Page:Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx.djvu/139

 Rh whose rulers held sway over the whole of Hindostan when the Aryans established their first colonies on the banks of the Saraswati. Later on we shall see that these Nâgás were originally Maya adepts, who in remote ages migrated from Mayach to Burmah, whence they spread their doctrines among the civilized nations of Asia and Africa. How else explain the use of the American Maya language by the Hindoos, calling Maya the material world? (Ma, "country;" yach, the vérêtrum of the ancestor, through which all living earthly things were produced.)

This query may be answered by another. Why do we find English customs, English traditions, English language, in America, India, Australia, Africa, and a thousand and one other places very distant from each other, among peoples that do not even know of each other's existence? Why, any one will say, because colonists from England have settled in those countries, and naturally carried there the customs, traditions, language, religion, sciences, and civilization of the mother country. Why, then, not admit that that which occurs in our day has taken place in past ages? Is not man the same in all times? Has not the stronger always imposed his ideas on the weaker? If in the struggle toward eternal progress, the most civilized has not always been physically victorious, history teaches that intellectually he has obtained the victory over his conqueror in the long run; proving, what has so many times been asserted, that mind is mightier than matter.

Civilization is indeed like the waves of the sea; one wave follows another. Their crests are not of equal height. Some are higher; some are lower. Between them there is always a trough more or less deep. The wave behind inevitably pushes that immediately before it, often overwhelms it.