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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Creative Unity, by Rabindranath Tagore
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Creative Unity
+
+Author: Rabindranath Tagore
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2007 [EBook #23136]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE UNITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Irma Špehar and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+                            CREATIVE UNITY
+
+                                  BY
+
+                          RABINDRANATH TAGORE
+
+                      MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+                      ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
+                                 1922
+
+                      MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+                  LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MADRAS
+                               MELBOURNE
+
+                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+                      NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
+                        DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO
+
+                   THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+
+                                TORONTO
+
+                               COPYRIGHT
+
+                       PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
+
+
+
+
+                                  TO
+                          DR. EDWIN H. LEWIS
+
+
+
+
+                             INTRODUCTION
+
+
+It costs me nothing to feel that I am; it is no burden to me. And yet
+if the mental, physical, chemical, and other innumerable facts
+concerning all branches of knowledge which have united in myself could
+be broken up, they would prove endless. It is some untold mystery of
+unity in me, that has the simplicity of the infinite and reduces the
+immense mass of multitude to a single point.
+
+This One in me knows the universe of the many. But, in whatever it
+knows, it knows the One in different aspects. It knows this room only
+because this room is One to it, in spite of the seeming contradiction
+of the endless facts contained in the single fact of the room. Its
+knowledge of a tree is the knowledge of a unity, which appears in the
+aspect of a tree.
+
+This One in me is creative. Its creations are a pastime, through which
+it gives expression to an ideal of unity in its endless show of
+variety. Such are its pictures, poems, music, in which it finds joy
+only because they reveal the perfect forms of an inherent unity.
+
+This One in me not only seeks unity in knowledge for its understanding
+and creates images of unity for its delight; it also seeks union in
+love for its fulfilment. It seeks itself in others. This is a fact,
+which would be absurd had there been no great medium of truth to give
+it reality. In love we find a joy which is ultimate because it is the
+ultimate truth. Therefore it is said in the Upanishads that the
+_advaitam_ is _anantam_,—"the One is Infinite"; that the _advaitam_
+is _anandam_,—"the One is Love."
+
+To give perfect expression to the One, the Infinite, through the
+harmony of the many; to the One, the Love, through the sacrifice of
+self, is the object alike of our individual life and our society.
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+
+                                        PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                              v
+
+THE POET'S RELIGION                       3
+
+THE CREATIVE IDEAL                       31
+
+THE RELIGION OF THE FOREST               45
+
+AN INDIAN FOLK RELIGION                  69
+
+EAST AND WEST                            93
+
+THE MODERN AGE                          115
+
+THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM                   133
+
+THE NATION                              143
+
+WOMAN AND HOME                          157
+
+AN EASTERN UNIVERSITY                   169
+
+
+
+
+                          THE POET'S RELIGION
+
+                                   I
+
+
+Civility is beauty of behaviour. It requires for its perfection
+patience, self-control, and an environment of leisure. For genuine
+courtesy is a creation, like pictures, like music. It is a harmonious
+blending of voice, gesture and movement, words and action, in which
+generosity of conduct is expressed. It reveals the man himself and has
+no ulterior purpose.
+
+Our needs are always in a hurry. They rush and hustle, they are rude
+and unceremonious; they have no surplus of leisure, no patience for
+anything else but fulfilment of purpose. We frequently see in our
+country at the present day men utilising empty kerosene cans for
+carrying water. These cans are emblems of discourtesy; they are curt
+and abrupt, they have not the least shame for their unmannerliness,
+they do not care to be ever so slightly more than useful.
+
+The instruments of our necessity assert that we must have food,
+shelter, clothes, comforts and convenience. And yet men spend an
+immense amount of their time and resources in contradicting this
+assertion, to prove that they are not a mere living catalogue of
+endless wants; that there is in them an ideal of perfection, a sense
+of unity, which is a harmony between parts and a harmony with
+surroundings.
+
+The quality of the infinite is not the magnitude of extension, it is
+in the _Advaitam_, the mystery of Unity. Facts occupy endless time and
+space; but the truth comprehending them all has no dimension; it is
+One. Wherever our heart touches the One, in the small or the big, it
+finds the touch of the infinite.
+
+I was speaking to some one of the joy we have in our personality. I
+said it was because we were made conscious by it of a spirit of unity
+within ourselves. He answered that he had no such feeling of joy about
+himself, but I was sure he exaggerated. In all probability he had been
+suffering from some break of harmony between his surroundings and the
+spirit of unity within him, proving all the more strongly its truth.
+The meaning of health comes home to us with painful force when disease
+disturbs it; since health expresses the unity of the vital functions
+and is accordingly joyful. Life's tragedies occur, not to demonstrate
+their own reality, but to reveal that eternal principle of joy in
+life, to which they gave a rude shaking. It is the object of this
+Oneness in us to realise its infinity by perfect union of love with
+others. All obstacles to this union create misery, giving rise to the
+baser passions that are expressions of finitude, of that separateness
+which is negative and therefore _máyá_.
+
+The joy of unity within ourselves, seeking expression, becomes
+creative; whereas our desire for the fulfilment of our needs is
+constructive. The water vessel, taken as a vessel only, raises the
+question, "Why does it exist at all?" Through its fitness of
+construction, it offers the apology for its existence. But where it is
+a work of beauty it has no question to answer; it has nothing to do,
+but to be. It reveals in its form a unity to which all that seems
+various in it is so related that, in a mysterious manner, it strikes
+sympathetic chords to the music of unity in our own being.
+
+What is the truth of this world? It is not in the masses of substance,
+not in the number of things, but in their relatedness, which neither
+can be counted, nor measured, nor abstracted. It is not in the
+materials which are many, but in the expression which is one. All our
+knowledge of things is knowing them in their relation to the Universe,
+in that relation which is truth. A drop of water is not a particular
+assortment of elements; it is the miracle of a harmonious mutuality,
+in which the two reveal the One. No amount of analysis can reveal to
+us this mystery of unity. Matter is an abstraction; we shall never be
+able to realise what it is, for our world of reality does not
+acknowledge it. Even the giant forces of the world, centripetal and
+centrifugal, are kept out of our recognition. They are the
+day-labourers not admitted into the audience-hall of creation. But
+light and sound come to us in their gay dresses as troubadours singing
+serenades before the windows of the senses. What is constantly before
+us, claiming our attention, is not the kitchen, but the feast; not the
+anatomy of the world, but its countenance. There is the dancing ring
+of seasons; the elusive play of lights and shadows, of wind and water;
+the many-coloured wings of erratic life flitting between birth and
+death. The importance of these does not lie in their existence as mere
+facts, but in their language of harmony, the mother-tongue of our own
+soul, through which they are communicated to us.
+
+We grow out of touch with this great truth, we forget to accept its
+invitation and its hospitality, when in quest of external success our
+works become unspiritual and unexpressive. This is what Wordsworth
+complained of when he said:
+
+    The world is too much with us; late and soon,
+    Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
+    Little we see in Nature that is ours.
+
+But it is not because the world has grown too familiar to us; on the
+contrary, it is because we do not see it in its aspect of unity,
+because we are driven to distraction by our pursuit of the
+fragmentary.
+
+Materials as materials are savage; they are solitary; they are ready
+to hurt one another. They are like our individual impulses seeking the
+unlimited freedom of wilfulness. Left to themselves they are
+destructive. But directly an ideal of unity raises its banner in their
+centre, it brings these rebellious forces under its sway and creation
+is revealed—the creation which is peace, which is the unity of
+perfect relationship. Our greed for eating is in itself ugly and
+selfish, it has no sense of decorum; but when brought under the ideal
+of social fellowship, it is regulated and made ornamental; it is
+changed into a daily festivity of life. In human nature sexual passion
+is fiercely individual and destructive, but dominated by the ideal of
+love, it has been made to flower into a perfection of beauty, becoming
+in its best expression symbolical of the spiritual truth in man which
+is his kinship of love with the Infinite. Thus we find it is the One
+which expresses itself in creation; and the Many, by giving up
+opposition, make the revelation of unity perfect.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+I remember, when I was a child, that a row of cocoanut trees by our
+garden wall, with their branches beckoning the rising sun on the
+horizon, gave me a companionship as living as I was myself. I know it
+was my imagination which transmuted the world around me into my own
+world—the imagination which seeks unity, which deals with it. But we
+have to consider that this companionship was true; that the universe
+in which I was born had in it an element profoundly akin to my own
+imaginative mind, one which wakens in all children's natures the
+Creator, whose pleasure is in interweaving the web of creation with
+His own patterns of many-coloured strands. It is something akin to us,
+and therefore harmonious to our imagination. When we find some strings
+vibrating in unison with others, we know that this sympathy carries in
+it an eternal reality. The fact that the world stirs our imagination
+in sympathy tells us that this creative imagination is a common truth
+both in us and in the heart of existence. Wordsworth says:
+
+                              I'd rather be
+    A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
+    So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
+    Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
+    Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
+    Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
+
+In this passage the poet says we are less forlorn in a world which we
+meet with our imagination. That can only be possible if through our
+imagination is revealed, behind all appearances, the reality which
+gives the touch of companionship, that is to say, something which has
+an affinity to us. An immense amount of our activity is engaged in
+making images, not for serving any useful purpose or formulating
+rational propositions, but for giving varied responses to the varied
+touches of this reality. In this image-making the child creates his
+own world in answer to the world in which he finds himself. The child
+in us finds glimpses of his eternal playmate from behind the veil of
+things, as Proteus rising from the sea, or Triton blowing his wreathèd
+horn. And the playmate is the Reality, that makes it possible for the
+child to find delight in activities which do not inform or bring
+assistance but merely express. There is an image-making joy in the
+infinite, which inspires in us our joy in imagining. The rhythm of
+cosmic motion produces in our mind the emotion which is creative.
+
+A poet has said about his destiny as a dreamer, about the
+worthlessness of his dreams and yet their permanence:
+
+    I hang 'mid men my heedless head,
+    And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:
+    The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper,
+    Time shall reap; but after the reaper
+    The world shall glean to me, me the sleeper.
+
+The dream persists; it is more real than even bread which has
+substance and use. The painted canvas is durable and substantial; it
+has for its production and transport to market a whole array of
+machines and factories. But the picture which no factory can produce
+is a dream, a _máyá_, and yet it, not the canvas, has the meaning of
+ultimate reality.
+
+A poet describes Autumn:
+
+    I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
+    Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
+    To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
+    Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn.
+
+Of April another poet sings:
+
+        April, April,
+    Laugh thy girlish laughter;
+    Then the moment after
+    Weep thy girlish tears!
+    April, that mine ears
+    Like a lover greetest,
+    If I tell thee, sweetest,
+    All my hopes and fears.
+
+        April, April,
+    Laugh thy golden laughter.
+    But the moment after
+    Weep thy golden tears!
+
+This Autumn, this April,—are they nothing but phantasy?
+
+Let us suppose that the Man from the Moon comes to the earth and
+listens to some music in a gramophone. He seeks for the origin of the
+delight produced in his mind. The facts before him are a cabinet made
+of wood and a revolving disc producing sound; but the one thing which
+is neither seen nor can be explained is the truth of the music, which
+his personality must immediately acknowledge as a personal message. It
+is neither in the wood, nor in the disc, nor in the sound of the
+notes. If the Man from the Moon be a poet, as can reasonably be
+supposed, he will write about a fairy imprisoned in that box, who sits
+spinning fabrics of songs expressing her cry for a far-away magic
+casement opening on the foam of some perilous sea, in a fairyland
+forlorn. It will not be literally, but essentially true. The facts of
+the gramophone make us aware of the laws of sound, but the music gives
+us personal companionship. The bare facts about April are alternate
+sunshine and showers; but the subtle blending of shadows and lights,
+of murmurs and movements, in April, gives us not mere shocks of
+sensation, but unity of joy as does music. Therefore when a poet sees
+the vision of a girl in April, even a downright materialist is in
+sympathy with him. But we know that the same individual would be
+menacingly angry if the law of heredity or a geometrical problem were
+described as a girl or a rose—or even as a cat or a camel. For these
+intellectual abstractions have no magical touch for our lute-strings
+of imagination. They are no dreams, as are the harmony of bird-songs,
+rain-washed leaves glistening in the sun, and pale clouds floating in
+the blue.
+
+The ultimate truth of our personality is that we are no mere
+biologists or geometricians; "we are the dreamers of dreams, we are
+the music-makers." This dreaming or music-making is not a function of
+the lotus-eaters, it is the creative impulse which makes songs not
+only with words and tunes, lines and colours, but with stones and
+metals, with ideas and men:
+
+    With wonderful deathless ditties
+    We build up the world's great cities,
+    And out of a fabulous story
+    We fashion an empire's glory.
+
+I have been told by a scholar friend of mine that by constant practice
+in logic he has weakened his natural instinct of faith. The reason is,
+faith is the spectator in us which finds the meaning of the drama from
+the unity of the performance; but logic lures us into the greenroom
+where there is stagecraft but no drama at all; and then this logic
+nods its head and wearily talks about disillusionment. But the
+greenroom, dealing with its fragments, looks foolish when questioned,
+or wears the sneering smile of Mephistopheles; for it does not have
+the secret of unity, which is somewhere else. It is for faith to
+answer, "Unity comes to us from the One, and the One in ourselves
+opens the door and receives it with joy." The function of poetry and
+the arts is to remind us that the greenroom is the greyest of
+illusions, and the reality is the drama presented before us, all its
+paint and tinsel, masks and pageantry, made one in art. The ropes and
+wheels perish, the stage is changed; but the dream which is drama
+remains true, for there remains the eternal Dreamer.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Poetry and the arts cherish in them the profound faith of man in the
+unity of his being with all existence, the final truth of which is the
+truth of personality. It is a religion directly apprehended, and not a
+system of metaphysics to be analysed and argued. We know in our
+personal experience what our creations are and we instinctively know
+through it what creation around us means.
+
+When Keats said in his "Ode to a Grecian Urn":
+
+    Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought,
+    As doth eternity,...
+
+he felt the ineffable which is in all forms of perfection, the mystery
+of the One, which takes us beyond all thought into the immediate
+touch of the Infinite. This is the mystery which is for a poet to
+realise and to reveal. It comes out in Keats' poems with struggling
+gleams through consciousness of suffering and despair:
+
+    Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
+    Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
+    Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways
+    Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
+    Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
+    From our dark spirits.
+
+In this there is a suggestion that truth reveals itself in beauty. For
+if beauty were mere accident, a rent in the eternal fabric of things,
+then it would hurt, would be defeated by the antagonism of facts.
+Beauty is no phantasy, it has the everlasting meaning of reality. The
+facts that cause despondence and gloom are mere mist, and when through
+the mist beauty breaks out in momentary gleams, we realise that Peace
+is true and not conflict, Love is true and not hatred; and Truth is
+the One, not the disjointed multitude. We realise that Creation is the
+perpetual harmony between the infinite ideal of perfection and the
+eternal continuity of its realisation; that so long as there is no
+absolute separation between the positive ideal and the material
+obstacle to its attainment, we need not be afraid of suffering and
+loss. This is the poet's religion.
+
+Those who are habituated to the rigid framework of sectarian creeds
+will find such a religion as this too indefinite and elastic. No doubt
+it is so, but only because its ambition is not to shackle the Infinite
+and tame it for domestic use; but rather to help our consciousness to
+emancipate itself from materialism. It is as indefinite as the
+morning, and yet as luminous; it calls our thoughts, feelings, and
+actions into freedom, and feeds them with light. In the poet's
+religion we find no doctrine or injunction, but rather the attitude of
+our entire being towards a truth which is ever to be revealed in its
+own endless creation.
+
+In dogmatic religion all questions are definitely answered, all doubts
+are finally laid to rest. But the poet's religion is fluid, like the
+atmosphere round the earth where lights and shadows play
+hide-and-seek, and the wind like a shepherd boy plays upon its reeds
+among flocks of clouds. It never undertakes to lead anybody anywhere
+to any solid conclusion; yet it reveals endless spheres of light,
+because it has no walls round itself. It acknowledges the facts of
+evil; it openly admits "the weariness, the fever and the fret" in the
+world "where men sit and hear each other groan"; yet it remembers that
+in spite of all there is the song of the nightingale, and "haply the
+Queen Moon is on her throne," and there is:
+
+    White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine,
+    Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
+            And mid-day's eldest child,
+    The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
+    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
+
+But all this has not the definiteness of an answer; it has only the
+music that teases us out of thought as it fills our being.
+
+Let me read a translation from an Eastern poet to show how this idea
+comes out in a poem in Bengali:
+
+        In the morning I awoke at the flutter of thy boat-sails,
+    Lady of my Voyage, and I left the shore to follow the beckoning waves.
+        I asked thee, "Does the dream-harvest ripen in the
+            island beyond the blue?"
+        The silence of thy smile fell on my question like
+            the silence of sunlight on waves.
+        The day passed on through storm and through calm,
+    The perplexed winds changed their course, time after time,
+            and the sea moaned.
+        I asked thee, "Does thy sleep-tower stand somewhere beyond the
+            dying embers of the day's funeral pyre?"
+    No answer came from thee, only thine eyes smiled like
+            the edge of a sunset cloud.
+        It is night. Thy figure grows dim in the dark.
+    Thy wind-blown hair flits on my cheek and thrills my
+            sadness with its scent.
+        My hands grope to touch the hem of thy robe, and
+    I ask thee—"Is there thy garden of death beyond the stars,
+            Lady of my Voyage, where thy silence blossoms into songs?"
+        Thy smile shines in the heart of the hush like the
+            star-mist of midnight.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+In Shelley we clearly see the growth of his religion through periods
+of vagueness and doubt, struggle and searching. But he did at length
+come to a positive utterance of his faith, though he died young. Its
+final expression is in his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." By the title
+of the poem the poet evidently means a beauty that is not merely a
+passive quality of particular things, but a spirit that manifests
+itself through the apparent antagonism of the unintellectual life.
+This hymn rang out of his heart when he came to the end of his
+pilgrimage and stood face to face with the Divinity, glimpses of which
+had already filled his soul with restlessness. All his experiences of
+beauty had ever teased him with the question as to what was its truth.
+Somewhere he sings of a nosegay which he makes of violets, daisies,
+tender bluebells and—
+
+                That tall flower that wets,
+    Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth,
+    Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears.
+
+He ends by saying:
+
+                  And then, elate and gay,
+    I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
+    That I might there present it!—Oh! to whom?
+
+This question, even though not answered, carries a significance. A
+creation of beauty suggests a fulfilment, which is the fulfilment of
+love. We have heard some poets scoff at it in bitterness and despair;
+but it is like a sick child beating its own mother—it is a sickness
+of faith, which hurts truth, but proves it by its very pain and anger.
+And the faith itself is this, that beauty is the self-offering of the
+One to the other One.
+
+In the first part of his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" Shelley dwells
+on the inconstancy and evanescence of the manifestation of beauty,
+which imparts to it an appearance of frailty and unreality:
+
+    Like hues and harmonies of evening,
+        Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
+        Like memory of music fled.
+
+This, he says, rouses in our mind the question:
+
+    Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
+        Why fear and dream and death and birth
+        Cast on the daylight of this earth
+        Such gloom,—why man has such a scope
+    For love and hate, despondency and hope?
+
+The poet's own answer to this question is:
+
+        Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
+    Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
+    Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
+
+This very elusiveness of beauty suggests the vision of immortality and
+of omnipotence, and stimulates the effort in man to realise it in some
+idea of permanence. The highest reality has actively to be achieved.
+The gain of truth is not in the end; it reveals itself through the
+endless length of achievement. But what is there to guide us in our
+voyage of realisation? Men have ever been struggling for direction:
+
+    Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven
+    Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
+    Frail spells,—whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
+    From all we hear and all we see,
+    Doubt, chance and mutability.
+
+The prevalent rites and practices of piety, according to this poet,
+are like magic spells—they only prove men's desperate endeavour and
+not their success. He knows that the end we seek has its own direct
+call to us, its own light to guide us to itself. And truth's call is
+the call of beauty. Of this he says:
+
+    Thy light alone,—like mist o'er mountain driven,
+          Or music by the night wind sent,
+    Thro' strings of some still instrument,
+          Or moonlight on a midnight stream
+    Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
+
+About this revelation of truth which calls us on, and yet which is
+everywhere, a village singer of Bengal sings:
+
+    My master's flute sounds in everything,
+        drawing me out of my house to everywhere.
+    While I listen to it I know that every step I take
+        is in my master's house.
+    For he is the sea, he is the river that leads to the sea,
+        and he is the landing place.
+
+Religion, in Shelley, grew with his life; it was not given to him in
+fixed and ready-made doctrines; he rebelled against them. He had the
+creative mind which could only approach Truth through its joy in
+creative effort. For true creation is realisation of truth through the
+translation of it into our own symbols.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+For man, the best opportunity for such a realisation has been in men's
+Society. It is a collective creation of his, through which his social
+being tries to find itself in its truth and beauty. Had that Society
+merely manifested its usefulness, it would be inarticulate like a dark
+star. But, unless it degenerates, it ever suggests in its concerted
+movements a living truth as its soul, which has personality. In this
+large life of social communion man feels the mystery of Unity, as he
+does in music. From the sense of that Unity, men came to the sense of
+their God. And therefore every religion began with its tribal God.
+
+The one question before all others that has to be answered by our
+civilisations is not what they have and in what quantity, but what
+they express and how. In a society, the production and circulation of
+materials, the amassing and spending of money, may go on, as in the
+interminable prolonging of a straight line, if its people forget to
+follow some spiritual design of life which curbs them and transforms
+them into an organic whole. For growth is not that enlargement which
+is merely adding to the dimensions of incompleteness. Growth is the
+movement of a whole towards a yet fuller wholeness. Living things
+start with this wholeness from the beginning of their career. A child
+has its own perfection as a child; it would be ugly if it appeared as
+an unfinished man. Life is a continual process of synthesis, and not
+of additions. Our activities of production and enjoyment of wealth
+attain that spirit of wholeness when they are blended with a creative
+ideal. Otherwise they have the insane aspect of the eternally
+unfinished; they become like locomotive engines which have railway
+lines but no stations; which rush on towards a collision of
+uncontrolled forces or to a sudden breakdown of the overstrained
+machinery.
+
+Through creation man expresses his truth; through that expression he
+gains back his truth in its fulness. Human society is for the best
+expression of man, and that expression, according to its perfection,
+leads him to the full realisation of the divine in humanity. When that
+expression is obscure, then his faith in the Infinite that is within
+him becomes weak; then his aspiration cannot go beyond the idea of
+success. His faith in the Infinite is creative; his desire for success
+is constructive; one is his home, and the other is his office. With
+the overwhelming growth of necessity, civilisation becomes a gigantic
+office to which the home is a mere appendix. The predominance of the
+pursuit of success gives to society the character of what we call
+_Shudra_ in India. In fighting a battle, the _Kshatriya_, the noble
+knight, followed his honour for his ideal, which was greater than
+victory itself; but the mercenary _Shudra_ has success for his object.
+The name Shudra symbolises a man who has no margin round him beyond
+his bare utility. The word denotes a classification which includes all
+naked machines that have lost their completeness of humanity, be their
+work manual or intellectual. They are like walking stomachs or brains,
+and we feel, in pity, urged to call on God and cry, "Cover them up for
+mercy's sake with some veil of beauty and life!"
+
+When Shelley in his view of the world realised the Spirit of Beauty,
+which is the vision of the Infinite, he thus uttered his faith:
+
+          Never joy illumed my brow
+    Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
+          This world from its dark slavery;
+          That thou,—O awful Loveliness,—
+    Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.
+
+This was his faith in the Infinite. It led his aspiration towards the
+region of freedom and perfection which was beyond the immediate and
+above the successful. This faith in God, this faith in the reality of
+the ideal of perfection, has built up all that is great in the human
+world. To keep indefinitely walking on, along a zigzag course of
+change, is negative and barren. A mere procession of notes does not
+make music; it is only when we have in the heart of the march of
+sounds some musical idea that it creates song. Our faith in the
+infinite reality of Perfection is that musical idea, and there is that
+one great creative force in our civilisation. When it wakens not, then
+our faith in money, in material power, takes its place; it fights and
+destroys, and in a brilliant fireworks of star-mimicry suddenly
+exhausts itself and dies in ashes and smoke.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+Men of great faith have always called us to wake up to great
+expectations, and the prudent have always laughed at them and said
+that these did not belong to reality. But the poet in man knows that
+reality is a creation, and human reality has to be called forth from
+its obscure depth by man's faith which is creative. There was a day
+when the human reality was the brutal reality. That was the only
+capital we had with which to begin our career. But age after age
+there has come to us the call of faith, which said against all the
+evidence of fact: "You are more than you appear to be, more than your
+circumstances seem to warrant. You are to attain the impossible, you
+are immortal." The unbelievers had laughed and tried to kill the
+faith. But faith grew stronger with the strength of martyrdom and at
+her bidding higher realities have been created over the strata of the
+lower. Has not a new age come to-day, borne by thunder-clouds, ushered
+in by a universal agony of suffering? Are we not waiting to-day for a
+great call of faith, which will say to us: "Come out of your present
+limitations. You are to attain the impossible, you are immortal"? The
+nations who are not prepared to accept it, who have all their trust in
+their present machines of system, and have no thought or space to
+spare to welcome the sudden guest who comes as the messenger of
+emancipation, are bound to court defeat whatever may be their present
+wealth and power.
+
+This great world, where it is a creation, an expression of the
+infinite—where its morning sings of joy to the newly awakened life,
+and its evening stars sing to the traveller, weary and worn, of the
+triumph of life in a new birth across death,—has its call for us.
+The call has ever roused the creator in man, and urged him to reveal
+the truth, to reveal the Infinite in himself. It is ever claiming from
+us, in our own creations, co-operation with God, reminding us of our
+divine nature, which finds itself in freedom of spirit. Our society
+exists to remind us, through its various voices, that the ultimate
+truth in man is not in his intellect or his possessions; it is in his
+illumination of mind, in his extension of sympathy across all barriers
+of caste and colour; in his recognition of the world, not merely as a
+storehouse of power, but as a habitation of man's spirit, with its
+eternal music of beauty and its inner light of the divine
+presence.
+
+
+
+
+                          THE CREATIVE IDEAL
+
+
+In an old Sanskrit book there is a verse which describes the essential
+elements of a picture. The first in order is _Vrúpa-bhédáh_—"separateness
+of forms." Forms are many, forms are different, each of them having
+its limits. But if this were absolute, if all forms remained
+obstinately separate, then there would be a fearful loneliness of
+multitude. But the varied forms, in their very separateness, must
+carry something which indicates the paradox of their ultimate unity,
+otherwise there would be no creation.
+
+So in the same verse, after the enumeration of separateness comes that
+of _Pramānāni_—proportions. Proportions indicate relationship,
+the principle of mutual accommodation. A leg dismembered from the body
+has the fullest licence to make a caricature of itself. But, as a
+member of the body, it has its responsibility to the living unity
+which rules the body; it must behave properly, it must keep its
+proportion. If, by some monstrous chance of physiological
+profiteering, it could outgrow by yards its fellow-stalker, then we
+know what a picture it would offer to the spectator and what
+embarrassment to the body itself. Any attempt to overcome the law of
+proportion altogether and to assert absolute separateness is
+rebellion; it means either running the gauntlet of the rest, or
+remaining segregated.
+
+The same Sanskrit word _Pramānāni_, which in a book of æsthetics
+means proportions, in a book of logic means the proofs by which the
+truth of a proposition is ascertained. All proofs of truth are
+credentials of relationship. Individual facts have to produce such
+passports to show that they are not expatriated, that they are not a
+break in the unity of the whole. The logical relationship present in
+an intellectual proposition, and the æsthetic relationship indicated
+in the proportions of a work of art, both agree in one thing. They
+affirm that truth consists, not in facts, but in harmony of facts. Of
+this fundamental note of reality it is that the poet has said, "Beauty
+is truth, truth beauty."
+
+Proportions, which prove relativity, form the outward language of
+creative ideals. A crowd of men is desultory, but in a march of
+soldiers every man keeps his proportion of time and space and relative
+movement, which makes him one with the whole vast army. But this is
+not all. The creation of an army has, for its inner principle, one
+single idea of the General. According to the nature of that ruling
+idea, a production is either a work of art or a mere construction. All
+the materials and regulations of a joint-stock company have the unity
+of an inner motive. But the expression of this unity itself is not the
+end; it ever indicates an ulterior purpose. On the other hand, the
+revelation of a work of art is a fulfilment in itself.
+
+The consciousness of personality, which is the consciousness of unity
+in ourselves, becomes prominently distinct when coloured by joy or
+sorrow, or some other emotion. It is like the sky, which is visible
+because it is blue, and which takes different aspect with the change
+of colours. In the creation of art, therefore, the energy of an
+emotional ideal is necessary; as its unity is not like that of a
+crystal, passive and inert, but actively expressive. Take, for
+example, the following verse:
+
+    Oh, fly not Pleasure, pleasant-hearted Pleasure,
+    Fold me thy wings, I prithee, yet and stay.
+        For my heart no measure
+        Knows, nor other treasure
+    To buy a garland for my love to-day.
+
+    And thou too, Sorrow, tender-hearted Sorrow,
+    Thou grey-eyed mourner, fly not yet away.
+        For I fain would borrow
+        Thy sad weeds to-morrow,
+    To make a mourning for love's yesterday.
+
+The words in this quotation, merely showing the metre, would have no
+appeal to us; with all its perfection and its proportion, rhyme and
+cadence, it would only be a construction. But when it is the outer
+body of an inner idea it assumes a personality. The idea flows through
+the rhythm, permeates the words and throbs in their rise and fall. On
+the other hand, the mere idea of the above-quoted poem, stated in
+unrhythmic prose, would represent only a fact, inertly static, which
+would not bear repetition. But the emotional idea, incarnated in a
+rhythmic form, acquires the dynamic quality needed for those things
+which take part in the world's eternal pageantry.
+
+Take the following doggerel:
+
+    Thirty days hath September,
+    April, June, and November.
+
+The metre is there, and it simulates the movement of life. But it
+finds no synchronous response in the metre of our heart-beats; it has
+not in its centre the living idea which creates for itself an
+indivisible unity. It is like a bag which is convenient, and not like
+a body which is inevitable.
+
+This truth, implicit in our own works of art, gives us the clue to the
+mystery of creation. We find that the endless rhythms of the world are
+not merely constructive; they strike our own heart-strings and produce
+music.
+
+Therefore it is we feel that this world is a creation; that in its
+centre there is a living idea which reveals itself in an eternal
+symphony, played on innumerable instruments, all keeping perfect time.
+We know that this great world-verse, that runs from sky to sky, is not
+made for the mere enumeration of facts—it is not "Thirty days hath
+September"—it has its direct revelation in our delight. That delight
+gives us the key to the truth of existence; it is personality acting
+upon personalities through incessant manifestations. The solicitor
+does not sing to his client, but the bridegroom sings to his bride.
+And when our soul is stirred by the song, we know it claims no fees
+from us; but it brings the tribute of love and a call from the
+bridegroom.
+
+It may be said that in pictorial and other arts there are some designs
+that are purely decorative and apparently have no living and inner
+ideal to express. But this cannot be true. These decorations carry the
+emotional motive of the artist, which says: "I find joy in my
+creation; it is good." All the language of joy is beauty. It is
+necessary to note, however, that joy is not pleasure, and beauty not
+mere prettiness. Joy is the outcome of detachment from self and lives
+in freedom of spirit. Beauty is that profound expression of reality
+which satisfies our hearts without any other allurements but its own
+ultimate value. When in some pure moments of ecstasy we realise this
+in the world around us, we see the world, not as merely existing, but
+as decorated in its forms, sounds, colours and lines; we feel in our
+hearts that there is One who through all things proclaims: "I have joy
+in my creation."
+
+That is why the Sanskrit verse has given us for the essential elements
+of a picture, not only the manifoldness of forms and the unity of
+their proportions, but also _bhávah_, the emotional idea.
+
+It is needless to say that upon a mere expression of emotion—even the
+best expression of it—no criterion of art can rest. The following
+poem is described by the poet as "An earnest Suit to his unkind
+Mistress":
+
+    And wilt thou leave me thus?
+    Say nay, say nay, for shame!
+    To save thee from the blame
+    Of all my grief and grame.
+    And wilt thou leave me thus?
+        Say nay! say nay!
+
+I am sure the poet would not be offended if I expressed my doubts
+about the earnestness of his appeal, or the truth of his avowed
+necessity. He is responsible for the lyric and not for the sentiment,
+which is mere material. The fire assumes different colours according
+to the fuel used; but we do not discuss the fuel, only the flames. A
+lyric is indefinably more than the sentiment expressed in it, as a
+rose is more than its substance. Let us take a poem in which the
+earnestness of sentiment is truer and deeper than the one I have
+quoted above:
+
+                  The sun,
+    Closing his benediction,
+    Sinks, and the darkening air
+    Thrills with the sense of the triumphing night,—
+    Night with her train of stars
+    And her great gift of sleep.
+        So be my passing!
+
+    My task accomplished and the long day done,
+    My wages taken, and in my heart
+    Some late lark singing,
+    Let me be gathered to the quiet West,
+    The sundown splendid and serene,
+        Death.
+
+The sentiment expressed in this poem is a subject for a psychologist.
+But for a poem the subject is completely merged in its poetry, like
+carbon in a living plant which the lover of plants ignores, leaving it
+for a charcoal-burner to seek.
+
+This is why, when some storm of feeling sweeps across the country, art
+is under a disadvantage. In such an atmosphere the boisterous passion
+breaks through the cordon of harmony and thrusts itself forward as the
+subject, which with its bulk and pressure dethrones the unity of
+creation. For a similar reason most of the hymns used in churches
+suffer from lack of poetry. For in them the deliberate subject,
+assuming the first importance, benumbs or kills the poem. Most
+patriotic poems have the same deficiency. They are like hill streams
+born of sudden showers, which are more proud of their rocky beds than
+of their water currents; in them the athletic and arrogant subject
+takes it for granted that the poem is there to give it occasion to
+display its powers. The subject is the material wealth for the sake of
+which poetry should never be tempted to barter her soul, even though
+the temptation should come in the name and shape of public good or
+some usefulness. Between the artist and his art must be that perfect
+detachment which is the pure medium of love. He must never make use of
+this love except for its own perfect expression.
+
+In everyday life our personality moves in a narrow circle of immediate
+self-interest. And therefore our feelings and events, within that
+short range, become prominent subjects for ourselves. In their
+vehement self-assertion they ignore their unity with the All. They
+rise up like obstructions and obscure their own background. But art
+gives our personality the disinterested freedom of the eternal, there
+to find it in its true perspective. To see our own home in flames is
+not to see fire in its verity. But the fire in the stars is the fire
+in the heart of the Infinite; there, it is the script of creation.
+
+Matthew Arnold, in his poem addressed to a nightingale, sings:
+
+    Hark! ah, the nightingale—
+    The tawny-throated!
+    Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
+    What triumph! hark!—what pain!
+
+But pain, when met within the boundaries of limited reality, repels
+and hurts; it is discordant with the narrow scope of life. But the
+pain of some great martyrdom has the detachment of eternity. It
+appears in all its majesty, harmonious in the context of everlasting
+life; like the thunder-flash in the stormy sky, not on the laboratory
+wire. Pain on that scale has its harmony in great love; for by hurting
+love it reveals the infinity of love in all its truth and beauty. On
+the other hand, the pain involved in business insolvency is
+discordant; it kills and consumes till nothing remains but ashes.
+
+The poet sings again:
+
+    How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
+    Eternal Passion!
+    Eternal Pain!
+
+And the truth of pain in eternity has been sung by those Vedic poets
+who had said, "From joy has come forth all creation." They say:
+
+    Sa tapas tapatvá sarvam asrajata Yadidam kincha.
+
+    (God from the heat of his pain created all that there is.)
+
+The sacrifice, which is in the heart of creation, is both joy and pain
+at the same moment. Of this sings a village mystic in Bengal:
+
+                        My eyes drown in the darkness of joy,
+    My heart, like a lotus, closes its petals in the rapture of the
+        dark night.
+
+That song speaks of a joy which is deep like the blue sea, endless
+like the blue sky; which has the magnificence of the night, and in its
+limitless darkness enfolds the radiant worlds in the awfulness of
+peace; it is the unfathomed joy in which all sufferings are made one.
+
+A poet of mediæval India tells us about his source of inspiration in a
+poem containing a question and an answer:
+
+    Where were your songs, my bird, when you spent your nights in the nest?
+    Was not all your pleasure stored therein?
+    What makes you lose your heart to the sky, the sky that is limitless?
+
+The bird answers:
+
+    I had my pleasure while I rested within bounds.
+    When I soared into the limitless, I found my songs!
+
+To detach the individual idea from its confinement of everyday facts
+and to give its soaring wings the freedom of the universal: this is
+the function of poetry. The ambition of Macbeth, the jealousy of
+Othello, would be at best sensational in police court proceedings; but
+in Shakespeare's dramas they are carried among the flaming
+constellations where creation throbs with Eternal Passion, Eternal
+Pain.
+
+
+
+
+                      THE RELIGION OF THE FOREST
+
+                                   I
+
+
+We stand before this great world. The truth of our life depends upon
+our attitude of mind towards it—an attitude which is formed by our
+habit of dealing with it according to the special circumstance of our
+surroundings and our temperaments. It guides our attempts to establish
+relations with the universe either by conquest or by union, either
+through the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy. And
+thus, in our realisation of the truth of existence, we put our
+emphasis either upon the principle of dualism or upon the principle of
+unity.
+
+The Indian sages have held in the Upanishads that the emancipation of
+our soul lies in its realising the ultimate truth of unity. They said:
+
+    Ishávásyam idam sarvam yat kinch jagatyám jagat.
+    Yéna tyakténa bhunjithá má graha kasyasvit dhanam.
+
+     (Know all that moves in this moving world as enveloped by
+     God; and find enjoyment through renunciation, not through
+     greed of possession.)
+
+The meaning of this is, that, when we know the multiplicity of things
+as the final truth, we try to augment ourselves by the external
+possession of them; but, when we know the Infinite Soul as the final
+truth, then through our union with it we realise the joy of our soul.
+Therefore it has been said of those who have attained their
+fulfilment,—"sarvam evá vishanti" (they enter into all things). Their
+perfect relation with this world is the relation of union.
+
+This ideal of perfection preached by the forest-dwellers of ancient
+India runs through the heart of our classical literature and still
+dominates our mind. The legends related in our epics cluster under the
+forest shade bearing all through their narrative the message of the
+forest-dwellers. Our two greatest classical dramas find their
+background in scenes of the forest hermitage, which are permeated by
+the association of these sages.
+
+The history of the Northmen of Europe is resonant with the music of
+the sea. That sea is not merely topographical in its significance, but
+represents certain ideals of life which still guide the history and
+inspire the creations of that race. In the sea, nature presented
+herself to those men in her aspect of a danger, a barrier which
+seemed to be at constant war with the land and its children. The sea
+was the challenge of untamed nature to the indomitable human soul. And
+man did not flinch; he fought and won, and the spirit of fight
+continued in him. This fight he still maintains; it is the fight
+against disease and poverty, tyranny of matter and of man.
+
+This refers to a people who live by the sea, and ride on it as on a
+wild, champing horse, catching it by its mane and making it render
+service from shore to shore. They find delight in turning by force the
+antagonism of circumstances into obedience. Truth appears to them in
+her aspect of dualism, the perpetual conflict of good and evil, which
+has no reconciliation, which can only end in victory or defeat.
+
+But in the level tracts of Northern India men found no barrier between
+their lives and the grand life that permeates the universe. The forest
+entered into a close living relationship with their work and leisure,
+with their daily necessities and contemplations. They could not think
+of other surroundings as separate or inimical. So the view of the
+truth, which these men found, did not make manifest the difference,
+but rather the unity of all things. They uttered their faith in these
+words: "Yadidam kinch sarvam prâna éjati nihsratam" (All that is
+vibrates with life, having come out from life). When we know this
+world as alien to us, then its mechanical aspect takes prominence in
+our mind; and then we set up our machines and our methods to deal with
+it and make as much profit as our knowledge of its mechanism allows us
+to do. This view of things does not play us false, for the machine has
+its place in this world. And not only this material universe, but
+human beings also, may be used as machines and made to yield powerful
+results. This aspect of truth cannot be ignored; it has to be known
+and mastered. Europe has done so and has reaped a rich harvest.
+
+The view of this world which India has taken is summed up in one
+compound Sanskrit word, Sachidānanda. The meaning is that Reality,
+which is essentially one, has three phases. The first is Sat; it is
+the simple fact that things are, the fact which relates us to all
+things through the relationship of common existence. The second is
+Chit; it is the fact that we know, which relates us to all things
+through the relationship of knowledge. The third is Ananda: it is the
+fact that we enjoy, which unites us with all things through the
+relationship of love.
+
+According to the true Indian view, our consciousness of the world,
+merely as the sum total of things that exist, and as governed by laws,
+is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realises all
+things as spiritually one with it, and therefore capable of giving us
+joy. For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in
+it, knowing it and making use of it, but realising our own selves in
+it through expansion of sympathy; not alienating ourselves from it and
+dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in
+perfect union.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+When Vikramâditya became king, Ujjayini a great capital, and Kâlidâsa
+its poet, the age of India's forest retreats had passed. Then we had
+taken our stand in the midst of the great concourse of humanity. The
+Chinese and the Hun, the Scythian and the Persian, the Greek and the
+Roman, had crowded round us. But, even in that age of pomp and
+prosperity, the love and reverence with which its poet sang about the
+hermitage shows what was the dominant ideal that occupied the mind of
+India; what was the one current of memory that continually flowed
+through her life.
+
+In Kâlidâsa's drama, _Shakuntalâ_, the hermitage, which dominates the
+play, overshadowing the king's palace, has the same idea running
+through it—the recognition of the kinship of man with conscious and
+unconscious creation alike.
+
+A poet of a later age, while describing a hermitage in his Kâdambari,
+tells us of the posture of salutation in the flowering lianas as they
+bow to the wind; of the sacrifice offered by the trees scattering
+their blossoms; of the grove resounding with the lessons chanted by
+the neophytes, and the verses repeated by the parrots, learnt by constantly
+hearing them; of the wild-fowl enjoying "vaishva-deva-bali-pinda"
+(the food offered to the divinity which is in all creatures); of the
+ducks coming up from the lake for their portion of the grass seed
+spread in the cottage yards to dry; and of the deer caressing with
+their tongues the young hermit boys. It is again the same story. The
+hermitage shines out, in all our ancient literature, as the place
+where the chasm between man and the rest of creation has been bridged.
+
+In the Western dramas, human characters drown our attention in the
+vortex of their passions. Nature occasionally peeps out, but she is
+almost always a trespasser, who has to offer excuses, or bow
+apologetically and depart. But in all our dramas which still retain
+their fame, such as _Mrit-Shakatikâ_, _Shakuntalâ_, _Uttara-Râmacharita_,
+Nature stands on her own right, proving that she has her great
+function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions.
+
+The fury of passion in two of Shakespeare's youthful poems is
+exhibited in conspicuous isolation. It is snatched away, naked, from
+the context of the All; it has not the green earth or the blue sky
+around it; it is there ready to bring to our view the raging fever
+which is in man's desires, and not the balm of health and repose which
+encircles it in the universe.
+
+_Ritûsamhâra_ is clearly a work of Kâlidâsa's immaturity. The youthful
+love-song in it does not reach the sublime reticence which is in
+_Shakuntalâ_ and _Kumâra-Sambhava_. But the tune of these voluptuous
+outbreaks is set to the varied harmony of Nature's symphony. The
+moonbeams of the summer evening, resonant with the flow of fountains,
+acknowledge it as a part of its own melody. In its rhythm sways the
+Kadamba forest, glistening in the first cool rain of the season; and
+the south breezes, carrying the scent of the mango blossoms, temper it
+with their murmur.
+
+In the third canto of _Kumâra-Sambhava_, Madana, the God Eros, enters
+the forest sanctuary to set free a sudden flood of desire amid the
+serenity of the ascetics' meditation. But the boisterous outbreak of
+passion so caused was shown against a background of universal life.
+The divine love-thrills of Sati and Shiva found their response in the
+world-wide immensity of youth, in which animals and trees have their
+life-throbs.
+
+Not only its third canto but the whole of the Kumâra-Sambhava poem is
+painted upon a limitless canvas. It tells of the eternal wedding of
+love, its wooing and sacrifice, and its fulfilment, for which the gods
+wait in suspense. Its inner idea is deep and of all time. It answers
+the one question that humanity asks through all its endeavours: "How
+is the birth of the hero to be brought about, the brave one who can
+defy and vanquish the evil demon laying waste heaven's own kingdom?"
+
+It becomes evident that such a problem had become acute in Kâlidâsa's
+time, when the old simplicity of Hindu life had broken up. The Hindu
+kings, forgetful of their duties, had become self-seeking epicureans,
+and India was being repeatedly devastated by the Scythians. What
+answer, then, does the poem give to the question it raises? Its
+message is that the cause of weakness lies in the inner life of the
+soul. It is in some break of harmony with the Good, some dissociation
+from the True. In the commencement of the poem we find that the God
+Shiva, the Good, had remained for long lost in the self-centred
+solitude of his asceticism, detached from the world of reality. And
+then Paradise was lost. But _Kumâra-Sambhava_ is the poem of Paradise
+Regained. How was it regained? When Sati, the Spirit of Reality,
+through humiliation, suffering, and penance, won the Heart of Shiva,
+the Spirit of Goodness. And thus, from the union of the freedom of the
+real with the restraint of the Good, was born the heroism that
+released Paradise from the demon of Lawlessness.
+
+Viewed from without, India, in the time of Kâlidâsa, appeared to have
+reached the zenith of civilisation, excelling as she did in luxury,
+literature and the arts. But from the poems of Kâlidâsa it is evident
+that this very magnificence of wealth and enjoyment worked against the
+ideal that sprang and flowed forth from the sacred solitude of the
+forest. These poems contain the voice of warnings against the
+gorgeous unreality of that age, which, like a Himalayan avalanche, was
+slowly gliding down to an abyss of catastrophe. And from his seat
+beside all the glories of Vikramâditya's throne the poet's heart
+yearns for the purity and simplicity of India's past age of spiritual
+striving. And it was this yearning which impelled him to go back to
+the annals of the ancient Kings of Raghu's line for the narrative
+poem, in which he traced the history of the rise and fall of the ideal
+that should guide the rulers of men.
+
+King Dilipa, with Queen Sudakshinâ, has entered upon the life of the
+forest. The great monarch is busy tending the cattle of the hermitage.
+Thus the poem opens, amid scenes of simplicity and self-denial. But it
+ends in the palace of magnificence, in the extravagance of
+self-enjoyment. With a calm restraint of language the poet tells us of
+the kingly glory crowned with purity. He begins his poem as the day
+begins, in the serenity of sunrise. But lavish are the colours in
+which he describes the end, as of the evening, eloquent for a time
+with the sumptuous splendour of sunset, but overtaken at last by the
+devouring darkness which sweeps away all its brilliance into night.
+
+In this beginning and this ending of his poem there lies hidden that
+message of the forest which found its voice in the poet's words. There
+runs through the narrative the idea that the future glowed gloriously
+ahead only when there was in the atmosphere the calm of self-control,
+of purity and renunciation. When downfall had become imminent, the
+hungry fires of desire, aflame at a hundred different points, dazzled
+the eyes of all beholders.
+
+Kâlidâsa in almost all his works represented the unbounded
+impetuousness of kingly splendour on the one side and the serene
+strength of regulated desires on the other. Even in the minor drama of
+_Mâlavikâgnimitra_ we find the same thing in a different manner. It
+must never be thought that, in this play, the poet's deliberate object
+was to pander to his royal patron by inviting him to a literary orgy
+of lust and passion. The very introductory verse indicates the object
+towards which this play is directed. The poet begins the drama with
+the prayer, "Sanmârgâlókayan vyapanayatu sa nastâmasi vritimishah"
+(Let God, to illumine for us the path of truth, sweep away our
+passions, bred of darkness). This is the God Shiva, in whose nature
+Parvati, the eternal Woman, is ever commingled in an ascetic purity of
+love. The unified being of Shiva and Parvati is the perfect symbol of
+the eternal in the wedded love of man and woman. When the poet opens
+his drama with an invocation of this Spirit of the Divine Union it is
+evident that it contains in it the message with which he greets his
+kingly audience. The whole drama goes to show the ugliness of the
+treachery and cruelty inherent in unchecked self-indulgence. In the
+play the conflict of ideals is between the King and the Queen, between
+Agnimitra and Dhârini, and the significance of the contrast lies
+hidden in the very names of the hero and the heroine. Though the name
+Agnimitra is historical, yet it symbolises in the poet's mind the
+destructive force of uncontrolled desire—just as did the name
+Agnivarna in _Raghuvamsha_. Agnimitra, "the friend of the fire," the
+reckless person, who in his love-making is playing with fire, not
+knowing that all the time it is scorching him black. And what a great
+name is Dhârini, signifying the fortitude and forbearance that comes
+from majesty of soul! What an association it carries of the infinite
+dignity of love, purified by a self-abnegation that rises far above
+all insult and baseness of betrayal!
+
+In _Shakuntalâ_ this conflict of ideals has been shown, all through
+the drama, by the contrast of the pompous heartlessness of the king's
+court and the natural purity of the forest hermitage. The drama opens
+with a hunting scene, where the king is in pursuit of an antelope. The
+cruelty of the chase appears like a menace symbolising the spirit of
+the king's life clashing against the spirit of the forest retreat,
+which is "sharanyam sarva-bhútânâm" (where all creatures find their
+protection of love). And the pleading of the forest-dwellers with the
+king to spare the life of the deer, helplessly innocent and beautiful,
+is the pleading that rises from the heart of the whole drama. "Never,
+oh, never is the arrow meant to pierce the tender body of a deer, even
+as the fire is not for the burning of flowers."
+
+In the _Râmâyana_, Râma and his companions, in their banishment, had
+to traverse forest after forest; they had to live in leaf-thatched
+huts, to sleep on the bare ground. But as their hearts felt their
+kinship with woodland, hill, and stream, they were not in exile amidst
+these. Poets, brought up in an atmosphere of different ideals, would
+have taken this opportunity of depicting in dismal colours the
+hardship of the forest-life in order to bring out the martyrdom of
+Râmachandra with all the emphasis of a strong contrast. But, in the
+_Râmâyana_, we are led to realise the greatness of the hero, not in a
+fierce struggle with Nature, but in sympathy with it. Sitâ, the
+daughter-in-law of a great kingly house, goes along the forest paths.
+We read:
+
+"She asks Râma about the flowering trees, and shrubs and creepers
+which she has not seen before. At her request Lakshmana gathers and
+brings her plants of all kinds, exuberant with flowers, and it
+delights her heart to see the forest rivers, variegated with their
+streams and sandy banks, resounding with the call of heron and duck.
+
+"When Râma first took his abode in the Chitrakuta peak, that
+delightful Chitrakuta, by the Mâlyavati river, with its easy slopes
+for landing, he forgot all the pain of leaving his home in the capital
+at the sight of those woodlands, alive with beast and bird."
+
+Having lived on that hill for long, Râma, who was "giri-vana-priya"
+(lover of the mountain and the forest), said one day to Sitâ:
+
+"When I look upon the beauties of this hill, the loss of my kingdom
+troubles me no longer, nor does the separation from my friends cause
+me any pang."
+
+Thus passed Râmachandra's exile, now in woodland, now in hermitage.
+The love which Râma and Sitâ bore to each other united them, not only
+to each other, but to the universe of life. That is why, when Sitâ was
+taken away, the loss seemed to be so great to the forest itself.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Strangely enough, in Shakespeare's dramas, like those of Kâlidâsa, we
+find a secret vein of complaint against the artificial life of the
+king's court—the life of ungrateful treachery and falsehood. And
+almost everywhere, in his dramas, foreign scenes have been introduced
+in connection with some working of the life of unscrupulous ambition.
+It is perfectly obvious in _Timon of Athens_—but there Nature offers
+no message or balm to the injured soul of man. In _Cymbeline_ the
+mountainous forest and the cave appear in their aspect of obstruction
+to life's opportunities. These only seem tolerable in comparison with
+the vicissitudes of fortune in the artificial court life. In _As You
+Like It_ the forest of Arden is didactic in its lessons. It does not
+bring peace, but preaches, when it says:
+
+    Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
+    Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
+    More free from peril than the envious court?
+
+In the _Tempest_, through Prospero's treatment of Ariel and Caliban we
+realise man's struggle with Nature and his longing to sever connection
+with her. In _Macbeth_, as a prelude to a bloody crime of treachery
+and treason, we are introduced to a scene of barren heath where the
+three witches appear as personifications of Nature's malignant forces;
+and in _King Lear_ it is the fury of a father's love turned into
+curses by the ingratitude born of the unnatural life of the court that
+finds its symbol in the storm on the heath. The tragic intensity of
+_Hamlet_ and _Othello_ is unrelieved by any touch of Nature's
+eternity. Except in a passing glimpse of a moonlight night in the love
+scene in the _Merchant of Venice_, Nature has not been allowed in
+other dramas of this series, including _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Antony
+and Cleopatra_, to contribute her own music to the music of man's
+love. In _The Winter's Tale_ the cruelty of a king's suspicion stands
+bare in its relentlessness, and Nature cowers before it, offering no
+consolation.
+
+I hope it is needless for me to say that these observations are not
+intended to minimise Shakespeare's great power as a dramatic poet, but
+to show in his works the gulf between Nature and human nature owing to
+the tradition of his race and time. It cannot be said that beauty of
+nature is ignored in his writings; only he fails to recognise in them
+the truth of the inter-penetration of human life with the cosmic life
+of the world. We observe a completely different attitude of mind in
+the later English poets like Wordsworth and Shelley, which can be
+attributed in the main to the great mental change in Europe, at that
+particular period, through the influence of the newly discovered
+philosophy of India which stirred the soul of Germany and aroused the
+attention of other Western countries.
+
+In Milton's _Paradise Lost_, the very subject—Man dwelling in the
+garden of Paradise—seems to afford a special opportunity for bringing
+out the true greatness of man's relationship with Nature. But though
+the poet has described to us the beauties of the garden, though he has
+shown to us the animals living there in amity and peace among
+themselves, there is no reality of kinship between them and man. They
+were created for man's enjoyment; man was their lord and master. We
+find no trace of the love between the first man and woman gradually
+surpassing themselves and overflowing the rest of creation, such as we
+find in the love scenes in _Kumâra-Sambhava_ and _Shakuntalâ_. In the
+seclusion of the bower, where the first man and woman rested in the
+garden of Paradise—
+
+                  Bird, beast, insect or worm
+    Durst enter none, such was their awe of man.
+
+Not that India denied the superiority of man, but the test of that
+superiority lay, according to her, in the comprehensiveness of
+sympathy, not in the aloofness of absolute distinction.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+India holds sacred, and counts as places of pilgrimage, all spots
+which display a special beauty or splendour of nature. These had no
+original attraction on account of any special fitness for cultivation
+or settlement. Here, man is free, not to look upon Nature as a source
+of supply of his necessities, but to realise his soul beyond himself.
+The Himâlayas of India are sacred and the Vindhya Hills. Her majestic
+rivers are sacred. Lake Mânasa and the confluence of the Ganges and
+the Jamuna are sacred. India has saturated with her love and worship
+the great Nature with which her children are surrounded, whose light
+fills their eyes with gladness, and whose water cleanses them, whose
+food gives them life, and from whose majestic mystery comes forth the
+constant revelation of the infinite in music, scent, and colour, which
+brings its awakening to the soul of man. India gains the world through
+worship, through spiritual communion; and the idea of freedom to which
+she aspired was based upon the realisation of her spiritual unity.
+
+When, in my recent voyage to Europe, our ship left Aden and sailed
+along the sea which lay between the two continents, we passed by the
+red and barren rocks of Arabia on our right side and the gleaming
+sands of Egypt on our left. They seemed to me like two giant brothers
+exchanging with each other burning glances of hatred, kept apart by
+the tearful entreaty of the sea from whose womb they had their birth.
+
+There was an immense stretch of silence on the left shore as well as
+on the right, but the two shores spoke to me of the two different
+historical dramas enacted. The civilisation which found its growth in
+Egypt was continued across long centuries, elaborately rich with
+sentiments and expressions of life, with pictures, sculptures,
+temples, and ceremonials. This was a country whose guardian-spirit was
+a noble river, which spread the festivities of life on its banks
+across the heart of the land. There man never raised the barrier of
+alienation between himself and the rest of the world.
+
+On the opposite shore of the Red Sea the civilisation which grew up in
+the inhospitable soil of Arabia had a contrary character to that of
+Egypt. There man felt himself isolated in his hostile and bare
+surroundings. His idea of God became that of a jealous God. His mind
+naturally dwelt upon the principle of separateness. It roused in him
+the spirit of fight, and this spirit was a force that drove him far
+and wide. These two civilisations represented two fundamental
+divisions of human nature. The one contained in it the spirit of
+conquest and the other the spirit of harmony. And both of these have
+their truth and purpose in human existence.
+
+The characters of two eminent sages have been described in our
+mythology. One was Vashishtha and another Vishvâmitra. Both of them
+were great, but they represented two different types of wisdom; and
+there was conflict between them. Vishvâmitra sought to achieve power
+and was proud of it; Vashishtha was rudely smitten by that power. But
+his hurt and his loss could not touch the illumination of his soul;
+for he rose above them and could forgive. Râmachandra, the great hero
+of our epic, had his initiation to the spiritual life from Vashishtha,
+the life of inner peace and perfection. But he had his initiation to
+war from Vishvâmitra, who called him to kill the demons and gave him
+weapons that were irresistible.
+
+Those two sages symbolise in themselves the two guiding spirits of
+civilisation. Can it be true that they shall never be reconciled? If
+so, can ever the age of peace and co-operation dawn upon the human
+world? Creation is the harmony of contrary forces—the forces of
+attraction and repulsion. When they join hands, all the fire and fight
+are changed into the smile of flowers and the songs of birds. When
+there is only one of them triumphant and the other defeated, then
+either there is the death of cold rigidity or that of suicidal
+explosion.
+
+Humanity, for ages, has been busy with the one great creation of
+spiritual life. Its best wisdom, its discipline, its literature and
+art, all the teachings and self-sacrifice of its noblest teachers,
+have been for this. But the harmony of contrary forces, which give
+their rhythm to all creation, has not yet been perfected by man in his
+civilisation, and the Creator in him is baffled over and over again.
+He comes back to his work, however, and makes himself busy, building
+his world in the midst of desolation and ruins. His history is the
+history of his aspiration interrupted and renewed. And one truth of
+which he must be reminded, therefore, is that the power which
+accomplishes the miracle of creation, by bringing conflicting forces
+into the harmony of the One, is no passion, but a love which accepts
+the bonds of self-control from the joy of its own immensity—a love
+whose sacrifice is the manifestation of its endless wealth within
+itself.
+
+
+
+
+                        AN INDIAN FOLK RELIGION
+
+                                   I
+
+
+In historical time the Buddha comes first of those who declared
+salvation to all men, without distinction, as by right man's own. What
+was the special force which startled men's minds and, almost within
+the master's lifetime, spread his teachings over India? It was the
+unique significance of the event, when a man came to men and said to
+them, "I am here to emancipate you from the miseries of the thraldom
+of self." This wisdom came, neither in texts of Scripture, nor in
+symbols of deities, nor in religious practices sanctified by ages, but
+through the voice of a living man and the love that flowed from a
+human heart.
+
+And I believe this was the first occasion in the history of the world
+when the idea of the Avatâr found its place in religion. Western
+scholars are never tired of insisting that Buddhism is of the nature
+of a moral code, coldly leading to the path of extinction. They forget
+that it was held to be a religion that roused in its devotees an
+inextinguishable fire of enthusiasm and carried them to lifelong exile
+across the mountain and desert barriers. To say that a philosophy of
+suicide can keep kindled in human hearts for centuries such fervour of
+self-sacrifice is to go against all the laws of sane psychology. The
+religious enthusiasm which cannot be bound within any daily ritual,
+but overflows into adventures of love and beneficence, must have in
+its centre that element of personality which rouses the whole soul. In
+answer, it may possibly be said that this was due to the personality
+of Buddha himself. But that also is not quite true. The personality
+which stirs the human heart to its immense depths, leading it to
+impossible deeds of heroism, must in that process itself reveal to men
+the infinite which is in all humanity. And that is what happened in
+Buddhism, making it a religion in the complete sense of the word.
+
+Like the religion of the Upanishads, Buddhism also generated two
+divergent currents; the one impersonal, preaching the abnegation of
+self through discipline, and the other personal, preaching the
+cultivation of sympathy for all creatures, and devotion to the
+infinite truth of love; the other, which is called the Mahâyâna, had
+its origin in the positive element contained in Buddha's teachings,
+which is immeasurable love. It could never, by any logic, find its
+reality in the emptiness of the truthless abyss. And the object of
+Buddha's meditation and his teachings was to free humanity from
+sufferings. But what was the path that he revealed to us? Was it some
+negative way of evading pain and seeking security against it? On the
+contrary, his path was the path of sacrifice—the utmost sacrifice of
+love. The meaning of such sacrifice is to reach some ultimate truth,
+some positive ideal, which in its greatness can accept suffering and
+transmute it into the profound peace of self-renunciation. True
+emancipation from suffering, which is the inalienable condition of the
+limited life of the self, can never be attained by fleeing from it,
+but rather by changing its value in the realm of truth—the truth of
+the higher life of love.
+
+We have learnt that, by calculations made in accordance with the law
+of gravitation, some planets were discovered exactly in the place
+where they should be. Such a law of gravitation there is also in the
+moral world. And when we find men's minds disturbed, as they were by
+the preaching of the Buddha, we can be sure, even without any
+corroborative evidence, that there must have been some great luminous
+body of attraction, positive and powerful, and not a mere unfathomable
+vacancy. It is exactly this which we discover in the heart of the
+Mahâyâna system; and we have no hesitation in saying that the truth of
+Buddhism is there. The oil has to be burnt, not for the purpose of
+diminishing it, but for the purpose of giving light to the lamp. And
+when the Buddha said that the self must go, he said at the same moment
+that love must be realised. Thus originated the doctrine of the
+Dharma-kâya, the Infinite Wisdom and Love manifested in the Buddha. It
+was the first instance, as I have said, when men felt that the
+Universal and the Eternal Spirit was revealed in a human individual
+whom they had known and touched. The joy was too great for them, since
+the very idea itself came to them as a freedom—a freedom from the
+sense of their measureless insignificance. It was the first time, I
+repeat, when the individual, as a man, felt in himself the Infinite
+made concrete.
+
+What was more, those men who felt the love welling forth from the
+heart of Buddhism, as one with the current of the Eternal Love itself,
+were struck with the idea that such an effluence could never have been
+due to a single cataclysm of history—unnatural and therefore untrue.
+They felt instead that it was in the eternal nature of truth, that the
+event must belong to a series of manifestations; there must have been
+numberless other revelations in the past and endless others to follow.
+
+The idea grew and widened until men began to feel that this Infinite
+Being was already in every one of them, and that it rested with
+themselves to remove the sensual obstructions and reveal him in their
+own lives. In every individual there was, they realised, the
+potentiality of Buddha—that is to say, the Infinite made manifest.
+
+We have to keep in mind the great fact that the preaching of the
+Buddha in India was not followed by stagnation of life—as would
+surely have happened if humanity was without any positive goal and his
+teaching was without any permanent value in itself. On the contrary,
+we find the arts and sciences springing up in its wake, institutions
+started for alleviating the misery of all creatures, human and
+non-human, and great centres of education founded. Some mighty power
+was suddenly roused from its obscurity, which worked for long
+centuries and changed the history of man in a large part of the world.
+And that power came into its full activity only by the individual
+being made conscious of his infinite worth. It was like the sudden
+discovery of a great mine of living wealth.
+
+During the period of Buddhism the doctrine of deliverance flourished,
+which reached all mankind and released man's inner resources from
+neglect and self-insult. Even to-day we see in our own country human
+nature, from its despised corner of indignity, slowly and painfully
+finding its way to assert the inborn majesty of man. It is like the
+imprisoned tree finding a rift in the wall, and sending out its eager
+branches into freedom, to prove that darkness is not its birthright,
+that its love is for the sunshine. In the time of the Buddha the
+individual discovered his own immensity of worth, first by witnessing
+a man who united his heart in sympathy with all creatures, in all
+worlds, through the power of a love that knew no bounds; and then by
+learning that the same light of perfection lay confined within
+himself behind the clouds of selfish desire, and that the
+Bodhi-hridaya—"the heart of the Eternal Enlightenment"—every moment
+claimed its unveiling in his own heart. Nâgârjuna speaks of this
+Bodhi-hridaya (another of whose names is Bodhi-Citta) as follows:
+
+     One who understands the nature of the Bodhi-hridaya, sees
+     everything with a loving heart; for love is the essence of
+     Bodhi-hridaya.[1]
+
+     [Footnote 1: _Outlines of Mahâyâna Buddhism_, by Dr. D. T.
+     Suzuki.]
+
+My object in writing this paper is to show, by the further help of
+illustration from a popular religious sect of Bengal, that the
+religious instinct of man urges him towards a truth, by which he can
+transcend the finite nature of the individual self. Man would never
+feel the indignity of his limitations if these were inevitable. Within
+him he has glimpses of the Infinite, which give him assurance that
+this truth is not in his limitations, but that this truth can be
+attained by love. For love is the positive quality of the Infinite,
+and love's sacrifice accordingly does not lead to emptiness, but to
+fulfilment, to Bodhi-hridaya, "the heart of enlightenment."
+
+The members of the religious sect I have mentioned call themselves
+"Baül." They live outside social recognition, and their very obscurity
+helps them in their seeking, from a direct source, the enlightenment
+which the soul longs for, the eternal light of love.
+
+It would be absurd to say that there is little difference between
+Buddhism and the religion of these simple people, who have no system
+of metaphysics to support their faith. But my object in bringing close
+together these two religions, which seem to belong to opposite poles,
+is to point out the fundamental unity in them. Both of them believe in
+a fulfilment which is reached by love's emancipating us from the
+dominance of self. In both these religions we find man's yearning to
+attain the infinite worth of his individuality, not through any
+conventional valuation of society, but through his perfect
+relationship with Truth. They agree in holding that the realisation of
+our ultimate object is waiting for us in ourselves. The Baül likens
+this fulfilment to the blossoming of a bud, and sings:
+
+    Make way, O bud, make way,
+      Burst open thy heart and make way.
+    The opening spirit has overtaken thee,
+      Canst thou remain a bud any longer?
+
+
+                                  II
+
+One day, in a small village in Bengal, an ascetic woman from the
+neighbourhood came to see me. She had the name "Sarva-khepi" given to
+her by the village people, the meaning of which is "the woman who is
+mad about all things." She fixed her star-like eyes upon my face and
+startled me with the question, "When are you coming to meet me
+underneath the trees?" Evidently she pitied me who lived (according to
+her) prisoned behind walls, banished away from the great meeting-place
+of the All, where she had her dwelling. Just at that moment my
+gardener came with his basket, and when the woman understood that the
+flowers in the vase on my table were going to be thrown away, to make
+place for the fresh ones, she looked pained and said to me, "You are
+always engaged reading and writing; you do not see." Then she took the
+discarded flowers in her palms, kissed them and touched them with her
+forehead, and reverently murmured to herself, "Beloved of my heart." I
+felt that this woman, in her direct vision of the infinite personality
+in the heart of all things, truly represented the spirit of India.
+
+In the same village I came into touch with some Baül singers. I had
+known them by their names, occasionally seen them singing and begging
+in the street, and so passed them by, vaguely classifying them in my
+mind under the general name of Vairâgis, or ascetics.
+
+The time came when I had occasion to meet with some members of the
+same body and talk to them about spiritual matters. The first Baül
+song, which I chanced to hear with any attention, profoundly stirred
+my mind. Its words are so simple that it makes me hesitate to render
+them in a foreign tongue, and set them forward for critical
+observation. Besides, the best part of a song is missed when the tune
+is absent; for thereby its movement and its colour are lost, and it
+becomes like a butterfly whose wings have been plucked.
+
+The first line may be translated thus: "Where shall I meet him, the
+Man of my Heart?" This phrase, "the Man of my Heart," is not peculiar
+to this song, but is usual with the Baül sect. It means that, for me,
+the supreme truth of all existence is in the revelation of the
+Infinite in my own humanity.
+
+"The Man of my Heart," to the Baül, is like a divine instrument
+perfectly tuned. He gives expression to infinite truth in the music
+of life. And the longing for the truth which is in us, which we have
+not yet realised, breaks out in the following Baül song:
+
+    Where shall I meet him, the Man of my Heart?
+    He is lost to me and I seek him wandering from land to land.
+
+    I am listless for that moonrise of beauty,
+        which is to light my life,
+        which I long to see in the fulness of vision, in gladness of heart.
+
+The name of the poet who wrote this song was Gagan. He was almost
+illiterate; and the ideas he received from his Baül teacher found no
+distraction from the self-consciousness of the modern age. He was a
+village postman, earning about ten shillings a month, and he died
+before he had completed his teens. The sentiment, to which he gave
+such intensity of expression, is common to most of the songs of his
+sect. And it is a sect, almost exclusively confined to that lower
+floor of society, where the light of modern education hardly finds an
+entrance, while wealth and respectability shun its utter indigence.
+
+In the song I have translated above, the longing of the singer to
+realise the infinite in his own personality is expressed. This has to
+be done daily by its perfect expression in life, in love. For the
+personal expression of life, in its perfection, is love; just as the
+personal expression of truth in its perfection is beauty.
+
+In the political life of the modern age the idea of democracy has
+given mankind faith in the individual. It gives each man trust in his
+own possibilities, and pride in his humanity. Something of the same
+idea, we find, has been working in the popular mind of India, with
+regard to its religious consciousness. Over and over again it tries to
+assert, not only that God is _for_ each of us, but also that God is
+_in_ each of us. These people have no special incarnations in their
+simple theology, because they know that God is special to each
+individual. They say that to be born a man is the greatest privilege
+that can fall to a creature in all the world. They assert that gods in
+Paradise envy human beings. Why? Because God's will, in giving his
+love, finds its completeness in man's will returning that love.
+Therefore Humanity is a necessary factor in the perfecting of the
+divine truth. The Infinite, for its self-expression, comes down into
+the manifoldness of the Finite; and the Finite, for its
+self-realisation, must rise into the unity of the Infinite. Then only
+is the Cycle of Truth complete.
+
+The dignity of man, in his eternal right of Truth, finds expression in
+the following song, composed, not by a theologian or a man of letters,
+but by one who belongs to that ninety per cent of the population of
+British India whose education has been far less than elementary, in
+fact almost below zero:
+
+    My longing is to meet you in play of love, my Lover;
+    But this longing is not only mine, but also yours.
+    For your lips can have their smile, and your flute
+        its music, only in your delight in my love;
+        and therefore you are importunate, even as I am.
+
+If the world were a mere expression of formative forces, then this
+song would be pathetic in its presumption. But why is there beauty at
+all in creation—the beauty whose only meaning is in a call that
+claims disinterestedness as a response? The poet proudly says: "Your
+flute could not have its music of beauty if your delight were not in
+my love. Your power is great—and there I am not equal to you—but it
+lies even in me to make you smile, and if you and I never meet, then
+this play of love remains incomplete."
+
+If this were not true, then it would be an utter humiliation to exist
+at all in this world. If it were solely _our_ business to seek the
+Lover, and _his_ to keep himself passively aloof in the infinity of
+his glory, or actively masterful only in imposing his commands upon
+us, then we should dare to defy him, and refuse to accept the
+everlasting insult latent in the one-sided importunity of a slave. And
+this is what the Baül says—he who, in the world of men, goes about
+singing for alms from door to door, with his one-stringed instrument
+and long robe of patched-up rags on his back:
+
+    I stop and sit here on the road. Do not ask me to walk farther.
+    If your love can be complete without mine, let me turn back
+        from seeing you.
+    I have been travelling to seek you, my friend, for long;
+    Yet I refuse to beg a sight of you, if you do not feel my need.
+    I am blind with market dust and midday glare,
+        and so wait, my heart's lover, in hopes that your own love
+          will send you to find me out.
+
+The poet is fully conscious that his value in the world's market is
+pitifully small; that he is neither wealthy nor learned. Yet he has
+his great compensation, for he has come close to his Lover's heart. In
+Bengal the women bathing in the river often use their overturned water
+jars to keep themselves floating when they swim, and the poet uses
+this incident for his simile:
+
+    It is lucky that I am an empty vessel,
+    For when you swim, I keep floating by your side.
+    Your full vessels are left on the empty shore, they are for use;
+    But I am carried to the river in your arms, and I dance
+        to the rhythm of your heart-throbs and heaving of the waves.
+
+The great distinguished people of the world do not know that these
+beggars—deprived of education, honour, and wealth—can, in the pride
+of their souls, look down upon them as the unfortunate ones, who are
+left on the shore for their worldly uses, but whose life ever misses
+the touch of the Lover's arms.
+
+The feeling that man is not a mere casual visitor at the palace-gate
+of the world, but the invited guest whose presence is needed to give
+the royal banquet its sole meaning, is not confined to any particular
+sect in India. Let me quote here some poems from a mediæval poet of
+Western India—Jnândâs—whose works are nearly forgotten, and have
+become scarce from the very exquisiteness of their excellence. In the
+following poem he is addressing God's messenger, who comes to us in
+the morning light of our childhood, in the dusk of our day's end, and
+in the night's darkness:
+
+    Messenger, morning brought you, habited in gold.
+    After sunset, your song wore a tune of ascetic grey,
+        and then came night.
+    Your message was written in bright letters across the black.
+    Why is such splendour about you, to lure the heart of one
+        who is nothing?
+
+This is the answer of the messenger:
+
+    Great is the festival hall where you are to be the only guest.
+    Therefore the letter to you is written from sky to sky,
+    And I, the proud servant, bring the invitation with all ceremony.
+
+And thus the poet knows that the silent rows of stars carry God's own
+invitation to the individual soul.
+
+The same poet sings:
+
+    What hast thou come to beg from the beggar, O King of Kings?
+    My Kingdom is poor for want of him, my dear one, and I
+        wait for him in sorrow.
+
+    How long will you keep him waiting, O wretch,
+        who has waited for you for ages in silence and stillness?
+    Open your gate, and make this very moment fit for the union.
+
+It is the song of man's pride in the value given to him by Supreme
+Love and realised by his own love.
+
+The Vaishnava religion, which has become the popular religion of
+India, carries the same message: God's love finding its finality in
+man's love. According to it, the lover, man, is the complement of the
+Lover, God, in the internal love drama of existence; and God's call
+is ever wafted in man's heart in the world-music, drawing him towards
+the union. This idea has been expressed in rich elaboration of symbols
+verging upon realism. But for these Baüls this idea is direct and
+simple, full of the dignified beauty of truth, which shuns all tinsels
+of ornament.
+
+The Baül poet, when asked why he had no sect mark on his forehead,
+answered in his song that the true colour decoration appears on the
+skin of the fruit when its inner core is filled with ripe, sweet
+juice; but by artificially smearing it with colour from outside you do
+not make it ripe. And he says of his Guru, his teacher, that he is
+puzzled to find in which direction he must make salutation. For his
+teacher is not one, but many, who, moving on, form a procession of
+wayfarers.
+
+Baüls have no temple or image for their worship, and this utter
+simplicity is needful for men whose one subject is to realise the
+innermost nearness of God. The Baül poet expressly says that if we try
+to approach God through the senses we miss him:
+
+    Bring him not into your house as the guest of your eyes;
+        but let him come at your heart's invitation.
+    Opening your doors to that which is seen only, is to lose it.
+
+Yet, being a poet, he also knows that the objects of sense can reveal
+their spiritual meaning only when they are not seen through mere
+physical eyes:
+
+    Eyes can see only dust and earth,
+    But feel it with your heart, it is pure joy.
+    The flowers of delight blossom on all sides, in every form,
+        but where is your heart's thread to weave them in a garland?
+
+These Baüls have a philosophy, which they call the philosophy of the
+body; but they keep its secret; it is only for the initiated.
+Evidently the underlying idea is that the individual's body is itself
+the temple, in whose inner mystic shrine the Divine appears before the
+soul, and the key to it has to be found from those who know. But as
+the key is not for us outsiders, I leave it with the observation that
+this mystic philosophy of the body is the outcome of the attempt to
+get rid of all the outward shelters which are too costly for people
+like themselves. But this human body of ours is made by God's own
+hand, from his own love, and even if some men, in the pride of their
+superiority, may despise it, God finds his joy in dwelling in others
+of yet lower birth. It is a truth easier of discovery by these people
+of humble origin than by men of proud estate.
+
+The pride of the Baül beggar is not in his worldly distinction, but in
+the distinction that God himself has given to him. He feels himself
+like a flute through which God's own breath of love has been breathed:
+
+    My heart is like a flute he has played on.
+    If ever it fall into other hands,—
+        let him fling it away.
+    My lover's flute is dear to him.
+    Therefore, if to-day alien breath have entered it and
+        sounded strange notes,
+    Let him break it to pieces and strew the dust with them.
+
+So we find that this man also has his disgust of defilement. While the
+ambitious world of wealth and power despises him, he in his turn
+thinks that the world's touch desecrates him who has been made sacred
+by the touch of his Lover. He does not envy us our life of ambition
+and achievements, but he knows how precious his own life has been:
+
+    I am poured forth in living notes of joy and sorrow by your breath.
+    Morning and evening, in summer and in rains, I am fashioned to music.
+    Yet should I be wholly spent in some flight of song,
+    I shall not grieve, the tune is so precious to me.
+
+Our joys and sorrows are contradictory when self separates them in
+opposition. But for the heart in which self merges in God's love,
+they lose their absoluteness. So the Baül's prayer is to feel in all
+situations—in danger, or pain, or sorrow—that he is in God's hands.
+He solves the problem of emancipation from sufferings by accepting and
+setting them in a higher context:
+
+    I am the boat, you are the sea, and also the boatman.
+    Though you never make the shore, though you let me sink,
+         why should I be foolish and afraid?
+    Is the reaching the shore a greater prize than losing myself
+         with you?
+    If you are only the haven, as they say, then what is the sea?
+    Let it surge and toss me on its waves, I shall be content.
+    I live in you, whatever and however you appear.
+    Save me or kill me as you wish, only never leave me in
+         others' hands.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+It is needless to say, before I conclude, that I had neither the
+training nor the opportunity to study this mendicant religious sect in
+Bengal from an ethnological standpoint. I was attracted to find out
+how the living currents of religious movements work in the heart of
+the people, saving them from degradation imposed by the society of the
+learned, of the rich, or of the high-born; how the spirit of man, by
+making use even of its obstacles, reaches fulfilment, led thither, not
+by the learned authorities in the scriptures, or by the mechanical
+impulse of the dogma-driven crowd, but by the unsophisticated
+aspiration of the loving soul. On the inaccessible mountain peaks of
+theology the snows of creed remain eternally rigid, cold, and pure.
+But God's manifest shower falls direct on the plain of humble hearts,
+flowing there in various channels, even getting mixed with some mud in
+its course, as it is soaked into the underground currents, invisible,
+but ever-moving.
+
+I can think of nothing better than to conclude my paper with a poem of
+Jnândâs, in which the aspiration of all simple spirits has found a
+devout expression:
+
+    I had travelled all day and was tired; then I bowed my head
+          towards thy kingly court still far away.
+    The night deepened, a longing burned in my heart.
+    Whatever the words I sang, pain cried through them—for
+          even my songs thirsted—
+      O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
+
+    When time seemed lost in darkness,
+        thy hand dropped its sceptre to take up the lute and
+          strike the uttermost chords;
+    And my heart sang out,
+      O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
+
+    Ah, who is this whose arms enfold me?
+    Whatever I have to leave, let me leave; and whatever I
+          have to bear, let me bear.
+    Only let me walk with thee,
+      O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
+    Descend at whiles from thy high audience hall, come down
+          amid joys and sorrows.
+    Hide in all forms and delights, in love,
+    And in my heart sing thy songs,—
+      O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
+
+
+
+
+                             EAST AND WEST
+
+                                   I
+
+
+It is not always a profound interest in man that carries travellers
+nowadays to distant lands. More often it is the facility for rapid
+movement. For lack of time and for the sake of convenience we
+generalise and crush our human facts into the packages within the
+steel trunks that hold our travellers' reports.
+
+Our knowledge of our own countrymen and our feelings about them have
+slowly and unconsciously grown out of innumerable facts which are full
+of contradictions and subject to incessant change. They have the
+elusive mystery and fluidity of life. We cannot define to ourselves
+what we are as a whole, because we know too much; because our
+knowledge is more than knowledge. It is an immediate consciousness of
+personality, any evaluation of which carries some emotion, joy or
+sorrow, shame or exaltation. But in a foreign land we try to find our
+compensation for the meagreness of our data by the compactness of the
+generalisation which our imperfect sympathy itself helps us to form.
+When a stranger from the West travels in the Eastern world he takes
+the facts that displease him and readily makes use of them for his
+rigid conclusions, fixed upon the unchallengeable authority of his
+personal experience. It is like a man who has his own boat for
+crossing his village stream, but, on being compelled to wade across
+some strange watercourse, draws angry comparisons as he goes from
+every patch of mud and every pebble which his feet encounter.
+
+Our mind has faculties which are universal, but its habits are
+insular. There are men who become impatient and angry at the least
+discomfort when their habits are incommoded. In their idea of the next
+world they probably conjure up the ghosts of their slippers and
+dressing-gowns, and expect the latchkey that opens their lodging-house
+door on earth to fit their front door in the other world. As
+travellers they are a failure; for they have grown too accustomed to
+their mental easy-chairs, and in their intellectual nature love home
+comforts, which are of local make, more than the realities of life,
+which, like earth itself, are full of ups and downs, yet are one in
+their rounded completeness.
+
+The modern age has brought the geography of the earth near to us, but
+made it difficult for us to come into touch with man. We go to strange
+lands and observe; we do not live there. We hardly meet men: but only
+specimens of knowledge. We are in haste to seek for general types and
+overlook individuals.
+
+When we fall into the habit of neglecting to use the understanding
+that comes of sympathy in our travels, our knowledge of foreign people
+grows insensitive, and therefore easily becomes both unjust and cruel
+in its character, and also selfish and contemptuous in its
+application. Such has, too often, been the case with regard to the
+meeting of Western people in our days with others for whom they do not
+recognise any obligation of kinship.
+
+It has been admitted that the dealings between different races of men
+are not merely between individuals; that our mutual understanding is
+either aided, or else obstructed, by the general emanations forming
+the social atmosphere. These emanations are our collective ideas and
+collective feelings, generated according to special historical
+circumstances.
+
+For instance, the caste-idea is a collective idea in India. When we
+approach an Indian who is under the influence of this collective idea,
+he is no longer a pure individual with his conscience fully awake to
+the judging of the value of a human being. He is more or less a
+passive medium for giving expression to the sentiment of a whole
+community.
+
+It is evident that the caste-idea is not creative; it is merely
+institutional. It adjusts human beings according to some mechanical
+arrangement. It emphasises the negative side of the individual—his
+separateness. It hurts the complete truth in man.
+
+In the West, also, the people have a certain collective idea that
+obscures their humanity. Let me try to explain what I feel about it.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Lately I went to visit some battlefields of France which had been
+devastated by war. The awful calm of desolation, which still bore
+wrinkles of pain—death-struggles stiffened into ugly ridges—brought
+before my mind the vision of a huge demon, which had no shape, no
+meaning, yet had two arms that could strike and break and tear, a
+gaping mouth that could devour, and bulging brains that could conspire
+and plan. It was a purpose, which had a living body, but no complete
+humanity to temper it. Because it was passion—belonging to life, and
+yet not having the wholeness of life—it was the most terrible of
+life's enemies.
+
+Something of the same sense of oppression in a different degree, the
+same desolation in a different aspect, is produced in my mind when I
+realise the effect of the West upon Eastern life—the West which, in
+its relation to us, is all plan and purpose incarnate, without any
+superfluous humanity.
+
+I feel the contrast very strongly in Japan. In that country the old
+world presents itself with some ideal of perfection, in which man has
+his varied opportunities of self-revelation in art, in ceremonial, in
+religious faith, and in customs expressing the poetry of social
+relationship. There one feels that deep delight of hospitality which
+life offers to life. And side by side, in the same soil, stands the
+modern world, which is stupendously big and powerful, but
+inhospitable. It has no simple-hearted welcome for man. It is living;
+yet the incompleteness of life's ideal within it cannot but hurt
+humanity.
+
+The wriggling tentacles of a cold-blooded utilitarianism, with which
+the West has grasped all the easily yielding succulent portions of the
+East, are causing pain and indignation throughout the Eastern
+countries. The West comes to us, not with the imagination and sympathy
+that create and unite, but with a shock of passion—passion for power
+and wealth. This passion is a mere force, which has in it the
+principle of separation, of conflict.
+
+I have been fortunate in coming into close touch with individual men
+and women of the Western countries, and have felt with them their
+sorrows and shared their aspirations. I have known that they seek the
+same God, who is my God—even those who deny Him. I feel certain that,
+if the great light of culture be extinct in Europe, our horizon in the
+East will mourn in darkness. It does not hurt my pride to acknowledge
+that, in the present age, Western humanity has received its mission to
+be the teacher of the world; that her science, through the mastery of
+laws of nature, is to liberate human souls from the dark dungeon of
+matter. For this very reason I have realised all the more strongly,
+on the other hand, that the dominant collective idea in the Western
+countries is not creative. It is ready to enslave or kill individuals,
+to drug a great people with soul-killing poison, darkening their whole
+future with the black mist of stupefaction, and emasculating entire
+races of men to the utmost degree of helplessness. It is wholly
+wanting in spiritual power to blend and harmonise; it lacks the sense
+of the great personality of man.
+
+The most significant fact of modern days is this, that the West has
+met the East. Such a momentous meeting of humanity, in order to be
+fruitful, must have in its heart some great emotional idea, generous
+and creative. There can be no doubt that God's choice has fallen upon
+the knights-errant of the West for the service of the present age;
+arms and armour have been given to them; but have they yet realised in
+their hearts the single-minded loyalty to their cause which can resist
+all temptations of bribery from the devil? The world to-day is offered
+to the West. She will destroy it, if she does not use it for a great
+creation of man. The materials for such a creation are in the hands of
+science; but the creative genius is in Man's spiritual ideal.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+When I was young a stranger from Europe came to Bengal. He chose his
+lodging among the people of the country, shared with them their frugal
+diet, and freely offered them his service. He found employment in the
+houses of the rich, teaching them French and German, and the money
+thus earned he spent to help poor students in buying books. This meant
+for him hours of walking in the mid-day heat of a tropical summer;
+for, intent upon exercising the utmost economy, he refused to hire
+conveyances. He was pitiless in his exaction from himself of his
+resources, in money, time, and strength, to the point of privation;
+and all this for the sake of a people who were obscure, to whom he was
+not born, yet whom he dearly loved. He did not come to us with a
+professional mission of teaching sectarian creeds; he had not in his
+nature the least trace of that self-sufficiency of goodness, which
+humiliates by gifts the victims of its insolent benevolence. Though he
+did not know our language, he took every occasion to frequent our
+meetings and ceremonies; yet he was always afraid of intrusion, and
+tenderly anxious lest he might offend us by his ignorance of our
+customs. At last, under the continual strain of work in an alien
+climate and surroundings, his health broke down. He died, and was
+cremated at our burning-ground, according to his express desire.
+
+The attitude of his mind, the manner of his living, the object of his
+life, his modesty, his unstinted self-sacrifice for a people who had
+not even the power to give publicity to any benefaction bestowed upon
+them, were so utterly unlike anything we were accustomed to associate
+with the Europeans in India, that it gave rise in our mind to a
+feeling of love bordering upon awe.
+
+We all have a realm, a private paradise, in our mind, where dwell
+deathless memories of persons who brought some divine light to our
+life's experience, who may not be known to others, and whose names
+have no place in the pages of history. Let me confess to you that this
+man lives as one of those immortals in the paradise of my individual
+life.
+
+He came from Sweden, his name was Hammargren. What was most remarkable
+in the event of his coming to us in Bengal was the fact that in his
+own country he had chanced to read some works of my great countryman,
+Ram Mohan Roy, and felt an immense veneration for his genius and his
+character. Ram Mohan Roy lived in the beginning of the last century,
+and it is no exaggeration when I describe him as one of the immortal
+personalities of modern time. This young Swede had the unusual gift of
+a far-sighted intellect and sympathy, which enabled him even from his
+distance of space and time, and in spite of racial differences, to
+realise the greatness of Ram Mohan Roy. It moved him so deeply that he
+resolved to go to the country which produced this great man, and offer
+her his service. He was poor, and he had to wait some time in England
+before he could earn his passage money to India. There he came at
+last, and in reckless generosity of love utterly spent himself to the
+last breath of his life, away from home and kindred and all the
+inheritances of his motherland. His stay among us was too short to
+produce any outward result. He failed even to achieve during his life
+what he had in his mind, which was to found by the help of his scanty
+earnings a library as a memorial to Ram Mohan Roy, and thus to leave
+behind him a visible symbol of his devotion. But what I prize most in
+this European youth, who left no record of his life behind him, is not
+the memory of any service of goodwill, but the precious gift of
+respect which he offered to a people who are fallen upon evil times,
+and whom it is so easy to ignore or to humiliate. For the first time
+in the modern days this obscure individual from Sweden brought to our
+country the chivalrous courtesy of the West, a greeting of human
+fellowship.
+
+The coincidence came to me with a great and delightful surprise when
+the Nobel Prize was offered to me from Sweden. As a recognition of
+individual merit it was of great value to me, no doubt; but it was the
+acknowledgment of the East as a collaborator with the Western
+continents, in contributing its riches to the common stock of
+civilisation, which had the chief significance for the present age. It
+meant joining hands in comradeship by the two great hemispheres of the
+human world across the sea.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+To-day the real East remains unexplored. The blindness of contempt is
+more hopeless than the blindness of ignorance; for contempt kills the
+light which ignorance merely leaves unignited. The East is waiting to
+be understood by the Western races, in order not only to be able to
+give what is true in her, but also to be confident of her own mission.
