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 yetif the mental, physical, chemical, and other innumerable factsconcerning all branches of knowledge which have united in myself couldbe broken up, they would prove endless. It is some untold mystery ofunity in me, that has the simplicity of the infinite and reduces theimmense mass of multitude to a single point. 

This One in me knows the universe of the many. But, in whatever itknows, it knows the One in different aspects. It knows this room onlybecause this room is One to it, in spite of the seeming contradictionof the endless facts contained in the single fact of the room. Itsknowledge of a tree is the knowledge of a unity, which appears in theaspect of a tree. 

This One in me is creative. Its creations are a pastime, through whichit gives expression to an ideal of unity in its endless show ofvariety. Such are its pictures, poems, music, in which it finds joyonly because they reveal the perfect forms of an inherent unity. 

This One in me not only seeks unity in knowledge for its understandingand creates images of unity for its delight; it also seeks union inlove 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 giveit reality. In love we find a joy which is ultimate because it is theultimate 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 theharmony of the many; to the One, the Love, through the sacrifice ofself, 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 perfectionpatience, self-control, and an environment of leisure. For genuinecourtesy is a creation, like pictures, like music. It is a harmoniousblending of voice, gesture and movement, words and action, in whichgenerosity of conduct is expressed. It reveals the man himself and hasno ulterior purpose. 

Our needs are always in a hurry. They rush and hustle, they are rudeand unceremonious; they have no surplus of leisure, no patience foranything else but fulfilment of purpose. We frequently see in ourcountry at the present day men utilising empty kerosene cans forcarrying water. These cans are emblems of discourtesy; they are curtand 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 animmense amount of their time and resources in contradicting thisassertion, to prove that they are not a mere living catalogue ofendless wants; that there is in them an ideal of perfection, a senseof unity, which is a harmony between parts and a harmony withsurroundings. 

The quality of the infinite is not the magnitude of extension, it isin the _Advaitam_, the mystery of Unity. Facts occupy endless time andspace; but the truth comprehending them all has no dimension; it isOne. Wherever our heart touches the One, in the small or the big, itfinds the touch of the infinite. 

I was speaking to some one of the joy we have in our personality. Isaid it was because we were made conscious by it of a spirit of unitywithin ourselves. He answered that he had no such feeling of joy abouthimself, but I was sure he exaggerated. In all probability he had beensuffering from some break of harmony between his surroundings and thespirit of unity within him, proving all the more strongly its truth. The meaning of health comes home to us with painful force when diseasedisturbs it; since health expresses the unity of the vital functionsand is accordingly joyful. Life's tragedies occur, not to demonstratetheir own reality, but to reveal that eternal principle of joy inlife, to which they gave a rude shaking. It is the object of thisOneness in us to realise its infinity by perfect union of love withothers. All obstacles to this union create misery, giving rise to thebaser passions that are expressions of finitude, of that separatenesswhich is negative and therefore _máyá_. 

The joy of unity within ourselves, seeking expression, becomescreative; whereas our desire for the fulfilment of our needs isconstructive. The water vessel, taken as a vessel only, raises thequestion, "Why does it exist at all?" Through its fitness ofconstruction, it offers the apology for its existence. But where it isa 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 seemsvarious in it is so related that, in a mysterious manner, it strikessympathetic 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 neithercan be counted, nor measured, nor abstracted. It is not in thematerials which are many, but in the expression which is one. All ourknowledge of things is knowing them in their relation to the Universe, in that relation which is truth. A drop of water is not a particularassortment of elements; it is the miracle of a harmonious mutuality, in which the two reveal the One. No amount of analysis can reveal tous this mystery of unity. Matter is an abstraction; we shall never beable to realise what it is, for our world of reality does notacknowledge it. Even the giant forces of the world, centripetal andcentrifugal, are kept out of our recognition. They are theday-labourers not admitted into the audience-hall of creation. Butlight and sound come to us in their gay dresses as troubadours singingserenades before the windows of the senses. What is constantly beforeus, claiming our attention, is not the kitchen, but the feast; not theanatomy of the world, but its countenance. There is the dancing ringof seasons; the elusive play of lights and shadows, of wind and water;the many-coloured wings of erratic life flitting between birth anddeath. The importance of these does not lie in their existence as merefacts, but in their language of harmony, the mother-tongue of our ownsoul, through which they are communicated to us. 

We grow out of touch with this great truth, we forget to accept itsinvitation and its hospitality, when in quest of external success ourworks become unspiritual and unexpressive. This is what Wordsworthcomplained 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 thecontrary, it is because we do not see it in its aspect of unity, because we are driven to distraction by our pursuit of thefragmentary. 

Materials as materials are savage; they are solitary; they are readyto hurt one another. They are like our individual impulses seeking theunlimited freedom of wilfulness. Left to themselves they aredestructive. But directly an ideal of unity raises its banner in theircentre, it brings these rebellious forces under its sway and creationis revealed—the creation which is peace, which is the unity ofperfect relationship. Our greed for eating is in itself ugly andselfish, it has no sense of decorum; but when brought under the idealof social fellowship, it is regulated and made ornamental; it ischanged into a daily festivity of life. In human nature sexual passionis fiercely individual and destructive, but dominated by the ideal oflove, it has been made to flower into a perfection of beauty, becomingin its best expression symbolical of the spiritual truth in man whichis his kinship of love with the Infinite. Thus we find it is the Onewhich expresses itself in creation; and the Many, by giving upopposition, make the revelation of unity perfect. 

 II

I remember, when I was a child, that a row of cocoanut trees by ourgarden wall, with their branches beckoning the rising sun on thehorizon, gave me a companionship as living as I was myself. I know itwas my imagination which transmuted the world around me into my ownworld—the imagination which seeks unity, which deals with it. But wehave to consider that this companionship was true; that the universein which I was born had in it an element profoundly akin to my ownimaginative mind, one which wakens in all children's natures theCreator, whose pleasure is in interweaving the web of creation withHis own patterns of many-coloured strands. It is something akin to us, and therefore harmonious to our imagination. When we find some stringsvibrating in unison with others, we know that this sympathy carries init an eternal reality. The fact that the world stirs our imaginationin sympathy tells us that this creative imagination is a common truthboth 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 wemeet with our imagination. That can only be possible if through ourimagination is revealed, behind all appearances, the reality whichgives the touch of companionship, that is to say, something which hasan affinity to us. An immense amount of our activity is engaged inmaking images, not for serving any useful purpose or formulatingrational propositions, but for giving varied responses to the variedtouches of this reality. In this image-making the child creates hisown world in answer to the world in which he finds himself. The childin us finds glimpses of his eternal playmate from behind the veil ofthings, as Proteus rising from the sea, or Triton blowing his wreathèdhorn. And the playmate is the Reality, that makes it possible for thechild to find delight in activities which do not inform or bringassistance but merely express. There is an image-making joy in theinfinite, which inspires in us our joy in imagining. The rhythm ofcosmic motion produces in our mind the emotion which is creative. 

A poet has said about his destiny as a dreamer, about theworthlessness 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 hassubstance and use. The painted canvas is durable and substantial; ithas for its production and transport to market a whole array ofmachines and factories. But the picture which no factory can produceis a dream, a _máyá_, and yet it, not the canvas, has the meaning ofultimate 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 andlistens to some music in a gramophone. He seeks for the origin of thedelight produced in his mind. The facts before him are a cabinet madeof wood and a revolving disc producing sound; but the one thing whichis neither seen nor can be explained is the truth of the music, whichhis personality must immediately acknowledge as a personal message. Itis neither in the wood, nor in the disc, nor in the sound of thenotes. If the Man from the Moon be a poet, as can reasonably besupposed, he will write about a fairy imprisoned in that box, who sitsspinning fabrics of songs expressing her cry for a far-away magiccasement opening on the foam of some perilous sea, in a fairylandforlorn. It will not be literally, but essentially true. The facts ofthe gramophone make us aware of the laws of sound, but the music givesus personal companionship. The bare facts about April are alternatesunshine and showers; but the subtle blending of shadows and lights, of murmurs and movements, in April, gives us not mere shocks ofsensation, but unity of joy as does music. Therefore when a poet seesthe vision of a girl in April, even a downright materialist is insympathy with him. But we know that the same individual would bemenacingly angry if the law of heredity or a geometrical problem weredescribed as a girl or a rose—or even as a cat or a camel. For theseintellectual abstractions have no magical touch for our lute-stringsof imagination. They are no dreams, as are the harmony of bird-songs, rain-washed leaves glistening in the sun, and pale clouds floating inthe blue. 

The ultimate truth of our personality is that we are no merebiologists or geometricians; "we are the dreamers of dreams, we arethe music-makers. " This dreaming or music-making is not a function ofthe lotus-eaters, it is the creative impulse which makes songs notonly with words and tunes, lines and colours, but with stones andmetals, 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 practicein 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 fromthe unity of the performance; but logic lures us into the greenroomwhere there is stagecraft but no drama at all; and then this logicnods its head and wearily talks about disillusionment. But thegreenroom, dealing with its fragments, looks foolish when questioned, or wears the sneering smile of Mephistopheles; for it does not havethe secret of unity, which is somewhere else. It is for faith toanswer, "Unity comes to us from the One, and the One in ourselvesopens the door and receives it with joy. " The function of poetry andthe arts is to remind us that the greenroom is the greyest ofillusions, and the reality is the drama presented before us, all itspaint and tinsel, masks and pageantry, made one in art. The ropes andwheels perish, the stage is changed; but the dream which is dramaremains true, for there remains the eternal Dreamer. 

 III

Poetry and the arts cherish in them the profound faith of man in theunity of his being with all existence, the final truth of which is thetruth of personality. It is a religion directly apprehended, and not asystem of metaphysics to be analysed and argued. We know in ourpersonal experience what our creations are and we instinctively knowthrough 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 mysteryof the One, which takes us beyond all thought into the immediatetouch of the Infinite. This is the mystery which is for a poet torealise and to reveal. It comes out in Keats' poems with strugglinggleams 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. Forif 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. Thefacts that cause despondence and gloom are mere mist, and when throughthe mist beauty breaks out in momentary gleams, we realise that Peaceis true and not conflict, Love is true and not hatred; and Truth isthe One, not the disjointed multitude. We realise that Creation is theperpetual harmony between the infinite ideal of perfection and theeternal continuity of its realisation; that so long as there is noabsolute separation between the positive ideal and the materialobstacle to its attainment, we need not be afraid of suffering andloss. This is the poet's religion. 

Those who are habituated to the rigid framework of sectarian creedswill find such a religion as this too indefinite and elastic. No doubtit is so, but only because its ambition is not to shackle the Infiniteand tame it for domestic use; but rather to help our consciousness toemancipate itself from materialism. It is as indefinite as themorning, and yet as luminous; it calls our thoughts, feelings, andactions into freedom, and feeds them with light. In the poet'sreligion we find no doctrine or injunction, but rather the attitude ofour entire being towards a truth which is ever to be revealed in itsown endless creation. 

In dogmatic religion all questions are definitely answered, all doubtsare finally laid to rest. But the poet's religion is fluid, like theatmosphere round the earth where lights and shadows playhide-and-seek, and the wind like a shepherd boy plays upon its reedsamong flocks of clouds. It never undertakes to lead anybody anywhereto any solid conclusion; yet it reveals endless spheres of light, because it has no walls round itself. It acknowledges the facts ofevil; it openly admits "the weariness, the fever and the fret" in theworld "where men sit and hear each other groan"; yet it remembers thatin spite of all there is the song of the nightingale, and "haply theQueen 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 themusic that teases us out of thought as it fills our being. 

Let me read a translation from an Eastern poet to show how this ideacomes 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 periodsof vagueness and doubt, struggle and searching. But he did at lengthcome to a positive utterance of his faith, though he died young. Itsfinal expression is in his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. " By the titleof the poem the poet evidently means a beauty that is not merely apassive quality of particular things, but a spirit that manifestsitself through the apparent antagonism of the unintellectual life. This hymn rang out of his heart when he came to the end of hispilgrimage and stood face to face with the Divinity, glimpses of whichhad already filled his soul with restlessness. All his experiences ofbeauty 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. Acreation of beauty suggests a fulfilment, which is the fulfilment oflove. 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 sicknessof 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 theOne to the other One. 

In the first part of his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" Shelley dwellson 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 andof omnipotence, and stimulates the effort in man to realise it in someidea of permanence. The highest reality has actively to be achieved. The gain of truth is not in the end; it reveals itself through theendless length of achievement. But what is there to guide us in ourvoyage 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 andnot their success. He knows that the end we seek has its own directcall to us, its own light to guide us to itself. And truth's call isthe 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 iseverywhere, 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 infixed and ready-made doctrines; he rebelled against them. He had thecreative mind which could only approach Truth through its joy increative effort. For true creation is realisation of truth through thetranslation of it into our own symbols. 

 V

For man, the best opportunity for such a realisation has been in men'sSociety. It is a collective creation of his, through which his socialbeing tries to find itself in its truth and beauty. Had that Societymerely manifested its usefulness, it would be inarticulate like a darkstar. But, unless it degenerates, it ever suggests in its concertedmovements a living truth as its soul, which has personality. In thislarge life of social communion man feels the mystery of Unity, as hedoes in music. From the sense of that Unity, men came to the sense oftheir God. And therefore every religion began with its tribal God. 

The one question before all others that has to be answered by ourcivilisations is not what they have and in what quantity, but whatthey express and how. In a society, the production and circulation ofmaterials, the amassing and spending of money, may go on, as in theinterminable prolonging of a straight line, if its people forget tofollow some spiritual design of life which curbs them and transformsthem into an organic whole. For growth is not that enlargement whichis merely adding to the dimensions of incompleteness. Growth is themovement of a whole towards a yet fuller wholeness. Living thingsstart with this wholeness from the beginning of their career. A childhas its own perfection as a child; it would be ugly if it appeared asan unfinished man. Life is a continual process of synthesis, and notof additions. Our activities of production and enjoyment of wealthattain that spirit of wholeness when they are blended with a creativeideal. Otherwise they have the insane aspect of the eternallyunfinished; they become like locomotive engines which have railwaylines but no stations; which rush on towards a collision ofuncontrolled forces or to a sudden breakdown of the overstrainedmachinery. 

Through creation man expresses his truth; through that expression hegains back his truth in its fulness. Human society is for the bestexpression of man, and that expression, according to its perfection, leads him to the full realisation of the divine in humanity. When thatexpression is obscure, then his faith in the Infinite that is withinhim becomes weak; then his aspiration cannot go beyond the idea ofsuccess. His faith in the Infinite is creative; his desire for successis constructive; one is his home, and the other is his office. Withthe overwhelming growth of necessity, civilisation becomes a giganticoffice to which the home is a mere appendix. The predominance of thepursuit of success gives to society the character of what we call_Shudra_ in India. In fighting a battle, the _Kshatriya_, the nobleknight, followed his honour for his ideal, which was greater thanvictory itself; but the mercenary _Shudra_ has success for his object. The name Shudra symbolises a man who has no margin round him beyondhis bare utility. The word denotes a classification which includes allnaked machines that have lost their completeness of humanity, be theirwork 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 formercy'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 theregion of freedom and perfection which was beyond the immediate andabove the successful. This faith in God, this faith in the reality ofthe ideal of perfection, has built up all that is great in the humanworld. To keep indefinitely walking on, along a zigzag course ofchange, is negative and barren. A mere procession of notes does notmake music; it is only when we have in the heart of the march ofsounds some musical idea that it creates song. Our faith in theinfinite reality of Perfection is that musical idea, and there is thatone great creative force in our civilisation. When it wakens not, thenour faith in money, in material power, takes its place; it fights anddestroys, and in a brilliant fireworks of star-mimicry suddenlyexhausts itself and dies in ashes and smoke. 

 VI

Men of great faith have always called us to wake up to greatexpectations, and the prudent have always laughed at them and saidthat these did not belong to reality. But the poet in man knows thatreality is a creation, and human reality has to be called forth fromits obscure depth by man's faith which is creative. There was a daywhen the human reality was the brutal reality. That was the onlycapital we had with which to begin our career. But age after agethere has come to us the call of faith, which said against all theevidence of fact: "You are more than you appear to be, more than yourcircumstances seem to warrant. You are to attain the impossible, youare immortal. " The unbelievers had laughed and tried to kill thefaith. But faith grew stronger with the strength of martyrdom and ather bidding higher realities have been created over the strata of thelower. Has not a new age come to-day, borne by thunder-clouds, usheredin by a universal agony of suffering? Are we not waiting to-day for agreat call of faith, which will say to us: "Come out of your presentlimitations. You are to attain the impossible, you are immortal"? Thenations who are not prepared to accept it, who have all their trust intheir present machines of system, and have no thought or space tospare to welcome the sudden guest who comes as the messenger ofemancipation, are bound to court defeat whatever may be their presentwealth and power. 

This great world, where it is a creation, an expression of theinfinite—where its morning sings of joy to the newly awakened life, and its evening stars sing to the traveller, weary and worn, of thetriumph 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 revealthe truth, to reveal the Infinite in himself. It is ever claiming fromus, in our own creations, co-operation with God, reminding us of ourdivine nature, which finds itself in freedom of spirit. Our societyexists to remind us, through its various voices, that the ultimatetruth in man is not in his intellect or his possessions; it is in hisillumination of mind, in his extension of sympathy across all barriersof caste and colour; in his recognition of the world, not merely as astorehouse of power, but as a habitation of man's spirit, with itseternal music of beauty and its inner light of the divinepresence. 

