The distinction between Indian philosophy before and after Buddha is that the former is a grand movement towards attaining the aim of Indian thought by and in the Indian soul, and the latter the perpetual turning-up of new facets of a now crystallized and undevelopable thought-stock. The solutions are there, for good, though the fashions of expressing them change. The same is true of Chinese painting before and after the Han dynasties--whether we know it or not--and of Egyptian architecture before and after the beginning of the New Empire. So also with technics. The West’s discoveries of the steam-engine and of electricity are accepted by the Chinese to-day in just the same way--and with just the same religious awe--as bronze and the plough were accepted four thousand years ago, and fire in a still remoter age. Both, spiritually, differ _in toto_ from the discoveries which the Chinese made for themselves in the Chóu period and which in each instance signified an epoch in their inner history.[58] Before and after that time, centuries play a vastly less important rôle than decades and even years within the Culture, _for the spans of time are gradually returning to the biological order_. This it is that confers upon these very Late conditions--which to the people living in them seem almost self-evident--that character of changeless pageantry which the genuine Culture-man--e.g., Herodotus in Egypt and the Western successors of Marco Polo in China--has found so astonishing in comparison with his own vigorous pulse of development. It is the changelessness of non-history.