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 cheer out of the mind and rests like a pall upon every future prospect. Then this expectation for the future robs men of any ambition to remedy present evils. For, they naturally will say, "Why flee from ills which are pressing upon us and which by experience we have learned to endure, if it be only to contract greater troubles in their stead; for freedom from evil is an impossibility in this age?" Is it not, to a very considerable extent, the reason why there are so few whole-hearted reformers in India? Why should a man seek, at the risk of opprobrium and enmity, to root out of the country some accursed custom if his inherited belief in the inherent badness of the present era is still with him? He must feel that all his efforts will be worse than vain; for even if he and others may succeed in overcoming this custom, it will be only to give room to another that may be worse. Hence the universal apathy in the face of crying evils and damning customs; hence also the helpless "_cui bono?_" to every effort of others to help the land out of the deep pits of injustice and ancient ills. Out of this belief comes another equally portentous danger, viz. that of easily yielding to the temptations of the time, and of a readiness to participate in the common sins of the day. For, say many, are not these immoralities and evils an integral part of the time; and, if so, what harm is there in our partaking of them? Or, at least, is it not our best interest to harmonize ourselves with the essentially evil environment of our age rather than vainly to combat the sins of the day and to strive to no purpose to remove them?