The Crest-Wave of Evolution | Page 6

light of romantic Europe ever since,
began.
Does it not seem as if that great Far Eastern note could not be struck
without this little far western note vibrating in sympathy? Very faintly;
not in a manner to be heard clearly by the world; because in historical
times the Celtic note has been as it were far up on the keyboard, and
never directly under the Master-Musician's fingers. And when you add
to it all that this Celtic note has come in the minds of literary critics
rather to stand as the synonym for Natural Magic--you all know what is
meant by that term;--and that now, as we are discovering the old
Chinese poetry and painting, we are finding that Natural Magic is really
far more Chinese than Celtic--that where we Celts have vibrated to it
minorly, the great Chinese gave it out fully and grandly--does it not add
to the piquancy of the 'coincidence?'
Now there is no particular reason for doubting the figures of Chinese
chronology as far back as 2350 B.C. Our Western authorities do doubt
all before about 750; but it is hard to see why, except that 'it is their
nature to.' The Chinese give the year 2356 as the date of the accession

of the Emperor Yao, first of the three canonized rulers who have been
the patriarchs, saints, sages, and examples for all ages since. In that
decade a manvantara of the race would seem to have begun, which
lasted through the dynasties of Hia and Shang, and halfway through the
Chow, ending about 850. During this period, then, I think presently we
shall come to place the chief activities and civilization of the Celts.
From 850 to 240--all these figures are of course approximations: there
was pralaya in China; on the other side of the world, it was the period
of Celtic eruptions--and probably, disruption. While Tsin Shi Hwangti,
from 246 to 213, was establishing the modern Chinese Empire, the
Gauls made their last incursion into Italy. The culmination of the age
Shi Hwangti inaugurated came in the reign of Han Wuti, traditionally
the most glorious in the Chines annals. It lasted from 140 to 86 B.C.;
nor was there any decline under his successor, who reigned until 63. In
the middle of that time--the last decade of the second century--the
Cimbri, allied with the Teutones, made their incursion down into Spain.
Opinion is divided as to whether this people was Celtic or Teutonic; but
probably the old view is the true one, that the word is akin to Cimerii,
Crimea, and Cymry, and that they were Welshmen in their day. When
Caesar was in Gaul, the people he conquered had much to say about
their last great king. Diviciacos, whose dominions included Gaul and
Britain; they looked back to his reign as a period of great splendor and
national strength. He lived, they said, about a hundred years before
Caesar's coming--or was contemporary with Han Wuti.
But the empire of the Celtic Kings was already far fallen, before it was
confined to Gaul, Britain, and perhaps Ireland. When first we see this
people they were winning a name for fickleness of purpose: making
conquests and throwing them away; which things are the marks of a
race declining from a high eminence it had won of old through hard
work and sound policy. We shall come to see that personal or outward
characteristics can never be posited as inherent in any race. Such things
belong to ages and stages in the race's growth. Whatever you can say of
Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, now, has been totally untrue of
them at some other period. We think of the Italians as passionate, subtle
of intellect, above all things artistic and beauty-loving. Now look at
them as they were three centuries B.C.: plodding, self- contained and

self-mastered, square-dealing and unsubtle, above all things
contemning beauty, wholly inartistic. But a race may retain the same
traits for a very long time, if it remains in a back-water, and is
unaffected by the currents of evolution.
So we may safely say of the Celts that the fickleness for which they
were famed in Roman times was not a racial, but a temporal or epochal
defect. They were not fickle when they held out (in Wales) for eight
centuries against the barbarian onslaughts which brought the rest of the
Roman empire down in two or three; or when they resisted for two
hundred years those Normans who had conquered the Anglo-Saxons in
a decade. This very quality, in old Welsh literature, is more than once
given as a characteristic of extreme age; "I am old, bent double; I am
fickly rash." says Llywarch Hen. I think that gives the clew to the
whole position. The race was at the end of