ina with Europe or America. The
Achaemenians are separated from us by two pralayas; while
between us and the Greeks there is but one. When our present
Europe has gone down, and a new barbarism and Middle Ages have
passed over France, Britain and Italy, and given place in turn to
a new growth of civilization--what shall we know of this Paris,
and Florence, and London? As much and as little as we know now
of Greece and Rome. We shall dig them up and reconstruct them;
found our culture on theirs, and think them very wonderful for
mere centers of (Christian) paganism; we shall marvel at their
genius, as shown in the fragments that go under the names of
those totally mythological poets, Dante and Milton; and at their
foul cruelty, as shown by their capital punishment and their
wars. And what shall we know of ancient Athens and Rome? Our
scholars will sneer at the superstition that they ever existed;
our theologians will say the world was created somewhat later.

Or indeed, no; I think it will not be so. I think we shall have
established an abiding perception of truth: Theosophy will have
smashed the backbone of this foolish Kali-Yuga as a little,
before then.

So that Creasy is all out in his estimate of the importance
of Marathon and the other victories. Wars are only straws
to show which way the current flows; and they do that only
indifferently. They are not the current themselves, and they do
not direct it; and were men wise enough to avoid them, better
than the best that was ever won out of war would be won by other
means that the Law would provide. And yet the Human Spirit will
win something out of all eventualities, even war, if Kama and the
Cycles permit. In a non-political sense the Persian Wars bore
huge harvest for Greece; the Law used them to that end. The
great effort brought out all the latent resources of the Athenian
mind: the successes heightened Greek racial feeling to a pitch.
--What! we could stand against huge Persia?--then we are not
unworthy of the men that fought at Ilion, our fathers; the race
and spirit of _anax andron Agamemnon_ is not dead! Ha, we can do
anything; there are no victories we may not win! And here is the
dead weight and terror of the war lifted from us; and there is
no anxiety now to hold our minds. We may go forth conquering and
to conquer; we may launch our triremes on immaterial seas, and
subdue unknown empires of the spirit!--And here is Athens the
quick-wit