+
+In Indian history, the meeting of the Mussulman and the Hindu produced
+Akbar, the object of whose dream was the unification of hearts and
+ideals. It had all the glowing enthusiasm of a religion, and it
+produced an immediate and a vast result even in his own lifetime.
+
+But the fact still remains that the Western mind, after centuries of
+contact with the East, has not evolved the enthusiasm of a chivalrous
+ideal which can bring this age to its fulfilment. It is everywhere
+raising thorny hedges of exclusion and offering human sacrifices to
+national self-seeking. It has intensified the mutual feelings of envy
+among Western races themselves, as they fight over their spoils and
+display a carnivorous pride in their snarling rows of teeth.
+
+We must again guard our minds from any encroaching distrust of the
+individuals of a nation. The active love of humanity and the spirit of
+martyrdom for the cause of justice and truth which I have met with in
+the Western countries have been a great lesson and inspiration to me.
+I have no doubt in my mind that the West owes its true greatness, not
+so much to its marvellous training of intellect, as to its spirit of
+service devoted to the welfare of man. Therefore I speak with a
+personal feeling of pain and sadness about the collective power which
+is guiding the helm of Western civilisation. It is a passion, not an
+ideal. The more success it has brought to Europe, the more costly it
+will prove to her at last, when the accounts have to be rendered. And
+the signs are unmistakable, that the accounts have been called for.
+The time has come when Europe must know that the forcible parasitism
+which she has been practising upon the two large Continents of the
+world—the two most unwieldy whales of humanity—must be causing to
+her moral nature a gradual atrophy and degeneration.
+
+As an example, let me quote the following extract from the concluding
+chapter of _From the Cape to Cairo_, by Messrs. Grogan and Sharp, two
+writers who have the power to inculcate their doctrines by precept and
+example. In their reference to the African they are candid, as when
+they say, "We have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limbs."
+These two sentences, carefully articulated, with a smack of
+enjoyment, have been more clearly explained in the following
+statement, where some sense of that decency which is the attenuated
+ghost of a buried conscience, prompts the writers to use the phrase
+"compulsory labour" in place of the honest word "slavery"; just as the
+modern politician adroitly avoids the word "injunction" and uses the
+word "mandate." "Compulsory labour in some form," they say, "is the
+corollary of our occupation of the country." And they add: "It is
+pathetic, but it is history," implying thereby that moral sentiments
+have no serious effect in the history of human beings.
+
+Elsewhere they write: "Either we must give up the country
+commercially, or we must make the African work. And mere abuse of
+those who point out the impasse cannot change the facts. We must
+decide, and soon. Or rather the white man of South Africa will
+decide." The authors also confess that they have seen too much of the
+world "to have any lingering belief that Western civilisation benefits
+native races."
+
+The logic is simple—the logic of egoism. But the argument is
+simplified by lopping off the greater part of the premise. For these
+writers seem to hold that the only important question for the white
+men of South Africa is, how indefinitely to grow fat on ostrich
+feathers and diamond mines, and dance jazz dances over the misery and
+degradation of a whole race of fellow-beings of a different colour
+from their own. Possibly they believe that moral laws have a special
+domesticated breed of comfortable concessions for the service of the
+people in power. Possibly they ignore the fact that commercial and
+political cannibalism, profitably practised upon foreign races, creeps
+back nearer home; that the cultivation of unwholesome appetites has
+its final reckoning with the stomach which has been made to serve it.
+For, after all, man is a spiritual being, and not a mere living
+money-bag jumping from profit to profit, and breaking the backbone of
+human races in its financial leapfrog.
+
+Such, however, has been the condition of things for more than a
+century; and to-day, trying to read the future by the light of the
+European conflagration, we are asking ourselves everywhere in the
+East: "Is this frightfully overgrown power really great? It can bruise
+us from without, but can it add to our wealth of spirit? It can sign
+peace treaties, but can it give peace?"
+
+It was about two thousand years ago that all-powerful Rome in one of
+its eastern provinces executed on a cross a simple teacher of an
+obscure tribe of fishermen. On that day the Roman governor felt no
+falling off of his appetite or sleep. On that day there was, on the
+one hand, the agony, the humiliation, the death; on the other, the
+pomp of pride and festivity in the Governor's palace.
+
+And to-day? To whom, then, shall we bow the head?
+
+    Kasmai devaya havisha vidhema?
+
+    (To which God shall we offer oblation?)
+
+We know of an instance in our own history of India, when a great
+personality, both in his life and voice, struck the keynote of the
+solemn music of the soul—love for all creatures. And that music
+crossed seas, mountains, and deserts. Races belonging to different
+climates, habits, and languages were drawn together, not in the clash
+of arms, not in the conflict of exploitation, but in harmony of life,
+in amity and peace. That was creation.
+
+When we think of it, we see at once what the confusion of thought was
+to which the Western poet, dwelling upon the difference between East
+and West, referred when he said, "Never the twain shall meet." It is
+true that they are not yet showing any real sign of meeting. But the
+reason is because the West has not sent out its humanity to meet the
+man in the East, but only its machine. Therefore the poet's line has
+to be changed into something like this:
+
+    Man is man, machine is machine,
+    And never the twain shall wed.
+
+You must know that red tape can never be a common human bond; that
+official sealing-wax can never provide means of mutual attachment;
+that it is a painful ordeal for human beings to have to receive
+favours from animated pigeonholes, and condescensions from printed
+circulars that give notice but never speak. The presence of the
+Western people in the East is a human fact. If we are to gain anything
+from them, it must not be a mere sum-total of legal codes and systems
+of civil and military services. Man is a great deal more to man than
+that. We have our human birthright to claim direct help from the man
+of the West, if he has anything great to give us. It must come to us,
+not through mere facts in a juxtaposition, but through the
+spontaneous sacrifice made by those who have the gift, and therefore
+the responsibility.
+
+Earnestly I ask the poet of the Western world to realise and sing to
+you with all the great power of music which he has, that the East and
+the West are ever in search of each other, and that they must meet not
+merely in the fulness of physical strength, but in fulness of truth;
+that the right hand, which wields the sword, has the need of the left,
+which holds the shield of safety.
+
+The East has its seat in the vast plains watched over by the
+snow-peaked mountains and fertilised by rivers carrying mighty volumes
+of water to the sea. There, under the blaze of a tropical sun, the
+physical life has bedimmed the light of its vigour and lessened its
+claims. There man has had the repose of mind which has ever tried to
+set itself in harmony with the inner notes of existence. In the
+silence of sunrise and sunset, and on star-crowded nights, he has sat
+face to face with the Infinite, waiting for the revelation that opens
+up the heart of all that there is. He has said, in a rapture of
+realisation:
+
+"Hearken to me, ye children of the Immortal, who dwell in the Kingdom
+of Heaven. I have known, from beyond darkness, the Supreme Person,
+shining with the radiance of the sun."
+
+The man from the East, with his faith in the eternal, who in his soul
+had met the touch of the Supreme Person—did he never come to you in
+the West and speak to you of the Kingdom of Heaven? Did he not unite
+the East and the West in truth, in the unity of one spiritual bond
+between all children of the Immortal, in the realisation of one great
+Personality in all human persons?
+
+Yes, the East did once meet the West profoundly in the growth of her
+life. Such union became possible, because the East came to the West
+with the ideal that is creative, and not with the passion that
+destroys moral bonds. The mystic consciousness of the Infinite, which
+she brought with her, was greatly needed by the man of the West to
+give him his balance.
+
+On the other hand, the East must find her own balance in Science—the
+magnificent gift that the West can bring to her. Truth has its nest as
+well as its sky. That nest is definite in structure, accurate in law
+of construction; and though it has to be changed and rebuilt over and
+over again, the need of it is never-ending and its laws are eternal.
+For some centuries the East has neglected the nest-building of truth.
+She has not been attentive to learn its secret. Trying to cross the
+trackless infinite, the East has relied solely upon her wings. She has
+spurned the earth, till, buffeted by storms, her wings are hurt and
+she is tired, sorely needing help. But has she then to be told that
+the messenger of the sky and the builder of the nest shall never
+meet?
+
+
+
+
+                            THE MODERN AGE
+
+                                   I
+
+
+Wherever man meets man in a living relationship, the meeting finds its
+natural expression in works of art, the signatures of beauty, in which
+the mingling of the personal touch leaves its memorial.
+
+On the other hand, a relationship of pure utility humiliates man—it
+ignores the rights and needs of his deeper nature; it feels no
+compunction in maltreating and killing things of beauty that can never
+be restored.
+
+Some years ago, when I set out from Calcutta on my voyage to Japan,
+the first thing that shocked me, with a sense of personal injury, was
+the ruthless intrusion of the factories for making gunny-bags on both
+banks of the Ganges. The blow it gave to me was owing to the precious
+memory of the days of my boyhood, when the scenery of this river was
+the only great thing near my birthplace reminding me of the existence
+of a world which had its direct communication with our innermost
+spirit.
+
+Calcutta is an upstart town with no depth of sentiment in her face and
+in her manners. It may truly be said about her genesis:—In the
+beginning there was the spirit of the Shop, which uttered through its
+megaphone, "Let there be the Office!" and there was Calcutta. She
+brought with her no dower of distinction, no majesty of noble or
+romantic origin; she never gathered around her any great historical
+associations, any annals of brave sufferings, or memory of mighty
+deeds. The only thing which gave her the sacred baptism of beauty was
+the river. I was fortunate enough to be born before the smoke-belching
+iron dragon had devoured the greater part of the life of its banks;
+when the landing-stairs descending into its waters, caressed by its
+tides, appeared to me like the loving arms of the villages clinging to
+it; when Calcutta, with her up-tilted nose and stony stare, had not
+completely disowned her foster-mother, rural Bengal, and had not
+surrendered body and soul to her wealthy paramour, the spirit of the
+ledger, bound in dead leather.
+
+But as an instance of the contrast of the different ideal of a
+different age, incarnated in the form of a town, the memory of my last
+visit to Benares comes to my mind. What impressed me most deeply,
+while I was there, was the mother-call of the river Ganges, ever
+filling the atmosphere with an "unheard melody," attracting the whole
+population to its bosom every hour of the day. I am proud of the fact
+that India has felt a most profound love for this river, which
+nourishes civilisation on its banks, guiding its course from the
+silence of the hills to the sea with its myriad voices of solitude.
+The love of this river, which has become one with the love of the best
+in man, has given rise to this town as an expression of reverence.
+This is to show that there are sentiments in us which are creative,
+which do not clamour for gain, but overflow in gifts, in spontaneous
+generosity of self-sacrifice.
+
+But our minds will nevermore cease to be haunted by the perturbed
+spirit of the question, "What about gunny-bags?" I admit they are
+indispensable, and am willing to allow them a place in society, if my
+opponent will only admit that even gunny-bags should have their
+limits, and will acknowledge the importance of leisure to man, with
+space for joy and worship, and a home of wholesale privacy, with
+associations of chaste love and mutual service. If this concession to
+humanity be denied or curtailed, and if profit and production are
+allowed to run amuck, they will play havoc with our love of beauty, of
+truth, of justice, and also with our love for our fellow-beings. So it
+comes about that the peasant cultivators of jute, who live on the
+brink of everlasting famine, are combined against, and driven to lower
+the price of their labours to the point of blank despair, by those who
+earn more than cent per cent profit and wallow in the infamy of their
+wealth. The facts that man is brave and kind, that he is social and
+generous and self-sacrificing, have some aspect of the complete in
+them; but the fact that he is a manufacturer of gunny-bags is too
+ridiculously small to claim the right of reducing his higher nature to
+insignificance. The fragmentariness of utility should never forget its
+subordinate position in human affairs. It must not be permitted to
+occupy more than its legitimate place and power in society, nor to
+have the liberty to desecrate the poetry of life, to deaden our
+sensitiveness to ideals, bragging of its own coarseness as a sign of
+virility. The pity is that when in the centre of our activities we
+acknowledge, by some proud name, the supremacy of wanton
+destructiveness, or production not less wanton, we shut out all the
+lights of our souls, and in that darkness our conscience and our
+consciousness of shame are hidden, and our love of freedom is killed.
+
+I do not for a moment mean to imply that in any particular period of
+history men were free from the disturbance of their lower passions.
+Selfishness ever had its share in government and trade. Yet there was
+a struggle to maintain a balance of forces in society; and our
+passions cherished no delusions about their own rank and value. They
+contrived no clever devices to hoodwink our moral nature. For in those
+days our intellect was not tempted to put its weight into the balance
+on the side of over-greed.
+
+But in recent centuries a devastating change has come over our
+mentality with regard to the acquisition of money. Whereas in former
+ages men treated it with condescension, even with disrespect, now they
+bend their knees to it. That it should be allowed a sufficiently large
+place in society, there can be no question; but it becomes an outrage
+when it occupies those seats which are specially reserved for the
+immortals, by bribing us, tampering with our moral pride, recruiting
+the best strength of society in a traitor's campaign against human
+ideals, thus disguising, with the help of pomp and pageantry, its true
+insignificance. Such a state of things has come to pass because, with
+the help of science, the possibilities of profit have suddenly become
+immoderate. The whole of the human world, throughout its length and
+breadth, has felt the gravitational pull of a giant planet of greed,
+with concentric rings of innumerable satellites, causing in our
+society a marked deviation from the moral orbit. In former times the
+intellectual and spiritual powers of this earth upheld their dignity
+of independence and were not giddily rocked on the tides of the money
+market. But, as in the last fatal stages of disease, this fatal
+influence of money has got into our brain and affected our heart. Like
+a usurper, it has occupied the throne of high social ideals, using
+every means, by menace and threat, to seize upon the right, and,
+tempted by opportunity, presuming to judge it. It has not only science
+for its ally, but other forces also that have some semblance of
+religion, such as nation-worship and the idealising of organised
+selfishness. Its methods are far-reaching and sure. Like the claws of
+a tiger's paw, they are softly sheathed. Its massacres are invisible,
+because they are fundamental, attacking the very roots of life. Its
+plunder is ruthless behind a scientific system of screens, which have
+the formal appearance of being open and responsible to inquiries. By
+whitewashing its stains it keeps its respectability unblemished. It
+makes a liberal use of falsehood in diplomacy, only feeling
+embarrassed when its evidence is disclosed by others of the trade. An
+unscrupulous system of propaganda paves the way for widespread
+misrepresentation. It works up the crowd psychology through regulated
+hypnotic doses at repeated intervals, administered in bottles with
+moral labels upon them of soothing colours. In fact, man has been able
+to make his pursuit of power easier to-day by his art of mitigating
+the obstructive forces that come from the higher region of his
+humanity. With his cult of power and his idolatry of money he has, in
+a great measure, reverted to his primitive barbarism, a barbarism
+whose path is lit up by the lurid light of intellect. For barbarism is
+the simplicity of a superficial life. It may be bewildering in its
+surface adornments and complexities, but it lacks the ideal to impart
+to it the depth of moral responsibility.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Society suffers from a profound feeling of unhappiness, not so much
+when it is in material poverty as when its members are deprived of a
+large part of their humanity. This unhappiness goes on smouldering in
+the subconscious mind of the community till its life is reduced to
+ashes or a sudden combustion is produced. The repressed personality of
+man generates an inflammable moral gas deadly in its explosive force.
+
+We have seen in the late war, and also in some of the still more
+recent events of history, how human individuals freed from moral and
+spiritual bonds find a boisterous joy in a debauchery of destruction.
+There is generated a disinterested passion of ravage. Through such
+catastrophe we can realise what formidable forces of annihilation are
+kept in check in our communities by bonds of social ideas; nay, made
+into multitudinous manifestations of beauty and fruitfulness. Thus we
+know that evils are, like meteors, stray fragments of life, which need
+the attraction of some great ideal in order to be assimilated with the
+wholesomeness of creation. The evil forces are literally outlaws;
+they only need the control and cadence of spiritual laws to change
+them into good. The true goodness is not the negation of badness, it
+is in the mastery of it. Goodness is the miracle which turns the
+tumult of chaos into a dance of beauty.
+
+In modern society the ideal of wholeness has lost its force. Therefore
+its different sections have become detached and resolved into their
+elemental character of forces. Labour is a force; so also is Capital;
+so are the Government and the People; so are Man and Woman. It is said
+that when the forces lying latent in even a handful of dust are
+liberated from their bond of unity, they can lift the buildings of a
+whole neighbourhood to the height of a mountain. Such disfranchised
+forces, irresponsible free-booters, may be useful to us for certain
+purposes, but human habitations standing secure on their foundations
+are better for us. To own the secret of utilising these forces is a
+proud fact for us, but the power of self-control and the
+self-dedication of love are truer subjects for the exultation of
+mankind. The genii of the Arabian Nights may have in their magic their
+lure and fascination for us. But the consciousness of God is of
+another order, infinitely more precious in imparting to our minds
+ideas of the spiritual power of creation. Yet these genii are abroad
+everywhere; and even now, after the late war, their devotees are
+getting ready to play further tricks upon humanity by suddenly
+spiriting it away to some hill-top of desolation.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+We know that when, at first, any large body of people in their history
+became aware of their unity, they expressed it in some popular symbol
+of divinity. For they felt that their combination was not an
+arithmetical one; its truth was deeper than the truth of number. They
+felt that their community was not a mere agglutination but a creation,
+having upon it the living touch of the infinite Person. The
+realisation of this truth having been an end in itself, a fulfilment,
+it gave meaning to self-sacrifice, to the acceptance even of death.
+
+But our modern education is producing a habit of mind which is ever
+weakening in us the spiritual apprehension of truth—the truth of a
+person as the ultimate reality of existence. Science has its proper
+sphere in analysing this world as a construction, just as grammar has
+its legitimate office in analysing the syntax of a poem. But the
+world, as a creation, is not a mere construction; it too is more than
+a syntax. It is a poem, which we are apt to forget when grammar takes
+exclusive hold of our minds.
+
+Upon the loss of this sense of a universal personality, which is
+religion, the reign of the machine and of method has been firmly
+established, and man, humanly speaking, has been made a homeless
+tramp. As nomads, ravenous and restless, the men from the West have
+come to us. They have exploited our Eastern humanity for sheer gain of
+power. This modern meeting of men has not yet received the blessing of
+God. For it has kept us apart, though railway lines are laid far and
+wide, and ships are plying from shore to shore to bring us together.
+
+It has been said in the Upanishads:
+
+    Yastu sarvâni bhutâni âtmânyevânupashyati
+    Sarva bhuteshu châtmânam na tato vijugupsate.
+
+     (He who sees all things in _âtmâ_, in the infinite spirit,
+     and the infinite spirit in all beings, remains no longer
+     unrevealed.)
+
+In the modern civilisation, for which an enormous number of men are
+used as materials, and human relationships have in a large measure
+become utilitarian, man is imperfectly revealed. For man's revelation
+does not lie in the fact that he is a power, but that he is a spirit.
+The prevalence of the theory which realises the power of the machine
+in the universe, and organises men into machines, is like the eruption
+of Etna, tremendous in its force, in its outburst of fire and fume;
+but its creeping lava covers up human shelters made by the ages, and
+its ashes smother life.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+The terribly efficient method of repressing personality in the
+individuals and the races who have failed to resist it has, in the
+present scientific age, spread all over the world; and in consequence
+there have appeared signs of a universal disruption which seems not
+far off. Faced with the possibility of such a disaster, which is sure
+to affect the successful peoples of the world in their intemperate
+prosperity, the great Powers of the West are seeking peace, not by
+curbing their greed, or by giving up the exclusive advantages which
+they have unjustly acquired, but by concentrating their forces for
+mutual security.
+
+But can powers find their equilibrium in themselves? Power has to be
+made secure not only against power, but also against weakness; for
+there lies the peril of its losing balance. The weak are as great a
+danger for the strong as quicksands for an elephant. They do not
+assist progress because they do not resist; they only drag down. The
+people who grow accustomed to wield absolute power over others are apt
+to forget that by so doing they generate an unseen force which some
+day rends that power into pieces. The dumb fury of the downtrodden
+finds its awful support from the universal law of moral balance. The
+air which is so thin and unsubstantial gives birth to storms that
+nothing can resist. This has been proved in history over and over
+again, and stormy forces arising from the revolt of insulted humanity
+are openly gathering in the air at the present time.
+
+Yet in the psychology of the strong the lesson is despised and no
+count taken of the terribleness of the weak. This is the latent
+ignorance that, like an unsuspected worm, burrows under the bulk of
+the prosperous. Have we never read of the castle of power, securely
+buttressed on all sides, in a moment dissolving in air at the
+explosion caused by the weak and outraged besiegers? Politicians
+calculate upon the number of mailed hands that are kept on the
+sword-hilts: they do not possess the third eye to see the great
+invisible hand that clasps in silence the hand of the helpless and
+waits its time. The strong form their league by a combination of
+powers, driving the weak to form their own league alone with their
+God. I know I am crying in the wilderness when I raise the voice of
+warning; and while the West is busy with its organisation of a
+machine-made peace, it will still continue to nourish by its
+iniquities the underground forces of earthquake in the Eastern
+Continent. The West seems unconscious that Science, by providing it
+with more and more power, is tempting it to suicide and encouraging it
+to accept the challenge of the disarmed; it does not know that the
+challenge comes from a higher source.
+
+Two prophecies about the world's salvation are cherished in the hearts
+of the two great religions of the world. They represent the highest
+expectation of man, thereby indicating his faith in a truth which he
+instinctively considers as ultimate—the truth of love. These
+prophecies have not for their vision the fettering of the world and
+reducing it to tameness by means of a close-linked power forged in the
+factory of a political steel trust. One of the religions has for its
+meditation the image of the Buddha who is to come, Maitreya, the
+Buddha of love; and he is to bring peace. The other religion waits for
+the coming of Christ. For Christ preached peace when he preached love,
+when he preached the oneness of the Father with the brothers who are
+many. And this was the truth of peace. Christ never held that peace
+was the best policy. For policy is not truth. The calculation of
+self-interest can never successfully fight the irrational force of
+passion—the passion which is perversion of love, and which can only
+be set right by the truth of love. So long as the powers build a
+league on the foundation of their desire for safety, secure enjoyment
+of gains, consolidation of past injustice, and putting off the
+reparation of wrongs, while their fingers still wriggle for greed and
+reek of blood, rifts will appear in their union; and in future their
+conflicts will take greater force and magnitude. It is political and
+commercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war. By different
+combinations it changes its shape and dimensions, but not its nature.
+This egoism is still held sacred, and made a religion; and such a
+religion, by a mere change of temple, and by new committees of
+priests, will never save mankind. We must know that, as, through
+science and commerce, the realisation of the unity of the material
+world gives us power, so the realisation of the great spiritual Unity
+of Man alone can give us peace.
+
+
+
+
+                         THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM
+
+        (A LETTER FROM NEW YORK TO THE AUTHOR'S OWN COUNTRYMEN)
+
+
+When freedom is not an inner idea which imparts strength to our
+activities and breadth to our creations, when it is merely a thing of
+external circumstance, it is like an open space to one who is
+blindfolded.
+
+In my recent travels in the West I have felt that out there freedom as
+an idea has become feeble and ineffectual. Consequently a spirit of
+repression and coercion is fast spreading in the politics and social
+relationships of the people.
+
+In the age of monarchy the king lived surrounded by a miasma of
+intrigue. At court there was an endless whispering of lies and
+calumny, and much plotting and planning among the conspiring courtiers
+to manipulate the king as the instrument of their own purposes.
+
+In the present age intrigue plays a wider part, and affects the whole
+country. The people are drugged with the hashish of false hopes and
+urged to deeds of frightfulness by the goadings of manufactured
+panics; their higher feelings are exploited by devious channels of
+unctuous hypocrisy, their pockets picked under anæsthetics of
+flattery, their very psychology affected by a conspiracy of money and
+unscrupulous diplomacy.
+
+In the old order the king was given to understand that he was the
+freest individual in the world. A greater semblance of external
+freedom, no doubt, he had than other individuals. But they built for
+him a gorgeous prison of unreality.
+
+The same thing is happening now with the people of the West. They are
+flattered into believing that they are free, and they have the
+sovereign power in their hands. But this power is robbed by hosts of
+self-seekers, and the horse is captured and stabled because of his
+gift of freedom over space. The mob-mind is allowed the enjoyment of
+an apparent liberty, while its true freedom is curtailed on every
+side. Its thoughts are fashioned according to the plans of organised
+interest; in its choosing of ideas and forming of opinions it is
+hindered either by some punitive force or by the constant insinuation
+of untruths; it is made to dwell in an artificial world of hypnotic
+phrases. In fact, the people have become the storehouse of a power
+that attracts round it a swarm of adventurers who are secretly
+investing its walls to exploit it for their own devices.
+
+Thus it has become more and more evident to me that the ideal of
+freedom has grown tenuous in the atmosphere of the West. The mentality
+is that of a slave-owning community, with a mutilated multitude of men
+tied to its commercial and political treadmill. It is the mentality of
+mutual distrust and fear. The appalling scenes of inhumanity and
+injustice, which are growing familiar to us, are the outcome of a
+psychology that deals with terror. No cruelty can be uglier in its
+ferocity than the cruelty of the coward. The people who have
+sacrificed their souls to the passion of profit-making and the
+drunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic and
+suspicion, and therefore they are ruthless even where they are least
+afraid of mischances. They become morally incapable of allowing
+freedom to others, and in their eagerness to curry favour with the
+powerful they not only connive at the injustice done by their own
+partners in political gambling, but participate in it. A perpetual
+anxiety for the protection of their gains at any cost strikes at the
+love of freedom and justice, until at length they are ready to forgo
+liberty for themselves and for others.
+
+My experience in the West, where I have realised the immense power of
+money and of organised propaganda,—working everywhere behind screens
+of camouflage, creating an atmosphere of distrust, timidity, and
+antipathy,—has impressed me deeply with the truth that real freedom
+is of the mind and spirit; it can never come to us from outside. He
+only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to
+extend it to others. He who cares to have slaves must chain himself to
+them; he who builds walls to create exclusion for others builds walls
+across his own freedom; he who distrusts freedom in others loses his
+moral right to it. Sooner or later he is lured into the meshes of
+physical and moral servility.
+
+Therefore I would urge my own countrymen to ask themselves if the
+freedom to which they aspire is one of external conditions. Is it
+merely a transferable commodity? Have they acquired a true love of
+freedom? Have they faith in it? Are they ready to make space in their
+society for the minds of their children to grow up in the ideal of
+human dignity, unhindered by restrictions that are unjust and
+irrational?
+
+Have we not made elaborately permanent the walls of our social
+compartments? We are tenaciously proud of their exclusiveness. We
+boast that, in this world, no other society but our own has come to
+finality in the classifying of its living members. Yet in our
+political agitations we conveniently forget that any unnaturalness in
+the relationship of governors and governed which humiliates us,
+becomes an outrage when it is artificially fixed under the threat of
+military persecution.
+
+When India gave voice to immortal thoughts, in the time of fullest
+vigour of vitality, her children had the fearless spirit of the
+seekers of truth. The great epic of the soul of our people—the
+_Mahâbhârata_—gives us a wonderful vision of an overflowing life,
+full of the freedom of inquiry and experiment. When the age of the
+Buddha came, humanity was stirred in our country to its uttermost
+depth. The freedom of mind which it produced expressed itself in a
+wealth of creation, spreading everywhere in its richness over the
+continent of Asia. But with the ebb of life in India the spirit of
+creation died away. It hardened into an age of inert construction. The
+organic unity of a varied and elastic society gave way to a
+conventional order which proved its artificial character by its
+inexorable law of exclusion.
+
+Life has its inequalities, I admit, but they are natural and are in
+harmony with our vital functions. The head keeps its place apart from
+the feet, not through some external arrangement or any conspiracy of
+coercion. If the body is compelled to turn somersaults for an
+indefinite period, the head never exchanges its relative function for
+that of the feet. But have our social divisions the same
+inevitableness of organic law? If we have the hardihood to say "yes"
+to that question, then how can we blame an alien people for subjecting
+us to a political order which they are tempted to believe eternal?
+
+By squeezing human beings in the grip of an inelastic system and
+forcibly holding them fixed, we have ignored the laws of life and
+growth. We have forced living souls into a permanent passivity, making
+them incapable of moulding circumstance to their own intrinsic design,
+and of mastering their own destiny. Borrowing our ideal of life from a
+dark period of our degeneracy, we have covered up our sensitiveness
+of soul under the immovable weight of a remote past. We have set up an
+elaborate ceremonial of cage-worship, and plucked all the feathers
+from the wings of the living spirit of our people. And for us,—with
+our centuries of degradation and insult, with the amorphousness of our
+national unity, with our helplessness before the attack of disasters
+from without and our unreasoning self-obstructions from within,—the
+punishment has been terrible. Our stupefaction has become so absolute
+that we do not even realise that this persistent misfortune, dogging
+our steps for ages, cannot be a mere accident of history, removable
+only by another accident from outside.
+
+Unless we have true faith in freedom, knowing it to be creative,
+manfully taking all its risks, not only do we lose the right to claim
+freedom in politics, but we also lack the power to maintain it with
+all our strength. For that would be like assigning the service of God
+to a confirmed atheist. And men, who contemptuously treat their own
+brothers and sisters as eternal babies, never to be trusted in the
+most trivial details of their personal life,—coercing them at every
+step by the cruel threat of persecution into following a blind lane
+leading to nowhere, driving a number of them into hypocrisy and into
+moral inertia,—will fail over and over again to rise to the height of
+their true and severe responsibility. They will be incapable of
+holding a just freedom in politics, and of fighting in freedom's
+cause.
+
+The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine which
+must move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel,
+keeping up the steam-power. It represents the active aspect of inertia
+which has the appearance of freedom, but not its truth, and therefore
+gives rise to slavery both within its boundaries and outside. The
+present civilisation of India has the constraining power of the mould.
+It squeezes living man in the grip of rigid regulations, and its
+repression of individual freedom makes it only too easy for men to be
+forced into submission of all kinds and degrees. In both of these
+traditions life is offered up to something which is not life; it is a
+sacrifice, which has no God for its worship, and is therefore utterly
+in vain. The West is continually producing mechanical power in excess
+of its spiritual control, and India has produced a system of
+mechanical control in excess of its vitality.
+
+
+
+
+                              THE NATION
+
+
+The peoples are living beings. They have their distinct personalities.
+But nations are organisations of power, and therefore their inner
+aspects and outward expressions are everywhere monotonously the same.
+Their differences are merely differences in degree of efficiency.
+
+In the modern world the fight is going on between the living spirit of
+the people and the methods of nation-organising. It is like the
+struggle that began in Central Asia between cultivated areas of man's
+habitation and the continually encroaching desert sands, till the
+human region of life and beauty was choked out of existence. When the
+spread of higher ideals of humanity is not held to be important, the
+hardening method of national efficiency gains a certain strength; and
+for some limited period of time, at least, it proudly asserts itself
+as the fittest to survive. But it is the survival of that part of man
+which is the least living. And this is the reason why dead monotony is
+the sign of the spread of the Nation. The modern towns, which present
+the physiognomy due to this dominance of the Nation, are everywhere
+the same, from San Francisco to London, from London to Tokyo. They
+show no faces, but merely masks.
+
+The peoples, being living personalities, must have their
+self-expression, and this leads to their distinctive creations. These
+creations are literature, art, social symbols and ceremonials. They
+are like different dishes at one common feast. They add richness to
+our enjoyment and understanding of truth. They are making the world of
+man fertile of life and variedly beautiful.
+
+But the nations do not create, they merely produce and destroy.
+Organisations for production are necessary. Even organisations for
+destruction may be so. But when, actuated by greed and hatred, they
+crowd away into a corner the living man who creates, then the harmony
+is lost, and the people's history runs at a break-neck speed towards
+some fatal catastrophe.
+
+Humanity, where it is living, is guided by inner ideals; but where it
+is a dead organisation it becomes impervious to them. Its building
+process is only an external process, and in its response to the moral
+guidance it has to pass through obstacles that are gross and
+non-plastic.
+
+Man as a person has his individuality, which is the field where his
+spirit has its freedom to express itself and to grow. The professional
+man carries a rigid crust around him which has very little variation
+and hardly any elasticity. This professionalism is the region where
+men specialise their knowledge and organise their power, mercilessly
+elbowing each other in their struggle to come to the front.
+Professionalism is necessary, without doubt; but it must not be
+allowed to exceed its healthy limits, to assume complete mastery over
+the personal man, making him narrow and hard, exclusively intent upon
+pursuit of success at the cost of his faith in ideals.
+
+In ancient India professions were kept within limits by social
+regulation. They were considered primarily as social necessities, and
+in the second place as the means of livelihood for individuals. Thus
+man, being free from the constant urging of unbounded competition,
+could have leisure to cultivate his nature in its completeness.
+
+The Cult of the Nation is the professionalism of the people. This cult
+is becoming their greatest danger, because it is bringing them
+enormous success, making them impatient of the claims of higher
+ideals. The greater the amount of success, the stronger are the
+conflicts of interest and jealousy and hatred which are aroused in
+men's minds, thereby making it more and more necessary for other
+peoples, who are still living, to stiffen into nations. With the
+growth of nationalism, man has become the greatest menace to man.
+Therefore the continual presence of panic goads that very nationalism
+into ever-increasing menace.
+
+Crowd psychology is a blind force. Like steam and other physical
+forces, it can be utilised for creating a tremendous amount of power.
+And therefore rulers of men, who, out of greed and fear, are bent upon
+turning their peoples into machines of power, try to train this crowd
+psychology for their special purposes. They hold it to be their duty
+to foster in the popular mind universal panic, unreasoning pride in
+their own race, and hatred of others. Newspapers, school-books, and
+even religious services are made use of for this object; and those
+who have the courage to express their disapprobation of this blind and
+impious cult are either punished in the law-courts, or are socially
+ostracised. The individual thinks, even when he feels; but the same
+individual, when he feels with the crowd, does not reason at all. His
+moral sense becomes blurred. This suppression of higher humanity in
+crowd minds is productive of enormous strength. For the crowd mind is
+essentially primitive; its forces are elemental. Therefore the Nation
+is for ever watching to take advantage of this enormous power of
+darkness.
+
+The people's instinct of self-preservation has been made dominant at
+particular times of crisis. Then, for the time being, the
+consciousness of its solidarity becomes aggressively wide-awake. But
+in the Nation this hyper-consciousness is kept alive for all time by
+artificial means. A man has to act the part of a policeman when he
+finds his house invaded by burglars. But if that remains his normal
+condition, then his consciousness of his household becomes acute and
+over-wrought, making him fly at every stranger passing near his house.
+This intensity of self-consciousness is nothing of which a man should
+feel proud; certainly it is not healthful. In like manner, incessant
+self-consciousness in a nation is highly injurious for the people. It
+serves its immediate purpose, but at the cost of the eternal in man.
+
+When a whole body of men train themselves for a particular narrow
+purpose, it becomes a common interest with them to keep up that
+purpose and preach absolute loyalty to it. Nationalism is the training
+of a whole people for a narrow ideal; and when it gets hold of their
+minds it is sure to lead them to moral degeneracy and intellectual
+blindness. We cannot but hold firm the faith that this Age of
+Nationalism, of gigantic vanity and selfishness, is only a passing
+phase in civilisation, and those who are making permanent arrangements
+for accommodating this temporary mood of history will be unable to fit
+themselves for the coming age, when the true spirit of freedom will
+have sway.
+
+With the unchecked growth of Nationalism the moral foundation of man's
+civilisation is unconsciously undergoing a change. The ideal of the
+social man is unselfishness, but the ideal of the Nation, like that of
+the professional man, is selfishness. This is why selfishness in the
+individual is condemned, while in the nation it is extolled, which
+leads to hopeless moral blindness, confusing the religion of the
+people with the religion of the nation. Therefore, to take an example,
+we find men more and more convinced of the superior claims of
+Christianity, merely because Christian nations are in possession of
+the greater part of the world. It is like supporting a robber's
+religion by quoting the amount of his stolen property. Nations
+celebrate their successful massacre of men in their churches. They
+forget that Thugs also ascribed their success in manslaughter to the
+favour of their goddess. But in the case of the latter their goddess
+frankly represented the principle of destruction. It was the criminal
+tribe's own murderous instinct deified—the instinct, not of one
+individual, but of the whole community, and therefore held sacred. In
+the same manner, in modern churches, selfishness, hatred and vanity in
+their collective aspect of national instincts do not scruple to share
+the homage paid to God.
+
+Of course, pursuit of self-interest need not be wholly selfish; it can
+even be in harmony with the interest of all. Therefore, ideally
+speaking, the nationalism, which stands for the expression of the
+collective self-interest of a people, need not be ashamed of itself
+if it maintains its true limitations. But what we see in practice is,
+that every nation which has prospered has done so through its career
+of aggressive selfishness either in commercial adventures or in
+foreign possessions, or in both. And this material prosperity not only
+feeds continually the selfish instincts of the people, but impresses
+men's minds with the lesson that, for a nation, selfishness is a
+necessity and therefore a virtue. It is the emphasis laid in Europe
+upon the idea of the Nation's constant increase of power, which is
+becoming the greatest danger to man, both in its direct activity and
+its power of infection.
+
+We must admit that evils there are in human nature, in spite of our
+faith in moral laws and our training in self-control. But they carry
+on their foreheads their own brand of infamy, their very success
+adding to their monstrosity. All through man's history there will be
+some who suffer, and others who cause suffering. The conquest of evil
+will never be a fully accomplished fact, but a continuous process like
+the process of burning in a flame.
+
+In former ages, when some particular people became turbulent and tried
+to rob others of their human rights, they sometimes achieved success
+and sometimes failed. And it amounted to nothing more than that. But
+when this idea of the Nation, which has met with universal acceptance
+in the present day, tries to pass off the cult of collective
+selfishness as a moral duty, simply because that selfishness is
+gigantic in stature, it not only commits depredation, but attacks the
+very vitals of humanity. It unconsciously generates in people's minds
+an attitude of defiance against moral law. For men are taught by
+repeated devices the lesson that the Nation is greater than the
+people, while yet it scatters to the winds the moral law that the
+people have held sacred.
+
+It has been said that a disease becomes most acutely critical when the
+brain is affected. For it is the brain that is constantly directing
+the siege against all disease forces. The spirit of national
+selfishness is that brain disease of a people which shows itself in
+red eyes and clenched fists, in violence of talk and movements, all
+the while shattering its natural restorative powers. But the power of
+self-sacrifice, together with the moral faculty of sympathy and
+co-operation, is the guiding spirit of social vitality. Its function
+is to maintain a beneficent relation of harmony with its
+surroundings. But when it begins to ignore the moral law which is
+universal and uses it only within the bounds of its own narrow sphere,
+then its strength becomes like the strength of madness which ends in
+self-destruction.
+
+What is worse, this aberration of a people, decked with the showy
+title of "patriotism," proudly walks abroad, passing itself off as a
+highly moral influence. Thus it has spread its inflammatory contagion
+all over the world, proclaiming its fever flush to be the best sign of
+health. It is causing in the hearts of peoples, naturally inoffensive,
+a feeling of envy at not having their temperature as high as that of
+their delirious neighbours and not being able to cause as much
+mischief, but merely having to suffer from it.
+
+I have often been asked by my Western friends how to cope with this
+evil, which has attained such sinister strength and vast dimensions.
+In fact, I have often been blamed for merely giving warning, and
+offering no alternative. When we suffer as a result of a particular
+system, we believe that some other system would bring us better luck.
+We are apt to forget that all systems produce evil sooner or later,
+when the psychology which is at the root of them is wrong. The system
+which is national to-day may assume the shape of the international
+to-morrow; but so long as men have not forsaken their idolatry of
+primitive instincts and collective passions, the new system will only
+become a new instrument of suffering. And because we are trained to
+confound efficient system with moral goodness itself, every ruined
+system makes us more and more distrustful of moral law.
+
+Therefore I do not put my faith in any new institution, but in the
+individuals all over the world who think clearly, feel nobly, and act
+rightly, thus becoming the channels of moral truth. Our moral ideals
+do not work with chisels and hammers. Like trees, they spread their
+roots in the soil and their branches in the sky, without consulting
+any architect for their plans.
+
+
+
+
+                            WOMAN AND HOME
+
+
+Creative expressions attain their perfect form through emotions
+modulated. Woman has that expression natural to her—a cadence of
+restraint in her behaviour, producing poetry of life. She has been an
+inspiration to man, guiding, most often unconsciously, his restless
+energy into an immense variety of creations in literature, art, music
+and religion. This is why, in India, woman has been described as the
+symbol of Shakti, the creative power.
+
+But if woman begins to believe that, though biologically her function
+is different from that of man, psychologically she is identical with
+him; if the human world in its mentality becomes exclusively male,
+then before long it will be reduced to utter inanity. For life finds
+its truth and beauty, not in any exaggeration of sameness, but in
+harmony.
+
+If woman's nature were identical with man's, if Eve were a mere
+tautology of Adam, it would only give rise to a monotonous
+superfluity. But that she was not so was proved by the banishment she
+secured from a ready-made Paradise. She had the instinctive wisdom to
+realise that it was her mission to help her mate in creating a
+Paradise of their own on earth, whose ideal she was to supply with her
+life, whose materials were to be produced and gathered by her comrade.
+
+However, it is evident that an increasing number of women in the West
+are ready to assert that their difference from men is unimportant. The
+reason for the vehement utterance of such a paradox cannot be ignored.
+It is a rebellion against a necessity, which is not equal for both the
+partners.
+
+Love in all forms has its obligations, and the love that binds women
+to their children binds them to their homes. But necessity is a
+tyrant, making us submit to injury and indignity, allowing advantage
+over us to those who are wholly or comparatively free from its burden.
+Such has been the case in the social relationship between man and
+woman. Along with the difference inherent in their respective natures,
+there have grown up between them inequalities fostered by
+circumstances. Man is not handicapped by the same biological and
+psychological responsibilities as woman, and therefore he has the
+liberty to give her the security of home. This liberty exacts payment
+when it offers its boon, because to give or to withhold the gift is
+within its power. It is the unequal freedom in their mutual
+relationships which has made the weight of life's tragedies so
+painfully heavy for woman to bear.
+
+Some mitigation of her disadvantage has been effected by her rendering
+herself and her home a luxury to man. She has accentuated those
+qualities in herself which insidiously impose their bondage over her
+mate, some by pandering to his weakness, and some by satisfying his
+higher nature, till the sex-consciousness in our society has grown
+abnormal and overpowering. There is no actual objection to this in
+itself, for it offers a stimulus, acting in the depth of life, which
+leads to creative exuberance. But a great deal of it is a forced
+growth of compulsion bearing seeds of degradation. In those ages when
+men acknowledged spiritual perfection to be their object, women were
+denounced as the chief obstacle in their way. The constant and
+conscious exercise of allurements, which gave women their power,
+attacked the weak spots in man's nature, and by doing so added to its
+weakness. For all relationships tainted with repression of freedom
+must become sources of degeneracy to the strong who impose such
+repression.
+
+Balance of power, however, between man and woman was in a measure
+established when home wielded a strong enough attraction to make men
+accept its obligations. But at last the time has come when the
+material ambition of man has assumed such colossal proportions that
+home is in danger of losing its centre of gravity for him, and he is
+receding farther and farther from its orbit.
+
+The arid zone in the social life is spreading fast. The simple
+comforts of home, made precious by the touch of love, are giving way
+to luxuries that can only have their full extension in the isolation
+of self-centred life. Hotels are being erected on the ruins of homes;
+productions are growing more stupendous than creations; and most men
+have, for the materials of their happiness and recreation, their dogs
+and horses, their pipes, guns, and gambling clubs.
+
+Reactions and rebellions, not being normal in their character, go on
+hurting truth until peace is restored. Therefore, when woman refuses
+to acknowledge the distinction between her life and that of man, she
+does not convince us of its truth, but only proves to us that she is
+suffering. All great sufferings indicate some wrong somewhere. In the
+present case, the wrong is in woman's lack of freedom in her
+relationship with man, which compels her to turn her disabilities into
+attractions, and to use untruths as her allies in the battle of life,
+while she is suffering from the precariousness of her position.
+
+From the beginning of our society, women have naturally accepted the
+training which imparts to their life and to their home a spirit of
+harmony. It is their instinct to perform their services in such a
+manner that these, through beauty, might be raised from the domain of
+slavery to the realm of grace. Women have tried to prove that in the
+building up of social life they are artists and not artisans. But all
+expressions of beauty lose their truth when compelled to accept the
+patronage of the gross and the indifferent. Therefore when necessity
+drives women to fashion their lives to the taste of the insensitive or
+the sensual, then the whole thing becomes a tragedy of desecration.
+Society is full of such tragedies. Many of the laws and social
+regulations guiding the relationships of man and woman are relics of
+a barbaric age, when the brutal pride of an exclusive possession had
+its dominance in human relations, such as those of parents and
+children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, teachers and
+disciples. The vulgarity of it still persists in the social bond
+between the sexes because of the economic helplessness of woman.
+Nothing makes us so stupidly mean as the sense of superiority which
+the power of the purse confers upon us.
+
+The powers of muscle and of money have opportunities of immediate
+satisfaction, but the power of the ideal must have infinite patience.
+The man who sells his goods, or fulfils his contract, is cheated if he
+fails to realise payment, but he who gives form to some ideal may
+never get his due and be fully paid. What I have felt in the women of
+India is the consciousness of this ideal—their simple faith in the
+sanctity of devotion lighted by love which is held to be divine. True
+womanliness is regarded in our country as the saintliness of love. It
+is not merely praised there, but literally worshipped; and she who is
+gifted with it is called _Devi_, as one revealing in herself Woman,
+the Divine. That this has not been a mere metaphor to us is because,
+in India, our mind is familiar with the idea of God in an eternal
+feminine aspect. Thus the Eastern woman, who is deeply aware in her
+heart of the sacredness of her mission, is a constant education to
+man. It has to be admitted that there are chances of such an influence
+failing to penetrate the callousness of the coarse-minded; but that is
+the destiny of all manifestations whose value is not in success or
+reward in honour.
+
+Woman has to be ready to suffer. She cannot allow her emotions to be
+dulled or polluted, for these are to create her life's atmosphere,
+apart from which her world would be dark and dead. This leaves her
+heart without any protection of insensibility, at the mercy of the
+hurts and insults of life. Women of India, like women everywhere, have
+their share of suffering, but it radiates through the ideal, and
+becomes, like sunlight, a creative force in their world. Our women
+know by heart the legends of the great women of the epic age—Savitri
+who by the power of love conquered death, and Sitâ who had no other
+reward for her life of sacrifice but the sacred majesty of sorrow.
+They know that it is their duty to make this life an image of the life
+eternal, and that love's mission truly performed has a spiritual
+meaning. It is a religious responsibility for them to live the life
+which is their own. For their activity is not for money-making, or
+organising power, or intellectually probing the mystery of existence,
+but for establishing and maintaining human relationships requiring the
+highest moral qualities. It is the consciousness of the spiritual
+character of their life's work, which lifts them above the utilitarian
+standard of the immediate and the passing, surrounds them with the
+dignity of the eternal, and transmutes their suffering and sorrow into
+a crown of light.
+
+I must guard myself from the risk of a possible misunderstanding. The
+permanent significance of home is not in the narrowness of its
+enclosure, but in an eternal moral idea. It represents the truth of
+human relationship; it reveals loyalty and love for the personality of
+man. Let us take a wider view, in a perspective truer than can be
+found in its present conventional associations. With the discovery and
+development of agriculture there came a period of settled life in our
+history. The nomad ever moved on with his tents and cattle; he
+explored space and exploited its contents. The cultivator of land
+explored time in its immensity, for he had leisure. Comparatively
+secured from the uncertainty of his outer resources, he had the
+opportunity to deal with his moral resources in the realm of human
+truth. This is why agricultural civilisation, like that of India and
+China, is essentially a civilisation of human relationship, of the
+adjustment of mutual obligations. It is deep-rooted in the inner life
+of man. Its basis is co-operation and not competition. In other words,
+its principle is the principle of home, to which all its outer
+adventures are subordinated.
+
+In the meanwhile, the nomadic life with its predatory instinct of
+exploitation has developed into a great civilisation. It is immensely
+proud and strong, killing leisure and pursuing opportunities. It
+minimises the claims of personal relationship and is jealously careful
+of its unhampered freedom for acquiring wealth and asserting its will
+upon others. Its burden is the burden of things, which grows heavier
+and more complex every day, disregarding the human and the spiritual.
+Its powerful pressure from all sides narrows the limits of home, the
+personal region of the human world. Thus, in this region of life,
+women are every day hustled out of their shelter for want of
+accommodation.
+
+But such a state of things can never have the effect of changing woman
+into man. On the contrary, it will lead her to find her place in the
+unlimited range of society, and the Guardian Spirit of the personal in
+human nature will extend the ministry of woman over all developments
+of life. Habituated to deal with the world as a machine, man is
+multiplying his materials, banishing away his happiness and
+sacrificing love to comfort, which is an illusion. At last the present
+age has sent its cry to woman, asking her to come out from her
+segregation in order to restore the spiritual supremacy of all that is
+human in the world of humanity. She has been aroused to remember that
+womanliness is not chiefly decorative. It is like that vital health,
+which not only imparts the bloom of beauty to the body, but joy to the
+mind and perfection to life.
+
+
+
+
+                         AN EASTERN UNIVERSITY
+
+
+In the midst of much that is discouraging in the present state of the
+world, there is one symptom of vital promise. Asia is awakening. This
+great event, if it be but directed along the right lines, is full of
+hope, not only for Asia herself, but for the whole world.
+
+On the other hand, it has to be admitted that the relationship of the
+West with the East, growing more and more complex and widespread for
+over two centuries, far from attaining its true fulfilment, has given
+rise to a universal spirit of conflict. The consequent strain and
+unrest have profoundly disturbed Asia, and antipathetic forces have
+been accumulating for years in the depth of the Eastern mind.
+
+The meeting of the East and the West has remained incomplete, because
+the occasions of it have not been disinterested. The political and
+commercial adventures carried on by Western races—very often by
+force and against the interest and wishes of the countries they have
+dealt with—have created a moral alienation, which is deeply injurious
+to both parties. The perils threatened by this unnatural relationship
+have long been contemptuously ignored by the West. But the blind
+confidence of the strong in their apparent invincibility has often led
+them, from their dream of security, into terrible surprises of
+history.
+
+It is not the fear of danger or loss to one people or another,
+however, which is most important. The demoralising influence of the
+constant estrangement between the two hemispheres, which affects the
+baser passions of man,—pride, greed and hypocrisy on the one hand;
+fear, suspiciousness and flattery on the other,—has been developing,
+and threatens us with a world-wide spiritual disaster.
+
+The time has come when we must use all our wisdom to understand the
+situation, and to control it, with a stronger trust in moral guidance
+than in any array of physical forces.
+
+In the beginning of man's history his first social object was to form
+a community, to grow into a people. At that early period, individuals
+were gathered together within geographical enclosures. But in the
+present age, with its facility of communication, geographical barriers
+have almost lost their reality, and the great federation of men, which
+is waiting either to find its true scope or to break asunder in a
+final catastrophe, is not a meeting of individuals, but of various
+human races. Now the problem before us is of one single country, which
+is this earth, where the races as individuals must find both their
+freedom of self-expression and their bond of federation. Mankind must
+realise a unity, wider in range, deeper in sentiment, stronger in
+power than ever before. Now that the problem is large, we have to
+solve it on a bigger scale, to realise the God in man by a larger
+faith and to build the temple of our faith on a sure and world-wide
+basis.
+
+The first step towards realisation is to create opportunities for
+revealing the different peoples to one another. This can never be done
+in those fields where the exploiting utilitarian spirit is supreme. We
+must find some meeting-ground, where there can be no question of
+conflicting interests. One of such places is the University, where we
+can work together in a common pursuit of truth, share together our
+common heritage, and realise that artists in all parts of the world
+have created forms of beauty, scientists discovered secrets of the
+universe, philosophers solved the problems of existence, saints made
+the truth of the spiritual world organic in their own lives, not
+merely for some particular race to which they belonged, but for all
+mankind. When the science of meteorology knows the earth's atmosphere
+as continuously one, affecting the different parts of the world
+differently, but in a harmony of adjustments, it knows and attains
+truth. And so, too, we must know that the great mind of man is one,
+working through the many differences which are needed to ensure the
+full result of its fundamental unity. When we understand this truth in
+a disinterested spirit, it teaches us to respect all the differences
+in man that are real, yet remain conscious of our oneness; and to know
+that perfection of unity is not in uniformity, but in harmony.
+
+This is the problem of the present age. The East, for its own sake and
+for the sake of the world, must not remain unrevealed. The deepest
+source of all calamities in history is misunderstanding. For where we
+do not understand, we can never be just.
+
+Being strongly impressed with the need and the responsibility, which
+every individual to-day must realise according to his power, I have
+formed the nucleus of an International University in India, as one of
+the best means of promoting mutual understanding between the East and
+the West. This Institution, according to the plan I have in mind, will
+invite students from the West to study the different systems of Indian
+philosophy, literature, art and music in their proper environment,
+encouraging them to carry on research work in collaboration with the
+scholars already engaged in this task.
+
+India has her renaissance. She is preparing to make her contribution
+to the world of the future. In the past she produced her great
+culture, and in the present age she has an equally important
+contribution to make to the culture of the New World which is emerging
+from the wreckage of the Old. This is a momentous period of her
+history, pregnant with precious possibilities, when any disinterested
+offer of co-operation from any part of the West will have an immense
+moral value, the memory of which will become brighter as the
+regeneration of the East grows in vigour and creative power.
+
+The Western Universities give their students an opportunity to learn
+what all the European peoples have contributed to their Western
+culture. Thus the intellectual mind of the West has been luminously
+revealed to the world. What is needed to complete this illumination is
+for the East to collect its own scattered lamps and offer them to the
+enlightenment of the world.
+
+There was a time when the great countries of Asia had, each of them,
+to nurture its own civilisation apart in comparative seclusion. Now
+has come the age of co-ordination and co-operation. The seedlings that
+were reared within narrow plots must now be transplanted into the open
+fields. They must pass the test of the world-market, if their maximum
+value is to be obtained.
+
+But before Asia is in a position to co-operate with the culture of
+Europe, she must base her own structure on a synthesis of all the
+different cultures which she has. When, taking her stand on such a
+culture, she turns toward the West, she will take, with a confident
+sense of mental freedom, her own view of truth, from her own
+vantage-ground, and open a new vista of thought to the world.
+Otherwise, she will allow her priceless inheritance to crumble into
+dust, and, trying to replace it clumsily with feeble imitations of the
+West, make herself superfluous, cheap and ludicrous. If she thus
+loses her individuality and her specific power to exist, will it in
+the least help the rest of the world? Will not her terrible bankruptcy
+involve also the Western mind? If the whole world grows at last into
+an exaggerated West, then such an illimitable parody of the modern age
+will die, crushed beneath its own absurdity.
+
+In this belief, it is my desire to extend by degrees the scope of this
+University on simple lines, until it comprehends the whole range of
+Eastern cultures—the Aryan, Semitic, Mongolian and others. Its object
+will be to reveal the Eastern mind to the world.
+
+Of one thing I felt certain during my travels in Europe, that a
+genuine interest has been roused there in the philosophy and the arts
+of the East, from which the Western mind seeks fresh inspiration of
+truth and beauty. Once the East had her reputation of fabulous wealth,
+and the seekers were attracted from across the sea. Since then, the
+shrine of wealth has changed its site. But the East is famed also for
+her storage of wisdom, harvested by her patriarchs from long
+successive ages of spiritual endeavour. And when, as now, in the midst
+of the pursuit of power and wealth, there rises the cry of privation
+from the famished spirit of man, an opportunity is offered to the East
+to offer her store to those who need it.
+
+Once upon a time we were in possession of such a thing as our own mind
+in India. It was living. It thought, it felt, it expressed itself. It
+was receptive as well as productive. That this mind could be of any
+use in the process, or in the end, of our education was overlooked by
+our modern educational dispensation. We are provided with buildings
+and books and other magnificent burdens calculated to suppress our
+mind. The latter was treated like a library-shelf solidly made of
+wood, to be loaded with leather-bound volumes of second-hand
+information. In consequence, it has lost its own colour and character,
+and has borrowed polish from the carpenter's shop. All this has cost
+us money, and also our finer ideas, while our intellectual vacancy has
+been crammed with what is described in official reports as Education.
+In fact, we have bought our spectacles at the expense of our eyesight.
+
+In India our goddess of learning is _Saraswati_. My audience in the
+West, I am sure, will be glad to know that her complexion is white.
+But the signal fact is that she is living and she is a woman, and her
+seat is on a lotus-flower. The symbolic meaning of this is, that she
+dwells in the centre of life and the heart of all existence, which
+opens itself in beauty to the light of heaven.
+
+The Western education which we have chanced to know is impersonal. Its
+complexion is also white, but it is the whiteness of the white-washed
+class-room walls. It dwells in the cold-storage compartments of
+lessons and the ice-packed minds of the schoolmasters. The effect
+which it had on my mind when, as a boy, I was compelled to go to
+school, I have described elsewhere. My feeling was very much the same
+as a tree might have, which was not allowed to live its full life, but
+was cut down to be made into packing-cases.
+
+The introduction of this education was not a part of the solemn
+marriage ceremony which was to unite the minds of the East and West in
+mutual understanding. It represented an artificial method of training
+specially calculated to produce the carriers of the white man's
+burden. This want of ideals still clings to our education system,
+though our Universities have latterly burdened their syllabus with a
+greater number of subjects than before. But it is only like adding to
+the bags of wheat the bullock carries to market; it does not make the
+bullock any better off.
+
+Mind, when long deprived of its natural food of truth and freedom of
+growth, develops an unnatural craving for success; and our students
+have fallen victims to the mania for success in examinations. Success
+consists in obtaining the largest number of marks with the strictest
+economy of knowledge. It is a deliberate cultivation of disloyalty to
+truth, of intellectual dishonesty, of a foolish imposition by which
+the mind is encouraged to rob itself. But as we are by means of it
+made to forget the existence of mind, we are supremely happy at the
+result. We pass examinations, and shrivel up into clerks, lawyers and
+police inspectors, and we die young.
+
+Universities should never be made into mechanical organisations for
+collecting and distributing knowledge. Through them the people should
+offer their intellectual hospitality, their wealth of mind to others,
+and earn their proud right in return to receive gifts from the rest of
+the world. But in the whole length and breadth of India there is not a
+single University established in the modern time where a foreign or
+an Indian student can properly be acquainted with the best products
+of the Indian mind. For that we have to cross the sea, and knock at
+the doors of France and Germany. Educational institutions in our
+country are India's alms-bowl of knowledge; they lower our
+intellectual self-respect; they encourage us to make a foolish display
+of decorations composed of borrowed feathers.
+
+This it was that led me to found a school in Bengal, in face of many
+difficulties and discouragements, and in spite of my own vocation as a
+poet, who finds his true inspiration only when he forgets that he is a
+schoolmaster. It is my hope that in this school a nucleus has been
+formed, round which an indigenous University of our own land will find
+its natural growth—a University which will help India's mind to
+concentrate and to be fully conscious of itself; free to seek the
+truth and make this truth its own wherever found, to judge by its own
+standard, give expression to its own creative genius, and offer its
+wisdom to the guests who come from other parts of the world.
+
+Man's intellect has a natural pride in its own aristocracy, which is
+the pride of its culture. Culture only acknowledges the excellence
+whose criticism is in its inner perfection, not in any external
+success. When this pride succumbs to some compulsion of necessity or
+lure of material advantage, it brings humiliation to the intellectual
+man. Modern India, through her very education, has been made to suffer
+this humiliation. Once she herself provided her children with a
+culture which was the product of her own ages of thought and creation.
+But it has been thrust aside, and we are made to tread the mill of
+passing examinations, not for learning anything, but for notifying
+that we are qualified for employments under organisations conducted in
+English. Our educated community is not a cultured community, but a
+community of qualified candidates. Meanwhile the proportion of
+possible employments to the number of claimants has gradually been
+growing narrower, and the consequent disaffection has been widespread.
+At last the very authorities who are responsible for this are blaming
+their victims. Such is the perversity of human nature. It bears its
+worst grudge against those it has injured.
+
+It is as if some tribe which had the primitive habit of decorating its
+tribal members with birds' plumage were some day to hold these very
+birds guilty of the crime of being extinct. There are belated
+attempts on the part of our governors to read us pious homilies about
+disinterested love of learning, while the old machinery goes on
+working, whose product is not education but certificates. It is good
+to remind the fettered bird that its wings are for soaring; but it is
+better to cut the chain which is holding it to its perch. The most
+pathetic feature of the tragedy is that the bird itself has learnt to
+use its chain for its ornament, simply because the chain jingles in
+fairly respectable English.
+
+In the Bengali language there is a modern maxim which can be
+translated, "He who learns to read and write rides in a carriage and
+pair." In English there is a similar proverb, "Knowledge is power." It
+is an offer of a prospective bribe to the student, a promise of an
+ulterior reward which is more important than knowledge itself.
+Temptations, held before us as inducements to be good or to pursue
+uncongenial paths, are most often flimsy lies or half-truths, such as
+the oft-quoted maxim of respectable piety, "Honesty is the best
+policy," at which politicians all over the world seem to laugh in
+their sleeves. But unfortunately, education conducted under a special
+providence of purposefulness, of eating the fruit of knowledge from
+the wrong end, _does_ lead one to that special paradise on earth, the
+daily rides in one's own carriage and pair. And the West, I have heard
+from authentic sources, is aspiring in its education after that
+special cultivation of worldliness.
+
+Where society is comparatively simple and obstructions are not too
+numerous, we can clearly see how the life-process guides education in
+its vital purpose. The system of folk-education, which is indigenous
+to India, but is dying out, was one with the people's life. It flowed
+naturally through the social channels and made its way everywhere. It
+is a system of widespread irrigation of culture. Its teachers,
+specially trained men, are in constant requisition, and find crowded
+meetings in our villages, where they repeat the best thoughts and
+express the ideals of the land in the most effective form. The mode of
+instruction includes the recitation of epics, expounding of the
+scriptures, reading from the Puranas, which are the classical records
+of old history, performance of plays founded upon the early myths and
+legends, dramatic narration of the lives of ancient heroes, and the
+singing in chorus of songs from the old religious literature.
+Evidently, according to this system, the best function of education
+is to enable us to realise that to live as a man is great, requiring
+profound philosophy for its ideal, poetry for its expression, and
+heroism in its conduct. Owing to this vital method of culture the
+common people of India, though technically illiterate, have been made
+conscious of the sanctity of social relationships, entailing constant
+sacrifice and self-control, urged and supported by ideals collectively
+expressed in one word, _Dharma_.
+
+Such a system of education may sound too simple for the complexities
+of modern life. But the fundamental principle of social life in its
+different stages of development remains the same; and in no
+circumstance can the truth be ignored that all human complexities must
+harmonise in organic unity with life, failing which there will be
+endless conflict. Most things in the civilised world occupy more than
+their legitimate space. Much of their burden is needless. By bearing
+this burden civilised man may be showing great strength, but he
+displays little skill. To the gods, viewing this from on high, it must
+seem like the flounderings of a giant who has got out of his depth and
+knows not how to swim.
+
+The main source of all forms of voluntary slavery is the desire of
+gain. It is difficult to fight against this when modern civilisation
+is tainted with such a universal contamination of avarice. I have
+realised it myself in the little boys of my own school. For the first
+few years there is no trouble. But as soon as the upper class is
+reached, their worldly wisdom—the malady of the aged—begins to
+assert itself. They rebelliously insist that they must no longer
+learn, but rather pass examinations. Professions in the modern age are
+more numerous and lucrative than ever before. They need specialisation
+of training and knowledge, tempting education to yield its spiritual
+freedom to the claims of utilitarian ambitions. But man's deeper
+nature is hurt; his smothered life seeks to be liberated from the
+suffocating folds and sensual ties of prosperity. And this is why we
+find almost everywhere in the world a growing dissatisfaction with the
+prevalent system of teaching, which betrays the encroachment of
+senility and worldly prudence over pure intellect.
+
+In India, also, a vague feeling of discontent has given rise to
+numerous attempts at establishing national schools and colleges. But,
+unfortunately, our very education has been successful in depriving us
+of our real initiative and our courage of thought. The training we get
+in our schools has the constant implication in it that it is not for
+us to produce but to borrow. And we are casting about to borrow our
+educational plans from European institutions. The trampled plants of
+Indian corn are dreaming of recouping their harvest from the
+neighbouring wheat fields. To change the figure, we forget that, for
+proficiency in walking, it is better to train the muscles of our own
+legs than to strut upon wooden ones of foreign make, although they
+clatter and cause more surprise at our skill in using them than if
+they were living and real.
+
+But when we go to borrow help from a foreign neighbourhood we are apt
+to overlook the real source of help behind all that is external and
+apparent. Had the deep-water fishes happened to produce a scientist
+who chose the jumping of a monkey for his research work, I am sure he
+would give most of the credit to the branches of the trees and very
+little to the monkey itself. In a foreign University we see the
+branching wildernesses of its buildings, furniture, regulations, and
+syllabus, but the monkey, which is a difficult creature to catch and
+more difficult to manufacture, we are likely to treat as a mere
+accident of minor importance. It is convenient for us to overlook the
+fact that among the Europeans the living spirit of the University is
+widely spread in their society, their parliament, their literature,
+and the numerous activities of their corporate life. In all these
+functions they are in perpetual touch with the great personality of
+the land which is creative and heroic in its constant acts of
+self-expression and self-sacrifice. They have their thoughts published
+in their books as well as through the medium of living men who think
+those thoughts, and who criticise, compare and disseminate them. Some
+at least of the drawbacks of their academic education are redeemed by
+the living energy of the intellectual personality pervading their
+social organism. It is like the stagnant reservoir of water which
+finds its purification in the showers of rain to which it keeps itself
+open. But, to our misfortune, we have in India all the furniture of
+the European University except the human teacher. We have, instead,
+mere purveyors of book-lore in whom the paper god of the bookshop has
+been made vocal.
+
+A most important truth, which we are apt to forget, is that a teacher
+can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can
+never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame.
+The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living
+traffic with his knowledge, but merely repeats his lessons to his
+students, can only load their minds; he cannot quicken them. Truth not
+only must inform but inspire. If the inspiration dies out, and the
+information only accumulates, then truth loses its infinity. The
+greater part of our learning in the schools has been wasted because,
+for most of our teachers, their subjects are like dead specimens of
+once living things, with which they have a learned acquaintance, but
+no communication of life and love.
+
+The educational institution, therefore, which I have in mind has
+primarily for its object the constant pursuit of truth, from which the
+imparting of truth naturally follows. It must not be a dead cage in
+which living minds are fed with food artificially prepared. It should
+be an open house, in which students and teachers are at one. They must
+live their complete life together, dominated by a common aspiration
+for truth and a need of sharing all the delights of culture. In former
+days the great master-craftsmen had students in their workshops where
+they co-operated in shaping things to perfection. That was the place
+where knowledge could become living—that knowledge which not only has
+its substance and law, but its atmosphere subtly informed by a
+creative personality. For intellectual knowledge also has its aspect
+of creative art, in which the man who explores truth expresses
+something which is human in him—his enthusiasm, his courage, his
+sacrifice, his honesty, and his skill. In merely academical teaching
+we find subjects, but not the man who pursues the subjects; therefore
+the vital part of education remains incomplete.
+
+For our Universities we must claim, not labelled packages of truth and
+authorised agents to distribute them, but truth in its living
+association with her lovers and seekers and discoverers. Also we must
+know that the concentration of the mind-forces scattered throughout
+the country is the most important mission of a University, which, like
+the nucleus of a living cell, should be the centre of the intellectual
+life of the people.
+
+The bringing about of an intellectual unity in India is, I am told,
+difficult to the verge of impossibility owing to the fact that India
+has so many different languages. Such a statement is as unreasonable
+as to say that man, because he has a diversity of limbs, should find
+it impossible to realise life's unity in himself, and that only an
+earthworm composed of a tail and nothing else could truly know that it
+had a body.
+
+Let us admit that India is not like any one of the great countries of
+Europe, which has its own separate language; but is rather like Europe
+herself, branching out into different peoples with many different
+languages. And yet Europe has a common civilisation, with an
+intellectual unity which is not based upon uniformity of language. It
+is true that in the earlier stages of her culture the whole of Europe
+had Latin for her learned tongue. That was in her intellectual budding
+time, when all her petals of self-expression were closed in one point.
+But the perfection of her mental unfolding was not represented by the
+singularity of her literary vehicle. When the great European countries
+found their individual languages, then only the true federation of
+cultures became possible in the West, and the very differences of the
+channels made the commerce of ideas in Europe so richly copious and so
+variedly active. We can well imagine what the loss to European
+civilisation would be if France, Italy and Germany, and England
+herself, had not through their separate agencies contributed to the
+common coffer their individual earnings.
+
+There was a time with us when India had her common language of culture
+in Sanskrit. But, for the complete commerce of her thought, she
+required that all her vernaculars should attain their perfect powers,
+through which her different peoples might manifest their
+idiosyncrasies; and this could never be done through a foreign tongue.
+
+In the United States, in Canada and other British Colonies, the
+language of the people is English. It has a great literature which had
+its birth and growth in the history of the British Islands. But when
+this language, with all its products and acquisitions, matured by ages
+on its own mother soil, is carried into foreign lands, which have
+their own separate history and their own life-growth, it must
+constantly hamper the indigenous growth of culture and destroy
+individuality of judgement and the perfect freedom of self-expression.
+The inherited wealth of the English language, with all its splendour,
+becomes an impediment when taken into different surroundings, just as
+when lungs are given to the whale in the sea. If such is the case even
+with races whose grandmother-tongue naturally continues to be their
+own mother-tongue, one can imagine what sterility it means for a
+people which accepts, for its vehicle of culture, an altogether
+foreign language. A language is not like an umbrella or an overcoat,
+that can be borrowed by unconscious or deliberate mistake; it is like
+the living skin itself. If the body of a draught-horse enters into the
+skin of a race-horse, it will be safe to wager that such an anomaly
+will never win a race, and will fail even to drag a cart. Have we not
+watched some modern Japanese artists imitating European art? The
+imitation may sometimes produce clever results; but such cleverness
+has only the perfection of artificial flowers which never bear fruit.
+
+All great countries have their vital centres for intellectual life,
+where a high standard of learning is maintained, where the minds of
+the people are naturally attracted, where they find their genial
+atmosphere, in which to prove their worth and to contribute their
+share to the country's culture. Thus they kindle, on the common altar
+of the land, that great sacrificial fire which can radiate the sacred
+light of wisdom abroad.
+
+Athens was such a centre in Greece, Rome in Italy; and Paris is such
+to-day in France. Benares has been and still continues to be the
+centre of our Sanskrit culture. But Sanskrit learning does not exhaust
+all the elements of culture that exist in modern India.
+
+If we were to take for granted, what some people maintain, that
+Western culture is the only source of light for our mind, then it
+would be like depending for daybreak upon some star, which is the sun
+of a far distant sphere. The star may give us light, but not the day;
+it may give us direction in our voyage of exploration, but it can
+never open the full view of truth before our eyes. In fact, we can
+never use this cold starlight for stirring the sap in our branches,
+and giving colour and bloom to our life. This is the reason why
+European education has become for India mere school lessons and no
+culture; a box of matches, good for the small uses of illumination,
+but not the light of morning, in which the use and beauty, and all the
+subtle mysteries of life are blended in one.
+
+Let me say clearly that I have no distrust of any culture because of
+its foreign character. On the contrary, I believe that the shock of
+such extraneous forces is necessary for the vitality of our
+intellectual nature. It is admitted that much of the spirit of
+Christianity runs counter, not only to the classical culture of
+Europe, but to the European temperament altogether. And yet this alien
+movement of ideas, constantly running against the natural mental
+current of Europe, has been a most important factor in strengthening
+and enriching her civilisation, on account of the sharp antagonism of
+its intellectual direction. In fact, the European vernaculars first
+woke up to life and fruitful vigour when they felt the impact of this
+foreign thought-power with all its oriental forms and affinities. The
+same thing is happening in India. The European culture has come to us,
+not only with its knowledge, but with its velocity.
+
+Then, again, let us admit that modern Science is Europe's great gift
+to humanity for all time to come. We, in India, must claim it from her
+hands, and gratefully accept it in order to be saved from the curse of
+futility by lagging behind. We shall fail to reap the harvest of the
+present age if we delay.
+
+What I object to is the artificial arrangement by which foreign
+education tends to occupy all the space of our national mind, and thus
+kills, or hampers, the great opportunity for the creation of a new
+thought-power by a new combination of truths. It is this which makes
+me urge that all the elements in our own culture have to be
+strengthened, not to resist the Western culture, but truly to accept
+and assimilate it; to use it for our sustenance, not as our burden; to
+get mastery over this culture, and not to live on its outskirts as the
+hewers of texts and drawers of book-learning.
+
+The main river in Indian culture has flowed in four streams,—the
+Vedic, the Puranic, the Buddhist, and the Jain. It has its source in
+the heights of the Indian consciousness. But a river, belonging to a
+country, is not fed by its own waters alone. The Tibetan Brahmaputra
+is a tributary to the Indian Ganges. Contributions have similarly
+found their way to India's original culture. The Muhammadan, for
+example, has repeatedly come into India from outside, laden with his
+own stores of knowledge and feeling and his wonderful religious
+democracy, bringing freshet after freshet to swell the current. To our
+music, our architecture, our pictorial art, our literature, the
+Muhammadans have made their permanent and precious contribution. Those
+who have studied the lives and writings of our medieval saints, and
+all the great religious movements that sprang up in the time of the
+Muhammadan rule, know how deep is our debt to this foreign current
+that has so intimately mingled with our life.
+
+So, in our centre of Indian learning, we must provide for the
+co-ordinate study of all these different cultures,—the Vedic, the
+Puranic, the Buddhist, the Jain, the Islamic, the Sikh and the
+Zoroastrian. The Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan will also have to be
+added; for, in the past, India did not remain isolated within her own
+boundaries. Therefore, in order to learn what she was, in her relation
+to the whole continent of Asia, these cultures too must be studied.
+Side by side with them must finally be placed the Western culture. For
+only then shall we be able to assimilate this last contribution to our
+common stock. A river flowing within banks is truly our own, and it
+can contain its due tributaries; but our relations with a flood can
+only prove disastrous.
+
+There are some who are exclusively modern, who believe that the past
+is the bankrupt time, leaving no assets for us, but only a legacy of
+debts. They refuse to believe that the army which is marching forward
+can be fed from the rear. It is well to remind such persons that the
+great ages of renaissance in history were those when man suddenly
+discovered the seeds of thought in the granary of the past.
+
+The unfortunate people who have lost the harvest of their past have
+lost their present age. They have missed their seed for cultivation,
+and go begging for their bare livelihood. We must not imagine that we
+are one of these disinherited peoples of the world. The time has come
+for us to break open the treasure-trove of our ancestors, and use it
+for our commerce of life. Let us, with its help, make our future our
+own, and not continue our existence as the eternal rag-pickers in
+other people's dustbins.
+
+So far I have dwelt only upon the intellectual aspect of Education.
+For, even in the West, it is the intellectual training which receives
+almost exclusive emphasis. The Western universities have not yet truly
+recognised that fulness of expression is fulness of life. And a large
+part of man can never find its expression in the mere language of
+words. It must therefore seek for its other languages,—lines and
+colours, sounds and movements. Through our mastery of these we not
+only make our whole nature articulate, but also understand man in all
+his attempts to reveal his innermost being in every age and clime. The
+great use of Education is not merely to collect facts, but to know
+man and to make oneself known to man. It is the duty of every human
+being to master, at least to some extent, not only the language of
+intellect, but also that personality which is the language of Art. It
+is a great world of reality for man,—vast and profound,—this growing
+world of his own creative nature. This is the world of Art. To be
+brought up in ignorance of it is to be deprived of the knowledge and
+use of that great inheritance of humanity, which has been growing and
+waiting for every one of us from the beginning of our history. It is
+to remain deaf to the eternal voice of Man, that speaks to all men the
+messages that are beyond speech. From the educational point of view we
+know Europe where it is scientific, or at best literary. So our notion
+of its modern culture is limited within the boundary lines of grammar
+and the laboratory. We almost completely ignore the æsthetic life of
+man, leaving it uncultivated, allowing weeds to grow there. Our
+newspapers are prolific, our meeting-places are vociferous; and in
+them we wear to shreds the things we have borrowed from our English
+teachers. We make the air dismal and damp with the tears of our
+grievances. But where are our arts, which, like the outbreak of
+spring flowers, are the spontaneous overflow of our deeper nature and
+spiritual magnificence?
+
+Through this great deficiency of our modern education, we are
+condemned to carry to the end a dead load of dumb wisdom. Like
+miserable outcasts, we are deprived of our place in the festival of
+culture, and wait at the outer court, where the colours are not for
+us, nor the forms of delight, nor the songs. Ours is the education of
+a prison-house, with hard labour and with a drab dress cut to the
+limits of minimum decency and necessity. We are made to forget that
+the perfection of colour and form and expression belongs to the
+perfection of vitality,—that the joy of life is only the other side
+of the strength of life. The timber merchant may think that the
+flowers and foliage are mere frivolous decorations of a tree; but if
+these are suppressed, he will know to his cost that the timber too
+will fail.
+
+During the Moghal period, music and art in India found a great impetus
+from the rulers, because their whole life—not merely their official
+life—was lived in this land; and it is the wholeness of life from
+which originates Art. But our English teachers are birds of passage;
+they cackle to us, but do not sing,—their true heart is not in the
+land of their exile.
+
+Constriction of life, owing to this narrowness of culture, must no
+longer be encouraged. In the centre of Indian culture which I am
+proposing, music and art must have their prominent seats of honour,
+and not be given merely a tolerant nod of recognition. The different
+systems of music and different schools of art which lie scattered in
+the different ages and provinces of India, and in the different strata
+of society, and also those belonging to the other great countries of
+Asia, which had communication with India, have to be brought there
+together and studied.
+
+I have already hinted that Education should not be dragged out of its
+native element, the life-current of the people. Economic life covers
+the whole width of the fundamental basis of society, because its
+necessities are the simplest and the most universal. Educational
+institutions, in order to obtain their fulness of truth, must have
+close association with this economic life. The highest mission of
+education is to help us to realise the inner principle of the unity of
+all knowledge and all the activities of our social and spiritual
+being. Society in its early stage was held together by its economic
+co-operation, when all its members felt in unison a natural interest
+in their right to live. Civilisation could never have been started at
+all if such was not the case. And civilisation will fall to pieces if
+it never again realises the spirit of mutual help and the common
+sharing of benefits in the elemental necessaries of life. The idea of
+such economic co-operation should be made the basis of our University.
+It must not only instruct, but live; not only think, but produce.
+
+Our ancient _tapovanas_, or forest schools, which were our natural
+universities, were not shut off from the daily life of the people.
+Masters and students gathered fruit and fuel, and took their cattle
+out to graze, supporting themselves by the work of their own hands.
+Spiritual education was a part of the spiritual life itself, which
+comprehended all life. Our centre of culture should not only be the
+centre of the intellectual life of India, but the centre of her
+economic life also. It must co-operate with the villages round it,
+cultivate land, breed cattle, spin cloths, press oil from oil-seeds;
+it must produce all the necessaries, devising the best means, using
+the best materials, and calling science to its aid. Its very existence
+should depend upon the success of its industrial activities carried
+out on the co-operative principle, which will unite the teachers and
+students and villagers of the neighbourhood in a living and active
+bond of necessity. This will give us also a practical industrial
+training, whose motive force is not the greed of profit.
+
+Before I conclude my paper, a delicate question remains to be
+considered. What must be the religious ideal that is to rule our
+centre of Indian culture? The one abiding ideal in the religious life
+of India has been _Mukti_, the deliverance of man's soul from the grip
+of self, its communion with the Infinite Soul through its union in
+_ânanda_ with the universe. This religion of spiritual harmony is not
+a theological doctrine to be taught, as a subject in the class, for
+half an hour each day. It is the spiritual truth and beauty of our
+attitude towards our surroundings, our conscious relationship with the
+Infinite, and the lasting power of the Eternal in the passing moments
+of our life. Such a religious ideal can only be made possible by
+making provision for students to live in intimate touch with nature,
+daily to grow in an atmosphere of service offered to all creatures,
+tending trees, feeding birds and animals, learning to feel the immense
+mystery of the soil and water and air.
+
+Along with this, there should be some common sharing of life with the
+tillers of the soil and the humble workers in the neighbouring
+villages; studying their crafts, inviting them to the feasts, joining
+them in works of co-operation for communal welfare; and in our
+intercourse we should be guided, not by moral maxims or the
+condescension of social superiority, but by natural sympathy of life
+for life, and by the sheer necessity of love's sacrifice for its own
+sake. In such an atmosphere students would learn to understand that
+humanity is a divine harp of many strings, waiting for its one grand
+music. Those who realise this unity are made ready for the pilgrimage
+through the night of suffering, and along the path of sacrifice, to
+the great meeting of Man in the future, for which the call comes to us
+across the darkness.
+
+Life, in such a centre, should be simple and clean. We should never
+believe that simplicity of life might make us unsuited to the
+requirements of the society of our time. It is the simplicity of the
+tuning-fork, which is needed all the more because of the intricacy of
+strings in the instrument. In the morning of our career our nature
+needs the pure and the perfect note of a spiritual ideal in order to
+fit us for the complications of our later years.
+
+In other words, this institution should be a perpetual creation by the
+co-operative enthusiasm of teachers and students, growing with the
+growth of their soul; a world in itself, self-sustaining, independent,
+rich with ever-renewing life, radiating life across space and time,
+attracting and maintaining round it a planetary system of dependent
+bodies. Its aim should lie in imparting life-breath to the complete
+man, who is intellectual as well as economic, bound by social bonds,
+but aspiring towards spiritual freedom and final perfection.
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+  _Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
+                        BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE
+
+
+=GITANJALI. (Song Offerings.)= Translated by the Author. With an
+Introduction by W. B. YEATS, and a Portrait by W. ROTHENSTEIN. Crown
+8vo. 5s. net.
+
+_ATHENÆUM._—"Mr. Tagore's translations are of trance-like beauty....
+The expanding sentiment of some of the poems wins, even through the
+alien medium of our English prose, a rhythm which in its strength and
+melody might recall familiar passages in the Psalms or Solomon's
+Song."
+
+
+=FRUIT-GATHERING. A Sequel to "Gitanjali."= Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+_ATHENÆUM._—"The eighty-six pieces that fill this volume are pure
+jets of lyric feeling, aphorisms expressed in moving symbols, or fully
+developed parables and allegories ... several are as perfect in form
+as they are beautiful and poignant in content."
+
+
+=GITANJALI AND FRUIT-GATHERING.=
+
+With Illustrations in colour and half-tone by NANDALAL BOSE,
+SURENDRANATH KAR, ABANINDRANATH TAGORE, and NOBINDRANATH TAGORE. Crown
+8vo. 10s. net.
+
+
+=THE GARDENER. Lyrics of Love and Life.= Translated by the Author. With
+Portrait. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+_DAILY MAIL._—"Flowers as fresh as sunrise.... One cannot tell what
+they have lost in the translation, but as they stand they are of
+extreme beauty.... They are simple, exalted, fragrant—episodes and
+incidents of every day transposed to faery."
+
+
+=THE CRESCENT MOON. Child-Poems.= Translated by the Author. With 8
+Illustrations in Colour. Pott 4to. 5s. net.
+
+_NATION._—"A vision of childhood which is only paralleled in our
+literature by the work of William Blake."
+
+
+=STRAY BIRDS.= Poems. With a Frontispiece by WILLY POGÁNY. Crown 8vo.
+4s. 6d. net.
+
+_SCOTSMAN._—"The richness of this volume in thought and in imagery,
+in tracing analogies and in discovering apologues, is such as to yield
+pleasure and profit to the most fertile and cultured minds."
+
+
+=LOVER'S GIFT AND CROSSING.= Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+_ATHENÆUM._—"The poems often touch extreme heights of passion and
+sublimity, and the diction has a beauty and a music that few have
+attained in this particular medium."
+
+
+=THE FUGITIVE.= Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+_SUNDAY TIMES._—"In 'The Fugitive' the lovers of Tagore will not be
+disappointed. He has all his powers still undimmed. Indeed, the poet
+never, in our judgment, has surpassed this work."
+
+
+=CHITRA. A Play.= Translated by the Author. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
+
+_OBSERVER._—"An allegory of love's meaning, clear as a pool in the
+sunshine. It was written, we are told, twenty-five years ago.... Even
+then Mr. Tagore had that calm intensity of vision which we have all
+come to love in his later work. We find in him that for which Arjuna
+groped in his love, 'that ultimate _you_, that bare simplicity of
+truth,' and never more than in this little work of beauty, 'Chitra.'"
+
+
+=THE KING OF THE DARK CHAMBER.= =A Play.= Translated by KSHITISH CHANDRA
+SEN. Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+_PALL MALL GAZETTE._—"Altogether, the play is a beautiful piece of
+fanciful writing with a veiled purpose at the back of it."
+
+
+=THE POST OFFICE. A Play.= Translated by DEVABRATA MUKERJEA. Crown 8vo.
+3s. 6d. net.
+
+_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN._—"'The Post Office' is a delicate, wistful
+thing, coloured with beautiful imagery; for a moment it lifts a corner
+of the veil of worldly existence. The translation is throughout
+extremely happy."
+
+
+=THE CYCLE OF SPRING. A Play.= Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
+
+_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN._—"The whole little drama is a spring-gift such
+as England has seldom received."
+
+
+=SACRIFICE and other Plays.= Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+_SCOTSMAN._—"All the pieces have a rare beauty of their own."
+
+
+=THE HOME AND THE WORLD. A Novel.= Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+_SATURDAY REVIEW._—"In these days of indiscriminating praise, it is
+hard for a reviewer to find words with which to welcome properly a
+book so good as this."
+
+
+=THE WRECK. A Novel.= Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
+
+_MORNING POST._—"The story cannot fail to interest and delight."
+
+
+=MASHI and other Stories.= Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+_OXFORD MAGAZINE._—"Full of pregnant pictures of Indian life and
+character, subdued but vivid in tone."
+
+
+=HUNGRY STONES and other Stories.= Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+_DAILY TELEGRAPH._—"Contains descriptive passages of rare vigour and
+beauty, and is embellished with imagery of a delicate and distinctive
+character."
+
+
+=SĀDHANĀ: The Realisation of Life. Lectures.= Extra Crown 8vo. 6s.
+net.
+
+=NATIONALISM.= Extra Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+=PERSONALITY. Lectures delivered in America.= Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
+6s. net.
+
+=CREATIVE UNITY. Essays.= Extra Crown 8vo.
+
+=MY REMINISCENCES.= Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+=GLIMPSES OF BENGAL. Selected from the Letters of Rabindranath Tagore,
+1885 to 1895.= Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+=ONE HUNDRED POEMS OF KABIR.= Translated by RABINDRANATH TAGORE,
+assisted by EVELYN UNDERHILL. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+=RABINDRANATH TAGORE.= A Biographical Study. By ERNEST RHYS.
+Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.
+
+=SIX PORTRAITS OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE.= By W. ROTHENSTEIN. Reproduced in
+Collotype. With Prefatory Note by MAX BEERBOHM. Imperial 4to. 10s.
+net.
+
+=THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MAHARSHI DEVENDRANATH TAGORE= (Father of
+RABINDRANATH TAGORE). Translated by SATYENDRANATH TAGORE and INDIRA
+DEVI. With Introduction by EVELYN UNDERHILL, and Portrait. Extra Crown
+8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+=THE PHILOSOPHY OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE.= By Prof. S. RADHAKRISHNAN. 8vo.
+8s. 6d. net.
+
+=SHANTINIKETAN: The Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.= By W. W.
+PEARSON. With Introduction by RABINDRANATH TAGORE. Illustrated. 8vo.
+4s. 6d. net.
+
+                    LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
+
+
+
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. The page numbers
+in the Table of Contents have been adjusted to match the actual page
+numbers.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Creative Unity, by Rabindranath Tagore
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Creative Unity, by Rabindranath Tagore
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Creative Unity
+
+Author: Rabindranath Tagore
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2007 [EBook #23136]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE UNITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Irma �pehar and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+                            CREATIVE UNITY
+
+                                  BY
+
+                          RABINDRANATH TAGORE
+
+                      MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+                      ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
+                                 1922
+
+                      MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+                  LONDON � BOMBAY � CALCUTTA � MADRAS
+                               MELBOURNE
+
+                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+                      NEW YORK � BOSTON � CHICAGO
+                        DALLAS � SAN FRANCISCO
+
+                   THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+
+                                TORONTO
+
+                               COPYRIGHT
+
+                       PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
+
+
+
+
+                                  TO
+                          DR. EDWIN H. LEWIS
+
+
+
+
+                             INTRODUCTION
+
+
+It costs me nothing to feel that I am; it is no burden to me. And yet
+if the mental, physical, chemical, and other innumerable facts
+concerning all branches of knowledge which have united in myself could
+be broken up, they would prove endless. It is some untold mystery of
+unity in me, that has the simplicity of the infinite and reduces the
+immense mass of multitude to a single point.
+
+This One in me knows the universe of the many. But, in whatever it
+knows, it knows the One in different aspects. It knows this room only
+because this room is One to it, in spite of the seeming contradiction
+of the endless facts contained in the single fact of the room. Its
+knowledge of a tree is the knowledge of a unity, which appears in the
+aspect of a tree.
+
+This One in me is creative. Its creations are a pastime, through which
+it gives expression to an ideal of unity in its endless show of
+variety. Such are its pictures, poems, music, in which it finds joy
+only because they reveal the perfect forms of an inherent unity.