 THE CREATIVE IDEAL

In an old Sanskrit book there is a verse which describes the essentialelements of a picture. The first in order is _Vrúpa-bhédáh_—"separatenessof forms. " Forms are many, forms are different, each of them havingits limits. But if this were absolute, if all forms remainedobstinately separate, then there would be a fearful loneliness ofmultitude. But the varied forms, in their very separateness, mustcarry 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 thatof _Pramānāni_—proportions. Proportions indicate relationship, the principle of mutual accommodation. A leg dismembered from the bodyhas the fullest licence to make a caricature of itself. But, as amember of the body, it has its responsibility to the living unitywhich rules the body; it must behave properly, it must keep itsproportion. If, by some monstrous chance of physiologicalprofiteering, it could outgrow by yards its fellow-stalker, then weknow what a picture it would offer to the spectator and whatembarrassment to the body itself. Any attempt to overcome the law ofproportion altogether and to assert absolute separateness isrebellion; it means either running the gauntlet of the rest, orremaining segregated. 

The same Sanskrit word _Pramānāni_, which in a book of æstheticsmeans proportions, in a book of logic means the proofs by which thetruth of a proposition is ascertained. All proofs of truth arecredentials of relationship. Individual facts have to produce suchpassports to show that they are not expatriated, that they are not abreak in the unity of the whole. The logical relationship present inan intellectual proposition, and the æsthetic relationship indicatedin the proportions of a work of art, both agree in one thing. Theyaffirm that truth consists, not in facts, but in harmony of facts. Ofthis fundamental note of reality it is that the poet has said, "Beautyis truth, truth beauty. "

Proportions, which prove relativity, form the outward language ofcreative ideals. A crowd of men is desultory, but in a march ofsoldiers every man keeps his proportion of time and space and relativemovement, which makes him one with the whole vast army. But this isnot all. The creation of an army has, for its inner principle, onesingle idea of the General. According to the nature of that rulingidea, a production is either a work of art or a mere construction. Allthe materials and regulations of a joint-stock company have the unityof an inner motive. But the expression of this unity itself is not theend; it ever indicates an ulterior purpose. On the other hand, therevelation of a work of art is a fulfilment in itself. 

The consciousness of personality, which is the consciousness of unityin ourselves, becomes prominently distinct when coloured by joy orsorrow, or some other emotion. It is like the sky, which is visiblebecause it is blue, and which takes different aspect with the changeof colours. In the creation of art, therefore, the energy of anemotional ideal is necessary; as its unity is not like that of acrystal, passive and inert, but actively expressive. Take, forexample, 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 noappeal to us; with all its perfection and its proportion, rhyme andcadence, it would only be a construction. But when it is the outerbody of an inner idea it assumes a personality. The idea flows throughthe rhythm, permeates the words and throbs in their rise and fall. Onthe other hand, the mere idea of the above-quoted poem, stated inunrhythmic prose, would represent only a fact, inertly static, whichwould not bear repetition. But the emotional idea, incarnated in arhythmic form, acquires the dynamic quality needed for those thingswhich 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 itfinds no synchronous response in the metre of our heart-beats; it hasnot in its centre the living idea which creates for itself anindivisible unity. It is like a bag which is convenient, and not likea body which is inevitable. 

This truth, implicit in our own works of art, gives us the clue to themystery of creation. We find that the endless rhythms of the world arenot merely constructive; they strike our own heart-strings and producemusic. 

Therefore it is we feel that this world is a creation; that in itscentre there is a living idea which reveals itself in an eternalsymphony, played on innumerable instruments, all keeping perfect time. We know that this great world-verse, that runs from sky to sky, is notmade for the mere enumeration of facts—it is not "Thirty days hathSeptember"—it has its direct revelation in our delight. That delightgives us the key to the truth of existence; it is personality actingupon personalities through incessant manifestations. The solicitordoes 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 feesfrom us; but it brings the tribute of love and a call from thebridegroom. 

It may be said that in pictorial and other arts there are some designsthat are purely decorative and apparently have no living and innerideal to express. But this cannot be true. These decorations carry theemotional motive of the artist, which says: "I find joy in mycreation; it is good. " All the language of joy is beauty. It isnecessary to note, however, that joy is not pleasure, and beauty notmere prettiness. Joy is the outcome of detachment from self and livesin freedom of spirit. Beauty is that profound expression of realitywhich satisfies our hearts without any other allurements but its ownultimate value. When in some pure moments of ecstasy we realise thisin the world around us, we see the world, not as merely existing, butas decorated in its forms, sounds, colours and lines; we feel in ourhearts that there is One who through all things proclaims: "I have joyin my creation. "

That is why the Sanskrit verse has given us for the essential elementsof a picture, not only the manifoldness of forms and the unity oftheir proportions, but also _bhávah_, the emotional idea. 

It is needless to say that upon a mere expression of emotion—even thebest expression of it—no criterion of art can rest. The followingpoem is described by the poet as "An earnest Suit to his unkindMistress":

 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 doubtsabout the earnestness of his appeal, or the truth of his avowednecessity. He is responsible for the lyric and not for the sentiment, which is mere material. The fire assumes different colours accordingto the fuel used; but we do not discuss the fuel, only the flames. Alyric is indefinably more than the sentiment expressed in it, as arose is more than its substance. Let us take a poem in which theearnestness of sentiment is truer and deeper than the one I havequoted 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, likecarbon in a living plant which the lover of plants ignores, leaving itfor a charcoal-burner to seek. 

This is why, when some storm of feeling sweeps across the country, artis under a disadvantage. In such an atmosphere the boisterous passionbreaks through the cordon of harmony and thrusts itself forward as thesubject, which with its bulk and pressure dethrones the unity ofcreation. For a similar reason most of the hymns used in churchessuffer from lack of poetry. For in them the deliberate subject, assuming the first importance, benumbs or kills the poem. Mostpatriotic poems have the same deficiency. They are like hill streamsborn of sudden showers, which are more proud of their rocky beds thanof their water currents; in them the athletic and arrogant subjecttakes it for granted that the poem is there to give it occasion todisplay its powers. The subject is the material wealth for the sake ofwhich poetry should never be tempted to barter her soul, even thoughthe temptation should come in the name and shape of public good orsome usefulness. Between the artist and his art must be that perfectdetachment which is the pure medium of love. He must never make use ofthis love except for its own perfect expression. 

In everyday life our personality moves in a narrow circle of immediateself-interest. And therefore our feelings and events, within thatshort range, become prominent subjects for ourselves. In theirvehement self-assertion they ignore their unity with the All. Theyrise up like obstructions and obscure their own background. But artgives our personality the disinterested freedom of the eternal, thereto find it in its true perspective. To see our own home in flames isnot to see fire in its verity. But the fire in the stars is the firein 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, repelsand hurts; it is discordant with the narrow scope of life. But thepain of some great martyrdom has the detachment of eternity. Itappears in all its majesty, harmonious in the context of everlastinglife; like the thunder-flash in the stormy sky, not on the laboratorywire. Pain on that scale has its harmony in great love; for by hurtinglove it reveals the infinity of love in all its truth and beauty. Onthe other hand, the pain involved in business insolvency isdiscordant; 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 poetswho 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 painat 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, endlesslike the blue sky; which has the magnificence of the night, and in itslimitless darkness enfolds the radiant worlds in the awfulness ofpeace; 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 apoem 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 factsand to give its soaring wings the freedom of the universal: this isthe function of poetry. The ambition of Macbeth, the jealousy ofOthello, would be at best sensational in police court proceedings; butin Shakespeare's dramas they are carried among the flamingconstellations where creation throbs with Eternal Passion, EternalPain. 

 THE RELIGION OF THE FOREST

 I

We stand before this great world. The truth of our life depends uponour attitude of mind towards it—an attitude which is formed by ourhabit of dealing with it according to the special circumstance of oursurroundings and our temperaments. It guides our attempts to establishrelations with the universe either by conquest or by union, eitherthrough the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy. Andthus, in our realisation of the truth of existence, we put ouremphasis either upon the principle of dualism or upon the principle ofunity. 

The Indian sages have held in the Upanishads that the emancipation ofour 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 thingsas the final truth, we try to augment ourselves by the externalpossession of them; but, when we know the Infinite Soul as the finaltruth, then through our union with it we realise the joy of our soul. Therefore it has been said of those who have attained theirfulfilment, —"sarvam evá vishanti" (they enter into all things). Theirperfect relation with this world is the relation of union. 

This ideal of perfection preached by the forest-dwellers of ancientIndia runs through the heart of our classical literature and stilldominates our mind. The legends related in our epics cluster under theforest shade bearing all through their narrative the message of theforest-dwellers. Our two greatest classical dramas find theirbackground in scenes of the forest hermitage, which are permeated bythe association of these sages. 

The history of the Northmen of Europe is resonant with the music ofthe sea. That sea is not merely topographical in its significance, butrepresents certain ideals of life which still guide the history andinspire the creations of that race. In the sea, nature presentedherself to those men in her aspect of a danger, a barrier whichseemed to be at constant war with the land and its children. The seawas the challenge of untamed nature to the indomitable human soul. Andman did not flinch; he fought and won, and the spirit of fightcontinued in him. This fight he still maintains; it is the fightagainst 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 awild, champing horse, catching it by its mane and making it renderservice from shore to shore. They find delight in turning by force theantagonism of circumstances into obedience. Truth appears to them inher aspect of dualism, the perpetual conflict of good and evil, whichhas no reconciliation, which can only end in victory or defeat. 

But in the level tracts of Northern India men found no barrier betweentheir lives and the grand life that permeates the universe. The forestentered into a close living relationship with their work and leisure, with their daily necessities and contemplations. They could not thinkof other surroundings as separate or inimical. So the view of thetruth, which these men found, did not make manifest the difference, but rather the unity of all things. They uttered their faith in thesewords: "Yadidam kinch sarvam prâna éjati nihsratam" (All that isvibrates with life, having come out from life). When we know thisworld as alien to us, then its mechanical aspect takes prominence inour mind; and then we set up our machines and our methods to deal withit and make as much profit as our knowledge of its mechanism allows usto do. This view of things does not play us false, for the machine hasits place in this world. And not only this material universe, buthuman beings also, may be used as machines and made to yield powerfulresults. This aspect of truth cannot be ignored; it has to be knownand mastered. Europe has done so and has reaped a rich harvest. 

The view of this world which India has taken is summed up in onecompound Sanskrit word, Sachidānanda. The meaning is that Reality, which is essentially one, has three phases. The first is Sat; it isthe simple fact that things are, the fact which relates us to allthings through the relationship of common existence. The second isChit; it is the fact that we know, which relates us to all thingsthrough the relationship of knowledge. The third is Ananda: it is thefact that we enjoy, which unites us with all things through therelationship 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 allthings as spiritually one with it, and therefore capable of giving usjoy. For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living init, knowing it and making use of it, but realising our own selves init through expansion of sympathy; not alienating ourselves from it anddominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves inperfect union. 

 II

When Vikramâditya became king, Ujjayini a great capital, and Kâlidâsaits poet, the age of India's forest retreats had passed. Then we hadtaken our stand in the midst of the great concourse of humanity. TheChinese and the Hun, the Scythian and the Persian, the Greek and theRoman, had crowded round us. But, even in that age of pomp andprosperity, the love and reverence with which its poet sang about thehermitage shows what was the dominant ideal that occupied the mind ofIndia; what was the one current of memory that continually flowedthrough her life. 

In Kâlidâsa's drama, _Shakuntalâ_, the hermitage, which dominates theplay, overshadowing the king's palace, has the same idea runningthrough it—the recognition of the kinship of man with conscious andunconscious 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 theybow to the wind; of the sacrifice offered by the trees scatteringtheir blossoms; of the grove resounding with the lessons chanted bythe neophytes, and the verses repeated by the parrots, learnt by constantlyhearing them; of the wild-fowl enjoying "vaishva-deva-bali-pinda"(the food offered to the divinity which is in all creatures); of theducks coming up from the lake for their portion of the grass seedspread in the cottage yards to dry; and of the deer caressing withtheir tongues the young hermit boys. It is again the same story. Thehermitage shines out, in all our ancient literature, as the placewhere the chasm between man and the rest of creation has been bridged. 

In the Western dramas, human characters drown our attention in thevortex of their passions. Nature occasionally peeps out, but she isalmost always a trespasser, who has to offer excuses, or bowapologetically and depart. But in all our dramas which still retaintheir fame, such as _Mrit-Shakatikâ_, _Shakuntalâ_, _Uttara-Râmacharita_, Nature stands on her own right, proving that she has her greatfunction, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions. 

The fury of passion in two of Shakespeare's youthful poems isexhibited in conspicuous isolation. It is snatched away, naked, fromthe context of the All; it has not the green earth or the blue skyaround it; it is there ready to bring to our view the raging feverwhich is in man's desires, and not the balm of health and repose whichencircles it in the universe. 

_Ritûsamhâra_ is clearly a work of Kâlidâsa's immaturity. The youthfullove-song in it does not reach the sublime reticence which is in_Shakuntalâ_ and _Kumâra-Sambhava_. But the tune of these voluptuousoutbreaks is set to the varied harmony of Nature's symphony. Themoonbeams of the summer evening, resonant with the flow of fountains, acknowledge it as a part of its own melody. In its rhythm sways theKadamba forest, glistening in the first cool rain of the season; andthe south breezes, carrying the scent of the mango blossoms, temper itwith their murmur. 

In the third canto of _Kumâra-Sambhava_, Madana, the God Eros, entersthe forest sanctuary to set free a sudden flood of desire amid theserenity of the ascetics' meditation. But the boisterous outbreak ofpassion so caused was shown against a background of universal life. The divine love-thrills of Sati and Shiva found their response in theworld-wide immensity of youth, in which animals and trees have theirlife-throbs. 

Not only its third canto but the whole of the Kumâra-Sambhava poem ispainted upon a limitless canvas. It tells of the eternal wedding oflove, its wooing and sacrifice, and its fulfilment, for which the godswait in suspense. Its inner idea is deep and of all time. It answersthe one question that humanity asks through all its endeavours: "Howis the birth of the hero to be brought about, the brave one who candefy and vanquish the evil demon laying waste heaven's own kingdom?"

It becomes evident that such a problem had become acute in Kâlidâsa'stime, when the old simplicity of Hindu life had broken up. The Hindukings, forgetful of their duties, had become self-seeking epicureans, and India was being repeatedly devastated by the Scythians. Whatanswer, then, does the poem give to the question it raises? Itsmessage is that the cause of weakness lies in the inner life of thesoul. It is in some break of harmony with the Good, some dissociationfrom the True. In the commencement of the poem we find that the GodShiva, the Good, had remained for long lost in the self-centredsolitude of his asceticism, detached from the world of reality. Andthen Paradise was lost. But _Kumâra-Sambhava_ is the poem of ParadiseRegained. 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 thereal with the restraint of the Good, was born the heroism thatreleased Paradise from the demon of Lawlessness. 

Viewed from without, India, in the time of Kâlidâsa, appeared to havereached the zenith of civilisation, excelling as she did in luxury, literature and the arts. But from the poems of Kâlidâsa it is evidentthat this very magnificence of wealth and enjoyment worked against theideal that sprang and flowed forth from the sacred solitude of theforest. These poems contain the voice of warnings against thegorgeous unreality of that age, which, like a Himalayan avalanche, wasslowly gliding down to an abyss of catastrophe. And from his seatbeside all the glories of Vikramâditya's throne the poet's heartyearns for the purity and simplicity of India's past age of spiritualstriving. And it was this yearning which impelled him to go back tothe annals of the ancient Kings of Raghu's line for the narrativepoem, in which he traced the history of the rise and fall of the idealthat should guide the rulers of men. 

King Dilipa, with Queen Sudakshinâ, has entered upon the life of theforest. The great monarch is busy tending the cattle of the hermitage. Thus the poem opens, amid scenes of simplicity and self-denial. But itends in the palace of magnificence, in the extravagance ofself-enjoyment. With a calm restraint of language the poet tells us ofthe kingly glory crowned with purity. He begins his poem as the daybegins, in the serenity of sunrise. But lavish are the colours inwhich he describes the end, as of the evening, eloquent for a timewith the sumptuous splendour of sunset, but overtaken at last by thedevouring darkness which sweeps away all its brilliance into night. 

In this beginning and this ending of his poem there lies hidden thatmessage of the forest which found its voice in the poet's words. Thereruns through the narrative the idea that the future glowed gloriouslyahead only when there was in the atmosphere the calm of self-control, of purity and renunciation. When downfall had become imminent, thehungry fires of desire, aflame at a hundred different points, dazzledthe eyes of all beholders. 

Kâlidâsa in almost all his works represented the unboundedimpetuousness of kingly splendour on the one side and the serenestrength of regulated desires on the other. Even in the minor drama of_Mâlavikâgnimitra_ we find the same thing in a different manner. Itmust never be thought that, in this play, the poet's deliberate objectwas to pander to his royal patron by inviting him to a literary orgyof lust and passion. The very introductory verse indicates the objecttowards which this play is directed. The poet begins the drama withthe prayer, "Sanmârgâlókayan vyapanayatu sa nastâmasi vritimishah"(Let God, to illumine for us the path of truth, sweep away ourpassions, bred of darkness). This is the God Shiva, in whose natureParvati, the eternal Woman, is ever commingled in an ascetic purity oflove. The unified being of Shiva and Parvati is the perfect symbol ofthe eternal in the wedded love of man and woman. When the poet openshis drama with an invocation of this Spirit of the Divine Union it isevident that it contains in it the message with which he greets hiskingly audience. The whole drama goes to show the ugliness of thetreachery and cruelty inherent in unchecked self-indulgence. In theplay the conflict of ideals is between the King and the Queen, betweenAgnimitra and Dhârini, and the significance of the contrast lieshidden in the very names of the hero and the heroine. Though the nameAgnimitra is historical, yet it symbolises in the poet's mind thedestructive force of uncontrolled desire—just as did the nameAgnivarna in _Raghuvamsha_. Agnimitra, "the friend of the fire, " thereckless person, who in his love-making is playing with fire, notknowing that all the time it is scorching him black. And what a greatname is Dhârini, signifying the fortitude and forbearance that comesfrom majesty of soul! What an association it carries of the infinitedignity of love, purified by a self-abnegation that rises far aboveall insult and baseness of betrayal!

