128 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



nature is dictated by malevolence quite untenable. 

 A vast multitude of pleasures, and these among the 

 purest and the best, are superfluities, bits of good 

 which are to all appearance unnecessary as induce- 

 ments to live, and are, so to speak, thrown into the 

 bargain of life. To those who experience them, few 

 delights can be more entrancing than such as are 

 afforded by natural beauty, or by the arts, and 

 especially by music ; but they are products of, rather 

 than factors in, evolution, and it is probable that 

 they are known, in any considerable degree, to but 

 a very small proportion of mankind. 



The conclusion of the whole matter seems to be 

 that, if Ormuzd has not had his way in this 

 world, neither has Ahriman. Pessimism is as little 

 consonant with the facts of sentient existence as 

 optimism. If we desire to represent the course of 

 nature in terms of human thought, and assume that 

 it was intended to be that which it is, we must say 

 that its governing principle is intellectual and not 

 moral ; that it is a materialized logical process, 

 accompanied by pleasures and pains, the incidence 

 of which, in the majority of cases, has not the 

 slightest reference to moral desert. That the rain 

 falls alike upon the just and the unjust, and that 

 those upon whom the Tower of Siloam fell were no 

 worse than their neighbours, seem to be Oriental 

 modes of expressing the same conclusion. 



In the strict sense of the word " nature," it denotes 

 the sum of the phenomenal world, of that which has 



