During the time of Chinese weakness Central Asia had relapsed
from the control the great Han Wuti had imposed on it, and that
Han Suenti had maintained by his name for justice; and the Huns
had recovered their power. One wonders what these people were;
of whom we first catch sight in the reign of the Yellow Emperor,
nearly 3000 B.C.; and who do not disappear from history until
after the death of Attila. During all those three millenniums
odd they were predatory nomads, never civilized: a curse to
their betters, and nothing more. And their betters were, you may
say, every race they contacted.
It seems as if, as in the human blood, so among the races of
mankind, there were builders and destroyers. I speculate as to
the beginnings of the latter: they cannot be . . . races apart,
of some special creation;--made by demons, where it was the Gods
made men. . . . "To the Huns," says Gibbon, "a fabulous origin
was assigned worthy of their form and manners,--that the witches
of Scythia, who for their foul and deadly practices had been
driven from society, had united in the desert with infernal
spirits, and that the Huns were the offspring of this execrable
conjunction." But it seems to me that it is in times of
intensive civilization, and in the slums of great cities, that
Nature--or anti-Nature--originates noxious human species. I
wonder if their forefathers were, once on a time, the hooligans
and yeggmen of some very ancient Babylon Bowery or the East End
of some pre-Nimrodic Nineveh? Babylon was a great city,--or
there were great cities in the neighborhood of Babylon, before
the Yellow Emperor was born. One of these may have had, God
knows when, its glorious freedom-establishing revolution, its
up-fountaining of sansculottes,--patriots whose predatory
proclivities had erstwhile been checked of their free brilliance
by busy-body tyrannical police;--and then this revolution may
have been put down, and the men of the underworld who made turned
out now from their city haunts, driven into the wilderness and
the mountains,--may have taken,--would certainly have taken, one
would say,--not to any industry, (they knew none but such as are
wrought by night unlawfully in other men's houses); not to
agriculture, which has ever had, for your free spirit, something
of degradation in it;--but to pure patriotism, freedom and
liberty, as their nature was: first to cracking such desultory
cribs as offered,--knocking down defenseless wayfarers and the
like: then to bolder raidings and excursions;--until presently,
lo, they are a great people; they have ridden over all Asia like
a scirocco; they have thundered rudely at the doors of proud
princes,--troubling even the peace of the Yellow Emperor on
his throne.
Well,--but isn't the stature stunted, physical, as well as mental
and moral, when life is forced to reproduce itself, generation
after generation, among the unnatural conditions of slums and
industrialism? . . . Can you nourish men upon poisons century by
century, and expect them to retain the semblance of men?
They had bothered Han Kwang-wuti; who could do little more than
hold his own against them, and leave them to his successor to
deal with as Karma might decree. Karma, having as you might
say one watchful eye on Rome and Europe, and what need of
chastisement should arise after awhile at that western end of the
world, provided Han Mingti with this Pan Chow; who, being a
soldier of promise, was sent upon the Hun war-path forthwith.
Then the miracles began to happen. Pan Chow strolled through
Central Asia as if upon his morning's constitutional: no fuss;
no hurry; little fighting,--but what there was, remarkably
effective, one gathers. Presently he found himself on the
Caspian shore; and if he had left any Huns behind him, they were
hardly enough to do more than pick an occasional pocket. He
started out when the Roman provinces were rising to make an end
of Nero; in the last year of Domitian, from his Caspian
headquarters he determined to discover Rome; and to that end
sent an emissary down through Parthia to take ship at the port of
Babylon for the unknown West. The Parthians (who were all
against the two great empires becoming acquainted, because they
are making a good thing of it as middle-men in the Roman-Chinese
caravan trade), knew better, probably, than to oppose Pan Chow's
designs openly; but their agents haunted the quays at Babylon,
tampered with west-going skippers, and persuaded the Chinese
envoy to go no farther. But I wonder whether some impulse
achieved flowing across the world from east to west at that
time, even though its physical link or channel was thus left
incomplete? It was in that very year that Nerva re-established
constitutionalism and good government in Rome.
Pan Chow worked as if by magic: seemed to make no effort, yet
accomplished all things. For nearly forty years he kept that
vast territory in order, despite the huge frontier northward, and
the breeding-place of nomad nations beyond. All north of Tibet
is a region of marvels. Where you were careful to leave only the
village blacksmith under his spreading chestnut-tree, or the
innkeeper and his wife, for the sake of future travelers, let a
century or two pass, and their descendants would be as the
sea-sands for multitude; they would have founded a power, and be
thundering down on an empire-smashing raid in Persia or China or
India: Whether Huns, Sienpi, Jiujen, Turks, Tatars, Tunguses,
Mongols, Manchus: God knows what all, but all destroyers. But
as far as the old original Huns were concerned, Pan Chow settled
their hash for them. Bag and baggage he dealt with them; and
practically speaking, the land of their fathers knew them no
more. Dry the starting tear! here your pity is misplaced. Think
of no vine-covered cottages ruined; no homesteads burned; no
fields laid waste. They lived mainly in the saddle; they were
as much at home fleeing before the Chinese army as at another
time. A shunt here; a good kick off there: so he dealt with
them. It is in European veins their blood flows now;--and prides
itself on its pure undiluted Aryanism and Nordicism, no doubt. I
suppose scarcely a people in continental Europe is without some
mixture of it; for they enlisted at last in all foraying armies,
and served under any banner and chief.
