A Look Back

Are you not quite tired of my letters! I think you deserve a rest. Well, I shall not write to you anything new for some time. I want you just to think about what we have already done. We have rushed through millions of years in a few letters. Starting from the time when the earth was a bit of the sun, we saw how it separated and slowly cooled down. The moon then shot off. For long ages, there was no life. Then during millions and millions of years-have you any idea how long a time a million years is?-life grew very slowly. It is enormously difficult to be able to form an idea of millions of years. You are only ten years old and how grown-up and old you are! You are a jeune fille, n'est-ce pas? A young lady! A hundred years to you is a terribly long time. And then a thousand! And a million, which is a thousand times thousand! I am afraid we cannot get this in our little heads properly. We imagine that we are so important and little things annoy us and worry us. But what are these little happenings in the long history of the world? It does us good to read and learn something of these vast periods of history because we will not then worry about little things much.

Let us remember the tremendously long time during which there was no life at all; and then of the long time when there were only animals in the sea. There is no man anywhere on earth. The animals come and roam about for millions of years with no man to shoot and kill them. Let us remember the tremendously long time during which there was no life at all; and then of the long time when there were only animals in the sea. There is no man anywhere on earth. The animals come and roam about for millions of years with no man to shoot and kill them. And when at last man comes, he is a puny, tiny, little thing, the weakest of animals. Slowly in thousands of years, he becomes stronger and cleverer till he becomes the master animal on earth. All the other animals become his servants and slaves to do as he tells them.

Then we come to the growth of civilization. We have seen the early beginnings of it. We shall try to follow it in later times. We have not got millions of years to go through now. In our letters, we. have arrived at a period which was only about four or five thousand years ago. But we know more about these four thousand years than about the millions of years that went before. The history and growth of man really took place during these four thousand years. You will read about this history a great deal when you grow up. I shall only write a little about it, just to give you some idea of what has happened to a man in this little world of ours.

Source: http://indiragandhi.in/en/philosophy/letters/4