In _Shakuntalâ_ this conflict of ideals has been shown, all throughthe drama, by the contrast of the pompous heartlessness of the king'scourt and the natural purity of the forest hermitage. The drama openswith a hunting scene, where the king is in pursuit of an antelope. Thecruelty of the chase appears like a menace symbolising the spirit ofthe king's life clashing against the spirit of the forest retreat, which is "sharanyam sarva-bhútânâm" (where all creatures find theirprotection of love). And the pleading of the forest-dwellers with theking 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, evenas the fire is not for the burning of flowers. "

In the _Râmâyana_, Râma and his companions, in their banishment, hadto traverse forest after forest; they had to live in leaf-thatchedhuts, to sleep on the bare ground. But as their hearts felt theirkinship with woodland, hill, and stream, they were not in exile amidstthese. Poets, brought up in an atmosphere of different ideals, wouldhave taken this opportunity of depicting in dismal colours thehardship of the forest-life in order to bring out the martyrdom ofRâmachandra with all the emphasis of a strong contrast. But, in the_Râmâyana_, we are led to realise the greatness of the hero, not in afierce struggle with Nature, but in sympathy with it. Sitâ, thedaughter-in-law of a great kingly house, goes along the forest paths. We read:

"She asks Râma about the flowering trees, and shrubs and creeperswhich she has not seen before. At her request Lakshmana gathers andbrings her plants of all kinds, exuberant with flowers, and itdelights her heart to see the forest rivers, variegated with theirstreams and sandy banks, resounding with the call of heron and duck. 

"When Râma first took his abode in the Chitrakuta peak, thatdelightful Chitrakuta, by the Mâlyavati river, with its easy slopesfor landing, he forgot all the pain of leaving his home in the capitalat 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 kingdomtroubles me no longer, nor does the separation from my friends causeme 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 onlyto each other, but to the universe of life. That is why, when Sitâ wastaken away, the loss seemed to be so great to the forest itself. 

 III

Strangely enough, in Shakespeare's dramas, like those of Kâlidâsa, wefind a secret vein of complaint against the artificial life of theking's court—the life of ungrateful treachery and falsehood. Andalmost everywhere, in his dramas, foreign scenes have been introducedin connection with some working of the life of unscrupulous ambition. It is perfectly obvious in _Timon of Athens_—but there Nature offersno message or balm to the injured soul of man. In _Cymbeline_ themountainous forest and the cave appear in their aspect of obstructionto life's opportunities. These only seem tolerable in comparison withthe vicissitudes of fortune in the artificial court life. In _As YouLike It_ the forest of Arden is didactic in its lessons. It does notbring 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 werealise man's struggle with Nature and his longing to sever connectionwith her. In _Macbeth_, as a prelude to a bloody crime of treacheryand treason, we are introduced to a scene of barren heath where thethree witches appear as personifications of Nature's malignant forces;and in _King Lear_ it is the fury of a father's love turned intocurses by the ingratitude born of the unnatural life of the court thatfinds its symbol in the storm on the heath. The tragic intensity of_Hamlet_ and _Othello_ is unrelieved by any touch of Nature'seternity. Except in a passing glimpse of a moonlight night in the lovescene in the _Merchant of Venice_, Nature has not been allowed inother dramas of this series, including _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Antonyand Cleopatra_, to contribute her own music to the music of man'slove. In _The Winter's Tale_ the cruelty of a king's suspicion standsbare in its relentlessness, and Nature cowers before it, offering noconsolation. 

I hope it is needless for me to say that these observations are notintended to minimise Shakespeare's great power as a dramatic poet, butto show in his works the gulf between Nature and human nature owing tothe tradition of his race and time. It cannot be said that beauty ofnature is ignored in his writings; only he fails to recognise in themthe truth of the inter-penetration of human life with the cosmic lifeof the world. We observe a completely different attitude of mind inthe later English poets like Wordsworth and Shelley, which can beattributed in the main to the great mental change in Europe, at thatparticular period, through the influence of the newly discoveredphilosophy of India which stirred the soul of Germany and aroused theattention of other Western countries. 

In Milton's _Paradise Lost_, the very subject—Man dwelling in thegarden of Paradise—seems to afford a special opportunity for bringingout the true greatness of man's relationship with Nature. But thoughthe poet has described to us the beauties of the garden, though he hasshown to us the animals living there in amity and peace amongthemselves, there is no reality of kinship between them and man. Theywere created for man's enjoyment; man was their lord and master. Wefind no trace of the love between the first man and woman graduallysurpassing themselves and overflowing the rest of creation, such as wefind in the love scenes in _Kumâra-Sambhava_ and _Shakuntalâ_. In theseclusion of the bower, where the first man and woman rested in thegarden 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 thatsuperiority lay, according to her, in the comprehensiveness ofsympathy, not in the aloofness of absolute distinction. 

 IV

India holds sacred, and counts as places of pilgrimage, all spotswhich display a special beauty or splendour of nature. These had nooriginal attraction on account of any special fitness for cultivationor settlement. Here, man is free, not to look upon Nature as a sourceof supply of his necessities, but to realise his soul beyond himself. The Himâlayas of India are sacred and the Vindhya Hills. Her majesticrivers are sacred. Lake Mânasa and the confluence of the Ganges andthe Jamuna are sacred. India has saturated with her love and worshipthe great Nature with which her children are surrounded, whose lightfills their eyes with gladness, and whose water cleanses them, whosefood gives them life, and from whose majestic mystery comes forth theconstant revelation of the infinite in music, scent, and colour, whichbrings its awakening to the soul of man. India gains the world throughworship, through spiritual communion; and the idea of freedom to whichshe aspired was based upon the realisation of her spiritual unity. 

When, in my recent voyage to Europe, our ship left Aden and sailedalong the sea which lay between the two continents, we passed by thered and barren rocks of Arabia on our right side and the gleamingsands of Egypt on our left. They seemed to me like two giant brothersexchanging with each other burning glances of hatred, kept apart bythe 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 ason the right, but the two shores spoke to me of the two differenthistorical dramas enacted. The civilisation which found its growth inEgypt was continued across long centuries, elaborately rich withsentiments and expressions of life, with pictures, sculptures, temples, and ceremonials. This was a country whose guardian-spirit wasa noble river, which spread the festivities of life on its banksacross the heart of the land. There man never raised the barrier ofalienation between himself and the rest of the world. 

On the opposite shore of the Red Sea the civilisation which grew up inthe inhospitable soil of Arabia had a contrary character to that ofEgypt. There man felt himself isolated in his hostile and baresurroundings. His idea of God became that of a jealous God. His mindnaturally dwelt upon the principle of separateness. It roused in himthe spirit of fight, and this spirit was a force that drove him farand wide. These two civilisations represented two fundamentaldivisions of human nature. The one contained in it the spirit ofconquest and the other the spirit of harmony. And both of these havetheir truth and purpose in human existence. 

The characters of two eminent sages have been described in ourmythology. One was Vashishtha and another Vishvâmitra. Both of themwere great, but they represented two different types of wisdom; andthere was conflict between them. Vishvâmitra sought to achieve powerand was proud of it; Vashishtha was rudely smitten by that power. Buthis hurt and his loss could not touch the illumination of his soul;for he rose above them and could forgive. Râmachandra, the great heroof our epic, had his initiation to the spiritual life from Vashishtha, the life of inner peace and perfection. But he had his initiation towar from Vishvâmitra, who called him to kill the demons and gave himweapons that were irresistible. 

Those two sages symbolise in themselves the two guiding spirits ofcivilisation. Can it be true that they shall never be reconciled? Ifso, can ever the age of peace and co-operation dawn upon the humanworld? Creation is the harmony of contrary forces—the forces ofattraction and repulsion. When they join hands, all the fire and fightare changed into the smile of flowers and the songs of birds. Whenthere is only one of them triumphant and the other defeated, theneither there is the death of cold rigidity or that of suicidalexplosion. 

Humanity, for ages, has been busy with the one great creation ofspiritual life. Its best wisdom, its discipline, its literature andart, all the teachings and self-sacrifice of its noblest teachers, have been for this. But the harmony of contrary forces, which givetheir rhythm to all creation, has not yet been perfected by man in hiscivilisation, and the Creator in him is baffled over and over again. He comes back to his work, however, and makes himself busy, buildinghis world in the midst of desolation and ruins. His history is thehistory of his aspiration interrupted and renewed. And one truth ofwhich he must be reminded, therefore, is that the power whichaccomplishes the miracle of creation, by bringing conflicting forcesinto the harmony of the One, is no passion, but a love which acceptsthe bonds of self-control from the joy of its own immensity—a lovewhose sacrifice is the manifestation of its endless wealth withinitself. 

 AN INDIAN FOLK RELIGION

 I

In historical time the Buddha comes first of those who declaredsalvation to all men, without distinction, as by right man's own. Whatwas the special force which startled men's minds and, almost withinthe master's lifetime, spread his teachings over India? It was theunique significance of the event, when a man came to men and said tothem, "I am here to emancipate you from the miseries of the thraldomof self. " This wisdom came, neither in texts of Scripture, nor insymbols of deities, nor in religious practices sanctified by ages, butthrough the voice of a living man and the love that flowed from ahuman heart. 

And I believe this was the first occasion in the history of the worldwhen the idea of the Avatâr found its place in religion. Westernscholars are never tired of insisting that Buddhism is of the natureof a moral code, coldly leading to the path of extinction. They forgetthat it was held to be a religion that roused in its devotees aninextinguishable fire of enthusiasm and carried them to lifelong exileacross the mountain and desert barriers. To say that a philosophy ofsuicide can keep kindled in human hearts for centuries such fervour ofself-sacrifice is to go against all the laws of sane psychology. Thereligious enthusiasm which cannot be bound within any daily ritual, but overflows into adventures of love and beneficence, must have inits centre that element of personality which rouses the whole soul. Inanswer, it may possibly be said that this was due to the personalityof Buddha himself. But that also is not quite true. The personalitywhich stirs the human heart to its immense depths, leading it toimpossible deeds of heroism, must in that process itself reveal to menthe infinite which is in all humanity. And that is what happened inBuddhism, making it a religion in the complete sense of the word. 

Like the religion of the Upanishads, Buddhism also generated twodivergent currents; the one impersonal, preaching the abnegation ofself through discipline, and the other personal, preaching thecultivation of sympathy for all creatures, and devotion to theinfinite truth of love; the other, which is called the Mahâyâna, hadits origin in the positive element contained in Buddha's teachings, which is immeasurable love. It could never, by any logic, find itsreality in the emptiness of the truthless abyss. And the object ofBuddha's meditation and his teachings was to free humanity fromsufferings. But what was the path that he revealed to us? Was it somenegative way of evading pain and seeking security against it? On thecontrary, his path was the path of sacrifice—the utmost sacrifice oflove. The meaning of such sacrifice is to reach some ultimate truth, some positive ideal, which in its greatness can accept suffering andtransmute it into the profound peace of self-renunciation. Trueemancipation from suffering, which is the inalienable condition of thelimited 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 ofthe higher life of love. 

We have learnt that, by calculations made in accordance with the lawof gravitation, some planets were discovered exactly in the placewhere they should be. Such a law of gravitation there is also in themoral world. And when we find men's minds disturbed, as they were bythe preaching of the Buddha, we can be sure, even without anycorroborative evidence, that there must have been some great luminousbody of attraction, positive and powerful, and not a mere unfathomablevacancy. It is exactly this which we discover in the heart of theMahâyâna system; and we have no hesitation in saying that the truth ofBuddhism is there. The oil has to be burnt, not for the purpose ofdiminishing it, but for the purpose of giving light to the lamp. Andwhen the Buddha said that the self must go, he said at the same momentthat love must be realised. Thus originated the doctrine of theDharma-kâya, the Infinite Wisdom and Love manifested in the Buddha. Itwas the first instance, as I have said, when men felt that theUniversal and the Eternal Spirit was revealed in a human individualwhom they had known and touched. The joy was too great for them, sincethe very idea itself came to them as a freedom—a freedom from thesense of their measureless insignificance. It was the first time, Irepeat, when the individual, as a man, felt in himself the Infinitemade concrete. 

What was more, those men who felt the love welling forth from theheart of Buddhism, as one with the current of the Eternal Love itself, were struck with the idea that such an effluence could never have beendue to a single cataclysm of history—unnatural and therefore untrue. They felt instead that it was in the eternal nature of truth, that theevent must belong to a series of manifestations; there must have beennumberless other revelations in the past and endless others to follow. 

The idea grew and widened until men began to feel that this InfiniteBeing was already in every one of them, and that it rested withthemselves to remove the sensual obstructions and reveal him in theirown lives. In every individual there was, they realised, thepotentiality of Buddha—that is to say, the Infinite made manifest. 

We have to keep in mind the great fact that the preaching of theBuddha in India was not followed by stagnation of life—as wouldsurely have happened if humanity was without any positive goal and histeaching was without any permanent value in itself. On the contrary, we find the arts and sciences springing up in its wake, institutionsstarted for alleviating the misery of all creatures, human andnon-human, and great centres of education founded. Some mighty powerwas suddenly roused from its obscurity, which worked for longcenturies and changed the history of man in a large part of the world. And that power came into its full activity only by the individualbeing made conscious of his infinite worth. It was like the suddendiscovery 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 fromneglect and self-insult. Even to-day we see in our own country humannature, from its despised corner of indignity, slowly and painfullyfinding its way to assert the inborn majesty of man. It is like theimprisoned tree finding a rift in the wall, and sending out its eagerbranches into freedom, to prove that darkness is not its birthright, that its love is for the sunshine. In the time of the Buddha theindividual discovered his own immensity of worth, first by witnessinga man who united his heart in sympathy with all creatures, in allworlds, through the power of a love that knew no bounds; and then bylearning that the same light of perfection lay confined withinhimself behind the clouds of selfish desire, and that theBodhi-hridaya—"the heart of the Eternal Enlightenment"—every momentclaimed its unveiling in his own heart. Nâgârjuna speaks of thisBodhi-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 ofillustration from a popular religious sect of Bengal, that thereligious instinct of man urges him towards a truth, by which he cantranscend the finite nature of the individual self. Man would neverfeel the indignity of his limitations if these were inevitable. Withinhim he has glimpses of the Infinite, which give him assurance thatthis truth is not in his limitations, but that this truth can beattained by love. For love is the positive quality of the Infinite, and love's sacrifice accordingly does not lead to emptiness, but tofulfilment, 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 obscurityhelps them in their seeking, from a direct source, the enlightenmentwhich the soul longs for, the eternal light of love. 

It would be absurd to say that there is little difference betweenBuddhism and the religion of these simple people, who have no systemof metaphysics to support their faith. But my object in bringing closetogether these two religions, which seem to belong to opposite poles, is to point out the fundamental unity in them. Both of them believe ina fulfilment which is reached by love's emancipating us from thedominance of self. In both these religions we find man's yearning toattain the infinite worth of his individuality, not through anyconventional valuation of society, but through his perfectrelationship with Truth. They agree in holding that the realisation ofour ultimate object is waiting for us in ourselves. The Baül likensthis 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 theneighbourhood came to see me. She had the name "Sarva-khepi" given toher by the village people, the meaning of which is "the woman who ismad about all things. " She fixed her star-like eyes upon my face andstartled me with the question, "When are you coming to meet meunderneath the trees?" Evidently she pitied me who lived (according toher) prisoned behind walls, banished away from the great meeting-placeof the All, where she had her dwelling. Just at that moment mygardener came with his basket, and when the woman understood that theflowers in the vase on my table were going to be thrown away, to makeplace for the fresh ones, she looked pained and said to me, "You arealways engaged reading and writing; you do not see. " Then she took thediscarded flowers in her palms, kissed them and touched them with herforehead, and reverently murmured to herself, "Beloved of my heart. " Ifelt that this woman, in her direct vision of the infinite personalityin the heart of all things, truly represented the spirit of India. 

In the same village I came into touch with some Baül singers. I hadknown them by their names, occasionally seen them singing and beggingin the street, and so passed them by, vaguely classifying them in mymind under the general name of Vairâgis, or ascetics. 

The time came when I had occasion to meet with some members of thesame body and talk to them about spiritual matters. The first Baülsong, which I chanced to hear with any attention, profoundly stirredmy mind. Its words are so simple that it makes me hesitate to renderthem in a foreign tongue, and set them forward for criticalobservation. Besides, the best part of a song is missed when the tuneis absent; for thereby its movement and its colour are lost, and itbecomes like a butterfly whose wings have been plucked. 

The first line may be translated thus: "Where shall I meet him, theMan of my Heart?" This phrase, "the Man of my Heart, " is not peculiarto 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 theInfinite in my own humanity. 

"The Man of my Heart, " to the Baül, is like a divine instrumentperfectly tuned. He gives expression to infinite truth in the musicof life. And the longing for the truth which is in us, which we havenot 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 almostilliterate; and the ideas he received from his Baül teacher found nodistraction from the self-consciousness of the modern age. He was avillage postman, earning about ten shillings a month, and he diedbefore he had completed his teens. The sentiment, to which he gavesuch intensity of expression, is common to most of the songs of hissect. And it is a sect, almost exclusively confined to that lowerfloor of society, where the light of modern education hardly finds anentrance, while wealth and respectability shun its utter indigence. 

In the song I have translated above, the longing of the singer torealise the infinite in his own personality is expressed. This has tobe done daily by its perfect expression in life, in love. For thepersonal expression of life, in its perfection, is love; just as thepersonal expression of truth in its perfection is beauty. 

In the political life of the modern age the idea of democracy hasgiven mankind faith in the individual. It gives each man trust in hisown possibilities, and pride in his humanity. Something of the sameidea, we find, has been working in the popular mind of India, withregard to its religious consciousness. Over and over again it tries toassert, 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 theirsimple theology, because they know that God is special to eachindividual. They say that to be born a man is the greatest privilegethat can fall to a creature in all the world. They assert that gods inParadise envy human beings. Why? Because God's will, in giving hislove, finds its completeness in man's will returning that love. Therefore Humanity is a necessary factor in the perfecting of thedivine truth. The Infinite, for its self-expression, comes down intothe manifoldness of the Finite; and the Finite, for itsself-realisation, must rise into the unity of the Infinite. Then onlyis the Cycle of Truth complete. 

