but to settle in Italy and found his Movement there? I suppose
the reason was this: He knew in what direction the cycles should
flow, and that the greatest need of the future ages would be for
a redeemed Italy; he foresaw, or Those who sent him foresaw,
that it was Italy should mold the common life of Europe for a
couple of thousand years. Greece was rising then, chiefly on the
planes of intellect and artistic creation; but Italy was to rise
after a few centuries on planes much more material, and therefore
with a force much more potent and immediate in its effects in
this world. The Age of Greece was nearer to the Mysteries; which
might be trusted to keep at least some knowledge of Truth alive;
the Age of Italy, farther away and on a lower plane, would be in
need of a Religion. So he chose Croton, a Greek city, because if
he had gone straight to the barbarous Italians, he could have
said nothing much at that time,--and hoped that from a living
center there, the light might percolate up through the whole
peninsula, and be ready for Rome when Rome was ready for it. He
left Athens to take care of itself;--much as H. P. Blavatsky
chose New York at first, and not immediately the then world-capitals
Paris and London;--I suppose we may say that Magna Graecia
stood to old Greece in his time as America did to western
Europe forty years ago. Had his Movement succeeded; had it
struck well up into the Italian lands; how different the whole
after-history of Europe might have been! Might?--certainly
would have been! But we know that a revolution at Croton
destroyed, at the end of the sixth century, the Pythagorean
School; after which the hope and messengers of the Movement--
Aeschylus, Plato--worked in Greece; and that although the
Pythagorean individual Lucanians, Iapygians, and even Samnites--
that noble Gaius Pontius of the Caudin Forks was himself a
Pythagorean and a pupil of the Pythagorean Archytas,--it was, in
the Teacher's own lifetime, practically broken up and driven out
into Sicily, where those two great Athenians contacted it. We
have seen that it was not effectless; and, what glimmer of it
came down, through Plato, into the Middle Ages. But its main
purpose: to supply nascent Italy with a saving World-Religion;
had been defeated. Of all the Theosophical Movements of the
time, this so far as we know was the only one that failed.
Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, each lasted on as a grand force
for human upli