Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/88

74 VI. THE DIGNITY OF SEX. the science of man or anthropology is fundamentally grounded in zoology.

Tennyson expressed the pious wish: "And let the ape and tiger die." That wish is never to be fulfilled. Woe unto humanity if that wish were ever^ to be fulfill- ed. The tiger-element has given rise to the " Kuru- kshetras " and " armageddons " of world's history. The wars of the Homeric and Valmikian epics, the Celtic sagas and the Teutonic Nibelungenlied, have repeated themselves epoch by epoch to demonstrate the progress of civilization through the manifestations of the tiger in man. War is a cosmic force — it is a sociological neces- sity. The " dignity of war " has been the verdict of universal history. It has yet to be frankly accepted as the first postulate of social philosophy. The " right " of war, the " sacredness " of war, the dignity of war, would, however; soon be current coin in human phraseology.

Likewise, the ape-element in man, his sexual impulse or sensuality, has a right to reverence which is no longer to be withheld by philosophers, statesmen, artists and educators. The dignity of sex is, infact, to be the principal plank in the platform of neo-positivism during the coming decades. And this inspite of the recent monkish con- clusion of an Austrian philosopher that "woman, as woman, must disappear,, and until that has come to pass there is no possibility of establishing the 'Kingdom, of God on earth,' and the pessimistic reflections of the older Schopenhauer and Hartmann.

The Psychology of Truth and Good, as well as of Beauty and Love, is at present oscillating between the extreme biological and extreme non-biological, the empiric-associational and the noumenal-transcendental, the