A LETTER TO A HINDU THE SUBJECTION OF INDIA--ITS CAUSE AND CURE _With an Introduction by_ M. K. GANDHI By Leo Tolstoy INTRODUCTION The letter printed below is a translation of Tolstoy's letter written inRussian in reply to one from the Editor of Free Hindustan. After havingpassed from hand to hand, this letter at last came into my possessionthrough a friend who asked me, as one much interested in Tolstoy'swritings, whether I thought it worth publishing. I at once replied inthe affirmative, and told him I should translate it myself into Gujaratiand induce others' to translate and publish it in various Indianvernaculars. The letter as received by me was a type-written copy. It was thereforereferred to the author, who confirmed it as his and kindly granted mepermission to print it. To me, as a humble follower of that great teacher whom I have longlooked upon as one of my guides, it is a matter of honour to beconnected with the publication of his letter, such especially as the onewhich is now being given to the world. It is a mere statement of fact to say that every Indian, whether heowns up to it or not, has national aspirations. But there are as manyopinions as there are Indian nationalists as to the exact meaning ofthat aspiration, and more especially as to the methods to be used toattain the end. One of the accepted and 'time-honoured' methods to attain the endis that of violence. The assassination of Sir Curzon Wylie was anillustration of that method in its worst and most detestable form. Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence forremoving tyranny or securing reform by the method of non-resistance toevil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed inself-suffering. He admits of no exception to whittle down this greatand divine law of love. He applies it to all the problems that troublemankind. When a man like Tolstoy, one of the clearest thinkers in the westernworld, one of the greatest writers, one who as a soldier has knownwhat violence is and what it can do, condemns Japan for having blindlyfollowed the law of modern science, falsely so-called, and fears forthat country 'the greatest calamities', it is for us to pause andconsider whether, in our impatience of English rule, we do not want toreplace one evil by another and a worse. India, which is the nurseryof the great faiths of the world, will cease to be nationalist India, whatever else she may become, when she goes through the process ofcivilization in the shape of reproduction on that sacred soil of gunfactories and the hateful industrialism which has reduced the people ofEurope to a state of slavery, and all but stifled among them the bestinstincts which are the heritage of the human family. If we do not want the English in India we must pay the price. Tolstoy indicates it. 'Do not resist evil, but also do not yourselvesparticipate in evil--in the violent deeds of the administration of thelaw courts, the collection of taxes and, what is more important, ofthe soldiers, and no one in the world will enslave you', passionatelydeclares the sage of Yasnaya Polyana. Who can question the truth ofwhat he says in the following: 'A commercial company enslaved anation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free fromsuperstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What doesit mean that thirty thousand people, not athletes, but rather weak andordinary people, have enslaved two hundred millions of vigorous, clever, capable, freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear thatnot the English, but the Indians, have enslaved themselves?' One need not accept all that Tolstoy says--some of his facts are notaccurately stated--to realize the central truth of his indictment ofthe present system, which is to understand and act upon the irresistiblepower of the soul over the body, of love, which is an attribute of thesoul, over the brute or body force generated by the stirring in us ofevil passions. There is no doubt that there is nothing new in what Tolstoy preaches. But his presentation of the old truth is refreshingly forceful. Hislogic is unassailable. And above all he endeavours to practise whathe preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. Hecommands attention. [_19th November, 1909_] M. K. GANDHI A LETTER TO A HINDU By Leo Tolstoy _All that exists is One. People only call this One by different names. _THE VEDAS. _God is love, and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and Godabideth in him. _ I JOHN iv. 16. _God is one whole; we are the parts. _ EXPOSITION OF THE TEACHING OF THEVEDAS BY VIVEKANANDA. I Do not seek quiet and rest in those earthly realms where delusions anddesires are engendered, for if thou dost, thou wilt be dragged throughthe rough wilderness of life, which is far from Me. Whenever thou feelest that thy feet are becoming entangled in theinterlaced roots of life, know that thou has strayed from the path towhich I beckon thee: for I have placed thee in broad, smooth paths, which are strewn with flowers. I have put a light before thee, whichthou canst follow and thus run without stumbling. KRISHNA. I have received your letter and two numbers of your periodical, both ofwhich interest me extremely. The oppression of a majority by a minority, and the demoralization inevitably resulting from it, is a phenomenonthat has always occupied me and has done so most particularly of late. I will try to explain to you what I think about that subject in general, and particularly about the cause