,,creative ,,unity ,,by ,,rabindranath ,,tagore ,,macmillan ,,and ,,co41 ,,limited ,,st4 ,,martin',s ,,street1 ,,london #aibb ,,macmillan ,,and ,,co41 ,,limited ,,london 4 ,,bombay 4 ,,calcutta 4 ,,madras ,,melbourne ,,the ,,macmillan ,,company ,,new ,,york 4 ,,boston 4 ,,chicago ,,dallas 4 ,,san ,,francisco ,,the ,,macmillan ,,co4 ,,of ,,canada1 ,,ltd4 ,,toronto ,,copyright ,,printed ,,in ,,great ,,britain ,,to ,,dr4 ,,edwin ,h4 ,,lewis ,,introduction ,it costs me nothing to feel that ,i am2 it is no burden to me4 ,and yet if the mental1 physical1 chemical1 and other innumerable facts concerning all branches of knowledge which have united in myself could be broken up1 they would prove endless4 ,it is some untold mystery of unity in me1 that has the simplicity of the infinite and reduces the immense mass of multitude to a single point4 ,this ,one in me knows the universe of the many4 ,but1 in whatever it knows1 it knows the ,one in different aspects4 ,it knows this room only because this room is ,one to it1 in spite of the seeming contradiction of the endless facts contained in the single fact of the room4 ,its knowledge of a tree is the knowledge of a unity1 which appears in the aspect of a tree4 ,this ,one in me is creative4 ,its creations are a pastime1 through which it gives expression to an ideal of unity in its endless show of variety4 ,such are its pictures1 poems1 music1 in which it finds joy only because they reveal the perfect forms of an inherent unity4 ,this ,one in me not only seeks unity in knowledge for its understanding and creates images of unity for its delight2 it also seeks union in love for its fulfilment4 ,it seeks itself in others4 ,this is a fact1 which would be absurd had there been no great medium of truth to give it reality4 ,in love we find a joy which is ultimate because it is the ultimate truth4 ,therefore it is said in the ,upanishads that the advaitam is anantam1--the ,one is ,infinite2 that the advaitam is anandam1--the ,one is ,love4 ,to give perfect expression to the ,one1 the ,infinite1 through the harmony of the many2 to the ,one1 the ,love1 through the sacrifice of self1 is the object alike of our individual life and our society4 ,,contents ,,page ,,introduction v ,,the ,,poet',s ,,religion #c ,,the ,,creative ,,ideal #ca ,,the ,,religion ,,of ,,the ,,forest #de ,,an ,,indian ,,folk ,,religion #fi ,,east ,,and ,,west #ic ,,the ,,modern ,,age #aae ,,the ,,spirit ,,of ,,freedom #acc ,,the ,,nation #adc ,,woman ,,and ,,home #aeg ,,an ,,eastern ,,university #afi ,,the ,,poet',s ,,religion ,i ,civility is beauty of behaviour4 ,it requires for its perfection patience1 self-control1 and an environment of leisure4 ,for genuine courtesy is a creation1 like pictures1 like music4 ,it is a harmonious blending of voice1 gesture and movement1 words and action1 in which generosity of conduct is expressed4 ,it reveals the man himself and has no ulterior purpose4 ,our needs are always in a hurry4 ,they rush and hustle1 they are rude and unceremonious2 they have no surplus of leisure1 no patience for anything else but fulfilment of purpose4 ,we frequently see in our country at the present day men utilising empty kerosene cans for carrying water4 ,these cans are emblems of discourtesy2 they are curt and abrupt1 they have not the least shame for their unmannerliness1 they do not care to be ever so slightly more than useful4 ,the instruments of our necessity assert that we must have food1 shelter1 clothes1 comforts and convenience4 ,and yet men spend an immense amount of their time and resources in contradicting this assertion1 to prove that they are not a mere living catalogue of endless wants2 that there is in them an ideal of perfection1 a sense of unity1 which is a harmony between parts and a harmony with surroundings4 ,the quality of the infinite is not the magnitude of extension1 it is in the ,advaitam1 the mystery of ,unity4 ,facts occupy endless time and space2 but the truth comprehending them all has no dimension2 it is ,one4 ,wherever our heart touches the ,one1 in the small or the big1 it finds the touch of the infinite4 ,i was speaking to some one of the joy we have in our personality4 ,i said it was because we were made conscious by it of a spirit of unity within ourselves4 ,he answered that he had no such feeling of joy about himself1 but ,i was sure he exaggerated4 ,in all probability he had been suffering from some break of harmony between his surroundings and the spirit of unity within him1 proving all the more strongly its truth4 ,the meaning of health comes home to us with painful force when disease disturbs it2 since health expresses the unity of the vital functions and is accordingly joyful4 ,life's tragedies occur1 not to demonstrate their own reality1 but to reveal that eternal principle of joy in life1 to which they gave a rude shaking4 ,it is the object of this ,oneness in us to realise its infinity by perfect union of love with others4 ,all obstacles to this union create misery1 giving rise to the baser passions that are expressions of finitude1 of that separateness which is negative and therefore maya4 ,the joy of unity within ourselves1 seeking expression1 becomes creative2 whereas our desire for the fulfilment of our needs is constructive4 ,the water vessel1 taken as a vessel only1 raises the question1 ,why does it exist at all8 ,through its fitness of construction1 it offers the apology for its existence4 ,but where it is a work of beauty it has no question to answer2 it has nothing to do1 but to be4 ,it reveals in its form a unity to which all that seems various in it is so related that1 in a mysterious manner1 it strikes sympathetic chords to the music of unity in our own being4 ,what is the truth of this world8 ,it is not in the masses of substance1 not in the number of things1 but in their relatedness1 which neither can be counted1 nor measured1 nor abstracted4 ,it is not in the materials which are many1 but in the expression which is one4 ,all our knowledge of things is knowing them in their relation to the ,universe1 in that relation which is truth4 ,a drop of water is not a particular assortment of elements2 it is the miracle of a harmonious mutuality1 in which the two reveal the ,one4 ,no amount of analysis can reveal to us this mystery of unity4 ,matter is an abstraction2 we shall never be able to realise what it is1 for our world of reality does not acknowledge it4 ,even the giant forces of the world1 centripetal and centrifugal1 are kept out of our recognition4 ,they are the day-labourers not admitted into the audience-hall of creation4 ,but light and sound come to us in their gay dresses as troubadours singing serenades before the windows of the senses4 ,what is constantly before us1 claiming our attention1 is not the kitchen1 but the feast2 not the anatomy of the world1 but its countenance4 ,there is the dancing ring of seasons2 the elusive play of lights and shadows1 of wind and water2 the many-coloured wings of erratic life flitting between birth and death4 ,the importance of these does not lie in their existence as mere facts1 but in their language of harmony1 the mother-tongue of our own soul1 through which they are communicated to us4 ,we grow out of touch with this great truth1 we forget to accept its invitation and its hospitality1 when in quest of external success our works become unspiritual and unexpressive4 ,this is what ,wordsworth complained of when he said3 ,the world is too much with us2 late and soon1 ,getting and spending1 we lay waste our powers4 ,little we see in ,nature that is ours4 ,but it is not because the world has grown too familiar to us2 on the contrary1 it is because we do not see it in its aspect of unity1 because we are driven to distraction by our pursuit of the fragmentary4 ,materials as materials are savage2 they are solitary2 they are ready to hurt one another4 ,they are like our individual impulses seeking the unlimited freedom of wilfulness4 ,left to themselves they are destructive4 ,but directly an ideal of unity raises its banner in their centre1 it brings these rebellious forces under its sway and creation is revealed--the creation which is peace1 which is the unity of perfect relationship4 ,our greed for eating is in itself ugly and selfish1 it has no sense of decorum2 but when brought under the ideal of social fellowship1 it is regulated and made ornamental2 it is changed into a daily festivity of life4 ,in human nature sexual passion is fiercely individual and destructive1 but dominated by the ideal of love1 it has been made to flower into a perfection of beauty1 becoming in its best expression symbolical of the spiritual truth in man which is his kinship of love with the ,infinite4 ,thus we find it is the ,one which expresses itself in creation2 and the ,many1 by giving up opposition1 make the revelation of unity perfect4 ,,ii ,i remember1 when ,i was a child1 that a row of cocoanut trees by our garden wall1 with their branches beckoning the rising sun on the horizon1 gave me a companionship as living as ,i was myself4 ,i know it was my imagination which transmuted the world around me into my own world--the imagination which seeks unity1 which deals with it4 ,but we have to consider that