A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

MAYA AND ILLUSION. 157hear that it is one of the features of evolution that it eliminates evil, and thjs evil being continuallyeliminated fromthe world, at last there will remain only good and goodalone. That is very nice to hear, and itpanders to ourvanities, at least of those of us who have got enough inthis world, who have not a hard struggle to face every day rand are not being crushed under the wheels of this so-calledevolution.It isvery good and comforting to them indeed.The common herds may suffer, but they do not care ;letthem die, they do not care for them. Very good, but yet thisargumentis fallacious from beginning to end. It takes forgranted, in the first place, that manifested good and evilin this world are fixed quantities. In the second place, itmakes a still worse assumption, that the amount of goodis an increasing quantity, and the amount of evil is aconstant quantity. So if evil is being eliminated [in thisway by what they call evolution, there will come a timewhen this evil will be eliminated and what remains will beall good. Very easy to say, but can it be proved that evilis a fixed quantity ? Is it not increasing all the time ?Take the man who lives in a forest, who does not knoweven how to cultivate the mind, cannot read a book, hasnot heard of such a thing as writing. Cut that man intotwenty pieces to-night, and to-morrow he is all right. Rana bayonet through his body and take it out, and he is all.sight again, while we, who are more cultured, get scratchedin the streets and die. Machines are making things cheap rmaking for progress and evolution, but are crushing downmillions that one may become rich, making one richer thanothe ;,and thousands at the same time poorer andpoorer, making slaves of whole masses of human beings.That way it is going on. The animal man has en joymentsonly in the senses, his pains and pleasuresare only in the