The dignity of man, in his eternal right of Truth, finds expression inthe 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 ofBritish India whose education has been far less than elementary, infact 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 thissong would be pathetic in its presumption. But why is there beauty atall in creation—the beauty whose only meaning is in a call thatclaims disinterestedness as a response? The poet proudly says: "Yourflute could not have its music of beauty if your delight were not inmy love. Your power is great—and there I am not equal to you—but itlies even in me to make you smile, and if you and I never meet, thenthis play of love remains incomplete. "

If this were not true, then it would be an utter humiliation to existat all in this world. If it were solely _our_ business to seek theLover, and _his_ to keep himself passively aloof in the infinity ofhis glory, or actively masterful only in imposing his commands uponus, then we should dare to defy him, and refuse to accept theeverlasting insult latent in the one-sided importunity of a slave. Andthis is what the Baül says—he who, in the world of men, goes aboutsinging for alms from door to door, with his one-stringed instrumentand 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 ispitifully small; that he is neither wealthy nor learned. Yet he hashis great compensation, for he has come close to his Lover's heart. InBengal the women bathing in the river often use their overturned waterjars to keep themselves floating when they swim, and the poet usesthis 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 thesebeggars—deprived of education, honour, and wealth—can, in the prideof their souls, look down upon them as the unfortunate ones, who areleft on the shore for their worldly uses, but whose life ever missesthe touch of the Lover's arms. 

The feeling that man is not a mere casual visitor at the palace-gateof the world, but the invited guest whose presence is needed to givethe royal banquet its sole meaning, is not confined to any particularsect in India. Let me quote here some poems from a mediæval poet ofWestern India—Jnândâs—whose works are nearly forgotten, and havebecome scarce from the very exquisiteness of their excellence. In thefollowing poem he is addressing God's messenger, who comes to us inthe morning light of our childhood, in the dusk of our day's end, andin 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 owninvitation 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 SupremeLove and realised by his own love. 

The Vaishnava religion, which has become the popular religion ofIndia, carries the same message: God's love finding its finality inman's love. According to it, the lover, man, is the complement of theLover, God, in the internal love drama of existence; and God's callis ever wafted in man's heart in the world-music, drawing him towardsthe union. This idea has been expressed in rich elaboration of symbolsverging upon realism. But for these Baüls this idea is direct andsimple, full of the dignified beauty of truth, which shuns all tinselsof 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 theskin of the fruit when its inner core is filled with ripe, sweetjuice; but by artificially smearing it with colour from outside you donot make it ripe. And he says of his Guru, his teacher, that he ispuzzled to find in which direction he must make salutation. For histeacher is not one, but many, who, moving on, form a procession ofwayfarers. 

Baüls have no temple or image for their worship, and this uttersimplicity is needful for men whose one subject is to realise theinnermost nearness of God. The Baül poet expressly says that if we tryto 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 revealtheir spiritual meaning only when they are not seen through merephysical 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 thebody; but they keep its secret; it is only for the initiated. Evidently the underlying idea is that the individual's body is itselfthe temple, in whose inner mystic shrine the Divine appears before thesoul, and the key to it has to be found from those who know. But asthe key is not for us outsiders, I leave it with the observation thatthis mystic philosophy of the body is the outcome of the attempt toget rid of all the outward shelters which are too costly for peoplelike themselves. But this human body of ours is made by God's ownhand, from his own love, and even if some men, in the pride of theirsuperiority, may despise it, God finds his joy in dwelling in othersof yet lower birth. It is a truth easier of discovery by these peopleof humble origin than by men of proud estate. 

The pride of the Baül beggar is not in his worldly distinction, but inthe distinction that God himself has given to him. He feels himselflike 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 theambitious world of wealth and power despises him, he in his turnthinks that the world's touch desecrates him who has been made sacredby the touch of his Lover. He does not envy us our life of ambitionand 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 inopposition. 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 allsituations—in danger, or pain, or sorrow—that he is in God's hands. He solves the problem of emancipation from sufferings by accepting andsetting 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 thetraining nor the opportunity to study this mendicant religious sect inBengal from an ethnological standpoint. I was attracted to find outhow the living currents of religious movements work in the heart ofthe people, saving them from degradation imposed by the society of thelearned, of the rich, or of the high-born; how the spirit of man, bymaking use even of its obstacles, reaches fulfilment, led thither, notby the learned authorities in the scriptures, or by the mechanicalimpulse of the dogma-driven crowd, but by the unsophisticatedaspiration of the loving soul. On the inaccessible mountain peaks oftheology 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 inits 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 ofJnândâs, in which the aspiration of all simple spirits has found adevout 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 travellersnowadays to distant lands. More often it is the facility for rapidmovement. For lack of time and for the sake of convenience wegeneralise and crush our human facts into the packages within thesteel trunks that hold our travellers' reports. 

Our knowledge of our own countrymen and our feelings about them haveslowly and unconsciously grown out of innumerable facts which are fullof contradictions and subject to incessant change. They have theelusive mystery and fluidity of life. We cannot define to ourselveswhat we are as a whole, because we know too much; because ourknowledge is more than knowledge. It is an immediate consciousness ofpersonality, any evaluation of which carries some emotion, joy orsorrow, shame or exaltation. But in a foreign land we try to find ourcompensation for the meagreness of our data by the compactness of thegeneralisation which our imperfect sympathy itself helps us to form. When a stranger from the West travels in the Eastern world he takesthe facts that displease him and readily makes use of them for hisrigid conclusions, fixed upon the unchallengeable authority of hispersonal experience. It is like a man who has his own boat forcrossing his village stream, but, on being compelled to wade acrosssome strange watercourse, draws angry comparisons as he goes fromevery patch of mud and every pebble which his feet encounter. 

Our mind has faculties which are universal, but its habits areinsular. There are men who become impatient and angry at the leastdiscomfort when their habits are incommoded. In their idea of the nextworld they probably conjure up the ghosts of their slippers anddressing-gowns, and expect the latchkey that opens their lodging-housedoor on earth to fit their front door in the other world. Astravellers they are a failure; for they have grown too accustomed totheir mental easy-chairs, and in their intellectual nature love homecomforts, which are of local make, more than the realities of life, which, like earth itself, are full of ups and downs, yet are one intheir rounded completeness. 

The modern age has brought the geography of the earth near to us, butmade it difficult for us to come into touch with man. We go to strangelands and observe; we do not live there. We hardly meet men: but onlyspecimens of knowledge. We are in haste to seek for general types andoverlook individuals. 

When we fall into the habit of neglecting to use the understandingthat comes of sympathy in our travels, our knowledge of foreign peoplegrows insensitive, and therefore easily becomes both unjust and cruelin its character, and also selfish and contemptuous in itsapplication. Such has, too often, been the case with regard to themeeting of Western people in our days with others for whom they do notrecognise any obligation of kinship. 

It has been admitted that the dealings between different races of menare not merely between individuals; that our mutual understanding iseither aided, or else obstructed, by the general emanations formingthe social atmosphere. These emanations are our collective ideas andcollective feelings, generated according to special historicalcircumstances. 

For instance, the caste-idea is a collective idea in India. When weapproach an Indian who is under the influence of this collective idea, he is no longer a pure individual with his conscience fully awake tothe judging of the value of a human being. He is more or less apassive medium for giving expression to the sentiment of a wholecommunity. 

It is evident that the caste-idea is not creative; it is merelyinstitutional. It adjusts human beings according to some mechanicalarrangement. It emphasises the negative side of the individual—hisseparateness. It hurts the complete truth in man. 

In the West, also, the people have a certain collective idea thatobscures their humanity. Let me try to explain what I feel about it. 

 II

Lately I went to visit some battlefields of France which had beendevastated by war. The awful calm of desolation, which still borewrinkles of pain—death-struggles stiffened into ugly ridges—broughtbefore my mind the vision of a huge demon, which had no shape, nomeaning, yet had two arms that could strike and break and tear, agaping mouth that could devour, and bulging brains that could conspireand plan. It was a purpose, which had a living body, but no completehumanity to temper it. Because it was passion—belonging to life, andyet not having the wholeness of life—it was the most terrible oflife's enemies. 

Something of the same sense of oppression in a different degree, thesame desolation in a different aspect, is produced in my mind when Irealise the effect of the West upon Eastern life—the West which, inits relation to us, is all plan and purpose incarnate, without anysuperfluous humanity. 

I feel the contrast very strongly in Japan. In that country the oldworld presents itself with some ideal of perfection, in which man hashis varied opportunities of self-revelation in art, in ceremonial, inreligious faith, and in customs expressing the poetry of socialrelationship. There one feels that deep delight of hospitality whichlife offers to life. And side by side, in the same soil, stands themodern world, which is stupendously big and powerful, butinhospitable. It has no simple-hearted welcome for man. It is living;yet the incompleteness of life's ideal within it cannot but hurthumanity. 

The wriggling tentacles of a cold-blooded utilitarianism, with whichthe West has grasped all the easily yielding succulent portions of theEast, are causing pain and indignation throughout the Easterncountries. The West comes to us, not with the imagination and sympathythat create and unite, but with a shock of passion—passion for powerand wealth. This passion is a mere force, which has in it theprinciple of separation, of conflict. 

I have been fortunate in coming into close touch with individual menand women of the Western countries, and have felt with them theirsorrows and shared their aspirations. I have known that they seek thesame 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 theEast will mourn in darkness. It does not hurt my pride to acknowledgethat, in the present age, Western humanity has received its mission tobe the teacher of the world; that her science, through the mastery oflaws of nature, is to liberate human souls from the dark dungeon ofmatter. For this very reason I have realised all the more strongly, on the other hand, that the dominant collective idea in the Westerncountries is not creative. It is ready to enslave or kill individuals, to drug a great people with soul-killing poison, darkening their wholefuture with the black mist of stupefaction, and emasculating entireraces of men to the utmost degree of helplessness. It is whollywanting in spiritual power to blend and harmonise; it lacks the senseof the great personality of man. 

The most significant fact of modern days is this, that the West hasmet the East. Such a momentous meeting of humanity, in order to befruitful, must have in its heart some great emotional idea, generousand creative. There can be no doubt that God's choice has fallen uponthe 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 intheir hearts the single-minded loyalty to their cause which can resistall temptations of bribery from the devil? The world to-day is offeredto the West. She will destroy it, if she does not use it for a greatcreation of man. The materials for such a creation are in the hands ofscience; but the creative genius is in Man's spiritual ideal. 

 III

When I was young a stranger from Europe came to Bengal. He chose hislodging among the people of the country, shared with them their frugaldiet, and freely offered them his service. He found employment in thehouses of the rich, teaching them French and German, and the moneythus earned he spent to help poor students in buying books. This meantfor him hours of walking in the mid-day heat of a tropical summer;for, intent upon exercising the utmost economy, he refused to hireconveyances. He was pitiless in his exaction from himself of hisresources, 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 wasnot born, yet whom he dearly loved. He did not come to us with aprofessional mission of teaching sectarian creeds; he had not in hisnature the least trace of that self-sufficiency of goodness, whichhumiliates by gifts the victims of its insolent benevolence. Though hedid not know our language, he took every occasion to frequent ourmeetings and ceremonies; yet he was always afraid of intrusion, andtenderly anxious lest he might offend us by his ignorance of ourcustoms. At last, under the continual strain of work in an alienclimate and surroundings, his health broke down. He died, and wascremated at our burning-ground, according to his express desire. 

The attitude of his mind, the manner of his living, the object of hislife, his modesty, his unstinted self-sacrifice for a people who hadnot even the power to give publicity to any benefaction bestowed uponthem, were so utterly unlike anything we were accustomed to associatewith the Europeans in India, that it gave rise in our mind to afeeling of love bordering upon awe. 

We all have a realm, a private paradise, in our mind, where dwelldeathless memories of persons who brought some divine light to ourlife's experience, who may not be known to others, and whose nameshave no place in the pages of history. Let me confess to you that thisman lives as one of those immortals in the paradise of my individuallife. 

He came from Sweden, his name was Hammargren. What was most remarkablein the event of his coming to us in Bengal was the fact that in hisown country he had chanced to read some works of my great countryman, Ram Mohan Roy, and felt an immense veneration for his genius and hischaracter. Ram Mohan Roy lived in the beginning of the last century, and it is no exaggeration when I describe him as one of the immortalpersonalities of modern time. This young Swede had the unusual gift ofa far-sighted intellect and sympathy, which enabled him even from hisdistance of space and time, and in spite of racial differences, torealise the greatness of Ram Mohan Roy. It moved him so deeply that heresolved to go to the country which produced this great man, and offerher his service. He was poor, and he had to wait some time in Englandbefore he could earn his passage money to India. There he came atlast, and in reckless generosity of love utterly spent himself to thelast breath of his life, away from home and kindred and all theinheritances of his motherland. His stay among us was too short toproduce any outward result. He failed even to achieve during his lifewhat he had in his mind, which was to found by the help of his scantyearnings a library as a memorial to Ram Mohan Roy, and thus to leavebehind him a visible symbol of his devotion. But what I prize most inthis European youth, who left no record of his life behind him, is notthe memory of any service of goodwill, but the precious gift ofrespect 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 timein the modern days this obscure individual from Sweden brought to ourcountry the chivalrous courtesy of the West, a greeting of humanfellowship. 

The coincidence came to me with a great and delightful surprise whenthe Nobel Prize was offered to me from Sweden. As a recognition ofindividual merit it was of great value to me, no doubt; but it was theacknowledgment of the East as a collaborator with the Westerncontinents, in contributing its riches to the common stock ofcivilisation, which had the chief significance for the present age. Itmeant joining hands in comradeship by the two great hemispheres of thehuman world across the sea. 

 IV

To-day the real East remains unexplored. The blindness of contempt ismore hopeless than the blindness of ignorance; for contempt kills thelight which ignorance merely leaves unignited. The East is waiting tobe understood by the Western races, in order not only to be able togive 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 producedAkbar, the object of whose dream was the unification of hearts andideals. It had all the glowing enthusiasm of a religion, and itproduced an immediate and a vast result even in his own lifetime. 

But the fact still remains that the Western mind, after centuries ofcontact with the East, has not evolved the enthusiasm of a chivalrousideal which can bring this age to its fulfilment. It is everywhereraising thorny hedges of exclusion and offering human sacrifices tonational self-seeking. It has intensified the mutual feelings of envyamong Western races themselves, as they fight over their spoils anddisplay a carnivorous pride in their snarling rows of teeth. 

We must again guard our minds from any encroaching distrust of theindividuals of a nation. The active love of humanity and the spirit ofmartyrdom for the cause of justice and truth which I have met with inthe 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, notso much to its marvellous training of intellect, as to its spirit ofservice devoted to the welfare of man. Therefore I speak with apersonal feeling of pain and sadness about the collective power whichis guiding the helm of Western civilisation. It is a passion, not anideal. The more success it has brought to Europe, the more costly itwill prove to her at last, when the accounts have to be rendered. Andthe signs are unmistakable, that the accounts have been called for. The time has come when Europe must know that the forcible parasitismwhich she has been practising upon the two large Continents of theworld—the two most unwieldy whales of humanity—must be causing toher moral nature a gradual atrophy and degeneration. 

As an example, let me quote the following extract from the concludingchapter of _From the Cape to Cairo_, by Messrs. Grogan and Sharp, twowriters who have the power to inculcate their doctrines by precept andexample. In their reference to the African they are candid, as whenthey say, "We have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limbs. "These two sentences, carefully articulated, with a smack ofenjoyment, have been more clearly explained in the followingstatement, where some sense of that decency which is the attenuatedghost of a buried conscience, prompts the writers to use the phrase"compulsory labour" in place of the honest word "slavery"; just as themodern politician adroitly avoids the word "injunction" and uses theword "mandate. " "Compulsory labour in some form, " they say, "is thecorollary of our occupation of the country. " And they add: "It ispathetic, but it is history, " implying thereby that moral sentimentshave no serious effect in the history of human beings. 

Elsewhere they write: "Either we must give up the countrycommercially, or we must make the African work. And mere abuse ofthose who point out the impasse cannot change the facts. We mustdecide, and soon. Or rather the white man of South Africa willdecide. " The authors also confess that they have seen too much of theworld "to have any lingering belief that Western civilisation benefitsnative races. "

The logic is simple—the logic of egoism. But the argument issimplified by lopping off the greater part of the premise. For thesewriters seem to hold that the only important question for the whitemen of South Africa is, how indefinitely to grow fat on ostrichfeathers and diamond mines, and dance jazz dances over the misery anddegradation of a whole race of fellow-beings of a different colourfrom their own. Possibly they believe that moral laws have a specialdomesticated breed of comfortable concessions for the service of thepeople in power. Possibly they ignore the fact that commercial andpolitical cannibalism, profitably practised upon foreign races, creepsback nearer home; that the cultivation of unwholesome appetites hasits final reckoning with the stomach which has been made to serve it. For, after all, man is a spiritual being, and not a mere livingmoney-bag jumping from profit to profit, and breaking the backbone ofhuman races in its financial leapfrog. 

Such, however, has been the condition of things for more than acentury; and to-day, trying to read the future by the light of theEuropean conflagration, we are asking ourselves everywhere in theEast: "Is this frightfully overgrown power really great? It can bruiseus from without, but can it add to our wealth of spirit? It can signpeace treaties, but can it give peace?"

