Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.87

c8.87

Scarcely anywhere does the appearance of a country depend so completely on the activity or sloth of its inhabitants, as in these parts of India adjoining the Himalayas. The mountains send forth year by year inexhaustible volumes of water: whether for the benefit or for the destruction of the country depends solely on man's activity. Tracts of land which in times of unrest and thriftlessness are a swampy wilderness, the homes of pestilential vapours, may by a few years of regular and steady industry pass into a state of high and prosperous culture, and, if the causes of decline set in anew, return still more quickly to the state of a wilderness.