54 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. n 



fulness; the unresting flow of all things, through 

 birth to visible being and thence to not being, in 

 which they could discern no sign of a beginning 

 and for which they saw no prospect of an ending. 

 It was no less plain to some of these antique fore- 

 runners of modern philosophy that suffering is the 

 badge of all the tribe of sentient things; that it 

 is no accidental accompaniment, but an essential 

 constituent of the cosmic process. The energetic 

 Greek might find fierce joys in a world in which 

 *^ strife is father and king "; but the old Aryan 

 spirit was subdued to quietism in the Indian sage; 

 the mist of suffering which spread over humanity 

 hid everything else from his view; to him life 

 was one with suffering and suffering with life. 



In Hindostan, as in Ionia, a period of rela- 

 tively high and tolerably stable civilization had 

 succeeded long ages of semi-barbarism and strug- 

 gle. Out of wealth and security had come leisure 

 and refinement, and, close at their heels, had fol- 

 lowed the malady of thought. To the struggle 

 for bare existence, which never ends, though it 

 may be alleviated and partially disguised for a for- 

 tunate few, succeeded the struggle to make exist- 

 ence 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. 



