said nothing much at that time,—­and hoped that from a living center there, the light might percolate up through the whole peninsula, and be ready for Rome when Rome was ready for it.  He left Athens to take care of itself;—­much as H. P. Blavatsky chose New York at first, and not immediately the then world-capitals Paris and London;—­I suppose we may say that Magna Graecia stood to old Greece in his time as America did to western Europe forty years ago.  Had his Movement succeeded; had it struck well up into the Italian lands; how different the whole after-history of Europe might have been!  Might?—­certainly would have been!  But we know that a revolution at Croton destroyed, at the end of the sixth century, the Pythagorean School; after which the hope and messengers of the Movement—­ Aeschylus, Plato—­worked in Greece; and that although the Pythagorean individual Lucanians, Iapygians, and even Samnites—­ that noble Gaius Pontius of the Caudin Forks was himself a Pythagorean and a pupil of the Pythagorean Archytas,—­it was, in the Teacher’s own lifetime, practically broken up and driven out into Sicily, where those two great Athenians contacted it.  We have seen that it was not effectless; and, what glimmer of it came down, through Plato, into the Middle Ages.  But its main purpose:  to supply nascent Italy with a saving World-Religion; had been defeated.  Of all the Theosophical Movements of the time, this so far as we know was the only one that failed.  Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, each lasted on as a grand force for human upliftment; but Pythagoreanism, as an organized instrument of the Spirit, passed.  When Aeschylus made his protests in Athens, the Center of the Movement to which he belonged had already been smashed.  Plato did marvels; but the cycle had gone by and gone down, and it was too late for him to attempt that which Pythagoras had failed to accomplish.

So Rome, when she needed it most, lacked divine guidance; so drifted out on to the high seas of history pilotless and rudderless;—­so Weltpolitik only corrupted and vulgarized her.  She had no Blue Pearl of Laotse to render her immortal; no Confucian Doctrine of the Mean to keep her sober and straight; and hence it came that, though later a new start was made, and great men arose, once, twice, three times, to do their best for her, she fell to pieces at last, a Humpty-Dumpty that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could never reweld into one;—­and the place she should have filled in history as Unifier of Europe was only filled perfunctorily and for a time; and her great duty was never rightly done. Hinc lacrimae aetatum—­hence the darkness and miseries of the Christian Era!