i6a THE THRESHOLD OF EVOLUTION 



ladder of progress, that it may in like manner raise the next 

 evolution, that of government, to a high ideal of efficiency. 

 After this it will in the same manner withdraw its attention 

 again from government and devote them to the further advanc- 

 ing of religion, as Christ, its last redeemer, will again throw 

 renewed light of divine revelation through the overhanging 

 boughs of political love of wealth and power, which will in 

 turn make religion more influential in human ambitions. 



This incentive to religious advancement will in turn 

 be again sacrificed on the altar of the shrine of govern- 

 ment as feudalism and Christian forms of government are 

 evolved out of the debris of defunct forms of heathen order and 

 control that grew in the rank soil of idolatrous worship. So 

 again we find the Protestant Reformation supplants Catholi- 

 cism to permit of modern forms of democratic government. 

 These two veteran heroes, Religion and Government, are hence- 

 forth to meet a new and powerful adversary in Science, which 

 has been dawning on the horizon of evolution during these con- 

 tests and which is now to take birth as an active force in 

 the direction of law and order, and an important exponent of 

 the revelation of God as made visible by the hand of Fate 

 through the evolutions of nature. Hence at the time now 

 under discussion we find Buddhism has a tendency to make 

 God and Fate the same personality and to make divinity 

 subservient to humanity, a teaching which, under the influ- 

 ence of Persian astronomy, is to evolve religion a step further 

 by creating the belief in God as the inspirer, as well as the 

 ruler of mankind. In this manner is evolved and grows 

 the conviction of duty to God and one's neighbour; and out 

 of the hero-worship of the valiant men who led the fights 

 against hail, snow and rain, evolved the worship of heredity, 

 custom and caste, out of which grew the more powerful of 

 all the laws of evolution, that of the survival of the fittest 

 and the conviction that like begets like. 



Thus the Aryans surpass other races in giving honour where 

 honour is due, and at the same time make the law of hereditary 

 superiority one of the principal rules of their life in a more 

 marked degree than any other race. Through the spread of 

 the ancient beliefs of India and Persia, which evolved six truths 

 of divine revelation, viz., the revelation of One God, One Ruler 



