they might of the ancient Theosophy.  So latterly H.P.  Blavasky must gather up fragments in the East for the nexus of her teaching; she must find seeds in old sarcophagi, and plant and make them grow in this soil so uncongenial; because there was no well-grown Tree patent to the world, with whose undeniable fruitage she might feed the nations.  This was one great difficulty in her way; whe had to introduce Theosphy into a world that had forgotten it ever existed.

So,—­but with a difference,—­in that first century.  The difference was that Pythagoreanism, the nexus, was only six hundrd years away, and the memory of it fairly fresh.  Stoicism was the most serious living influence within the empire; a system that concerned itself with right and brave living, and was so far spiritual; but perhaps not much further.  The best in men reacted against the sensuality of the mid-century, and made Stoicism strong; but this formed only a basis of moral grit for the higher teaching; of which, while we know it was there, there is not very much to say.  I shall come to it presently; meanwhile, to something else.—­In literature, this was the cycle of Spain:  the Crest-Wave was largely there during the first thirteen decades of the Christian era.  Seneca was born in Cordova about 3 B. C.; Hadrian, the last greatman of Spanish birth (though probably of Italian race), died in 138.  Seneca was a Stoic:  a man with many imperfections, of whom history cannot make up its mind wholly to approve.  He was Nero’s tutor and minister during the first five golden years of the reign; his government was wise and beneficent, though, it is said, sometimes upheld by rather doubtful means.  In the growing gloom and horror of the nightmare reign of Nero, he wrote many counsels of perfection; his notes rise often, someone has said, to a sort of falsetto shriek; but then, the wonder is he could sing at all in such a hell’s cacophony.  A man with obvious weaknesses, perhaps; but fighting hard to be brave and hopeful where there was nothing in sight to encourage bravery or foster hope; when every moment was pregnant with ghastly possibilities; when death and abominable torture hobnobbed in the Roman streets with riots of disgusting indulgence, abnormal lusts, filthiness parading unabashed.  He speaks of the horrors, the gruesome impalings; deprecating them in a general way; not daring to come down to particulars, and rebuke Nero.  Well; Nero commanded the legions, and was kittle cattle to rebuke.  If sometimes you see tinsel and tawdriness about poor Seneca, look a little deeper, and you seem to see him writing it in agony and bloody sweat. . . .  He was among the richest men in Rome, when riches were a deadly peril:  he might even, had he been another man, have made himself emperor; perhaps the worst thing against him is that he did not.  His counsels and aspirations were much better than his deeds;—­which is as much as to say his Higher Self than his lower.  He stood