of her larger freedom, and some\nsuperstition rightly to be called degrading:  in our Middle Ages,\nwhen we were in pralaya, we were superstitious enough; and being\nunbalanced, fell into other evils too such as China never knew:\nblack tyrannies of dogmatism, burnings of heretics wholesale.\nBut when the Crest-Wave Egos were in China, that larger freedom\nof hers enabled her, among other things, to achieve the highest\nheights in art:  the Yellow Crane was at her disposal, and she\nfailed not to mount the heavens; she had the glimpses Wordsworth\npined for; she was not left forlorn. This merely for another\nblow at that worst superstition of all:  Unbrotherliness, and our\ndoctrine of Superior Racehood.--Many of the tales are mere\nthaumatolatry:  as of the man who took out his bones and washed\nthem once every thousand years; or of the man who would fill his\nmouth with rice-grains, let them forth as a swarm of bees to\ngather honey in the valley,--then readmit them into his mouth as\nto a hive, where they became rice again,--presumably \"sweetened\nto taste.\"  But in others there seems to be a core of symbolism\nand recognition of the fundamental things.  There was a man\nonce,--the tale is in Giles's Dictionary of Chinese Biography,\nbut I forget his name--who sought out the Sennin Ho Kwang (his\nname might have been Ho Kwang); and found him at last in a\ngourd-flask, whither he was used to retire for the night.  In\nthis retreat Ho Kwang invited our man to join him; and he was\nenabled to do so; and found it, once he had got in, a fair and\nspacious palace enough.  Three days he remained there learning;\nwhile fifteen years were passing in China without.  Then Ho Kwang\ngave him a rod, and a spell to say over it; and bade him go his\nways.  He would lay the rod on the ground, stand astride of it,\nand speak the spell; and straight it became a dragon for him to\nmount and ride the heavens where he would.  Thenceforth for many\nyears he was a kind of Guardian Spirit over China:  appearing\nsuddenly wherever there was distress or need of help:  at dawn in\nmountain Chungnan by Changan town in the north; at noon, maybe,\nby the southern sea; at dusk he might be seen a-dragon-back\nabove the sea-mists rolling in over Yangtse;--and all in the same\nday.  But at last, they say, he forgot the spell, and found\nhimself riding the clouds on a mere willow wand;--and the wand\nbehaving as though Newton had already watched that aggravating\napple;--and himself, in due course dashed to pieces on the earth\nbelow.--There is some fine symbolism here; the makings of\na good story.\n\nAnd now we come to 197, \"the year in which (to quote our\ntabulation above) the main or original Han Cycle should end,\" and\nin which \"we should expect the beginnings of a downfall.\"  The\nEmpire, as empires go, is very old now:  four hundred and forty\nodd years since Ts'in Shi Hwangti founded it; as old as Rome was\n(from Julius Caesar's time) when the East and West split under\nArcadius and Honorius; nearly three centuries older than the\nBritish Empire is now;--the cyclic force is running out,\ncentripetalism very nearly wasted.  In these one-nineties we find\ntwo non-entitous brothers quarreling for the throne:  who has\neyes to see, now, can see that the days of Han are numbered.  All\ncomes to an end in 220, ten years before the third half-cycle\n(and therefore second 'day') of the Eastern Han series; there is\nnot force enough left to carry things  through till 230.  Han\nHienti, the survivor of the two brothers aforesaid, retired into\nprivate life; the dynasty was at an end, and the empire split in\nthree.  In Ssechuan a Han prince set up a small unstable throne;\nanother went to Armenia, and became a great man there; but in\nLoyang the capital, Ts'ao Ts'ao, the man who engineered the fall\nof the Hans, set his son as Wei Wenti on the throne.\n\nHe was a very typical figure, this Ts'ao Ts'ao:  a man ominous of\ndisintegration.  You cannot go far in Chinese poetry without\nmeeting references to him.  He rose during the reign of the last\nHan,--the Chien-An period, as it is called, from 196 to 221,--by\nsuperiority of energies and cunning, from a wild irregular youth\nspent as hanger-on of no particular position at the court,--the\nson of a man that had been adopted by a chief eunuch,--to be\nprime minister, commander of vast armies (he had at one time,\nsays Dr. H. A. Giles, as many as a million men under arms),\nfather of the empress; holder of supreme power; then overturner\nof the Han, and founder of the Wei dynasty.  Civilization had\nbecome effete; and such a strong wildling could play ducks and\ndrakes with affairs.  But he could not hold the empire together.\nCentrifugalism was stronger than Ts'ao Ts'ao.\n\nThe cycles and all else here become confused.  The period from\n220 to 265--about a half-cycle, you will note, from 196 and the\nbeginning of the Chien-An time, or the end of the main Han\nCycle,--is known as that of the San Koue or Three Kingdoms:  its\nannals read like Froissart, they say; gay with raidings,\nexcursions, and alarms.  It was the riot of life disorganized in\nthe corpse, when organized life had gone.  A great historical\nnovel dealing with this time,--one not unworthy, it is said, of\nScott,--remains to be translated.  Then, by way of reaction, came\nanother half-cycle (roughly) of reunion:  an unwarlike period of\ntimid politics and a super-refined effeminate court; it was,\nsays Professor Harper Parker, \"a great age of calligraphy, belles\nlettres, fans, chess, wine-bibbing and poetry-making.\"  Then,\nearly in the fourth century, China split up again:  crafty\nladylike Chinese houses ruling in the South; and in the north a\nwild medley of dynasties, Turkish, Tungus, Tatar, and Tibetan,--\neven some relics of the Huns:  sometimes one at a time, sometimes\nhalf a dozen all together.  Each barbarian race took on hastily\nsomething of Chinese culture, and in turn imparted to it certain\nwild vigorous qualities which one sees very well in the northern\nart of the period:  strong, fierce, dramatic landscapes:  Nature\npainted in her sudden and terrific moods.  China was still in\nmanvantara, though under obscuration; she still drew her moiety\nof Crest-Wave souls:  there were great men, but through a lack of\nco-ordination, they failed to make a great empire or nation.  So\nhere we may take leave of her for a couple of centuries.\nJust why the vigor of the Crest-Wave was called off in the\ntwo-twenties, causing her to split then, we shall see presently.\nBack now to Rome, at the time of the death of Pan Chow the\nHun-expeller and the end of the one glorious half-cycle of the\nEastern Hans.\n\nAs China went down, Rome came up.  Pan Chow died early in the\nreign of Trajan, the first great Roman conqueror since Julius\nCaesar; and only the Caspian Sea, and perhaps a few years,\ndivided Trajan's eastern outposts from the western outposts of\nthe Hans.  We need not stay with this Spaniard longer than to\nnote that here was a case where grand military abilities were of\npractical value:  Trajan used his to subserve the greatness of\nhis statesmanship; only a general of the first water could have\nbrought the army under the new constitutional regime.  The\nsoldiers had been setting up Caesars ever since the night they\npitched on old Claudius in his litter; now came a Caesar who\ncould set the soldiers down.--His nineteen years of sovereignty\nwere followed by the twenty-one of Hadrian:  a very great emperor\nindeed; a master statesman, and queer mass of contradictions\nwhose private life is much better uninquired into.  He was a\nmighty builder and splendid adorner of cities; all that remained\nunsystematized in the Augustan system, he reduced to perfect\nsystem and order.  His laws were excellent and humane; he\nintroduced a special training for the Civil Service, which\nwrought enormous economies in public affairs:  officials were no\nlonger to obtain their posts by imperial appointment, which might\nbe wise or not, but because of their own tested efficiency for\nthe work.--Then came the golden twenty-three years of Antoninus\nPius, from 138 to 161:  a time of peace and strength, with a wise\nand saintly emperor on the throne.  The flower Rome now was in\nperfect bloom:  an urbane, polished, and ordered civilization\ncovered the whole expanse of the empire.  Hadrian had legislated\nfor the down-trodden:  no longer had you power of life and death\nover your slaves; they were protected by the law like other men;\nyou could not even treat them harshly.  True, there was slavery,\n--a canker; and there were the gladiatorial games; we may feel\npiously superior if we like.  But there was much humanism also.\nThere was no proletariat perpetually on the verge of starvation,\nas in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe.  If we can look\nback now and say, There this, that, or the other sign of oncoming\ndecay; the thing could not last;--it will also be remarkably\neasy for us, two thousand years hence, to be just as wise about\nthese present years 'of grace.'  It is perhaps safe to say,\n--as I think Gibbon says--that there was greater happiness\namong a greater number then than there has been at any time in\nChristendom since.  Gibbon calculates that there were twice as\nmany slaves as free citizens:  we do know that their number was\nimmense,--that it was not unusual for one man to own several\nthousand.  But they were well treated:  often highly  educated;\nmight become free with no insuperable difficulty:--their position\nwas perhaps comparable with that of slaves in Turkey now, who\nare insulted if you call them servants.  Gibbon estimates the\npopulation at a hundred and twenty millions; many authorities\nthink that figure too high; but Gibbon may well be right, or\neven under the mark,--and it may account for the rapid decline\nthat followed the age of the Antonines.  For I suspect that a too\ngreat population is a great danger, that hosts at such times pour\ninto incarnation, besides those that have good right to call\nthemselves human souls;--that the maxim \"fewer children and\nbetter ones\" is based upon deep and occult laws.  China in her\ngreat days would never appear to have had more than from fifty to\nseventy millions:  the present enormous figures have grown up\nonly since the Manchu conquest.\n\nThere was no great stir of creative intellect and imagination in\nsecond century Rome:  little noteworthy production in literature\nafter Trajan's death.  The greatest energies went into building;\nespecially under Hadrian.  The time was mainly static,--though\ngolden.  There were huge and opulent cities, and they were\nbeautiful; there was enormous wealth; an even and widespread\nculture affecting to sweetness and light the lives of millions--\nby race Britons, Gauls, Moors, Asiatics or what not, but all\nproud to be Romans; all sharing in the blessings of the Roman\nCitizenship and Peace.  Not without self-government, either, in\nlocal affairs:  thus we find Welsh clans in Britain still with\nkings, and stranger still, with senates, of their own.\n\nIt was the quiet and perfect moment at the apex of a cycle:  the\nmoment that precedes descent.  The old impulse of conquest\nflickered up, almost for the last time, under Trajan, some of\nwhose gains wise Hadrian wisely abandoned.  Under whom it was,\nand under the first Antonine, that the empire stood in its\nperfect and final form:  neither growing nor decreasing; neither\non the offensive nor actively on the defensive.  Now remember\nthe cycles:  sixty-five years of manvantara under Augustus and\nTiberius,--B.C. 29 to A. D. 36.  Then sixty-five mostly of\npralaya from 36 to 101; and now sixty-five more of mnavantara\nunder the Five Good Emperors (or three of them), from 101 to 166.\n\nBut why stop at 166, you ask.  Had not Marcus Aurelius, the best\nof them all, until 180 to reign?--He had; and yet the change\ncame in 166; after that year Rome stood on the defensive until\nshe fell.  It was in that year, you will remember, that King\nAn-tun Aurelius's envoys reached Loyang by way of Bumiah\nand the sea.\n\nBut note this:  Domitian was killed, and Nerva came to the\nthrone, and Rome had leave to breathe freely again, in five years\nbefore the half-cycle of shadows should have ended:  the two\nyears of Nerva, and the first three of Trajan, we may call\nborrowed by the dawning manvantara from the dusk of the pralaya\nthat was passing.  Now if we took the strictness of the cycles\n_au_ very _pied de lettre,_ we should be a little uneasy about\nthe last five years of that manvantara; we should expect them at\nleast to be filled with omens of coming evil; we should expect\nto find in them a dark compensation for the five bright years at\nthe tail of the old pralaya.--Well, cycles have sometimes a\npretty way of fulfilling expectations.  For see what happened:--\n\nMarcus Aurelius came to the throne in 161:  a known man, not\nuntried; one, certalnly, to keep the Golden Age in being,--if\nkept in being it might be.  Greatly capable in action, saintly in\nlife and ideals:  what could Rome ask better?  Or what had she to\nfear?--The king is the representative man:  it must have been a\nwonderful Rome, we may note in passing, that was ruled by and\nwent with and loved well those two saintly philosophic Antonines\nenthroned.--Nothing, then, could seem more hopeful.  Under the\ncircumstances it was rather a mean trick on the part of Father\nTiber (to whom the Romans pray), that before a year was out he\nmust needs be breeding trouble for his votaries:  overflowing,\nthe ingrate, and sweeping away large parts of his city; wasting\nfields and slaughtering men (to quote Macaulay again); drowning\ncattle wholesale, and causing shortage of supplies.  And he does\nbut give the hint to the other gods, it seems; who are not slow\nto follow suit.  Earthquakes are the next thing; then fires;\nthen comes in Beelzebub with a plague of insects.  There is no\nend to it.  The legions in Britain,--after all this long\npeace and good order,--grow frisky:  mind them of ancient and\nprofitable times when you might catch big fish in troubled\nwaters;--and try to induce their general to revolt.  Then\nParthian Vologaeses sees his chance; declares war, annihilates a\nRoman army, and overruns Syria.  Verus, co-emperor by a certain\ntoo generous unwisdom that remains a kind of admirable fly in the\nointment of the character of Aurelius, shows his mettle against\nthe Parthians,--taking his command as a chance for having a\nluxurious fling beyond the reach and supervision of his severe\ncolleague;--and things would go ill indeed in the East but for\nAvidius Cassius, Verus' second in command.  This Cassius returns\nvictorious in 165, and brings in his wake disaster worse than any\nParthians:--after battle, murder, and sudden death come plague,\npestilence, and famine.  In 166 the first of these latter three\nbroke out, devastated Rome, Italy, the empire in general; famine\nfollowed;--it was thought the end of all things was at hand.  It\nwas the first stroke of the cataclysm that sent Rome down. . . .\nThen came Quadi and Marcomans, Hun-impelled, thundering on the\ndoors of Pannonia; and for the next eleven years Aurelius was\nbusy fighting them.  Then Avidius Cassius revolted in Asia;--but\nwas soon assassinated.  Then the Christians emerged from their\nobscurity, preachers of what seemed anti-national doctrine; and\nthe wise and noble emperor found himself obliged to deal with\nthem harshly.  He _was_ wise and noble,--there is no impugning\nthat; and he _did_ deal with them harshly:  we may regret it;\nas he must have regretted it then.\n\nSo the reign marks a definite turning-point:  that at which the\nempire began to go down.  In it the three main causes of the ruin\nof the ancient world appeared:  the first of the pestilences that\ndepopulated it; the first incursion of the barbarians that broke\nit down from without; the new religion that, with its loyalty\nprimarily to a church, an _imperium in imperior,_ undermined\nRoman patriotism from within.  Nero's persecution of the\nChristians had been on a different footing:  a madman's lust to\nbe cruel, the sensuality that finds satisfaction in watching\ntorture:  there was neither statecraft nor religion in it; but\nhere the Roman state saw itself threatened.  It was threatened;\nbut it is a pity Aurelius could find no other way.\n\nIn himself he was the culmination of all the good that had been\nRoman:  a Stoic, and the finest fruit of Stoicism,--which was the\nfinest fruit of philosophy unillumined (as I think) by the\nspiritual light of mysticism.  He practised all the virtues; but\n(perhaps) we do not find in him that knowledge of the Inner Laws\nand Worlds which alone can make practise of the virtues a saving\nenergy in the life of nations, and the imspiration of great ages\nand awakener of the hidden god in the creative imagination of\nman.  The burden of his _Meditations_ is self-mastery:  a\nreasoning of himself out of the power of the small and great\nannoyances of life;--this is to stand on the defensive; but\nthe spiritual World-Conqueror must march out, and flash his\nconquering armies over all the continents of thought.  An\nunderlying sadness is to be felt in Aurelius's writings.  He\nlived greatly and nobly for a world he could not save... that\ncould not be saved, so far as he knew.  He died in 180; and\nanother Nero, without Nero's artistic instincts, came to the\nthrone in his son Commodus; pralaya, military rule, disruption,\nhad definitely set in.\n\nNow anciently a manvantara had begun in Western Asia somewhere\nabout 1890 B.C.; had lasted fifteen centuries, as the wont of\nthem appears to be; and had given place to pralaya about 390;\nand that, in turn, was due to end in or about 220 A.D.  We\nshould, if we had confidence in these cycles, look for what\nremained of the Crest-Wave in Europe to be wandering flickeringly\neastward about this time.  Hitherto it had been in two of the\nthree world-centers of civilization:  in China and in Europe;\nnow for a few centuries it was to be divided between three.--I am\nirrigating the garden, and get a fine flow from the faucet, which\ngives me a sense of inward peace and satisfaction.  Suddenly the\nfine flow diminishes to a miserable dribble, and all my happiness\nis gone.  I look eastward, to the next garden below on the slope;\nand see my neighbors busy there:  their faucet has been turned\non, and is flowing royally; and I know where the water is going.\nThe West-Asian faucet was due to be turned on in the two-twenties;\nnow watch the spray from the sprinklers in the Chinese and\nRoman gardens.  In those two-twenties we saw China split into\nthree; and it rather looked as if the manvantara had ended.  I\nshall not look at West Asia yet, but leave it for a future\nlecture.  But in Europe, with Marcus Aurelius died almost the\nlast Italian you could call a Crest-Wave Ego.  The cyclic forces,\noutworn and old, produced after that no order that you can go\nupon:  events followed each other higgledipiggledy and inertly;--\nbut it was the Illyrian legions that put him on the throne.  Note\nthat Illyria:  it is what we shall soon grow accustomed to\ncalling _Jugoslavia._  Severus's reign of eighteen years, from\n193 to 211, was the only strong one, almost the only one not\ndisgraceful, until 268; by which time the Roman world was in\nanarchy, split into dozens, with emperors springing up like\nmushrooms everywhere.  Then came a succession of strong soldiers\nwho reestablished unity:  Claudius Gothicaus, an Illyrian\npeasant; Aurelian, an Illyrian peasant; Tacitus, a Roman\nsenator, for one year only; Probus, an Illyrian peasant; Caus,\nan Illyrian; then the greatest of all statesmen since Hadian,\nwho refounded the empire on a new plan,--the Illyrian who began\nlife as Docles the slave, rose to be Diocles the soldier, and\nfinally, in 284, tiaraed Diocletian reigning with all the pomp\nand mystery and magnificence of an Eastern King of kings.  He it\nwas who felt the cyclic flow, and moved his capital to Nicomedia,\nwhich is about fifty miles south and east from Constaintinople.\n\nOne can speak of no Illyrian cycle; rather only of the Crest-Wave\ndropping a number of strong men there as it trailed eastward\ntowards West Asia.  The intellect of the empire, in that third\ncentury, and the spiritual force, all incarnated in the Roman\nWest-Asian seats; in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria, as we shall\nsee in a moment.  But you not how bueautifully orderly, in a\ngeographical sense, are the movements of the Wave in Roman world\nand epoch:  beginning in Italy in the first century B.C.; going\nwest to Spain about A.D. 1,--and to Gaul too, though there\nkindling chiefly material and industrial greatness; passing\nthrough Italy again in the late first and in the second century,\nin the time of the Glavians and the five Good Emperors; then in\nthe third like a swan flying eastward, with one wing, the\nmaterial one, stretched over Illyria raising up mighty soldiers\nand administrators there, and the other, the spiritual wing, over\nEgypt, there fanning (as we shall see) the fires of esotericism\nto flame.\n\nFor it was in that third century, while disaster on disaster was\nengulfing the power and prestige of Rome, that the strongest\nspiritual movement of all the Roman period came into being.\nHistory would not take much note of the year in which a porter in\nAlexandria was born; so the birth-date of the man we come to now\nis unknown.  It would have been, however, not later than 180;\nsince he had among his pupils one man at least born not later\nthan 185.  According to Eusebius, he was born a Christian; and\nH.P. Blavatsky, in _The Key to Theosophy,_ seems to accept, or at\nleast not to contradict, this view.  I think she often did allow\npopular views on non-essentials to pass, for lack of time and\nimmediate need to contradict them.  But Eusebius (of who she has\nmuch to say, and none of it complimentary to his truthfulness)\nis, I believe, the sole authority for it; and scholars since\nhave found good reason for supposing that he was mixing this man\nwith another of the same name, who _was_ a Christian; whereas\n(it is thought) this man was not.  Be that as it may, we know\nalmost nothing about him; except that he began life as a porter,\nwith the job of carrying goods in sacks; whence he got the\nsurname Sakkophoros, latter shortened to Saccas;--from which you\nwill have divined by this time that his personal name was\nAmmonius.  We know also that early in the third century he had\ngathered disciples about him, and was teaching them a doctrine he\ncalled _Theosophy;_  very properly, since it was and is the\nWisdom of the gods or divine Wisdom.  An eclectic system, as they\nsay; wherein the truths in all such philosophies and religions as\ncome handy were fitted together and set forth.  But in truth all\nthis was but the nexus of his teaching:  Theosophy, then as now,\nis eclectic only in this sense:  that some truth out of it\nunderlies all religions and systems; which they derive from it,\nand it from them nothing.\n\nAll through the long West-Asian pralaya,--West-Asian includes\nEgyptian,--the seeds of the Esoteric Wisdom remained in those\nparts; they lacked vitalization, because the world-currents were\nnot playing there then; but they survived in Egypt from the\nEgyptian Mysteries of old; and as in India you might have found\nmen who knew about them, but not how to use them for the\nuplifting of the world,--so doubtless you should have found such\nmen in Egypt during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.  Hence the\nstatement of Diogenes Laertius, that the Theosophy of Ammonius\nSaccas originated with one Pot Ammun, a priest of Ptolemaic\ntimes:  who, perhaps, was one of those who transmitted the\ndoctrine in secret.  The seeds were there, then; and how that\nthe Crest Wave was coming back to West Asia, it was possible for\nAmmonius to quicken them; and this he did.  But it had not quite\ncome back; so he made nothing public.  He wrote nothing; he had\nhis circle of disciples, and what he taught is to be know from\nthem.  Among them was Origen, who was born, or became, a\nChristian; but who introduced into, or emphasized in, his\nChristianity much sound Theosophical teaching; very likely he\nwas deputed to capture Christianity, or some part of it, for\ntruth.  Here I may offer a little explanation of something that\nmay have puzzled some of us:  it will be remembered that Mr.\nJudge says somewhere that Reincarnation was condemned by the\nCouncil of Constantinople; and that in a series of learned\narticles which appeared in THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH recently, the\nlate Rev. S.J. Neill contradicted this asserion.  The truth seems\nto be this:  Origen taught, if not Reincarnation, at least\nthe pre-existence of souls; and, says the _Encyclopaedia\nBritannica:_  \"It is true that many scholars deny that Origen\n[read, his teachings] was condemned by this council [of Constantinople,\nA.D. 553]; but Moller rightly holds that the condemnation is proved.\"\n\nAnother pupil of Ammonius was Cassius Longinus, born in 213 at\nEmessa (Homs) in Asia Minor.  Later he taught Platonism for\nthirty years at Athens; then in the two-sixties went east to the\ncourt of Zenobia at Palmyra,--whose brilliant empire, though it\nfell before the Illyrian Aurelian, was a sign in its time that\nthe Crest-Wave had come back to West Asia.  Longinus became her\nchief counselor; it was by his advice that she resisted\nAurelian;--who pardoned the Arab queen, and, after she had\nparaded Rome in his triumph, became very good friends with her;\nbut condemned her counselor to death.  But Longinus I think had\nfailed to follow in the paths laid down for him by his Teacher:\nwe find him in disagreement with that Teacher's successor.\n\nWho was Plotinus, born of Roman parents at Lycopolis in Egypt.\nIt is from his writings we get the best account of Ammonius'\ndoctrine.  He was with the latter until 243; then joined Gordian\nIII's expedition against Persia, with a view to studying Persian\nand Indian philosophies at their source.  But Gordian was\nassassinated; and Plotinus, after a stay at Antioch, made his\nway to Rome and opened a school there.  This was in the so-called\nAge of the Thirty Tyrants, when the central government was at its\nweakest.  Gallienus was emperor in Rome, and every province\nhad an emperorlet of its own;--it was before the Illyrian\npeasant-soldiers had set affairs on their feet again.  A\nlazy erratic creature, this Gallienus; says Gibbon:  \"In\nevery art that he attempted his lively genius enable him\nto succeed; and, as his genius was destitute of judgement,\nhe attempted every art, except the important ones of war\nand government.  He was master of several curious but useless\nsciences, a ready orator, an elegant poet, a skilful gardener,\nan excellent cook, and a most contemptible prince.\"  Yet he\nhad a curious higher side to his nature, wherewith he might\nhave done much for humanity,--if he had ever bothered to\nbring it to the fore.  He, and his wife, were deeply interested\nin the teachings of Plotinus.  Such a man may sometimes be\n'run,' and made the instrument of great accomplishment:  a\nmorass through which here and there are solid footholds;\nif you can find them, you may reach firm ground, but you\nmust walk infinitely carefully.  It is the old tale of the\nPrince with the dual nature, and the Initiate who tries to use\nhim for the saving of the world,--and fails.\n\nPlotinus knew what he was about.  Was it last week we were\ntalking of the endless need of the ages:  a stronghold of the\nGods to be established in this world, whence they might conduct\ntheir cyclic raidings?  What had Pythagoras tried to do in his\nday?--Found a Center of Learning in the West, in which the Laws\nof Life, physical, mental, moral, and spiritual, should be\ntaught.  He did found it,--at Croton; but Croton was destroyed,\nand all the history of the next seven centuries suffered from the\ndestruction.  Then--it was seven centuries after his death,--\nAmmonius Saccas arose, and started things again; and left a\nsuccessor who was able to carry them forward almost to the point\nwhere Pythagoras left them.  For the fame of this Neo-Platonic\nTheosophy had traveled by this time right over the empire; and\nPlotinus in Rome, and in high favor with Gallienus, was a man on\nwhom all eyes were turned.  He proposed to found a Point Loma in\nCampania; to be called Platonopolis.  Things were well in hand;\nthe emperor and empress were enthusiastic:--as your Gallieneuses\nwill be, for quarter of an hour at a time, over any high project.\nBut certain of his ministers were against it; and he wobbled;\nand delayed; and thought of something else; and hung fire; and\npresently was killed.  And Claudius, the first of the Illyrian\nemperors, who succeeded him, was much to busy defeating the Goths\nto come to Rome even,--much less could he pay attention to\nspiritual projects.  Two years later Plotinus died, in 270;--and\nthe chance was not to come again for more than sixteen centuries.\n\nBut Neo-Platonism was not done with yet, by any means.  Plotinus\nleft a successor in his disciple Porphyry, born at Tyre or at\nBatanea in Syria in 233.  You see they were all West Asians, at\nleast by birth:  the first spiritual fruits of the Crest-Wave's\ninflux there.  Porphyry's name was originally Malchus (the Arabic\n_Malek,_ meaning _king_); but as a king was a wearer of the\npurple, someone changed it for him to Porphyry or 'Purple.'  In\n262 he went to Rome to study under Plotinus, and was with him for\nsix years; then his health broke down, and he retired to Sicily\nto recover.  In 273 he returned,--Plotinus had died three years\nbefore, and opened a Neo-Platonic School of his own.  He taught\nthrough the last quarter of that century, while the Illyrian\nemperors were smashing back invaders on the frontiers or upstart\nemperors in the provinces.  Without imperial support, no\nPlatonopolis could have been founded; and there was no time for\nany of those Illyrians to think of such things.--even if they had\nhad it in them to do so, as they had not:--witness Aurelian's\nexecution of Longinus.  The time had gone by for that highest of\nall victories:  as it might have gone by in our own day, but for\nevents in Chicago, in February, 1898.  When Porphyry died in 304,\nhe left a successor indeed; but now one that did not concern\nhimself with Rome.\n\nIt was Iamblichus, born in the Lebanon region; we do not know in\nwhat year; or much about him at all, beyond that he was an\naristocrat, and well-to-do; and that he conducted his Theosophic\nactivities mainly from his native city of Chalcis.  he died\nbetween 330 and 333; thus through thirteen decades, from the\nbeginning of the third century, these four great Neo-Platonist\nAdepts were teaching Theosophy in the Roman world;--Ammonius in\nEgypt; Plotinus and Porphyry,--the arm of the Movement stretched\nwestward to save, if saved they might be, the Roman west Europe,\n--in Rome itself; then, since that was not be done, Iamblichus in\nSyria.  We hear of no man to be named as successor to Iamblichus;\nI imagine the great line of Teachers came to an end with him.\nYet, as we shall see, their impulse, or movement, or propaganda,\ndid not cease then:  it did not fail to reach an arm down into\nsecular history, and to light up one fiery dynamic soul on the\nImperial Throne, who did all that a God-ensouled Man could do to\nsave the dying Roman world.  Diocletian, that great but quite\nunillumined pagan, was dead; the new order, that subverted Rome\nat last, had been established by Constantine; and the House of\nConstantine, with all that it implied, was in power.  But a year\nor two before the death of Iamblichus it chanced that a Great\nSoul stole a march on the House of Constantine, and (as you may\nsay) surreptitiously incarnated in it, for the Cause of the Gods\nand Sublime Perfection.  And to him, in his lonely and desolate\nyouth, kept in confinement or captivity by the Christian on the\nthrone, came one Maximus of Smyrna, a disciple of Iamblichus;--\nand lit in the soul of Prince Julian that divine knowledge of\nTheosophy wherewith afterwards he made his splendid and tragic\neffort for Heaven.\n\n\n\n\nXXII.  EASTWARD HO!\n\n\nThe point we start out from this evening is, in time, the year\n220 A.D., in place, West Asia:  220, or you may call it 226,--\nsixty-five years, a half-cycle, after 161 and the accession of\nMarcus Aurelius; and therewith, in Rome, the beginning of the\nseasons prophetic of decline.  So now we are in 226; look well\naround you; note your whereabouts;--for there is no resting\nhere.  You have seen?  you have noted?  On again then, I beseech\nyou; and speedily.  And, please, backwards:  playing as it were\nthe crab in time; and not content till the whole pralaya is\nskipped, and you stand on the far shore, in the sunset of an\nelder day:  looking now forward, into futurity, from 390, perhaps\n394 B.C.; over first a half-cycle of Persian decline,--long\nmelancholy sands and shingle, to--there on the edge of the great\nwan water,--that July in 330 when mean Satrap Bessus killed his\nking, Codomannus, last of the Achaemenidae, then in flight from\nAlexander;--and the House of Cyrus and Darius came to an end.\nWhat a time it was that drifted into Limbo then!  One unit of\nhistory; one phase of the world's life-story!  It had seen all\nthose world-shaking Tiglath-pilesers eastward; all those proud\nOsirified kings by the Nile;--and now it was over; had died in\nits last stronghold, Persia, and there was nowhere else for it to\nbe reborn; and, after a decent half-cycle of lying in state\nunder degenerate descendants of the great Darius, had been furied\n(cataclysmal obsequies!) beneath a landslide of Hellenistic\nMacedonianism.  Its old civilization, senile long since, was\ngone, and a new kind from the west superimposed;--Babylon was a\nmemory vague and splendid;--the Assyrian had gone down, and\nshould never re-arise:--Egypt of the Pharaohs had fallen forever\nand ever;--Aryan Persia was over-run;--\n\n     \"Iran indeed had gone, with all his rose,\n     And Jamshyd's seven-ringed cup, where no one knows:\"\n\n--And the angel that recorded their deeds and misdeed had written\n_Tamam_ on the last page, sprinkled sand over the ink,--shut the\nvolume, and put it away on the shelf;--and with a _Thank God\nthat's done with!_  settled down to snooze for six hundred years\nand ten.\n\nFor what had he to do with what followed?  With Alexander's\nwedding-feast in 324,--when upwards of ten thousand couples, the\ngrooms all Macedonian, the brides all Persian, were united:  what\nhad he to do with the new race young Achilles Redivivus thus\nproposed to bring into being?  These were mere Macedonian doings,\nto be recorded by his brother angel of Europe; as also were the\ndeath of Alexander, and his grand schemes that came to nothing.\nThere was no West Asia now; only Europe:  all was European and\nHellenized to the borders of India, with periodical overflowings\nbeyond;--just as, long afterwards, Spain was a province of West\nAsia; and just as Egypt now is submerged under a European power.\n\nOnly the trouble is that the seed of something native always\nremains in regions so overflowed with an alien culture; and\nAlexander dreamed never of what might lie quiescent, resurrectable\nin time, in the mountains of Persis, the Achaemenian land,\nout of the path of the eastward march of his phalanxes;--or\nindeed, in those wide deserts southward, parched Araby, that\nnone but a fool--and such was not Alexander--would trouble\nto invade or think of conquering:  something that should\nin its time reassert West Asia over all Hellenedom, in Macedonia\nitself, and West beyond the Pillars of Hercules and the limits of\nthe world.  But let that be:  it need trouble no one in this year\nof 324 B.C.!  Only remember that \"that which hath been shall be\nagain, and there is nothing new under the sun.\"\n\nIn this study of comparative history one finds after awhile that\nthere are very few dates that count, and they are very easy to\nkeep in mind. The same decades are important everywhere; and\nthis because humanity is one, and however diversified on the\noutside, inwardly all history is the history of the one Host of\nSouls.  Take 320 B.C.  Alexander is dead three years, but the\nworld is still vibrating with him.  Chandragupta Maurya has just\nstarted his dynasty and great age in India, which is to last its\nthirteen decades until the neighborhood of 190.  Seleucus\nNicataor, the only one of the Macedonian _diadochi_ who has not\ndivorced his Persian bride, is about to set up for himself a\nsovereignty in Babylon,--which Scipio Africanus, thirteen decades\nafterwards, struck from the list of the Great Powers when he\ndefeated Seleucus' descendant Antiochus at Magnesia,--in 190\nagain; at which time the Romans first broke into Asia.  And it\nwas in the one-nineties, too, that the second Han Emperor came to\nthe Dragon Thone, and the glorious age of the Western Hans began.\n\nThough the Seleucidae possessed for some time a great part of\nDarius Hystaspes' empire,--and, except Egypt, all the old\nimperial seats of the foregone manvantara,--they do not belong to\nWest Asia at all; their history is not West-Asian, but European;\nthey are a part of that manvantara whose forces were drifting\nWest from Greece to Italy.  The history of all the Macedonian\nkingdoms is profoundly uninteresting.  There was enough of Greek\nin them to keep them polished; enough of Macedonian to keep them\nessentially barbarous; they sopped up some of the effeteness of\nthe civilizations they had displaced, Egyptian and Asiatic; but\nthe souls of those old civilizations remained aloof.  There was\nmighty little Egypt in the Egypt of the Ptolemies:  what memories\nand atmosphere of a grand antiquity survived, hid in the crypts\nand pyramids; all one saw was a sullen fanatic people scorning\ntheir conquerors.  So too in Seleucus' Babylon there was little\nevidence of the old Childacan wisdom, or the Assyrian power, or\nthe pride and chivalry of the Persian.  It was Europe occupying\nWest Asia; and not good Europe at that; and only able to do so\n(as is always the case) because the Soul of West Asia was\ntemporarily absent.  The Seleucidae maintained a mimic greatness\nin tinsels until 190 and Scipio and Magnesia; then a mere\nrising-tide-lapped sand-castle of a kingdom until, in 64 B.C.,\nPompey made what remained of it a Roman province,--just twice\nthirteen decades after the marriage-feast at Babylon; just when\nthe great age of the Western Hans was ending, and when Augustus\nwas thinking of being born, and (probably or possibly) Vikramaditya\nof starting up a splendor at Ujjain.  What Pompey took,--what\nremained for him to take,--consisted only of Syria; all the\neastern part of the Seleucid empire had gone long since.\n\nIn 255 Diodotus, the Seleucid satrap of  Bactria, rebelled and\nmade himself a kingdom; and that the kingdom might become an\nempire, went further on the war-path.  On the eastern shores of\nthe Caspian he defeated one of the myriad nomad tribes of\nTuranian stock that haunt those parts,--first cousins, a few\ntimes removed perhaps, to our friends the Huns; a few more times\nremoved, to that branch of their race that had, so to say,\nmarried above them and become thus a sort of poor relations to\nthe aristocracy,--the Ts'inners who were at that time finishing\nup their conquest of China.  Thus while the far eastern branch of\nthe family was prospering mightily, the far western was getting\ninto trouble:  I may mention that they were known, these far\nwesterners, as the _Parni;_  and that their chief had tickled his\npride with assumption of the Persian name of Arsaces;--just as I\ndare say you should find various George Washingtons and Pompey\nthe Greats now swaying empire in the less explored parts of\nAfrica.  South of this Parnian country lies what is now the\nprovince of Khorasan, mountainous; then a Seleucan satrapy known\nas Parthia;--also inhabited by Turanians, but of a little more\nsettled sort; the satrap was Andragoras, who, like Diodotus in\nBactria (only not quite so much so), had made himself independent\nof the reigning Antiochus (II).  With him Arsaces found refuge\nafter his defeat by Diodotus, and there spent the next seven\nyears:--whether enjoying Andragoras' hospitality, or making\ntrouble for him, this deponent knoweth not.  In 248, however, he\nproceeeded to slay him and to reign in his stead.  Two years\nlater, Arsaces died, and his brother Tiridates succeeded him and\ncarried on the good work; he was driven out by Seleucus II in\n238, but returned to it when the latter was called westward by\nrebellions soon after.  Thenceforward the Parthian kingdom was,\nas you might say, a fact in nature; though until a half-cycle\nhad passed, a small and unimportant one, engaged mostly in\nreinvogorating the native Turanianism of the Parthians with fresh\nParnian importations from the northern steppes.  Then, in 170,\nMithradates I came to the throne, and seriously founded an\nempire.  He fought Eucratidas of Bactria, and won some territory\nfrom him.  He fought eastward as far as to the Indus; then\nconquered Meida and Babylonia in the west.  In 129 Demetrius II\nNicator, the reigning Seleucid, attacked Mithradates' son,\nPhraates II, and was defeated; and the lands east of the\nEuphrates definitely passed from Seleucid to Parthian control.\n\nWhy not, then, count as manvantaric doings in West Asia\nthis rise of the Parthians to power?  Why relegate them\nand their activities to the dimness of pralaya?  Says the\n_Encyclopaedia Britannica:_\n\n\"The Parthian Empire as founded by the conquests of Mithradates I\nand restored, once by Mithradates II (the Great, c. 124 to 88\nB.C.), and again by Phraates II (B.C. 76 to 70), was, to all\nexterior appearances, a continuation of the Achaemenid dominion.\nThus the Arsacids now began to assume the old title 'King of\nkings' (the shahanshah of modern Persia), though previously their\ncoins as a rule had borne only the legend 'great king.'  The\nofficial version preserved by Arrian in his _Parthica,_\nderives the line of These Parnian nomads from [the Achaemenian]\nArtaxerxes II.  In reality however the Parthian empire was\ntotally different from its predecessor, both externally and\ninternally.  