Now I want to suggest a few ideas along these lines that may throw light on ancient Europe; of which orthodox history tells us of nothing but the few centuries of Greece and Rome.  As if the people of three thousand years hence should know, of the history of Christendom, only that of Italy from Garibaldi onward, and that of Greece beginning, say, at the Second Balkan War.  That is the position we are in with regard to old Europe.  Very like Spain, France, Britain, Germany and Scandinavia played as great parts in the millennia B.C., as they have done in the times we know about.  All analogy from the other seats of civilization is for it; all racial memories and traditions—­tradition is racial memory—­are for it; and I venture to say, all reason and common sense are for it too.

Now I have to remind you of certain conclusions worked out in an article ‘Cyclic Law in History,’ which appeared some time back in The Theosophical Path:—­that there are, for example, three great centers of historical activity in the Old World:  China and her surroundings; West Asia and Egypt; Europe.  Perhaps these are major facets of the dodecahedron.  Perhaps again, were the facts in our knowledge not so desperately incomplete, we should find, as in the notes and colors, a set of octaves:  that each of these centers was a complete octave, and each phase or nation a note.  Do you see where these leads?  Supposing the note China is struck in the Far Eastern Octave; would there not be a vibration of some corresponding note in the octave Europe?  Supposing the Octave West Asia were under the fingers of the Great Player, would not the corresponding note in Europe vibrate?

Now let us look at history.  Right on the eastern rim of the Old World is the Chino-Japanese field of civilization.  It has been, until lately, under pralaya, in a night or inactive period of its existence, for something over six centuries:  a beautiful pralaya in the case of Japan; a rather ugly one, recently, in the case of China.  Right on the western rim of the Old World are the remnants of the once great Celtic people.  Europe at large has been very much in manvantara, a day or waking period, for a little over six hundred years.  Yet of the four racial roots or stocks of Europe, the Greco-Latin, Teutonic, Slavic, and Celtic, the last-named alone has been under pralaya, sound asleep, during the whole of this time.  Let me interject here the warning that it is no complete scheme that is to be offered; only a few facts that suggest that such a scheme may exist, could we find it.  Before Europe awoke to her present cycle of civilization and progress, before the last quarter of the thirteenth century, the Chinese had been in manvantara, very much awake, for about fifteen hundred years.  When they went to sleep, the Celts did also.