herself, in yet another birth. And she is still
only a woman, for she has not yet succeeded in raising herself by
merit into the condition of a man. And it may be long before she
succeeds. For it is easy to sink, but it is hard for any creature to
rise into a status of being superior to its own, and the women who
emerge into manhood are very rare. For the goodness that is synonymous
with real existence[41] is only to be found in those who have behind
them the accumulated effort and desert of ages, standing on a peak
loftier by far than any of thy father's snowy summits, which cannot be
attained in any single birth by no matter what exertions or
austerities. But when once any being has attained it, emancipation
dawns, touching it into colour more beautiful by far than any tints
the rising sun has ever thrown on newly fallen mountain snow.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 37: A very beautiful story in the MS., which has not yet
seen the light. The opinion of the deity is corroborated by that very
clever woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who says in one of her
letters from Constantinople that if women went without clothes, the
face would hardly count at all. Nearly all of them would gain
immensely by wearing a permanent veil, but the pretty ones would never
consent to it.]

[Footnote 38: Purusha is the philosophical term for the Primordial
Male, of which Prakriti is the female antithesis. The god is combining
Goethe and Swinburne: the "eternal feminine" and the "holy spirit of
man."]

[Footnote 39: See note _ante_, p. 47.]

[Footnote 40: A very short word for a very long process, and
untranslatable by any English equivalent. It means the whole system of
the laws of metempsychosis, running in a long chain forward into the
future, and back into the past.]

[Footnote 41: That is, _sat_ or _sattwa_ = goodness, or true being.]

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