from which the dreadful evils of whichyou write in your letter, and in the Hindu periodical you have sent me, have arisen and continue to arise. The reason for the astonishing fact that a majority of working peoplesubmit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their verylives is always and everywhere the same--whether the oppressors andoppressed are of one race or whether, as in India and elsewhere, theoppressors are of a different nation. This phenomenon seems particularly strange in India, for there more thantwo hundred million people, highly gifted both physically and mentally, find themselves in the power of a small group of people quite aliento them in thought, and immeasurably inferior to them in religiousmorality. From your letter and the articles in _Free Hindustan_ as well as fromthe very interesting writings of the Hindu Swami Vivekananda andothers, it appears that, as is the case in our time with the ills of allnations, the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teachingwhich by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law forthe guidance of conduct and would replace the more than dubious preceptsof pseudo-religion and pseudo-science with the immoral conclusionsdeduced from them and commonly called 'civilization'. Your letter, as well as the articles in _Free Hindustan_ and Indianpolitical literature generally, shows that most of the leaders of publicopinion among your people no longer attach any significance to thereligious teachings that were and are professed by the peoples of India, and recognize no possibility of freeing the people from the oppressionthey endure except by adopting the irreligious and profoundly immoralsocial arrangements under which the English and other pseudo-Christiannations live to-day. And yet the chief if not the sole cause of the enslavement of theIndian peoples by the English lies in this very absence of a religiousconsciousness and of the guidance for conduct which should flow fromit--a lack common in our day to all nations East and West, from Japan toEngland and America alike. II _O ye, who see perplexities over your heads, beneath your feet, and tothe right and left of you; you will be an eternal enigma unto yourselvesuntil ye become humble and joyful as children. Then will ye find Me, andhaving found Me in yourselves, you will rule over worlds, and lookingout from the great world within to the little world without, you willbless everything that is, and find all is well with time and with you. _KRISHNA. To make my thoughts clear to you I must go farther back. We do not, cannot, and I venture to say need not, know how men lived millions ofyears ago or even ten thousand years ago, but we do know positivelythat, as far back as we have any knowledge of mankind, it has alwayslived in special groups of families, tribes, and nations in whichthe majority, in the conviction that it must be so, submissively andwillingly bowed to the rule of one or more persons--that is to a verysmall minority. Despite all varieties of circumstances and personalitiesthese relations manifested themselves among the various peoples ofwhose origin we have any knowledge; and the farther back we go the moreabsolutely necessary did this arrangement appear, both to the rulers andthe ruled, to make it possible for people to live peacefully together. So it was everywhere. But though this external form of life existed forcenturies and still exists, very early--thousands of years beforeour time--amid this life based on coercion, one and the same thoughtconstantly emerged among different nations, namely, that in everyindividual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all thatexists, and that this spiritual element strives to unite with everythingof a like nature to itself, and attains this aim through love. Thisthought appeared in most various forms at different times andplaces, with varying completeness and clarity. It found expression inBrahmanism, Judaism, Mazdaism (the teachings of Zoroaster), in Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and in the writings of the Greek and Roman sages, as well as in Christianity and Mohammedanism. The mere fact that thisthought has sprung up among different nations and at different timesindicates that it is inherent in human nature and contains the truth. But this truth was made known to people who considered that a communitycould only be kept together if some of them restrained others, and soit appeared quite irreconcilable with the existing order of society. Moreover it was at first expressed only fragmentarily, and so obscurelythat though people admitted its theoretic truth they could not entirelyaccept it as guidance for their conduct. Then, too, the dissemination ofthe truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one andthe same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognitionof this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimesunconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreignto it, and also opposed it by open violence. Thus the truth--that hislife should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis, which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man--thistruth, in order to force a way to man's consciousness, had to strugglenot merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed and theintentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but alsoagainst deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions andpunishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorizedby the rulers and conflicting with the truth. Such a hindrance andmisrepresentation of the truth--which had not yet achieved completeclarity--occurred everywhere: in Confucianism and Taoism, in Buddhismand in Christianity, in Mohammedanism and in your Brahmanism. III _My hand has sowed love everywhere, giving unto all that will receive. Blessings are offered unto all My children, but many times in theirblindness they fail to see them. How few there are who gather the giftswhich lie in profusion at their feet: how many there are, who, in wilfulwaywardness, turn their eyes away from them and complain with a wailthat they have not that which I have given them; many of them defiantlyrepudiate not only My gifts, but Me also, Me, the Source of allblessings and the Author of their being. _ KRISHNA. _I tarry awhile from the turmoil and strife of the world. I willbeautify and quicken thy life with love and with joy, for the light ofthe soul is Love. Where Love is, there is contentment and peace, andwhere there is contentment and peace, there am I, also, in their midst. _KRISHNA. _The aim of the sinless One consists in acting without causing sorrowto others, although he could attain to great power by ignoring theirfeelings. _ _The aim of the sinless One lies in not doing evil unto those who havedone evil unto him. _ _If a man causes suffering even to those who hate him without anyreason, he will ultimately have grief not to be overcome. _ _The punishment of evil doers consists in making them feel ashamed ofthemselves by doing them a great kindness. _ _Of what use is superior knowledge in the one, if he does not endeavourto relieve his neighbour's want as much as his own?_ _If, in the morning, a man wishes to do evil unto another, in theevening the evil will return to him. _ THE HINDU KURAL. Thus it went on everywhere. The recognition that love represents thehighest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth wasso interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distortedit, that finally nothing of it remained but words. It was taught thatthis highest morality was only applicable to private life--for homeuse, as it were--but that in public life all forms of violence--such asimprisonment, executions, and wars--might be used for the protectionof the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means werediametrically opposed to any vestige of love. And though common senseindicated that if some men claim to decide who is to be subjected toviolence of all kinds for the benefit of others, these men to whomviolence is applied may, in turn, arrive at a similar conclusion withregard to those who have employed violence to them, and though thegreat religious teachers of Brahmanism, Buddhism, and above all ofChristianity, foreseeing such a perversion of the law of love, haveconstantly drawn attention to the one invariable condition of love(namely, the enduring of injuries, insults, and violence of all kindswithout resisting evil by evil) people continued--regardless of allthat leads man forward--to try to unite the incompatibles: the virtueof love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil byviolence. And such a teaching, despite its inner contradiction, was sofirmly established that the very people who recognize love as a virtueaccept as lawful at the same time an order of life based on violence andallowing men not merely to torture but even to kill one another. For a long time people lived in this obvious contradiction withoutnoticing it. But a time arrived when this contradiction became moreand more evident to thinkers of various nations. And the old and simpletruth that it is natural for men to help and to love one another, butnot to torture and to kill one another, became ever clearer, so thatfewer and fewer people were able to believe the sophistries by which thedistortion of the truth had been made so plausible. In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence andthereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine rightfor the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs, and other heads ofstates. But the longer humanity lived the weaker grew the belief in thispeculiar, God--given right of the ruler. That belief withered in thesame way and almost simultaneously in the Christian and the Brahmanworld, as well as in Buddhist and Confucian spheres, and in recent timesit has so faded away as to prevail no longer against man's reasonableunderstanding and the true religious feeling. People saw more and moreclearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, the senselessness andimmorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people justlike themselves, when they are bidden to do what is contrary not only totheir interests but also to their moral sense. And so one might supposethat having lost confidence in any religious authority for a belief inthe divinity of potentates of various kinds, people would try to freethemselves from subjection to it. But unfortunately not only were therulers, who were considered supernatural beings, benefited by having thepeoples in subjection, but as a result of the belief in, and during therule of, these pseudodivine beings, ever larger and larger circles ofpeople grouped and established themselves around them, and under anappearance of governing took advantage of the people. And when the olddeception of a supernatural and God-appointed authority had dwindledaway these men were only concerned