with much effect afterwards. I felt that my
open partnership might even injure them more than it could help them;
for was it not always open to my opponents to say that I was a German,
and therefore could not possibly understand purely English questions?
Besides, there is another peculiarity which I have often observed in
England. People like to do what has to be done by themselves. It
seemed to me sometimes as if I had offended my friends if I did
anything by myself, and without consulting them. Besides, my position,
even after I had been in England for so many years, was always
peculiar; for though I had spent nearly a whole life in the service of
my adopted country, though my political allegiance was due and was
gladly given to England, still I was, and have always remained, a
German.

And next to Germany, which was young and full of ideals when I was
young, there came India, and Indian thought which exercised their
quieting influence on me. From a very early time I became conscious of
the narrow horizon of this life on earth, and the purely phenomenal
character of the world in which for a few years we have to live and
move and have our being. As students of classical and other Oriental
history we come to admire the great empires with their palaces and
pyramids and temples and capitols. What could have seemed more real,
more grand, more likely to impress the young mind than Babylon and
Nineveh, Thebes and Alexandria, Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome? And now
where are they? The very names of their great rulers and heroes are
known to few people only and have to be learnt by heart, without
telling us much of those who wore them. Many things for which
thousands of human beings were willing to lay down their lives, and
actually did lay them down, are to us mere words and dreams, myths,
fables, and legends. If ever there was a doer, it was Hercules, and
now we are told that he was a mere myth!

If one reads the description of Babylonian and Egyptian campaigns, as
recorded on cuneiform cylinders and on the walls of ancient Egyptian
temples, the number of people slaughtered seems immense, the issues
overwhelming; and yet what has become of it all? The inroads of the
Huns, the expeditions of Genghis Khan and Timur, so fully described by
historians, shook the whole world to its foundations, and now the sand
of the desert disturbed by their armies lies as smooth as ever.

What India teaches us is that in a state advancing towar