Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
said Heraclitus, is the father of all things, War is the king of all ; and the saying," like "most ^ KURUKSHETRA the apophthegms of the Greek thinker, suggests a profound truth. JErom_.^clash of material or other forces everything in this world, if not the world itself, seems to be born ; by ^ struggle of forces, tendencies,^rincijples, beings it seems to proceed, ever creating new things, ever d estro ying the old, marching one knows not very well whither, — to a final self-destruction, say some ; in an unending series of vain cycles, say others ; in progressive cycles, is the most optimistic conclusion, leading through whatever trouble and apparent confusion towards a higher and higher approximation to some divine apocalypse. However that may be, this is certain that there is not only._ no .construction, h^e without destruction, no harmony except by a poise oF'cmitendihg forces won out of many actual and potential discords, but also no continued existence of life except by a constant self-feeding and devouring of other life. Ou^ye^ bodily life is a constant dying and being reborn, the ^dy i tsel f a beleaguered city attocked by assail ing , protected by defending forces whose business is to devour eacff other anff this is only a type of all "otO: existence. “The command seems to have gone out from the beginning, “Thou shalt not conquer except by battle with thy fellows and thy surroundings ; thou shalt not even live except by battle and struggle and by absorbing into thyself other life. The fi rst law of this world _that I have made i s creation and preservation b y destru c- tion.“
Ancient thought acoy)ted tl^ starting-point so far as^ could see it by scrutiny of the universe. The old Upanishads saw it very clearly and phrased it with aiT^uncompronusing thoroughness which will have nothing to do with any honeyed glosses or optimistic scuttlings of the truth. H unge r that is Death, they said, is^he creator ancT master of ^is and they figured vital existence in the image of the Horse of the sacrifice. Matter they described by a name which means ordinarily food and they said, we call it food because it is devoured and devo urs creatures. The eater eating is eaten, this ^ the formula of the material world^ as Ihe Darwinians rediscovered when they laid it down that the struggle for life is the law of evolutionary existence. Modern science has only rephrased the old truths that had already been expressed in much more forcible, wide and accurate formulas by the apophthegm of Heraclitus and the figures emplo^ted by the Upanishads.
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.