Quite as much of the art, the literature and the philosophy of the greatest periods of civilisation has been wiped out and destroyed beyond recovery by these possessive struggles of the past as has been hazardously preserved and passed down to us through interludes of peace; nor have we any cause to think that in the future we shall be any wiser while our views as to possession show so little change. And that loss in beautiful production is but the symbol, the outward and visible sign of a loss immensely more great in flesh and blood and spirit, which has gone on--not only while wars were waged, but when (war being ended) dominance over the conquered was imposed as a condition of peace. Every nation that has made itself materially great on these terms, has done so on a _débris_ of perished loveliness which does not reach its full amount in the hour of the victors’ triumph; but goes on accumulating till that also which caused it is brought to the dust. It is many years, for instance, since we conquered India; and in so far as our dominion has saved it from other conquests and wars of native State against State, and creed against creed, our rule may have been beneficial--though I do not think that we ought to take our own word for it, or indeed anyone’s word except that of the native communities themselves and a native press, free and unfettered for the giving or the withholding of its testimonial. But one thing we assuredly have done: we have gone on steadily destroying the native arts and “mysteries,” and substituting for them our own baser code of commercialism and capitalised industry. And in so far as we have done this we have not possessed ourselves, but have dispossessed ourselves of the real beauties and values of Indian civilization; and, for the sake of trade-profit to our merchants and manufacturers, we hold in our hand a poorer India in consequence, and are the poorer possessors of it. All that poverty--poverty of invention, poverty of craft--is the product of a false ideal of possession, false to human nature, because quite obviously a cause of deterioration to those visible proofs of man’s well-being--the joyous labour of his hand and brain.