OF THF 



UNIVERSITY ' 



Functions of the Gods. 67 



action, destructive as it seems in appearance, the 

 building of the plain and the valley where men shall 

 live and love, where children shall be playing, 

 where horses shall graze, where corn shall grow 

 and ripen in the sunshine, and where, on the peace- 

 ful banks of the river, men shall worship the God 

 who made possible their happy life. 



We talk about the " cruelty of nature." L,et us 

 try and understand what this cruelty means. The 

 world now is inhabited. Crowds of men are here, 

 and lo ! the river, that made the habitation of the 

 valley possible and keeps it fruitful, now overflows 

 its banks and the mighty flood sweeps away village 

 and town, men, women, children, and cattle, and 

 only desolation is left behind. What is this ? Is 

 this horror a divine working ? What is this that 

 Varuna has done ? Varuna is working for evolution. 

 His thought is not fixed on the forms in which the 

 life is cabined, but on the life that is evolving with- 

 in them, which can make for itself new forms. 

 When those men are swept away, it is only the 

 breaking of the forms that happens ; the life up- 

 springs uninjured and set free ; for the body is the 

 prison-house of the evolving life, and if the prison 

 doors were never thrown open, we should be in jail 

 all our lives and make no progress for the future. 

 The God to whom form is nothing and life every- 