Pan Chow felt that they belonged to the (presumably) barbarous
regions west of the Caspian. Ta Ts'in in future might deal with
them; by God's grace, Han never should. He gently pushed them
over the brink; removed them; cut the cancer out of Asia. Next
time they appeared in history, it was not on the Hoangho, but on
the Danube. Meanwhile, they established themselves in Russia;
moved across Central Europe, impelling Quadi and Marcomans
against Marcus Aurelius, and then Teutons of all sorts against
the whole frontier of Rome. In the sixties, for Han Mingti, Pan
Chow set that great wave in motion in the far east of the world.
Three times thirteen decades passed, and it broke and wasted in
foam in the far west: in what we may call the Very First Battle
of the Marne, when Aetius defeated Attila in 451. I can but
think of one thing better he might have done: shipped them
eastward to the remote Pacific Islands; but it is too late to
suggest that now. But I wonder what would have happened if Pan
Chow had succeeded in reaching his arm across, and grasping hands
with Trajan? He had not died; the might of China had not begun
to recede from its westward limits, before the might of Rome
under that great Spaniard had begun to flow towards its limits
in the east.
Through the bulk of the second century China remained static, or
weakening. Her forward urge seems to have ended with the death
of Pan Chow, or at the end of the half-cycle Han Kwang-wuti began
in 35. We might tabulate the two concurrent Han cycles, for the
sake of clearness, and note their points of intersection, thus:
--Western Han Cycle, 130 years
--Eastern Han Half-Cycle, 65 yrs
--35 A.D. Opened by Han Kwang-wuti.
--A static and consolidating time until 67 A.D., thirteen decades
from the death of Han Chaoti. Introduction of Buddhism in 65.
--The period of Pan Chao's victories; the Golden Age of the
Eastern Hans, lasting until (about):
--100 A. D. the end of the Eastern Han 'Day'; death of Pan Chow.
--Continuance of Day under this, and supervention of Night under
this Cycle, produce:
--A static, but weakening period until:
--165, the year in which a new Eastern Han Day should begin. A
weak recrudescence should be seen.
--197: the year in which the main or original Han Cycle should
end. We should expect the beginnings of a downfall. By or before:
--230, the end of the second, feeble, Eastern Han Day, the
downfall would have been completed.
Now to see how this works out.
The first date we have to notice is 165. Well; in the very
scant notices of Chinese history I have been able to come on, two
events mark this date; or rather, one marks 165, and the other
166. To take the latter first: we saw that at a momentous point
in Roman history,--in the year of Nerva's accession, 96,--China
tried to discover Rome. In 166 Rome actually succeeded in
discovering China. This year too, as we shall see, was momentous
in Roman history. You may call it a half cycle after the other;
for probably the ambassadors of King An-Tun of Ta Ts'in who
arrived at the court of Han Hwanti at Loyang in 166, had been a
few years on their journey. You know King An-tun better by his
Latin name of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
The event for 165 is the foundation of the Taoist Church, under
the half-legendary figure of its first Pope, Chang Taoling;
whose lineal descendants and successors have reigned Popes of
Taoism from their Vatican on the Dragon-Tiger Mountain in Kiangsi
ever since. They have not adverertised their virtues in their
names, however: we find no Innocents and Piuses here: they are
all plain Changs; his reigning Holiness being Chang the
Sixth-somethingth. It was from Buddhism that the Taoists took
the idea of making a church of themselves. Taoism and Buddhism
from the outset were fiercely at odds; and yet the main
splendor of China was to come from their inner coalescence.
Chu Hsi, the greatest of the Sung philosophers of the brilliant
twelfth century A.D., says that "Buddhism stole the best
features of Taoism; Taoism stole the worst features of Buddhism:
as if the one took a jewel from the other, and the other
recouped the loss with a stone." * This is exact: the jewel
stolen by Buddhism was Laotse's Blue Pearl,--Wonder and Natural
Magic; the stone that Taoism took instead was the priestly
hierarchy and church organization, imitated from the Buddhists,
that grew up under the successors of Chang Taoling.
------
* _Chinese Literature:_ H.A. Giles
------
If Laotse founded any school or order at all, it remained quite
secret. I imagine his mission was like Plato's, not Buddha's:
to start ideas, not a brotherhood. By Ts'in Shi Hwangti's time,
any notions that were wild, extravagant, and gorgeous were
Taoism; which would hardly have been, perhaps, had there been a
Taoist organization behind them;--although it is not safe to
dogmatize. It was, at any rate, mostly an inspiration to the
heights for the best minds, and for the masses (including Ts'in
Shi Hwangti) a rumor of tremendous things. After Han Wuti's next
successor, the best minds took to thinking Confucianly: which
was decidedly a good thing for China during the troublous times
before and after the fall of the Western Hans. Then when
Buddhism came in, Taoism came to the fore again, spurred up to
emulation by this new rival. I take it that Chang Taoling's
activities round about this year 165 represent an impulse of the
national soul to awakenment under the influence of the recurrence
of the Eastern Han Day half-cycle. What kind of reality Chang
Taoling represents, one cannot say: whether a true teacher in
his degree, sent by the Lodge, around whom legends have gathered;
or a mere dabbler in alchemy and magic. Here is the story told
of him; you will note an incident or two in it that suggest the
former possibility.
