The Crest-Wave of Evolution | Page 4

the world of causes. And just as you
might press a flower in an album, or make a painting of it, and preserve
its scent by chemical distillation or what not--and thereby preserve the
whole story of all the forces that went to the production of that
bloom--and they are, I suppose, in number beyond human
computation--so you might express the history of a race in a symbol as
simple as a bloom... And that there is a power, an unfolding faculty, in
the soul, which, seeing such a symbol, could unravel from it, by
meditation, the whole achievement of the race; its whole history, down
to details; yes, even down to the lives of every soul that incarnated in it:

their personal lives, with all successes, failures, attempts, everything.
Because, for example, the light which comes down to us as that of
ancient Greece is the resultant, the remainder of all the forces in all the
lives of all individual Greeks, as these were played on by the conditions
of place and time. Time:--at such and such a period, the Mood of the
Oversoul is such and such. Place:--the temporal mood of the Oversoul,
playing through that particular facet of the dodecahedron, which is
Greece. The combinations and interplay of these two, plus the energies
for good or evil of the souls there incarnate, give as their resultant the
whole life of the race. There is perhaps a high Algebra of the Soul by
which, if we understood its laws, we could revive the history of any
past epoch, discover its thought and modes of living, as we discover the
value of the unknown factor in an equation. Pythagoras must have his
pupils understand music and geometry; and by music he intended, all
the arts, every department of life that came under the sway of the Nine
Muses. Why?--Because, as he taught, God is Poet and Geometer.
Chaos is only on the outer rim of existence; as you get nearer the heart
of thing, order and rhythm, geometry and poetry, are more and more
found. Chaos is only in our own chaotic minds and perceptions: train
these aright, and you shall hear the music of the spheres, perceive the
reign of everlasting Law. These impulses from the Oversoul, that create
the great epochs, raising one race after another, have perfect rhythm
and rhyme. God sits harping in the Cycle of Infinity, and human history
is the far faint echo of the tune he plays. Why can we not listen, till we
hear and apprehend the tune? Or History is the sound heard from far, of
the marching hosts of angels and archangels; the cyclic tread of their
battalions; the thrill and rumble and splendor of their drums and
fifes:--why should we not listen till the whole order of their cohorts and
squadrons is revealed?--I mean to suggest that there are laws,
undiscovered, but discoverable--discoverable from the fragments of
history we possess--by knowing which we might gain knowledge, even
without further material discoveries, of the lost history of man. Without
moving from Point Loma, or digging up anything more important that
hard-pan, we may yet make the most important finds, and throw floods
of light on the whole dark problem of the past. H.P. Blavatsky gave us
the clews; we owe it to her to use them.

Now I want to suggest a few ideas along these lines that may throw
light on ancient Europe; of which orthodox history tells us of nothing
but the few centuries of Greece and Rome. As if the people of three
thousand years hence should know, of the history of Christendom, only
that of Italy from Garibaldi onward, and that of Greece beginning, say,
at the Second Balkan War. That is the position we are in with regard to
old Europe. Very like Spain, France, Britain, Germany and Scandinavia
played as great parts in the millennia B.C., as they have done in the
times we know about. All analogy from the other seats of civilization is
for it; all racial memories and traditions--tradition is racial memory--are
for it; and I venture to say, all reason and common sense are for it too.
Now I have to remind you of certain conclusions worked out in an
article 'Cyclic Law in History,' which appeared some time back in _The
Theosophical Path:_--that there are, for example, three great centers of
historical activity in the Old World: China and her surroundings; West
Asia and Egypt; Europe. Perhaps these are major facets of the
dodecahedron. Perhaps again, were the facts in our knowledge not so
desperately incomplete, we should find, as in the notes and colors, a set
of octaves: that each of these centers was a complete octave, and each
phase or nation a note. Do you see where these