Constantius, and the latter thoughtfully invited in the Germans to put him down and help themselves to what they found handy;—­ and a certain Chnodomar, a king in those trans-Rhenish regions, has taken him much at his word.  Result:  a strip forty miles wide along the left bank of the Rhine from source to mouth has been conquered and annexed; three times as much this side is a perfectly desolate No-man’s land; forty-five important cities, including Cologne and Strasbourg, have been reduced to ashes, with innumerable smaller towns and villages; all open towns in north-eastern Gaul have been abandoned; the people of the walled cities are starving on what corn they can grow on vacant corner lots and in their own back-gardens; hundreds of thousands have been killed out, or carried off into slavery in Germany; and King Chnodomar has every reason to think that God is behaving in a very reasonable manner.—­As for the rest of the empire, whatever may be its population in human bodies, there is a plentiful lack of human souls to inhabit them; the Roman world has fallen on evil years, truly, but is by no means unchanged;—­ and the one thing you can prophesy with any decent security is that affairs cannot go on in this way much longer.  Rome has conducted a number of funerals in her day, of this nation and that conquered and put an end to; not much intuition is required now, to foresee that the next funeral will be her own.—­(Though indeed, I doubt you should have found half-a-dozen in the Roman world who could foresee it.)

Now there is a Way, narrow and most difficult to find,—­a Way of conducting the affairs of this life and this world, in balance, in equilibrium; in that fine I condition through which alone the life-renewing forces from the vaster worlds within may flow down, and keep existence here in harmony, and forefend decay.  This was, of course, the essence of Chinese thought, Confucian and Taoist.  You maintained the inner harmony, and the forces of heaven might use you as their channel.  You found Tao (the Way), and grew never old; you succeeded in all enterprises; walked through life unruffled,—­duty flowing, beautifully accomplished, at every moment from your hands.  You met with no snags or adjusted yourself always to conditions as they arose, and over-rode them in quietest triumph.—­They said that, possessing Tao, one might live on many times the common threescore years and ten; very likely there is some truth in it; it seems as if it were true at any rate, of the life of nations.  China caught glimpses, and lived on and on; grew old, and reviewed her youth time and again.  But normally, what do we find with these un-Taoist nations of the West?—­They go easily for some period; then it becomes harder and harder for them to adjust theniselves to conditions.  They become clogged with the detritus of old thought and action.  What is the meaning of the incessant need we see for reform?  Under whatever form of government a nation may be, it arises perpetually;