ETHICS AND EVOLUTION 323 



as in many passages of his writings generally, he 

 demonstrates that he was far ahead of his con- 

 temporaries in the breadth and intensity of his 

 moral nature, and in advance even of all except a 

 very few of those living to-day, 2,000 years after 

 him. Shelley among the poets of modern times, 

 and Tolstoy in these latter days, are others among 

 the eminent adherents of this holy cause. 



Wherever Buddhism prevails, there will be 

 found in greater or less purity, as one of the 

 cardinal principles of its founder, the doctrine of 

 the sacredness of all Sentient Life. But the 

 Aryan race of the West has remained steadfastly 

 deaf to the pleadings of its Shelleys and Tolstoys, 

 owing to the overmastering influence of its anthro- 

 pocentric religions. Not till the coming of Darwin 

 and his school of thinkers was there a basis 

 for hope of a reformed world. To-day the planet 

 is ripe for the old-new doctrine. Tradition is 

 losing its power over men's conduct and concep- 

 tions as never before, and Science is growing 

 more and more influential. A central truth of 

 the Darwinian philosophy is the unity and con- 

 sanguinity of all organic life. And during the 

 next century or two the ethical corollary of this 

 truth is going to receive unprecedented recognition 

 in all departments of human thought. Ignorance 

 and Inertia are fearful facts. They endure like 

 granite in the human mind. But the tireless 

 chisels of evolution are invincible. And the time 

 will come when the anthropocentric customs and 

 conceptions, which are to-day fashionable enough 



21 — 2 



