APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 105 



the cosmic process necessarily brings on the mere 

 animal. In fact, civilized man brands all these ape 

 and tiger promptings with the name of sins ; he 

 punishes many of the acts which flow from them as 

 crimes ; and, in extreme cases, he does his best to 

 put an end to the survival of the fittest of former 

 days by axe and rope. 



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 refinement, 

 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. 



Two thousand five hundred years ago the value 

 of civilization was as apparent as it is now ; then, 

 as now, it was obvious that only in the garden of an 

 orderly polity can the finest fruits humanity is 

 capable of bearing be produced. But it had also 

 become evident that the blessings of culture were 

 not unmixed. The garden was apt to turn into 

 a hothouse. The stimulation of the senses, the 

 pampering of the emotions, endlessly multiplied the 

 sources of pleasure. The constant widening of 

 the intellectual field indefinitely extended the range 

 of that especially human faculty of looking before 

 and after, which adds to the fleeting present those 

 old and new worlds of the past and the future, 



