it carries us around the ring of the-archies and-cracies, and there is no finality anywhere.—­No; there is no straight line of political progress; but round in a ring you go!  You turn out your kings, because they are tyrannical:  which means that their government is no longer efficient, and cannot cope with affairs; there is a lack of adjustment between the inner and the outer, between the needs and the provision made to meet them.  The monarchy, which was at first representative and the true expression of the nation,—­because it, or anything else, when there was no detritus, but things were new and the inner air uncluttered, gave freedom to the national aspirations to pour themselves out in action,—­gives such freedom no longer; it irks; it misfits; you feel it chafing everywhere.  And yet it has not ceased by any means to be representative:  it represents now a nation which has lost its adjustment to the inner things and is clogged up by the detritus of old thought and action, and it is that detritus that irks and misfits and chafes you.  So you rise and smash an astral mold or two; turn out your kings; shout freedom and liberty, and are very glorious for a time under a totally free and independent republic;—­which means, at once or after a while, government by a class.  And this succeeds just as well and badly as its predecessor; neither has found Tao, the Way,—­following which, your detritus should be consumed as it goes, and life lifted above the sway of Karma.  So once more the detritus accumulates, and blocks the channels; and the life of the nation labors and is oppressed.  Need arises for reforms; and the reforms are difficultly carried through; the franchise is extended, and there is loud talk about political growth and what not; we see the millennium at hand, and ourselves its predestined enjoyers.  And the old process repeats itself, till you have a very full-fledged democracy:—­you make all the men vote, and all the women; and presently no doubt all the children; but even when you have all adult dogs and cats and cows voting as well,—­you will not find that that order is Tao, the Way, any more than the others were.  The presence of a cow or two, or an ass or two, more or less, in your parliament will not really insure efficiency of administration.  The detritus grows again, under the most democratic of democracies; and weighs things down;—­and you cast about for new methods of reform.  Democratic government, somehow, does nothing of what was expected of it; is not the panacea;—­you see that, to bring the chaos of affairs into order, you must stop all this jabber and tinkering, and set up some undivided council,—­some Man, for God’s sake!—­a Dictator who can keep his own and other people’s mouths shut and hands busy, and get things done unimpeded.  So you make one more grand reform for the sake of efficiency, and set up your Imperator, and have peace, and decent government; and you have, wittingly or not, started up old bugbear