this companionship was true2 that the universe in which ,i was born had in it an element profoundly akin to my own imaginative mind1 one which wakens in all children's natures the ,creator1 whose pleasure is in interweaving the web of creation with ,his own patterns of many-coloured strands4 ,it is something akin to us1 and therefore harmonious to our imagination4 ,when we find some strings vibrating in unison with others1 we know that this sympathy carries in it an eternal reality4 ,the fact that the world stirs our imagination in sympathy tells us that this creative imagination is a common truth both in us and in the heart of existence4 ,wordsworth says3 ,i'd rather be ,a pagan suckled in a creed outworn2 ,so might ,i1 standing on this pleasant lea1 ,have glimpses that would make me less forlorn2 ,have sight of ,proteus rising from the sea1 ,or hear old ,triton blow his wreathed horn4 ,in this passage the poet says we are less forlorn in a world which we meet with our imagination4 ,that can only be possible if through our imagination is revealed1 behind all appearances1 the reality which gives the touch of companionship1 that is to say1 something which has an affinity to us4 ,an immense amount of our activity is engaged in making images1 not for serving any useful purpose or formulating rational propositions1 but for giving varied responses to the varied touches of this reality4 ,in this image-making the child creates his own world in answer to the world in which he finds himself4 ,the child in us finds glimpses of his eternal playmate from behind the veil of things1 as ,proteus rising from the sea1 or ,triton blowing his wreathed horn4 ,and the playmate is the ,reality1 that makes it possible for the child to find delight in activities which do not inform or bring assistance but merely express4 ,there is an image-making joy in the infinite1 which inspires in us our joy in imagining4 ,the rhythm of cosmic motion produces in our mind the emotion which is creative4 ,a poet has said about his destiny as a dreamer1 about the worthlessness of his dreams and yet their permanence3 ,i hang 'mid men my heedless head1 ,and my fruit is dreams1 as theirs is bread3 ,the goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper1 ,time shall reap2 but after the reaper ,the world shall glean to me1 me the sleeper4 ,the dream persists2 it is more real than even bread which has substance and use4 ,the painted canvas is durable and substantial2 it has for its production and transport to market a whole array of machines and factories4 ,but the picture which no factory can produce is a dream1 a maya1 and yet it1 not the canvas1 has the meaning of ultimate reality4 ,a poet describes ,autumn3 ,i saw old ,autumn in the misty morn ,stand shadowless like ,silence1 listening ,to silence1 for no lonely bird would sing ,into his hollow ear from woods forlorn4 ,of ,april another poet sings3 ,april1 ,april1 ,laugh thy girlish laughter2 ,then the moment after ,weep thy girlish tears6 ,april1 that mine ears ,like a lover greetest1 ,if ,i tell thee1 sweetest1 ,all my hopes and fears4 ,april1 ,april1 ,laugh thy golden laughter4 ,but the moment after ,weep thy golden tears6 ,this ,autumn1 this ,april1--are they nothing but phantasy8 ,let us suppose that the ,man from the ,moon comes to the earth and listens to some music in a gramophone4 ,he seeks for the origin of the delight produced in his mind4 ,the facts before him are a cabinet made of wood and a revolving disc producing sound2 but the one thing which is neither seen nor can be explained is the truth of the music1 which his personality must immediately acknowledge as a personal message4 ,it is neither in the wood1 nor in the disc1 nor in the sound of the notes4 ,if the ,man from the ,moon be a poet1 as can reasonably be supposed1 he will write about a fairy imprisoned in that box1 who sits spinning fabrics of songs expressing her cry for a far-away magic casement opening on the foam of some perilous sea1 in a fairyland forlorn4 ,it will not be literally1 but essentially true4 ,the facts of the gramophone make us aware of the laws of sound1 but the music gives us personal companionship4 ,the bare facts about ,april are alternate sunshine and showers2 but the subtle blending of shadows and lights1 of murmurs and movements1 in ,april1 gives us not mere shocks of sensation1 but unity of joy as does music4 ,therefore when a poet sees the vision of a girl in ,april1 even a downright materialist is in sympathy with him4 ,but we know that the same individual would be menacingly angry if the law of heredity or a geometrical problem were described as a girl or a rose--or even as a cat or a camel4 ,for these intellectual abstractions have no magical touch for our lute-strings of imagination4 ,they are no dreams1 as are the harmony of bird-songs1 rain-washed leaves glistening in the sun1 and pale clouds floating in the blue4 ,the ultimate truth of our personality is that we are no mere biologists or geometricians2 we are the dreamers of dreams1 we are the music-makers4 ,this dreaming or music-making is not a function of the lotus-eaters1 it is the creative impulse which makes songs not only with words and tunes1 lines and colours1 but with stones and metals1 with ideas and men3 ,with wonderful deathless ditties ,we build up the world's great cities1 ,and out of a fabulous story ,we fashion an empire's glory4 ,i have been told by a scholar friend of mine that by constant practice in logic he has weakened his natural instinct of faith4 ,the reason is1 faith is the spectator in us which finds the meaning of the drama from the unity of the performance2 but logic lures us into the greenroom where there is stagecraft but no drama at all2 and then this logic nods its head and wearily talks about disillusionment4 ,but the greenroom1 dealing with its fragments1 looks foolish when questioned1 or wears the sneering smile of ,mephistopheles2 for it does not have the secret of unity1 which is somewhere else4 ,it is for faith to answer1 ,unity comes to us from the ,one1 and the ,one in ourselves opens the door and receives it with joy4 ,the function of poetry and the arts is to remind us that the greenroom is the greyest of illusions1 and the reality is the drama presented before us1 all its paint and tinsel1 masks and pageantry1 made one in art4 ,the ropes and wheels perish1 the stage is changed2 but the dream which is drama remains true1 for there remains the eternal ,dreamer4 ,,iii ,poetry and the arts cherish in them the profound faith of man in the unity of his being with all existence1 the final truth of which is the truth of personality4 ,it is a religion directly apprehended1 and not a system of metaphysics to be analysed and argued4 ,we know in our personal experience what our creations are and we instinctively know through it what creation around us means4 ,when ,keats said in his ,ode to a ,grecian ,urn3 ,thou1 silent form1 dost tease us out of thought1 ,as doth eternity1444 he felt the ineffable which is in all forms of perfection1 the mystery of the ,one1 which takes us beyond all thought into the immediate touch of the ,infinite4 ,this is the mystery which is for a poet to realise and to reveal4 ,it comes out in ,keats' poems with struggling gleams through consciousness of suffering and despair3 ,spite of despondence1 of the inhuman dearth ,of noble natures1 of the gloomy days1 ,of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways ,made for our searching3 yes1 in spite of all1 ,some shape of beauty moves away the pall ,from our dark spirits4 ,in this there is a suggestion that truth reveals itself in beauty4 ,for if beauty were mere accident1 a rent in the eternal fabric of things1 then it would hurt1 would be defeated by the antagonism of facts4 ,beauty is no phantasy1 it has the everlasting meaning of reality4 ,the facts that cause despondence and gloom are mere mist1 and when through the mist beauty breaks out in momentary gleams1 we realise that ,peace is true and not conflict1 ,love is true and not hatred2 and ,truth is the ,one1 not the disjointed multitude4 ,we realise that ,creation is the perpetual harmony between the infinite ideal of perfection and the eternal continuity of its realisation2 that so long as there is no absolute separation between the positive ideal and the material obstacle to its attainment1 we need not be afraid of suffering and loss4 ,this is the poet's religion4 ,those who are habituated to the rigid framework of sectarian creeds will find such a religion as this too indefinite and elastic4 ,no doubt it is so1 but only because its ambition is not to shackle the ,infinite and tame it for domestic use2 but rather to help our consciousness to emancipate itself from materialism4 ,it is as indefinite as the morning1 and yet as luminous2 it calls our thoughts1 feelings1 and actions into freedom1 and feeds them with light4 ,in the poet's religion we find no doctrine or injunction1 but rather the attitude of our entire being towards a truth which is ever to be revealed in its own endless creation4 ,in dogmatic religion all questions are definitely answered1 all doubts are finally laid to rest4 ,but the poet's religion is fluid1 like the atmosphere