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The Crest-Wave of Evolution - A Course of Lectures in History, Given to the Graduates' Class in the Raja-Yoga College, Point Loma, in the College-Year 1918-19 by Kenneth Morris
page 161 of 787 (20%)
have been. The pivot of the Mediterranean world, in the sixth
century, was not Athens, but in Magna Graecia: at Croton, where
Pythagoras had built his school. But the mob wrecked Croton, and
smashed the Pythagorean Movement as an organization; and that, I
take it, and one other which we shall come to in time, were the
most disastrous happenings in European history. Yes; the causes
why Classical civilization went down; why the Dark Ages were
dark; why the God in Man his been dethroned, and suffered all
this crucifixion and ignominy the last two thousand years.
Aeschylus, truly, received some needed backing from the relics of
the Movement which he found still existent in Sicily; but what
might he not have written, and what of his writings might not
have come down to us, preserved there in the archives, had he had
the peace and elevation of a Croton, organized, to retire to?
Whither, too, Socrates might have gone, and not to death, when
Athens became impossible; where Plato might have dwelt and
taught; revealing, to disciples already well-trained, much more
than ever he did reveal; and engraving, oh so deeply! on the
stuff of time, the truths that make men free. And there he should
have had successors and successors and successors; a line to
last perhaps a thousand or two thousand years; who never should
have let European humanity forget such simple facts as Karma and
Reincarnation. But only at certain times are such great
possibilities presented to mankind; and a seed-time once passed,
there can be no sowing again until the next season comes. It is
no good arguing with the Law of Cycles. Plato may not have been
less than Pythagoras; yet, under the Law, he might not attempt--
it would have been folly for him to have attempted--that which
Pythagoras had attempted. So he had to take another line
altogether; to choose another method; not to try to prevent the
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