It was anything rather than a world empire.  The\ncountries west of the Euphrates never owned its dominion, and\neven of Iran itself not one half was subject to the Arsacids.\nThere were indeed vassal states on every hand, but the actual\npossessions of the kings--the provinces governed by their\nsatraps--consisted of a rather narrow strip of land stretching\nfrom the Euphrates and north Babylonia through southern Media and\nParthia as far as north-western Afghanistan... Round these\nprovinces lay a ring of minor states which as a rule were\ndependent on the Arsacids.  They might, however, partially\ntransfer their allegiance on the rise of a new power (e.g.\nTigranes in Armenia) or a Roman invasion.  Thus it is not without\njustice that the Arsacid period is described, in the later\nPersian and Arabian tadition, as the period of the 'kings of the\npart-kingdoms'--among which the Ashkanians (i.e. the Arsacids)\nhad won the first place....\n\n\"It may appear surprising that the Aracids made no attempt to\nincorporate the minor states in the empire and create a great and\nunited dominion, such as existed under the Achaemenids and was\nafterwards restored by the Sassanians.  This fact is the clearest\nsymptom of the weakness of their empire and of the small power\nwielded by their King of kings.  In contrast alike with its\npredecessors and successors the Arsacid dominion was peculiarly a\nchance formation--a state which had come into existence through\nfortuitous external circumstances, and had no firm foundation\nwithin itself, or any intrinsic _raison d'etre._\"\n\nA Turanian domination over Iran, it had leave to exist only\nbecause the time was pralaya.  When a man dies, life does not\ndepart from his body; but only that which sways and organizes\nlife; then life, ungoverned and disorganized, takes hold and\nriots.  So with the seats of civilization.  One generally finds\nthat at such times some foreign power receives, as we are getting\nto say, a mandate (but from the Law) to run these dead or\nsleeping or disorganized regions,--until such time as they come\nto life again, and proceed to evict the mandataries.--As well to\nremember this, now that we are proposing, upon a brain-mind\nscheme, to arrange for ourselves what formerly the Law saw to:--\nthe nations that are now to be great and proud manditaries,\nshall sometime themselves be mandataried; and those that are\nmandataried now, shall then arrange their fate for them; there\nis no help for it:  you cannot catch Spring in a trap, or cage\nup Summer lest he go.--It seems now we must believe in a new\ndoctrine:  that certain 'Nordics' are the Superior Race, and you\nmust be blue-eyed and large and blond, or you shall never pass\nPeter's wicket.  One of these days we shall have some learned\ningenious Hottentot arising, to convince us poor others of the\ninnate superiority of Hottentottendom, and that we had better bow\ndown! . . . But to return:\n\nThe Parthians remained little more than Central-Asian nomads:\nsomething between the Huns who destroved civilization, and the\nTurks who cultivated it for all they were worth (in a Central\nAsian-nomad sort of way).  All their magnates were Turanian;\nthey retained a taste for tent-life; their army and fighting\ntactics where of the desert-horseman type:  mounted bowmen,\ncharging and shooting, wheeling and scattering in flight,--which\nput not your trust in, or 'ware the \"Parthian shot.\"  They were\nnot armed for close combat; and were quite defenseless in\nwinter, when the weather slackened their bow-string.  True, Aryan\nIran put its impress on them:  so that presently their kings wore\nlong beards in the Achaemenian fashion, made for themselves an\nAchaemenian descent, called themselves by Achaemenian names.\nThey took on, too, the Achaemenian religion of Zoroaster:--so,\nbut much more earnestly and adventurously and _opera-bouffe_\ngrimly.  Ts'in Shi Hwangti took on the quest of Tao.  There was\nalso a stratum of Hellenistic culture in their domains, and they\ntook on something of that.  When they conquered Babylonia, it was\ninevitable that they should move their headquarters down into\nthat richest and most thickly-populated part of their realm--to\nSeleucia, the natural capital, one might suppos?--a huge\nHellenistic city well organized for world-commerce.--But let\nthese nomad kings come into it with their horde, and what would\nbecome of the ordered civic life?  Nomads do not take well\nto life in great cities; they love the openness of their\neverlasting plains, and the narrrow streets and high buildings\nirk their sensibilities.  For this reason, and perhaps because\nthey recognised their deficienceies, they shunned Seleucia; and\nbuilt themselves lumbering straggling gawky Ctesiphon across the\nTigris to be their chief capital;--for they had many; not\nabiding to be long in one place, but gadding about as of old.\nStill, Greek culture was not to be denied.  They coined money,\ncopying the inscriptions on the coins of the Seleucids, and\ncopyting them ever worse and worse.  Not until after 77 A.D., and\nthen only occasionally, do Parthian coins bear inscriptions in\nAramaic.  Yet sometimes we hear of their being touched more\ndeeply with Greekness.  Orodes I,--he who defeated Crassus,--\nspoke good Greek, and Greek tragedies were played at his court.--\nAs with nomads generally, it was always easy for a Parthian king\nto shark up a great army and achieve a striking victory; but\nas a rule impossible to keep the horde so sharked up thogether\nfor solid conquests; and above all, it was impossible to\norganize anything.\n\nBut they played their part in history:  striking down to cut\noff the flow of Greek culture eastward.  It had gone, upon\nAlexander's impulse, up into Afghanistan and down into India;\nmay even have touched Han China,--probably did.  I do not suppose\nthat the touch could have done anything but good in India and\nChina; where culture was well-established, older, and in all\nessentials higher, than in Greece.  But in Persia itself the case\nwas different.  Persia was under pralaya, in retreat among its\noriginal mountains; and submergence under Hellenisticism might\nhave meant for its oblivion of its own native Persianism.\nConsder:  of the two great centers of West-Asian culture, Egypt\nfell under Greek, and then under Roman, dominion; and the old\nEgyptian civilization became, so far as we can tell, utterly a\nthing of the past.  When Egypt rose again, under the Esotericist\nSultans of the tenth century A.D., I dare not quite say that her\nnew glory was linked by nothing whaterver to the ancient glory of\nthe Pharaohs; but that would be the general--as it is the\nobvious--view.  Fallen into pralaya, she had no positive strength\nof her own to oppose to the active manvantaric influence of\nGreekism under the Ptolemies; and in Roman days it was her\nimported Greekism that she opposed to the Romans, not her own old\nand submerged Khemism.  Her soul was buried very deep indeed, if\nit remained with her at all.  In Persia, on the other hand,\nWest Asia retained much more clearly its cultural identity.\nPersianism was submerged for about thirteen decades under the\nSeleucids; then the Parthians cut in, and the drowning waters\nwere drained away.  The Parthians had no superior culture to\nimpose on the Persians; whereas the Greeks had,--because theirs\nwas active and in manvantara, while that of the Persians\nthemselves was negative, because in pralaya.  One might say\nroughly that a nation under the dominance of a people more highly\nor actively cultured than itself, tends to lose the integrity of\nits own culture,--as has happened in Ireland and Wales under\nEnglish rule:--they take on, not advantageously, an imitation of\nthe culture of their rulers.  But under the dominance of a\nstronger, but less advanced, people, they tend to seek refuge the\nmore keenly in their own cultural sources:  as the Finns and\nPoles have done under the Russians.  This explains in part the\ndifference between Egypt and Persia it the dawn of the new\nWest-Asian manvantara.  We have seen that in the former the seeds\nwere ready to sprout, and did,--in Ammonius Saccas and his movement.\nThey were Egyptian seeds; but the soil and fertilizers were so\nGreek that the blossom when it appeared seemed not Egyptian, not\nWest-Asian, but Neo-Greek; and turned not to the rising, but to\nthe setting sun.  The new growth affiliated itself to the\nEuropean manvantara that was passing, not to the West-Asian one\nthat was to begin.  Persia was in a different position.\n\nCertain events went to quicken the Persian seed within the\nParthian empire.  One was the rise of the Yueh Chi.  During the\nperiod between the end of the brilliance of the Western, and the\nbeginning of that of the Eastern Hans, these people were\nconsolidating an empire in Northern India, and figuring there as\nthe Kushan Dynasty:  their power culminated, probably, in the\nreign of Kanishka. They had wrested from the Parthians some of\ntheir eastern provinces;--really, the overlordship of these\nrather than the sovereignty, for the Parthians held all things\nlightly except the ground they happened to be camping on; and\nthis made a change in the center of Parthian gravity which was of\nenormous help to the Persians.\n\nThe heart of Persiandom was the province of Fars or Persis, the\nmountain-land lying to the east of the Persian Gulf, and between\nit and the Great Persian Desert.  Mesopotamia, where were\nCtesiphon, the Parthian's chief capital, and Seleucia, their\ngreatest city,--the richest and most populated part of their\nempire, stretches northward from the very top of the gulf, a long\nway from Fars; and the main routes eastward from Mesopotamia run\nwell to the north of the latter avoiding its mountains and desert\nbeyond.  So this province is remote, and well calculated to\nmaintain appreciable independence of any empire not born in\nitself.  The Parthian writ had never run there much; nor had the\nMedian in the days when the Medes were in power; though of that\nempire, as of the Parthian, it had been more or less nominally a\ndependent province.  It was from these mountains that a chieftain\ncame, in the five-fifties B.C., to over turn Astyages the Mede's\nsovereignty, and replace it with his own Achaemenian Persian;\nand to take Persianism out of mountain Fars, and spread it over\nall West Asia.  Back to Fars, when the Achaemenians fell, that\nPersianism receded; there to maintain itself unimportantly aloof\nthrough the Seleucid and Arsacid ages; probably never very\nseriously menaced by Greekism, even in Seleucid times, because so\nremote from the routes of trade and armies.  The conquests of the\nYueh Chi put Fars still nearer the circumference of Parthia:\nthrew the center of that more definitely into Mesopotamia, and\nclosed the avenues eastward.  The change made Fars the more\nconscious of herself.\n\nBut there were Persians all over the Parthian domain; and had\nbeen ever since they first went down out of their mountains under\nCyhrus to conquer.  It was in accordance with what I may call the\nLaw of Cyclic Backwashes, that the rise of Yueh Chi should have\nstirred up Persian feeling in them everywhere.  Thus:  the\nimpulse of Han Wuti's westward activities passed as a quickening\ninto the Yueh Chi; and on from them, not into the Parthians, who\nwere but an unreality and mirage of empire, but into these\nPersians, the true possessors of the land whose turn it was to be\nquickened.  They began remembering, now, their ancient greatness;\nand turning their eyes to their still half-independent ancestral\nmountains, whence--dared they hope it?--another Cyrus might appear.\n\nThen came another psychic impulse, from the west:  when Trajan's\neastward victories shook the Parthian power again.  Then,--you\nwill remember how the Roman world was shaken at the time\nof Marcus Aurelius' accession:  how Vologaeses seized the\nopportunity to attack; how Verus the co-emperor went against\nhim, and made a mess of things; how Avidius Casius (who brought\nback the plague to Rome) saved the situation.  In doing so, he\nconferred unwittingly untold benefits on the Persian subjects of\nParthia.  He destroyed Seleucia as a punitive measure.  Now\nSeleucia had been the cultureal capital of the Parthian empire;\nand it was a Greek city.  Its culture was Greek; and Greek\nculture had ever been, for Persianism, a graver danger and more\npresent check than Parthian ignorance; or it submerged and\nabashed, where the other only ignore, the Persian spirit.  So\nwhen Seleucia was wiped out, in 165, the chief and real enemy of\nthe National Soul had vanished.  The Persians might no longer\nlook to Hellenism for their cultural inspiration; might no more\nset up _Its_ light against the Parthian darkness; they must find\na light instead proper to their own souls;--and must look\ntowards mountain Fars to find it.  Within a half-cycle they\nwere up.  They were due to be up, as you will remember, in\nthe two-twenties:  the decade in which we saw the stream in\nChina, as in Rome, diminish.  Troubles had begun in Rome in\n162, the second year of Aurelisus.  162 plus 65 are 227.  In\n227 Persia rose and Parthia vanished.\n\nIn the second century A.D. there had been a man in Fars named\nPapak the son of Sassan, who took as his motto the well-known\nlines from Marlowe:\n\n     \"Is it not passing brave to be a king\n     And ride in triumph through Persepolis?\"\n\n--Persepolis, indeed, was gone, and only its vast and pillared\nruins remained in the wilderness; but near by the town of\nIstakhr had grown up, to be what Persepolis had been in the old\nAchaemenian days,--the heart and center of Fars, which is\nspiritually, the heart and center of all Iran.  Papak thought he\nwould make Istakhr serve his purpose; and did;--and reigned\nthere in due course without ever a Parthian to say him nay.  In\n212 he died; and what he had been and desired to be, that his\nson Ardashir would be in turn, and much more also.  This Ardashir\nwas very busy remembering the story of the Achaemenidae:  men,\nlike himself, of Fars; men, like himself, of the One and Only\nTrue Religion:  but further, conquerors of the world and Kings of\nthe kings of Iran and Turan.  And if they, why not he?--So he\ngoes to it, and from king of Istakhr becomes king of Fars; and\nthen unobtrusively takes in Karmania eastward;--until news of his\ndoings comes to the ears of his suzerain Artabanus King of\nParthis, who does not like it.  Artabanus has recently (217)\nreceived in indemnity a matter of seven and a half million\ndollars from a well-whipped Roman emperor; and is not prepared\nto see his own uderlings give themselves airs;--so whistles up\nhis horde of cavalry, and marches south and east to settle\nthings.  Three battles, and the Parthian empire is a thing of the\npast; and Ardashir (which is Artaxerxes) the son of Papak the\nson of Sassan sits in the great seat of the Achaemenidae.\n\nNow this is the key to all the history of the west in those\ntimes; and we may include West Asia in the west:--the world was\ngoing down, and each new phase of civilization was something\nworse than the one before.  I cannot but see degeneracy, and with\nevery age a step further from ancient truth:  Rome with less\nlight than Greece; the Sassanians a feebble copy of the\nAchaemenians:--knowledge of the Realities receding ever into the\npast.  A new spirit had been coming in since the beginning of the\nChristian era, or since the living flame of the last-surviving\nMysteries was quenched.  It is one we are but painfully\nstruggling away from now; it has tainted all life west of China\nsince.  China, with her satellite nations, alone in the main\nescaped it:  I mean, the spirit of religious intolerance.\n\nThe odium of introducing it belongs not (as you might think) to\none particular religious body, but to the evil in humanlty; on\nwhich, since the Mysteries were destroyed, there had been no\neffective check.  The corner-stone of true religion is the Divine\nSpirit omnipresent in Nature; the Divine Soul in Man.  As well\nforbid the rest of men to breathe the air you breathe, or walk\nunder your private stretches of sky, as try to peg yourself out a\nspecial claim in these!   You cannot do it, and the first\ninstinct of man should be that you cannot do it. But lose sight\nof these Divine Things; lose the sense that perceives them,\ntheir essential universality, their inevitable universality;--and\nwhere are you?  What are you to do about the inner life?--Why,\nfor lack of reality, you shall take a sham:  you shall hatch up\nsome formula of words; or better still, take the formula already\nhatched that comes handiest; call it your creed or confession of\nfaith; fix your belief on that, as supreme and infallible, the\nsure and certain key to the mysteries within and around you;--\nthen you may cease to think of those mysteries altogether; the\nword-formula will be enough; it is that, not thought, not\naction, that saves. I believe in--such and such an arrangement of\nconsonants and vowels;--and therefore I am saved, and highly\nsuperior; and you, poor reptile, who possess not this arrangement,\nbut some other and totally false one;--you, thank God, are\ndamned.  You are lost; you shall go to hell; I scorn and\nlook down on you from the heights of the special favor of the\nMaker of the Stars and Suns:  as if I lay already snug in\nAbraham's bosom, and watched you parched and howling.--The\nMysteries were gone; there was no Center of Light in the West,\nfrom which the thought-essence of common sense might seep out\npurifying year by year into men's minds; Theosophy the grand\nantiseptic was not; so such tomfoolery as this came in to take\nits place.  You must react to this from indifference, and to\nindifference from this;--two poles of inner darkness, and\nwretched unthinking humanity wobbling between them;--so long as\nyou have no Light.  What then is the Light?--Why, simply\nsomething you cannot confine in a church or bottle in a creed:\nand this is a proposition that needs no proving at all, because\nit is self-evident.  There was a fellow in English Wiltshire\nonce, they say, who planted a hedge about his field to keep\nin the cuckoo from her annual migration.   The spirit of\nCuckoo-hedging came in, in the first centuries A. D.\n\nIt was totally unknown to the Roman polity.  Whatever inner\nthings any man or nation chose to bear witness to, said the Roman\nstate, were to be supposed to exist; and might be proclaimed,\nwere they not subversive of the public order, for the benefit of\nany that needed them.  There were two exceptions:  Druidism; we\nhave glanced at a possible reason why  it was proscribed in Gaul\nby Augustus; another reason may been that the Druids clung to\nthe memories of Celtic--and so anti-Roman--great things forelost.\nThe other exception was the first historical world-religion that\nproclaimed the doctrine,--_Believe or be damned!_\n\nOver the portals of the first century A.D., says H.P. Blavatsky,\nthe words \"the Karma of Israel\" are written.  Judaism had never\ntried to impress itself on the world, as the religion that was\nborn from it did.--It is rarely that one finds sane views taken\nas to Jewish history; it is a history, and a race, that provoke\nextreme feelings.  A small people, originally exiled from India,\nthat had had eight thousand years of vicissitudes since;\nsometimes, it is necessary to think, high fortunes;--no doubt an\nage of splendor once under their great king Solomon, or some one\nelse for whom the traditional Solomon stands; oftenest, perhaps,\nsubjected to their powerful neighbors in Egypt, Babylon, or\nAssyria, and latterly Rome:  you may say that no doubt they were\nin the long run no better and no worse than the rest of mankind.\nThey had great qualities, and the failings correspondent.  They\nhad, like all other races, their champions of the Light, their\nProphets and wise Rabbis; and in ages of darkness their stiff\nnecked fierce materialism incased in dogma and inthroned in high\nplaces in the national religion.  Their history has been lifted\nto a bad eminence,--bad for them and the rest of us,--by the\nignorance of the last two millenniums; in reality, that history,\nsanely understood, and not gathered too much from their own\nrecords, amply explains their failings and their virtues, and\nshould leave us not unduly admiring, nor unfraternally the\nreverse.  They were human; which means, subject to human\nduality, to cycles of light, and cycles of darkness.  The\ncenturies after the sixth B.C. were, as we have seen, a cycle of\ngrowing darkness for most of the world.  The position of the\nJews, a small people surrounded by great ones, and therefore\nalways liable to be trampled on, had intensified their national\nfeeling to an extraordinary pitch; and their religion was the\none lasting bond of their nationality.  So, at the beginning of\nthe Christian era, they were notoriously the most difficult\npeople to govern in the Roman world.  The passing of the Egyptian\nMysteries had left those Egyptians who still were Egyptian\nsullenly fanatical; but the reaction from ancient greatness kept\nthat fanaticism aloof,--the energies were dormant:  Egypt,\nthoroughly conquered, turned her face from the world, and hoped\nfor nothing.  But the Jews maintained an inextinguishable hope;\nthey nourished on it a fighting spirit which entered fiercely\ninto the religion that was for them the one and only truth, and\nthat lifted them in their own estimation high above the rest of\nmankind.  Romans and Egyptians alike worshiped the Gods, though\nthey called them by different names; but the Jews abhorred the\nGods.  The Maker of Sirius and Canopus and the far limits of the\ngalaxy was a good Jew like themselves, their peculiar property;\nHe had his earthly  headquarters in Jerusalem; spoke, I suppose,\nonly Hebrew, and considered other languages gibberish; of\nall this earth, was only interested in a tiny corner at the\nsouth-east end of the Mediterrancan; and of all the millions of\nhumanity only in the million or two of his Chosen People.  I say\nat once that, considering their history, and the universal\ndecline of the Mysteries, and the gathering darkness of the age,\nthere is nothing surprising in their attitude.  Much oppression,\nmany conquests,--never accepted by themselves,--had driven them\nin on themselves and kept their racial self-consciousness at a\nperpetual boiling-point; and it all went into their religion,\nwhich compensated them with unearthly dignities for the\nindignities they suffered on earth .... _them_.... the Chosen\nPeople of the Lord!  It bred in them scorn of the Gentiles, for\nwhich there was no solvent in the Roman polity, the Roman\ncitizenship, the Roman peace.--There must have been always noble\nprotest-ants among them.  The common people,--as the picture in\nthe Gospels shows,--were ready enough to fraternize humanly with\nGentiles and Romans; but the fact remains that at the time\nJudaism gave birth to Christianity, this narrow fierce antagonism\nto all other religions was the official attitude of the Jewish\nchurch.  It was, perhaps, the darkest moment in Jewish spiritual\nhistory; and it was the moment chosen by a Teacher as that in\nwhich he should be born a Jew.\n\nThe story in the Gospels cannot, I suppose, be taken as _au pied\nde lettre_ historical; but no doubt it gives a general picture\nwhich is true enough.  And the picture it gives shows the Jewish\nproletariat in very favorable contrast with the officials heads\nof the church and state.  They, the common people, received the\nTeacher well; to them, he was a gracious figure whom they came\nin multitudes to hear.  He was in fierce opposition to the\nhierarchic aristocracy,--the \"scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,\"\nas he called them:  the body that nourished the tradition of\nexclusiveness and intolerance.  He preached pure ethics to the\npeople, and they loved him for it.  He gathered round him\ndisciples,--men eager to learn from him that which it would have\nbeen ridiculous to have tried to teach the mob:  the Secret\nWisdom, without which to keep them sweet, ethics become\nsentimentalism, and philosophy a cold corpse.  It is a law\nin the Schools of this Wisdom that seven years of training\nare necessary before the disciple can reach that grade of\ninsight and self-mastery which will enable him in turn to\nbecome a Teacher:  seven years at the very least.   Within\nfour years of the beginning of his mission, before, in the\nnature of things, one single disciple could have been more\nthan half-trained, the hierarchic aristrocracy had had this\nTeacher crucified.\n\nWho, then, was to transmit his doctrine?  he wrote nothing of it\ndown; in the truest sense it never can be written down:  had\nnever had time to teach it; from any writings whatsoever each\nstudent can only gain the nexus of what he is to learn from life;\nfor teaching does not mean giving dissertations, arguments,\nproofs; enunciating principles, and explaining them, or the\nlike.  It means, so far as one dare try to express it, bringing\nsuch experiences to bear on the lives of those who are to be\ntaught, as shall awaken their own inner perceptions to truth.  So\nthis Man's doctrine _was never transmitted._  His disciples, good\nand earnest men, as we may imagine, had not the weapons spiritual\nwherewith to wage effective warfare for the Light.  Supposing\nH.P. Blavatsky had died in 1879....?\n\nThe next step was, the inevitable materialization of the whole\nmovement.  It followed the course all such movements must follow,\nthat are without spiritual leadership at the head, spiritual\nwisdom at the core.  It reacted against the exclusiveness of\nJudaism,--and at the same time inherited it.  Feelings of that\nsort lie far deeper than the articles of belief; a change of\ncreed will not remove them; it needs special, defined, and\nherculean efforts to remove them.  You might, for example, react\nfrom a bigoted creed to one whose sole proclaimed article was\nuniversal toleration, and become a fierce bigot in that,--for the\ncreed, not the idea; because creeds always obscure ideas:  when a\ncreed is formulated, it means that ideas are shelved.  So now\nChrisitianity inherited the Chosen People dogma, but transferred\nit from a racial-ecclesiastical to a wholly ecclesiastical basis;\nand, since every Teacher comes upon a cyclic impusle outward,\ntook on a missionary spirit.  The Chosen People now were the\nmembers of the church, who might belong to any race.  Within that\nchurchly pale you were saved; you were a special protege of the\nMaker of Sirius and Canopus and the far limits of the galaxy;\nwho had--for a dogma had to be invented to explain the untimely\ndisastrous death of the Teacher,--incarnated and been crucified\nin Judea.  Outside that pale you were damned,--from Caesar on his\nthrone to the smallest newsboy yelling false news in the Forum.\nWhile such a spirit had been confined to the Jews, it had been\ncomparatively harmless; now it was spreading broadcast through\nthe Roman world, an entirely new thing, and the darkest and most\nominous yet.\n\nWhom, then, shall we blame?  These sectarians?--No: to understand\nis to forgo the imagined right apportioning blame.  It was that\nhumanity had entered on a dark region in time:  a region whose\nterrors had not been forefended; to be entered perforce by a\nhumanity, or section of humanity, that had no Center of Light\nestablished in its midst.  Had Croton of Pythagoras survived; or\nthe Mysteries at Gaulish Bibracte:  had there been but one firm\nfoothold for the Lodge in the world of men;--I think none of\nthese things could have come about; and that for the same reason\nthat you cannot have total darkness in a room in which a lamp is\nlighted.  But this darkness was total:  intolerance is the\nnegation of spiritual light.  Of all the various movements in the\nRoman world that had not actual members of the Lodge behind and\nmoving them, Christianity had the greatest impetus; and it was\nthe one that first entered into this murk and deadly gloom.  So\nthat it may seem, to an impartial but not too deeply-seeing eye,\nas if it were Christianity that invented the gloom.  Not so; nor\nJudaism neither; nor any Christians nor Jews.  It was the men\nwho burned Croton; the man who killed the Mysteries in Gaul.\nFor every disaster there are causes far and far back.\n\nChristianity had spread, by this third century, perhaps as\nmuch through the Parthian empire as through the Roman.  The\nZoroastrians had been as tolerant as the Romans; much more so to\nChristianity;--though the motive of their toleration had been\npure indifference to everything religious; whereas in Rome there\nwas statesmanship and wisdom behind theirs.  The Persians reacted\nagainst Parthianism in all its manifestations.  They were shocked\nat Parthian indifference.  The Persian is as naturally religious\nas the Hindoo:  and has the virtues and vices of the religious\ntemperament.  The virtues are a tendency to mysticism, a need to\nconcern oneself with the unseen; the vices, a non-immunity to\nfanaticism and bigotry.  They came down now from their mountains\ndetermined to combat the slackness; the indifference, the\nmaterialism of the world.  The virus of intolerance was in the\nair,--a spirit like the germ of plague or any epidemic; one\nreligion catches it from another.  Let it be about, and you are\nin danger of catching it, unless your faith is based on actual\ninner enlightenment, and not faith at all, but knowledge; or\nunless you have a Teacher so enlightened to adjust you, and keep\nyou too busy to catch it;--or unless you are totally heedless of\nthe unseen.  The Persians were not indifferent, but very much in\nearnest; and they had no knowledge, but only faith:  so they\nstood in peculiar danger.  And presently a Teacher came to them,\nand they rejected him.\n\nHis name was Mani; he was born in Ctesiphon, of noble Persian\nfamily, probably in 215; and came forward as a Teacher (according\nto the Mohammedan tradition, which is the most trustworthy)\nat the coronation of Sapor I, Ardashir's successor, in 242.\nSapor at first was disposed to hear him; but the Magi moved\nheaven and earth to change that disposition.  Ardashir had\nbound church and state together in the closest union:  no worship\nbut the Zoroastrian was allowed in his dominions.  This was\nmainly aimed at the Christians, and must have caused them much\ndiscomfort.  But Mani, it would seem, rose against all this\nnarrow-ness.  It has been said that he taught Reincarnation, and\nagain denied;--this much he taught certainly,--that all religions\nare founded on one body of truth.  He drew his own doctrine from\nZoroistrianism, Christianity (chiefly Gnostic), and Buddhism;\ntaking from each what he found to be true.  Manichaeism spread\nquickly, through the Roman world as well as through Persia; in\nthe former it replaced Mithraism, another Persian growth, that\nhad come to be preeminently the religion of the Roman soldier.\nSapor looked on him favorably; Hormizd, the heir apparent, was\nmore or less a disciple; but the Magi agitated.  They arranged a\ngreat debate before the king, and therein convinced him;\npersuaded him, at least, to withdraw from the Teacher the light\nof his countenance;--and Mani found it expedient, or perhaps was\ncompelled, to go into exile.  In China; where the fimily of the\nTs'ao Ts'ao who expelled the Eastern Hans, was reigning as the\nHouse of Wei in the north.  There Mani busied himself, less in\nteaching his religion than in studying Chinese civilization,--\nespecially its arts and crafts, and most of all, carpet-weaving.\nPresently he ventured back to Persia, with a large knowledge of\nChinese methods and a large collection of specimens;--with which\nhe gave a new impetus to Persian art and manufactures.  Hormizd\ncame to the throne in 271, and befriended him and his doctrine;\nbut reigned only a single year.  His successor Bahram I in the\nname of Zoroastrianism had him flayed and crucified.\n\nSo Sassanian history is, on the whole, uninteresting.  Their\nculture stood for no great ideas; only for a narrow persecuting\nchurch.  West Asia was not ready yet for great and world-important\ndoings; it must wait for these till Mohammed, who struck\ninto the very least promising quarter of it, and kindled\nin the barbarous wilderness a light to redeem the civilization of\nthe western world.  I shall hardly have to turn to the Sassanians\nagain; so will say here what is to be said.  We have seen that\ntheir empire was quite unlike the Parthian; it was a reversion\nto, and copy in small of, the Achaemenian of Cyrus and Darius.\nIt never attained the size of that; and only late in its\nexistence, and to a small degree, overflowed the Parthian limits.\nBut it was a well-organized state, with a culture of its own;\nand enough military power to stand throughout its existence the\nserious rival of Rome.  Its arts and crafts became famous,\n--thanks largely to Mani; in architecture it revived the\nAchaemenian tradition, with modifications of its own; and passed\nthe result on to the Arabs when they rose, to be the basis of the\nSaracenic Style.  There was a fairly extensive literature:\nlargely religious, but with much also in _belles lettres,_\nre-tellings of the old Iranian sagas, and the like.  Its history is\nmainly the record of gigantic wars with Rome; these were\ndiversified later by tussles with the Turks, Ephthalites or White\nHuns, _et hoc genus omne._  Its whole period of existence lasted\nfrom 227 to 637; 410 years;--which we may compare with the 426\nof the Hans, and the Roman 424 from the accession of Augustus to\nthe final division of the empire.  Of its cycles, there is a\nlittle information forthcoming; but we may say this:  Sapor I\ncame to the throne in 241, succeeding his father Ardashir; he\nhad on the whole a broad outlook; favored Mani at first; was at\npains to bring in teachers of civilization from all possible\nsources;--with his reign the renaissance of the arts and\nlearning, such as it was,--and it was by no means contemptible,--\nbegan.  Three times thirteen decades from that, and we are at\n631.  The thirteen decades (less a year) from 499 to 628 are\nmainly filled with the reigns of Kavadh I and the two Chosroeses,--\n\n     \"Kai-Kobad the great and Kai-Khusru,\"\n\n--all three strong kings and conquerors.  When Chosroes II was\nkilled in 628, after a war with Heraclius that began brilliantly\nand ended in disaster,--the empire practically fell:  split up\nunder several pretenders, to be an easy prey for the Moslems a\nfew years later.  Was the whole Sassanian period divisible into a\nday, a night, and a day?  Information is not at hand whereby one\nmight gauge the life of the people, and say.  The last thirteen\ndecades, certainly, seem to have left their mark as an age of\nglory on the Persian imagination, and to have been remembered as\nsuch in the days of Omar Khayyam.--And here we must leave the\nSassanians, having other fish to fry.\n\nWe saw the Crest-Wave strike Rome (at Nerva's accession) in 96;\nthen, 131 years later, raise up Ardashir and Persia in 227;\n--and so, I suppose, should incline to look east again, and\njump another thirteen decades, and land in India, in 357 or\nthereabouts,--praying God to keep us from a bad fall.  _India_\nI allow; but look before you leap;--or, if you will, in mid-air\nturn over in your minds the old Indian cycles, as far as you know\nthem, and see if they offer you any prospect of a landing-place.\nAs thus:  there were the Mauryas, 320 to 190 B. C.; thence on\nthirteen decades to 60 B.C.,--and near enough to the reputed 58\nof the reputed Vikramaditya of Ujjain.  On again (thirteen\ndecades as usual) to the seventies A.D.--and good enough in all\nconscience for that slippery Kanishka who so dodges in and out\namong the early centuries, and is fitted with a new date by\neveryone who has to do with him.  On again, from 70 to 200;\nnothing doing there, I regret to say, (that we know about).\nNever mind; on thence to 320,--the nearest point to our 357;\nlet us land in the three-twenties then, and see what happens.\n\nOn solid ground:  for India, remarkably solid.  There actually\nwas a Golden Age there at that time; and everybody seems to\nagree that it lasted, say, one hundred and twenty-nine years;\nfrom 326 to 455.  This you will note, was the period of the last\nphase of the Roman Empire:  that of its rapid decline.  In 323\nConstantine came to the throne, and began making Chrisitianity\nthe state religion; in 330 he moved his capital.  After 456, no\nemperor ruled in the west but for puppets set up by the German\nRicimer, two set up by Constantinople, and Romulus Augustulus,\nthe last,--and all within twenty years.  There is no bright spot\nwithin the whole thirteen decades, except the two years of\nJulian.  The faucet was turned on in India; and the Roman garden\nwent waterless, and wilted.\n\nWhat happened was this:  in 320, one Chandragupta Gupta married\nthe Pincess of Magadha; and an era was dated from their\ncoronation on the 26th of February in that year.  Their son\nSamudragupta succeeded his father in 326, and reigned until 375.\nIt is characteristic of India that this, probably the greatest\nmonarch since Asoka, is absolutely unmentioned in any history or\ncontemporary literature:  the sole evidence for his reign and\ngreatness comes from coins and inscriptions.   One of the latter\nis to be found on a pillar originally set up and inscribed by\nAsoka, now in the fort at Allahabad.  It shows him a mighty\nconqueror, reigning over all Hindustan; victorious in the\nDeccan; and, by influence and alliances, dominant from Ceylon to\nthe Oxus.  His coins picture him playing on the lyre; the\ninscriptions speak of him as a poet and musician; in his reign\nbegan a great renaissance in art, architecture, literature, and\nperhaps especially in music,--a renaissance which reached its\nculmination in the reign of his successor.  Another thing to\nnote:  when of old time Pushyamitra overturned the Buddhist\nMauryas, he showed his Brahmin orthodoxy by performing the great\nHorse Sacrifice;--a sign that the ancient religion had come back\nin triumph.  They let loose a horse to wander where it would, and\nfollowed it with an army for a whole year; then sacrificed it.\nSamudragupta performed the same rites;--and it is known that the\nGupta age was one of strong reaction against Buddhism.  I know\nthat it is disputed now that there was ever a persecution of the\nBuddhists in India; but the tradition remains; and one of the\nTeachers, in a letter that appears either in the _Occult World_\nor _Esoteric Buddhism,_ speaks of India as a land from which the\nLight of the Lodge had been driven with the followers of the\nBuddha.  Certainly there were Buddhists in India long after this\ntime:  even a great Buddhist king in the seventh century:  but it\nseems more than probably that the spirit of intolerance went east\nwith the eastward cyclic flow we have noted this evening:  from\nChristianity to Zoroastrianism:  from Zoroastrianism under the\nSassanids to Brahminism under the Guptas.\n\nNot, perhaps, that there was actual persecution, yet.  Emissaries\nfrom the king of Ceylon found the shrine at Buddhagaya fallen\ninto decay; and they themselves were not well treated at the\nsite.  The Buddhist kind, however, determined to remedy things as\nwell as he could.  He sent ambassadors with rich gifts to\nSamundragupta; who called the gifts tribute, and permitted him,\non consideration thereof, to restore the shrine.  The monastery\nthen built by the Sinhalese was afterwards visited by Hiuen\nTsang; who describes it as having three storeys, six halls,\nthree towers, and accommodation for a thousand monks.  \"On it,\"\nsays Hiuen Tsang, \"the utmost skill of the artist has been\nemployed; the ornamentation is in the richest colors, and the\nstatue of Buddha is cast in gold and silver, decorated with gems\nand precious stones.\"\n\nA revolution took place in architecture in this age:  the\nBuddhist style was abandoned, for something which, says Mrs.\nFlora Annie Steel: *\n\n     \".....more ornate, less self-evident, served to reflect the\nnew and elaborate pretensions of the priesthood.\"\n\n------\n* To whose book _India through the Ages,_ I am indebted for these\nfacts concerning the Gupta Age.\n------\n\nIt is summed up, says Mrs. Steel, in the words:\n\n     \"...._cucumber and gourd_... tall curved vimanas or towers,\nexactly like two thirds of a cucumber stuck in the ground and\nsurmounted by a flat gourd-like 'amalika.' .... Exquisite in\ndetail, perfect in the design and execution of their ornamentation,\nthe form of these temples leaves much to be desired.  The flat\nblob at the top seems to crush down the vague aspirings of\nthe cucumber, which, even if unstopped, must erelong have\nended in an earthward curve again.\"\n\nThe age culminated in the next reign, that of Chandragupta II\nVikramaditya.  Heaven knows how to distingusih between him and\nhis half-mythological namesake of B.C. 58 and Ujjain.  Very\npossibly the Nine Gems of Literature and Kalidasa and _The Ring\nof Sakoontala_ belong to this reign really.  At any rate it\nwas a wonderful time.  Fa-hien, the Chinese Buddhist traveler,\nobligingly visited India during its process, and left a picture\nof conditions.  Personal liberty, says Mrs. Steel, was the\nkeynote feature.  There was no capital punishment; no hard\npressure of the laws; there were excellent hospitals and\ncharitable institutions of all sorts.--We are to see in the whole\nage, I imagine, a period of great brilliance, and of humaneness\nresulting from eight centuries of the really civilizing influence\nof Buddhism:  far higher conditions than you should have found\nelsewhere to east or west at that time;--and also, the moment\nwhen the impulse of culture had reached its outward limit, and\nthe reaction against the spiritual sources of culture began.\n\nChandragupta Vikramaditya reigned until 413; Kumaragupta, great\nand successful also, until 455.  Then, thirteen decades after\nSamudragupta's accession, came Skandagupta; and with him, the\nWhite Huns.  He defeated them on a large scale in the fifties;\nbut they returned again and again to the attack; during the next\nthirty years their pressure was breaking up the empire; till\nwhen Skandagupta died in 480, it fell to pieces.