round the earth where lights and shadows play hide-and-seek1 and the wind like a shepherd boy plays upon its reeds among flocks of clouds4 ,it never undertakes to lead anybody anywhere to any solid conclusion2 yet it reveals endless spheres of light1 because it has no walls round itself4 ,it acknowledges the facts of evil2 it openly admits the weariness1 the fever and the fret in the world where men sit and hear each other groan2 yet it remembers that in spite of all there is the song of the nightingale1 and haply the ,queen ,moon is on her throne1 and there is3 ,white hawthorn1 and the pastoral eglantine1 ,fast-fading violets covered up in leaves2 ,and mid-day's eldest child1 ,the coming musk-rose1 full of dewy wine1 ,the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves4 ,but all this has not the definiteness of an answer2 it has only the music that teases us out of thought as it fills our being4 ,let me read a translation from an ,eastern poet to show how this idea comes out in a poem in ,bengali3 ,in the morning ,i awoke at the flutter of thy boat-sails1 ,lady of my ,voyage1 and ,i left the shore to follow the beckoning waves4 ,i asked thee1 ,does the dream-harvest ripen in the island beyond the blue8 ,the silence of thy smile fell on my question like the silence of sunlight on waves4 ,the day passed on through storm and through calm1 ,the perplexed winds changed their course1 time after time1 and the sea moaned4 ,i asked thee1 ,does thy sleep-tower stand somewhere beyond the dying embers of the day's funeral pyre8 ,no answer came from thee1 only thine eyes smiled like the edge of a sunset cloud4 ,it is night4 ,thy figure grows dim in the dark4 ,thy wind-blown hair flits on my cheek and thrills my sadness with its scent4 ,my hands grope to touch the hem of thy robe1 and ,i ask thee--,is there thy garden of death beyond the stars1 ,lady of my ,voyage1 where thy silence blossoms into songs8 ,thy smile shines in the heart of the hush like the star-mist of midnight4 ,,iv ,in ,shelley we clearly see the growth of his religion through periods of vagueness and doubt1 struggle and searching4 ,but he did at length come to a positive utterance of his faith1 though he died young4 ,its final expression is in his ,hymn to ,intellectual ,beauty4 ,by the title of the poem the poet evidently means a beauty that is not merely a passive quality of particular things1 but a spirit that manifests itself through the apparent antagonism of the unintellectual life4 ,this hymn rang out of his heart when he came to the end of his pilgrimage and stood face to face with the ,divinity1 glimpses of which had already filled his soul with restlessness4 ,all his experiences of beauty had ever teased him with the question as to what was its truth4 ,somewhere he sings of a nosegay which he makes of violets1 daisies1 tender bluebells and-- ,that tall flower that wets1 ,like a child1 half in tenderness and mirth1 ,its mother's face with heaven-collected tears4 ,he ends by saying3 ,and then1 elate and gay1 ,i hastened to the spot whence ,i had come1 ,that ,i might there present it6--,oh6 to whom8 ,this question1 even though not answered1 carries a significance4 ,a creation of beauty suggests a fulfilment1 which is the fulfilment of love4 ,we have heard some poets scoff at it in bitterness and despair2 but it is like a sick child beating its own mother--it is a sickness of faith1 which hurts truth1 but proves it by its very pain and anger4 ,and the faith itself is this1 that beauty is the self-offering of the ,one to the other ,one4 ,in the first part of his ,hymn to ,intellectual ,beauty ,shelley dwells on the inconstancy and evanescence of the manifestation of beauty1 which imparts to it an appearance of frailty and unreality3 ,like hues and harmonies of evening1 ,like clouds in starlight widely spread1 ,like memory of music fled4 ,this1 he says1 rouses in our mind the question3 ,why aught should fail and fade that once is shown1 ,why fear and dream and death and birth ,cast on the daylight of this earth ,such gloom1--why man has such a scope ,for love and hate1 despondency and hope8 ,the poet's own answer to this question is3 ,man were immortal1 and omnipotent1 ,didst thou1 unknown and awful as thou art1 ,keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart4 ,this very elusiveness of beauty suggests the vision of immortality and of omnipotence1 and stimulates the effort in man to realise it in some idea of permanence4 ,the highest reality has actively to be achieved4 ,the gain of truth is not in the end2 it reveals itself through the endless length of achievement4 ,but what is there to guide us in our voyage of realisation8 ,men have ever been struggling for direction3 ,therefore the names of ,demon1 ,ghost1 and ,heaven ,remain the records of their vain endeavour1 ,frail spells1--whose uttered charm might not avail to sever1 ,from all we hear and all we see1 ,doubt1 chance and mutability4 ,the prevalent rites and practices of piety1 according to this poet1 are like magic spells--they only prove men's desperate endeavour and not their success4 ,he knows that the end we seek has its own direct call to us1 its own light to guide us to itself4 ,and truth's call is the call of beauty4 ,of this he says3 ,thy light alone1--like mist o'er mountain driven1 ,or music by the night wind sent1 ,thro' strings of some still instrument1 ,or moonlight on a midnight stream ,gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream4 ,about this revelation of truth which calls us on1 and yet which is everywhere1 a village singer of ,bengal sings3 ,my master's flute sounds in everything1 drawing me out of my house to everywhere4 ,while ,i listen to it ,i know that every step ,i take is in my master's house4 ,for he is the sea1 he is the river that leads to the sea1 and he is the landing place4 ,religion1 in ,shelley1 grew with his life2 it was not given to him in fixed and ready-made doctrines2 he rebelled against them4 ,he had the creative mind which could only approach ,truth through its joy in creative effort4 ,for true creation is realisation of truth through the translation of it into our own symbols4 ,v ,for man1 the best opportunity for such a realisation has been in men's ,society4 ,it is a collective creation of his1 through which his social being tries to find itself in its truth and beauty4 ,had that ,society merely manifested its usefulness1 it would be inarticulate like a dark star4 ,but1 unless it degenerates1 it ever suggests in its concerted movements a living truth as its soul1 which has personality4 ,in this large life of social communion man feels the mystery of ,unity1 as he does in music4 ,from the sense of that ,unity1 men came to the sense of their ,god4 ,and therefore every religion began with its tribal ,god4 ,the one question before all others that has to be answered by our civilisations is not what they have and in what quantity1 but what they express and how4 ,in a society1 the production and circulation of materials1 the amassing and spending of money1 may go on1 as in the interminable prolonging of a straight line1 if its people forget to follow some spiritual design of life which curbs them and transforms them into an organic whole4 ,for growth is not that enlargement which is merely adding to the dimensions of incompleteness4 ,growth is the movement of a whole towards a yet fuller wholeness4 ,living things start with this wholeness from the beginning of their career4 ,a child has its own perfection as a child2 it would be ugly if it appeared as an unfinished man4 ,life is a continual process of synthesis1 and not of additions4 ,our activities of production and enjoyment of wealth attain that spirit of wholeness when they are blended with a creative ideal4 ,otherwise they have the insane aspect of the eternally unfinished2 they become like locomotive engines which have railway lines but no stations2 which rush on towards a collision of uncontrolled forces or to a sudden breakdown of the overstrained machinery4 ,through creation man expresses his truth2 through that expression he gains back his truth in its fulness4 ,human society is for the best expression of man1 and that expression1 according to its perfection1 leads him to the full realisation of the divine in humanity4 ,when that expression is obscure1 then his faith in the ,infinite that is within him becomes weak2 then his aspiration cannot go beyond the idea of success4 ,his faith in the ,infinite is creative2 his desire for success is constructive2 one is his home1 and the other is his office4 ,with the overwhelming growth of necessity1 civilisation becomes a gigantic office to which the home is a mere appendix4 ,the predominance of the pursuit of success gives to society the character of what we call ,shudra in ,india4 ,in fighting a battle1 the ,kshatriya1 the noble knight1 followed his honour for his ideal1 which was greater than victory itself2 but the mercenary ,shudra has success for his object4 ,the name ,shudra symbolises a man who has no margin round him beyond his bare utility4 ,the word denotes a classification which includes all naked machines that have lost their completeness of humanity1 be their work manual or intellectual4 ,they are like walking stomachs or brains1 and we feel1 in pity1 urged to call on ,god and cry1 ,cover them up for mercy's sake with some veil of beauty and life6 ,when ,shelley in his view of the world realised the ,spirit of ,beauty1 which is the vision of the ,infinite1 he thus uttered his faith3 ,never joy illumed my brow ,unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free ,this world from its dark slavery2 ,that thou1--,o awful ,loveliness1-- ,wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express4 ,this was his faith in the ,infinite4 ,it led his aspiration towards the region of freedom and perfection which was beyond the immediate and above the successful4 ,this faith in ,god1 this faith in the reality of the ideal of perfection1 has built up all that is great in the human world4 ,to keep indefinitely walking on1 along a zigzag course of change1 is negative and barren4 ,a mere procession of notes does not make music2 it is only when we have in the heart of the march of sounds some musical idea that it creates song4 ,our faith in the infinite reality of ,perfection is that musical idea1 and there is that one great creative force in our civilisation4 ,when it wakens not1 then our faith in money1 in material power1 takes its place2 it fights and destroys1 and in a brilliant fireworks of star-mimicry suddenly exhausts itself and dies in ashes and smoke4 ,,vi ,men of great faith have always called us to wake up to great expectations1 and the prudent have always laughed at them and said that these did not belong to reality4 ,but the poet in man knows that reality is a creation1 and human reality has to be called forth from its obscure depth by man's faith which is creative4 ,there was a day when the human reality was the brutal reality4 ,that was the only capital we had with which to begin our career4 ,but age after age there has come to us the call of faith1 which said against all the evidence of fact3 ,you are more than you appear to be1 more than your circumstances seem to warrant4 ,you are to attain the impossible1 you are immortal4 ,the unbelievers had laughed and tried to kill the faith4 ,but faith grew stronger with the strength of martyrdom and at her bidding higher realities have been created over the strata of the lower4 ,has not a new age come to-day1 borne by thunder-clouds1 ushered in by a universal agony of suffering8 ,are we not waiting to-day for a great call of faith1 which will say to us3 ,come out of your present limitations4 ,you are to attain the impossible1 you are immortal8 ,the nations who are not prepared to accept it1 who have all their trust in their present machines of system1 and have no thought or space to spare to welcome the sudden guest who comes as the messenger of emancipation1 are bound to court defeat whatever may be their present wealth and power4 ,this great world1 where it is a creation1 an expression of the infinite--where its morning sings of joy to the newly awakened life1 and its evening stars sing to the traveller1 weary and worn1 of the triumph of life in a new birth across death1--has its call for us4 ,the call has ever roused the creator in man1 and urged him to reveal the truth1 to reveal the ,infinite in himself4 ,it is ever claiming from us1 in our own creations1 co-operation with ,god1 reminding us of our divine nature1 which finds itself in freedom of spirit4 ,our society exists to remind us1 through its various voices1 that the ultimate truth in man is not in his intellect or his possessions2 it is in his illumination of mind1 in his extension of sympathy across all barriers of caste and colour2 in his recognition of the world1 not merely as a storehouse of power1 but as a habitation of man's spirit1 with its eternal music of beauty and its inner light of the divine presence4 ,,the ,,creative ,,ideal ,in an old ,sanskrit book there is a verse which describes the essential elements of a picture4 ,the first in order is ,vrupa-bhedah--separateness of forms4 ,forms are many1 forms are different1 each of them having its limits4 ,but if this were absolute1 if all forms remained obstinately separate1 then there would be a fearful loneliness of multitude4 ,but the varied forms1 in their very separateness1 must carry something which indicates the paradox of their ultimate unity1 otherwise there would be no creation4 ,so in the same verse1 after the enumeration of separateness comes that of ,pramanani--proportions4 ,proportions indicate relationship1 the principle of mutual accommodation4 ,a leg dismembered from the body has the fullest licence to make a caricature of itself4 ,but1 as a member of the body1 it has its responsibility to the living unity which rules the body2 it must behave properly1 it must keep its proportion4 ,if1 by some monstrous chance of physiological profiteering1 it could outgrow by yards its fellow-stalker1 then we know what a picture it would offer to the spectator and what embarrassment to the body itself4 ,any attempt to overcome the law of proportion altogether and to assert absolute separateness is rebellion2 it means either running the gauntlet of the rest1 or remaining segregated4 ,the same ,sanskrit word ,pramanani1 which in a book of aesthetics means proportions1 in a book of logic means the proofs by which the truth of a proposition is ascertained4 ,all proofs of truth are credentials of relationship4 ,individual facts have to produce such passports to show that they are not expatriated1 that they are not a break in the unity of the whole4 ,the logical relationship present in an intellectual proposition1 and the aesthetic relationship indicated in the proportions of a work of art1 both agree in one thing4 ,they affirm that truth consists1 not in facts1 but in harmony of facts4 ,of this fundamental note of reality it is that the poet has said1 ,beauty is truth1 truth beauty4 ,proportions1 which prove relativity1 form the outward language of creative ideals4 ,a crowd of men is desultory1 but in a march of soldiers every man keeps his proportion of time and space and relative movement1 which makes him one with the whole vast army4 ,but this is not all4 ,the creation of an army has1 for its inner principle1 one single idea of the ,general4 ,according to the nature of that ruling idea1 a production is either a work of art or a mere construction4 ,all the materials and regulations of a joint-stock company have the unity of an inner motive4 ,but the expression of this unity itself is not the end2 it ever indicates an ulterior purpose4 ,on the other hand1 the revelation of a work of art is a fulfilment in itself4 ,the consciousness of personality1 which is the consciousness of unity in ourselves1 becomes prominently distinct when coloured by joy or sorrow1 or some other emotion4 ,it is like the sky1 which is visible because it is blue1 and which takes different aspect with the change of colours4 ,in the creation of art1 therefore1 the energy of an emotional ideal is necessary2 as its unity is not like that of a crystal1 passive and inert1 but actively expressive4 ,take1 for example1 the following verse3 ,oh1 fly not ,pleasure1 pleasant-hearted ,pleasure1 ,fold me thy wings1 ,i prithee1 yet and stay4 ,for my heart no measure ,knows1 nor other treasure ,to buy a garland for my love to-day4 ,and thou too1 ,sorrow1 tender-hearted ,sorrow1 ,thou grey-eyed mourner1 fly not yet away4 ,for ,i fain would borrow ,thy sad weeds to-morrow1 ,to make a mourning for love's yesterday4 ,the words in this quotation1 merely showing the metre1 would have no appeal to us2 with all its perfection and its proportion1 rhyme and cadence1 it would only be a construction4 ,but when it is the outer body of an inner idea it assumes a personality4 ,the idea flows through the rhythm1 permeates the words and throbs in their rise and fall4 ,on the other hand1 the mere idea of the above-quoted poem1 stated in unrhythmic prose1 would represent only a fact1 inertly static1 which would not bear repetition4 ,but the emotional idea1 incarnated in a rhythmic form1 acquires the dynamic quality needed for those things which take part in the world's eternal pageantry4 ,take the following doggerel3 ,thirty days hath ,september1 ,april1 ,june1 and ,november4 ,the metre is there1 and it simulates the movement of life4 ,but it finds no synchronous response in the metre of our heart-beats2 it has not in its centre the living idea which creates for itself an indivisible unity4 ,it is like a bag which is convenient1 and not like a body which is inevitable4 ,this truth1 implicit in our own works of art1 gives us the clue to the mystery of creation4 ,we find that the endless rhythms of the world are not merely constructive2 they strike our own heart-strings and produce music4 ,therefore it is we feel that this world is a creation2 that in its centre there is a living idea which reveals itself in an eternal symphony1 played on innumerable instruments1 all keeping perfect time4 ,we know that this great world-verse1 that runs from sky to sky1 is not made for the mere enumeration of facts--it is not ,thirty days hath ,september--it has its direct revelation in our delight4 ,that delight gives us the key to the truth of existence2 it is personality acting upon