It was about two thousand years ago that all-powerful Rome in one ofits eastern provinces executed on a cross a simple teacher of anobscure tribe of fishermen. On that day the Roman governor felt nofalling off of his appetite or sleep. On that day there was, on theone hand, the agony, the humiliation, the death; on the other, thepomp 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 greatpersonality, both in his life and voice, struck the keynote of thesolemn music of the soul—love for all creatures. And that musiccrossed seas, mountains, and deserts. Races belonging to differentclimates, habits, and languages were drawn together, not in the clashof 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 wasto which the Western poet, dwelling upon the difference between Eastand West, referred when he said, "Never the twain shall meet. " It istrue that they are not yet showing any real sign of meeting. But thereason is because the West has not sent out its humanity to meet theman in the East, but only its machine. Therefore the poet's line hasto 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; thatofficial sealing-wax can never provide means of mutual attachment;that it is a painful ordeal for human beings to have to receivefavours from animated pigeonholes, and condescensions from printedcirculars that give notice but never speak. The presence of theWestern people in the East is a human fact. If we are to gain anythingfrom them, it must not be a mere sum-total of legal codes and systemsof civil and military services. Man is a great deal more to man thanthat. We have our human birthright to claim direct help from the manof the West, if he has anything great to give us. It must come to us, not through mere facts in a juxtaposition, but through thespontaneous sacrifice made by those who have the gift, and thereforethe responsibility. 

Earnestly I ask the poet of the Western world to realise and sing toyou with all the great power of music which he has, that the East andthe West are ever in search of each other, and that they must meet notmerely 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 thesnow-peaked mountains and fertilised by rivers carrying mighty volumesof water to the sea. There, under the blaze of a tropical sun, thephysical life has bedimmed the light of its vigour and lessened itsclaims. There man has had the repose of mind which has ever tried toset itself in harmony with the inner notes of existence. In thesilence of sunrise and sunset, and on star-crowded nights, he has satface to face with the Infinite, waiting for the revelation that opensup the heart of all that there is. He has said, in a rapture ofrealisation:

"Hearken to me, ye children of the Immortal, who dwell in the Kingdomof 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 soulhad met the touch of the Supreme Person—did he never come to you inthe West and speak to you of the Kingdom of Heaven? Did he not unitethe East and the West in truth, in the unity of one spiritual bondbetween all children of the Immortal, in the realisation of one greatPersonality in all human persons?

Yes, the East did once meet the West profoundly in the growth of herlife. Such union became possible, because the East came to the Westwith the ideal that is creative, and not with the passion thatdestroys moral bonds. The mystic consciousness of the Infinite, whichshe brought with her, was greatly needed by the man of the West togive him his balance. 

On the other hand, the East must find her own balance in Science—themagnificent gift that the West can bring to her. Truth has its nest aswell as its sky. That nest is definite in structure, accurate in lawof construction; and though it has to be changed and rebuilt over andover 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 thetrackless infinite, the East has relied solely upon her wings. She hasspurned the earth, till, buffeted by storms, her wings are hurt andshe is tired, sorely needing help. But has she then to be told thatthe messenger of the sky and the builder of the nest shall nevermeet?

 THE MODERN AGE

 I

Wherever man meets man in a living relationship, the meeting finds itsnatural expression in works of art, the signatures of beauty, in whichthe mingling of the personal touch leaves its memorial. 

On the other hand, a relationship of pure utility humiliates man—itignores the rights and needs of his deeper nature; it feels nocompunction in maltreating and killing things of beauty that can neverbe 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, wasthe ruthless intrusion of the factories for making gunny-bags on bothbanks of the Ganges. The blow it gave to me was owing to the preciousmemory of the days of my boyhood, when the scenery of this river wasthe only great thing near my birthplace reminding me of the existenceof a world which had its direct communication with our innermostspirit. 

Calcutta is an upstart town with no depth of sentiment in her face andin her manners. It may truly be said about her genesis:—In thebeginning there was the spirit of the Shop, which uttered through itsmegaphone, "Let there be the Office!" and there was Calcutta. Shebrought with her no dower of distinction, no majesty of noble orromantic origin; she never gathered around her any great historicalassociations, any annals of brave sufferings, or memory of mightydeeds. The only thing which gave her the sacred baptism of beauty wasthe river. I was fortunate enough to be born before the smoke-belchingiron dragon had devoured the greater part of the life of its banks;when the landing-stairs descending into its waters, caressed by itstides, appeared to me like the loving arms of the villages clinging toit; when Calcutta, with her up-tilted nose and stony stare, had notcompletely disowned her foster-mother, rural Bengal, and had notsurrendered body and soul to her wealthy paramour, the spirit of theledger, bound in dead leather. 

But as an instance of the contrast of the different ideal of adifferent age, incarnated in the form of a town, the memory of my lastvisit to Benares comes to my mind. What impressed me most deeply, while I was there, was the mother-call of the river Ganges, everfilling the atmosphere with an "unheard melody, " attracting the wholepopulation to its bosom every hour of the day. I am proud of the factthat India has felt a most profound love for this river, whichnourishes civilisation on its banks, guiding its course from thesilence 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 bestin 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 spontaneousgenerosity of self-sacrifice. 

But our minds will nevermore cease to be haunted by the perturbedspirit of the question, "What about gunny-bags?" I admit they areindispensable, and am willing to allow them a place in society, if myopponent will only admit that even gunny-bags should have theirlimits, and will acknowledge the importance of leisure to man, withspace for joy and worship, and a home of wholesale privacy, withassociations of chaste love and mutual service. If this concession tohumanity be denied or curtailed, and if profit and production areallowed to run amuck, they will play havoc with our love of beauty, oftruth, of justice, and also with our love for our fellow-beings. So itcomes about that the peasant cultivators of jute, who live on thebrink of everlasting famine, are combined against, and driven to lowerthe price of their labours to the point of blank despair, by those whoearn more than cent per cent profit and wallow in the infamy of theirwealth. The facts that man is brave and kind, that he is social andgenerous and self-sacrificing, have some aspect of the complete inthem; but the fact that he is a manufacturer of gunny-bags is tooridiculously small to claim the right of reducing his higher nature toinsignificance. The fragmentariness of utility should never forget itssubordinate position in human affairs. It must not be permitted tooccupy more than its legitimate place and power in society, nor tohave the liberty to desecrate the poetry of life, to deaden oursensitiveness to ideals, bragging of its own coarseness as a sign ofvirility. The pity is that when in the centre of our activities weacknowledge, by some proud name, the supremacy of wantondestructiveness, or production not less wanton, we shut out all thelights of our souls, and in that darkness our conscience and ourconsciousness 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 ofhistory men were free from the disturbance of their lower passions. Selfishness ever had its share in government and trade. Yet there wasa struggle to maintain a balance of forces in society; and ourpassions cherished no delusions about their own rank and value. Theycontrived no clever devices to hoodwink our moral nature. For in thosedays our intellect was not tempted to put its weight into the balanceon the side of over-greed. 

But in recent centuries a devastating change has come over ourmentality with regard to the acquisition of money. Whereas in formerages men treated it with condescension, even with disrespect, now theybend their knees to it. That it should be allowed a sufficiently largeplace in society, there can be no question; but it becomes an outragewhen it occupies those seats which are specially reserved for theimmortals, by bribing us, tampering with our moral pride, recruitingthe best strength of society in a traitor's campaign against humanideals, thus disguising, with the help of pomp and pageantry, its trueinsignificance. Such a state of things has come to pass because, withthe help of science, the possibilities of profit have suddenly becomeimmoderate. The whole of the human world, throughout its length andbreadth, has felt the gravitational pull of a giant planet of greed, with concentric rings of innumerable satellites, causing in oursociety a marked deviation from the moral orbit. In former times theintellectual and spiritual powers of this earth upheld their dignityof independence and were not giddily rocked on the tides of the moneymarket. But, as in the last fatal stages of disease, this fatalinfluence of money has got into our brain and affected our heart. Likea usurper, it has occupied the throne of high social ideals, usingevery means, by menace and threat, to seize upon the right, and, tempted by opportunity, presuming to judge it. It has not only sciencefor its ally, but other forces also that have some semblance ofreligion, such as nation-worship and the idealising of organisedselfishness. Its methods are far-reaching and sure. Like the claws ofa tiger's paw, they are softly sheathed. Its massacres are invisible, because they are fundamental, attacking the very roots of life. Itsplunder is ruthless behind a scientific system of screens, which havethe formal appearance of being open and responsible to inquiries. Bywhitewashing its stains it keeps its respectability unblemished. Itmakes a liberal use of falsehood in diplomacy, only feelingembarrassed when its evidence is disclosed by others of the trade. Anunscrupulous system of propaganda paves the way for widespreadmisrepresentation. It works up the crowd psychology through regulatedhypnotic doses at repeated intervals, administered in bottles withmoral labels upon them of soothing colours. In fact, man has been ableto make his pursuit of power easier to-day by his art of mitigatingthe obstructive forces that come from the higher region of hishumanity. With his cult of power and his idolatry of money he has, ina great measure, reverted to his primitive barbarism, a barbarismwhose path is lit up by the lurid light of intellect. For barbarism isthe simplicity of a superficial life. It may be bewildering in itssurface adornments and complexities, but it lacks the ideal to impartto it the depth of moral responsibility. 

 II

Society suffers from a profound feeling of unhappiness, not so muchwhen it is in material poverty as when its members are deprived of alarge part of their humanity. This unhappiness goes on smouldering inthe subconscious mind of the community till its life is reduced toashes or a sudden combustion is produced. The repressed personality ofman generates an inflammable moral gas deadly in its explosive force. 

We have seen in the late war, and also in some of the still morerecent events of history, how human individuals freed from moral andspiritual bonds find a boisterous joy in a debauchery of destruction. There is generated a disinterested passion of ravage. Through suchcatastrophe we can realise what formidable forces of annihilation arekept in check in our communities by bonds of social ideas; nay, madeinto multitudinous manifestations of beauty and fruitfulness. Thus weknow that evils are, like meteors, stray fragments of life, which needthe attraction of some great ideal in order to be assimilated with thewholesomeness of creation. The evil forces are literally outlaws;they only need the control and cadence of spiritual laws to changethem into good. The true goodness is not the negation of badness, itis in the mastery of it. Goodness is the miracle which turns thetumult of chaos into a dance of beauty. 

In modern society the ideal of wholeness has lost its force. Thereforeits different sections have become detached and resolved into theirelemental 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 saidthat when the forces lying latent in even a handful of dust areliberated from their bond of unity, they can lift the buildings of awhole neighbourhood to the height of a mountain. Such disfranchisedforces, irresponsible free-booters, may be useful to us for certainpurposes, but human habitations standing secure on their foundationsare better for us. To own the secret of utilising these forces is aproud fact for us, but the power of self-control and theself-dedication of love are truer subjects for the exultation ofmankind. The genii of the Arabian Nights may have in their magic theirlure and fascination for us. But the consciousness of God is ofanother order, infinitely more precious in imparting to our mindsideas of the spiritual power of creation. Yet these genii are abroadeverywhere; and even now, after the late war, their devotees aregetting ready to play further tricks upon humanity by suddenlyspiriting it away to some hill-top of desolation. 

 III

We know that when, at first, any large body of people in their historybecame aware of their unity, they expressed it in some popular symbolof divinity. For they felt that their combination was not anarithmetical one; its truth was deeper than the truth of number. Theyfelt that their community was not a mere agglutination but a creation, having upon it the living touch of the infinite Person. Therealisation 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 everweakening in us the spiritual apprehension of truth—the truth of aperson as the ultimate reality of existence. Science has its propersphere in analysing this world as a construction, just as grammar hasits legitimate office in analysing the syntax of a poem. But theworld, as a creation, is not a mere construction; it too is more thana syntax. It is a poem, which we are apt to forget when grammar takesexclusive hold of our minds. 

Upon the loss of this sense of a universal personality, which isreligion, the reign of the machine and of method has been firmlyestablished, and man, humanly speaking, has been made a homelesstramp. As nomads, ravenous and restless, the men from the West havecome to us. They have exploited our Eastern humanity for sheer gain ofpower. This modern meeting of men has not yet received the blessing ofGod. For it has kept us apart, though railway lines are laid far andwide, 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 areused as materials, and human relationships have in a large measurebecome utilitarian, man is imperfectly revealed. For man's revelationdoes 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 machinein the universe, and organises men into machines, is like the eruptionof Etna, tremendous in its force, in its outburst of fire and fume;but its creeping lava covers up human shelters made by the ages, andits ashes smother life. 

 IV

The terribly efficient method of repressing personality in theindividuals and the races who have failed to resist it has, in thepresent scientific age, spread all over the world; and in consequencethere have appeared signs of a universal disruption which seems notfar off. Faced with the possibility of such a disaster, which is sureto affect the successful peoples of the world in their intemperateprosperity, the great Powers of the West are seeking peace, not bycurbing their greed, or by giving up the exclusive advantages whichthey have unjustly acquired, but by concentrating their forces formutual security. 

But can powers find their equilibrium in themselves? Power has to bemade secure not only against power, but also against weakness; forthere lies the peril of its losing balance. The weak are as great adanger for the strong as quicksands for an elephant. They do notassist progress because they do not resist; they only drag down. Thepeople who grow accustomed to wield absolute power over others are aptto forget that by so doing they generate an unseen force which someday rends that power into pieces. The dumb fury of the downtroddenfinds its awful support from the universal law of moral balance. Theair which is so thin and unsubstantial gives birth to storms thatnothing can resist. This has been proved in history over and overagain, and stormy forces arising from the revolt of insulted humanityare openly gathering in the air at the present time. 

Yet in the psychology of the strong the lesson is despised and nocount taken of the terribleness of the weak. This is the latentignorance that, like an unsuspected worm, burrows under the bulk ofthe prosperous. Have we never read of the castle of power, securelybuttressed on all sides, in a moment dissolving in air at theexplosion caused by the weak and outraged besiegers? Politicianscalculate upon the number of mailed hands that are kept on thesword-hilts: they do not possess the third eye to see the greatinvisible hand that clasps in silence the hand of the helpless andwaits its time. The strong form their league by a combination ofpowers, driving the weak to form their own league alone with theirGod. I know I am crying in the wilderness when I raise the voice ofwarning; and while the West is busy with its organisation of amachine-made peace, it will still continue to nourish by itsiniquities the underground forces of earthquake in the EasternContinent. The West seems unconscious that Science, by providing itwith more and more power, is tempting it to suicide and encouraging itto accept the challenge of the disarmed; it does not know that thechallenge comes from a higher source. 

Two prophecies about the world's salvation are cherished in the heartsof the two great religions of the world. They represent the highestexpectation of man, thereby indicating his faith in a truth which heinstinctively considers as ultimate—the truth of love. Theseprophecies have not for their vision the fettering of the world andreducing it to tameness by means of a close-linked power forged in thefactory of a political steel trust. One of the religions has for itsmeditation the image of the Buddha who is to come, Maitreya, theBuddha of love; and he is to bring peace. The other religion waits forthe coming of Christ. For Christ preached peace when he preached love, when he preached the oneness of the Father with the brothers who aremany. And this was the truth of peace. Christ never held that peacewas the best policy. For policy is not truth. The calculation ofself-interest can never successfully fight the irrational force ofpassion—the passion which is perversion of love, and which can onlybe set right by the truth of love. So long as the powers build aleague on the foundation of their desire for safety, secure enjoymentof gains, consolidation of past injustice, and putting off thereparation of wrongs, while their fingers still wriggle for greed andreek of blood, rifts will appear in their union; and in future theirconflicts will take greater force and magnitude. It is political andcommercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war. By differentcombinations it changes its shape and dimensions, but not its nature. This egoism is still held sacred, and made a religion; and such areligion, by a mere change of temple, and by new committees ofpriests, will never save mankind. We must know that, as, throughscience and commerce, the realisation of the unity of the materialworld gives us power, so the realisation of the great spiritual Unityof 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 ouractivities and breadth to our creations, when it is merely a thing ofexternal circumstance, it is like an open space to one who isblindfolded. 

In my recent travels in the West I have felt that out there freedom asan idea has become feeble and ineffectual. Consequently a spirit ofrepression and coercion is fast spreading in the politics and socialrelationships of the people. 

In the age of monarchy the king lived surrounded by a miasma ofintrigue. At court there was an endless whispering of lies andcalumny, and much plotting and planning among the conspiring courtiersto manipulate the king as the instrument of their own purposes. 

In the present age intrigue plays a wider part, and affects the wholecountry. The people are drugged with the hashish of false hopes andurged to deeds of frightfulness by the goadings of manufacturedpanics; their higher feelings are exploited by devious channels ofunctuous hypocrisy, their pockets picked under anæsthetics offlattery, their very psychology affected by a conspiracy of money andunscrupulous diplomacy. 

In the old order the king was given to understand that he was thefreest individual in the world. A greater semblance of externalfreedom, no doubt, he had than other individuals. But they built forhim a gorgeous prison of unreality. 

The same thing is happening now with the people of the West. They areflattered into believing that they are free, and they have thesovereign power in their hands. But this power is robbed by hosts ofself-seekers, and the horse is captured and stabled because of hisgift of freedom over space. The mob-mind is allowed the enjoyment ofan apparent liberty, while its true freedom is curtailed on everyside. Its thoughts are fashioned according to the plans of organisedinterest; in its choosing of ideas and forming of opinions it ishindered either by some punitive force or by the constant insinuationof untruths; it is made to dwell in an artificial world of hypnoticphrases. In fact, the people have become the storehouse of a powerthat attracts round it a swarm of adventurers who are secretlyinvesting its walls to exploit it for their own devices. 

Thus it has become more and more evident to me that the ideal offreedom has grown tenuous in the atmosphere of the West. The mentalityis that of a slave-owning community, with a mutilated multitude of mentied to its commercial and political treadmill. It is the mentality ofmutual distrust and fear. The appalling scenes of inhumanity andinjustice, which are growing familiar to us, are the outcome of apsychology that deals with terror. No cruelty can be uglier in itsferocity than the cruelty of the coward. The people who havesacrificed their souls to the passion of profit-making and thedrunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic andsuspicion, and therefore they are ruthless even where they are leastafraid of mischances. They become morally incapable of allowingfreedom to others, and in their eagerness to curry favour with thepowerful they not only connive at the injustice done by their ownpartners in political gambling, but participate in it. A perpetualanxiety for the protection of their gains at any cost strikes at thelove of freedom and justice, until at length they are ready to forgoliberty for themselves and for others. 