He retired to the mountains of the west to study magic, cultivate
purity of life, and engage in meditation; stedfastly declining
the offers of emperors who desired him to take office. Laotse
appeared to him in a vision, and gave him a treatise in which
were directions for making the 'Elixir of the Dragon and the
Tiger.' While he was brewing this, a spirit came to him and
said: "On the Pesung Mountain is a house of stone; buried
beneath it are the Books of the Three Emperors (Yao, Shun, and
Yu). Get these, practise the discipline they enjoin, and you
will attain the power of ascending to heaven." He found the
Pesung Mountain; and the stone house; and dug, and discovered
the books; which taught him how to fly, to leave his body at
will, and to hear all sounds the most distant. During a thousand
days he disciplined himself; a goddess came to him, and taught
him to walk among the stars; then he learned to cleave the seas
and the mountains, and command the thunder and the winds. He
fought the king of the demons, whose hosts fled before him
"leaving no trace of their departing footsteps." So great
slaughter he wrought in that battle that, we are told, "various
divinities came with eager haste to acknowledge their faults."
In nine years he gained the power of ascending to heaven. His
last days were spent on the Dragon-Tiger Mountain; where, at the
age of a hundred and twenty-three, he drank the elixir, and
soared skyward in broad daylight;--followed (I think it was he)
by all the poultry in his barnyard, immortalized by the drops
that fell from the cup as he drank. He left his books of magic,
and his magical sword and seal, to his descendants; but I think
the Dragon-Tiger Mountain did not come into their possession
until some centuries later.
I judge that the tales of the Taoist _Sennin_ or Adepts, if told
by some Chinese-enamored Lafcadio, would be about the best
collection of fairy-stories in the world; they reveal a
universe so deliciously nooked and crannied with bewildering
possibilities:--as indeed this our universe is;--only not all its
byways are profitable traveling. It is all very well to cry out
against superstition; but we are only half-men in the West: we
have lost the faculty of wonder and the companionship of
extrahuman things. We walk our narrow path to nowhere safely
trussed up in our personal selves: or we not so much walk at
all, as lie still, chrysalissed in them:--it may be just as well,
since for lack of the quality of balance, we are about as capable
of walking at ease and dignity as is a jellyfish of doing Blondin
on the tight-rope. China, in her pralaya and dearth of souls,
may have fallen into the perils of her larger freedom, and some
superstition rightly to be called degrading: in our Middle Ages,
when we were in pralaya, we were superstitious enough; and being
unbalanced, fell into other evils too such as China never knew:
black tyrannies of dogmatism, burnings of heretics wholesale.
But when the Crest-Wave Egos were in China, that larger freedom
of hers enabled her, among other things, to achieve the highest
heights in art: the Yellow Crane was at her disposal, and she
failed not to mount the heavens; she had the glimpses Wordsworth
pined for; she was not left forlorn. This merely for another
blow at that worst superstition of all: Unbrotherliness, and our
doctrine of Superior Racehood.--Many of the tales are mere
thaumatolatry: as of the man who took out his bones and washed
them once every thousand years; or of the man who would fill his
mouth with rice-grains, let them forth as a swarm of bees to
gather honey in the valley,--then readmit them into his mouth as
to a hive, where they became rice again,--presumably "sweetened
to taste." But in others there seems to be a core of symbolism
and recognition of the fundamental things. There was a man
once,--the tale is in Giles's Dictionary of Chinese Biography,
but I forget his name--who sought out the Sennin Ho Kwang (his
name might have been Ho Kwang); and found him at last in a
gourd-flask, whither he was used to retire for the night. In
this retreat Ho Kwang invited our man to join him; and he was
enabled to do so; and found it, once he had got in, a fair and
spacious palace enough. Three days he remained there learning;
while fifteen years were passing in China without. Then Ho Kwang
gave him a rod, and a spell to say over it; and bade him go his
ways. He would lay the rod on the ground, stand astride of it,
and speak the spell; and straight it became a dragon for him to
mount and ride the heavens where he would. Thenceforth for many
years he was a kind of Guardian Spirit over China: appearing
suddenly wherever there was distress or need of help: at dawn in
mountain Chungnan by Changan town in the north; at noon, maybe,
by the southern sea; at dusk he might be seen a-dragon-back
above the sea-mists rolling in over Yangtse;--and all in the same
day. But at last, they say, he forgot the spell, and found
himself riding the clouds on a mere willow wand;--and the wand
behaving as though Newton had already watched that aggravating
apple;--and himself, in due course dashed to pieces on the earth
below.--There is some fine symbolism here; the makings of
a good story.