+
+This One in me not only seeks unity in knowledge for its understanding
+and creates images of unity for its delight; it also seeks union in
+love for its fulfilment. It seeks itself in others. This is a fact,
+which would be absurd had there been no great medium of truth to give
+it reality. In love we find a joy which is ultimate because it is the
+ultimate truth. Therefore it is said in the Upanishads that the
+_advaitam_ is _anantam_,--"the One is Infinite"; that the _advaitam_
+is _anandam_,--"the One is Love."
+
+To give perfect expression to the One, the Infinite, through the
+harmony of the many; to the One, the Love, through the sacrifice of
+self, is the object alike of our individual life and our society.
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+
+                                        PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                              v
+
+THE POET'S RELIGION                       3
+
+THE CREATIVE IDEAL                       31
+
+THE RELIGION OF THE FOREST               45
+
+AN INDIAN FOLK RELIGION                  69
+
+EAST AND WEST                            93
+
+THE MODERN AGE                          115
+
+THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM                   133
+
+THE NATION                              143
+
+WOMAN AND HOME                          157
+
+AN EASTERN UNIVERSITY                   169
+
+
+
+
+                          THE POET'S RELIGION
+
+                                   I
+
+
+Civility is beauty of behaviour. It requires for its perfection
+patience, self-control, and an environment of leisure. For genuine
+courtesy is a creation, like pictures, like music. It is a harmonious
+blending of voice, gesture and movement, words and action, in which
+generosity of conduct is expressed. It reveals the man himself and has
+no ulterior purpose.
+
+Our needs are always in a hurry. They rush and hustle, they are rude
+and unceremonious; they have no surplus of leisure, no patience for
+anything else but fulfilment of purpose. We frequently see in our
+country at the present day men utilising empty kerosene cans for
+carrying water. These cans are emblems of discourtesy; they are curt
+and abrupt, they have not the least shame for their unmannerliness,
+they do not care to be ever so slightly more than useful.
+
+The instruments of our necessity assert that we must have food,
+shelter, clothes, comforts and convenience. And yet men spend an
+immense amount of their time and resources in contradicting this
+assertion, to prove that they are not a mere living catalogue of
+endless wants; that there is in them an ideal of perfection, a sense
+of unity, which is a harmony between parts and a harmony with
+surroundings.
+
+The quality of the infinite is not the magnitude of extension, it is
+in the _Advaitam_, the mystery of Unity. Facts occupy endless time and
+space; but the truth comprehending them all has no dimension; it is
+One. Wherever our heart touches the One, in the small or the big, it
+finds the touch of the infinite.
+
+I was speaking to some one of the joy we have in our personality. I
+said it was because we were made conscious by it of a spirit of unity
+within ourselves. He answered that he had no such feeling of joy about
+himself, but I was sure he exaggerated. In all probability he had been
+suffering from some break of harmony between his surroundings and the
+spirit of unity within him, proving all the more strongly its truth.
+The meaning of health comes home to us with painful force when disease
+disturbs it; since health expresses the unity of the vital functions
+and is accordingly joyful. Life's tragedies occur, not to demonstrate
+their own reality, but to reveal that eternal principle of joy in
+life, to which they gave a rude shaking. It is the object of this
+Oneness in us to realise its infinity by perfect union of love with
+others. All obstacles to this union create misery, giving rise to the
+baser passions that are expressions of finitude, of that separateness
+which is negative and therefore _m�y�_.
+
+The joy of unity within ourselves, seeking expression, becomes
+creative; whereas our desire for the fulfilment of our needs is
+constructive. The water vessel, taken as a vessel only, raises the
+question, "Why does it exist at all?" Through its fitness of
+construction, it offers the apology for its existence. But where it is
+a work of beauty it has no question to answer; it has nothing to do,
+but to be. It reveals in its form a unity to which all that seems
+various in it is so related that, in a mysterious manner, it strikes
+sympathetic chords to the music of unity in our own being.
+
+What is the truth of this world? It is not in the masses of substance,
+not in the number of things, but in their relatedness, which neither
+can be counted, nor measured, nor abstracted. It is not in the
+materials which are many, but in the expression which is one. All our
+knowledge of things is knowing them in their relation to the Universe,
+in that relation which is truth. A drop of water is not a particular
+assortment of elements; it is the miracle of a harmonious mutuality,
+in which the two reveal the One. No amount of analysis can reveal to
+us this mystery of unity. Matter is an abstraction; we shall never be
+able to realise what it is, for our world of reality does not
+acknowledge it. Even the giant forces of the world, centripetal and
+centrifugal, are kept out of our recognition. They are the
+day-labourers not admitted into the audience-hall of creation. But
+light and sound come to us in their gay dresses as troubadours singing
+serenades before the windows of the senses. What is constantly before
+us, claiming our attention, is not the kitchen, but the feast; not the
+anatomy of the world, but its countenance. There is the dancing ring
+of seasons; the elusive play of lights and shadows, of wind and water;
+the many-coloured wings of erratic life flitting between birth and
+death. The importance of these does not lie in their existence as mere
+facts, but in their language of harmony, the mother-tongue of our own
+soul, through which they are communicated to us.
+
+We grow out of touch with this great truth, we forget to accept its
+invitation and its hospitality, when in quest of external success our
+works become unspiritual and unexpressive. This is what Wordsworth
+complained of when he said:
+
+    The world is too much with us; late and soon,
+    Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
+    Little we see in Nature that is ours.
+
+But it is not because the world has grown too familiar to us; on the
+contrary, it is because we do not see it in its aspect of unity,
+because we are driven to distraction by our pursuit of the
+fragmentary.
+
+Materials as materials are savage; they are solitary; they are ready
+to hurt one another. They are like our individual impulses seeking the
+unlimited freedom of wilfulness. Left to themselves they are
+destructive. But directly an ideal of unity raises its banner in their
+centre, it brings these rebellious forces under its sway and creation
+is revealed--the creation which is peace, which is the unity of
+perfect relationship. Our greed for eating is in itself ugly and
+selfish, it has no sense of decorum; but when brought under the ideal
+of social fellowship, it is regulated and made ornamental; it is
+changed into a daily festivity of life. In human nature sexual passion
+is fiercely individual and destructive, but dominated by the ideal of
+love, it has been made to flower into a perfection of beauty, becoming
+in its best expression symbolical of the spiritual truth in man which
+is his kinship of love with the Infinite. Thus we find it is the One
+which expresses itself in creation; and the Many, by giving up
+opposition, make the revelation of unity perfect.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+I remember, when I was a child, that a row of cocoanut trees by our
+garden wall, with their branches beckoning the rising sun on the
+horizon, gave me a companionship as living as I was myself. I know it
+was my imagination which transmuted the world around me into my own
+world--the imagination which seeks unity, which deals with it. But we
+have to consider that this companionship was true; that the universe
+in which I was born had in it an element profoundly akin to my own
+imaginative mind, one which wakens in all children's natures the
+Creator, whose pleasure is in interweaving the web of creation with
+His own patterns of many-coloured strands. It is something akin to us,
+and therefore harmonious to our imagination. When we find some strings
+vibrating in unison with others, we know that this sympathy carries in
+it an eternal reality. The fact that the world stirs our imagination
+in sympathy tells us that this creative imagination is a common truth
+both in us and in the heart of existence. Wordsworth says:
+
+                              I'd rather be
+    A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
+    So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
+    Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
+    Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
+    Or hear old Triton blow his wreath�d horn.
+
+In this passage the poet says we are less forlorn in a world which we
+meet with our imagination. That can only be possible if through our
+imagination is revealed, behind all appearances, the reality which
+gives the touch of companionship, that is to say, something which has
+an affinity to us. An immense amount of our activity is engaged in
+making images, not for serving any useful purpose or formulating
+rational propositions, but for giving varied responses to the varied
+touches of this reality. In this image-making the child creates his
+own world in answer to the world in which he finds himself. The child
+in us finds glimpses of his eternal playmate from behind the veil of
+things, as Proteus rising from the sea, or Triton blowing his wreath�d
+horn. And the playmate is the Reality, that makes it possible for the
+child to find delight in activities which do not inform or bring
+assistance but merely express. There is an image-making joy in the
+infinite, which inspires in us our joy in imagining. The rhythm of
+cosmic motion produces in our mind the emotion which is creative.
+
+A poet has said about his destiny as a dreamer, about the
+worthlessness of his dreams and yet their permanence:
+
+    I hang 'mid men my heedless head,
+    And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:
+    The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper,
+    Time shall reap; but after the reaper
+    The world shall glean to me, me the sleeper.
+
+The dream persists; it is more real than even bread which has
+substance and use. The painted canvas is durable and substantial; it
+has for its production and transport to market a whole array of
+machines and factories. But the picture which no factory can produce
+is a dream, a _m�y�_, and yet it, not the canvas, has the meaning of
+ultimate reality.
+
+A poet describes Autumn:
+
+    I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
+    Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
+    To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
+    Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn.
+
+Of April another poet sings:
+
+        April, April,
+    Laugh thy girlish laughter;
+    Then the moment after
+    Weep thy girlish tears!
+    April, that mine ears
+    Like a lover greetest,
+    If I tell thee, sweetest,
+    All my hopes and fears.
+
+        April, April,
+    Laugh thy golden laughter.
+    But the moment after
+    Weep thy golden tears!
+
+This Autumn, this April,--are they nothing but phantasy?
+
+Let us suppose that the Man from the Moon comes to the earth and
+listens to some music in a gramophone. He seeks for the origin of the
+delight produced in his mind. The facts before him are a cabinet made
+of wood and a revolving disc producing sound; but the one thing which
+is neither seen nor can be explained is the truth of the music, which
+his personality must immediately acknowledge as a personal message. It
+is neither in the wood, nor in the disc, nor in the sound of the
+notes. If the Man from the Moon be a poet, as can reasonably be
+supposed, he will write about a fairy imprisoned in that box, who sits
+spinning fabrics of songs expressing her cry for a far-away magic
+casement opening on the foam of some perilous sea, in a fairyland
+forlorn. It will not be literally, but essentially true. The facts of
+the gramophone make us aware of the laws of sound, but the music gives
+us personal companionship. The bare facts about April are alternate
+sunshine and showers; but the subtle blending of shadows and lights,
+of murmurs and movements, in April, gives us not mere shocks of
+sensation, but unity of joy as does music. Therefore when a poet sees
+the vision of a girl in April, even a downright materialist is in
+sympathy with him. But we know that the same individual would be
+menacingly angry if the law of heredity or a geometrical problem were
+described as a girl or a rose--or even as a cat or a camel. For these
+intellectual abstractions have no magical touch for our lute-strings
+of imagination. They are no dreams, as are the harmony of bird-songs,
+rain-washed leaves glistening in the sun, and pale clouds floating in
+the blue.
+
+The ultimate truth of our personality is that we are no mere
+biologists or geometricians; "we are the dreamers of dreams, we are
+the music-makers." This dreaming or music-making is not a function of
+the lotus-eaters, it is the creative impulse which makes songs not
+only with words and tunes, lines and colours, but with stones and
+metals, with ideas and men:
+
+    With wonderful deathless ditties
+    We build up the world's great cities,
+    And out of a fabulous story
+    We fashion an empire's glory.
+
+I have been told by a scholar friend of mine that by constant practice
+in logic he has weakened his natural instinct of faith. The reason is,
+faith is the spectator in us which finds the meaning of the drama from
+the unity of the performance; but logic lures us into the greenroom
+where there is stagecraft but no drama at all; and then this logic
+nods its head and wearily talks about disillusionment. But the
+greenroom, dealing with its fragments, looks foolish when questioned,
+or wears the sneering smile of Mephistopheles; for it does not have
+the secret of unity, which is somewhere else. It is for faith to
+answer, "Unity comes to us from the One, and the One in ourselves
+opens the door and receives it with joy." The function of poetry and
+the arts is to remind us that the greenroom is the greyest of
+illusions, and the reality is the drama presented before us, all its
+paint and tinsel, masks and pageantry, made one in art. The ropes and
+wheels perish, the stage is changed; but the dream which is drama
+remains true, for there remains the eternal Dreamer.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Poetry and the arts cherish in them the profound faith of man in the
+unity of his being with all existence, the final truth of which is the
+truth of personality. It is a religion directly apprehended, and not a
+system of metaphysics to be analysed and argued. We know in our
+personal experience what our creations are and we instinctively know
+through it what creation around us means.
+
+When Keats said in his "Ode to a Grecian Urn":
+
+    Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought,
+    As doth eternity,...
+
+he felt the ineffable which is in all forms of perfection, the mystery
+of the One, which takes us beyond all thought into the immediate
+touch of the Infinite. This is the mystery which is for a poet to
+realise and to reveal. It comes out in Keats' poems with struggling
+gleams through consciousness of suffering and despair:
+
+    Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
+    Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
+    Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways
+    Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
+    Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
+    From our dark spirits.
+
+In this there is a suggestion that truth reveals itself in beauty. For
+if beauty were mere accident, a rent in the eternal fabric of things,
+then it would hurt, would be defeated by the antagonism of facts.
+Beauty is no phantasy, it has the everlasting meaning of reality. The
+facts that cause despondence and gloom are mere mist, and when through
+the mist beauty breaks out in momentary gleams, we realise that Peace
+is true and not conflict, Love is true and not hatred; and Truth is
+the One, not the disjointed multitude. We realise that Creation is the
+perpetual harmony between the infinite ideal of perfection and the
+eternal continuity of its realisation; that so long as there is no
+absolute separation between the positive ideal and the material
+obstacle to its attainment, we need not be afraid of suffering and
+loss. This is the poet's religion.
+
+Those who are habituated to the rigid framework of sectarian creeds
+will find such a religion as this too indefinite and elastic. No doubt
+it is so, but only because its ambition is not to shackle the Infinite
+and tame it for domestic use; but rather to help our consciousness to
+emancipate itself from materialism. It is as indefinite as the
+morning, and yet as luminous; it calls our thoughts, feelings, and
+actions into freedom, and feeds them with light. In the poet's
+religion we find no doctrine or injunction, but rather the attitude of
+our entire being towards a truth which is ever to be revealed in its
+own endless creation.
+
+In dogmatic religion all questions are definitely answered, all doubts
+are finally laid to rest. But the poet's religion is fluid, like the
+atmosphere round the earth where lights and shadows play
+hide-and-seek, and the wind like a shepherd boy plays upon its reeds
+among flocks of clouds. It never undertakes to lead anybody anywhere
+to any solid conclusion; yet it reveals endless spheres of light,
+because it has no walls round itself. It acknowledges the facts of
+evil; it openly admits "the weariness, the fever and the fret" in the
+world "where men sit and hear each other groan"; yet it remembers that
+in spite of all there is the song of the nightingale, and "haply the
+Queen Moon is on her throne," and there is:
+
+    White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine,
+    Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
+            And mid-day's eldest child,
+    The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
+    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
+
+But all this has not the definiteness of an answer; it has only the
+music that teases us out of thought as it fills our being.
+
+Let me read a translation from an Eastern poet to show how this idea
+comes out in a poem in Bengali:
+
+        In the morning I awoke at the flutter of thy boat-sails,
+    Lady of my Voyage, and I left the shore to follow the beckoning waves.
+        I asked thee, "Does the dream-harvest ripen in the
+            island beyond the blue?"
+        The silence of thy smile fell on my question like
+            the silence of sunlight on waves.
+        The day passed on through storm and through calm,
+    The perplexed winds changed their course, time after time,
+            and the sea moaned.
+        I asked thee, "Does thy sleep-tower stand somewhere beyond the
+            dying embers of the day's funeral pyre?"
+    No answer came from thee, only thine eyes smiled like
+            the edge of a sunset cloud.
+        It is night. Thy figure grows dim in the dark.
+    Thy wind-blown hair flits on my cheek and thrills my
+            sadness with its scent.
+        My hands grope to touch the hem of thy robe, and
+    I ask thee--"Is there thy garden of death beyond the stars,
+            Lady of my Voyage, where thy silence blossoms into songs?"
+        Thy smile shines in the heart of the hush like the
+            star-mist of midnight.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+In Shelley we clearly see the growth of his religion through periods
+of vagueness and doubt, struggle and searching. But he did at length
+come to a positive utterance of his faith, though he died young. Its
+final expression is in his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." By the title
+of the poem the poet evidently means a beauty that is not merely a
+passive quality of particular things, but a spirit that manifests
+itself through the apparent antagonism of the unintellectual life.
+This hymn rang out of his heart when he came to the end of his
+pilgrimage and stood face to face with the Divinity, glimpses of which
+had already filled his soul with restlessness. All his experiences of
+beauty had ever teased him with the question as to what was its truth.
+Somewhere he sings of a nosegay which he makes of violets, daisies,
+tender bluebells and--
+
+                That tall flower that wets,
+    Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth,
+    Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears.
+
+He ends by saying:
+
+                  And then, elate and gay,
+    I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
+    That I might there present it!--Oh! to whom?
+
+This question, even though not answered, carries a significance. A
+creation of beauty suggests a fulfilment, which is the fulfilment of
+love. We have heard some poets scoff at it in bitterness and despair;
+but it is like a sick child beating its own mother--it is a sickness
+of faith, which hurts truth, but proves it by its very pain and anger.
+And the faith itself is this, that beauty is the self-offering of the
+One to the other One.
+
+In the first part of his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" Shelley dwells
+on the inconstancy and evanescence of the manifestation of beauty,
+which imparts to it an appearance of frailty and unreality:
+
+    Like hues and harmonies of evening,
+        Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
+        Like memory of music fled.
+
+This, he says, rouses in our mind the question:
+
+    Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
+        Why fear and dream and death and birth
+        Cast on the daylight of this earth
+        Such gloom,--why man has such a scope
+    For love and hate, despondency and hope?
+
+The poet's own answer to this question is:
+
+        Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
+    Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
+    Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
+
+This very elusiveness of beauty suggests the vision of immortality and
+of omnipotence, and stimulates the effort in man to realise it in some
+idea of permanence. The highest reality has actively to be achieved.
+The gain of truth is not in the end; it reveals itself through the
+endless length of achievement. But what is there to guide us in our
+voyage of realisation? Men have ever been struggling for direction:
+
+    Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven
+    Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
+    Frail spells,--whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
+    From all we hear and all we see,
+    Doubt, chance and mutability.
+
+The prevalent rites and practices of piety, according to this poet,
+are like magic spells--they only prove men's desperate endeavour and
+not their success. He knows that the end we seek has its own direct
+call to us, its own light to guide us to itself. And truth's call is
+the call of beauty. Of this he says:
+
+    Thy light alone,--like mist o'er mountain driven,
+          Or music by the night wind sent,
+    Thro' strings of some still instrument,
+          Or moonlight on a midnight stream
+    Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
+
+About this revelation of truth which calls us on, and yet which is
+everywhere, a village singer of Bengal sings:
+
+    My master's flute sounds in everything,
+        drawing me out of my house to everywhere.
+    While I listen to it I know that every step I take
+        is in my master's house.
+    For he is the sea, he is the river that leads to the sea,
+        and he is the landing place.
+
+Religion, in Shelley, grew with his life; it was not given to him in
+fixed and ready-made doctrines; he rebelled against them. He had the
+creative mind which could only approach Truth through its joy in
+creative effort. For true creation is realisation of truth through the
+translation of it into our own symbols.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+For man, the best opportunity for such a realisation has been in men's
+Society. It is a collective creation of his, through which his social
+being tries to find itself in its truth and beauty. Had that Society
+merely manifested its usefulness, it would be inarticulate like a dark
+star. But, unless it degenerates, it ever suggests in its concerted
+movements a living truth as its soul, which has personality. In this
+large life of social communion man feels the mystery of Unity, as he
+does in music. From the sense of that Unity, men came to the sense of
+their God. And therefore every religion began with its tribal God.
+
+The one question before all others that has to be answered by our
+civilisations is not what they have and in what quantity, but what
+they express and how. In a society, the production and circulation of
+materials, the amassing and spending of money, may go on, as in the
+interminable prolonging of a straight line, if its people forget to
+follow some spiritual design of life which curbs them and transforms
+them into an organic whole. For growth is not that enlargement which
+is merely adding to the dimensions of incompleteness. Growth is the
+movement of a whole towards a yet fuller wholeness. Living things
+start with this wholeness from the beginning of their career. A child
+has its own perfection as a child; it would be ugly if it appeared as
+an unfinished man. Life is a continual process of synthesis, and not
+of additions. Our activities of production and enjoyment of wealth
+attain that spirit of wholeness when they are blended with a creative
+ideal. Otherwise they have the insane aspect of the eternally
+unfinished; they become like locomotive engines which have railway
+lines but no stations; which rush on towards a collision of
+uncontrolled forces or to a sudden breakdown of the overstrained
+machinery.
+
+Through creation man expresses his truth; through that expression he
+gains back his truth in its fulness. Human society is for the best
+expression of man, and that expression, according to its perfection,
+leads him to the full realisation of the divine in humanity. When that
+expression is obscure, then his faith in the Infinite that is within
+him becomes weak; then his aspiration cannot go beyond the idea of
+success. His faith in the Infinite is creative; his desire for success
+is constructive; one is his home, and the other is his office. With
+the overwhelming growth of necessity, civilisation becomes a gigantic
+office to which the home is a mere appendix. The predominance of the
+pursuit of success gives to society the character of what we call
+_Shudra_ in India. In fighting a battle, the _Kshatriya_, the noble
+knight, followed his honour for his ideal, which was greater than
+victory itself; but the mercenary _Shudra_ has success for his object.
+The name Shudra symbolises a man who has no margin round him beyond
+his bare utility. The word denotes a classification which includes all
+naked machines that have lost their completeness of humanity, be their
+work manual or intellectual. They are like walking stomachs or brains,
+and we feel, in pity, urged to call on God and cry, "Cover them up for
+mercy's sake with some veil of beauty and life!"
+
+When Shelley in his view of the world realised the Spirit of Beauty,
+which is the vision of the Infinite, he thus uttered his faith:
+
+          Never joy illumed my brow
+    Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
+          This world from its dark slavery;
+          That thou,--O awful Loveliness,--
+    Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.
+
+This was his faith in the Infinite. It led his aspiration towards the
+region of freedom and perfection which was beyond the immediate and
+above the successful. This faith in God, this faith in the reality of
+the ideal of perfection, has built up all that is great in the human
+world. To keep indefinitely walking on, along a zigzag course of
+change, is negative and barren. A mere procession of notes does not
+make music; it is only when we have in the heart of the march of
+sounds some musical idea that it creates song. Our faith in the
+infinite reality of Perfection is that musical idea, and there is that
+one great creative force in our civilisation. When it wakens not, then
+our faith in money, in material power, takes its place; it fights and
+destroys, and in a brilliant fireworks of star-mimicry suddenly
+exhausts itself and dies in ashes and smoke.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+Men of great faith have always called us to wake up to great
+expectations, and the prudent have always laughed at them and said
+that these did not belong to reality. But the poet in man knows that
+reality is a creation, and human reality has to be called forth from
+its obscure depth by man's faith which is creative. There was a day
+when the human reality was the brutal reality. That was the only
+capital we had with which to begin our career. But age after age
+there has come to us the call of faith, which said against all the
+evidence of fact: "You are more than you appear to be, more than your
+circumstances seem to warrant. You are to attain the impossible, you
+are immortal." The unbelievers had laughed and tried to kill the
+faith. But faith grew stronger with the strength of martyrdom and at
+her bidding higher realities have been created over the strata of the
+lower. Has not a new age come to-day, borne by thunder-clouds, ushered
+in by a universal agony of suffering? Are we not waiting to-day for a
+great call of faith, which will say to us: "Come out of your present
+limitations. You are to attain the impossible, you are immortal"? The
+nations who are not prepared to accept it, who have all their trust in
+their present machines of system, and have no thought or space to
+spare to welcome the sudden guest who comes as the messenger of
+emancipation, are bound to court defeat whatever may be their present
+wealth and power.
+
+This great world, where it is a creation, an expression of the
+infinite--where its morning sings of joy to the newly awakened life,
+and its evening stars sing to the traveller, weary and worn, of the
+triumph of life in a new birth across death,--has its call for us.
+The call has ever roused the creator in man, and urged him to reveal
+the truth, to reveal the Infinite in himself. It is ever claiming from
+us, in our own creations, co-operation with God, reminding us of our
+divine nature, which finds itself in freedom of spirit. Our society
+exists to remind us, through its various voices, that the ultimate
+truth in man is not in his intellect or his possessions; it is in his
+illumination of mind, in his extension of sympathy across all barriers
+of caste and colour; in his recognition of the world, not merely as a
+storehouse of power, but as a habitation of man's spirit, with its
+eternal music of beauty and its inner light of the divine
+presence.
+
+
+
+
+                          THE CREATIVE IDEAL
+
+
+In an old Sanskrit book there is a verse which describes the essential
+elements of a picture. The first in order is _Vr�pa-bh�d�h_--"separateness
+of forms." Forms are many, forms are different, each of them having
+its limits. But if this were absolute, if all forms remained
+obstinately separate, then there would be a fearful loneliness of
+multitude. But the varied forms, in their very separateness, must
+carry something which indicates the paradox of their ultimate unity,
+otherwise there would be no creation.
+
+So in the same verse, after the enumeration of separateness comes that
+of _Pram[=a]n[=a]ni_--proportions. Proportions indicate relationship,
+the principle of mutual accommodation. A leg dismembered from the body
+has the fullest licence to make a caricature of itself. But, as a
+member of the body, it has its responsibility to the living unity
+which rules the body; it must behave properly, it must keep its
+proportion. If, by some monstrous chance of physiological
+profiteering, it could outgrow by yards its fellow-stalker, then we
+know what a picture it would offer to the spectator and what
+embarrassment to the body itself. Any attempt to overcome the law of
+proportion altogether and to assert absolute separateness is
+rebellion; it means either running the gauntlet of the rest, or
+remaining segregated.
+
+The same Sanskrit word _Pram[=a]n[=a]ni_, which in a book of �sthetics
+means proportions, in a book of logic means the proofs by which the
+truth of a proposition is ascertained. All proofs of truth are
+credentials of relationship. Individual facts have to produce such
+passports to show that they are not expatriated, that they are not a
+break in the unity of the whole. The logical relationship present in
+an intellectual proposition, and the �sthetic relationship indicated
+in the proportions of a work of art, both agree in one thing. They
+affirm that truth consists, not in facts, but in harmony of facts. Of
+this fundamental note of reality it is that the poet has said, "Beauty
+is truth, truth beauty."
+
+Proportions, which prove relativity, form the outward language of
+creative ideals. A crowd of men is desultory, but in a march of
+soldiers every man keeps his proportion of time and space and relative
+movement, which makes him one with the whole vast army. But this is
+not all. The creation of an army has, for its inner principle, one
+single idea of the General. According to the nature of that ruling
+idea, a production is either a work of art or a mere construction. All
+the materials and regulations of a joint-stock company have the unity
+of an inner motive. But the expression of this unity itself is not the
+end; it ever indicates an ulterior purpose. On the other hand, the
+revelation of a work of art is a fulfilment in itself.
+
+The consciousness of personality, which is the consciousness of unity
+in ourselves, becomes prominently distinct when coloured by joy or
+sorrow, or some other emotion. It is like the sky, which is visible
+because it is blue, and which takes different aspect with the change
+of colours. In the creation of art, therefore, the energy of an
+emotional ideal is necessary; as its unity is not like that of a
+crystal, passive and inert, but actively expressive. Take, for
+example, the following verse:
+
+    Oh, fly not Pleasure, pleasant-hearted Pleasure,
+    Fold me thy wings, I prithee, yet and stay.
+        For my heart no measure
+        Knows, nor other treasure
+    To buy a garland for my love to-day.
+
+    And thou too, Sorrow, tender-hearted Sorrow,
+    Thou grey-eyed mourner, fly not yet away.
+        For I fain would borrow
+        Thy sad weeds to-morrow,
+    To make a mourning for love's yesterday.
+
+The words in this quotation, merely showing the metre, would have no
+appeal to us; with all its perfection and its proportion, rhyme and
+cadence, it would only be a construction. But when it is the outer
+body of an inner idea it assumes a personality. The idea flows through
+the rhythm, permeates the words and throbs in their rise and fall. On
+the other hand, the mere idea of the above-quoted poem, stated in
+unrhythmic prose, would represent only a fact, inertly static, which
+would not bear repetition. But the emotional idea, incarnated in a
+rhythmic form, acquires the dynamic quality needed for those things
+which take part in the world's eternal pageantry.
+
+Take the following doggerel:
+
+    Thirty days hath September,
+    April, June, and November.
+
+The metre is there, and it simulates the movement of life. But it
+finds no synchronous response in the metre of our heart-beats; it has
+not in its centre the living idea which creates for itself an
+indivisible unity. It is like a bag which is convenient, and not like
+a body which is inevitable.
+
+This truth, implicit in our own works of art, gives us the clue to the
+mystery of creation. We find that the endless rhythms of the world are
+not merely constructive; they strike our own heart-strings and produce
+music.
+
+Therefore it is we feel that this world is a creation; that in its
+centre there is a living idea which reveals itself in an eternal
+symphony, played on innumerable instruments, all keeping perfect time.
+We know that this great world-verse, that runs from sky to sky, is not
+made for the mere enumeration of facts--it is not "Thirty days hath
+September"--it has its direct revelation in our delight. That delight
+gives us the key to the truth of existence; it is personality acting
+upon personalities through incessant manifestations. The solicitor
+does not sing to his client, but the bridegroom sings to his bride.
+And when our soul is stirred by the song, we know it claims no fees
+from us; but it brings the tribute of love and a call from the
+bridegroom.
+
+It may be said that in pictorial and other arts there are some designs
+that are purely decorative and apparently have no living and inner
+ideal to express. But this cannot be true. These decorations carry the
+emotional motive of the artist, which says: "I find joy in my
+creation; it is good." All the language of joy is beauty. It is
+necessary to note, however, that joy is not pleasure, and beauty not
+mere prettiness. Joy is the outcome of detachment from self and lives
+in freedom of spirit. Beauty is that profound expression of reality
+which satisfies our hearts without any other allurements but its own
+ultimate value. When in some pure moments of ecstasy we realise this
+in the world around us, we see the world, not as merely existing, but
+as decorated in its forms, sounds, colours and lines; we feel in our
+hearts that there is One who through all things proclaims: "I have joy
+in my creation."
+
+That is why the Sanskrit verse has given us for the essential elements
+of a picture, not only the manifoldness of forms and the unity of
+their proportions, but also _bh�vah_, the emotional idea.
+
+It is needless to say that upon a mere expression of emotion--even the
+best expression of it--no criterion of art can rest. The following
+poem is described by the poet as "An earnest Suit to his unkind
+Mistress":
+
+    And wilt thou leave me thus?
+    Say nay, say nay, for shame!
+    To save thee from the blame
+    Of all my grief and grame.
+    And wilt thou leave me thus?
+        Say nay! say nay!
+
+I am sure the poet would not be offended if I expressed my doubts
+about the earnestness of his appeal, or the truth of his avowed
+necessity. He is responsible for the lyric and not for the sentiment,
+which is mere material. The fire assumes different colours according
+to the fuel used; but we do not discuss the fuel, only the flames. A
+lyric is indefinably more than the sentiment expressed in it, as a
+rose is more than its substance. Let us take a poem in which the
+earnestness of sentiment is truer and deeper than the one I have
+quoted above:
+
+                  The sun,
+    Closing his benediction,
+    Sinks, and the darkening air
+    Thrills with the sense of the triumphing night,--
+    Night with her train of stars
+    And her great gift of sleep.
+        So be my passing!
+
+    My task accomplished and the long day done,
+    My wages taken, and in my heart
+    Some late lark singing,
+    Let me be gathered to the quiet West,
+    The sundown splendid and serene,
+        Death.
+
+The sentiment expressed in this poem is a subject for a psychologist.
+But for a poem the subject is completely merged in its poetry, like
+carbon in a living plant which the lover of plants ignores, leaving it
+for a charcoal-burner to seek.
+
+This is why, when some storm of feeling sweeps across the country, art
+is under a disadvantage. In such an atmosphere the boisterous passion
+breaks through the cordon of harmony and thrusts itself forward as the
+subject, which with its bulk and pressure dethrones the unity of
+creation. For a similar reason most of the hymns used in churches
+suffer from lack of poetry. For in them the deliberate subject,
+assuming the first importance, benumbs or kills the poem. Most
+patriotic poems have the same deficiency. They are like hill streams
+born of sudden showers, which are more proud of their rocky beds than
+of their water currents; in them the athletic and arrogant subject
+takes it for granted that the poem is there to give it occasion to
+display its powers. The subject is the material wealth for the sake of
+which poetry should never be tempted to barter her soul, even though
+the temptation should come in the name and shape of public good or
+some usefulness. Between the artist and his art must be that perfect
+detachment which is the pure medium of love. He must never make use of
+this love except for its own perfect expression.
+
+In everyday life our personality moves in a narrow circle of immediate
+self-interest. And therefore our feelings and events, within that
+short range, become prominent subjects for ourselves. In their
+vehement self-assertion they ignore their unity with the All. They
+rise up like obstructions and obscure their own background. But art
+gives our personality the disinterested freedom of the eternal, there
+to find it in its true perspective. To see our own home in flames is
+not to see fire in its verity. But the fire in the stars is the fire
+in the heart of the Infinite; there, it is the script of creation.
+
+Matthew Arnold, in his poem addressed to a nightingale, sings:
+
+    Hark! ah, the nightingale--
+    The tawny-throated!
+    Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
+    What triumph! hark!--what pain!
+
+But pain, when met within the boundaries of limited reality, repels
+and hurts; it is discordant with the narrow scope of life. But the
+pain of some great martyrdom has the detachment of eternity. It
+appears in all its majesty, harmonious in the context of everlasting
+life; like the thunder-flash in the stormy sky, not on the laboratory
+wire. Pain on that scale has its harmony in great love; for by hurting
+love it reveals the infinity of love in all its truth and beauty. On
+the other hand, the pain involved in business insolvency is
+discordant; it kills and consumes till nothing remains but ashes.
+
+The poet sings again:
+
+    How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
+    Eternal Passion!
+    Eternal Pain!
+
+And the truth of pain in eternity has been sung by those Vedic poets
+who had said, "From joy has come forth all creation." They say:
+
+    Sa tapas tapatv� sarvam asrajata Yadidam kincha.
+
+    (God from the heat of his pain created all that there is.)
+
+The sacrifice, which is in the heart of creation, is both joy and pain
+at the same moment. Of this sings a village mystic in Bengal:
+
+                        My eyes drown in the darkness of joy,
+    My heart, like a lotus, closes its petals in the rapture of the
+        dark night.
+
+That song speaks of a joy which is deep like the blue sea, endless
+like the blue sky; which has the magnificence of the night, and in its
+limitless darkness enfolds the radiant worlds in the awfulness of
+peace; it is the unfathomed joy in which all sufferings are made one.
+
+A poet of medi�val India tells us about his source of inspiration in a
+poem containing a question and an answer:
+
+    Where were your songs, my bird, when you spent your nights in the nest?
+    Was not all your pleasure stored therein?
+    What makes you lose your heart to the sky, the sky that is limitless?
+
+The bird answers:
+
+    I had my pleasure while I rested within bounds.
+    When I soared into the limitless, I found my songs!
+
+To detach the individual idea from its confinement of everyday facts
+and to give its soaring wings the freedom of the universal: this is
+the function of poetry. The ambition of Macbeth, the jealousy of
+Othello, would be at best sensational in police court proceedings; but
+in Shakespeare's dramas they are carried among the flaming
+constellations where creation throbs with Eternal Passion, Eternal
+Pain.
+
+
+
+
+                      THE RELIGION OF THE FOREST
+
+                                   I
+
+
+We stand before this great world. The truth of our life depends upon
+our attitude of mind towards it--an attitude which is formed by our
+habit of dealing with it according to the special circumstance of our
+surroundings and our temperaments. It guides our attempts to establish
+relations with the universe either by conquest or by union, either
+through the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy. And
+thus, in our realisation of the truth of existence, we put our
+emphasis either upon the principle of dualism or upon the principle of
+unity.
+
+The Indian sages have held in the Upanishads that the emancipation of
+our soul lies in its realising the ultimate truth of unity. They said:
+
+    Ish�v�syam idam sarvam yat kinch jagaty�m jagat.
+    Y�na tyakt�na bhunjith� m� graha kasyasvit dhanam.
+
+     (Know all that moves in this moving world as enveloped by
+     God; and find enjoyment through renunciation, not through
+     greed of possession.)
+
+The meaning of this is, that, when we know the multiplicity of things
+as the final truth, we try to augment ourselves by the external
+possession of them; but, when we know the Infinite Soul as the final
+truth, then through our union with it we realise the joy of our soul.
+Therefore it has been said of those who have attained their
+fulfilment,--"sarvam ev� vishanti" (they enter into all things). Their
+perfect relation with this world is the relation of union.
+
+This ideal of perfection preached by the forest-dwellers of ancient
+India runs through the heart of our classical literature and still
+dominates our mind. The legends related in our epics cluster under the
+forest shade bearing all through their narrative the message of the
+forest-dwellers. Our two greatest classical dramas find their
+background in scenes of the forest hermitage, which are permeated by
+the association of these sages.
+
+The history of the Northmen of Europe is resonant with the music of
+the sea. That sea is not merely topographical in its significance, but
+represents certain ideals of life which still guide the history and
+inspire the creations of that race. In the sea, nature presented
+herself to those men in her aspect of a danger, a barrier which
+seemed to be at constant war with the land and its children. The sea
+was the challenge of untamed nature to the indomitable human soul. And
+man did not flinch; he fought and won, and the spirit of fight
+continued in him. This fight he still maintains; it is the fight
+against disease and poverty, tyranny of matter and of man.
+
+This refers to a people who live by the sea, and ride on it as on a
+wild, champing horse, catching it by its mane and making it render
+service from shore to shore. They find delight in turning by force the
+antagonism of circumstances into obedience. Truth appears to them in
+her aspect of dualism, the perpetual conflict of good and evil, which
+has no reconciliation, which can only end in victory or defeat.
+
+But in the level tracts of Northern India men found no barrier between
+their lives and the grand life that permeates the universe. The forest
+entered into a close living relationship with their work and leisure,
+with their daily necessities and contemplations. They could not think
+of other surroundings as separate or inimical. So the view of the
+truth, which these men found, did not make manifest the difference,
+but rather the unity of all things. They uttered their faith in these
+words: "Yadidam kinch sarvam pr�na �jati nihsratam" (All that is
+vibrates with life, having come out from life). When we know this
+world as alien to us, then its mechanical aspect takes prominence in
+our mind; and then we set up our machines and our methods to deal with
+it and make as much profit as our knowledge of its mechanism allows us
+to do. This view of things does not play us false, for the machine has
+its place in this world. And not only this material universe, but
+human beings also, may be used as machines and made to yield powerful
+results. This aspect of truth cannot be ignored; it has to be known
+and mastered. Europe has done so and has reaped a rich harvest.
+
+The view of this world which India has taken is summed up in one
+compound Sanskrit word, Sachid[=a]nanda. The meaning is that Reality,
+which is essentially one, has three phases. The first is Sat; it is
+the simple fact that things are, the fact which relates us to all
+things through the relationship of common existence. The second is
+Chit; it is the fact that we know, which relates us to all things
+through the relationship of knowledge. The third is Ananda: it is the
+fact that we enjoy, which unites us with all things through the
+relationship of love.
+
+According to the true Indian view, our consciousness of the world,
+merely as the sum total of things that exist, and as governed by laws,
+is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realises all
+things as spiritually one with it, and therefore capable of giving us
+joy. For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in
+it, knowing it and making use of it, but realising our own selves in
+it through expansion of sympathy; not alienating ourselves from it and
+dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in
+perfect union.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+When Vikram�ditya became king, Ujjayini a great capital, and K�lid�sa
+its poet, the age of India's forest retreats had passed. Then we had
+taken our stand in the midst of the great concourse of humanity. The
+Chinese and the Hun, the Scythian and the Persian, the Greek and the
+Roman, had crowded round us. But, even in that age of pomp and
+prosperity, the love and reverence with which its poet sang about the
+hermitage shows what was the dominant ideal that occupied the mind of
+India; what was the one current of memory that continually flowed
+through her life.
+
+In K�lid�sa's drama, _Shakuntal�_, the hermitage, which dominates the
+play, overshadowing the king's palace, has the same idea running
+through it--the recognition of the kinship of man with conscious and
+unconscious creation alike.
+
+A poet of a later age, while describing a hermitage in his K�dambari,
+tells us of the posture of salutation in the flowering lianas as they
+bow to the wind; of the sacrifice offered by the trees scattering
+their blossoms; of the grove resounding with the lessons chanted by
+the neophytes, and the verses repeated by the parrots, learnt by constantly
+hearing them; of the wild-fowl enjoying "vaishva-deva-bali-pinda"
+(the food offered to the divinity which is in all creatures); of the
+ducks coming up from the lake for their portion of the grass seed
+spread in the cottage yards to dry; and of the deer caressing with
+their tongues the young hermit boys. It is again the same story. The
+hermitage shines out, in all our ancient literature, as the place
+where the chasm between man and the rest of creation has been bridged.
+
+In the Western dramas, human characters drown our attention in the
+vortex of their passions. Nature occasionally peeps out, but she is
+almost always a trespasser, who has to offer excuses, or bow
+apologetically and depart. But in all our dramas which still retain
+their fame, such as _Mrit-Shakatik�_, _Shakuntal�_, _Uttara-R�macharita_,
+Nature stands on her own right, proving that she has her great
+function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions.
+
+The fury of passion in two of Shakespeare's youthful poems is
+exhibited in conspicuous isolation. It is snatched away, naked, from
+the context of the All; it has not the green earth or the blue sky
+around it; it is there ready to bring to our view the raging fever
+which is in man's desires, and not the balm of health and repose which
+encircles it in the universe.
+
+_Rit�samh�ra_ is clearly a work of K�lid�sa's immaturity. The youthful
+love-song in it does not reach the sublime reticence which is in
+_Shakuntal�_ and _Kum�ra-Sambhava_. But the tune of these voluptuous
+outbreaks is set to the varied harmony of Nature's symphony. The
+moonbeams of the summer evening, resonant with the flow of fountains,
+acknowledge it as a part of its own melody. In its rhythm sways the
+Kadamba forest, glistening in the first cool rain of the season; and
+the south breezes, carrying the scent of the mango blossoms, temper it
+with their murmur.
+
+In the third canto of _Kum�ra-Sambhava_, Madana, the God Eros, enters
+the forest sanctuary to set free a sudden flood of desire amid the
+serenity of the ascetics' meditation. But the boisterous outbreak of
+passion so caused was shown against a background of universal life.
+The divine love-thrills of Sati and Shiva found their response in the
+world-wide immensity of youth, in which animals and trees have their
+life-throbs.
+
+Not only its third canto but the whole of the Kum�ra-Sambhava poem is
+painted upon a limitless canvas. It tells of the eternal wedding of
+love, its wooing and sacrifice, and its fulfilment, for which the gods
+wait in suspense. Its inner idea is deep and of all time. It answers
+the one question that humanity asks through all its endeavours: "How
+is the birth of the hero to be brought about, the brave one who can
+defy and vanquish the evil demon laying waste heaven's own kingdom?"
+
+It becomes evident that such a problem had become acute in K�lid�sa's
+time, when the old simplicity of Hindu life had broken up. The Hindu
+kings, forgetful of their duties, had become self-seeking epicureans,
+and India was being repeatedly devastated by the Scythians. What
+answer, then, does the poem give to the question it raises? Its
+message is that the cause of weakness lies in the inner life of the
+soul. It is in some break of harmony with the Good, some dissociation
+from the True. In the commencement of the poem we find that the God
+Shiva, the Good, had remained for long lost in the self-centred
+solitude of his asceticism, detached from the world of reality. And
+then Paradise was lost. But _Kum�ra-Sambhava_ is the poem of Paradise
+Regained. How was it regained? When Sati, the Spirit of Reality,
+through humiliation, suffering, and penance, won the Heart of Shiva,
+the Spirit of Goodness. And thus, from the union of the freedom of the
+real with the restraint of the Good, was born the heroism that
+released Paradise from the demon of Lawlessness.
+
+Viewed from without, India, in the time of K�lid�sa, appeared to have
+reached the zenith of civilisation, excelling as she did in luxury,
+literature and the arts. But from the poems of K�lid�sa it is evident
+that this very magnificence of wealth and enjoyment worked against the
+ideal that sprang and flowed forth from the sacred solitude of the
+forest. These poems contain the voice of warnings against the
+gorgeous unreality of that age, which, like a Himalayan avalanche, was
+slowly gliding down to an abyss of catastrophe. And from his seat
+beside all the glories of Vikram�ditya's throne the poet's heart
+yearns for the purity and simplicity of India's past age of spiritual
+striving. And it was this yearning which impelled him to go back to
+the annals of the ancient Kings of Raghu's line for the narrative
+poem, in which he traced the history of the rise and fall of the ideal
+that should guide the rulers of men.
+
+King Dilipa, with Queen Sudakshin�, has entered upon the life of the
+forest. The great monarch is busy tending the cattle of the hermitage.
+Thus the poem opens, amid scenes of simplicity and self-denial. But it
+ends in the palace of magnificence, in the extravagance of
+self-enjoyment. With a calm restraint of language the poet tells us of
+the kingly glory crowned with purity. He begins his poem as the day
+begins, in the serenity of sunrise. But lavish are the colours in
+which he describes the end, as of the evening, eloquent for a time
+with the sumptuous splendour of sunset, but overtaken at last by the
+devouring darkness which sweeps away all its brilliance into night.
+
+In this beginning and this ending of his poem there lies hidden that
+message of the forest which found its voice in the poet's words. There
+runs through the narrative the idea that the future glowed gloriously
+ahead only when there was in the atmosphere the calm of self-control,
+of purity and renunciation. When downfall had become imminent, the
+hungry fires of desire, aflame at a hundred different points, dazzled
+the eyes of all beholders.
+
+K�lid�sa in almost all his works represented the unbounded
+impetuousness of kingly splendour on the one side and the serene
+strength of regulated desires on the other. Even in the minor drama of
+_M�lavik�gnimitra_ we find the same thing in a different manner. It
+must never be thought that, in this play, the poet's deliberate object
+was to pander to his royal patron by inviting him to a literary orgy
+of lust and passion. The very introductory verse indicates the object
+towards which this play is directed. The poet begins the drama with
+the prayer, "Sanm�rg�l�kayan vyapanayatu sa nast�masi vritimishah"
+(Let God, to illumine for us the path of truth, sweep away our
+passions, bred of darkness). This is the God Shiva, in whose nature
+Parvati, the eternal Woman, is ever commingled in an ascetic purity of
+love. The unified being of Shiva and Parvati is the perfect symbol of
+the eternal in the wedded love of man and woman. When the poet opens
+his drama with an invocation of this Spirit of the Divine Union it is
+evident that it contains in it the message with which he greets his
+kingly audience. The whole drama goes to show the ugliness of the
+treachery and cruelty inherent in unchecked self-indulgence. In the
+play the conflict of ideals is between the King and the Queen, between
+Agnimitra and Dh�rini, and the significance of the contrast lies
+hidden in the very names of the hero and the heroine. Though the name
+Agnimitra is historical, yet it symbolises in the poet's mind the
+destructive force of uncontrolled desire--just as did the name
+Agnivarna in _Raghuvamsha_. Agnimitra, "the friend of the fire," the
+reckless person, who in his love-making is playing with fire, not
+knowing that all the time it is scorching him black. And what a great
+name is Dh�rini, signifying the fortitude and forbearance that comes
+from majesty of soul! What an association it carries of the infinite
+dignity of love, purified by a self-abnegation that rises far above
+all insult and baseness of betrayal!
+
+In _Shakuntal�_ this conflict of ideals has been shown, all through
+the drama, by the contrast of the pompous heartlessness of the king's
+court and the natural purity of the forest hermitage. The drama opens
+with a hunting scene, where the king is in pursuit of an antelope. The
+cruelty of the chase appears like a menace symbolising the spirit of
+the king's life clashing against the spirit of the forest retreat,
+which is "sharanyam sarva-bh�t�n�m" (where all creatures find their
+protection of love). And the pleading of the forest-dwellers with the
+king to spare the life of the deer, helplessly innocent and beautiful,
+is the pleading that rises from the heart of the whole drama. "Never,
+oh, never is the arrow meant to pierce the tender body of a deer, even
+as the fire is not for the burning of flowers."
+
+In the _R�m�yana_, R�ma and his companions, in their banishment, had
+to traverse forest after forest; they had to live in leaf-thatched
+huts, to sleep on the bare ground. But as their hearts felt their
+kinship with woodland, hill, and stream, they were not in exile amidst
+these. Poets, brought up in an atmosphere of different ideals, would
+have taken this opportunity of depicting in dismal colours the
+hardship of the forest-life in order to bring out the martyrdom of
+R�machandra with all the emphasis of a strong contrast. But, in the
+_R�m�yana_, we are led to realise the greatness of the hero, not in a
+fierce struggle with Nature, but in sympathy with it. Sit�, the
+daughter-in-law of a great kingly house, goes along the forest paths.
+We read:
+
+"She asks R�ma about the flowering trees, and shrubs and creepers
+which she has not seen before. At her request Lakshmana gathers and
+brings her plants of all kinds, exuberant with flowers, and it
+delights her heart to see the forest rivers, variegated with their
+streams and sandy banks, resounding with the call of heron and duck.
+
+"When R�ma first took his abode in the Chitrakuta peak, that
+delightful Chitrakuta, by the M�lyavati river, with its easy slopes
+for landing, he forgot all the pain of leaving his home in the capital
+at the sight of those woodlands, alive with beast and bird."
+
+Having lived on that hill for long, R�ma, who was "giri-vana-priya"
+(lover of the mountain and the forest), said one day to Sit�:
+
+"When I look upon the beauties of this hill, the loss of my kingdom
+troubles me no longer, nor does the separation from my friends cause
+me any pang."
+
+Thus passed R�machandra's exile, now in woodland, now in hermitage.
+The love which R�ma and Sit� bore to each other united them, not only
+to each other, but to the universe of life. That is why, when Sit� was
+taken away, the loss seemed to be so great to the forest itself.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Strangely enough, in Shakespeare's dramas, like those of K�lid�sa, we
+find a secret vein of complaint against the artificial life of the
+king's court--the life of ungrateful treachery and falsehood. And
+almost everywhere, in his dramas, foreign scenes have been introduced
+in connection with some working of the life of unscrupulous ambition.
+It is perfectly obvious in _Timon of Athens_--but there Nature offers
+no message or balm to the injured soul of man. In _Cymbeline_ the
+mountainous forest and the cave appear in their aspect of obstruction
+to life's opportunities. These only seem tolerable in comparison with
+the vicissitudes of fortune in the artificial court life. In _As You
+Like It_ the forest of Arden is didactic in its lessons. It does not
+bring peace, but preaches, when it says:
+
+    Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
+    Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
+    More free from peril than the envious court?
+
+In the _Tempest_, through Prospero's treatment of Ariel and Caliban we
+realise man's struggle with Nature and his longing to sever connection
+with her. In _Macbeth_, as a prelude to a bloody crime of treachery
+and treason, we are introduced to a scene of barren heath where the
+three witches appear as personifications of Nature's malignant forces;
+and in _King Lear_ it is the fury of a father's love turned into
+curses by the ingratitude born of the unnatural life of the court that
+finds its symbol in the storm on the heath. The tragic intensity of
+_Hamlet_ and _Othello_ is unrelieved by any touch of Nature's
+eternity. Except in a passing glimpse of a moonlight night in the love
+scene in the _Merchant of Venice_, Nature has not been allowed in
+other dramas of this series, including _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Antony
+and Cleopatra_, to contribute her own music to the music of man's
+love. In _The Winter's Tale_ the cruelty of a king's suspicion stands
+bare in its relentlessness, and Nature cowers before it, offering no
+consolation.
+
+I hope it is needless for me to say that these observations are not
+intended to minimise Shakespeare's great power as a dramatic poet, but
+to show in his works the gulf between Nature and human nature owing to
+the tradition of his race and time. It cannot be said that beauty of
+nature is ignored in his writings; only he fails to recognise in them
+the truth of the inter-penetration of human life with the cosmic life
+of the world. We observe a completely different attitude of mind in
+the later English poets like Wordsworth and Shelley, which can be
+attributed in the main to the great mental change in Europe, at that
+particular period, through the influence of the newly discovered
+philosophy of India which stirred the soul of Germany and aroused the
+attention of other Western countries.
+
+In Milton's _Paradise Lost_, the very subject--Man dwelling in the
+garden of Paradise--seems to afford a special opportunity for bringing
+out the true greatness of man's relationship with Nature. But though
+the poet has described to us the beauties of the garden, though he has
+shown to us the animals living there in amity and peace among
+themselves, there is no reality of kinship between them and man. They
+were created for man's enjoyment; man was their lord and master. We
+find no trace of the love between the first man and woman gradually
+surpassing themselves and overflowing the rest of creation, such as we
+find in the love scenes in _Kum�ra-Sambhava_ and _Shakuntal�_. In the
+seclusion of the bower, where the first man and woman rested in the
+garden of Paradise--
+
+                  Bird, beast, insect or worm
+    Durst enter none, such was their awe of man.
+
+Not that India denied the superiority of man, but the test of that
+superiority lay, according to her, in the comprehensiveness of
+sympathy, not in the aloofness of absolute distinction.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+India holds sacred, and counts as places of pilgrimage, all spots
+which display a special beauty or splendour of nature. These had no
+original attraction on account of any special fitness for cultivation
+or settlement. Here, man is free, not to look upon Nature as a source
+of supply of his necessities, but to realise his soul beyond himself.
+The Him�layas of India are sacred and the Vindhya Hills. Her majestic
+rivers are sacred. Lake M�nasa and the confluence of the Ganges and
+the Jamuna are sacred. India has saturated with her love and worship
+the great Nature with which her children are surrounded, whose light
+fills their eyes with gladness, and whose water cleanses them, whose
+food gives them life, and from whose majestic mystery comes forth the
+constant revelation of the infinite in music, scent, and colour, which
+brings its awakening to the soul of man. India gains the world through
+worship, through spiritual communion; and the idea of freedom to which
+she aspired was based upon the realisation of her spiritual unity.
+
+When, in my recent voyage to Europe, our ship left Aden and sailed
+along the sea which lay between the two continents, we passed by the
+red and barren rocks of Arabia on our right side and the gleaming
+sands of Egypt on our left. They seemed to me like two giant brothers
+exchanging with each other burning glances of hatred, kept apart by
+the tearful entreaty of the sea from whose womb they had their birth.
+
+There was an immense stretch of silence on the left shore as well as
+on the right, but the two shores spoke to me of the two different
+historical dramas enacted. The civilisation which found its growth in
+Egypt was continued across long centuries, elaborately rich with
+sentiments and expressions of life, with pictures, sculptures,
+temples, and ceremonials. This was a country whose guardian-spirit was
+a noble river, which spread the festivities of life on its banks
+across the heart of the land. There man never raised the barrier of
+alienation between himself and the rest of the world.
+
+On the opposite shore of the Red Sea the civilisation which grew up in
+the inhospitable soil of Arabia had a contrary character to that of
+Egypt. There man felt himself isolated in his hostile and bare
+surroundings. His idea of God became that of a jealous God. His mind
+naturally dwelt upon the principle of separateness. It roused in him
+the spirit of fight, and this spirit was a force that drove him far
+and wide. These two civilisations represented two fundamental
+divisions of human nature. The one contained in it the spirit of
+conquest and the other the spirit of harmony. And both of these have
+their truth and purpose in human existence.
+
+The characters of two eminent sages have been described in our
+mythology. One was Vashishtha and another Vishv�mitra. Both of them
+were great, but they represented two different types of wisdom; and
+there was conflict between them. Vishv�mitra sought to achieve power
+and was proud of it; Vashishtha was rudely smitten by that power. But
+his hurt and his loss could not touch the illumination of his soul;
+for he rose above them and could forgive. R�machandra, the great hero
+of our epic, had his initiation to the spiritual life from Vashishtha,
+the life of inner peace and perfection. But he had his initiation to
+war from Vishv�mitra, who called him to kill the demons and gave him
+weapons that were irresistible.
+
+Those two sages symbolise in themselves the two guiding spirits of
+civilisation. Can it be true that they shall never be reconciled? If
+so, can ever the age of peace and co-operation dawn upon the human
+world? Creation is the harmony of contrary forces--the forces of
+attraction and repulsion. When they join hands, all the fire and fight
+are changed into the smile of flowers and the songs of birds. When
+there is only one of them triumphant and the other defeated, then
+either there is the death of cold rigidity or that of suicidal
+explosion.
+
+Humanity, for ages, has been busy with the one great creation of
+spiritual life. Its best wisdom, its discipline, its literature and
+art, all the teachings and self-sacrifice of its noblest teachers,
+have been for this. But the harmony of contrary forces, which give
+their rhythm to all creation, has not yet been perfected by man in his
+civilisation, and the Creator in him is baffled over and over again.
+He comes back to his work, however, and makes himself busy, building
+his world in the midst of desolation and ruins. His history is the
+history of his aspiration interrupted and renewed. And one truth of
+which he must be reminded, therefore, is that the power which
+accomplishes the miracle of creation, by bringing conflicting forces
+into the harmony of the One, is no passion, but a love which accepts
+the bonds of self-control from the joy of its own immensity--a love
+whose sacrifice is the manifestation of its endless wealth within
+itself.
+
+
+
+
+                        AN INDIAN FOLK RELIGION
+
+                                   I
+
+
+In historical time the Buddha comes first of those who declared
+salvation to all men, without distinction, as by right man's own. What
+was the special force which startled men's minds and, almost within
+the master's lifetime, spread his teachings over India? It was the
+unique significance of the event, when a man came to men and said to
+them, "I am here to emancipate you from the miseries of the thraldom
+of self." This wisdom came, neither in texts of Scripture, nor in
+symbols of deities, nor in religious practices sanctified by ages, but
+through the voice of a living man and the love that flowed from a
+human heart.
+
+And I believe this was the first occasion in the history of the world
+when the idea of the Avat�r found its place in religion. Western
+scholars are never tired of insisting that Buddhism is of the nature
+of a moral code, coldly leading to the path of extinction. They forget
+that it was held to be a religion that roused in its devotees an
+inextinguishable fire of enthusiasm and carried them to lifelong exile
+across the mountain and desert barriers. To say that a philosophy of
+suicide can keep kindled in human hearts for centuries such fervour of
+self-sacrifice is to go against all the laws of sane psychology. The
+religious enthusiasm which cannot be bound within any daily ritual,
+but overflows into adventures of love and beneficence, must have in
+its centre that element of personality which rouses the whole soul. In
+answer, it may possibly be said that this was due to the personality
+of Buddha himself. But that also is not quite true. The personality
+which stirs the human heart to its immense depths, leading it to
+impossible deeds of heroism, must in that process itself reveal to men
+the infinite which is in all humanity. And that is what happened in
+Buddhism, making it a religion in the complete sense of the word.
+
+Like the religion of the Upanishads, Buddhism also generated two
+divergent currents; the one impersonal, preaching the abnegation of
+self through discipline, and the other personal, preaching the
+cultivation of sympathy for all creatures, and devotion to the
+infinite truth of love; the other, which is called the Mah�y�na, had
+its origin in the positive element contained in Buddha's teachings,
+which is immeasurable love. It could never, by any logic, find its
+reality in the emptiness of the truthless abyss. And the object of
+Buddha's meditation and his teachings was to free humanity from
+sufferings. But what was the path that he revealed to us? Was it some
+negative way of evading pain and seeking security against it? On the
+contrary, his path was the path of sacrifice--the utmost sacrifice of
+love. The meaning of such sacrifice is to reach some ultimate truth,
+some positive ideal, which in its greatness can accept suffering and
+transmute it into the profound peace of self-renunciation. True
+emancipation from suffering, which is the inalienable condition of the
+limited life of the self, can never be attained by fleeing from it,
+but rather by changing its value in the realm of truth--the truth of
+the higher life of love.
+
+We have learnt that, by calculations made in accordance with the law
+of gravitation, some planets were discovered exactly in the place
+where they should be. Such a law of gravitation there is also in the
+moral world. And when we find men's minds disturbed, as they were by
+the preaching of the Buddha, we can be sure, even without any
+corroborative evidence, that there must have been some great luminous
+body of attraction, positive and powerful, and not a mere unfathomable
+vacancy. It is exactly this which we discover in the heart of the
+Mah�y�na system; and we have no hesitation in saying that the truth of
+Buddhism is there. The oil has to be burnt, not for the purpose of
+diminishing it, but for the purpose of giving light to the lamp. And
+when the Buddha said that the self must go, he said at the same moment
+that love must be realised. Thus originated the doctrine of the
+Dharma-k�ya, the Infinite Wisdom and Love manifested in the Buddha. It
+was the first instance, as I have said, when men felt that the
+Universal and the Eternal Spirit was revealed in a human individual
+whom they had known and touched. The joy was too great for them, since
+the very idea itself came to them as a freedom--a freedom from the
+sense of their measureless insignificance. It was the first time, I
+repeat, when the individual, as a man, felt in himself the Infinite
+made concrete.
+
+What was more, those men who felt the love welling forth from the
+heart of Buddhism, as one with the current of the Eternal Love itself,
+were struck with the idea that such an effluence could never have been
+due to a single cataclysm of history--unnatural and therefore untrue.
+They felt instead that it was in the eternal nature of truth, that the
+event must belong to a series of manifestations; there must have been
+numberless other revelations in the past and endless others to follow.
+
+The idea grew and widened until men began to feel that this Infinite
+Being was already in every one of them, and that it rested with
+themselves to remove the sensual obstructions and reveal him in their
+own lives. In every individual there was, they realised, the
+potentiality of Buddha--that is to say, the Infinite made manifest.
+
+We have to keep in mind the great fact that the preaching of the
+Buddha in India was not followed by stagnation of life--as would
+surely have happened if humanity was without any positive goal and his
+teaching was without any permanent value in itself. On the contrary,
+we find the arts and sciences springing up in its wake, institutions
+started for alleviating the misery of all creatures, human and
+non-human, and great centres of education founded. Some mighty power
+was suddenly roused from its obscurity, which worked for long
+centuries and changed the history of man in a large part of the world.
+And that power came into its full activity only by the individual
+being made conscious of his infinite worth. It was like the sudden
+discovery of a great mine of living wealth.
+
+During the period of Buddhism the doctrine of deliverance flourished,
+which reached all mankind and released man's inner resources from
+neglect and self-insult. Even to-day we see in our own country human
+nature, from its despised corner of indignity, slowly and painfully
+finding its way to assert the inborn majesty of man. It is like the
+imprisoned tree finding a rift in the wall, and sending out its eager
+branches into freedom, to prove that darkness is not its birthright,
+that its love is for the sunshine. In the time of the Buddha the
+individual discovered his own immensity of worth, first by witnessing
+a man who united his heart in sympathy with all creatures, in all
+worlds, through the power of a love that knew no bounds; and then by
+learning that the same light of perfection lay confined within
+himself behind the clouds of selfish desire, and that the
+Bodhi-hridaya--"the heart of the Eternal Enlightenment"--every moment
+claimed its unveiling in his own heart. N�g�rjuna speaks of this
+Bodhi-hridaya (another of whose names is Bodhi-Citta) as follows:
+
+     One who understands the nature of the Bodhi-hridaya, sees
+     everything with a loving heart; for love is the essence of
+     Bodhi-hridaya.[1]
+
+     [Footnote 1: _Outlines of Mah�y�na Buddhism_, by Dr. D. T.
+     Suzuki.]
+
+My object in writing this paper is to show, by the further help of
+illustration from a popular religious sect of Bengal, that the
+religious instinct of man urges him towards a truth, by which he can
+transcend the finite nature of the individual self. Man would never
+feel the indignity of his limitations if these were inevitable. Within
+him he has glimpses of the Infinite, which give him assurance that
+this truth is not in his limitations, but that this truth can be
+attained by love. For love is the positive quality of the Infinite,
+and love's sacrifice accordingly does not lead to emptiness, but to
+fulfilment, to Bodhi-hridaya, "the heart of enlightenment."
+
+The members of the religious sect I have mentioned call themselves
+"Ba�l." They live outside social recognition, and their very obscurity
+helps them in their seeking, from a direct source, the enlightenment
+which the soul longs for, the eternal light of love.
+
+It would be absurd to say that there is little difference between
+Buddhism and the religion of these simple people, who have no system
+of metaphysics to support their faith. But my object in bringing close
+together these two religions, which seem to belong to opposite poles,
+is to point out the fundamental unity in them. Both of them believe in
+a fulfilment which is reached by love's emancipating us from the
+dominance of self. In both these religions we find man's yearning to
+attain the infinite worth of his individuality, not through any
+conventional valuation of society, but through his perfect
+relationship with Truth. They agree in holding that the realisation of
+our ultimate object is waiting for us in ourselves. The Ba�l likens
+this fulfilment to the blossoming of a bud, and sings:
+
+    Make way, O bud, make way,
+      Burst open thy heart and make way.
+    The opening spirit has overtaken thee,
+      Canst thou remain a bud any longer?
+
+
+                                  II
+
+One day, in a small village in Bengal, an ascetic woman from the
+neighbourhood came to see me. She had the name "Sarva-khepi" given to
+her by the village people, the meaning of which is "the woman who is
+mad about all things." She fixed her star-like eyes upon my face and
+startled me with the question, "When are you coming to meet me
+underneath the trees?" Evidently she pitied me who lived (according to
+her) prisoned behind walls, banished away from the great meeting-place
+of the All, where she had her dwelling. Just at that moment my
+gardener came with his basket, and when the woman understood that the
+flowers in the vase on my table were going to be thrown away, to make
+place for the fresh ones, she looked pained and said to me, "You are
+always engaged reading and writing; you do not see." Then she took the
+discarded flowers in her palms, kissed them and touched them with her
+forehead, and reverently murmured to herself, "Beloved of my heart." I
+felt that this woman, in her direct vision of the infinite personality
+in the heart of all things, truly represented the spirit of India.
+
+In the same village I came into touch with some Ba�l singers. I had
+known them by their names, occasionally seen them singing and begging
+in the street, and so passed them by, vaguely classifying them in my
+mind under the general name of Vair�gis, or ascetics.
+
+The time came when I had occasion to meet with some members of the
+same body and talk to them about spiritual matters. The first Ba�l
+song, which I chanced to hear with any attention, profoundly stirred
+my mind. Its words are so simple that it makes me hesitate to render
+them in a foreign tongue, and set them forward for critical
+observation. Besides, the best part of a song is missed when the tune
+is absent; for thereby its movement and its colour are lost, and it
+becomes like a butterfly whose wings have been plucked.
+
+The first line may be translated thus: "Where shall I meet him, the
+Man of my Heart?" This phrase, "the Man of my Heart," is not peculiar
+to this song, but is usual with the Ba�l sect. It means that, for me,
+the supreme truth of all existence is in the revelation of the
+Infinite in my own humanity.
+
+"The Man of my Heart," to the Ba�l, is like a divine instrument
+perfectly tuned. He gives expression to infinite truth in the music
+of life. And the longing for the truth which is in us, which we have
+not yet realised, breaks out in the following Ba�l song:
+
+    Where shall I meet him, the Man of my Heart?
+    He is lost to me and I seek him wandering from land to land.
+
+    I am listless for that moonrise of beauty,
+        which is to light my life,
+        which I long to see in the fulness of vision, in gladness of heart.
+
+The name of the poet who wrote this song was Gagan. He was almost
+illiterate; and the ideas he received from his Ba�l teacher found no
+distraction from the self-consciousness of the modern age. He was a
+village postman, earning about ten shillings a month, and he died
+before he had completed his teens. The sentiment, to which he gave
+such intensity of expression, is common to most of the songs of his
+sect. And it is a sect, almost exclusively confined to that lower
+floor of society, where the light of modern education hardly finds an
+entrance, while wealth and respectability shun its utter indigence.
+
+In the song I have translated above, the longing of the singer to
+realise the infinite in his own personality is expressed. This has to
+be done daily by its perfect expression in life, in love. For the
+personal expression of life, in its perfection, is love; just as the
+personal expression of truth in its perfection is beauty.
+
+In the political life of the modern age the idea of democracy has
+given mankind faith in the individual. It gives each man trust in his
+own possibilities, and pride in his humanity. Something of the same
+idea, we find, has been working in the popular mind of India, with
+regard to its religious consciousness. Over and over again it tries to
+assert, not only that God is _for_ each of us, but also that God is
+_in_ each of us. These people have no special incarnations in their
+simple theology, because they know that God is special to each
+individual. They say that to be born a man is the greatest privilege
+that can fall to a creature in all the world. They assert that gods in
+Paradise envy human beings. Why? Because God's will, in giving his
+love, finds its completeness in man's will returning that love.
+Therefore Humanity is a necessary factor in the perfecting of the
+divine truth. The Infinite, for its self-expression, comes down into
+the manifoldness of the Finite; and the Finite, for its
+self-realisation, must rise into the unity of the Infinite. Then only
+is the Cycle of Truth complete.
+
+The dignity of man, in his eternal right of Truth, finds expression in
+the following song, composed, not by a theologian or a man of letters,
+but by one who belongs to that ninety per cent of the population of
+British India whose education has been far less than elementary, in
+fact almost below zero:
+
+    My longing is to meet you in play of love, my Lover;
+    But this longing is not only mine, but also yours.
+    For your lips can have their smile, and your flute
+        its music, only in your delight in my love;
+        and therefore you are importunate, even as I am.
+
+If the world were a mere expression of formative forces, then this
+song would be pathetic in its presumption. But why is there beauty at
+all in creation--the beauty whose only meaning is in a call that
+claims disinterestedness as a response? The poet proudly says: "Your
+flute could not have its music of beauty if your delight were not in
+my love. Your power is great--and there I am not equal to you--but it
+lies even in me to make you smile, and if you and I never meet, then
+this play of love remains incomplete."
+
+If this were not true, then it would be an utter humiliation to exist
+at all in this world. If it were solely _our_ business to seek the
+Lover, and _his_ to keep himself passively aloof in the infinity of
+his glory, or actively masterful only in imposing his commands upon
+us, then we should dare to defy him, and refuse to accept the
+everlasting insult latent in the one-sided importunity of a slave. And
+this is what the Ba�l says--he who, in the world of men, goes about
+singing for alms from door to door, with his one-stringed instrument
+and long robe of patched-up rags on his back:
+
+    I stop and sit here on the road. Do not ask me to walk farther.
+    If your love can be complete without mine, let me turn back
+        from seeing you.
+    I have been travelling to seek you, my friend, for long;
+    Yet I refuse to beg a sight of you, if you do not feel my need.
+    I am blind with market dust and midday glare,
+        and so wait, my heart's lover, in hopes that your own love
+          will send you to find me out.
+
+The poet is fully conscious that his value in the world's market is
+pitifully small; that he is neither wealthy nor learned. Yet he has
+his great compensation, for he has come close to his Lover's heart. In
+Bengal the women bathing in the river often use their overturned water
+jars to keep themselves floating when they swim, and the poet uses
+this incident for his simile:
+
+    It is lucky that I am an empty vessel,
+    For when you swim, I keep floating by your side.
+    Your full vessels are left on the empty shore, they are for use;
+    But I am carried to the river in your arms, and I dance
+        to the rhythm of your heart-throbs and heaving of the waves.
+
+The great distinguished people of the world do not know that these
+beggars--deprived of education, honour, and wealth--can, in the pride
+of their souls, look down upon them as the unfortunate ones, who are
+left on the shore for their worldly uses, but whose life ever misses
+the touch of the Lover's arms.
+
+The feeling that man is not a mere casual visitor at the palace-gate
+of the world, but the invited guest whose presence is needed to give
+the royal banquet its sole meaning, is not confined to any particular
+sect in India. Let me quote here some poems from a medi�val poet of
+Western India--Jn�nd�s--whose works are nearly forgotten, and have
+become scarce from the very exquisiteness of their excellence. In the
+following poem he is addressing God's messenger, who comes to us in
+the morning light of our childhood, in the dusk of our day's end, and
+in the night's darkness:
+
+    Messenger, morning brought you, habited in gold.
+    After sunset, your song wore a tune of ascetic grey,
+        and then came night.
+    Your message was written in bright letters across the black.
+    Why is such splendour about you, to lure the heart of one
+        who is nothing?
+
+This is the answer of the messenger:
+
+    Great is the festival hall where you are to be the only guest.
+    Therefore the letter to you is written from sky to sky,
+    And I, the proud servant, bring the invitation with all ceremony.
+
+And thus the poet knows that the silent rows of stars carry God's own
+invitation to the individual soul.
+
+The same poet sings:
+
+    What hast thou come to beg from the beggar, O King of Kings?
+    My Kingdom is poor for want of him, my dear one, and I
+        wait for him in sorrow.
+
+    How long will you keep him waiting, O wretch,
+        who has waited for you for ages in silence and stillness?
+    Open your gate, and make this very moment fit for the union.
+
+It is the song of man's pride in the value given to him by Supreme
+Love and realised by his own love.
+
+The Vaishnava religion, which has become the popular religion of
+India, carries the same message: God's love finding its finality in
+man's love. According to it, the lover, man, is the complement of the
+Lover, God, in the internal love drama of existence; and God's call
+is ever wafted in man's heart in the world-music, drawing him towards
+the union. This idea has been expressed in rich elaboration of symbols
+verging upon realism. But for these Ba�ls this idea is direct and
+simple, full of the dignified beauty of truth, which shuns all tinsels
+of ornament.
+
+The Ba�l poet, when asked why he had no sect mark on his forehead,
+answered in his song that the true colour decoration appears on the
+skin of the fruit when its inner core is filled with ripe, sweet
+juice; but by artificially smearing it with colour from outside you do
+not make it ripe. And he says of his Guru, his teacher, that he is
+puzzled to find in which direction he must make salutation. For his
+teacher is not one, but many, who, moving on, form a procession of
+wayfarers.
+
+Ba�ls have no temple or image for their worship, and this utter
+simplicity is needful for men whose one subject is to realise the
+innermost nearness of God. The Ba�l poet expressly says that if we try
+to approach God through the senses we miss him:
+
+    Bring him not into your house as the guest of your eyes;
+        but let him come at your heart's invitation.
+    Opening your doors to that which is seen only, is to lose it.
+
+Yet, being a poet, he also knows that the objects of sense can reveal
+their spiritual meaning only when they are not seen through mere
+physical eyes:
+
+    Eyes can see only dust and earth,
+    But feel it with your heart, it is pure joy.
+    The flowers of delight blossom on all sides, in every form,
+        but where is your heart's thread to weave them in a garland?
+
+These Ba�ls have a philosophy, which they call the philosophy of the
+body; but they keep its secret; it is only for the initiated.
+Evidently the underlying idea is that the individual's body is itself
+the temple, in whose inner mystic shrine the Divine appears before the
+soul, and the key to it has to be found from those who know. But as
+the key is not for us outsiders, I leave it with the observation that
+this mystic philosophy of the body is the outcome of the attempt to
+get rid of all the outward shelters which are too costly for people
+like themselves. But this human body of ours is made by God's own
+hand, from his own love, and even if some men, in the pride of their
+superiority, may despise it, God finds his joy in dwelling in others
+of yet lower birth. It is a truth easier of discovery by these people
+of humble origin than by men of proud estate.
+
+The pride of the Ba�l beggar is not in his worldly distinction, but in
+the distinction that God himself has given to him. He feels himself
+like a flute through which God's own breath of love has been breathed:
+
+    My heart is like a flute he has played on.
+    If ever it fall into other hands,--
+        let him fling it away.
+    My lover's flute is dear to him.
+    Therefore, if to-day alien breath have entered it and
+        sounded strange notes,
+    Let him break it to pieces and strew the dust with them.
+
+So we find that this man also has his disgust of defilement. While the
+ambitious world of wealth and power despises him, he in his turn
+thinks that the world's touch desecrates him who has been made sacred
+by the touch of his Lover. He does not envy us our life of ambition
+and achievements, but he knows how precious his own life has been:
+
+    I am poured forth in living notes of joy and sorrow by your breath.
+    Morning and evening, in summer and in rains, I am fashioned to music.
+    Yet should I be wholly spent in some flight of song,
+    I shall not grieve, the tune is so precious to me.
+
+Our joys and sorrows are contradictory when self separates them in
+opposition. But for the heart in which self merges in God's love,
+they lose their absoluteness. So the Ba�l's prayer is to feel in all
+situations--in danger, or pain, or sorrow--that he is in God's hands.
+He solves the problem of emancipation from sufferings by accepting and
+setting them in a higher context:
+
+    I am the boat, you are the sea, and also the boatman.
+    Though you never make the shore, though you let me sink,
+         why should I be foolish and afraid?
+    Is the reaching the shore a greater prize than losing myself
+         with you?
+    If you are only the haven, as they say, then what is the sea?
+    Let it surge and toss me on its waves, I shall be content.
+    I live in you, whatever and however you appear.
+    Save me or kill me as you wish, only never leave me in
+         others' hands.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+It is needless to say, before I conclude, that I had neither the
+training nor the opportunity to study this mendicant religious sect in
+Bengal from an ethnological standpoint. I was attracted to find out
+how the living currents of religious movements work in the heart of
+the people, saving them from degradation imposed by the society of the
+learned, of the rich, or of the high-born; how the spirit of man, by
+making use even of its obstacles, reaches fulfilment, led thither, not
+by the learned authorities in the scriptures, or by the mechanical
+impulse of the dogma-driven crowd, but by the unsophisticated
+aspiration of the loving soul. On the inaccessible mountain peaks of
+theology the snows of creed remain eternally rigid, cold, and pure.
+But God's manifest shower falls direct on the plain of humble hearts,
+flowing there in various channels, even getting mixed with some mud in
+its course, as it is soaked into the underground currents, invisible,
+but ever-moving.
+
+I can think of nothing better than to conclude my paper with a poem of
+Jn�nd�s, in which the aspiration of all simple spirits has found a
+devout expression:
+
+    I had travelled all day and was tired; then I bowed my head
+          towards thy kingly court still far away.
+    The night deepened, a longing burned in my heart.
+    Whatever the words I sang, pain cried through them--for
+          even my songs thirsted--
+      O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
+
+    When time seemed lost in darkness,
+        thy hand dropped its sceptre to take up the lute and
+          strike the uttermost chords;
+    And my heart sang out,
+      O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
+
+    Ah, who is this whose arms enfold me?
+    Whatever I have to leave, let me leave; and whatever I
+          have to bear, let me bear.
+    Only let me walk with thee,
+      O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
+    Descend at whiles from thy high audience hall, come down
+          amid joys and sorrows.
+    Hide in all forms and delights, in love,
+    And in my heart sing thy songs,--
+      O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
+
+
+
+
+                             EAST AND WEST
+
+                                   I
+
+
+It is not always a profound interest in man that carries travellers
+nowadays to distant lands. More often it is the facility for rapid
+movement. For lack of time and for the sake of convenience we
+generalise and crush our human facts into the packages within the
+steel trunks that hold our travellers' reports.
+
+Our knowledge of our own countrymen and our feelings about them have
+slowly and unconsciously grown out of innumerable facts which are full
+of contradictions and subject to incessant change. They have the
+elusive mystery and fluidity of life. We cannot define to ourselves
+what we are as a whole, because we know too much; because our
+knowledge is more than knowledge. It is an immediate consciousness of
+personality, any evaluation of which carries some emotion, joy or
+sorrow, shame or exaltation. But in a foreign land we try to find our
+compensation for the meagreness of our data by the compactness of the
+generalisation which our imperfect sympathy itself helps us to form.
+When a stranger from the West travels in the Eastern world he takes
+the facts that displease him and readily makes use of them for his
+rigid conclusions, fixed upon the unchallengeable authority of his
+personal experience. It is like a man who has his own boat for
+crossing his village stream, but, on being compelled to wade across
+some strange watercourse, draws angry comparisons as he goes from
+every patch of mud and every pebble which his feet encounter.
+
+Our mind has faculties which are universal, but its habits are
+insular. There are men who become impatient and angry at the least
+discomfort when their habits are incommoded. In their idea of the next
+world they probably conjure up the ghosts of their slippers and
+dressing-gowns, and expect the latchkey that opens their lodging-house
+door on earth to fit their front door in the other world. As
+travellers they are a failure; for they have grown too accustomed to
+their mental easy-chairs, and in their intellectual nature love home
+comforts, which are of local make, more than the realities of life,
+which, like earth itself, are full of ups and downs, yet are one in
+their rounded completeness.
+
+The modern age has brought the geography of the earth near to us, but
+made it difficult for us to come into touch with man. We go to strange
+lands and observe; we do not live there. We hardly meet men: but only
+specimens of knowledge. We are in haste to seek for general types and
+overlook individuals.
+
+When we fall into the habit of neglecting to use the understanding
+that comes of sympathy in our travels, our knowledge of foreign people
+grows insensitive, and therefore easily becomes both unjust and cruel
+in its character, and also selfish and contemptuous in its
+application. Such has, too often, been the case with regard to the
+meeting of Western people in our days with others for whom they do not
+recognise any obligation of kinship.
+
+It has been admitted that the dealings between different races of men
+are not merely between individuals; that our mutual understanding is
+either aided, or else obstructed, by the general emanations forming
+the social atmosphere. These emanations are our collective ideas and
+collective feelings, generated according to special historical
+circumstances.
+
+For instance, the caste-idea is a collective idea in India. When we
+approach an Indian who is under the influence of this collective idea,
+he is no longer a pure individual with his conscience fully awake to
+the judging of the value of a human being. He is more or less a
+passive medium for giving expression to the sentiment of a whole
+community.
+
+It is evident that the caste-idea is not creative; it is merely
+institutional. It adjusts human beings according to some mechanical
+arrangement. It emphasises the negative side of the individual--his
+separateness. It hurts the complete truth in man.
+
+In the West, also, the people have a certain collective idea that
+obscures their humanity. Let me try to explain what I feel about it.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Lately I went to visit some battlefields of France which had been
+devastated by war. The awful calm of desolation, which still bore
+wrinkles of pain--death-struggles stiffened into ugly ridges--brought
+before my mind the vision of a huge demon, which had no shape, no
+meaning, yet had two arms that could strike and break and tear, a
+gaping mouth that could devour, and bulging brains that could conspire
+and plan. It was a purpose, which had a living body, but no complete
+humanity to temper it. Because it was passion--belonging to life, and
+yet not having the wholeness of life--it was the most terrible of
+life's enemies.
+
+Something of the same sense of oppression in a different degree, the
+same desolation in a different aspect, is produced in my mind when I
+realise the effect of the West upon Eastern life--the West which, in
+its relation to us, is all plan and purpose incarnate, without any
+superfluous humanity.
+
+I feel the contrast very strongly in Japan. In that country the old
+world presents itself with some ideal of perfection, in which man has
+his varied opportunities of self-revelation in art, in ceremonial, in
+religious faith, and in customs expressing the poetry of social
+relationship. There one feels that deep delight of hospitality which
+life offers to life. And side by side, in the same soil, stands the
+modern world, which is stupendously big and powerful, but
+inhospitable. It has no simple-hearted welcome for man. It is living;
+yet the incompleteness of life's ideal within it cannot but hurt
+humanity.
+
+The wriggling tentacles of a cold-blooded utilitarianism, with which
+the West has grasped all the easily yielding succulent portions of the
+East, are causing pain and indignation throughout the Eastern
+countries. The West comes to us, not with the imagination and sympathy
+that create and unite, but with a shock of passion--passion for power
+and wealth. This passion is a mere force, which has in it the
+principle of separation, of conflict.
+
+I have been fortunate in coming into close touch with individual men
+and women of the Western countries, and have felt with them their
+sorrows and shared their aspirations. I have known that they seek the
+same God, who is my God--even those who deny Him. I feel certain that,
+if the great light of culture be extinct in Europe, our horizon in the
+East will mourn in darkness. It does not hurt my pride to acknowledge
+that, in the present age, Western humanity has received its mission to
+be the teacher of the world; that her science, through the mastery of
+laws of nature, is to liberate human souls from the dark dungeon of
+matter. For this very reason I have realised all the more strongly,
+on the other hand, that the dominant collective idea in the Western
+countries is not creative. It is ready to enslave or kill individuals,
+to drug a great people with soul-killing poison, darkening their whole
+future with the black mist of stupefaction, and emasculating entire
+races of men to the utmost degree of helplessness. It is wholly
+wanting in spiritual power to blend and harmonise; it lacks the sense
+of the great personality of man.
+
+The most significant fact of modern days is this, that the West has
+met the East. Such a momentous meeting of humanity, in order to be
+fruitful, must have in its heart some great emotional idea, generous
+and creative. There can be no doubt that God's choice has fallen upon
+the knights-errant of the West for the service of the present age;
+arms and armour have been given to them; but have they yet realised in
+their hearts the single-minded loyalty to their cause which can resist
+all temptations of bribery from the devil? The world to-day is offered
+to the West. She will destroy it, if she does not use it for a great
+creation of man. The materials for such a creation are in the hands of
+science; but the creative genius is in Man's spiritual ideal.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+When I was young a stranger from Europe came to Bengal. He chose his
+lodging among the people of the country, shared with them their frugal
+diet, and freely offered them his service. He found employment in the
+houses of the rich, teaching them French and German, and the money
+thus earned he spent to help poor students in buying books. This meant
+for him hours of walking in the mid-day heat of a tropical summer;
+for, intent upon exercising the utmost economy, he refused to hire
+conveyances. He was pitiless in his exaction from himself of his
+resources, in money, time, and strength, to the point of privation;
+and all this for the sake of a people who were obscure, to whom he was
+not born, yet whom he dearly loved. He did not come to us with a
+professional mission of teaching sectarian creeds; he had not in his
+nature the least trace of that self-sufficiency of goodness, which
+humiliates by gifts the victims of its insolent benevolence. Though he
+did not know our language, he took every occasion to frequent our
+meetings and ceremonies; yet he was always afraid of intrusion, and
+tenderly anxious lest he might offend us by his ignorance of our
+customs. At last, under the continual strain of work in an alien
+climate and surroundings, his health broke down. He died, and was
+cremated at our burning-ground, according to his express desire.
+
+The attitude of his mind, the manner of his living, the object of his
+life, his modesty, his unstinted self-sacrifice for a people who had
+not even the power to give publicity to any benefaction bestowed upon
+them, were so utterly unlike anything we were accustomed to associate
+with the Europeans in India, that it gave rise in our mind to a
+feeling of love bordering upon awe.
+
+We all have a realm, a private paradise, in our mind, where dwell
+deathless memories of persons who brought some divine light to our
+life's experience, who may not be known to others, and whose names
+have no place in the pages of history. Let me confess to you that this
+man lives as one of those immortals in the paradise of my individual
+life.
+
+He came from Sweden, his name was Hammargren. What was most remarkable
+in the event of his coming to us in Bengal was the fact that in his
+own country he had chanced to read some works of my great countryman,
+Ram Mohan Roy, and felt an immense veneration for his genius and his
+character. Ram Mohan Roy lived in the beginning of the last century,
+and it is no exaggeration when I describe him as one of the immortal
+personalities of modern time. This young Swede had the unusual gift of
+a far-sighted intellect and sympathy, which enabled him even from his
+distance of space and time, and in spite of racial differences, to
+realise the greatness of Ram Mohan Roy. It moved him so deeply that he
+resolved to go to the country which produced this great man, and offer
+her his service. He was poor, and he had to wait some time in England
+before he could earn his passage money to India. There he came at
+last, and in reckless generosity of love utterly spent himself to the
+last breath of his life, away from home and kindred and all the
+inheritances of his motherland. His stay among us was too short to
+produce any outward result. He failed even to achieve during his life
+what he had in his mind, which was to found by the help of his scanty
+earnings a library as a memorial to Ram Mohan Roy, and thus to leave
+behind him a visible symbol of his devotion. But what I prize most in
+this European youth, who left no record of his life behind him, is not
+the memory of any service of goodwill, but the precious gift of
+respect which he offered to a people who are fallen upon evil times,
+and whom it is so easy to ignore or to humiliate. For the first time
+in the modern days this obscure individual from Sweden brought to our
+country the chivalrous courtesy of the West, a greeting of human
+fellowship.
+
+The coincidence came to me with a great and delightful surprise when
+the Nobel Prize was offered to me from Sweden. As a recognition of
+individual merit it was of great value to me, no doubt; but it was the
+acknowledgment of the East as a collaborator with the Western
+continents, in contributing its riches to the common stock of
+civilisation, which had the chief significance for the present age. It
+meant joining hands in comradeship by the two great hemispheres of the
+human world across the sea.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+To-day the real East remains unexplored. The blindness of contempt is
+more hopeless than the blindness of ignorance; for contempt kills the
+light which ignorance merely leaves unignited. The East is waiting to
+be understood by the Western races, in order not only to be able to
+give what is true in her, but also to be confident of her own mission.
+
+In Indian history, the meeting of the Mussulman and the Hindu produced
+Akbar, the object of whose dream was the unification of hearts and
+ideals. It had all the glowing enthusiasm of a religion, and it
+produced an immediate and a vast result even in his own lifetime.
+
+But the fact still remains that the Western mind, after centuries of
+contact with the East, has not evolved the enthusiasm of a chivalrous
+ideal which can bring this age to its fulfilment. It is everywhere
+raising thorny hedges of exclusion and offering human sacrifices to
+national self-seeking. It has intensified the mutual feelings of envy
+among Western races themselves, as they fight over their spoils and
+display a carnivorous pride in their snarling rows of teeth.
+
+We must again guard our minds from any encroaching distrust of the
+individuals of a nation. The active love of humanity and the spirit of
+martyrdom for the cause of justice and truth which I have met with in
+the Western countries have been a great lesson and inspiration to me.