My experience in the West, where I have realised the immense power ofmoney and of organised propaganda, —working everywhere behind screensof camouflage, creating an atmosphere of distrust, timidity, andantipathy, —has impressed me deeply with the truth that real freedomis of the mind and spirit; it can never come to us from outside. Heonly has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad toextend it to others. He who cares to have slaves must chain himself tothem; he who builds walls to create exclusion for others builds wallsacross his own freedom; he who distrusts freedom in others loses hismoral right to it. Sooner or later he is lured into the meshes ofphysical and moral servility. 

Therefore I would urge my own countrymen to ask themselves if thefreedom to which they aspire is one of external conditions. Is itmerely a transferable commodity? Have they acquired a true love offreedom? Have they faith in it? Are they ready to make space in theirsociety for the minds of their children to grow up in the ideal ofhuman dignity, unhindered by restrictions that are unjust andirrational?

Have we not made elaborately permanent the walls of our socialcompartments? We are tenaciously proud of their exclusiveness. Weboast that, in this world, no other society but our own has come tofinality in the classifying of its living members. Yet in ourpolitical agitations we conveniently forget that any unnaturalness inthe relationship of governors and governed which humiliates us, becomes an outrage when it is artificially fixed under the threat ofmilitary persecution. 

When India gave voice to immortal thoughts, in the time of fullestvigour of vitality, her children had the fearless spirit of theseekers 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 theBuddha came, humanity was stirred in our country to its uttermostdepth. The freedom of mind which it produced expressed itself in awealth of creation, spreading everywhere in its richness over thecontinent of Asia. But with the ebb of life in India the spirit ofcreation died away. It hardened into an age of inert construction. Theorganic unity of a varied and elastic society gave way to aconventional order which proved its artificial character by itsinexorable law of exclusion. 

Life has its inequalities, I admit, but they are natural and are inharmony with our vital functions. The head keeps its place apart fromthe feet, not through some external arrangement or any conspiracy ofcoercion. If the body is compelled to turn somersaults for anindefinite period, the head never exchanges its relative function forthat of the feet. But have our social divisions the sameinevitableness of organic law? If we have the hardihood to say "yes"to that question, then how can we blame an alien people for subjectingus to a political order which they are tempted to believe eternal?

By squeezing human beings in the grip of an inelastic system andforcibly holding them fixed, we have ignored the laws of life andgrowth. We have forced living souls into a permanent passivity, makingthem incapable of moulding circumstance to their own intrinsic design, and of mastering their own destiny. Borrowing our ideal of life from adark period of our degeneracy, we have covered up our sensitivenessof soul under the immovable weight of a remote past. We have set up anelaborate ceremonial of cage-worship, and plucked all the feathersfrom the wings of the living spirit of our people. And for us, —withour centuries of degradation and insult, with the amorphousness of ournational unity, with our helplessness before the attack of disastersfrom without and our unreasoning self-obstructions from within, —thepunishment has been terrible. Our stupefaction has become so absolutethat we do not even realise that this persistent misfortune, doggingour steps for ages, cannot be a mere accident of history, removableonly 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 claimfreedom in politics, but we also lack the power to maintain it withall our strength. For that would be like assigning the service of Godto a confirmed atheist. And men, who contemptuously treat their ownbrothers and sisters as eternal babies, never to be trusted in themost trivial details of their personal life, —coercing them at everystep by the cruel threat of persecution into following a blind laneleading to nowhere, driving a number of them into hypocrisy and intomoral inertia, —will fail over and over again to rise to the height oftheir true and severe responsibility. They will be incapable ofholding a just freedom in politics, and of fighting in freedom'scause. 

The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine whichmust move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel, keeping up the steam-power. It represents the active aspect of inertiawhich has the appearance of freedom, but not its truth, and thereforegives rise to slavery both within its boundaries and outside. Thepresent civilisation of India has the constraining power of the mould. It squeezes living man in the grip of rigid regulations, and itsrepression of individual freedom makes it only too easy for men to beforced into submission of all kinds and degrees. In both of thesetraditions life is offered up to something which is not life; it is asacrifice, which has no God for its worship, and is therefore utterlyin vain. The West is continually producing mechanical power in excessof its spiritual control, and India has produced a system ofmechanical 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 inneraspects 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 ofthe people and the methods of nation-organising. It is like thestruggle that began in Central Asia between cultivated areas of man'shabitation and the continually encroaching desert sands, till thehuman region of life and beauty was choked out of existence. When thespread of higher ideals of humanity is not held to be important, thehardening method of national efficiency gains a certain strength; andfor some limited period of time, at least, it proudly asserts itselfas the fittest to survive. But it is the survival of that part of manwhich is the least living. And this is the reason why dead monotony isthe sign of the spread of the Nation. The modern towns, which presentthe physiognomy due to this dominance of the Nation, are everywherethe same, from San Francisco to London, from London to Tokyo. Theyshow no faces, but merely masks. 

The peoples, being living personalities, must have theirself-expression, and this leads to their distinctive creations. Thesecreations are literature, art, social symbols and ceremonials. Theyare like different dishes at one common feast. They add richness toour enjoyment and understanding of truth. They are making the world ofman fertile of life and variedly beautiful. 

But the nations do not create, they merely produce and destroy. Organisations for production are necessary. Even organisations fordestruction may be so. But when, actuated by greed and hatred, theycrowd away into a corner the living man who creates, then the harmonyis lost, and the people's history runs at a break-neck speed towardssome fatal catastrophe. 

Humanity, where it is living, is guided by inner ideals; but where itis a dead organisation it becomes impervious to them. Its buildingprocess is only an external process, and in its response to the moralguidance it has to pass through obstacles that are gross andnon-plastic. 

Man as a person has his individuality, which is the field where hisspirit has its freedom to express itself and to grow. The professionalman carries a rigid crust around him which has very little variationand hardly any elasticity. This professionalism is the region wheremen specialise their knowledge and organise their power, mercilesslyelbowing each other in their struggle to come to the front. Professionalism is necessary, without doubt; but it must not beallowed to exceed its healthy limits, to assume complete mastery overthe personal man, making him narrow and hard, exclusively intent uponpursuit of success at the cost of his faith in ideals. 

In ancient India professions were kept within limits by socialregulation. They were considered primarily as social necessities, andin the second place as the means of livelihood for individuals. Thusman, 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 cultis becoming their greatest danger, because it is bringing themenormous success, making them impatient of the claims of higherideals. The greater the amount of success, the stronger are theconflicts of interest and jealousy and hatred which are aroused inmen's minds, thereby making it more and more necessary for otherpeoples, who are still living, to stiffen into nations. With thegrowth of nationalism, man has become the greatest menace to man. Therefore the continual presence of panic goads that very nationalisminto ever-increasing menace. 

Crowd psychology is a blind force. Like steam and other physicalforces, it can be utilised for creating a tremendous amount of power. And therefore rulers of men, who, out of greed and fear, are bent uponturning their peoples into machines of power, try to train this crowdpsychology for their special purposes. They hold it to be their dutyto foster in the popular mind universal panic, unreasoning pride intheir own race, and hatred of others. Newspapers, school-books, andeven religious services are made use of for this object; and thosewho have the courage to express their disapprobation of this blind andimpious cult are either punished in the law-courts, or are sociallyostracised. The individual thinks, even when he feels; but the sameindividual, when he feels with the crowd, does not reason at all. Hismoral sense becomes blurred. This suppression of higher humanity incrowd minds is productive of enormous strength. For the crowd mind isessentially primitive; its forces are elemental. Therefore the Nationis for ever watching to take advantage of this enormous power ofdarkness. 

The people's instinct of self-preservation has been made dominant atparticular times of crisis. Then, for the time being, theconsciousness of its solidarity becomes aggressively wide-awake. Butin the Nation this hyper-consciousness is kept alive for all time byartificial means. A man has to act the part of a policeman when hefinds his house invaded by burglars. But if that remains his normalcondition, then his consciousness of his household becomes acute andover-wrought, making him fly at every stranger passing near his house. This intensity of self-consciousness is nothing of which a man shouldfeel proud; certainly it is not healthful. In like manner, incessantself-consciousness in a nation is highly injurious for the people. Itserves its immediate purpose, but at the cost of the eternal in man. 

When a whole body of men train themselves for a particular narrowpurpose, it becomes a common interest with them to keep up thatpurpose and preach absolute loyalty to it. Nationalism is the trainingof a whole people for a narrow ideal; and when it gets hold of theirminds it is sure to lead them to moral degeneracy and intellectualblindness. We cannot but hold firm the faith that this Age ofNationalism, of gigantic vanity and selfishness, is only a passingphase in civilisation, and those who are making permanent arrangementsfor accommodating this temporary mood of history will be unable to fitthemselves for the coming age, when the true spirit of freedom willhave sway. 

With the unchecked growth of Nationalism the moral foundation of man'scivilisation is unconsciously undergoing a change. The ideal of thesocial man is unselfishness, but the ideal of the Nation, like that ofthe professional man, is selfishness. This is why selfishness in theindividual is condemned, while in the nation it is extolled, whichleads to hopeless moral blindness, confusing the religion of thepeople with the religion of the nation. Therefore, to take an example, we find men more and more convinced of the superior claims ofChristianity, merely because Christian nations are in possession ofthe greater part of the world. It is like supporting a robber'sreligion by quoting the amount of his stolen property. Nationscelebrate their successful massacre of men in their churches. Theyforget that Thugs also ascribed their success in manslaughter to thefavour of their goddess. But in the case of the latter their goddessfrankly represented the principle of destruction. It was the criminaltribe's own murderous instinct deified—the instinct, not of oneindividual, but of the whole community, and therefore held sacred. Inthe same manner, in modern churches, selfishness, hatred and vanity intheir collective aspect of national instincts do not scruple to sharethe homage paid to God. 

Of course, pursuit of self-interest need not be wholly selfish; it caneven be in harmony with the interest of all. Therefore, ideallyspeaking, the nationalism, which stands for the expression of thecollective self-interest of a people, need not be ashamed of itselfif it maintains its true limitations. But what we see in practice is, that every nation which has prospered has done so through its careerof aggressive selfishness either in commercial adventures or inforeign possessions, or in both. And this material prosperity not onlyfeeds continually the selfish instincts of the people, but impressesmen's minds with the lesson that, for a nation, selfishness is anecessity and therefore a virtue. It is the emphasis laid in Europeupon the idea of the Nation's constant increase of power, which isbecoming the greatest danger to man, both in its direct activity andits power of infection. 

We must admit that evils there are in human nature, in spite of ourfaith in moral laws and our training in self-control. But they carryon their foreheads their own brand of infamy, their very successadding to their monstrosity. All through man's history there will besome who suffer, and others who cause suffering. The conquest of evilwill never be a fully accomplished fact, but a continuous process likethe process of burning in a flame. 

In former ages, when some particular people became turbulent and triedto rob others of their human rights, they sometimes achieved successand sometimes failed. And it amounted to nothing more than that. Butwhen this idea of the Nation, which has met with universal acceptancein the present day, tries to pass off the cult of collectiveselfishness as a moral duty, simply because that selfishness isgigantic in stature, it not only commits depredation, but attacks thevery vitals of humanity. It unconsciously generates in people's mindsan attitude of defiance against moral law. For men are taught byrepeated devices the lesson that the Nation is greater than thepeople, while yet it scatters to the winds the moral law that thepeople have held sacred. 

It has been said that a disease becomes most acutely critical when thebrain is affected. For it is the brain that is constantly directingthe siege against all disease forces. The spirit of nationalselfishness is that brain disease of a people which shows itself inred eyes and clenched fists, in violence of talk and movements, allthe while shattering its natural restorative powers. But the power ofself-sacrifice, together with the moral faculty of sympathy andco-operation, is the guiding spirit of social vitality. Its functionis to maintain a beneficent relation of harmony with itssurroundings. But when it begins to ignore the moral law which isuniversal and uses it only within the bounds of its own narrow sphere, then its strength becomes like the strength of madness which ends inself-destruction. 

What is worse, this aberration of a people, decked with the showytitle of "patriotism, " proudly walks abroad, passing itself off as ahighly moral influence. Thus it has spread its inflammatory contagionall over the world, proclaiming its fever flush to be the best sign ofhealth. It is causing in the hearts of peoples, naturally inoffensive, a feeling of envy at not having their temperature as high as that oftheir delirious neighbours and not being able to cause as muchmischief, but merely having to suffer from it. 

I have often been asked by my Western friends how to cope with thisevil, which has attained such sinister strength and vast dimensions. In fact, I have often been blamed for merely giving warning, andoffering no alternative. When we suffer as a result of a particularsystem, 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 systemwhich is national to-day may assume the shape of the internationalto-morrow; but so long as men have not forsaken their idolatry ofprimitive instincts and collective passions, the new system will onlybecome a new instrument of suffering. And because we are trained toconfound efficient system with moral goodness itself, every ruinedsystem makes us more and more distrustful of moral law. 

Therefore I do not put my faith in any new institution, but in theindividuals all over the world who think clearly, feel nobly, and actrightly, thus becoming the channels of moral truth. Our moral idealsdo not work with chisels and hammers. Like trees, they spread theirroots in the soil and their branches in the sky, without consultingany architect for their plans. 

 WOMAN AND HOME

Creative expressions attain their perfect form through emotionsmodulated. Woman has that expression natural to her—a cadence ofrestraint in her behaviour, producing poetry of life. She has been aninspiration to man, guiding, most often unconsciously, his restlessenergy into an immense variety of creations in literature, art, musicand religion. This is why, in India, woman has been described as thesymbol of Shakti, the creative power. 

But if woman begins to believe that, though biologically her functionis different from that of man, psychologically she is identical withhim; if the human world in its mentality becomes exclusively male, then before long it will be reduced to utter inanity. For life findsits truth and beauty, not in any exaggeration of sameness, but inharmony. 

If woman's nature were identical with man's, if Eve were a meretautology of Adam, it would only give rise to a monotonoussuperfluity. But that she was not so was proved by the banishment shesecured from a ready-made Paradise. She had the instinctive wisdom torealise that it was her mission to help her mate in creating aParadise of their own on earth, whose ideal she was to supply with herlife, whose materials were to be produced and gathered by her comrade. 

However, it is evident that an increasing number of women in the Westare ready to assert that their difference from men is unimportant. Thereason for the vehement utterance of such a paradox cannot be ignored. It is a rebellion against a necessity, which is not equal for both thepartners. 

Love in all forms has its obligations, and the love that binds womento their children binds them to their homes. But necessity is atyrant, making us submit to injury and indignity, allowing advantageover us to those who are wholly or comparatively free from its burden. Such has been the case in the social relationship between man andwoman. Along with the difference inherent in their respective natures, there have grown up between them inequalities fostered bycircumstances. Man is not handicapped by the same biological andpsychological responsibilities as woman, and therefore he has theliberty to give her the security of home. This liberty exacts paymentwhen it offers its boon, because to give or to withhold the gift iswithin its power. It is the unequal freedom in their mutualrelationships which has made the weight of life's tragedies sopainfully heavy for woman to bear. 

Some mitigation of her disadvantage has been effected by her renderingherself and her home a luxury to man. She has accentuated thosequalities in herself which insidiously impose their bondage over hermate, some by pandering to his weakness, and some by satisfying hishigher nature, till the sex-consciousness in our society has grownabnormal and overpowering. There is no actual objection to this initself, for it offers a stimulus, acting in the depth of life, whichleads to creative exuberance. But a great deal of it is a forcedgrowth of compulsion bearing seeds of degradation. In those ages whenmen acknowledged spiritual perfection to be their object, women weredenounced as the chief obstacle in their way. The constant andconscious exercise of allurements, which gave women their power, attacked the weak spots in man's nature, and by doing so added to itsweakness. For all relationships tainted with repression of freedommust become sources of degeneracy to the strong who impose suchrepression. 

Balance of power, however, between man and woman was in a measureestablished when home wielded a strong enough attraction to make menaccept its obligations. But at last the time has come when thematerial ambition of man has assumed such colossal proportions thathome is in danger of losing its centre of gravity for him, and he isreceding farther and farther from its orbit. 

The arid zone in the social life is spreading fast. The simplecomforts of home, made precious by the touch of love, are giving wayto luxuries that can only have their full extension in the isolationof self-centred life. Hotels are being erected on the ruins of homes;productions are growing more stupendous than creations; and most menhave, for the materials of their happiness and recreation, their dogsand horses, their pipes, guns, and gambling clubs. 

Reactions and rebellions, not being normal in their character, go onhurting truth until peace is restored. Therefore, when woman refusesto acknowledge the distinction between her life and that of man, shedoes not convince us of its truth, but only proves to us that she issuffering. All great sufferings indicate some wrong somewhere. In thepresent case, the wrong is in woman's lack of freedom in herrelationship with man, which compels her to turn her disabilities intoattractions, 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 thetraining which imparts to their life and to their home a spirit ofharmony. It is their instinct to perform their services in such amanner that these, through beauty, might be raised from the domain ofslavery to the realm of grace. Women have tried to prove that in thebuilding up of social life they are artists and not artisans. But allexpressions of beauty lose their truth when compelled to accept thepatronage of the gross and the indifferent. Therefore when necessitydrives women to fashion their lives to the taste of the insensitive orthe sensual, then the whole thing becomes a tragedy of desecration. Society is full of such tragedies. Many of the laws and socialregulations guiding the relationships of man and woman are relics ofa barbaric age, when the brutal pride of an exclusive possession hadits dominance in human relations, such as those of parents andchildren, husbands and wives, masters and servants, teachers anddisciples. The vulgarity of it still persists in the social bondbetween the sexes because of the economic helplessness of woman. Nothing makes us so stupidly mean as the sense of superiority whichthe power of the purse confers upon us. 