personalities through incessant manifestations4 ,the solicitor does not sing to his client1 but the bridegroom sings to his bride4 ,and when our soul is stirred by the song1 we know it claims no fees from us2 but it brings the tribute of love and a call from the bridegroom4 ,it may be said that in pictorial and other arts there are some designs that are purely decorative and apparently have no living and inner ideal to express4 ,but this cannot be true4 ,these decorations carry the emotional motive of the artist1 which says3 ,i find joy in my creation2 it is good4 ,all the language of joy is beauty4 ,it is necessary to note1 however1 that joy is not pleasure1 and beauty not mere prettiness4 ,joy is the outcome of detachment from self and lives in freedom of spirit4 ,beauty is that profound expression of reality which satisfies our hearts without any other allurements but its own ultimate value4 ,when in some pure moments of ecstasy we realise this in the world around us1 we see the world1 not as merely existing1 but as decorated in its forms1 sounds1 colours and lines2 we feel in our hearts that there is ,one who through all things proclaims3 ,i have joy in my creation4 ,that is why the ,sanskrit verse has given us for the essential elements of a picture1 not only the manifoldness of forms and the unity of their proportions1 but also bhavah1 the emotional idea4 ,it is needless to say that upon a mere expression of emotion--even the best expression of it--no criterion of art can rest4 ,the following poem is described by the poet as ,an earnest ,suit to his unkind ,mistress3 ,and wilt thou leave me thus8 ,say nay1 say nay1 for shame6 ,to save thee from the blame ,of all my grief and grame4 ,and wilt thou leave me thus8 ,say nay6 say nay6 ,i am sure the poet would not be offended if ,i expressed my doubts about the earnestness of his appeal1 or the truth of his avowed necessity4 ,he is responsible for the lyric and not for the sentiment1 which is mere material4 ,the fire assumes different colours according to the fuel used2 but we do not discuss the fuel1 only the flames4 ,a lyric is indefinably more than the sentiment expressed in it1 as a rose is more than its substance4 ,let us take a poem in which the earnestness of sentiment is truer and deeper than the one ,i have quoted above3 ,the sun1 ,closing his benediction1 ,sinks1 and the darkening air ,thrills with the sense of the triumphing night1-- ,night with her train of stars ,and her great gift of sleep4 ,so be my passing6 ,my task accomplished and the long day done1 ,my wages taken1 and in my heart ,some late lark singing1 ,let me be gathered to the quiet ,west1 ,the sundown splendid and serene1 ,death4 ,the sentiment expressed in this poem is a subject for a psychologist4 ,but for a poem the subject is completely merged in its poetry1 like carbon in a living plant which the lover of plants ignores1 leaving it for a charcoal-burner to seek4 ,this is why1 when some storm of feeling sweeps across the country1 art is under a disadvantage4 ,in such an atmosphere the boisterous passion breaks through the cordon of harmony and thrusts itself forward as the subject1 which with its bulk and pressure dethrones the unity of creation4 ,for a similar reason most of the hymns used in churches suffer from lack of poetry4 ,for in them the deliberate subject1 assuming the first importance1 benumbs or kills the poem4 ,most patriotic poems have the same deficiency4 ,they are like hill streams born of sudden showers1 which are more proud of their rocky beds than of their water currents2 in them the athletic and arrogant subject takes it for granted that the poem is there to give it occasion to display its powers4 ,the subject is the material wealth for the sake of which poetry should never be tempted to barter her soul1 even though the temptation should come in the name and shape of public good or some usefulness4 ,between the artist and his art must be that perfect detachment which is the pure medium of love4 ,he must never make use of this love except for its own perfect expression4 ,in everyday life our personality moves in a narrow circle of immediate self-interest4 ,and therefore our feelings and events1 within that short range1 become prominent subjects for ourselves4 ,in their vehement self-assertion they ignore their unity with the ,all4 ,they rise up like obstructions and obscure their own background4 ,but art gives our personality the disinterested freedom of the eternal1 there to find it in its true perspective4 ,to see our own home in flames is not to see fire in its verity4 ,but the fire in the stars is the fire in the heart of the ,infinite2 there1 it is the script of creation4 ,matthew ,arnold1 in his poem addressed to a nightingale1 sings3 ,hark6 ah1 the nightingale-- ,the tawny-throated6 ,hark1 from that moonlit cedar what a burst6 ,what triumph6 hark6--what pain6 ,but pain1 when met within the boundaries of limited reality1 repels and hurts2 it is discordant with the narrow scope of life4 ,but the pain of some great martyrdom has the detachment of eternity4 ,it appears in all its majesty1 harmonious in the context of everlasting life2 like the thunder-flash in the stormy sky1 not on the laboratory wire4 ,pain on that scale has its harmony in great love2 for by hurting love it reveals the infinity of love in all its truth and beauty4 ,on the other hand1 the pain involved in business insolvency is discordant2 it kills and consumes till nothing remains but ashes4 ,the poet sings again3 ,how thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves6 ,eternal ,passion6 ,eternal ,pain6 ,and the truth of pain in eternity has been sung by those ,vedic poets who had said1 ,from joy has come forth all creation4 ,they say3 ,sa tapas tapatva sarvam asrajata ,yadidam kincha4 7,god from the heat of his pain created all that there is47 ,the sacrifice1 which is in the heart of creation1 is both joy and pain at the same moment4 ,of this sings a village mystic in ,bengal3 ,my eyes drown in the darkness of joy1 ,my heart1 like a lotus1 closes its petals in the rapture of the dark night4 ,that song speaks of a joy which is deep like the blue sea1 endless like the blue sky2 which has the magnificence of the night1 and in its limitless darkness enfolds the radiant worlds in the awfulness of peace2 it is the unfathomed joy in which all sufferings are made one4 ,a poet of mediaeval ,india tells us about his source of inspiration in a poem containing a question and an answer3 ,where were your songs1 my bird1 when you spent your nights in the nest8 ,was not all your pleasure stored therein8 ,what makes you lose your heart to the sky1 the sky that is limitless8 ,the bird answers3 ,i had my pleasure while ,i rested within bounds4 ,when ,i soared into the limitless1 ,i found my songs6 ,to detach the individual idea from its confinement of everyday facts and to give its soaring wings the freedom of the universal3 this is the function of poetry4 ,the ambition of ,macbeth1 the jealousy of ,othello1 would be at best sensational in police court proceedings2 but in ,shakespeare's dramas they are carried among the flaming constellations where creation throbs with ,eternal ,passion1 ,eternal ,pain4 ,,the ,,religion ,,of ,,the ,,forest ,i ,we stand before this great world4 ,the truth of our life depends upon our attitude of mind towards it--an attitude which is formed by our habit of dealing with it according to the special circumstance of our surroundings and our temperaments4 ,it guides our attempts to establish relations with the universe either by conquest or by union1 either through the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy4 ,and thus1 in our realisation of the truth of existence1 we put our emphasis either upon the principle of dualism or upon the principle of unity4 ,the ,indian sages have held in the ,upanishads that the emancipation of our soul lies in its realising the ultimate truth of unity4 ,they said3 ,ishavasyam idam sarvam yat kinch jagatyam jagat4 ,yena tyaktena bhunjitha ma graha kasyasvit dhanam4 7,know all that moves in this moving world as enveloped by ,god2 and find enjoyment through renunciation1 not through greed of possession47 ,the meaning of this is1 that1 when we know the multiplicity of things as the final truth1 we try to augment ourselves by the external possession of them2 but1 when we know the ,infinite ,soul as the final truth1 then through our union with it we realise the joy of our soul4 ,therefore it has been said of those who have attained their fulfilment1--sarvam eva vishanti 7they enter into all things74 ,their perfect relation with this world is the relation of union4 ,this ideal of perfection preached by the forest-dwellers of ancient ,india runs through the heart of our classical literature and still dominates our mind4 ,the legends related in our epics cluster under the forest shade bearing all through their narrative the message of the forest-dwellers4 ,our two greatest classical dramas find their background in scenes of the forest hermitage1 which are permeated by the association of these sages4 ,the history of the ,northmen of ,europe is resonant with the music of the sea4 ,that sea is not merely topographical in