long system, is whether it could forever
return upon itself after this fashion. Is there no _progress_ in time?
Is it true, in this sense also, that "there is nothing new under the
sun"? While other people are refreshed by the sense that they are
moving forward and upward in the fulfilment of some great destiny, are
ever adding new increments to their wisdom, and are rising higher upon
"their dead selves" to ever nobler achievements, is it right that the
people of this great land should be doomed to think that there is no
permanent advance for India, but that she alone must forever return
whence she started and repeat the weary cycle of the past?

As a matter of fact, no people can be thus tied down to any mechanical
order of time. Every race and nation is either making for progress or
for degeneracy. It will never return to its old moorings. The past has
told upon it. It has accumulated some wealth of knowledge, of
experience, of character, which, as the centuries roll, brings it
farther on in its career. It is true that a nation, like a man, may
have lapses by which it may fall down a step or more in the ladder of
its upward progress. But this cannot be a necessity of its nature or a
relentless law of its being.

This chronological system also accounts for much of the pessimism that
pervades the minds and depresses the heart of the people of India
to-day. It is everywhere claimed that the best things of India were
found in the remote past. But, you ask, will not the _Sattia
yuga_--the golden age--return again? Oh, yes, it is next in the
procession, we are told. But we must not forget that there are about
427,000 long years before this _Kali yuga_ comes to an end. Even
supposing that the doctrine of transmigration is true, and that the
soul of man must pass through many reincarnations; who can be expected
to hold on to courage and hope through nearly half a million years of
dreary existence? What India sorely needs to-day is a conviction that
she is moving onward--that there is but one _yuga_ in her calendar,
and that that is the _yuga_ of _opportunity to rise to higher things_.
Thus alone can she be stimulated to her best efforts and most worthy
activity.

In this connection we must not forget another aspect of these changing
and ever recurring ages of the _puranas_. Each _yuga_, _maha-yuga_,
and _karpa_ is followed by a period of more or less complete
destruction. The achievements of each period are forgotten, bec