THE BLACK HAIRED PEOPLE


Greece shone between 478 and 348,--to give the thirteen decades
of her greatest spiritual brightness. Then came India in 321; we
lose sight of her after the death of Asoka in the two-thirties,
but know the Maurya Empire lasted its thirteen decades (and six
years) until 185. Then China flamed up brilliantly under the
Western House of Han from 194 to 64;--at which time, however, we
shall not arrive for a few weeks yet.

Between these three national epochs there is this difference:
the Greek Age came late in its manvantara; which opened (as I
guess), roughly speaking, some three hundred and ninety years
before:--three times thirteen decades, with room for three
national flowerings in Europe--among what peoples, who can say?--
We cannot tell where in its manvantara the Indian Age may have
come: whether near the beginning, or at the middle. But in China
we are on firm ground, and the firmest of all. A manvantara, a
fifteen-century cycle, began in the two-forties B. C.; this Age
of Han was its first blossom and splendid epoch; and we need feel
no surprise that it was not followed by a night immediately, but
only by a twilight and slight dimming of the glories for about
thirteen decades again, and then the full brilliance of another
day. Such things are proper to peoples new-born after their long
pralaya; and can hardly happen, one would say, after the morning
of the manvantara has passed. Thus in our own European cycle,
Italy the first-born was in full creative energy from about 1240
to 1500: twenty-six decades;--whereas the nations that have held
hegemony since have had to be content each with its thirteen.

And now to take bird's-eye views of China as a whole; and to be
at pains to discover what relation she bears, historically, to
ourselves and the rest of the globe.

Do you remernber how Abraham haggled with the Lord over the
Cities of the Plain? Yahveh was for destroying them off hand for
their manifold sins and iniquities; but Abraham argued and
bargained and brought him down till if peradventure there should
be found ten righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah, the Lord promised
he would spare them. But ten righteous there were not, nor
nothing near; so the Cities of the Plain went down.

I suppose the Crest-Wave rarely passes from a race without
leaving a wide trail of insanity in its wake. The life forces are
strong; the human organisms through which they play are but--as
we know them. Commonly these organisms are not directed by the
Divine Soul, which has all too little of the direction of life in
its hands; so the life-currents drift downward, instead of
fountaining up; and exhaust these their vehicles, and leave them
played out and mentally--because long since morally--deficient.
So come the cataclysmic wars and reigns of terror that mark the
end of racial manvantaras: it is a humanity gone collectively
mad. On the other hand, none can tell what immense safeguarding
work may be done by the smallest sane co-ordinated effort
upwards. If peradventure the ten righteous shall be found--but
they must be righteous, and know what they are doing--I will
spare, and not destroy, saith the Lord.

(He said nothing about respectabilities. I dare say there was
quite a percentage of respectable chapel-going Sabbath-observing
folk in the Cities of the Plain.)

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