The Crest-Wave of Evolution | Page 9

rise, making clouds
with their breath. Innumerable, singing, exultant; and hell underneath
them shall pant, And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled
beneath them in death."
"No," says Patrick; "none war on the masters of hell, who could break
up the world in their rage"; and bids him weep and kneel in prayer for
his lost soul. But that will not do for the old Celtic warrior bard; no
tame heaven for him. He will go to hell; he will not surrender the pride
and glory of his soul to the mere meanness of fate. He will
"Go to Caolte and Conan, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair And dwell in the
house of the Fenians, be they in flames or at feast."
So with Llywarch Hen, Prince of Cumberland, in his old age and
desolation. His kingdom has been conquered; he is in exile in Wales;
his four and twenty sons, "wearers of golden torques, proud rulers of
princes," have been slain; he is considerably over a hundred years old,
and homeless, and sick; but no whit of his pride is gone. He has learnt
no lesson from life excepts this One: that fate and Karma and sorrow
are not so proud, not so skillful to persecute, as the human soul is
capable of bitter resentful endurance. He is titanically angry with
destiny; but never meek or acquiescent.
Then if you look at their laws of war, you come to know very well how

this people came to be almost blotted out. If they had a true spiritual
purpose, instead of mere personal pride, I should say the world would
be Celtic-speaking and Celtic-governed now. Yet still their reliance
was all on what we must call spiritual qualities. The first notice we get
in classical literature of Celts and Teutons--I think from Strabo--is this:
"The Celts fight for glory, the Teutons for plunder." Instead of plunder,
let us say material advantage; they knew why they were fighting, and
went to get it. But the Celtic military laws--Don Quixote in a fit of
extravagance framed them! There must be no defensive armor; the
warrior must go bare-breasted into battle. There are a thousand things
he must fear more than defeat or death--all that would make the glory
of his soul seem less to him. He must make fighting his business,
because in his folly it seemed to him that in it he could best nourish that
glory; not for what material ends he could gain. Pitted against a
people--with a definite policy, he was bound to lose in the long run.
But still he endowed the human spirit with a certain wealth; still his
folly had been a true spiritual wisdom at one time. The French at
Fontenoy, who cried to their English enemies, when both were about to
open fire: _"Apres vous, messieurs! "_ were simply practicing the
principles of their Gaulish forefathers; the thrill of honor, of
_'Pundonor'_ as the Spaniard says, was much more in their eyes than
the chance of victory.
Now, in what condition does a race gain such qualities? Not in sorrow;
not in defeat, political dependence or humiliation. The virtues which
these teach are of an opposite kind; they are what we may call the
plebeian virtues which lead to success. But the others, the old Celtic
qualities, are essentially patrician. You find them in the Turks;
accustomed to sway subject races, and utterly ruthless in their dealings
with them; but famed as clean and chivalrous fighters in a war with
foreign peoples. See how the Samurai, the patricians of never yet
defeated Japan, developed them. They are the qualities the Law teaches
us through centuries of domination and aristocratic life. They are
developed in a race accustomed to rule other races; a race that does not
engage in commerce; in an aristocratic race, or in an aristocratic caste
within a race. Here is the point: the Law designs periods of ascendency
for each people in its turn, that it may acquire these qualities; and it

appoints for each people in its turn Periods of subordination, poverty
and sorrow, that it may develop the opposite qualities of patience,
humility, and orderly effort.
Would it not appear then, that in those first centuries B. C. when Celts
and Teutons were emerging into historical notice, the Teutons were
coming out of a long period of subordination, in which they had learnt
strength--the Celts out of a long period of ascendency, in which they
had learnt other things? The Teuton, fresh from his pralayic sleep, was
unconquerable by Rome. The Celt, old, and intoxicated with the
triumphs of a long manvantara, could not repel Roman persistence and
order. Rome. too, was rising, or in her prime; had patience, and
followed her material plans every inch of the way to