And now we come to 197, "the year in which (to quote our
tabulation above) the main or original Han Cycle should end," and
in which "we should expect the beginnings of a downfall." The
Empire, as empires go, is very old now: four hundred and forty
odd years since Ts'in Shi Hwangti founded it; as old as Rome was
(from Julius Caesar's time) when the East and West split under
Arcadius and Honorius; nearly three centuries older than the
British Empire is now;--the cyclic force is running out,
centripetalism very nearly wasted. In these one-nineties we find
two non-entitous brothers quarreling for the throne: who has
eyes to see, now, can see that the days of Han are numbered. All
comes to an end in 220, ten years before the third half-cycle
(and therefore second 'day') of the Eastern Han series; there is
not force enough left to carry things through till 230. Han
Hienti, the survivor of the two brothers aforesaid, retired into
private life; the dynasty was at an end, and the empire split in
three. In Ssechuan a Han prince set up a small unstable throne;
another went to Armenia, and became a great man there; but in
Loyang the capital, Ts'ao Ts'ao, the man who engineered the fall
of the Hans, set his son as Wei Wenti on the throne.
He was a very typical figure, this Ts'ao Ts'ao: a man ominous of
disintegration. You cannot go far in Chinese poetry without
meeting references to him. He rose during the reign of the last
Han,--the Chien-An period, as it is called, from 196 to 221,--by
superiority of energies and cunning, from a wild irregular youth
spent as hanger-on of no particular position at the court,--the
son of a man that had been adopted by a chief eunuch,--to be
prime minister, commander of vast armies (he had at one time,
says Dr. H. A. Giles, as many as a million men under arms),
father of the empress; holder of supreme power; then overturner
of the Han, and founder of the Wei dynasty. Civilization had
become effete; and such a strong wildling could play ducks and
drakes with affairs. But he could not hold the empire together.
Centrifugalism was stronger than Ts'ao Ts'ao.
The cycles and all else here become confused. The period from
220 to 265--about a half-cycle, you will note, from 196 and the
beginning of the Chien-An time, or the end of the main Han
Cycle,--is known as that of the San Koue or Three Kingdoms: its
annals read like Froissart, they say; gay with raidings,
excursions, and alarms. It was the riot of life disorganized in
the corpse, when organized life had gone. A great historical
novel dealing with this time,--one not unworthy, it is said, of
Scott,--remains to be translated. Then, by way of reaction, came
another half-cycle (roughly) of reunion: an unwarlike period of
timid politics and a super-refined effeminate court; it was,
says Professor Harper Parker, "a great age of calligraphy, belles
lettres, fans, chess, wine-bibbing and poetry-making." Then,
early in the fourth century, China split up again: crafty
ladylike Chinese houses ruling in the South; and in the north a
wild medley of dynasties, Turkish, Tungus, Tatar, and Tibetan,--
even some relics of the Huns: sometimes one at a time, sometimes
half a dozen all together. Each barbarian race took on hastily
something of Chinese culture, and in turn imparted to it certain
wild vigorous qualities which one sees very well in the northern
art of the period: strong, fierce, dramatic landscapes: Nature
painted in her sudden and terrific moods. China was still in
manvantara, though under obscuration; she still drew her moiety
of Crest-Wave souls: there were great men, but through a lack of
co-ordination, they failed to make a great empire or nation. So
here we may take leave of her for a couple of centuries.
Just why the vigor of the Crest-Wave was called off in the
two-twenties, causing her to split then, we shall see presently.
Back now to Rome, at the time of the death of Pan Chow the
Hun-expeller and the end of the one glorious half-cycle of the
Eastern Hans.
As China went down, Rome came up. Pan Chow died early in the
reign of Trajan, the first great Roman conqueror since Julius
Caesar; and only the Caspian Sea, and perhaps a few years,
divided Trajan's eastern outposts from the western outposts of
the Hans. We need not stay with this Spaniard longer than to
note that here was a case where grand military abilities were of
practical value: Trajan used his to subserve the greatness of
his statesmanship; only a general of the first water could have
brought the army under the new constitutional regime. The
soldiers had been setting up Caesars ever since the night they
pitched on old Claudius in his litter; now came a Caesar who
could set the soldiers down.--His nineteen years of sovereignty
were followed by the twenty-one of Hadrian: a very great emperor
indeed; a master statesman, and queer mass of contradictions
whose private life is much better uninquired into. He was a
mighty builder and splendid adorner of cities; all that remained
unsystematized in the Augustan system, he reduced to perfect
system and order. His laws were excellent and humane; he
introduced a special training for the Civil Service, which
wrought enormous economies in public affairs: officials were no
longer to obtain their posts by imperial appointment, which might
be wise or not, but because of their own tested efficiency for
the work.--Then came the golden twenty-three years of Antoninus
Pius, from 138 to 161: a time of peace and strength, with a wise
and saintly emperor on the throne. The flower Rome now was in
perfect bloom: an urbane, polished, and ordered civilization
covered the whole expanse of the empire. Hadrian had legislated
for the down-trodden: no longer had you power of life and death
over your slaves; they were protected by the law like other men;
you could not even treat them harshly. True, there was slavery,
--a canker; and there were the gladiatorial games; we may feel
piously superior if we like. But there was much humanism also.
