I have compared their achievement with that of the West:  we have one whole manvantara and a pralaya of theirs to judge by, as against two fragments of western manvantaras with the pralaya intervening.  It is not much; and we should remember that there are cycles and epicycles; and that Japan, or old China herself, within our own lifetime, may give the lie to everything.  But from the evidence at hand one is inclined to draw this conclusion:  That in the Far East you have a great section of humanity in reserve;—­in a sense, in a backwater of evolution:  nearer the Spirit, farther from the hot press and conflict of the material world;—­even in its times of highest activity, not in the van of the down-rush of Spirit into matter, as the western races have been in theirs;—­but held apart to perform a different function.  As if the Crest-Wave of Evolution needed what we might call Devachanic cycles of incarnation, and found them there during the Altaic manvantaras of manifestation.  Not that their history has been empty of tragedies; it has been very full of them; and wars—­some eight or nine Napoleons in their day have sat on the Dragon Throne.  But still, the worlds of poetry, delight, wonder, have been nearer and more accessible to the Chinaman, in his great ages, than to us in ours; as they have been, and probably are now, nearer to the Japanese.  And I do not know how that should be, unless the Law had taken those Atlanteans away, kept them apart from the main stream—­not fighting the main battle, but in reserve—­for purposes that the long millenniums of the future are to declare.

IX.  THE DRAGON AND THE BLUE PEARL

The horizon of Chinese history lies near the middle of the third millennium B. C. The first date sinologists dare swear to is 776; in which year an eclipse of the sun is recorded, that actually did happen:  it is set down, not as a thing interesting in itself, but as ominous of the fall of wicked kings.  Here, then, in the one place where there is any testing the annals, it appears they are sound enough; which might be thought to speak well for them.  But our scholars are so damnebly logical, as Mr. Mantalini would say, that to them it only proves this:  you are to accept no date earlier.  One general solar indorsement will not do; you must have an eclipse for everything you believe, and trust nothing unless the stars in their courses bear witness.

Well; we have fortunately Halley’s Comet in the Bayeux Tapestry for our familiar 1066; but beware! everything before that is to be taken as pure fudge!

The fact is there is no special reason for doubting either chronology or sequence of events up to about 2357 B. C., in which year the Patriarch Yao came to the throne.  He was the first of those three, Yao, Shun, and Yu, who have been ever since the patterns for all Chinese rulers who have aspired to be Confucianly good.  “Be like Yao, Shun, and Yu; do as they did";—­ there you have the word of Confucius to all emperors and governors of states.