era?

Let it not be assumed that the people of India in the days of the
Rishis of old were purer in life or loftier in ideals than many who
live in India to-day. It is true that such evils as caste, infant
marriage, and many similar customs did not exist at all in Vedic days.
But it is also true that not a few serious evils of ancient times,
such as drunkenness, human sacrifice, and slavery, do not generally
exist in India to-day.

But if we desire to know what the condition of the present time is, we
should compare this beginning of the twentieth with the beginning of
the eighteenth century and see what progress has been achieved. During
the last two centuries numberless crimes and evils have been swept
away. I need only mention such enormities as _thuggee_, _sattee_,
infant murder, etc., all of which were thriving even a hundred years
ago, but which are now things of the past. And what shall I say of a
horde of other customs that have cursed the land, such as infant
marriage, _thevathasis_, caste, all of which are beginning to yield to
the enlightened thought of the present and will soon be driven out of
the country?

I need not add, however, that all of these wonderful changes and
progress have not come out of Hinduism. They have been carried out and
are progressing in the teeth of constant opposition from the orthodox
defenders of the ancestral faith. It is the new light of the West that
has dawned upon India and has brought to it a new era. Even while the
people are insisting that they are in the midst of _Kali yuga_ and are
confident that the days are "out of joint," they are nevertheless
witnessing such a revolution in religious, social, and intellectual
life all around them that any people who were not under the blind
spell of the Hindu time-fallacy would rejoice with exceeding joy to
see it.

And herein do we find one of the great evils of this chronology: It
incapacitates the people to accept or to appreciate any blessing which
has or may come to them through religious and social advancement.
They think that everything must be bad, as a matter of course, in
_Kali yuga_, and so nothing can appear good to them, however
beneficent and beautiful it may be.

This conviction that things are now out of joint, and the settled
purpose that all will continue an unmixed programme of evil, has more
to do with the sad and universal pessimism of India than anything else
of which I know. It crushes all buoyancy and ch