+I have no doubt in my mind that the West owes its true greatness, not
+so much to its marvellous training of intellect, as to its spirit of
+service devoted to the welfare of man. Therefore I speak with a
+personal feeling of pain and sadness about the collective power which
+is guiding the helm of Western civilisation. It is a passion, not an
+ideal. The more success it has brought to Europe, the more costly it
+will prove to her at last, when the accounts have to be rendered. And
+the signs are unmistakable, that the accounts have been called for.
+The time has come when Europe must know that the forcible parasitism
+which she has been practising upon the two large Continents of the
+world--the two most unwieldy whales of humanity--must be causing to
+her moral nature a gradual atrophy and degeneration.
+
+As an example, let me quote the following extract from the concluding
+chapter of _From the Cape to Cairo_, by Messrs. Grogan and Sharp, two
+writers who have the power to inculcate their doctrines by precept and
+example. In their reference to the African they are candid, as when
+they say, "We have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limbs."
+These two sentences, carefully articulated, with a smack of
+enjoyment, have been more clearly explained in the following
+statement, where some sense of that decency which is the attenuated
+ghost of a buried conscience, prompts the writers to use the phrase
+"compulsory labour" in place of the honest word "slavery"; just as the
+modern politician adroitly avoids the word "injunction" and uses the
+word "mandate." "Compulsory labour in some form," they say, "is the
+corollary of our occupation of the country." And they add: "It is
+pathetic, but it is history," implying thereby that moral sentiments
+have no serious effect in the history of human beings.
+
+Elsewhere they write: "Either we must give up the country
+commercially, or we must make the African work. And mere abuse of
+those who point out the impasse cannot change the facts. We must
+decide, and soon. Or rather the white man of South Africa will
+decide." The authors also confess that they have seen too much of the
+world "to have any lingering belief that Western civilisation benefits
+native races."
+
+The logic is simple--the logic of egoism. But the argument is
+simplified by lopping off the greater part of the premise. For these
+writers seem to hold that the only important question for the white
+men of South Africa is, how indefinitely to grow fat on ostrich
+feathers and diamond mines, and dance jazz dances over the misery and
+degradation of a whole race of fellow-beings of a different colour
+from their own. Possibly they believe that moral laws have a special
+domesticated breed of comfortable concessions for the service of the
+people in power. Possibly they ignore the fact that commercial and
+political cannibalism, profitably practised upon foreign races, creeps
+back nearer home; that the cultivation of unwholesome appetites has
+its final reckoning with the stomach which has been made to serve it.
+For, after all, man is a spiritual being, and not a mere living
+money-bag jumping from profit to profit, and breaking the backbone of
+human races in its financial leapfrog.
+
+Such, however, has been the condition of things for more than a
+century; and to-day, trying to read the future by the light of the
+European conflagration, we are asking ourselves everywhere in the
+East: "Is this frightfully overgrown power really great? It can bruise
+us from without, but can it add to our wealth of spirit? It can sign
+peace treaties, but can it give peace?"
+
+It was about two thousand years ago that all-powerful Rome in one of
+its eastern provinces executed on a cross a simple teacher of an
+obscure tribe of fishermen. On that day the Roman governor felt no
+falling off of his appetite or sleep. On that day there was, on the
+one hand, the agony, the humiliation, the death; on the other, the
+pomp of pride and festivity in the Governor's palace.
+
+And to-day? To whom, then, shall we bow the head?
+
+    Kasmai devaya havisha vidhema?
+
+    (To which God shall we offer oblation?)
+
+We know of an instance in our own history of India, when a great
+personality, both in his life and voice, struck the keynote of the
+solemn music of the soul--love for all creatures. And that music
+crossed seas, mountains, and deserts. Races belonging to different
+climates, habits, and languages were drawn together, not in the clash
+of arms, not in the conflict of exploitation, but in harmony of life,
+in amity and peace. That was creation.
+
+When we think of it, we see at once what the confusion of thought was
+to which the Western poet, dwelling upon the difference between East
+and West, referred when he said, "Never the twain shall meet." It is
+true that they are not yet showing any real sign of meeting. But the
+reason is because the West has not sent out its humanity to meet the
+man in the East, but only its machine. Therefore the poet's line has
+to be changed into something like this:
+
+    Man is man, machine is machine,
+    And never the twain shall wed.
+
+You must know that red tape can never be a common human bond; that
+official sealing-wax can never provide means of mutual attachment;
+that it is a painful ordeal for human beings to have to receive
+favours from animated pigeonholes, and condescensions from printed
+circulars that give notice but never speak. The presence of the
+Western people in the East is a human fact. If we are to gain anything
+from them, it must not be a mere sum-total of legal codes and systems
+of civil and military services. Man is a great deal more to man than
+that. We have our human birthright to claim direct help from the man
+of the West, if he has anything great to give us. It must come to us,
+not through mere facts in a juxtaposition, but through the
+spontaneous sacrifice made by those who have the gift, and therefore
+the responsibility.
+
+Earnestly I ask the poet of the Western world to realise and sing to
+you with all the great power of music which he has, that the East and
+the West are ever in search of each other, and that they must meet not
+merely in the fulness of physical strength, but in fulness of truth;
+that the right hand, which wields the sword, has the need of the left,
+which holds the shield of safety.
+
+The East has its seat in the vast plains watched over by the
+snow-peaked mountains and fertilised by rivers carrying mighty volumes
+of water to the sea. There, under the blaze of a tropical sun, the
+physical life has bedimmed the light of its vigour and lessened its
+claims. There man has had the repose of mind which has ever tried to
+set itself in harmony with the inner notes of existence. In the
+silence of sunrise and sunset, and on star-crowded nights, he has sat
+face to face with the Infinite, waiting for the revelation that opens
+up the heart of all that there is. He has said, in a rapture of
+realisation:
+
+"Hearken to me, ye children of the Immortal, who dwell in the Kingdom
+of Heaven. I have known, from beyond darkness, the Supreme Person,
+shining with the radiance of the sun."
+
+The man from the East, with his faith in the eternal, who in his soul
+had met the touch of the Supreme Person--did he never come to you in
+the West and speak to you of the Kingdom of Heaven? Did he not unite
+the East and the West in truth, in the unity of one spiritual bond
+between all children of the Immortal, in the realisation of one great
+Personality in all human persons?
+
+Yes, the East did once meet the West profoundly in the growth of her
+life. Such union became possible, because the East came to the West
+with the ideal that is creative, and not with the passion that
+destroys moral bonds. The mystic consciousness of the Infinite, which
+she brought with her, was greatly needed by the man of the West to
+give him his balance.
+
+On the other hand, the East must find her own balance in Science--the
+magnificent gift that the West can bring to her. Truth has its nest as
+well as its sky. That nest is definite in structure, accurate in law
+of construction; and though it has to be changed and rebuilt over and
+over again, the need of it is never-ending and its laws are eternal.
+For some centuries the East has neglected the nest-building of truth.
+She has not been attentive to learn its secret. Trying to cross the
+trackless infinite, the East has relied solely upon her wings. She has
+spurned the earth, till, buffeted by storms, her wings are hurt and
+she is tired, sorely needing help. But has she then to be told that
+the messenger of the sky and the builder of the nest shall never
+meet?
+
+
+
+
+                            THE MODERN AGE
+
+                                   I
+
+
+Wherever man meets man in a living relationship, the meeting finds its
+natural expression in works of art, the signatures of beauty, in which
+the mingling of the personal touch leaves its memorial.
+
+On the other hand, a relationship of pure utility humiliates man--it
+ignores the rights and needs of his deeper nature; it feels no
+compunction in maltreating and killing things of beauty that can never
+be restored.
+
+Some years ago, when I set out from Calcutta on my voyage to Japan,
+the first thing that shocked me, with a sense of personal injury, was
+the ruthless intrusion of the factories for making gunny-bags on both
+banks of the Ganges. The blow it gave to me was owing to the precious
+memory of the days of my boyhood, when the scenery of this river was
+the only great thing near my birthplace reminding me of the existence
+of a world which had its direct communication with our innermost
+spirit.
+
+Calcutta is an upstart town with no depth of sentiment in her face and
+in her manners. It may truly be said about her genesis:--In the
+beginning there was the spirit of the Shop, which uttered through its
+megaphone, "Let there be the Office!" and there was Calcutta. She
+brought with her no dower of distinction, no majesty of noble or
+romantic origin; she never gathered around her any great historical
+associations, any annals of brave sufferings, or memory of mighty
+deeds. The only thing which gave her the sacred baptism of beauty was
+the river. I was fortunate enough to be born before the smoke-belching
+iron dragon had devoured the greater part of the life of its banks;
+when the landing-stairs descending into its waters, caressed by its
+tides, appeared to me like the loving arms of the villages clinging to
+it; when Calcutta, with her up-tilted nose and stony stare, had not
+completely disowned her foster-mother, rural Bengal, and had not
+surrendered body and soul to her wealthy paramour, the spirit of the
+ledger, bound in dead leather.
+
+But as an instance of the contrast of the different ideal of a
+different age, incarnated in the form of a town, the memory of my last
+visit to Benares comes to my mind. What impressed me most deeply,
+while I was there, was the mother-call of the river Ganges, ever
+filling the atmosphere with an "unheard melody," attracting the whole
+population to its bosom every hour of the day. I am proud of the fact
+that India has felt a most profound love for this river, which
+nourishes civilisation on its banks, guiding its course from the
+silence of the hills to the sea with its myriad voices of solitude.
+The love of this river, which has become one with the love of the best
+in man, has given rise to this town as an expression of reverence.
+This is to show that there are sentiments in us which are creative,
+which do not clamour for gain, but overflow in gifts, in spontaneous
+generosity of self-sacrifice.
+
+But our minds will nevermore cease to be haunted by the perturbed
+spirit of the question, "What about gunny-bags?" I admit they are
+indispensable, and am willing to allow them a place in society, if my
+opponent will only admit that even gunny-bags should have their
+limits, and will acknowledge the importance of leisure to man, with
+space for joy and worship, and a home of wholesale privacy, with
+associations of chaste love and mutual service. If this concession to
+humanity be denied or curtailed, and if profit and production are
+allowed to run amuck, they will play havoc with our love of beauty, of
+truth, of justice, and also with our love for our fellow-beings. So it
+comes about that the peasant cultivators of jute, who live on the
+brink of everlasting famine, are combined against, and driven to lower
+the price of their labours to the point of blank despair, by those who
+earn more than cent per cent profit and wallow in the infamy of their
+wealth. The facts that man is brave and kind, that he is social and
+generous and self-sacrificing, have some aspect of the complete in
+them; but the fact that he is a manufacturer of gunny-bags is too
+ridiculously small to claim the right of reducing his higher nature to
+insignificance. The fragmentariness of utility should never forget its
+subordinate position in human affairs. It must not be permitted to
+occupy more than its legitimate place and power in society, nor to
+have the liberty to desecrate the poetry of life, to deaden our
+sensitiveness to ideals, bragging of its own coarseness as a sign of
+virility. The pity is that when in the centre of our activities we
+acknowledge, by some proud name, the supremacy of wanton
+destructiveness, or production not less wanton, we shut out all the
+lights of our souls, and in that darkness our conscience and our
+consciousness of shame are hidden, and our love of freedom is killed.
+
+I do not for a moment mean to imply that in any particular period of
+history men were free from the disturbance of their lower passions.
+Selfishness ever had its share in government and trade. Yet there was
+a struggle to maintain a balance of forces in society; and our
+passions cherished no delusions about their own rank and value. They
+contrived no clever devices to hoodwink our moral nature. For in those
+days our intellect was not tempted to put its weight into the balance
+on the side of over-greed.
+
+But in recent centuries a devastating change has come over our
+mentality with regard to the acquisition of money. Whereas in former
+ages men treated it with condescension, even with disrespect, now they
+bend their knees to it. That it should be allowed a sufficiently large
+place in society, there can be no question; but it becomes an outrage
+when it occupies those seats which are specially reserved for the
+immortals, by bribing us, tampering with our moral pride, recruiting
+the best strength of society in a traitor's campaign against human
+ideals, thus disguising, with the help of pomp and pageantry, its true
+insignificance. Such a state of things has come to pass because, with
+the help of science, the possibilities of profit have suddenly become
+immoderate. The whole of the human world, throughout its length and
+breadth, has felt the gravitational pull of a giant planet of greed,
+with concentric rings of innumerable satellites, causing in our
+society a marked deviation from the moral orbit. In former times the
+intellectual and spiritual powers of this earth upheld their dignity
+of independence and were not giddily rocked on the tides of the money
+market. But, as in the last fatal stages of disease, this fatal
+influence of money has got into our brain and affected our heart. Like
+a usurper, it has occupied the throne of high social ideals, using
+every means, by menace and threat, to seize upon the right, and,
+tempted by opportunity, presuming to judge it. It has not only science
+for its ally, but other forces also that have some semblance of
+religion, such as nation-worship and the idealising of organised
+selfishness. Its methods are far-reaching and sure. Like the claws of
+a tiger's paw, they are softly sheathed. Its massacres are invisible,
+because they are fundamental, attacking the very roots of life. Its
+plunder is ruthless behind a scientific system of screens, which have
+the formal appearance of being open and responsible to inquiries. By
+whitewashing its stains it keeps its respectability unblemished. It
+makes a liberal use of falsehood in diplomacy, only feeling
+embarrassed when its evidence is disclosed by others of the trade. An
+unscrupulous system of propaganda paves the way for widespread
+misrepresentation. It works up the crowd psychology through regulated
+hypnotic doses at repeated intervals, administered in bottles with
+moral labels upon them of soothing colours. In fact, man has been able
+to make his pursuit of power easier to-day by his art of mitigating
+the obstructive forces that come from the higher region of his
+humanity. With his cult of power and his idolatry of money he has, in
+a great measure, reverted to his primitive barbarism, a barbarism
+whose path is lit up by the lurid light of intellect. For barbarism is
+the simplicity of a superficial life. It may be bewildering in its
+surface adornments and complexities, but it lacks the ideal to impart
+to it the depth of moral responsibility.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Society suffers from a profound feeling of unhappiness, not so much
+when it is in material poverty as when its members are deprived of a
+large part of their humanity. This unhappiness goes on smouldering in
+the subconscious mind of the community till its life is reduced to
+ashes or a sudden combustion is produced. The repressed personality of
+man generates an inflammable moral gas deadly in its explosive force.
+
+We have seen in the late war, and also in some of the still more
+recent events of history, how human individuals freed from moral and
+spiritual bonds find a boisterous joy in a debauchery of destruction.
+There is generated a disinterested passion of ravage. Through such
+catastrophe we can realise what formidable forces of annihilation are
+kept in check in our communities by bonds of social ideas; nay, made
+into multitudinous manifestations of beauty and fruitfulness. Thus we
+know that evils are, like meteors, stray fragments of life, which need
+the attraction of some great ideal in order to be assimilated with the
+wholesomeness of creation. The evil forces are literally outlaws;
+they only need the control and cadence of spiritual laws to change
+them into good. The true goodness is not the negation of badness, it
+is in the mastery of it. Goodness is the miracle which turns the
+tumult of chaos into a dance of beauty.
+
+In modern society the ideal of wholeness has lost its force. Therefore
+its different sections have become detached and resolved into their
+elemental character of forces. Labour is a force; so also is Capital;
+so are the Government and the People; so are Man and Woman. It is said
+that when the forces lying latent in even a handful of dust are
+liberated from their bond of unity, they can lift the buildings of a
+whole neighbourhood to the height of a mountain. Such disfranchised
+forces, irresponsible free-booters, may be useful to us for certain
+purposes, but human habitations standing secure on their foundations
+are better for us. To own the secret of utilising these forces is a
+proud fact for us, but the power of self-control and the
+self-dedication of love are truer subjects for the exultation of
+mankind. The genii of the Arabian Nights may have in their magic their
+lure and fascination for us. But the consciousness of God is of
+another order, infinitely more precious in imparting to our minds
+ideas of the spiritual power of creation. Yet these genii are abroad
+everywhere; and even now, after the late war, their devotees are
+getting ready to play further tricks upon humanity by suddenly
+spiriting it away to some hill-top of desolation.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+We know that when, at first, any large body of people in their history
+became aware of their unity, they expressed it in some popular symbol
+of divinity. For they felt that their combination was not an
+arithmetical one; its truth was deeper than the truth of number. They
+felt that their community was not a mere agglutination but a creation,
+having upon it the living touch of the infinite Person. The
+realisation of this truth having been an end in itself, a fulfilment,
+it gave meaning to self-sacrifice, to the acceptance even of death.
+
+But our modern education is producing a habit of mind which is ever
+weakening in us the spiritual apprehension of truth--the truth of a
+person as the ultimate reality of existence. Science has its proper
+sphere in analysing this world as a construction, just as grammar has
+its legitimate office in analysing the syntax of a poem. But the
+world, as a creation, is not a mere construction; it too is more than
+a syntax. It is a poem, which we are apt to forget when grammar takes
+exclusive hold of our minds.
+
+Upon the loss of this sense of a universal personality, which is
+religion, the reign of the machine and of method has been firmly
+established, and man, humanly speaking, has been made a homeless
+tramp. As nomads, ravenous and restless, the men from the West have
+come to us. They have exploited our Eastern humanity for sheer gain of
+power. This modern meeting of men has not yet received the blessing of
+God. For it has kept us apart, though railway lines are laid far and
+wide, and ships are plying from shore to shore to bring us together.
+
+It has been said in the Upanishads:
+
+    Yastu sarv�ni bhut�ni �tm�nyev�nupashyati
+    Sarva bhuteshu ch�tm�nam na tato vijugupsate.
+
+     (He who sees all things in _�tm�_, in the infinite spirit,
+     and the infinite spirit in all beings, remains no longer
+     unrevealed.)
+
+In the modern civilisation, for which an enormous number of men are
+used as materials, and human relationships have in a large measure
+become utilitarian, man is imperfectly revealed. For man's revelation
+does not lie in the fact that he is a power, but that he is a spirit.
+The prevalence of the theory which realises the power of the machine
+in the universe, and organises men into machines, is like the eruption
+of Etna, tremendous in its force, in its outburst of fire and fume;
+but its creeping lava covers up human shelters made by the ages, and
+its ashes smother life.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+The terribly efficient method of repressing personality in the
+individuals and the races who have failed to resist it has, in the
+present scientific age, spread all over the world; and in consequence
+there have appeared signs of a universal disruption which seems not
+far off. Faced with the possibility of such a disaster, which is sure
+to affect the successful peoples of the world in their intemperate
+prosperity, the great Powers of the West are seeking peace, not by
+curbing their greed, or by giving up the exclusive advantages which
+they have unjustly acquired, but by concentrating their forces for
+mutual security.
+
+But can powers find their equilibrium in themselves? Power has to be
+made secure not only against power, but also against weakness; for
+there lies the peril of its losing balance. The weak are as great a
+danger for the strong as quicksands for an elephant. They do not
+assist progress because they do not resist; they only drag down. The
+people who grow accustomed to wield absolute power over others are apt
+to forget that by so doing they generate an unseen force which some
+day rends that power into pieces. The dumb fury of the downtrodden
+finds its awful support from the universal law of moral balance. The
+air which is so thin and unsubstantial gives birth to storms that
+nothing can resist. This has been proved in history over and over
+again, and stormy forces arising from the revolt of insulted humanity
+are openly gathering in the air at the present time.
+
+Yet in the psychology of the strong the lesson is despised and no
+count taken of the terribleness of the weak. This is the latent
+ignorance that, like an unsuspected worm, burrows under the bulk of
+the prosperous. Have we never read of the castle of power, securely
+buttressed on all sides, in a moment dissolving in air at the
+explosion caused by the weak and outraged besiegers? Politicians
+calculate upon the number of mailed hands that are kept on the
+sword-hilts: they do not possess the third eye to see the great
+invisible hand that clasps in silence the hand of the helpless and
+waits its time. The strong form their league by a combination of
+powers, driving the weak to form their own league alone with their
+God. I know I am crying in the wilderness when I raise the voice of
+warning; and while the West is busy with its organisation of a
+machine-made peace, it will still continue to nourish by its
+iniquities the underground forces of earthquake in the Eastern
+Continent. The West seems unconscious that Science, by providing it
+with more and more power, is tempting it to suicide and encouraging it
+to accept the challenge of the disarmed; it does not know that the
+challenge comes from a higher source.
+
+Two prophecies about the world's salvation are cherished in the hearts
+of the two great religions of the world. They represent the highest
+expectation of man, thereby indicating his faith in a truth which he
+instinctively considers as ultimate--the truth of love. These
+prophecies have not for their vision the fettering of the world and
+reducing it to tameness by means of a close-linked power forged in the
+factory of a political steel trust. One of the religions has for its
+meditation the image of the Buddha who is to come, Maitreya, the
+Buddha of love; and he is to bring peace. The other religion waits for
+the coming of Christ. For Christ preached peace when he preached love,
+when he preached the oneness of the Father with the brothers who are
+many. And this was the truth of peace. Christ never held that peace
+was the best policy. For policy is not truth. The calculation of
+self-interest can never successfully fight the irrational force of
+passion--the passion which is perversion of love, and which can only
+be set right by the truth of love. So long as the powers build a
+league on the foundation of their desire for safety, secure enjoyment
+of gains, consolidation of past injustice, and putting off the
+reparation of wrongs, while their fingers still wriggle for greed and
+reek of blood, rifts will appear in their union; and in future their
+conflicts will take greater force and magnitude. It is political and
+commercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war. By different
+combinations it changes its shape and dimensions, but not its nature.
+This egoism is still held sacred, and made a religion; and such a
+religion, by a mere change of temple, and by new committees of
+priests, will never save mankind. We must know that, as, through
+science and commerce, the realisation of the unity of the material
+world gives us power, so the realisation of the great spiritual Unity
+of Man alone can give us peace.
+
+
+
+
+                         THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM
+
+        (A LETTER FROM NEW YORK TO THE AUTHOR'S OWN COUNTRYMEN)
+
+
+When freedom is not an inner idea which imparts strength to our
+activities and breadth to our creations, when it is merely a thing of
+external circumstance, it is like an open space to one who is
+blindfolded.
+
+In my recent travels in the West I have felt that out there freedom as
+an idea has become feeble and ineffectual. Consequently a spirit of
+repression and coercion is fast spreading in the politics and social
+relationships of the people.
+
+In the age of monarchy the king lived surrounded by a miasma of
+intrigue. At court there was an endless whispering of lies and
+calumny, and much plotting and planning among the conspiring courtiers
+to manipulate the king as the instrument of their own purposes.
+
+In the present age intrigue plays a wider part, and affects the whole
+country. The people are drugged with the hashish of false hopes and
+urged to deeds of frightfulness by the goadings of manufactured
+panics; their higher feelings are exploited by devious channels of
+unctuous hypocrisy, their pockets picked under an�sthetics of
+flattery, their very psychology affected by a conspiracy of money and
+unscrupulous diplomacy.
+
+In the old order the king was given to understand that he was the
+freest individual in the world. A greater semblance of external
+freedom, no doubt, he had than other individuals. But they built for
+him a gorgeous prison of unreality.
+
+The same thing is happening now with the people of the West. They are
+flattered into believing that they are free, and they have the
+sovereign power in their hands. But this power is robbed by hosts of
+self-seekers, and the horse is captured and stabled because of his
+gift of freedom over space. The mob-mind is allowed the enjoyment of
+an apparent liberty, while its true freedom is curtailed on every
+side. Its thoughts are fashioned according to the plans of organised
+interest; in its choosing of ideas and forming of opinions it is
+hindered either by some punitive force or by the constant insinuation
+of untruths; it is made to dwell in an artificial world of hypnotic
+phrases. In fact, the people have become the storehouse of a power
+that attracts round it a swarm of adventurers who are secretly
+investing its walls to exploit it for their own devices.
+
+Thus it has become more and more evident to me that the ideal of
+freedom has grown tenuous in the atmosphere of the West. The mentality
+is that of a slave-owning community, with a mutilated multitude of men
+tied to its commercial and political treadmill. It is the mentality of
+mutual distrust and fear. The appalling scenes of inhumanity and
+injustice, which are growing familiar to us, are the outcome of a
+psychology that deals with terror. No cruelty can be uglier in its
+ferocity than the cruelty of the coward. The people who have
+sacrificed their souls to the passion of profit-making and the
+drunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic and
+suspicion, and therefore they are ruthless even where they are least
+afraid of mischances. They become morally incapable of allowing
+freedom to others, and in their eagerness to curry favour with the
+powerful they not only connive at the injustice done by their own
+partners in political gambling, but participate in it. A perpetual
+anxiety for the protection of their gains at any cost strikes at the
+love of freedom and justice, until at length they are ready to forgo
+liberty for themselves and for others.
+
+My experience in the West, where I have realised the immense power of
+money and of organised propaganda,--working everywhere behind screens
+of camouflage, creating an atmosphere of distrust, timidity, and
+antipathy,--has impressed me deeply with the truth that real freedom
+is of the mind and spirit; it can never come to us from outside. He
+only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to
+extend it to others. He who cares to have slaves must chain himself to
+them; he who builds walls to create exclusion for others builds walls
+across his own freedom; he who distrusts freedom in others loses his
+moral right to it. Sooner or later he is lured into the meshes of
+physical and moral servility.
+
+Therefore I would urge my own countrymen to ask themselves if the
+freedom to which they aspire is one of external conditions. Is it
+merely a transferable commodity? Have they acquired a true love of
+freedom? Have they faith in it? Are they ready to make space in their
+society for the minds of their children to grow up in the ideal of
+human dignity, unhindered by restrictions that are unjust and
+irrational?
+
+Have we not made elaborately permanent the walls of our social
+compartments? We are tenaciously proud of their exclusiveness. We
+boast that, in this world, no other society but our own has come to
+finality in the classifying of its living members. Yet in our
+political agitations we conveniently forget that any unnaturalness in
+the relationship of governors and governed which humiliates us,
+becomes an outrage when it is artificially fixed under the threat of
+military persecution.
+
+When India gave voice to immortal thoughts, in the time of fullest
+vigour of vitality, her children had the fearless spirit of the
+seekers of truth. The great epic of the soul of our people--the
+_Mah�bh�rata_--gives us a wonderful vision of an overflowing life,
+full of the freedom of inquiry and experiment. When the age of the
+Buddha came, humanity was stirred in our country to its uttermost
+depth. The freedom of mind which it produced expressed itself in a
+wealth of creation, spreading everywhere in its richness over the
+continent of Asia. But with the ebb of life in India the spirit of
+creation died away. It hardened into an age of inert construction. The
+organic unity of a varied and elastic society gave way to a
+conventional order which proved its artificial character by its
+inexorable law of exclusion.
+
+Life has its inequalities, I admit, but they are natural and are in
+harmony with our vital functions. The head keeps its place apart from
+the feet, not through some external arrangement or any conspiracy of
+coercion. If the body is compelled to turn somersaults for an
+indefinite period, the head never exchanges its relative function for
+that of the feet. But have our social divisions the same
+inevitableness of organic law? If we have the hardihood to say "yes"
+to that question, then how can we blame an alien people for subjecting
+us to a political order which they are tempted to believe eternal?
+
+By squeezing human beings in the grip of an inelastic system and
+forcibly holding them fixed, we have ignored the laws of life and
+growth. We have forced living souls into a permanent passivity, making
+them incapable of moulding circumstance to their own intrinsic design,
+and of mastering their own destiny. Borrowing our ideal of life from a
+dark period of our degeneracy, we have covered up our sensitiveness
+of soul under the immovable weight of a remote past. We have set up an
+elaborate ceremonial of cage-worship, and plucked all the feathers
+from the wings of the living spirit of our people. And for us,--with
+our centuries of degradation and insult, with the amorphousness of our
+national unity, with our helplessness before the attack of disasters
+from without and our unreasoning self-obstructions from within,--the
+punishment has been terrible. Our stupefaction has become so absolute
+that we do not even realise that this persistent misfortune, dogging
+our steps for ages, cannot be a mere accident of history, removable
+only by another accident from outside.
+
+Unless we have true faith in freedom, knowing it to be creative,
+manfully taking all its risks, not only do we lose the right to claim
+freedom in politics, but we also lack the power to maintain it with
+all our strength. For that would be like assigning the service of God
+to a confirmed atheist. And men, who contemptuously treat their own
+brothers and sisters as eternal babies, never to be trusted in the
+most trivial details of their personal life,--coercing them at every
+step by the cruel threat of persecution into following a blind lane
+leading to nowhere, driving a number of them into hypocrisy and into
+moral inertia,--will fail over and over again to rise to the height of
+their true and severe responsibility. They will be incapable of
+holding a just freedom in politics, and of fighting in freedom's
+cause.
+
+The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine which
+must move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel,
+keeping up the steam-power. It represents the active aspect of inertia
+which has the appearance of freedom, but not its truth, and therefore
+gives rise to slavery both within its boundaries and outside. The
+present civilisation of India has the constraining power of the mould.
+It squeezes living man in the grip of rigid regulations, and its
+repression of individual freedom makes it only too easy for men to be
+forced into submission of all kinds and degrees. In both of these
+traditions life is offered up to something which is not life; it is a
+sacrifice, which has no God for its worship, and is therefore utterly
+in vain. The West is continually producing mechanical power in excess
+of its spiritual control, and India has produced a system of
+mechanical control in excess of its vitality.
+
+
+
+
+                              THE NATION
+
+
+The peoples are living beings. They have their distinct personalities.
+But nations are organisations of power, and therefore their inner
+aspects and outward expressions are everywhere monotonously the same.
+Their differences are merely differences in degree of efficiency.
+
+In the modern world the fight is going on between the living spirit of
+the people and the methods of nation-organising. It is like the
+struggle that began in Central Asia between cultivated areas of man's
+habitation and the continually encroaching desert sands, till the
+human region of life and beauty was choked out of existence. When the
+spread of higher ideals of humanity is not held to be important, the
+hardening method of national efficiency gains a certain strength; and
+for some limited period of time, at least, it proudly asserts itself
+as the fittest to survive. But it is the survival of that part of man
+which is the least living. And this is the reason why dead monotony is
+the sign of the spread of the Nation. The modern towns, which present
+the physiognomy due to this dominance of the Nation, are everywhere
+the same, from San Francisco to London, from London to Tokyo. They
+show no faces, but merely masks.
+
+The peoples, being living personalities, must have their
+self-expression, and this leads to their distinctive creations. These
+creations are literature, art, social symbols and ceremonials. They
+are like different dishes at one common feast. They add richness to
+our enjoyment and understanding of truth. They are making the world of
+man fertile of life and variedly beautiful.
+
+But the nations do not create, they merely produce and destroy.
+Organisations for production are necessary. Even organisations for
+destruction may be so. But when, actuated by greed and hatred, they
+crowd away into a corner the living man who creates, then the harmony
+is lost, and the people's history runs at a break-neck speed towards
+some fatal catastrophe.
+
+Humanity, where it is living, is guided by inner ideals; but where it
+is a dead organisation it becomes impervious to them. Its building
+process is only an external process, and in its response to the moral
+guidance it has to pass through obstacles that are gross and
+non-plastic.
+
+Man as a person has his individuality, which is the field where his
+spirit has its freedom to express itself and to grow. The professional
+man carries a rigid crust around him which has very little variation
+and hardly any elasticity. This professionalism is the region where
+men specialise their knowledge and organise their power, mercilessly
+elbowing each other in their struggle to come to the front.
+Professionalism is necessary, without doubt; but it must not be
+allowed to exceed its healthy limits, to assume complete mastery over
+the personal man, making him narrow and hard, exclusively intent upon
+pursuit of success at the cost of his faith in ideals.
+
+In ancient India professions were kept within limits by social
+regulation. They were considered primarily as social necessities, and
+in the second place as the means of livelihood for individuals. Thus
+man, being free from the constant urging of unbounded competition,
+could have leisure to cultivate his nature in its completeness.
+
+The Cult of the Nation is the professionalism of the people. This cult
+is becoming their greatest danger, because it is bringing them
+enormous success, making them impatient of the claims of higher
+ideals. The greater the amount of success, the stronger are the
+conflicts of interest and jealousy and hatred which are aroused in
+men's minds, thereby making it more and more necessary for other
+peoples, who are still living, to stiffen into nations. With the
+growth of nationalism, man has become the greatest menace to man.
+Therefore the continual presence of panic goads that very nationalism
+into ever-increasing menace.
+
+Crowd psychology is a blind force. Like steam and other physical
+forces, it can be utilised for creating a tremendous amount of power.
+And therefore rulers of men, who, out of greed and fear, are bent upon
+turning their peoples into machines of power, try to train this crowd
+psychology for their special purposes. They hold it to be their duty
+to foster in the popular mind universal panic, unreasoning pride in
+their own race, and hatred of others. Newspapers, school-books, and
+even religious services are made use of for this object; and those
+who have the courage to express their disapprobation of this blind and
+impious cult are either punished in the law-courts, or are socially
+ostracised. The individual thinks, even when he feels; but the same
+individual, when he feels with the crowd, does not reason at all. His
+moral sense becomes blurred. This suppression of higher humanity in
+crowd minds is productive of enormous strength. For the crowd mind is
+essentially primitive; its forces are elemental. Therefore the Nation
+is for ever watching to take advantage of this enormous power of
+darkness.
+
+The people's instinct of self-preservation has been made dominant at
+particular times of crisis. Then, for the time being, the
+consciousness of its solidarity becomes aggressively wide-awake. But
+in the Nation this hyper-consciousness is kept alive for all time by
+artificial means. A man has to act the part of a policeman when he
+finds his house invaded by burglars. But if that remains his normal
+condition, then his consciousness of his household becomes acute and
+over-wrought, making him fly at every stranger passing near his house.
+This intensity of self-consciousness is nothing of which a man should
+feel proud; certainly it is not healthful. In like manner, incessant
+self-consciousness in a nation is highly injurious for the people. It
+serves its immediate purpose, but at the cost of the eternal in man.
+
+When a whole body of men train themselves for a particular narrow
+purpose, it becomes a common interest with them to keep up that
+purpose and preach absolute loyalty to it. Nationalism is the training
+of a whole people for a narrow ideal; and when it gets hold of their
+minds it is sure to lead them to moral degeneracy and intellectual
+blindness. We cannot but hold firm the faith that this Age of
+Nationalism, of gigantic vanity and selfishness, is only a passing
+phase in civilisation, and those who are making permanent arrangements
+for accommodating this temporary mood of history will be unable to fit
+themselves for the coming age, when the true spirit of freedom will
+have sway.
+
+With the unchecked growth of Nationalism the moral foundation of man's
+civilisation is unconsciously undergoing a change. The ideal of the
+social man is unselfishness, but the ideal of the Nation, like that of
+the professional man, is selfishness. This is why selfishness in the
+individual is condemned, while in the nation it is extolled, which
+leads to hopeless moral blindness, confusing the religion of the
+people with the religion of the nation. Therefore, to take an example,
+we find men more and more convinced of the superior claims of
+Christianity, merely because Christian nations are in possession of
+the greater part of the world. It is like supporting a robber's
+religion by quoting the amount of his stolen property. Nations
+celebrate their successful massacre of men in their churches. They
+forget that Thugs also ascribed their success in manslaughter to the
+favour of their goddess. But in the case of the latter their goddess
+frankly represented the principle of destruction. It was the criminal
+tribe's own murderous instinct deified--the instinct, not of one
+individual, but of the whole community, and therefore held sacred. In
+the same manner, in modern churches, selfishness, hatred and vanity in
+their collective aspect of national instincts do not scruple to share
+the homage paid to God.
+
+Of course, pursuit of self-interest need not be wholly selfish; it can
+even be in harmony with the interest of all. Therefore, ideally
+speaking, the nationalism, which stands for the expression of the
+collective self-interest of a people, need not be ashamed of itself
+if it maintains its true limitations. But what we see in practice is,
+that every nation which has prospered has done so through its career
+of aggressive selfishness either in commercial adventures or in
+foreign possessions, or in both. And this material prosperity not only
+feeds continually the selfish instincts of the people, but impresses
+men's minds with the lesson that, for a nation, selfishness is a
+necessity and therefore a virtue. It is the emphasis laid in Europe
+upon the idea of the Nation's constant increase of power, which is
+becoming the greatest danger to man, both in its direct activity and
+its power of infection.
+
+We must admit that evils there are in human nature, in spite of our
+faith in moral laws and our training in self-control. But they carry
+on their foreheads their own brand of infamy, their very success
+adding to their monstrosity. All through man's history there will be
+some who suffer, and others who cause suffering. The conquest of evil
+will never be a fully accomplished fact, but a continuous process like
+the process of burning in a flame.
+
+In former ages, when some particular people became turbulent and tried
+to rob others of their human rights, they sometimes achieved success
+and sometimes failed. And it amounted to nothing more than that. But
+when this idea of the Nation, which has met with universal acceptance
+in the present day, tries to pass off the cult of collective
+selfishness as a moral duty, simply because that selfishness is
+gigantic in stature, it not only commits depredation, but attacks the
+very vitals of humanity. It unconsciously generates in people's minds
+an attitude of defiance against moral law. For men are taught by
+repeated devices the lesson that the Nation is greater than the
+people, while yet it scatters to the winds the moral law that the
+people have held sacred.
+
+It has been said that a disease becomes most acutely critical when the
+brain is affected. For it is the brain that is constantly directing
+the siege against all disease forces. The spirit of national
+selfishness is that brain disease of a people which shows itself in
+red eyes and clenched fists, in violence of talk and movements, all
+the while shattering its natural restorative powers. But the power of
+self-sacrifice, together with the moral faculty of sympathy and
+co-operation, is the guiding spirit of social vitality. Its function
+is to maintain a beneficent relation of harmony with its
+surroundings. But when it begins to ignore the moral law which is
+universal and uses it only within the bounds of its own narrow sphere,
+then its strength becomes like the strength of madness which ends in
+self-destruction.
+
+What is worse, this aberration of a people, decked with the showy
+title of "patriotism," proudly walks abroad, passing itself off as a
+highly moral influence. Thus it has spread its inflammatory contagion
+all over the world, proclaiming its fever flush to be the best sign of
+health. It is causing in the hearts of peoples, naturally inoffensive,
+a feeling of envy at not having their temperature as high as that of
+their delirious neighbours and not being able to cause as much
+mischief, but merely having to suffer from it.
+
+I have often been asked by my Western friends how to cope with this
+evil, which has attained such sinister strength and vast dimensions.
+In fact, I have often been blamed for merely giving warning, and
+offering no alternative. When we suffer as a result of a particular
+system, we believe that some other system would bring us better luck.
+We are apt to forget that all systems produce evil sooner or later,
+when the psychology which is at the root of them is wrong. The system
+which is national to-day may assume the shape of the international
+to-morrow; but so long as men have not forsaken their idolatry of
+primitive instincts and collective passions, the new system will only
+become a new instrument of suffering. And because we are trained to
+confound efficient system with moral goodness itself, every ruined
+system makes us more and more distrustful of moral law.
+
+Therefore I do not put my faith in any new institution, but in the
+individuals all over the world who think clearly, feel nobly, and act
+rightly, thus becoming the channels of moral truth. Our moral ideals
+do not work with chisels and hammers. Like trees, they spread their
+roots in the soil and their branches in the sky, without consulting
+any architect for their plans.
+
+
+
+
+                            WOMAN AND HOME
+
+
+Creative expressions attain their perfect form through emotions
+modulated. Woman has that expression natural to her--a cadence of
+restraint in her behaviour, producing poetry of life. She has been an
+inspiration to man, guiding, most often unconsciously, his restless
+energy into an immense variety of creations in literature, art, music
+and religion. This is why, in India, woman has been described as the
+symbol of Shakti, the creative power.
+
+But if woman begins to believe that, though biologically her function
+is different from that of man, psychologically she is identical with
+him; if the human world in its mentality becomes exclusively male,
+then before long it will be reduced to utter inanity. For life finds
+its truth and beauty, not in any exaggeration of sameness, but in
+harmony.
+
+If woman's nature were identical with man's, if Eve were a mere
+tautology of Adam, it would only give rise to a monotonous
+superfluity. But that she was not so was proved by the banishment she
+secured from a ready-made Paradise. She had the instinctive wisdom to
+realise that it was her mission to help her mate in creating a
+Paradise of their own on earth, whose ideal she was to supply with her
+life, whose materials were to be produced and gathered by her comrade.
+
+However, it is evident that an increasing number of women in the West
+are ready to assert that their difference from men is unimportant. The
+reason for the vehement utterance of such a paradox cannot be ignored.
+It is a rebellion against a necessity, which is not equal for both the
+partners.
+
+Love in all forms has its obligations, and the love that binds women
+to their children binds them to their homes. But necessity is a
+tyrant, making us submit to injury and indignity, allowing advantage
+over us to those who are wholly or comparatively free from its burden.
+Such has been the case in the social relationship between man and
+woman. Along with the difference inherent in their respective natures,
+there have grown up between them inequalities fostered by
+circumstances. Man is not handicapped by the same biological and
+psychological responsibilities as woman, and therefore he has the
+liberty to give her the security of home. This liberty exacts payment
+when it offers its boon, because to give or to withhold the gift is
+within its power. It is the unequal freedom in their mutual
+relationships which has made the weight of life's tragedies so
+painfully heavy for woman to bear.
+
+Some mitigation of her disadvantage has been effected by her rendering
+herself and her home a luxury to man. She has accentuated those
+qualities in herself which insidiously impose their bondage over her
+mate, some by pandering to his weakness, and some by satisfying his
+higher nature, till the sex-consciousness in our society has grown
+abnormal and overpowering. There is no actual objection to this in
+itself, for it offers a stimulus, acting in the depth of life, which
+leads to creative exuberance. But a great deal of it is a forced
+growth of compulsion bearing seeds of degradation. In those ages when
+men acknowledged spiritual perfection to be their object, women were
+denounced as the chief obstacle in their way. The constant and
+conscious exercise of allurements, which gave women their power,
+attacked the weak spots in man's nature, and by doing so added to its
+weakness. For all relationships tainted with repression of freedom
+must become sources of degeneracy to the strong who impose such
+repression.
+
+Balance of power, however, between man and woman was in a measure
+established when home wielded a strong enough attraction to make men
+accept its obligations. But at last the time has come when the
+material ambition of man has assumed such colossal proportions that
+home is in danger of losing its centre of gravity for him, and he is
+receding farther and farther from its orbit.
+
+The arid zone in the social life is spreading fast. The simple
+comforts of home, made precious by the touch of love, are giving way
+to luxuries that can only have their full extension in the isolation
+of self-centred life. Hotels are being erected on the ruins of homes;
+productions are growing more stupendous than creations; and most men
+have, for the materials of their happiness and recreation, their dogs
+and horses, their pipes, guns, and gambling clubs.
+
+Reactions and rebellions, not being normal in their character, go on
+hurting truth until peace is restored. Therefore, when woman refuses
+to acknowledge the distinction between her life and that of man, she
+does not convince us of its truth, but only proves to us that she is
+suffering. All great sufferings indicate some wrong somewhere. In the
+present case, the wrong is in woman's lack of freedom in her
+relationship with man, which compels her to turn her disabilities into
+attractions, and to use untruths as her allies in the battle of life,
+while she is suffering from the precariousness of her position.
+
+From the beginning of our society, women have naturally accepted the
+training which imparts to their life and to their home a spirit of
+harmony. It is their instinct to perform their services in such a
+manner that these, through beauty, might be raised from the domain of
+slavery to the realm of grace. Women have tried to prove that in the
+building up of social life they are artists and not artisans. But all
+expressions of beauty lose their truth when compelled to accept the
+patronage of the gross and the indifferent. Therefore when necessity
+drives women to fashion their lives to the taste of the insensitive or
+the sensual, then the whole thing becomes a tragedy of desecration.
+Society is full of such tragedies. Many of the laws and social
+regulations guiding the relationships of man and woman are relics of
+a barbaric age, when the brutal pride of an exclusive possession had
+its dominance in human relations, such as those of parents and
+children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, teachers and
+disciples. The vulgarity of it still persists in the social bond
+between the sexes because of the economic helplessness of woman.
+Nothing makes us so stupidly mean as the sense of superiority which
+the power of the purse confers upon us.
+
+The powers of muscle and of money have opportunities of immediate
+satisfaction, but the power of the ideal must have infinite patience.
+The man who sells his goods, or fulfils his contract, is cheated if he
+fails to realise payment, but he who gives form to some ideal may
+never get his due and be fully paid. What I have felt in the women of
+India is the consciousness of this ideal--their simple faith in the
+sanctity of devotion lighted by love which is held to be divine. True
+womanliness is regarded in our country as the saintliness of love. It
+is not merely praised there, but literally worshipped; and she who is
+gifted with it is called _Devi_, as one revealing in herself Woman,
+the Divine. That this has not been a mere metaphor to us is because,
+in India, our mind is familiar with the idea of God in an eternal
+feminine aspect. Thus the Eastern woman, who is deeply aware in her
+heart of the sacredness of her mission, is a constant education to
+man. It has to be admitted that there are chances of such an influence
+failing to penetrate the callousness of the coarse-minded; but that is
+the destiny of all manifestations whose value is not in success or
+reward in honour.
+
+Woman has to be ready to suffer. She cannot allow her emotions to be
+dulled or polluted, for these are to create her life's atmosphere,
+apart from which her world would be dark and dead. This leaves her
+heart without any protection of insensibility, at the mercy of the
+hurts and insults of life. Women of India, like women everywhere, have
+their share of suffering, but it radiates through the ideal, and
+becomes, like sunlight, a creative force in their world. Our women
+know by heart the legends of the great women of the epic age--Savitri
+who by the power of love conquered death, and Sit� who had no other
+reward for her life of sacrifice but the sacred majesty of sorrow.
+They know that it is their duty to make this life an image of the life
+eternal, and that love's mission truly performed has a spiritual
+meaning. It is a religious responsibility for them to live the life
+which is their own. For their activity is not for money-making, or
+organising power, or intellectually probing the mystery of existence,
+but for establishing and maintaining human relationships requiring the
+highest moral qualities. It is the consciousness of the spiritual
+character of their life's work, which lifts them above the utilitarian
+standard of the immediate and the passing, surrounds them with the
+dignity of the eternal, and transmutes their suffering and sorrow into
+a crown of light.
+
+I must guard myself from the risk of a possible misunderstanding. The
+permanent significance of home is not in the narrowness of its
+enclosure, but in an eternal moral idea. It represents the truth of
+human relationship; it reveals loyalty and love for the personality of
+man. Let us take a wider view, in a perspective truer than can be
+found in its present conventional associations. With the discovery and
+development of agriculture there came a period of settled life in our
+history. The nomad ever moved on with his tents and cattle; he
+explored space and exploited its contents. The cultivator of land
+explored time in its immensity, for he had leisure. Comparatively
+secured from the uncertainty of his outer resources, he had the
+opportunity to deal with his moral resources in the realm of human
+truth. This is why agricultural civilisation, like that of India and
+China, is essentially a civilisation of human relationship, of the
+adjustment of mutual obligations. It is deep-rooted in the inner life
+of man. Its basis is co-operation and not competition. In other words,
+its principle is the principle of home, to which all its outer
+adventures are subordinated.
+
+In the meanwhile, the nomadic life with its predatory instinct of
+exploitation has developed into a great civilisation. It is immensely
+proud and strong, killing leisure and pursuing opportunities. It
+minimises the claims of personal relationship and is jealously careful
+of its unhampered freedom for acquiring wealth and asserting its will
+upon others. Its burden is the burden of things, which grows heavier
+and more complex every day, disregarding the human and the spiritual.
+Its powerful pressure from all sides narrows the limits of home, the
+personal region of the human world. Thus, in this region of life,
+women are every day hustled out of their shelter for want of
+accommodation.
+
+But such a state of things can never have the effect of changing woman
+into man. On the contrary, it will lead her to find her place in the
+unlimited range of society, and the Guardian Spirit of the personal in
+human nature will extend the ministry of woman over all developments
+of life. Habituated to deal with the world as a machine, man is
+multiplying his materials, banishing away his happiness and
+sacrificing love to comfort, which is an illusion. At last the present
+age has sent its cry to woman, asking her to come out from her
+segregation in order to restore the spiritual supremacy of all that is
+human in the world of humanity. She has been aroused to remember that
+womanliness is not chiefly decorative. It is like that vital health,
+which not only imparts the bloom of beauty to the body, but joy to the
+mind and perfection to life.
+
+
+
+
+                         AN EASTERN UNIVERSITY
+
+
+In the midst of much that is discouraging in the present state of the
+world, there is one symptom of vital promise. Asia is awakening. This
+great event, if it be but directed along the right lines, is full of
+hope, not only for Asia herself, but for the whole world.
+
+On the other hand, it has to be admitted that the relationship of the
+West with the East, growing more and more complex and widespread for
+over two centuries, far from attaining its true fulfilment, has given
+rise to a universal spirit of conflict. The consequent strain and
+unrest have profoundly disturbed Asia, and antipathetic forces have
+been accumulating for years in the depth of the Eastern mind.
+
+The meeting of the East and the West has remained incomplete, because
+the occasions of it have not been disinterested. The political and
+commercial adventures carried on by Western races--very often by
+force and against the interest and wishes of the countries they have
+dealt with--have created a moral alienation, which is deeply injurious
+to both parties. The perils threatened by this unnatural relationship
+have long been contemptuously ignored by the West. But the blind
+confidence of the strong in their apparent invincibility has often led
+them, from their dream of security, into terrible surprises of
+history.
+
+It is not the fear of danger or loss to one people or another,
+however, which is most important. The demoralising influence of the
+constant estrangement between the two hemispheres, which affects the
+baser passions of man,--pride, greed and hypocrisy on the one hand;
+fear, suspiciousness and flattery on the other,--has been developing,
+and threatens us with a world-wide spiritual disaster.
+
+The time has come when we must use all our wisdom to understand the
+situation, and to control it, with a stronger trust in moral guidance
+than in any array of physical forces.
+
+In the beginning of man's history his first social object was to form
+a community, to grow into a people. At that early period, individuals
+were gathered together within geographical enclosures. But in the
+present age, with its facility of communication, geographical barriers
+have almost lost their reality, and the great federation of men, which
+is waiting either to find its true scope or to break asunder in a
+final catastrophe, is not a meeting of individuals, but of various
+human races. Now the problem before us is of one single country, which
+is this earth, where the races as individuals must find both their
+freedom of self-expression and their bond of federation. Mankind must
+realise a unity, wider in range, deeper in sentiment, stronger in
+power than ever before. Now that the problem is large, we have to
+solve it on a bigger scale, to realise the God in man by a larger
+faith and to build the temple of our faith on a sure and world-wide
+basis.
+
+The first step towards realisation is to create opportunities for
+revealing the different peoples to one another. This can never be done
+in those fields where the exploiting utilitarian spirit is supreme. We
+must find some meeting-ground, where there can be no question of
+conflicting interests. One of such places is the University, where we
+can work together in a common pursuit of truth, share together our
+common heritage, and realise that artists in all parts of the world
+have created forms of beauty, scientists discovered secrets of the
+universe, philosophers solved the problems of existence, saints made
+the truth of the spiritual world organic in their own lives, not
+merely for some particular race to which they belonged, but for all
+mankind. When the science of meteorology knows the earth's atmosphere
+as continuously one, affecting the different parts of the world
+differently, but in a harmony of adjustments, it knows and attains
+truth. And so, too, we must know that the great mind of man is one,
+working through the many differences which are needed to ensure the
+full result of its fundamental unity. When we understand this truth in
+a disinterested spirit, it teaches us to respect all the differences
+in man that are real, yet remain conscious of our oneness; and to know
+that perfection of unity is not in uniformity, but in harmony.
+
+This is the problem of the present age. The East, for its own sake and
+for the sake of the world, must not remain unrevealed. The deepest
+source of all calamities in history is misunderstanding. For where we
+do not understand, we can never be just.
+
+Being strongly impressed with the need and the responsibility, which
+every individual to-day must realise according to his power, I have
+formed the nucleus of an International University in India, as one of
+the best means of promoting mutual understanding between the East and
+the West. This Institution, according to the plan I have in mind, will
+invite students from the West to study the different systems of Indian
+philosophy, literature, art and music in their proper environment,
+encouraging them to carry on research work in collaboration with the
+scholars already engaged in this task.
+
+India has her renaissance. She is preparing to make her contribution
+to the world of the future. In the past she produced her great
+culture, and in the present age she has an equally important
+contribution to make to the culture of the New World which is emerging
+from the wreckage of the Old. This is a momentous period of her
+history, pregnant with precious possibilities, when any disinterested
+offer of co-operation from any part of the West will have an immense
+moral value, the memory of which will become brighter as the
+regeneration of the East grows in vigour and creative power.
+
+The Western Universities give their students an opportunity to learn
+what all the European peoples have contributed to their Western
+culture. Thus the intellectual mind of the West has been luminously
+revealed to the world. What is needed to complete this illumination is
+for the East to collect its own scattered lamps and offer them to the
+enlightenment of the world.
+
+There was a time when the great countries of Asia had, each of them,
+to nurture its own civilisation apart in comparative seclusion. Now
+has come the age of co-ordination and co-operation. The seedlings that
+were reared within narrow plots must now be transplanted into the open
+fields. They must pass the test of the world-market, if their maximum
+value is to be obtained.
+
+But before Asia is in a position to co-operate with the culture of
+Europe, she must base her own structure on a synthesis of all the
+different cultures which she has. When, taking her stand on such a
+culture, she turns toward the West, she will take, with a confident
+sense of mental freedom, her own view of truth, from her own
+vantage-ground, and open a new vista of thought to the world.
+Otherwise, she will allow her priceless inheritance to crumble into
+dust, and, trying to replace it clumsily with feeble imitations of the
+West, make herself superfluous, cheap and ludicrous. If she thus
+loses her individuality and her specific power to exist, will it in
+the least help the rest of the world? Will not her terrible bankruptcy
+involve also the Western mind? If the whole world grows at last into
+an exaggerated West, then such an illimitable parody of the modern age
+will die, crushed beneath its own absurdity.
+
+In this belief, it is my desire to extend by degrees the scope of this
+University on simple lines, until it comprehends the whole range of
+Eastern cultures--the Aryan, Semitic, Mongolian and others. Its object
+will be to reveal the Eastern mind to the world.
+
+Of one thing I felt certain during my travels in Europe, that a
+genuine interest has been roused there in the philosophy and the arts
+of the East, from which the Western mind seeks fresh inspiration of
+truth and beauty. Once the East had her reputation of fabulous wealth,
+and the seekers were attracted from across the sea. Since then, the
+shrine of wealth has changed its site. But the East is famed also for
+her storage of wisdom, harvested by her patriarchs from long
+successive ages of spiritual endeavour. And when, as now, in the midst
+of the pursuit of power and wealth, there rises the cry of privation
+from the famished spirit of man, an opportunity is offered to the East
+to offer her store to those who need it.
+
+Once upon a time we were in possession of such a thing as our own mind
+in India. It was living. It thought, it felt, it expressed itself. It
+was receptive as well as productive. That this mind could be of any
+use in the process, or in the end, of our education was overlooked by
+our modern educational dispensation. We are provided with buildings
+and books and other magnificent burdens calculated to suppress our
+mind. The latter was treated like a library-shelf solidly made of
+wood, to be loaded with leather-bound volumes of second-hand
+information. In consequence, it has lost its own colour and character,
+and has borrowed polish from the carpenter's shop. All this has cost
+us money, and also our finer ideas, while our intellectual vacancy has
+been crammed with what is described in official reports as Education.
+In fact, we have bought our spectacles at the expense of our eyesight.
+
+In India our goddess of learning is _Saraswati_. My audience in the
+West, I am sure, will be glad to know that her complexion is white.
+But the signal fact is that she is living and she is a woman, and her
+seat is on a lotus-flower. The symbolic meaning of this is, that she
+dwells in the centre of life and the heart of all existence, which
+opens itself in beauty to the light of heaven.
+
+The Western education which we have chanced to know is impersonal. Its
+complexion is also white, but it is the whiteness of the white-washed
+class-room walls. It dwells in the cold-storage compartments of
+lessons and the ice-packed minds of the schoolmasters. The effect
+which it had on my mind when, as a boy, I was compelled to go to
+school, I have described elsewhere. My feeling was very much the same
+as a tree might have, which was not allowed to live its full life, but
+was cut down to be made into packing-cases.
+
+The introduction of this education was not a part of the solemn
+marriage ceremony which was to unite the minds of the East and West in
+mutual understanding. It represented an artificial method of training
+specially calculated to produce the carriers of the white man's
+burden. This want of ideals still clings to our education system,
+though our Universities have latterly burdened their syllabus with a
+greater number of subjects than before. But it is only like adding to
+the bags of wheat the bullock carries to market; it does not make the
+bullock any better off.
+
+Mind, when long deprived of its natural food of truth and freedom of
+growth, develops an unnatural craving for success; and our students
+have fallen victims to the mania for success in examinations. Success
+consists in obtaining the largest number of marks with the strictest
+economy of knowledge. It is a deliberate cultivation of disloyalty to
+truth, of intellectual dishonesty, of a foolish imposition by which
+the mind is encouraged to rob itself. But as we are by means of it
+made to forget the existence of mind, we are supremely happy at the
+result. We pass examinations, and shrivel up into clerks, lawyers and
+police inspectors, and we die young.
+
+Universities should never be made into mechanical organisations for
+collecting and distributing knowledge. Through them the people should
+offer their intellectual hospitality, their wealth of mind to others,
+and earn their proud right in return to receive gifts from the rest of
+the world. But in the whole length and breadth of India there is not a
+single University established in the modern time where a foreign or
+an Indian student can properly be acquainted with the best products
+of the Indian mind. For that we have to cross the sea, and knock at
+the doors of France and Germany. Educational institutions in our
+country are India's alms-bowl of knowledge; they lower our
+intellectual self-respect; they encourage us to make a foolish display
+of decorations composed of borrowed feathers.
+
+This it was that led me to found a school in Bengal, in face of many
+difficulties and discouragements, and in spite of my own vocation as a
+poet, who finds his true inspiration only when he forgets that he is a
+schoolmaster. It is my hope that in this school a nucleus has been
+formed, round which an indigenous University of our own land will find
+its natural growth--a University which will help India's mind to
+concentrate and to be fully conscious of itself; free to seek the
+truth and make this truth its own wherever found, to judge by its own
+standard, give expression to its own creative genius, and offer its
+wisdom to the guests who come from other parts of the world.
+
+Man's intellect has a natural pride in its own aristocracy, which is
+the pride of its culture. Culture only acknowledges the excellence
+whose criticism is in its inner perfection, not in any external
+success. When this pride succumbs to some compulsion of necessity or
+lure of material advantage, it brings humiliation to the intellectual
+man. Modern India, through her very education, has been made to suffer
+this humiliation. Once she herself provided her children with a
+culture which was the product of her own ages of thought and creation.
+But it has been thrust aside, and we are made to tread the mill of
+passing examinations, not for learning anything, but for notifying
+that we are qualified for employments under organisations conducted in
+English. Our educated community is not a cultured community, but a
+community of qualified candidates. Meanwhile the proportion of
+possible employments to the number of claimants has gradually been
+growing narrower, and the consequent disaffection has been widespread.
+At last the very authorities who are responsible for this are blaming
+their victims. Such is the perversity of human nature. It bears its
+worst grudge against those it has injured.
+
+It is as if some tribe which had the primitive habit of decorating its
+tribal members with birds' plumage were some day to hold these very
+birds guilty of the crime of being extinct. There are belated
+attempts on the part of our governors to read us pious homilies about
+disinterested love of learning, while the old machinery goes on
+working, whose product is not education but certificates. It is good
+to remind the fettered bird that its wings are for soaring; but it is
+better to cut the chain which is holding it to its perch. The most
+pathetic feature of the tragedy is that the bird itself has learnt to
+use its chain for its ornament, simply because the chain jingles in
+fairly respectable English.
+
+In the Bengali language there is a modern maxim which can be
+translated, "He who learns to read and write rides in a carriage and
+pair." In English there is a similar proverb, "Knowledge is power." It
+is an offer of a prospective bribe to the student, a promise of an
+ulterior reward which is more important than knowledge itself.
+Temptations, held before us as inducements to be good or to pursue
+uncongenial paths, are most often flimsy lies or half-truths, such as
+the oft-quoted maxim of respectable piety, "Honesty is the best
+policy," at which politicians all over the world seem to laugh in
+their sleeves. But unfortunately, education conducted under a special
+providence of purposefulness, of eating the fruit of knowledge from
+the wrong end, _does_ lead one to that special paradise on earth, the
+daily rides in one's own carriage and pair. And the West, I have heard
+from authentic sources, is aspiring in its education after that
+special cultivation of worldliness.
+
+Where society is comparatively simple and obstructions are not too
+numerous, we can clearly see how the life-process guides education in
+its vital purpose. The system of folk-education, which is indigenous
+to India, but is dying out, was one with the people's life. It flowed
+naturally through the social channels and made its way everywhere. It
+is a system of widespread irrigation of culture. Its teachers,
+specially trained men, are in constant requisition, and find crowded
+meetings in our villages, where they repeat the best thoughts and
+express the ideals of the land in the most effective form. The mode of
+instruction includes the recitation of epics, expounding of the
+scriptures, reading from the Puranas, which are the classical records
+of old history, performance of plays founded upon the early myths and
+legends, dramatic narration of the lives of ancient heroes, and the
+singing in chorus of songs from the old religious literature.
+Evidently, according to this system, the best function of education
+is to enable us to realise that to live as a man is great, requiring
+profound philosophy for its ideal, poetry for its expression, and
+heroism in its conduct. Owing to this vital method of culture the
+common people of India, though technically illiterate, have been made
+conscious of the sanctity of social relationships, entailing constant
+sacrifice and self-control, urged and supported by ideals collectively
+expressed in one word, _Dharma_.
+
+Such a system of education may sound too simple for the complexities
+of modern life. But the fundamental principle of social life in its
+different stages of development remains the same; and in no
+circumstance can the truth be ignored that all human complexities must
+harmonise in organic unity with life, failing which there will be
+endless conflict. Most things in the civilised world occupy more than
+their legitimate space. Much of their burden is needless. By bearing
+this burden civilised man may be showing great strength, but he
+displays little skill. To the gods, viewing this from on high, it must
+seem like the flounderings of a giant who has got out of his depth and
+knows not how to swim.
+
+The main source of all forms of voluntary slavery is the desire of
+gain. It is difficult to fight against this when modern civilisation
+is tainted with such a universal contamination of avarice. I have
+realised it myself in the little boys of my own school. For the first
+few years there is no trouble. But as soon as the upper class is
+reached, their worldly wisdom--the malady of the aged--begins to
+assert itself. They rebelliously insist that they must no longer
+learn, but rather pass examinations. Professions in the modern age are
+more numerous and lucrative than ever before. They need specialisation
+of training and knowledge, tempting education to yield its spiritual
+freedom to the claims of utilitarian ambitions. But man's deeper
+nature is hurt; his smothered life seeks to be liberated from the
+suffocating folds and sensual ties of prosperity. And this is why we
+find almost everywhere in the world a growing dissatisfaction with the
+prevalent system of teaching, which betrays the encroachment of
+senility and worldly prudence over pure intellect.
+
+In India, also, a vague feeling of discontent has given rise to
+numerous attempts at establishing national schools and colleges. But,
+unfortunately, our very education has been successful in depriving us
+of our real initiative and our courage of thought. The training we get
+in our schools has the constant implication in it that it is not for
+us to produce but to borrow. And we are casting about to borrow our
+educational plans from European institutions. The trampled plants of
+Indian corn are dreaming of recouping their harvest from the
+neighbouring wheat fields. To change the figure, we forget that, for
+proficiency in walking, it is better to train the muscles of our own
+legs than to strut upon wooden ones of foreign make, although they
+clatter and cause more surprise at our skill in using them than if
+they were living and real.
+
+But when we go to borrow help from a foreign neighbourhood we are apt
+to overlook the real source of help behind all that is external and
+apparent. Had the deep-water fishes happened to produce a scientist
+who chose the jumping of a monkey for his research work, I am sure he
+would give most of the credit to the branches of the trees and very
+little to the monkey itself. In a foreign University we see the
+branching wildernesses of its buildings, furniture, regulations, and
+syllabus, but the monkey, which is a difficult creature to catch and
+more difficult to manufacture, we are likely to treat as a mere
+accident of minor importance. It is convenient for us to overlook the
+fact that among the Europeans the living spirit of the University is
+widely spread in their society, their parliament, their literature,
+and the numerous activities of their corporate life. In all these
+functions they are in perpetual touch with the great personality of
+the land which is creative and heroic in its constant acts of
+self-expression and self-sacrifice. They have their thoughts published
+in their books as well as through the medium of living men who think
+those thoughts, and who criticise, compare and disseminate them. Some
+at least of the drawbacks of their academic education are redeemed by
+the living energy of the intellectual personality pervading their
+social organism. It is like the stagnant reservoir of water which
+finds its purification in the showers of rain to which it keeps itself
+open. But, to our misfortune, we have in India all the furniture of
+the European University except the human teacher. We have, instead,
+mere purveyors of book-lore in whom the paper god of the bookshop has
+been made vocal.
+
+A most important truth, which we are apt to forget, is that a teacher
+can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can
+never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame.
+The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living
+traffic with his knowledge, but merely repeats his lessons to his
+students, can only load their minds; he cannot quicken them. Truth not
+only must inform but inspire. If the inspiration dies out, and the
+information only accumulates, then truth loses its infinity. The
+greater part of our learning in the schools has been wasted because,
+for most of our teachers, their subjects are like dead specimens of
+once living things, with which they have a learned acquaintance, but
+no communication of life and love.
+
+The educational institution, therefore, which I have in mind has
+primarily for its object the constant pursuit of truth, from which the
+imparting of truth naturally follows. It must not be a dead cage in
+which living minds are fed with food artificially prepared. It should
+be an open house, in which students and teachers are at one. They must
+live their complete life together, dominated by a common aspiration
+for truth and a need of sharing all the delights of culture. In former
+days the great master-craftsmen had students in their workshops where
+they co-operated in shaping things to perfection. That was the place
+where knowledge could become living--that knowledge which not only has
+its substance and law, but its atmosphere subtly informed by a
+creative personality. For intellectual knowledge also has its aspect
+of creative art, in which the man who explores truth expresses
+something which is human in him--his enthusiasm, his courage, his
+sacrifice, his honesty, and his skill. In merely academical teaching
+we find subjects, but not the man who pursues the subjects; therefore
+the vital part of education remains incomplete.
+
+For our Universities we must claim, not labelled packages of truth and
+authorised agents to distribute them, but truth in its living
+association with her lovers and seekers and discoverers. Also we must
+know that the concentration of the mind-forces scattered throughout
+the country is the most important mission of a University, which, like
+the nucleus of a living cell, should be the centre of the intellectual
+life of the people.
+
+The bringing about of an intellectual unity in India is, I am told,
+difficult to the verge of impossibility owing to the fact that India
+has so many different languages. Such a statement is as unreasonable
+as to say that man, because he has a diversity of limbs, should find
+it impossible to realise life's unity in himself, and that only an
+earthworm composed of a tail and nothing else could truly know that it
+had a body.
+
+Let us admit that India is not like any one of the great countries of
+Europe, which has its own separate language; but is rather like Europe
+herself, branching out into different peoples with many different
+languages. And yet Europe has a common civilisation, with an
+intellectual unity which is not based upon uniformity of language. It
+is true that in the earlier stages of her culture the whole of Europe
+had Latin for her learned tongue. That was in her intellectual budding
+time, when all her petals of self-expression were closed in one point.
+But the perfection of her mental unfolding was not represented by the
+singularity of her literary vehicle. When the great European countries
+found their individual languages, then only the true federation of
+cultures became possible in the West, and the very differences of the
+channels made the commerce of ideas in Europe so richly copious and so
+variedly active. We can well imagine what the loss to European
+civilisation would be if France, Italy and Germany, and England
+herself, had not through their separate agencies contributed to the
+common coffer their individual earnings.
+
+There was a time with us when India had her common language of culture
+in Sanskrit. But, for the complete commerce of her thought, she
+required that all her vernaculars should attain their perfect powers,
+through which her different peoples might manifest their
+idiosyncrasies; and this could never be done through a foreign tongue.
+
+In the United States, in Canada and other British Colonies, the
+language of the people is English. It has a great literature which had
+its birth and growth in the history of the British Islands. But when
+this language, with all its products and acquisitions, matured by ages
+on its own mother soil, is carried into foreign lands, which have
+their own separate history and their own life-growth, it must
+constantly hamper the indigenous growth of culture and destroy
+individuality of judgement and the perfect freedom of self-expression.
+The inherited wealth of the English language, with all its splendour,
+becomes an impediment when taken into different surroundings, just as
+when lungs are given to the whale in the sea. If such is the case even
+with races whose grandmother-tongue naturally continues to be their
+own mother-tongue, one can imagine what sterility it means for a
+people which accepts, for its vehicle of culture, an altogether
+foreign language. A language is not like an umbrella or an overcoat,
+that can be borrowed by unconscious or deliberate mistake; it is like
+the living skin itself. If the body of a draught-horse enters into the
+skin of a race-horse, it will be safe to wager that such an anomaly
+will never win a race, and will fail even to drag a cart. Have we not
+watched some modern Japanese artists imitating European art? The
+imitation may sometimes produce clever results; but such cleverness
+has only the perfection of artificial flowers which never bear fruit.
+
+All great countries have their vital centres for intellectual life,
+where a high standard of learning is maintained, where the minds of
+the people are naturally attracted, where they find their genial
+atmosphere, in which to prove their worth and to contribute their
+share to the country's culture. Thus they kindle, on the common altar
+of the land, that great sacrificial fire which can radiate the sacred
+light of wisdom abroad.
+
+Athens was such a centre in Greece, Rome in Italy; and Paris is such
+to-day in France. Benares has been and still continues to be the
+centre of our Sanskrit culture. But Sanskrit learning does not exhaust
+all the elements of culture that exist in modern India.
+
+If we were to take for granted, what some people maintain, that
+Western culture is the only source of light for our mind, then it
+would be like depending for daybreak upon some star, which is the sun
+of a far distant sphere. The star may give us light, but not the day;
+it may give us direction in our voyage of exploration, but it can
+never open the full view of truth before our eyes. In fact, we can
+never use this cold starlight for stirring the sap in our branches,
+and giving colour and bloom to our life. This is the reason why
+European education has become for India mere school lessons and no
+culture; a box of matches, good for the small uses of illumination,
+but not the light of morning, in which the use and beauty, and all the
+subtle mysteries of life are blended in one.
+
+Let me say clearly that I have no distrust of any culture because of
+its foreign character. On the contrary, I believe that the shock of
+such extraneous forces is necessary for the vitality of our
+intellectual nature. It is admitted that much of the spirit of
+Christianity runs counter, not only to the classical culture of
+Europe, but to the European temperament altogether. And yet this alien
+movement of ideas, constantly running against the natural mental
+current of Europe, has been a most important factor in strengthening
+and enriching her civilisation, on account of the sharp antagonism of
+its intellectual direction. In fact, the European vernaculars first
+woke up to life and fruitful vigour when they felt the impact of this
+foreign thought-power with all its oriental forms and affinities. The
+same thing is happening in India. The European culture has come to us,
+not only with its knowledge, but with its velocity.
+
+Then, again, let us admit that modern Science is Europe's great gift
+to humanity for all time to come. We, in India, must claim it from her
+hands, and gratefully accept it in order to be saved from the curse of
+futility by lagging behind. We shall fail to reap the harvest of the
+present age if we delay.
+
+What I object to is the artificial arrangement by which foreign
+education tends to occupy all the space of our national mind, and thus
+kills, or hampers, the great opportunity for the creation of a new
+thought-power by a new combination of truths. It is this which makes
+me urge that all the elements in our own culture have to be
+strengthened, not to resist the Western culture, but truly to accept
+and assimilate it; to use it for our sustenance, not as our burden; to
+get mastery over this culture, and not to live on its outskirts as the
+hewers of texts and drawers of book-learning.
+
+The main river in Indian culture has flowed in four streams,--the
+Vedic, the Puranic, the Buddhist, and the Jain. It has its source in
+the heights of the Indian consciousness. But a river, belonging to a
+country, is not fed by its own waters alone. The Tibetan Brahmaputra
+is a tributary to the Indian Ganges. Contributions have similarly
+found their way to India's original culture. The Muhammadan, for
+example, has repeatedly come into India from outside, laden with his
+own stores of knowledge and feeling and his wonderful religious
+democracy, bringing freshet after freshet to swell the current. To our
+music, our architecture, our pictorial art, our literature, the
+Muhammadans have made their permanent and precious contribution. Those
+who have studied the lives and writings of our medieval saints, and
+all the great religious movements that sprang up in the time of the
+Muhammadan rule, know how deep is our debt to this foreign current
+that has so intimately mingled with our life.
+
+So, in our centre of Indian learning, we must provide for the
+co-ordinate study of all these different cultures,--the Vedic, the
+Puranic, the Buddhist, the Jain, the Islamic, the Sikh and the
+Zoroastrian. The Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan will also have to be
+added; for, in the past, India did not remain isolated within her own
+boundaries. Therefore, in order to learn what she was, in her relation
+to the whole continent of Asia, these cultures too must be studied.
+Side by side with them must finally be placed the Western culture. For
+only then shall we be able to assimilate this last contribution to our
+common stock. A river flowing within banks is truly our own, and it
+can contain its due tributaries; but our relations with a flood can
+only prove disastrous.
+
+There are some who are exclusively modern, who believe that the past
+is the bankrupt time, leaving no assets for us, but only a legacy of
+debts. They refuse to believe that the army which is marching forward
+can be fed from the rear. It is well to remind such persons that the
+great ages of renaissance in history were those when man suddenly
+discovered the seeds of thought in the granary of the past.
+
+The unfortunate people who have lost the harvest of their past have
+lost their present age. They have missed their seed for cultivation,
+and go begging for their bare livelihood. We must not imagine that we
+are one of these disinherited peoples of the world. The time has come
+for us to break open the treasure-trove of our ancestors, and use it
+for our commerce of life. Let us, with its help, make our future our
+own, and not continue our existence as the eternal rag-pickers in
+other people's dustbins.
+
+So far I have dwelt only upon the intellectual aspect of Education.
+For, even in the West, it is the intellectual training which receives
+almost exclusive emphasis. The Western universities have not yet truly
+recognised that fulness of expression is fulness of life. And a large
+part of man can never find its expression in the mere language of
+words. It must therefore seek for its other languages,--lines and
+colours, sounds and movements. Through our mastery of these we not
+only make our whole nature articulate, but also understand man in all
+his attempts to reveal his innermost being in every age and clime. The
+great use of Education is not merely to collect facts, but to know
+man and to make oneself known to man. It is the duty of every human
+being to master, at least to some extent, not only the language of
+intellect, but also that personality which is the language of Art. It
+is a great world of reality for man,--vast and profound,--this growing
+world of his own creative nature. This is the world of Art. To be
+brought up in ignorance of it is to be deprived of the knowledge and
+use of that great inheritance of humanity, which has been growing and
+waiting for every one of us from the beginning of our history. It is
+to remain deaf to the eternal voice of Man, that speaks to all men the
+messages that are beyond speech. From the educational point of view we
+know Europe where it is scientific, or at best literary. So our notion
+of its modern culture is limited within the boundary lines of grammar
+and the laboratory. We almost completely ignore the �sthetic life of
+man, leaving it uncultivated, allowing weeds to grow there. Our
+newspapers are prolific, our meeting-places are vociferous; and in
+them we wear to shreds the things we have borrowed from our English
+teachers. We make the air dismal and damp with the tears of our
+grievances. But where are our arts, which, like the outbreak of
+spring flowers, are the spontaneous overflow of our deeper nature and
+spiritual magnificence?
+
+Through this great deficiency of our modern education, we are
+condemned to carry to the end a dead load of dumb wisdom. Like
+miserable outcasts, we are deprived of our place in the festival of
+culture, and wait at the outer court, where the colours are not for
+us, nor the forms of delight, nor the songs. Ours is the education of
+a prison-house, with hard labour and with a drab dress cut to the
+limits of minimum decency and necessity. We are made to forget that
+the perfection of colour and form and expression belongs to the
+perfection of vitality,--that the joy of life is only the other side
+of the strength of life. The timber merchant may think that the
+flowers and foliage are mere frivolous decorations of a tree; but if
+these are suppressed, he will know to his cost that the timber too
+will fail.
+
+During the Moghal period, music and art in India found a great impetus
+from the rulers, because their whole life--not merely their official
+life--was lived in this land; and it is the wholeness of life from
+which originates Art. But our English teachers are birds of passage;
+they cackle to us, but do not sing,--their true heart is not in the
+land of their exile.
+
+Constriction of life, owing to this narrowness of culture, must no
+longer be encouraged. In the centre of Indian culture which I am
+proposing, music and art must have their prominent seats of honour,
+and not be given merely a tolerant nod of recognition. The different
+systems of music and different schools of art which lie scattered in
+the different ages and provinces of India, and in the different strata
+of society, and also those belonging to the other great countries of
+Asia, which had communication with India, have to be brought there
+together and studied.
+
+I have already hinted that Education should not be dragged out of its
+native element, the life-current of the people. Economic life covers
+the whole width of the fundamental basis of society, because its
+necessities are the simplest and the most universal. Educational
+institutions, in order to obtain their fulness of truth, must have
+close association with this economic life. The highest mission of
+education is to help us to realise the inner principle of the unity of
+all knowledge and all the activities of our social and spiritual
+being. Society in its early stage was held together by its economic
+co-operation, when all its members felt in unison a natural interest
+in their right to live. Civilisation could never have been started at
+all if such was not the case. And civilisation will fall to pieces if
+it never again realises the spirit of mutual help and the common
+sharing of benefits in the elemental necessaries of life. The idea of
+such economic co-operation should be made the basis of our University.
+It must not only instruct, but live; not only think, but produce.
+
+Our ancient _tapovanas_, or forest schools, which were our natural
+universities, were not shut off from the daily life of the people.
+Masters and students gathered fruit and fuel, and took their cattle
+out to graze, supporting themselves by the work of their own hands.
+Spiritual education was a part of the spiritual life itself, which
+comprehended all life. Our centre of culture should not only be the
+centre of the intellectual life of India, but the centre of her
+economic life also. It must co-operate with the villages round it,
+cultivate land, breed cattle, spin cloths, press oil from oil-seeds;
+it must produce all the necessaries, devising the best means, using
+the best materials, and calling science to its aid. Its very existence
+should depend upon the success of its industrial activities carried
+out on the co-operative principle, which will unite the teachers and
+students and villagers of the neighbourhood in a living and active
+bond of necessity. This will give us also a practical industrial
+training, whose motive force is not the greed of profit.
+
+Before I conclude my paper, a delicate question remains to be
+considered. What must be the religious ideal that is to rule our
+centre of Indian culture? The one abiding ideal in the religious life
+of India has been _Mukti_, the deliverance of man's soul from the grip
+of self, its communion with the Infinite Soul through its union in
+_�nanda_ with the universe. This religion of spiritual harmony is not
+a theological doctrine to be taught, as a subject in the class, for
+half an hour each day. It is the spiritual truth and beauty of our
+attitude towards our surroundings, our conscious relationship with the
+Infinite, and the lasting power of the Eternal in the passing moments
+of our life. Such a religious ideal can only be made possible by
+making provision for students to live in intimate touch with nature,
+daily to grow in an atmosphere of service offered to all creatures,
+tending trees, feeding birds and animals, learning to feel the immense
+mystery of the soil and water and air.
+
+Along with this, there should be some common sharing of life with the
+tillers of the soil and the humble workers in the neighbouring
+villages; studying their crafts, inviting them to the feasts, joining
+them in works of co-operation for communal welfare; and in our
+intercourse we should be guided, not by moral maxims or the
+condescension of social superiority, but by natural sympathy of life
+for life, and by the sheer necessity of love's sacrifice for its own
+sake. In such an atmosphere students would learn to understand that
+humanity is a divine harp of many strings, waiting for its one grand
+music. Those who realise this unity are made ready for the pilgrimage
+through the night of suffering, and along the path of sacrifice, to
+the great meeting of Man in the future, for which the call comes to us
+across the darkness.
+
+Life, in such a centre, should be simple and clean. We should never
+believe that simplicity of life might make us unsuited to the
+requirements of the society of our time. It is the simplicity of the
+tuning-fork, which is needed all the more because of the intricacy of
+strings in the instrument. In the morning of our career our nature
+needs the pure and the perfect note of a spiritual ideal in order to
+fit us for the complications of our later years.
+
+In other words, this institution should be a perpetual creation by the
+co-operative enthusiasm of teachers and students, growing with the
+growth of their soul; a world in itself, self-sustaining, independent,
+rich with ever-renewing life, radiating life across space and time,
+attracting and maintaining round it a planetary system of dependent
+bodies. Its aim should lie in imparting life-breath to the complete
+man, who is intellectual as well as economic, bound by social bonds,
+but aspiring towards spiritual freedom and final perfection.
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+  _Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
+                        BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE
+
+
+=GITANJALI. (Song Offerings.)= Translated by the Author. With an
+Introduction by W. B. YEATS, and a Portrait by W. ROTHENSTEIN. Crown
+8vo. 5s. net.
+
+_ATHEN�UM._--"Mr. Tagore's translations are of trance-like beauty....
+The expanding sentiment of some of the poems wins, even through the
+alien medium of our English prose, a rhythm which in its strength and
+melody might recall familiar passages in the Psalms or Solomon's
+Song."
+
+
+=FRUIT-GATHERING. A Sequel to "Gitanjali."= Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+_ATHEN�UM._--"The eighty-six pieces that fill this volume are pure
+jets of lyric feeling, aphorisms expressed in moving symbols, or fully
+developed parables and allegories ... several are as perfect in form
+as they are beautiful and poignant in content."
+
+
+=GITANJALI AND FRUIT-GATHERING.=
+
+With Illustrations in colour and half-tone by NANDALAL BOSE,
+SURENDRANATH KAR, ABANINDRANATH TAGORE, and NOBINDRANATH TAGORE. Crown
+8vo. 10s. net.
+
+
+=THE GARDENER. Lyrics of Love and Life.= Translated by the Author. With
+Portrait. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+_DAILY MAIL._--"Flowers as fresh as sunrise.... One cannot tell what
+they have lost in the translation, but as they stand they are of
+extreme beauty.... They are simple, exalted, fragrant--episodes and
+incidents of every day transposed to faery."
+
+
+=THE CRESCENT MOON. Child-Poems.= Translated by the Author. With 8
+Illustrations in Colour. Pott 4to. 5s. net.
+
+_NATION._--"A vision of childhood which is only paralleled in our
+literature by the work of William Blake."
+
+
+=STRAY BIRDS.= Poems. With a Frontispiece by WILLY POG�NY. Crown 8vo.
+4s. 6d. net.
+
+_SCOTSMAN._--"The richness of this volume in thought and in imagery,
+in tracing analogies and in discovering apologues, is such as to yield
+pleasure and profit to the most fertile and cultured minds."
+
+
+=LOVER'S GIFT AND CROSSING.= Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+_ATHEN�UM._--"The poems often touch extreme heights of passion and
+sublimity, and the diction has a beauty and a music that few have
+attained in this particular medium."
+
+
+=THE FUGITIVE.= Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+_SUNDAY TIMES._--"In 'The Fugitive' the lovers of Tagore will not be
+disappointed. He has all his powers still undimmed. Indeed, the poet
+never, in our judgment, has surpassed this work."
+
+
+=CHITRA. A Play.= Translated by the Author. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
+
+_OBSERVER._--"An allegory of love's meaning, clear as a pool in the
+sunshine. It was written, we are told, twenty-five years ago.... Even
+then Mr. Tagore had that calm intensity of vision which we have all
+come to love in his later work. We find in him that for which Arjuna
+groped in his love, 'that ultimate _you_, that bare simplicity of
+truth,' and never more than in this little work of beauty, 'Chitra.'"
+
+
+=THE KING OF THE DARK CHAMBER.= =A Play.= Translated by KSHITISH CHANDRA
+SEN. Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+_PALL MALL GAZETTE._--"Altogether, the play is a beautiful piece of
+fanciful writing with a veiled purpose at the back of it."
+
+
+=THE POST OFFICE. A Play.= Translated by DEVABRATA MUKERJEA. Crown 8vo.
+3s. 6d. net.
+
+_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN._--"'The Post Office' is a delicate, wistful
+thing, coloured with beautiful imagery; for a moment it lifts a corner
+of the veil of worldly existence. The translation is throughout
+extremely happy."
+
+
+=THE CYCLE OF SPRING. A Play.= Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
+
+_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN._--"The whole little drama is a spring-gift such
+as England has seldom received."
+
+
+=SACRIFICE and other Plays.= Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+_SCOTSMAN._--"All the pieces have a rare beauty of their own."
+
+
+=THE HOME AND THE WORLD. A Novel.= Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+_SATURDAY REVIEW._--"In these days of indiscriminating praise, it is
+hard for a reviewer to find words with which to welcome properly a
+book so good as this."
+
+
+=THE WRECK. A Novel.= Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
+
+_MORNING POST._--"The story cannot fail to interest and delight."
+
+
+=MASHI and other Stories.= Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+_OXFORD MAGAZINE._--"Full of pregnant pictures of Indian life and
+character, subdued but vivid in tone."
+
+
+=HUNGRY STONES and other Stories.= Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+_DAILY TELEGRAPH._--"Contains descriptive passages of rare vigour and
+beauty, and is embellished with imagery of a delicate and distinctive
+character."
+
+
+=S[=A]DHAN[=A]: The Realisation of Life. Lectures.= Extra Crown 8vo. 6s.
+net.
+
+=NATIONALISM.= Extra Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+=PERSONALITY. Lectures delivered in America.= Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
+6s. net.
+
+=CREATIVE UNITY. Essays.= Extra Crown 8vo.
+
+=MY REMINISCENCES.= Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+=GLIMPSES OF BENGAL. Selected from the Letters of Rabindranath Tagore,
+1885 to 1895.= Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+=ONE HUNDRED POEMS OF KABIR.= Translated by RABINDRANATH TAGORE,
+assisted by EVELYN UNDERHILL. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+=RABINDRANATH TAGORE.= A Biographical Study. By ERNEST RHYS.
+Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.
+
+=SIX PORTRAITS OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE.= By W. ROTHENSTEIN. Reproduced in
+Collotype. With Prefatory Note by MAX BEERBOHM. Imperial 4to. 10s.
+net.
+
+=THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MAHARSHI DEVENDRANATH TAGORE= (Father of
+RABINDRANATH TAGORE). Translated by SATYENDRANATH TAGORE and INDIRA
+DEVI. With Introduction by EVELYN UNDERHILL, and Portrait. Extra Crown
+8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+=THE PHILOSOPHY OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE.= By Prof. S. RADHAKRISHNAN. 8vo.
+8s. 6d. net.
+
+=SHANTINIKETAN: The Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.= By W. W.
+PEARSON. With Introduction by RABINDRANATH TAGORE. Illustrated. 8vo.
+4s. 6d. net.
+
+                    LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
+
+
+
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. The page numbers
+in the Table of Contents have been adjusted to match the actual page
+numbers.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Creative Unity, by Rabindranath Tagore
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Creative Unity, by Rabindranath Tagore
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
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+Title: Creative Unity
+
+Author: Rabindranath Tagore
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2007 [EBook #23136]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE UNITY ***
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+Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Irma Spehar and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
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+</pre>
+
+<h1>CREATIVE UNITY</h1>
+
+<p class="center" style="padding-top: 6em; font-size: 80%">BY</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="font-weight: bold">RABINDRANATH TAGORE</p>
+
+<p class="publisher">
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br />
+ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON<br />
+1922<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="publisher">
+MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br />
+<br />
+<small>LONDON &middot; BOMBAY &middot; CALCUTTA &middot; MADRAS<br />
+MELBOURNE</small><br />
+<br />
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />
+<br />
+<small>NEW YORK &middot; BOSTON &middot; CHICAGO<br />
+DALLAS &middot; SAN FRANCISCO</small><br />
+<br />
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br />
+<br />
+<small>TORONTO</small><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="padding-top: 4em; padding-bottom: 2em; font-size: 80%">COPYRIGHT</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="padding-top: 4em; padding-bottom: 4em; font-size: 70%">PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center" style="padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; font-weight: bold">
+<span style="font-size: 70%">TO</span><br /><br />
+<span class="smcap">Dr.</span> EDWIN H. LEWIS<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> costs me nothing to feel that I am; it is no burden to me. And yet
+if the mental, physical, chemical, and other innumerable facts
+concerning all branches of knowledge which have united in myself could
+be broken up, they would prove endless. It is some untold mystery of
+unity in me, that has the simplicity of the infinite and reduces the
+immense mass of multitude to a single point.</p>
+
+<p>This One in me knows the universe of the many. But, in whatever it
+knows, it knows the One in different aspects. It knows this room only
+because this room is One to it, in spite of the seeming contradiction
+of the endless facts contained in the single fact of the room. Its
+knowledge of a tree is the knowledge of a unity, which appears in the
+aspect of a tree.</p>
+
+<p>This One in me is creative. Its creations are a pastime, through which
+it gives expression<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span> to an ideal of unity in its endless show of
+variety. Such are its pictures, poems, music, in which it finds joy
+only because they reveal the perfect forms of an inherent unity.</p>
+
+<p>This One in me not only seeks unity in knowledge for its understanding
+and creates images of unity for its delight; it also seeks union in
+love for its fulfilment. It seeks itself in others. This is a fact,
+which would be absurd had there been no great medium of truth to give
+it reality. In love we find a joy which is ultimate because it is the
+ultimate truth. Therefore it is said in the Upanishads that the
+<i>advaitam</i> is <i>anantam</i>,&mdash;"the One is Infinite"; that the <i>advaitam</i>
+is <i>anandam</i>,&mdash;"the One is Love."</p>
+
+<p>To give perfect expression to the One, the Infinite, through the
+harmony of the many; to the One, the Love, through the sacrifice of
+self, is the object alike of our individual life and our society.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td class="pageno"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_v">v</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Poet's Religion</span></td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Creative Ideal</span></td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Religion of the Forest</span></td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Indian Folk Religion</span></td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">East and West</span></td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Modern Age</span></td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Spirit of Freedom</span></td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Nation</span></td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Woman and Home</span></td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Eastern University</span></td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_POETS_RELIGION" id="THE_POETS_RELIGION"></a>THE POET'S RELIGION<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Civility</span> is beauty of behaviour. It requires for its perfection
+patience, self-control, and an environment of leisure. For genuine
+courtesy is a creation, like pictures, like music. It is a harmonious
+blending of voice, gesture and movement, words and action, in which
+generosity of conduct is expressed. It reveals the man himself and has
+no ulterior purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Our needs are always in a hurry. They rush and hustle, they are rude
+and unceremonious; they have no surplus of leisure, no patience for
+anything else but fulfilment of purpose. We frequently see in our
+country at the present day men utilising empty kerosene cans for
+carrying water. These cans are emblems of discourtesy; they are curt
+and abrupt, they have not the least shame for their unmannerliness,
+they do not care to be ever so slightly more than useful.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The instruments of our necessity assert that we must have food,
+shelter, clothes, comforts and convenience. And yet men spend an
+immense amount of their time and resources in contradicting this
+assertion, to prove that they are not a mere living catalogue of
+endless wants; that there is in them an ideal of perfection, a sense
+of unity, which is a harmony between parts and a harmony with
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>The quality of the infinite is not the magnitude of extension, it is
+in the <i>Advaitam</i>, the mystery of Unity. Facts occupy endless time and
+space; but the truth comprehending them all has no dimension; it is
+One. Wherever our heart touches the One, in the small or the big, it
+finds the touch of the infinite.</p>
+
+<p>I was speaking to some one of the joy we have in our personality. I
+said it was because we were made conscious by it of a spirit of unity
+within ourselves. He answered that he had no such feeling of joy about
+himself, but I was sure he exaggerated. In all probability he had been
+suffering from some break of harmony between his surroundings and the
+spirit of unity within him, proving all the more strongly its truth.
