desire to enter it. Diocletian knew nothing of this; so, great
statesman as he was, his methods were effective only while he sat
on the throne; in his old age and retirement he had to watch,
from his palace at Spalato, the empire he had piloted banging
about in a thousand storms again; and to plead in vain to those
to whom he had given their thrones for the safety and life of his
own wife and daughter;--the total failure of his life and labors
thus miserably brought home to him before he died.

"Where there is no vision the people perish," said that learned
Hebrew of old, King Solomon; and by that one saying proclaimed
his right to his title of 'the Wise.' Look into it, and you have
almost the whole philosophy of history. The incessant need of
humanity is this thing _Vision:_ men and nations go mad for lack
of it: they seek in hell the joys of heaven which should be
theirs, and which they cannot see. It means vision of the Inner
Worlds, of the heaven that lies around us. Oh, nothing spooky or
foolish; one is far from meaning the Astral Light. People who
go burrowing into that are again seeking a substitute for
Vision, and a very poisonous one.--If I may speak of a personal
experience: coming to Point Loma from London was like coming
from the bottom of the sea into the upper ether. There, in the
heart of that old civilization, the air is thick with detritus;
here--if only because a long pralaya and fallow time have made
the land new,--the detritus is negligible; perhaps it is not
even forming, but consumed as we go; because at least we have
glimpses of the Way. Result: the mental outlook that extended
there, in visionary moments, to some six inches, before one's
nose, here has broadened out to take in some seas and mountains;
in comparison, it runs to far horizons. I take it that this is
the experience of us all. So this is what that wise Solomon
meant: "When the detritus has accumulated to the point where,
like a thick fog, it shuts away all vision of the True, then the
nation must go into abeyance; it must fall."--Rome was very near
that point.

One wishes one could say something about those Inner Worlds of
Beauty. When the voices of self are silenced, and desires
abashed and at peace,--how they shine through! This outer world,
truly, reflects them; but another and ugly world of our own making.

.....is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.