186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pre-Buddhistic philosophy, rather than with the teachings of 

 Gautama, in so far as it postulates a permanent substance equiv- 

 alent to " Brahma " and " Atman " ; and that, in stoical practice, 

 the adoption of the life of the mendicant cynic was held to be 

 more a counsel of perfection than an indispensable condition of 

 the higher life. 



Thus the extremes touch. Greek thought and Indian thought 

 set out from ground common to both, diverge widely, develop 

 under very different physical and moral conditions, and finally 

 converge to practically the same end. 



The Vedas and the Homeric epos set before us a world of rich 

 and vigorous life, full of joyous fighting men 



" That ever with a frolic welcome took 

 The thunder and the sunshine," .... 



and who were ready to brave the very gods themselves when 

 their blood was up. A few centuries pass away and, under the 

 influence of civilization, the descendants of these men are " sick- 

 lied o'er with the pale cast of thought" frank pessimists, or at 

 best, make-believe optimists. The courage of the warlike stock 

 may be as hardly tried as before, perhaps more hardly, but the 

 enemy is self. The hero has become a monk. The man of action 

 is replaced by the quietist, whose highest aspiration is to be the 

 passive instrument of the divine Reason. By the Tiber, as by the 

 Ganges, ethical man admits that the cosmos is too strong for him ; 

 and, destroying every bond which ties him to it by ascetic dis- 

 cipline, he seeks salvation in absolute renunciation.* 



Modern thought is making a fresh start from the base whence 

 Indian and Greek philosophy set out ; and, the human mind being 

 very much what it was six and twenty centuries ago, there is no 

 ground for wonder if it presents indications of a tendency to move 

 along the old lines to the same results. t 



We are more than sufficiently familiar with modern pessimism, 

 at least as a speculation ; for I can not call to mind that any of its 

 present votaries have sealed their faith by assuming the rags and 

 the bowl of the mendicant Bhikku, or the cloak and the wallet of 

 the Cynic. The obstacles placed in the way of sturdy vagrancy 

 by an unphilosophical police have, perhaps, proved too formidable 

 for philosophical consistency. "We also know modern speculative 



* Many of the stoical philosophers recommended their disciples to take an active share 

 in public affairs, and in the Roman world, for several centuries, the best public men were 

 strongly inclined to Stoicism. Nevertheless, the logical tendency of Stoicism seems to me 

 to be fulfilled only in such men as Diogenes and Epictetus. 