its significance1 but represents certain ideals of life which still guide the history and inspire the creations of that race4 ,in the sea1 nature presented herself to those men in her aspect of a danger1 a barrier which seemed to be at constant war with the land and its children4 ,the sea was the challenge of untamed nature to the indomitable human soul4 ,and man did not flinch2 he fought and won1 and the spirit of fight continued in him4 ,this fight he still maintains2 it is the fight against disease and poverty1 tyranny of matter and of man4 ,this refers to a people who live by the sea1 and ride on it as on a wild1 champing horse1 catching it by its mane and making it render service from shore to shore4 ,they find delight in turning by force the antagonism of circumstances into obedience4 ,truth appears to them in her aspect of dualism1 the perpetual conflict of good and evil1 which has no reconciliation1 which can only end in victory or defeat4 ,but in the level tracts of ,northern ,india men found no barrier between their lives and the grand life that permeates the universe4 ,the forest entered into a close living relationship with their work and leisure1 with their daily necessities and contemplations4 ,they could not think of other surroundings as separate or inimical4 ,so the view of the truth1 which these men found1 did not make manifest the difference1 but rather the unity of all things4 ,they uttered their faith in these words3 ,yadidam kinch sarvam prana ejati nihsratam 7,all that is vibrates with life1 having come out from life74 ,when we know this world as alien to us1 then its mechanical aspect takes prominence in our mind2 and then we set up our machines and our methods to deal with it and make as much profit as our knowledge of its mechanism allows us to do4 ,this view of things does not play us false1 for the machine has its place in this world4 ,and not only this material universe1 but human beings also1 may be used as machines and made to yield powerful results4 ,this aspect of truth cannot be ignored2 it has to be known and mastered4 ,europe has done so and has reaped a rich harvest4 ,the view of this world which ,india has taken is summed up in one compound ,sanskrit word1 ,sachidananda4 ,the meaning is that ,reality1 which is essentially one1 has three phases4 ,the first is ,sat2 it is the simple fact that things are1 the fact which relates us to all things through the relationship of common existence4 ,the second is ,chit2 it is the fact that we know1 which relates us to all things through the relationship of knowledge4 ,the third is ,ananda3 it is the fact that we enjoy1 which unites us with all things through the relationship of love4 ,according to the true ,indian view1 our consciousness of the world1 merely as the sum total of things that exist1 and as governed by laws1 is imperfect4 ,but it is perfect when our consciousness realises all things as spiritually one with it1 and therefore capable of giving us joy4 ,for us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in it1 knowing it and making use of it1 but realising our own selves in it through expansion of sympathy2 not alienating ourselves from it and dominating it1 but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in perfect union4 ,,ii ,when ,vikramaditya became king1 ,ujjayini a great capital1 and ,kalidasa its poet1 the age of ,india's forest retreats had passed4 ,then we had taken our stand in the midst of the great concourse of humanity4 ,the ,chinese and the ,hun1 the ,scythian and the ,persian1 the ,greek and the ,roman1 had crowded round us4 ,but1 even in that age of pomp and prosperity1 the love and reverence with which its poet sang about the hermitage shows what was the dominant ideal that occupied the mind of ,india2 what was the one current of memory that continually flowed through her life4 ,in ,kalidasa's drama1 ,shakuntala1 the hermitage1 which dominates the play1 overshadowing the king's palace1 has the same idea running through it--the recognition of the kinship of man with conscious and unconscious creation alike4 ,a poet of a later age1 while describing a hermitage in his ,kadambari1 tells us of the posture of salutation in the flowering lianas as they bow to the wind2 of the sacrifice offered by the trees scattering their blossoms2 of the grove resounding with the lessons chanted by the neophytes1 and the verses repeated by the parrots1 learnt by constantly hearing them2 of the wild-fowl enjoying vaishva-deva-bali-pinda 7the food offered to the divinity which is in all creatures72 of the ducks coming up from the lake for their portion of the grass seed spread in the cottage yards to dry2 and of the deer caressing with their tongues the young hermit boys4 ,it is again the same story4 ,the hermitage shines out1 in all our ancient literature1 as the place where the chasm between man and the rest of creation has been bridged4 ,in the ,western dramas1 human characters drown our attention in the vortex of their passions4 ,nature occasionally peeps out1 but she is almost always a trespasser1 who has to offer excuses1 or bow apologetically and depart4 ,but in all our dramas which still retain their fame1 such as ,mrit-,shakatika1 ,shakuntala1 ,uttara-,ramacharita1 ,nature stands on her own right1 proving that she has her great function1 to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions4 ,the fury of passion in two of ,shakespeare's youthful poems is exhibited in conspicuous isolation4 ,it is snatched away1 naked1 from the context of the ,all2 it has not the green earth or the blue sky around it2 it is there ready to bring to our view the raging fever which is in man's desires1 and not the balm of health and repose which encircles it in the universe4 ,ritusamhara is clearly a work of ,kalidasa's immaturity4 ,the youthful love-song in it does not reach the sublime reticence which is in ,shakuntala and ,kumara-,sambhava4 ,but the tune of these voluptuous outbreaks is set to the varied harmony of ,nature's symphony4 ,the moonbeams of the summer evening1 resonant with the flow of fountains1 acknowledge it as a part of its own melody4 ,in its rhythm sways the ,kadamba forest1 glistening in the first cool rain of the season2 and the south breezes1 carrying the scent of the mango blossoms1 temper it with their murmur4 ,in the third canto of ,kumara-,sambhava1 ,madana1 the ,god ,eros1 enters the forest sanctuary to set free a sudden flood of desire amid the serenity of the ascetics' meditation4 ,but the boisterous outbreak of passion so caused was shown against a background of universal life4 ,the divine love-thrills of ,sati and ,shiva found their response in the world-wide immensity of youth1 in which animals and trees have their life-throbs4 ,not only its third canto but the whole of the ,kumara-,sambhava poem is painted upon a limitless canvas4 ,it tells of the eternal wedding of love1 its wooing and sacrifice1 and its fulfilment1 for which the gods wait in suspense4 ,its inner idea is deep and of all time4 ,it answers the one question that humanity asks through all its endeavours3 ,how is the birth of the hero to be brought about1 the brave one who can defy and vanquish the evil demon laying waste heaven's own kingdom8 ,it becomes evident that such a problem had become acute in ,kalidasa's time1 when the old simplicity of ,hindu life had broken up4 ,the ,hindu kings1 forgetful of their duties1 had become self-seeking epicureans1 and ,india was being repeatedly devastated by the ,scythians4 ,what answer1 then1 does the poem give to the question it raises8 ,its message is that the cause of weakness lies in the inner life of the soul4 ,it is in some break of harmony with the ,good1 some dissociation from the ,true4 ,in the commencement of the poem we find that the ,god ,shiva1 the ,good1 had remained for long lost in the self-centred solitude of his asceticism1 detached from the world of reality4 ,and then ,paradise was lost4 ,but ,kumara-,sambhava is the poem of ,paradise ,regained4 ,how was it regained8 ,when ,sati1 the ,spirit of ,reality1 through humiliation1 suffering1 and penance1 won the ,heart of ,shiva1 the ,spirit of ,goodness4 ,and thus1 from the union of the freedom of the real with the restraint of the ,good1 was born the heroism that released ,paradise from the demon of ,lawlessness4 ,viewed from without1 ,india1 in the time of ,kalidasa1 appeared to have reached the zenith of civilisation1 excelling as she did in luxury1 literature and the arts4 ,but from the poems of ,kalidasa it is evident that this very magnificence of wealth and enjoyment worked against the ideal that sprang and flowed forth from the sacred solitude of the forest4 ,these poems contain the voice of warnings against the gorgeous unreality of that age1 which1 like a ,himalayan avalanche1 was slowly gliding down to an abyss of catastrophe4 ,and from his seat beside all the glories of ,vikramaditya's throne the poet's heart yearns for the purity and simplicity of ,india's past age of spiritual striving4 ,and it was this yearning which impelled him to go back to the annals of the ancient ,kings of ,raghu's line for the narrative poem1 in which he traced the history of the rise and fall of the ideal that