it gave to Philosophy.
There was no dominant priesthood to close the door of progress.

It utilized all the past and built and beautified the present.

It bequeathed no creed nor dogma to the future, and yet its civilization
was transcendent and is immortal.

It had its canons of Art and of Architecture. These it demonstrated by
constructive work. It illustrated, explained and exemplified, but it did
not argue nor dogmatize.

The world for two thousand years has been "going back to Greece" and
trying to explain how it all happened, just as we have been trying to
explain Goethe's "Faust."

Genius is transcendent and immortal.

With the decline of Greece there arose the Genius of the Tiber, Imperial
Rome, and the Caesars.

Rome created an _Avatar_ out of the "Babe of Bethlehem." Having enthroned
Jehovah, it proceeded to deify Jesus, and then by substitution to take the
place of both.

Imperial Rome, the "Scarlet Mother of the Tiber," assumed the government
and dictatorship of the world. Imperial, dogmatic, relentless, the arbiter
of the fate of humanity on earth and beyond.

Here was arbitrary, relentless _power_ at any cost, to be maintained on
any terms. "The end always justified the means."

In the civilization of Greece, the Individual, the citizen was first, and
association and co-operation built the State.

With Rome the Individual is nothing but a pawn, an accessory to the
Church. It was and is the Church first, last, and all the time. The
Individual can claim no right nor prerogative except as a concession from
the Church.

The contrast is extreme and absolute between the Genius of Greece and that
of Rome.

As the Genius of Greece was adapted from the older Aryan, so also was that
of Rome, from the Brahmans, through Egypt.

Among the various Avatars of old India designated as "Incarnations of
Vishnu," Siva "_the destroyer_," was often in evidence.

Rome proceeded to adopt the Hindoo Trinity--Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva--(the
Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer), and to so shape its creed and
dogmas as to secure and maintain the power of Mother Church, simply with a
change of names--"Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

It has enslaved nations and slaughtered millions in order to maintain its
power. For more than fifteen hundred years it has maintained its
relentless warfare against the inalienable rights of the Individual, and
the inevitable progress of humanity.

It has escaped the execration