456 A BRIEF SURVEY OF HUMAN HISTORY

beginning, this is the reality behind our contemporary strug-
gles. Being engrossed each in his own part of the problem
we seem to have lost sigjht of the whole. Like individual
soldiers in a campaign we are obsessed with our own im-
mediate and fragmentary pre-occupations. Fighting for a
ditch here or a fence there appears to us the only purpose
of our existence; and it is not wrong that it should be so,
But the campaign is that of Humanity; our objectives are
Truth, Beauty, Goodness. In the long course of our history
we have not lost sight of our Goal, except partially and
occasionally. We are not to be content with the mere in-
tellectual appreciation of this tripple ideal, but we must
translate it into the facts of life for all mankind. In the
past ages Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, have been the dream
of the many, but the possession of only a few—individuals
or small groups. The aim of the Modern World is to make
them universal.

Science has established to-day the unity of our existence
—e.g., Newton by his discovery of the universality of gravi-
tation, Darwin by his theory of evolution, Einstein by his
contemplation of a space-time continuum, other scientists
by their observation of radio-activity suggesting that matter
is electricity. This is a more definite and demonstrable
apprehension of the Truth vaguely and intuitively visualised
by the World's earliest monists (like our own Vedantists).
The latent Beauty of our Universe was first dimly perceived
by primitive man. It aroused in him his aesthetic instinct and a
craving for artistic expression and satisfaction. The history of
art and literature on the one hand, and, on the other, the
larger attempts made in modern society to impart a touch
of beauty to everything concerning human life as a whole
—not only for the elite—are the ideals of Beauty. While
the history of " humanity "—at first the fruit of individual