should guide the rulers of men4 ,king ,dilipa1 with ,queen ,sudakshina1 has entered upon the life of the forest4 ,the great monarch is busy tending the cattle of the hermitage4 ,thus the poem opens1 amid scenes of simplicity and self-denial4 ,but it ends in the palace of magnificence1 in the extravagance of self-enjoyment4 ,with a calm restraint of language the poet tells us of the kingly glory crowned with purity4 ,he begins his poem as the day begins1 in the serenity of sunrise4 ,but lavish are the colours in which he describes the end1 as of the evening1 eloquent for a time with the sumptuous splendour of sunset1 but overtaken at last by the devouring darkness which sweeps away all its brilliance into night4 ,in this beginning and this ending of his poem there lies hidden that message of the forest which found its voice in the poet's words4 ,there runs through the narrative the idea that the future glowed gloriously ahead only when there was in the atmosphere the calm of self-control1 of purity and renunciation4 ,when downfall had become imminent1 the hungry fires of desire1 aflame at a hundred different points1 dazzled the eyes of all beholders4 ,kalidasa in almost all his works represented the unbounded impetuousness of kingly splendour on the one side and the serene strength of regulated desires on the other4 ,even in the minor drama of ,malavikagnimitra we find the same thing in a different manner4 ,it must never be thought that1 in this play1 the poet's deliberate object was to pander to his royal patron by inviting him to a literary orgy of lust and passion4 ,the very introductory verse indicates the object towards which this play is directed4 ,the poet begins the drama with the prayer1 ,sanmargalokayan vyapanayatu sa nastamasi vritimishah 7,let ,god1 to illumine for us the path of truth1 sweep away our passions1 bred of darkness74 ,this is the ,god ,shiva1 in whose nature ,parvati1 the eternal ,woman1 is ever commingled in an ascetic purity of love4 ,the unified being of ,shiva and ,parvati is the perfect symbol of the eternal in the wedded love of man and woman4 ,when the poet opens his drama with an invocation of this ,spirit of the ,divine ,union it is evident that it contains in it the message with which he greets his kingly audience4 ,the whole drama goes to show the ugliness of the treachery and cruelty inherent in unchecked self-indulgence4 ,in the play the conflict of ideals is between the ,king and the ,queen1 between ,agnimitra and ,dharini1 and the significance of the contrast lies hidden in the very names of the hero and the heroine4 ,though the name ,agnimitra is historical1 yet it symbolises in the poet's mind the destructive force of uncontrolled desire--just as did the name ,agnivarna in ,raghuvamsha4 ,agnimitra1 the friend of the fire1 the reckless person1 who in his love-making is playing with fire1 not knowing that all the time it is scorching him black4 ,and what a great name is ,dharini1 signifying the fortitude and forbearance that comes from majesty of soul6 ,what an association it carries of the infinite dignity of love1 purified by a self-abnegation that rises far above all insult and baseness of betrayal6 ,in ,shakuntala this conflict of ideals has been shown1 all through the drama1 by the contrast of the pompous heartlessness of the king's court and the natural purity of the forest hermitage4 ,the drama opens with a hunting scene1 where the king is in pursuit of an antelope4 ,the cruelty of the chase appears like a menace symbolising the spirit of the king's life clashing against the spirit of the forest retreat1 which is sharanyam sarva-bhutanam 7where all creatures find their protection of love74 ,and the pleading of the forest-dwellers with the king to spare the life of the deer1 helplessly innocent and beautiful1 is the pleading that rises from the heart of the whole drama4 ,never1 oh1 never is the arrow meant to pierce the tender body of a deer1 even as the fire is not for the burning of flowers4 ,in the ,ramayana1 ,rama and his companions1 in their banishment1 had to traverse forest after forest2 they had to live in leaf-thatched huts1 to sleep on the bare ground4 ,but as their hearts felt their kinship with woodland1 hill1 and stream1 they were not in exile amidst these4 ,poets1 brought up in an atmosphere of different ideals1 would have taken this opportunity of depicting in dismal colours the hardship of the forest-life in order to bring out the martyrdom of ,ramachandra with all the emphasis of a strong contrast4 ,but1 in the ,ramayana1 we are led to realise the greatness of the hero1 not in a fierce struggle with ,nature1 but in sympathy with it4 ,sita1 the daughter-in-law of a great kingly house1 goes along the forest paths4 ,we read3 ,she asks ,rama about the flowering trees1 and shrubs and creepers which she has not seen before4 ,at her request ,lakshmana gathers and brings her plants of all kinds1 exuberant with flowers1 and it delights her heart to see the forest rivers1 variegated with their streams and sandy banks1 resounding with the call of heron and duck4 ,when ,rama first took his abode in the ,chitrakuta peak1 that delightful ,chitrakuta1 by the ,malyavati river1 with its easy slopes for landing1 he forgot all the pain of leaving his home in the capital at the sight of those woodlands1 alive with beast and bird4 ,having lived on that hill for long1 ,rama1 who was giri-vana-priya 7lover of the mountain and the forest71 said one day to ,sita3 ,when ,i look upon the beauties of this hill1 the loss of my kingdom troubles me no longer1 nor does the separation from my friends cause me any pang4 ,thus passed ,ramachandra's exile1 now in woodland1 now in hermitage4 ,the love which ,rama and ,sita bore to each other united them1 not only to each other1 but to the universe of life4 ,that is why1 when ,sita was taken away1 the loss seemed to be so great to the forest itself4 ,,iii ,strangely enough1 in ,shakespeare's dramas1 like those of ,kalidasa1 we find a secret vein of complaint against the artificial life of the king's court--the life of ungrateful treachery and falsehood4 ,and almost everywhere1 in his dramas1 foreign scenes have been introduced in connection with some working of the life of unscrupulous ambition4 ,it is perfectly obvious in ,timon of ,athens--but there ,nature offers no message or balm to the injured soul of man4 ,in ,cymbeline the mountainous forest and the cave appear in their aspect of obstruction to life's opportunities4 ,these only seem tolerable in comparison with the vicissitudes of fortune in the artificial court life4 ,in ,as ,you ,like ,it the forest of ,arden is didactic in its lessons4 ,it does not bring peace1 but preaches1 when it says3 ,hath not old custom made this life more sweet ,than that of painted pomp8 ,are not these woods ,more free from peril than the envious court8 ,in the ,tempest1 through ,prospero's treatment of ,ariel and ,caliban we realise man's struggle with ,nature and his longing to sever connection with her4 ,in ,macbeth1 as a prelude to a bloody crime of treachery and treason1 we are introduced to a scene of barren heath where the three witches appear as personifications of ,nature's malignant forces2 and in ,king ,lear it is the fury of a father's love turned into curses by the ingratitude born of the unnatural life of the court that finds its symbol in the storm on the heath4 ,the tragic intensity of ,hamlet and ,othello is unrelieved by any touch of ,nature's eternity4 ,except in a passing glimpse of a moonlight night in the love scene in the ,merchant of ,venice1 ,nature has not been allowed in other dramas of this series1 including ,romeo and ,juliet and ,antony and ,cleopatra1 to contribute her own music to the music of man's love4 ,in ,the ,winter's ,tale the cruelty of a king's suspicion stands bare in its relentlessness1 and ,nature cowers before it1 offering no consolation4 ,i hope it is needless for me to say that these observations are not intended to minimise ,shakespeare's great power as a dramatic poet1 but to show in his works the gulf between ,nature and human nature owing to the tradition of his race and time4 ,it cannot be said that beauty of nature is ignored in his writings2 only he fails to recognise in them the truth of the inter-penetration of human life with the cosmic life of the world4 ,we observe a completely different attitude of mind in the later ,english poets like ,wordsworth and ,shelley1 which can be attributed in the main to the great mental change in ,europe1 at that particular period1 through the influence of the newly discovered philosophy of ,india which stirred the soul of ,germany and aroused the attention of other ,western countries4 ,in ,milton's ,paradise ,lost1 the very subject--,man dwelling in the garden of ,paradise--seems to afford a special opportunity for bringing out the true greatness of man's relationship with ,nature4 ,but though the poet has described to us the beauties of the garden1 though he has shown to us the animals living there in amity and peace among themselves1 there is no reality of kinship between them and man4 ,they were created for man's enjoyment2 man was their lord and master4 ,we find no trace of the love