There was no proletariat perpetually on the verge of starvation,
as in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. If we can look
back now and say, There this, that, or the other sign of oncoming
decay; the thing could not last;--it will also be remarkably
easy for us, two thousand years hence, to be just as wise about
these present years 'of grace.' It is perhaps safe to say,
--as I think Gibbon says--that there was greater happiness
among a greater number then than there has been at any time in
Christendom since. Gibbon calculates that there were twice as
many slaves as free citizens: we do know that their number was
immense,--that it was not unusual for one man to own several
thousand. But they were well treated: often highly educated;
might become free with no insuperable difficulty:--their position
was perhaps comparable with that of slaves in Turkey now, who
are insulted if you call them servants. Gibbon estimates the
population at a hundred and twenty millions; many authorities
think that figure too high; but Gibbon may well be right, or
even under the mark,--and it may account for the rapid decline
that followed the age of the Antonines. For I suspect that a too
great population is a great danger, that hosts at such times pour
into incarnation, besides those that have good right to call
themselves human souls;--that the maxim "fewer children and
better ones" is based upon deep and occult laws. China in her
great days would never appear to have had more than from fifty to
seventy millions: the present enormous figures have grown up
only since the Manchu conquest.
There was no great stir of creative intellect and imagination in
second century Rome: little noteworthy production in literature
after Trajan's death. The greatest energies went into building;
especially under Hadrian. The time was mainly static,--though
golden. There were huge and opulent cities, and they were
beautiful; there was enormous wealth; an even and widespread
culture affecting to sweetness and light the lives of millions--
by race Britons, Gauls, Moors, Asiatics or what not, but all
proud to be Romans; all sharing in the blessings of the Roman
Citizenship and Peace. Not without self-government, either, in
local affairs: thus we find Welsh clans in Britain still with
kings, and stranger still, with senates, of their own.
It was the quiet and perfect moment at the apex of a cycle: the
moment that precedes descent. The old impulse of conquest
flickered up, almost for the last time, under Trajan, some of
whose gains wise Hadrian wisely abandoned. Under whom it was,
and under the first Antonine, that the empire stood in its
perfect and final form: neither growing nor decreasing; neither
on the offensive nor actively on the defensive. Now remember
the cycles: sixty-five years of manvantara under Augustus and
Tiberius,--B.C. 29 to A. D. 36. Then sixty-five mostly of
pralaya from 36 to 101; and now sixty-five more of mnavantara
under the Five Good Emperors (or three of them), from 101 to 166.
But why stop at 166, you ask. Had not Marcus Aurelius, the best
of them all, until 180 to reign?--He had; and yet the change
came in 166; after that year Rome stood on the defensive until
she fell. It was in that year, you will remember, that King
An-tun Aurelius's envoys reached Loyang by way of Bumiah
and the sea.
But note this: Domitian was killed, and Nerva came to the
throne, and Rome had leave to breathe freely again, in five years
before the half-cycle of shadows should have ended: the two
years of Nerva, and the first three of Trajan, we may call
borrowed by the dawning manvantara from the dusk of the pralaya
that was passing. Now if we took the strictness of the cycles
_au_ very _pied de lettre,_ we should be a little uneasy about
the last five years of that manvantara; we should expect them at
least to be filled with omens of coming evil; we should expect
to find in them a dark compensation for the five bright years at
the tail of the old pralaya.--Well, cycles have sometimes a
pretty way of fulfilling expectations. For see what happened:--
Marcus Aurelius came to the throne in 161: a known man, not
untried; one, certalnly, to keep the Golden Age in being,--if
kept in being it might be. Greatly capable in action, saintly in
life and ideals: what could Rome ask better? Or what had she to
fear?--The king is the representative man: it must have been a
wonderful Rome, we may note in passing, that was ruled by and
went with and loved well those two saintly philosophic Antonines
enthroned.--Nothing, then, could seem more hopeful. Under the
circumstances it was rather a mean trick on the part of Father
Tiber (to whom the Romans pray), that before a year was out he
must needs be breeding trouble for his votaries: overflowing,
the ingrate, and sweeping away large parts of his city; wasting
fields and slaughtering men (to quote Macaulay again); drowning
cattle wholesale, and causing shortage of supplies. And he does
but give the hint to the other gods, it seems; who are not slow
to follow suit. Earthquakes are the next thing; then fires;
then comes in Beelzebub with a plague of insects. There is no
end to it. The legions in Britain,--after all this long
peace and good order,--grow frisky: mind them of ancient and
profitable times when you might catch big fish in troubled
waters;--and try to induce their general to revolt. Then
Parthian Vologaeses sees his chance; declares war, annihilates a
Roman army, and overruns Syria. Verus, co-emperor by a certain
too generous unwisdom that remains a kind of admirable fly in the
ointment of the character of Aurelius, shows his mettle against
the Parthians,--taking his command as a chance for having a
luxurious fling beyond the reach and supervision of his severe
colleague;--and things would go ill indeed in the East but for
Avidius Cassius, Verus' second in command. This Cassius returns
victorious in 165, and brings in his wake disaster worse than any
Parthians:--after battle, murder, and sudden death come plague,
pestilence, and famine. In 166 the first of these latter three
broke out, devastated Rome, Italy, the empire in general; famine
followed;--it was thought the end of all things was at hand. It
was the first stroke of the cataclysm that sent Rome down. . . .