The powers of muscle and of money have opportunities of immediatesatisfaction, but the power of the ideal must have infinite patience. The man who sells his goods, or fulfils his contract, is cheated if hefails to realise payment, but he who gives form to some ideal maynever get his due and be fully paid. What I have felt in the women ofIndia is the consciousness of this ideal—their simple faith in thesanctity of devotion lighted by love which is held to be divine. Truewomanliness is regarded in our country as the saintliness of love. Itis not merely praised there, but literally worshipped; and she who isgifted 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 eternalfeminine aspect. Thus the Eastern woman, who is deeply aware in herheart of the sacredness of her mission, is a constant education toman. It has to be admitted that there are chances of such an influencefailing to penetrate the callousness of the coarse-minded; but that isthe destiny of all manifestations whose value is not in success orreward in honour. 

Woman has to be ready to suffer. She cannot allow her emotions to bedulled or polluted, for these are to create her life's atmosphere, apart from which her world would be dark and dead. This leaves herheart without any protection of insensibility, at the mercy of thehurts and insults of life. Women of India, like women everywhere, havetheir share of suffering, but it radiates through the ideal, andbecomes, like sunlight, a creative force in their world. Our womenknow by heart the legends of the great women of the epic age—Savitriwho by the power of love conquered death, and Sitâ who had no otherreward 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 lifeeternal, and that love's mission truly performed has a spiritualmeaning. It is a religious responsibility for them to live the lifewhich is their own. For their activity is not for money-making, ororganising power, or intellectually probing the mystery of existence, but for establishing and maintaining human relationships requiring thehighest moral qualities. It is the consciousness of the spiritualcharacter of their life's work, which lifts them above the utilitarianstandard of the immediate and the passing, surrounds them with thedignity of the eternal, and transmutes their suffering and sorrow intoa crown of light. 

I must guard myself from the risk of a possible misunderstanding. Thepermanent significance of home is not in the narrowness of itsenclosure, but in an eternal moral idea. It represents the truth ofhuman relationship; it reveals loyalty and love for the personality ofman. Let us take a wider view, in a perspective truer than can befound in its present conventional associations. With the discovery anddevelopment of agriculture there came a period of settled life in ourhistory. The nomad ever moved on with his tents and cattle; heexplored space and exploited its contents. The cultivator of landexplored time in its immensity, for he had leisure. Comparativelysecured from the uncertainty of his outer resources, he had theopportunity to deal with his moral resources in the realm of humantruth. This is why agricultural civilisation, like that of India andChina, is essentially a civilisation of human relationship, of theadjustment of mutual obligations. It is deep-rooted in the inner lifeof man. Its basis is co-operation and not competition. In other words, its principle is the principle of home, to which all its outeradventures are subordinated. 

In the meanwhile, the nomadic life with its predatory instinct ofexploitation has developed into a great civilisation. It is immenselyproud and strong, killing leisure and pursuing opportunities. Itminimises the claims of personal relationship and is jealously carefulof its unhampered freedom for acquiring wealth and asserting its willupon others. Its burden is the burden of things, which grows heavierand more complex every day, disregarding the human and the spiritual. Its powerful pressure from all sides narrows the limits of home, thepersonal region of the human world. Thus, in this region of life, women are every day hustled out of their shelter for want ofaccommodation. 

But such a state of things can never have the effect of changing womaninto man. On the contrary, it will lead her to find her place in theunlimited range of society, and the Guardian Spirit of the personal inhuman nature will extend the ministry of woman over all developmentsof life. Habituated to deal with the world as a machine, man ismultiplying his materials, banishing away his happiness andsacrificing love to comfort, which is an illusion. At last the presentage has sent its cry to woman, asking her to come out from hersegregation in order to restore the spiritual supremacy of all that ishuman in the world of humanity. She has been aroused to remember thatwomanliness is not chiefly decorative. It is like that vital health, which not only imparts the bloom of beauty to the body, but joy to themind and perfection to life. 

 AN EASTERN UNIVERSITY

In the midst of much that is discouraging in the present state of theworld, there is one symptom of vital promise. Asia is awakening. Thisgreat event, if it be but directed along the right lines, is full ofhope, not only for Asia herself, but for the whole world. 

On the other hand, it has to be admitted that the relationship of theWest with the East, growing more and more complex and widespread forover two centuries, far from attaining its true fulfilment, has givenrise to a universal spirit of conflict. The consequent strain andunrest have profoundly disturbed Asia, and antipathetic forces havebeen accumulating for years in the depth of the Eastern mind. 

The meeting of the East and the West has remained incomplete, becausethe occasions of it have not been disinterested. The political andcommercial adventures carried on by Western races—very often byforce and against the interest and wishes of the countries they havedealt with—have created a moral alienation, which is deeply injuriousto both parties. The perils threatened by this unnatural relationshiphave long been contemptuously ignored by the West. But the blindconfidence of the strong in their apparent invincibility has often ledthem, from their dream of security, into terrible surprises ofhistory. 

It is not the fear of danger or loss to one people or another, however, which is most important. The demoralising influence of theconstant estrangement between the two hemispheres, which affects thebaser 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 thesituation, and to control it, with a stronger trust in moral guidancethan in any array of physical forces. 

In the beginning of man's history his first social object was to forma community, to grow into a people. At that early period, individualswere gathered together within geographical enclosures. But in thepresent age, with its facility of communication, geographical barriershave almost lost their reality, and the great federation of men, whichis waiting either to find its true scope or to break asunder in afinal catastrophe, is not a meeting of individuals, but of varioushuman races. Now the problem before us is of one single country, whichis this earth, where the races as individuals must find both theirfreedom of self-expression and their bond of federation. Mankind mustrealise a unity, wider in range, deeper in sentiment, stronger inpower than ever before. Now that the problem is large, we have tosolve it on a bigger scale, to realise the God in man by a largerfaith and to build the temple of our faith on a sure and world-widebasis. 

The first step towards realisation is to create opportunities forrevealing the different peoples to one another. This can never be donein those fields where the exploiting utilitarian spirit is supreme. Wemust find some meeting-ground, where there can be no question ofconflicting interests. One of such places is the University, where wecan work together in a common pursuit of truth, share together ourcommon heritage, and realise that artists in all parts of the worldhave created forms of beauty, scientists discovered secrets of theuniverse, philosophers solved the problems of existence, saints madethe truth of the spiritual world organic in their own lives, notmerely for some particular race to which they belonged, but for allmankind. When the science of meteorology knows the earth's atmosphereas continuously one, affecting the different parts of the worlddifferently, but in a harmony of adjustments, it knows and attainstruth. And so, too, we must know that the great mind of man is one, working through the many differences which are needed to ensure thefull result of its fundamental unity. When we understand this truth ina disinterested spirit, it teaches us to respect all the differencesin man that are real, yet remain conscious of our oneness; and to knowthat perfection of unity is not in uniformity, but in harmony. 

This is the problem of the present age. The East, for its own sake andfor the sake of the world, must not remain unrevealed. The deepestsource of all calamities in history is misunderstanding. For where wedo not understand, we can never be just. 

Being strongly impressed with the need and the responsibility, whichevery individual to-day must realise according to his power, I haveformed the nucleus of an International University in India, as one ofthe best means of promoting mutual understanding between the East andthe West. This Institution, according to the plan I have in mind, willinvite students from the West to study the different systems of Indianphilosophy, literature, art and music in their proper environment, encouraging them to carry on research work in collaboration with thescholars already engaged in this task. 

India has her renaissance. She is preparing to make her contributionto the world of the future. In the past she produced her greatculture, and in the present age she has an equally importantcontribution to make to the culture of the New World which is emergingfrom the wreckage of the Old. This is a momentous period of herhistory, pregnant with precious possibilities, when any disinterestedoffer of co-operation from any part of the West will have an immensemoral value, the memory of which will become brighter as theregeneration of the East grows in vigour and creative power. 

The Western Universities give their students an opportunity to learnwhat all the European peoples have contributed to their Westernculture. Thus the intellectual mind of the West has been luminouslyrevealed to the world. What is needed to complete this illumination isfor the East to collect its own scattered lamps and offer them to theenlightenment 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. Nowhas come the age of co-ordination and co-operation. The seedlings thatwere reared within narrow plots must now be transplanted into the openfields. They must pass the test of the world-market, if their maximumvalue is to be obtained. 

But before Asia is in a position to co-operate with the culture ofEurope, she must base her own structure on a synthesis of all thedifferent cultures which she has. When, taking her stand on such aculture, she turns toward the West, she will take, with a confidentsense of mental freedom, her own view of truth, from her ownvantage-ground, and open a new vista of thought to the world. Otherwise, she will allow her priceless inheritance to crumble intodust, and, trying to replace it clumsily with feeble imitations of theWest, make herself superfluous, cheap and ludicrous. If she thusloses her individuality and her specific power to exist, will it inthe least help the rest of the world? Will not her terrible bankruptcyinvolve also the Western mind? If the whole world grows at last intoan exaggerated West, then such an illimitable parody of the modern agewill die, crushed beneath its own absurdity. 

In this belief, it is my desire to extend by degrees the scope of thisUniversity on simple lines, until it comprehends the whole range ofEastern cultures—the Aryan, Semitic, Mongolian and others. Its objectwill be to reveal the Eastern mind to the world. 

Of one thing I felt certain during my travels in Europe, that agenuine interest has been roused there in the philosophy and the artsof the East, from which the Western mind seeks fresh inspiration oftruth and beauty. Once the East had her reputation of fabulous wealth, and the seekers were attracted from across the sea. Since then, theshrine of wealth has changed its site. But the East is famed also forher storage of wisdom, harvested by her patriarchs from longsuccessive ages of spiritual endeavour. And when, as now, in the midstof the pursuit of power and wealth, there rises the cry of privationfrom the famished spirit of man, an opportunity is offered to the Eastto offer her store to those who need it. 

Once upon a time we were in possession of such a thing as our own mindin India. It was living. It thought, it felt, it expressed itself. Itwas receptive as well as productive. That this mind could be of anyuse in the process, or in the end, of our education was overlooked byour modern educational dispensation. We are provided with buildingsand books and other magnificent burdens calculated to suppress ourmind. The latter was treated like a library-shelf solidly made ofwood, to be loaded with leather-bound volumes of second-handinformation. In consequence, it has lost its own colour and character, and has borrowed polish from the carpenter's shop. All this has costus money, and also our finer ideas, while our intellectual vacancy hasbeen 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 theWest, 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 herseat is on a lotus-flower. The symbolic meaning of this is, that shedwells in the centre of life and the heart of all existence, whichopens itself in beauty to the light of heaven. 

The Western education which we have chanced to know is impersonal. Itscomplexion is also white, but it is the whiteness of the white-washedclass-room walls. It dwells in the cold-storage compartments oflessons and the ice-packed minds of the schoolmasters. The effectwhich it had on my mind when, as a boy, I was compelled to go toschool, I have described elsewhere. My feeling was very much the sameas a tree might have, which was not allowed to live its full life, butwas cut down to be made into packing-cases. 

The introduction of this education was not a part of the solemnmarriage ceremony which was to unite the minds of the East and West inmutual understanding. It represented an artificial method of trainingspecially calculated to produce the carriers of the white man'sburden. This want of ideals still clings to our education system, though our Universities have latterly burdened their syllabus with agreater number of subjects than before. But it is only like adding tothe bags of wheat the bullock carries to market; it does not make thebullock any better off. 

Mind, when long deprived of its natural food of truth and freedom ofgrowth, develops an unnatural craving for success; and our studentshave fallen victims to the mania for success in examinations. Successconsists in obtaining the largest number of marks with the strictesteconomy of knowledge. It is a deliberate cultivation of disloyalty totruth, of intellectual dishonesty, of a foolish imposition by whichthe mind is encouraged to rob itself. But as we are by means of itmade to forget the existence of mind, we are supremely happy at theresult. We pass examinations, and shrivel up into clerks, lawyers andpolice inspectors, and we die young. 

Universities should never be made into mechanical organisations forcollecting and distributing knowledge. Through them the people shouldoffer their intellectual hospitality, their wealth of mind to others, and earn their proud right in return to receive gifts from the rest ofthe world. But in the whole length and breadth of India there is not asingle University established in the modern time where a foreign oran Indian student can properly be acquainted with the best productsof the Indian mind. For that we have to cross the sea, and knock atthe doors of France and Germany. Educational institutions in ourcountry are India's alms-bowl of knowledge; they lower ourintellectual self-respect; they encourage us to make a foolish displayof decorations composed of borrowed feathers. 

This it was that led me to found a school in Bengal, in face of manydifficulties and discouragements, and in spite of my own vocation as apoet, who finds his true inspiration only when he forgets that he is aschoolmaster. It is my hope that in this school a nucleus has beenformed, round which an indigenous University of our own land will findits natural growth—a University which will help India's mind toconcentrate and to be fully conscious of itself; free to seek thetruth and make this truth its own wherever found, to judge by its ownstandard, give expression to its own creative genius, and offer itswisdom to the guests who come from other parts of the world. 

Man's intellect has a natural pride in its own aristocracy, which isthe pride of its culture. Culture only acknowledges the excellencewhose criticism is in its inner perfection, not in any externalsuccess. When this pride succumbs to some compulsion of necessity orlure of material advantage, it brings humiliation to the intellectualman. Modern India, through her very education, has been made to sufferthis humiliation. Once she herself provided her children with aculture 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 ofpassing examinations, not for learning anything, but for notifyingthat we are qualified for employments under organisations conducted inEnglish. Our educated community is not a cultured community, but acommunity of qualified candidates. Meanwhile the proportion ofpossible employments to the number of claimants has gradually beengrowing narrower, and the consequent disaffection has been widespread. At last the very authorities who are responsible for this are blamingtheir victims. Such is the perversity of human nature. It bears itsworst grudge against those it has injured. 

It is as if some tribe which had the primitive habit of decorating itstribal members with birds' plumage were some day to hold these verybirds guilty of the crime of being extinct. There are belatedattempts on the part of our governors to read us pious homilies aboutdisinterested love of learning, while the old machinery goes onworking, whose product is not education but certificates. It is goodto remind the fettered bird that its wings are for soaring; but it isbetter to cut the chain which is holding it to its perch. The mostpathetic feature of the tragedy is that the bird itself has learnt touse its chain for its ornament, simply because the chain jingles infairly respectable English. 

In the Bengali language there is a modern maxim which can betranslated, "He who learns to read and write rides in a carriage andpair. " In English there is a similar proverb, "Knowledge is power. " Itis an offer of a prospective bribe to the student, a promise of anulterior reward which is more important than knowledge itself. Temptations, held before us as inducements to be good or to pursueuncongenial paths, are most often flimsy lies or half-truths, such asthe oft-quoted maxim of respectable piety, "Honesty is the bestpolicy, " at which politicians all over the world seem to laugh intheir sleeves. But unfortunately, education conducted under a specialprovidence of purposefulness, of eating the fruit of knowledge fromthe wrong end, _does_ lead one to that special paradise on earth, thedaily rides in one's own carriage and pair. And the West, I have heardfrom authentic sources, is aspiring in its education after thatspecial cultivation of worldliness. 

Where society is comparatively simple and obstructions are not toonumerous, we can clearly see how the life-process guides education inits vital purpose. The system of folk-education, which is indigenousto India, but is dying out, was one with the people's life. It flowednaturally through the social channels and made its way everywhere. Itis a system of widespread irrigation of culture. Its teachers, specially trained men, are in constant requisition, and find crowdedmeetings in our villages, where they repeat the best thoughts andexpress the ideals of the land in the most effective form. The mode ofinstruction includes the recitation of epics, expounding of thescriptures, reading from the Puranas, which are the classical recordsof old history, performance of plays founded upon the early myths andlegends, dramatic narration of the lives of ancient heroes, and thesinging in chorus of songs from the old religious literature. Evidently, according to this system, the best function of educationis to enable us to realise that to live as a man is great, requiringprofound philosophy for its ideal, poetry for its expression, andheroism in its conduct. Owing to this vital method of culture thecommon people of India, though technically illiterate, have been madeconscious of the sanctity of social relationships, entailing constantsacrifice and self-control, urged and supported by ideals collectivelyexpressed in one word, _Dharma_. 

Such a system of education may sound too simple for the complexitiesof modern life. But the fundamental principle of social life in itsdifferent stages of development remains the same; and in nocircumstance can the truth be ignored that all human complexities mustharmonise in organic unity with life, failing which there will beendless conflict. Most things in the civilised world occupy more thantheir legitimate space. Much of their burden is needless. By bearingthis burden civilised man may be showing great strength, but hedisplays little skill. To the gods, viewing this from on high, it mustseem like the flounderings of a giant who has got out of his depth andknows not how to swim. 

The main source of all forms of voluntary slavery is the desire ofgain. It is difficult to fight against this when modern civilisationis tainted with such a universal contamination of avarice. I haverealised it myself in the little boys of my own school. For the firstfew years there is no trouble. But as soon as the upper class isreached, their worldly wisdom—the malady of the aged—begins toassert itself. They rebelliously insist that they must no longerlearn, but rather pass examinations. Professions in the modern age aremore numerous and lucrative than ever before. They need specialisationof training and knowledge, tempting education to yield its spiritualfreedom to the claims of utilitarian ambitions. But man's deepernature is hurt; his smothered life seeks to be liberated from thesuffocating folds and sensual ties of prosperity. And this is why wefind almost everywhere in the world a growing dissatisfaction with theprevalent system of teaching, which betrays the encroachment ofsenility and worldly prudence over pure intellect. 

In India, also, a vague feeling of discontent has given rise tonumerous attempts at establishing national schools and colleges. But, unfortunately, our very education has been successful in depriving usof our real initiative and our courage of thought. The training we getin our schools has the constant implication in it that it is not forus to produce but to borrow. And we are casting about to borrow oureducational plans from European institutions. The trampled plants ofIndian corn are dreaming of recouping their harvest from theneighbouring wheat fields. To change the figure, we forget that, forproficiency in walking, it is better to train the muscles of our ownlegs than to strut upon wooden ones of foreign make, although theyclatter and cause more surprise at our skill in using them than ifthey were living and real. 

