His fame as a
benefactor of the human race spread marvelously: in far-away
India (where at that time the Secret Wisdom and its Masters were
much more than a tradition), they knew of him, and struck coins
in his honor; coins bearing the image and superscription of this
Roman Caesar.

I said that he went to work like an Occultist: like one with an
understanding of the inner laws of life, and power to direct
outward things in accordance with that knowledge. Thus:--the
task that lay before him was to effect a complete revolution.
Rome could not go on under the old system any longer. That
system had utterly broken down; and unless an efficient
executive could be evolved, there was nothing for it but that
the world should go forward Kilkenny-catting itself into
non-existence. Now an efficient executive meant one-man rule; or
a king, by whatsoever name he might be called. But the tradition
of centureis made a king impossible. There were strongly formed
astral molds; and whoever should attempt to break them would,
like Caesar, ensure his own defeat. Whoever actually should
break them,--well, the result of breaking astral molds is always
about the same. H.P. Blavatsky said that she came to break molds
of mind; and so she did; but it was not in politics; and the
while she was laying her trains of thought-dynamite, and
exploding them gloriously, she was also building up fair and
glorious mansions of thought to house those made homeless. The
situation we are looking at here is on a different plane, the
political. You break the astral molds there; and they may be
quite worthless, quite effete and contemptible,--yet they are the
things which alone keep the demon in man under restraint. It is
the old peril of Revolutions. They may be started with the best
of intentions, in the name of the highest ideals; but, unless
there be super-human strength (like Ts'in Shi Hwangti's) or
superhuman wisdom (like Augustus') to guide them, as surely as
they succeed in breaking the old molds, they degenerate into
orgies,--blood, vice, and crime.

Augustus effected his revolution and kept all that out; he
substituted peace and prosperity for the blood and butchery of a
century. And it was because he went to work with the knowledge
of an Occultist that he was able to do so.

He carefully abstained from breaking the molds. He labored to
keep them all intact,--for the time being, and until new ones
should have been formed. Gently an