\n\n\n\n\nXXIII.   \"THE DRAGON, THE APOSTATE, THE GREAT MIND\"\n\n\nThe time is the middle of the fourth century A.D.  The top of the\nCrest-Wave is in India, now the greatest country in the world.\nThe young Samudragupta, about thirty years old now, has been\nfilling the whole peninsula with his renown as warrior, poet,\nconqueror, patron of arts and letters, musician.  The Hindus are\na busy and efficient people, masterly in this material world.\nTheir colonies are spread over Java, Sumatra, and the other\nislands; Formosa (think where it lies) has a Sanskrit, but not\nyet (so far as we know) a Chinese, name; all those seas are\nfilled with Indian shipping.--And with Arab shipping, too, by the\nway; or are coming to be so; and spray of the Wave (in the\nshape of Indian and Arab ships) is falling in the port of Canton.\nBut China as a whole is in a deep trough of sea:  an intriguing,\nceremonious, ultra-elegant, and wily-weak court and dynasty have\nlately been expelled from precarious sovereignty at Changan in\nthe North to Nankin south of the Yangtse; there to abide a\nlittle while un-overturned, looking down in lofty impotent\ncontempt on the uncouth Wether Huns, Tunguses, and Tibetans\nwho are sharing and quarreling over the ancient seats of the\nBlack-haired People in the Hoangho basin, after driving this same\nprecious House of Tsin into the south.--Persia is on the back of\nthe Wave, something lower than the Crest:  Sapor II, a dozen or\nso years older than Samudragupta, has been on the throne since\nsome months before his (Sapor's) birth; and has now grown up\ninto a particularly vigorous monarch; conquering here and there;\npersecuting the Christians with renewed energy since Constantine\ntook them into favor;--and of late years unmercifully banging\nabout Constantius son of Constantine in the open field, and\nbesieging and sometimes taking his fortresses.  This, you may\nsay, with one hand:  with the other he has been very busy with\nhis neighbors in the north-east, the nomads; he has been\npunishing them a little; and incidentally founding, as a\nprotection against their in roads, the city of New Sapor in\nKhorassan,--famed later as Nai-shapur, and the birthplace of a\ncertain Tent-maker of song-rich memory.  In Armenia an Arsacid--\nthat is, Parthian--house has survived and holds sovereignty:  and\nArmenia is a sort of weak Belgium between Persia and Rome;\ninclining to the latter, of course, because ruled by Arsacids,\nwho are the natural dynastic enemies of the Sassanids of Persia.\nRome has turned Christian; so, to cement his alliance with Rome\nand insure Roman aid against powerful Persia, the Armenian king\nhas had himself coverted likewise, and his people follow suit\nwith great piety;--which sends Shah Sapor, King of the kings of\nIran and Turan, Brother of the Sun and Moon, to it with a\nmissionary as well as a dynastic zeal; and a war that is to be\nof nearly thirty years' duration has been in process along the\nfrontier since 336.  Persia, better called a kingdom, perhaps,\nthan an empire, commands about forty millions of subjects; as\nagainst imperial Rome's--who can say?  The population there must\nhave gone down by many millions since the days of the Antonines,\nwith all the civil wars, plagues, pestilences, and famines that\nhave harrowed the years between.\n\nThe sons of Constantine have succeeded to the throne of their\nfather; and the portions of Constantine II, the eldest of the\nthree, and Constans, the youngest, have at last fallen into\nthe hands, or the web, of Constantius,--a sort of cross between\na spider, an octopus, and an elderly maiden aunt,--and in\ngeneral about as unpleasant a creature as ever sat on a throne.\nConstantine the Great, indeed, had willed the succession into the\nhands of a much larger number of his relatives; but this\nConstantius, his father once decently buried, had taken time by\nthe forelock, and insured things to his two brothers and himself\nby killing out two of his uncles and seven of their sons; so\nthat now, Constantine II and Constans being dead, no male scions\nof the house of Constantius Chlorus remain as possible rivals to\nhim, except two boys who had been at the time of the massacre,\nthe one too young, and the other too sickly, to count.  We shall\ncome to them by and by.\n\nChristianity is well established; though Constantius, followed\nhis father's wise example, is deferring his baptism until the\nlast possible moment:  he partly knows the weakness of his\nnature, and desires to have license for a little pleasant sinning\nuntil the end, with the certainty of a glorious resurrection to\nfollow in despite of it.--Dismiss your kindly apprehensions; God\nwas good to Constantius; no untimely accident cut him off\nunbaptized; his plan worked excellently, and providing an Arian\nheretic may go to heaven, in heaven he is to this day, singing\nhis Alleluias with the best of them,--and perhaps between whiles\narguing it out with the various uncles and cousins he murdered.\n\nMeanwhile, however, priests and bishops are the great men of his\nempire; and they enjoy immunities from duties and taxation to an\nextent that throws the whole rational order of government out of\ngear.  Thus, for example, the upkeep of the great roads and posts\nsystem,--the lines of communication,--falls upon a certain class\ncalled the Decurions, who in each district at their own expense\nhave to maintain all in order.  But churchmen,--an enormous class\nnow,--are immune from the decurionship; and are allowed further\nthe use of the post-horses and inns free of cost;--with the\nresult that, practically speaking, no one else can use them at\nall.  Because these churchmen are forever hurrying hither and\nthither to conference, council, or synod; there each sect,--\nArian and Athanasian chiefly,--to damn to eternal perdition (and\ntemporal excommunication when possible) the vile heretics of the\nother:  Homoiousian to thunder against Homoousian, Homoousian\nagainst Homoiousian: _Arius contra Athanasium,_ and _Athanasius\ncontra mundum:_--till the air of the whole Roman world is thick\nwith the fumes of brimstone and the stench of the Nether Pit.\nTaxation, on those left to tax, falls an intolerable burden;\n--we have seen how Shah Sapor is dealing with one end of the\nempire;--at the other end, in Gaul, one Magnentius rose against\nConstantius, and the latter thoughtfully invited in the Germans\nto put him down and help themselves to what they found handy;--\nand a certain Chnodomar, a king in those trans-Rhenish regions,\nhas taken him much at his word.  Result:  a strip forty miles\nwide along the left bank of the Rhine from source to mouth has\nbeen conquered and annexed; three times as much this side is a\nperfectly desolate No-man's land; forty-five important cities,\nincluding Cologne and Strasbourg, have been reduced to ashes,\nwith innumerable smaller towns and villages; all open towns in\nnorth-eastern Gaul have been abandoned; the people of the walled\ncities are starving on what corn they can grow on vacant corner\nlots and in their own back-gardens; hundreds of thousands have\nbeen killed out, or carried off into slavery in Germany; and\nKing Chnodomar has every reason to think that God is behaving\nin a very reasonable manner.--As for the rest of the empire,\nwhatever may be its population in human bodies, there is a\nplentiful lack of human souls to inhabit them; the Roman world\nhas fallen on evil years, truly, but is by no means unchanged;--\nand the one thing you can prophesy with any decent security is\nthat affairs cannot go on in this way much longer.  Rome has\nconducted a number of funerals in her day, of this nation and\nthat conquered and put an end to; not much intuition is required\nnow, to foresee that the next funeral will be her own.--(Though\nindeed, I doubt you should have found half-a-dozen in the Roman\nworld who could foresee it.)\n\nNow there is a Way, narrow and most difficult to find,--a Way of\nconducting the affairs of this life and this world, in balance,\nin equilibrium; in that fine I condition through which alone the\nlife-renewing forces from the vaster worlds within may flow down,\nand keep existence here in harmony, and forefend decay.  This\nwas, of course, the essence of Chinese thought, Confucian and\nTaoist. You maintained the inner harmony, and the forces of\nheaven might use you as their channel.  You found Tao  (the Way),\nand grew never old; you succeeded in all enterprises; walked\nthrough life unruffled,--duty flowing, beautifully accomplished,\nat every moment from your hands.  You met with no snags or\nadjusted yourself always to conditions as they arose, and\nover-rode them in quietest triumph.--They said that, possessing Tao,\none might live on many times the common threescore years and ten;\nvery likely there is some truth in it; it seems as if it were\ntrue at any rate, of the life of nations.  China caught glimpses,\nand lived on and on; grew old, and reviewed her youth time and\nagain.  But normally, what do we find with these un-Taoist\nnations of the West?--They go easily for some period; then it\nbecomes harder and harder for them to adjust theniselves to\nconditions.  They become clogged with the detritus of old thought\nand action.  What is the meaning of the incessant need we see for\nreform?  Under whatever form of government a nation may be, it\narises perpetually; it carries us around the ring of the-archies\nand-cracies, and there is no finality anywhere.--No; there is no\nstraight line of political progress; but round in a ring you go!\nYou turn out your kings, because they are tyrannical:  which\nmeans that their government is no longer efficient, and cannot\ncope with affairs; there is a lack of adjustment between the\ninner and the outer, between the needs and the provision made to\nmeet them. The monarchy, which was at first representative and\nthe true expression of the nation,--because it, or anything else,\nwhen there was no detritus, but  things were new and the inner\nair uncluttered, gave freedom to the national aspirations to pour\nthemselves out in action,--gives such freedom no longer; it\nirks; it misfits; you feel it chafing everywhere.  And yet it\nhas not ceased by any means to be representative:  it represents\nnow a nation which has lost its adjustment to the inner things\nand is clogged up by the detritus of old thought and action, and\nit is that detritus that irks and misfits and chafes you.  So you\nrise and smash an astral mold or two; turn out your kings;\nshout freedom and liberty, and are very glorious for a time under\na totally free and independent republic;--which means, at once or\nafter a while, government by a class.  And this succeeds just as\nwell and badly as its predecessor; neither has found Tao, the\nWay,--following which, your detritus should be consumed as it\ngoes, and life lifted above the sway of Karma.  So once more the\ndetritus accumulates, and blocks the channels; and the life of\nthe nation labors and is oppressed.  Need arises for reforms;\nand the reforms are difficultly carried through; the franchise\nis extended, and there is loud talk about political growth and\nwhat not; we see the millennium at hand, and ourselves its\npredestined enjoyers.  And the old process repeats itself, till\nyou have a very full-fledged democracy:--you make all the men\nvote, and all the women; and presently no doubt all the\nchildren; but even when you have all adult dogs and cats and\ncows voting as well,--you will not find that that order is Tao,\nthe Way, any more than the others were.  The presence of a cow or\ntwo, or an ass or two, more or less, in your parliament will not\nreally insure efficiency of administration.  The detritus grows\nagain, under the most democratic of democracies; and weighs\nthings down;--and you cast about for new methods of reform.\nDemocratic government, somehow, does nothing of what was expected\nof it; is not the panacea;--you see that, to bring the chaos of\naffairs into order, you must stop all this jabber and tinkering,\nand set up some undivided council,--some Man, for God's sake!--a\nDictator who can keep his own and other people's mouths shut and\nhands busy, and get things done unimpeded.  So you make one more\ngrand reform for the sake of efficiency, and set up your\nImperator, and have peace, and decent government; and you have,\nwittingly or not, started up old bugbear Monarchy again; and\nthings go well for a time.  But, bless you, you have not found\nthe Way; you know nothing about Tao, which is not to be\ndiscovered in the fields of politics, and has nothing whatever to\ndo with forms of government.  So you go in search once more for a\npolitical method of dealing with that one and only oppressing\nthing, the detritus,--your karma;--and away you go squirreling\nround the changes again; and all this you call political\nevolution, as I dare say the squirrel does his own gyrations in\nhis cage;--whereas if you found Tao,--if you lived balancedly,--\nif you kept open the channels between this and the God-world,--\nthere would be no political evolution at all--no squirreling,--\nbut only calm, untrammeled beautiful life.  All the claptrap\nabout Western Superiority to the Orient, and the growth of\nfreedom in the West, in contrast with Eastern political immobility,\nsimply means that the Orient is less fond of squirreling than\nwe are; taking its aces by and large, there has been a little\nmore Tao with them than with us:  more consuming the detritus\nas they went; more balanced living, and thus more keeping\nthe channels open.--At least, I imagine so.\n\nNow Rome was very old; and, since Augustus' day, the detritus\nhad grown and grown.  Diocletian had devoted a political sagacity\namounting in some respects to genius to setting things right, and\nhad accomplished something.  He had moved out of Rome itself,\nwhere the psychic atmosphere was too thickly encumbered; had\ngone eastward, where the air, after long pralaya, was clearer;\nhad propped up imperial authority, now for the first time, with\nthe definite insignia of imperial state:  wore a tiara, was to be\nkneeled to, addressed as _Dominus,_ and so forth:--all outward\nexpedients, and Brummagem substitutes for that inner adjustment\nwhich Laotse called Tao:  the Way that you are to seek by\nretreating within, and by advancing boldly without; and not\nby any one road, because it is not found by devotion alone,\nnor by religous contemplation alone, or by ardent progress,\nself-sacrificing labor, or studious observation of life, alone;\nbut the whole nature of man must be used wisely by the one who\ndesire to enter it.  Diocletian knew nothing of this; so, great\nstatesman as he was, his methods were effective only while he sat\non the throne; in his old age and retirement he had to watch,\nfrom his palace at Spalato, the empire he had piloted banging\nabout in a thousand storms again; and to plead in vain to those\nto whom he had given their thrones for the safety and life of his\nown wife and daughter;--the total failure of his life and labors\nthus miserably brought home to him before he died.\n\n\"Where there is no vision the people perish,\" said that learned\nHebrew of old, King Solomon; and by that one saying proclaimed\nhis right to his title of 'the Wise.'  Look into it, and you have\nalmost the whole philosophy of history.  The incessant need of\nhumanity is this thing _Vision:_  men and nations go mad for lack\nof it:  they seek in hell the joys of heaven which should be\ntheirs, and which they cannot see.  It means vision of the Inner\nWorlds, of the heaven that lies around us.  Oh, nothing spooky or\nfoolish; one is far from meaning the Astral Light.  People who\ngo burrowing into that are again seeking a substitute for\nVision, and a very poisonous one.--If I may speak of a personal\nexperience:  coming to Point Loma from London was like coming\nfrom the bottom of the sea into the upper ether.  There, in the\nheart of that old civilization, the air is thick with detritus;\nhere--if only because a long pralaya and fallow time have made\nthe land new,--the detritus is negligible; perhaps it is not\neven forming, but consumed as we go; because at least we have\nglimpses of the Way.  Result:  the mental outlook that extended\nthere, in visionary moments, to some six inches, before one's\nnose, here has broadened out to take in some seas and mountains;\nin comparison, it runs to far horizons.  I take it that this is\nthe experience of us all.  So this is what that wise Solomon\nmeant:  \"When the detritus has accumulated to the point where,\nlike a thick fog, it shuts away all vision of the True, then the\nnation must go into abeyance; it must fall.\"--Rome was very near\nthat point.\n\nOne wishes one could say something about those Inner Worlds of\nBeauty.  When the voices of self are silenced, and desires\nabashed and at peace,--how they shine through!  This outer world,\ntruly, reflects them; but another and ugly world of our own making.\n\n        .....is too much with us; late and soon,\n     Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.\n     Little we see in Nature that is ours;\n     We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!\n\n     The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,\n     The winds that will be howling at all hours,\n     And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers,--\n     For this, for everything, we are out of tune.\n\nSometimes; not always, thank God!  Look again:  there are\nthe mountains, and above them the mournful glories of the\nanti-sunset; the mute and golden trumpetings of the dawn;\n--there is the sea, and over it the wistfulness and pomp\nand pageantry of the setting sun, and the gentleness of heaven\nat evening;--there is the whole drama of Day with its tremendous\nglories; and the huge mystery of Night-time:  Niobe Night,\nsilent in the heavens,\n\n     \"Glittering magnificently unperturbed;\"\n\n--and there are the flowers in the garden, those _Praelarissimi_\nand _Nobilisimi_ in the Court of God, the Pansy, the Blue\nLarkspur, the Purple Anemone;--and what are all these things?--\nJust symbols; just mirrorings of a beauty in the World of Ideas\nwithin; just places where the Spirit has touched matter, and\nmatter, at that fiery and creative touch, has flamed up into the\nlikeness of God, which is Beauty.--What is Vision?--It is to have\nluminous forms rising in the imagination, like Wordsworth had,\nlike Shelley; it is with shut eyes to see the beauty and wonder\nof the Gods; it is to have no grayness or dearth or darkness\nwithin; but to have the 'bliss of solitude' crowded with\nbeautiful squadrons of deities, trembling with the light of\nlegions on legions of suns.  For:\n\n     Not all we are here\n     Where this darkness oppresses us;\n     Not this oblivion\n     Of Beauty expresses us.\n\n     Gaze not on it,\n     To be stained with its stain;\n     The Lonely All-Beautiful\n     Calls us again.\n\n     In galleried palaces,\n     Turquoise blue,\n     With the sweetness of many suns\n     Filtering through,--\n\n     In the Suns's own garden,\n     Where galaxies flame\n     For lilac and daffodil,\n     Each on his stem,--\n\n     Where apple-bloom Capricorn\n     Hangs from his tree,\n     Glittering dim o'er\n     The dim blue sea,--\n\n     And billowing dim o'er\n     The dim blue lawns\n     Of heaven come the nebular\n     Sunsets and dawns,--\n\n     We too have the regallest\n     Part of our being,\n     Far beyond dreaming of,\n     Hearing of, seeing.\n\n     And the Lonely All-Beautiful\n     Calls to us here:--\n     \"My knights, my commissioned,\n     My children dear!\n\n     \"The hell where affrighted,\n     Enchanted, ye roam,--\n     Ye set forth to make it\n     A heaven for my home!\"\n\n--And it is Vision, not to mistake mankind for less or other than\nDeific Essence cruelly encumbered over with oblivion; it is to\nsee the flame of Eternal Beauty and valiant Godhood in all men;\nand not to rest or sit content without doing something to uncover\nthat Beauty, to rescue that Godhood.--You go into the slums\nof a great city; and you do not wonder that the God-essence,\ninmingling and involved in the clay which is (the lower) man,\ngoes there quite distraught and unrecognizable; where life is so\nfar from the great reflexion of the Worlds of Beauty; where the\nSun is no bright brother and confidential friend, but a breeder\nup of pestilences; where the sky is shut away and there are no\nflowers to bloom;--whether we like it or no, these things, the\nunperverted manifestations of the formative pressure of the\nSpirit, are needed to keep men sane.  Beauty you must have, to\nnourish the Divine within you; alas for him that thinks he may\nattain to the Good or the True, and in a thin meager or Puritan\nspirit, strives to shut out their divine sister from his needs\nand aspirations!--But there, in our hideous modern conditions,\nthere is no vision, without or within; so men go mad with\nfearful lusts and despairs; and it is the van of the Battle, in\none sense, between Godhood and Chaos; and reeks with the\nslaughter and bloodshed and the madness of that conflict; there\ntoo the Holy Spirit of Man is incarnate; there the Host of\nSouls;--but in the shock and din and the carnage, there on the\nslippery brink of yet unconquered hell,--all the divine descent\nand ancient glory of the Host is forgotten:--_there is no Vision,\nand the people perish._\n\n(It may seem I go a long way round to come to him; but in\nreality I am already trying to draw you a character-sketch of the\nsubject of this evening's lecture:  to present you the permanent\npart and significance of a strange incarnation of Vision that\nappeared in Rome's dark and dying days:  the man to whom Saint\nGregory Nazianzen, in his grand attack, applied that ringing\ntriplet of epithets I have taken for the title of the lecture:\n\"The Dragon, the Apostate, the Great Mind.\"  Know him first in\nhis impersonality thus:  a great white flame of Vision; a\ntremendous Poet of the Gods in action;--and then, when you\ncome to his personality, with what it might have retained of\npersonality, of hereditary impairments, perhaps, that should have\nvanished had he lived past his young manhood, these will not\nhinder you from understanding the greatness and beauty and\ntragedy of that life apparently wasted.  But we shall come to him\nin our time.)\n\nBack in the sixth century B. C., when all those Great Teachers\ncame:  when the forces that until then had been pent up in the\nMysteries were suddenly let loose upon the world,--and the more\nvehement for their having been so pent up, and their now being so\nlet loose;--what a flood of vision they brought with them!  In\nGreece, to rouse up almost at once that wonderful wave of\nartistic creation; in Persia, to create quickly a splendid and\nchivalrous empire; in India, (so far as we know) to pervade as\nan ethical illumination the life of the people for some centuries\nbefore manifesting in art or empire; in China, to work in a\ntwofold current, on one side upon the imagination, on the other\nupon the moral conceptions of the race, until the Chinese\nmanvantara began.  Its effect in each case was according to the\ncyclic position of the country at the time:  those, seemingly,\nbeing the most fortunate, that had to wait longest for the full\nfruition.  Thus it struck China in the midst of pralaya, and lay\nin the soil fructifying until the pralaya had passed; then,\nappearing and re-appearing according to cyclic law, was a saving\nhealth in the nation for fifteen centuries at least;--India, I\nimagine, when the manvantara there some five centuries old, and\nunder a minor shadow; which shadow once passed, it produced its\nsplendors in the Maurya time; and was in all effective for a\nthousand years.  But it came to Persia in the autumn of the great\ncycle, when the forces it brought had to ripen quickly, and\ndescend at once on to the military (the lowest) plane;--and to\nGreece just at noon or early summer,--just before the most\nintellectual moment,--and so there, too, had no time to ripen,\nbut must burst out at once in artistic creation without ever a\nchance first to work in and affect the moral life of the race.\nThis last is what Pythagoras at Croton had in mind to do:  had\nCroton endured, there would have been a stable moral basis for\nthe intellectual spendors.--I believe that you have here the very\narcheus and central clue to history.  In China, it was enough for\nLaotse to float his magical ideas, and for confucius to give out\nhis extremely simple (but highly efficient) philosophy, and to\nprovide his grand Example; in India it was enough for the Lord\nBuddha to teach his wisdom and to found his Order; he might\ntrust the future to them;--For Persia, one cannot say:  the facts\nas to Zoroaster are not enough known; there might seem to have\nbeen some failure there too;--but in Greece, it was imperative\nthat Pythagoras should establish his Lomaland; nothing else\ncould save the forces from squandering themselves at once, in\nthat momentous time, on the intellectual and artistic planes, and\nleaving life unredeemed and unaffected.\n\nWhich indeed they did; and thence on it Europe we see century by\ncentury vision waning and the world on a downward path, until the\nmoment comes when a new effort may be made.  Augustus calls a\nhalt then; moves heaven and earth; works like ten Herculeses,\nalong all lines, to bring about an equilibrium in outer affairs;\nand so far succeeds that in his time one or two men may have the\nVision, at any rate:--Virgil may catch more than glimpses of the\nInner Beauty, and leave the outer world a litle less forlorn.\nBut in place of the rush and fine flow of the Grecian Age, what\npainful strivings we find in the Augustan!--When too, Teachers\nlabor to illumine the vastnesses within; Apollonius; Moderatus;\nshall we add, the Nazarene?--So the downward tendency is checked;\nin the following centuries we see a slow pushing upward,--in the\nheroic effort of the Stoics, not after Vision--that was beyond\ntheir scope and ken,--but after at least that which should bring\nit back,--a noble method of life.\n\nAnd then, at last, a dawn eastward:  and the bugles of the\nSpirits of the Dawn heard above the Pyramids, heard over the\nshadowy plains where Babylon was of old;--and out of that yellow\nglow in the sky come, now that the cycle permits them, masters of\nthe Splendid vision.  They come with something of light from the\nancient Mysteries of Egypt; with some shining from Star Plato,\nand from Pythagoras; and at their coming light up the dark\nworlds and the intense blue deeps of the sky,--wherein you can\nsee now, under their guidance, immeasurable and beautiful things\nto satisfy the highest cravings of your heart:  winged Aeons on\nAeons, ring above ring,--mystery emanating mystery, beauty,\nbeauty, from here up to the Throne of the Lonely All-Beautiful.--\nWhat growth there had been in Roman Europe, to prepare the way\nfor the spread of Neo-Platonism, I cannot say; but imagine\nGnosticism had something to do with it; and that Gnosticism was\na graft on the parent stem of Christianity set there by some real\nTeacher who came later than Jesus.  If we knew more of the\nrealities about Simon Magus on the one hand, and Paul of Tarsus\non the other, we might have clearer light on the whole problem;\nat present must be content with saying this much:--that Gnosticism,\nwith its deep mystical truths, emerges into the light of\nwell-founded history about neck and neck with orthodox Christianity;\nwas considered a branch of the same movement, equally Christian;\nbut was at least tinged with esoteric truth, and deeply Hellenized,\nand perhaps Persianized;--whereas the orthodox branch was\nthe legitimate heir of exoteric Judaism.  How much of real\nvision there may have been in Gnosticism; how much of mere\nspeculation, which is but a step towards vision,--I am not\nprepared to guess; but have little doubt that Gnostic activities\nmade ready the ground for Neo-Platonism; so that when the\nlatter's Manasaputric light incarnated, it found fit rupas\nto inhabit.\n\nThis was the Lodge's most important effort to sow truth in Europe\nsince Pythagoras.  Says even the _Enyclopaedia Britannica_\n(without help from Esotericism):\n\n\"Neo-Platonism is in one aspect ... the consummation of ancient\nphilosophy.  Never before in Greek or Roman speculation had the\nconsciousness of man's dignity and superiority to Nature received\nsuch adequate expression.... From the religious and moral point\nof view, it must be admitted that the ethical 'mood' which\nNeo-Platonisni endeavored to create and maintain is the highest\nand purest ever reached by antiquity.... It is a proof of the\nstrength of the moral instincts of mankind that the only phase of\nculture which we can survey in all its stages from beginning to\nend culminated not in materialism but in the highest idealism.\"\n\n\nIt asserted the Gods, the great stars and luminaries of the Inner\nWorld; it asserted the Divinity of Man,--superior, truly, as the\n_Encyclopaedia_ says to (the lower) Nature, but of the Higher,\none part or factor in the whole.  It came into Europe trailing\nclouds of splendor and opening the heavens of Vision.  The huge\nmenace and perils of the age, the multiplying disasters,\nwere driving men to seek spiritual refuge of some kind; and\nthere were, in the main, two camps that offered it:--this of\nNeo-Platonism, proclaiming Human Divinity and strong effort\nupward in the name of that; and that other which proclaimed\nhuman helplessness, and that man is a poor worm and weakling,\noriginally sinful, and with nothing to hope from his own\nefforts, but all from the grace, help, or mercy of Extracosmic\nIntervention.  It was a terribly comfortable doctrine, this last,\nfor a race staggering towards the end of its manvantara under a\nfearful load of detritus, a culture old and thoroughly tired.  No\nwonder Europe chose this path, and not the Neo-Platonist path of\nflaming idealism and endeavor.  Ammonius, Plotinus, Porphyry,\nIamblichus,--they had worked wonders; but not the crowning\nwonder of that which could save the age and the age to come:\nPlotinus had failed of that, because there no tool at hand for\nthe Gods, but a silly, weak Gallienus.--So now Constantine has\nmade the great change; and the empire that was Roman is now\nRoman no longer:  You owe your first allegiance now, not to the\nstate or to the emperor at its head, but to an _imperium_ within\nthe state which claims immunity from laws and duties:  the\nkingdom is divided within itself, and must look for the fate of\ndivided kingdoms.  Zeus on Olympus now weighs the Roman empire in\nhis scales,--and finds the fate is death, and no help for it:\nthere are to be thirteen decades of moribundity, and then\nChristian burial, with Odoacer and sundry other the like\nbarbarians to be mourners and heirs; and then,--blackest night\nover the western world for God knows how long:  night, with\nnightmare and horror, and no Vision, no beautiful dreams, no\nrefreshment, no peace.  For the party that Constantine has now\nmade dominant despises cordially all the ancient light of\nHellenism; Aeschylus, Homer, Plato, Sophocles, Euripides,--\neveryone you could in any sense a light-bearer that came of old,\nto bring mankind even the merest brain-mind culture,--these\npeople condemn and abhor for heathen, and take pleasure in the\nthought that they are now, and have been since they died, and\nshall be forever, frizzling in the nether fires:  they condemn\nthe substance of their writings, and will draw no ideas, no\nsaving grace, from them whatever;--will learn from them nothing\nin the world but grammar and eloquence with which to thunder at\nthem and all their like from barren raucous pulpits.  So,\nVision having gone, culture is to go too, and all you can call\ncivilization; and therewith law and order, and the decencies of\nlife:  all that _soap_ stands symbol for is to be anathema\nmaranatha; all that the Soul stands symbol for is to be anathema\nmaranatha;--a pretty prospect!  Zeus sighs in heaven, and his\nsigh is a doleful thunder prophetic of the gloom that is to\noverspread all the western skies for many centuries to come.\n\n--And then comes Helios, the Unconquered Sun, and lays a hand on\nhis arm, and says:  \"Not so fast!; Never despair yet; look\ndown--_there!_\"\n\nAnd the Gods look down:  to a gloomy castle upon a crag in the\nwild mountains of Cappadocia; and they see there a youth, a\ncaptive banished to that desolate grand region:  well-attended,\nas befits a prince of the royal blood, but lonely and overshadowed;\n--not under fear, because fear is no part of his nature; but\nyet never knowing when the order for his death may come.  They\nread all this in his mind, his atmosphere.  They see him\ndeep in his books:  a soul burning with earnestness, but\ndiscontented, and waiting for something:  all the images of Homer\nrising about him beckoning on the one hand, and on the other a\ngrim something that whispers, These are false; I alone am true!\n--\"What of him?\" says Zeus; \"he too is a Christian.\"--\"Watch!\"\nsays Sol Invictus; \"I have sent my man to him.\"--And they watch;\nand sure enough, presently they see a man coming into this\nyouth's presence, and pointing upwards towards themselves; and\nthey see the youth look up, and the shadow pass from his eyes as\na great blaze of light and splendor breaks before him,--as he\ncatches sight of them, the Gods, and his eye meets theirs, and he\nrises, illumined and smiling;--and they know that in the Roman\nworld there is this one man with the Grand Vision; this man who\nmay yet (if they play their cards well) wear the Roman diadem;--\nthat there is vision in the Roman world again, and it may be the\npeople shall not perish.\n\nIt was Julian, \"the Dragon, the Apostate, the Great Mind\"; I\nthank thee, Gregory of Nazianzus, for teaching me that word!--and\nthe one that came to him there in Cappadocia was Maximus of\nSmyrna, Iamblichus' disciple.  His story has been told and\nre-told; I expect you know it fairly well.  How he was a son\nof Julius Constantius, son of Constantius Chlorus,--and thus a\nnephew of Constantine the Great, and a first cousin to the\nOctopus-Spider-Maiden Aunt Constantius then on the throne;--how\nhe because of his infancy, and his half-brother Gallus because of\na delicate constitution which made it seem impossible he should\ngrow up, were spared when Constantius had the rest of the family\nmassacred;--how he was banished and confined in that Cappadocian\ncastle;--of Gallus' short and evil reign that ended, poor\nfool that he was, in his being lured into the spider-web of\nConstantius and beheaded;--how Julian was called then to the\ncourt at Milan, expecting a like fate;--how he spent seven months\nthere, spied on at every moment, and looking for each to be his\nlast;--how he was saved and befriended by the noble Empress\nEusebia (a strangely beautiful figure to find in those sinister\nsurroundings);--and sent presently to the University of Athens,\nthere to spend the happiest moments of his life;--then called\nback to be made Caesar:  he who had never been anything but a\nstudent and a dreamer, called from his books and dreams at\ntwenty-four, and set to learn (as Caesar) his elementary drill,--\nwhich he found very difficult to learn indeed;--and then sent to\nfight the Germans in Gaul.  How Constantius tried always to\nthwart him while he was there:  setting underlings over him with\npower to undo or prevent all he might attempt or do;--how in\nspite of it all he fought the Germans, and drove them across the\nRhine, and followed them up, and taught them new lessons in their\nown remote forests; and took the gorgeous Chnodomar, their king,\nprisoner; and sent for him, prepared to greet friendlily one so\ngreat in stature and splendid in bearing; but was disgusted when\nthe gentleman, on coming into his presence, groveled on the floor\nand whined for his life,--whereupon Julian, instead of treating\nhim like a gentleman as he had intended, packed him off to his\n(Chnodomar's) old ally the Maiden Aunt at Milan to see what\nthey would make of each other;--how he fought three campaigns\nvictoriously beyond the Rhine; restored the desolated Cisrhenish\nNo-man's land, and brought in from Britain, in six hundred\ncorn-ships, an amount Gibbon calculates at 120,000 quarters of\nwheat to feed its destitute population.--And this fact is worth\nnothing:  if Britain could export all that wheat, it surface\nwas not, as some folks hold, mainly under forest:  it was a\nwell-cultivated country, you may depend, with agriculture\nin a very flourishing condition,--as Gibbon does not fail\nto point out.\n\n--And you know, probably, how Julian loved his Paris, and\ngoverned Gaul thence in civil affairs in such a manner that Paris\nand Gaul loved him;--how his own special legions, his pets,\nhis Tenth, so to say, were the _Celts_ and _Petulants,_ and\nafter these, the _Herulians_ and _Batavians_ (or shall I say\n_Dutchmen?_);--how Constantius tried to deprive him of these,\nordering him to send them off to him for wars with Sapor in the\neast;--how Julian sorrowfully bade them go, judging well by\nGallus his brother's experience (whom Constantius had treated in\nthe same way as a first step towards cutting off his head) what\nthe next thing should be;--but how they, (bless their Celtic and\nPetulant and Herulian and Dutch hearts!) told him very plainly\nthat that kind of thing would not wash with them:  \"Come!\" said\nthey; \"no nonsense of this sort; be you our emperor, and\n_condemn_ that old lady your cousin Constantius!--or we kill you\nright now.\"  Into his bed-room in Paris they poured by night with\nthose terms,--an ultimatum; whether or not with a twinkle in\ntheir eyes when they proposed the alternative, who can say?--What\nwas a young hero to do, whom the Gods had commissioned to strike\nthe grand blow for them; and who never should strike it, that\nwas certain, if Constantius should have leave to take away from\nhim, first his Celts and Petulants, and then his head?  So he\naccepts; and writes kindly and respectfully to his Maiden Aunt--\nSpidership the Emperor telling him he must manage _without_ the\nlegions, and _with_ a Co-Augustus to share the empire with him,--\nruling (it was to be hoped in perfect harmony with himself)  the\nwest and leaving the east to Constantius.  However, all will not\ndo:  Constantius writes severe and haughtily, Send the men, and\nlet's hear no more of that presumptuous fooling about the second\nAugustus!--So Julian marches east; whither, accompanying him,\nthe lately rebellious Celts and Petulants are ready enough to go\nnow; and Constantius might after all have fallen in battle, and\nso missed his saving baptism; but his plans had gone agley, and\nthe whole situation was extremely disturbing; and you never\nknew what might happen:  and really, when you thought how you\nhad treated this Julian's father, and his two brothers, and\nnumberless uncles and cousins, you might fear the very worst;--\nand so, good maiden-auntish soul, he fell into a sadness, and\nthence into a decline; and while Julian and his Petulants were\nyet a long way off, got baptized respectably, and slipped\noff to heaven.\n\nAnd you know, too, probably, how Julian, being now sole emperor,\nreigned:  working night and day; wearing out relays of secretaries,\nbut never worn out himself; making the three years of his\nreign, as I think Gibbon says, read like thirty; disestablishing\nChristianity, and refounding Paganism,--not the Paganism\nthat had been of old, but a new kind, based upon compassion,\nhuman brotherhood, and Theosophical ethics, and illumined\nby his own ever-present vision of the Gods;--how he reformed\nthe laws; governed; made his life-giving hand felt from\nthe Scottish Wall to the Nile Cataracts;--instilled new vigor\ninto everything; forced toleration upon the Christians,\nstopping dead their mutual persecutions, and recalling from\nbanishment those who had been banished by their co-religionists\nof other sects;--made them rebuild temples they had torn down,\nand disgorge temple properties they had plundered;--and amidst\nall this, and much more also, found time in the wee small hours\nof the nights to do a good deal of literary work:  Theosophical\ntreatises, correspondence, sketches....--And you will know\nof the spotless purity, the asceticism, of his life; and how\nhe stedfastly refused to persecute;--whereby his opponents\ncomplained that, son of Satan as he was, he denied them the glory\nof the martyr's crown;--and of his plan to rebuild the Temple at\nJerusalem, and to re-establish Jews and Judaism in their native\nland:--of his letter to the Jewish high priest or chief Rabbi,\nbeginning \"My brother\";--of the charitable institutions he\nraised, and dedicated to the Lord of Vision, his God the\nUnconquered Sun;--of his contests with frivolity and corruption\nat Antioch, and his friendship with the philosophers;--and then,\nof his Persian expedition, with its rashness,--its brilliant\nvictories,--its over-rashness and head-strong advance;--of the\nburning of the fleet, and march into the desert; and retreat;\nand that sudden attack,--the Persian squadrons rising up like\nafreets out of the sands, from nowhere; and Julian rushing\nunarmed through the thickest of the fight, turning, first here,\nthen there, confusion into firmness, defeat into victory;--and of\nthe arrow, Persian or Christian, that cut across his fingers and\npierced his side; and how he fainted as he tried to draw it out;\nand recovered, and called for his horse and armor; and fainted\nagain; and was carried into a tent hastily run up for him:--and\nof the scene there in the night, that made those who were with\nhim think of the last scene in the life of Socrates; Julian\ndying, comforting his mourning officers; cheering them; talking\nto them quietly about the beauty and dignity of death, and the\ndivinity of the Soul; then suddenly inquiring why Anatolius was\nnot present,--and learning that Anatolius had fallen,--and\n(strange inconsistency!) the dying man breaking into tears of the\ndeath of his friend.--And you will know of the hopeless march of\nthe army back under ignominious Jovian, all Shah Sapor's hard\nterms accepted;--and the doom of the Roman Empire sealed.\n\nThat was the Man:  that is the record, outwardly, of a Soul fed\nupon the immensities of Vision.  