THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

358 The Harmony of Virtueof moral and spiritual evolution and the decline of the dharmaor established law of conduct from the satya to the kaliyuga isnot in reality a deterioration but a detrition of the outward formsand props of spirituality in order to prepare a deeper spiritualintensity within the heart. In each kaliyuga mankind gains somethingin essential spirituality. Whether we take the modern scientificor the ancient Hindu standpoint the progress of humanityis a fact. The wheel of Brahma rotates for ever but it does notturn in the same place; its rotations carry it forward.The animal is distinguished from man by its enslavement tothe body and the vital impulses. AÙanÀyÀ mÐtyuÕ, Hunger whois Death, evolved the material world from of old, and it is thephysical hunger and desire and the vital sensations and primaryemotions connected with the prÀÍa that seek to feed upon theworld in the beast and in the savage man who approximates tothe condition of the beast. Out of this animal state, according toEuropean Science, man rises working out the tiger and the apeby intellectual and moral development in the social condition. Ifthe beast has to be worked out, it is obvious that the body andthe prÀÍa must be conquered, and as that conquest is more orless complete, the man is more or less evolved. The progress ofmankind has been placed by many predominatingly in the developmentof the human intellect, and intellectual developmentis no doubt essential to self-conquest. The animal and the savageare bound by the body because the ideas of the animal orthe ideas of the savage are mostly limited to those sensationsand associations which are connected with the body. The developmentof intellect enables a man to find the deeper self withinand partially replace what our philosophy calls the dehÀtmakabuddhi,the sum of ideas and sensations which make us think ofthe body as ourself, by another set of ideas which reach beyondthe body, and existing for their own delight and substituting intellectualand moral satisfaction as the chief objects of life, master,if they cannot entirely silence, the clamour of the lower sensualdesires. That animal ignorance which is engrossed with the caresand the pleasures of the body and the vital impulses, emotionsand sensations is tÀmasika, the result of the predominance of thethird principle of nature which leads to ignorance and inertia. That