to devise a new one which like itspredecessor should make it possible to hold the people in bondage to alimited number of rulers. IV _Children, do you want to know by what your hearts should be guided?Throw aside your longings and strivings after that which is null andvoid; get rid of your erroneous thoughts about happiness and wisdom, andyour empty and insincere desires. Dispense with these and you will knowLove. _ KRISHNA. _Be not the destroyers of yourselves. Arise to your true Being, and thenyou will have nothing to fear. _ KRISHNA. New justifications have now appeared in place of the antiquated, obsolete, religious ones. These new justifications are just asinadequate as the old ones, but as they are new their futility cannotimmediately be recognized by the majority of men. Besides this, thosewho enjoy power propagate these new sophistries and support them soskilfully that they seem irrefutable even to many of those whosuffer from the oppression these theories seek to justify. These newjustifications are termed 'scientific'. But by the term 'scientific' isunderstood just what was formerly understood by the term 'religious':just as formerly everything called 'religious' was held to beunquestionable simply because it was called religious, so now all thatis called 'scientific' is held to be unquestionable. In the present casethe obsolete religious justification of violence which consisted in therecognition of the supernatural personality of the God-ordained ruler('there is no power but of God') has been superseded by the 'scientific'justification which puts forward, first, the assertion that because thecoercion of man by man has existed in all ages, it follows that suchcoercion must continue to exist. This assertion that people shouldcontinue to live as they have done throughout past ages rather thanas their reason and conscience indicate, is what 'science' calls'the historic law'. A further 'scientific' justification lies in thestatement that as among plants and wild beasts there is a constantstruggle for existence which always results in the survival ofthe fittest, a similar struggle should be carried on among humanbeings--beings, that is, who are gifted with intelligence and love;faculties lacking in the creatures subject to the struggle forexistence and survival of the fittest. Such is the second 'scientific'justification. The third, most important, and unfortunately most widespreadjustification is, at bottom, the age-old religious one just a littlealtered: that in public life the suppression of some for the protectionof the majority cannot be avoided--so that coercion is unavoidablehowever desirable reliance on love alone might be in human intercourse. The only difference in this justification by pseudo-science consists inthe fact that, to the question why such and such people and not othershave the right to decide against whom violence may and must beused, pseudo-science now gives a different reply to that given byreligion--which declared that the right to decide was valid because itwas pronounced by persons possessed of divine power. 'Science' saysthat these decisions represent the will of the people, which under aconstitutional form of government is supposed to find expression in allthe decisions and actions of those who are at the helm at the moment. Such are the scientific justifications of the principle of coercion. They are not merely weak but absolutely invalid, yet they are so muchneeded by those who occupy privileged positions that they believe inthem as blindly as they formerly believed in the immaculate conception, and propagate them just as confidently. And the unfortunate majority ofmen bound to toil is so dazzled by the pomp with which these 'scientifictruths' are presented, that under this new influence it accepts thesescientific stupidities for holy truth, just as it formerly acceptedthe pseudo-religious justifications; and it continues to submit to thepresent holders of power who are just as hard-hearted but rather morenumerous than before. V _Who am I? I am that which thou hast searched for since thy baby eyesgazed wonderingly upon the world, whose horizon hides this real lifefrom thee. I am that which in thy heart thou hast prayed for, demandedas thy birthright, although thou hast not known what it was. I amthat which has lain in thy soul for hundreds and thousands of years. Sometimes I lay in thee grieving because thou didst not recognize me;sometimes I raised my head, opened my eyes, and extended my arms callingthee either tenderly and quietly, or strenuously, demanding that thoushouldst rebel against the iron chains which bound thee to the earth. _ KRISHNA. So matters went on, and still go on, in the Christian world. But wemight have hope that in the immense Brahman, Buddhist, and Confucianworlds this new scientific superstition would not establish itself, andthat the Chinese, Japanese, and Hindus, once their eyes were opened tothe religious fraud justifying violence, would advance directly to arecognition of the law of love inherent in humanity, and which hadbeen so forcibly enunciated by the great Eastern teachers. But what hashappened is that the scientific superstition replacing the religious onehas been accepted and secured a stronger and stronger hold in the East. In your periodical you set out as the basic principle which should guidethe actions of your people the maxim that: 'Resistance to aggression isnot simply justifiable but imperative, nonresistance hurts both Altruismand