Vision is the keynote of him:\nthe intense reality to him of the ever-beautiful compassionate\nGods.... It is true there was a personality attached; and all\nhis defenders since have found much in it that they wished had\nnot been there.  A lack of dignity, it is said; a certain\nself-consciousness... Well; he was very young; he died a very\nboy at thirty-two; he never attained to years of discretion:--in\na sense we may allow that much.  You say, he might very well have\nfollowd the reaonable conventions of life; and condescended,\nwhen emperor, not to dress as a philosopher of the schools.  So\nhe might.  They laughed at his ways, at his garb, at his beard;--\nand he went the length of sitting up one night to write the\n_Misopogon,_ a skit upon his personality.  Only philosophers wore\nbeards in those days; it was thought most unsuitable in an\nemperor.  I do not know what the men of Antioch said about\nit; but he speaks of it as unkempt and,--in the Gibbonistic\neuphemism,--_populous;_  indeed, names the loathsome cootie\noutright, which Gibbon was much too Gibbonish to do.  In the\nnature of things, this was a libel.\n\nI read lately an article, I think by an Irish writer, on the\neccentricities of youthful genius.  It often happens that a soul\nof really fine caliber, with a great work to do in the world,\nwill waste a portion of his forces, at the outset, in fighting\nthe harmless conventions.  But as his real self grows into\nmastery, all this disappears, and he comes to see where his\nbattle truly lies.  Julian died before he had had time quite to\noutgow the eccentricities; but for all that, not before he had\nshown the world what the Soul in action is like.\n\nEvery great soul, incarnating, has still this labor to carry\nthrough as prolog to his life's work:--he must conquer the new\npersonality, with all its hereditary tendencies; he must mold it\ndifficultly to the perfect expression of the glory and dignity of\nhimself.  Julian had to take up a body in which on the one side\nran the warrior blood of Claudius Gothicus and Constantius\nChlorus, on the other, the refinement and culture of the\nsenatorial house of the Anicii.  Two such streams, coming\ntogether, might well need some harmonizing:  might well produce,\nfor example, an acute self-consciousness,--to be mastered.  What\nhe got from them, for world-service, was on the one hand his\nsuperb military leadership and mastery of affairs; on the other,\nhis intense devotion to learning and culture.  Thus the two\nstreams of heredity appeared, dominated by his own quality of\nVision.  The paternal stream, by his generation, had grown much\nvitiated:  it was pure warriorism in Claudius Gothicus, and even\nin Constantius Chlorus; it was warriorism refined with subtlety\nand cruelty in Constantine I; it was mere fussy treacherous\ncruelty in the Spider-Octopus,--and sensual brutality in Julian's\nbrother Gallus.  The vices of the latter may indicate how great a\nself-conqueror the unstained Julian was.\n\nHe was a Keats in imperial affairs, dying when he had given no\nmore than a promise of what he should become.  He laws, his\nvalor, his victories, his writings, are no more than _juvenilia:_\nthey are equal to the grand performance, not the promise, of many\nwho are counted great.  He came out from his overshadowment and\nlong seclusion, from him books and dreams; was thrown into\nconditions that would have been difficult for an experienced\nstatesman, and won through them all triumphantly; was set to\nconduct a war that would have taxed the genius of a Caesar, a\nTiberius, or an Aurelius,--and swept through to as signal\nvictories as any of theirs.  He learnt the elements of drill, and\nwas straight sent to conquer the conquering Germans; and did it\nbrilliantly.  He came to a Gaul as broken and hopeless as Joan of\nArc's France; and found within himself every quality needed to\nheal it and make it whole.\n\nJoan conquered with her Vision; Julian conquered with his.  He\nset out with this before his eyes and in his soul:--The Gods are\nthere; the beautiful Gods; uttermost splendor of divinity is at\nthe heart of things.  The glory of the Gods and of their world\nfilled his eyes; and the determination filled his soul to make\nthis outer world conform to the beauty of his vision.  The thing\nhe did not care about,--did not notice, except in a humourous\nway,--was that queer thing of a personality that had been\nallotted to himself.  How could he have succeeded, in the world\nthat then was?--And yet even a Christian poet was constrained to\nsay,--and to rise, says Gibbon, above his customary mediocrity in\nsaying it,--that though Julian was hateful to God, he was\naltogether beneficent to mankind.\n\nI do not know how to explain the Persian expedition.  He himself\nsaid, when dying, that he had loved and sought peace, and had but\ngone to war when driven to it.  We cannot see now what were the\ndriving factors.  Did he go to reap glory that he might have\nused, or thought he might have used, in his grand design?  Did he\ngo to break a way into India, perhaps there to find a light\nbeyond any that was in Rome? ... Or was it the supreme mistake of\nhis life.... one would say the only mistake?\n\nIt failed, and he died, and his grand designs came to nothing;\nand Rome went out in utter darkness.  And men sneered at him\nthen, and have been sneering at him ever since, for his failure.\nPerhaps we must call it that; it was a forlorn hope at the best\nof times.  But you cannot understand him, unless you think of him\nas a Lord of Vision lonely in a world wholly bereft of it:  a man\nfor whom all skies were transparent, and the solid earth without\nopacity, but with the luminous worlds shining through wherein\nApollo walks, and all the Masters of Light and Beauty;--unless\nyou think of him as a Lord of Vision moving in an outer world, a\nphase of civilization, old, tired, dying, dull as ditch-water,\nwithout imagination, with no little vestige of poetry, no gleam\nof aspiration,--with wit enough to sneer at him, and no more; by\nno means with wit enough to allow him to save it from itself and\nfrom ruin.\n\n\n\n\nXXIV.  FROM JULIAN TO BODHIDHARMA\n\n\nWhen the news came drifting back over the Roman world that\nthe Emperor had been killed in Persia, and that an unknown\ninsignificant Jovian reigned in his stead;--and while three parts\nof the population were rejoicing that there was an end of the\nApostate and his apostasy; and half the rest, that there was an\nend of this terrible strenuosity, this taking of the Gods (good\nharmless useful fictions--probably fictions) so fearfully in\nearnest:  I wonder how many there were to guess how near the end\nof the world had come?  The cataclysm was much more sudden and\nover-whelming than we commonly think; and to have prophesied, in\nRoman society, in the year 363, that in a century's time the\nempire and all its culture would be things of the past (in the\nWest), would have sounded just as ridiculous, probably, as such a\nprophesy concerning Europe and its culture would have sounded in\na London drawing-room fifteen years ago.  There were signs and\nportents, of course, for the thoughtful; and no doubt some few\nMatthew Arnolds in their degree to be troubled by them.  And of\ncourse (as in our own day, but perhaps rather more), an idea with\ncranks that at any moment Doomsday might come.  But while the\nworld endured, and the Last Trump had not sounded, of course the\nRoman empire would stand.--Christianity?  Well, yes; it had\ngrown very strong; and the extremists among the Christians were\nrabid enough against culture of any sort.  But there were also\nChristians who, while they hated the olden culture of Paganism,\nwere ambitious to supply a Christian literature in prose and\nverse to take the place of the Classical.  There had been an\nawful devastation of Gaul; the barbarians of the north had been,\nnow and again, uneasy and troublesome; but see how Julian--even\nhe, with the Grace of God all against him--had chastised them!\nThe head of the Roman State would always be the Master of the\nWorld.\n\nAnd strangely enough, this was an idea that persisted for\ncenturies; facts with all their mordant logic were impotent to\nkill it.  Hardly in Dante's time did men guess that the Roman\nempire and its civilization were gone.\n\nLife, when Julian died, was still capable of being a very\ngraceful and dignified affair,--outwardly, at any rate.  On their\ngreat estates in Gaul, in Britain, in Italy, great and polished\ngentlemen still enjoyed their _otium cum dignitate._  The culture\nof the great past still maintained itself amongst them; although\nthought and all mental vigor were buried deep under the detritus.\nIn fourth century Gaul there was quite a little literary\nrenaissance; centering, as you might expect, in the parts\nfurthest from German invasion.  Its leading light was born in\nBordeaux in the three-thirties; and was thus (to link things up\na little) a younger contemporary of the Indian Samudragupta.  He\nwas Ausonius:  teacher of rhetoric, tutor to the prince Gratian,\nconsul, country gentleman, large land-owner, and, in a studious\nuninspired reflective way, a goodish poet.  Also a convert to\nChristianity, but unenthusiastic:--altogether, a dignified and\npolished figure; such as you might find in England now, in the\ncountry squire who has held important offices in India in his\ntime, hunts and shoots in season, manages his estates with\nsomething between amateur and professional interest, reads Horace\nfor his pleasure, and even has a turn for writing Latin verses.\nAusonius leaves us a picture of the life of his class:  a placid,\ncultured life, with quite a strong ethical side to it; sterile\nof any deep thought or speculation; far removed from unrest.--\nAnother respresentative man was his friend Symmachus at Rome:\nalso highly cultured and of dignified leisure; a very upright\nand capable gentleman widely respected for his sterling honesty;\na pagan, not for any stirring of life within his heart or\nmind, but simply for love of the ancient Roman idea,--sheer\nconservatism;--for much the same reasons, in fact, as make the\nEnglishman above-mentioned a staunch member of the English Church.\n\nThere were many such men about:  admirable men; but unluckily\nwithout the great constructive energies that might, under\nJulian's guidance for example, have saved the empire.  But the\nempire!  In that crisis,--in that narrow pass in time!  It is not\nexcellent gentlemen that can do such near-thaumaturgic business;\nbut only disciples; for the proposition is, as I understand it,\nto link this world with the God-world, and hold fast through\nthunders and cataclysm, so that what shall come through,--what\nshall be when the thunder is stilled and the cataclysm over,--\nshall flow on and up onto a new order of cycles, higher, nearer\nthe Spirit.  . . . . No; it is not to be done by amiable\ngentlemen, or excellent administrators, or clever politicians. .\n. . Julian had come flaming down into the world, to see if he\ncould rouse up and call together those who should do it; but his\nbugles had sounded in the empty desert, and died away over the\nsands.\n\nThere were tremendous energies abroad; but they were all with\nthe Destroyers, and were to be, ever increasingly:  with such men\nas, at this time, Saint Martin of Tours, that great tearer-down\nof temples; or in the next century, Saint Cyril of Alexandria\nand Peter the Reader, the tearers-to-pieces of Hypatia.  Perhaps\nthe greatest energies of all you should have found, now and\nlater, in the Christian mob of Alexandria,--wild beasts innocent\nof nothing but soap and water.\n\nIt was Symmachus who was chosen by the Roman Senate to remonstrate\nwith the emperor Valentinian against the removal of the altar\nand statue of Victory,--the Pagan symbols,--from the senate\nhouse.  I quote you Gibbon's summary of a part of his petition:\n\n\"The great and incomprehensible Secret of the Universe eludes the\nenquiry of man.  Where reason cannot instruct, custom may be\npermitted to guide; and every nation seems to consult the\ndictates of prudence by a faithful attachment to those rites and\nopinions which have received the sanction of ages.  If those ages\nhave been crowned with glory and prosperity--if the devout people\nhave frequently obtained the blessings which they have solicited\nat the altars of the Gods--it must appear still more advisable to\npersist in the same salutary practise and not to risk the unknown\nperils that may attend any rash inovations. The test of antiquity\nand success, (continues Gibbon), was applied with singular\nadvantage to the Religion of NUMA, and Rome herself, the\ncelestial genius that presided over the fates of the city, is\nintroduced by the orator to plead her own cause before the\ntribunal of the emperors.  'Most excellent princes,' says the\nvenerable matron, 'fathers of your country!  pity and respect my\nage, which has hitherto flowed in an uninterrupted course of\npiety.  Since I do not repent, enjoy my domestic institutions.\nThis religion has reduced the world under my laws.  These rites\nhave repelled Hannibal from the city, and the Gauls from the\nCapitol.  Were my grey hairs reserved for such intolerable\ndisgrace?  I am ignorant of the new system I am required to\nadopt; but I am well assured that the correction of old age is\nalways an ungrateful and ignominious office.'\"\n\nSymmachus was addressing a Christian emperor; and it was an ill\nthing then, as in the days of Hadrian, to argue with the master\nof the legions.  Still, the method he chooses is interesting:\nit holds a light up to the inwardness of the age, and shows\nit dead.  This was at twenty-one years after the death of the\nDragon-Apostate; whose appeal had all been to the realities and\nthe divinity of man and the living splendor of the Gods he knew and\nloved.  That splendor, said he, should burn away the detritus,\nand make Romans men and free again.  But Symmachus, for all his\nadmirable restraint, his rhetorical excellence, his good manners\nand gentlemanly bearing,--which I am sure we should admire,--\nappeals really only to the detritus; to nothing in the world\nthat could possibly help or save Rome.  The Christians wanted to\nbe free of it, because they felt its weight; the Pagans wanted\nto keep it, because they found it warm and comfortable. Symmachus\nsees nothing higher or better than custom; the secret of the\nuniverse, says he, is unknowable; there is no inner life.\n--He was confuted by a much more alive and less estimable\nman:  Ambrose, bishop of Milan,--with whom, also, both he and\nAusonius were on friendly terms.  Ambrose's argument, too, is\nilluminating:   like the King of Hearts', it was in the main that\n\"you were not to talk nonsense.\"  How ridiculous, said he, to\nimpute the victories of old Rome to the Religion of Numa and\nfavor of the Gods,--when the strength and valor of the Roman\nsoldier were quite enough to account for all.  Thus he appears in\nthe strange role of a rationalist.  Christianity, he continued,\nwas the one and only true religion; and all the rest--etc.,\netc., etc.  Ambrose and his party were fighting towards a\ndefinite and positive end; knew what they wanted, and meant to\nget it.  Of course they won.  Symmachus and the senate were\nfighting only for a sentiment about the past, and had no chance\nat all.  And it really did not matter:  Rome was doomed anyway.\n\nBut in passing I must e'en linger on a note of sublimity in this\npetition of Symmachus:  of sublime faith;--when he makes Dea\nRoma refer to her history as having \"hitherto flowed in an\nuninterrupted course of piety.\"  It makes one think that they\ntaught Roman history in their schools then much in the same way\nthat we teach our national histories in our schools today; here\nand in England, and no doubt elsewhere, _\"An uninterrupted course\nof piety!\"_ quotha.  Marry come up!\n\nBut all this is anticipating the years a little:  looking into\nthe eighties, whereas we have not finished with the sixties yet.\nJulian died in 363, on the 26th of June; and within a couple of\nyears, you may say,--many said so then,--the Gods began to avenge\nhim.  Nature herself took a hand, to warn a degenerate world.  In\n365 came an earthquake; gollowed by a huge withdrawal of the\nsea, so that you could explore dry-shod the antres of the\nsea-gods.  And then a tidal wave which threw large ships up onto the\nroofs of houses two miles inland, and killed in Alexandria alone\nfifty thousand people.--\"Aha!\" said the Pagans, \"we told you\nso.\"--\"Nothing of the kind!\"  said the Christians in reply; \"did\nnot we set a saint on the beach at Epidaurus, before whom the\noncoming billow stopped, bowed its head, and retired?\"  Well; no\ndoubt that was so; but Alexandria was a perfect hotbed of\nsaints, one of whom, you might think, might have been lured down\nto the beach and the perilous proximity of water for the\noccasion.  But let it pass!\n\nTen years later the Law began to marshal its armies seriously for\nthe destruction of an obsolete world.  The Huns crossed the Volga,\nand fell upon the Ostrogoths, who had had a Middle-European\nempire up through Austria and Germany.  The Ostrogoths, somewhat\nflattened out, joined with the Huns to fall upon the Visigoths;\nwho theeupon poured down through the Balkans to fall upon\nthe Romans; and defeated and killed the emperor Valens at\nAdianople in 378.  Theodosius, from 379 to 395, held precariously\ntogether a frontier cracking and bulging all along the line as it\nhad never cracked and bulged before.  When he died, the empire\nfinally split:  of his two sons, Arcadius taking the East,\nHonorius the West.\n\nIn Honorius' half, from now on it is a record of ruin hurrying on\nthe footsteps of ruin.  Ended the quiet _otium cum dignitate_ of\nthe great country gentlemen; the sterile culture, the somewhat\npuritan morality, the placid refined life we read of in Ausonius.\nYou shall see now the well-ordered estate laid waste;--the\npeasants killed or hiding in the woods;--the mansion smashed, and\nits elegant furniture;--the squire, the kindly-severe religious\nmatron his mother the young wife,--gracious lady of the house,--\nand the bonny children:--they are hacked corpses lying at random\nin the wrecked salons, or in the trampled garden where my lady's\nflowers now grow wild.  The land went out of cultivation; the\npopulace, what remained of it, crowded into the walled cities,\nthere to frowse in mental and physical stuffiness until the\nMiddle Ages were passed,--or else took to the wilds under any\nvigorous mind, and became bandits.  The open country was all\ntrodden down by wave after wave of marauding, murdering,\nbeer-swilling, turbulent giants from the north,--or by the still\nmore dreaded dwarfish horsemen whose forefathers Pan Chow had\ndriven long since out of Asia.  They poured down into Greece;\nthey, poured down through Gaul and Spain into Africa; into Italy;\nhost after host of them;--civilization was a pathetic sand-castle\nwashed over and over by ruining seas.  Rome, indeed, could still\ncommand generals at times:  Stilicho, Aetius, and afterwards\nBelisarius and Narses; but they were all pitiful Partingtons\nswishing their mops round against a most ugly Atlantic.  In 410\nRome itself was sacked by Alaric; in the same year Britain,\nand then Brittany, rose and threw off the Roman yoke.  In the\nfour-fifties came the keen point of the Hunnish terror, putting\nthe fear of death on even the worst of the barbarians that had\nwrecked the Roman world.  In 476, the pretense of a Western\nEmpire was abandoned.--So now to follow the great march of the\ncycles eastward; with this warning:  that next week we shall\nglance at a little backwash in the other direction, and see\nthe disembodied soul of this now closed phase of human culture\n'go west.'\n\nThe split with Rome was altogether of value to the Eastern empire\nof Constantinople.  That empire lasted, from the time of Arcadius\nto that of Constantine IX and Mohammed the Conqueror, \"one\nthousand and fifty-eight years,\" says Gibbon, \"in a state of\npremature and perpetual decay.\"--A statement which, taken as an\nexample of Gibbonese, is altogether delightful; but for the true\npurposes of history it may need a little modification.  The\nposition of this Byzantine Empire was a curious one:  European in\norigin, mainly West-Asian in location.  Its situation permitted\nit to last on so long into the West-Asian manvantara; its origin\ndoomed that long survival to be, for the most part, devoid of the\nbest characteristics of life.  Yet during most of the European\npralaya it was far and away the richest and most civilized power\nin Christendom; and, except during the reigns of extraordinary\nkings in the west, like Charlemagne, the strongest too.  It\nspecialized in military science; and the well-trained Byzantine\nsoldiers and highly scientific generals had little to fear, as a\nrule, from the rude energies and huge stature of the northern and\nwestern hordes.  But culture remained there in the sishta state,\nand could do nothing until it was transplanted. There were\ncycles:  weaknesses and recoveries; on the whole its long\nlife-period matters very little to history; it only became of\ngreat importance when it died.\n\nThe reason why it did not succumb when Rome did was that the\ntides of life in the whole empire had long been flowing eastward,\nand were now gathered there almost wholly:  there was much more\nactivity in the east; there were much bigger cities, and a much\ngreater population.  So that part was harder to penetrate and\nconquer:  there was more resistance there.  The barbarian deluge\nflowed down where it might flow down most easily:  following, as\ndeluges and everything else gifted with common sense always do,\nthe lines of least resistance.  The way through Gaul and Spain\nwas quite open; the way into Italy nearly so;--but the way into\nAsia was blocked by Constantinople.  That city is naturally one\nof the strongest in the world, in a military sense; and, you\nwould say, inevitably the capital of an empire.  If Dardanus had\nhad a little more intuition, and had founded his Troy on the\nGolden Horn instead of on the Dardanelles, Anax andron Agamemnon\nand his chalcho-chitoned Achaeans, I dare say, would have gone\nhome to Greece much sadder and wiser men;--or more probably, not\nat all.  But Troy is near enough to that inevitable site to argue\nthe strong probability of its having been, perhaps long before\nPriam's time, a great seat of empire, trade, and culture.  If one\ndug in Constantinople itself, I dare say one should find the\nremains of cities that had been mighty.  Events of the last seven\nyears have shown how difficult it is to attack, how easy to\ndefend.  Since its foundation by Constantine it has been besieged\nnine times, and only twice taken by foreign enemies.  When the\nTurks took it, they had already overflowed all the surrounding\nterritories; and they were the strongest military power in the\nworld, and the Byzantines were among the weakest.--So it stood\nthere in the fifth century to hold back the hordes of northern\nEurope from the rich lands of Asia Minor and Syria:  a strength\nmuch beyond the power of those barbarians to tackle; while all\nEurope west-ward was being trampled to death.\n\nFurther, the peace imposed on Jovian by Shah Sapor in 364 lasted,\nwith one small intermission of war, and that successful for the\nRomans, for a hundred and thirty-eight years; during which time,\nalso, the powers that were at Constantinople ruled mainly wisely\nand with economy.  They were generally not the reigning emperor,\nbut his wife or mother or aunt, or someone like that.\n\nSo then, in the year 400 we find the world in this condition:--\nwestern Europe going\n\n     \"With hideous ruin and combustion down\n     To bottomless perdition;\"\n\n--the Eastern Empire weakish, but fairly quiet and advancing\ntowards prosperity:  in pralaya certainly, and so to remain for\nthirteen decades (395 to 527) from the death of Theodosius to\nthe accession of Justinian;--Persia, under an energetic and\nintelligent Yazdegird II (399 to 420), a strongish military\npower:  Yazdegird held his barons well in hand, and even made a\nbrave effort to broaden the religious outlook; he tried to stop\nthe persecution of the Christians, and allowed them to organize a\nnational church, the Nestorian;--India, still and until 456, at\nthe height of her glory:--there is a continual rise as you go\neastward, with the climax in India.  The next step is China; to\nwhich now after all these centuries we return.\n\nAs we have seen, since the Hans fell there had been a confusion\nof ephemeral kingdoms jostling and hustling each other across the\nstage of time:  there had been too much history altogether; too\nmany wars, heroes, adventures and wild escapades.  Life was too\nriotous and whirling an affair:  China seemed to have sunk into a\nmere Europe, a kind of Kilkenny Christendom.  Not that culture\never became extinct; indeed, through this whole period the\nsuper-refinement that had grown up under the Hans persisted side\nby side with the barbarian excursions and alarms.  It was not, as\nin Rome, a case of major pralaya:  men did not resort to\nsavagery; literary production seems never to have run quite so\nsterile.  But things were in the melting-pot, centripetalism had\ngone; little dynasties flared up quickly and expired; and\namidst all those lightning changes there was no time for\nprogress, or deep concerns, or for the Soul of the Black-haired\nPeople to be stirring to manifestation.\n\nYou will, I dare say, have learned to look for a rise in China at\nany falling-time in Europe; so would consider something should\nhave happened there in 365, the year of the great earthquake and\ntidal wave, when the fifty thousand Alexandrians were drowned,--\nthe second year after Julian's death.  Well; in that 365 Tao\nYuan-ming was born, who later became known as Tao Chien:  in\nJapanese, Toemmei.  There had been poets all along.  During the\nlast thirty years of the Hans, 190 to 220, there had been the\nSeven Scholars of the Chien An Period:  among them that jolly\nK'ung Jung who, because he was a descendant of Confucius, claimed\nblood-relationship with the descendants of Laotse.  Ts'ao Ts'ao\nhimself wrote songs:  he was that bold bad adventurer and highly\nsuccessful general who turned out the last Han and set his own\nson on the throne as Wei Wenti; who also was a poet, as was his\nbrother Ts'ao Chih.  Of Ts'ao Chih a contemporary said:  \"If all\nthe talent in the world were divided into ten parts, Ts'ao Chih\nwould have eight of them.\"--\"Who, then, would have the other\ntwo?\" asked somebody.--\"I should have one of them myself,\"\nwas the answer, \"and the rest of the world the other.\"  Ts'ao\nChih enriched the language with one of its most familiar and\ndelicious quotations:\n\n     \"The Superior Man takes precautions,\n     And avoids giving rise to suspicion:\n     He does not pull up his shoes in a melon patch,\n     Nor adjust his cap while passing through an orchard of plums.\"\n\nIt is indicative of his own position at court.\n\nLater in the third century came the Seven Sages of the Bamboo\nGrove, a \"club of rather bibulous singers\"; and there are names\nof many scholars besides to say that the time was not too barren;\nyet on the whole it was, I suppose, a period of slump in literary\nproduction, as it was of confusion in politics.  But when Julian\nhad been dead two years in the west of the world, Tao Yuan-ming\nwas born in the east:  I do not say the creator of a new time;\nbut certainly a sign of its coming.\n\nA large amount of his poetry survives; and it is filled with a\nnew spirit.  Like Wordsworth, he went back to nature.  Ambition,\nof course, had been a great mark of the age:  men raced after\noffice, and scrambled for the spoils.  Tao Yuan-ming was called\nto fill an official post, and went up reluctantly to the\ncapital; but very soon escaped back to the things he loved:\nthe mountains, and his chrysanthemum garden, and the country,\nwhere he could hear the dogs barking in the far farms, and see\nthe chickens scratching in the lanes.  We do not find in him,\nperhaps, the flood of Natural Magic that came with the poets of\nthe Great Age three or four centuries later; but we do find a\nheart-felt worship of the great unspoiled world under the sky:\nhe is there to say that China was returning to her real strength,\nwhich is Nature-worship.  While he pottered about in the front\ngarden, he tells us, his wife pottered about in the back garden;\nthey made an idol of their chrysanthemums, and started or\nnourished the cult which has flourished so strongly since in\nJapan.  He was I suppose the greatest poet since Ch'u Yuan, who\ncame some seven centuries earlier; it is from him we get the story\nsome of you may know under the title _Red Peach-Blossom Inlet._\n\nFor about half a cycle (sixty-five years) barbarian dynasties had\nbeen holding the north; with the result that the center of\ngravity of the real Black-haired People had been shifted from the\npuritan landscapes of North China to the pagan landscapes of the\nYangtse Valley,--a region of mountains and forests and lakes and\nwild waters:  Tsu the land of Laotse and Ch'u Yuan, and I think\nChwangtse too.  It is here are the Hills of T'ang, the metropolis\nof Natural Magic perhaps for all the world; and the mind and\nimagination of China, centered here, were receiving a new\npolarization; something richer and more luminous was being born.\nContemporary with Tao Yuan-ming was Ku Kaichih, the first supreme\nname in painting.  Fenollosa speaks of a \"White Lotus Club,\"\norganized by Hui Yuan, A Buddhist priest, and consisteing of\n\"mountain-climbers and thinkers,\"--Tao Yuan-ming being a member.\n\nOne would like to get at the heart of what happened in that last\nquarter of the fourth century.  This is what we see on our side:\nCanton and Yangtse ports were being visited more and more by\nHindu, Arab, and Sassanian traders, bringing in new things and\nideas:  the Hindus, especially, an impetus towards culture from\nthe splendor of the gupta period, then at its topmost height.\nAlso ther were new inventions, such as that of paper, which was\nan incentive to literary output.  The Chinese mind, in the south\nespecially, was quickened on the one hand by the magical wind\nfrom the mountains, and on the other by a wind from the great\nworld over-seas:  the necessary nationalistic and international\nquickenings.  But deeper quickenings also were taking place.\nIndia was fast becoming, under the Gupta reaction towards\nBrahmanism, no place for the Buddhists; and the Hindu ships that\nput in at Canton and the Yangtse were bringing much to China\nbesides merchandise.  A great propaganda of Buddhism was in\nprocess; by Indian monks, and now too for the first time by\nnative Chinese.  We read of a missionary who went about preaching\nto an indifferent world; then in sorrow took to the mountains,\nand proclaimed the Good Law to the mountain boulders; and they\n\"nodded as it were their heads in assent.\" *  But there is\nevidence that China was fast becoming the spiritual metropolis of\nthe world:  Buddhism was drifting in, and mingling among the\nmountains with mountain Taoism, that dear and hoary magic of the\nEastern World; and the result was an atmosphere in which\nastounding events were to happen.\n\n------\n* Giles _Dictionary of Chinese Biography;_ from which work,\nand from the same author's _Chinese Literature,_ the facts,\nquotations, and enecdotes given in this lecture are taken.\n------\n\nIn 401, Kumarajiva, the seventeenth Buddhist Patriarch, came from\nIndia and took up his residence at the court at Changan, where a\nTibetan family was then reigning over the north; and this, when\nyou think that these Patriarchs were (as I believe) no popes\nelected by a conclave of churchly dignities, but the Spiritual\nSuccessors of the Buddha, each appointed by his predecessor, an\nevent momentous enough in itself.  Still, Kumarajiva came (it\nwould appear) but to prepare the way for the great change that\nwas impending; left behind him a successor in India, or one to\nfill the office at his death; in India the headquarters of\nBuddhism remained.  Two years before his arrival, Fa Hian, a\nChinese Buddhist monk, had set out on foot from Central China,\nwalked across the Gobi Desert, and down through Afghanistan into\nIndia, a pilgrim to the sacred places:  a sane and saintly man,\nfrom whom we learn most of what we know about the Gupta regime.\nHe returned by sea in 412, landing at Kiao-chao in Santung,--a\nplace latterly so sadly famous,--bringing with him spiritual and\nquickening influences.  In the south, meanwhile, another Indian\nteacher, Buddhabhadra, had been at work.  Before very long, a\nRenaissance was in full flow.\n\nThe political events that led up to it were these:  between 304\nand 319 a Tatar family by the name of Liu, from Manchuria,\nsucceeded in driving the House of Tsin out of northern China:\nthese Tsins were that effete, ladylike, chess-playing, fan-waving,\nhigh-etiquettish dynasty I have spoken of before.  In 319\nthey took up their abode in Nanking, and there ruled corruptly\nfor a hundred years, leaving the north to the barbarians.  In\n420, a soldier in their employ, Liu-yu by name, deposed the\nlast Tsin emperor, and set himself on the throne as the first\nsovereign of the Liu-song Dynasty.  He was a capable man, and\nintroduced some vigor and betterment into affairs; he found\nconditions ripe for a renaissance of civilization; and in his\nreign we may say that the renaissance took shape.  420 is, so far\nas a date can be given for what was really a long process, a\nconvenient date to give.  We have seen Persia rise in the\ntwo-twenties; India in the three-twenties; we shall not go far\nwrong in giving the four-twenties to China.  That decade, too,\nmarks a fresh step downward in the career of Rome:  Honorius died\nin 423.  Fenollosa is definite upon 420 for the inception of\nthe great age of the Southern Renaissance of art.  That age\nculminated in the first half of the next century, and ended with\nthe passing of the Liang dynasty in the five-fifties:  a matter\nof thirteen decades again; which, I take it, is further reason\nfor considering our four-twenties epochal.\n\nI fancy we shall grow used to finding the twenties in each\ncentury momentous, and marked by great political and spiritual\nre-shapings of the world.  We shall find this in our historical\nstudies; in the next few years we may find it in current events\ntoo; and what we shall see may remind us that in these decades\nthe sun generally rises in some new part of the world,--the sun\nof culture and power.  Naturally enough:--in the last quarter of\neach century you have the influx of spiritual forces; which\ninflux, it is to be supposed, can hardly fail to produce changes\ninwardly,--a new temperature, new conditions in the world of\nmind.  So there must be readjustments; there is a disharmony\nbetween outer and inner things, between the world of causes and\nthe world of effects; and one commonly finds the first two\ndecades of the new century filled with the noise and confusion of\nreadjustment.  New wine has been poured into the old skin-bottles\nof the world; and ferments, explodes, rends them.  Then, in\nthe twenties or so, things calm down, and it is seen that\nreadjustments have been made.  By 'readjustments,' one does not\nmean the treaties of statesmen and the like; brain-mind affairs\nfor the most part, that amount to nothing.  One means a new\ndirection taken by the tide of incarnating souls.  As if the\nreadjusting cataclysms had blocked their old channels of these,\nand opened new ones...\n\nA new _arpeggio_ chord, but rather a faint and broken one, sounds\nin the five-twenties, or begins then.  At Constantinople the\nthirteen pralayic and recuperative decades since the death of\nTheodosius and the split with the West have ended.  Now an\nemperor dies; and it becomes a question which of several likely\ncandidates can lay out his money to best advantage and secure the\nsuccession.  There is an official of some sort at court there,\none Justin, a Balkan peasant by birth; you will do well to bribe\nhim heavily, for he, probably, can manage the affair for you,--\nOne of the candidates does so:  hands him a large sum, on the\nassurance from Justin that he shall be the man.  But the old\nfellow has peasant shrewdness, shall we say; and the money is\n_used_ most thriftily; but not as its donor intended.  Justin\nduly ascends the throne.\n\nNothing very promising in that, to insure manvantaric times\ncoming in.  But the old man remembers a nephew of his back there\nin Bulgaria or Jugoslavia or where it may have been; and sends\nfor him, and very wisely lets him do most of the running of\nthings.  In 527, this nephew succeeds to the purple on his\nuncle's death:  as Justinian; and, for Europe and the Byzantine\nempire, and for the times,--that is to say, 'considering,'\n--manvantaric doings do begin.  A man of hugely sanguine\ntemperament, inquisitive and enterprising and impulsive, he had\nthe fortune to be served by some great men:  Tibonian, who drew\nup the Pandects; Belisarius and Narses, who thrashed the\nbarbarians; the architect who built Saint Sophia.  Against these\nassets to his reign of thirty-eight years you must set the\nfactions of the circus, at Constantinople itself; and bloody\nbattle over the merits of the Greens, the Blues, the Whites, etc.\nBut certainly Justinian contrived to strike into history as no\nother Byzantine emperor did; with his law code, and with his\nchurch.  So now enough of him.\n\nFour years after the accession of this greatest of the Byzantines,\nthe greatest of the Sassanids came to the throne in Persia:\nChosroes Anushirwan:  a wise and victorious reign until 579.\nThere was an 'Endless Peace' sworn with Rome in 533; and\nnot peace merely, but friendship and alliance; it was to last\nfor all time, and did last for seven years.  The Chosroes,\njealous of the western victories of Justinian, listened to the\npleadings of the Ostrogoths, and declared war; peace came again\nin 563, on the basis of a yearly tribute from Rome to Persia,--\nbut with compensations, such as toleration for the Christians in\nPersia.--there were reforms in the army and in taxation;\nimprovements in irrigation; encouragement of learning;\nrevision of the laws; some little outburst in literature and\nculture generally:  the culmination, in all but extent of\nterritory, of the whole Sassanian period.--We may throw in one\nitem from the future,--that is from 620:  in that year Sassanian\nPersia had flowed out to the full limits of the empire of Darius\nHystaspes:  held Egypt, Syria, all West Asia to within a mile of\nthe walls of Constantinople.  Within three years the fall had\nbegun; within twenty it was completed.\n\nAs to India, this (520) is among the hidden times:  the\nEphthalites had overturned the Guptas; they were Huns of the\nHunniest; they had over-turned the Guptas and all else (in the\nnorth).  Tales come down of the fiendishness of their kings:  of\na man that for his sport would have elephants hurled from the top\nof precipices; it may be that the Indian manvantara closed with\nthe Gupta fall;--though we get the finical dandiacal 'great'\nreign of Harsha in 700.  The light certainly was dying from India\nnow:  the Crest-Wave had been there, in all its splendor; they\nhad made good use of it in all but the spiritual sense, and very\nbad use of it in that.  The year in which you may say (as nearly\nas history will tell you) the light died there, was precisely\nthis year of 520; and that effected a change in the spiritual\ncenter of gravity of the world of the most momentous kind:  so\nmuch so that we may think of a new order of ages as beginning\nthen; and looking at world-history as a whole, we may say, Here\nendeth the lesson that began where we took things up in the time\nof the Six Great Teachers; and here beginneth a new chapter,--\nwith which these lectures will hardly concern themselves.  But we\nmay glance at the event that opens it.\n\nIt made very little stir at the time.  It was merely the landing\nat Canton of an old man from India:  a 'Blue-eyed Brahmin,'--but\na Buddhist, and the head of all the Buddhists at that;--and his\npreaching there until Liang Wuti, the emperor at Nanking, had\nheard of his fame, and invited him to court; and his retirement\nthence to a cave-temple in the north.  Beyond this there is very\nlittle to tell you.  He was a king's son from southern India;\nhis name Bodhidharma; and one would like to know what the records\nof the Great Lodge have to say about him.  For he stands in\nhistory as the founder of the Dhyana or Zen School, another form\nof the name of which is _Dzyan;_  when one reads _The Voice of\nthe Silence,_ or the Stanzas in _The Secret Doctrine,_ one might\nremember this.  Outwardly,--I think this is true,--he refused to\ncut into history at all:  was a grand Esoteric figure, whose\ncampaigns, (super-Napoleonic, more mirific than those of Genghiz\nKhan), were all fought on spiritual planes whence no noise of the\ncannonading could be heard in this outer world.  He was the\ntwenty-eighth Successor of the Buddha; of a line of Masters that\nincluded such great names as those of Vasubandhu, and of\nNagarjuna, founder of the Mahayana,--\"one of the four suns that\nillumine the world.\"  We have seen that he had been preceded:\nKumarajiva had come to China a century before; but experimentally,\nleaving the Center of the Movement in India; there must have\nbeen thousands of disciples in the Middle Kingdom in 520 when\nBodhidharma came, bringing with him the Buddha's alms-bowl,\nthe symbol of the Patriarchate, to make in China his headquarters\nand that of his successors.  For a thousand years the Buddha's\nMovement had been in India a living link with the Lodge;--in\nthat land of esoteric history which hides from us what it\nmeans to be so linked and connected.  Now India had failed.\nThe Guptas had reigned in great splendor; but they had flourished\nupon a reaction away from the Light.  I suppose it means this:\nthat the burden of fighting upward had been too much for this\npeople, now wearied with old age; they had dropped the burden\nand the struggle, and found in the relief a phantom of renewed\nyouth to last them a little day.