54 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 



I! 



fulness ; the unresting 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 fore 

 runners 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 subdued 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 refine 

 ment, 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. 