Egotism. ' Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills, and in it youtoo have the only method of saving your people from enslavement. In veryancient times love was proclaimed with special strength and clearnessamong your people to be the religious basis of human life. Love, andforcible resistance to evil-doers, involve such a mutual contradictionas to destroy utterly the whole sense and meaning of the conception oflove. And what follows? With a light heart and in the twentiethcentury you, an adherent of a religious people, deny their law, feelingconvinced of your scientific enlightenment and your right to do so, andyou repeat (do not take this amiss) the amazing stupidity indoctrinatedin you by the advocates of the use of violence--the enemies of truth, the servants first of theology and then of science--your Europeanteachers. You say that the English have enslaved your people and hold them insubjection because the latter have not resisted resolutely enough andhave not met force by force. But the case is just the opposite. If the English have enslaved thepeople of India it is just because the latter recognized, and stillrecognize, force as the fundamental principle of the social order. Inaccord with that principle they submitted to their little rajahs, andon their behalf struggled against one another, fought the Europeans, theEnglish, and are now trying to fight with them again. A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to graspwhat these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, notathletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundredmillion vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not thefigures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved theIndians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves? When the Indians complain that the English have enslaved them it is asif drunkards complained that the spirit-dealers who have settled amongthem have enslaved them. You tell them that they might give up drinking, but they reply that they are so accustomed to it that they cannotabstain, and that they must have alcohol to keep up their energy. Is itnot the same thing with the millions of people who submit to thousands'or even to hundreds, of others--of their own or other nations? If the people of India are enslaved by violence it is only because theythemselves live and have lived by violence, and do not recognize theeternal law of love inherent in humanity. _Pitiful and foolish is the man who seeks what he already has, and doesnot know that he has it. Yes, Pitiful and foolish is he who does notknow the bliss of love which surrounds him and which I have given him. _KRISHNA. As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural totheir hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistanceby violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation inviolence--as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable toenslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a singleindividual. Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in theworld will be able to enslave you. VI _O ye who sit in bondage and continually seek and pant for freedom, seekonly for love. Love is peace in itself and peace which gives completesatisfaction. I am the key that opens the portal to the rarelydiscovered land where contentment alone is found. _ KRISHNA. What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West islike what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood toadolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guidedhis life and lives without direction, not having found a new standardsuitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the miseryand senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time. When an individual passes from one period of life to another a timecomes when he cannot go on in senseless activity and excitement asbefore, but has to understand that although he has outgrown what beforeused to direct him, this does not mean that he must live without anyreasonable guidance, but rather that he must formulate for himself anunderstanding of life corresponding to his age, and having elucidatedit must be guided by it. And in the same way a similar time must come inthe growth and development of humanity. I believe that such a time hasnow arrived--not in the sense that it has come in the year 1908, butthat the inherent contradiction of human life has now reached an extremedegree of tension: on the one side there is the consciousness of thebeneficence of the law of love, and on the other the existing order oflife which has for centuries occasioned an empty, anxious, restless, andtroubled mode of life, conflicting as it does with the law of love andbuilt on the use of violence. This contradiction must be faced, andthe solution will evidently not be favourable to the outlived law ofviolence, but to the truth which has dwelt in the hearts of men fromremote antiquity: the truth that the law of love is in accord with thenature of man. But men can only recognize this truth to its full extent when theyhave completely freed themselves from all religious and scientificsuperstitions and from all the consequent misrepresentations andsophistical distortions by which its recognition has been hindered forcenturies. To save a sinking ship it is necessary to throw overboard the ballast, which though it may once have been needed would now cause the ship tosink. And so it is with the scientific superstition which hides