\n\nWhatever may be true of Buddhism now,--however the long cycles\nmay have wasted its vitality, and to whatever depths it may have\nfallen,--we should remember this:  that certainly for about\nfourteen centuries there was contained within it a living link\nwith the Masters' Lodge.  It was not like any other existing\nreligion (so far as one knows):  like none of the dominant\nreligions of today, at any rate.  At its head, apparently,\nthrough all those long centuries, was a line of Adepts, men of\nspiritual genius, members of the Lodge.  So what Bodhidharma's\ncoming meant, I take it, was that in China that was established\nactually which in the West first Pythagoras, and then Plotinus\nhad tried to establish, and tried in vain.  It was, as you may\nsay, the transplanting of the Tree of Life from a soil that had\ngrown outworn to one in which it could flourish; and the result\nwas, it appears to me, a new impulse given to the ages, to\nall history.\n\nHitherto, in the main, we have seen (except in China) a downward\ntrend of cycles; from this point an upward trend began.  We have\nbeen dealing, latterly, with dullish centuries, and history in a\nfebrile and flickering mood;--but give this wonderful change time\nto take effect, and the centuries begin to flame up, and history\nto become a roaring conflagration.  We might here spy out into\nthat time, which will lie beyond the scope of these lecture; and\nsee the glory of the T'angs begin in China in 618; Corea's one\nhistoric age of splendor, in art and also in military prowess, at\nits highest point about 680; the era of Shotoku Daishi, saint,\nsage, prince and protagonist of civilization in Japan, from about\n580 to 620; the rise of Siam, and of Tibet, into strength and\nculture and Buddhism, in the first half of the seventh century;--\nthen, looking westward, the wonderful career of Mohammed in\nArabia, who gave the impetus that rescued civilization first\nin West Asia and then, when in the thirteenth century a new\nEuropean manvantara was ready to open, in Europe also:  rescued\ncivilization first in West Asia and then, when in the thirteenth\ncentury a new European manvantara was ready to open, in Europe\nalso; an impetus which worked on the intellectual-cultural plane\nuntil it had brought things to the point where H. P. Blavatsky\nmight come to give things a huge twist towards the spiritual,--\nand where Katherine Tingley might accomplish that which all the\nages had been expecting, and the whole creation groaning and\ntravailing to see.  Oh, on brain-mind lines you can trace no\nconnexion; but then the plane of causes lies deeper than the\nbrain-mind.  We may understand now, I think, what place the\nBuddha holds in human history: how it was not for nothing that he\nwas _the Buddha,_ the central Avatar, the topmost and Master\nFigure of humanity for these last twenty-five hundred years, with\nwhat other sublime men appeared as it were subordinate to him,\nand the guides of tributary streams:  Laotse and Confucius\npreparing the way for him in China; Pythagoras carrying his\ndoctrine into the West.... Well; here is scope for thought; and\nfor much thought that may be true and deep, and illuminative of\nfuture ages; and _yet not convenient to write down at this time._\n\nBut to Bodhidharma again.\n\nH. P. Blavatsky affirmed that Buddhism had an esoteric as well as\nan exoteric side:  an affirmation that was of course disputed.\nBut here is this from a Chinese writer quoted by Edkins:\n\n\"Tathagata taught great truths and the causes of things.  He\nbecame the instructor of men and devas; saved multitudes, and\nspoke the contents of more than five hundred books.  Hence arose\nthe Kiaumen or Exoteric branch of the system, and it was believed\nto hold the tradition of the words of the Buddha.  Bodhidharma\nbrought from the Western Heaven the seal of truth, and opened the\nFountain of Dhyana in the east.  He pointed directly to Buddha's\nheart and nature, swept away the parasitic growth of book\ninstruction, and thus established the Esoteric branch of the\nsystem containing the doctrine of the heart, the tradition of the\nHeart of Buddha.  Yet the two branches, while presenting of\nnecessity a different aspect, form but one whole.\"\n\nNow that Doctrine of the Heart had always been in existence; it\ndoes not mean that Bodhidharma invented anything.  But in a line\nof Teachers, each will have its own methods, and, if there is\nprogress, there will be new and deeper revelations.  The Buddha\ngave out so much, as the time permitted him; Nagarjuna, founding\nthe Mahayana, so much further; Bodhidharma, now that with the\nmove to China a new lease of life had come, gave out, or rather\ntaught to his disciples, so much more again of the doctrine that\nin its fulness is and always has been the doctrine of the Lodge.\n\nLian Wuti, the emperor at Nanking, had been at the end of the\nfifth century a general in the service of the last scion of a\ndying dynasty there, and a devout Taoist; in 502 he became the\nfirst of a new dynasty, the Liang; and presently, a devout\nBuddhist.  Chinese historians love him not; Fenollosa describes\nhim as too generous-minded and other-worldly for success.  Yet he\nheld the throne for nearly fifty years; a time in which art was\nculminating and affairs advancing through splendor and unwisdom\nto a downfall.  Twice he took the yellow robe and alms-bowl, and\nwent forth through his domains, emperor still, but mendicant\nmissionary preaching the Good Law.--The Truth?  the Inner\ndoctrine?--I learn most about this poor Lian Wuti from the record\nof an interview held once between him and the 'Blue-eyed Brahmin'\nMaster of Dzyan.  Lian Wuti invited Bodhidharma to court, and\nBodhidharma came.  Said the emperor:\n\n--\"Since my accession I have been continually building temples,\ntranscribing books, and admitting new monks to take the vows.\nHow much merit may I be supposed to have accumulated?\"\n\n--\"None,\" said Bodhidharma.\n\n--\"And why none?\"\n\n--\"All this,\" said the Master, \"is but the insignificant effect\nof an imperfect cause not complete in itself; it is but the\nshadow that follows the substance, and without real existence.\"\n\n--\"Then what,\" asked Wuti, \"is real merit?\"\n\n--\"It consists in purity and enlightenment, depth and completeness;\nin being wrapped in thought while surrounded by vacancy and\nstillness.  Merit such as this cannot be won by worldly means.\"\n\nWuti, I suppose, found this kind of conversation difficult, and\nchanged the subject,--with an exotericist's question.  Said he:\n\n--\"Which is the most important of the holy doctrines?\"\n\n--\"Where all is emptiness,\" said Bodhidharma, \"nothing can be\ncalled holy.\"\n\nA neat compliment, thinks good externalist Wuti, may improve\nthings.--\"If nothing can be called holy,\" says he, \"who is\nit then that replies to me?\"--holiness being a well-known\ncharacteristic of Bodhidharma himself.  Who answered merely:\n\n--\"I do not know\"; and went his ways.  The final comment on the\ninterview is given by a Japanese writer thus:  \"Can an elephant\nassociate with rabbits?\"\n\nFor the rest, he spent the remaining years of his life in a\ncave-temple near Honanfu; and died after appointing a Chinaman\nhis successor.  Besides this small stock of facts there is a\nsort of legend; as for example:\n\nAfter leaving the court of Lian, he crossed the Yangtse on a\nreed,--a theme in sacred art for thousands ever since,--and\nbecause of this miraculous crossing, is worshiped still by\nYangtse boatman as their patron saint,--on the 28th of February\nin each year.--Once, as he sat in meditation, sleep overcame him;\nand on waking, that it might never happen again, he cut off his\neyelids.  But they fell on the earth, took root and sprouted;\nand the plant that grew from them was the first of all tea\nplants,--the symbol (and cause!) of eternal wakefulness.  He is\nrepresented in the pictures as being footless; in his missionary\ntravels, it is said, he wore away his feet.  Thus where there is\nno known life-story, but all hidden away beneath a veil of\nesotericism and a Master's seclusion, myths have grown, and a\nstory has been made.--He sat there in his cave silent through the\nyears, they say; his face to the wall.  Chih Kuang came to him,\nasking to be taught the doctrine; and for seven days stood in\nthe snow at the cave-mouth, pleading and unnoticed.  Then, to\nshow that he was in earnest, he drew his sword and sliced off his\nleft arm; and the Master called him in, and taught him.--Legend\nagain, no doubt.\n\nI imagine we can only judge of the man and of his astounding\ngreatness by the greatness of the ages he illumined.  It was as\nif he gave, in East Asia, the signal for nation after nation to\nleap into brilliant being.  As for China, she became something\nnew.  The Age of Han had been golden, strong, manly, splendid.\nBut Han was like other empires here and there about the world.\nHenceforth during her cycle China was to be as a light-giving\nbody, a luminary wondrous in the firmament with a shining array\nof satellite kingdoms circling about her.  Her own Teachers of a\nthousand years before had prepared the way for it:  Confucius\nwhen he gave her stability; Laotse when he dropped the Blue\nPearl into her fields.  That Pearl had shone, heaven knows.  Now\nTa-mo, this Bodhidharma, breathed on it; and it glowed, and\nflame shot up from it, and grew, and foamed up beautiful, till it\nwas a steady fountain of wonder-fire spraying the far stars.\nHeretofore we have had a background of Taoist wizardry:  in its\nhighest aspects, Natural Magic,--the Keatsism of the waters and\nthe wild, the wood, the field, and the mountain; henceforth\nthere was to be a sacred something shining through and inmingled\nwith this:  the urge of the Divine Soul, the holy purposes of\nevolution.  We may say this in Art, to take that one field alone,\nthe most perfect, the fullest, the divinest, expression of\nNatural Magic\n\n     \"whereof this world holds record\"\n\nwas to come in the school of the Successors of Bodhidharma,\ndirectly the result of his 'Doctrine of the Heart.'\n\nHis school remained esoteric; but it was established, not among\nthe secret mountains, nor in far unvisited regions; but there in\nthe midst of imperial China:  an extension of the Lodge, you may\nsay, visible among men.  Bodhidharma--are you to call him a\n_Messenger_ at all?  He hardly came out into the world.  It was\nknown he was there; near by was the northern capital;--he taught\ndisciples, when they had the strength to insist on it.  Yet he\ndwelt aloof too, and wrapped about in the seclusion Masters must\nhave, to carry on their spiritual work.  One must suppose that\nMessengers of the Lodge had been very busy in China between 375\nand 400, in the days of Tao Yuang-ming and Ku Kai-chih; that\nthey had been very busy again in the last quarter of the fifth\ncentury; for it seems as if somehow or other there was such an\natmosphere in China in the first half of the sixth century,--when\nordinarily speaking the Doors of the Spiritual World would be\nshut,--that the Lodge was enabled partly to throw off its\nseclusion, and it was possible for at least one of its Members to\ntake up his abode there, and to be known to the world as doing\nso.\n\nA Messenger was sent out into the Chinese world from the School\nof Bodhidarma in 575:  Chih-i, the founder of the Tientai School\nwhich was the spiritual force underlying the glory of the\nT'ang age; but he was a Messenger from the Dzyan School of\nBodhidharma, not its Head.  As far as I have been able to\ngather the threads of it, the line of those Heads, the Eastern\nPatriarchs, Bodhidharma's successors, was as follows:  He died in\nor about 536, having appointed Chi Kuang to succeed him.  Chi\nKuang appointed Hui Ssu, called the \"Chief of the Chunglung\nSchool of the followers of Bodhidharma.\"  Hui Ssu died in 576,\nhaving sent out Chih-i into the world the year before, and having\nappointed Seng T'san to succeed him as head of Dzyan.  Seng T'san\ndied in 606; Tao Hsin, his successor, in 651; Hung Jen, his, in\n675.  Hung Jen, it appears, left two successors:  Lu Hui-neng in\nthe south, and Shen Hsiu in the north.  It was the last quarter\nof the century:  I imagine Lu Hui-neng was the Messenger sent out\ninto the world; he spent the rest of his life teaching in the\nneighborhood of Canton; I imagine Shen Hsiu remained the Head of\nthe Esoteric School.  After that the line disappears; but the\nschool attained its greatest influence in the twelfth and\nthirteenth centuries in China, and later still in Japan.--All\nthese were men living not quite in the world:  it was known that\nthey were there, and where they might be found.  After Shen Hsiu,\nthe last Northern Chinese Patriarch, the line probably withdrew\nto Tibet, which had lately come into relations with China, and\nwhere civilization had been established through the efforts of\nT'ang Taitsong.  And now I will close this lecture with a saying\nof Shen Hsiu's which, in this modified form, is very familiar to\nall of you:\n\n\"Mind is like a mirror:  it gathers dust while it reflects.  It\nneeds the gentle breezes of soul wisdom to brush away the dust of\nour illusions.\"\n\n\n\n\nXXV.  TOWARDS THE ISLANDS OF THE SUNSET\n\n\nI had not thought to speak to you further about Celtic things.\nBut there is something in them here which concerns the spiritual\nhistory of the race; something to note, that may help us to\nunderstand the Great Plan.  So, having beckoned you last week to\nthe edge of the world and the fountain of dawn, and to see\nBodhidharma standing there and evoking out of the deep a new\norder of ages, I find myself now lured by a westward trail, and\nmust jump the width of two continents with you, and follow this\ntrack whither it leads:  into the heart and flame of mysterious\nsunset.  I hope, and the Gwerddonau Llion, the Green Spots of the\nFlood,--Makarn Nesoi, Tirnanogue, the Islands of the Blest.\n\nWe saw that while the great flow of the cycles from dying Rome\nran in wave after wave eastward, there was a little backwash\nalso, by reason of which almost the last glow we saw in the west\nwas in fourth century Gaul, in the literary renaissance there\nwhich centers round the name of Ausonius.   Now in later history\nwe find every important French cycle tending to be followed by\none in England:  as Chaucer followed Jean de Meung; Shakespeare,\nRonsard and the Pleyade; Dryden and Pope, Moliere and Racine;\nWordsworth and Shelley, the Revolution.  And we have seen China\nwake in 420; and we have noted, in the first of these lectures,\nthe strange fact that whenever China 'gets busy,' we see a sort\nof reflexion of it among the Celts of the west.  And we shall\ncome presently to one of the most curious episodes in history,--\nthe Irish Renaissance in the sixth century:  when all Europe else\nwas dead and buried under night and confusion, and Ireland only,\nstanding like a white pillar to the west, a blazing beacon of\nculture and creative genius.  Now if you see a wave rising in\nfourth-century Gaul, and a wave breaking into glorious foam in\nsixth- and seventh-century Ireland,--what would you suspect?--\nWhy, naturally, that it was the same wave, and had flowed through\nthe country that lies between:  common sense would tell you to\nexpect something of a Great Age in fifth- and early sixth-century\nBritain.  And then comes tradition,--which is nine times out of\nten the truest vehicle of history,--and shouts that your\nexpectations are correct.  For within this time came Arthur.\n\nYou know that in the twelfth century Geoffrey of Monmouth\npublished what he claimed to be a History of the Kings of Britain\nfrom the time of the coming there of the Trojans; and that it\nwas he mainly who was responsible for floating the Arthurian\nLegend on to the wide waters of European literature.  What\npercentage of history there may be in his book; how much of it\nhe did not \"make out of whole cloth,\" but founded on genuine\nWelsh or Breton traditions, is at present unknowable;--the\npresumption being that it is not much.  But here is a curious\nfact that I only came on this week.  The Romans were expelled\nfrom Britain in 410, remember.  Arthur passed from the world of\nmortals on the night after Camlan, that\n\n     \"last weird battle in the west,\"\n\nwhen\n\n     \"All day long the noise of battle rolled\n     Among the mountains by the wintry sea,\n     Till all King Arthur's Table, man by man,\n     Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their lord\n     King Arthur.\"\n\nNow the reign of Arthur may be supposed to represent the\nculmination of a national revival among the British Celts; and,\n--this is the detail I was pleased to come upon,--according to\nGeoffrey, Camlan was fought in 542;--a matter of thirteen decades\n(and two years) after the expulsion of the Romans.  So that, I\nsay, it looks as if there were some cyclic reality behind it.\nGeoffrey of Monmouth did not know that such periods of national\nrevival do last as a general rule for thirteen decades.  He had\nsome other guide to help him to that 542 for Camlan.\n\nHistory knows practically nothing about fifth-century Britain.\nIt has been looking at it, since scientific methods came in,\nthrough Teutonic (including Anglo-Saxon) or Latin eyes; and seen\nvery little indeed but confusion.  Britain like the rest of the\nwestern empire, suffered the incursions of northern barbarism;\nbut unlike most of the rest, it fought, and not as a piece of\nRome, but as Celtic Britain;--fought, and would not compromise\nnor understand that it was defeated.  It took eight centuries of\nwar, and the loss of all England, and the loss of all Wales, to\nteach, it that lesson; and even then it was by no means sure.\nIn the twelve-eighties, when last Llewelyn went to war, he\nwas still hoping, not to save Wales from the English, but to\nre-establish the Celtic Kingdom of Britain, Arthur's Empire, and to\nwear the high crown of London.  The men that marched to Bosworth\nField under Harri Tudor, two centuries later, went with the same\ncurious hope and assurance.  It was a racial mold of mind, and\none of extraordinary strength and persistence,--and one totally\nunjustified by facts in what were then the present and future.\nBut I do not believe such molds can ever be fudged up out of\nnothing:  _ex nihilo nihil_ is as true here as elsewhere.  So we\nmust look for the cause and formation of this mold in the past.\nSomething, I think, within that first cycle of Welsh history must\nhave impressed it on the Welsh mind:  some national flowering;\nsome great figure, one would say.--Arthur?  He is like Vikramaditya\nof Ujjain; no one know whether he existed at all.  There is\nno historic evidence; but rather the reverse.  But then\nthere are all those mountains and things named after him, \"from\nthe top of Pengwaed in Cornwall to the bottom of Dinsol in the\nNorth\"; and, there is the Arthurian Legend, with such great\nvitality that it drove out the national Saxon legends from\nEngland, and quenched the Charlemagne legend in France, and made\nitself master of the mind of western Europe in the Middle Ages;--\nI imagine there would have been an Arthur.  Some chieftain\nwho won battles; held up the Saxon advance for a long time,\nprobably; and reminded his people of some ancient hero, or\nperhaps of a God Artaios, thought to be reincarnate in him.\n\nNot that I believe that the mold of mind of which we have\nbeen speaking could have been created in the fifth and sixth\ncenturies.  Whoever Arthur was--the Arthur of that time,--however\ngreat and successful, he could but have reigned over some part of\nBritain, precariously resisting and checking the barbarians; but\ntradition tells of a very Chakravartin, swaying the western\nworld.  No; that mold certainly was a relic of the lost Celtic\nempire.  It had grown dim during the Roman domination; but it\nhad survived, and the coming in of the Crest-Wave had put new\nlife into it.  Nothing could have put new life into it, it seems\nto me, but such a coming in of the Crest-Wave,--to make it endure\nand inspire men as it did.  I think it is certain the Crest-Wave,\n--a backwash of it, a little portion of it, but enough to\nmake life hum and the age important,--was among the Welsh between\n410 and 542.  The wave was receding towards the Western Laya-Center;\nand gathered force as it rolled from Ausonius' Gaul to Taliesin's\nWales, and from Tallesin's Wales to Ireland.\n\nLet us look at the probabilities in Britain in 410, seeing what\nwe can.  Three hundred years of Roman rule had left that\nprovince, I cannot doubt, rich and populous, with agriculture in\na better condition than it has been since:--remember the corn\nJulian brought thence to feed Gaul.  We must think of a large\npopulation, Roman and Romanized, mixed of every race in the Roman\nworld, in the cities; and of another population, still Celtic,\nin the mountains of northern England, in the western Scottish\nLowlands, and especially in Wales.  It was the former element,\nthe cities, that appealed to Aetius for help against the Picts\nand Scots; the latter, dwelling in less accessible places,\nfought as soon as they felt the invaders' pressure.  Wales itself\nhad never been all held by the Romans.  The legions had covered\nthe south from Caerleon in Monmouthshire to Saint Davids in\nPenfro, a region held by Silures and Gaelic Celts.  They\nhad marched along the northern coast to the island of Mona,\nestablishing, just as Edward the Conqueror did in his day,\nstrongholds from which to dominate the dangerous mountains:\nthese regions also were held by Gaels.  But just south of those\nmountains, in what are now the counties of Meirionydd and\nMontgomery, there was a great piece of Wales which they seem\nnever to have penetrated; and it was held by the Cymric\nOrdovices, Welsh, not Irish, by language.\n\nAbout this time there was a great upheaval of the Irish; who\nconquered western Scotland, and established there sooner or later\nthe Scottish kingdom of history.  They also invaded Wales and\nEngland, and sent their fleets far and wide:  they were the\n'Picts and Scots' of the history-books.  There seems also to have\nbeen an invasion and conquest of Wales, from the north, by the\nWelsh; who, joining forces with the Welsh Ordovices whom they\nfound already in the unconquered un-Roman part, established in\nthe course of time the kingdom and House of Cunedda, which\nreigned till the Edwardian Conquest.  It is pretty safe to say\nthat the Romanized cities and the Romanized population generally\noffered no great resistance to the Saxons; mixed with them\nfairly readily, and went to form perhaps the basis of the English\nrace; that they lost their language and culture is due to the\nfact that they were cut off from the sources of these on the\ncontinent, and, being of an effete civilization, were far less in\nvigor than the Saxon incomers.  And as we saw in the first of\nthese lectures, there was probably a large Teutonic or Saxon\nelement in Britain since before the days of Julius Caesar.\n\nBut there seems to have been a time during those thirteen decades\nthat followed the eviction of the Romans, when the Celtic\nelement, wakened to life and receiving an impulse from the\nCrest-Wave, caught up the sovereignty that the Romans had dropped,\nremembered its Ancient greatness, and nourished vigorous hopes.\nTo the Welsh mind, the age has appeared one of old unhappy\nfar-off things,--unhappy, because of their tragic ending at Camlan;--\nbut grandiose.  Titanic vague figures loom up:  Arthur, the type\nof all hero-kings; Taliesin, type of all prophet-bards; Merlin,\ntype of magicians.  Tennyson caught the spirit of it in the grand\nmoments of the _Morte D'Arthur;_  and missed it by a thousand\nmiles elsewhere in the _Idylls._  The spirit, the atmosphere, is\nthat of a glory receding into the unknown and the West of Wonder;\ninto Lyonnesse, into Avallon, into the Sunset Isles.  There is a\nsense of being on the brink of the world; with the 'arm\nclothed in white samite' reaching in from a world beyond,--that\nOtherworld to which the wounded Arthur, barge-borne over the\nnightly waters by the Queens of Faerie, went to heal him of his\nwounds, and to await the cyclic hour for his retum.  He is the\nsymbol of--what shall we say?--civilization, culture, or the\nspiritual sources of these, the light that alone can keep them\nsweet and wholesome; that light has died from the broken Roman\nworld, and passes now west-ward through the Gates of the Sunset:\nthrough Wales, through Ireland, the Laya-Center; into the\nHidden, the Place of the Spirit; into Avallon, which is Ynys\nAfallen, the 'Isle of Apple-trees';--whence to return in its\ntime:--_Rex quondam, rexque futurus._\n\nThere is a poem by Myrddin Gwyllt, traditionally of the sixth\ncentury, about that Garth of Apple-trees; which he will have a\nsecret place in the Woods of Celyddon, the Occult Land, and not\nan island in the sea at all; and in this poem it has always\nseemed to me that one gets a clue to the real and interesting\nthings of history.  He claims in it to be the last of the\nwhite-robed Guardians of the Sacred Tree, the fruit of which\nnone of the black-robed,--no 'son of a monk,'--shall ever\nenjoy.  There has been a battle, in which the true order\nof the world has gone down; but there Myrddin stays to guard\nthe 'Tree' against the 'Woodmen,'--whom also he seems to\nidentify with the 'black-robed' and the priests  Myrddin\nGwyllt, by the by, is one of the two figures in Welsh tradition\nwho have combined to become the Merlin of European tradition;\nthe other was Myrddin Emrys the magician.  I take great risks,\ngentlemen but wish to give you a taste, as I think the sound\nof some lines from the original may, and doubt any translation\ncan, of the old and haughty sense of mystery and grandeur\nembodied in the poem; because it is this feeling, perhaps\nthe last echo of the Western Mysteries, that is so characteristic\nof the literature that claims to come down to us from this age:\n\n     Afallen beren, bren ailwyddfa,\n     Cwn coed cylch ei gwraidd dywasgodfa;\n     A mi ddysgoganaf dyddiau etwa\n     Medrawd ac Arthus modur tyrfa;\n     Camlan darwerthin difiau yna;\n     Namyn saith ni ddyraith o'r cymanfa.\n\n     Afallen bere, beraf ei haeron,\n     A dyf yn argel yn argoed Celyddon;\n     Cyt ceiser ofer fydd herwydd ei hafon,\n     Yn y ddel Cadwaladr at gynadl Rhyd Theon,\n     A Chynan yn erbyn cychwyn y Saeson.\n     Cymru a orfydd; cain fydd ei Dragon;\n     Caffant pawb ei deithi; llawen fi Brython!\n     Caintor cyrn elwch cathl heddwch a hinon.\n\nWhat it means appears to be something of this sort:\n\n     Sweet and beautiful Tree of the trees!\n     The Wood-dogs guard the circle of its roots;\n     But I will foretell, a day shall be\n     When Modred and Authur shall rush to the conflict;\n     Again shall they come to the Battle at Camlan,\n     And but seven men shall escape from that meeting.\n\n     Sweet Apple-tree, sweetest its fruitage!\n     It grows in secret in the Woods of Celyddon;\n     In vain shall they seek it on the banks of its stream there,\n     Till Cadwaladr shall come to Rhyd Theon,\n     And Cynan, opposing the tumult of Saxons,\n     Wales shall arise then; bright shall be her Dragon;\n     All shall have their just reward; joy is me for the Brython!\n     The horns of joy shall sound then the song of peace and\n         calmness....\n\nThe sweet fruits of the Tree, he says, are the \"prisoners of\nwords,\"  (_carcharorion geirau_)--which is just what one would\nsay, under a stress of inspiration, about the truths of the\nSecret Wisdom;--and they shall not be found, he says,--they shall\nbe sought in vain,--until the _Maban Huan,_ the 'Child of the\nSun,' shall come.  The whole poem is exceedingly obscure; a\nhundred years ago, the wise men of Wales took it as meaning much\nwhat I think it means:  the passing of the real wisdom of the\nMysteries,--of Neo-druidism,--away from the world and the\nknowledge of men, to a secret place where the Woodmen, the\nBlack-robed, could not find to destroy it;--until, after ages,\na Leader of the Hosts of Light should come--you see it is\nhere Cadwaladr, but Cadwaladr simply means 'Battle-Leader,'\n--and the age-old battle between light and darkness, Arthur\nand Modred, should be fought again, and this time won, and\nthe Mysteries re-established.--If I have succeeded in conveying\nto you anything of the atmosphere of this poem, I have given\nyou more or less that of most of the poetry attributed to\nthis period; there is a large mass of it:  some of the poems,\nlike the long _Gododin_ of Aneurin, merely telling of battles;\nothers, like the splendid elegies of Llywarch Hen, being\nlaments,--but with a marvelous haughty uplift to them; and\nothers again, those attributed to Taliesin, strewn here and\nthere with passages that . . . move me strangely . . . and\nremind me (to borrow a leaf from the Imagists) of a shower\nof diamonds struck from some great rock of it; and of a\nsunset over purple mountains; and of the Mysteries of Antiquity;\nand of the Divine Human Soul.  Much of this poetry is unintelligible;\nmuch of it undoubtedly of far later origin; and the names of\nTaliesin and Myrddin, all through the centuries spells for\nCelts to conjure with, are now the laughing-stock of a brand-new\nscholarship that has tidied them up into limbo in the usual\nway.  It is what happens when you treat poetry with the brain-mind,\ninstead of with the creative imagination God gave you to treat\nit with:  when you dissect it, instead of feeding your soul\nwith it.  But this much is true, I think:  out of this poetry,\nthe occasional intelligible flashes of it, rings out a much\ngreater note than any I know of in our Welsh literature since:\na sense of much profounder, much less provincial things:  the\nGrand Manner,--of which we have had echoes since, in the long\ncenturies of our provincialism; but only I think echoes;\n--but you shall find something more than echoes of it, say\nin Llywarch Hen, in a sense of heroic uplift, of the titanic\nunconquerableness that is in the Soul;--and in Taliesin, in a\nsense of the wizardly all-pervadingness of that Soul in space\nand time:\n\n     \"I know the imagination of the oak-trees.\"\n\n     \"Not of father and mother,\n     When I became,\n     My creator created me;\n     But of nine-formed faculties,\n     Of the Fruit of fruits,\n     Of the fruit of primordial God;\n     Of primroses and mountain flowers,\n     Of the blooms of trees and shrubs,\n     Of Earth, of an earthly course,\n     When I became,--\n     Of the blooms of the nettle,\n     Of the foam of the Ninth Wave.\n     I was enchanted by Math\n     Before I became immortal.\n     I was enchanted by Gwydion,\n     The purifier of Brython,\n     Of Eurwys, of Euron,\n     Of Euron, of Modron,--\n     Of Five Battalions of Initiates,\n     High Teachers, the children of Math.\"\n\n--Now Math--he was a famous wizard of old--means 'sort,' 'kind';\nand so implies such ideas as 'differentiation,' 'heterogeneity.'\nTo say that you were enchanted by Math before you became\nimmortal, is as much as to say that before the great illumination,\nthe initiation, one is under the sway of this illusionary world\nof separatenesses;--as for being 'enchanted by Gwydion,' that\nname is, I suppose, etymologically the same as the Sanskrit\n_Vidya,_ or _Budha;_  he is the 'Purifier' of those 'Five\nBattalions of--_'Celfyddon,'_ the word is 'artists,' 'skillful\nones'; but again I imagine, it is connected with the word\n_Celi,_ 'occult' or 'secret'; so that being 'enchanted by' him\nwould mean simply, being initiated into the Occult Wisdom.  It is\ndifficult for a student of symbolism not to believe that  there\nwere Theosophical activities in fifth- and sixth-century Britain.\n\nAnother glimpse of the feeling of the age you get in the two\noldest Arthurian romances:  _The Dream of Rhonobwy,_ and _Culhwch\nand Olwen._  They were written, in the form in which we have\nthem, not until the last centuries of Welsh independence,--when\nthere was another national illumination; and indeed all the\nliterature of this early time comes to us through the bards of\nthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries.  They transmitted it;\nwrote it down; added to and took away from it; altered it:  a\npurely brain-mind scholarship might satisfy itself that they\ninvented it; but criticism, to be of any use at all, must be\nendowed with a certain delicacy and intuition; it must rely on\nbetter tools than the brain-mind.  Matthew Arnold, who had such\nqualifications, compared the work of the later bards to peasants'\nhuts built on and of the ruins of Ephesus; and it is still\neasier for us, with the light Theosophy throws on all such\nsubjects, to see the greater and more ancient work through the\nless and later.  I shall venture to quote from _Culhwch and\nOlwen:_  a passage that some of you may know very well already.\nCulhwch the son of Cilydd the son of the Prince of Celyddon rides\nout to seek the help of Arthur:\n\n\"And the youth pricked forth upon a steed with head dappled gray,\nof four winters old, firm of limb, with shell-formed hoofs,\nhaving a bridle of linked gold on his head, and upon him a saddle\nof costly gold.  In his hands were two spears of silver, sharp,\nwell-tempered, headed with steel, three ells in length, of an\nedge to wound the wind and cause blood to flow, and that faster\nthan the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass upon\nthe earth when the dew of June is at its heaviest.  A gold-hilted\nsword was at his side, the blade of which was of gold, bearing a\ncross of inlaid gold of the hue of the lightning of heaven;\nhis war-horn was of ivory.  Before him were two brindled\nwhite-breasted greyhounds, having strong collars of rubies about\ntheir necks, reaching from the shoulder to the ear.  And the one\nthat was on the right side bounded across to the left side, and\nthe one that was on the left to the right, and like two sea-swallows\nsported they around him.  And his courser cast up four sods with\nhis four hoofs like four swallows in the air, now above his head\nand now below.  About him was a four-cornered cloth of purple,\nhaving an apple of gold at each corner; and every one of the\napples was of the value of a hundred kine.  And there was\nprecious gold of the value of three hundred kine upon his shoes\nand upon his stirrups, from his knee to the tip of his toe.  And\nthe blade of reed-grass bent not beneath him, as he journeyed\ntowards the gates of Arthur's palace.\"\n\nSo far we have the glittering imagination of the twelfth-century\nbard; you might think working in a medium not wholly Celtic, but\nNorman-influenced as well; imagining his Arthurian Culhwch in\nterms of the knights he had seen at the courts of the Lords\nMarchers,--were it not that just such descriptions are the\ncommonplaces of Irish Celticism, where they come from a time and\npeople that had never seen Norman knights at all.  But now you\nbegin to leave regions where Normans can be remembered or\nimagined at all:\n\n\"Spake the youth, 'Is there a porter?'--'There is; and unless\nthou holdest thy peace, small will be thy welcome.  I am the\nporter of Arthur's hall on the first day of January in every\nyear; and on every other day than this the post is filled by\nHuandaw, and Gogigwc, and Llaescenym, and Penpingion who goeth\nupon his head to save his feet, neither towards the heavens nor\ntowards the earth, but like a rolling stone upon the floor of\nthe court.'--'Open thou the portal.'--'I will not open it.'--\n'Wherefore not?'--'The knife is in the meat and the drink is in\nthe horn, and there is revelry in Arthur's court; and no man may\nenter but a craftsman bearing his craft, or the son of the king\nof a privileged country.  But there will be refreshment for thy\ndogs and for thy horse, and for thee there will be collops cooked\nand peppered, and luscious wine and mirthful song,--and food for\nfifty men shall be set before thee in the guest chamber, where\nthe stranger and the sons of other countries eat, who come not\ninto the precincts of the palace of Arthur.  Said the youth,\n'That will I not do.  If thou openest the portal, it is well.  If\nthou dost not open it, I will bring disgrace upon thy lord and an\nevil report upon thee.  And I will set up three shouts at this\nvery gate, than which none were ever more deadly, from the top of\nPengwaed in Cornwall to the bottom of Dinsol in the North, and to\nEsgair Oerfel in Ireland.'--'Whatsoever clamor thou mayest make,'\nsaid Glewlwyd Gafaelfawr, against the rules of Arthur's court\nthou shalt not enter until I first go and consult with Arthur.'\n\n\"Then Glewlwyd went into the hall.  And Arthur said to him, 'Hast\nthou news from the gate?'--Half of my life is past, and half of\nthine.  I was heretofore in Caer Se and As Se, in Sach and\nSalach, in Lotor and Ffotor, in India the Greater and India the\nLess.  And I was with thee in the Battle of Dau Ynyr, when the\ntwelve hostages were brought from Norway.  And I have also been\nin Europe and in Africa and in the islands of Corsica, and in\nCaer Brythwch and Brythach and Ferthach; and I was present when\nthou didst conquer Greece in the East.  And I have have been\nin Caer Oeth and Annoeth and Caer Nefenhir:  nine supreme\nsovereigns, handsome men, saw we there; but never did I behold a\nman of equal dignity to him who is now at the door of the\nportal.'  Then said Arthur:--'If walking thou didst enter here,\nreturn thou running.  And everyone that beholds the light, and\neveryone that opens and shuts the eye, let him show him respect\nand serve him; some with gold-mounted drinking-horns, others\nwith collops cooked and peppered, until such time as food and\ndrink can be set before him.\"\n\nCulhwch came in, and asked a boon of Arthur; and Arthur answered\nthat he should receive whatsoever his tongue might name, \"as far\nas the wind dries and the rain moistens and the sun revolves and\nthe sea encircles and the earth extends; save only my ship and\nmy mantle, and Caledfwlch my sword, and Rhongomiant my lance, and\nWynebgwrthucher my shield, and Carnwenhau my dagger and Gwen\nHwyfar my wife.  By the truth of heaven thou shalt receive it\ncheerfully, name what thou wilt.\"  So Culhwch made his request;--\nand it is really here that the ancient ages come trooping in:--\n\n\"I crave of thee that thou obtain for me Olwen the daughter of\nYspaddaden Head of Giants; and this boon I seek likewise at the\nhands of thy warriors.  I seek it from Cai, and Bedwyr, and\nGreidawl Galldonyd, and Greid the son of Eri, and Cynddelig\nCyfarwvdd, and Tathal Cheat-the-Light, and Maelwys the son of\nBaeddan, and\"--well, there are hundreds of them; but  I must\npositively give you a few; they are all, it is likely, the\ndenizens of ancient Celtic God-worlds and fairy-worlds and\ngoblin-worlds,--\"and Duach and Grathach and Nerthach the sons of\nGwawrddur Cyrfach (these men came forth from the confines of\nhell); and Huell the son of Caw (he never yet made a request at\nthe hands of any lord.)  And Taliesin the Chief of Bards, and\nManawyddan son of the Boundless, and Cormorant the son of Beauty\n(no one struck him in the Battle of Camlan by reason of his\nugliness; all thought he was an auxiliary devil.  Hair had he\nupon him like the hair of a stag).  And Sandde Bryd Angel (no one\ntouched him with a spear in the Battle of Camlan by reason of his\nbeauty; all thought he was a ministering angel).  And Cynwyl\nSant (the third man who escaped from the Battle of Camlan; and\nhe was the last that parted from Authur upon Henrtoen his horse).\nAnd Henwas the Winged the son of Erim; (unto these three men\nbelonged these three peculiarities:  with Henbedestyr there was\nnot anyone that could keep pace, either on horseback or on foot;\nwith Henwas Adeiniog no fourfooted beast could run the distance\nof an acre, much less could it go beyond it; and as to Sgilti\nYsgawndroed, when he intended to go on a message for his lord, he\nnever sought to find a path, but knowing whither he was to go, if\nhis way led through a wood he went along the tops of the trees.\nDuring his whole life a blade of grass bent not beneath his feet,\nmuch less did it break, so light was his tread.)  Teithi Hen the\nson of Gwynhan (his dominions were swallowed by the sea, and he\nhimself barely escaped, and he came to Arthur; and his knife had\nthis peculiarity:  from the time he came there no haft would ever\nremain on it; and owing to this a sickness came on him, and he\npined away during the remainder of his life, and of this he\ndied.)  Drem the son of Dremidyd (when the gnat arose in the\nmorning with the sun, Drem could see it from Gelli Wis in\nCornwall as far off as Pen Blathaon in North Britain.)  And Eidol\nthe son of Ner, and Glwyddyn Saer (who built Ehangwen, Arthur's\nhall.)  Henwas and Henwyneb, (an old companion unto Arthur).\nGwallgoyc another.  (When he came to a town, though there were\nthree hundred houses in it, if he wanted anything, he would let\nsleep come to the eyes of no man until he had it.)  Osla\nGyllellfawr (he bore a short broad dagger.  When Arthur and his\nhosts came before a torrent, they would seek a narrow place where\nthey might cross the water, and lay the sheathed dagger across\nthe torrent, and it would be a bridge enough for the armies of\nthe Three Islands of the Mighty and the three islands near\nthereby, with all their spoils.)  The sons of Llwch Llawyniog\nfrom beyond the raging sea.  Celi and Cueli and Gilla Coes Hydd,\n(who could clear three hundred acres at a bound:  the chief\nleaper of Ireland was he).  Sol and Gwadyn Ossol and Gwadyn\nOdyeith.  (Sol could stand all day upon one foot.  Gwadyn Ossol,\nif he stood upon the top of the highest mountain in the world, it\nwould become a level plain under his feet.  Gwadyn Odyeith,--the\nsoles of his feet emitted sparks when they struck upon things\nhard, like the heated mass drawn out of the forge.  He cleared\nthe way for Arthur when they came to any stoppage.)  Hireerwm and\nHiratrwm (the day they went upon a visit three cantref provided\nfor their entertainment, and they feasted until noon and drank\nuntil night and they they devoured the heads of vermin as if they\nhad never eaten anything in their lives.  