Evolution of Life. 117 



from injury and even from death ; and the poorest 

 soldier who goes out on a campaign, who goes 

 through hardship after hardship, who finds him- 

 self frozen with cold or burnt up with heat, who 

 plunges through frozen river or toils across sandy 

 desert, who learns to preserve discipline and sub- 

 mission under hardship, who learns to keep cheerful 

 under difficulty, so that his comrades may not be 

 depressed, who is moved, not by the thought of the 

 body which is suffering, but by the great ideal of 

 the military renown of his regiment, and the safety 

 of the country which he is serving, who is learning 

 thus to sacrifice himself for an ideal, is developing 

 thereby qualities invaluable in lives to come. Need 

 I say this to you, who know the place of the Kshat- 

 triya in human evolution? Did Manu when he 

 described these different castes demarcate a caste 

 that had not its place in the evolution of life, that 

 had not something to teach ? Was not a man kept 

 in the Kshattriya vehicle until he had learned that 

 life was not dependent on the body, that life was to 

 be held at the service of the ideal, at the service of 

 the mother-land that gave him birth, of the king 

 who ruled him, and who to him stood, as to every 

 Hindu the king should stand, as an Avatara of God ? 

 He learned that when that king called him to the 

 battle-field, he had to give his body to mutilation 



