Passage 17

In plain words

Well and good! For all, the welfare of the world is what matters most. But if wise people calmly inquire, ‘Has the world been able to stand even this much because of the varṇa system, or has this evil plight befallen it because the varṇa system has declined?’, and push these aside by the proofs of investigation, surely all should accept that. But if, instead, without inquiry, without investigating with the eye of Viveka, one condemns the varṇa system on the proofs of surmise, that cannot be borne. It is true, as some elders have said, that the varṇa systems have left the right path and taken a crooked one. But that alone does not make it just to drive the system out. To cut off the hands and feet on the ground that the feet are doing the work the hands should do, and the head the work the feet should do, is not good. What has lost its way in this manner, what has fallen out of order, one must try to put into practice; but to ruin the thing itself is to fall into injustice. Indeed, the root cause of so much anarchy is not that the varṇa system came into being. The cause is that the varṇa system was not nourished in the proper way. The varṇa system is God's prasāda. By not honouring it fittingly, by not conducting it on the right path, by using it as one pleased, it has led to ills of this kind.