When they made a visit\nthey left neither the fat not the lean, the hot nor the cold, the\nsour nor the sweet, the fresh not the salt, the boiled nor the\nraw.)  Huarwar the son of Aflawn (who asked Arthur such a boon as\nwould satisfy him; it was the third great plague of Cornwall\nwhen he received it.  None could get a smile from him but when he\nwas satisfied.)  Sugyn the sone of Sugnedydd (who could suck up\nthe sea on which there were three hundred ships, so broad-chested\nhe was).  Uchtryd Faryf Draws (who spread his red untrimmed beard\nover the eight-and-forty rafters that were in Arthur's hall).\nBwlch and Cyfwlch and Sefwlch the three sons of Cleddyf Cyfwlch,\nthe three grandsons of Cleddyf Difwlch.  (Their three shields\nwere three gleaming glitterers.  Their three spears were three\npointed piercers.  Their three swords were three griding\ngashers,--Gles, and Glessic, and Gleisad.)  Clust the son of\nClustfeinad; (though he were buried seven cubits beneath the\nearth, he would hear the ant fifty miles off rise from her nest\nin the norning).  Medyr the son of Methredydd; (from Belli Wic\nhe could in a twinkling\")--\n\nWell; one must stop somewhere; Culhwch himself was in no hurry\nto.  He went on until the armies of the Island of the Mighty and\nthe chief ladies of Arthur's court, with all their peculiarities,\nhad been enumerated.  But here, I say, you are let into an elder\nworld; beyond this one in space, beyond it in time.  You are on\nthe precipice edge of the world's end, and mist fills the chasm\nbefore you; and out of the mist, things vast and gigantic,\nthings half human and things not half human, present themselves,\nstirring your wonder, and withdraw leaving your imagination\nathirst.  \"These men came forth from the confines of hell\" ....\nWho wrote of them had news, I think, of terrific doings in\nAtlantis, when earth shook to the tread of giant hosts.  I\nconfess that to me all things European, after this, look a little\nneat and dapper.  I look from the cliffs at the limit of things,\nout over\n\n     .....the sunset bound of Lyonnesse,\n     A land of old upheaven from the abyss\n     By fire, to sink into the abyss again;\n     Where fragments of forgotten people dwelt:\n\n--it is not in this world; belongs not to this Fifth Race; but\nis more ancient, fantasmal, and portentous.\n\nHas it ever occurred to you that no body of men, no movement, no\nnation for that matter, can choose for itself a symbol that does\nnot actually express it?  The flags of the nations are all, for\nthose that can read them, the sign manuals of the souls of the\nnations, wherein the status of each is written plain; though\nthose that chose the symbol, and those that glory in it, may have\nno idea how they are thus revealing or exposing themselves.--No,\nI am not going to speak of the Dragon; which, by all traditions,\nwas the symbol chosen for the monarchy set up by the fifth-century\nBritons; nor to remind you--and yet it is worth remembering,--\nthat the Dragon is the symbol of the Esoteric Wisdom;--I am\ngoing to speak of something else.--You take some form, some\npicture; and it seems to you in some inexplicable way inspiring;\nand you adopt it, and say _In hoc signo vincam._  Why?  You\nknow nothing about symbolism; and yet, if you have any inner\nlife, those who understand symbolism can read your inner\nlife in you symbol.  That is because symbolism is a universal\nscience, real, and with nothing arbitrary about it; and because\nsomething in your subconsciousness wiser than you has directed\nyou choice, and means you to be expressed.\n\nTake one of the most universal symbols of all:  the Cross. In one\nform or another we find it all over the world.  In ancient Egypt,\nwhere it is called the _Ankh,_ and is drawn as a capital T with a\ncircle above.  There it symbolizes life in the largest sense.\nThe circle above stands for Spirit; the Tau or cross below, for\nmatter:  thus it pictures the two in their true relation the one\nto the other.--The Christian Church, as it grew up in the last\ncenturies of the Roman empire, chose for itself a symbol,--in\nwhich Constantine went forth to conquer.  It was the four limbs\nof the cross:  simply the symbol of Matter.\n\nBut somehow, the Christian Church in the Celtic Isles did not\nadopt this symbol, or rather this form of it.  It took what is\ncalled the Celtic Cross:  the Cross, which is matter, with the\nCircle, which is Spirit, imposed over the upper part of it.  Now\nif you brought a man from India, or China, or anywhere, who knew\nnothing about European history or Christianity, but understood\nthe ancient science of symbolism; and showed him these two\ncrosses, the Celtic and the Latin; he would tell you at once\nthat the one, the Latin, stood for a movement wholly unspiritual;\nand that the other, the Celtic, stood for a movement with some\nspiritual light in it.  How much, I am not prepared to say.\n\nOne of the chief formative forces in Christian theology was Saint\nAugustine of Hippo, born in 354, died in 430.  He taught that man\nwas Originally sinful, naturally depraved; and that no effort of\nhis own will could make him otherwise:  all depended on the Grace\nof God, something from without, absolutely beyond control of\nvolition.  Then rose up a Welshman by the name of Morgan,--or he\nmay have been an Irishman; some say so; only Morgan is a Welsh,\nnot an Irish name; and evidence is lacking that there were Irish\nChristians at that time; he was a Celt, 'whatever';--and went to\nRome, teaching and preaching.  His doctrine was that man is not\noriginally sinful and naturally depraved; he had the temerity to\ndeclare that pagans, especially those who had never heard of\nChristianity, were not by God's ineffable mercy damned to\neverlasting hell; that unbaptized infants were not destined to\nfrizzle eternally; that what a man ought to do, that he had the\npower, within his own being, to do; and that his salvation lay\nin his own hands.  They translated his Welsh name (which means\n'Sea-born') into the Greek--Pelagius; and dubbed his damnable\nheresy 'Pelagianism'; and it was a heresy that flourished a good\ndeal in the Celtic Isles;--his writings came down in Ireland.\nThe incident is not much in itself; but something.  Not that the\nCeltic Church of David and Patrick was Pelagian; it was not.  In\nthe matter of doctrine it is impossible to distinguish it from\nthe Church on the continent.  But Pelagianism may suggest that\nthere were in Britain relics of an elder light.\n\nDid some echo of ancient wisdom, Druidic, survive in Britain from\nPre-roman days? It is a question that has been much fought over;\nand one that, nowadays, the learned among my countrymen answer\nvery rabidly in the negative. You have but to propound it in a\nwhisper, to make them foam heartily at the mouth.  Bless you,\nthey know that it didn't, and can prove it over and over;\nbecause--because--it couldn't have, and you are a fool for\nthinking it could.  Here is the position taken by modern\nscholarship (as a rule):  we know nothing about the philosophy of\nthe Druids, and do not believe they had one.  They could not have\nhad one; and the classical writers who said they had simply knew\nnothing about it.  It may be useful to quote what some of these\nclassical writers say.\n\n\"They (the Druids) speak the language of the Gods,\" says Diodorus\nSiculus (v, 31, 4); who describes them also as \"exhorting\ncombatants to peace, and taming them like wild beasts by\nenchantment\" (v, 31, 5).  They taught men, says Diogenes\nLaertius, \"to worship the Gods, to do no evil, and to exercise\ncourage\" (6).  They taught \"many things regarding the stars and\ntheir motions, the extent of the universe and the earth, and the\nnature of things, and the power and might of the immortal Gods,\"\nsays Caesar (iv, 14.); and Strabo speaks of their teaching in\nmoral science (iv, 4, 4).  \"And ye, ye Druids,\" says Lucan, \"to\nyou only is given knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the\nGods and the powers of heaven. . . . From you we learn that the\nborne of man's ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale\nrealm of the monarch below.\" (i, 451 sq,)  \"The Druids wish to\nimpress this in particular:  that souls do not perish, but pass\nfrom one to another after death.\" (Caesar, iv, 14)  Diodorus\ntestifies that \"among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevailed,\nthat the souls of men are immortal, and after completing their\nterm of existence, live again, the soul passing into another\nbody\" (v, 28).  Says Valerius Maximus:  \"They would fain make us\nbelieve that the souls of men are immortal.  I would be tempted\nto call these breeches-warers fools, if their doctrine were not\nthe same as that of the mantle-clad Pythagoras\"; and he goes on\nto speak of the Celtic custom of lending money to be repaid in a\nfuture life (vi, 6, 10).  Timagenes, Strabo, and mela also bear\nwitness to their teaching the immortality of the soul.\n\nI may say at once that I copy all these quotations from a book\nwritten largely to prove that the Druids were savage medicine-men\nwith no philosophy at all:  it is, _The Religion of the Ancient\nCelts,_ by Canon MacCulloch.  The argument used by this learned\ndivine is very simple.  The Druids were savage medicine-men,\nand could have known nothing about Pythagoras' teachings or\nPythagoras himself.  Therefore they didn't.  All the classical\nwriters were exaggerating, or inventing, or copying from one\nanother.--It never occurs to our Canon to remember Iamblichus'\nstatement that the Druids did not borrow or learn from Pythagoras,\nbut Pythagoras from them.  He quotes with no sign of doubt\nthe things said by the classical writers about barbaric Druid\nrites; never dreaming that in respect to these there may\nhave been invention, exaggeration, or copying one from another--\nand that other chiefly the gentle Julius who--but I have\nmentioned _his_ exploit before.\n\nHolding to such firm preconceptions as these,--and being in\ntotal ignorance of the fact that the Esoteric Wisdom was once\nuniversal, and therefore naturally the same with Pythagoras as\nwith anyone else who had not lost it, whether he and the Druids\nhad ever heard of each other or not,--it becomes quite easy for\nmy learned countryment to scout the idea that any such doctrine\nor system could have survived among the Britons until the fifth\ncentury, and revived then.  Yet Nennius, by the way, asserts that\nVortigern (the king who called in the Saxons) had 'Magi' with\nhim; which word in the Irish text appears as 'Druids':  and\nCanon MacCulloch himself speaks of this as evidence of a\nrecrudescence of Druidism at that time.\n\nWith those quotations from the classical writers in view--if\nwith nothing else,--I think we may call Reincarnation.... the\ncharacteristic doctrine of Druidism.  It so appeared to the\nRomans; it was that doctrine, which with themselves had been\nobscured by skepticism, worldliness, and the outwornness of their\nspiritual perceptions, that struck them as the most noteworthy,\nmost surprising thing in Druidic teaching.  It stood in sharp\ncontrast, too, with the beliefs of Christianity; so that,\nsupposing it, and the system that taught it, had died during the\nRoman occupation of Britain, there really was nowhere from\nwhich it might have been regained.  Wales has been, until\nvery recently, extraordinarily cut off from the currents of\ncivilization and world-thought.  She has dwelt aloof among her\nmountains, satisfied with an interesting but exceedingly narrow\nlittle culture of her own. You might almost say that from the\ntime the Romans left Britain there was no channel through which\nideas might flow in to her; and this idea, especially, was\nhardly in Europe to flow in.  And yet this idea has curiously\npersisted in Wales, as a tradition among the unlettered, even to\nour own day.  Dr. Evans-Wentz, of Berkeley, Oxford, and Rennes\nUniversities, in this present twentieth century, found old people\namong the peasantry who knew something about it, had heard of it\nfrom their elders; there was nothing new or unfamiliar about it\nto them; and this though nearly all Welsh folklore, even belief\nin the fairies, almost suffered extinction during the Religious\nRevivals of the eighteenth century and since.  They say the\nchapels frightened the fairies out of Wales; it is not quite\ntrue; but you can understand how wave after wave of fervid\nCalvinism would have dealt with a tradition like that of\nReincarnation.  And yet echoes of it linger, and Dr. Wentz found\nthem.  I myself remember hearing of a servant-girl from the\nmountains to whom her mistress (from whom I heard it) introduced\nthe subject.  The girl expressed no surprise whatever:  indeed to\ngoodness she shouldn' wonder, so there; her father was a druid,\nmiss, indeed and had told her about it when she was a child.\n\nWe have collateral evidence,--in Nennius, I believe,--for the\nexistence of several famed poets among the Welsh at that time;\nand Tallesin' is one of the names mentioned.  Seventy-seven poems\ncome down ascribed to him:  I quoted some lines from one of them;\nhere now are some line from another.  The child Taliesin is\ndiscovered in the court of Maelgwr Gwynedd, where he has\nconfounded the bards with his magic; and is called forth to\nexplain himself.  He does so in the following verses:\n\n     Primary Chief Bard am I to Elphin,\n     And my original country is the Region of the Summer Stars;\n     Idno and Heinin called me Merddin;\n     At length every being shall call me Taliesin.\n\n     I was with my Lord in the highest sphere\n     When Lucifer fell into the depths of hell;\n     I have borne a banner before Alexander;\n     I know the names of the stars from north to south.\n\n     I was in Canaan when Absalom was slain;\n     I was in the Court of Don (the Milky Way) before the birth\n         of Gwydion;\n     I was on the high cross of the merciful Son of God;\n     I have been three periods in the prison of Arianrhod.\n\n     I was in Asia with Noah in the Ark;\n     I saw the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah;\n     I was in India when Rome was built;\n     I am now come here to the remnant of the Trojans.\n\n     I was with my Lord in the ass's manger;\n     I strengthened Moses through the waters of Jordan;\n     I was in the firmament from the Cauldron of Ceridwen\n     I shall be on earth until the day of doom. *\n\n------\n* I quote it from Mr. T.W. Rollestone's _Myths and Legends of the\nCeltic Race._  The poem appeares in the _Hanes Taliesin,_ in Lady\nGuest's _Mabinogion._\n------\n\nNow, what would common sense have to say about things like that?\nSimply, I think, that they are echoes that came down in Wales\nthrough the ages, of a teaching that once was known.  They do\nnot,--they would not,--no one would expect them to,--give the\ntrue and exact features and the inwardness of such teaching, but\nthey do reflect the haunting reminiscences of a race that once\nbelieved in Reincarnation so firmly, that people were ready to\nlend money not to be repaid until a future life on earth.  If you\ncan prove that that poem not written until the thirteenth, or\nsixteenth, or eighteenth century, all the better; it only shows\nthe greater strength, the longer endurance, of the tradition;\nand therefore, the greater reality of that from which the\ntradition came.  It is the ghost of something which once was\nliving; and the longer you can show the ghost surviving,--the\nmore living in its day was the something it survived from.  Your\nTamerlanes and Malek Rics can be used to frighten babies for\ncentures;--their ghosts walk in that sense; their memories\nlinger;--but your Tomlinsons die and are done with, and no wind\ncarries rumors of them after.\n\nAnd the name of Taliesin,--whom you may say we know to have been\na Welsh poet of the sixth century,--is made the peg on which to\nhang these floating reminiscences of Druidic teaching;--and the\nstory told about him,--a story replete with universal symbolism,\n--is, for anyone who has studied that science, clearly symbolic\nof the initiation of a Teacher of the Secret Doctrine.\n\nWhat is it accounts for race-persistence?  _Not_ just what you\nsee on the physical plane.  There is what we should call an\nastral mold; and this is fed and nourished,--its edges kept\nfirm and distinct,--by forces from the plane of causes, the\nthought-plane.  When this mold has been well established,--as by\ncenturies of national greatness and power,--all sorts of waves of\nouter circumstance may roll over the race, and apparently wash\nits raciality clean away; and yet something in the unseen\noperates to resist, and, when the waves recede, to raise up first\nthe old race-consciousness, and finally national existence again.\nTake Ireland for example.  It has been over-run and over-run so\nmuch that many authorities would deny the existence of any Celtic\nblood there at all.  But what is absolutely undeniable is that a\ndistinct and well-defined racial type exists there; and that it\ncorresponds largely to the racial type--I do not mean physical so\nmuch as spiritual,--that the Greek and Roman writers ascribed to\nthe Celtic Gauls.  It is often claimed that an Irishman is merely\nan inferior kind of Englishman, and that there is little\ndifference in blood between the two; but those who make this\nclaim most loudly would not dream of denying the difference of\nthe mental types; they are generally the ones who see most\ndifference.  Why was it that the children of the Norman invaders\nof Ireland became _Hiberniores ipsis Hiberniis?_  Because of the\nastral mold, certainly.  It is race-consciousness that makes\nrace, and not the other way; and there is something behind that\nmakes race-consciousness; so that even where calamity has\nsmashed up the latter and put it altogether in abeyance, the\nseeds of it remain, in the soil and on the inner planes, to\nsprout again in their day; when the Crest-Wave rolls in; when\nSouls come to revive them.  It may be that this will never\nhappen, of course; but it seems to me that where Nature wishes\nto put an end to these racial recrudescences, she must take\nstrong steps.\n\nThough the British Celts had been under Roman rule for four\ncenturies, their language today is Celtic.--Why?--Because there\nwas what you may call a very old, well-established and strong\nCeltic-speaking astral mold.  We absorbed a large number of Latin\nwords; but assimilated them to the Celtic mold so that you would\nnever recognise them; whereas in a page of English the Latin\nborrowings stand out by the score.  Look at that _ascend,_ for\ninstance:  Latin _ascendere_ parading itself naked and unashamed,\nand making no pretense whatever to be anything else.  You shall\nfind _ascendere,_ too, on any page of Welsh; or rather, you\nshall not find him, by reason of his skillful camouflage.  He has\ncut off his train, as in English; but he has cut off more of it:\nthe _d_ of the stem, as well as the ending.  He has altered both\nhis vowels, and one of his three remaining consonants; and\nappears as _esgyn,_ to walk the pages undetected for an alien by\nthat vigilant police, the Celtic sense of euphony.  He is typical\nof a thousand others.  Wherefore the difference?--The English\nwere a new people in process of formation, and besides with a\nwhole heap of Latin blood in them from the Roman province; their\nmold was faintly formed, or only forming; but the Celts had\nformed theirs rigidly in ancient times.\n\nAgain:  when in the ninth century Hywel Dda king of Wales\ncodified the laws of his country, the result was a Celtic code\nwithout, I think, any relation to Roman law; though Roman law\nhad prevailed in Roman Britain for three centuries or so.  What\nstrong Celtic molds must have persisted, to cause this!  Roman\nlaw imposed itself on nearly all Europe, including many peoples\nthat never were under Roman rule; and yet here was this people,\nthat had been all that time under the Romans, oblivious of Roman\nlaw, uninfluenced by it, practically speaking;--and returning at\nthe first opportunity to the kind of laws they had had before the\nRomans were born or thought of.\n\nDruidism had been proscribed, as a practice, during Roman times.\nThe worship of the Celtic Gods had continued; but they had been\nassimilated to those of the empire;--which would be a much more\ndifficult thing to do were the Gods, as your modern learned\nsuppose, mere fictions of the superstitious, and not the symbols\nof, or the Powers behind, the forces of Nature.  So Celtic\nreligion outwardly was submerged in Roman religion; and then\nlater.  Christianity came in.  But the science, the institutions,\nand the philosophy of the Druids had been part and parcel of the\ninner life of the race perhaps as long as their laws and language\nhad; and your Celt runs by nature to religion, or even to\nreligiosity,--ultra-religion.  Is it likely that, while he kept\nhis laws and language, he let his religion go?  And when it was\nnot an arbitrary farrago of dogmas, like some we might mention;\nbut a philosophy of the soul so vivid that he counted death\nlittle more to fuss about than going to sleep?\n\nWhen should those old ideas have reappeared,--when should the\nracial astral molds have been brought out and furbished up with\nnew strength to make them endure?  Why, when the Roman dominion\ncame to an end; when the people were turning for inspiration to\ntheir own things, and away from Latin things; when they were\nforgoing Latin for Celtic; reviving Celtic laws and customs;\ntrying to forget they had been subjected to foreigners, and to\nremember and resurrect the old Monarchy of Britain.  Christianity\nwould not give them all the difference from Romanism that they\nwanted,--that the most ardent among them wanted:  the Romans were\nChristians too;--but there was that other ancient thing which the\nRomans had proscribed.  It still existed, in Ireland for example;\nand for that matter, there were plenty of places in Britain where\nthe Roman arm could never have reached it.  Matthew Arnold saw\nthese things in his day, and argued for the Neo-druidism of the\nsixth century.  He was a man accustomed to deal in ideas.  You\nmay easily train your mind to an acuteness and sagacity in\ndealing with grammatical roots, and forms, that will not help you\nin dealing with ideas.\n\nTo sum up, then:  I believe there was an influx of the Crest-Wave\ninto Britain, from about 410 to 540:  a national awakenment, with\nsomething of greatness to account for the Arthurian legend; and\nwith something of spiritual illumination, through a revival of\nDruidic Wisdom to account for the rumor of Taliesin.  I am not\nsure but that this influenced the Celtic Church:  I am not sure\nbut that David, and Cadoc, and Teilo, and Padarn, fathers of that\nchurch, were men pervious to higher influences; and that the\nmonastery-colleges they presided over were real seats of lerning,\nunopposed to, if not in league with, the light.\n\n\n\n\nXXVI.  \"SACRED IERNE OF THE HIBERNIANS\" *\n\n\n     \"I could not put the pen aside\n     Till with my heart's love I had tried\n     To fashion some poor skilless crown\n     For that dear head so low bowed down.\"\n                             --From the Celtic\n\n\nIt is but a step from Wales to Ireland.  From the one, you can\nsee the \"fair hills of holy Ireland\" in the heart of any decent\nsunset; from the other, you can see Wales shining landed in in\nany shining dawn.  No Roman legion ever landed in Ireland; yet\nall through Roman times boats must have been slipping across and\nacross; there must have been constant communication, and there\nwas, really, no distinction of race.  There was a time, I\nbelieve, when they were joined, one island; and all the seas\nwere east of the Severn.  Both peoples were a mixture of Gaels\nand Cymry; only it happens that the Gaelic or Q language survived\nin Ireland; the Cymric or P language in Wales.  So, having\ntouched upon Wales last week, and shown the Crest-Wave flowing in\nthere, this week, following that Wave westward,\n\n     I invoke the land of Ireland!\n     Shining, shining sea!\n     Fertile, fertile mountain!\n     Gladed, gladed wood!\n     Abundant river, abundant in water!\n     Fish-abounding lake!\n\n     It was what Amargin the Druid sang, when the Gael first came\ninto Ireland.  Here is the story of their coming:--\n\n------\n* The stories told in this and the following lecture, and the\ntranslations of Irish poems, etc., are taken from Mr. T.W.\nRollertone's delightful _Myths and Legends of the Celtic\nRace,_ or from M. de Jubainville's _Irish Mythological Cycle,_\ntranslated and published in Dublin in the 'nineties.\n------\n\nBregon built a tower in Spain.  He had a son named Ith; and one\nfine evening in winter Ith was looking out over the horizon from\nBregon's tower, and saw the coast of Ireland in the distance;\nfor \"it is on a winter's evening when the air is pure that one's\nsight carries farthest.\"  So says the eleventh century bard who\ntells the tale:  he without knowing then that it was not in Spain\nwas Bregon's tower, but on the Great Plain, which is in the\nAtlantic, and yet not in this world at all.  Now this will tell\nyou what you ought to know about Ireland, and why it is we end\nour lectures with her.  We saw Wales near the border of things;\nlooking out from that cliff's edge on to the unknown and unseen,\nand aware of mysterious things beyond.  Now we shall see Ireland,\nwestward again, down where the little waves run in and tumble;\nsunlit waves along shining sands; and with boats putting out at\nany time; and indeed, so lively an intercourse going forward\nalways, that you never can be quite sure whether it is in mortal\nIreland or immortal Fairyland you are,--\n\n     \"So your soul goes straying in a land more fair;\n     Half you tread the dew-wet grasses, half wander there.\"\n\nFor the wonder of Ireland is, that it is the West Pole of things;\nthere is no place else nearer the Unseen; its next-door\nneighbor-land westward is this Great Plain, whither sail the\nHappy Dead in their night-dark coracles,--to return, of course,\nin due season; and all the peoplings of Ireland were from this\nGreat Plain.  So you see why the Crest-Wave, passing from dying\nEurope, \"went west\" by way of Ireland.\n\nI will tell you about that Great Plain:  it is\n\n\"A marvelous land, full of music, where primrose blossoms on the\nhair, and the body is white as snow.\n\n\"There none speaks of _mine and thine;_  white are the teeth and\nblack the brows; eyes flash with many-colored lights, and the\nhue of the fox-glove is on every cheek. . . .\n\n\"Though fair are the plains of Ireland, few of them are so fair\nas the Great Plain.  The ale of Ireland is heady, but headier far\nthe ale of the Great Country.  What a wonder of a land it is!\nNo youth there grows to old age.  Warm streams flow through\nit; the choicest mead and wine.  Men there are always comely\nand blemishless.\"\n\nWell; Ith set sail from the Great Plain, with three times thirty\nwarriors, and landed at Corcaguiney in the south-west of Ireland;\nand at that time the island inhabited less by men than by Gods;\nit was the Tuatha De Danaan, the Race of the Danaan Gods, that\nheld the kingship there.  Little wonder, then, that the first\nname of Ireland we get in the Greek writings is \"Sacred Ierne,\npopulous with the Hibernians.\"\n\nWell now, he found MacCuill, MacCecht, and MacGrene the Son of\nthe Sun, arranging to divide the kingdom between them; and they\ncalled on him to settle how the division should be.--\"Act,\" said\nhe, \"according to the laws of justice, for the country you dwell\nin is a good one; it is rich in fruit and honey, in wheat and in\nfish; and in heat and cold it is temperate.\"  From that they\nthought he would be designing to conquer it from them, and so\nforestalled his designs by killing him; but his companions\nescaped, and sailed back to the Great Plain.  That was why the\nMilesians came to conquer Ireland.  The chiefs of them were Eber\nFinn, and Eber Donn, and Eremon, and Amargin the Druid:  the\nsons of Mile, the son of Bile the son of Bregon; thus their\ngrandfather was the brother of that Ith whom the Gods of\nIreland slew.\n\nIt was on a Thursday, the first of May, and the seventeenth day\nof the moon, that the Milesians arrived in Ireland; and as he\nset his right foot on the soil of it, Amargin chanted this poem:\n\n     I am the wave of the Ocean;\n     I am the murmur of the billow;\n     I am the ox of the seven combats;\n     I am the vuture upon the rock;\n     I am a tear of the sun;\n     I am the fairest of plants;\n     I am a wild boar in valor;\n     I am a salmon in the water;\n     I am a lake in the plain;\n     I am a word of science;\n     I am the spear-point that gives battle;\n     I am the god who creates in the head the fire of thought.\n     Who is it that enlightens the assembly upon the mountain,\n        if not I?\n     Who telleth the ages of the moon, if not I?\n     Who showeth the place where the sun goes to rest?\n\nThey went forward to Tara, and summoned the kings of the Danaan\nGods to give up the island to them; who asked three days to\nconsider whether they would give battle, or surrender, or quit\nIreland.  On that request Amargin gave judgment:  that it would\nbe wrong for the Milesians to take the Gods unprepared that way;\nand that they should go to their ships again, and sail out the\ndistance of nine waves from the shore, and then return; then if\nthey could conquer Ireland fairly in battle, it should be theirs.\n\nSo they embarked, and put the nine waves between themselves and\nthe shore, and waited.  And the Danaans raised up a druid mist\nand a storm against them, whereby Ireland seemed to them no more\nthan the size of a pig's back in the water; and by reason of\nthat it has the name of Innis na Wic, the Island of the Pig.  But\nif the Gods had magic, Amargin had better magic; and he sang\nthat Invocation to the Land of Ireland; and at that the storm\nfell and the mist vanished.  Then Eber Donn was exulting in his\nrage at the thought of putting the inhabitants to death; but the\nthought in his mind brought the storm again, and his ship went\ndown, and he was drowned.  But at last the remnant of them\nlanded, and fought a battle with the Gods, and defeated them;\nwhereafter the Gods put a druid invisibility on themselves, and\nretired into the hills; and there in their fairy palaces they\nremain to this day; indeed they do.  They went back into the\ninwardness of things; whence, however, they were always\nappearing, and again vanishing into it; and all the old\nliterature of Ireland is thridded through with the lights of\ntheir magic and their beauty, and their strange forthcomings and\nwithdrawings.  For example:\n\nThere was Midir the Proud, one of them.  In the time of the great\nCaesar, Eochaid Airem was high king of Ireland; and he had for\nhis queen Etain, reborn then as a mortal,--but a Danaan princess\nat one time, and the wife of Miidir.  It was a fine evening in\nthe summer, and Eochaid Airem was looking from the walls of Tara\nand admiring the beauty of the world.  He saw an unknown warrior\nriding towards him; clad in purple tunic; his hair yellow as\ngold, and his blue eyes shining like candles.  A five-pointed\nlance was in his hand; his shield was ornamented with beads\nof gold.\n\n--\"A hundred thousand welcomes to you,\" said the high king. \"Who\nis it you are?\"\n\n--\"I know well who you are,\" said the warrior, \"and for a long\ntime.\"\n\n--\"What name is on you?\" said Eochaid.\n\n--\"Nothing illustrious about it in the world,\" said the other. \"I\nam Midir of Bregleith.\"\n\n--\"What has brought you hither?\"\n\n--\"I am come to play at chess with you.\"\n\n--\"I have great skill at chess,\" said the high king; and indeed,\nhe was the best at it in Ireland, in those days.\n\n--\"We shall see about that,\" said Midir.\n\n--\"But the queen is sleeping in her chamber now,\" said Eochaid;\n\"and it is there the chessboard is.\"\n\n--\"Little matter,\" said Midir, \"I have here a board as good as\nyours is.\"\n\nAnd that was the truth.  His chessboard was of silver, glittering\nwith precious stones at each corner.  From a satchel wrought of\nshining metal he took his chessmen, which were of pure gold.\nThen he arranged them on the board.--\"Play you,\" said he.\n\n--\"I will not play without a stake,\" said the king.\n\n--\"What will the stake be?\" said Midir.\n\n--\"All one to me,\" said Eochaid.\n\n--\"If you win,\" said Midir, \"I will give you fifty broad-chested\nhorses with slim swift feet.\"\n\n--\"And if you win,\" said Eochaid Airem, sure of victory, \"I will\ngive you whatever you demand.\"\n\nMidir won that game, and demanded Etain the queen.  But the rules\nof chess are that the vanquished may claim his revenge,--a second\ngame, that is, to decide the matter; and the high king proposed\nthat it should be played at the end of a year. Midir agreed,\nand vanished.\n\nThe year ended, and Eochaid was at Tara; he had had the palace\nsurrounded by a great armed host against Midir; and Etain was\nthere with him.  Here is the description of Etain:\n\n\"A clear comb of silver was held in her hand, the comb was\nadorned with gold; and near her, as for washing, was a basin of\nsilver whereon four birds had been chased, and there were little\nbright gems of carbuncles on the rim of the basin.  A bright\npurple mantle waved round her; and beneath it another mantle\nwith fringes of silver:  the outer one clasped over her bosom\nwith a golden brooch.  A tunic she wore, with a long hood that\nmight cover her head attached to it; it was stiff and glossy\nwith green silk beneath red embroidery of gold, and clasped over\nher breast with marvelously wrought clasps of gold and silver, so\nthat men saw the bright gold and the green silk flashing against\nthe sun.  On her head were two tresses of golden hair, and each\ntress plaited into four strands, and at the end of each strand a\nlittle ball of gold.  Each of her two arms was as white as the\nsnow of a single night, and each of her two cheeks of the hue of\nthe foxglove.  Even and small the teeth in her head, and they\nshone like pearls.  Her eyes were blue as the blue hyacinth, her\nlips delicate and crimson. . . . White as snow, or the foam of\nthe wave, was her neck. . . . Her feet were slim and white as the\nocean foam; evenly set were her eyes, and the eyebrows of a\nbluish black, such as you see on the shell of a beetle.\"\n\n--What I call on you to note about that is something very\nunpoetic.  It is not the flashing brightness, the grace, the\nevidence of an eye craving for beauty, and of a hand sure in the\ncreation of beauty;--but the dress.  The Irish writers got these\nideas of dress without having contacted, for example, classical\ncivilization, or any foreign civilization.  The ideas were\nhome-grown, the tradition Irish.  The writer was describing what\nhe was familiar with:  the kind of dress worn by an Irish princess\nbefore Ireland had seen foreign fashions and customs.  He was\nheightening picture for artistic effect, no doubt; but he was\ndrawing with his eye on the object.  I am inclined to think that\nimagination always must work upon a basis of things known; just\nas tradition must always be based on fact. Now then:  try,\nwill you, to imagine primitive savages dressing like that, or\nsufficiently nearly like that for one of their bards to\nwork up such a picture on the actualities he had seen.  I\nthink you cannot do it.  And this picture is not extraordinary;\nit is typical of what we commonly find in the ancient Irish\nstories.  What it proves is that the Ireland that emerges\ninto history, war-battered and largely decivilized by long\nunsettled conditions as she was, remembered and was the inheiritor\nof an Ireland consummately civilized.--But to return to the\nhall of Eochaid Airem:\n\nEvery door in it was locked; and the whole place filled with the\ncream of the war-host of the Gael, and apprehension on everyone,\nthey not knowing would it be war and violence with Midir, or what\nit would be.  So it had been all day; so it was now in the dusk\nof the evening.  Then suddenly there stood Midir in the midst of\nthem:  Midir the Proud; never had he seemed fairer than then.\nNo man had seen him enter; none knew how he had come.  And then\nit was but putting his spear in his left hand for him, and\nputting his right arm about the waist of Etain, and rising\nthrough the air with her, and vanishing through the roof.  And\nwhen the men of Ireland rushed out from the hall, they saw two\nswans circling above Tara and away, their long white necks yoked\ntogether with a yoke of moon-bright silver.\n\nIt was a long time the Gods were ruling in Ireland before the\nMilesians came.  King after king reigned over them; and there\nare stories on stories, a rich literature for another nation,\nabout the time of these Danaan Gods alone.  One of them was Lir,\nthe Boundless Deep.  He had four children by his first wife;\nwhen she died, he married her sister, Aoife by name.  Aoife was\njealous of the love he had for his children, and was for killing\nthem.  But when it came to doing it, \"her womanhood overcame\nher,\" and instead she put swanhood on the four of them, and the\ndoom that swans they should be from that out for nine hundred\nyears:  three hundred on Lake Derryvaragh in West Meath, three\nhundred on the Straits of Moyle between Ireland and Scotland,\nthree hundred on the Atlantic by Erris and Innishglory.  After\nthat the enchantment would end.\n\nFor that, Bov Derg, one of the Gods, changed her into a demon of\nthe air, and she flew away shrieking, and was heard of no more.\nBut there was no taking the fate from the swan-children; and the\nDanaans sought them on their lake, and found they had human\nspeech left to them, and the gift of wonderful Danaan music.\nFrom all parts they came to the lake to talk with them and to\nhear them singing; and that way it was for three hundred years.\nThen they must depart, Fionuala and her three brothers, the\nswan-children, and wing their way to the northern sea, and be among\nthe wild cliffs and the foam; and the worst of loneliness and\ncold and storm was the best fate there was for them.  Their\nfeathers froze to the rocks on the winter nights; but they\nfilled the drear chasms of the tempest with their Danaan singing.\nIt was Fionuala wrapped her plumage about her brothers, to keep\nthem from the cold; she was their leader, heartening them.  And\nif it was bad for them on the Straits of Moyle, it was worse on\nthe Atlantic; three hundred years they were there, and bitter\nsorrow the fate on them.\n\nWhen their time to be freed was near, they were for flying to the\npalace of Lir their father, at the hill of the White Field in\nArmagh.  But long since the Milesians had come into Ireland, and\nthe Danaans had passed into the hills and the unseen; and with\nthe old centuries of their enchantment heavy on them, their eyes\nhad grown no better than the eyes of mortals:  gorse-grown hills\nthey saw, and green nettles growing, and no sign of the walls and\ntowers of the palace of Lir.  And they heard the bells ringing\nfrom a church, and were frightened at the \"thin, dreadful sound.\"\nBut afterwards, in their misery, they took refuge with the saint\nin the church, and were converted, and joined him in singing the\nservices.  Then, after a while, the swanhood fell from them, and\nthey became human, with the whole of their nine centuries heavy\non them.  \"Lay us in one grave,\" said Fionuala to the saint;\n\"and place Conn at my right hand, and Fiachra at my left, and Aed\nbefore my face; for there they were wont to be when I sheltered\nthem many a winter night upon the seas of Moyle.\"  So it was they\nwere buried; but the saint sorrowed for them till the end of his\ndays.  And there, if you understand it, you have the forgotten\nstory of Ireland.\n\nShe was once Danaan, and fortunate in the Golden Age.  Then she\nwas enchanted, and fell from her high estate; and sorrow and the\nwildness of ages of decivilizing wars were her portion; but\nshe retained her wonderful Danaan gift of song.  Then came\nChristianity, and she sang her swan-song in the services of the\nChurch;--when she had overcome her terror of the ominous sound of\nthe bells.  She became human again:  that is, enjoyed one more\nperiod of creative greatness, a faint revival of her old\nsplendor; and then,--Ah, it was a long time ago; a long time\nthe hermit had been sorrowing over her grave!  But listen, by the\nlake of Derryvaragh, on the seas of Moyle, or by Erris and\nInnishglory, and  you will hear still the ghostly echoes of the\nsinging of Danaan swans.  _Danaan_ swans:  music better than of\nthe world of men!\n\n     O Swan-child, come from the grave, and be bright as you were\n        of old\n     When you sing o'er the sun-bright wave in the Danaans' Age\n        of Gold!\n     Are you never remembering, darling, the truth that you knew\n        well then,\n     That there's nobody dies from the world, asthore, but is\n        born in the world again.\n\nIt brings me naturally to the place where we take her up in our\nhistory.  At the end of the fourth century, \"the sea,\" says the\nRoman poet Claudian, \"was foamy with the hostile oars of the\nIrish.\"  Niall of the Nine Hostages was high king of Tara; and\nhe was all for a life on the ocean wave and a home on the rolling\ndeep.  He raided the coasts of Britain annually, and any other\ncoasts that came handy, carrying off captives where he might.\nOne of these was a boy named Sucat, from Glamorgan:  probably\nfrom Glamorgan, though it might have been from anywhere between\nthe Clyde and the Loire.  In time this Sucat escaped from his\nIrish slavery, entered the Church, took the Latin name of\nPatrick, and made it his business to Christianize Ireland.  That\nwas about the time when the Britons were throwing off the Roman\nyoke.  He was at the height of his career in the middle of the\nfifth century.\n\nEven if he did not make a clean and bloodless sweep of the whole\ncountry, Patrick was one of the most successful Christian\nmissionaries that ever preached.  There was some opposition by\nthe druids, but it was not successful.  He went to the courts of\nthe kings, and converted them; and to say you had baptized a\nking, was as good as to say you had his whole clan captured; for\nit was a fractious unnatural clansman who would not go where his\nchieftain led.  