+The meaning of health comes home to us with painful force when disease
+disturbs it; since<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> health expresses the unity of the vital functions
+and is accordingly joyful. Life's tragedies occur, not to demonstrate
+their own reality, but to reveal that eternal principle of joy in
+life, to which they gave a rude shaking. It is the object of this
+Oneness in us to realise its infinity by perfect union of love with
+others. All obstacles to this union create misery, giving rise to the
+baser passions that are expressions of finitude, of that separateness
+which is negative and therefore <i>m&aacute;y&aacute;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The joy of unity within ourselves, seeking expression, becomes
+creative; whereas our desire for the fulfilment of our needs is
+constructive. The water vessel, taken as a vessel only, raises the
+question, "Why does it exist at all?" Through its fitness of
+construction, it offers the apology for its existence. But where it is
+a work of beauty it has no question to answer; it has nothing to do,
+but to be. It reveals in its form a unity to which all that seems
+various in it is so related that, in a mysterious manner, it strikes
+sympathetic chords to the music of unity in our own being.</p>
+
+<p>What is the truth of this world? It is not in the masses of substance,
+not in the number of things, but in their relatedness, which neither<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+can be counted, nor measured, nor abstracted. It is not in the
+materials which are many, but in the expression which is one. All our
+knowledge of things is knowing them in their relation to the Universe,
+in that relation which is truth. A drop of water is not a particular
+assortment of elements; it is the miracle of a harmonious mutuality,
+in which the two reveal the One. No amount of analysis can reveal to
+us this mystery of unity. Matter is an abstraction; we shall never be
+able to realise what it is, for our world of reality does not
+acknowledge it. Even the giant forces of the world, centripetal and
+centrifugal, are kept out of our recognition. They are the
+day-labourers not admitted into the audience-hall of creation. But
+light and sound come to us in their gay dresses as troubadours singing
+serenades before the windows of the senses. What is constantly before
+us, claiming our attention, is not the kitchen, but the feast; not the
+anatomy of the world, but its countenance. There is the dancing ring
+of seasons; the elusive play of lights and shadows, of wind and water;
+the many-coloured wings of erratic life flitting between birth and
+death. The importance of these does not lie in their existence as mere
+facts, but in their language of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> harmony, the mother-tongue of our own
+soul, through which they are communicated to us.</p>
+
+<p>We grow out of touch with this great truth, we forget to accept its
+invitation and its hospitality, when in quest of external success our
+works become unspiritual and unexpressive. This is what Wordsworth
+complained of when he said:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The world is too much with us; late and soon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Little we see in Nature that is ours.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But it is not because the world has grown too familiar to us; on the
+contrary, it is because we do not see it in its aspect of unity,
+because we are driven to distraction by our pursuit of the
+fragmentary.</p>
+
+<p>Materials as materials are savage; they are solitary; they are ready
+to hurt one another. They are like our individual impulses seeking the
+unlimited freedom of wilfulness. Left to themselves they are
+destructive. But directly an ideal of unity raises its banner in their
+centre, it brings these rebellious forces under its sway and creation
+is revealed&mdash;the creation which is peace, which is the unity of
+perfect relationship. Our greed for eating is in itself ugly and
+selfish, it has no sense of decorum; but when brought under the ideal
+of social fellowship, it is regulated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> and made ornamental; it is
+changed into a daily festivity of life. In human nature sexual passion
+is fiercely individual and destructive, but dominated by the ideal of
+love, it has been made to flower into a perfection of beauty, becoming
+in its best expression symbolical of the spiritual truth in man which
+is his kinship of love with the Infinite. Thus we find it is the One
+which expresses itself in creation; and the Many, by giving up
+opposition, make the revelation of unity perfect.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>I remember, when I was a child, that a row of cocoanut trees by our
+garden wall, with their branches beckoning the rising sun on the
+horizon, gave me a companionship as living as I was myself. I know it
+was my imagination which transmuted the world around me into my own
+world&mdash;the imagination which seeks unity, which deals with it. But we
+have to consider that this companionship was true; that the universe
+in which I was born had in it an element profoundly akin to my own
+imaginative mind, one which wakens in all children's natures the
+Creator, whose pleasure is in interweaving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> the web of creation with
+His own patterns of many-coloured strands. It is something akin to us,
+and therefore harmonious to our imagination. When we find some strings
+vibrating in unison with others, we know that this sympathy carries in
+it an eternal reality. The fact that the world stirs our imagination
+in sympathy tells us that this creative imagination is a common truth
+both in us and in the heart of existence. Wordsworth says:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">I'd rather be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or hear old Triton blow his wreath&egrave;d horn.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In this passage the poet says we are less forlorn in a world which we
+meet with our imagination. That can only be possible if through our
+imagination is revealed, behind all appearances, the reality which
+gives the touch of companionship, that is to say, something which has
+an affinity to us. An immense amount of our activity is engaged in
+making images, not for serving any useful purpose or formulating
+rational propositions, but for giving varied responses to the varied
+touches of this reality. In this image-making the child creates his
+own world in answer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> to the world in which he finds himself. The child
+in us finds glimpses of his eternal playmate from behind the veil of
+things, as Proteus rising from the sea, or Triton blowing his wreath&egrave;d
+horn. And the playmate is the Reality, that makes it possible for the
+child to find delight in activities which do not inform or bring
+assistance but merely express. There is an image-making joy in the
+infinite, which inspires in us our joy in imagining. The rhythm of
+cosmic motion produces in our mind the emotion which is creative.</p>
+
+<p>A poet has said about his destiny as a dreamer, about the
+worthlessness of his dreams and yet their permanence:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I hang 'mid men my heedless head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time shall reap; but after the reaper<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The world shall glean to me, me the sleeper.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The dream persists; it is more real than even bread which has
+substance and use. The painted canvas is durable and substantial; it
+has for its production and transport to market a whole array of
+machines and factories. But the picture which no factory can produce
+is a dream, a <i>m&aacute;y&aacute;</i>, and yet it, not the canvas, has the meaning of
+ultimate reality.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A poet describes Autumn:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I saw old Autumn in the misty morn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stand shadowless like Silence, listening<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To silence, for no lonely bird would sing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Of April another poet sings:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">April, April,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laugh thy girlish laughter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then the moment after<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weep thy girlish tears!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">April, that mine ears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a lover greetest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If I tell thee, sweetest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All my hopes and fears.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">April, April,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laugh thy golden laughter.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the moment after<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weep thy golden tears!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">This Autumn, this April,&mdash;are they nothing but phantasy?</p>
+
+<p>Let us suppose that the Man from the Moon comes to the earth and
+listens to some music in a gramophone. He seeks for the origin of the
+delight produced in his mind. The facts before him are a cabinet made
+of wood and a revolving disc producing sound; but the one thing which
+is neither seen nor can be explained is the truth of the music, which
+his personality must immediately acknowledge as a personal message. It
+is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> neither in the wood, nor in the disc, nor in the sound of the
+notes. If the Man from the Moon be a poet, as can reasonably be
+supposed, he will write about a fairy imprisoned in that box, who sits
+spinning fabrics of songs expressing her cry for a far-away magic
+casement opening on the foam of some perilous sea, in a fairyland
+forlorn. It will not be literally, but essentially true. The facts of
+the gramophone make us aware of the laws of sound, but the music gives
+us personal companionship. The bare facts about April are alternate
+sunshine and showers; but the subtle blending of shadows and lights,
+of murmurs and movements, in April, gives us not mere shocks of
+sensation, but unity of joy as does music. Therefore when a poet sees
+the vision of a girl in April, even a downright materialist is in
+sympathy with him. But we know that the same individual would be
+menacingly angry if the law of heredity or a geometrical problem were
+described as a girl or a rose&mdash;or even as a cat or a camel. For these
+intellectual abstractions have no magical touch for our lute-strings
+of imagination. They are no dreams, as are the harmony of bird-songs,
+rain-washed leaves glistening in the sun, and pale clouds floating in
+the blue.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The ultimate truth of our personality is that we are no mere
+biologists or geometricians; "we are the dreamers of dreams, we are
+the music-makers." This dreaming or music-making is not a function of
+the lotus-eaters, it is the creative impulse which makes songs not
+only with words and tunes, lines and colours, but with stones and
+metals, with ideas and men:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With wonderful deathless ditties<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We build up the world's great cities,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And out of a fabulous story<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We fashion an empire's glory.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I have been told by a scholar friend of mine that by constant practice
+in logic he has weakened his natural instinct of faith. The reason is,
+faith is the spectator in us which finds the meaning of the drama from
+the unity of the performance; but logic lures us into the greenroom
+where there is stagecraft but no drama at all; and then this logic
+nods its head and wearily talks about disillusionment. But the
+greenroom, dealing with its fragments, looks foolish when questioned,
+or wears the sneering smile of Mephistopheles; for it does not have
+the secret of unity, which is somewhere else. It is for faith to
+answer, "Unity comes to us from the One, and the One in ourselves
+opens the door and receives it with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> joy." The function of poetry and
+the arts is to remind us that the greenroom is the greyest of
+illusions, and the reality is the drama presented before us, all its
+paint and tinsel, masks and pageantry, made one in art. The ropes and
+wheels perish, the stage is changed; but the dream which is drama
+remains true, for there remains the eternal Dreamer.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Poetry and the arts cherish in them the profound faith of man in the
+unity of his being with all existence, the final truth of which is the
+truth of personality. It is a religion directly apprehended, and not a
+system of metaphysics to be analysed and argued. We know in our
+personal experience what our creations are and we instinctively know
+through it what creation around us means.</p>
+
+<p>When Keats said in his "Ode to a Grecian Urn":</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As doth eternity,...<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">he felt the ineffable which is in all forms of perfection, the mystery
+of the One, which takes us beyond all thought into the immediate
+touch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> of the Infinite. This is the mystery which is for a poet to
+realise and to reveal. It comes out in Keats' poems with struggling
+gleams through consciousness of suffering and despair:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some shape of beauty moves away the pall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From our dark spirits.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In this there is a suggestion that truth reveals itself in beauty. For
+if beauty were mere accident, a rent in the eternal fabric of things,
+then it would hurt, would be defeated by the antagonism of facts.
+Beauty is no phantasy, it has the everlasting meaning of reality. The
+facts that cause despondence and gloom are mere mist, and when through
+the mist beauty breaks out in momentary gleams, we realise that Peace
+is true and not conflict, Love is true and not hatred; and Truth is
+the One, not the disjointed multitude. We realise that Creation is the
+perpetual harmony between the infinite ideal of perfection and the
+eternal continuity of its realisation; that so long as there is no
+absolute separation between the positive ideal and the material
+obstacle to its attainment, we need not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> be afraid of suffering and
+loss. This is the poet's religion.</p>
+
+<p>Those who are habituated to the rigid framework of sectarian creeds
+will find such a religion as this too indefinite and elastic. No doubt
+it is so, but only because its ambition is not to shackle the Infinite
+and tame it for domestic use; but rather to help our consciousness to
+emancipate itself from materialism. It is as indefinite as the
+morning, and yet as luminous; it calls our thoughts, feelings, and
+actions into freedom, and feeds them with light. In the poet's
+religion we find no doctrine or injunction, but rather the attitude of
+our entire being towards a truth which is ever to be revealed in its
+own endless creation.</p>
+
+<p>In dogmatic religion all questions are definitely answered, all doubts
+are finally laid to rest. But the poet's religion is fluid, like the
+atmosphere round the earth where lights and shadows play
+hide-and-seek, and the wind like a shepherd boy plays upon its reeds
+among flocks of clouds. It never undertakes to lead anybody anywhere
+to any solid conclusion; yet it reveals endless spheres of light,
+because it has no walls round itself. It acknowledges the facts of
+evil; it openly admits "the weariness, the fever and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> fret" in the
+world "where men sit and hear each other groan"; yet it remembers that
+in spite of all there is the song of the nightingale, and "haply the
+Queen Moon is on her throne," and there is:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And mid-day's eldest child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But all this has not the definiteness of an answer; it has only the
+music that teases us out of thought as it fills our being.</p>
+
+<p>Let me read a translation from an Eastern poet to show how this idea
+comes out in a poem in Bengali:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">In the morning I awoke at the flutter of thy boat-sails,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lady of my Voyage, and I left the shore to follow the beckoning waves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I asked thee, "Does the dream-harvest ripen in the island beyond the blue?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The silence of thy smile fell on my question like the silence of sunlight on waves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The day passed on through storm and through calm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The perplexed winds changed their course, time after time, and the sea moaned.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I asked thee, "Does thy sleep-tower stand somewhere beyond the dying embers of the day's funeral pyre?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No answer came from thee, only thine eyes smiled like the edge of a sunset cloud.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It is night. Thy figure grows dim in the dark.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy wind-blown hair flits on my cheek and thrills my sadness with its scent.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My hands grope to touch the hem of thy robe, and<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I ask thee&mdash;"Is there thy garden of death beyond the stars, Lady of my Voyage, where thy silence blossoms into songs?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy smile shines in the heart of the hush like the star-mist of midnight.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>In Shelley we clearly see the growth of his religion through periods
+of vagueness and doubt, struggle and searching. But he did at length
+come to a positive utterance of his faith, though he died young. Its
+final expression is in his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." By the title
+of the poem the poet evidently means a beauty that is not merely a
+passive quality of particular things, but a spirit that manifests
+itself through the apparent antagonism of the unintellectual life.
+This hymn rang out of his heart when he came to the end of his
+pilgrimage and stood face to face with the Divinity, glimpses of which
+had already filled his soul with restlessness. All his experiences of
+beauty had ever teased him with the question as to what was its truth.
+Some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>where he sings of a nosegay which he makes of violets, daisies,
+tender bluebells and&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i5">That tall flower that wets,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">He ends by saying:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">And then, elate and gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I hastened to the spot whence I had come,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I might there present it!&mdash;Oh! to whom?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This question, even though not answered, carries a significance. A
+creation of beauty suggests a fulfilment, which is the fulfilment of
+love. We have heard some poets scoff at it in bitterness and despair;
+but it is like a sick child beating its own mother&mdash;it is a sickness
+of faith, which hurts truth, but proves it by its very pain and anger.
+And the faith itself is this, that beauty is the self-offering of the
+One to the other One.</p>
+
+<p>In the first part of his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" Shelley dwells
+on the inconstancy and evanescence of the manifestation of beauty,
+which imparts to it an appearance of frailty and unreality:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Like hues and harmonies of evening,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like clouds in starlight widely spread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like memory of music fled.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">This, he says, rouses in our mind the question:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Why fear and dream and death and birth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cast on the daylight of this earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Such gloom,&mdash;why man has such a scope<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For love and hate, despondency and hope?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The poet's own answer to this question is:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Man were immortal, and omnipotent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This very elusiveness of beauty suggests the vision of immortality and
+of omnipotence, and stimulates the effort in man to realise it in some
+idea of permanence. The highest reality has actively to be achieved.
+The gain of truth is not in the end; it reveals itself through the
+endless length of achievement. But what is there to guide us in our
+voyage of realisation? Men have ever been struggling for direction:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Remain the records of their vain endeavour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frail spells,&mdash;whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From all we hear and all we see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doubt, chance and mutability.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The prevalent rites and practices of piety, according to this poet,
+are like magic spells&mdash;they only prove men's desperate endeavour and
+not their success. He knows that the end we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> seek has its own direct
+call to us, its own light to guide us to itself. And truth's call is
+the call of beauty. Of this he says:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thy light alone,&mdash;like mist o'er mountain driven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Or music by the night wind sent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thro' strings of some still instrument,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Or moonlight on a midnight stream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>About this revelation of truth which calls us on, and yet which is
+everywhere, a village singer of Bengal sings:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My master's flute sounds in everything, drawing me out of my house to everywhere.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While I listen to it I know that every step I take is in my master's house.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For he is the sea, he is the river that leads to the sea, and he is the landing place.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Religion, in Shelley, grew with his life; it was not given to him in
+fixed and ready-made doctrines; he rebelled against them. He had the
+creative mind which could only approach Truth through its joy in
+creative effort. For true creation is realisation of truth through the
+translation of it into our own symbols.</p>
+
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>For man, the best opportunity for such a realisation has been in men's
+Society. It is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> collective creation of his, through which his social
+being tries to find itself in its truth and beauty. Had that Society
+merely manifested its usefulness, it would be inarticulate like a dark
+star. But, unless it degenerates, it ever suggests in its concerted
+movements a living truth as its soul, which has personality. In this
+large life of social communion man feels the mystery of Unity, as he
+does in music. From the sense of that Unity, men came to the sense of
+their God. And therefore every religion began with its tribal God.</p>
+
+<p>The one question before all others that has to be answered by our
+civilisations is not what they have and in what quantity, but what
+they express and how. In a society, the production and circulation of
+materials, the amassing and spending of money, may go on, as in the
+interminable prolonging of a straight line, if its people forget to
+follow some spiritual design of life which curbs them and transforms
+them into an organic whole. For growth is not that enlargement which
+is merely adding to the dimensions of incompleteness. Growth is the
+movement of a whole towards a yet fuller wholeness. Living things
+start with this wholeness from the beginning of their career. A child
+has its own perfection as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> a child; it would be ugly if it appeared as
+an unfinished man. Life is a continual process of synthesis, and not
+of additions. Our activities of production and enjoyment of wealth
+attain that spirit of wholeness when they are blended with a creative
+ideal. Otherwise they have the insane aspect of the eternally
+unfinished; they become like locomotive engines which have railway
+lines but no stations; which rush on towards a collision of
+uncontrolled forces or to a sudden breakdown of the overstrained
+machinery.</p>
+
+<p>Through creation man expresses his truth; through that expression he
+gains back his truth in its fulness. Human society is for the best
+expression of man, and that expression, according to its perfection,
+leads him to the full realisation of the divine in humanity. When that
+expression is obscure, then his faith in the Infinite that is within
+him becomes weak; then his aspiration cannot go beyond the idea of
+success. His faith in the Infinite is creative; his desire for success
+is constructive; one is his home, and the other is his office. With
+the overwhelming growth of necessity, civilisation becomes a gigantic
+office to which the home is a mere appendix. The predominance of the
+pursuit of success gives to society the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> character of what we call
+<i>Shudra</i> in India. In fighting a battle, the <i>Kshatriya</i>, the noble
+knight, followed his honour for his ideal, which was greater than
+victory itself; but the mercenary <i>Shudra</i> has success for his object.
+The name Shudra symbolises a man who has no margin round him beyond
+his bare utility. The word denotes a classification which includes all
+naked machines that have lost their completeness of humanity, be their
+work manual or intellectual. They are like walking stomachs or brains,
+and we feel, in pity, urged to call on God and cry, "Cover them up for
+mercy's sake with some veil of beauty and life!"</p>
+
+<p>When Shelley in his view of the world realised the Spirit of Beauty,
+which is the vision of the Infinite, he thus uttered his faith:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Never joy illumed my brow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">This world from its dark slavery;<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">That thou,&mdash;O awful Loveliness,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This was his faith in the Infinite. It led his aspiration towards the
+region of freedom and perfection which was beyond the immediate and
+above the successful. This faith in God, this faith in the reality of
+the ideal of perfection, has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> built up all that is great in the human
+world. To keep indefinitely walking on, along a zigzag course of
+change, is negative and barren. A mere procession of notes does not
+make music; it is only when we have in the heart of the march of
+sounds some musical idea that it creates song. Our faith in the
+infinite reality of Perfection is that musical idea, and there is that
+one great creative force in our civilisation. When it wakens not, then
+our faith in money, in material power, takes its place; it fights and
+destroys, and in a brilliant fireworks of star-mimicry suddenly
+exhausts itself and dies in ashes and smoke.</p>
+
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>Men of great faith have always called us to wake up to great
+expectations, and the prudent have always laughed at them and said
+that these did not belong to reality. But the poet in man knows that
+reality is a creation, and human reality has to be called forth from
+its obscure depth by man's faith which is creative. There was a day
+when the human reality was the brutal reality. That was the only
+capital we had with which to begin our career. But age<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> after age
+there has come to us the call of faith, which said against all the
+evidence of fact: "You are more than you appear to be, more than your
+circumstances seem to warrant. You are to attain the impossible, you
+are immortal." The unbelievers had laughed and tried to kill the
+faith. But faith grew stronger with the strength of martyrdom and at
+her bidding higher realities have been created over the strata of the
+lower. Has not a new age come to-day, borne by thunder-clouds, ushered
+in by a universal agony of suffering? Are we not waiting to-day for a
+great call of faith, which will say to us: "Come out of your present
+limitations. You are to attain the impossible, you are immortal"? The
+nations who are not prepared to accept it, who have all their trust in
+their present machines of system, and have no thought or space to
+spare to welcome the sudden guest who comes as the messenger of
+emancipation, are bound to court defeat whatever may be their present
+wealth and power.</p>
+
+<p>This great world, where it is a creation, an expression of the
+infinite&mdash;where its morning sings of joy to the newly awakened life,
+and its evening stars sing to the traveller, weary and worn, of the
+triumph of life in a new birth across<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> death,&mdash;has its call for us.
+The call has ever roused the creator in man, and urged him to reveal
+the truth, to reveal the Infinite in himself. It is ever claiming from
+us, in our own creations, co-operation with God, reminding us of our
+divine nature, which finds itself in freedom of spirit. Our society
+exists to remind us, through its various voices, that the ultimate
+truth in man is not in his intellect or his possessions; it is in his
+illumination of mind, in his extension of sympathy across all barriers
+of caste and colour; in his recognition of the world, not merely as a
+storehouse of power, but as a habitation of man's spirit, with its
+eternal music of beauty and its inner light of the divine
+presence.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_CREATIVE_IDEAL" id="THE_CREATIVE_IDEAL"></a>THE CREATIVE IDEAL<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> an old Sanskrit book there is a verse which describes the essential
+elements of a picture. The first in order is
+<i>Vr&uacute;pa-bh&eacute;d&aacute;h</i>&mdash;"separateness of forms." Forms are many, forms are
+different, each of them having its limits. But if this were absolute,
+if all forms remained obstinately separate, then there would be a
+fearful loneliness of multitude. But the varied forms, in their very
+separateness, must carry something which indicates the paradox of
+their ultimate unity, otherwise there would be no creation.</p>
+
+<p>So in the same verse, after the enumeration of separateness comes that
+of <i>Pram&#257;n&#257;ni</i>&mdash;proportions. Proportions indicate relationship,
+the principle of mutual accommodation. A leg dismembered from the body
+has the fullest licence to make a caricature of itself. But, as a
+member of the body, it has its responsibility to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> the living unity
+which rules the body; it must behave properly, it must keep its
+proportion. If, by some monstrous chance of physiological
+profiteering, it could outgrow by yards its fellow-stalker, then we
+know what a picture it would offer to the spectator and what
+embarrassment to the body itself. Any attempt to overcome the law of
+proportion altogether and to assert absolute separateness is
+rebellion; it means either running the gauntlet of the rest, or
+remaining segregated.</p>
+
+<p>The same Sanskrit word <i>Pram&#257;n&#257;ni</i>, which in a book of &aelig;sthetics
+means proportions, in a book of logic means the proofs by which the
+truth of a proposition is ascertained. All proofs of truth are
+credentials of relationship. Individual facts have to produce such
+passports to show that they are not expatriated, that they are not a
+break in the unity of the whole. The logical relationship present in
+an intellectual proposition, and the &aelig;sthetic relationship indicated
+in the proportions of a work of art, both agree in one thing. They
+affirm that truth consists, not in facts, but in harmony of facts. Of
+this fundamental note of reality it is that the poet has said, "Beauty
+is truth, truth beauty."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Proportions, which prove relativity, form the outward language of
+creative ideals. A crowd of men is desultory, but in a march of
+soldiers every man keeps his proportion of time and space and relative
+movement, which makes him one with the whole vast army. But this is
+not all. The creation of an army has, for its inner principle, one
+single idea of the General. According to the nature of that ruling
+idea, a production is either a work of art or a mere construction. All
+the materials and regulations of a joint-stock company have the unity
+of an inner motive. But the expression of this unity itself is not the
+end; it ever indicates an ulterior purpose. On the other hand, the
+revelation of a work of art is a fulfilment in itself.</p>
+
+<p>The consciousness of personality, which is the consciousness of unity
+in ourselves, becomes prominently distinct when coloured by joy or
+sorrow, or some other emotion. It is like the sky, which is visible
+because it is blue, and which takes different aspect with the change
+of colours. In the creation of art, therefore, the energy of an
+emotional ideal is necessary; as its unity is not like that of a
+crystal, passive and inert, but actively expressive. Take, for
+example, the following verse:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, fly not Pleasure, pleasant-hearted Pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fold me thy wings, I prithee, yet and stay.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For my heart no measure<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Knows, nor other treasure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To buy a garland for my love to-day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And thou too, Sorrow, tender-hearted Sorrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou grey-eyed mourner, fly not yet away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For I fain would borrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy sad weeds to-morrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make a mourning for love's yesterday.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The words in this quotation, merely showing the metre, would have no
+appeal to us; with all its perfection and its proportion, rhyme and
+cadence, it would only be a construction. But when it is the outer
+body of an inner idea it assumes a personality. The idea flows through
+the rhythm, permeates the words and throbs in their rise and fall. On
+the other hand, the mere idea of the above-quoted poem, stated in
+unrhythmic prose, would represent only a fact, inertly static, which
+would not bear repetition. But the emotional idea, incarnated in a
+rhythmic form, acquires the dynamic quality needed for those things
+which take part in the world's eternal pageantry.</p>
+
+<p>Take the following doggerel:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thirty days hath September,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">April, June, and November.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The metre is there, and it simulates the movement of life. But it
+finds no synchronous response in the metre of our heart-beats; it has
+not in its centre the living idea which creates for itself an
+indivisible unity. It is like a bag which is convenient, and not like
+a body which is inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>This truth, implicit in our own works of art, gives us the clue to the
+mystery of creation. We find that the endless rhythms of the world are
+not merely constructive; they strike our own heart-strings and produce
+music.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore it is we feel that this world is a creation; that in its
+centre there is a living idea which reveals itself in an eternal
+symphony, played on innumerable instruments, all keeping perfect time.
+We know that this great world-verse, that runs from sky to sky, is not
+made for the mere enumeration of facts&mdash;it is not "Thirty days hath
+September"&mdash;it has its direct revelation in our delight. That delight
+gives us the key to the truth of existence; it is personality acting
+upon personalities through incessant manifestations. The solicitor
+does not sing to his client, but the bridegroom sings to his bride.
+And when our soul is stirred by the song, we know it claims no fees
+from us; but it brings the tribute of love and a call from the
+bridegroom.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It may be said that in pictorial and other arts there are some designs
+that are purely decorative and apparently have no living and inner
+ideal to express. But this cannot be true. These decorations carry the
+emotional motive of the artist, which says: "I find joy in my
+creation; it is good." All the language of joy is beauty. It is
+necessary to note, however, that joy is not pleasure, and beauty not
+mere prettiness. Joy is the outcome of detachment from self and lives
+in freedom of spirit. Beauty is that profound expression of reality
+which satisfies our hearts without any other allurements but its own
+ultimate value. When in some pure moments of ecstasy we realise this
+in the world around us, we see the world, not as merely existing, but
+as decorated in its forms, sounds, colours and lines; we feel in our
+hearts that there is One who through all things proclaims: "I have joy
+in my creation."</p>
+
+<p>That is why the Sanskrit verse has given us for the essential elements
+of a picture, not only the manifoldness of forms and the unity of
+their proportions, but also <i>bh&aacute;vah</i>, the emotional idea.</p>
+
+<p>It is needless to say that upon a mere expression of emotion&mdash;even the
+best expression of it&mdash;no criterion of art can rest. The following<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+poem is described by the poet as "An earnest Suit to his unkind
+Mistress":</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And wilt thou leave me thus?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say nay, say nay, for shame!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To save thee from the blame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all my grief and grame.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wilt thou leave me thus?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Say nay! say nay!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I am sure the poet would not be offended if I expressed my doubts
+about the earnestness of his appeal, or the truth of his avowed
+necessity. He is responsible for the lyric and not for the sentiment,
+which is mere material. The fire assumes different colours according
+to the fuel used; but we do not discuss the fuel, only the flames. A
+lyric is indefinably more than the sentiment expressed in it, as a
+rose is more than its substance. Let us take a poem in which the
+earnestness of sentiment is truer and deeper than the one I have
+quoted above:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">The sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Closing his benediction,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sinks, and the darkening air<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thrills with the sense of the triumphing night,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Night with her train of stars<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And her great gift of sleep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So be my passing!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My task accomplished and the long day done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My wages taken, and in my heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some late lark singing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me be gathered to the quiet West,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sundown splendid and serene,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Death.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sentiment expressed in this poem is a subject for a psychologist.
+But for a poem the subject is completely merged in its poetry, like
+carbon in a living plant which the lover of plants ignores, leaving it
+for a charcoal-burner to seek.</p>
+
+<p>This is why, when some storm of feeling sweeps across the country, art
+is under a disadvantage. In such an atmosphere the boisterous passion
+breaks through the cordon of harmony and thrusts itself forward as the
+subject, which with its bulk and pressure dethrones the unity of
+creation. For a similar reason most of the hymns used in churches
+suffer from lack of poetry. For in them the deliberate subject,
+assuming the first importance, benumbs or kills the poem. Most
+patriotic poems have the same deficiency. They are like hill streams
+born of sudden showers, which are more proud of their rocky beds than
+of their water currents; in them the athletic and arrogant subject
+takes it for granted that the poem is there to give it occasion to
+display its powers. The subject is the material wealth for the sake of
+which poetry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> should never be tempted to barter her soul, even though
+the temptation should come in the name and shape of public good or
+some usefulness. Between the artist and his art must be that perfect
+detachment which is the pure medium of love. He must never make use of
+this love except for its own perfect expression.</p>
+
+<p>In everyday life our personality moves in a narrow circle of immediate
+self-interest. And therefore our feelings and events, within that
+short range, become prominent subjects for ourselves. In their
+vehement self-assertion they ignore their unity with the All. They
+rise up like obstructions and obscure their own background. But art
+gives our personality the disinterested freedom of the eternal, there
+to find it in its true perspective. To see our own home in flames is
+not to see fire in its verity. But the fire in the stars is the fire
+in the heart of the Infinite; there, it is the script of creation.</p>
+
+<p>Matthew Arnold, in his poem addressed to a nightingale, sings:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hark! ah, the nightingale&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tawny-throated!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What triumph! hark!&mdash;what pain!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But pain, when met within the boundaries of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> limited reality, repels
+and hurts; it is discordant with the narrow scope of life. But the
+pain of some great martyrdom has the detachment of eternity. It
+appears in all its majesty, harmonious in the context of everlasting
+life; like the thunder-flash in the stormy sky, not on the laboratory
+wire. Pain on that scale has its harmony in great love; for by hurting
+love it reveals the infinity of love in all its truth and beauty. On
+the other hand, the pain involved in business insolvency is
+discordant; it kills and consumes till nothing remains but ashes.</p>
+
+<p>The poet sings again:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eternal Passion!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eternal Pain!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the truth of pain in eternity has been sung by those Vedic poets
+who had said, "From joy has come forth all creation." They say:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sa tapas tapatv&aacute; sarvam asrajata Yadidam kincha.<br /></span><br />
+<span class="i0" style="padding-top: 0.5em">(God from the heat of his pain created all that there is.)<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sacrifice, which is in the heart of creation, is both joy and pain
+at the same moment. Of this sings a village mystic in Bengal:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">My eyes drown in the darkness of joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart, like a lotus, closes its petals in the rapture of the dark night.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>That song speaks of a joy which is deep like the blue sea, endless
+like the blue sky; which has the magnificence of the night, and in its
+limitless darkness enfolds the radiant worlds in the awfulness of
+peace; it is the unfathomed joy in which all sufferings are made one.</p>
+
+<p>A poet of medi&aelig;val India tells us about his source of inspiration in a
+poem containing a question and an answer:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where were your songs, my bird, when you spent your nights in the nest?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was not all your pleasure stored therein?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What makes you lose your heart to the sky, the sky that is limitless?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The bird answers:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I had my pleasure while I rested within bounds.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I soared into the limitless, I found my songs!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To detach the individual idea from its confinement of everyday facts
+and to give its soaring wings the freedom of the universal: this is
+the function of poetry. The ambition of Macbeth, the jealousy of
+Othello, would be at best sensational in police court proceedings; but
+in Shakespeare's dramas they are carried among the flaming
+constellations where creation throbs with Eternal Passion, Eternal
+Pain.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_RELIGION_OF_THE_FOREST" id="THE_RELIGION_OF_THE_FOREST"></a>THE RELIGION OF THE FOREST<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> stand before this great world. The truth of our life depends upon
+our attitude of mind towards it&mdash;an attitude which is formed by our
+habit of dealing with it according to the special circumstance of our
+surroundings and our temperaments. It guides our attempts to establish
+relations with the universe either by conquest or by union, either
+through the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy. And
+thus, in our realisation of the truth of existence, we put our
+emphasis either upon the principle of dualism or upon the principle of
+unity.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian sages have held in the Upanishads that the emancipation of
+our soul lies in its realising the ultimate truth of unity. They said:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ish&aacute;v&aacute;syam idam sarvam yat kinch jagaty&aacute;m jagat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Y&eacute;na tyakt&eacute;na bhunjith&aacute; m&aacute; graha kasyasvit dhanam.<br /></span>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent" style="padding-top: 0.5em; font-size: 80%; padding-left: 10%">(Know all that moves in this moving world as enveloped by
+God;<br /> and find enjoyment through renunciation, not through
+greed of possession.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>The meaning of this is, that, when we know the multiplicity of things
+as the final truth, we try to augment ourselves by the external
+possession of them; but, when we know the Infinite Soul as the final
+truth, then through our union with it we realise the joy of our soul.
+Therefore it has been said of those who have attained their
+fulfilment,&mdash;"sarvam ev&aacute; vishanti" (they enter into all things). Their
+perfect relation with this world is the relation of union.</p>
+
+<p>This ideal of perfection preached by the forest-dwellers of ancient
+India runs through the heart of our classical literature and still
+dominates our mind. The legends related in our epics cluster under the
+forest shade bearing all through their narrative the message of the
+forest-dwellers. Our two greatest classical dramas find their
+background in scenes of the forest hermitage, which are permeated by
+the association of these sages.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the Northmen of Europe is resonant with the music of
+the sea. That sea is not merely topographical in its significance, but
+represents certain ideals of life which still guide the history and
+inspire the creations of that race. In the sea, nature presented
+herself to those men in her aspect of a danger, a barrier which
+seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> to be at constant war with the land and its children. The sea
+was the challenge of untamed nature to the indomitable human soul. And
+man did not flinch; he fought and won, and the spirit of fight
+continued in him. This fight he still maintains; it is the fight
+against disease and poverty, tyranny of matter and of man.</p>
+
+<p>This refers to a people who live by the sea, and ride on it as on a
+wild, champing horse, catching it by its mane and making it render
+service from shore to shore. They find delight in turning by force the
+antagonism of circumstances into obedience. Truth appears to them in
+her aspect of dualism, the perpetual conflict of good and evil, which
+has no reconciliation, which can only end in victory or defeat.</p>
+
+<p>But in the level tracts of Northern India men found no barrier between
+their lives and the grand life that permeates the universe. The forest
+entered into a close living relationship with their work and leisure,
+with their daily necessities and contemplations. They could not think
+of other surroundings as separate or inimical. So the view of the
+truth, which these men found, did not make manifest the difference,
+but rather the unity of all things. They uttered their faith in these
+words: "Yadidam kinch sarvam pr&acirc;na<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> &eacute;jati nihsratam" (All that is
+vibrates with life, having come out from life). When we know this
+world as alien to us, then its mechanical aspect takes prominence in
+our mind; and then we set up our machines and our methods to deal with
+it and make as much profit as our knowledge of its mechanism allows us
+to do. This view of things does not play us false, for the machine has
+its place in this world. And not only this material universe, but
+human beings also, may be used as machines and made to yield powerful
+results. This aspect of truth cannot be ignored; it has to be known
+and mastered. Europe has done so and has reaped a rich harvest.</p>
+
+<p>The view of this world which India has taken is summed up in one
+compound Sanskrit word, Sachid&#257;nanda. The meaning is that Reality,
+which is essentially one, has three phases. The first is Sat; it is
+the simple fact that things are, the fact which relates us to all
+things through the relationship of common existence. The second is
+Chit; it is the fact that we know, which relates us to all things
+through the relationship of knowledge. The third is Ananda: it is the
+fact that we enjoy, which unites us with all things through the
+relationship of love.</p>
+
+<p>According to the true Indian view, our consciousness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> of the world,
+merely as the sum total of things that exist, and as governed by laws,
+is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realises all
+things as spiritually one with it, and therefore capable of giving us
+joy. For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in
+it, knowing it and making use of it, but realising our own selves in
+it through expansion of sympathy; not alienating ourselves from it and
+dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in
+perfect union.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>When Vikram&acirc;ditya became king, Ujjayini a great capital, and K&acirc;lid&acirc;sa
+its poet, the age of India's forest retreats had passed. Then we had
+taken our stand in the midst of the great concourse of humanity. The
+Chinese and the Hun, the Scythian and the Persian, the Greek and the
+Roman, had crowded round us. But, even in that age of pomp and
+prosperity, the love and reverence with which its poet sang about the
+hermitage shows what was the dominant ideal that occupied the mind of
+India; what was the one current of memory that continually flowed
+through her life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In K&acirc;lid&acirc;sa's drama, <i>Shakuntal&acirc;</i>, the hermitage, which dominates the
+play, overshadowing the king's palace, has the same idea running
+through it&mdash;the recognition of the kinship of man with conscious and
+unconscious creation alike.</p>
+
+<p>A poet of a later age, while describing a hermitage in his K&acirc;dambari,
+tells us of the posture of salutation in the flowering lianas as they
+bow to the wind; of the sacrifice offered by the trees scattering
+their blossoms; of the grove resounding with the lessons chanted by
+the neophytes, and the verses repeated by the parrots, learnt by
+constantly hearing them; of the wild-fowl enjoying
+"vaishva-deva-bali-pinda" (the food offered to the divinity which is
+in all creatures); of the ducks coming up from the lake for their
+portion of the grass seed spread in the cottage yards to dry; and of
+the deer caressing with their tongues the young hermit boys. It is
+again the same story. The hermitage shines out, in all our ancient
+literature, as the place where the chasm between man and the rest of
+creation has been bridged.</p>
+
+<p>In the Western dramas, human characters drown our attention in the
+vortex of their passions. Nature occasionally peeps out, but she is
+almost always a trespasser, who has to offer excuses,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> or bow
+apologetically and depart. But in all our dramas which still retain
+their fame, such as <i>Mrit-Shakatik&acirc;</i>, <i>Shakuntal&acirc;</i>,
+<i>Uttara-R&acirc;macharita</i>, Nature stands on her own right, proving that she
+has her great function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human
+emotions.</p>
+
+<p>The fury of passion in two of Shakespeare's youthful poems is
+exhibited in conspicuous isolation. It is snatched away, naked, from
+the context of the All; it has not the green earth or the blue sky
+around it; it is there ready to bring to our view the raging fever
+which is in man's desires, and not the balm of health and repose which
+encircles it in the universe.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rit&ucirc;samh&acirc;ra</i> is clearly a work of K&acirc;lid&acirc;sa's immaturity. The youthful
+love-song in it does not reach the sublime reticence which is in
+<i>Shakuntal&acirc;</i> and <i>Kum&acirc;ra-Sambhava</i>. But the tune of these voluptuous
+outbreaks is set to the varied harmony of Nature's symphony. The
+moonbeams of the summer evening, resonant with the flow of fountains,
+acknowledge it as a part of its own melody. In its rhythm sways the
+Kadamba forest, glistening in the first cool rain of the season; and
+the south breezes, carrying the scent of the mango blossoms, temper it
+with their murmur.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the third canto of <i>Kum&acirc;ra-Sambhava</i>, Madana, the God Eros, enters
+the forest sanctuary to set free a sudden flood of desire amid the
+serenity of the ascetics' meditation. But the boisterous outbreak of
+passion so caused was shown against a background of universal life.
+The divine love-thrills of Sati and Shiva found their response in the
+world-wide immensity of youth, in which animals and trees have their
+life-throbs.</p>
+
+<p>Not only its third canto but the whole of the Kum&acirc;ra-Sambhava poem is
+painted upon a limitless canvas. It tells of the eternal wedding of
+love, its wooing and sacrifice, and its fulfilment, for which the gods
+wait in suspense. Its inner idea is deep and of all time. It answers
+the one question that humanity asks through all its endeavours: "How
+is the birth of the hero to be brought about, the brave one who can
+defy and vanquish the evil demon laying waste heaven's own kingdom?"</p>
+
+<p>It becomes evident that such a problem had become acute in K&acirc;lid&acirc;sa's
+time, when the old simplicity of Hindu life had broken up. The Hindu
+kings, forgetful of their duties, had become self-seeking epicureans,
+and India was being repeatedly devastated by the Scythians.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> What
+answer, then, does the poem give to the question it raises? Its
+message is that the cause of weakness lies in the inner life of the
+soul. It is in some break of harmony with the Good, some dissociation
+from the True. In the commencement of the poem we find that the God
+Shiva, the Good, had remained for long lost in the self-centred
+solitude of his asceticism, detached from the world of reality. And
+then Paradise was lost. But <i>Kum&acirc;ra-Sambhava</i> is the poem of Paradise
+Regained. How was it regained? When Sati, the Spirit of Reality,
+through humiliation, suffering, and penance, won the Heart of Shiva,
+the Spirit of Goodness. And thus, from the union of the freedom of the
+real with the restraint of the Good, was born the heroism that
+released Paradise from the demon of Lawlessness.</p>
+
+<p>Viewed from without, India, in the time of K&acirc;lid&acirc;sa, appeared to have
+reached the zenith of civilisation, excelling as she did in luxury,
+literature and the arts. But from the poems of K&acirc;lid&acirc;sa it is evident
+that this very magnificence of wealth and enjoyment worked against the
+ideal that sprang and flowed forth from the sacred solitude of the
+forest. These poems contain the voice of warnings against the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+gorgeous unreality of that age, which, like a Himalayan avalanche, was
+slowly gliding down to an abyss of catastrophe. And from his seat
+beside all the glories of Vikram&acirc;ditya's throne the poet's heart
+yearns for the purity and simplicity of India's past age of spiritual
+striving. And it was this yearning which impelled him to go back to
+the annals of the ancient Kings of Raghu's line for the narrative
+poem, in which he traced the history of the rise and fall of the ideal
+that should guide the rulers of men.</p>
+
+<p>King Dilipa, with Queen Sudakshin&acirc;, has entered upon the life of the
+forest. The great monarch is busy tending the cattle of the hermitage.
+Thus the poem opens, amid scenes of simplicity and self-denial. But it
+ends in the palace of magnificence, in the extravagance of
+self-enjoyment. With a calm restraint of language the poet tells us of
+the kingly glory crowned with purity. He begins his poem as the day
+begins, in the serenity of sunrise. But lavish are the colours in
+which he describes the end, as of the evening, eloquent for a time
+with the sumptuous splendour of sunset, but overtaken at last by the
+devouring darkness which sweeps away all its brilliance into night.</p>
+
+<p>In this beginning and this ending of his poem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> there lies hidden that
+message of the forest which found its voice in the poet's words. There
+runs through the narrative the idea that the future glowed gloriously
+ahead only when there was in the atmosphere the calm of self-control,
+of purity and renunciation. When downfall had become imminent, the
+hungry fires of desire, aflame at a hundred different points, dazzled
+the eyes of all beholders.</p>
+
+<p>K&acirc;lid&acirc;sa in almost all his works represented the unbounded
+impetuousness of kingly splendour on the one side and the serene
+strength of regulated desires on the other. Even in the minor drama of
+<i>M&acirc;lavik&acirc;gnimitra</i> we find the same thing in a different manner. It
+must never be thought that, in this play, the poet's deliberate object
+was to pander to his royal patron by inviting him to a literary orgy
+of lust and passion. The very introductory verse indicates the object
+towards which this play is directed. The poet begins the drama with
+the prayer, "Sanm&acirc;rg&acirc;l&oacute;kayan vyapanayatu sa nast&acirc;masi vritimishah"
+(Let God, to illumine for us the path of truth, sweep away our
+passions, bred of darkness). This is the God Shiva, in whose nature
+Parvati, the eternal Woman, is ever commingled in an ascetic purity of
+love. The unified<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> being of Shiva and Parvati is the perfect symbol of
+the eternal in the wedded love of man and woman. When the poet opens
+his drama with an invocation of this Spirit of the Divine Union it is
+evident that it contains in it the message with which he greets his
+kingly audience. The whole drama goes to show the ugliness of the
+treachery and cruelty inherent in unchecked self-indulgence. In the
+play the conflict of ideals is between the King and the Queen, between
+Agnimitra and Dh&acirc;rini, and the significance of the contrast lies
+hidden in the very names of the hero and the heroine. Though the name
+Agnimitra is historical, yet it symbolises in the poet's mind the
+destructive force of uncontrolled desire&mdash;just as did the name
+Agnivarna in <i>Raghuvamsha</i>. Agnimitra, "the friend of the fire," the
+reckless person, who in his love-making is playing with fire, not
+knowing that all the time it is scorching him black. And what a great
+name is Dh&acirc;rini, signifying the fortitude and forbearance that comes
+from majesty of soul! What an association it carries of the infinite
+dignity of love, purified by a self-abnegation that rises far above
+all insult and baseness of betrayal!</p>
+
+<p>In <i>Shakuntal&acirc;</i> this conflict of ideals has been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> shown, all through
+the drama, by the contrast of the pompous heartlessness of the king's
+court and the natural purity of the forest hermitage. The drama opens
+with a hunting scene, where the king is in pursuit of an antelope. The
+cruelty of the chase appears like a menace symbolising the spirit of
+the king's life clashing against the spirit of the forest retreat,
+which is "sharanyam sarva-bh&uacute;t&acirc;n&acirc;m" (where all creatures find their
+protection of love). And the pleading of the forest-dwellers with the
+king to spare the life of the deer, helplessly innocent and beautiful,
+is the pleading that rises from the heart of the whole drama. "Never,
+oh, never is the arrow meant to pierce the tender body of a deer, even
+as the fire is not for the burning of flowers."</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>R&acirc;m&acirc;yana</i>, R&acirc;ma and his companions, in their banishment, had
+to traverse forest after forest; they had to live in leaf-thatched
+huts, to sleep on the bare ground. But as their hearts felt their
+kinship with woodland, hill, and stream, they were not in exile amidst
+these. Poets, brought up in an atmosphere of different ideals, would
+have taken this opportunity of depicting in dismal colours the
+hardship of the forest-life in order to bring out the martyrdom of
+R&acirc;machandra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> with all the emphasis of a strong contrast. But, in the
+<i>R&acirc;m&acirc;yana</i>, we are led to realise the greatness of the hero, not in a
+fierce struggle with Nature, but in sympathy with it. Sit&acirc;, the
+daughter-in-law of a great kingly house, goes along the forest paths.
+We read:</p>
+
+<p>"She asks R&acirc;ma about the flowering trees, and shrubs and creepers
+which she has not seen before. At her request Lakshmana gathers and
+brings her plants of all kinds, exuberant with flowers, and it
+delights her heart to see the forest rivers, variegated with their
+streams and sandy banks, resounding with the call of heron and duck.</p>
+
+<p>"When R&acirc;ma first took his abode in the Chitrakuta peak, that
+delightful Chitrakuta, by the M&acirc;lyavati river, with its easy slopes
+for landing, he forgot all the pain of leaving his home in the capital
+at the sight of those woodlands, alive with beast and bird."</p>
+
+<p>Having lived on that hill for long, R&acirc;ma, who was "giri-vana-priya"
+(lover of the mountain and the forest), said one day to Sit&acirc;:</p>
+
+<p>"When I look upon the beauties of this hill, the loss of my kingdom
+troubles me no longer, nor does the separation from my friends cause
+me any pang."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus passed R&acirc;machandra's exile, now in woodland, now in hermitage.
+The love which R&acirc;ma and Sit&acirc; bore to each other united them, not only
+to each other, but to the universe of life. That is why, when Sit&acirc; was
+taken away, the loss seemed to be so great to the forest itself.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Strangely enough, in Shakespeare's dramas, like those of K&acirc;lid&acirc;sa, we
+find a secret vein of complaint against the artificial life of the
+king's court&mdash;the life of ungrateful treachery and falsehood. And
+almost everywhere, in his dramas, foreign scenes have been introduced
+in connection with some working of the life of unscrupulous ambition.
+It is perfectly obvious in <i>Timon of Athens</i>&mdash;but there Nature offers
+no message or balm to the injured soul of man. In <i>Cymbeline</i> the
+mountainous forest and the cave appear in their aspect of obstruction
+to life's opportunities. These only seem tolerable in comparison with
+the vicissitudes of fortune in the artificial court life. In <i>As You
+Like It</i> the forest of Arden is didactic in its lessons. It does not
+bring peace, but preaches, when it says:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hath not old custom made this life more sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More free from peril than the envious court?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the <i>Tempest</i>, through Prospero's treatment of Ariel and Caliban we
+realise man's struggle with Nature and his longing to sever connection
+with her. In <i>Macbeth</i>, as a prelude to a bloody crime of treachery
+and treason, we are introduced to a scene of barren heath where the
+three witches appear as personifications of Nature's malignant forces;
+and in <i>King Lear</i> it is the fury of a father's love turned into
+curses by the ingratitude born of the unnatural life of the court that
+finds its symbol in the storm on the heath. The tragic intensity of
+<i>Hamlet</i> and <i>Othello</i> is unrelieved by any touch of Nature's
+eternity. Except in a passing glimpse of a moonlight night in the love
+scene in the <i>Merchant of Venice</i>, Nature has not been allowed in
+other dramas of this series, including <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> and <i>Antony
+and Cleopatra</i>, to contribute her own music to the music of man's
+love. In <i>The Winter's Tale</i> the cruelty of a king's suspicion stands
+bare in its relentlessness, and Nature cowers before it, offering no
+consolation.</p>
+
+<p>I hope it is needless for me to say that these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> observations are not
+intended to minimise Shakespeare's great power as a dramatic poet, but
+to show in his works the gulf between Nature and human nature owing to
+the tradition of his race and time. It cannot be said that beauty of
+nature is ignored in his writings; only he fails to recognise in them
+the truth of the inter-penetration of human life with the cosmic life
+of the world. We observe a completely different attitude of mind in
+the later English poets like Wordsworth and Shelley, which can be
+attributed in the main to the great mental change in Europe, at that
+particular period, through the influence of the newly discovered
+philosophy of India which stirred the soul of Germany and aroused the
+attention of other Western countries.</p>
+
+<p>In Milton's <i>Paradise Lost</i>, the very subject&mdash;Man dwelling in the
+garden of Paradise&mdash;seems to afford a special opportunity for bringing
+out the true greatness of man's relationship with Nature. But though
+the poet has described to us the beauties of the garden, though he has
+shown to us the animals living there in amity and peace among
+themselves, there is no reality of kinship between them and man. They
+were created for man's enjoyment; man was their lord and master. We
+find no trace of the love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> between the first man and woman gradually
+surpassing themselves and overflowing the rest of creation, such as we
+find in the love scenes in <i>Kum&acirc;ra-Sambhava</i> and <i>Shakuntal&acirc;</i>. In the
+seclusion of the bower, where the first man and woman rested in the
+garden of Paradise&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">Bird, beast, insect or worm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Durst enter none, such was their awe of man.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Not that India denied the superiority of man, but the test of that
+superiority lay, according to her, in the comprehensiveness of
+sympathy, not in the aloofness of absolute distinction.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>India holds sacred, and counts as places of pilgrimage, all spots
+which display a special beauty or splendour of nature. These had no
+original attraction on account of any special fitness for cultivation
+or settlement. Here, man is free, not to look upon Nature as a source
+of supply of his necessities, but to realise his soul beyond himself.
+The Him&acirc;layas of India are sacred and the Vindhya Hills. Her majestic
+rivers are sacred. Lake M&acirc;nasa and the confluence of the Ganges and
+the Jamuna are sacred. India has saturated with her love and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> worship
+the great Nature with which her children are surrounded, whose light
+fills their eyes with gladness, and whose water cleanses them, whose
+food gives them life, and from whose majestic mystery comes forth the
+constant revelation of the infinite in music, scent, and colour, which
+brings its awakening to the soul of man. India gains the world through
+worship, through spiritual communion; and the idea of freedom to which
+she aspired was based upon the realisation of her spiritual unity.</p>
+
+<p>When, in my recent voyage to Europe, our ship left Aden and sailed
+along the sea which lay between the two continents, we passed by the
+red and barren rocks of Arabia on our right side and the gleaming
+sands of Egypt on our left. They seemed to me like two giant brothers
+exchanging with each other burning glances of hatred, kept apart by
+the tearful entreaty of the sea from whose womb they had their birth.</p>
+
+<p>There was an immense stretch of silence on the left shore as well as
+on the right, but the two shores spoke to me of the two different
+historical dramas enacted. The civilisation which found its growth in
+Egypt was continued across long centuries, elaborately rich with
+sentiments and expressions of life, with pictures,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> sculptures,
+temples, and ceremonials. This was a country whose guardian-spirit was
+a noble river, which spread the festivities of life on its banks
+across the heart of the land. There man never raised the barrier of
+alienation between himself and the rest of the world.</p>
+
+<p>On the opposite shore of the Red Sea the civilisation which grew up in
+the inhospitable soil of Arabia had a contrary character to that of
+Egypt. There man felt himself isolated in his hostile and bare
+surroundings. His idea of God became that of a jealous God. His mind
+naturally dwelt upon the principle of separateness. It roused in him
+the spirit of fight, and this spirit was a force that drove him far
+and wide. These two civilisations represented two fundamental
+divisions of human nature. The one contained in it the spirit of
+conquest and the other the spirit of harmony. And both of these have
+their truth and purpose in human existence.</p>
+
+<p>The characters of two eminent sages have been described in our
+mythology. One was Vashishtha and another Vishv&acirc;mitra. Both of them
+were great, but they represented two different types of wisdom; and
+there was conflict between them. Vishv&acirc;mitra sought to achieve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> power
+and was proud of it; Vashishtha was rudely smitten by that power. But
+his hurt and his loss could not touch the illumination of his soul;
+for he rose above them and could forgive. R&acirc;machandra, the great hero
+of our epic, had his initiation to the spiritual life from Vashishtha,
+the life of inner peace and perfection. But he had his initiation to
+war from Vishv&acirc;mitra, who called him to kill the demons and gave him
+weapons that were irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>Those two sages symbolise in themselves the two guiding spirits of
+civilisation. Can it be true that they shall never be reconciled? If
+so, can ever the age of peace and co-operation dawn upon the human
+world? Creation is the harmony of contrary forces&mdash;the forces of
+attraction and repulsion. When they join hands, all the fire and fight
+are changed into the smile of flowers and the songs of birds. When
+there is only one of them triumphant and the other defeated, then
+either there is the death of cold rigidity or that of suicidal
+explosion.</p>
+
+<p>Humanity, for ages, has been busy with the one great creation of
+spiritual life. Its best wisdom, its discipline, its literature and
+art, all the teachings and self-sacrifice of its noblest teachers,
+have been for this. But the harmony<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> of contrary forces, which give
+their rhythm to all creation, has not yet been perfected by man in his
+civilisation, and the Creator in him is baffled over and over again.
+He comes back to his work, however, and makes himself busy, building
+his world in the midst of desolation and ruins. His history is the
+history of his aspiration interrupted and renewed. And one truth of
+which he must be reminded, therefore, is that the power which
+accomplishes the miracle of creation, by bringing conflicting forces
+into the harmony of the One, is no passion, but a love which accepts
+the bonds of self-control from the joy of its own immensity&mdash;a love
+whose sacrifice is the manifestation of its endless wealth within
+itself.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="AN_INDIAN_FOLK_RELIGION" id="AN_INDIAN_FOLK_RELIGION"></a>AN INDIAN FOLK RELIGION<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> historical time the Buddha comes first of those who declared
+salvation to all men, without distinction, as by right man's own. What
+was the special force which startled men's minds and, almost within
+the master's lifetime, spread his teachings over India? It was the
+unique significance of the event, when a man came to men and said to
+them, "I am here to emancipate you from the miseries of the thraldom
+of self." This wisdom came, neither in texts of Scripture, nor in
+symbols of deities, nor in religious practices sanctified by ages, but
+through the voice of a living man and the love that flowed from a
+human heart.</p>
+
+<p>And I believe this was the first occasion in the history of the world
+when the idea of the Avat&acirc;r found its place in religion. Western
+scholars are never tired of insisting that Buddhism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> is of the nature
+of a moral code, coldly leading to the path of extinction. They forget
+that it was held to be a religion that roused in its devotees an
+inextinguishable fire of enthusiasm and carried them to lifelong exile
+across the mountain and desert barriers. To say that a philosophy of
+suicide can keep kindled in human hearts for centuries such fervour of
+self-sacrifice is to go against all the laws of sane psychology. The
+religious enthusiasm which cannot be bound within any daily ritual,
+but overflows into adventures of love and beneficence, must have in
+its centre that element of personality which rouses the whole soul. In
+answer, it may possibly be said that this was due to the personality
+of Buddha himself. But that also is not quite true. The personality
+which stirs the human heart to its immense depths, leading it to
+impossible deeds of heroism, must in that process itself reveal to men
+the infinite which is in all humanity. And that is what happened in
+Buddhism, making it a religion in the complete sense of the word.</p>
+
+<p>Like the religion of the Upanishads, Buddhism also generated two
+divergent currents; the one impersonal, preaching the abnegation of
+self through discipline, and the other personal,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> preaching the
+cultivation of sympathy for all creatures, and devotion to the
+infinite truth of love; the other, which is called the Mah&acirc;y&acirc;na, had
+its origin in the positive element contained in Buddha's teachings,
+which is immeasurable love. It could never, by any logic, find its
+reality in the emptiness of the truthless abyss. And the object of
+Buddha's meditation and his teachings was to free humanity from
+sufferings. But what was the path that he revealed to us? Was it some
+negative way of evading pain and seeking security against it? On the
+contrary, his path was the path of sacrifice&mdash;the utmost sacrifice of
+love. The meaning of such sacrifice is to reach some ultimate truth,
+some positive ideal, which in its greatness can accept suffering and
+transmute it into the profound peace of self-renunciation. True
+emancipation from suffering, which is the inalienable condition of the
+limited life of the self, can never be attained by fleeing from it,
+but rather by changing its value in the realm of truth&mdash;the truth of
+the higher life of love.</p>
+
+<p>We have learnt that, by calculations made in accordance with the law
+of gravitation, some planets were discovered exactly in the place
+where they should be. Such a law of gravitation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> there is also in the
+moral world. And when we find men's minds disturbed, as they were by
+the preaching of the Buddha, we can be sure, even without any
+corroborative evidence, that there must have been some great luminous
+body of attraction, positive and powerful, and not a mere unfathomable
+vacancy. It is exactly this which we discover in the heart of the
+Mah&acirc;y&acirc;na system; and we have no hesitation in saying that the truth of
+Buddhism is there. The oil has to be burnt, not for the purpose of
+diminishing it, but for the purpose of giving light to the lamp. And
+when the Buddha said that the self must go, he said at the same moment
+that love must be realised. Thus originated the doctrine of the
+Dharma-k&acirc;ya, the Infinite Wisdom and Love manifested in the Buddha. It
+was the first instance, as I have said, when men felt that the
+Universal and the Eternal Spirit was revealed in a human individual
+whom they had known and touched. The joy was too great for them, since
+the very idea itself came to them as a freedom&mdash;a freedom from the
+sense of their measureless insignificance. It was the first time, I
+repeat, when the individual, as a man, felt in himself the Infinite
+made concrete.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>What was more, those men who felt the love welling forth from the
+heart of Buddhism, as one with the current of the Eternal Love itself,
+were struck with the idea that such an effluence could never have been
+due to a single cataclysm of history&mdash;unnatural and therefore untrue.
+They felt instead that it was in the eternal nature of truth, that the
+event must belong to a series of manifestations; there must have been
+numberless other revelations in the past and endless others to follow.</p>
+
+<p>The idea grew and widened until men began to feel that this Infinite
+Being was already in every one of them, and that it rested with
+themselves to remove the sensual obstructions and reveal him in their
+own lives. In every individual there was, they realised, the
+potentiality of Buddha&mdash;that is to say, the Infinite made manifest.</p>
+
+<p>We have to keep in mind the great fact that the preaching of the
+Buddha in India was not followed by stagnation of life&mdash;as would
+surely have happened if humanity was without any positive goal and his
+teaching was without any permanent value in itself. On the contrary,
+we find the arts and sciences springing up in its wake, institutions
+started for alleviating the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> misery of all creatures, human and
+non-human, and great centres of education founded. Some mighty power
+was suddenly roused from its obscurity, which worked for long
+centuries and changed the history of man in a large part of the world.
+And that power came into its full activity only by the individual
+being made conscious of his infinite worth. It was like the sudden
+discovery of a great mine of living wealth.</p>
+
+<p>During the period of Buddhism the doctrine of deliverance flourished,
+which reached all mankind and released man's inner resources from
+neglect and self-insult. Even to-day we see in our own country human
+nature, from its despised corner of indignity, slowly and painfully
+finding its way to assert the inborn majesty of man. It is like the
+imprisoned tree finding a rift in the wall, and sending out its eager
+branches into freedom, to prove that darkness is not its birthright,
+that its love is for the sunshine. In the time of the Buddha the
+individual discovered his own immensity of worth, first by witnessing
+a man who united his heart in sympathy with all creatures, in all
+worlds, through the power of a love that knew no bounds; and then by
+learning that the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> light of perfection lay confined within
+himself behind the clouds of selfish desire, and that the
+Bodhi-hridaya&mdash;"the heart of the Eternal Enlightenment"&mdash;every moment
+claimed its unveiling in his own heart. N&acirc;g&acirc;rjuna speaks of this
+Bodhi-hridaya (another of whose names is Bodhi-Citta) as follows:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">One who understands the nature of the Bodhi-hridaya, sees
+everything with a loving heart; for love is the essence of
+Bodhi-hridaya.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>My object in writing this paper is to show, by the further help of
+illustration from a popular religious sect of Bengal, that the
+religious instinct of man urges him towards a truth, by which he can
+transcend the finite nature of the individual self. Man would never
+feel the indignity of his limitations if these were inevitable. Within
+him he has glimpses of the Infinite, which give him assurance that
+this truth is not in his limitations, but that this truth can be
+attained by love. For love is the positive quality of the Infinite,
+and love's sacrifice accordingly does not lead to emptiness, but to
+fulfilment, to Bodhi-hridaya, "the heart of enlightenment."</p>
+
+<p>The members of the religious sect I have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>mentioned call themselves
+"Ba&uuml;l." They live outside social recognition, and their very obscurity
+helps them in their seeking, from a direct source, the enlightenment
+which the soul longs for, the eternal light of love.</p>
+
+<p>It would be absurd to say that there is little difference between
+Buddhism and the religion of these simple people, who have no system
+of metaphysics to support their faith. But my object in bringing close
+together these two religions, which seem to belong to opposite poles,
+is to point out the fundamental unity in them. Both of them believe in
+a fulfilment which is reached by love's emancipating us from the
+dominance of self. In both these religions we find man's yearning to
+attain the infinite worth of his individuality, not through any
+conventional valuation of society, but through his perfect
+relationship with Truth. They agree in holding that the realisation of
+our ultimate object is waiting for us in ourselves. The Ba&uuml;l likens
+this fulfilment to the blossoming of a bud, and sings:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Make way, O bud, make way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Burst open thy heart and make way.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The opening spirit has overtaken thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Canst thou remain a bud any longer?<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></div></div>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>One day, in a small village in Bengal, an ascetic woman from the
+neighbourhood came to see me. She had the name "Sarva-khepi" given to
+her by the village people, the meaning of which is "the woman who is
+mad about all things." She fixed her star-like eyes upon my face and
+startled me with the question, "When are you coming to meet me
+underneath the trees?" Evidently she pitied me who lived (according to
+her) prisoned behind walls, banished away from the great meeting-place
+of the All, where she had her dwelling. Just at that moment my
+gardener came with his basket, and when the woman understood that the
+flowers in the vase on my table were going to be thrown away, to make
+place for the fresh ones, she looked pained and said to me, "You are
+always engaged reading and writing; you do not see." Then she took the
+discarded flowers in her palms, kissed them and touched them with her
+forehead, and reverently murmured to herself, "Beloved of my heart." I
+felt that this woman, in her direct vision of the infinite personality
+in the heart of all things, truly represented the spirit of India.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the same village I came into touch with some Ba&uuml;l singers. I had
+known them by their names, occasionally seen them singing and begging
+in the street, and so passed them by, vaguely classifying them in my
+mind under the general name of Vair&acirc;gis, or ascetics.</p>
+
+<p>The time came when I had occasion to meet with some members of the
+same body and talk to them about spiritual matters. The first Ba&uuml;l
+song, which I chanced to hear with any attention, profoundly stirred
+my mind. Its words are so simple that it makes me hesitate to render
+them in a foreign tongue, and set them forward for critical
+observation. Besides, the best part of a song is missed when the tune
+is absent; for thereby its movement and its colour are lost, and it
+becomes like a butterfly whose wings have been plucked.</p>
+
+<p>The first line may be translated thus: "Where shall I meet him, the
+Man of my Heart?" This phrase, "the Man of my Heart," is not peculiar
+to this song, but is usual with the Ba&uuml;l sect. It means that, for me,
+the supreme truth of all existence is in the revelation of the
+Infinite in my own humanity.</p>
+
+<p>"The Man of my Heart," to the Ba&uuml;l, is like a divine instrument
+perfectly tuned. He gives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> expression to infinite truth in the music
+of life. And the longing for the truth which is in us, which we have
+not yet realised, breaks out in the following Ba&uuml;l song:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where shall I meet him, the Man of my Heart?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is lost to me and I seek him wandering from land to land.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am listless for that moonrise of beauty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">which is to light my life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">which I long to see in the fulness of vision, in gladness of heart.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The name of the poet who wrote this song was Gagan. He was almost
+illiterate; and the ideas he received from his Ba&uuml;l teacher found no
+distraction from the self-consciousness of the modern age. He was a
+village postman, earning about ten shillings a month, and he died
+before he had completed his teens. The sentiment, to which he gave
+such intensity of expression, is common to most of the songs of his
+sect. And it is a sect, almost exclusively confined to that lower
+floor of society, where the light of modern education hardly finds an
+entrance, while wealth and respectability shun its utter indigence.</p>
+
+<p>In the song I have translated above, the longing of the singer to
+realise the infinite in his own personality is expressed. This has to
+be done daily by its perfect expression in life, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> love. For the
+personal expression of life, in its perfection, is love; just as the
+personal expression of truth in its perfection is beauty.</p>
+
+<p>In the political life of the modern age the idea of democracy has
+given mankind faith in the individual. It gives each man trust in his
+own possibilities, and pride in his humanity. Something of the same
+idea, we find, has been working in the popular mind of India, with
+regard to its religious consciousness. Over and over again it tries to
+assert, not only that God is <i>for</i> each of us, but also that God is
+<i>in</i> each of us. These people have no special incarnations in their
+simple theology, because they know that God is special to each
+individual. They say that to be born a man is the greatest privilege
+that can fall to a creature in all the world. They assert that gods in
+Paradise envy human beings. Why? Because God's will, in giving his
+love, finds its completeness in man's will returning that love.
+Therefore Humanity is a necessary factor in the perfecting of the
+divine truth. The Infinite, for its self-expression, comes down into
+the manifoldness of the Finite; and the Finite, for its
+self-realisation, must rise into the unity of the Infinite. Then only
+is the Cycle of Truth complete.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The dignity of man, in his eternal right of Truth, finds expression in
+the following song, composed, not by a theologian or a man of letters,
+but by one who belongs to that ninety per cent of the population of
+British India whose education has been far less than elementary, in
+fact almost below zero:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My longing is to meet you in play of love, my Lover;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But this longing is not only mine, but also yours.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For your lips can have their smile, and your flute<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">its music, only in your delight in my love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">and therefore you are importunate, even as I am.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If the world were a mere expression of formative forces, then this
+song would be pathetic in its presumption. But why is there beauty at
+all in creation&mdash;the beauty whose only meaning is in a call that
+claims disinterestedness as a response? The poet proudly says: "Your
+flute could not have its music of beauty if your delight were not in
+my love. Your power is great&mdash;and there I am not equal to you&mdash;but it
+lies even in me to make you smile, and if you and I never meet, then
+this play of love remains incomplete."</p>
+
+<p>If this were not true, then it would be an utter humiliation to exist
+at all in this world. If it were solely <i>our</i> business to seek the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+Lover, and <i>his</i> to keep himself passively aloof in the infinity of
+his glory, or actively masterful only in imposing his commands upon
+us, then we should dare to defy him, and refuse to accept the
+everlasting insult latent in the one-sided importunity of a slave. And
+this is what the Ba&uuml;l says&mdash;he who, in the world of men, goes about
+singing for alms from door to door, with his one-stringed instrument
+and long robe of patched-up rags on his back:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I stop and sit here on the road. Do not ask me to walk farther.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If your love can be complete without mine, let me turn back from seeing you.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have been travelling to seek you, my friend, for long;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet I refuse to beg a sight of you, if you do not feel my need.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am blind with market dust and midday glare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">and so wait, my heart's lover, in hopes that your own love<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">will send you to find me out.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The poet is fully conscious that his value in the world's market is
+pitifully small; that he is neither wealthy nor learned. Yet he has
+his great compensation, for he has come close to his Lover's heart. In
+Bengal the women bathing in the river often use their overturned water
+jars to keep themselves floating when they swim, and the poet uses
+this incident for his simile:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It is lucky that I am an empty vessel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For when you swim, I keep floating by your side.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your full vessels are left on the empty shore, they are for use;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I am carried to the river in your arms, and I dance<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">to the rhythm of your heart-throbs and heaving of the waves.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The great distinguished people of the world do not know that these
+beggars&mdash;deprived of education, honour, and wealth&mdash;can, in the pride
+of their souls, look down upon them as the unfortunate ones, who are
+left on the shore for their worldly uses, but whose life ever misses
+the touch of the Lover's arms.</p>
+
+<p>The feeling that man is not a mere casual visitor at the palace-gate
+of the world, but the invited guest whose presence is needed to give
+the royal banquet its sole meaning, is not confined to any particular
+sect in India. Let me quote here some poems from a medi&aelig;val poet of
+Western India&mdash;Jn&acirc;nd&acirc;s&mdash;whose works are nearly forgotten, and have
+become scarce from the very exquisiteness of their excellence. In the
+following poem he is addressing God's messenger, who comes to us in
+the morning light of our childhood, in the dusk of our day's end, and
+in the night's darkness:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Messenger, morning brought you, habited in gold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After sunset, your song wore a tune of ascetic grey, and then came night.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your message was written in bright letters across the black.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why is such splendour about you, to lure the heart of one who is nothing?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">This is the answer of the messenger:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Great is the festival hall where you are to be the only guest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore the letter to you is written from sky to sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I, the proud servant, bring the invitation with all ceremony.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">And thus the poet knows that the silent rows of stars carry God's own
+invitation to the individual soul.</p>
+
+<p>The same poet sings:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What hast thou come to beg from the beggar, O King of Kings?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My Kingdom is poor for want of him, my dear one, and I wait for him in sorrow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How long will you keep him waiting, O wretch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">who has waited for you for ages in silence and stillness?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Open your gate, and make this very moment fit for the union.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">It is the song of man's pride in the value given to him by Supreme
+Love and realised by his own love.</p>
+
+<p>The Vaishnava religion, which has become the popular religion of
+India, carries the same message: God's love finding its finality in
+man's love. According to it, the lover, man, is the complement of the
+Lover, God, in the internal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> love drama of existence; and God's call
+is ever wafted in man's heart in the world-music, drawing him towards
+the union. This idea has been expressed in rich elaboration of symbols
+verging upon realism. But for these Ba&uuml;ls this idea is direct and
+simple, full of the dignified beauty of truth, which shuns all tinsels
+of ornament.</p>
+
+<p>The Ba&uuml;l poet, when asked why he had no sect mark on his forehead,
+answered in his song that the true colour decoration appears on the
+skin of the fruit when its inner core is filled with ripe, sweet
+juice; but by artificially smearing it with colour from outside you do
+not make it ripe. And he says of his Guru, his teacher, that he is
+puzzled to find in which direction he must make salutation. For his
+teacher is not one, but many, who, moving on, form a procession of
+wayfarers.</p>
+
+<p>Ba&uuml;ls have no temple or image for their worship, and this utter
+simplicity is needful for men whose one subject is to realise the
+innermost nearness of God. The Ba&uuml;l poet expressly says that if we try
+to approach God through the senses we miss him:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bring him not into your house as the guest of your eyes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">but let him come at your heart's invitation.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Opening your doors to that which is seen only, is to lose it.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Yet, being a poet, he also knows that the objects of sense can reveal
+their spiritual meaning only when they are not seen through mere
+physical eyes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Eyes can see only dust and earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But feel it with your heart, it is pure joy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flowers of delight blossom on all sides, in every form,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">but where is your heart's thread to weave them in a garland?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These Ba&uuml;ls have a philosophy, which they call the philosophy of the
+body; but they keep its secret; it is only for the initiated.
+Evidently the underlying idea is that the individual's body is itself
+the temple, in whose inner mystic shrine the Divine appears before the
+soul, and the key to it has to be found from those who know. But as
+the key is not for us outsiders, I leave it with the observation that
+this mystic philosophy of the body is the outcome of the attempt to
+get rid of all the outward shelters which are too costly for people
+like themselves. But this human body of ours is made by God's own
+hand, from his own love, and even if some men, in the pride of their
+superiority, may despise it, God finds his joy in dwelling in others
+of yet lower birth. It is a truth easier of discovery by these people
+of humble origin than by men of proud estate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The pride of the Ba&uuml;l beggar is not in his worldly distinction, but in
+the distinction that God himself has given to him. He feels himself
+like a flute through which God's own breath of love has been breathed:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My heart is like a flute he has played on.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If ever it fall into other hands,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">let him fling it away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My lover's flute is dear to him.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore, if to-day alien breath have entered it and sounded strange notes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let him break it to pieces and strew the dust with them.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So we find that this man also has his disgust of defilement. While the
+ambitious world of wealth and power despises him, he in his turn
+thinks that the world's touch desecrates him who has been made sacred
+by the touch of his Lover. He does not envy us our life of ambition
+and achievements, but he knows how precious his own life has been:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am poured forth in living notes of joy and sorrow by your breath.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Morning and evening, in summer and in rains, I am fashioned to music.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet should I be wholly spent in some flight of song,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall not grieve, the tune is so precious to me.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Our joys and sorrows are contradictory when self separates them in
+opposition. But for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> heart in which self merges in God's love,
+they lose their absoluteness. So the Ba&uuml;l's prayer is to feel in all
+situations&mdash;in danger, or pain, or sorrow&mdash;that he is in God's hands.
+He solves the problem of emancipation from sufferings by accepting and
+setting them in a higher context:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the boat, you are the sea, and also the boatman.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though you never make the shore, though you let me sink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">why should I be foolish and afraid?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is the reaching the shore a greater prize than losing myself<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">with you?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you are only the haven, as they say, then what is the sea?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let it surge and toss me on its waves, I shall be content.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I live in you, whatever and however you appear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save me or kill me as you wish, only never leave me in<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">others' hands.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>It is needless to say, before I conclude, that I had neither the
+training nor the opportunity to study this mendicant religious sect in
+Bengal from an ethnological standpoint. I was attracted to find out
+how the living currents of religious movements work in the heart of
+the people, saving them from degradation imposed by the society of the
+learned, of the rich, or of the high-born; how the spirit of man, by
+making use even of its obstacles, reaches fulfilment, led thither, not
+by the learned authorities in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> scriptures, or by the mechanical
+impulse of the dogma-driven crowd, but by the unsophisticated
+aspiration of the loving soul. On the inaccessible mountain peaks of
+theology the snows of creed remain eternally rigid, cold, and pure.
+But God's manifest shower falls direct on the plain of humble hearts,
+flowing there in various channels, even getting mixed with some mud in
+its course, as it is soaked into the underground currents, invisible,
+but ever-moving.</p>
+
+<p>I can think of nothing better than to conclude my paper with a poem of
+Jn&acirc;nd&acirc;s, in which the aspiration of all simple spirits has found a
+devout expression:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I had travelled all day and was tired; then I bowed my head<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">towards thy kingly court still far away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The night deepened, a longing burned in my heart.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whatever the words I sang, pain cried through them&mdash;for<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">even my songs thirsted&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When time seemed lost in darkness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">thy hand dropped its sceptre to take up the lute and<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">strike the uttermost chords;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my heart sang out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, who is this whose arms enfold me?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whatever I have to leave, let me leave; and whatever I<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">have to bear, let me bear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only let me walk with thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Descend at whiles from thy high audience hall, come down<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">amid joys and sorrows.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hide in all forms and delights, in love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in my heart sing thy songs,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Outlines of Mah&acirc;y&acirc;na Buddhism</i>, by Dr. D.&nbsp;T. Suzuki.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="EAST_AND_WEST" id="EAST_AND_WEST"></a>EAST AND WEST<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is not always a profound interest in man that carries travellers
+nowadays to distant lands. More often it is the facility for rapid
+movement. For lack of time and for the sake of convenience we
+generalise and crush our human facts into the packages within the
+steel trunks that hold our travellers' reports.</p>
+
+<p>Our knowledge of our own countrymen and our feelings about them have
+slowly and unconsciously grown out of innumerable facts which are full
+of contradictions and subject to incessant change. They have the
+elusive mystery and fluidity of life. We cannot define to ourselves
+what we are as a whole, because we know too much; because our
+knowledge is more than knowledge. It is an immediate consciousness of
+personality, any evaluation of which carries some emotion, joy or
+sorrow, shame or exaltation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> But in a foreign land we try to find our
+compensation for the meagreness of our data by the compactness of the
+generalisation which our imperfect sympathy itself helps us to form.
+When a stranger from the West travels in the Eastern world he takes
+the facts that displease him and readily makes use of them for his
+rigid conclusions, fixed upon the unchallengeable authority of his
+personal experience. It is like a man who has his own boat for
+crossing his village stream, but, on being compelled to wade across
+some strange watercourse, draws angry comparisons as he goes from
+every patch of mud and every pebble which his feet encounter.</p>
+
+<p>Our mind has faculties which are universal, but its habits are
+insular. There are men who become impatient and angry at the least
+discomfort when their habits are incommoded. In their idea of the next
+world they probably conjure up the ghosts of their slippers and
+dressing-gowns, and expect the latchkey that opens their lodging-house
+door on earth to fit their front door in the other world. As
+travellers they are a failure; for they have grown too accustomed to
+their mental easy-chairs, and in their intellectual nature love home
+comforts,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> which are of local make, more than the realities of life,
+which, like earth itself, are full of ups and downs, yet are one in
+their rounded completeness.</p>
+
+<p>The modern age has brought the geography of the earth near to us, but
+made it difficult for us to come into touch with man. We go to strange
+lands and observe; we do not live there. We hardly meet men: but only
+specimens of knowledge. We are in haste to seek for general types and
+overlook individuals.</p>
+
+<p>When we fall into the habit of neglecting to use the understanding
+that comes of sympathy in our travels, our knowledge of foreign people
+grows insensitive, and therefore easily becomes both unjust and cruel
+in its character, and also selfish and contemptuous in its
+application. Such has, too often, been the case with regard to the
+meeting of Western people in our days with others for whom they do not
+recognise any obligation of kinship.</p>
+
+<p>It has been admitted that the dealings between different races of men
+are not merely between individuals; that our mutual understanding is
+either aided, or else obstructed, by the general emanations forming
+the social atmosphere. These emanations are our collective<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> ideas and
+collective feelings, generated according to special historical
+circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, the caste-idea is a collective idea in India. When we
+approach an Indian who is under the influence of this collective idea,
+he is no longer a pure individual with his conscience fully awake to
+the judging of the value of a human being. He is more or less a
+passive medium for giving expression to the sentiment of a whole
+community.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident that the caste-idea is not creative; it is merely
+institutional. It adjusts human beings according to some mechanical
+arrangement. It emphasises the negative side of the individual&mdash;his
+separateness. It hurts the complete truth in man.</p>
+
+<p>In the West, also, the people have a certain collective idea that
+obscures their humanity. Let me try to explain what I feel about it.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Lately I went to visit some battlefields of France which had been
+devastated by war. The awful calm of desolation, which still bore
+wrinkles of pain&mdash;death-struggles stiffened into ugly ridges&mdash;brought
+before my mind the vision<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> of a huge demon, which had no shape, no
+meaning, yet had two arms that could strike and break and tear, a
+gaping mouth that could devour, and bulging brains that could conspire
+and plan. It was a purpose, which had a living body, but no complete
+humanity to temper it. Because it was passion&mdash;belonging to life, and
+yet not having the wholeness of life&mdash;it was the most terrible of
+life's enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Something of the same sense of oppression in a different degree, the
+same desolation in a different aspect, is produced in my mind when I
+realise the effect of the West upon Eastern life&mdash;the West which, in
+its relation to us, is all plan and purpose incarnate, without any
+superfluous humanity.</p>
+
+<p>I feel the contrast very strongly in Japan. In that country the old
+world presents itself with some ideal of perfection, in which man has
+his varied opportunities of self-revelation in art, in ceremonial, in
+religious faith, and in customs expressing the poetry of social
+relationship. There one feels that deep delight of hospitality which
+life offers to life. And side by side, in the same soil, stands the
+modern world, which is stupendously big and powerful, but
+inhospitable. It has no simple-hearted welcome for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> man. It is living;
+yet the incompleteness of life's ideal within it cannot but hurt
+humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The wriggling tentacles of a cold-blooded utilitarianism, with which
+the West has grasped all the easily yielding succulent portions of the
+East, are causing pain and indignation throughout the Eastern
+countries. The West comes to us, not with the imagination and sympathy
+that create and unite, but with a shock of passion&mdash;passion for power
+and wealth. This passion is a mere force, which has in it the
+principle of separation, of conflict.</p>
+
+<p>I have been fortunate in coming into close touch with individual men
+and women of the Western countries, and have felt with them their
+sorrows and shared their aspirations. I have known that they seek the
+same God, who is my God&mdash;even those who deny Him. I feel certain that,
+if the great light of culture be extinct in Europe, our horizon in the
+East will mourn in darkness. It does not hurt my pride to acknowledge
+that, in the present age, Western humanity has received its mission to
+be the teacher of the world; that her science, through the mastery of
+laws of nature, is to liberate human souls from the dark dungeon of
+matter. For this very reason I have realised all the more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> strongly,
+on the other hand, that the dominant collective idea in the Western
+countries is not creative. It is ready to enslave or kill individuals,
+to drug a great people with soul-killing poison, darkening their whole
+future with the black mist of stupefaction, and emasculating entire
+races of men to the utmost degree of helplessness. It is wholly
+wanting in spiritual power to blend and harmonise; it lacks the sense
+of the great personality of man.</p>
+
+<p>The most significant fact of modern days is this, that the West has
+met the East. Such a momentous meeting of humanity, in order to be
+fruitful, must have in its heart some great emotional idea, generous
+and creative. There can be no doubt that God's choice has fallen upon
+the knights-errant of the West for the service of the present age;
+arms and armour have been given to them; but have they yet realised in
+their hearts the single-minded loyalty to their cause which can resist
+all temptations of bribery from the devil? The world to-day is offered
+to the West. She will destroy it, if she does not use it for a great
+creation of man. The materials for such a creation are in the hands of
+science; but the creative genius is in Man's spiritual ideal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>When I was young a stranger from Europe came to Bengal. He chose his
+lodging among the people of the country, shared with them their frugal
+diet, and freely offered them his service. He found employment in the
+houses of the rich, teaching them French and German, and the money
+thus earned he spent to help poor students in buying books. This meant
+for him hours of walking in the mid-day heat of a tropical summer;
+for, intent upon exercising the utmost economy, he refused to hire
+conveyances. He was pitiless in his exaction from himself of his
+resources, in money, time, and strength, to the point of privation;
+and all this for the sake of a people who were obscure, to whom he was
+not born, yet whom he dearly loved. He did not come to us with a
+professional mission of teaching sectarian creeds; he had not in his
+nature the least trace of that self-sufficiency of goodness, which
+humiliates by gifts the victims of its insolent benevolence. Though he
+did not know our language, he took every occasion to frequent our
+meetings and ceremonies; yet he was always afraid of intrusion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> and
+tenderly anxious lest he might offend us by his ignorance of our
+customs. At last, under the continual strain of work in an alien
+climate and surroundings, his health broke down. He died, and was
+cremated at our burning-ground, according to his express desire.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude of his mind, the manner of his living, the object of his
+life, his modesty, his unstinted self-sacrifice for a people who had
+not even the power to give publicity to any benefaction bestowed upon
+them, were so utterly unlike anything we were accustomed to associate
+with the Europeans in India, that it gave rise in our mind to a
+feeling of love bordering upon awe.</p>
+
+<p>We all have a realm, a private paradise, in our mind, where dwell
+deathless memories of persons who brought some divine light to our
+life's experience, who may not be known to others, and whose names
+have no place in the pages of history. Let me confess to you that this
+man lives as one of those immortals in the paradise of my individual
+life.</p>
+
+<p>He came from Sweden, his name was Hammargren. What was most remarkable
+in the event of his coming to us in Bengal was the fact that in his
+own country he had chanced to read some works of my great countryman,
+Ram<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> Mohan Roy, and felt an immense veneration for his genius and his
+character. Ram Mohan Roy lived in the beginning of the last century,
+and it is no exaggeration when I describe him as one of the immortal
+personalities of modern time. This young Swede had the unusual gift of
+a far-sighted intellect and sympathy, which enabled him even from his
+distance of space and time, and in spite of racial differences, to
+realise the greatness of Ram Mohan Roy. It moved him so deeply that he
+resolved to go to the country which produced this great man, and offer
+her his service. He was poor, and he had to wait some time in England
+before he could earn his passage money to India. There he came at
+last, and in reckless generosity of love utterly spent himself to the
+last breath of his life, away from home and kindred and all the
+inheritances of his motherland. His stay among us was too short to
+produce any outward result. He failed even to achieve during his life
+what he had in his mind, which was to found by the help of his scanty
+earnings a library as a memorial to Ram Mohan Roy, and thus to leave
+behind him a visible symbol of his devotion. But what I prize most in
+this European youth, who left no record of his life behind him, is not
+the memory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> of any service of goodwill, but the precious gift of
+respect which he offered to a people who are fallen upon evil times,
+and whom it is so easy to ignore or to humiliate. For the first time
+in the modern days this obscure individual from Sweden brought to our
+country the chivalrous courtesy of the West, a greeting of human
+fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>The coincidence came to me with a great and delightful surprise when
+the Nobel Prize was offered to me from Sweden. As a recognition of
+individual merit it was of great value to me, no doubt; but it was the
+acknowledgment of the East as a collaborator with the Western
+continents, in contributing its riches to the common stock of
+civilisation, which had the chief significance for the present age. It
+meant joining hands in comradeship by the two great hemispheres of the
+human world across the sea.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>To-day the real East remains unexplored. The blindness of contempt is
+more hopeless than the blindness of ignorance; for contempt kills the
+light which ignorance merely leaves unignited. The East is waiting to
+be understood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> by the Western races, in order not only to be able to
+give what is true in her, but also to be confident of her own mission.</p>
+
+<p>In Indian history, the meeting of the Mussulman and the Hindu produced
+Akbar, the object of whose dream was the unification of hearts and
+ideals. It had all the glowing enthusiasm of a religion, and it
+produced an immediate and a vast result even in his own lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>But the fact still remains that the Western mind, after centuries of
+contact with the East, has not evolved the enthusiasm of a chivalrous
+ideal which can bring this age to its fulfilment. It is everywhere
+raising thorny hedges of exclusion and offering human sacrifices to
+national self-seeking. It has intensified the mutual feelings of envy
+among Western races themselves, as they fight over their spoils and
+display a carnivorous pride in their snarling rows of teeth.</p>
+
+<p>We must again guard our minds from any encroaching distrust of the
+individuals of a nation. The active love of humanity and the spirit of
+martyrdom for the cause of justice and truth which I have met with in
+the Western countries have been a great lesson and inspiration to me.