Then came Quadi and Marcomans, Hun-impelled, thundering on the
doors of Pannonia; and for the next eleven years Aurelius was
busy fighting them. Then Avidius Cassius revolted in Asia;--but
was soon assassinated. Then the Christians emerged from their
obscurity, preachers of what seemed anti-national doctrine; and
the wise and noble emperor found himself obliged to deal with
them harshly. He _was_ wise and noble,--there is no impugning
that; and he _did_ deal with them harshly: we may regret it;
as he must have regretted it then.
So the reign marks a definite turning-point: that at which the
empire began to go down. In it the three main causes of the ruin
of the ancient world appeared: the first of the pestilences that
depopulated it; the first incursion of the barbarians that broke
it down from without; the new religion that, with its loyalty
primarily to a church, an _imperium in imperior,_ undermined
Roman patriotism from within. Nero's persecution of the
Christians had been on a different footing: a madman's lust to
be cruel, the sensuality that finds satisfaction in watching
torture: there was neither statecraft nor religion in it; but
here the Roman state saw itself threatened. It was threatened;
but it is a pity Aurelius could find no other way.
In himself he was the culmination of all the good that had been
Roman: a Stoic, and the finest fruit of Stoicism,--which was the
finest fruit of philosophy unillumined (as I think) by the
spiritual light of mysticism. He practised all the virtues; but
(perhaps) we do not find in him that knowledge of the Inner Laws
and Worlds which alone can make practise of the virtues a saving
energy in the life of nations, and the imspiration of great ages
and awakener of the hidden god in the creative imagination of
man. The burden of his _Meditations_ is self-mastery: a
reasoning of himself out of the power of the small and great
annoyances of life;--this is to stand on the defensive; but
the spiritual World-Conqueror must march out, and flash his
conquering armies over all the continents of thought. An
underlying sadness is to be felt in Aurelius's writings. He
lived greatly and nobly for a world he could not save... that
could not be saved, so far as he knew. He died in 180; and
another Nero, without Nero's artistic instincts, came to the
throne in his son Commodus; pralaya, military rule, disruption,
had definitely set in.
Now anciently a manvantara had begun in Western Asia somewhere
about 1890 B.C.; had lasted fifteen centuries, as the wont of
them appears to be; and had given place to pralaya about 390;
and that, in turn, was due to end in or about 220 A.D. We
should, if we had confidence in these cycles, look for what
remained of the Crest-Wave in Europe to be wandering flickeringly
eastward about this time. Hitherto it had been in two of the
three world-centers of civilization: in China and in Europe;
now for a few centuries it was to be divided between three.--I am
irrigating the garden, and get a fine flow from the faucet, which
gives me a sense of inward peace and satisfaction. Suddenly the
fine flow diminishes to a miserable dribble, and all my happiness
is gone. I look eastward, to the next garden below on the slope;
and see my neighbors busy there: their faucet has been turned
on, and is flowing royally; and I know where the water is going.
The West-Asian faucet was due to be turned on in the two-twenties;
now watch the spray from the sprinklers in the Chinese and
Roman gardens. In those two-twenties we saw China split into
three; and it rather looked as if the manvantara had ended. I
shall not look at West Asia yet, but leave it for a future
lecture. But in Europe, with Marcus Aurelius died almost the
last Italian you could call a Crest-Wave Ego. The cyclic forces,
outworn and old, produced after that no order that you can go
upon: events followed each other higgledipiggledy and inertly;--
but it was the Illyrian legions that put him on the throne. Note
that Illyria: it is what we shall soon grow accustomed to
calling _Jugoslavia._ Severus's reign of eighteen years, from
193 to 211, was the only strong one, almost the only one not
disgraceful, until 268; by which time the Roman world was in
anarchy, split into dozens, with emperors springing up like
mushrooms everywhere. Then came a succession of strong soldiers
who reestablished unity: Claudius Gothicaus, an Illyrian
peasant; Aurelian, an Illyrian peasant; Tacitus, a Roman
senator, for one year only; Probus, an Illyrian peasant; Caus,
an Illyrian; then the greatest of all statesmen since Hadian,
who refounded the empire on a new plan,--the Illyrian who began
life as Docles the slave, rose to be Diocles the soldier, and
finally, in 284, tiaraed Diocletian reigning with all the pomp
and mystery and magnificence of an Eastern King of kings. He it
was who felt the cyclic flow, and moved his capital to Nicomedia,
which is about fifty miles south and east from Constaintinople.
