108 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. u 



capacity of the Greek mind — itF power of Helleniz- 

 ing whatever it touched — has here worked so effectu- 

 ally, that, so far as I can learn, no indubitable traces 

 of such extraneous contributions are now allowed to 

 exist by the most authoritative historians of Philoso- 

 phy. Nevertheless, I think it must be admitted that 

 the coincidences between the Heracleito-stoical doc- 

 trines and those of the older Hindu philosophy are 

 extremely remarkable. In both, the cosmos pursues 

 an eternal succession of cyclical changes. The 

 great year, answering to the Kalpa, covers an entire 

 cycle from the origin of the universe as a fluid to its 

 dissolution in fire — " Humor initium, ignis exitus 

 mundi," as Seneca has it. In both systems, there is 

 immanent in the cosmos a source of energy, Brahma, 

 or the Logos, which works according to fixed laws. 

 The individual soul is an efflux of this world-spirit, 

 and returns to it. Perfection is attainable only by 

 individual effort, through ascetic discipline, and is 

 rather a state of painlessness than of happiness; if 

 indeed it can be said to be a state of anything, save 

 the negation of perturbing emotion. The hatch- 

 ment motto " In Coelo Quies " would serve both 

 Hindu and Stoic; and absolute quiet is not easily 

 distinguishable from annihilation. 



Zoroasterism, which, geographically, occupies a 

 position intermediate between Hellenism and Hin- 

 duism, agrees with the latter in recognizing the es- 

 sential evil of the cosmos; but differs from both in 

 its intensely anthropomorphic personification of the 

 two antagonistic principles, to the one of which it 

 ascribes all the good; and, to the other, all the evil. 