+I have no doubt in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> my mind that the West owes its true greatness, not
+so much to its marvellous training of intellect, as to its spirit of
+service devoted to the welfare of man. Therefore I speak with a
+personal feeling of pain and sadness about the collective power which
+is guiding the helm of Western civilisation. It is a passion, not an
+ideal. The more success it has brought to Europe, the more costly it
+will prove to her at last, when the accounts have to be rendered. And
+the signs are unmistakable, that the accounts have been called for.
+The time has come when Europe must know that the forcible parasitism
+which she has been practising upon the two large Continents of the
+world&mdash;the two most unwieldy whales of humanity&mdash;must be causing to
+her moral nature a gradual atrophy and degeneration.</p>
+
+<p>As an example, let me quote the following extract from the concluding
+chapter of <i>From the Cape to Cairo</i>, by Messrs. Grogan and Sharp, two
+writers who have the power to inculcate their doctrines by precept and
+example. In their reference to the African they are candid, as when
+they say, "We have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limbs."
+These two sentences, carefully articulated, with a smack of
+enjoyment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> have been more clearly explained in the following
+statement, where some sense of that decency which is the attenuated
+ghost of a buried conscience, prompts the writers to use the phrase
+"compulsory labour" in place of the honest word "slavery"; just as the
+modern politician adroitly avoids the word "injunction" and uses the
+word "mandate." "Compulsory labour in some form," they say, "is the
+corollary of our occupation of the country." And they add: "It is
+pathetic, but it is history," implying thereby that moral sentiments
+have no serious effect in the history of human beings.</p>
+
+<p>Elsewhere they write: "Either we must give up the country
+commercially, or we must make the African work. And mere abuse of
+those who point out the impasse cannot change the facts. We must
+decide, and soon. Or rather the white man of South Africa will
+decide." The authors also confess that they have seen too much of the
+world "to have any lingering belief that Western civilisation benefits
+native races."</p>
+
+<p>The logic is simple&mdash;the logic of egoism. But the argument is
+simplified by lopping off the greater part of the premise. For these
+writers seem to hold that the only important<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> question for the white
+men of South Africa is, how indefinitely to grow fat on ostrich
+feathers and diamond mines, and dance jazz dances over the misery and
+degradation of a whole race of fellow-beings of a different colour
+from their own. Possibly they believe that moral laws have a special
+domesticated breed of comfortable concessions for the service of the
+people in power. Possibly they ignore the fact that commercial and
+political cannibalism, profitably practised upon foreign races, creeps
+back nearer home; that the cultivation of unwholesome appetites has
+its final reckoning with the stomach which has been made to serve it.
+For, after all, man is a spiritual being, and not a mere living
+money-bag jumping from profit to profit, and breaking the backbone of
+human races in its financial leapfrog.</p>
+
+<p>Such, however, has been the condition of things for more than a
+century; and to-day, trying to read the future by the light of the
+European conflagration, we are asking ourselves everywhere in the
+East: "Is this frightfully overgrown power really great? It can bruise
+us from without, but can it add to our wealth of spirit? It can sign
+peace treaties, but can it give peace?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was about two thousand years ago that all-powerful Rome in one of
+its eastern provinces executed on a cross a simple teacher of an
+obscure tribe of fishermen. On that day the Roman governor felt no
+falling off of his appetite or sleep. On that day there was, on the
+one hand, the agony, the humiliation, the death; on the other, the
+pomp of pride and festivity in the Governor's palace.</p>
+
+<p>And to-day? To whom, then, shall we bow the head?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Kasmai devaya havisha vidhema?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0" style="padding-top: 0.5em">(To which God shall we offer oblation?)<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We know of an instance in our own history of India, when a great
+personality, both in his life and voice, struck the keynote of the
+solemn music of the soul&mdash;love for all creatures. And that music
+crossed seas, mountains, and deserts. Races belonging to different
+climates, habits, and languages were drawn together, not in the clash
+of arms, not in the conflict of exploitation, but in harmony of life,
+in amity and peace. That was creation.</p>
+
+<p>When we think of it, we see at once what the confusion of thought was
+to which the Western poet, dwelling upon the difference<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> between East
+and West, referred when he said, "Never the twain shall meet." It is
+true that they are not yet showing any real sign of meeting. But the
+reason is because the West has not sent out its humanity to meet the
+man in the East, but only its machine. Therefore the poet's line has
+to be changed into something like this:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Man is man, machine is machine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And never the twain shall wed.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>You must know that red tape can never be a common human bond; that
+official sealing-wax can never provide means of mutual attachment;
+that it is a painful ordeal for human beings to have to receive
+favours from animated pigeonholes, and condescensions from printed
+circulars that give notice but never speak. The presence of the
+Western people in the East is a human fact. If we are to gain anything
+from them, it must not be a mere sum-total of legal codes and systems
+of civil and military services. Man is a great deal more to man than
+that. We have our human birthright to claim direct help from the man
+of the West, if he has anything great to give us. It must come to us,
+not through mere facts in a juxtaposition, but through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+spontaneous sacrifice made by those who have the gift, and therefore
+the responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>Earnestly I ask the poet of the Western world to realise and sing to
+you with all the great power of music which he has, that the East and
+the West are ever in search of each other, and that they must meet not
+merely in the fulness of physical strength, but in fulness of truth;
+that the right hand, which wields the sword, has the need of the left,
+which holds the shield of safety.</p>
+
+<p>The East has its seat in the vast plains watched over by the
+snow-peaked mountains and fertilised by rivers carrying mighty volumes
+of water to the sea. There, under the blaze of a tropical sun, the
+physical life has bedimmed the light of its vigour and lessened its
+claims. There man has had the repose of mind which has ever tried to
+set itself in harmony with the inner notes of existence. In the
+silence of sunrise and sunset, and on star-crowded nights, he has sat
+face to face with the Infinite, waiting for the revelation that opens
+up the heart of all that there is. He has said, in a rapture of
+realisation:</p>
+
+<p>"Hearken to me, ye children of the Immortal, who dwell in the Kingdom
+of Heaven.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> I have known, from beyond darkness, the Supreme Person,
+shining with the radiance of the sun."</p>
+
+<p>The man from the East, with his faith in the eternal, who in his soul
+had met the touch of the Supreme Person&mdash;did he never come to you in
+the West and speak to you of the Kingdom of Heaven? Did he not unite
+the East and the West in truth, in the unity of one spiritual bond
+between all children of the Immortal, in the realisation of one great
+Personality in all human persons?</p>
+
+<p>Yes, the East did once meet the West profoundly in the growth of her
+life. Such union became possible, because the East came to the West
+with the ideal that is creative, and not with the passion that
+destroys moral bonds. The mystic consciousness of the Infinite, which
+she brought with her, was greatly needed by the man of the West to
+give him his balance.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the East must find her own balance in Science&mdash;the
+magnificent gift that the West can bring to her. Truth has its nest as
+well as its sky. That nest is definite in structure, accurate in law
+of construction; and though it has to be changed and rebuilt over and
+over again, the need of it is never-ending<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> and its laws are eternal.
+For some centuries the East has neglected the nest-building of truth.
+She has not been attentive to learn its secret. Trying to cross the
+trackless infinite, the East has relied solely upon her wings. She has
+spurned the earth, till, buffeted by storms, her wings are hurt and
+she is tired, sorely needing help. But has she then to be told that
+the messenger of the sky and the builder of the nest shall never
+meet?</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_MODERN_AGE" id="THE_MODERN_AGE"></a>THE MODERN AGE<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Wherever</span> man meets man in a living relationship, the meeting finds its
+natural expression in works of art, the signatures of beauty, in which
+the mingling of the personal touch leaves its memorial.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, a relationship of pure utility humiliates man&mdash;it
+ignores the rights and needs of his deeper nature; it feels no
+compunction in maltreating and killing things of beauty that can never
+be restored.</p>
+
+<p>Some years ago, when I set out from Calcutta on my voyage to Japan,
+the first thing that shocked me, with a sense of personal injury, was
+the ruthless intrusion of the factories for making gunny-bags on both
+banks of the Ganges. The blow it gave to me was owing to the precious
+memory of the days of my boyhood, when the scenery of this river was
+the only great thing near<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> my birthplace reminding me of the existence
+of a world which had its direct communication with our innermost
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Calcutta is an upstart town with no depth of sentiment in her face and
+in her manners. It may truly be said about her genesis:&mdash;In the
+beginning there was the spirit of the Shop, which uttered through its
+megaphone, "Let there be the Office!" and there was Calcutta. She
+brought with her no dower of distinction, no majesty of noble or
+romantic origin; she never gathered around her any great historical
+associations, any annals of brave sufferings, or memory of mighty
+deeds. The only thing which gave her the sacred baptism of beauty was
+the river. I was fortunate enough to be born before the smoke-belching
+iron dragon had devoured the greater part of the life of its banks;
+when the landing-stairs descending into its waters, caressed by its
+tides, appeared to me like the loving arms of the villages clinging to
+it; when Calcutta, with her up-tilted nose and stony stare, had not
+completely disowned her foster-mother, rural Bengal, and had not
+surrendered body and soul to her wealthy paramour, the spirit of the
+ledger, bound in dead leather.</p>
+
+<p>But as an instance of the contrast of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> different ideal of a
+different age, incarnated in the form of a town, the memory of my last
+visit to Benares comes to my mind. What impressed me most deeply,
+while I was there, was the mother-call of the river Ganges, ever
+filling the atmosphere with an "unheard melody," attracting the whole
+population to its bosom every hour of the day. I am proud of the fact
+that India has felt a most profound love for this river, which
+nourishes civilisation on its banks, guiding its course from the
+silence of the hills to the sea with its myriad voices of solitude.
+The love of this river, which has become one with the love of the best
+in man, has given rise to this town as an expression of reverence.
+This is to show that there are sentiments in us which are creative,
+which do not clamour for gain, but overflow in gifts, in spontaneous
+generosity of self-sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>But our minds will nevermore cease to be haunted by the perturbed
+spirit of the question, "What about gunny-bags?" I admit they are
+indispensable, and am willing to allow them a place in society, if my
+opponent will only admit that even gunny-bags should have their
+limits, and will acknowledge the importance of leisure to man, with
+space for joy and worship, and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> home of wholesale privacy, with
+associations of chaste love and mutual service. If this concession to
+humanity be denied or curtailed, and if profit and production are
+allowed to run amuck, they will play havoc with our love of beauty, of
+truth, of justice, and also with our love for our fellow-beings. So it
+comes about that the peasant cultivators of jute, who live on the
+brink of everlasting famine, are combined against, and driven to lower
+the price of their labours to the point of blank despair, by those who
+earn more than cent per cent profit and wallow in the infamy of their
+wealth. The facts that man is brave and kind, that he is social and
+generous and self-sacrificing, have some aspect of the complete in
+them; but the fact that he is a manufacturer of gunny-bags is too
+ridiculously small to claim the right of reducing his higher nature to
+insignificance. The fragmentariness of utility should never forget its
+subordinate position in human affairs. It must not be permitted to
+occupy more than its legitimate place and power in society, nor to
+have the liberty to desecrate the poetry of life, to deaden our
+sensitiveness to ideals, bragging of its own coarseness as a sign of
+virility. The pity is that when in the centre of our activities we
+acknowledge, by some proud<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> name, the supremacy of wanton
+destructiveness, or production not less wanton, we shut out all the
+lights of our souls, and in that darkness our conscience and our
+consciousness of shame are hidden, and our love of freedom is killed.</p>
+
+<p>I do not for a moment mean to imply that in any particular period of
+history men were free from the disturbance of their lower passions.
+Selfishness ever had its share in government and trade. Yet there was
+a struggle to maintain a balance of forces in society; and our
+passions cherished no delusions about their own rank and value. They
+contrived no clever devices to hoodwink our moral nature. For in those
+days our intellect was not tempted to put its weight into the balance
+on the side of over-greed.</p>
+
+<p>But in recent centuries a devastating change has come over our
+mentality with regard to the acquisition of money. Whereas in former
+ages men treated it with condescension, even with disrespect, now they
+bend their knees to it. That it should be allowed a sufficiently large
+place in society, there can be no question; but it becomes an outrage
+when it occupies those seats which are specially reserved for the
+immortals, by bribing us, tampering with our moral pride, recruiting
+the best strength of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> society in a traitor's campaign against human
+ideals, thus disguising, with the help of pomp and pageantry, its true
+insignificance. Such a state of things has come to pass because, with
+the help of science, the possibilities of profit have suddenly become
+immoderate. The whole of the human world, throughout its length and
+breadth, has felt the gravitational pull of a giant planet of greed,
+with concentric rings of innumerable satellites, causing in our
+society a marked deviation from the moral orbit. In former times the
+intellectual and spiritual powers of this earth upheld their dignity
+of independence and were not giddily rocked on the tides of the money
+market. But, as in the last fatal stages of disease, this fatal
+influence of money has got into our brain and affected our heart. Like
+a usurper, it has occupied the throne of high social ideals, using
+every means, by menace and threat, to seize upon the right, and,
+tempted by opportunity, presuming to judge it. It has not only science
+for its ally, but other forces also that have some semblance of
+religion, such as nation-worship and the idealising of organised
+selfishness. Its methods are far-reaching and sure. Like the claws of
+a tiger's paw, they are softly sheathed. Its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> massacres are invisible,
+because they are fundamental, attacking the very roots of life. Its
+plunder is ruthless behind a scientific system of screens, which have
+the formal appearance of being open and responsible to inquiries. By
+whitewashing its stains it keeps its respectability unblemished. It
+makes a liberal use of falsehood in diplomacy, only feeling
+embarrassed when its evidence is disclosed by others of the trade. An
+unscrupulous system of propaganda paves the way for widespread
+misrepresentation. It works up the crowd psychology through regulated
+hypnotic doses at repeated intervals, administered in bottles with
+moral labels upon them of soothing colours. In fact, man has been able
+to make his pursuit of power easier to-day by his art of mitigating
+the obstructive forces that come from the higher region of his
+humanity. With his cult of power and his idolatry of money he has, in
+a great measure, reverted to his primitive barbarism, a barbarism
+whose path is lit up by the lurid light of intellect. For barbarism is
+the simplicity of a superficial life. It may be bewildering in its
+surface adornments and complexities, but it lacks the ideal to impart
+to it the depth of moral responsibility.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Society suffers from a profound feeling of unhappiness, not so much
+when it is in material poverty as when its members are deprived of a
+large part of their humanity. This unhappiness goes on smouldering in
+the subconscious mind of the community till its life is reduced to
+ashes or a sudden combustion is produced. The repressed personality of
+man generates an inflammable moral gas deadly in its explosive force.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen in the late war, and also in some of the still more
+recent events of history, how human individuals freed from moral and
+spiritual bonds find a boisterous joy in a debauchery of destruction.
+There is generated a disinterested passion of ravage. Through such
+catastrophe we can realise what formidable forces of annihilation are
+kept in check in our communities by bonds of social ideas; nay, made
+into multitudinous manifestations of beauty and fruitfulness. Thus we
+know that evils are, like meteors, stray fragments of life, which need
+the attraction of some great ideal in order to be assimilated with the
+wholesomeness of creation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> The evil forces are literally outlaws;
+they only need the control and cadence of spiritual laws to change
+them into good. The true goodness is not the negation of badness, it
+is in the mastery of it. Goodness is the miracle which turns the
+tumult of chaos into a dance of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>In modern society the ideal of wholeness has lost its force. Therefore
+its different sections have become detached and resolved into their
+elemental character of forces. Labour is a force; so also is Capital;
+so are the Government and the People; so are Man and Woman. It is said
+that when the forces lying latent in even a handful of dust are
+liberated from their bond of unity, they can lift the buildings of a
+whole neighbourhood to the height of a mountain. Such disfranchised
+forces, irresponsible free-booters, may be useful to us for certain
+purposes, but human habitations standing secure on their foundations
+are better for us. To own the secret of utilising these forces is a
+proud fact for us, but the power of self-control and the
+self-dedication of love are truer subjects for the exultation of
+mankind. The genii of the Arabian Nights may have in their magic their
+lure and fascination for us. But the consciousness of God is of
+another order, infinitely more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> precious in imparting to our minds
+ideas of the spiritual power of creation. Yet these genii are abroad
+everywhere; and even now, after the late war, their devotees are
+getting ready to play further tricks upon humanity by suddenly
+spiriting it away to some hill-top of desolation.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>We know that when, at first, any large body of people in their history
+became aware of their unity, they expressed it in some popular symbol
+of divinity. For they felt that their combination was not an
+arithmetical one; its truth was deeper than the truth of number. They
+felt that their community was not a mere agglutination but a creation,
+having upon it the living touch of the infinite Person. The
+realisation of this truth having been an end in itself, a fulfilment,
+it gave meaning to self-sacrifice, to the acceptance even of death.</p>
+
+<p>But our modern education is producing a habit of mind which is ever
+weakening in us the spiritual apprehension of truth&mdash;the truth of a
+person as the ultimate reality of existence. Science has its proper
+sphere in analysing this world as a construction, just as grammar has
+its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> legitimate office in analysing the syntax of a poem. But the
+world, as a creation, is not a mere construction; it too is more than
+a syntax. It is a poem, which we are apt to forget when grammar takes
+exclusive hold of our minds.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the loss of this sense of a universal personality, which is
+religion, the reign of the machine and of method has been firmly
+established, and man, humanly speaking, has been made a homeless
+tramp. As nomads, ravenous and restless, the men from the West have
+come to us. They have exploited our Eastern humanity for sheer gain of
+power. This modern meeting of men has not yet received the blessing of
+God. For it has kept us apart, though railway lines are laid far and
+wide, and ships are plying from shore to shore to bring us together.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said in the Upanishads:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yastu sarv&acirc;ni bhut&acirc;ni &acirc;tm&acirc;nyev&acirc;nupashyati<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sarva bhuteshu ch&acirc;tm&acirc;nam na tato vijugupsate.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>(He who sees all things in <i>&acirc;tm&acirc;</i>, in the infinite spirit,
+and the infinite spirit in all beings, remains no longer
+unrevealed.)</p></div>
+
+<p>In the modern civilisation, for which an enormous number of men are
+used as materials, and human relationships have in a large measure
+become utilitarian, man is imperfectly revealed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> For man's revelation
+does not lie in the fact that he is a power, but that he is a spirit.
+The prevalence of the theory which realises the power of the machine
+in the universe, and organises men into machines, is like the eruption
+of Etna, tremendous in its force, in its outburst of fire and fume;
+but its creeping lava covers up human shelters made by the ages, and
+its ashes smother life.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>The terribly efficient method of repressing personality in the
+individuals and the races who have failed to resist it has, in the
+present scientific age, spread all over the world; and in consequence
+there have appeared signs of a universal disruption which seems not
+far off. Faced with the possibility of such a disaster, which is sure
+to affect the successful peoples of the world in their intemperate
+prosperity, the great Powers of the West are seeking peace, not by
+curbing their greed, or by giving up the exclusive advantages which
+they have unjustly acquired, but by concentrating their forces for
+mutual security.</p>
+
+<p>But can powers find their equilibrium in themselves? Power has to be
+made secure not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> only against power, but also against weakness; for
+there lies the peril of its losing balance. The weak are as great a
+danger for the strong as quicksands for an elephant. They do not
+assist progress because they do not resist; they only drag down. The
+people who grow accustomed to wield absolute power over others are apt
+to forget that by so doing they generate an unseen force which some
+day rends that power into pieces. The dumb fury of the downtrodden
+finds its awful support from the universal law of moral balance. The
+air which is so thin and unsubstantial gives birth to storms that
+nothing can resist. This has been proved in history over and over
+again, and stormy forces arising from the revolt of insulted humanity
+are openly gathering in the air at the present time.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in the psychology of the strong the lesson is despised and no
+count taken of the terribleness of the weak. This is the latent
+ignorance that, like an unsuspected worm, burrows under the bulk of
+the prosperous. Have we never read of the castle of power, securely
+buttressed on all sides, in a moment dissolving in air at the
+explosion caused by the weak and outraged besiegers? Politicians
+calculate upon the number of mailed hands that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> are kept on the
+sword-hilts: they do not possess the third eye to see the great
+invisible hand that clasps in silence the hand of the helpless and
+waits its time. The strong form their league by a combination of
+powers, driving the weak to form their own league alone with their
+God. I know I am crying in the wilderness when I raise the voice of
+warning; and while the West is busy with its organisation of a
+machine-made peace, it will still continue to nourish by its
+iniquities the underground forces of earthquake in the Eastern
+Continent. The West seems unconscious that Science, by providing it
+with more and more power, is tempting it to suicide and encouraging it
+to accept the challenge of the disarmed; it does not know that the
+challenge comes from a higher source.</p>
+
+<p>Two prophecies about the world's salvation are cherished in the hearts
+of the two great religions of the world. They represent the highest
+expectation of man, thereby indicating his faith in a truth which he
+instinctively considers as ultimate&mdash;the truth of love. These
+prophecies have not for their vision the fettering of the world and
+reducing it to tameness by means of a close-linked power forged in the
+factory of a political steel trust. One of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> religions has for its
+meditation the image of the Buddha who is to come, Maitreya, the
+Buddha of love; and he is to bring peace. The other religion waits for
+the coming of Christ. For Christ preached peace when he preached love,
+when he preached the oneness of the Father with the brothers who are
+many. And this was the truth of peace. Christ never held that peace
+was the best policy. For policy is not truth. The calculation of
+self-interest can never successfully fight the irrational force of
+passion&mdash;the passion which is perversion of love, and which can only
+be set right by the truth of love. So long as the powers build a
+league on the foundation of their desire for safety, secure enjoyment
+of gains, consolidation of past injustice, and putting off the
+reparation of wrongs, while their fingers still wriggle for greed and
+reek of blood, rifts will appear in their union; and in future their
+conflicts will take greater force and magnitude. It is political and
+commercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war. By different
+combinations it changes its shape and dimensions, but not its nature.
+This egoism is still held sacred, and made a religion; and such a
+religion, by a mere change of temple, and by new committees of
+priests, will never save mankind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> We must know that, as, through
+science and commerce, the realisation of the unity of the material
+world gives us power, so the realisation of the great spiritual Unity
+of Man alone can give us peace.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_SPIRIT_OF_FREEDOM" id="THE_SPIRIT_OF_FREEDOM"></a>THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></h2>
+
+<p class="center" style="padding-top: 0em; padding-bottom: 1em">(<span class="smcap">A Letter from New York to the<br /> Author's own Countrymen</span>)</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> freedom is not an inner idea which imparts strength to our
+activities and breadth to our creations, when it is merely a thing of
+external circumstance, it is like an open space to one who is
+blindfolded.</p>
+
+<p>In my recent travels in the West I have felt that out there freedom as
+an idea has become feeble and ineffectual. Consequently a spirit of
+repression and coercion is fast spreading in the politics and social
+relationships of the people.</p>
+
+<p>In the age of monarchy the king lived surrounded by a miasma of
+intrigue. At court there was an endless whispering of lies and
+calumny, and much plotting and planning among the conspiring courtiers
+to manipulate the king as the instrument of their own purposes.</p>
+
+<p>In the present age intrigue plays a wider<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> part, and affects the whole
+country. The people are drugged with the hashish of false hopes and
+urged to deeds of frightfulness by the goadings of manufactured
+panics; their higher feelings are exploited by devious channels of
+unctuous hypocrisy, their pockets picked under an&aelig;sthetics of
+flattery, their very psychology affected by a conspiracy of money and
+unscrupulous diplomacy.</p>
+
+<p>In the old order the king was given to understand that he was the
+freest individual in the world. A greater semblance of external
+freedom, no doubt, he had than other individuals. But they built for
+him a gorgeous prison of unreality.</p>
+
+<p>The same thing is happening now with the people of the West. They are
+flattered into believing that they are free, and they have the
+sovereign power in their hands. But this power is robbed by hosts of
+self-seekers, and the horse is captured and stabled because of his
+gift of freedom over space. The mob-mind is allowed the enjoyment of
+an apparent liberty, while its true freedom is curtailed on every
+side. Its thoughts are fashioned according to the plans of organised
+interest; in its choosing of ideas and forming of opinions it is
+hindered either by some punitive force or by the constant insinuation
+of untruths; it is made to dwell in an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> artificial world of hypnotic
+phrases. In fact, the people have become the storehouse of a power
+that attracts round it a swarm of adventurers who are secretly
+investing its walls to exploit it for their own devices.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it has become more and more evident to me that the ideal of
+freedom has grown tenuous in the atmosphere of the West. The mentality
+is that of a slave-owning community, with a mutilated multitude of men
+tied to its commercial and political treadmill. It is the mentality of
+mutual distrust and fear. The appalling scenes of inhumanity and
+injustice, which are growing familiar to us, are the outcome of a
+psychology that deals with terror. No cruelty can be uglier in its
+ferocity than the cruelty of the coward. The people who have
+sacrificed their souls to the passion of profit-making and the
+drunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic and
+suspicion, and therefore they are ruthless even where they are least
+afraid of mischances. They become morally incapable of allowing
+freedom to others, and in their eagerness to curry favour with the
+powerful they not only connive at the injustice done by their own
+partners in political gambling, but participate in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> it. A perpetual
+anxiety for the protection of their gains at any cost strikes at the
+love of freedom and justice, until at length they are ready to forgo
+liberty for themselves and for others.</p>
+
+<p>My experience in the West, where I have realised the immense power of
+money and of organised propaganda,&mdash;working everywhere behind screens
+of camouflage, creating an atmosphere of distrust, timidity, and
+antipathy,&mdash;has impressed me deeply with the truth that real freedom
+is of the mind and spirit; it can never come to us from outside. He
+only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to
+extend it to others. He who cares to have slaves must chain himself to
+them; he who builds walls to create exclusion for others builds walls
+across his own freedom; he who distrusts freedom in others loses his
+moral right to it. Sooner or later he is lured into the meshes of
+physical and moral servility.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore I would urge my own countrymen to ask themselves if the
+freedom to which they aspire is one of external conditions. Is it
+merely a transferable commodity? Have they acquired a true love of
+freedom? Have they faith in it? Are they ready to make space in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> their
+society for the minds of their children to grow up in the ideal of
+human dignity, unhindered by restrictions that are unjust and
+irrational?</p>
+
+<p>Have we not made elaborately permanent the walls of our social
+compartments? We are tenaciously proud of their exclusiveness. We
+boast that, in this world, no other society but our own has come to
+finality in the classifying of its living members. Yet in our
+political agitations we conveniently forget that any unnaturalness in
+the relationship of governors and governed which humiliates us,
+becomes an outrage when it is artificially fixed under the threat of
+military persecution.</p>
+
+<p>When India gave voice to immortal thoughts, in the time of fullest
+vigour of vitality, her children had the fearless spirit of the
+seekers of truth. The great epic of the soul of our people&mdash;the
+<i>Mah&acirc;bh&acirc;rata</i>&mdash;gives us a wonderful vision of an overflowing life,
+full of the freedom of inquiry and experiment. When the age of the
+Buddha came, humanity was stirred in our country to its uttermost
+depth. The freedom of mind which it produced expressed itself in a
+wealth of creation, spreading everywhere in its richness over the
+continent of Asia. But with the ebb<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> of life in India the spirit of
+creation died away. It hardened into an age of inert construction. The
+organic unity of a varied and elastic society gave way to a
+conventional order which proved its artificial character by its
+inexorable law of exclusion.</p>
+
+<p>Life has its inequalities, I admit, but they are natural and are in
+harmony with our vital functions. The head keeps its place apart from
+the feet, not through some external arrangement or any conspiracy of
+coercion. If the body is compelled to turn somersaults for an
+indefinite period, the head never exchanges its relative function for
+that of the feet. But have our social divisions the same
+inevitableness of organic law? If we have the hardihood to say "yes"
+to that question, then how can we blame an alien people for subjecting
+us to a political order which they are tempted to believe eternal?</p>
+
+<p>By squeezing human beings in the grip of an inelastic system and
+forcibly holding them fixed, we have ignored the laws of life and
+growth. We have forced living souls into a permanent passivity, making
+them incapable of moulding circumstance to their own intrinsic design,
+and of mastering their own destiny. Borrowing our ideal of life from a
+dark period of our degeneracy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> we have covered up our sensitiveness
+of soul under the immovable weight of a remote past. We have set up an
+elaborate ceremonial of cage-worship, and plucked all the feathers
+from the wings of the living spirit of our people. And for us,&mdash;with
+our centuries of degradation and insult, with the amorphousness of our
+national unity, with our helplessness before the attack of disasters
+from without and our unreasoning self-obstructions from within,&mdash;the
+punishment has been terrible. Our stupefaction has become so absolute
+that we do not even realise that this persistent misfortune, dogging
+our steps for ages, cannot be a mere accident of history, removable
+only by another accident from outside.</p>
+
+<p>Unless we have true faith in freedom, knowing it to be creative,
+manfully taking all its risks, not only do we lose the right to claim
+freedom in politics, but we also lack the power to maintain it with
+all our strength. For that would be like assigning the service of God
+to a confirmed atheist. And men, who contemptuously treat their own
+brothers and sisters as eternal babies, never to be trusted in the
+most trivial details of their personal life,&mdash;coercing them at every
+step by the cruel threat of persecution into following a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> blind lane
+leading to nowhere, driving a number of them into hypocrisy and into
+moral inertia,&mdash;will fail over and over again to rise to the height of
+their true and severe responsibility. They will be incapable of
+holding a just freedom in politics, and of fighting in freedom's
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine which
+must move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel,
+keeping up the steam-power. It represents the active aspect of inertia
+which has the appearance of freedom, but not its truth, and therefore
+gives rise to slavery both within its boundaries and outside. The
+present civilisation of India has the constraining power of the mould.
+It squeezes living man in the grip of rigid regulations, and its
+repression of individual freedom makes it only too easy for men to be
+forced into submission of all kinds and degrees. In both of these
+traditions life is offered up to something which is not life; it is a
+sacrifice, which has no God for its worship, and is therefore utterly
+in vain. The West is continually producing mechanical power in excess
+of its spiritual control, and India has produced a system of
+mechanical control in excess of its vitality.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_NATION" id="THE_NATION"></a>THE NATION<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> peoples are living beings. They have their distinct personalities.
+But nations are organisations of power, and therefore their inner
+aspects and outward expressions are everywhere monotonously the same.
+Their differences are merely differences in degree of efficiency.</p>
+
+<p>In the modern world the fight is going on between the living spirit of
+the people and the methods of nation-organising. It is like the
+struggle that began in Central Asia between cultivated areas of man's
+habitation and the continually encroaching desert sands, till the
+human region of life and beauty was choked out of existence. When the
+spread of higher ideals of humanity is not held to be important, the
+hardening method of national efficiency gains a certain strength; and
+for some limited period of time, at least, it proudly asserts itself
+as the fittest to survive. But it is the survival of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> that part of man
+which is the least living. And this is the reason why dead monotony is
+the sign of the spread of the Nation. The modern towns, which present
+the physiognomy due to this dominance of the Nation, are everywhere
+the same, from San Francisco to London, from London to Tokyo. They
+show no faces, but merely masks.</p>
+
+<p>The peoples, being living personalities, must have their
+self-expression, and this leads to their distinctive creations. These
+creations are literature, art, social symbols and ceremonials. They
+are like different dishes at one common feast. They add richness to
+our enjoyment and understanding of truth. They are making the world of
+man fertile of life and variedly beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>But the nations do not create, they merely produce and destroy.
+Organisations for production are necessary. Even organisations for
+destruction may be so. But when, actuated by greed and hatred, they
+crowd away into a corner the living man who creates, then the harmony
+is lost, and the people's history runs at a break-neck speed towards
+some fatal catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>Humanity, where it is living, is guided by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> inner ideals; but where it
+is a dead organisation it becomes impervious to them. Its building
+process is only an external process, and in its response to the moral
+guidance it has to pass through obstacles that are gross and
+non-plastic.</p>
+
+<p>Man as a person has his individuality, which is the field where his
+spirit has its freedom to express itself and to grow. The professional
+man carries a rigid crust around him which has very little variation
+and hardly any elasticity. This professionalism is the region where
+men specialise their knowledge and organise their power, mercilessly
+elbowing each other in their struggle to come to the front.
+Professionalism is necessary, without doubt; but it must not be
+allowed to exceed its healthy limits, to assume complete mastery over
+the personal man, making him narrow and hard, exclusively intent upon
+pursuit of success at the cost of his faith in ideals.</p>
+
+<p>In ancient India professions were kept within limits by social
+regulation. They were considered primarily as social necessities, and
+in the second place as the means of livelihood for individuals. Thus
+man, being free from the constant urging of unbounded competition,
+could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> have leisure to cultivate his nature in its completeness.</p>
+
+<p>The Cult of the Nation is the professionalism of the people. This cult
+is becoming their greatest danger, because it is bringing them
+enormous success, making them impatient of the claims of higher
+ideals. The greater the amount of success, the stronger are the
+conflicts of interest and jealousy and hatred which are aroused in
+men's minds, thereby making it more and more necessary for other
+peoples, who are still living, to stiffen into nations. With the
+growth of nationalism, man has become the greatest menace to man.
+Therefore the continual presence of panic goads that very nationalism
+into ever-increasing menace.</p>
+
+<p>Crowd psychology is a blind force. Like steam and other physical
+forces, it can be utilised for creating a tremendous amount of power.
+And therefore rulers of men, who, out of greed and fear, are bent upon
+turning their peoples into machines of power, try to train this crowd
+psychology for their special purposes. They hold it to be their duty
+to foster in the popular mind universal panic, unreasoning pride in
+their own race, and hatred of others. Newspapers, school-books, and
+even religious services<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> are made use of for this object; and those
+who have the courage to express their disapprobation of this blind and
+impious cult are either punished in the law-courts, or are socially
+ostracised. The individual thinks, even when he feels; but the same
+individual, when he feels with the crowd, does not reason at all. His
+moral sense becomes blurred. This suppression of higher humanity in
+crowd minds is productive of enormous strength. For the crowd mind is
+essentially primitive; its forces are elemental. Therefore the Nation
+is for ever watching to take advantage of this enormous power of
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The people's instinct of self-preservation has been made dominant at
+particular times of crisis. Then, for the time being, the
+consciousness of its solidarity becomes aggressively wide-awake. But
+in the Nation this hyper-consciousness is kept alive for all time by
+artificial means. A man has to act the part of a policeman when he
+finds his house invaded by burglars. But if that remains his normal
+condition, then his consciousness of his household becomes acute and
+over-wrought, making him fly at every stranger passing near his house.
+This intensity of self-consciousness is nothing of which a man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> should
+feel proud; certainly it is not healthful. In like manner, incessant
+self-consciousness in a nation is highly injurious for the people. It
+serves its immediate purpose, but at the cost of the eternal in man.</p>
+
+<p>When a whole body of men train themselves for a particular narrow
+purpose, it becomes a common interest with them to keep up that
+purpose and preach absolute loyalty to it. Nationalism is the training
+of a whole people for a narrow ideal; and when it gets hold of their
+minds it is sure to lead them to moral degeneracy and intellectual
+blindness. We cannot but hold firm the faith that this Age of
+Nationalism, of gigantic vanity and selfishness, is only a passing
+phase in civilisation, and those who are making permanent arrangements
+for accommodating this temporary mood of history will be unable to fit
+themselves for the coming age, when the true spirit of freedom will
+have sway.</p>
+
+<p>With the unchecked growth of Nationalism the moral foundation of man's
+civilisation is unconsciously undergoing a change. The ideal of the
+social man is unselfishness, but the ideal of the Nation, like that of
+the professional man, is selfishness. This is why selfishness in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+individual is condemned, while in the nation it is extolled, which
+leads to hopeless moral blindness, confusing the religion of the
+people with the religion of the nation. Therefore, to take an example,
+we find men more and more convinced of the superior claims of
+Christianity, merely because Christian nations are in possession of
+the greater part of the world. It is like supporting a robber's
+religion by quoting the amount of his stolen property. Nations
+celebrate their successful massacre of men in their churches. They
+forget that Thugs also ascribed their success in manslaughter to the
+favour of their goddess. But in the case of the latter their goddess
+frankly represented the principle of destruction. It was the criminal
+tribe's own murderous instinct deified&mdash;the instinct, not of one
+individual, but of the whole community, and therefore held sacred. In
+the same manner, in modern churches, selfishness, hatred and vanity in
+their collective aspect of national instincts do not scruple to share
+the homage paid to God.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, pursuit of self-interest need not be wholly selfish; it can
+even be in harmony with the interest of all. Therefore, ideally
+speaking, the nationalism, which stands for the expression of the
+collective self-interest of a people, need<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> not be ashamed of itself
+if it maintains its true limitations. But what we see in practice is,
+that every nation which has prospered has done so through its career
+of aggressive selfishness either in commercial adventures or in
+foreign possessions, or in both. And this material prosperity not only
+feeds continually the selfish instincts of the people, but impresses
+men's minds with the lesson that, for a nation, selfishness is a
+necessity and therefore a virtue. It is the emphasis laid in Europe
+upon the idea of the Nation's constant increase of power, which is
+becoming the greatest danger to man, both in its direct activity and
+its power of infection.</p>
+
+<p>We must admit that evils there are in human nature, in spite of our
+faith in moral laws and our training in self-control. But they carry
+on their foreheads their own brand of infamy, their very success
+adding to their monstrosity. All through man's history there will be
+some who suffer, and others who cause suffering. The conquest of evil
+will never be a fully accomplished fact, but a continuous process like
+the process of burning in a flame.</p>
+
+<p>In former ages, when some particular people became turbulent and tried
+to rob others of their human rights, they sometimes achieved success<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+and sometimes failed. And it amounted to nothing more than that. But
+when this idea of the Nation, which has met with universal acceptance
+in the present day, tries to pass off the cult of collective
+selfishness as a moral duty, simply because that selfishness is
+gigantic in stature, it not only commits depredation, but attacks the
+very vitals of humanity. It unconsciously generates in people's minds
+an attitude of defiance against moral law. For men are taught by
+repeated devices the lesson that the Nation is greater than the
+people, while yet it scatters to the winds the moral law that the
+people have held sacred.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that a disease becomes most acutely critical when the
+brain is affected. For it is the brain that is constantly directing
+the siege against all disease forces. The spirit of national
+selfishness is that brain disease of a people which shows itself in
+red eyes and clenched fists, in violence of talk and movements, all
+the while shattering its natural restorative powers. But the power of
+self-sacrifice, together with the moral faculty of sympathy and
+co-operation, is the guiding spirit of social vitality. Its function
+is to maintain a beneficent relation of harmony with its
+surroundings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> But when it begins to ignore the moral law which is
+universal and uses it only within the bounds of its own narrow sphere,
+then its strength becomes like the strength of madness which ends in
+self-destruction.</p>
+
+<p>What is worse, this aberration of a people, decked with the showy
+title of "patriotism," proudly walks abroad, passing itself off as a
+highly moral influence. Thus it has spread its inflammatory contagion
+all over the world, proclaiming its fever flush to be the best sign of
+health. It is causing in the hearts of peoples, naturally inoffensive,
+a feeling of envy at not having their temperature as high as that of
+their delirious neighbours and not being able to cause as much
+mischief, but merely having to suffer from it.</p>
+
+<p>I have often been asked by my Western friends how to cope with this
+evil, which has attained such sinister strength and vast dimensions.
+In fact, I have often been blamed for merely giving warning, and
+offering no alternative. When we suffer as a result of a particular
+system, we believe that some other system would bring us better luck.
+We are apt to forget that all systems produce evil sooner or later,
+when the psychology which is at the root of them is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> wrong. The system
+which is national to-day may assume the shape of the international
+to-morrow; but so long as men have not forsaken their idolatry of
+primitive instincts and collective passions, the new system will only
+become a new instrument of suffering. And because we are trained to
+confound efficient system with moral goodness itself, every ruined
+system makes us more and more distrustful of moral law.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore I do not put my faith in any new institution, but in the
+individuals all over the world who think clearly, feel nobly, and act
+rightly, thus becoming the channels of moral truth. Our moral ideals<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+do not work with chisels and hammers. Like trees, they spread their
+roots in the soil and their branches in the sky, without consulting
+any architect for their plans.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="WOMAN_AND_HOME" id="WOMAN_AND_HOME"></a>WOMAN AND HOME<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Creative</span> expressions attain their perfect form through emotions
+modulated. Woman has that expression natural to her&mdash;a cadence of
+restraint in her behaviour, producing poetry of life. She has been an
+inspiration to man, guiding, most often unconsciously, his restless
+energy into an immense variety of creations in literature, art, music
+and religion. This is why, in India, woman has been described as the
+symbol of Shakti, the creative power.</p>
+
+<p>But if woman begins to believe that, though biologically her function
+is different from that of man, psychologically she is identical with
+him; if the human world in its mentality becomes exclusively male,
+then before long it will be reduced to utter inanity. For life finds
+its truth and beauty, not in any exaggeration of sameness, but in
+harmony.</p>
+
+<p>If woman's nature were identical with man's,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> if Eve were a mere
+tautology of Adam, it would only give rise to a monotonous
+superfluity. But that she was not so was proved by the banishment she
+secured from a ready-made Paradise. She had the instinctive wisdom to
+realise that it was her mission to help her mate in creating a
+Paradise of their own on earth, whose ideal she was to supply with her
+life, whose materials were to be produced and gathered by her comrade.</p>
+
+<p>However, it is evident that an increasing number of women in the West
+are ready to assert that their difference from men is unimportant. The
+reason for the vehement utterance of such a paradox cannot be ignored.
+It is a rebellion against a necessity, which is not equal for both the
+partners.</p>
+
+<p>Love in all forms has its obligations, and the love that binds women
+to their children binds them to their homes. But necessity is a
+tyrant, making us submit to injury and indignity, allowing advantage
+over us to those who are wholly or comparatively free from its burden.
+Such has been the case in the social relationship between man and
+woman. Along with the difference inherent in their respective natures,
+there have grown up between them inequalities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> fostered by
+circumstances. Man is not handicapped by the same biological and
+psychological responsibilities as woman, and therefore he has the
+liberty to give her the security of home. This liberty exacts payment
+when it offers its boon, because to give or to withhold the gift is
+within its power. It is the unequal freedom in their mutual
+relationships which has made the weight of life's tragedies so
+painfully heavy for woman to bear.</p>
+
+<p>Some mitigation of her disadvantage has been effected by her rendering
+herself and her home a luxury to man. She has accentuated those
+qualities in herself which insidiously impose their bondage over her
+mate, some by pandering to his weakness, and some by satisfying his
+higher nature, till the sex-consciousness in our society has grown
+abnormal and overpowering. There is no actual objection to this in
+itself, for it offers a stimulus, acting in the depth of life, which
+leads to creative exuberance. But a great deal of it is a forced
+growth of compulsion bearing seeds of degradation. In those ages when
+men acknowledged spiritual perfection to be their object, women were
+denounced as the chief obstacle in their way. The constant and
+conscious exercise of allurements, which gave women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> their power,
+attacked the weak spots in man's nature, and by doing so added to its
+weakness. For all relationships tainted with repression of freedom
+must become sources of degeneracy to the strong who impose such
+repression.</p>
+
+<p>Balance of power, however, between man and woman was in a measure
+established when home wielded a strong enough attraction to make men
+accept its obligations. But at last the time has come when the
+material ambition of man has assumed such colossal proportions that
+home is in danger of losing its centre of gravity for him, and he is
+receding farther and farther from its orbit.</p>
+
+<p>The arid zone in the social life is spreading fast. The simple
+comforts of home, made precious by the touch of love, are giving way
+to luxuries that can only have their full extension in the isolation
+of self-centred life. Hotels are being erected on the ruins of homes;
+productions are growing more stupendous than creations; and most men
+have, for the materials of their happiness and recreation, their dogs
+and horses, their pipes, guns, and gambling clubs.</p>
+
+<p>Reactions and rebellions, not being normal in their character, go on
+hurting truth until peace is restored. Therefore, when woman refuses
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> acknowledge the distinction between her life and that of man, she
+does not convince us of its truth, but only proves to us that she is
+suffering. All great sufferings indicate some wrong somewhere. In the
+present case, the wrong is in woman's lack of freedom in her
+relationship with man, which compels her to turn her disabilities into
+attractions, and to use untruths as her allies in the battle of life,
+while she is suffering from the precariousness of her position.</p>
+
+<p>From the beginning of our society, women have naturally accepted the
+training which imparts to their life and to their home a spirit of
+harmony. It is their instinct to perform their services in such a
+manner that these, through beauty, might be raised from the domain of
+slavery to the realm of grace. Women have tried to prove that in the
+building up of social life they are artists and not artisans. But all
+expressions of beauty lose their truth when compelled to accept the
+patronage of the gross and the indifferent. Therefore when necessity
+drives women to fashion their lives to the taste of the insensitive or
+the sensual, then the whole thing becomes a tragedy of desecration.
+Society is full of such tragedies. Many of the laws and social
+regulations guiding the relationships of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> man and woman are relics of
+a barbaric age, when the brutal pride of an exclusive possession had
+its dominance in human relations, such as those of parents and
+children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, teachers and
+disciples. The vulgarity of it still persists in the social bond
+between the sexes because of the economic helplessness of woman.
+Nothing makes us so stupidly mean as the sense of superiority which
+the power of the purse confers upon us.</p>
+
+<p>The powers of muscle and of money have opportunities of immediate
+satisfaction, but the power of the ideal must have infinite patience.
+The man who sells his goods, or fulfils his contract, is cheated if he
+fails to realise payment, but he who gives form to some ideal may
+never get his due and be fully paid. What I have felt in the women of
+India is the consciousness of this ideal&mdash;their simple faith in the
+sanctity of devotion lighted by love which is held to be divine. True
+womanliness is regarded in our country as the saintliness of love. It
+is not merely praised there, but literally worshipped; and she who is
+gifted with it is called <i>Devi</i>, as one revealing in herself Woman,
+the Divine. That this has not been a mere metaphor to us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> is because,
+in India, our mind is familiar with the idea of God in an eternal
+feminine aspect. Thus the Eastern woman, who is deeply aware in her
+heart of the sacredness of her mission, is a constant education to
+man. It has to be admitted that there are chances of such an influence
+failing to penetrate the callousness of the coarse-minded; but that is
+the destiny of all manifestations whose value is not in success or
+reward in honour.</p>
+
+<p>Woman has to be ready to suffer. She cannot allow her emotions to be
+dulled or polluted, for these are to create her life's atmosphere,
+apart from which her world would be dark and dead. This leaves her
+heart without any protection of insensibility, at the mercy of the
+hurts and insults of life. Women of India, like women everywhere, have
+their share of suffering, but it radiates through the ideal, and
+becomes, like sunlight, a creative force in their world. Our women
+know by heart the legends of the great women of the epic age&mdash;Savitri
+who by the power of love conquered death, and Sit&acirc; who had no other
+reward for her life of sacrifice but the sacred majesty of sorrow.
+They know that it is their duty to make this life an image of the life
+eternal, and that love's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> mission truly performed has a spiritual
+meaning. It is a religious responsibility for them to live the life
+which is their own. For their activity is not for money-making, or
+organising power, or intellectually probing the mystery of existence,
+but for establishing and maintaining human relationships requiring the
+highest moral qualities. It is the consciousness of the spiritual
+character of their life's work, which lifts them above the utilitarian
+standard of the immediate and the passing, surrounds them with the
+dignity of the eternal, and transmutes their suffering and sorrow into
+a crown of light.</p>
+
+<p>I must guard myself from the risk of a possible misunderstanding. The
+permanent significance of home is not in the narrowness of its
+enclosure, but in an eternal moral idea. It represents the truth of
+human relationship; it reveals loyalty and love for the personality of
+man. Let us take a wider view, in a perspective truer than can be
+found in its present conventional associations. With the discovery and
+development of agriculture there came a period of settled life in our
+history. The nomad ever moved on with his tents and cattle; he
+explored space and exploited its contents. The cultivator of land
+explored time in its immensity, for he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> leisure. Comparatively
+secured from the uncertainty of his outer resources, he had the
+opportunity to deal with his moral resources in the realm of human
+truth. This is why agricultural civilisation, like that of India and
+China, is essentially a civilisation of human relationship, of the
+adjustment of mutual obligations. It is deep-rooted in the inner life
+of man. Its basis is co-operation and not competition. In other words,
+its principle is the principle of home, to which all its outer
+adventures are subordinated.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile, the nomadic life with its predatory instinct of
+exploitation has developed into a great civilisation. It is immensely
+proud and strong, killing leisure and pursuing opportunities. It
+minimises the claims of personal relationship and is jealously careful
+of its unhampered freedom for acquiring wealth and asserting its will
+upon others. Its burden is the burden of things, which grows heavier
+and more complex every day, disregarding the human and the spiritual.
+Its powerful pressure from all sides narrows the limits of home, the
+personal region of the human world. Thus, in this region of life,
+women are every day hustled out of their shelter for want of
+accommodation.</p>
+
+<p>But such a state of things can never have the effect of changing woman
+into man. On the contrary, it will lead her to find her place in the
+unlimited range of society, and the Guardian Spirit of the personal in
+human nature will extend the ministry of woman over all developments
+of life. Habituated to deal with the world as a machine, man is
+multiplying his materials, banishing away his happiness and
+sacrificing love to comfort, which is an illusion. At last the present
+age has sent its cry to woman, asking her to come out from her
+segregation in order to restore the spiritual supremacy of all that is
+human in the world of humanity. She has been aroused to remember that
+womanliness is not chiefly decorative. It is like that vital health,
+which not only imparts the bloom of beauty to the body, but joy to the
+mind and perfection to life.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="AN_EASTERN_UNIVERSITY" id="AN_EASTERN_UNIVERSITY"></a>AN EASTERN UNIVERSITY<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the midst of much that is discouraging in the present state of the
+world, there is one symptom of vital promise. Asia is awakening. This
+great event, if it be but directed along the right lines, is full of
+hope, not only for Asia herself, but for the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, it has to be admitted that the relationship of the
+West with the East, growing more and more complex and widespread for
+over two centuries, far from attaining its true fulfilment, has given
+rise to a universal spirit of conflict. The consequent strain and
+unrest have profoundly disturbed Asia, and antipathetic forces have
+been accumulating for years in the depth of the Eastern mind.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting of the East and the West has remained incomplete, because
+the occasions of it have not been disinterested. The political and
+commercial adventures carried on by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> Western races&mdash;very often by
+force and against the interest and wishes of the countries they have
+dealt with&mdash;have created a moral alienation, which is deeply injurious
+to both parties. The perils threatened by this unnatural relationship
+have long been contemptuously ignored by the West. But the blind
+confidence of the strong in their apparent invincibility has often led
+them, from their dream of security, into terrible surprises of
+history.</p>
+
+<p>It is not the fear of danger or loss to one people or another,
+however, which is most important. The demoralising influence of the
+constant estrangement between the two hemispheres, which affects the
+baser passions of man,&mdash;pride, greed and hypocrisy on the one hand;
+fear, suspiciousness and flattery on the other,&mdash;has been developing,
+and threatens us with a world-wide spiritual disaster.</p>
+
+<p>The time has come when we must use all our wisdom to understand the
+situation, and to control it, with a stronger trust in moral guidance
+than in any array of physical forces.</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning of man's history his first social object was to form
+a community, to grow into a people. At that early period, individuals
+were gathered together within geographical enclosures.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> But in the
+present age, with its facility of communication, geographical barriers
+have almost lost their reality, and the great federation of men, which
+is waiting either to find its true scope or to break asunder in a
+final catastrophe, is not a meeting of individuals, but of various
+human races. Now the problem before us is of one single country, which
+is this earth, where the races as individuals must find both their
+freedom of self-expression and their bond of federation. Mankind must
+realise a unity, wider in range, deeper in sentiment, stronger in
+power than ever before. Now that the problem is large, we have to
+solve it on a bigger scale, to realise the God in man by a larger
+faith and to build the temple of our faith on a sure and world-wide
+basis.</p>
+
+<p>The first step towards realisation is to create opportunities for
+revealing the different peoples to one another. This can never be done
+in those fields where the exploiting utilitarian spirit is supreme. We
+must find some meeting-ground, where there can be no question of
+conflicting interests. One of such places is the University, where we
+can work together in a common pursuit of truth, share together our
+common heritage, and realise that artists in all parts of the world<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+have created forms of beauty, scientists discovered secrets of the
+universe, philosophers solved the problems of existence, saints made
+the truth of the spiritual world organic in their own lives, not
+merely for some particular race to which they belonged, but for all
+mankind. When the science of meteorology knows the earth's atmosphere
+as continuously one, affecting the different parts of the world
+differently, but in a harmony of adjustments, it knows and attains
+truth. And so, too, we must know that the great mind of man is one,
+working through the many differences which are needed to ensure the
+full result of its fundamental unity. When we understand this truth in
+a disinterested spirit, it teaches us to respect all the differences
+in man that are real, yet remain conscious of our oneness; and to know
+that perfection of unity is not in uniformity, but in harmony.</p>
+
+<p>This is the problem of the present age. The East, for its own sake and
+for the sake of the world, must not remain unrevealed. The deepest
+source of all calamities in history is misunderstanding. For where we
+do not understand, we can never be just.</p>
+
+<p>Being strongly impressed with the need and the responsibility, which
+every individual to-day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> must realise according to his power, I have
+formed the nucleus of an International University in India, as one of
+the best means of promoting mutual understanding between the East and
+the West. This Institution, according to the plan I have in mind, will
+invite students from the West to study the different systems of Indian
+philosophy, literature, art and music in their proper environment,
+encouraging them to carry on research work in collaboration with the
+scholars already engaged in this task.</p>
+
+<p>India has her renaissance. She is preparing to make her contribution
+to the world of the future. In the past she produced her great
+culture, and in the present age she has an equally important
+contribution to make to the culture of the New World which is emerging
+from the wreckage of the Old. This is a momentous period of her
+history, pregnant with precious possibilities, when any disinterested
+offer of co-operation from any part of the West will have an immense
+moral value, the memory of which will become brighter as the
+regeneration of the East grows in vigour and creative power.</p>
+
+<p>The Western Universities give their students an opportunity to learn
+what all the European peoples have contributed to their Western<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+culture. Thus the intellectual mind of the West has been luminously
+revealed to the world. What is needed to complete this illumination is
+for the East to collect its own scattered lamps and offer them to the
+enlightenment of the world.</p>
+
+<p>There was a time when the great countries of Asia had, each of them,
+to nurture its own civilisation apart in comparative seclusion. Now
+has come the age of co-ordination and co-operation. The seedlings that
+were reared within narrow plots must now be transplanted into the open
+fields. They must pass the test of the world-market, if their maximum
+value is to be obtained.</p>
+
+<p>But before Asia is in a position to co-operate with the culture of
+Europe, she must base her own structure on a synthesis of all the
+different cultures which she has. When, taking her stand on such a
+culture, she turns toward the West, she will take, with a confident
+sense of mental freedom, her own view of truth, from her own
+vantage-ground, and open a new vista of thought to the world.
+Otherwise, she will allow her priceless inheritance to crumble into
+dust, and, trying to replace it clumsily with feeble imitations of the
+West, make herself superfluous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> cheap and ludicrous. If she thus
+loses her individuality and her specific power to exist, will it in
+the least help the rest of the world? Will not her terrible bankruptcy
+involve also the Western mind? If the whole world grows at last into
+an exaggerated West, then such an illimitable parody of the modern age
+will die, crushed beneath its own absurdity.</p>
+
+<p>In this belief, it is my desire to extend by degrees the scope of this
+University on simple lines, until it comprehends the whole range of
+Eastern cultures&mdash;the Aryan, Semitic, Mongolian and others. Its object
+will be to reveal the Eastern mind to the world.</p>
+
+<p>Of one thing I felt certain during my travels in Europe, that a
+genuine interest has been roused there in the philosophy and the arts
+of the East, from which the Western mind seeks fresh inspiration of
+truth and beauty. Once the East had her reputation of fabulous wealth,
+and the seekers were attracted from across the sea. Since then, the
+shrine of wealth has changed its site. But the East is famed also for
+her storage of wisdom, harvested by her patriarchs from long
+successive ages of spiritual endeavour. And when, as now, in the midst
+of the pursuit of power and wealth, there rises the cry of privation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+from the famished spirit of man, an opportunity is offered to the East
+to offer her store to those who need it.</p>
+
+<p>Once upon a time we were in possession of such a thing as our own mind
+in India. It was living. It thought, it felt, it expressed itself. It
+was receptive as well as productive. That this mind could be of any
+use in the process, or in the end, of our education was overlooked by
+our modern educational dispensation. We are provided with buildings
+and books and other magnificent burdens calculated to suppress our
+mind. The latter was treated like a library-shelf solidly made of
+wood, to be loaded with leather-bound volumes of second-hand
+information. In consequence, it has lost its own colour and character,
+and has borrowed polish from the carpenter's shop. All this has cost
+us money, and also our finer ideas, while our intellectual vacancy has
+been crammed with what is described in official reports as Education.
+In fact, we have bought our spectacles at the expense of our eyesight.</p>
+
+<p>In India our goddess of learning is <i>Saraswati</i>. My audience in the
+West, I am sure, will be glad to know that her complexion is white.
+But the signal fact is that she is living and she is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> a woman, and her
+seat is on a lotus-flower. The symbolic meaning of this is, that she
+dwells in the centre of life and the heart of all existence, which
+opens itself in beauty to the light of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>The Western education which we have chanced to know is impersonal. Its
+complexion is also white, but it is the whiteness of the white-washed
+class-room walls. It dwells in the cold-storage compartments of
+lessons and the ice-packed minds of the schoolmasters. The effect
+which it had on my mind when, as a boy, I was compelled to go to
+school, I have described elsewhere. My feeling was very much the same
+as a tree might have, which was not allowed to live its full life, but
+was cut down to be made into packing-cases.</p>
+
+<p>The introduction of this education was not a part of the solemn
+marriage ceremony which was to unite the minds of the East and West in
+mutual understanding. It represented an artificial method of training
+specially calculated to produce the carriers of the white man's
+burden. This want of ideals still clings to our education system,
+though our Universities have latterly burdened their syllabus with a
+greater number of subjects than before. But it is only like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> adding to
+the bags of wheat the bullock carries to market; it does not make the
+bullock any better off.</p>
+
+<p>Mind, when long deprived of its natural food of truth and freedom of
+growth, develops an unnatural craving for success; and our students
+have fallen victims to the mania for success in examinations. Success
+consists in obtaining the largest number of marks with the strictest
+economy of knowledge. It is a deliberate cultivation of disloyalty to
+truth, of intellectual dishonesty, of a foolish imposition by which
+the mind is encouraged to rob itself. But as we are by means of it
+made to forget the existence of mind, we are supremely happy at the
+result. We pass examinations, and shrivel up into clerks, lawyers and
+police inspectors, and we die young.</p>
+
+<p>Universities should never be made into mechanical organisations for
+collecting and distributing knowledge. Through them the people should
+offer their intellectual hospitality, their wealth of mind to others,
+and earn their proud right in return to receive gifts from the rest of
+the world. But in the whole length and breadth of India there is not a
+single University established in the modern time where a foreign or
+an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> Indian student can properly be acquainted with the best products
+of the Indian mind. For that we have to cross the sea, and knock at
+the doors of France and Germany. Educational institutions in our
+country are India's alms-bowl of knowledge; they lower our
+intellectual self-respect; they encourage us to make a foolish display
+of decorations composed of borrowed feathers.</p>
+
+<p>This it was that led me to found a school in Bengal, in face of many
+difficulties and discouragements, and in spite of my own vocation as a
+poet, who finds his true inspiration only when he forgets that he is a
+schoolmaster. It is my hope that in this school a nucleus has been
+formed, round which an indigenous University of our own land will find
+its natural growth&mdash;a University which will help India's mind to
+concentrate and to be fully conscious of itself; free to seek the
+truth and make this truth its own wherever found, to judge by its own
+standard, give expression to its own creative genius, and offer its
+wisdom to the guests who come from other parts of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Man's intellect has a natural pride in its own aristocracy, which is
+the pride of its culture. Culture only acknowledges the excellence
+whose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> criticism is in its inner perfection, not in any external
+success. When this pride succumbs to some compulsion of necessity or
+lure of material advantage, it brings humiliation to the intellectual
+man. Modern India, through her very education, has been made to suffer
+this humiliation. Once she herself provided her children with a
+culture which was the product of her own ages of thought and creation.
+But it has been thrust aside, and we are made to tread the mill of
+passing examinations, not for learning anything, but for notifying
+that we are qualified for employments under organisations conducted in
+English. Our educated community is not a cultured community, but a
+community of qualified candidates. Meanwhile the proportion of
+possible employments to the number of claimants has gradually been
+growing narrower, and the consequent disaffection has been widespread.
+At last the very authorities who are responsible for this are blaming
+their victims. Such is the perversity of human nature. It bears its
+worst grudge against those it has injured.</p>
+
+<p>It is as if some tribe which had the primitive habit of decorating its
+tribal members with birds' plumage were some day to hold these very
+birds guilty of the crime of being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> extinct. There are belated
+attempts on the part of our governors to read us pious homilies about
+disinterested love of learning, while the old machinery goes on
+working, whose product is not education but certificates. It is good
+to remind the fettered bird that its wings are for soaring; but it is
+better to cut the chain which is holding it to its perch. The most
+pathetic feature of the tragedy is that the bird itself has learnt to
+use its chain for its ornament, simply because the chain jingles in
+fairly respectable English.</p>
+
+<p>In the Bengali language there is a modern maxim which can be
+translated, "He who learns to read and write rides in a carriage and
+pair." In English there is a similar proverb, "Knowledge is power." It
+is an offer of a prospective bribe to the student, a promise of an
+ulterior reward which is more important than knowledge itself.
+Temptations, held before us as inducements to be good or to pursue
+uncongenial paths, are most often flimsy lies or half-truths, such as
+the oft-quoted maxim of respectable piety, "Honesty is the best
+policy," at which politicians all over the world seem to laugh in
+their sleeves. But unfortunately, education conducted under a special
+providence of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> purposefulness, of eating the fruit of knowledge from
+the wrong end, <i>does</i> lead one to that special paradise on earth, the
+daily rides in one's own carriage and pair. And the West, I have heard
+from authentic sources, is aspiring in its education after that
+special cultivation of worldliness.</p>
+
+<p>Where society is comparatively simple and obstructions are not too
+numerous, we can clearly see how the life-process guides education in
+its vital purpose. The system of folk-education, which is indigenous
+to India, but is dying out, was one with the people's life. It flowed
+naturally through the social channels and made its way everywhere. It
+is a system of widespread irrigation of culture. Its teachers,
+specially trained men, are in constant requisition, and find crowded
+meetings in our villages, where they repeat the best thoughts and
+express the ideals of the land in the most effective form. The mode of
+instruction includes the recitation of epics, expounding of the
+scriptures, reading from the Puranas, which are the classical records
+of old history, performance of plays founded upon the early myths and
+legends, dramatic narration of the lives of ancient heroes, and the
+singing in chorus of songs from the old religious literature.
+Evidently, according<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> to this system, the best function of education
+is to enable us to realise that to live as a man is great, requiring
+profound philosophy for its ideal, poetry for its expression, and
+heroism in its conduct. Owing to this vital method of culture the
+common people of India, though technically illiterate, have been made
+conscious of the sanctity of social relationships, entailing constant
+sacrifice and self-control, urged and supported by ideals collectively
+expressed in one word, <i>Dharma</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Such a system of education may sound too simple for the complexities
+of modern life. But the fundamental principle of social life in its
+different stages of development remains the same; and in no
+circumstance can the truth be ignored that all human complexities must
+harmonise in organic unity with life, failing which there will be
+endless conflict. Most things in the civilised world occupy more than
+their legitimate space. Much of their burden is needless. By bearing
+this burden civilised man may be showing great strength, but he
+displays little skill. To the gods, viewing this from on high, it must
+seem like the flounderings of a giant who has got out of his depth and
+knows not how to swim.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The main source of all forms of voluntary slavery is the desire of
+gain. It is difficult to fight against this when modern civilisation
+is tainted with such a universal contamination of avarice. I have
+realised it myself in the little boys of my own school. For the first
+few years there is no trouble. But as soon as the upper class is
+reached, their worldly wisdom&mdash;the malady of the aged&mdash;begins to
+assert itself. They rebelliously insist that they must no longer
+learn, but rather pass examinations. Professions in the modern age are
+more numerous and lucrative than ever before. They need specialisation
+of training and knowledge, tempting education to yield its spiritual
+freedom to the claims of utilitarian ambitions. But man's deeper
+nature is hurt; his smothered life seeks to be liberated from the
+suffocating folds and sensual ties of prosperity. And this is why we
+find almost everywhere in the world a growing dissatisfaction with the
+prevalent system of teaching, which betrays the encroachment of
+senility and worldly prudence over pure intellect.</p>
+
+<p>In India, also, a vague feeling of discontent has given rise to
+numerous attempts at establishing national schools and colleges. But,
+unfortunately, our very education has been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> successful in depriving us
+of our real initiative and our courage of thought. The training we get
+in our schools has the constant implication in it that it is not for
+us to produce but to borrow. And we are casting about to borrow our
+educational plans from European institutions. The trampled plants of
+Indian corn are dreaming of recouping their harvest from the
+neighbouring wheat fields. To change the figure, we forget that, for
+proficiency in walking, it is better to train the muscles of our own
+legs than to strut upon wooden ones of foreign make, although they
+clatter and cause more surprise at our skill in using them than if
+they were living and real.</p>
+
+<p>But when we go to borrow help from a foreign neighbourhood we are apt
+to overlook the real source of help behind all that is external and
+apparent. Had the deep-water fishes happened to produce a scientist
+who chose the jumping of a monkey for his research work, I am sure he
+would give most of the credit to the branches of the trees and very
+little to the monkey itself. In a foreign University we see the
+branching wildernesses of its buildings, furniture, regulations, and
+syllabus, but the monkey, which is a difficult creature to catch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> and
+more difficult to manufacture, we are likely to treat as a mere
+accident of minor importance. It is convenient for us to overlook the
+fact that among the Europeans the living spirit of the University is
+widely spread in their society, their parliament, their literature,
+and the numerous activities of their corporate life. In all these
+functions they are in perpetual touch with the great personality of
+the land which is creative and heroic in its constant acts of
+self-expression and self-sacrifice. They have their thoughts published
+in their books as well as through the medium of living men who think
+those thoughts, and who criticise, compare and disseminate them. Some
+at least of the drawbacks of their academic education are redeemed by
+the living energy of the intellectual personality pervading their
+social organism. It is like the stagnant reservoir of water which
+finds its purification in the showers of rain to which it keeps itself
+open. But, to our misfortune, we have in India all the furniture of
+the European University except the human teacher. We have, instead,
+mere purveyors of book-lore in whom the paper god of the bookshop has
+been made vocal.</p>
+
+<p>A most important truth, which we are apt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> to forget, is that a teacher
+can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can
+never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame.
+The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living
+traffic with his knowledge, but merely repeats his lessons to his
+students, can only load their minds; he cannot quicken them. Truth not
+only must inform but inspire. If the inspiration dies out, and the
+information only accumulates, then truth loses its infinity. The
+greater part of our learning in the schools has been wasted because,
+for most of our teachers, their subjects are like dead specimens of
+once living things, with which they have a learned acquaintance, but
+no communication of life and love.</p>
+
+<p>The educational institution, therefore, which I have in mind has
+primarily for its object the constant pursuit of truth, from which the
+imparting of truth naturally follows. It must not be a dead cage in
+which living minds are fed with food artificially prepared. It should
+be an open house, in which students and teachers are at one. They must
+live their complete life together, dominated by a common aspiration
+for truth and a need of sharing all the delights of culture. In former
+days the great master-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>craftsmen had students in their workshops where
+they co-operated in shaping things to perfection. That was the place
+where knowledge could become living&mdash;that knowledge which not only has
+its substance and law, but its atmosphere subtly informed by a
+creative personality. For intellectual knowledge also has its aspect
+of creative art, in which the man who explores truth expresses
+something which is human in him&mdash;his enthusiasm, his courage, his
+sacrifice, his honesty, and his skill. In merely academical teaching
+we find subjects, but not the man who pursues the subjects; therefore
+the vital part of education remains incomplete.</p>
+
+<p>For our Universities we must claim, not labelled packages of truth and
+authorised agents to distribute them, but truth in its living
+association with her lovers and seekers and discoverers. Also we must
+know that the concentration of the mind-forces scattered throughout
+the country is the most important mission of a University, which, like
+the nucleus of a living cell, should be the centre of the intellectual
+life of the people.</p>
+
+<p>The bringing about of an intellectual unity in India is, I am told,
+difficult to the verge of impossibility owing to the fact that India
+has so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> many different languages. Such a statement is as unreasonable
+as to say that man, because he has a diversity of limbs, should find
+it impossible to realise life's unity in himself, and that only an
+earthworm composed of a tail and nothing else could truly know that it
+had a body.</p>
+
+<p>Let us admit that India is not like any one of the great countries of
+Europe, which has its own separate language; but is rather like Europe
+herself, branching out into different peoples with many different
+languages. And yet Europe has a common civilisation, with an
+intellectual unity which is not based upon uniformity of language. It
+is true that in the earlier stages of her culture the whole of Europe
+had Latin for her learned tongue. That was in her intellectual budding
+time, when all her petals of self-expression were closed in one point.
+But the perfection of her mental unfolding was not represented by the
+singularity of her literary vehicle. When the great European countries
+found their individual languages, then only the true federation of
+cultures became possible in the West, and the very differences of the
+channels made the commerce of ideas in Europe so richly copious and so
+variedly active. We can well imagine what the loss to European
+civilisation would be if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> France, Italy and Germany, and England
+herself, had not through their separate agencies contributed to the
+common coffer their individual earnings.</p>
+
+<p>There was a time with us when India had her common language of culture
+in Sanskrit. But, for the complete commerce of her thought, she
+required that all her vernaculars should attain their perfect powers,
+through which her different peoples might manifest their
+idiosyncrasies; and this could never be done through a foreign tongue.</p>
+
+<p>In the United States, in Canada and other British Colonies, the
+language of the people is English. It has a great literature which had
+its birth and growth in the history of the British Islands. But when
+this language, with all its products and acquisitions, matured by ages
+on its own mother soil, is carried into foreign lands, which have
+their own separate history and their own life-growth, it must
+constantly hamper the indigenous growth of culture and destroy
+individuality of judgement and the perfect freedom of self-expression.
+The inherited wealth of the English language, with all its splendour,
+becomes an impediment when taken into different surroundings, just as
+when lungs are given to the whale in the sea. If such is the case even
+with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> races whose grandmother-tongue naturally continues to be their
+own mother-tongue, one can imagine what sterility it means for a
+people which accepts, for its vehicle of culture, an altogether
+foreign language. A language is not like an umbrella or an overcoat,
+that can be borrowed by unconscious or deliberate mistake; it is like
+the living skin itself. If the body of a draught-horse enters into the
+skin of a race-horse, it will be safe to wager that such an anomaly
+will never win a race, and will fail even to drag a cart. Have we not
+watched some modern Japanese artists imitating European art? The
+imitation may sometimes produce clever results; but such cleverness
+has only the perfection of artificial flowers which never bear fruit.</p>
+
+<p>All great countries have their vital centres for intellectual life,
+where a high standard of learning is maintained, where the minds of
+the people are naturally attracted, where they find their genial
+atmosphere, in which to prove their worth and to contribute their
+share to the country's culture. Thus they kindle, on the common altar
+of the land, that great sacrificial fire which can radiate the sacred
+light of wisdom abroad.</p>
+
+<p>Athens was such a centre in Greece, Rome in Italy; and Paris is such
+to-day in France.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> Benares has been and still continues to be the
+centre of our Sanskrit culture. But Sanskrit learning does not exhaust
+all the elements of culture that exist in modern India.</p>
+
+<p>If we were to take for granted, what some people maintain, that
+Western culture is the only source of light for our mind, then it
+would be like depending for daybreak upon some star, which is the sun
+of a far distant sphere. The star may give us light, but not the day;
+it may give us direction in our voyage of exploration, but it can
+never open the full view of truth before our eyes. In fact, we can
+never use this cold starlight for stirring the sap in our branches,
+and giving colour and bloom to our life. This is the reason why
+European education has become for India mere school lessons and no
+culture; a box of matches, good for the small uses of illumination,
+but not the light of morning, in which the use and beauty, and all the
+subtle mysteries of life are blended in one.</p>
+
+<p>Let me say clearly that I have no distrust of any culture because of
+its foreign character. On the contrary, I believe that the shock of
+such extraneous forces is necessary for the vitality of our
+intellectual nature. It is admitted that much of the spirit of
+Christianity runs counter,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> not only to the classical culture of
+Europe, but to the European temperament altogether. And yet this alien
+movement of ideas, constantly running against the natural mental
+current of Europe, has been a most important factor in strengthening
+and enriching her civilisation, on account of the sharp antagonism of
+its intellectual direction. In fact, the European vernaculars first
+woke up to life and fruitful vigour when they felt the impact of this
+foreign thought-power with all its oriental forms and affinities. The
+same thing is happening in India. The European culture has come to us,
+not only with its knowledge, but with its velocity.</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, let us admit that modern Science is Europe's great gift
+to humanity for all time to come. We, in India, must claim it from her
+hands, and gratefully accept it in order to be saved from the curse of
+futility by lagging behind. We shall fail to reap the harvest of the
+present age if we delay.</p>
+
+<p>What I object to is the artificial arrangement by which foreign
+education tends to occupy all the space of our national mind, and thus
+kills, or hampers, the great opportunity for the creation of a new
+thought-power by a new combination<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> of truths. It is this which makes
+me urge that all the elements in our own culture have to be
+strengthened, not to resist the Western culture, but truly to accept
+and assimilate it; to use it for our sustenance, not as our burden; to
+get mastery over this culture, and not to live on its outskirts as the
+hewers of texts and drawers of book-learning.</p>
+
+<p>The main river in Indian culture has flowed in four streams,&mdash;the
+Vedic, the Puranic, the Buddhist, and the Jain. It has its source in
+the heights of the Indian consciousness. But a river, belonging to a
+country, is not fed by its own waters alone. The Tibetan Brahmaputra
+is a tributary to the Indian Ganges. Contributions have similarly
+found their way to India's original culture. The Muhammadan, for
+example, has repeatedly come into India from outside, laden with his
+own stores of knowledge and feeling and his wonderful religious
+democracy, bringing freshet after freshet to swell the current. To our
+music, our architecture, our pictorial art, our literature, the
+Muhammadans have made their permanent and precious contribution. Those
+who have studied the lives and writings of our medieval saints, and
+all the great religious movements that sprang up in the time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> of the
+Muhammadan rule, know how deep is our debt to this foreign current
+that has so intimately mingled with our life.</p>
+
+<p>So, in our centre of Indian learning, we must provide for the
+co-ordinate study of all these different cultures,&mdash;the Vedic, the
+Puranic, the Buddhist, the Jain, the Islamic, the Sikh and the
+Zoroastrian. The Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan will also have to be
+added; for, in the past, India did not remain isolated within her own
+boundaries. Therefore, in order to learn what she was, in her relation
+to the whole continent of Asia, these cultures too must be studied.
+Side by side with them must finally be placed the Western culture. For
+only then shall we be able to assimilate this last contribution to our
+common stock. A river flowing within banks is truly our own, and it
+can contain its due tributaries; but our relations with a flood can
+only prove disastrous.</p>
+
+<p>There are some who are exclusively modern, who believe that the past
+is the bankrupt time, leaving no assets for us, but only a legacy of
+debts. They refuse to believe that the army which is marching forward
+can be fed from the rear. It is well to remind such persons that the
+great ages of renaissance in history were those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> when man suddenly
+discovered the seeds of thought in the granary of the past.</p>
+
+<p>The unfortunate people who have lost the harvest of their past have
+lost their present age. They have missed their seed for cultivation,
+and go begging for their bare livelihood. We must not imagine that we
+are one of these disinherited peoples of the world. The time has come
+for us to break open the treasure-trove of our ancestors, and use it
+for our commerce of life. Let us, with its help, make our future our
+own, and not continue our existence as the eternal rag-pickers in
+other people's dustbins.</p>
+
+<p>So far I have dwelt only upon the intellectual aspect of Education.
+For, even in the West, it is the intellectual training which receives
+almost exclusive emphasis. The Western universities have not yet truly
+recognised that fulness of expression is fulness of life. And a large
+part of man can never find its expression in the mere language of
+words. It must therefore seek for its other languages,&mdash;lines and
+colours, sounds and movements. Through our mastery of these we not
+only make our whole nature articulate, but also understand man in all
+his attempts to reveal his innermost being in every age and clime. The
+great use of Education is not merely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> to collect facts, but to know
+man and to make oneself known to man. It is the duty of every human
+being to master, at least to some extent, not only the language of
+intellect, but also that personality which is the language of Art. It
+is a great world of reality for man,&mdash;vast and profound,&mdash;this growing
+world of his own creative nature. This is the world of Art. To be
+brought up in ignorance of it is to be deprived of the knowledge and
+use of that great inheritance of humanity, which has been growing and
+waiting for every one of us from the beginning of our history. It is
+to remain deaf to the eternal voice of Man, that speaks to all men the
+messages that are beyond speech. From the educational point of view we
+know Europe where it is scientific, or at best literary. So our notion
+of its modern culture is limited within the boundary lines of grammar
+and the laboratory. We almost completely ignore the &aelig;sthetic life of
+man, leaving it uncultivated, allowing weeds to grow there. Our
+newspapers are prolific, our meeting-places are vociferous; and in
+them we wear to shreds the things we have borrowed from our English
+teachers. We make the air dismal and damp with the tears of our
+grievances. But where are our arts, which, like the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> outbreak of
+spring flowers, are the spontaneous overflow of our deeper nature and
+spiritual magnificence?</p>
+
+<p>Through this great deficiency of our modern education, we are
+condemned to carry to the end a dead load of dumb wisdom. Like
+miserable outcasts, we are deprived of our place in the festival of
+culture, and wait at the outer court, where the colours are not for
+us, nor the forms of delight, nor the songs. Ours is the education of
+a prison-house, with hard labour and with a drab dress cut to the
+limits of minimum decency and necessity. We are made to forget that
+the perfection of colour and form and expression belongs to the
+perfection of vitality,&mdash;that the joy of life is only the other side
+of the strength of life. The timber merchant may think that the
+flowers and foliage are mere frivolous decorations of a tree; but if
+these are suppressed, he will know to his cost that the timber too
+will fail.</p>
+
+<p>During the Moghal period, music and art in India found a great impetus
+from the rulers, because their whole life&mdash;not merely their official
+life&mdash;was lived in this land; and it is the wholeness of life from
+which originates Art. But our English teachers are birds of passage;
+they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> cackle to us, but do not sing,&mdash;their true heart is not in the
+land of their exile.</p>
+
+<p>Constriction of life, owing to this narrowness of culture, must no
+longer be encouraged. In the centre of Indian culture which I am
+proposing, music and art must have their prominent seats of honour,
+and not be given merely a tolerant nod of recognition. The different
+systems of music and different schools of art which lie scattered in
+the different ages and provinces of India, and in the different strata
+of society, and also those belonging to the other great countries of
+Asia, which had communication with India, have to be brought there
+together and studied.</p>
+
+<p>I have already hinted that Education should not be dragged out of its
+native element, the life-current of the people. Economic life covers
+the whole width of the fundamental basis of society, because its
+necessities are the simplest and the most universal. Educational
+institutions, in order to obtain their fulness of truth, must have
+close association with this economic life. The highest mission of
+education is to help us to realise the inner principle of the unity of
+all knowledge and all the activities of our social and spiritual
+being. Society in its early stage was held together by its economic
+co-operation, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> all its members felt in unison a natural interest
+in their right to live. Civilisation could never have been started at
+all if such was not the case. And civilisation will fall to pieces if
+it never again realises the spirit of mutual help and the common
+sharing of benefits in the elemental necessaries of life. The idea of
+such economic co-operation should be made the basis of our University.
+It must not only instruct, but live; not only think, but produce.</p>
+
+<p>Our ancient <i>tapovanas</i>, or forest schools, which were our natural
+universities, were not shut off from the daily life of the people.
+Masters and students gathered fruit and fuel, and took their cattle
+out to graze, supporting themselves by the work of their own hands.
+Spiritual education was a part of the spiritual life itself, which
+comprehended all life. Our centre of culture should not only be the
+centre of the intellectual life of India, but the centre of her
+economic life also. It must co-operate with the villages round it,
+cultivate land, breed cattle, spin cloths, press oil from oil-seeds;
+it must produce all the necessaries, devising the best means, using
+the best materials, and calling science to its aid. Its very existence
+should depend upon the success of its industrial activities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> carried
+out on the co-operative principle, which will unite the teachers and
+students and villagers of the neighbourhood in a living and active
+bond of necessity. This will give us also a practical industrial
+training, whose motive force is not the greed of profit.</p>
+
+<p>Before I conclude my paper, a delicate question remains to be
+considered. What must be the religious ideal that is to rule our
+centre of Indian culture? The one abiding ideal in the religious life
+of India has been <i>Mukti</i>, the deliverance of man's soul from the grip
+of self, its communion with the Infinite Soul through its union in
+<i>&acirc;nanda</i> with the universe. This religion of spiritual harmony is not
+a theological doctrine to be taught, as a subject in the class, for
+half an hour each day. It is the spiritual truth and beauty of our
+attitude towards our surroundings, our conscious relationship with the
+Infinite, and the lasting power of the Eternal in the passing moments
+of our life. Such a religious ideal can only be made possible by
+making provision for students to live in intimate touch with nature,
+daily to grow in an atmosphere of service offered to all creatures,
+tending trees, feeding birds and animals, learning to feel the immense
+mystery of the soil and water and air.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Along with this, there should be some common sharing of life with the
+tillers of the soil and the humble workers in the neighbouring
+villages; studying their crafts, inviting them to the feasts, joining
+them in works of co-operation for communal welfare; and in our
+intercourse we should be guided, not by moral maxims or the
+condescension of social superiority, but by natural sympathy of life
+for life, and by the sheer necessity of love's sacrifice for its own
+sake. In such an atmosphere students would learn to understand that
+humanity is a divine harp of many strings, waiting for its one grand
+music. Those who realise this unity are made ready for the pilgrimage
+through the night of suffering, and along the path of sacrifice, to
+the great meeting of Man in the future, for which the call comes to us
+across the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Life, in such a centre, should be simple and clean. We should never
+believe that simplicity of life might make us unsuited to the
+requirements of the society of our time. It is the simplicity of the
+tuning-fork, which is needed all the more because of the intricacy of
+strings in the instrument. In the morning of our career our nature
+needs the pure and the perfect note of a spiritual ideal in order<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> to
+fit us for the complications of our later years.</p>
+
+<p>In other words, this institution should be a perpetual creation by the
+co-operative enthusiasm of teachers and students, growing with the
+growth of their soul; a world in itself, self-sustaining, independent,
+rich with ever-renewing life, radiating life across space and time,
+attracting and maintaining round it a planetary system of dependent
+bodies. Its aim should lie in imparting life-breath to the complete
+man, who is intellectual as well as economic, bound by social bonds,
+but aspiring towards spiritual freedom and final perfection.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center" style="padding-top: 4em; font-size: 80%">THE END</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="padding-top: 4em; padding-bottom: 2em; font-size: 70%"><i>Printed in Great Britain by</i> <span class="smcap">R. &amp; R. Clark, Limited</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="advertisements">
+<h2><a name="BY_RABINDRANATH_TAGORE" id="BY_RABINDRANATH_TAGORE"></a>BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1-1" id="Page_1-1">[1]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>GITANJALI. (Song Offerings.)</big></b> Translated by the Author. With an
+Introduction by <span class="smcap">W.&nbsp;B. Yeats</span>, and a Portrait by <span class="smcap">W. Rothenstein</span>. Crown
+8vo. 5s. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>ATHEN&AElig;UM.</i>&mdash;"Mr. Tagore's translations are of trance-like beauty....
+The expanding sentiment of some of the poems wins, even through the
+alien medium of our English prose, a rhythm which in its strength and
+melody might recall familiar passages in the Psalms or Solomon's
+Song."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>FRUIT-GATHERING. A Sequel to "Gitanjali."</big></b> Crown 8vo. 5s. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>ATHEN&AElig;UM.</i>&mdash;"The eighty-six pieces that fill this volume are pure
+jets of lyric feeling, aphorisms expressed in moving symbols, or fully
+developed parables and allegories ... several are as perfect in form
+as they are beautiful and poignant in content."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>GITANJALI AND FRUIT-GATHERING.</big></b>
+
+With Illustrations in colour and half-tone by <span class="smcap">Nandalal Bose</span>,
+<span class="smcap">Surendranath Kar</span>, <span class="smcap">Abanindranath Tagore</span>, and <span class="smcap">Nobindranath Tagore</span>. Crown
+8vo. 10s. net.</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>THE GARDENER. Lyrics of Love and Life.</big></b> Translated by the Author. With
+Portrait. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>DAILY MAIL.</i>&mdash;"Flowers as fresh as sunrise.... One cannot tell what
+they have lost in the translation, but as they stand they are of
+extreme beauty.... They are simple, exalted, fragrant&mdash;episodes and
+incidents of every day transposed to faery."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>THE CRESCENT MOON. Child-Poems.</big></b> Translated by the Author. With 8
+Illustrations in Colour. Pott 4to. 5s. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>NATION.</i>&mdash;"A vision of childhood which is only paralleled in our
+literature by the work of William Blake."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2-1" id="Page_2-1">[2]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>STRAY BIRDS. Poems.</big></b> With a Frontispiece by <span class="smcap">Willy Pog&aacute;ny</span>. Crown 8vo.
+4s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>SCOTSMAN.</i>&mdash;"The richness of this volume in thought and in imagery,
+in tracing analogies and in discovering apologues, is such as to yield
+pleasure and profit to the most fertile and cultured minds."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>LOVER'S GIFT AND CROSSING.</big></b> Crown 8vo. 5s. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>ATHEN&AElig;UM.</i>&mdash;"The poems often touch extreme heights of passion and
+sublimity, and the diction has a beauty and a music that few have
+attained in this particular medium."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>THE FUGITIVE.</big></b> Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>SUNDAY TIMES.</i>&mdash;"In 'The Fugitive' the lovers of Tagore will not be
+disappointed. He has all his powers still undimmed. Indeed, the poet
+never, in our judgment, has surpassed this work."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>CHITRA. A Play.</big></b> Translated by the Author. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>OBSERVER.</i>&mdash;"An allegory of love's meaning, clear as a pool in the
+sunshine. It was written, we are told, twenty-five years ago.... Even
+then Mr. Tagore had that calm intensity of vision which we have all
+come to love in his later work. We find in him that for which Arjuna
+groped in his love, 'that ultimate <i>you</i>, that bare simplicity of
+truth,' and never more than in this little work of beauty, 'Chitra.'"</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>THE KING OF THE DARK CHAMBER. A Play.</big></b> Translated by <span class="smcap">Kshitish Chandra
+Sen.</span> Crown 8vo. 6s. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>PALL MALL GAZETTE.</i>&mdash;"Altogether, the play is a beautiful piece of
+fanciful writing with a veiled purpose at the back of it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3-1" id="Page_3-1">[3]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>THE POST OFFICE. A Play.</big></b> Translated by <span class="smcap">Devabrata Mukerjea</span>. Crown 8vo.
+3s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.</i>&mdash;"'The Post Office' is a delicate, wistful
+thing, coloured with beautiful imagery; for a moment it lifts a corner
+of the veil of worldly existence. The translation is throughout
+extremely happy."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>THE CYCLE OF SPRING. A Play.</big></b> Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.</i>&mdash;"The whole little drama is a spring-gift such
+as England has seldom received."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>SACRIFICE and other Plays.</big></b> Crown 8vo. 6s. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>SCOTSMAN.</i>&mdash;"All the pieces have a rare beauty of their own."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>THE HOME AND THE WORLD. A Novel.</big></b> Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>SATURDAY REVIEW.</i>&mdash;"In these days of indiscriminating praise, it is
+hard for a reviewer to find words with which to welcome properly a
+book so good as this."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>THE WRECK. A Novel.</big></b> Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>MORNING POST.</i>&mdash;"The story cannot fail to interest and delight."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>MASHI and other Stories.</big></b> Crown 8vo. 6s. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>OXFORD MAGAZINE.</i>&mdash;"Full of pregnant pictures of Indian life and
+character, subdued but vivid in tone."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>HUNGRY STONES and other Stories.</big></b> Crown 8vo. 6s. net.</p>
+
+<p><i>DAILY TELEGRAPH.</i>&mdash;"Contains descriptive passages of rare vigour and
+beauty, and is embellished with imagery of a delicate and distinctive
+character."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4-1" id="Page_4-1">[4]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>S&#256;DHAN&#256;: The Realisation of Life. Lectures.</big></b> Extra Crown 8vo. 6s.