We are in an atmosphere altogether different from\nthe rancor and fanaticism of the continent.  Patrick,--there must\nhave been something very winning and kindly about the man,--\nroused no tradition of animosity.  He never made Ireland hate her\npagan past.  When the Great Age came,--which was not till later,\n--not till the Crest-Wave had passed from Wales,--and Christian\nIrishmen took to writing down the old legends and stories, they\nwere very tender to the memories of the Gods and heroes.  It was\nin pity for the Children of Lir, that were turned into swans,\nthat they were kept alive long enough to be baptized and sent to\nheaven.  Can you fancy Latona and her children so received by\nGreekish or Latin monks into the Communion of Saints?  But the\nIrish Church was always finding excuses for the salvation of the\ngreat figures of old.  Some saint called up Cuculain from hell,\nconverted him, and gave him a free pass that Peter at the Gates\nshould honor.  There was Conchobar MacNessa again.  He was king\nof Ulster in the days of the Red Branch, the grand heroic cycle\nof Irish legend; Cuculain was the chief of his warriors.  A\nbrain-ball was driven through the skull of Conchobar from a\nsling; but sure, his druid doctors would never be phased by a\ntrifle like that.  They bound up the wound and healed him in a\ncauldron of cure; but warned him never to get excited or\nover-exert himself, or the brain-ball would come out and he would\ndie; barring such accidents, he would do splendidly.  And so he\ndid for some years. Then one day a darkness came over the world,\nand he put his druids to finding out the cause of it.  They told\nhim they saw in their vision three crosses on a hill in the east\nof the world, and three men nailed on them; and the man in the\nmiddle with the likeness of the Son of God.  With that the\nbattle-fury came on Conchobar, and he fell to destroying the\ntrees of the forest with his sword.  \"Oh that I were there!\" he\ncried; \"thus would I deal with his enemies.\"  With the excitement\nand over-exertion, out came the brain-ball, and he died.  And if\nGod Almighty would not take Conchobar MacNessa, pagan as he was,\ninto heaven for a thing like that,--sure, God Almighty was not\nhalf such a decent kindly creature as the Irish monk who invented\nthe yarn.\n\nSo nothing comes down to us that has not passed the censorship of\na race-proud priesthood, with perhaps never a drop of the wine of\ntrue wisdom in them, to help them discriminate and truth to shine\nthrough what they were passing on; but still, with a great deal\nof the milk of human kindness as a substitute, so far as it\nmight be.  They treasured the literary remains of druid days;\nliberally twisting them, to be sure, into consonance with\nChristian ideas of history and the fitness of things; but still\nthey treasured them, and drew from them inspiration.  Thus the\nwhole past comes down euhemerized, cooked, and touched up.  It\ncomes down very glorious,--because the strongest feeling in Irish\nhearts was Irishism, race-consciousness.  Whereas the Latin\nChurch was fiercely against antiquity and all its monuments, the\nCeltic Church in Ireland was anxious above all things to preserve\nCeltic antiquity,--having first brought it into line with the one\ntrue faith.  The records had to be kept,--and made to tally with\nthe Bible.  The godhood of the Gods had to be covered away, and\nyou had to treat them as if they had been respectable children of\nAdam,--more or less respectable, at any rate.  A descent from\nNoah had to be found for the legendary kings and heroes; and for\nevery event a date corresponding with that of someone in the\nBible.  Above all, you had to pack the whole Irish past into\nthe few thousand years since Noah came out of the Ark.--You\nget a glimpse in Wales of the struggle there was between\nHebrao-Christian chronology and the Celtic sense of the age of\nthe world:  in the pedigree of an ancient family, where, it\nis said, about half way down the line this entry occurs after one\nof the names: \"In his time Adam was expelled from Paradise.\"  In\nIreland, indeed, there was at least one man from before the Flood\nliving in historic times:  Fintan, whom, with others, Noah sent\ninto the western world while the Ark was building.  Here is one\nof Fintan's poems:\n\n\"If you inquire of me concerning Ireland, I know and can relate\ngladly all the invasions of it since the beginning of the\ndelightful world.  Out of the east came Cessair, a woman,\ndaughter of Bith, with her fifty maidens, with her three men.\nThe flood came upon Bith on his mountain without mystery; on\nLadru at Ard Ladran; on Cessair at Cull Cesra.  As for me, for\nthe space of a year, beneath the rapid flood, on the height of a\nmighty wave, I enjoyed sleep which was exceeding good.  Then, in\nIreland, I found my way above the waters until Partholan came out\nof the East, from the land of the Greeks.  Then, in Ireland, I\nenjoyed rest; Ireland was void till the son of Agnoman came,\nNemed with the delightful manners.  The Fir Bolg and the Fir\nGalioin came a long time after, and the Fir Domnan also; they\nlanded at Erris in the west.  Then came the Tuatha De Danaan in\ntheir hood of mist.  I lived with them for a long time, though\ntheir age is far removed.  After that came the sons of Mile out\nof Spain and the south.  I lived with them; mighty were their\nbattles.  I had come to a great age, I do not conceal it,\nwhen the pure faith was sent to Ireland by the King of the\nCloudy Heaven.  I am the fair Fintan son of Bochra; I proclaim\nit aloud.  Since the flood came here I am a great personage\nin Ireland.\"\n\nIn the middle of the sixth century he was summoned as a witness\nby the descendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages against King\nDermot MacKerval, in a dispute as to the ancient divisions of\nIreland.  He came to Tara with nine companies in front of him,\nand nine companies behind:  they were his descendants.  This,\nmind you, is in strictly historical times.  The king and his\npeople received him kindly, and after he had rested a little, he\ntold them his story, and that of Tara from its foundation.\nThey asked him to give them some proof of his memory. \"Right\nwillingly,\" said Fintan. \"I passed one day through a wood in West\nMunster; I brought home with me a red berry of the yew-tree,\nwhich I planted in my kitchen-garden, and it grew there till it\nwas as tall as a man.  Then I took it up, and re-planted it on\nthe green lawn before the house, and it grew there until a\nhundred champions could find room under its foliage, to be\nsheltered there from wind and rain, and cold and heat.  I\nremained so, and my yew remained so, spending our time alike,\nuntil at last all its leaves fell off from decay. When afterwards\nI thought of turning it to some profit, I went to it, and cut it\nfrom its stem; and I made of it seven vats, and seven keeves, and\nseven stans, and seven churns, and seven pitchers, and seven\nmilans, and seven medars, with hoops for all.  I remained so with\nmy yew vessels until their hoops all fell off from decay and old\nage.  After that I re-made them; but could only get a keeve out\nof the vat, and a stan out of the keeve, and a mug out of the\nstan, and a cilorn out of the mug, and a milan out of the cilom,\nand a medar out of the milan; and I leave it to Almighty\nGod that I do not know where their dust is now, after their\ndissolution with me from decay.\" *\n\n------\n* De Jubainville, _Irish Mythological Cycle;_ when also Fintan's\npoem quoted above.\n------\n\nNow here is a strange relic of the Secret Teaching that comes\ndown with this legend of Fintan.  Each of the four Cardinal\nPoints, it was said, had had its Man appointed to record all the\nwonderful events that had taken place in the world.*  One of them\nwas this Fintan, son of Bochra, son of Lamech, whose duty was to\npreserve the histories of Spain and Ireland, and the West in\ngeneral.  As we have seen, Spain is a glyph for the Great Plain,\nthe Otherworld.\n\n------\n* See _The Secret Doctrine,_ for the Thesophical teaching.\n------\n\nFrom this universal euhemerization,--this loving preservation and\ncareful cooking of the traditions by the Christian redactors of\nthem,--we get certain results.  One is that ancient Ireland\nremains for us in the colors of life:  every figure flashes\nbefore our eyes in a golden mellow light of morning, at once\nextremely real and extremely magical:  not the Greek heroic age\nappears so flooded with dawn-freshness, so realistic, so minutely\ndrawn, nor half so lit with glamor.  Another result is that,\nwhile strange gleams of Esotericism shine through,--as in that\nabout the Four Recorders of the Four Cardinal Points,--things\nthat it seemed undangerous to the monks, because they did not\nunderstand their significance, to let pass,--we hear nothing in\nIrish literature about the philosophy of the Druids.  Ireland\nretains her belief in magic to this day; and his would be a hard\nskull that could know Ireland intimately and escape that belief.\nSo it seemed nothing irreligious to the monks to let the Druids\nremain magicians.  But philosophy was another matter entirely;\nand must be ruled out as conflicting with the Christian scheme of\nthings.  From this silence our Druid-Medicine-men Theorists draw\ngreat comfort and unction for their pet belief.  Reincarnation\nappears in some stories as a sort of thing that might happen in\nspecial cases; because \"God is good to the Irish,\" and might be\nwilling to give them sometimes another chance.  But nothing is\nallowed to come down to imply it was known for a law in Nature;\nno moral or philosophic bearing is attached to it.  This is just\nwhat you would expect.  The Christian censors of the literature\nhad rejected it as unchristian doctrine.  They would hate to have\nit thought that Irishmen could ever have believed in such things;\nthey would cover such belief up in every possible way.  You would\nfind peasant-bards in Wales to this day, men learned in the\nnational tradition, who are deacons in their chapels and druids\nof the Gorsedd, and firm believers in Druidism.  They have\nfounded a Gorsedd here in America lately, with an active\npropaganda of Druidism, and lecturers touring.  They think of it\nas a kind of Pre-christian Christianity; and would open their\neyes wide to hear that Reincarnation was the cornerstone teaching\nin it.  This may throw a little light on the attitude of those\nearly Irish Christians.--But on the other hand there were tales\nthat could not be preserved at all, that you could not tell at\nall, without bringing a touch of reincarnation into them.  The\nuniversal doctrine survived in that way in Ireland, as it\nsurvived as a rumor in the folk-lore in Wales.\n\nThere is the story, for instance, of Mongan son of Fiachta, a\nhistorical chieftain killed in 625.  According to Tigernach, the\noldest of the Irish annalists, Finn MacCool died in A.D. 274.\nFinn, you will remember, is the central figure of the Fenian\nCycle of sagas; he was the father of Oisin and the leader of the\nFenians; next to Cuculain, he is the chiefest hero of Irish\nlegend.  I quote this story from M. de Jubainville.*\n\n------\n* But without word-for-word exactitude; hence the absence of\ninverted commas.  The same remark applies to all the stories\nquoted, or nearly quoted, from Mr. Rollerstone'e book.\n------\n\nMongan had a quarrel with Forgoll, his chief bard or _file,_ as\nto the place where Fothad Airgtech king of Ireland had been slain\nby Cailte, one of Finn's companions.  Mongan said it was on the\nbanks of the Lame in Ulster, near his own palace; Forgoll\nsaid it was at Dubtar in Leinster.  Forgoll, enraged at being\ncontradicted by a mere layman, threatened to pronounce awful\nincantations against Mongan, which might put rat-hood on him, or\nanything.  The end of it was that Mongan was given three days to\nprove his statement; if he should not have done so by that\ntime, he and all his possessions were to become the property\nof the file.\n\nTwo days passed, and half the third, and Mongan did nothing, but\nremained at his ease entirely, never troubling in the world.  As\nfor his wife, poor woman, from the moment he made the wager her\ntears had not ceased to flow.--\"Make an end of weeping,\" said he;\n\"help will certainly come to us.\"\n\nForgoll came to claim his bond.--\"Wait you till the evening,\"\nsaid Mongan.  Evening came, and if help was coming, there was no\nsign of it.  Mongan sat with his wife in the upper chamber;\nForgoll out before them waiting to take possession of everything.\nPitiless and revengeful the look of Forgoll; the queen weeping\nand walling; Mongan himself with no sign of care on him.--\"Be\nnot you sorrowful, woman,\" said he; \"the one who is coming to\nhelp us is not far off; I hear his footsteps on the Labrinne.\"\nIt is the River Caragh, that flows into Dingle bay in the\nsouthwest; a hundred leagues from where they were in the palace\nat Donegore in the north-east of Antrim.\n\nWith that she was quiet for awhile; but nothing happened, and\nshe began weeping again.--\"Hush now!\" said Mongan; \"I hear the\nfeet of the one that will help us crossing the Maine.\"  It is\nanother river in Kerry, between the Caragh and the north-east:\non the road, that is, between Mongan's palace and the Great Plain.\n\nThat way he was consoling her again and again; and she again and\nagain breaking out with her lamentations.  He was hearing the\nfootsteps at every river between Kerry and Antrim:  at the\nLiffey, and then the Boyne, and then the Dee, and after that, at\nCarlingford Lough, and at last at Larne Water, a little to the\nsouth of the palace.--\"Enough of this folly,\" said Forgoll; \"pay\nyou me what is mine.\"  A man came in from the ramparts;--\"What\nnews with you?\" asks Mongan.--\"There is a warrior like the men of\nold time approaching from the south, and a headless spear-shaft\nin his hand.\"--\"I told you he would be coming,\" said Mongan.\nBefore the words were out from between his teeth, the warrior had\nleaped the three ramparts into the middle of the dun, and in a\nmoment was there between Mongan and the file in the hall.--\"What\nis it is troubling you?\" said he.\n\n--\"I and the file yonder have made a wager about the death of\nFothad Airgtech,\" said Mongan. \"The file said he died at Dubtar\nin Leinster; I said it was false.\"\n\n--\"Then the file has lied,\" said the warrior.\n\n--\"Thou wilt repent of that,\" cried Forgoll.\n\n--\"That is not a good speech,\" said the warrior.  \"I will prove\nwhat I say.\" Then he turned to Mongan. \"We were with thee, Finn\nMacCool,\" said he,--\n\n--\"Hush!\" said Mongan; _\"it is wrong for thee to reveal a\nsecret.\"_\n\n--\"Well then,\" said the warrior, \"we were with Finn coming from\nAlba.  We met Fothad Airgtech near here, on the banks of Larne\nWater.  We fought a battle with him.  I cast my spear at him, so\nthat it went through his body, and the iron head quitted the\nshaft, and went into earth beyond, and remained there.  This is\nthe shaft of that spear,\" said he, holding up the headless shaft\nhe had with him.  \"The bare rock from which I hurled it will be\nfound, and the iron head is in the earth a little to the east of\nit; and the grave of Fothad Airgtech a little to the east of\nthat again.  A stone chest is round his body; in the chest are\nhis two bracelets of silver, and his two arm-rings, and his\ncollar of silver.  Over the grave is a stone pillar, and on the\nend of the pillar that is in the earth is Ogham writing, and it\nsays, 'Here is Fothad Airgtech.  He was fighting with Finn when\nCailte slew him.'\"\n\nCailte had been one of the most renowned of Finn's companions;\nhe had come now from the Great Plain to save his old master.  You\nwill note that remark of the latter's when Cailte let the fact\nescape him that he, Mongan, had been Finn:  \"Hush! it is wrong\nfor the to reveal a secret.\"  That was the feeling of the\nChristian redactors.  Reincarnation was not a thing for baptized\nlips to speak about.\n\nBut we are anticipating things:  the coming of Patrick did not\nbring about the great literary revival which sent all these\nstories down to us.  Patrick Christianized Ireland:  converted\nthe kings and established the church; and left the bulk of the\npeople pagan-hearted and pagan-visioned still,--as, glory be to\nGod, they have been ever since.  I mean by that that under all\nvicissitudes the Irish have never quite lost sight of the Inner\nLife at the heart of things, as most of the rest of us have.\nTime and men and circumstance, sorrow and ignorance and falsity,\nhave conspired to destroy the race; but there is a vision there,\nhowever thwarted and hedged in,--and the people do not perish:\ntheir woods and mountains are still full of a gay or mournful, a\nwailing or a singing, but always a beautiful, life.  Patrick was\na great man; but he never could drive out the Danaan Gods, who\nhad gone into the hills when the Milesians came.  He drove out\nthe serpents, they say; and a serpent was a name for a Druid\nAdept:  Taliesin says, in one of his poems, _'Wyf dryw, wyf\nsarff,'_ 'I am a druid, I am a serpent'; and we know from H.P.\nBlavatsky how universal this symbol was, with the meaning of an\nInitiate of the Secret Wisdom.  So perhaps Patrick did evict his\nBetters from that land of evictions; it may be so;--but not the\nGod-life in the mountains.  But I judge from the clean and easy\nsweep he made of things that Druidism was at a low pass in\nIreland when he came.  It had survived there five centuries since\nits vital center and link with the Lodge had been destroyed at\nBibracte by Caesar; and, I suppose, thus cut off, and faced with\nno opposition to keep it pure and alert, might well, and would\nnaturally have declined.  Its central light no longer burning,\npolitical supremacy itself would have hastened its decay;\nfostering arrogance for spirituality, and worldliness for true\nWisdom.  How then about the theory that some life and light\nremained or was revivable in it in Britain?   Why claim that for\nBritain, which one would incline to deny to Ireland and Gaul?--\nWell; we know that Druidism did survive in Gaul a long time\nafter the Romans had proscribed it.  But Gaul became very\nthoroughly Romanized.  The Romans and their civilization were\neverywhere; the Celtic language quite died out; (Breton was\nbrought in by emigrants from Britain;)--and where the Celtic\nlanguage had died, unlikely that Celtic thought would survive.\nBut in Britain, as we have seen, while the Romans and their\nproscription were near enough to provide a salutary opposition\nand constant peril, there were many places in which the survivors\nof Suetonius' massacre in Mona might have taken refuge.  I take\nit that in Ireland it suffered through lack of opposition; in\nGaul, it died of too effective opposition; but in Britain there\nwere midway conditions that may well have allowed it to live on.\n\nBeyond Christianizing the country, it does not appear that\nPatrick did much for it.  It is not clear that Ireland made any\nprogress in material civilization then,--or for that matter, at\nany time since.  We should know by this time that these things\nare a matter of law.  Patrick found her essentially in pralaya,\nessentially under the influence of centrifugalism; and you\ncannot turn the ebbing tide, and make it flow before its time.\nThere was a queer mixture of intensive culture and ruthless\nbarbarism:  an extreme passion on the one hand for poetry and the\nthings of the spirit,--and on the other, such savagery as\ncontinual warfare always brings in its train.  The literary class\nwas so strong that in the little kingdom of Tir Conall in Donegal\nalone the value of ten thousand dollars of the revenue was set\naside yearly for its support and purposes;--whereby one would\nimagine that for all things else they could but have had a nickel\nor so left.  This is culture with a vengeance.  There was,\nbesides, wonderful skill in arts and crafts, intricate designing\nin jewelry-work;--and all this is not to be called by another\nname than the relics of a high civilization.  But there was no\npolitical unity; or only a loose bond under the high kings at\nTara, who had forever to be fighting to maintain their authority.\nThere was racial, but not national consciousness.\n\nBut where in Europe was there national consciousness?  We should\nremember that it only began to exist, or to reincarnate from\ntimes beyond the horizon of history, in the thirteenth century\nA.D.  There would be a deal less sneering at Ireland were only\nthese facts known.  England was perhaps the first country in\nwhich it became effective:  the wars of the first and third\nEdwards called it into being there.  Joan lit the fires of it in\nFrance; she mainly;--in the fourteen-twenties and thirties.\nSpain had to wait for Ferdinand and Isabel; Sweden for Gustavus\nVasa; Holland for William the Silent; Italy for Victor\nEmmanuel; Germany for Bismarck.  Wales was advancing towards it,\nin an imperfect sort of way, rather earlier than England; but\nthe Edwardian conquest put the whole idea into abeyance for\ncenturies.  So too Ireland:  she was half-conquered by the\nNormans, broken, racked, ruined and crucified, a century before\nthe idea of Nationhood had come into existence, and while\ncentrifugalism was still the one force in Europe.  It is thus\nquite beside the point to say that she was never a nation, even\nin the days of her native rule.  Of course she was not. Nor was\nEngland, in those times; nor any other.  In every part of the\ncontinent the centrifugal forces were running riot; though in\nsome there were strong fighting kings to hold things together.\nThis by way of hurling one more spear at the old cruel doctrine\nof race inferiorities and superiorities:  at Unbrotherliness and\nall its wicked works and ways.  I was the European pralaya; when\nyour duty to your neighbor was everywhere and always to fight\nhim, to get in the first blow; to kill him before he killed you,\nand thank God for his mericies.  So Ireland was not exceptional\nin that way.  Where she was exceptional, bless her sweet heart,\nlay, as we shall see, in the fact that while all the rest were\nsunk in ignorance and foulest barbarism, and mentall utterly\nbarren,--she alone had the grace to combine her Kilkenny Cattery\nwith an exquisite and wonderful illumination of culture.  While\nshe tore herself to pieces with one hand, with the other she was\nholding up the torch of learning,--and a very real learning too,\n--to benighted Europe; and _then_ (bedad!) she found another hand\nagain, to be holding the pen with it, and to produce a literature\nto make the white angels of God as green as her own holy hills\nwith envy!  _That_ was Ireland!\n\nThe Crest-Wave rolled in to her; the spiritual forces descended\nfar enough to create a cultural illumination, but not far enough\nto create political stability.  We have seen before that they\ntouch the artistic creative planes, in their descent, before\nthey reach the more material planes.  So her position is\nperfectly comprehensible.  The old European manvantara was dying;\nelsewhere it was dead.  Its forces, when they passed away through\nIreland, were nearly exhausted; in no condition whatever to\npenetrate to the material plane and make political greatnesses\nand strengths.  But they found in her very soil and atmosphere a\nspiritual something which enabled them to produce a splendor of\nliterary creation that perhaps had had no parallel in Europe\nsince Periclean days:  Yes, surely Ireland was much more creative\nthan Augustan Rome.\n\nHave any of you heard of literary savages?  Of wild men of the\nwoods, your true prognathous primitives, that in a bare couple of\ngenerations, and upon no contact with civilized races, rose from\ntheir native pithecanthropism to be the wonderful beacon of the\nWest or East?  You have not, and cannot imagine it; nor could it\never be.  A great literary habit is only acquired in long ages of\nsettled civilization; and there were long ages of settled\ncivilization behind Ireland;--and when, about thirteen decades\nafter Patrick's coming, she flamed up into cultural creation, she\nwas but returning to what was proper to her soul; in the midst\nof her dissolution, she was but groping after an olden self.\nThat olden self, very likely, she had even by that time more than\nhalf forgotten; and we now can only see it refracted, as it\nwere, through the lens of those first Christian centuries, and\nwith the eyes of those Christian monks and bards.  How would they\nhave seen them?--There was that spirit of euhemerization:  of\nmaking ancient things conform to new Christian ideas.  They had\nthe Kilkenny Catterwauling in their ears daily; would they have\nallowed to any Pagan times a quieter less dissonant music?  Could\nthey have imagined it, indeed?--I doubt.  Kilkennyism would have\nappeared to them the natural state of things.  Were you to look\nback into Paganism for your Christian millennium, to come not\ntill Christ came again?  Were you to search there for peace on\nearth and mercy mild?--there in the long past, when all the near\npast was war?--Besides, there was that ancientest of Mariners,\nNoah, but a few thousand years back; and you had to make things\nfit.\n\nSo I find nothing in it conclusive, if the legends tell of no\nconditions different from those Patrick found:  Kilkenny Cattery\nin politics, intensive culture in the things of the spirit; and\nI see no difficulty in the co-existence of the two.  The cultured\nhabit had grown in forgotten civilized ages; the Cattery was the\nresult of national or racial pralaya; of the break-up of the old\ncivilization, and the cyclic necessary night-time between it and\nthe birth of another.  Let us remember that during the Thirty\nYears War, in mid-manvantara, Europeans sunk into cannibalism;\nlet us remember the lessons of our own day, which show what a\nvery few years of war, so it be intense enough, can do toward\nreducing civilized to the levels of savage consciousness.  So\nwhen we find Ireland, in this fourth century, always fighting,--\nand the women as well as the men; and when we find a tribe in\nScotland, the Attacotti, with a reputation for cannibalism;--we\nneed not for a moment imagine that things had always been like\nthat.  It is not that man is naturally a savage, and may from the\nheights of civilization quickly relapse into savagery; it is\nthat he is a dual being, with the higher part of his nature\nusually in abeyance, and its place taken, when it is taken at\nall, by the conventions of law and order; and so the things that\nare only thought, or perhaps secretly practised, in times of\ncivilization, as soon as war has broken down the conventions,\nfind their full expression in action,--and others along with\nthem.  So Patrick found Ireland, what she has been mostly since,\na grand Kilkenny Cattery; but with the literary habit of an\nolder and better day surviving, and nearly ready to be awakened\ninto transcendent splendor.  The echoes of the Danaan music were\nringing in her still; and are now, heaven knows;--and how would\nthey not be, when what to our eyes are the hills of her green\nwith fern, to eyes anointed, and to the vision of the spirit,\nare the palaces of the Danaan Sidhe, and the topless towers\nof Fairyland?\n\nI shall come to my history next week; meanwhile here for you\nis the _Song of Finn in Praise of May,_ a part of it, as Mr.\nRollertone translates it, to give a taste of the literary habit\nof Pre-christian Ireland:\n\n     May day!  delightful day!\n     Bright colors play the vales along;\n     Now wakes at morning's slender ray,\n     Wild and gay, the blackbird's song.\n\n     Now comes the bird of dusty hue,\n     The loud cuckoo, the summer lover;\n     Broad-branching trees are thick with leaves;\n     The bitter evil time is over.\n\n     Swift horses gather nigh,\n     Where half dry the river goes;\n     Tufted heather crowns the height;\n     Weak and white the bog-down blows.\n\n     Corncrake singing, from eve til morn,\n     Deep in corn, the strenuous bird;\n     Sings the virgin waterfall,\n     White and tall, her one sweet word.\n     Loaded bough of little power\n     Goodly flower-harvests win;\n     Cattle roam with muddy flanks;\n     Busy ants go out and in.\n\n---------\n\n     Carols loud the lark on high,\n     Small and shy, his tireless lay,\n     Singing in wildest, merriest mood\n     Of delicate-hued delightful May.\n\nAnd here, from the same source, are the _Delights of Finn,_ as\nhis son Oisin sang them to Patrick:\n\n     These are the things that were dear to Finn,--\n     The din of battle, the banquet's glee,\n     The bay of his hounds through the rough glen ringing,\n     And the blackbird singing in Letterlee.\n\n     The Shingle grinding along the shore,\n     When they dragged his war-boats down to the sea;\n     The dawn-wind whistling his spears among.\n     And the magic song of his ministrels three.\n\nWhereby you may know, if you consider it rightly, what great\nstrain of influence flows in from the Great Plain and the Land of\nYouth, that may yet help towards the salvation of Europe.  When\nyou turn your eyes on the diaphanous veil of the Mighty Mother,\nand see it sparkling and gleaming like that, it is but a\nstep to seeing the motions of the Great Life behind; but a\nstep to seeing\n\n     'Eternal Beauty wander on her way;'\n\n--that Beauty which is the grand Theophany or manifestation of\nGod.  It would not be, it could not exist, but that the Spirit is\nhere; but that the Gods are here, and clearly visible; talk not\nof the Supreme Self, and shut your eyes meanwhile to the Beauty\nof the World which is the light that shines from It, and the sign\nof Its presence!  And the consciousness of this Beauty is one\nwhich, since Ireland, thrilled from the Otherworld, arose and\nsang, has been forcing itself ever more and more through the\nminds, chiefly of poets, of a Europe exiled from truth.  I cannot\nover-estimate the importance of this delight in and worship of\nBeauty in Nature, which the wise Chinese considered the path to\nthe highest things in Art.  Europe has inherited, mainly from the\nGreeks and the time the western world fell into ignorance, a\npreoccupation with human personality:  in Art and Literature, I\nmean, as well as in life.  We are individuals, and would peg out\nclaims for ourselves even in the Inner World; and by reason of\nthat the Inner World is mostly shut away from us;--for there, as\nthe poem I quoted about the Great Plain says, \"none talk\nof 'mine' and 'thine.'\"  But down through the centuries of\nChristendom, after our catching it so near its source in magical\nIreland, comes this other music:  this listening, not for the\nvoices of passion, and indecision, and the self-conceit which is\nthe greatest fool's play of all, within our personal selves,--but\nfor the meditations of the Omnipresent as they are communicated\nthrough the gleam on water, through the breath and delicacy of\nflowers, through the\n\n     'blackbird's singing in Letterlee,'\n\n--this tendency to 'seek in the Impersonal' (Nature is impersonal)\n'for the Eternal Self.'\n\nSo here, in these fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh centuries,\nI find the forces 'going west,' through Gaul, through Wales,\nthrough Ireland, to the Great Plain; there to recover themselves\nbathing in the magical Fountain of Youth which is so near to the\nisland the Greeks called \"Sacred Ierne of the Hibernians.\"  It\nmay be that the finest part of them has not come back yet; but\nwill re-emerge, spiritual and saving, through this same gateway.\nOne would be ashamed of the Host of the Gods, were they not doing\nstrenuous battle in the unseen for the regeneration of this poor\nIreland, that will yet mean so much to the world:  and one would\nmarvel at the hellions, indeed one would, were they in their turn\nnot moving heaven and earth, with their best battle-breaking\nchampions in the fore-front, to maintain their strangle-hold on\nher tortured and beautiful soul.\n\n\n\n\nXXVII.  THE IRISH ILLUMINATION\n\n\nWe put 420 for a date to the Southern Renaissance in China, and\n410 to the age that became Arthurian in Wales. The next thing in\nChina is 527, and the coming of Bodhidharma; the next thing in\nCeltdom is 520, and the coming of Findian.\n\nHe was an Irishman, and had been studying in Wales; where,\ncertainly, there was great activity in churchly circles in those\ndays.  Get a map of that country, and note all the place-names\nbeginning with _Llan,_--and you will see.  There are countless\nthousands of them. 'Llan' means 'the holy place of,' and the rest\nof the name will be that of the saint who taught or preached\nthere:  of whom, I believe, only David appears in the Catholic\ncalendar.  They were most of them active in the fifth and\nsixth centuries.\n\nFindian, according to the _Encyclopaedia Britannica,_ had come\nunder the influence of three of the foremost of them:  David,\nGildas, and Catwg the Wise; who were perhaps great men, if\nwe may judge by the results of their teaching, as Findian\ntransmitted it to those that came after him.  We have seen that\nPatrick opened no kind of golden age in Ireland, gave no impulse\nto civilization or letters.  The church he founded had fallen on\nrather evil days since his death; and now Findian came to reform\nthings in the light of what he had learned in Wales.  He began by\nfounding at Clonard a monastery on the Welsh plan.  That was some\ntwenty-two years before Geoffrey's date for the passing of\nArthur.  By the time Camlan had been fought, and the Crest-Wave\nhad left Wales, Findian had made a channel through which it\nmight flow into Ireland, and in the five-forties the Irish\nillumination began.\n\nWe must say a word or two as to the kind of institution he\nfounded.  There were several of them in Wales,--to be called\ncolleges, or even universities, as rightly as monasteries:--one\nat Bangor in the north; two or three in Glamorgan; one at Saint\nDavids.  Students flocked to them by the thousands; there was\nstrict discipline, the ascetic life,--and also serious study,\nreligious and secular.  It was all beautifully simple:  each\nstudent lived in his own hut,\n\n     \"of clay and wattles made,\"\n\n--or, where stone might be plentiful, as it is in most parts of\nWales, of stone.  Like a military camp, the whole place would be\nsurrounded with fosse and vallum.  They grew their own corn and\nvegetables, milked their own cows, fished in the streams, and\nsupported themselves.  The sky roofed their lecture-halls; of\nwhich the walls, if there were any, were the trees and the\nmountains.  But these places were real centers of learning, the\nbest there were in Europe in those days; and you needed not to\nbe a monk to attend them.\n\nIn Wales the strain of the Saxon wars kept them from their full\nfruition.  Celtic warfare was governed by a certain code:  thus,\nyou, went to war only at such and such a time of the year;\ninvaded your neighbor's territory only through such and such a\nstretch of his frontier; and no one need trouble to guard more\nthan the recognized doorway of his realm.  Above all, you never\ntook an army through church lands.  So through all the wars the\nBritons might be waging among themselves to keep their hands in,\nthe monastery-colleges remained islands of peace, on friendly\nterms with all the combatants.  But Wales, with no natural\nfrontier, lay very open to invaders who knew no respect for\nreligion or learning.  Twelve hundred of the student-monks of\nBangor, for example, were slaughtered in 613 by the Saxon\nEthelfrith;--whereafter the rest fled to Bardsey Island in\nCardigan Bay, and the great college at Bangor ceased to be.\n\nAugustine of Canterbury, sent by the Pope to convert the English,\nhad summoned the Welsh bishops to a conference, and ordered them\nto come under his sway and conform to Rome.  They hardly knew\nwhy, but disliked the idea.  Outwardly, their divergence from\nCatholicism was altogether trivial:  they had their own way of\nshaving their heads for the tonsure, and their own times for\ncelebrating Easter,--though truly, these are the kind of things\nover which you fight religious wars.  However, it was not these\ndetails that worried them so much; but an uneasy sense they\nderived, perhaps, from the tone of Augustine's summons.  The\nstory runs that they took counsel among themselves, and agreed\nthat if he were a man sent from God, they would find him\nhumble-minded and mannered; whereof the sign should be, that he\nwould rise to greet them when they entered.  But Augustine had\nother ideas; and as the ambassador of the Vicar of Christ, rose\nto greet no man.  So still, not quite knowing why, they would have\nno dealings with him; and went their ways after refusing to\nassimilate their Church of the Circled Cross to his of the Cross\nUncircled;--whereupon he, to teach them a sound lesson, impelled\nthe Saxon kings to war.  Fair play to him, he was dead before\nthat war brought about the massacre of the monks of Bangor,--who\nhad marched to Chester to pray for the Briton arms.\n\nBut when Findian went back to Ireland he found no such difficulties\nin his way.  Not till two hundred and seventy-five years later\nwas that island disturbed by foreign invaders; and whatever\ndomestic Kilkenny Cattery might be going forward, the colleges\nwere respected.  His school at Clonard quickly grew* till\nits students numbered three thousand; and in the forties, he\nsent out twelve of the chief of them to found other such schools\nthroughout the island.  Then the great age began; and for the\nnext couple of thirteen-decade periods Ireland was a really\nbrilliant center of light and learning.  Not by any means merely,\nor even chiefly, in theology; there was a wonderful quickening\nof mental energies, a real illumination.  The age became, as we\nhave seen, a sort of literary clearing-house for the whole Irish\npast.  If the surviving known Gaelic manuscripts were printed,\nthey would fill nearly fifty thousand quarto volumes, with matter\nthat mostly comes from before the year 800,--and which is still\nnot only interesting, but fascinating.\n\n------\n* _Encyclopaedia Britannica,_ article 'Ireland'; whence all re\nFindian and the colleges.\n------\n\nThe truth is, we seem to have in it the relics and wreckage of\nthe literary output of a whole foregone manvantara, or perhaps\nseveral.  For in the vast mass of epics and romances that comes\ndown, one distinguishes three main cycles:  the _Mythological,_\nthe _Red Branch,_ and the _Fenian._  The first deals with the\nFive Races that invaded or colonized Ireland:  Partholanians,\nNemedians, Firbolgs, Gods, and Irish;--in all of it I suspect the\nfaint memories and _membra disjecta_ of old, old manvantaras:\nindeed, the summing up of the history of created man.  You will\nhave noted that the number of the races, as in Theosophic\nteaching, is five.  M. de Jubainville points out that the\ncreation of the world, or its gradual assumption of its present\nform, goes on _pari passu_ with the evolution of its humanities,\nand under their eyes; thus, when Partholan, the first invader,\narrived, there were but three lakes in Ireland, and nine rivers,\nand one plain.  This, too, is an echo of the secret doctrine;\nand incidentally indicates how tremendously far back that first\ninvasion was thought to have been.\n\nThe Partholanians came into Ireland from the Great Plain, the\n\"Land of the Living,\" as the Irish called it, which is also the\nLand of the Dead:--in other words, they came _into_ this world,\nand not from another part of it.  Their peculiarity was that they\nwere \"no wiser the one than the other \"; an allusion to the\nmindlessness of the early humanities before the Manasaputra\nincarnated in the mid-Third Root Race.  Again, before their\ncoming, there was a people in Ireland called the Fomorians:  they\ncame up from the sea, were gigantic and deformed; some of them\nwith but one foot or one arm, some with the heads of horses or\ngoats.  That will remind you of the \"water-men, terrible and bad\"\nin the Stanzas of Dzyan:  the first attempts of the Earth or\nunaided Nature to create men.  But when the Partholanians fought\nwith and defeated these Fomoroh, they were said to have \"freed\nIreland from a foreign foe\"; this though the Fomorians were\nthere first, and though the Partholanians were \"invaders,\" and\nutterly ceased to be after a time, so that no drop of their blood\nruns in Irish veins.  Why, then, does Ireland identify itself\nwith the one race, and discard the other as \"foreign foes\"?--\nBecause the Partholanians represent the first human race, but the\nFomoroh or 'Water-men' were unhuman, and a kind of _lusus\nnaturae._  'Fomoroh,' by the way, may very well be translated\n'Water-men'; _fo_ I take to be the Greek _upo,_ 'under,' and\n'mor' is the 'sea.'  Now the Battle of Mag Itha, between\nPartholan and the Fomorians, is a very late invention; not\ndevised, I think, until the eleventh century.  And of course\nthere was no war or contact between the First Race and the\nWater-men, who had been destroyed long before.  This is a good\nexample of what came down in Pagan Ireland, and how the Christian\nredactors treated it.  They had heard of the existence of the\nFomoroh before the coming of Partholan, and thought it wise to\nprovide the latter with a war against them.  Later, as we shall\nsee, the Fomoroh stood for the over-sea people westward,--the\nAtlantean giant-sorcerers.\n\nThe second race of invaders, the Nemedians, were also given a war\nwith the Fomorians,--in the story of the seige of Conan's Tower.\nBut this story is told by Nennius as applying to the Milesians,\nthe Fifth Race Irish, and not to the Second Race Nemedians; and\nprobably relates to events in comparatively historical tiems,--\nsay a million years ago, or between that and the submersion of\nPoseidonis about nine thousand B.C.  One would imagine that\nIreland, from its position, must have been a main battle-ground\nbetween the men of the Fifth and the Atlanteans, between the\nWhite and the Black Magicians.  Mr. Judge's _Bryan Kinnavan_\nstories indicate that it was a grand stronghold of the former.