absence of control from above; the lost adequacy of the
Mysteries, and the failure of the Pythagorean Movement;--the
impatience of spiritual criticism, heedlessness of spiritual
warning;--well, we can see what a turning-point the time was in
history. On the side of politics, selfishness and ambition were
growing; on the side of personal life, vice. . . . It is a thing
to be pondered on, that what has kept Greece sterile these last
two thousand years or so is, I believe, the malaria; which is a
thing that depends for its efficacy on mosquitos. Great men
simply will not incarnate in malarial territory; because
they would have no chance whatever of doing anything, with
that oppression and enervation sapping them. Greece has been
malarial; Rome, too, to some extent; the Roman Campagna
terribly; as if the disease were (as no doubt it is) a Karma
fallen on the sites of old-time tremendous cultural energies;
where the energies were presently wrecked, drowned and sodden in
vice. Here then is a pretty little problem in the workings of
Karma: on what plane, through what superphysical links or
channels, do the vices of an effete civilization transform
themselves into that poor familiar singer in the night-time, the
mosquito? Greece and Rome, in their heyday, were not malarial;
if they had been, no genius and no power would have shone
in them.

In the Middle Ages, before people knew much about sanitary
science and antiseptics and the like, a great war quickly
translated itself into a great pestilence. Then we made advances
and discovered Listerian remedies and things, and said: Come now;
we shall fight this one; we shall have slaughtered millions
lying about as we please, and get no plague out of it; we are