“Where there is no vision the people perish,” said that learned Hebrew of old, King Solomon; and by that one saying proclaimed his right to his title of ‘the Wise.’  Look into it, and you have almost the whole philosophy of history.  The incessant need of humanity is this thing Vision: men and nations go mad for lack of it:  they seek in hell the joys of heaven which should be theirs, and which they cannot see.  It means vision of the Inner Worlds, of the heaven that lies around us.  Oh, nothing spooky or foolish; one is far from meaning the Astral Light.  People who go burrowing into that are again seeking a substitute for Vision, and a very poisonous one.—­If I may speak of a personal experience:  coming to Point Loma from London was like coming from the bottom of the sea into the upper ether.  There, in the heart of that old civilization, the air is thick with detritus; here—­if only because a long pralaya and fallow time have made the land new,—­the detritus is negligible; perhaps it is not even forming, but consumed as we go; because at least we have glimpses of the Way.  Result:  the mental outlook that extended there, in visionary moments, to some six inches, before one’s nose, here has broadened out to take in some seas and mountains; in comparison, it runs to far horizons.  I take it that this is the experience of us all.  So this is what that wise Solomon meant:  “When the detritus has accumulated to the point where, like a thick fog, it shuts away all vision of the True, then the nation must go into abeyance; it must fall.”—­Rome was very near that point.

One wishes one could say something about those Inner Worlds of Beauty.  When the voices of self are silenced, and desires abashed and at peace,—­how they shine through!  This outer world, truly, reflects them; but another and ugly world of our own making.

.....is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. 
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

     The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
     The winds that will be howling at all hours,
     And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers,—­
     For this, for everything, we are out of tune.

Sometimes; not always, thank God!  Look again:  there are the mountains, and above them the mournful glories of the anti-sunset; the mute and golden trumpetings of the dawn; —­there is the sea, and over it the wistfulness and pomp and pageantry of the setting sun, and the gentleness of heaven at evening;—­there is the whole drama of Day with its tremendous glories; and the huge mystery of Night-time:  Niobe Night, silent in the heavens,

     “Glittering magnificently unperturbed;”