an
undiluted Theosophy. The lower the stratum of thought into
which it fell, the less it could be Thought-Spiritual, the
stuff unalloyed of Manas-Taijasi. Nevertheless, it was the
Pearl Immortality, with a vigor and virtue of its own, and
a competence for ages, on whatever plane it might be, to work
wonders. Among thinking and spiritual minds it remained a true
Way of Salvation. Among the masses it came to be thought of
presently as personal immortality and the elixir of life.
Regrettable, you may say; but this is the point: nothing was
ever intended to last forever. You must judge Taoism by what it
was in its day, not by what it may be now. Laotse had somehow
flashed down into human consciousness a vision of Infinity: had
confronted the Chinese mind with a conviction of the Great
Mystery, the Divine Silence. It is simply a fact that that is
the fountain whose waters feed the imagination and make it grow
and bloom. Search for the Secret in chatter and outward sights
and deeds, and you soon run to waste and nothingness; but seek
here, and you shall find what seemed a void, teeming with lovely
forms. He set the Chinese imagination, staggered and stupefied
by the so long ages of manvantara, and then of ruin, into a glow
of activity, of grace, of wonder; men became aware of the vast
world of the Within; as if a thousand Americas had been
discovered. It supplied the seed of creation for all the poets
and artists to come. It made a new folklore; revivified the
inner atmosphere of mountains and forests; set the fairies
dancing; raised Yellow Crane Pagodas to mark the spot where Wang
Tzu-chiao flew on the Crane to heaven in broad daylight. It sent
out the ships of Ts'in Shi Hwangti presently to seek the Golden
Islands of Peng-lai, where the Immortals give cups of the elixir
to their votaries; in some degree it sent the armies of Han Wuti
in search of the Garden of Si Wang Mu. The ships found (perhaps)
only the Golden Islands of Japan; the armies found certainly
Persia, India, and even the borders of Rome;--and withal, new
currents, awakening and inter-national, to flow into China and
make splendid the Golden Age of Han.

X. "SUCH A ONE"

"I produce myself among creatures, O son of Bharata, whenever
there is a decline of Virtue and an insurrection of vice and
injustice in the world: and thus I incarnate from age to age for
the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and
the establishm