the _College de France_.

What then, you may ask, do we find in that ancient Sanskrit literature
and cannot find anywhere else? My answer is: We find there the Aryan
man, whom we know in his various characters, as Greek, Roman, German,
Celt, and Slave, in an entirely new character. Whereas in his
migrations northward his active and political energies are called out
and brought to their highest perfection, we find the other side of the
human character, the passive and meditative, carried to its fullest
growth in India. In some of the hymns of the Rig-Veda we can still
watch an earlier phase. We see the Aryan tribes taking possession of
the land, and under the guidance of such warlike gods as Indra and the
Maruts, defending their new homes against the assaults of the
black-skinned aborigines as well as against the inroads of later Aryan
colonists. But that period of war soon came to an end, and when the
great mass of the people had once settled down in their homesteads,
the military and political duties seem to have been monopolized by
what we call a _caste_,[110] that is by a small aristocracy, while the
great majority of the people were satisfied with spending their days
within the narrow spheres of their villages, little concerned about
the outside world, and content with the gifts that nature bestowed on
them, without much labor. We read in the Mahabharata (XIII. 22):

"There is fruit on the trees in every forest, which every one
who likes may pluck without trouble. There is cool and sweet
water in the pure rivers here and there. There is a soft bed
made of the twigs of beautiful creepers. And yet wretched
people suffer pain at the door of the rich!"

At first sight we may feel inclined to call this quiet enjoyment of
life, this mere looking on, a degeneracy rather than a growth. It
seems so different from what _we_ think life ought to be. Yet, from a
higher point of view it may appear that those Southern Aryans have
chosen the good part, or at least the part good for them, while we,
Northern Aryans, have been careful and troubled about many things.

It is at all events a problem worth considering whether, as there is
in nature a South and a North, there are not two hemispheres also in
human nature, both worth developing--the active, combative, and
political on one side, the passive, meditative, and philosophical on
the other; and for the solution of that problem no literature
furnishes such a