It was that
humanity had entered on a dark region in time: a region whose
terrors had not been forefended; to be entered perforce by a
humanity, or section of humanity, that had no Center of Light
established in its midst. Had Croton of Pythagoras survived; or
the Mysteries at Gaulish Bibracte: had there been but one firm
foothold for the Lodge in the world of men;--I think none of
these things could have come about; and that for the same reason
that you cannot have total darkness in a room in which a lamp is
lighted. But this darkness was total: intolerance is the
negation of spiritual light. Of all the various movements in the
Roman world that had not actual members of the Lodge behind and
moving them, Christianity had the greatest impetus; and it was
the one that first entered into this murk and deadly gloom. So
that it may seem, to an impartial but not too deeply-seeing eye,
as if it were Christianity that invented the gloom. Not so; nor
Judaism neither; nor any Christians nor Jews. It was the men
who burned Croton; the man who killed the Mysteries in Gaul.
For every disaster there are causes far and far back.

Christianity had spread, by this third century, perhaps as
much through the Parthian empire as through the Roman. The
Zoroastrians had been as tolerant as the Romans; much more so to
Christianity;--though the motive of their toleration had been
pure indifference to everything religious; whereas in Rome there
was statesmanship and wisdom behind theirs. The Persians reacted
against Parthianism in all its manifestations. They were shocked
at Parthian indifference. The Persian is as naturally religious
as the Hindoo: and has the virtues and vices of the religious
temperament. The virtues are a tendency to mysticism, a need to
concern oneself with the unseen; the vices, a non-immunity to
fanaticism and bigotry. They came down now from their mountains
determined to combat the slackness; the indifference, the
materialism of the world. The virus of intolerance was in the
air,--a spirit like the germ of plague or any epidemic; one
religion catches it from another. Let it be about, and you are
in danger of catching it, unless your faith is based on actual
inner enlightenment, and not faith at all, but knowledge; or
unless you have a Teacher so enlightened to adjust you, and keep
you too busy to catch it;--or unless you are totally heedless of
the unseen. The Persians were not indifferent, but ver