Even the political aspect of his message--the only one I have touched on--is vital. It proclaims a truth that underlies all history: one, I suspect, that remains for our Theosophical Movement to impress on the general world-consciousness so that wars may end: namely, that the impulse of Nationalism is a holy thing, foundationed upon the human spirit: a means designed by the Law for humanity's salvation. But like all spiritual forces, it must be kept pure and spiritual, or instead of saving, it will damn. In its inception, it is vision of the Soul: of the Racial or National Soul--which is a divine light to lure us away from the plane of personality, to obliterate our distressing and private moods; to evoke the divine actor in us, and merge us in a consciousness vastly greater than out own. But add to that saving truth this damning corolary: _I am better than thou; my race than thine; we have harvests to reap at your expense, and our rights may be your wrongs:_--and you have, though it appear not for awhile, fouled that stream from godhood:--you have debased your nationalism and made it hellish. Upon your ambitions and your strength, now in the time of your national flowering, you may win to your desire, if you _will;_ because now the spirit is quickening the whole fiber of your national self; and the national will must become, under that pressure, almost irresistibly victorious. The Peoples of the earth shall kneel before your throne; you shall get your vulgar empire;--but you shall get it presently, as they say, "where the chicken got the axe": _Vengeance is mine, saith the Law; I will repay._ The cycle, on the plane to which you have dragged it down, will run its course; your high throne will go down with it, and yourself shall kneel to races you now sniff at for 'inferior.' You have brought it on to the material plane, and are now going upward on its upward trend there gaily-- "Ah, let no evil lust attack the host Conquered by greed, to plunder what they ought not; For yet they need return in safety home, Doubling the goal to run their backward race" [_Agamemnon,_ Plumtre's translation] The downtrend of the cycle awaits you--the other half--just as the runner in the foot-races to win, must round the pillar at the far end of the course, and return to the starting-place.--That is among the warnings Aeschylus spoke in the _Agamemnon_ to an Athens that was barefacedly conquering and enslaving the Isles of Greece to no end but her own wealth and power and glory. The obvious reference is of course to the conquerors of Troy. I have spoken of this Oresteian Trilogy as his _Hamlet;_ with the _Prometheus Bound_--another tremendous Soul-Symbol--it is what puts him in equal rank with the four supreme Masters of later Western Literature. I suppose it is pretty certain that Shakespeare knew nothing of him, and had never heard of the plot of his _Agamemnon._ But look here:--