In the same way, the varṇas must be regarded as sharp safeguards, as the very weapons that protect the country by carrying out their respective duties. In whatever ways we use them without breaking order and keep them safe, in just that way they must be practised and kept safe; but because they were used without limit or measure, as one pleased, things have fallen into such anarchy. So if one reflects just once on how sacredly the ancestors, great kings, excellent scholars and experienced great souls used them, were saved by them, and have guarded them all this time, it will become plain to the wise whether they are good or bad. If they were things that did the world nothing but harm, was it that those people had no intelligence, or that they lacked the education and learning of the present day? Were they simply naive? No, no! Their intelligence, their skill of understanding, their Ātma-vidyā, their power of research: search among people today, and not one in ten million will be found to match them. Living on roots and tubers, undergoing bodily hardship, holding the welfare of the world as their very life, they poured out all their strength: great renouncers, yogis and warriors. They were great ṛṣis who, desiring and longing for the true welfare of the country, strove head-on in every way. To wish for welfare in words while in deeds doing nothing but destruction, as people do today, is an art the ancients did not know. Such are today's new ideas and modern plans; their plans are castles in the air. What is theirs is known only to them; others do not understand it. While building goes on at one side, on the other side it keeps collapsing: mansions of fancy.