| Wear
and tear is natural for everything that is constantly in use.
Even mountains must erode and crumble to the level of the earth
as the fleeting steps of time march down its slopes. Not only
gross substances in the outer world suffer thus from change
but even our inner emotions must slowly decay. The law of diminishing
utility in economics amply explains this phenomenon of erosion
even in our mental life and this is not all.
Even
the ideas and ideals have a knack of fading away as they wade
through the dusty storms and tussles of history. What was
conceived as a glorious tradition, as unquestionable faith,
a perfect ideal, an incontrovertible theory, a scientific
conclusion or a logical fact in the past, gets itself slowly
spoilt to be a bundle of superstitions, a meaningless show,
a dry exhibition, a purposeless belief, an idle hope or even
a logical absurdity, in the context of the changed factors
of more recent and modern times.
A
traditional religion of the past thus becomes, if not unfit
totally, at least ineffectual, in controlling, guiding and
directing the energies and enthusiasm of a reinterpretation
of timeless, immortal values becomes absolutely necessary.
Coins in circulation will have to be now and then withdrawn
by the mint and replaced by fresh ones of the same denomination
and royal stamp.
Cultural
ideas in circulation are a religion, and from time to time
a religion’s needs must change. They must put on fresh
robes and reappear on the stage of life to serve mankind.
But the values they preach are always the same, be they through
text books written in Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit or Pali. These
new arrivals were not destructive revolutions but they were
only constructive revivals.
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