It may be remembered that in “The Great Thousand Years” I endeavoured to demonstrate the vibratory theory of history, whereby the life of society is conditioned by a rhythmical wave motion; curves rising and descending, inflexibly though with varying trajectories, the falling curve meeting at some point the rising curve of a future coming into being, the crossing points forming the nodes of history, and spacing themselves at five-century intervals either side the birth of Christ, or the year 1 A.D. In the same place I called attention to the correspondence in time (since the Christian era) between certain periodic manifestations of spiritual force, identical in nature though somewhat varied in fashion, and these nodal points; that is to say, the monastic idea as this showed itself in the first, sixth, eleventh and sixteenth centuries. This synchronism may be graphically explained thus, the thin line indicating the approximate curve of social development, the shaded line the monastic manifestation: [Illustration: A THE CURVE OF CIVILIZATION B THE CURVE OF MONASTICISM] It would appear from this that now, while the next nodal point is possibly seventy-five years in the future, the next manifestations of monasticism should already be showing itself. The curve of modernism is now descending as precipitously as did that of Roman Imperialism, but already, to those who are willing to see, there are indisputable evidences of the rising of the following curve. Whether this is to emulate in lift and continuance the curves of Mediævalism and of modernism, or whether it is to be but a poor copy of the sag and the low, heavy lift of the Dark Ages, is the question that man is to determine for himself during the next two generations.