One can speak of no Illyrian cycle; rather only of the Crest-Wave
dropping a number of strong men there as it trailed eastward
towards West Asia. The intellect of the empire, in that third
century, and the spiritual force, all incarnated in the Roman
West-Asian seats; in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria, as we shall
see in a moment. But you not how bueautifully orderly, in a
geographical sense, are the movements of the Wave in Roman world
and epoch: beginning in Italy in the first century B.C.; going
west to Spain about A.D. 1,--and to Gaul too, though there
kindling chiefly material and industrial greatness; passing
through Italy again in the late first and in the second century,
in the time of the Glavians and the five Good Emperors; then in
the third like a swan flying eastward, with one wing, the
material one, stretched over Illyria raising up mighty soldiers
and administrators there, and the other, the spiritual wing, over
Egypt, there fanning (as we shall see) the fires of esotericism
to flame.
For it was in that third century, while disaster on disaster was
engulfing the power and prestige of Rome, that the strongest
spiritual movement of all the Roman period came into being.
History would not take much note of the year in which a porter in
Alexandria was born; so the birth-date of the man we come to now
is unknown. It would have been, however, not later than 180;
since he had among his pupils one man at least born not later
than 185. According to Eusebius, he was born a Christian; and
H.P. Blavatsky, in _The Key to Theosophy,_ seems to accept, or at
least not to contradict, this view. I think she often did allow
popular views on non-essentials to pass, for lack of time and
immediate need to contradict them. But Eusebius (of who she has
much to say, and none of it complimentary to his truthfulness)
is, I believe, the sole authority for it; and scholars since
have found good reason for supposing that he was mixing this man
with another of the same name, who _was_ a Christian; whereas
(it is thought) this man was not. Be that as it may, we know
almost nothing about him; except that he began life as a porter,
with the job of carrying goods in sacks; whence he got the
surname Sakkophoros, latter shortened to Saccas;--from which you
will have divined by this time that his personal name was
Ammonius. We know also that early in the third century he had
gathered disciples about him, and was teaching them a doctrine he
called _Theosophy;_ very properly, since it was and is the
Wisdom of the gods or divine Wisdom. An eclectic system, as they
say; wherein the truths in all such philosophies and religions as
come handy were fitted together and set forth. But in truth all
this was but the nexus of his teaching: Theosophy, then as now,
is eclectic only in this sense: that some truth out of it
underlies all religions and systems; which they derive from it,
and it from them nothing.
All through the long West-Asian pralaya,--West-Asian includes
Egyptian,--the seeds of the Esoteric Wisdom remained in those
parts; they lacked vitalization, because the world-currents were
not playing there then; but they survived in Egypt from the
Egyptian Mysteries of old; and as in India you might have found
men who knew about them, but not how to use them for the
uplifting of the world,--so doubtless you should have found such
men in Egypt during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Hence the
statement of Diogenes Laertius, that the Theosophy of Ammonius
Saccas originated with one Pot Ammun, a priest of Ptolemaic
times: who, perhaps, was one of those who transmitted the
doctrine in secret. The seeds were there, then; and how that
the Crest Wave was coming back to West Asia, it was possible for
Ammonius to quicken them; and this he did. But it had not quite
come back; so he made nothing public. He wrote nothing; he had
his circle of disciples, and what he taught is to be know from
them. Among them was Origen, who was born, or became, a
Christian; but who introduced into, or emphasized in, his
Christianity much sound Theosophical teaching; very likely he
was deputed to capture Christianity, or some part of it, for
truth. Here I may offer a little explanation of something that
may have puzzled some of us: it will be remembered that Mr.
Judge says somewhere that Reincarnation was condemned by the
Council of Constantinople; and that in a series of learned
articles which appeared in THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH recently, the
late Rev. S.J. Neill contradicted this asserion. The truth seems
to be this: Origen taught, if not Reincarnation, at least
the pre-existence of souls; and, says the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica:_ "It is true that many scholars deny that Origen
[read, his teachings] was condemned by this council [of Constantinople,
A.D. 553]; but Moller rightly holds that the condemnation is proved."
Another pupil of Ammonius was Cassius Longinus, born in 213 at
Emessa (Homs) in Asia Minor. Later he taught Platonism for
thirty years at Athens; then in the two-sixties went east to the
court of Zenobia at Palmyra,--whose brilliant empire, though it
fell before the Illyrian Aurelian, was a sign in its time that
the Crest-Wave had come back to West Asia. Longinus became her
chief counselor; it was by his advice that she resisted
Aurelian;--who pardoned the Arab queen, and, after she had
paraded Rome in his triumph, became very good friends with her;
but condemned her counselor to death. But Longinus I think had
failed to follow in the paths laid down for him by his Teacher:
we find him in disagreement with that Teacher's successor.
Who was Plotinus, born of Roman parents at Lycopolis in Egypt.
