8 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 



philosophers of Hindostan, no less than to those of 

 Ionia, the salient and characteristic feature of the 

 phenomenal world was its chaugefulness ; the unrest- 

 ing flow of all things, through birth to visible being 

 and thence to not being, in which they could discern 

 no sign of a beginning and for which they saw no 

 prospect of an ending. It was no less plain to some 

 of these antique forerunners of modern philosophy that 

 suffering is the badge of all the tribe of sentient things ; 

 that it is no accidental accompaniment, but an essential 

 constituent of the cosmic process. The energetic Greek 

 might find fierce joys in a world in which ' strife is 

 father and king ' ; but the old Aryan spirit was sub- 

 dued to quietism in the Indian sage ; the mist of 

 suffering which spread over humanity hid everything 

 else from his view ; to him life was one with suffering 

 and suffering with life. 



In Hindostan, as in Ionia, a period of relatively 

 high and tolerably stable civilization had succeeded 

 long ages of semi-barbarism and struggle. Out of 

 wealth and security had come leisure and refinement, 

 and, close at their heels, had followed the malady of 

 thought. To the struggle for bare existence, which 

 never ends, though it may be alleviated and partially 

 disguised for a fortunate few, succeeded the struggle 

 to make existence intelligible and to bring the order 

 of things into harmony with the moral sense of man, 

 which also never ends, but, for the thinking few, 

 becomes keener with every increase of knowledge and 

 with every step towards the realization of a worthy 

 ideal of life. 