\n\nThe Nemedians were akin to the Partholanians:  the Second Race to\nthe First,--both mindless:  they came after their predecessors\nhad all died out; and in their turn died or departed to the last\nman.  So we find in _The Secret Doctrine_ that the first two\nhumanities passed utterly and left no trace.  If I go into all\nthis a little fully, it is because it illustrates so well the\nsystem of _blinds_ under which the Inner Teaching was hidden, and\nat the same time revealed, by the Initiate of every land.  These\nCeltic things seem never to have come under the eye of Mme.\nBlavatsky at all; or how she might have drawn on them!  I think\nthat nowhere else in the mythologies are the Five Root-Races, the\nfour past and the one existent, mentioned so clearly as here in\nIreland.  For historic reasons at which we have glanced,--the\nRoman occupation, which was hardly over before the Saxon\ninvasions began,--Wales has preserved infinitely less of the\nrecords of ancient Celtic civilization than Ireland has; and yet\nProfessor Kund Meyer told me,--and surely no living man is better\nqualified to make suct a statement,--that the whole of the\nforgotten Celtic mythology might yet be recovered from old MSS.\nhidden away in Welsh private libraries that have never been\nexamined.  How much more then may be hoped for from Ireland!\n\nThe third invasion was by a threefold people:  the Fir Domnan, or\nMen of the Goddess Domna; the Fir Bolg, or Men of the Sacks;\nand the Galioin.  From these races there were still people in\nConnacht in the seventeenth century who claimed their decent.\nGenerally all three are called by the one name of Firbolgs.  They\nwere \"avaricious, mean, uncouth, musicless, and inhospitable.\"\nThen came the Tuatha De Danaan, \"Gods and false gods,\" as Tuan\nMacCarell told St. Finnen, \"from whom everyone knows the Irish\nmen of learning are descended. It is likely they came into\nIreland from heaven, hence their knowledge and the excellence of\ntheir teaching.\"  Thus Tuan, who has just been made to allude to\nthem as \"Gods and _false gods._\"  This Tuan, I should mention,\noriginally came into Ireland with Partholan; and, that history\nmight be preserved, kept on reincarnating there, and remembering\nall his past lives.  These Danaans conquered, and then ruled\nover, the Firbolgs:  it is a glyph of the Third or Lemurian\nRace, of which the first three (and a half) sub-races were\nmindless--the Fir Domnan, Fir Bolg and Galioin; then the Lords\nof Mind incarnated and reigned over them, the Tuatha De Danaan,\nwafted down from heaven in a druid cloud.  So far we have a\npretty exact symbolic rendering of the Theosophic teaching.\n\nThe Danaans conquered the Firbolgs, it is said, at the Battle of\nMoytura.  Now there were two Battles of Moytura, of which this\nwas the first; it alludes to the incarnation of the Manasaputra,\nand with it the clear symbolic telling of human history comes to\nan end.  So much, being very remote, was allowed to come down\nwithout other disguise than that which the symbols afforded.  But\nat this point, which is the beginning of the mind-endowed\nhumanity we know, a mere eighteen million years ago, further\nblinds became necessary.  History, an esoteric science, had\nstill more to be camouflaged, lest memories should seize upon\nindications too readily, and find out too much.  Why this should\nbe, it is not the time to argue; enough to say that the wisdom\nof antiquity decreed it.\n\nThere has always been some doubt as to the Second Battle of\nMoytura.  Because of a certain air with which it is invested,\nscholars think now, for the most part, that it was a later\ninvention.  But I do not think so:  I think that air comes from\nthe extra layer of symbolism that is laid over it; from the\nsecond coating of camouflage; from the fact that the few years\nbetween the two battles represent several million years,--about\nwhich the mythological history is silent, running them all\ntogether, like street-lights you see a long way off.  What\nhappened was this:\n\nIn the first battle Nuada, king of the Danaans, lost his hand;\nand, because a king must be blemishless, lost his kinghood too.\nIt went to Bres son of Elatha; whose mother was Danaan, but\nwhose unknown father was of the Fomoroh.  Note the change:  the\nfirst battle was with the Firbolgs, the mindless humanity of the\nearly third Race; now we are to deal with Fomorians, who have\ncome to symbolize the Black Magicians of Atlantis:  the second\nhalf of the Lemurian, and nearly the whole of the Atlantean\nperiod, have elapse.--In person, Bres was handsome like the\nDanaans; in character he was Fomorian altogether.  This is the\nsum of the history of later Lemuria and of Atlantis; Moytura,\nand Nuada's loss of his hand and kinghood there, symbolize the\nincarnation of the Manasaputra,--descent of Spirit into matter,--\nand therewith, in time, their forgetting their own divinity.  I\nshould say that it is Bres himself, rather than the Fomorians as\na whole, who stands symbol just now for the Atlantean sorcerers.\nThere is a subtle connexion between the Firbolgs and Fomoroh:\nthe former are the men, the latter the Gods, of the same race;\nthe Firbolgs stood originally for the mindless men of the early\nthird, men evolving up out of the lower kingdoms towards the\npoint of becoming human and mind-endowed; the Fomorians were the\nGods or so to say Spiritual Powers of those lower worlds; the\nforces in opposition to upward evolution.  So we see Bres of that\ndual lineage:  with magic from his Danaan mother, and blackness\nfrom his Fomorian father:  the Atlanteans, inheriting mind from\nthe Manasaputra, but turning their divine inheritance to the uses\nof chaos and night.\n\nAs his reign represents the whole Atlantean period, we might\nexpect it to have begun well enough, and worsened as it went.\nThis was so; had he shown his colors from the first, it is not\nto be thought that the Danaans would have tolerated him at all.\nBut it came to be, as time went on, that he oppressed Ireland\nabominably; and at last they rose and drove him out.  Nuada,\nwhose missing hand had been replaced with one of silver, was\nrestored in the kingship; henceforth he is called Nuada of the\nSilver Hand.  Here we have the return or redescent of the Divine\nDynasties who came to lead the men of the early Fifth Race\nagainst the Atlantean giants.  I shall beg leave now to tell you\nthe story of the Second Battle of Moytura.\n\nPerhaps it was in Ireland that the White Adepts of the Fifth made\ntheir first stand against the Atlanteans?  Perhaps thence it\nfirst got its epithet, _Sacred_ Ierne?--Bres, driven out by the\nGods, took refuge with his father the Fomorian king beyond the\nwestern sea; who gave him an army with which to reconquer his\nlost dominions.  Now we come to the figure who represents the\nFifth Race.  There are in Europe perhaps a dozen cities named\nafter Lugh Lamfada, the Irish (indeed Celtic) Sun-god:  Lyons,\nthe most important of them, was Lug-dunum, the _dun_ or fortress\nof Lugh.  Lugh was a kind of counterpart to Bres; he was the son\nof Cian, a Danaan, and a daughter of the Fomorian champion Balor\nof the Mighty Blows, or of the Evil Eye.  The story of his birth\nis like that of Perseus, son of Zeus and Danae.  Danae's son,\nyou remember, was fated to kill his grandfather Acrisius; so\nAcrisius shut Danae in an inaccessable tower, that no son might\nbe born to her.  The antiquity of the whole legend is suggested\nby this nearness of the Greek and Irish versions;--even to the\nsimilarity of the names of Dana and Danae:  though Dana was not\nthe mother of Lugh, but of the whole race of the Gods:  _Tuatha\nDe Danaan_ means, the 'Race of the Gods the Children of Dana.'\nSo you see it comes from the beginnings of the Fifth Race, a\nmillion years ago; but how much better the history of that time\nis preserved in the Irish than in the Greek version!  As if the\nIrish took it direct from history and symbolism, and the Greeks\nfrom the Irish.  And why not? since in the nature of things\nIreland must have been so much nearer the scene of action.\n\nLugh grew up among his mother's people, but remembered his divine\ndescent on his father's side; and when it came to the War of the\nFomoroh against Ireland, was for fighting for his father's\npeople.  So he set out for Tara, where Nuada and the Gods were\npreparing to meet the invasion; and whoever beheld him as he\ncame, it seemed to them as if they had seen the sun rising on a\nbright day in summer.--\"Open thou the portal!\" said he; but the\nknife was in the meat and the mead in the horn, and no man might\nenter but a craftsman bearing his craft.  \"Oh then, I am a\ncraftsman,\" said Lugh; \"I am a good carpenter.\"  There was an\nexcellent carpenter in Tara already, and none other needed.-\"It\nis a smith I am,\" said Lugh.  But they had a smith there who was\nprofessor of the three new designs in smithcraft, and none else\nwould be desired.  Then he was a champion; but they had Ogma son\nof Ethlenn for champion, and would not ask a better.  Then he was\na harper; and a poet; and an antiquary; and a necromancer;\nand an artificer; and a cup-bearer.  But they were well supplied\nwith men of all those crafts, and there was no place for him.--\n\"Then go and ask the king,\" said Lugh, \"if he will not be needing\na man who is excellent in all those crafts at once\"; and that\nway he got admission.\n\nAfter that he was drawing up the smiths and carpenters, and\ninquiring into their abilities, and giving them their tasks in\npreparation for the battle.  There was Goibniu, the smith of the\nDanaans.--\"Though the men of Ireland should be fighting for seven\nyears,\" said Goibniu, \"for every spear that falls off its handle,\nand for every sword that breaks, I will put a new weapon in its\nplace; and no erring or missing cast shall be thrown with a\nspear of my making; and no flesh it may enter shall ever taste\nthe sweets of life after;--and this is more than Dub the smith of\nthe Fomorians can do.\"  And there was Creidne the Brazier:  he\nwould not do less well than Goibniu the Smith would; and there\nwas Luchtine the Carpenter:  evil on his beard if he did less\nthan Creidne;--and so with the long list of them.\n\nIt was on the first day of November the battle began; and when\nthe sun went to his setting, the weapons of the Fomorians were\nall bent and notched, but those of the Gods were like new.  And\nnew they were:  new and new after every blow struck or cast\nthrown.  For with three strokes of his hammer Goibniu would be\nfashioning a spear-head, and after the third stroke there could\nbe no bettering it.  With three chippings of his knife, Luchtine\nhad cut a handle for it; and at the third chipping there would\nbe no fault to find with the handle either by Gods or men.  And\nas quickly as they made the spear-heads and the shafts, Creidne\nthe Brazier had the rivets made to rivet them; and if there were\nbettering those rivets, it would not be by any known workmanship.\nWhen Goibniu had made a spear-head, he took it in his tongs, and\nhurled it at the lintel of the door so that it stuck fast there,\nthe socket outward.  When Luchtine had made a spear-haft, he\nhurled it out at the spear-head in the lintel; and it was good\nhurling, not to be complained of:  the end of the haft stuck in\nthe socket, and stuck firm.  And as fast as those two men did\nthose two things, Creidne had his rivets ready, and threw them at\nthe spear-head; and so excellent his throwing, and the nicety of\nhis aim, no rivet would do less than enter the holes in the\nsocket, and drive on into the wood of the shaft;--and that way\nthere was no cast of a spear by the Gods at the hellions, but\nthere was a new spear in the smithy ready to replace it.  Then\nthe Fomoroh sent a spy into the camp of the Gods, who achieved\nkilling Goibniu with one of the latter's own spears; and by\nreason of that it was going ill with the Gods the next day in the\nbattle.  And it was going worse with them because of Balor of the\nMighty Blows, and he taking the field at last for the Fomorians,--\n\n     \"Balor as old as a forest, his mighty head helpless sunk,\n     And an army of men holding open his weary and death-dealing eye,\"\n\n--for wherever his glances fell, there death came.  They fell on\nNuada of the Silver Hand, and he died,--albeit it is well known\nthat he was alive, and worshiped in Britain in Roman times, for a\ntemple to him has been found near the River Severn.--Then came\nLugh to avenge Nuada, and a bolt from his sling tore like the\ndawn ray, like the meteor of heaven, over Moytura plain, and took\nthe evil eye of Balor in the midst, and drove it into his head;\nand then the Fomorians were routed. And this, in truth, like\nCamlan and Kurukshetra, is the battle that is forever being\nfought:  Balor comes death-dealing still; and still the sling of\nLugh Lamfada is driving its meteor shafts through heaven and\ndefeating him.\n\nAs for the defeat of the Gods by the Milesians, and their\nretirement into the mountains,--that too is actual history told\nunder a thinnish veil of symbolism:  the Fifth Race having been\nstarted, the Sons of Wisdom, its first Gods and Adept Kings, who\nhad sown the seeds of all bright things that were to be in its\nfuture civilizations, withdrew into the Unseen.\n\nAll this and much more,--the whole Mythological Cycle,--\nrepresents what came over into Irish literature from ancient\nmanvantaric periods, and the compression of the records of\nmillions of years.  A century seems a very long time while it is\npassing; but at two or three millenniums ago, no longer than a\nfew autumns and winters; and at a million years' distance, the\ndoings and changes, the empires and dynasties of a hundred\ncenturies, look to the eyes of racial memory like the contents of\na single spring.  So it is the history and wisdom of remote\nmultiplied ages that come down to us in these tales.\n\nBut with the Heroic Cycle we seem to be entering a near manvantara.\nThis is the noon-period of Irish literature, the Shakespeare-Milton\ntime; where the other was the dawn or Chaucer period.  Or the\nMythological Cycle is the Vedic, and the Heroic, the Epic,\nperiod, to take an Indian analogy; and this fits it better,\nbecause the Irish, like the Indian, dawn-period is immensely\nancient and of immense duration.  But when you come to the\nHeroic time, with the stories of the high king Conary Mor,\nand of the Red Branch Warriors, with for _piece de resistance_\nthe epic _Tann Bo Cuailgne,_ you seem (as you do in the\n_Mahabharata_) to be standing upon actual memories, as much\nhistorical as symbolic.  Here all the figures, though titanic,\nare at least half human, with a definite character assigned to\nall of importance.  They revel in huge dramatic action; move in\nan heroic mistless sunlight.  You can take part in the daily life\nof the Red Branch champions as you can in that of the Greeks\nbefore Troy; they seem real and clear-cut; you can almost\nremember Deirdre's beauty and the sorrow of the doom of the\nChildren of Usna; you have a shrewd notion what Cuculain looked\nlike, and what Conall Carnach; you are familiar with the fire\ntrailed from the chariot wheels, the sods kicked up by the\nhorses' hoofs; you believe in them all, as you do in Odysseus\nand Ajax, in Bhishma and Arjuna, in Hamlet and Falstaff;--as I\nfor my part never found it possible to believe in Malory's and\nTennyson's well-groomed gentlemen of the Table Round.\n\nAnd then, after long lapse, came another age, and the Cycle of\nthe Fenians.  It too is full of excellent tales, but all less\ntitanic and clearly-defined:  almost, you might say, standing to\nthe Red Branch as Wordsworth and Keats to Shakespeare and Milton.\nThe atmosphere is on the whole dimmer, the figures are weaker;\nthere is not the same dynamic urge of creation.  You come away\nwith an impression of the beauty of the forest through which the\nFenians wandered and camped, and less with an impression of the\npersonalities of the Fenians themselves.  There is abundant\nNatural Magic, but not the old Grand Manner; and you would not\nrecognise Finn or Oisin or Oscar, if you ment them, so easily as\nyou would Cuculain or Fergus MacRoy or Naisi.  Civilization\nappears to have declined far between the two ages, to have become\nmuch less settled,--as it naturally would, with all that fighting\ngoing on.  I take it that all the stories of both cycles relate\nto ages of the breakup of civilization:  peaceful and civilized\ntimes leave less impress on the racial memory.  The Fenians are\ndistinctly further from such civilized times, however, than are\nthe Red Branch:  they are a nomad company, but the Red Branch had\ntheir capital at Emain Macha by Armagh in Ulster.  But what\nmystery, what sparkling magic environs them!  Mr. Rollerstone\ncites this as an example:  Once three beautiful unknown youths\njoined Finn's company; but stipulated that they should camp\napart, and be left alone during the nights.  After awhile it fell\nout what was the reason for this:  one of them died between every\ndusk and dawn, and the other two had to be watching him.  That is\nall that is said; but it is enough to keep your imagination at\nwork a long while.\n\n--And then, the manvantara dies away in a dolphin glory of\nmystical colors in the many tales of wondrous voyages and islands\nin the Atlantic:  such as the Voyage of Maelduin, of which\nTennyson's version gives you some taste of the brightness, but\nnone at all of the delicacy and mysterious beauty and grace.\n\nExcept the classical, this is the oldest written literature in\nEurope; and I doubt there is any other that gives us such a wide\npeep-hole into lost antiquity.  Yes; perhaps it is the best lens\nextant, west of India.  It is a lens, of course, that distorts:\nthe long past is shown through a temperament,--made into poetry\nand romance; not left bare scientific history.  But perhaps\npoetry and romance are after all the truest and final form of\nhistory.  Perhaps, in looking at recent ages, we are balked of\nseeing their true underlying form by the dust of events and the\nclamor of details; for eyes anointed they might resolve\nthemselves into Moyturas and Camlans endlessly fought; into\nmagical weapons magically forged; into Cuculains battling\neternally at the Watcher's Ford, he alone withstanding the great\nhost of this world's invaders, while all his companions are under\na druid sleep. . . .  It is the most splendid scene or incident\nin the _Tann Bo Cuailgne;_  and I cannot think of it, but it\ncalls up before my mind's eye another picture:  that of a little\noffice in New York, and a desk, and rows of empty seats; and\nanother Irishman, lecturing to those empty seats . . . . but to\nall humanity, really  . . . . from the ranks of which his\ncompanions should come to him presently; he would hold back the\nhosts of darkness alone, waiting for their coming.  And I cannot\nthink of this latter picture but it seems to me as if:\n\n     Cuculain rode from out the ages' prime,\n          The hero time, spacious and girt with gold,\n     For he had heard this earth was stained with crime.\n\n     With loud hoof-thunder, clangor, ring and rhyme,\n          With chariot-wheels flame-trailing where they rolled,\n     Cuculain rode from out the ages' prime.\n\n     I saw his eyes, how darkening, how sublime,\n          With what impatient pity and power ensouled;\n     (For he had heard this earth was stained with crime!)\n\n     Song on his lips--I heard the chant and chime.\n          The stars themselves danced to in days of old:--\n     Cuculain rode from out the ages' prime.\n\n     Love sped him on to out-speed the steeds of Time:\n          No bliss for him, and this world left a-cold,\n     Which, he had heard, was stained with grief and crime.\n\n     Here in this Iron Age's gloom and grime\n          The Ford of Time, the waiting years, to hold,\n     Cuculain came . . . . and from the Golden prime\n     Brought light to save this world grown dark with crime....\n\nWell; from the schools of Findian and his disciples missionaries\nsoon began to go out over Europe.  To preach Christianity, yes;\nbut distinctly as apostles of civilization as well.  Columba left\nIreland to found his college at Iona in 563; and from Iona,\nAidan presently went into Northumbria of the Saxons, to found his\ncollege at Lindisfarne.  Northumbria was Christianized by these\nIrishmen; and there, under their auspices, Anglo-Saxon culture\nwas born.  In Whitby, one of their foundations, Caedmon arose to\nstart the poetry:  a pupil of Irish teachers.  At the other end\nof England, Augustine from Rome had Christianized Kent; but no\nculture came in or spread over England from Augustine and Kent\nand Rome; Northumbria was the source of it all.  You have only\nto compare _Beowulf,_ the epic the Saxons brought with them from\nthe continent, with the poetry of Caedmon and Cynewulf, or with\nsuch poems as _The Phoenix,_ to see how Irishism tinged the minds\nof these Saxon pupils of Irish teachers with, as Stopford Brooke\nsays, \"a certain imaginative passion, a love of natural beauty,\nand a reckless wildness curiously mingled with an almost\nscientific devotion to metrical form.\"\n\nIreland meanwhile was the heart of a regular circulation of\nculture.  Students poured in from abroad, drawn by the fame of\nher learning; we have a poem in praise of generous Ireland from\nan Anglo-Saxon prince who spent his exile there in study.  Irish\nteachers were at the court of Charlemagne; Irish teachers\nmissionarized Austria and Germany. When the Norsemen discovered\nIceland, they found Irish books there; probably Irish scholars\nas well, for it has been noted (by Matthew Arnold) that the\nIcelandic sagas, unlike any other Pre-Christian Teutonic\nliterature, bear strong traces of the Celtic quality of Style.\nThey had their schools everywhere.  You hear of an Irish bishop\nof Tarentum in the latter part of the seventh century; and a\nhundred years later, of an Irish bishop of Salzburg in Austria.\nThis was Virgil--in Irish, Fergil, I imagine a native name of\nSalzburg:  a really noteworthy man.  He taught, _at that time,_\nthat the world is a globe, and with people living at the\nantipodes; for which teaching he was called to order by the\nPope:  but we do not hear of his retracting.  Last and greatest\nof them all was Johannes Scotus Erigena, who died in 882:  a very\nbright particular star, and perhaps the one of the largest\nmagnitude between the Neo-Platonists and the great mystics of\nlater times, who came long after the new manvantara had dawned.\nHe is not to be classed with the Scholastics; he never\nsubordinated his philosophy to theology; but approached the\nproblems of existence from a high, sane, and Theosophic\nstandpoint:  an independent and illuminated thinker.  He taught\nat the court of Charles the Bald of France; and was invited to\nOxford by Alfred in 877, and died abbot of Malmesbury five years\nlater,--having in his time propounded many tough nuts of\npropositions for churchmen to crack and digest if they could.\nAs, that authority should be derived from reason, and not, as\nthey thought, vice versa; and that \"damnation was simply the\nconsciousness of having failed to fulfill the divine purpose,\"--\nand not, as their pet theory was, a matter of high temperature of\neternal duration.  The following are quotations from his work _De\nDivisione Naturae;_  I take them from M. de Jubainville's _Irish\nMythological Cycle,_ where they are given as summing up Erigena's\nphilosophy,--and as an indication of the vigorous Pantheism of\nPre-christian Irish thought.\n\n\"We are informed by all the means of knowledge that beneath the\napparent diversity of beings subsists the One Being which is\ntheir common foundation.\"\n\n\"When we are told that God makes all things, we are to understand\nthat God is in all things, that he is the substantial essence of\nall things.  For He alone possesses in himself all that which may\nbe truly said to exist.  For nothing which is, is truly of\nitself, but God alone; who alone exists _per se,_ spreading\nhimself over all things, and communicating to them all that which\nin them truly corresponds to the notion of being.\"\n\nI think we can recognise here, under a not too thick disguise of\nchurchly phraseology, the philosophy of the _Bhagavad-Gita._\nAgain:\n\n\"Do you not see how the creator of the universality of things\nhold the first rank in the divisions of Nature?  Not without\nreason, indeed; since he is the basic principle of all things,\nand is inseparable from all the diversity which he created,\nwithout which he could not exist as creator.  In him, indeed,\nimmutably and essentially, all things are; he is in himself\ndivision and collection, the genus and the species, the whole and\nthe part of the created universe.\"\n\n\"What is a pure idea?  It is, in proper terms, a theophany:\nthat is to say, a manifestator of God in the human soul.\"\n\nYou would be mildly surprised, to say the least of it, to hear at\nthe present day a native, say in Abyssinia, rise to talk in terms\nlike these:  it is no whit less surprising to hear a man doing so\nin ninth-century Europe.  But an Irishman in Europe in those days\nwas much the same thing as an Oxford professor in the wilds of\nAbyssinia would be now;--with this difference:  that Ireland is a\npart of Europe, and affected by the general European cycles (we\nmust suppose). Europe then was in thick pralaya (as Abyssinia is\nnow); but in the midst of it all there was Ireland, with her\nnative contrariness, behaving better than most people do in\nhigh manvantara.\n\nThe impulse that made that age great for her never came far\nenough down to awaken great creation in the plastic arts; but it\ntouched the fringes of them, and produced marvelous designing, in\njewel-work, and it the illumination of manuscripts.  Concerning\nthe latter, I will quote this from Joyce's Short History of\nIreland; it may be of interest:--\n\n\"Its most marked characteristic is interlaced work formed by\nbands, ribbons and cords, which are curved and twisted and\ninterwoven in the most intricate way, something like basket work\ninfinitely varied in pattern.  These are intermingled and\nalternated with zigzags, waves, spirals, and lozenges; while\nhere and there among the curves are seen the faces or forms of\ndragons, serpents, or other strange-looking animals, their tails\nor ears or tongues elongated and woven till they become merged or\nlost in the general design. . . . The pattern is so minute and\ncomplicated as to require the aid of a magnifying glass to\nexamine it. . . . Miss Stokes, who has examined the _Book of\nKells,_ says of it:  'No effort hitherto made to transcribe any\none page of it has the perfection of execution and rich harmony\nof color which belongs to this wonderful book.  It is no\nexaggeration to say that, as with the microscopic works of\nNature, the stronger the magnifying power brought to bear on it,\nthe more is this perfection seen.  No single false interlacement\nor uneven curve in the spirals, no faint tiace of a trembling\nhand or wandering thought can be detected.'\"\n\nThe same author tells us that someone took the trouble to count,\nthrough a magnifying glass, in the _Book of Armagh,_ in a \"small\nspace scarcely three quarters of an inch in length by less than\nhalf an inch in width, no less than one hundred and fifty-eight\ninterlacements of a slender ribbon pattern formed of white lines\nedged with black ones.\"--One of these manuscripts, sometimes,\nwould be given as a king's ransom.\n\nAn unmasculine art, it may be said; and enormous laborious skill\nspent upon tribial creation. But once again, the age was pralaya;\nall Europe was passing into, or quite sunk in, pralaya.  The Host\nof Souls was not then holding the western world; there was but a\nglint and flicker of their wings over Ireland as they passed\nelsewhere; there was no thorough entering in to take possession.\nBut the island (perhaps) is the Western Lay-center, and a\ncritical spot; the veils of matter there are not very thick;\nand that mere glint and flicker was enough to call forth all this\nwonderful manifestation of beauty.  If I emphasize over-much, it\nis because all this talk about 'inferior races,'--and because\nIreland has come in for so much opprobrium, one way and another,\non that score.  But people do not know, and they will not think,\nthat those races are superior in which the Crest-Wave is rearing\nitself; and that their superiority cannot last:  the Crest-Wave\npasses from one to another, and in the nature of things can never\nremain in any one for longer than its due season.  It is as\ncertain that it will pass sometime from the regions it fills with\nstrength and glory now, as that it will sometime thrill into life\nand splendor the lands that are now forlorn and helpless; and\nfor my part, seeing what the feeble dying away of it, or the far\nfoam flung,--no more than that,--raised up in Ireland once, I am\nanxious to see the central glory of it rise there; I am keen to\nknow what will happen then.  It will rise there, some time; and\nperhaps that time may not be far off.--Oh if men could only look\nat these national questions with calm scientific vision,\nunderstanding the laws that govern national and racial life!\nThere would be none of these idiotic jealousies then; no\nheart-burnings or contempt or hatred as between the nations;\nthere would be none of this cock-a-doodling arrogance that\nsometimes makes nations in their heyday a laughing-stock\nfor the Gods.  Instead we should see one single race, Humanity;\npoured now into one national mold, now into another; but\nalways with the same duality:  half divine, half devilish-idiotic;\n--and while making the utmost best of each mold as they came\nto inhabit it, the strong would find it their supreme business\nto help the weak, and not exploit or contemn them.  But it will\nneed the sound sense of Theosophy,--knowledge of Reincarnation,\nthe conviction of Human Brotherhood,--to work this change\nin mankind.\n\nWell; now to the things that brought Ireland down.  In 795 the\nNorwegians began their ravages, and they seem to have had a\npeculiar spite against the monastery-colleges.  That at Armagh\nwas sacked nine times in the ninth, and six times in the tenth\ncentury.  In the same period Glendalough was plundered seven\ntimes; Clonard four times; Clonmacnois five times betnveen 838\nand 845, and often afterwards.  These are only samples:  there\nwere scores of the institutions, and they were all sacked, burnt,\nplundered, and ravaged, again and again.  The scholars fled\nabroad, taking their precious manuscripts with them; for which\nreason many of the most valuable of these have been found in\nmonasteries on the continent.  The age of brilliance was over.\nFor a couple of centuries, the Norwegians, and then the Danes,\nwere ruining Ireland; until Brian Boru did their quietus make at\nClontarf in 1014.  Before the country had had time to recover,\nthe Norman conquest began:  a thing that went on for centuries,\nand never really finished; and that was much more ruinous even\nthan the invasions of the Norsemen.  As to the Celtic Church,\nwhich had fostered all that brilliance, its story is soon told.\nIn Wales, the Norman and Plantagenet kings of England were at\npains to bring the see of St. Davids under the sway of Canterbury\nand into close communion with Rome:  they and the Roman Church\nfought hand in hand to destroy Celtic liberties.  The Church of\nthe Circled Cross had never been an independent organization in\nthe sense that the Greek Church was:  it had never had its own\nPatriarchs or Popes; it was always in theory under Rome.  But\nsecular events had kept the two apart; and while they did so,\nthe Celtic Church was virtually independent.  In the eleventh and\ntwelfth Centuries the Welsh Church fought hard for its existence;\nbut Norman arms backed by Papal sanction proved too strong for\nit; and despite the valor of the princes, and especially of that\ngallant bishop-historian Gerald the Welshman, it succumbed.\nAs to Ireland:  an English Pope, Adrian IV, born Nicholas\nBrakespeare, presented the island to King Henry II; and King\nHenry II with true courtesy returned the compliment by presenting\nit to the Pope.  The Synod of Cashel, called by Henry in 1172,\nput Ireland under Rome; and the Church of the Circled Cross\nceased to be.  There, in short and simple terms, you have the\nhistory of it.\n\nAnd therein, too, as I guess, you may see all sorts of interesting\nphases of karmic working.  For the Church of the Circled Cross,\nthat had done so well by Ireland in some things, had done\nmarvelously badly in others.  There was a relic of political\nstability in ancient Ireland,--in the office of the High-kings\nof Tara.  It is supposed now that it had grown up, you may\nsay out of nothing:  had been established by some strong\nwarrior, to maintain itself as it might under such of his\nsuccessors as might be strong too.  I have no doubt, on the other\nhand, that it was really an ancient institution, once firmly\ngrounded, that had weakened since the general decay of the Celtic\nPower.  The Gods in their day had had their capital at Tara; and\nuntil the middle of the fifth century A.D. Tara stood there as\nthe symbol of national unity.  When Patrick came the position was\nthis:  all Ireland was divided into innumerable small kingdoms\nwith their kinglets, with the Ard-righ of Tara as supreme over\nthem all as he could make himself.  The hopefullest thing that\ncould have happened would have been the abolition of the kingdoms\nand kinglets, and the establishment of the Ard-righ's authority\nas absolute and final.\n\nDermot son of Fergus Kervall became High-king in 544.  A chief\nnamed Aed Guairy murdered one of Dermot's officers, and sought\nsanctuary with St. Ruadan of Lorrha, one of Findian's twelve\napostles, to whom he was related. The king hailed him forth, and\nbrought him to Tara for trial.  Thereupon the whole Church of\nIreland rose to a man against the mere layman, the king, who had\ndared thus defy the spiritual powers.  They came to Tara in a\nbody, fasted against him, and laid their heavy curse on him, on\nTara, and, in the result, on the kingship.--\"Alas!\" said Dermot,\n\"for the iniquitous contest that ye have waged against me,\nseeing that it is Ireland's good I pursue, and to preserve her\ndiscipline and royal right; but it is Ireland's unpeace and\nmurderousness ye endeavor after.\" *\n\n------\n* I quote this from Mr. Rollerstone's book.\n------\n\nWhich was true.  The same trouble came up in England six\ncenturies later, and might have ended in the same way.  But the\ndawn of a manvantara was approaching then, and the centrifugal\nforces in England were slowly giving place to the centripetal:\nnational unity was ahead, and the first two strong Williams and\nHenrys were able in the main to assert their kingly supremacy.\nBut in the Irish time not manvantara, but pralaya, was coming;\nand this not for Ireland only, but for all Europe.  In the\nnatural order of things, the centrifugal forces were increasing\nalways.  That is why Dermot MacKervall failed, where Henry II in\npart suceeded.  There was nothing in the cycles to support him\nagainst the saints. Tara, accursed, was abandoned, and fell into\nruin; and the symbol and center of Irish unity was gone.  The\nHigh-kingship, thus bereft of its traditional seat, grew weaker\nand weaker; and Ireland, except by Brian Boru, a usurper, was\nnever after effectively governed.  So when the Norsemen came\nthere was no strong secular power to defend the monasteries from\nthem, and the karma of St. Ruadan's churchly arrogance and\nambition fell on them.  And when Strongbow and the Normans came,\nthere was no strong central monarchy to oppose them:  the king of\nLeinster invited them in, and the king of Ireland lacked the\nbacking of a united nation to drive them out; and Ireland fell.\n\nWell; we have seen how often things tend to repeat themselves,--\nbut on a higher level,--after the lapse of fifteen centuries.\nPatrick, probably, was born in or about 387.  In 1887 or\nthereabouts Theosophy was brought into Ireland.  Patrick's coming\nled eventually to the period of the Irish illumination; the\ncoming of Theosophy led in a very few years to the greatest Irish\nillumination, in poetry and drama especially, that had been since\nIreland fell.  But Patrick did not complete things; nor did that\nfirst touch of Theosophy in the 'eighties and 'nineties of last\ncentury.  Theosophy, known in those days only to a score or so of\nIrishmen, kindled wonderful fires:  you know that English\nliterature is more alive in Ireland now than anywhere else in the\nEnglish-speaking world; and that that whole Celtic Renaissance\nwas born in the rooms of the Dublin Theosophical Society.  Yet\nthere were to be eventualities:  the Dublin Lodge was only a\npromise; the Celtic Renaissance is only a promise.  Theosophy\nonly bides its time until the storm of the world has subsided.\nIt will take hold upon marvelous Ireland yet; it will take hold\nupon Sacred Ierne.  What may we not expect then?  When she had\nbut a feeble candle of Truth, in those ancient times, she stood\nup a light-giver to the nations; how will it be when she has the\nbright sun shining in her heart?\n\n-------------\n\nSo now we have followed the history of the world, so far as we\nmight, for about a thousand years.  We have seen the Mysteries\ndecline in Europe, and nothing adequate rise to take their place;\nand, because of that sorrowful happening, the fall of European\ncivilization into an ever-increasing oblivion of the Spiritual\nthings.  We have seen how in the East, in India and China,\nspiritual movements did arise, and succeed in some sort in taking\nthe place of the Mysteries; and how in consequence civilization\nthere did in the main, for long ages, go forward undeclining and\nstable.  And we have watched the Crest-Wave, indifferent to all\nnational prides and conceits, flow from one race to another,\naccording to a defined geographical and temporal plan:  one\nnation after another enjoying its hour of greatness, and none\nchosen of the Law or the Spirit to be lifted forever above its\nfellows;--but a regular circulation of splendor about the globe,\nlike the blood through the veins:  Greece, India, China; Rome,\nSpain, Rome, Egypt, Persia, India, China:  each repeating itself\nas the cycles of its own lifetime might permit.  And then, as the\nmain current passed eastward from dying Europe, a reserve of it,\na little European _Sishta,_ passing west:  from Gaul to Britain,\nfrom Britain to Ireland; from Ireland to Tirnanogue and\nWonderland,* there to hide for some centuries until the Great\nWave should roll westward again from China through Persia, Egypt,\nAfrica, Sicily and Spain, up into Europe:  when the Little Wave,\nreturning magic-laden out of the Western Paradise should roll\nback Europewards again through Ireland, twelfth-century Wales and\nBrittany; and spray Christendom with foam from the sea! that\nwash the shores of Fairyland:  producing first what there was of\nmystery and delicacy to uplift mankind in feudal chivalry; then\nthe wonder-note in poetry which has probably been one of the\nstrongest and subtlest antidotes against deathly materialism.\nHence one may understand the _raison d'etre_ for that strange\ncorrespondence between Chinese and Celtic happenings which we\nhave noted:  the main wave rolls east; the backwash west; and\nthey touch simultaneously the extremities of things, which\nextremities are, Celtdom and China.  In both you get the sense of\nbeing at the limits of the world,--of having beyond you only\nnonmaterial and magical realms:--Peng-lai in the East, Hy Brasil\nin the West;--the Fortunate Islands of the Sunset, and the\nFortunate Islands of the Dawn.\n\nWe have seen opportunities coming to each nation in turn; but\nthat how they used them depended on themselves:  on whether they\nwould turn them to spiritual or partly spiritual, or to wholly\nmaterial uses:  whether they would side, in their hour of\nprosperity, with the Gods--as China did to some extent; or with\nthe hellions, as in the main Europe did.  And above all, we have\nseen how the Gods will never accept defeat, but return ever and\nagain to the attack, and are in perpetual heroic rebellion\nagainst the despotism of materialism and evil and human blindness;\nand we know that the victory they so often failed to achieve\nof old, they are out to win now, and in the way of winning it:\nthat we are in the crisis and most exciting of times, standing\nto make the future ages golden; that the measure of the victory\nthe Gods shall win is somewhat in our own hands to decide.  The\nwar-harps that played victory to Heaven at Moytura of old are\nsounding in our ears now, if we will listen for them; and\nwhen Point Loma was founded, it was as if once more the shaft\nof Lugh the Sunbright took the eye of Balor Balcbeimnech in\nthe midst.\n\nAnd so, at this point, we take leave of our voyaging together\nthrough the past.\n\n------\n\n* Perhaps, if we knew anything about American history, to\nAmerica.  One is tempted to put two and two together, in the\nlight of what we have seen, and note what they come to.  The\ngreat American Empires fell before Cortes and Pizarro, between\n1520 and 1533.  That surely marked the end of a manvantaa or\nfifteen hundred years period of cultural activity; which then\nwould have begun between 20 and 33 A.D.--upon a backwash of the\ncycle from Augustan Rome?  We are not to imagine that any outward\nlink would be necessary.  Is it possibly a fact that in those\ncenturies, the first five of our era roughly, when both Europe\nand China were somewhat sterile for the most part,--the high tide\nof culture and creation was mainly in the antipodes of each\nother, America and India?   And that after the fall of the Tang\nglory in China (750) and the Irish illumination in the west\n(775), some new phase of civilization began, somewhere between\nthe Rio Grande del Norte and the borders of Chile?  The Incaic\nEmpire, like the Han and the Western Roman, we know lasted about\nfour centuries, or from the region of 1100-A.D.--But there we\nmust leave it, awaiting the work of discovery.","title":"The Crest-Wave of Evolution: A Course of Lectures in History, Given to the Graduates' Class in the Raja-Yoga College, Point Loma, in the College-Year 1918-19","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":231377}