n6 Evolution of Life and Form. 



In practical politics condemnation is useful as a 

 stimulus, as one of the agents for bringing about 

 the evolutionary changes, but the philosopher should 

 understand, and, understanding, he cannot con- 

 demn. The worst struggle that we may see, the 

 most terrible poverty, the most shocking misery, the 

 strife of man against man and nation against nation 

 all these are working out the Divine purpose, 

 and are bringing us towards a richer unity than 

 without them we could possibly attain. 



Let me take one instance which seems to be the 

 most hopeless of all the instance of war. What 

 can be more inhuman than war, what more brutal 

 and more terrible, stirring the angriest passions of 

 man and making him like a wild beast in his rage ? 

 Aye, but that is not all. Let us look at the life 

 within a soldier which has been evolved by this 

 terrible discipline without. What is that life learn- 

 ing as its vehicles are plunged into strife, into blood- 

 shed, into mutilation, into death? It is learning 

 lessons that without that stern experience it could 

 not learn, without which its evolution would be 

 checked and be unable to proceed; it is learn- 

 ing that there is something greater than the 

 body, something greater than the physical exist- 

 ence, something higher, more noble, more com- 

 pelling, than the guarding of the physical vehicle 



