148 Evolution of Life and Form. 



but also those of the far more sentient forms which 

 Ishvara has developed in the animal kingdom of His 

 world. We find men who wear the outer shape of 

 the Hindu, who have his colour, his form, his face, 

 who boast themselves of their descent from antiquity, 

 who hold themselves therefore in thought above the 

 western nations, forgetting the life of the Self in 

 this sentient creation, and nourishing their bodies 

 with the bodies of their lower brethren, without 

 showing any sense of the sacrifice made, or feeling 

 even a passing gratitude for the life which is given 

 for them. 



L,et us come back to the tracing of our forms. 

 Ishvara, brooding over the evolving forms, con- 

 tinues His patient work patient, that the form may 

 never be broken by an overstrain, but may be slowly 

 developed into a vehicle of the life that ensouls it. 

 In every form He lives, evolving it, but He limits 

 with illimitable patience His manifestation of life 

 to the poor capacities of the form, that it may grow 

 and not be destroyed. Do you remember an old 

 story of the ancient days, in which most of you 

 would be ashamed to acknowledge belief, for are 

 you not graduates and men of western knowledge ? 

 Though descendants from the old time, you have 

 naught to do with it, but I, who was trained in the 

 West, I have no feeling of shame in acknowledging 