thetruth of their welfare from mankind. In order that men should embracethe truth--not in the vague way they did in childhood, nor in theone-sided and perverted way presented to them by their religious andscientific teachers, but embrace it as their highest law--the completeliberation of this truth from all and every superstition (bothpseudo-religious and pseudo-scientific) by which it is still obscuredis essential: not a partial, timid attempt, reckoning with traditionssanctified by age and with the habits of the people--not such as waseffected in the religious sphere by Guru-Nanak, the founder of thesect of the Sikhs, and in the Christian world by Luther, and by similarreformers in other religions--but a fundamental cleansing of religiousconsciousness from all ancient religious and modern scientificsuperstitions. If only people freed themselves from their beliefs in all kinds ofOrmuzds, Brahmas, Sabbaoths, and their incarnation as Krishnas andChrists, from beliefs in Paradises and Hells, in reincarnations andresurrections, from belief in the interference of the Gods in theexternal affairs of the universe, and above all, if they freedthemselves from belief in the infallibility of all the various Vedas, Bibles, Gospels, Tripitakas, Korans, and the like, and also freedthemselves from blind belief in a variety of scientific teachings aboutinfinitely small atoms and molecules and in all the infinitely great andinfinitely remote worlds, their movements and origin, as well as fromfaith in the infallibility of the scientific law to which humanity isat present subjected: the historic law, the economic laws, the law ofstruggle and survival, and so on--if people only freed themselves fromthis terrible accumulation of futile exercises of our lower capacitiesof mind and memory called the 'Sciences', and from the innumerabledivisions of all sorts of histories, anthropologies, homiletics, bacteriologics, jurisprudences, cosmographies, strategies--their nameis legion--and freed themselves from all this harmful, stupifyingballast--the simple law of love, natural to man, accessible to all andsolving all questions and perplexities, would of itself become clear andobligatory. VII _Children, look at the flowers at your feet; do not trample upon them. Look at the love in your midst and do not repudiate it. _ KRISHNA. _There is a higher reason which transcends all human minds. It is farand near. It permeates all the worlds and at the same time is infinitelyhigher than they. _ _A man who sees that all things are contained in the higher spiritcannot treat any being with contempt. _ _For him to whom all spiritual beings are equal to the highest there canbe no room for deception or grief. _ _Those who are ignorant and are devoted to the religious rites only, arein a deep gloom, but those who are given up to fruitless meditations arein a still greater darkness. _ UPANISHADS, FROM VEDAS. Yes, in our time all these things must be cleared away in order thatmankind may escape from self-inflicted calamities that have reached anextreme intensity. Whether an Indian seeks liberation from subjectionto the English, or anyone else struggles with an oppressor either of hisown nationality or of another--whether it be a Negro defending himselfagainst the North Americans; or Persians, Russians, or Turks againstthe Persian, Russian, or Turkish governments, or any man seeking thegreatest welfare for himself and for everybody else--they do not needexplanations and justifications of old religious superstitions such ashave been formulated by your Vivekanandas, Baba Bharatis, and others, orin the Christian world by a number of similar interpreters and exponentsof things that nobody needs; nor the innumerable scientific theoriesabout matters not only unnecessary but for the most part harmful. (In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful isharmful. ) What are wanted for the Indian as for the Englishman, theFrenchman, the German, and the Russian, are not Constitutions andRevolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the manyingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to theenjoyment of the rich, ruling classes; nor new schools and universitieswith innumerable faculties of science, nor an augmentation of papers andbooks, nor gramophones and cinematographs, nor those childish and forthe most part corrupt stupidities termed art--but one thing only isneedful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which findsplace in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientificsuperstitions--the truth that for our life one law is valid--the law oflove, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as wellas to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainousimbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once thetruth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has beensmothering it: the indubitable, eternal truth inherent in man, which isone and the same in all the great religions of the world. It will in duetime emerge and make its way to general recognition, and the nonsensethat has obscured it will disappear of itself, and with it will go theevil from which humanity now suffers. _Children, look upwards with your beclouded eyes, and a world full ofjoy and love will disclose itself to you, a rational world made by Mywisdom, the only real world. Then you will know what love has donewith you, what love has bestowed upon you, what love demands from you. _KRISHNA. YASNAYA POLYANA. December 14th, 1908.