But when we go to borrow help from a foreign neighbourhood we are aptto overlook the real source of help behind all that is external andapparent. Had the deep-water fishes happened to produce a scientistwho chose the jumping of a monkey for his research work, I am sure hewould give most of the credit to the branches of the trees and verylittle to the monkey itself. In a foreign University we see thebranching wildernesses of its buildings, furniture, regulations, andsyllabus, but the monkey, which is a difficult creature to catch andmore difficult to manufacture, we are likely to treat as a mereaccident of minor importance. It is convenient for us to overlook thefact that among the Europeans the living spirit of the University iswidely spread in their society, their parliament, their literature, and the numerous activities of their corporate life. In all thesefunctions they are in perpetual touch with the great personality ofthe land which is creative and heroic in its constant acts ofself-expression and self-sacrifice. They have their thoughts publishedin their books as well as through the medium of living men who thinkthose thoughts, and who criticise, compare and disseminate them. Someat least of the drawbacks of their academic education are redeemed bythe living energy of the intellectual personality pervading theirsocial organism. It is like the stagnant reservoir of water whichfinds its purification in the showers of rain to which it keeps itselfopen. But, to our misfortune, we have in India all the furniture ofthe European University except the human teacher. We have, instead, mere purveyors of book-lore in whom the paper god of the bookshop hasbeen made vocal. 

A most important truth, which we are apt to forget, is that a teachercan never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp cannever 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 livingtraffic with his knowledge, but merely repeats his lessons to hisstudents, can only load their minds; he cannot quicken them. Truth notonly must inform but inspire. If the inspiration dies out, and theinformation only accumulates, then truth loses its infinity. Thegreater part of our learning in the schools has been wasted because, for most of our teachers, their subjects are like dead specimens ofonce living things, with which they have a learned acquaintance, butno communication of life and love. 

The educational institution, therefore, which I have in mind hasprimarily for its object the constant pursuit of truth, from which theimparting of truth naturally follows. It must not be a dead cage inwhich living minds are fed with food artificially prepared. It shouldbe an open house, in which students and teachers are at one. They mustlive their complete life together, dominated by a common aspirationfor truth and a need of sharing all the delights of culture. In formerdays the great master-craftsmen had students in their workshops wherethey co-operated in shaping things to perfection. That was the placewhere knowledge could become living—that knowledge which not only hasits substance and law, but its atmosphere subtly informed by acreative personality. For intellectual knowledge also has its aspectof creative art, in which the man who explores truth expressessomething which is human in him—his enthusiasm, his courage, hissacrifice, his honesty, and his skill. In merely academical teachingwe find subjects, but not the man who pursues the subjects; thereforethe vital part of education remains incomplete. 

For our Universities we must claim, not labelled packages of truth andauthorised agents to distribute them, but truth in its livingassociation with her lovers and seekers and discoverers. Also we mustknow that the concentration of the mind-forces scattered throughoutthe country is the most important mission of a University, which, likethe nucleus of a living cell, should be the centre of the intellectuallife 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 Indiahas so many different languages. Such a statement is as unreasonableas to say that man, because he has a diversity of limbs, should findit impossible to realise life's unity in himself, and that only anearthworm composed of a tail and nothing else could truly know that ithad a body. 

Let us admit that India is not like any one of the great countries ofEurope, which has its own separate language; but is rather like Europeherself, branching out into different peoples with many differentlanguages. And yet Europe has a common civilisation, with anintellectual unity which is not based upon uniformity of language. Itis true that in the earlier stages of her culture the whole of Europehad Latin for her learned tongue. That was in her intellectual buddingtime, when all her petals of self-expression were closed in one point. But the perfection of her mental unfolding was not represented by thesingularity of her literary vehicle. When the great European countriesfound their individual languages, then only the true federation ofcultures became possible in the West, and the very differences of thechannels made the commerce of ideas in Europe so richly copious and sovariedly active. We can well imagine what the loss to Europeancivilisation would be if France, Italy and Germany, and Englandherself, had not through their separate agencies contributed to thecommon coffer their individual earnings. 

There was a time with us when India had her common language of culturein Sanskrit. But, for the complete commerce of her thought, sherequired that all her vernaculars should attain their perfect powers, through which her different peoples might manifest theiridiosyncrasies; and this could never be done through a foreign tongue. 

In the United States, in Canada and other British Colonies, thelanguage of the people is English. It has a great literature which hadits birth and growth in the history of the British Islands. But whenthis language, with all its products and acquisitions, matured by ageson its own mother soil, is carried into foreign lands, which havetheir own separate history and their own life-growth, it mustconstantly hamper the indigenous growth of culture and destroyindividuality 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 aswhen lungs are given to the whale in the sea. If such is the case evenwith races whose grandmother-tongue naturally continues to be theirown mother-tongue, one can imagine what sterility it means for apeople which accepts, for its vehicle of culture, an altogetherforeign language. A language is not like an umbrella or an overcoat, that can be borrowed by unconscious or deliberate mistake; it is likethe living skin itself. If the body of a draught-horse enters into theskin of a race-horse, it will be safe to wager that such an anomalywill never win a race, and will fail even to drag a cart. Have we notwatched some modern Japanese artists imitating European art? Theimitation may sometimes produce clever results; but such clevernesshas 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 ofthe people are naturally attracted, where they find their genialatmosphere, in which to prove their worth and to contribute theirshare to the country's culture. Thus they kindle, on the common altarof the land, that great sacrificial fire which can radiate the sacredlight of wisdom abroad. 

Athens was such a centre in Greece, Rome in Italy; and Paris is suchto-day in France. Benares has been and still continues to be thecentre of our Sanskrit culture. But Sanskrit learning does not exhaustall the elements of culture that exist in modern India. 

If we were to take for granted, what some people maintain, thatWestern culture is the only source of light for our mind, then itwould be like depending for daybreak upon some star, which is the sunof 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 cannever open the full view of truth before our eyes. In fact, we cannever use this cold starlight for stirring the sap in our branches, and giving colour and bloom to our life. This is the reason whyEuropean education has become for India mere school lessons and noculture; 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 thesubtle mysteries of life are blended in one. 

Let me say clearly that I have no distrust of any culture because ofits foreign character. On the contrary, I believe that the shock ofsuch extraneous forces is necessary for the vitality of ourintellectual nature. It is admitted that much of the spirit ofChristianity runs counter, not only to the classical culture ofEurope, but to the European temperament altogether. And yet this alienmovement of ideas, constantly running against the natural mentalcurrent of Europe, has been a most important factor in strengtheningand enriching her civilisation, on account of the sharp antagonism ofits intellectual direction. In fact, the European vernaculars firstwoke up to life and fruitful vigour when they felt the impact of thisforeign thought-power with all its oriental forms and affinities. Thesame 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 giftto humanity for all time to come. We, in India, must claim it from herhands, and gratefully accept it in order to be saved from the curse offutility by lagging behind. We shall fail to reap the harvest of thepresent age if we delay. 

What I object to is the artificial arrangement by which foreigneducation tends to occupy all the space of our national mind, and thuskills, or hampers, the great opportunity for the creation of a newthought-power by a new combination of truths. It is this which makesme urge that all the elements in our own culture have to bestrengthened, not to resist the Western culture, but truly to acceptand assimilate it; to use it for our sustenance, not as our burden; toget mastery over this culture, and not to live on its outskirts as thehewers of texts and drawers of book-learning. 

The main river in Indian culture has flowed in four streams, —theVedic, the Puranic, the Buddhist, and the Jain. It has its source inthe heights of the Indian consciousness. But a river, belonging to acountry, is not fed by its own waters alone. The Tibetan Brahmaputrais a tributary to the Indian Ganges. Contributions have similarlyfound their way to India's original culture. The Muhammadan, forexample, has repeatedly come into India from outside, laden with hisown stores of knowledge and feeling and his wonderful religiousdemocracy, bringing freshet after freshet to swell the current. To ourmusic, our architecture, our pictorial art, our literature, theMuhammadans have made their permanent and precious contribution. Thosewho have studied the lives and writings of our medieval saints, andall the great religious movements that sprang up in the time of theMuhammadan rule, know how deep is our debt to this foreign currentthat has so intimately mingled with our life. 

So, in our centre of Indian learning, we must provide for theco-ordinate study of all these different cultures, —the Vedic, thePuranic, the Buddhist, the Jain, the Islamic, the Sikh and theZoroastrian. The Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan will also have to beadded; for, in the past, India did not remain isolated within her ownboundaries. Therefore, in order to learn what she was, in her relationto the whole continent of Asia, these cultures too must be studied. Side by side with them must finally be placed the Western culture. Foronly then shall we be able to assimilate this last contribution to ourcommon stock. A river flowing within banks is truly our own, and itcan contain its due tributaries; but our relations with a flood canonly prove disastrous. 

There are some who are exclusively modern, who believe that the pastis the bankrupt time, leaving no assets for us, but only a legacy ofdebts. They refuse to believe that the army which is marching forwardcan be fed from the rear. It is well to remind such persons that thegreat ages of renaissance in history were those when man suddenlydiscovered the seeds of thought in the granary of the past. 

The unfortunate people who have lost the harvest of their past havelost their present age. They have missed their seed for cultivation, and go begging for their bare livelihood. We must not imagine that weare one of these disinherited peoples of the world. The time has comefor us to break open the treasure-trove of our ancestors, and use itfor our commerce of life. Let us, with its help, make our future ourown, and not continue our existence as the eternal rag-pickers inother 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 receivesalmost exclusive emphasis. The Western universities have not yet trulyrecognised that fulness of expression is fulness of life. And a largepart of man can never find its expression in the mere language ofwords. It must therefore seek for its other languages, —lines andcolours, sounds and movements. Through our mastery of these we notonly make our whole nature articulate, but also understand man in allhis attempts to reveal his innermost being in every age and clime. Thegreat use of Education is not merely to collect facts, but to knowman and to make oneself known to man. It is the duty of every humanbeing to master, at least to some extent, not only the language ofintellect, but also that personality which is the language of Art. Itis a great world of reality for man, —vast and profound, —this growingworld of his own creative nature. This is the world of Art. To bebrought up in ignorance of it is to be deprived of the knowledge anduse of that great inheritance of humanity, which has been growing andwaiting for every one of us from the beginning of our history. It isto remain deaf to the eternal voice of Man, that speaks to all men themessages that are beyond speech. From the educational point of view weknow Europe where it is scientific, or at best literary. So our notionof its modern culture is limited within the boundary lines of grammarand the laboratory. We almost completely ignore the æsthetic life ofman, leaving it uncultivated, allowing weeds to grow there. Ournewspapers are prolific, our meeting-places are vociferous; and inthem we wear to shreds the things we have borrowed from our Englishteachers. We make the air dismal and damp with the tears of ourgrievances. But where are our arts, which, like the outbreak ofspring flowers, are the spontaneous overflow of our deeper nature andspiritual magnificence?

Through this great deficiency of our modern education, we arecondemned to carry to the end a dead load of dumb wisdom. Likemiserable outcasts, we are deprived of our place in the festival ofculture, and wait at the outer court, where the colours are not forus, nor the forms of delight, nor the songs. Ours is the education ofa prison-house, with hard labour and with a drab dress cut to thelimits of minimum decency and necessity. We are made to forget thatthe perfection of colour and form and expression belongs to theperfection of vitality, —that the joy of life is only the other sideof the strength of life. The timber merchant may think that theflowers and foliage are mere frivolous decorations of a tree; but ifthese are suppressed, he will know to his cost that the timber toowill fail. 

During the Moghal period, music and art in India found a great impetusfrom the rulers, because their whole life—not merely their officiallife—was lived in this land; and it is the wholeness of life fromwhich originates Art. But our English teachers are birds of passage;they cackle to us, but do not sing, —their true heart is not in theland of their exile. 

Constriction of life, owing to this narrowness of culture, must nolonger be encouraged. In the centre of Indian culture which I amproposing, music and art must have their prominent seats of honour, and not be given merely a tolerant nod of recognition. The differentsystems of music and different schools of art which lie scattered inthe different ages and provinces of India, and in the different strataof society, and also those belonging to the other great countries ofAsia, which had communication with India, have to be brought theretogether and studied. 

I have already hinted that Education should not be dragged out of itsnative element, the life-current of the people. Economic life coversthe whole width of the fundamental basis of society, because itsnecessities are the simplest and the most universal. Educationalinstitutions, in order to obtain their fulness of truth, must haveclose association with this economic life. The highest mission ofeducation is to help us to realise the inner principle of the unity ofall knowledge and all the activities of our social and spiritualbeing. Society in its early stage was held together by its economicco-operation, when all its members felt in unison a natural interestin their right to live. Civilisation could never have been started atall if such was not the case. And civilisation will fall to pieces ifit never again realises the spirit of mutual help and the commonsharing of benefits in the elemental necessaries of life. The idea ofsuch 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 naturaluniversities, were not shut off from the daily life of the people. Masters and students gathered fruit and fuel, and took their cattleout to graze, supporting themselves by the work of their own hands. Spiritual education was a part of the spiritual life itself, whichcomprehended all life. Our centre of culture should not only be thecentre of the intellectual life of India, but the centre of hereconomic 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, usingthe best materials, and calling science to its aid. Its very existenceshould depend upon the success of its industrial activities carriedout on the co-operative principle, which will unite the teachers andstudents and villagers of the neighbourhood in a living and activebond of necessity. This will give us also a practical industrialtraining, whose motive force is not the greed of profit. 

Before I conclude my paper, a delicate question remains to beconsidered. What must be the religious ideal that is to rule ourcentre of Indian culture? The one abiding ideal in the religious lifeof India has been _Mukti_, the deliverance of man's soul from the gripof self, its communion with the Infinite Soul through its union in_ânanda_ with the universe. This religion of spiritual harmony is nota theological doctrine to be taught, as a subject in the class, forhalf an hour each day. It is the spiritual truth and beauty of ourattitude towards our surroundings, our conscious relationship with theInfinite, and the lasting power of the Eternal in the passing momentsof our life. Such a religious ideal can only be made possible bymaking 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 immensemystery of the soil and water and air. 

Along with this, there should be some common sharing of life with thetillers of the soil and the humble workers in the neighbouringvillages; studying their crafts, inviting them to the feasts, joiningthem in works of co-operation for communal welfare; and in ourintercourse we should be guided, not by moral maxims or thecondescension of social superiority, but by natural sympathy of lifefor life, and by the sheer necessity of love's sacrifice for its ownsake. In such an atmosphere students would learn to understand thathumanity is a divine harp of many strings, waiting for its one grandmusic. Those who realise this unity are made ready for the pilgrimagethrough the night of suffering, and along the path of sacrifice, tothe great meeting of Man in the future, for which the call comes to usacross the darkness. 

Life, in such a centre, should be simple and clean. We should neverbelieve that simplicity of life might make us unsuited to therequirements of the society of our time. It is the simplicity of thetuning-fork, which is needed all the more because of the intricacy ofstrings in the instrument. In the morning of our career our natureneeds the pure and the perfect note of a spiritual ideal in order tofit us for the complications of our later years. 

In other words, this institution should be a perpetual creation by theco-operative enthusiasm of teachers and students, growing with thegrowth 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 dependentbodies. Its aim should lie in imparting life-breath to the completeman, 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 anIntroduction by W. B. YEATS, and a Portrait by W. ROTHENSTEIN. Crown8vo. 5s. Net. 

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=THE GARDENER. Lyrics of Love and Life. = Translated by the Author. WithPortrait. Crown 8vo. 5s. Net. 

_DAILY MAIL. _—"Flowers as fresh as sunrise. .. . One cannot tell whatthey have lost in the translation, but as they stand they are ofextreme beauty. .. . They are simple, exalted, fragrant—episodes andincidents of every day transposed to faery. "

=THE CRESCENT MOON. Child-Poems. = Translated by the Author. With 8Illustrations in Colour. Pott 4to. 5s. Net. 

_NATION. _—"A vision of childhood which is only paralleled in ourliterature 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 yieldpleasure 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 andsublimity, and the diction has a beauty and a music that few haveattained in this particular medium. "

=THE FUGITIVE. = Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. Net. 

_SUNDAY TIMES. _—"In 'The Fugitive' the lovers of Tagore will not bedisappointed. He has all his powers still undimmed. Indeed, the poetnever, 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 thesunshine. It was written, we are told, twenty-five years ago. .. . Eventhen Mr. Tagore had that calm intensity of vision which we have allcome to love in his later work. We find in him that for which Arjunagroped in his love, 'that ultimate _you_, that bare simplicity oftruth, ' and never more than in this little work of beauty, 'Chitra. '"

=THE KING OF THE DARK CHAMBER. = =A Play. = Translated by KSHITISH CHANDRASEN. Crown 8vo. 6s. Net. 

_PALL MALL GAZETTE. _—"Altogether, the play is a beautiful piece offanciful 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, wistfulthing, coloured with beautiful imagery; for a moment it lifts a cornerof the veil of worldly existence. The translation is throughoutextremely happy. "

=THE CYCLE OF SPRING. A Play. = Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. Net. 

_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN. _—"The whole little drama is a spring-gift suchas 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 ishard for a reviewer to find words with which to welcome properly abook 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 andcharacter, subdued but vivid in tone. "

=HUNGRY STONES and other Stories. = Crown 8vo. 6s. Net. 

_DAILY TELEGRAPH. _—"Contains descriptive passages of rare vigour andbeauty, and is embellished with imagery of a delicate and distinctivecharacter. "

=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 inCollotype. With Prefatory Note by MAX BEERBOHM. Imperial 4to. 10s. Net. 

=THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MAHARSHI DEVENDRANATH TAGORE= (Father ofRABINDRANATH TAGORE). Translated by SATYENDRANATH TAGORE and INDIRADEVI. With Introduction by EVELYN UNDERHILL, and Portrait. Extra Crown8vo. 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 numbersin the Table of Contents have been adjusted to match the actual pagenumbers.