by the operation of the laws of natural
selection and the survival of the fittest, ultimately and through
endless ages, and by the most infinitesimal changes, becomes at last
Plato and Caesar, Leonardo and Dante, St. Louis and Shakespeare and St.
Francis.

Now in this process of the interpenetration of matter by spirit there
must be a certain periodicity, if it is a constant process and not one
accomplished once and for all time in the very beginnings of the world.
This rhythmical action, which is exemplified by every phenomenon of
nature, the vibratory process of light, sound, heat, electricity, the
pulsation of the heart, the motion of the tides, has never escaped the
observation even of primitive peoples, and always attempts have been
made to determine its periodicity. May it not be infinitely complex, as
the ripple rises on the wave that lifts on the swell of the underlying
tide? Certainly we are now being forced back to a new consideration of
this periodical beat, in history at least, for now that our own era,
which came in by the power of the Renaissance and the Reformation and
received its final energizing force through the revolutions of the
eighteenth century and the industrial revolution of the nineteenth, is
so manifestly coming to its end, we look backward for precedents for
this unexpected debacle and lo, they appear every five hundred years
back as far as history records. 500 B.C., Anno Domini; 500 A.D., 1000
A.D., and 1500 A.D. are all, to the point of very clear approximation,
nodal points, where the curve of the preceding five centuries, having
achieved its crest, curves downward, and in its fall meets the curve of
rising energy that is to condition the ensuing era. The next nodal
point, calculated on this basis, comes about the year 2000. Are we not
justified, in plotting our trajectory of modernism, in placing the crest
in the year 1914, and in tracing the line of fall from that moment?

I have plotted this curve, or series of curves, after a rough and ready
fashion (Diagram No. 2) and though the personal equation must, in any
subjective proposition such as this, enter largely into account, I think
the diagram will be accepted in principle if not in details, and not
wholly in its relationships. I have made no effort to estimate or
indicate comparative heights and depths, giving to each five-hundred
year epoch a similar level of rise and depth of fall. Perhaps the actual
difference here would, rightly