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out, there would be no armies and no courts of law. You cannot
use armies if you love your enemies. You cannot use courts and
prisons if you forgive the criminals.
Between two and three centuries after Gautama the great
Hindu Emperor Asoka was so much impressed by his teachings that
he reformed the laws and abolished capital punishment. Eighteen
centuries after Lao-tze the great Chinese Emperor Hung-wu was so
impressed by his teachings that he did the same thing in China.
No self-styled Christian political leader or statesman has come even
that close to Christianity.
But all three of the great prophets of return had their followers,
great spirits who attempted to extend the Empire of Thought in the
direction already pointed out to them. The Spirit of Return had
lodged itself unshakeably in the minds of men, and was destined to
grow. Sankara developed the Buddhist system. Chuang-tze developed
the Taoist system, or, rather, unsystem. Plotinus attempted a synthesis
between Plato and Christ. But because of one extraordinary leap of
the imagination, I believe that the next important religious teacher
after Christ was the pseudo-Dionysius.
Writing in the fourth century, A. D., he not only established
the hierarchies of heaven and earth, which was a tremendous labor
of the imagination, but he went beyond them. Mter explaining that
the function of the Thrones, Dominations, Powers, etc., was to diffuse
and transmit the Divine Light which emanated from God, and which
in its pure state would be unbearable, he went on to say that behind
that Divine Light was an even more Divine Darkness.
The tremendous importance of this conception has not yet been
realized. Unless the Western mind can grasp the great truth, that
darkness, which destroys boundaries and dissolves geometry, is older
and better than light, and that Love and Forgiveness are better than
strife and hatred, it can never free itself from the illusions of
Zoroaster.
Zoroastrianism runs through all modem Western thought. Com–
petitive sport, like competitive business, is based on the belief that it
is better to struggle and win, however selfishly, than to surrender.
We lack the graciousness of surrender.
As
long as we accept white as
a symbol of good, and black as a symbol of evil, we are Zoroastrians
and cannot help going to war, because we cannot help believing that