It is from his writings we get the best account of Ammonius'
doctrine. He was with the latter until 243; then joined Gordian
III's expedition against Persia, with a view to studying Persian
and Indian philosophies at their source. But Gordian was
assassinated; and Plotinus, after a stay at Antioch, made his
way to Rome and opened a school there. This was in the so-called
Age of the Thirty Tyrants, when the central government was at its
weakest. Gallienus was emperor in Rome, and every province
had an emperorlet of its own;--it was before the Illyrian
peasant-soldiers had set affairs on their feet again. A
lazy erratic creature, this Gallienus; says Gibbon: "In
every art that he attempted his lively genius enable him
to succeed; and, as his genius was destitute of judgement,
he attempted every art, except the important ones of war
and government. He was master of several curious but useless
sciences, a ready orator, an elegant poet, a skilful gardener,
an excellent cook, and a most contemptible prince." Yet he
had a curious higher side to his nature, wherewith he might
have done much for humanity,--if he had ever bothered to
bring it to the fore. He, and his wife, were deeply interested
in the teachings of Plotinus. Such a man may sometimes be
'run,' and made the instrument of great accomplishment: a
morass through which here and there are solid footholds;
if you can find them, you may reach firm ground, but you
must walk infinitely carefully. It is the old tale of the
Prince with the dual nature, and the Initiate who tries to use
him for the saving of the world,--and fails.
Plotinus knew what he was about. Was it last week we were
talking of the endless need of the ages: a stronghold of the
Gods to be established in this world, whence they might conduct
their cyclic raidings? What had Pythagoras tried to do in his
day?--Found a Center of Learning in the West, in which the Laws
of Life, physical, mental, moral, and spiritual, should be
taught. He did found it,--at Croton; but Croton was destroyed,
and all the history of the next seven centuries suffered from the
destruction. Then--it was seven centuries after his death,--
Ammonius Saccas arose, and started things again; and left a
successor who was able to carry them forward almost to the point
where Pythagoras left them. For the fame of this Neo-Platonic
Theosophy had traveled by this time right over the empire; and
Plotinus in Rome, and in high favor with Gallienus, was a man on
whom all eyes were turned. He proposed to found a Point Loma in
Campania; to be called Platonopolis. Things were well in hand;
the emperor and empress were enthusiastic:--as your Gallieneuses
will be, for quarter of an hour at a time, over any high project.
But certain of his ministers were against it; and he wobbled;
and delayed; and thought of something else; and hung fire; and
presently was killed. And Claudius, the first of the Illyrian
emperors, who succeeded him, was much to busy defeating the Goths
to come to Rome even,--much less could he pay attention to
spiritual projects. Two years later Plotinus died, in 270;--and
the chance was not to come again for more than sixteen centuries.
But Neo-Platonism was not done with yet, by any means. Plotinus
left a successor in his disciple Porphyry, born at Tyre or at
Batanea in Syria in 233. You see they were all West Asians, at
least by birth: the first spiritual fruits of the Crest-Wave's
influx there. Porphyry's name was originally Malchus (the Arabic
_Malek,_ meaning _king_); but as a king was a wearer of the
purple, someone changed it for him to Porphyry or 'Purple.' In
262 he went to Rome to study under Plotinus, and was with him for
six years; then his health broke down, and he retired to Sicily
to recover. In 273 he returned,--Plotinus had died three years
before, and opened a Neo-Platonic School of his own. He taught
through the last quarter of that century, while the Illyrian
emperors were smashing back invaders on the frontiers or upstart
emperors in the provinces. Without imperial support, no
Platonopolis could have been founded; and there was no time for
any of those Illyrians to think of such things.--even if they had
had it in them to do so, as they had not:--witness Aurelian's
execution of Longinus. The time had gone by for that highest of
all victories: as it might have gone by in our own day, but for
events in Chicago, in February, 1898. When Porphyry died in 304,
he left a successor indeed; but now one that did not concern
himself with Rome.
It was Iamblichus, born in the Lebanon region; we do not know in
what year; or much about him at all, beyond that he was an
aristocrat, and well-to-do; and that he conducted his Theosophic
activities mainly from his native city of Chalcis. he died
between 330 and 333; thus through thirteen decades, from the
beginning of the third century, these four great Neo-Platonist
Adepts were teaching Theosophy in the Roman world;--Ammonius in
Egypt; Plotinus and Porphyry,--the arm of the Movement stretched
westward to save, if saved they might be, the Roman west Europe,
--in Rome itself; then, since that was not be done, Iamblichus in
Syria. We hear of no man to be named as successor to Iamblichus;
I imagine the great line of Teachers came to an end with him.
Yet, as we shall see, their impulse, or movement, or propaganda,
did not cease then: it did not fail to reach an arm down into
secular history, and to light up one fiery dynamic soul on the
Imperial Throne, who did all that a God-ensouled Man could do to
save the dying Roman world. Diocletian, that great but quite
unillumined pagan, was dead; the new order, that subverted Rome
at last, had been established by Constantine; and the House of
Constantine, with all that it implied, was in power. But a year
or two before the death of Iamblichus it chanced that a Great
Soul stole a march on the House of Constantine, and (as you may
say) surreptitiously incarnated in it, for the Cause of the Gods
and Sublime Perfection. And to him, in his lonely and desolate
youth, kept in confinement or captivity by the Christian on the
throne, came one Maximus of Smyrna, a disciple of Iamblichus;--
and lit in the soul of Prince Julian that divine knowledge of
Theosophy wherewith afterwards he made his splendid and tragic
effort for Heaven.