ily to destroy all sense of personal
responsibility. The abdication of the personal ego is an easy way of
shifting the burden of guilt. The late Naryan Sheshadri declared that
one thing which led him to renounce Hinduism was the fact that, when he
came to trace its underlying principles to their last logical result he
saw no ground of moral responsibility left. It plunged him into an abyss
of intellectual and moral darkness without chart or compass. It
paralyzed conscience and moral sensibility.

It is equally impossible to reason ourselves into any consciousness of
merit or demerit, if we are moved only by some vague law of nature whose
behest, as described by Mr. Buckle, we cannot resist, whose operations
within us we cannot discern, and whose drift or tendency we cannot
foresee. It makes little difference whether we build our faith upon the
god of pantheism or upon the unknowable but impersonal force which is
supposed to move the world, which operates in the same ways upon all
grades of existence from the archangel to the mote in the sunbeam,
which moves the molecules of the human brain only as it stirs the
globules of sap in the tree or plant. It is difficult to see how, upon
any such hypothesis, we are any more responsible for our volitions and
affections than we are for our heart-beats or respirations. And yet we
are conscious of responsibility in the one case and not in the other.
Consciousness comes in with tremendous force at just this point, all
theories and speculations to the contrary notwithstanding. And we dare
not disregard its testimony or its claims. We know that we are morally
responsible.

6. Many philosophic systems, ancient and modern, have tended to fill the
world with gloomy pessimism. Pessimism is very old and very widespread.
Schopenhauer acknowledges his indebtedness to Gautama for much of the
philosophy which is known by his name. In Hinduism and Buddhism, as well
as in the teachings of the German pessimists, the natural complainings
of the human heart are organized into philosophical systems. There is in
all human nature quite enough of querulousness against the unequal
allotments of Providence, but all these systems inculcate and foster
that discontent by the sanctions of philosophy. The whole assumption of
"The Light of Asia" is that the power that upholds and governs the world
is a hard master, from whose leash we should escape if we can by
annihilating our powers and faculties, and abdic