Is it your daily newspapers and periodicals, rags of a few
days; your fragile books bearing the records of all your grand
civilization, withal liable to become annihilated after a few meals are
made on them by the white ants, that are regarded as invulnerable? And
why should European civilization escape the common lot? It is from the
lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in
nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers; and these know
nothing of the arts, sciences, or languages except their own, and those
very imperfectly. The arts and sciences are like the phoenix of old:
they die but to revive. And when the question found on page 58 of
"Esoteric Buddhism" concerning "the curious rush of human progress
within the last two thousand years," was first propounded, Mr. Sinnett's
correspondent might have made his answer more complete by saying: "This
rush, this progress, and the abnormal rapidity with which one discovery
follows the other, ought to be a sign to human intuition that what you
look upon in the light of 'discoveries' are merely rediscoveries, which,
following the law of gradual progress, you make more perfect, yet in
enunciating, you are not the first to explain them.
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