+net.</p>
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>NATIONALISM.</big></b> Extra Crown 8vo. 6s. net.</p>
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>PERSONALITY. Lectures delivered in America.</big></b> Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
+6s. net.</p>
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>CREATIVE UNITY. Essays.</big></b> Extra Crown 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>MY REMINISCENCES.</big></b> Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>GLIMPSES OF BENGAL. Selected from the Letters of Rabindranath Tagore,
+1885 to 1895.</big></b> Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>ONE HUNDRED POEMS OF KABIR.</big></b> Translated by <span class="smcap">Rabindranath Tagore</span>,
+assisted by <span class="smcap">Evelyn Underhill</span>. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.</p>
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>RABINDRANATH TAGORE.</big></b> A Biographical Study. By <span class="smcap">Ernest Rhys</span>.
+Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>SIX PORTRAITS OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE.</big></b> By <span class="smcap">W. Rothenstein</span>. Reproduced in
+Collotype. With Prefatory Note by <span class="smcap">Max Beerbohm</span>. Imperial 4to. 10s.
+net.</p>
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MAHARSHI DEVENDRANATH TAGORE</big></b> (Father of
+<span class="smcap">Rabindranath Tagore</span>). Translated by <span class="smcap">Satyendranath Tagore</span> and <span class="smcap">Indira
+Devi</span>. With Introduction by <span class="smcap">Evelyn Underhill</span>, and Portrait. Extra Crown
+8vo. 7s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>THE PHILOSOPHY OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE.</big></b> By Prof. <span class="smcap">S. Radhakrishnan</span>. 8vo.
+8s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p class="ads"><b><big>SHANTINIKETAN: The Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.</big></b> By <span class="smcap">W.&nbsp;W.
+Pearson</span>. With Introduction by <span class="smcap">Rabindranath Tagore</span>. Illustrated. 8vo.
+4s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p class="center">LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="note">
+<p class="center"><b>Transcriber's Notes</b></p>
+
+<p>Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. The page numbers
+in the Table of Contents have been adjusted to match the actual page
+numbers.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Creative Unity, by Rabindranath Tagore
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Creative Unity, by Rabindranath Tagore
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Creative Unity
+
+Author: Rabindranath Tagore
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2007 [EBook #23136]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE UNITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Irma �pehar and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+                            CREATIVE UNITY
+
+                                  BY
+
+                          RABINDRANATH TAGORE
+
+                      MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+                      ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
+                                 1922
+
+                      MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+                  LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA . MADRAS
+                               MELBOURNE
+
+                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+                      NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
+                        DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO
+
+                   THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+
+                                TORONTO
+
+                               COPYRIGHT
+
+                       PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
+
+
+
+
+                                  TO
+                          DR. EDWIN H. LEWIS
+
+
+
+
+                             INTRODUCTION
+
+
+It costs me nothing to feel that I am; it is no burden to me. And yet
+if the mental, physical, chemical, and other innumerable facts
+concerning all branches of knowledge which have united in myself could
+be broken up, they would prove endless. It is some untold mystery of
+unity in me, that has the simplicity of the infinite and reduces the
+immense mass of multitude to a single point.
+
+This One in me knows the universe of the many. But, in whatever it
+knows, it knows the One in different aspects. It knows this room only
+because this room is One to it, in spite of the seeming contradiction
+of the endless facts contained in the single fact of the room. Its
+knowledge of a tree is the knowledge of a unity, which appears in the
+aspect of a tree.
+
+This One in me is creative. Its creations are a pastime, through which
+it gives expression to an ideal of unity in its endless show of
+variety. Such are its pictures, poems, music, in which it finds joy
+only because they reveal the perfect forms of an inherent unity.
+
+This One in me not only seeks unity in knowledge for its understanding
+and creates images of unity for its delight; it also seeks union in
+love for its fulfilment. It seeks itself in others. This is a fact,
+which would be absurd had there been no great medium of truth to give
+it reality. In love we find a joy which is ultimate because it is the
+ultimate truth. Therefore it is said in the Upanishads that the
+_advaitam_ is _anantam_,--"the One is Infinite"; that the _advaitam_
+is _anandam_,--"the One is Love."
+
+To give perfect expression to the One, the Infinite, through the
+harmony of the many; to the One, the Love, through the sacrifice of
+self, is the object alike of our individual life and our society.
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+
+                                        PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                              v
+
+THE POET'S RELIGION                       3
+
+THE CREATIVE IDEAL                       31
+
+THE RELIGION OF THE FOREST               45
+
+AN INDIAN FOLK RELIGION                  69
+
+EAST AND WEST                            93
+
+THE MODERN AGE                          115
+
+THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM                   133
+
+THE NATION                              143
+
+WOMAN AND HOME                          157
+
+AN EASTERN UNIVERSITY                   169
+
+
+
+
+                          THE POET'S RELIGION
+
+                                   I
+
+
+Civility is beauty of behaviour. It requires for its perfection
+patience, self-control, and an environment of leisure. For genuine
+courtesy is a creation, like pictures, like music. It is a harmonious
+blending of voice, gesture and movement, words and action, in which
+generosity of conduct is expressed. It reveals the man himself and has
+no ulterior purpose.
+
+Our needs are always in a hurry. They rush and hustle, they are rude
+and unceremonious; they have no surplus of leisure, no patience for
+anything else but fulfilment of purpose. We frequently see in our
+country at the present day men utilising empty kerosene cans for
+carrying water. These cans are emblems of discourtesy; they are curt
+and abrupt, they have not the least shame for their unmannerliness,
+they do not care to be ever so slightly more than useful.
+
+The instruments of our necessity assert that we must have food,
+shelter, clothes, comforts and convenience. And yet men spend an
+immense amount of their time and resources in contradicting this
+assertion, to prove that they are not a mere living catalogue of
+endless wants; that there is in them an ideal of perfection, a sense
+of unity, which is a harmony between parts and a harmony with
+surroundings.
+
+The quality of the infinite is not the magnitude of extension, it is
+in the _Advaitam_, the mystery of Unity. Facts occupy endless time and
+space; but the truth comprehending them all has no dimension; it is
+One. Wherever our heart touches the One, in the small or the big, it
+finds the touch of the infinite.
+
+I was speaking to some one of the joy we have in our personality. I
+said it was because we were made conscious by it of a spirit of unity
+within ourselves. He answered that he had no such feeling of joy about
+himself, but I was sure he exaggerated. In all probability he had been
+suffering from some break of harmony between his surroundings and the
+spirit of unity within him, proving all the more strongly its truth.
+The meaning of health comes home to us with painful force when disease
+disturbs it; since health expresses the unity of the vital functions
+and is accordingly joyful. Life's tragedies occur, not to demonstrate
+their own reality, but to reveal that eternal principle of joy in
+life, to which they gave a rude shaking. It is the object of this
+Oneness in us to realise its infinity by perfect union of love with
+others. All obstacles to this union create misery, giving rise to the
+baser passions that are expressions of finitude, of that separateness
+which is negative and therefore _maya_.
+
+The joy of unity within ourselves, seeking expression, becomes
+creative; whereas our desire for the fulfilment of our needs is
+constructive. The water vessel, taken as a vessel only, raises the
+question, "Why does it exist at all?" Through its fitness of
+construction, it offers the apology for its existence. But where it is
+a work of beauty it has no question to answer; it has nothing to do,
+but to be. It reveals in its form a unity to which all that seems
+various in it is so related that, in a mysterious manner, it strikes
+sympathetic chords to the music of unity in our own being.
+
+What is the truth of this world? It is not in the masses of substance,
+not in the number of things, but in their relatedness, which neither
+can be counted, nor measured, nor abstracted. It is not in the
+materials which are many, but in the expression which is one. All our
+knowledge of things is knowing them in their relation to the Universe,
+in that relation which is truth. A drop of water is not a particular
+assortment of elements; it is the miracle of a harmonious mutuality,
+in which the two reveal the One. No amount of analysis can reveal to
+us this mystery of unity. Matter is an abstraction; we shall never be
+able to realise what it is, for our world of reality does not
+acknowledge it. Even the giant forces of the world, centripetal and
+centrifugal, are kept out of our recognition. They are the
+day-labourers not admitted into the audience-hall of creation. But
+light and sound come to us in their gay dresses as troubadours singing
+serenades before the windows of the senses. What is constantly before
+us, claiming our attention, is not the kitchen, but the feast; not the
+anatomy of the world, but its countenance. There is the dancing ring
+of seasons; the elusive play of lights and shadows, of wind and water;
+the many-coloured wings of erratic life flitting between birth and
+death. The importance of these does not lie in their existence as mere
+facts, but in their language of harmony, the mother-tongue of our own
+soul, through which they are communicated to us.
+
+We grow out of touch with this great truth, we forget to accept its
+invitation and its hospitality, when in quest of external success our
+works become unspiritual and unexpressive. This is what Wordsworth
+complained of when he said:
+
+    The world is too much with us; late and soon,
+    Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
+    Little we see in Nature that is ours.
+
+But it is not because the world has grown too familiar to us; on the
+contrary, it is because we do not see it in its aspect of unity,
+because we are driven to distraction by our pursuit of the
+fragmentary.
+
+Materials as materials are savage; they are solitary; they are ready
+to hurt one another. They are like our individual impulses seeking the
+unlimited freedom of wilfulness. Left to themselves they are
+destructive. But directly an ideal of unity raises its banner in their
+centre, it brings these rebellious forces under its sway and creation
+is revealed--the creation which is peace, which is the unity of
+perfect relationship. Our greed for eating is in itself ugly and
+selfish, it has no sense of decorum; but when brought under the ideal
+of social fellowship, it is regulated and made ornamental; it is
+changed into a daily festivity of life. In human nature sexual passion
+is fiercely individual and destructive, but dominated by the ideal of
+love, it has been made to flower into a perfection of beauty, becoming
+in its best expression symbolical of the spiritual truth in man which
+is his kinship of love with the Infinite. Thus we find it is the One
+which expresses itself in creation; and the Many, by giving up
+opposition, make the revelation of unity perfect.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+I remember, when I was a child, that a row of cocoanut trees by our
+garden wall, with their branches beckoning the rising sun on the
+horizon, gave me a companionship as living as I was myself. I know it
+was my imagination which transmuted the world around me into my own
+world--the imagination which seeks unity, which deals with it. But we
+have to consider that this companionship was true; that the universe
+in which I was born had in it an element profoundly akin to my own
+imaginative mind, one which wakens in all children's natures the
+Creator, whose pleasure is in interweaving the web of creation with
+His own patterns of many-coloured strands. It is something akin to us,
+and therefore harmonious to our imagination. When we find some strings
+vibrating in unison with others, we know that this sympathy carries in
+it an eternal reality. The fact that the world stirs our imagination
+in sympathy tells us that this creative imagination is a common truth
+both in us and in the heart of existence. Wordsworth says:
+
+                              I'd rather be
+    A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
+    So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
+    Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
+    Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
+    Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
+
+In this passage the poet says we are less forlorn in a world which we
+meet with our imagination. That can only be possible if through our
+imagination is revealed, behind all appearances, the reality which
+gives the touch of companionship, that is to say, something which has
+an affinity to us. An immense amount of our activity is engaged in
+making images, not for serving any useful purpose or formulating
+rational propositions, but for giving varied responses to the varied
+touches of this reality. In this image-making the child creates his
+own world in answer to the world in which he finds himself. The child
+in us finds glimpses of his eternal playmate from behind the veil of
+things, as Proteus rising from the sea, or Triton blowing his wreathed
+horn. And the playmate is the Reality, that makes it possible for the
+child to find delight in activities which do not inform or bring
+assistance but merely express. There is an image-making joy in the
+infinite, which inspires in us our joy in imagining. The rhythm of
+cosmic motion produces in our mind the emotion which is creative.
+
+A poet has said about his destiny as a dreamer, about the
+worthlessness of his dreams and yet their permanence:
+
+    I hang 'mid men my heedless head,
+    And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:
+    The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper,
+    Time shall reap; but after the reaper
+    The world shall glean to me, me the sleeper.
+
+The dream persists; it is more real than even bread which has
+substance and use. The painted canvas is durable and substantial; it
+has for its production and transport to market a whole array of
+machines and factories. But the picture which no factory can produce
+is a dream, a _maya_, and yet it, not the canvas, has the meaning of
+ultimate reality.
+
+A poet describes Autumn:
+
+    I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
+    Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
+    To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
+    Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn.
+
+Of April another poet sings:
+
+        April, April,
+    Laugh thy girlish laughter;
+    Then the moment after
+    Weep thy girlish tears!
+    April, that mine ears
+    Like a lover greetest,
+    If I tell thee, sweetest,
+    All my hopes and fears.
+
+        April, April,
+    Laugh thy golden laughter.
+    But the moment after
+    Weep thy golden tears!
+
+This Autumn, this April,--are they nothing but phantasy?
+
+Let us suppose that the Man from the Moon comes to the earth and
+listens to some music in a gramophone. He seeks for the origin of the
+delight produced in his mind. The facts before him are a cabinet made
+of wood and a revolving disc producing sound; but the one thing which
+is neither seen nor can be explained is the truth of the music, which
+his personality must immediately acknowledge as a personal message. It
+is neither in the wood, nor in the disc, nor in the sound of the
+notes. If the Man from the Moon be a poet, as can reasonably be
+supposed, he will write about a fairy imprisoned in that box, who sits
+spinning fabrics of songs expressing her cry for a far-away magic
+casement opening on the foam of some perilous sea, in a fairyland
+forlorn. It will not be literally, but essentially true. The facts of
+the gramophone make us aware of the laws of sound, but the music gives
+us personal companionship. The bare facts about April are alternate
+sunshine and showers; but the subtle blending of shadows and lights,
+of murmurs and movements, in April, gives us not mere shocks of
+sensation, but unity of joy as does music. Therefore when a poet sees
+the vision of a girl in April, even a downright materialist is in
+sympathy with him. But we know that the same individual would be
+menacingly angry if the law of heredity or a geometrical problem were
+described as a girl or a rose--or even as a cat or a camel. For these
+intellectual abstractions have no magical touch for our lute-strings
+of imagination. They are no dreams, as are the harmony of bird-songs,
+rain-washed leaves glistening in the sun, and pale clouds floating in
+the blue.
+
+The ultimate truth of our personality is that we are no mere
+biologists or geometricians; "we are the dreamers of dreams, we are
+the music-makers." This dreaming or music-making is not a function of
+the lotus-eaters, it is the creative impulse which makes songs not
+only with words and tunes, lines and colours, but with stones and
+metals, with ideas and men:
+
+    With wonderful deathless ditties
+    We build up the world's great cities,
+    And out of a fabulous story
+    We fashion an empire's glory.
+
+I have been told by a scholar friend of mine that by constant practice
+in logic he has weakened his natural instinct of faith. The reason is,
+faith is the spectator in us which finds the meaning of the drama from
+the unity of the performance; but logic lures us into the greenroom
+where there is stagecraft but no drama at all; and then this logic
+nods its head and wearily talks about disillusionment. But the
+greenroom, dealing with its fragments, looks foolish when questioned,
+or wears the sneering smile of Mephistopheles; for it does not have
+the secret of unity, which is somewhere else. It is for faith to
+answer, "Unity comes to us from the One, and the One in ourselves
+opens the door and receives it with joy." The function of poetry and
+the arts is to remind us that the greenroom is the greyest of
+illusions, and the reality is the drama presented before us, all its
+paint and tinsel, masks and pageantry, made one in art. The ropes and
+wheels perish, the stage is changed; but the dream which is drama
+remains true, for there remains the eternal Dreamer.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Poetry and the arts cherish in them the profound faith of man in the
+unity of his being with all existence, the final truth of which is the
+truth of personality. It is a religion directly apprehended, and not a
+system of metaphysics to be analysed and argued. We know in our
+personal experience what our creations are and we instinctively know
+through it what creation around us means.
+
+When Keats said in his "Ode to a Grecian Urn":
+
+    Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought,
+    As doth eternity,...
+
+he felt the ineffable which is in all forms of perfection, the mystery
+of the One, which takes us beyond all thought into the immediate
+touch of the Infinite. This is the mystery which is for a poet to
+realise and to reveal. It comes out in Keats' poems with struggling
+gleams through consciousness of suffering and despair:
+
+    Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
+    Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
+    Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways
+    Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
+    Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
+    From our dark spirits.
+
+In this there is a suggestion that truth reveals itself in beauty. For
+if beauty were mere accident, a rent in the eternal fabric of things,
+then it would hurt, would be defeated by the antagonism of facts.
+Beauty is no phantasy, it has the everlasting meaning of reality. The
+facts that cause despondence and gloom are mere mist, and when through
+the mist beauty breaks out in momentary gleams, we realise that Peace
+is true and not conflict, Love is true and not hatred; and Truth is
+the One, not the disjointed multitude. We realise that Creation is the
+perpetual harmony between the infinite ideal of perfection and the
+eternal continuity of its realisation; that so long as there is no
+absolute separation between the positive ideal and the material
+obstacle to its attainment, we need not be afraid of suffering and
+loss. This is the poet's religion.
+
+Those who are habituated to the rigid framework of sectarian creeds
+will find such a religion as this too indefinite and elastic. No doubt
+it is so, but only because its ambition is not to shackle the Infinite
+and tame it for domestic use; but rather to help our consciousness to
+emancipate itself from materialism. It is as indefinite as the
+morning, and yet as luminous; it calls our thoughts, feelings, and
+actions into freedom, and feeds them with light. In the poet's
+religion we find no doctrine or injunction, but rather the attitude of
+our entire being towards a truth which is ever to be revealed in its
+own endless creation.
+
+In dogmatic religion all questions are definitely answered, all doubts
+are finally laid to rest. But the poet's religion is fluid, like the
+atmosphere round the earth where lights and shadows play
+hide-and-seek, and the wind like a shepherd boy plays upon its reeds
+among flocks of clouds. It never undertakes to lead anybody anywhere
+to any solid conclusion; yet it reveals endless spheres of light,
+because it has no walls round itself. It acknowledges the facts of
+evil; it openly admits "the weariness, the fever and the fret" in the
+world "where men sit and hear each other groan"; yet it remembers that
+in spite of all there is the song of the nightingale, and "haply the
+Queen Moon is on her throne," and there is:
+
+    White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine,
+    Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
+            And mid-day's eldest child,
+    The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
+    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
+
+But all this has not the definiteness of an answer; it has only the
+music that teases us out of thought as it fills our being.
+
+Let me read a translation from an Eastern poet to show how this idea
+comes out in a poem in Bengali:
+
+        In the morning I awoke at the flutter of thy boat-sails,
+    Lady of my Voyage, and I left the shore to follow the beckoning waves.
+        I asked thee, "Does the dream-harvest ripen in the
+            island beyond the blue?"
+        The silence of thy smile fell on my question like
+            the silence of sunlight on waves.
+        The day passed on through storm and through calm,
+    The perplexed winds changed their course, time after time,
+            and the sea moaned.
+        I asked thee, "Does thy sleep-tower stand somewhere beyond the
+            dying embers of the day's funeral pyre?"
+    No answer came from thee, only thine eyes smiled like
+            the edge of a sunset cloud.
+        It is night. Thy figure grows dim in the dark.
+    Thy wind-blown hair flits on my cheek and thrills my
+            sadness with its scent.
+        My hands grope to touch the hem of thy robe, and
+    I ask thee--"Is there thy garden of death beyond the stars,
+            Lady of my Voyage, where thy silence blossoms into songs?"
+        Thy smile shines in the heart of the hush like the
+            star-mist of midnight.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+In Shelley we clearly see the growth of his religion through periods
+of vagueness and doubt, struggle and searching. But he did at length
+come to a positive utterance of his faith, though he died young. Its
+final expression is in his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." By the title
+of the poem the poet evidently means a beauty that is not merely a
+passive quality of particular things, but a spirit that manifests
+itself through the apparent antagonism of the unintellectual life.
+This hymn rang out of his heart when he came to the end of his
+pilgrimage and stood face to face with the Divinity, glimpses of which
+had already filled his soul with restlessness. All his experiences of
+beauty had ever teased him with the question as to what was its truth.
+Somewhere he sings of a nosegay which he makes of violets, daisies,
+tender bluebells and--
+
+                That tall flower that wets,
+    Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth,
+    Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears.
+
+He ends by saying:
+
+                  And then, elate and gay,
+    I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
+    That I might there present it!--Oh! to whom?
+
+This question, even though not answered, carries a significance. A
+creation of beauty suggests a fulfilment, which is the fulfilment of
+love. We have heard some poets scoff at it in bitterness and despair;
+but it is like a sick child beating its own mother--it is a sickness
+of faith, which hurts truth, but proves it by its very pain and anger.
+And the faith itself is this, that beauty is the self-offering of the
+One to the other One.
+
+In the first part of his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" Shelley dwells
+on the inconstancy and evanescence of the manifestation of beauty,
+which imparts to it an appearance of frailty and unreality:
+
+    Like hues and harmonies of evening,
+        Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
+        Like memory of music fled.
+
+This, he says, rouses in our mind the question:
+
+    Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
+        Why fear and dream and death and birth
+        Cast on the daylight of this earth
+        Such gloom,--why man has such a scope
+    For love and hate, despondency and hope?
+
+The poet's own answer to this question is:
+
+        Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
+    Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
+    Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
+
+This very elusiveness of beauty suggests the vision of immortality and
+of omnipotence, and stimulates the effort in man to realise it in some
+idea of permanence. The highest reality has actively to be achieved.
+The gain of truth is not in the end; it reveals itself through the
+endless length of achievement. But what is there to guide us in our
+voyage of realisation? Men have ever been struggling for direction:
+
+    Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven
+    Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
+    Frail spells,--whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
+    From all we hear and all we see,
+    Doubt, chance and mutability.
+
+The prevalent rites and practices of piety, according to this poet,
+are like magic spells--they only prove men's desperate endeavour and
+not their success. He knows that the end we seek has its own direct
+call to us, its own light to guide us to itself. And truth's call is
+the call of beauty. Of this he says:
+
+    Thy light alone,--like mist o'er mountain driven,
+          Or music by the night wind sent,
+    Thro' strings of some still instrument,
+          Or moonlight on a midnight stream
+    Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
+
+About this revelation of truth which calls us on, and yet which is
+everywhere, a village singer of Bengal sings:
+
+    My master's flute sounds in everything,
+        drawing me out of my house to everywhere.
+    While I listen to it I know that every step I take
+        is in my master's house.
+    For he is the sea, he is the river that leads to the sea,
+        and he is the landing place.
+
+Religion, in Shelley, grew with his life; it was not given to him in
+fixed and ready-made doctrines; he rebelled against them. He had the
+creative mind which could only approach Truth through its joy in
+creative effort. For true creation is realisation of truth through the
+translation of it into our own symbols.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+For man, the best opportunity for such a realisation has been in men's
+Society. It is a collective creation of his, through which his social
+being tries to find itself in its truth and beauty. Had that Society
+merely manifested its usefulness, it would be inarticulate like a dark
+star. But, unless it degenerates, it ever suggests in its concerted
+movements a living truth as its soul, which has personality. In this
+large life of social communion man feels the mystery of Unity, as he
+does in music. From the sense of that Unity, men came to the sense of
+their God. And therefore every religion began with its tribal God.
+
+The one question before all others that has to be answered by our
+civilisations is not what they have and in what quantity, but what
+they express and how. In a society, the production and circulation of
+materials, the amassing and spending of money, may go on, as in the
+interminable prolonging of a straight line, if its people forget to
+follow some spiritual design of life which curbs them and transforms
+them into an organic whole. For growth is not that enlargement which
+is merely adding to the dimensions of incompleteness. Growth is the
+movement of a whole towards a yet fuller wholeness. Living things
+start with this wholeness from the beginning of their career. A child
+has its own perfection as a child; it would be ugly if it appeared as
+an unfinished man. Life is a continual process of synthesis, and not
+of additions. Our activities of production and enjoyment of wealth
+attain that spirit of wholeness when they are blended with a creative
+ideal. Otherwise they have the insane aspect of the eternally
+unfinished; they become like locomotive engines which have railway
+lines but no stations; which rush on towards a collision of
+uncontrolled forces or to a sudden breakdown of the overstrained
+machinery.
+
+Through creation man expresses his truth; through that expression he
+gains back his truth in its fulness. Human society is for the best
+expression of man, and that expression, according to its perfection,
+leads him to the full realisation of the divine in humanity. When that
+expression is obscure, then his faith in the Infinite that is within
+him becomes weak; then his aspiration cannot go beyond the idea of
+success. His faith in the Infinite is creative; his desire for success
+is constructive; one is his home, and the other is his office. With
+the overwhelming growth of necessity, civilisation becomes a gigantic
+office to which the home is a mere appendix. The predominance of the
+pursuit of success gives to society the character of what we call
+_Shudra_ in India. In fighting a battle, the _Kshatriya_, the noble
+knight, followed his honour for his ideal, which was greater than
+victory itself; but the mercenary _Shudra_ has success for his object.
+The name Shudra symbolises a man who has no margin round him beyond
+his bare utility. The word denotes a classification which includes all
+naked machines that have lost their completeness of humanity, be their
+work manual or intellectual. They are like walking stomachs or brains,
+and we feel, in pity, urged to call on God and cry, "Cover them up for
+mercy's sake with some veil of beauty and life!"
+
+When Shelley in his view of the world realised the Spirit of Beauty,
+which is the vision of the Infinite, he thus uttered his faith:
+
+          Never joy illumed my brow
+    Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
+          This world from its dark slavery;
+          That thou,--O awful Loveliness,--
+    Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.
+
+This was his faith in the Infinite. It led his aspiration towards the
+region of freedom and perfection which was beyond the immediate and
+above the successful. This faith in God, this faith in the reality of
+the ideal of perfection, has built up all that is great in the human
+world. To keep indefinitely walking on, along a zigzag course of
+change, is negative and barren. A mere procession of notes does not
+make music; it is only when we have in the heart of the march of
+sounds some musical idea that it creates song. Our faith in the
+infinite reality of Perfection is that musical idea, and there is that
+one great creative force in our civilisation. When it wakens not, then
+our faith in money, in material power, takes its place; it fights and
+destroys, and in a brilliant fireworks of star-mimicry suddenly
+exhausts itself and dies in ashes and smoke.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+Men of great faith have always called us to wake up to great
+expectations, and the prudent have always laughed at them and said
+that these did not belong to reality. But the poet in man knows that
+reality is a creation, and human reality has to be called forth from
+its obscure depth by man's faith which is creative. There was a day
+when the human reality was the brutal reality. That was the only
+capital we had with which to begin our career. But age after age
+there has come to us the call of faith, which said against all the
+evidence of fact: "You are more than you appear to be, more than your
+circumstances seem to warrant. You are to attain the impossible, you
+are immortal." The unbelievers had laughed and tried to kill the
+faith. But faith grew stronger with the strength of martyrdom and at
+her bidding higher realities have been created over the strata of the
+lower. Has not a new age come to-day, borne by thunder-clouds, ushered
+in by a universal agony of suffering? Are we not waiting to-day for a
+great call of faith, which will say to us: "Come out of your present
+limitations. You are to attain the impossible, you are immortal"? The
+nations who are not prepared to accept it, who have all their trust in
+their present machines of system, and have no thought or space to
+spare to welcome the sudden guest who comes as the messenger of
+emancipation, are bound to court defeat whatever may be their present
+wealth and power.
+
+This great world, where it is a creation, an expression of the
+infinite--where its morning sings of joy to the newly awakened life,
+and its evening stars sing to the traveller, weary and worn, of the
+triumph of life in a new birth across death,--has its call for us.
+The call has ever roused the creator in man, and urged him to reveal
+the truth, to reveal the Infinite in himself. It is ever claiming from
+us, in our own creations, co-operation with God, reminding us of our
+divine nature, which finds itself in freedom of spirit. Our society
+exists to remind us, through its various voices, that the ultimate
+truth in man is not in his intellect or his possessions; it is in his
+illumination of mind, in his extension of sympathy across all barriers
+of caste and colour; in his recognition of the world, not merely as a
+storehouse of power, but as a habitation of man's spirit, with its
+eternal music of beauty and its inner light of the divine
+presence.
+
+
+
+
+                          THE CREATIVE IDEAL
+
+
+In an old Sanskrit book there is a verse which describes the essential
+elements of a picture. The first in order is _Vrupa-bhedah_--"separateness
+of forms." Forms are many, forms are different, each of them having
+its limits. But if this were absolute, if all forms remained
+obstinately separate, then there would be a fearful loneliness of
+multitude. But the varied forms, in their very separateness, must
+carry something which indicates the paradox of their ultimate unity,
+otherwise there would be no creation.
+
+So in the same verse, after the enumeration of separateness comes that
+of _Pram[=a]n[=a]ni_--proportions. Proportions indicate relationship,
+the principle of mutual accommodation. A leg dismembered from the body
+has the fullest licence to make a caricature of itself. But, as a
+member of the body, it has its responsibility to the living unity
+which rules the body; it must behave properly, it must keep its
+proportion. If, by some monstrous chance of physiological
+profiteering, it could outgrow by yards its fellow-stalker, then we
+know what a picture it would offer to the spectator and what
+embarrassment to the body itself. Any attempt to overcome the law of
+proportion altogether and to assert absolute separateness is
+rebellion; it means either running the gauntlet of the rest, or
+remaining segregated.
+
+The same Sanskrit word _Pram[=a]n[=a]ni_, which in a book of aesthetics
+means proportions, in a book of logic means the proofs by which the
+truth of a proposition is ascertained. All proofs of truth are
+credentials of relationship. Individual facts have to produce such
+passports to show that they are not expatriated, that they are not a
+break in the unity of the whole. The logical relationship present in
+an intellectual proposition, and the aesthetic relationship indicated
+in the proportions of a work of art, both agree in one thing. They
+affirm that truth consists, not in facts, but in harmony of facts. Of
+this fundamental note of reality it is that the poet has said, "Beauty
+is truth, truth beauty."
+
+Proportions, which prove relativity, form the outward language of
+creative ideals. A crowd of men is desultory, but in a march of
+soldiers every man keeps his proportion of time and space and relative
+movement, which makes him one with the whole vast army. But this is
+not all. The creation of an army has, for its inner principle, one
+single idea of the General. According to the nature of that ruling
+idea, a production is either a work of art or a mere construction. All
+the materials and regulations of a joint-stock company have the unity
+of an inner motive. But the expression of this unity itself is not the
+end; it ever indicates an ulterior purpose. On the other hand, the
+revelation of a work of art is a fulfilment in itself.
+
+The consciousness of personality, which is the consciousness of unity
+in ourselves, becomes prominently distinct when coloured by joy or
+sorrow, or some other emotion. It is like the sky, which is visible
+because it is blue, and which takes different aspect with the change
+of colours. In the creation of art, therefore, the energy of an
+emotional ideal is necessary; as its unity is not like that of a
+crystal, passive and inert, but actively expressive. Take, for
+example, the following verse:
+
+    Oh, fly not Pleasure, pleasant-hearted Pleasure,
+    Fold me thy wings, I prithee, yet and stay.
+        For my heart no measure
+        Knows, nor other treasure
+    To buy a garland for my love to-day.
+
+    And thou too, Sorrow, tender-hearted Sorrow,
+    Thou grey-eyed mourner, fly not yet away.
+        For I fain would borrow
+        Thy sad weeds to-morrow,
+    To make a mourning for love's yesterday.
+
+The words in this quotation, merely showing the metre, would have no
+appeal to us; with all its perfection and its proportion, rhyme and
+cadence, it would only be a construction. But when it is the outer
+body of an inner idea it assumes a personality. The idea flows through
+the rhythm, permeates the words and throbs in their rise and fall. On
+the other hand, the mere idea of the above-quoted poem, stated in
+unrhythmic prose, would represent only a fact, inertly static, which
+would not bear repetition. But the emotional idea, incarnated in a
+rhythmic form, acquires the dynamic quality needed for those things
+which take part in the world's eternal pageantry.
+
+Take the following doggerel:
+
+    Thirty days hath September,
+    April, June, and November.
+
+The metre is there, and it simulates the movement of life. But it
+finds no synchronous response in the metre of our heart-beats; it has
+not in its centre the living idea which creates for itself an
+indivisible unity. It is like a bag which is convenient, and not like
+a body which is inevitable.
+
+This truth, implicit in our own works of art, gives us the clue to the
+mystery of creation. We find that the endless rhythms of the world are
+not merely constructive; they strike our own heart-strings and produce
+music.
+
+Therefore it is we feel that this world is a creation; that in its
+centre there is a living idea which reveals itself in an eternal
+symphony, played on innumerable instruments, all keeping perfect time.
+We know that this great world-verse, that runs from sky to sky, is not
+made for the mere enumeration of facts--it is not "Thirty days hath
+September"--it has its direct revelation in our delight. That delight
+gives us the key to the truth of existence; it is personality acting
+upon personalities through incessant manifestations. The solicitor
+does not sing to his client, but the bridegroom sings to his bride.
+And when our soul is stirred by the song, we know it claims no fees
+from us; but it brings the tribute of love and a call from the
+bridegroom.
+
+It may be said that in pictorial and other arts there are some designs
+that are purely decorative and apparently have no living and inner
+ideal to express. But this cannot be true. These decorations carry the
+emotional motive of the artist, which says: "I find joy in my
+creation; it is good." All the language of joy is beauty. It is
+necessary to note, however, that joy is not pleasure, and beauty not
+mere prettiness. Joy is the outcome of detachment from self and lives
+in freedom of spirit. Beauty is that profound expression of reality
+which satisfies our hearts without any other allurements but its own
+ultimate value. When in some pure moments of ecstasy we realise this
+in the world around us, we see the world, not as merely existing, but
+as decorated in its forms, sounds, colours and lines; we feel in our
+hearts that there is One who through all things proclaims: "I have joy
+in my creation."
+
+That is why the Sanskrit verse has given us for the essential elements
+of a picture, not only the manifoldness of forms and the unity of
+their proportions, but also _bhavah_, the emotional idea.
+
+It is needless to say that upon a mere expression of emotion--even the
+best expression of it--no criterion of art can rest. The following
+poem is described by the poet as "An earnest Suit to his unkind
+Mistress":
+
+    And wilt thou leave me thus?
+    Say nay, say nay, for shame!
+    To save thee from the blame
+    Of all my grief and grame.
+    And wilt thou leave me thus?
+        Say nay! say nay!
+
+I am sure the poet would not be offended if I expressed my doubts
+about the earnestness of his appeal, or the truth of his avowed
+necessity. He is responsible for the lyric and not for the sentiment,
+which is mere material. The fire assumes different colours according
+to the fuel used; but we do not discuss the fuel, only the flames. A
+lyric is indefinably more than the sentiment expressed in it, as a
+rose is more than its substance. Let us take a poem in which the
+earnestness of sentiment is truer and deeper than the one I have
+quoted above:
+
+                  The sun,
+    Closing his benediction,
+    Sinks, and the darkening air
+    Thrills with the sense of the triumphing night,--
+    Night with her train of stars
+    And her great gift of sleep.
+        So be my passing!
+
+    My task accomplished and the long day done,
+    My wages taken, and in my heart
+    Some late lark singing,
+    Let me be gathered to the quiet West,
+    The sundown splendid and serene,
+        Death.
+
+The sentiment expressed in this poem is a subject for a psychologist.
+But for a poem the subject is completely merged in its poetry, like
+carbon in a living plant which the lover of plants ignores, leaving it
+for a charcoal-burner to seek.
+
+This is why, when some storm of feeling sweeps across the country, art
+is under a disadvantage. In such an atmosphere the boisterous passion
+breaks through the cordon of harmony and thrusts itself forward as the
+subject, which with its bulk and pressure dethrones the unity of
+creation. For a similar reason most of the hymns used in churches
+suffer from lack of poetry. For in them the deliberate subject,
+assuming the first importance, benumbs or kills the poem. Most
+patriotic poems have the same deficiency. They are like hill streams
+born of sudden showers, which are more proud of their rocky beds than
+of their water currents; in them the athletic and arrogant subject
+takes it for granted that the poem is there to give it occasion to
+display its powers. The subject is the material wealth for the sake of
+which poetry should never be tempted to barter her soul, even though
+the temptation should come in the name and shape of public good or
+some usefulness. Between the artist and his art must be that perfect
+detachment which is the pure medium of love. He must never make use of
+this love except for its own perfect expression.
+
+In everyday life our personality moves in a narrow circle of immediate
+self-interest. And therefore our feelings and events, within that
+short range, become prominent subjects for ourselves. In their
+vehement self-assertion they ignore their unity with the All. They
+rise up like obstructions and obscure their own background. But art
+gives our personality the disinterested freedom of the eternal, there
+to find it in its true perspective. To see our own home in flames is
+not to see fire in its verity. But the fire in the stars is the fire
+in the heart of the Infinite; there, it is the script of creation.
+
+Matthew Arnold, in his poem addressed to a nightingale, sings:
+
+    Hark! ah, the nightingale--
+    The tawny-throated!
+    Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
+    What triumph! hark!--what pain!
+
+But pain, when met within the boundaries of limited reality, repels
+and hurts; it is discordant with the narrow scope of life. But the
+pain of some great martyrdom has the detachment of eternity. It
+appears in all its majesty, harmonious in the context of everlasting
+life; like the thunder-flash in the stormy sky, not on the laboratory
+wire. Pain on that scale has its harmony in great love; for by hurting
+love it reveals the infinity of love in all its truth and beauty. On
+the other hand, the pain involved in business insolvency is
+discordant; it kills and consumes till nothing remains but ashes.
+
+The poet sings again:
+
+    How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
+    Eternal Passion!
+    Eternal Pain!
+
+And the truth of pain in eternity has been sung by those Vedic poets
+who had said, "From joy has come forth all creation." They say:
+
+    Sa tapas tapatva sarvam asrajata Yadidam kincha.
+
+    (God from the heat of his pain created all that there is.)
+
+The sacrifice, which is in the heart of creation, is both joy and pain
+at the same moment. Of this sings a village mystic in Bengal:
+
+                        My eyes drown in the darkness of joy,
+    My heart, like a lotus, closes its petals in the rapture of the
+        dark night.
+
+That song speaks of a joy which is deep like the blue sea, endless
+like the blue sky; which has the magnificence of the night, and in its
+limitless darkness enfolds the radiant worlds in the awfulness of
+peace; it is the unfathomed joy in which all sufferings are made one.
+
+A poet of mediaeval India tells us about his source of inspiration in a
+poem containing a question and an answer:
+
+    Where were your songs, my bird, when you spent your nights in the nest?
+    Was not all your pleasure stored therein?
+    What makes you lose your heart to the sky, the sky that is limitless?
+
+The bird answers:
+
+    I had my pleasure while I rested within bounds.
+    When I soared into the limitless, I found my songs!
+
+To detach the individual idea from its confinement of everyday facts
+and to give its soaring wings the freedom of the universal: this is
+the function of poetry. The ambition of Macbeth, the jealousy of
+Othello, would be at best sensational in police court proceedings; but
+in Shakespeare's dramas they are carried among the flaming
+constellations where creation throbs with Eternal Passion, Eternal
+Pain.
+
+
+
+
+                      THE RELIGION OF THE FOREST
+
+                                   I
+
+
+We stand before this great world. The truth of our life depends upon
+our attitude of mind towards it--an attitude which is formed by our
+habit of dealing with it according to the special circumstance of our
+surroundings and our temperaments. It guides our attempts to establish
+relations with the universe either by conquest or by union, either
+through the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy. And
+thus, in our realisation of the truth of existence, we put our
+emphasis either upon the principle of dualism or upon the principle of
+unity.
+
+The Indian sages have held in the Upanishads that the emancipation of
+our soul lies in its realising the ultimate truth of unity. They said:
+
+    Ishavasyam idam sarvam yat kinch jagatyam jagat.
+    Yena tyaktena bhunjitha ma graha kasyasvit dhanam.
+
+     (Know all that moves in this moving world as enveloped by
+     God; and find enjoyment through renunciation, not through
+     greed of possession.)
+
+The meaning of this is, that, when we know the multiplicity of things
+as the final truth, we try to augment ourselves by the external
+possession of them; but, when we know the Infinite Soul as the final
+truth, then through our union with it we realise the joy of our soul.
+Therefore it has been said of those who have attained their
+fulfilment,--"sarvam eva vishanti" (they enter into all things). Their
+perfect relation with this world is the relation of union.
+
+This ideal of perfection preached by the forest-dwellers of ancient
+India runs through the heart of our classical literature and still
+dominates our mind. The legends related in our epics cluster under the
+forest shade bearing all through their narrative the message of the
+forest-dwellers. Our two greatest classical dramas find their
+background in scenes of the forest hermitage, which are permeated by
+the association of these sages.
+
+The history of the Northmen of Europe is resonant with the music of
+the sea. That sea is not merely topographical in its significance, but
+represents certain ideals of life which still guide the history and
+inspire the creations of that race. In the sea, nature presented
+herself to those men in her aspect of a danger, a barrier which
+seemed to be at constant war with the land and its children. The sea
+was the challenge of untamed nature to the indomitable human soul. And
+man did not flinch; he fought and won, and the spirit of fight
+continued in him. This fight he still maintains; it is the fight
+against disease and poverty, tyranny of matter and of man.
+
+This refers to a people who live by the sea, and ride on it as on a
+wild, champing horse, catching it by its mane and making it render
+service from shore to shore. They find delight in turning by force the
+antagonism of circumstances into obedience. Truth appears to them in
+her aspect of dualism, the perpetual conflict of good and evil, which
+has no reconciliation, which can only end in victory or defeat.
+
+But in the level tracts of Northern India men found no barrier between
+their lives and the grand life that permeates the universe. The forest
+entered into a close living relationship with their work and leisure,
+with their daily necessities and contemplations. They could not think
+of other surroundings as separate or inimical. So the view of the
+truth, which these men found, did not make manifest the difference,
+but rather the unity of all things. They uttered their faith in these
+words: "Yadidam kinch sarvam prana ejati nihsratam" (All that is
+vibrates with life, having come out from life). When we know this
+world as alien to us, then its mechanical aspect takes prominence in
+our mind; and then we set up our machines and our methods to deal with
+it and make as much profit as our knowledge of its mechanism allows us
+to do. This view of things does not play us false, for the machine has
+its place in this world. And not only this material universe, but
+human beings also, may be used as machines and made to yield powerful
+results. This aspect of truth cannot be ignored; it has to be known
+and mastered. Europe has done so and has reaped a rich harvest.
+
+The view of this world which India has taken is summed up in one
+compound Sanskrit word, Sachid[=a]nanda. The meaning is that Reality,
+which is essentially one, has three phases. The first is Sat; it is
+the simple fact that things are, the fact which relates us to all
+things through the relationship of common existence. The second is
+Chit; it is the fact that we know, which relates us to all things
+through the relationship of knowledge. The third is Ananda: it is the
+fact that we enjoy, which unites us with all things through the
+relationship of love.
+
+According to the true Indian view, our consciousness of the world,
+merely as the sum total of things that exist, and as governed by laws,
+is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realises all
+things as spiritually one with it, and therefore capable of giving us
+joy. For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in
+it, knowing it and making use of it, but realising our own selves in
+it through expansion of sympathy; not alienating ourselves from it and
+dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in
+perfect union.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+When Vikramaditya became king, Ujjayini a great capital, and Kalidasa
+its poet, the age of India's forest retreats had passed. Then we had
+taken our stand in the midst of the great concourse of humanity. The
+Chinese and the Hun, the Scythian and the Persian, the Greek and the
+Roman, had crowded round us. But, even in that age of pomp and
+prosperity, the love and reverence with which its poet sang about the
+hermitage shows what was the dominant ideal that occupied the mind of
+India; what was the one current of memory that continually flowed
+through her life.
+
+In Kalidasa's drama, _Shakuntala_, the hermitage, which dominates the
+play, overshadowing the king's palace, has the same idea running
+through it--the recognition of the kinship of man with conscious and
+unconscious creation alike.
+
+A poet of a later age, while describing a hermitage in his Kadambari,
+tells us of the posture of salutation in the flowering lianas as they
+bow to the wind; of the sacrifice offered by the trees scattering
+their blossoms; of the grove resounding with the lessons chanted by
+the neophytes, and the verses repeated by the parrots, learnt by constantly
+hearing them; of the wild-fowl enjoying "vaishva-deva-bali-pinda"
+(the food offered to the divinity which is in all creatures); of the
+ducks coming up from the lake for their portion of the grass seed
+spread in the cottage yards to dry; and of the deer caressing with
+their tongues the young hermit boys. It is again the same story. The
+hermitage shines out, in all our ancient literature, as the place
+where the chasm between man and the rest of creation has been bridged.
+
+In the Western dramas, human characters drown our attention in the
+vortex of their passions. Nature occasionally peeps out, but she is
+almost always a trespasser, who has to offer excuses, or bow
+apologetically and depart. But in all our dramas which still retain
+their fame, such as _Mrit-Shakatika_, _Shakuntala_, _Uttara-Ramacharita_,
+Nature stands on her own right, proving that she has her great
+function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions.
+
+The fury of passion in two of Shakespeare's youthful poems is
+exhibited in conspicuous isolation. It is snatched away, naked, from
+the context of the All; it has not the green earth or the blue sky
+around it; it is there ready to bring to our view the raging fever
+which is in man's desires, and not the balm of health and repose which
+encircles it in the universe.
+
+_Ritusamhara_ is clearly a work of Kalidasa's immaturity. The youthful
+love-song in it does not reach the sublime reticence which is in
+_Shakuntala_ and _Kumara-Sambhava_. But the tune of these voluptuous
+outbreaks is set to the varied harmony of Nature's symphony. The
+moonbeams of the summer evening, resonant with the flow of fountains,
+acknowledge it as a part of its own melody. In its rhythm sways the
+Kadamba forest, glistening in the first cool rain of the season; and
+the south breezes, carrying the scent of the mango blossoms, temper it
+with their murmur.
+
+In the third canto of _Kumara-Sambhava_, Madana, the God Eros, enters
+the forest sanctuary to set free a sudden flood of desire amid the
+serenity of the ascetics' meditation. But the boisterous outbreak of
+passion so caused was shown against a background of universal life.
+The divine love-thrills of Sati and Shiva found their response in the
+world-wide immensity of youth, in which animals and trees have their
+life-throbs.
+
+Not only its third canto but the whole of the Kumara-Sambhava poem is
+painted upon a limitless canvas. It tells of the eternal wedding of
+love, its wooing and sacrifice, and its fulfilment, for which the gods
+wait in suspense. Its inner idea is deep and of all time. It answers
+the one question that humanity asks through all its endeavours: "How
+is the birth of the hero to be brought about, the brave one who can
+defy and vanquish the evil demon laying waste heaven's own kingdom?"
+
+It becomes evident that such a problem had become acute in Kalidasa's
+time, when the old simplicity of Hindu life had broken up. The Hindu
+kings, forgetful of their duties, had become self-seeking epicureans,
+and India was being repeatedly devastated by the Scythians. What
+answer, then, does the poem give to the question it raises? Its
+message is that the cause of weakness lies in the inner life of the
+soul. It is in some break of harmony with the Good, some dissociation
+from the True. In the commencement of the poem we find that the God
+Shiva, the Good, had remained for long lost in the self-centred
+solitude of his asceticism, detached from the world of reality. And
+then Paradise was lost. But _Kumara-Sambhava_ is the poem of Paradise
+Regained. How was it regained? When Sati, the Spirit of Reality,
+through humiliation, suffering, and penance, won the Heart of Shiva,
+the Spirit of Goodness. And thus, from the union of the freedom of the
+real with the restraint of the Good, was born the heroism that
+released Paradise from the demon of Lawlessness.
+
+Viewed from without, India, in the time of Kalidasa, appeared to have
+reached the zenith of civilisation, excelling as she did in luxury,
+literature and the arts. But from the poems of Kalidasa it is evident
+that this very magnificence of wealth and enjoyment worked against the
+ideal that sprang and flowed forth from the sacred solitude of the
+forest. These poems contain the voice of warnings against the
+gorgeous unreality of that age, which, like a Himalayan avalanche, was
+slowly gliding down to an abyss of catastrophe. And from his seat
+beside all the glories of Vikramaditya's throne the poet's heart
+yearns for the purity and simplicity of India's past age of spiritual
+striving. And it was this yearning which impelled him to go back to
+the annals of the ancient Kings of Raghu's line for the narrative
+poem, in which he traced the history of the rise and fall of the ideal
+that should guide the rulers of men.
+
+King Dilipa, with Queen Sudakshina, has entered upon the life of the
+forest. The great monarch is busy tending the cattle of the hermitage.
+Thus the poem opens, amid scenes of simplicity and self-denial. But it
+ends in the palace of magnificence, in the extravagance of
+self-enjoyment. With a calm restraint of language the poet tells us of
+the kingly glory crowned with purity. He begins his poem as the day
+begins, in the serenity of sunrise. But lavish are the colours in
+which he describes the end, as of the evening, eloquent for a time
+with the sumptuous splendour of sunset, but overtaken at last by the
+devouring darkness which sweeps away all its brilliance into night.
+
+In this beginning and this ending of his poem there lies hidden that
+message of the forest which found its voice in the poet's words. There
+runs through the narrative the idea that the future glowed gloriously
+ahead only when there was in the atmosphere the calm of self-control,
+of purity and renunciation. When downfall had become imminent, the
+hungry fires of desire, aflame at a hundred different points, dazzled
+the eyes of all beholders.
+
+Kalidasa in almost all his works represented the unbounded
+impetuousness of kingly splendour on the one side and the serene
+strength of regulated desires on the other. Even in the minor drama of
+_Malavikagnimitra_ we find the same thing in a different manner. It
+must never be thought that, in this play, the poet's deliberate object
+was to pander to his royal patron by inviting him to a literary orgy
+of lust and passion. The very introductory verse indicates the object
+towards which this play is directed. The poet begins the drama with
+the prayer, "Sanmargalokayan vyapanayatu sa nastamasi vritimishah"
+(Let God, to illumine for us the path of truth, sweep away our
+passions, bred of darkness). This is the God Shiva, in whose nature
+Parvati, the eternal Woman, is ever commingled in an ascetic purity of
+love. The unified being of Shiva and Parvati is the perfect symbol of
+the eternal in the wedded love of man and woman. When the poet opens
+his drama with an invocation of this Spirit of the Divine Union it is
+evident that it contains in it the message with which he greets his
+kingly audience. The whole drama goes to show the ugliness of the
+treachery and cruelty inherent in unchecked self-indulgence. In the
+play the conflict of ideals is between the King and the Queen, between
+Agnimitra and Dharini, and the significance of the contrast lies
+hidden in the very names of the hero and the heroine. Though the name
+Agnimitra is historical, yet it symbolises in the poet's mind the
+destructive force of uncontrolled desire--just as did the name
+Agnivarna in _Raghuvamsha_. Agnimitra, "the friend of the fire," the
+reckless person, who in his love-making is playing with fire, not
+knowing that all the time it is scorching him black. And what a great
+name is Dharini, signifying the fortitude and forbearance that comes
+from majesty of soul! What an association it carries of the infinite
+dignity of love, purified by a self-abnegation that rises far above
+all insult and baseness of betrayal!
+
+In _Shakuntala_ this conflict of ideals has been shown, all through
+the drama, by the contrast of the pompous heartlessness of the king's
+court and the natural purity of the forest hermitage. The drama opens
+with a hunting scene, where the king is in pursuit of an antelope. The
+cruelty of the chase appears like a menace symbolising the spirit of
+the king's life clashing against the spirit of the forest retreat,
+which is "sharanyam sarva-bhutanam" (where all creatures find their
+protection of love). And the pleading of the forest-dwellers with the
+king to spare the life of the deer, helplessly innocent and beautiful,
+is the pleading that rises from the heart of the whole drama. "Never,
+oh, never is the arrow meant to pierce the tender body of a deer, even
+as the fire is not for the burning of flowers."
+
+In the _Ramayana_, Rama and his companions, in their banishment, had
+to traverse forest after forest; they had to live in leaf-thatched
+huts, to sleep on the bare ground. But as their hearts felt their
+kinship with woodland, hill, and stream, they were not in exile amidst
+these. Poets, brought up in an atmosphere of different ideals, would
+have taken this opportunity of depicting in dismal colours the
+hardship of the forest-life in order to bring out the martyrdom of
+Ramachandra with all the emphasis of a strong contrast. But, in the
+_Ramayana_, we are led to realise the greatness of the hero, not in a
+fierce struggle with Nature, but in sympathy with it. Sita, the
+daughter-in-law of a great kingly house, goes along the forest paths.
+We read:
+
+"She asks Rama about the flowering trees, and shrubs and creepers
+which she has not seen before. At her request Lakshmana gathers and
+brings her plants of all kinds, exuberant with flowers, and it
+delights her heart to see the forest rivers, variegated with their
+streams and sandy banks, resounding with the call of heron and duck.
+
+"When Rama first took his abode in the Chitrakuta peak, that
+delightful Chitrakuta, by the Malyavati river, with its easy slopes
+for landing, he forgot all the pain of leaving his home in the capital
+at the sight of those woodlands, alive with beast and bird."
+
+Having lived on that hill for long, Rama, who was "giri-vana-priya"
+(lover of the mountain and the forest), said one day to Sita:
+
+"When I look upon the beauties of this hill, the loss of my kingdom
+troubles me no longer, nor does the separation from my friends cause
+me any pang."
+
+Thus passed Ramachandra's exile, now in woodland, now in hermitage.
+The love which Rama and Sita bore to each other united them, not only
+to each other, but to the universe of life. That is why, when Sita was
+taken away, the loss seemed to be so great to the forest itself.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Strangely enough, in Shakespeare's dramas, like those of Kalidasa, we
+find a secret vein of complaint against the artificial life of the
+king's court--the life of ungrateful treachery and falsehood. And
+almost everywhere, in his dramas, foreign scenes have been introduced
+in connection with some working of the life of unscrupulous ambition.
+It is perfectly obvious in _Timon of Athens_--but there Nature offers
+no message or balm to the injured soul of man. In _Cymbeline_ the
+mountainous forest and the cave appear in their aspect of obstruction
+to life's opportunities. These only seem tolerable in comparison with
+the vicissitudes of fortune in the artificial court life. In _As You
+Like It_ the forest of Arden is didactic in its lessons. It does not
+bring peace, but preaches, when it says:
+
+    Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
+    Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
+    More free from peril than the envious court?
+
+In the _Tempest_, through Prospero's treatment of Ariel and Caliban we
+realise man's struggle with Nature and his longing to sever connection
+with her. In _Macbeth_, as a prelude to a bloody crime of treachery
+and treason, we are introduced to a scene of barren heath where the
+three witches appear as personifications of Nature's malignant forces;
+and in _King Lear_ it is the fury of a father's love turned into
+curses by the ingratitude born of the unnatural life of the court that
+finds its symbol in the storm on the heath. The tragic intensity of
+_Hamlet_ and _Othello_ is unrelieved by any touch of Nature's
+eternity. Except in a passing glimpse of a moonlight night in the love
+scene in the _Merchant of Venice_, Nature has not been allowed in
+other dramas of this series, including _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Antony
+and Cleopatra_, to contribute her own music to the music of man's
+love. In _The Winter's Tale_ the cruelty of a king's suspicion stands
+bare in its relentlessness, and Nature cowers before it, offering no
+consolation.
+
+I hope it is needless for me to say that these observations are not
+intended to minimise Shakespeare's great power as a dramatic poet, but
+to show in his works the gulf between Nature and human nature owing to
+the tradition of his race and time. It cannot be said that beauty of
+nature is ignored in his writings; only he fails to recognise in them
+the truth of the inter-penetration of human life with the cosmic life
+of the world. We observe a completely different attitude of mind in
+the later English poets like Wordsworth and Shelley, which can be
+attributed in the main to the great mental change in Europe, at that
+particular period, through the influence of the newly discovered
+philosophy of India which stirred the soul of Germany and aroused the
+attention of other Western countries.
+
+In Milton's _Paradise Lost_, the very subject--Man dwelling in the
+garden of Paradise--seems to afford a special opportunity for bringing
+out the true greatness of man's relationship with Nature. But though
+the poet has described to us the beauties of the garden, though he has
+shown to us the animals living there in amity and peace among
+themselves, there is no reality of kinship between them and man. They
+were created for man's enjoyment; man was their lord and master. We
+find no trace of the love between the first man and woman gradually
+surpassing themselves and overflowing the rest of creation, such as we
+find in the love scenes in _Kumara-Sambhava_ and _Shakuntala_. In the
+seclusion of the bower, where the first man and woman rested in the
+garden of Paradise--
+
+                  Bird, beast, insect or worm
+    Durst enter none, such was their awe of man.
+
+Not that India denied the superiority of man, but the test of that
+superiority lay, according to her, in the comprehensiveness of
+sympathy, not in the aloofness of absolute distinction.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+India holds sacred, and counts as places of pilgrimage, all spots
+which display a special beauty or splendour of nature. These had no
+original attraction on account of any special fitness for cultivation
+or settlement. Here, man is free, not to look upon Nature as a source
+of supply of his necessities, but to realise his soul beyond himself.
+The Himalayas of India are sacred and the Vindhya Hills. Her majestic
+rivers are sacred. Lake Manasa and the confluence of the Ganges and
+the Jamuna are sacred. India has saturated with her love and worship
+the great Nature with which her children are surrounded, whose light
+fills their eyes with gladness, and whose water cleanses them, whose
+food gives them life, and from whose majestic mystery comes forth the
+constant revelation of the infinite in music, scent, and colour, which
+brings its awakening to the soul of man. India gains the world through
+worship, through spiritual communion; and the idea of freedom to which
+she aspired was based upon the realisation of her spiritual unity.
+
+When, in my recent voyage to Europe, our ship left Aden and sailed
+along the sea which lay between the two continents, we passed by the
+red and barren rocks of Arabia on our right side and the gleaming
+sands of Egypt on our left. They seemed to me like two giant brothers
+exchanging with each other burning glances of hatred, kept apart by
+the tearful entreaty of the sea from whose womb they had their birth.
+
+There was an immense stretch of silence on the left shore as well as
+on the right, but the two shores spoke to me of the two different
+historical dramas enacted. The civilisation which found its growth in
+Egypt was continued across long centuries, elaborately rich with
+sentiments and expressions of life, with pictures, sculptures,
+temples, and ceremonials. This was a country whose guardian-spirit was
+a noble river, which spread the festivities of life on its banks
+across the heart of the land. There man never raised the barrier of
+alienation between himself and the rest of the world.
+
+On the opposite shore of the Red Sea the civilisation which grew up in
+the inhospitable soil of Arabia had a contrary character to that of
+Egypt. There man felt himself isolated in his hostile and bare
+surroundings. His idea of God became that of a jealous God. His mind
+naturally dwelt upon the principle of separateness. It roused in him
+the spirit of fight, and this spirit was a force that drove him far
+and wide. These two civilisations represented two fundamental
+divisions of human nature. The one contained in it the spirit of
+conquest and the other the spirit of harmony. And both of these have
+their truth and purpose in human existence.
+
+The characters of two eminent sages have been described in our
+mythology. One was Vashishtha and another Vishvamitra. Both of them
+were great, but they represented two different types of wisdom; and
+there was conflict between them. Vishvamitra sought to achieve power
+and was proud of it; Vashishtha was rudely smitten by that power. But
+his hurt and his loss could not touch the illumination of his soul;
+for he rose above them and could forgive. Ramachandra, the great hero
+of our epic, had his initiation to the spiritual life from Vashishtha,
+the life of inner peace and perfection. But he had his initiation to
+war from Vishvamitra, who called him to kill the demons and gave him
+weapons that were irresistible.
+
+Those two sages symbolise in themselves the two guiding spirits of
+civilisation. Can it be true that they shall never be reconciled? If
+so, can ever the age of peace and co-operation dawn upon the human
+world? Creation is the harmony of contrary forces--the forces of
+attraction and repulsion. When they join hands, all the fire and fight
+are changed into the smile of flowers and the songs of birds. When
+there is only one of them triumphant and the other defeated, then
+either there is the death of cold rigidity or that of suicidal
+explosion.
+
+Humanity, for ages, has been busy with the one great creation of
+spiritual life. Its best wisdom, its discipline, its literature and
+art, all the teachings and self-sacrifice of its noblest teachers,
+have been for this. But the harmony of contrary forces, which give
+their rhythm to all creation, has not yet been perfected by man in his
+civilisation, and the Creator in him is baffled over and over again.
+He comes back to his work, however, and makes himself busy, building
+his world in the midst of desolation and ruins. His history is the
+history of his aspiration interrupted and renewed. And one truth of
+which he must be reminded, therefore, is that the power which
+accomplishes the miracle of creation, by bringing conflicting forces
+into the harmony of the One, is no passion, but a love which accepts
+the bonds of self-control from the joy of its own immensity--a love
+whose sacrifice is the manifestation of its endless wealth within
+itself.
+
+
+
+
+                        AN INDIAN FOLK RELIGION
+
+                                   I
+
+
+In historical time the Buddha comes first of those who declared
+salvation to all men, without distinction, as by right man's own. What
+was the special force which startled men's minds and, almost within
+the master's lifetime, spread his teachings over India? It was the
+unique significance of the event, when a man came to men and said to
+them, "I am here to emancipate you from the miseries of the thraldom
+of self." This wisdom came, neither in texts of Scripture, nor in
+symbols of deities, nor in religious practices sanctified by ages, but
+through the voice of a living man and the love that flowed from a
+human heart.
+
+And I believe this was the first occasion in the history of the world
+when the idea of the Avatar found its place in religion. Western
+scholars are never tired of insisting that Buddhism is of the nature
+of a moral code, coldly leading to the path of extinction. They forget
+that it was held to be a religion that roused in its devotees an
+inextinguishable fire of enthusiasm and carried them to lifelong exile
+across the mountain and desert barriers. To say that a philosophy of
+suicide can keep kindled in human hearts for centuries such fervour of
+self-sacrifice is to go against all the laws of sane psychology. The
+religious enthusiasm which cannot be bound within any daily ritual,
+but overflows into adventures of love and beneficence, must have in
+its centre that element of personality which rouses the whole soul. In
+answer, it may possibly be said that this was due to the personality
+of Buddha himself. But that also is not quite true. The personality
+which stirs the human heart to its immense depths, leading it to
+impossible deeds of heroism, must in that process itself reveal to men
+the infinite which is in all humanity. And that is what happened in
+Buddhism, making it a religion in the complete sense of the word.
+
+Like the religion of the Upanishads, Buddhism also generated two
+divergent currents; the one impersonal, preaching the abnegation of
+self through discipline, and the other personal, preaching the
+cultivation of sympathy for all creatures, and devotion to the
+infinite truth of love; the other, which is called the Mahayana, had
+its origin in the positive element contained in Buddha's teachings,
+which is immeasurable love. It could never, by any logic, find its
+reality in the emptiness of the truthless abyss. And the object of
+Buddha's meditation and his teachings was to free humanity from
+sufferings. But what was the path that he revealed to us? Was it some
+negative way of evading pain and seeking security against it? On the
+contrary, his path was the path of sacrifice--the utmost sacrifice of
+love. The meaning of such sacrifice is to reach some ultimate truth,
+some positive ideal, which in its greatness can accept suffering and
+transmute it into the profound peace of self-renunciation. True
+emancipation from suffering, which is the inalienable condition of the
+limited life of the self, can never be attained by fleeing from it,
+but rather by changing its value in the realm of truth--the truth of
+the higher life of love.
+
+We have learnt that, by calculations made in accordance with the law
+of gravitation, some planets were discovered exactly in the place
+where they should be. Such a law of gravitation there is also in the
+moral world. And when we find men's minds disturbed, as they were by
+the preaching of the Buddha, we can be sure, even without any
+corroborative evidence, that there must have been some great luminous
+body of attraction, positive and powerful, and not a mere unfathomable
+vacancy. It is exactly this which we discover in the heart of the
+Mahayana system; and we have no hesitation in saying that the truth of
+Buddhism is there. The oil has to be burnt, not for the purpose of
+diminishing it, but for the purpose of giving light to the lamp. And
+when the Buddha said that the self must go, he said at the same moment
+that love must be realised. Thus originated the doctrine of the
+Dharma-kaya, the Infinite Wisdom and Love manifested in the Buddha. It
+was the first instance, as I have said, when men felt that the
+Universal and the Eternal Spirit was revealed in a human individual
+whom they had known and touched. The joy was too great for them, since
+the very idea itself came to them as a freedom--a freedom from the
+sense of their measureless insignificance. It was the first time, I
+repeat, when the individual, as a man, felt in himself the Infinite
+made concrete.
+
+What was more, those men who felt the love welling forth from the
+heart of Buddhism, as one with the current of the Eternal Love itself,
+were struck with the idea that such an effluence could never have been
+due to a single cataclysm of history--unnatural and therefore untrue.
+They felt instead that it was in the eternal nature of truth, that the
+event must belong to a series of manifestations; there must have been
+numberless other revelations in the past and endless others to follow.
+
+The idea grew and widened until men began to feel that this Infinite
+Being was already in every one of them, and that it rested with
+themselves to remove the sensual obstructions and reveal him in their
+own lives. In every individual there was, they realised, the
+potentiality of Buddha--that is to say, the Infinite made manifest.
+
+We have to keep in mind the great fact that the preaching of the
+Buddha in India was not followed by stagnation of life--as would
+surely have happened if humanity was without any positive goal and his
+teaching was without any permanent value in itself. On the contrary,
+we find the arts and sciences springing up in its wake, institutions
+started for alleviating the misery of all creatures, human and
+non-human, and great centres of education founded. Some mighty power
+was suddenly roused from its obscurity, which worked for long
+centuries and changed the history of man in a large part of the world.
+And that power came into its full activity only by the individual
+being made conscious of his infinite worth. It was like the sudden
+discovery of a great mine of living wealth.
+
+During the period of Buddhism the doctrine of deliverance flourished,
+which reached all mankind and released man's inner resources from
+neglect and self-insult. Even to-day we see in our own country human
+nature, from its despised corner of indignity, slowly and painfully
+finding its way to assert the inborn majesty of man. It is like the
+imprisoned tree finding a rift in the wall, and sending out its eager
+branches into freedom, to prove that darkness is not its birthright,
+that its love is for the sunshine. In the time of the Buddha the
+individual discovered his own immensity of worth, first by witnessing
+a man who united his heart in sympathy with all creatures, in all
+worlds, through the power of a love that knew no bounds; and then by
+learning that the same light of perfection lay confined within
+himself behind the clouds of selfish desire, and that the
+Bodhi-hridaya--"the heart of the Eternal Enlightenment"--every moment
+claimed its unveiling in his own heart. Nagarjuna speaks of this
+Bodhi-hridaya (another of whose names is Bodhi-Citta) as follows:
+
+     One who understands the nature of the Bodhi-hridaya, sees
+     everything with a loving heart; for love is the essence of
+     Bodhi-hridaya.[1]
+
+     [Footnote 1: _Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism_, by Dr. D. T.
+     Suzuki.]
+
+My object in writing this paper is to show, by the further help of
+illustration from a popular religious sect of Bengal, that the
+religious instinct of man urges him towards a truth, by which he can
+transcend the finite nature of the individual self. Man would never
+feel the indignity of his limitations if these were inevitable. Within
+him he has glimpses of the Infinite, which give him assurance that
+this truth is not in his limitations, but that this truth can be
+attained by love. For love is the positive quality of the Infinite,
+and love's sacrifice accordingly does not lead to emptiness, but to
+fulfilment, to Bodhi-hridaya, "the heart of enlightenment."
+
+The members of the religious sect I have mentioned call themselves
+"Bauel." They live outside social recognition, and their very obscurity
+helps them in their seeking, from a direct source, the enlightenment
+which the soul longs for, the eternal light of love.
+
+It would be absurd to say that there is little difference between
+Buddhism and the religion of these simple people, who have no system
+of metaphysics to support their faith. But my object in bringing close
+together these two religions, which seem to belong to opposite poles,
+is to point out the fundamental unity in them. Both of them believe in
+a fulfilment which is reached by love's emancipating us from the
+dominance of self. In both these religions we find man's yearning to
+attain the infinite worth of his individuality, not through any
+conventional valuation of society, but through his perfect
+relationship with Truth. They agree in holding that the realisation of
+our ultimate object is waiting for us in ourselves. The Bauel likens
+this fulfilment to the blossoming of a bud, and sings:
+
+    Make way, O bud, make way,
+      Burst open thy heart and make way.
+    The opening spirit has overtaken thee,
+      Canst thou remain a bud any longer?
+
+
+                                  II
+
+One day, in a small village in Bengal, an ascetic woman from the
+neighbourhood came to see me. She had the name "Sarva-khepi" given to
+her by the village people, the meaning of which is "the woman who is
+mad about all things." She fixed her star-like eyes upon my face and
+startled me with the question, "When are you coming to meet me
+underneath the trees?" Evidently she pitied me who lived (according to
+her) prisoned behind walls, banished away from the great meeting-place
+of the All, where she had her dwelling. Just at that moment my
+gardener came with his basket, and when the woman understood that the
+flowers in the vase on my table were going to be thrown away, to make
+place for the fresh ones, she looked pained and said to me, "You are
+always engaged reading and writing; you do not see." Then she took the
+discarded flowers in her palms, kissed them and touched them with her
+forehead, and reverently murmured to herself, "Beloved of my heart." I
+felt that this woman, in her direct vision of the infinite personality
+in the heart of all things, truly represented the spirit of India.
+
+In the same village I came into touch with some Bauel singers. I had
+known them by their names, occasionally seen them singing and begging
+in the street, and so passed them by, vaguely classifying them in my
+mind under the general name of Vairagis, or ascetics.
+
+The time came when I had occasion to meet with some members of the
+same body and talk to them about spiritual matters. The first Bauel
+song, which I chanced to hear with any attention, profoundly stirred
+my mind. Its words are so simple that it makes me hesitate to render
+them in a foreign tongue, and set them forward for critical
+observation. Besides, the best part of a song is missed when the tune
+is absent; for thereby its movement and its colour are lost, and it
+becomes like a butterfly whose wings have been plucked.
+
+The first line may be translated thus: "Where shall I meet him, the
+Man of my Heart?" This phrase, "the Man of my Heart," is not peculiar
+to this song, but is usual with the Bauel sect. It means that, for me,
+the supreme truth of all existence is in the revelation of the
+Infinite in my own humanity.
+
+"The Man of my Heart," to the Bauel, is like a divine instrument
+perfectly tuned. He gives expression to infinite truth in the music
+of life. And the longing for the truth which is in us, which we have
+not yet realised, breaks out in the following Bauel song:
+
+    Where shall I meet him, the Man of my Heart?
+    He is lost to me and I seek him wandering from land to land.
+
+    I am listless for that moonrise of beauty,
+        which is to light my life,
+        which I long to see in the fulness of vision, in gladness of heart.
+
+The name of the poet who wrote this song was Gagan. He was almost
+illiterate; and the ideas he received from his Bauel teacher found no
+distraction from the self-consciousness of the modern age. He was a
+village postman, earning about ten shillings a month, and he died
+before he had completed his teens. The sentiment, to which he gave
+such intensity of expression, is common to most of the songs of his
+sect. And it is a sect, almost exclusively confined to that lower
+floor of society, where the light of modern education hardly finds an
+entrance, while wealth and respectability shun its utter indigence.
+
+In the song I have translated above, the longing of the singer to
+realise the infinite in his own personality is expressed. This has to
+be done daily by its perfect expression in life, in love. For the
+personal expression of life, in its perfection, is love; just as the
+personal expression of truth in its perfection is beauty.
+
+In the political life of the modern age the idea of democracy has
+given mankind faith in the individual. It gives each man trust in his
+own possibilities, and pride in his humanity. Something of the same
+idea, we find, has been working in the popular mind of India, with
+regard to its religious consciousness. Over and over again it tries to
+assert, not only that God is _for_ each of us, but also that God is
+_in_ each of us. These people have no special incarnations in their
+simple theology, because they know that God is special to each
+individual. They say that to be born a man is the greatest privilege
+that can fall to a creature in all the world. They assert that gods in
+Paradise envy human beings. Why? Because God's will, in giving his
+love, finds its completeness in man's will returning that love.
+Therefore Humanity is a necessary factor in the perfecting of the
+divine truth. The Infinite, for its self-expression, comes down into
+the manifoldness of the Finite; and the Finite, for its
+self-realisation, must rise into the unity of the Infinite. Then only
+is the Cycle of Truth complete.
+
+The dignity of man, in his eternal right of Truth, finds expression in
+the following song, composed, not by a theologian or a man of letters,
+but by one who belongs to that ninety per cent of the population of
+British India whose education has been far less than elementary, in
+fact almost below zero:
+
+    My longing is to meet you in play of love, my Lover;
+    But this longing is not only mine, but also yours.
+    For your lips can have their smile, and your flute
+        its music, only in your delight in my love;
+        and therefore you are importunate, even as I am.
+
+If the world were a mere expression of formative forces, then this
+song would be pathetic in its presumption. But why is there beauty at
+all in creation--the beauty whose only meaning is in a call that
+claims disinterestedness as a response? The poet proudly says: "Your
+flute could not have its music of beauty if your delight were not in
+my love. Your power is great--and there I am not equal to you--but it
+lies even in me to make you smile, and if you and I never meet, then
+this play of love remains incomplete."
+
+If this were not true, then it would be an utter humiliation to exist
+at all in this world. If it were solely _our_ business to seek the
+Lover, and _his_ to keep himself passively aloof in the infinity of
+his glory, or actively masterful only in imposing his commands upon
+us, then we should dare to defy him, and refuse to accept the
+everlasting insult latent in the one-sided importunity of a slave. And
+this is what the Bauel says--he who, in the world of men, goes about
+singing for alms from door to door, with his one-stringed instrument
+and long robe of patched-up rags on his back:
+
+    I stop and sit here on the road. Do not ask me to walk farther.
+    If your love can be complete without mine, let me turn back
+        from seeing you.
+    I have been travelling to seek you, my friend, for long;
+    Yet I refuse to beg a sight of you, if you do not feel my need.
+    I am blind with market dust and midday glare,
+        and so wait, my heart's lover, in hopes that your own love
+          will send you to find me out.
+
+The poet is fully conscious that his value in the world's market is
+pitifully small; that he is neither wealthy nor learned. Yet he has
+his great compensation, for he has come close to his Lover's heart. In
+Bengal the women bathing in the river often use their overturned water
+jars to keep themselves floating when they swim, and the poet uses
+this incident for his simile:
+
+    It is lucky that I am an empty vessel,
+    For when you swim, I keep floating by your side.
+    Your full vessels are left on the empty shore, they are for use;
+    But I am carried to the river in your arms, and I dance
+        to the rhythm of your heart-throbs and heaving of the waves.
+
+The great distinguished people of the world do not know that these
+beggars--deprived of education, honour, and wealth--can, in the pride
+of their souls, look down upon them as the unfortunate ones, who are
+left on the shore for their worldly uses, but whose life ever misses
+the touch of the Lover's arms.
+
+The feeling that man is not a mere casual visitor at the palace-gate
+of the world, but the invited guest whose presence is needed to give
+the royal banquet its sole meaning, is not confined to any particular
+sect in India. Let me quote here some poems from a mediaeval poet of
+Western India--Jnandas--whose works are nearly forgotten, and have
+become scarce from the very exquisiteness of their excellence. In the
+following poem he is addressing God's messenger, who comes to us in
+the morning light of our childhood, in the dusk of our day's end, and
+in the night's darkness:
+
+    Messenger, morning brought you, habited in gold.
+    After sunset, your song wore a tune of ascetic grey,
+        and then came night.
+    Your message was written in bright letters across the black.
+    Why is such splendour about you, to lure the heart of one
+        who is nothing?
+
+This is the answer of the messenger:
+
+    Great is the festival hall where you are to be the only guest.
+    Therefore the letter to you is written from sky to sky,
+    And I, the proud servant, bring the invitation with all ceremony.
+
+And thus the poet knows that the silent rows of stars carry God's own
+invitation to the individual soul.
+
+The same poet sings:
+
+    What hast thou come to beg from the beggar, O King of Kings?
+    My Kingdom is poor for want of him, my dear one, and I
+        wait for him in sorrow.
+
+    How long will you keep him waiting, O wretch,
+        who has waited for you for ages in silence and stillness?
+    Open your gate, and make this very moment fit for the union.
+
+It is the song of man's pride in the value given to him by Supreme
+Love and realised by his own love.
+
+The Vaishnava religion, which has become the popular religion of
+India, carries the same message: God's love finding its finality in
+man's love. According to it, the lover, man, is the complement of the
+Lover, God, in the internal love drama of existence; and God's call
+is ever wafted in man's heart in the world-music, drawing him towards
+the union. This idea has been expressed in rich elaboration of symbols
+verging upon realism. But for these Bauels this idea is direct and
+simple, full of the dignified beauty of truth, which shuns all tinsels
+of ornament.
+
+The Bauel poet, when asked why he had no sect mark on his forehead,
+answered in his song that the true colour decoration appears on the
+skin of the fruit when its inner core is filled with ripe, sweet
+juice; but by artificially smearing it with colour from outside you do
+not make it ripe. And he says of his Guru, his teacher, that he is
+puzzled to find in which direction he must make salutation. For his
+teacher is not one, but many, who, moving on, form a procession of
+wayfarers.
+
+Bauels have no temple or image for their worship, and this utter
+simplicity is needful for men whose one subject is to realise the
+innermost nearness of God. The Bauel poet expressly says that if we try
+to approach God through the senses we miss him:
+
+    Bring him not into your house as the guest of your eyes;
+        but let him come at your heart's invitation.
+    Opening your doors to that which is seen only, is to lose it.
+
+Yet, being a poet, he also knows that the objects of sense can reveal
+their spiritual meaning only when they are not seen through mere
+physical eyes:
+
+    Eyes can see only dust and earth,
+    But feel it with your heart, it is pure joy.
+    The flowers of delight blossom on all sides, in every form,
+        but where is your heart's thread to weave them in a garland?
+
+These Bauels have a philosophy, which they call the philosophy of the
+body; but they keep its secret; it is only for the initiated.
+Evidently the underlying idea is that the individual's body is itself
+the temple, in whose inner mystic shrine the Divine appears before the
+soul, and the key to it has to be found from those who know. But as
+the key is not for us outsiders, I leave it with the observation that
+this mystic philosophy of the body is the outcome of the attempt to
+get rid of all the outward shelters which are too costly for people
+like themselves. But this human body of ours is made by God's own
+hand, from his own love, and even if some men, in the pride of their
+superiority, may despise it, God finds his joy in dwelling in others
+of yet lower birth. It is a truth easier of discovery by these people
+of humble origin than by men of proud estate.
+
+The pride of the Bauel beggar is not in his worldly distinction, but in
+the distinction that God himself has given to him. He feels himself
+like a flute through which God's own breath of love has been breathed:
+
+    My heart is like a flute he has played on.
+    If ever it fall into other hands,--
+        let him fling it away.
+    My lover's flute is dear to him.
+    Therefore, if to-day alien breath have entered it and
+        sounded strange notes,
+    Let him break it to pieces and strew the dust with them.
+
+So we find that this man also has his disgust of defilement. While the
+ambitious world of wealth and power despises him, he in his turn
+thinks that the world's touch desecrates him who has been made sacred
+by the touch of his Lover. He does not envy us our life of ambition
+and achievements, but he knows how precious his own life has been:
+
+    I am poured forth in living notes of joy and sorrow by your breath.
+    Morning and evening, in summer and in rains, I am fashioned to music.
+    Yet should I be wholly spent in some flight of song,
+    I shall not grieve, the tune is so precious to me.
+
+Our joys and sorrows are contradictory when self separates them in
+opposition. But for the heart in which self merges in God's love,
+they lose their absoluteness. So the Bauel's prayer is to feel in all
+situations--in danger, or pain, or sorrow--that he is in God's hands.
+He solves the problem of emancipation from sufferings by accepting and
+setting them in a higher context:
+
+    I am the boat, you are the sea, and also the boatman.
+    Though you never make the shore, though you let me sink,
+         why should I be foolish and afraid?
+    Is the reaching the shore a greater prize than losing myself
+         with you?
+    If you are only the haven, as they say, then what is the sea?
+    Let it surge and toss me on its waves, I shall be content.
+    I live in you, whatever and however you appear.
+    Save me or kill me as you wish, only never leave me in
+         others' hands.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+It is needless to say, before I conclude, that I had neither the
+training nor the opportunity to study this mendicant religious sect in
+Bengal from an ethnological standpoint. I was attracted to find out
+how the living currents of religious movements work in the heart of
+the people, saving them from degradation imposed by the society of the
+learned, of the rich, or of the high-born; how the spirit of man, by
+making use even of its obstacles, reaches fulfilment, led thither, not
+by the learned authorities in the scriptures, or by the mechanical
+impulse of the dogma-driven crowd, but by the unsophisticated
+aspiration of the loving soul. On the inaccessible mountain peaks of
+theology the snows of creed remain eternally rigid, cold, and pure.
+But God's manifest shower falls direct on the plain of humble hearts,
+flowing there in various channels, even getting mixed with some mud in
+its course, as it is soaked into the underground currents, invisible,
+but ever-moving.
+
+I can think of nothing better than to conclude my paper with a poem of
+Jnandas, in which the aspiration of all simple spirits has found a
+devout expression:
+
+    I had travelled all day and was tired; then I bowed my head
+          towards thy kingly court still far away.
+    The night deepened, a longing burned in my heart.
+    Whatever the words I sang, pain cried through them--for
+          even my songs thirsted--
+      O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
+
+    When time seemed lost in darkness,
+        thy hand dropped its sceptre to take up the lute and
+          strike the uttermost chords;
+    And my heart sang out,
+      O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
+
+    Ah, who is this whose arms enfold me?
+    Whatever I have to leave, let me leave; and whatever I
+          have to bear, let me bear.
+    Only let me walk with thee,
+      O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
+    Descend at whiles from thy high audience hall, come down
+          amid joys and sorrows.
+    Hide in all forms and delights, in love,
+    And in my heart sing thy songs,--
+      O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
+
+
+
+
+                             EAST AND WEST
+
+                                   I
+
+
+It is not always a profound interest in man that carries travellers
+nowadays to distant lands. More often it is the facility for rapid
+movement. For lack of time and for the sake of convenience we
+generalise and crush our human facts into the packages within the
+steel trunks that hold our travellers' reports.
+
+Our knowledge of our own countrymen and our feelings about them have
+slowly and unconsciously grown out of innumerable facts which are full
+of contradictions and subject to incessant change. They have the
+elusive mystery and fluidity of life. We cannot define to ourselves
+what we are as a whole, because we know too much; because our
+knowledge is more than knowledge. It is an immediate consciousness of
+personality, any evaluation of which carries some emotion, joy or
+sorrow, shame or exaltation. But in a foreign land we try to find our
+compensation for the meagreness of our data by the compactness of the
+generalisation which our imperfect sympathy itself helps us to form.
+When a stranger from the West travels in the Eastern world he takes
+the facts that displease him and readily makes use of them for his
+rigid conclusions, fixed upon the unchallengeable authority of his
+personal experience. It is like a man who has his own boat for
+crossing his village stream, but, on being compelled to wade across
+some strange watercourse, draws angry comparisons as he goes from
+every patch of mud and every pebble which his feet encounter.
+
+Our mind has faculties which are universal, but its habits are
+insular. There are men who become impatient and angry at the least
+discomfort when their habits are incommoded. In their idea of the next
+world they probably conjure up the ghosts of their slippers and
+dressing-gowns, and expect the latchkey that opens their lodging-house
+door on earth to fit their front door in the other world. As
+travellers they are a failure; for they have grown too accustomed to
+their mental easy-chairs, and in their intellectual nature love home
+comforts, which are of local make, more than the realities of life,
+which, like earth itself, are full of ups and downs, yet are one in
+their rounded completeness.
+
+The modern age has brought the geography of the earth near to us, but
+made it difficult for us to come into touch with man. We go to strange
+lands and observe; we do not live there. We hardly meet men: but only
+specimens of knowledge. We are in haste to seek for general types and
+overlook individuals.
+
+When we fall into the habit of neglecting to use the understanding
+that comes of sympathy in our travels, our knowledge of foreign people
+grows insensitive, and therefore easily becomes both unjust and cruel
+in its character, and also selfish and contemptuous in its
+application. Such has, too often, been the case with regard to the
+meeting of Western people in our days with others for whom they do not
+recognise any obligation of kinship.
+
+It has been admitted that the dealings between different races of men
+are not merely between individuals; that our mutual understanding is
+either aided, or else obstructed, by the general emanations forming
+the social atmosphere. These emanations are our collective ideas and
+collective feelings, generated according to special historical
+circumstances.
+
+For instance, the caste-idea is a collective idea in India. When we
+approach an Indian who is under the influence of this collective idea,
+he is no longer a pure individual with his conscience fully awake to
+the judging of the value of a human being. He is more or less a
+passive medium for giving expression to the sentiment of a whole
+community.
+
+It is evident that the caste-idea is not creative; it is merely
+institutional. It adjusts human beings according to some mechanical
+arrangement. It emphasises the negative side of the individual--his
+separateness. It hurts the complete truth in man.
+
+In the West, also, the people have a certain collective idea that
+obscures their humanity. Let me try to explain what I feel about it.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Lately I went to visit some battlefields of France which had been
+devastated by war. The awful calm of desolation, which still bore
+wrinkles of pain--death-struggles stiffened into ugly ridges--brought
+before my mind the vision of a huge demon, which had no shape, no
+meaning, yet had two arms that could strike and break and tear, a
+gaping mouth that could devour, and bulging brains that could conspire
+and plan. It was a purpose, which had a living body, but no complete
+humanity to temper it. Because it was passion--belonging to life, and
+yet not having the wholeness of life--it was the most terrible of
+life's enemies.
+
+Something of the same sense of oppression in a different degree, the
+same desolation in a different aspect, is produced in my mind when I
+realise the effect of the West upon Eastern life--the West which, in
+its relation to us, is all plan and purpose incarnate, without any
+superfluous humanity.
+
+I feel the contrast very strongly in Japan. In that country the old
+world presents itself with some ideal of perfection, in which man has
+his varied opportunities of self-revelation in art, in ceremonial, in
+religious faith, and in customs expressing the poetry of social
+relationship. There one feels that deep delight of hospitality which
+life offers to life. And side by side, in the same soil, stands the
+modern world, which is stupendously big and powerful, but
+inhospitable. It has no simple-hearted welcome for man. It is living;
+yet the incompleteness of life's ideal within it cannot but hurt
+humanity.
+
+The wriggling tentacles of a cold-blooded utilitarianism, with which
+the West has grasped all the easily yielding succulent portions of the
+East, are causing pain and indignation throughout the Eastern
+countries. The West comes to us, not with the imagination and sympathy
+that create and unite, but with a shock of passion--passion for power
+and wealth. This passion is a mere force, which has in it the
+principle of separation, of conflict.
+
+I have been fortunate in coming into close touch with individual men
+and women of the Western countries, and have felt with them their
+sorrows and shared their aspirations. I have known that they seek the
+same God, who is my God--even those who deny Him. I feel certain that,
+if the great light of culture be extinct in Europe, our horizon in the
+East will mourn in darkness. It does not hurt my pride to acknowledge
+that, in the present age, Western humanity has received its mission to
+be the teacher of the world; that her science, through the mastery of
+laws of nature, is to liberate human souls from the dark dungeon of
+matter. For this very reason I have realised all the more strongly,
+on the other hand, that the dominant collective idea in the Western
+countries is not creative. It is ready to enslave or kill individuals,
+to drug a great people with soul-killing poison, darkening their whole
+future with the black mist of stupefaction, and emasculating entire
+races of men to the utmost degree of helplessness. It is wholly
+wanting in spiritual power to blend and harmonise; it lacks the sense
+of the great personality of man.
+
+The most significant fact of modern days is this, that the West has
+met the East. Such a momentous meeting of humanity, in order to be
+fruitful, must have in its heart some great emotional idea, generous
+and creative. There can be no doubt that God's choice has fallen upon
+the knights-errant of the West for the service of the present age;
+arms and armour have been given to them; but have they yet realised in
+their hearts the single-minded loyalty to their cause which can resist
+all temptations of bribery from the devil? The world to-day is offered
+to the West. She will destroy it, if she does not use it for a great
+creation of man. The materials for such a creation are in the hands of
+science; but the creative genius is in Man's spiritual ideal.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+When I was young a stranger from Europe came to Bengal. He chose his
+lodging among the people of the country, shared with them their frugal
+diet, and freely offered them his service. He found employment in the
+houses of the rich, teaching them French and German, and the money
+thus earned he spent to help poor students in buying books. This meant
+for him hours of walking in the mid-day heat of a tropical summer;
+for, intent upon exercising the utmost economy, he refused to hire
+conveyances. He was pitiless in his exaction from himself of his
+resources, in money, time, and strength, to the point of privation;
+and all this for the sake of a people who were obscure, to whom he was
+not born, yet whom he dearly loved. He did not come to us with a
+professional mission of teaching sectarian creeds; he had not in his
+nature the least trace of that self-sufficiency of goodness, which
+humiliates by gifts the victims of its insolent benevolence. Though he
+did not know our language, he took every occasion to frequent our
+meetings and ceremonies; yet he was always afraid of intrusion, and
+tenderly anxious lest he might offend us by his ignorance of our
+customs. At last, under the continual strain of work in an alien
+climate and surroundings, his health broke down. He died, and was
+cremated at our burning-ground, according to his express desire.
+
+The attitude of his mind, the manner of his living, the object of his
+life, his modesty, his unstinted self-sacrifice for a people who had
+not even the power to give publicity to any benefaction bestowed upon
+them, were so utterly unlike anything we were accustomed to associate
+with the Europeans in India, that it gave rise in our mind to a
+feeling of love bordering upon awe.
+
+We all have a realm, a private paradise, in our mind, where dwell
+deathless memories of persons who brought some divine light to our
+life's experience, who may not be known to others, and whose names
+have no place in the pages of history. Let me confess to you that this
+man lives as one of those immortals in the paradise of my individual
+life.
