II EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 63 



sented the only way of escape from the endless 

 round of transmigrations. 



The earlier forms of Indian philosophy agreed 

 with those prevalent in our own times, in suppos 

 ing the existence of a permanent reality, or sub 

 stance, beneath the shifting series of phenomena, 

 whether of matter or of mind. The substance of 

 the cosmos was Brahma, that of the individual 

 man Atman ; and the latter was separated from 

 the former only, if I may so speak, by its pheno 

 menal envelope, by the casing of sensations, 

 thoughts and desires, pleasures and pains, which 

 make up the illusive phantasmagoria of life. This 

 the ignorant take for reality ; their * Atman 

 therefore remains eternally imprisoned in delu 

 sions, bound by the fetters of desire and scourged 

 by the whip of misery. But the man who has 

 attained enlightenment sees that the apparent 

 reality is mere illusion, or, as was said a couple of 

 thousand years later, that there is nothing good 

 nor bad but thinking makes it so. If the cosmos 

 &quot; is just and of our pleasant vices makes instru 

 ments to scourge us,&quot; it would seem that the only 

 way to escape from our heritage of evil is to 

 destroy that fountain of desire whence our vices 

 flow ; to refuse any longer to be the instruments 

 of the evolutionary process, and withdraw from the 

 struggle for existence. If the karma is modifiable 

 by self-discipline, if its coarser desires, one after 

 another, can be extinguished, the ultimate funda- 



