t all times but
especially under Vespasian; and above all, (3) the Theosophic
impulse whose outward visible sign is the mission of Apollonius
and Moderatus:--we find her ready to emerge into light in 96,
when Nerva came to the throne, instead of having to wait the five
more years for the end of the half-cycle;--although we may well
suppose it took that time at least for Nerva and Trajan to clear
things up and settle them. So we may keep this scheme of dates
in memory as indicative: a (rough) half-cycle before 29 B.C.,
that of dawn and darkest hour preceding it; 29 B.C. to 36 A.D.
daylight; 36 to 101, night and the beginnings of a new dawn.

And now we must turn to China.

Dusk came on in Rome with the death of Tiberius in A.D. 37; but
what is dusk in the west is dawn in the east of the world. In 35
Han Kwang-wuti had put down the Crimson-Eyebrow rebellion, and
seated himself firmly on the throne. The preceding half-cycle,
great in Rome under Augustus and Tiberius, had been a time, first
of puppet emperors, then of illegalism and usurpation, then of
civil war. Han Kwang-wuti put an end to all that, and opened, in
35, a new cycle of his own.

But there is also an old cycle to be taken into account: the
original thirteen-decade period of the Hans, that began in 194,
and ended its first "day" in 63 or so,--to name convenient dates.
I should, if I believed in this cyclic law, look for a recurrence
of that: a new day to dawn, under its influence, in 66 or 67
A.D., thirteen decades after the old one ended,--and to last
until 196 or 197. But on the other hand, here is Han Kwang-wuti
starting things going in 35, a matter of thirty-two years ahead
of time,--catching the flow of force just as it diminished in
Rome.--And this thirty-two years, you may note, with what odd
months we may suppose thrown in, is in itself a quarter-cycle.

Now cyclic impulses waste; a second day of splendor will
commonly be found a Silver Age, where the first was Golden: it
will often be more perfect and refined, but much less vigorous,
than the first. So I should look for the second "day" of the
Hans to come on the whole with less light to shine and less
strength to endure than its predecessor; I should expect a
gentleness as of late afternoon in place of the old noontide
glory. But then there is the complication induced by Han
Kwang-wuti, who started his cycle in 35.... or more probably
his half-cycle;--I should look for it to be no m