+
+He came from Sweden, his name was Hammargren. What was most remarkable
+in the event of his coming to us in Bengal was the fact that in his
+own country he had chanced to read some works of my great countryman,
+Ram Mohan Roy, and felt an immense veneration for his genius and his
+character. Ram Mohan Roy lived in the beginning of the last century,
+and it is no exaggeration when I describe him as one of the immortal
+personalities of modern time. This young Swede had the unusual gift of
+a far-sighted intellect and sympathy, which enabled him even from his
+distance of space and time, and in spite of racial differences, to
+realise the greatness of Ram Mohan Roy. It moved him so deeply that he
+resolved to go to the country which produced this great man, and offer
+her his service. He was poor, and he had to wait some time in England
+before he could earn his passage money to India. There he came at
+last, and in reckless generosity of love utterly spent himself to the
+last breath of his life, away from home and kindred and all the
+inheritances of his motherland. His stay among us was too short to
+produce any outward result. He failed even to achieve during his life
+what he had in his mind, which was to found by the help of his scanty
+earnings a library as a memorial to Ram Mohan Roy, and thus to leave
+behind him a visible symbol of his devotion. But what I prize most in
+this European youth, who left no record of his life behind him, is not
+the memory of any service of goodwill, but the precious gift of
+respect which he offered to a people who are fallen upon evil times,
+and whom it is so easy to ignore or to humiliate. For the first time
+in the modern days this obscure individual from Sweden brought to our
+country the chivalrous courtesy of the West, a greeting of human
+fellowship.
+
+The coincidence came to me with a great and delightful surprise when
+the Nobel Prize was offered to me from Sweden. As a recognition of
+individual merit it was of great value to me, no doubt; but it was the
+acknowledgment of the East as a collaborator with the Western
+continents, in contributing its riches to the common stock of
+civilisation, which had the chief significance for the present age. It
+meant joining hands in comradeship by the two great hemispheres of the
+human world across the sea.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+To-day the real East remains unexplored. The blindness of contempt is
+more hopeless than the blindness of ignorance; for contempt kills the
+light which ignorance merely leaves unignited. The East is waiting to
+be understood by the Western races, in order not only to be able to
+give what is true in her, but also to be confident of her own mission.
+
+In Indian history, the meeting of the Mussulman and the Hindu produced
+Akbar, the object of whose dream was the unification of hearts and
+ideals. It had all the glowing enthusiasm of a religion, and it
+produced an immediate and a vast result even in his own lifetime.
+
+But the fact still remains that the Western mind, after centuries of
+contact with the East, has not evolved the enthusiasm of a chivalrous
+ideal which can bring this age to its fulfilment. It is everywhere
+raising thorny hedges of exclusion and offering human sacrifices to
+national self-seeking. It has intensified the mutual feelings of envy
+among Western races themselves, as they fight over their spoils and
+display a carnivorous pride in their snarling rows of teeth.
+
+We must again guard our minds from any encroaching distrust of the
+individuals of a nation. The active love of humanity and the spirit of
+martyrdom for the cause of justice and truth which I have met with in
+the Western countries have been a great lesson and inspiration to me.
+I have no doubt in my mind that the West owes its true greatness, not
+so much to its marvellous training of intellect, as to its spirit of
+service devoted to the welfare of man. Therefore I speak with a
+personal feeling of pain and sadness about the collective power which
+is guiding the helm of Western civilisation. It is a passion, not an
+ideal. The more success it has brought to Europe, the more costly it
+will prove to her at last, when the accounts have to be rendered. And
+the signs are unmistakable, that the accounts have been called for.
+The time has come when Europe must know that the forcible parasitism
+which she has been practising upon the two large Continents of the
+world--the two most unwieldy whales of humanity--must be causing to
+her moral nature a gradual atrophy and degeneration.
+
+As an example, let me quote the following extract from the concluding
+chapter of _From the Cape to Cairo_, by Messrs. Grogan and Sharp, two
+writers who have the power to inculcate their doctrines by precept and
+example. In their reference to the African they are candid, as when
+they say, "We have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limbs."
+These two sentences, carefully articulated, with a smack of
+enjoyment, have been more clearly explained in the following
+statement, where some sense of that decency which is the attenuated
+ghost of a buried conscience, prompts the writers to use the phrase
+"compulsory labour" in place of the honest word "slavery"; just as the
+modern politician adroitly avoids the word "injunction" and uses the
+word "mandate." "Compulsory labour in some form," they say, "is the
+corollary of our occupation of the country." And they add: "It is
+pathetic, but it is history," implying thereby that moral sentiments
+have no serious effect in the history of human beings.
+
+Elsewhere they write: "Either we must give up the country
+commercially, or we must make the African work. And mere abuse of
+those who point out the impasse cannot change the facts. We must
+decide, and soon. Or rather the white man of South Africa will
+decide." The authors also confess that they have seen too much of the
+world "to have any lingering belief that Western civilisation benefits
+native races."
+
+The logic is simple--the logic of egoism. But the argument is
+simplified by lopping off the greater part of the premise. For these
+writers seem to hold that the only important question for the white
+men of South Africa is, how indefinitely to grow fat on ostrich
+feathers and diamond mines, and dance jazz dances over the misery and
+degradation of a whole race of fellow-beings of a different colour
+from their own. Possibly they believe that moral laws have a special
+domesticated breed of comfortable concessions for the service of the
+people in power. Possibly they ignore the fact that commercial and
+political cannibalism, profitably practised upon foreign races, creeps
+back nearer home; that the cultivation of unwholesome appetites has
+its final reckoning with the stomach which has been made to serve it.
+For, after all, man is a spiritual being, and not a mere living
+money-bag jumping from profit to profit, and breaking the backbone of
+human races in its financial leapfrog.
+
+Such, however, has been the condition of things for more than a
+century; and to-day, trying to read the future by the light of the
+European conflagration, we are asking ourselves everywhere in the
+East: "Is this frightfully overgrown power really great? It can bruise
+us from without, but can it add to our wealth of spirit? It can sign
+peace treaties, but can it give peace?"
+
+It was about two thousand years ago that all-powerful Rome in one of
+its eastern provinces executed on a cross a simple teacher of an
+obscure tribe of fishermen. On that day the Roman governor felt no
+falling off of his appetite or sleep. On that day there was, on the
+one hand, the agony, the humiliation, the death; on the other, the
+pomp of pride and festivity in the Governor's palace.
+
+And to-day? To whom, then, shall we bow the head?
+
+    Kasmai devaya havisha vidhema?
+
+    (To which God shall we offer oblation?)
+
+We know of an instance in our own history of India, when a great
+personality, both in his life and voice, struck the keynote of the
+solemn music of the soul--love for all creatures. And that music
+crossed seas, mountains, and deserts. Races belonging to different
+climates, habits, and languages were drawn together, not in the clash
+of arms, not in the conflict of exploitation, but in harmony of life,
+in amity and peace. That was creation.
+
+When we think of it, we see at once what the confusion of thought was
+to which the Western poet, dwelling upon the difference between East
+and West, referred when he said, "Never the twain shall meet." It is
+true that they are not yet showing any real sign of meeting. But the
+reason is because the West has not sent out its humanity to meet the
+man in the East, but only its machine. Therefore the poet's line has
+to be changed into something like this:
+
+    Man is man, machine is machine,
+    And never the twain shall wed.
+
+You must know that red tape can never be a common human bond; that
+official sealing-wax can never provide means of mutual attachment;
+that it is a painful ordeal for human beings to have to receive
+favours from animated pigeonholes, and condescensions from printed
+circulars that give notice but never speak. The presence of the
+Western people in the East is a human fact. If we are to gain anything
+from them, it must not be a mere sum-total of legal codes and systems
+of civil and military services. Man is a great deal more to man than
+that. We have our human birthright to claim direct help from the man
+of the West, if he has anything great to give us. It must come to us,
+not through mere facts in a juxtaposition, but through the
+spontaneous sacrifice made by those who have the gift, and therefore
+the responsibility.
+
+Earnestly I ask the poet of the Western world to realise and sing to
+you with all the great power of music which he has, that the East and
+the West are ever in search of each other, and that they must meet not
+merely in the fulness of physical strength, but in fulness of truth;
+that the right hand, which wields the sword, has the need of the left,
+which holds the shield of safety.
+
+The East has its seat in the vast plains watched over by the
+snow-peaked mountains and fertilised by rivers carrying mighty volumes
+of water to the sea. There, under the blaze of a tropical sun, the
+physical life has bedimmed the light of its vigour and lessened its
+claims. There man has had the repose of mind which has ever tried to
+set itself in harmony with the inner notes of existence. In the
+silence of sunrise and sunset, and on star-crowded nights, he has sat
+face to face with the Infinite, waiting for the revelation that opens
+up the heart of all that there is. He has said, in a rapture of
+realisation:
+
+"Hearken to me, ye children of the Immortal, who dwell in the Kingdom
+of Heaven. I have known, from beyond darkness, the Supreme Person,
+shining with the radiance of the sun."
+
+The man from the East, with his faith in the eternal, who in his soul
+had met the touch of the Supreme Person--did he never come to you in
+the West and speak to you of the Kingdom of Heaven? Did he not unite
+the East and the West in truth, in the unity of one spiritual bond
+between all children of the Immortal, in the realisation of one great
+Personality in all human persons?
+
+Yes, the East did once meet the West profoundly in the growth of her
+life. Such union became possible, because the East came to the West
+with the ideal that is creative, and not with the passion that
+destroys moral bonds. The mystic consciousness of the Infinite, which
+she brought with her, was greatly needed by the man of the West to
+give him his balance.
+
+On the other hand, the East must find her own balance in Science--the
+magnificent gift that the West can bring to her. Truth has its nest as
+well as its sky. That nest is definite in structure, accurate in law
+of construction; and though it has to be changed and rebuilt over and
+over again, the need of it is never-ending and its laws are eternal.
+For some centuries the East has neglected the nest-building of truth.
+She has not been attentive to learn its secret. Trying to cross the
+trackless infinite, the East has relied solely upon her wings. She has
+spurned the earth, till, buffeted by storms, her wings are hurt and
+she is tired, sorely needing help. But has she then to be told that
+the messenger of the sky and the builder of the nest shall never
+meet?
+
+
+
+
+                            THE MODERN AGE
+
+                                   I
+
+
+Wherever man meets man in a living relationship, the meeting finds its
+natural expression in works of art, the signatures of beauty, in which
+the mingling of the personal touch leaves its memorial.
+
+On the other hand, a relationship of pure utility humiliates man--it
+ignores the rights and needs of his deeper nature; it feels no
+compunction in maltreating and killing things of beauty that can never
+be restored.
+
+Some years ago, when I set out from Calcutta on my voyage to Japan,
+the first thing that shocked me, with a sense of personal injury, was
+the ruthless intrusion of the factories for making gunny-bags on both
+banks of the Ganges. The blow it gave to me was owing to the precious
+memory of the days of my boyhood, when the scenery of this river was
+the only great thing near my birthplace reminding me of the existence
+of a world which had its direct communication with our innermost
+spirit.
+
+Calcutta is an upstart town with no depth of sentiment in her face and
+in her manners. It may truly be said about her genesis:--In the
+beginning there was the spirit of the Shop, which uttered through its
+megaphone, "Let there be the Office!" and there was Calcutta. She
+brought with her no dower of distinction, no majesty of noble or
+romantic origin; she never gathered around her any great historical
+associations, any annals of brave sufferings, or memory of mighty
+deeds. The only thing which gave her the sacred baptism of beauty was
+the river. I was fortunate enough to be born before the smoke-belching
+iron dragon had devoured the greater part of the life of its banks;
+when the landing-stairs descending into its waters, caressed by its
+tides, appeared to me like the loving arms of the villages clinging to
+it; when Calcutta, with her up-tilted nose and stony stare, had not
+completely disowned her foster-mother, rural Bengal, and had not
+surrendered body and soul to her wealthy paramour, the spirit of the
+ledger, bound in dead leather.
+
+But as an instance of the contrast of the different ideal of a
+different age, incarnated in the form of a town, the memory of my last
+visit to Benares comes to my mind. What impressed me most deeply,
+while I was there, was the mother-call of the river Ganges, ever
+filling the atmosphere with an "unheard melody," attracting the whole
+population to its bosom every hour of the day. I am proud of the fact
+that India has felt a most profound love for this river, which
+nourishes civilisation on its banks, guiding its course from the
+silence of the hills to the sea with its myriad voices of solitude.
+The love of this river, which has become one with the love of the best
+in man, has given rise to this town as an expression of reverence.
+This is to show that there are sentiments in us which are creative,
+which do not clamour for gain, but overflow in gifts, in spontaneous
+generosity of self-sacrifice.
+
+But our minds will nevermore cease to be haunted by the perturbed
+spirit of the question, "What about gunny-bags?" I admit they are
+indispensable, and am willing to allow them a place in society, if my
+opponent will only admit that even gunny-bags should have their
+limits, and will acknowledge the importance of leisure to man, with
+space for joy and worship, and a home of wholesale privacy, with
+associations of chaste love and mutual service. If this concession to
+humanity be denied or curtailed, and if profit and production are
+allowed to run amuck, they will play havoc with our love of beauty, of
+truth, of justice, and also with our love for our fellow-beings. So it
+comes about that the peasant cultivators of jute, who live on the
+brink of everlasting famine, are combined against, and driven to lower
+the price of their labours to the point of blank despair, by those who
+earn more than cent per cent profit and wallow in the infamy of their
+wealth. The facts that man is brave and kind, that he is social and
+generous and self-sacrificing, have some aspect of the complete in
+them; but the fact that he is a manufacturer of gunny-bags is too
+ridiculously small to claim the right of reducing his higher nature to
+insignificance. The fragmentariness of utility should never forget its
+subordinate position in human affairs. It must not be permitted to
+occupy more than its legitimate place and power in society, nor to
+have the liberty to desecrate the poetry of life, to deaden our
+sensitiveness to ideals, bragging of its own coarseness as a sign of
+virility. The pity is that when in the centre of our activities we
+acknowledge, by some proud name, the supremacy of wanton
+destructiveness, or production not less wanton, we shut out all the
+lights of our souls, and in that darkness our conscience and our
+consciousness of shame are hidden, and our love of freedom is killed.
+
+I do not for a moment mean to imply that in any particular period of
+history men were free from the disturbance of their lower passions.
+Selfishness ever had its share in government and trade. Yet there was
+a struggle to maintain a balance of forces in society; and our
+passions cherished no delusions about their own rank and value. They
+contrived no clever devices to hoodwink our moral nature. For in those
+days our intellect was not tempted to put its weight into the balance
+on the side of over-greed.
+
+But in recent centuries a devastating change has come over our
+mentality with regard to the acquisition of money. Whereas in former
+ages men treated it with condescension, even with disrespect, now they
+bend their knees to it. That it should be allowed a sufficiently large
+place in society, there can be no question; but it becomes an outrage
+when it occupies those seats which are specially reserved for the
+immortals, by bribing us, tampering with our moral pride, recruiting
+the best strength of society in a traitor's campaign against human
+ideals, thus disguising, with the help of pomp and pageantry, its true
+insignificance. Such a state of things has come to pass because, with
+the help of science, the possibilities of profit have suddenly become
+immoderate. The whole of the human world, throughout its length and
+breadth, has felt the gravitational pull of a giant planet of greed,
+with concentric rings of innumerable satellites, causing in our
+society a marked deviation from the moral orbit. In former times the
+intellectual and spiritual powers of this earth upheld their dignity
+of independence and were not giddily rocked on the tides of the money
+market. But, as in the last fatal stages of disease, this fatal
+influence of money has got into our brain and affected our heart. Like
+a usurper, it has occupied the throne of high social ideals, using
+every means, by menace and threat, to seize upon the right, and,
+tempted by opportunity, presuming to judge it. It has not only science
+for its ally, but other forces also that have some semblance of
+religion, such as nation-worship and the idealising of organised
+selfishness. Its methods are far-reaching and sure. Like the claws of
+a tiger's paw, they are softly sheathed. Its massacres are invisible,
+because they are fundamental, attacking the very roots of life. Its
+plunder is ruthless behind a scientific system of screens, which have
+the formal appearance of being open and responsible to inquiries. By
+whitewashing its stains it keeps its respectability unblemished. It
+makes a liberal use of falsehood in diplomacy, only feeling
+embarrassed when its evidence is disclosed by others of the trade. An
+unscrupulous system of propaganda paves the way for widespread
+misrepresentation. It works up the crowd psychology through regulated
+hypnotic doses at repeated intervals, administered in bottles with
+moral labels upon them of soothing colours. In fact, man has been able
+to make his pursuit of power easier to-day by his art of mitigating
+the obstructive forces that come from the higher region of his
+humanity. With his cult of power and his idolatry of money he has, in
+a great measure, reverted to his primitive barbarism, a barbarism
+whose path is lit up by the lurid light of intellect. For barbarism is
+the simplicity of a superficial life. It may be bewildering in its
+surface adornments and complexities, but it lacks the ideal to impart
+to it the depth of moral responsibility.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Society suffers from a profound feeling of unhappiness, not so much
+when it is in material poverty as when its members are deprived of a
+large part of their humanity. This unhappiness goes on smouldering in
+the subconscious mind of the community till its life is reduced to
+ashes or a sudden combustion is produced. The repressed personality of
+man generates an inflammable moral gas deadly in its explosive force.
+
+We have seen in the late war, and also in some of the still more
+recent events of history, how human individuals freed from moral and
+spiritual bonds find a boisterous joy in a debauchery of destruction.
+There is generated a disinterested passion of ravage. Through such
+catastrophe we can realise what formidable forces of annihilation are
+kept in check in our communities by bonds of social ideas; nay, made
+into multitudinous manifestations of beauty and fruitfulness. Thus we
+know that evils are, like meteors, stray fragments of life, which need
+the attraction of some great ideal in order to be assimilated with the
+wholesomeness of creation. The evil forces are literally outlaws;
+they only need the control and cadence of spiritual laws to change
+them into good. The true goodness is not the negation of badness, it
+is in the mastery of it. Goodness is the miracle which turns the
+tumult of chaos into a dance of beauty.
+
+In modern society the ideal of wholeness has lost its force. Therefore
+its different sections have become detached and resolved into their
+elemental character of forces. Labour is a force; so also is Capital;
+so are the Government and the People; so are Man and Woman. It is said
+that when the forces lying latent in even a handful of dust are
+liberated from their bond of unity, they can lift the buildings of a
+whole neighbourhood to the height of a mountain. Such disfranchised
+forces, irresponsible free-booters, may be useful to us for certain
+purposes, but human habitations standing secure on their foundations
+are better for us. To own the secret of utilising these forces is a
+proud fact for us, but the power of self-control and the
+self-dedication of love are truer subjects for the exultation of
+mankind. The genii of the Arabian Nights may have in their magic their
+lure and fascination for us. But the consciousness of God is of
+another order, infinitely more precious in imparting to our minds
+ideas of the spiritual power of creation. Yet these genii are abroad
+everywhere; and even now, after the late war, their devotees are
+getting ready to play further tricks upon humanity by suddenly
+spiriting it away to some hill-top of desolation.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+We know that when, at first, any large body of people in their history
+became aware of their unity, they expressed it in some popular symbol
+of divinity. For they felt that their combination was not an
+arithmetical one; its truth was deeper than the truth of number. They
+felt that their community was not a mere agglutination but a creation,
+having upon it the living touch of the infinite Person. The
+realisation of this truth having been an end in itself, a fulfilment,
+it gave meaning to self-sacrifice, to the acceptance even of death.
+
+But our modern education is producing a habit of mind which is ever
+weakening in us the spiritual apprehension of truth--the truth of a
+person as the ultimate reality of existence. Science has its proper
+sphere in analysing this world as a construction, just as grammar has
+its legitimate office in analysing the syntax of a poem. But the
+world, as a creation, is not a mere construction; it too is more than
+a syntax. It is a poem, which we are apt to forget when grammar takes
+exclusive hold of our minds.
+
+Upon the loss of this sense of a universal personality, which is
+religion, the reign of the machine and of method has been firmly
+established, and man, humanly speaking, has been made a homeless
+tramp. As nomads, ravenous and restless, the men from the West have
+come to us. They have exploited our Eastern humanity for sheer gain of
+power. This modern meeting of men has not yet received the blessing of
+God. For it has kept us apart, though railway lines are laid far and
+wide, and ships are plying from shore to shore to bring us together.
+
+It has been said in the Upanishads:
+
+    Yastu sarvani bhutani atmanyevanupashyati
+    Sarva bhuteshu chatmanam na tato vijugupsate.
+
+     (He who sees all things in _atma_, in the infinite spirit,
+     and the infinite spirit in all beings, remains no longer
+     unrevealed.)
+
+In the modern civilisation, for which an enormous number of men are
+used as materials, and human relationships have in a large measure
+become utilitarian, man is imperfectly revealed. For man's revelation
+does not lie in the fact that he is a power, but that he is a spirit.
+The prevalence of the theory which realises the power of the machine
+in the universe, and organises men into machines, is like the eruption
+of Etna, tremendous in its force, in its outburst of fire and fume;
+but its creeping lava covers up human shelters made by the ages, and
+its ashes smother life.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+The terribly efficient method of repressing personality in the
+individuals and the races who have failed to resist it has, in the
+present scientific age, spread all over the world; and in consequence
+there have appeared signs of a universal disruption which seems not
+far off. Faced with the possibility of such a disaster, which is sure
+to affect the successful peoples of the world in their intemperate
+prosperity, the great Powers of the West are seeking peace, not by
+curbing their greed, or by giving up the exclusive advantages which
+they have unjustly acquired, but by concentrating their forces for
+mutual security.
+
+But can powers find their equilibrium in themselves? Power has to be
+made secure not only against power, but also against weakness; for
+there lies the peril of its losing balance. The weak are as great a
+danger for the strong as quicksands for an elephant. They do not
+assist progress because they do not resist; they only drag down. The
+people who grow accustomed to wield absolute power over others are apt
+to forget that by so doing they generate an unseen force which some
+day rends that power into pieces. The dumb fury of the downtrodden
+finds its awful support from the universal law of moral balance. The
+air which is so thin and unsubstantial gives birth to storms that
+nothing can resist. This has been proved in history over and over
+again, and stormy forces arising from the revolt of insulted humanity
+are openly gathering in the air at the present time.
+
+Yet in the psychology of the strong the lesson is despised and no
+count taken of the terribleness of the weak. This is the latent
+ignorance that, like an unsuspected worm, burrows under the bulk of
+the prosperous. Have we never read of the castle of power, securely
+buttressed on all sides, in a moment dissolving in air at the
+explosion caused by the weak and outraged besiegers? Politicians
+calculate upon the number of mailed hands that are kept on the
+sword-hilts: they do not possess the third eye to see the great
+invisible hand that clasps in silence the hand of the helpless and
+waits its time. The strong form their league by a combination of
+powers, driving the weak to form their own league alone with their
+God. I know I am crying in the wilderness when I raise the voice of
+warning; and while the West is busy with its organisation of a
+machine-made peace, it will still continue to nourish by its
+iniquities the underground forces of earthquake in the Eastern
+Continent. The West seems unconscious that Science, by providing it
+with more and more power, is tempting it to suicide and encouraging it
+to accept the challenge of the disarmed; it does not know that the
+challenge comes from a higher source.
+
+Two prophecies about the world's salvation are cherished in the hearts
+of the two great religions of the world. They represent the highest
+expectation of man, thereby indicating his faith in a truth which he
+instinctively considers as ultimate--the truth of love. These
+prophecies have not for their vision the fettering of the world and
+reducing it to tameness by means of a close-linked power forged in the
+factory of a political steel trust. One of the religions has for its
+meditation the image of the Buddha who is to come, Maitreya, the
+Buddha of love; and he is to bring peace. The other religion waits for
+the coming of Christ. For Christ preached peace when he preached love,
+when he preached the oneness of the Father with the brothers who are
+many. And this was the truth of peace. Christ never held that peace
+was the best policy. For policy is not truth. The calculation of
+self-interest can never successfully fight the irrational force of
+passion--the passion which is perversion of love, and which can only
+be set right by the truth of love. So long as the powers build a
+league on the foundation of their desire for safety, secure enjoyment
+of gains, consolidation of past injustice, and putting off the
+reparation of wrongs, while their fingers still wriggle for greed and
+reek of blood, rifts will appear in their union; and in future their
+conflicts will take greater force and magnitude. It is political and
+commercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war. By different
+combinations it changes its shape and dimensions, but not its nature.
+This egoism is still held sacred, and made a religion; and such a
+religion, by a mere change of temple, and by new committees of
+priests, will never save mankind. We must know that, as, through
+science and commerce, the realisation of the unity of the material
+world gives us power, so the realisation of the great spiritual Unity
+of Man alone can give us peace.
+
+
+
+
+                         THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM
+
+        (A LETTER FROM NEW YORK TO THE AUTHOR'S OWN COUNTRYMEN)
+
+
+When freedom is not an inner idea which imparts strength to our
+activities and breadth to our creations, when it is merely a thing of
+external circumstance, it is like an open space to one who is
+blindfolded.
+
+In my recent travels in the West I have felt that out there freedom as
+an idea has become feeble and ineffectual. Consequently a spirit of
+repression and coercion is fast spreading in the politics and social
+relationships of the people.
+
+In the age of monarchy the king lived surrounded by a miasma of
+intrigue. At court there was an endless whispering of lies and
+calumny, and much plotting and planning among the conspiring courtiers
+to manipulate the king as the instrument of their own purposes.
+
+In the present age intrigue plays a wider part, and affects the whole
+country. The people are drugged with the hashish of false hopes and
+urged to deeds of frightfulness by the goadings of manufactured
+panics; their higher feelings are exploited by devious channels of
+unctuous hypocrisy, their pockets picked under anaesthetics of
+flattery, their very psychology affected by a conspiracy of money and
+unscrupulous diplomacy.
+
+In the old order the king was given to understand that he was the
+freest individual in the world. A greater semblance of external
+freedom, no doubt, he had than other individuals. But they built for
+him a gorgeous prison of unreality.
+
+The same thing is happening now with the people of the West. They are
+flattered into believing that they are free, and they have the
+sovereign power in their hands. But this power is robbed by hosts of
+self-seekers, and the horse is captured and stabled because of his
+gift of freedom over space. The mob-mind is allowed the enjoyment of
+an apparent liberty, while its true freedom is curtailed on every
+side. Its thoughts are fashioned according to the plans of organised
+interest; in its choosing of ideas and forming of opinions it is
+hindered either by some punitive force or by the constant insinuation
+of untruths; it is made to dwell in an artificial world of hypnotic
+phrases. In fact, the people have become the storehouse of a power
+that attracts round it a swarm of adventurers who are secretly
+investing its walls to exploit it for their own devices.
+
+Thus it has become more and more evident to me that the ideal of
+freedom has grown tenuous in the atmosphere of the West. The mentality
+is that of a slave-owning community, with a mutilated multitude of men
+tied to its commercial and political treadmill. It is the mentality of
+mutual distrust and fear. The appalling scenes of inhumanity and
+injustice, which are growing familiar to us, are the outcome of a
+psychology that deals with terror. No cruelty can be uglier in its
+ferocity than the cruelty of the coward. The people who have
+sacrificed their souls to the passion of profit-making and the
+drunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic and
+suspicion, and therefore they are ruthless even where they are least
+afraid of mischances. They become morally incapable of allowing
+freedom to others, and in their eagerness to curry favour with the
+powerful they not only connive at the injustice done by their own
+partners in political gambling, but participate in it. A perpetual
+anxiety for the protection of their gains at any cost strikes at the
+love of freedom and justice, until at length they are ready to forgo
+liberty for themselves and for others.
+
+My experience in the West, where I have realised the immense power of
+money and of organised propaganda,--working everywhere behind screens
+of camouflage, creating an atmosphere of distrust, timidity, and
+antipathy,--has impressed me deeply with the truth that real freedom
+is of the mind and spirit; it can never come to us from outside. He
+only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to
+extend it to others. He who cares to have slaves must chain himself to
+them; he who builds walls to create exclusion for others builds walls
+across his own freedom; he who distrusts freedom in others loses his
+moral right to it. Sooner or later he is lured into the meshes of
+physical and moral servility.
+
+Therefore I would urge my own countrymen to ask themselves if the
+freedom to which they aspire is one of external conditions. Is it
+merely a transferable commodity? Have they acquired a true love of
+freedom? Have they faith in it? Are they ready to make space in their
+society for the minds of their children to grow up in the ideal of
+human dignity, unhindered by restrictions that are unjust and
+irrational?
+
+Have we not made elaborately permanent the walls of our social
+compartments? We are tenaciously proud of their exclusiveness. We
+boast that, in this world, no other society but our own has come to
+finality in the classifying of its living members. Yet in our
+political agitations we conveniently forget that any unnaturalness in
+the relationship of governors and governed which humiliates us,
+becomes an outrage when it is artificially fixed under the threat of
+military persecution.
+
+When India gave voice to immortal thoughts, in the time of fullest
+vigour of vitality, her children had the fearless spirit of the
+seekers of truth. The great epic of the soul of our people--the
+_Mahabharata_--gives us a wonderful vision of an overflowing life,
+full of the freedom of inquiry and experiment. When the age of the
+Buddha came, humanity was stirred in our country to its uttermost
+depth. The freedom of mind which it produced expressed itself in a
+wealth of creation, spreading everywhere in its richness over the
+continent of Asia. But with the ebb of life in India the spirit of
+creation died away. It hardened into an age of inert construction. The
+organic unity of a varied and elastic society gave way to a
+conventional order which proved its artificial character by its
+inexorable law of exclusion.
+
+Life has its inequalities, I admit, but they are natural and are in
+harmony with our vital functions. The head keeps its place apart from
+the feet, not through some external arrangement or any conspiracy of
+coercion. If the body is compelled to turn somersaults for an
+indefinite period, the head never exchanges its relative function for
+that of the feet. But have our social divisions the same
+inevitableness of organic law? If we have the hardihood to say "yes"
+to that question, then how can we blame an alien people for subjecting
+us to a political order which they are tempted to believe eternal?
+
+By squeezing human beings in the grip of an inelastic system and
+forcibly holding them fixed, we have ignored the laws of life and
+growth. We have forced living souls into a permanent passivity, making
+them incapable of moulding circumstance to their own intrinsic design,
+and of mastering their own destiny. Borrowing our ideal of life from a
+dark period of our degeneracy, we have covered up our sensitiveness
+of soul under the immovable weight of a remote past. We have set up an
+elaborate ceremonial of cage-worship, and plucked all the feathers
+from the wings of the living spirit of our people. And for us,--with
+our centuries of degradation and insult, with the amorphousness of our
+national unity, with our helplessness before the attack of disasters
+from without and our unreasoning self-obstructions from within,--the
+punishment has been terrible. Our stupefaction has become so absolute
+that we do not even realise that this persistent misfortune, dogging
+our steps for ages, cannot be a mere accident of history, removable
+only by another accident from outside.
+
+Unless we have true faith in freedom, knowing it to be creative,
+manfully taking all its risks, not only do we lose the right to claim
+freedom in politics, but we also lack the power to maintain it with
+all our strength. For that would be like assigning the service of God
+to a confirmed atheist. And men, who contemptuously treat their own
+brothers and sisters as eternal babies, never to be trusted in the
+most trivial details of their personal life,--coercing them at every
+step by the cruel threat of persecution into following a blind lane
+leading to nowhere, driving a number of them into hypocrisy and into
+moral inertia,--will fail over and over again to rise to the height of
+their true and severe responsibility. They will be incapable of
+holding a just freedom in politics, and of fighting in freedom's
+cause.
+
+The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine which
+must move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel,
+keeping up the steam-power. It represents the active aspect of inertia
+which has the appearance of freedom, but not its truth, and therefore
+gives rise to slavery both within its boundaries and outside. The
+present civilisation of India has the constraining power of the mould.
+It squeezes living man in the grip of rigid regulations, and its
+repression of individual freedom makes it only too easy for men to be
+forced into submission of all kinds and degrees. In both of these
+traditions life is offered up to something which is not life; it is a
+sacrifice, which has no God for its worship, and is therefore utterly
+in vain. The West is continually producing mechanical power in excess
+of its spiritual control, and India has produced a system of
+mechanical control in excess of its vitality.
+
+
+
+
+                              THE NATION
+
+
+The peoples are living beings. They have their distinct personalities.
+But nations are organisations of power, and therefore their inner
+aspects and outward expressions are everywhere monotonously the same.
+Their differences are merely differences in degree of efficiency.
+
+In the modern world the fight is going on between the living spirit of
+the people and the methods of nation-organising. It is like the
+struggle that began in Central Asia between cultivated areas of man's
+habitation and the continually encroaching desert sands, till the
+human region of life and beauty was choked out of existence. When the
+spread of higher ideals of humanity is not held to be important, the
+hardening method of national efficiency gains a certain strength; and
+for some limited period of time, at least, it proudly asserts itself
+as the fittest to survive. But it is the survival of that part of man
+which is the least living. And this is the reason why dead monotony is
+the sign of the spread of the Nation. The modern towns, which present
+the physiognomy due to this dominance of the Nation, are everywhere
+the same, from San Francisco to London, from London to Tokyo. They
+show no faces, but merely masks.
+
+The peoples, being living personalities, must have their
+self-expression, and this leads to their distinctive creations. These
+creations are literature, art, social symbols and ceremonials. They
+are like different dishes at one common feast. They add richness to
+our enjoyment and understanding of truth. They are making the world of
+man fertile of life and variedly beautiful.
+
+But the nations do not create, they merely produce and destroy.
+Organisations for production are necessary. Even organisations for
+destruction may be so. But when, actuated by greed and hatred, they
+crowd away into a corner the living man who creates, then the harmony
+is lost, and the people's history runs at a break-neck speed towards
+some fatal catastrophe.
+
+Humanity, where it is living, is guided by inner ideals; but where it
+is a dead organisation it becomes impervious to them. Its building
+process is only an external process, and in its response to the moral
+guidance it has to pass through obstacles that are gross and
+non-plastic.
+
+Man as a person has his individuality, which is the field where his
+spirit has its freedom to express itself and to grow. The professional
+man carries a rigid crust around him which has very little variation
+and hardly any elasticity. This professionalism is the region where
+men specialise their knowledge and organise their power, mercilessly
+elbowing each other in their struggle to come to the front.
+Professionalism is necessary, without doubt; but it must not be
+allowed to exceed its healthy limits, to assume complete mastery over
+the personal man, making him narrow and hard, exclusively intent upon
+pursuit of success at the cost of his faith in ideals.
+
+In ancient India professions were kept within limits by social
+regulation. They were considered primarily as social necessities, and
+in the second place as the means of livelihood for individuals. Thus
+man, being free from the constant urging of unbounded competition,
+could have leisure to cultivate his nature in its completeness.
+
+The Cult of the Nation is the professionalism of the people. This cult
+is becoming their greatest danger, because it is bringing them
+enormous success, making them impatient of the claims of higher
+ideals. The greater the amount of success, the stronger are the
+conflicts of interest and jealousy and hatred which are aroused in
+men's minds, thereby making it more and more necessary for other
+peoples, who are still living, to stiffen into nations. With the
+growth of nationalism, man has become the greatest menace to man.
+Therefore the continual presence of panic goads that very nationalism
+into ever-increasing menace.
+
+Crowd psychology is a blind force. Like steam and other physical
+forces, it can be utilised for creating a tremendous amount of power.
+And therefore rulers of men, who, out of greed and fear, are bent upon
+turning their peoples into machines of power, try to train this crowd
+psychology for their special purposes. They hold it to be their duty
+to foster in the popular mind universal panic, unreasoning pride in
+their own race, and hatred of others. Newspapers, school-books, and
+even religious services are made use of for this object; and those
+who have the courage to express their disapprobation of this blind and
+impious cult are either punished in the law-courts, or are socially
+ostracised. The individual thinks, even when he feels; but the same
+individual, when he feels with the crowd, does not reason at all. His
+moral sense becomes blurred. This suppression of higher humanity in
+crowd minds is productive of enormous strength. For the crowd mind is
+essentially primitive; its forces are elemental. Therefore the Nation
+is for ever watching to take advantage of this enormous power of
+darkness.
+
+The people's instinct of self-preservation has been made dominant at
+particular times of crisis. Then, for the time being, the
+consciousness of its solidarity becomes aggressively wide-awake. But
+in the Nation this hyper-consciousness is kept alive for all time by
+artificial means. A man has to act the part of a policeman when he
+finds his house invaded by burglars. But if that remains his normal
+condition, then his consciousness of his household becomes acute and
+over-wrought, making him fly at every stranger passing near his house.
+This intensity of self-consciousness is nothing of which a man should
+feel proud; certainly it is not healthful. In like manner, incessant
+self-consciousness in a nation is highly injurious for the people. It
+serves its immediate purpose, but at the cost of the eternal in man.
+
+When a whole body of men train themselves for a particular narrow
+purpose, it becomes a common interest with them to keep up that
+purpose and preach absolute loyalty to it. Nationalism is the training
+of a whole people for a narrow ideal; and when it gets hold of their
+minds it is sure to lead them to moral degeneracy and intellectual
+blindness. We cannot but hold firm the faith that this Age of
+Nationalism, of gigantic vanity and selfishness, is only a passing
+phase in civilisation, and those who are making permanent arrangements
+for accommodating this temporary mood of history will be unable to fit
+themselves for the coming age, when the true spirit of freedom will
+have sway.
+
+With the unchecked growth of Nationalism the moral foundation of man's
+civilisation is unconsciously undergoing a change. The ideal of the
+social man is unselfishness, but the ideal of the Nation, like that of
+the professional man, is selfishness. This is why selfishness in the
+individual is condemned, while in the nation it is extolled, which
+leads to hopeless moral blindness, confusing the religion of the
+people with the religion of the nation. Therefore, to take an example,
+we find men more and more convinced of the superior claims of
+Christianity, merely because Christian nations are in possession of
+the greater part of the world. It is like supporting a robber's
+religion by quoting the amount of his stolen property. Nations
+celebrate their successful massacre of men in their churches. They
+forget that Thugs also ascribed their success in manslaughter to the
+favour of their goddess. But in the case of the latter their goddess
+frankly represented the principle of destruction. It was the criminal
+tribe's own murderous instinct deified--the instinct, not of one
+individual, but of the whole community, and therefore held sacred. In
+the same manner, in modern churches, selfishness, hatred and vanity in
+their collective aspect of national instincts do not scruple to share
+the homage paid to God.
+
+Of course, pursuit of self-interest need not be wholly selfish; it can
+even be in harmony with the interest of all. Therefore, ideally
+speaking, the nationalism, which stands for the expression of the
+collective self-interest of a people, need not be ashamed of itself
+if it maintains its true limitations. But what we see in practice is,
+that every nation which has prospered has done so through its career
+of aggressive selfishness either in commercial adventures or in
+foreign possessions, or in both. And this material prosperity not only
+feeds continually the selfish instincts of the people, but impresses
+men's minds with the lesson that, for a nation, selfishness is a
+necessity and therefore a virtue. It is the emphasis laid in Europe
+upon the idea of the Nation's constant increase of power, which is
+becoming the greatest danger to man, both in its direct activity and
+its power of infection.
+
+We must admit that evils there are in human nature, in spite of our
+faith in moral laws and our training in self-control. But they carry
+on their foreheads their own brand of infamy, their very success
+adding to their monstrosity. All through man's history there will be
+some who suffer, and others who cause suffering. The conquest of evil
+will never be a fully accomplished fact, but a continuous process like
+the process of burning in a flame.
+
+In former ages, when some particular people became turbulent and tried
+to rob others of their human rights, they sometimes achieved success
+and sometimes failed. And it amounted to nothing more than that. But
+when this idea of the Nation, which has met with universal acceptance
+in the present day, tries to pass off the cult of collective
+selfishness as a moral duty, simply because that selfishness is
+gigantic in stature, it not only commits depredation, but attacks the
+very vitals of humanity. It unconsciously generates in people's minds
+an attitude of defiance against moral law. For men are taught by
+repeated devices the lesson that the Nation is greater than the
+people, while yet it scatters to the winds the moral law that the
+people have held sacred.
+
+It has been said that a disease becomes most acutely critical when the
+brain is affected. For it is the brain that is constantly directing
+the siege against all disease forces. The spirit of national
+selfishness is that brain disease of a people which shows itself in
+red eyes and clenched fists, in violence of talk and movements, all
+the while shattering its natural restorative powers. But the power of
+self-sacrifice, together with the moral faculty of sympathy and
+co-operation, is the guiding spirit of social vitality. Its function
+is to maintain a beneficent relation of harmony with its
+surroundings. But when it begins to ignore the moral law which is
+universal and uses it only within the bounds of its own narrow sphere,
+then its strength becomes like the strength of madness which ends in
+self-destruction.
+
+What is worse, this aberration of a people, decked with the showy
+title of "patriotism," proudly walks abroad, passing itself off as a
+highly moral influence. Thus it has spread its inflammatory contagion
+all over the world, proclaiming its fever flush to be the best sign of
+health. It is causing in the hearts of peoples, naturally inoffensive,
+a feeling of envy at not having their temperature as high as that of
+their delirious neighbours and not being able to cause as much
+mischief, but merely having to suffer from it.
+
+I have often been asked by my Western friends how to cope with this
+evil, which has attained such sinister strength and vast dimensions.
+In fact, I have often been blamed for merely giving warning, and
+offering no alternative. When we suffer as a result of a particular
+system, we believe that some other system would bring us better luck.
+We are apt to forget that all systems produce evil sooner or later,
+when the psychology which is at the root of them is wrong. The system
+which is national to-day may assume the shape of the international
+to-morrow; but so long as men have not forsaken their idolatry of
+primitive instincts and collective passions, the new system will only
+become a new instrument of suffering. And because we are trained to
+confound efficient system with moral goodness itself, every ruined
+system makes us more and more distrustful of moral law.
+
+Therefore I do not put my faith in any new institution, but in the
+individuals all over the world who think clearly, feel nobly, and act
+rightly, thus becoming the channels of moral truth. Our moral ideals
+do not work with chisels and hammers. Like trees, they spread their
+roots in the soil and their branches in the sky, without consulting
+any architect for their plans.
+
+
+
+
+                            WOMAN AND HOME
+
+
+Creative expressions attain their perfect form through emotions
+modulated. Woman has that expression natural to her--a cadence of
+restraint in her behaviour, producing poetry of life. She has been an
+inspiration to man, guiding, most often unconsciously, his restless
+energy into an immense variety of creations in literature, art, music
+and religion. This is why, in India, woman has been described as the
+symbol of Shakti, the creative power.
+
+But if woman begins to believe that, though biologically her function
+is different from that of man, psychologically she is identical with
+him; if the human world in its mentality becomes exclusively male,
+then before long it will be reduced to utter inanity. For life finds
+its truth and beauty, not in any exaggeration of sameness, but in
+harmony.
+
+If woman's nature were identical with man's, if Eve were a mere
+tautology of Adam, it would only give rise to a monotonous
+superfluity. But that she was not so was proved by the banishment she
+secured from a ready-made Paradise. She had the instinctive wisdom to
+realise that it was her mission to help her mate in creating a
+Paradise of their own on earth, whose ideal she was to supply with her
+life, whose materials were to be produced and gathered by her comrade.
+
+However, it is evident that an increasing number of women in the West
+are ready to assert that their difference from men is unimportant. The
+reason for the vehement utterance of such a paradox cannot be ignored.
+It is a rebellion against a necessity, which is not equal for both the
+partners.
+
+Love in all forms has its obligations, and the love that binds women
+to their children binds them to their homes. But necessity is a
+tyrant, making us submit to injury and indignity, allowing advantage
+over us to those who are wholly or comparatively free from its burden.
+Such has been the case in the social relationship between man and
+woman. Along with the difference inherent in their respective natures,
+there have grown up between them inequalities fostered by
+circumstances. Man is not handicapped by the same biological and
+psychological responsibilities as woman, and therefore he has the
+liberty to give her the security of home. This liberty exacts payment
+when it offers its boon, because to give or to withhold the gift is
+within its power. It is the unequal freedom in their mutual
+relationships which has made the weight of life's tragedies so
+painfully heavy for woman to bear.
+
+Some mitigation of her disadvantage has been effected by her rendering
+herself and her home a luxury to man. She has accentuated those
+qualities in herself which insidiously impose their bondage over her
+mate, some by pandering to his weakness, and some by satisfying his
+higher nature, till the sex-consciousness in our society has grown
+abnormal and overpowering. There is no actual objection to this in
+itself, for it offers a stimulus, acting in the depth of life, which
+leads to creative exuberance. But a great deal of it is a forced
+growth of compulsion bearing seeds of degradation. In those ages when
+men acknowledged spiritual perfection to be their object, women were
+denounced as the chief obstacle in their way. The constant and
+conscious exercise of allurements, which gave women their power,
+attacked the weak spots in man's nature, and by doing so added to its
+weakness. For all relationships tainted with repression of freedom
+must become sources of degeneracy to the strong who impose such
+repression.
+
+Balance of power, however, between man and woman was in a measure
+established when home wielded a strong enough attraction to make men
+accept its obligations. But at last the time has come when the
+material ambition of man has assumed such colossal proportions that
+home is in danger of losing its centre of gravity for him, and he is
+receding farther and farther from its orbit.
+
+The arid zone in the social life is spreading fast. The simple
+comforts of home, made precious by the touch of love, are giving way
+to luxuries that can only have their full extension in the isolation
+of self-centred life. Hotels are being erected on the ruins of homes;
+productions are growing more stupendous than creations; and most men
+have, for the materials of their happiness and recreation, their dogs
+and horses, their pipes, guns, and gambling clubs.
+
+Reactions and rebellions, not being normal in their character, go on
+hurting truth until peace is restored. Therefore, when woman refuses
+to acknowledge the distinction between her life and that of man, she
+does not convince us of its truth, but only proves to us that she is
+suffering. All great sufferings indicate some wrong somewhere. In the
+present case, the wrong is in woman's lack of freedom in her
+relationship with man, which compels her to turn her disabilities into
+attractions, and to use untruths as her allies in the battle of life,
+while she is suffering from the precariousness of her position.
+
+From the beginning of our society, women have naturally accepted the
+training which imparts to their life and to their home a spirit of
+harmony. It is their instinct to perform their services in such a
+manner that these, through beauty, might be raised from the domain of
+slavery to the realm of grace. Women have tried to prove that in the
+building up of social life they are artists and not artisans. But all
+expressions of beauty lose their truth when compelled to accept the
+patronage of the gross and the indifferent. Therefore when necessity
+drives women to fashion their lives to the taste of the insensitive or
+the sensual, then the whole thing becomes a tragedy of desecration.
+Society is full of such tragedies. Many of the laws and social
+regulations guiding the relationships of man and woman are relics of
+a barbaric age, when the brutal pride of an exclusive possession had
+its dominance in human relations, such as those of parents and
+children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, teachers and
+disciples. The vulgarity of it still persists in the social bond
+between the sexes because of the economic helplessness of woman.
+Nothing makes us so stupidly mean as the sense of superiority which
+the power of the purse confers upon us.
+
+The powers of muscle and of money have opportunities of immediate
+satisfaction, but the power of the ideal must have infinite patience.
+The man who sells his goods, or fulfils his contract, is cheated if he
+fails to realise payment, but he who gives form to some ideal may
+never get his due and be fully paid. What I have felt in the women of
+India is the consciousness of this ideal--their simple faith in the
+sanctity of devotion lighted by love which is held to be divine. True
+womanliness is regarded in our country as the saintliness of love. It
+is not merely praised there, but literally worshipped; and she who is
+gifted with it is called _Devi_, as one revealing in herself Woman,
+the Divine. That this has not been a mere metaphor to us is because,
+in India, our mind is familiar with the idea of God in an eternal
+feminine aspect. Thus the Eastern woman, who is deeply aware in her
+heart of the sacredness of her mission, is a constant education to
+man. It has to be admitted that there are chances of such an influence
+failing to penetrate the callousness of the coarse-minded; but that is
+the destiny of all manifestations whose value is not in success or
+reward in honour.
+
+Woman has to be ready to suffer. She cannot allow her emotions to be
+dulled or polluted, for these are to create her life's atmosphere,
+apart from which her world would be dark and dead. This leaves her
+heart without any protection of insensibility, at the mercy of the
+hurts and insults of life. Women of India, like women everywhere, have
+their share of suffering, but it radiates through the ideal, and
+becomes, like sunlight, a creative force in their world. Our women
+know by heart the legends of the great women of the epic age--Savitri
+who by the power of love conquered death, and Sita who had no other
+reward for her life of sacrifice but the sacred majesty of sorrow.
+They know that it is their duty to make this life an image of the life
+eternal, and that love's mission truly performed has a spiritual
+meaning. It is a religious responsibility for them to live the life
+which is their own. For their activity is not for money-making, or
+organising power, or intellectually probing the mystery of existence,
+but for establishing and maintaining human relationships requiring the
+highest moral qualities. It is the consciousness of the spiritual
+character of their life's work, which lifts them above the utilitarian
+standard of the immediate and the passing, surrounds them with the
+dignity of the eternal, and transmutes their suffering and sorrow into
+a crown of light.
+
+I must guard myself from the risk of a possible misunderstanding. The
+permanent significance of home is not in the narrowness of its
+enclosure, but in an eternal moral idea. It represents the truth of
+human relationship; it reveals loyalty and love for the personality of
+man. Let us take a wider view, in a perspective truer than can be
+found in its present conventional associations. With the discovery and
+development of agriculture there came a period of settled life in our
+history. The nomad ever moved on with his tents and cattle; he
+explored space and exploited its contents. The cultivator of land
+explored time in its immensity, for he had leisure. Comparatively
+secured from the uncertainty of his outer resources, he had the
+opportunity to deal with his moral resources in the realm of human
+truth. This is why agricultural civilisation, like that of India and
+China, is essentially a civilisation of human relationship, of the
+adjustment of mutual obligations. It is deep-rooted in the inner life
+of man. Its basis is co-operation and not competition. In other words,
+its principle is the principle of home, to which all its outer
+adventures are subordinated.
+
+In the meanwhile, the nomadic life with its predatory instinct of
+exploitation has developed into a great civilisation. It is immensely
+proud and strong, killing leisure and pursuing opportunities. It
+minimises the claims of personal relationship and is jealously careful
+of its unhampered freedom for acquiring wealth and asserting its will
+upon others. Its burden is the burden of things, which grows heavier
+and more complex every day, disregarding the human and the spiritual.
+Its powerful pressure from all sides narrows the limits of home, the
+personal region of the human world. Thus, in this region of life,
+women are every day hustled out of their shelter for want of
+accommodation.
+
+But such a state of things can never have the effect of changing woman
+into man. On the contrary, it will lead her to find her place in the
+unlimited range of society, and the Guardian Spirit of the personal in
+human nature will extend the ministry of woman over all developments
+of life. Habituated to deal with the world as a machine, man is
+multiplying his materials, banishing away his happiness and
+sacrificing love to comfort, which is an illusion. At last the present
+age has sent its cry to woman, asking her to come out from her
+segregation in order to restore the spiritual supremacy of all that is
+human in the world of humanity. She has been aroused to remember that
+womanliness is not chiefly decorative. It is like that vital health,
+which not only imparts the bloom of beauty to the body, but joy to the
+mind and perfection to life.
+
+
+
+
+                         AN EASTERN UNIVERSITY
+
+
+In the midst of much that is discouraging in the present state of the
+world, there is one symptom of vital promise. Asia is awakening. This
+great event, if it be but directed along the right lines, is full of
+hope, not only for Asia herself, but for the whole world.
+
+On the other hand, it has to be admitted that the relationship of the
+West with the East, growing more and more complex and widespread for
+over two centuries, far from attaining its true fulfilment, has given
+rise to a universal spirit of conflict. The consequent strain and
+unrest have profoundly disturbed Asia, and antipathetic forces have
+been accumulating for years in the depth of the Eastern mind.
+
+The meeting of the East and the West has remained incomplete, because
+the occasions of it have not been disinterested. The political and
+commercial adventures carried on by Western races--very often by
+force and against the interest and wishes of the countries they have
+dealt with--have created a moral alienation, which is deeply injurious
+to both parties. The perils threatened by this unnatural relationship
+have long been contemptuously ignored by the West. But the blind
+confidence of the strong in their apparent invincibility has often led
+them, from their dream of security, into terrible surprises of
+history.
+
+It is not the fear of danger or loss to one people or another,
+however, which is most important. The demoralising influence of the
+constant estrangement between the two hemispheres, which affects the
+baser passions of man,--pride, greed and hypocrisy on the one hand;
+fear, suspiciousness and flattery on the other,--has been developing,
+and threatens us with a world-wide spiritual disaster.
+
+The time has come when we must use all our wisdom to understand the
+situation, and to control it, with a stronger trust in moral guidance
+than in any array of physical forces.
+
+In the beginning of man's history his first social object was to form
+a community, to grow into a people. At that early period, individuals
+were gathered together within geographical enclosures. But in the
+present age, with its facility of communication, geographical barriers
+have almost lost their reality, and the great federation of men, which
+is waiting either to find its true scope or to break asunder in a
+final catastrophe, is not a meeting of individuals, but of various
+human races. Now the problem before us is of one single country, which
+is this earth, where the races as individuals must find both their
+freedom of self-expression and their bond of federation. Mankind must
+realise a unity, wider in range, deeper in sentiment, stronger in
+power than ever before. Now that the problem is large, we have to
+solve it on a bigger scale, to realise the God in man by a larger
+faith and to build the temple of our faith on a sure and world-wide
+basis.
+
+The first step towards realisation is to create opportunities for
+revealing the different peoples to one another. This can never be done
+in those fields where the exploiting utilitarian spirit is supreme. We
+must find some meeting-ground, where there can be no question of
+conflicting interests. One of such places is the University, where we
+can work together in a common pursuit of truth, share together our
+common heritage, and realise that artists in all parts of the world
+have created forms of beauty, scientists discovered secrets of the
+universe, philosophers solved the problems of existence, saints made
+the truth of the spiritual world organic in their own lives, not
+merely for some particular race to which they belonged, but for all
+mankind. When the science of meteorology knows the earth's atmosphere
+as continuously one, affecting the different parts of the world
+differently, but in a harmony of adjustments, it knows and attains
+truth. And so, too, we must know that the great mind of man is one,
+working through the many differences which are needed to ensure the
+full result of its fundamental unity. When we understand this truth in
+a disinterested spirit, it teaches us to respect all the differences
+in man that are real, yet remain conscious of our oneness; and to know
+that perfection of unity is not in uniformity, but in harmony.
+
+This is the problem of the present age. The East, for its own sake and
+for the sake of the world, must not remain unrevealed. The deepest
+source of all calamities in history is misunderstanding. For where we
+do not understand, we can never be just.
+
+Being strongly impressed with the need and the responsibility, which
+every individual to-day must realise according to his power, I have
+formed the nucleus of an International University in India, as one of
+the best means of promoting mutual understanding between the East and
+the West. This Institution, according to the plan I have in mind, will
+invite students from the West to study the different systems of Indian
+philosophy, literature, art and music in their proper environment,
+encouraging them to carry on research work in collaboration with the
+scholars already engaged in this task.
+
+India has her renaissance. She is preparing to make her contribution
+to the world of the future. In the past she produced her great
+culture, and in the present age she has an equally important
+contribution to make to the culture of the New World which is emerging
+from the wreckage of the Old. This is a momentous period of her
+history, pregnant with precious possibilities, when any disinterested
+offer of co-operation from any part of the West will have an immense
+moral value, the memory of which will become brighter as the
+regeneration of the East grows in vigour and creative power.
+
+The Western Universities give their students an opportunity to learn
+what all the European peoples have contributed to their Western
+culture. Thus the intellectual mind of the West has been luminously
+revealed to the world. What is needed to complete this illumination is
+for the East to collect its own scattered lamps and offer them to the
+enlightenment of the world.
+
+There was a time when the great countries of Asia had, each of them,
+to nurture its own civilisation apart in comparative seclusion. Now
+has come the age of co-ordination and co-operation. The seedlings that
+were reared within narrow plots must now be transplanted into the open
+fields. They must pass the test of the world-market, if their maximum
+value is to be obtained.
+
+But before Asia is in a position to co-operate with the culture of
+Europe, she must base her own structure on a synthesis of all the
+different cultures which she has. When, taking her stand on such a
+culture, she turns toward the West, she will take, with a confident
+sense of mental freedom, her own view of truth, from her own
+vantage-ground, and open a new vista of thought to the world.
+Otherwise, she will allow her priceless inheritance to crumble into
+dust, and, trying to replace it clumsily with feeble imitations of the
+West, make herself superfluous, cheap and ludicrous. If she thus
+loses her individuality and her specific power to exist, will it in
+the least help the rest of the world? Will not her terrible bankruptcy
+involve also the Western mind? If the whole world grows at last into
+an exaggerated West, then such an illimitable parody of the modern age
+will die, crushed beneath its own absurdity.
+
+In this belief, it is my desire to extend by degrees the scope of this
+University on simple lines, until it comprehends the whole range of
+Eastern cultures--the Aryan, Semitic, Mongolian and others. Its object
+will be to reveal the Eastern mind to the world.
+
+Of one thing I felt certain during my travels in Europe, that a
+genuine interest has been roused there in the philosophy and the arts
+of the East, from which the Western mind seeks fresh inspiration of
+truth and beauty. Once the East had her reputation of fabulous wealth,
+and the seekers were attracted from across the sea. Since then, the
+shrine of wealth has changed its site. But the East is famed also for
+her storage of wisdom, harvested by her patriarchs from long
+successive ages of spiritual endeavour. And when, as now, in the midst
+of the pursuit of power and wealth, there rises the cry of privation
+from the famished spirit of man, an opportunity is offered to the East
+to offer her store to those who need it.
+
+Once upon a time we were in possession of such a thing as our own mind
+in India. It was living. It thought, it felt, it expressed itself. It
+was receptive as well as productive. That this mind could be of any
+use in the process, or in the end, of our education was overlooked by
+our modern educational dispensation. We are provided with buildings
+and books and other magnificent burdens calculated to suppress our
+mind. The latter was treated like a library-shelf solidly made of
+wood, to be loaded with leather-bound volumes of second-hand
+information. In consequence, it has lost its own colour and character,
+and has borrowed polish from the carpenter's shop. All this has cost
+us money, and also our finer ideas, while our intellectual vacancy has
+been crammed with what is described in official reports as Education.
+In fact, we have bought our spectacles at the expense of our eyesight.
+
+In India our goddess of learning is _Saraswati_. My audience in the
+West, I am sure, will be glad to know that her complexion is white.
+But the signal fact is that she is living and she is a woman, and her
+seat is on a lotus-flower. The symbolic meaning of this is, that she
+dwells in the centre of life and the heart of all existence, which
+opens itself in beauty to the light of heaven.
+
+The Western education which we have chanced to know is impersonal. Its
+complexion is also white, but it is the whiteness of the white-washed
+class-room walls. It dwells in the cold-storage compartments of
+lessons and the ice-packed minds of the schoolmasters. The effect
+which it had on my mind when, as a boy, I was compelled to go to
+school, I have described elsewhere. My feeling was very much the same
+as a tree might have, which was not allowed to live its full life, but
+was cut down to be made into packing-cases.
+
+The introduction of this education was not a part of the solemn
+marriage ceremony which was to unite the minds of the East and West in
+mutual understanding. It represented an artificial method of training
+specially calculated to produce the carriers of the white man's
+burden. This want of ideals still clings to our education system,
+though our Universities have latterly burdened their syllabus with a
+greater number of subjects than before. But it is only like adding to
+the bags of wheat the bullock carries to market; it does not make the
+bullock any better off.
+
+Mind, when long deprived of its natural food of truth and freedom of
+growth, develops an unnatural craving for success; and our students
+have fallen victims to the mania for success in examinations. Success
+consists in obtaining the largest number of marks with the strictest
+economy of knowledge. It is a deliberate cultivation of disloyalty to
+truth, of intellectual dishonesty, of a foolish imposition by which
+the mind is encouraged to rob itself. But as we are by means of it
+made to forget the existence of mind, we are supremely happy at the
+result. We pass examinations, and shrivel up into clerks, lawyers and
+police inspectors, and we die young.
+
+Universities should never be made into mechanical organisations for
+collecting and distributing knowledge. Through them the people should
+offer their intellectual hospitality, their wealth of mind to others,
+and earn their proud right in return to receive gifts from the rest of
+the world. But in the whole length and breadth of India there is not a
+single University established in the modern time where a foreign or
+an Indian student can properly be acquainted with the best products
+of the Indian mind. For that we have to cross the sea, and knock at
+the doors of France and Germany. Educational institutions in our
+country are India's alms-bowl of knowledge; they lower our
+intellectual self-respect; they encourage us to make a foolish display
+of decorations composed of borrowed feathers.
+
+This it was that led me to found a school in Bengal, in face of many
+difficulties and discouragements, and in spite of my own vocation as a
+poet, who finds his true inspiration only when he forgets that he is a
+schoolmaster. It is my hope that in this school a nucleus has been
+formed, round which an indigenous University of our own land will find
+its natural growth--a University which will help India's mind to
+concentrate and to be fully conscious of itself; free to seek the
+truth and make this truth its own wherever found, to judge by its own
+standard, give expression to its own creative genius, and offer its
+wisdom to the guests who come from other parts of the world.
+
+Man's intellect has a natural pride in its own aristocracy, which is
+the pride of its culture. Culture only acknowledges the excellence
+whose criticism is in its inner perfection, not in any external
+success. When this pride succumbs to some compulsion of necessity or
+lure of material advantage, it brings humiliation to the intellectual
+man. Modern India, through her very education, has been made to suffer
+this humiliation. Once she herself provided her children with a
+culture which was the product of her own ages of thought and creation.
+But it has been thrust aside, and we are made to tread the mill of
+passing examinations, not for learning anything, but for notifying
+that we are qualified for employments under organisations conducted in
+English. Our educated community is not a cultured community, but a
+community of qualified candidates. Meanwhile the proportion of
+possible employments to the number of claimants has gradually been
+growing narrower, and the consequent disaffection has been widespread.
+At last the very authorities who are responsible for this are blaming
+their victims. Such is the perversity of human nature. It bears its
+worst grudge against those it has injured.
+
+It is as if some tribe which had the primitive habit of decorating its
+tribal members with birds' plumage were some day to hold these very
+birds guilty of the crime of being extinct. There are belated
+attempts on the part of our governors to read us pious homilies about
+disinterested love of learning, while the old machinery goes on
+working, whose product is not education but certificates. It is good
+to remind the fettered bird that its wings are for soaring; but it is
+better to cut the chain which is holding it to its perch. The most
+pathetic feature of the tragedy is that the bird itself has learnt to
+use its chain for its ornament, simply because the chain jingles in
+fairly respectable English.
+
+In the Bengali language there is a modern maxim which can be
+translated, "He who learns to read and write rides in a carriage and
+pair." In English there is a similar proverb, "Knowledge is power." It
+is an offer of a prospective bribe to the student, a promise of an
+ulterior reward which is more important than knowledge itself.
+Temptations, held before us as inducements to be good or to pursue
+uncongenial paths, are most often flimsy lies or half-truths, such as
+the oft-quoted maxim of respectable piety, "Honesty is the best
+policy," at which politicians all over the world seem to laugh in
+their sleeves. But unfortunately, education conducted under a special
+providence of purposefulness, of eating the fruit of knowledge from
+the wrong end, _does_ lead one to that special paradise on earth, the
+daily rides in one's own carriage and pair. And the West, I have heard
+from authentic sources, is aspiring in its education after that
+special cultivation of worldliness.
+
+Where society is comparatively simple and obstructions are not too
+numerous, we can clearly see how the life-process guides education in
+its vital purpose. The system of folk-education, which is indigenous
+to India, but is dying out, was one with the people's life. It flowed
+naturally through the social channels and made its way everywhere. It
+is a system of widespread irrigation of culture. Its teachers,
+specially trained men, are in constant requisition, and find crowded
+meetings in our villages, where they repeat the best thoughts and
+express the ideals of the land in the most effective form. The mode of
+instruction includes the recitation of epics, expounding of the
+scriptures, reading from the Puranas, which are the classical records
+of old history, performance of plays founded upon the early myths and
+legends, dramatic narration of the lives of ancient heroes, and the
+singing in chorus of songs from the old religious literature.
+Evidently, according to this system, the best function of education
+is to enable us to realise that to live as a man is great, requiring
+profound philosophy for its ideal, poetry for its expression, and
+heroism in its conduct. Owing to this vital method of culture the
+common people of India, though technically illiterate, have been made
+conscious of the sanctity of social relationships, entailing constant
+sacrifice and self-control, urged and supported by ideals collectively
+expressed in one word, _Dharma_.
+
+Such a system of education may sound too simple for the complexities
+of modern life. But the fundamental principle of social life in its
+different stages of development remains the same; and in no
+circumstance can the truth be ignored that all human complexities must
+harmonise in organic unity with life, failing which there will be
+endless conflict. Most things in the civilised world occupy more than
+their legitimate space. Much of their burden is needless. By bearing
+this burden civilised man may be showing great strength, but he
+displays little skill. To the gods, viewing this from on high, it must
+seem like the flounderings of a giant who has got out of his depth and
+knows not how to swim.
+
+The main source of all forms of voluntary slavery is the desire of
+gain. It is difficult to fight against this when modern civilisation
+is tainted with such a universal contamination of avarice. I have
+realised it myself in the little boys of my own school. For the first
+few years there is no trouble. But as soon as the upper class is
+reached, their worldly wisdom--the malady of the aged--begins to
+assert itself. They rebelliously insist that they must no longer
+learn, but rather pass examinations. Professions in the modern age are
+more numerous and lucrative than ever before. They need specialisation
+of training and knowledge, tempting education to yield its spiritual
+freedom to the claims of utilitarian ambitions. But man's deeper
+nature is hurt; his smothered life seeks to be liberated from the
+suffocating folds and sensual ties of prosperity. And this is why we
+find almost everywhere in the world a growing dissatisfaction with the
+prevalent system of teaching, which betrays the encroachment of
+senility and worldly prudence over pure intellect.
+
+In India, also, a vague feeling of discontent has given rise to
+numerous attempts at establishing national schools and colleges. But,
+unfortunately, our very education has been successful in depriving us
+of our real initiative and our courage of thought. The training we get
+in our schools has the constant implication in it that it is not for
+us to produce but to borrow. And we are casting about to borrow our
+educational plans from European institutions. The trampled plants of
+Indian corn are dreaming of recouping their harvest from the
+neighbouring wheat fields. To change the figure, we forget that, for
+proficiency in walking, it is better to train the muscles of our own
+legs than to strut upon wooden ones of foreign make, although they
+clatter and cause more surprise at our skill in using them than if
+they were living and real.
+
+But when we go to borrow help from a foreign neighbourhood we are apt
+to overlook the real source of help behind all that is external and
+apparent. Had the deep-water fishes happened to produce a scientist
+who chose the jumping of a monkey for his research work, I am sure he
+would give most of the credit to the branches of the trees and very
+little to the monkey itself. In a foreign University we see the
+branching wildernesses of its buildings, furniture, regulations, and
+syllabus, but the monkey, which is a difficult creature to catch and
+more difficult to manufacture, we are likely to treat as a mere
+accident of minor importance. It is convenient for us to overlook the
+fact that among the Europeans the living spirit of the University is
+widely spread in their society, their parliament, their literature,
+and the numerous activities of their corporate life. In all these
+functions they are in perpetual touch with the great personality of
+the land which is creative and heroic in its constant acts of
+self-expression and self-sacrifice. They have their thoughts published
+in their books as well as through the medium of living men who think
+those thoughts, and who criticise, compare and disseminate them. Some
+at least of the drawbacks of their academic education are redeemed by
+the living energy of the intellectual personality pervading their
+social organism. It is like the stagnant reservoir of water which
+finds its purification in the showers of rain to which it keeps itself
+open. But, to our misfortune, we have in India all the furniture of
+the European University except the human teacher. We have, instead,
+mere purveyors of book-lore in whom the paper god of the bookshop has
+been made vocal.
+
+A most important truth, which we are apt to forget, is that a teacher
+can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can
+never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame.
+The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living
+traffic with his knowledge, but merely repeats his lessons to his
+students, can only load their minds; he cannot quicken them. Truth not
+only must inform but inspire. If the inspiration dies out, and the
+information only accumulates, then truth loses its infinity. The
+greater part of our learning in the schools has been wasted because,
+for most of our teachers, their subjects are like dead specimens of
+once living things, with which they have a learned acquaintance, but
+no communication of life and love.
+
+The educational institution, therefore, which I have in mind has
+primarily for its object the constant pursuit of truth, from which the
+imparting of truth naturally follows. It must not be a dead cage in
+which living minds are fed with food artificially prepared. It should
+be an open house, in which students and teachers are at one. They must
+live their complete life together, dominated by a common aspiration
+for truth and a need of sharing all the delights of culture. In former
+days the great master-craftsmen had students in their workshops where
+they co-operated in shaping things to perfection. That was the place
+where knowledge could become living--that knowledge which not only has
+its substance and law, but its atmosphere subtly informed by a
+creative personality. For intellectual knowledge also has its aspect
+of creative art, in which the man who explores truth expresses
+something which is human in him--his enthusiasm, his courage, his
+sacrifice, his honesty, and his skill. In merely academical teaching
+we find subjects, but not the man who pursues the subjects; therefore
+the vital part of education remains incomplete.
+
+For our Universities we must claim, not labelled packages of truth and
+authorised agents to distribute them, but truth in its living
+association with her lovers and seekers and discoverers. Also we must
+know that the concentration of the mind-forces scattered throughout
+the country is the most important mission of a University, which, like
+the nucleus of a living cell, should be the centre of the intellectual
+life of the people.
+
+The bringing about of an intellectual unity in India is, I am told,
+difficult to the verge of impossibility owing to the fact that India
+has so many different languages. Such a statement is as unreasonable
+as to say that man, because he has a diversity of limbs, should find
+it impossible to realise life's unity in himself, and that only an
+earthworm composed of a tail and nothing else could truly know that it
+had a body.
+
+Let us admit that India is not like any one of the great countries of
+Europe, which has its own separate language; but is rather like Europe
+herself, branching out into different peoples with many different
+languages. And yet Europe has a common civilisation, with an
+intellectual unity which is not based upon uniformity of language. It
+is true that in the earlier stages of her culture the whole of Europe
+had Latin for her learned tongue. That was in her intellectual budding
+time, when all her petals of self-expression were closed in one point.
+But the perfection of her mental unfolding was not represented by the
+singularity of her literary vehicle. When the great European countries
+found their individual languages, then only the true federation of
+cultures became possible in the West, and the very differences of the
+channels made the commerce of ideas in Europe so richly copious and so
+variedly active. We can well imagine what the loss to European
+civilisation would be if France, Italy and Germany, and England
+herself, had not through their separate agencies contributed to the
+common coffer their individual earnings.
+
+There was a time with us when India had her common language of culture
+in Sanskrit. But, for the complete commerce of her thought, she
+required that all her vernaculars should attain their perfect powers,
+through which her different peoples might manifest their
+idiosyncrasies; and this could never be done through a foreign tongue.
+
+In the United States, in Canada and other British Colonies, the
+language of the people is English. It has a great literature which had
+its birth and growth in the history of the British Islands. But when
+this language, with all its products and acquisitions, matured by ages
+on its own mother soil, is carried into foreign lands, which have
+their own separate history and their own life-growth, it must
+constantly hamper the indigenous growth of culture and destroy
+individuality of judgement and the perfect freedom of self-expression.
+The inherited wealth of the English language, with all its splendour,
+becomes an impediment when taken into different surroundings, just as
+when lungs are given to the whale in the sea. If such is the case even
+with races whose grandmother-tongue naturally continues to be their
+own mother-tongue, one can imagine what sterility it means for a
+people which accepts, for its vehicle of culture, an altogether
+foreign language. A language is not like an umbrella or an overcoat,
+that can be borrowed by unconscious or deliberate mistake; it is like
+the living skin itself. If the body of a draught-horse enters into the
+skin of a race-horse, it will be safe to wager that such an anomaly
+will never win a race, and will fail even to drag a cart. Have we not
+watched some modern Japanese artists imitating European art? The
+imitation may sometimes produce clever results; but such cleverness
+has only the perfection of artificial flowers which never bear fruit.
+
+All great countries have their vital centres for intellectual life,
+where a high standard of learning is maintained, where the minds of
+the people are naturally attracted, where they find their genial
+atmosphere, in which to prove their worth and to contribute their
+share to the country's culture. Thus they kindle, on the common altar
+of the land, that great sacrificial fire which can radiate the sacred
+light of wisdom abroad.
+
+Athens was such a centre in Greece, Rome in Italy; and Paris is such
+to-day in France. Benares has been and still continues to be the
+centre of our Sanskrit culture. But Sanskrit learning does not exhaust
+all the elements of culture that exist in modern India.
+
+If we were to take for granted, what some people maintain, that
+Western culture is the only source of light for our mind, then it
+would be like depending for daybreak upon some star, which is the sun
+of a far distant sphere. The star may give us light, but not the day;
+it may give us direction in our voyage of exploration, but it can
+never open the full view of truth before our eyes. In fact, we can
+never use this cold starlight for stirring the sap in our branches,
+and giving colour and bloom to our life. This is the reason why
+European education has become for India mere school lessons and no
+culture; a box of matches, good for the small uses of illumination,
+but not the light of morning, in which the use and beauty, and all the
+subtle mysteries of life are blended in one.
+
+Let me say clearly that I have no distrust of any culture because of
+its foreign character. On the contrary, I believe that the shock of
+such extraneous forces is necessary for the vitality of our
+intellectual nature. It is admitted that much of the spirit of
+Christianity runs counter, not only to the classical culture of
+Europe, but to the European temperament altogether. And yet this alien
+movement of ideas, constantly running against the natural mental
+current of Europe, has been a most important factor in strengthening
+and enriching her civilisation, on account of the sharp antagonism of
+its intellectual direction. In fact, the European vernaculars first
+woke up to life and fruitful vigour when they felt the impact of this
+foreign thought-power with all its oriental forms and affinities. The
+same thing is happening in India. The European culture has come to us,
+not only with its knowledge, but with its velocity.
+
+Then, again, let us admit that modern Science is Europe's great gift
+to humanity for all time to come. We, in India, must claim it from her
+hands, and gratefully accept it in order to be saved from the curse of
+futility by lagging behind. We shall fail to reap the harvest of the
+present age if we delay.
+
+What I object to is the artificial arrangement by which foreign
+education tends to occupy all the space of our national mind, and thus
+kills, or hampers, the great opportunity for the creation of a new
+thought-power by a new combination of truths. It is this which makes
+me urge that all the elements in our own culture have to be
+strengthened, not to resist the Western culture, but truly to accept
+and assimilate it; to use it for our sustenance, not as our burden; to
+get mastery over this culture, and not to live on its outskirts as the
+hewers of texts and drawers of book-learning.
+
+The main river in Indian culture has flowed in four streams,--the
+Vedic, the Puranic, the Buddhist, and the Jain. It has its source in
+the heights of the Indian consciousness. But a river, belonging to a
+country, is not fed by its own waters alone. The Tibetan Brahmaputra
+is a tributary to the Indian Ganges. Contributions have similarly
+found their way to India's original culture. The Muhammadan, for
+example, has repeatedly come into India from outside, laden with his
+own stores of knowledge and feeling and his wonderful religious
+democracy, bringing freshet after freshet to swell the current. To our
+music, our architecture, our pictorial art, our literature, the
+Muhammadans have made their permanent and precious contribution. Those
+who have studied the lives and writings of our medieval saints, and
+all the great religious movements that sprang up in the time of the
+Muhammadan rule, know how deep is our debt to this foreign current
+that has so intimately mingled with our life.
+
+So, in our centre of Indian learning, we must provide for the
+co-ordinate study of all these different cultures,--the Vedic, the
+Puranic, the Buddhist, the Jain, the Islamic, the Sikh and the
+Zoroastrian. The Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan will also have to be
+added; for, in the past, India did not remain isolated within her own
+boundaries. Therefore, in order to learn what she was, in her relation
+to the whole continent of Asia, these cultures too must be studied.
+Side by side with them must finally be placed the Western culture. For
+only then shall we be able to assimilate this last contribution to our
+common stock. A river flowing within banks is truly our own, and it
+can contain its due tributaries; but our relations with a flood can
+only prove disastrous.
+
+There are some who are exclusively modern, who believe that the past
+is the bankrupt time, leaving no assets for us, but only a legacy of
+debts. They refuse to believe that the army which is marching forward
+can be fed from the rear. It is well to remind such persons that the
+great ages of renaissance in history were those when man suddenly
+discovered the seeds of thought in the granary of the past.
+
+The unfortunate people who have lost the harvest of their past have
+lost their present age. They have missed their seed for cultivation,
+and go begging for their bare livelihood. We must not imagine that we
+are one of these disinherited peoples of the world. The time has come
+for us to break open the treasure-trove of our ancestors, and use it
+for our commerce of life. Let us, with its help, make our future our
+own, and not continue our existence as the eternal rag-pickers in
+other people's dustbins.
+
+So far I have dwelt only upon the intellectual aspect of Education.
+For, even in the West, it is the intellectual training which receives
+almost exclusive emphasis. The Western universities have not yet truly
+recognised that fulness of expression is fulness of life. And a large
+part of man can never find its expression in the mere language of
+words. It must therefore seek for its other languages,--lines and
+colours, sounds and movements. Through our mastery of these we not
+only make our whole nature articulate, but also understand man in all
+his attempts to reveal his innermost being in every age and clime. The
+great use of Education is not merely to collect facts, but to know
+man and to make oneself known to man. It is the duty of every human
+being to master, at least to some extent, not only the language of
+intellect, but also that personality which is the language of Art. It
+is a great world of reality for man,--vast and profound,--this growing
+world of his own creative nature. This is the world of Art. To be
+brought up in ignorance of it is to be deprived of the knowledge and
+use of that great inheritance of humanity, which has been growing and
+waiting for every one of us from the beginning of our history. It is
+to remain deaf to the eternal voice of Man, that speaks to all men the
+messages that are beyond speech. From the educational point of view we
+know Europe where it is scientific, or at best literary. So our notion
+of its modern culture is limited within the boundary lines of grammar
+and the laboratory. We almost completely ignore the aesthetic life of
+man, leaving it uncultivated, allowing weeds to grow there. Our
+newspapers are prolific, our meeting-places are vociferous; and in
+them we wear to shreds the things we have borrowed from our English
+teachers. We make the air dismal and damp with the tears of our
+grievances. But where are our arts, which, like the outbreak of
+spring flowers, are the spontaneous overflow of our deeper nature and
+spiritual magnificence?
+
+Through this great deficiency of our modern education, we are
+condemned to carry to the end a dead load of dumb wisdom. Like
+miserable outcasts, we are deprived of our place in the festival of
+culture, and wait at the outer court, where the colours are not for
+us, nor the forms of delight, nor the songs. Ours is the education of
+a prison-house, with hard labour and with a drab dress cut to the
+limits of minimum decency and necessity. We are made to forget that
+the perfection of colour and form and expression belongs to the
+perfection of vitality,--that the joy of life is only the other side
+of the strength of life. The timber merchant may think that the
+flowers and foliage are mere frivolous decorations of a tree; but if
+these are suppressed, he will know to his cost that the timber too
+will fail.
+
+During the Moghal period, music and art in India found a great impetus
+from the rulers, because their whole life--not merely their official
+life--was lived in this land; and it is the wholeness of life from
+which originates Art. But our English teachers are birds of passage;
+they cackle to us, but do not sing,--their true heart is not in the
+land of their exile.
+
+Constriction of life, owing to this narrowness of culture, must no
+longer be encouraged. In the centre of Indian culture which I am
+proposing, music and art must have their prominent seats of honour,
+and not be given merely a tolerant nod of recognition. The different
+systems of music and different schools of art which lie scattered in
+the different ages and provinces of India, and in the different strata
+of society, and also those belonging to the other great countries of
+Asia, which had communication with India, have to be brought there
+together and studied.
+
+I have already hinted that Education should not be dragged out of its
+native element, the life-current of the people. Economic life covers
+the whole width of the fundamental basis of society, because its
+necessities are the simplest and the most universal. Educational
+institutions, in order to obtain their fulness of truth, must have
+close association with this economic life. The highest mission of
+education is to help us to realise the inner principle of the unity of
+all knowledge and all the activities of our social and spiritual
+being. Society in its early stage was held together by its economic
+co-operation, when all its members felt in unison a natural interest
+in their right to live. Civilisation could never have been started at
+all if such was not the case. And civilisation will fall to pieces if
+it never again realises the spirit of mutual help and the common
+sharing of benefits in the elemental necessaries of life. The idea of
+such economic co-operation should be made the basis of our University.
+It must not only instruct, but live; not only think, but produce.
+
+Our ancient _tapovanas_, or forest schools, which were our natural
+universities, were not shut off from the daily life of the people.
+Masters and students gathered fruit and fuel, and took their cattle
+out to graze, supporting themselves by the work of their own hands.
+Spiritual education was a part of the spiritual life itself, which
+comprehended all life. Our centre of culture should not only be the
+centre of the intellectual life of India, but the centre of her
+economic life also. It must co-operate with the villages round it,
+cultivate land, breed cattle, spin cloths, press oil from oil-seeds;
+it must produce all the necessaries, devising the best means, using
+the best materials, and calling science to its aid. Its very existence
+should depend upon the success of its industrial activities carried
+out on the co-operative principle, which will unite the teachers and
+students and villagers of the neighbourhood in a living and active
+bond of necessity. This will give us also a practical industrial
+training, whose motive force is not the greed of profit.
+
+Before I conclude my paper, a delicate question remains to be
+considered. What must be the religious ideal that is to rule our
+centre of Indian culture? The one abiding ideal in the religious life
+of India has been _Mukti_, the deliverance of man's soul from the grip
+of self, its communion with the Infinite Soul through its union in
+_ananda_ with the universe. This religion of spiritual harmony is not
+a theological doctrine to be taught, as a subject in the class, for
+half an hour each day. It is the spiritual truth and beauty of our
+attitude towards our surroundings, our conscious relationship with the
+Infinite, and the lasting power of the Eternal in the passing moments
+of our life. Such a religious ideal can only be made possible by
+making provision for students to live in intimate touch with nature,
+daily to grow in an atmosphere of service offered to all creatures,
+tending trees, feeding birds and animals, learning to feel the immense
+mystery of the soil and water and air.
+
+Along with this, there should be some common sharing of life with the
+tillers of the soil and the humble workers in the neighbouring
+villages; studying their crafts, inviting them to the feasts, joining
+them in works of co-operation for communal welfare; and in our
+intercourse we should be guided, not by moral maxims or the
+condescension of social superiority, but by natural sympathy of life
+for life, and by the sheer necessity of love's sacrifice for its own
+sake. In such an atmosphere students would learn to understand that
+humanity is a divine harp of many strings, waiting for its one grand
+music. Those who realise this unity are made ready for the pilgrimage
+through the night of suffering, and along the path of sacrifice, to
+the great meeting of Man in the future, for which the call comes to us
+across the darkness.
+
+Life, in such a centre, should be simple and clean. We should never
+believe that simplicity of life might make us unsuited to the
+requirements of the society of our time. It is the simplicity of the
+tuning-fork, which is needed all the more because of the intricacy of
+strings in the instrument. In the morning of our career our nature
+needs the pure and the perfect note of a spiritual ideal in order to
+fit us for the complications of our later years.
+
+In other words, this institution should be a perpetual creation by the
+co-operative enthusiasm of teachers and students, growing with the
+growth of their soul; a world in itself, self-sustaining, independent,
+rich with ever-renewing life, radiating life across space and time,
+attracting and maintaining round it a planetary system of dependent
+bodies. Its aim should lie in imparting life-breath to the complete
+man, who is intellectual as well as economic, bound by social bonds,
+but aspiring towards spiritual freedom and final perfection.
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+  _Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
+                        BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE
+
+
+=GITANJALI. (Song Offerings.)= Translated by the Author. With an
+Introduction by W. B. YEATS, and a Portrait by W. ROTHENSTEIN. Crown
+8vo. 5s. net.
+
+_ATHENAEUM._--"Mr. Tagore's translations are of trance-like beauty....
+The expanding sentiment of some of the poems wins, even through the
+alien medium of our English prose, a rhythm which in its strength and
+melody might recall familiar passages in the Psalms or Solomon's
+Song."
+
+
+=FRUIT-GATHERING. A Sequel to "Gitanjali."= Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+_ATHENAEUM._--"The eighty-six pieces that fill this volume are pure
+jets of lyric feeling, aphorisms expressed in moving symbols, or fully
+developed parables and allegories ... several are as perfect in form
+as they are beautiful and poignant in content."
+
+
+=GITANJALI AND FRUIT-GATHERING.=
+
+With Illustrations in colour and half-tone by NANDALAL BOSE,
+SURENDRANATH KAR, ABANINDRANATH TAGORE, and NOBINDRANATH TAGORE. Crown
+8vo. 10s. net.
+
+
+=THE GARDENER. Lyrics of Love and Life.= Translated by the Author. With
+Portrait. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+_DAILY MAIL._--"Flowers as fresh as sunrise.... One cannot tell what
+they have lost in the translation, but as they stand they are of
+extreme beauty.... They are simple, exalted, fragrant--episodes and
+incidents of every day transposed to faery."
+
+
+=THE CRESCENT MOON. Child-Poems.= Translated by the Author. With 8
+Illustrations in Colour. Pott 4to. 5s. net.
+
+_NATION._--"A vision of childhood which is only paralleled in our
+literature by the work of William Blake."
+
+
+=STRAY BIRDS.= Poems. With a Frontispiece by WILLY POGANY. Crown 8vo.
+4s. 6d. net.
+
+_SCOTSMAN._--"The richness of this volume in thought and in imagery,
+in tracing analogies and in discovering apologues, is such as to yield
+pleasure and profit to the most fertile and cultured minds."
+
+
+=LOVER'S GIFT AND CROSSING.= Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+_ATHENAEUM._--"The poems often touch extreme heights of passion and
+sublimity, and the diction has a beauty and a music that few have
+attained in this particular medium."
+
+
+=THE FUGITIVE.= Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+_SUNDAY TIMES._--"In 'The Fugitive' the lovers of Tagore will not be
+disappointed. He has all his powers still undimmed. Indeed, the poet
+never, in our judgment, has surpassed this work."
+
+
+=CHITRA. A Play.= Translated by the Author. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
+
+_OBSERVER._--"An allegory of love's meaning, clear as a pool in the
+sunshine. It was written, we are told, twenty-five years ago.... Even
+then Mr. Tagore had that calm intensity of vision which we have all
+come to love in his later work. We find in him that for which Arjuna
+groped in his love, 'that ultimate _you_, that bare simplicity of
+truth,' and never more than in this little work of beauty, 'Chitra.'"
+
+
+=THE KING OF THE DARK CHAMBER.= =A Play.= Translated by KSHITISH CHANDRA
+SEN. Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+_PALL MALL GAZETTE._--"Altogether, the play is a beautiful piece of
+fanciful writing with a veiled purpose at the back of it."
+
+
+=THE POST OFFICE. A Play.= Translated by DEVABRATA MUKERJEA. Crown 8vo.
+3s. 6d. net.
+
+_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN._--"'The Post Office' is a delicate, wistful
+thing, coloured with beautiful imagery; for a moment it lifts a corner
+of the veil of worldly existence. The translation is throughout
+extremely happy."
+
+
+=THE CYCLE OF SPRING. A Play.= Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
+
+_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN._--"The whole little drama is a spring-gift such
+as England has seldom received."
+
+
+=SACRIFICE and other Plays.= Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+_SCOTSMAN._--"All the pieces have a rare beauty of their own."
+
+
+=THE HOME AND THE WORLD. A Novel.= Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+_SATURDAY REVIEW._--"In these days of indiscriminating praise, it is
+hard for a reviewer to find words with which to welcome properly a
+book so good as this."
+
+
+=THE WRECK. A Novel.= Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
+
+_MORNING POST._--"The story cannot fail to interest and delight."
+
+
+=MASHI and other Stories.= Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+_OXFORD MAGAZINE._--"Full of pregnant pictures of Indian life and
+character, subdued but vivid in tone."
+
+
+=HUNGRY STONES and other Stories.= Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+_DAILY TELEGRAPH._--"Contains descriptive passages of rare vigour and
+beauty, and is embellished with imagery of a delicate and distinctive
+character."
+
+
+=S[=A]DHAN[=A]: The Realisation of Life. Lectures.= Extra Crown 8vo. 6s.
+net.
+
+=NATIONALISM.= Extra Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+=PERSONALITY. Lectures delivered in America.= Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
+6s. net.
+
+=CREATIVE UNITY. Essays.= Extra Crown 8vo.
+
+=MY REMINISCENCES.= Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+=GLIMPSES OF BENGAL. Selected from the Letters of Rabindranath Tagore,
+1885 to 1895.= Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+=ONE HUNDRED POEMS OF KABIR.= Translated by RABINDRANATH TAGORE,
+assisted by EVELYN UNDERHILL. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+=RABINDRANATH TAGORE.= A Biographical Study. By ERNEST RHYS.
+Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.
+
+=SIX PORTRAITS OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE.= By W. ROTHENSTEIN. Reproduced in
+Collotype. With Prefatory Note by MAX BEERBOHM. Imperial 4to. 10s.
+net.
+
+=THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MAHARSHI DEVENDRANATH TAGORE= (Father of
+RABINDRANATH TAGORE). Translated by SATYENDRANATH TAGORE and INDIRA
+DEVI. With Introduction by EVELYN UNDERHILL, and Portrait. Extra Crown
+8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+=THE PHILOSOPHY OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE.= By Prof. S. RADHAKRISHNAN. 8vo.
+8s. 6d. net.
+
+=SHANTINIKETAN: The Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.= By W. W.
+PEARSON. With Introduction by RABINDRANATH TAGORE. Illustrated. 8vo.
+4s. 6d. net.
+
+                    LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
+
+
+
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. The page numbers
+in the Table of Contents have been adjusted to match the actual page
+numbers.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Creative Unity, by Rabindranath Tagore
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