true organisations that is the point which is to be
aimed at: that the informing life shall shape and mould the organism
which is thus expressing the life on planes of matter; that that
organism shall ever be an organism spirit-inspired, life-shaped, so as
to become more and more perfectly the expression of the life which it
enfolds. We shall see presently that for a time, when Spirit became
utterly blinded by matter, that matter, as it were, took the upper hand
and claimed to be monarch. But in those far-off days it was still
recognised that Spirit was the master of matter, and the Gods walked
amongst men and were recognised by men as their Teachers and Kings. And
humanity in its infancy clung to These, who were as fathers and mothers
of the race, and looked to Them for everything necessary to nourish and
develop the young life. So that looking back to those earlier days, the
great lawgivers like the Manus were at once Kings and Priests. They gave
everything to the humanity that They guarded: literature, science, art,
architecture, everything which was necessary to the national life. And
under that mighty protection grew up the vast civilisations of the past.
You find traces of them, of course, in Egypt; traces of them, in fact,
everywhere in the older, the now dying, or dead peoples. And these
King-Priests, these King-Prophets, summed up in Their own divine persons
all the ruling powers of Spirit and matter alike. The State was a
Church, or the Church was a State.

Gradually, as these Great Ones withdrew, as Those who only lived for
service saw that humanity had begun to take its first steps, and
needed less physical guidance and visible helping, others still great,
but not as superhuman as the earlier ones, took up the royal and
priestly rank. Still the two ran together: the temporal and spiritual
power in one pair of hands; and so on and on, from Atlantis downwards.
Some traces of it still survive, as in the Indian civilisation, where
the ideal of the monarch is always that of the Divine representative
upon earth. But in India, after the earliest days, you see the
beginning division, and the offices of the King and of the Teacher
gradually diverged the one from the other. And as time went on, and
man grew a little older in his childhood, those who ruled over the
State gave away out of their hands the teaching of the religion.
Rightly and well; for it was necessary that humanity should learn to
guide itself. It was o