Hayagrīva: He says..., but he says, "This attempt to escape from evil has ended in flight from the battlefield." He doesn't advocate this for an Englishman. In a typically British manner he quotes Alfred Lord Tennyson. He says, "We are grown men and must play the man strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield."
Prabhupāda: Rascal, at last you die. (laughter) You do not like to yield, but the nature kicks on your face and says you must die. That he does not like.
Hayagrīva: Well, at any rate he's dead now, so...
Prabhupāda: So therefore he is..., he is not surviving. He was...
Hayagrīva: He admits, he says, "This seems..."
Prabhupāda: Either you be Englishman or Frenchman or this man, you cannot survive. You have to succumb under the dictation of the superior nature. That is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā, that—I think Huxley read Bhagavad-gītā; he does not know-that,
- prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni
- guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ
- ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā
- kartāham iti manyate
- (BG 3.27)
This kind of conception, that "I shall survive, I am Englishman," this is a false egotism and bewildered soul. Whatever he may be, Englishman or this man or that man, he must die. That is the law of nature. So intelligent man first of all makes provision "How I shall not die." That is real business of human being. That is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā, that if one simply understands Kṛṣṇa, then he survives; otherwise one has to die.