_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