those nameless vices grew up and grew common in her which
probably account for the long dark night that has spread itself
over Greece ever since. It is a strange situation, that looks
like an anomaly: that wherever the Human Spirit presses in most,
and raises up most splendor of genius, there, and then the dark
forces that undermine life are most at work. But we should have
no difficulty in understanding it. At such times, by such
influxes, the whole inner kingdom of man is roused and illumined;
and not only the intellect and all noble qualities are quickened,
but the passions also. The race, and the individual, are stirred
to the deepest depths, and no part of you may have rest. What
then will happen, unless you have the surest moral training for
foundation? The force which rouses up the highest in you, rouses
up also the lowest; and there must be battle-royal and victory at
last, or surrender to hell. Through lack of training, and
ignorance of the laws of the inner life, the Higher will be
handicapped; the lower will have advantage through its own
natural impulse downward, increased by every success it is
allowed to gain. And so all these ages of creative achievement
exhaust themselves; every victory of the passions drawing down
the creative force from the higher planes, to waste it on the
lower; till at last what had been an attempt of the Spirit to
lift humanity up on to nobler lines of evolution, and to open a
new order of ages, expires in debauchery, weakness, degeneracy,
physical and moral death. The worst fate you could wish a man is
genius without moral strength. It wrecks individuals, and it
wrecks nations. I said we stand now on an isthmus of time;
fifth-century Greece stood on such another. For reasons that we
have seen, there was to be a radical difference between the ages
that preceded, and the ages that followed it; its influence was