5.  Life and Change.

A peculiar phase of life is change which appears in the form of growth and decay.  Nobody can deny the transitoriness of life.  One of our friends humorously observed:  “Everything in the world may be doubtful to you, but it can never be doubted that you will die.”  Life is like a burning lamp.  Every minute its flame dies out and is renewed.  Life is like a running stream.  Every moment it pushes onward.  If there be anything constant in this world of change, it should be change itself.  Is it not just one step from rosy childhood to snowy age?  Is it not just one moment from the nuptial song to the funeral-dirge?  Who can live the same moment twice?  In comparison with an organism, inorganic matter appears to be constant and changeless; but, in fact, it is equally subjected to ceaseless alteration.  Every morning, looking into the mirror, you will find your visage reflected in it just as it was on the preceding day; so also every morning, looking at the sun and the earth, you will find them reflected in your retina just as they were on the previous morning; but the sun and the earth are no less changeless than you.  Why do the sun and the earth seem changeless and constant to you?  Only because you yourself undergo change more quickly than they.  When you look at the clouds sweeping across the face of the moon, they seem to be at rest, and the moon in rapid motion; but, in fact, the clouds, as well as the moon, incessantly move on.

Science might maintain the quantitative constancy of matter, but the so-called matter is mere abstraction.  To say matter is changeless is as much as to say 2 is always 2, changeless and constant, because the arithmetical number is not more abstract than the physiological matter.  The moon appears standing still when you look at her only a few moments.  In like manner she seems to be free from change when you look at her in your short span of life.  Astronomers, nevertheless, can tell you how she saw her better days, and is now in her wrinkles and white hair.

6.  Pessimistic View of the Ancient Hindus.

In addition to this, the new theory of matter has entirely over thrown the old conception of the unchanging atoms, and they are now regarded to be composed of magnetic forces, ions, and corpuscles in incessant motion.  Therefore we have no inert matter in the concrete, no unchanging thing in the sphere of experience, no constant organism in the transient universe.  These considerations often led many thinkers, ancient and modern, to the pessimistic view of life.  What is the use of your exertion, they would say, in accumulating wealth, which is doomed to melt away in the twinkling of an eye?  What is the use of your striving after power, which is more short-lived than a bubble?  What is the use of your endeavour in the reformation of society, which does not endure any longer than the castle in the air?  How do kings differ from beggars in the eye of Transience?  How do the rich differ from the poor, how the beautiful from the ugly, bow the young from the old, how the good from the evil, how the lucky from the unlucky, how the wise from the unwise, in the court of Death?  Vain is ambition.  Vain is fame.  Vain is pleasure.  Vain are struggles and efforts.  All is in vain.  An ancient Hindu thinker[FN#144] says: