II EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 63 



sented the only way of escape from the endless 

 round of transmigrations. 



The earlier forms of Indian philosophy agreed 

 with those prevalent in our own times, in suppos- 

 ing the existence of a permanent reality, or " sub- 

 stance/' beneath the shifting series of phenomena, 

 whether of matter or of mind. The substance of 

 the cosmos was " Brahma,^' that of the individual 

 man " Atman "; and the latter was separated from 

 the former only, if I may so speak, by its phenom- 

 enal envelope, by the casing of sensations, thoughts 

 and desires, pleasures and pains, which make up 

 the illusive phantasmagoria of life. This the ig- 

 norant take for reality;' their " Atman " there- 

 fore remains eternally imprisoned in delusions, 

 bound by the fetters of desire and scourged by 

 the whip of misery. But the man who has at- 

 tained enlightenment sees that the apparent real- 

 ity is mere illusion, or, as was said a couple of 

 thousand years later, that there is nothing good 

 nor bad but thinking makes it so. If the cosmos 

 is just " and of our pleasant vices makes instru- 

 ments to scourge us," it would seem that the only 

 way to escape from our heritage of evil is to de- 

 stroy that fountain of desire whence our vices 

 flow; to refuse any longer to be the instruments 

 of the evolutionary process, and withdraw from 

 the struggle for existence. If the karma is modi- 

 fiable by self-discipline, if its coarser desires, one 

 after another, can be extinguished, the ultimate 



