Page:Epochs of Civilization.djvu/12

PREPLC!. ix at an advanced stage of life, it was because the greater and more arduous battle ci such progress might be fought more energetically and more efficiently, because they held with Buddha—

One may conquer a thousand thousand nen in battle, a But he who conquers himself is the greatest vittOT.

The Western nations are "playingthe inan,' "tostrive, to seek, to find.' But the question naturally obtmdes itself, to find what I A spectator from the Oriental view-point, may well ask Of what avail is the victory of the Western gro wit man," which is achieved not by love, mercy and sell-sacrifice, but the path to which lies over the misery of countless fellow- creatures in all quarters of the globe, and which does not seoure the tranquillity and beatitude begotten of righteousness and concord, but brings in Sisyphean misery and disquiet engendered by unsatisfied desire, insatiable greed and perpetual discord?

But the objective as well as the subjective difficulties which have hitherto retarded the progress of the science of civilized society are being gradually diminished The patient and persevering explorations and researches of arc&ologists and philologists are bridging the gulf between the Past and the Present, and placing within the easy reach of the student of sociology the varied phenomena of the civilizations of antiquity. The close