between the first man and woman gradually surpassing themselves and overflowing the rest of creation1 such as we find in the love scenes in ,kumara-,sambhava and ,shakuntala4 ,in the seclusion of the bower1 where the first man and woman rested in the garden of ,paradise-- ,bird1 beast1 insect or worm ,durst enter none1 such was their awe of man4 ,not that ,india denied the superiority of man1 but the test of that superiority lay1 according to her1 in the comprehensiveness of sympathy1 not in the aloofness of absolute distinction4 ,,iv ,india holds sacred1 and counts as places of pilgrimage1 all spots which display a special beauty or splendour of nature4 ,these had no original attraction on account of any special fitness for cultivation or settlement4 ,here1 man is free1 not to look upon ,nature as a source of supply of his necessities1 but to realise his soul beyond himself4 ,the ,himalayas of ,india are sacred and the ,vindhya ,hills4 ,her majestic rivers are sacred4 ,lake ,manasa and the confluence of the ,ganges and the ,jamuna are sacred4 ,india has saturated with her love and worship the great ,nature with which her children are surrounded1 whose light fills their eyes with gladness1 and whose water cleanses them1 whose food gives them life1 and from whose majestic mystery comes forth the constant revelation of the infinite in music1 scent1 and colour1 which brings its awakening to the soul of man4 ,india gains the world through worship1 through spiritual communion2 and the idea of freedom to which she aspired was based upon the realisation of her spiritual unity4 ,when1 in my recent voyage to ,europe1 our ship left ,aden and sailed along the sea which lay between the two continents1 we passed by the red and barren rocks of ,arabia on our right side and the gleaming sands of ,egypt on our left4 ,they seemed to me like two giant brothers exchanging with each other burning glances of hatred1 kept apart by the tearful entreaty of the sea from whose womb they had their birth4 ,there was an immense stretch of silence on the left shore as well as on the right1 but the two shores spoke to me of the two different historical dramas enacted4 ,the civilisation which found its growth in ,egypt was continued across long centuries1 elaborately rich with sentiments and expressions of life1 with pictures1 sculptures1 temples1 and ceremonials4 ,this was a country whose guardian-spirit was a noble river1 which spread the festivities of life on its banks across the heart of the land4 ,there man never raised the barrier of alienation between himself and the rest of the world4 ,on the opposite shore of the ,red ,sea the civilisation which grew up in the inhospitable soil of ,arabia had a contrary character to that of ,egypt4 ,there man felt himself isolated in his hostile and bare surroundings4 ,his idea of ,god became that of a jealous ,god4 ,his mind naturally dwelt upon the principle of separateness4 ,it roused in him the spirit of fight1 and this spirit was a force that drove him far and wide4 ,these two civilisations represented two fundamental divisions of human nature4 ,the one contained in it the spirit of conquest and the other the spirit of harmony4 ,and both of these have their truth and purpose in human existence4 ,the characters of two eminent sages have been described in our mythology4 ,one was ,vashishtha and another ,vishvamitra4 ,both of them were great1 but they represented two different types of wisdom2 and there was conflict between them4 ,vishvamitra sought to achieve power and was proud of it2 ,vashishtha was rudely smitten by that power4 ,but his hurt and his loss could not touch the illumination of his soul2 for he rose above them and could forgive4 ,ramachandra1 the great hero of our epic1 had his initiation to the spiritual life from ,vashishtha1 the life of inner peace and perfection4 ,but he had his initiation to war from ,vishvamitra1 who called him to kill the demons and gave him weapons that were irresistible4 ,those two sages symbolise in themselves the two guiding spirits of civilisation4 ,can it be true that they shall never be reconciled8 ,if so1 can ever the age of peace and co-operation dawn upon the human world8 ,creation is the harmony of contrary forces--the forces of attraction and repulsion4 ,when they join hands1 all the fire and fight are changed into the smile of flowers and the songs of birds4 ,when there is only one of them triumphant and the other defeated1 then either there is the death of cold rigidity or that of suicidal explosion4 ,humanity1 for ages1 has been busy with the one great creation of spiritual life4 ,its best wisdom1 its discipline1 its literature and art1 all the teachings and self-sacrifice of its noblest teachers1 have been for this4 ,but the harmony of contrary forces1 which give their rhythm to all creation1 has not yet been perfected by man in his civilisation1 and the ,creator in him is baffled over and over again4 ,he comes back to his work1 however1 and makes himself busy1 building his world in the midst of desolation and ruins4 ,his history is the history of his aspiration interrupted and renewed4 ,and one truth of which he must be reminded1 therefore1 is that the power which accomplishes the miracle of creation1 by bringing conflicting forces into the harmony of the ,one1 is no passion1 but a love which accepts the bonds of self-control from the joy of its own immensity--a love whose sacrifice is the manifestation of its endless wealth within itself4 ,,an ,,indian ,,folk ,,religion ,i ,in historical time the ,buddha comes first of those who declared salvation to all men1 without distinction1 as by right man's own4 ,what was the special force which startled men's minds and1 almost within the master's lifetime1 spread his teachings over ,india8 ,it was the unique significance of the event1 when a man came to men and said to them1 ,i am here to emancipate you from the miseries of the thraldom of self4 ,this wisdom came1 neither in texts of ,scripture1 nor in symbols of deities1 nor in religious practices sanctified by ages1 but through the voice of a living man and the love that flowed from a human heart4 ,and ,i believe this was the first occasion in the history of the world when the idea of the ,avatar found its place in religion4 ,western scholars are never tired of insisting that ,buddhism is of the nature of a moral code1 coldly leading to the path of extinction4 ,they forget that it was held to be a religion that roused in its devotees an inextinguishable fire of enthusiasm and carried them to lifelong exile across the mountain and desert barriers4 ,to say that a philosophy of suicide can keep kindled in human hearts for centuries such fervour of self-sacrifice is to go against all the laws of sane psychology4 ,the religious enthusiasm which cannot be bound within any daily ritual1 but overflows into adventures of love and beneficence1 must have in its centre that element of personality which rouses the whole soul4 ,in answer1 it may possibly be said that this was due to the personality of ,buddha himself4 ,but that also is not quite true4 ,the personality which stirs the human heart to its immense depths1 leading it to impossible deeds of heroism1 must in that process itself reveal to men the infinite which is in all humanity4 ,and that is what happened in ,buddhism1 making it a religion in the complete sense of the word4 ,like the religion of the ,upanishads1 ,buddhism also generated two divergent currents2 the one impersonal1 preaching the abnegation of self through discipline1 and the other personal1 preaching the cultivation of sympathy for all creatures1 and devotion to the infinite truth of love2 the other1 which is called the ,mahayana1 had its origin in the positive element contained in ,buddha's teachings1 which is immeasurable love4 ,it could never1 by any logic1 find its reality in the emptiness of the truthless abyss4 ,and the object of ,buddha's meditation and his teachings was to free humanity from sufferings4 ,but what was the path that he revealed to us8 ,was it some negative way of evading pain and seeking security against it8 ,on the contrary1 his path was the path of sacrifice--the utmost sacrifice of love4 ,the meaning of such sacrifice is to reach some ultimate truth1 some positive ideal1 which in its greatness can accept suffering and transmute it into the profound peace of self-renunciation4 ,true emancipation from suffering1 which is the inalienable condition of the limited life of the self1 can never be attained by fleeing from it1 but rather by changing its value in the realm of truth--the truth of the higher life of love4 ,we have learnt that1 by calculations made in accordance with the law of gravitation1 some planets were discovered exactly in the place where they should be4 ,such a law of gravitation there is also in the moral world4 ,and when we find men's minds disturbed1 as they were by the preaching of the ,buddha1 we can be sure1 even without any corroborative evidence1 that there must have been some great luminous body of attraction1 positive and powerful1 and not a mere unfathomable vacancy4 ,it is exactly this which we discover in the heart of the ,mahayana system2 and we have no hesitation in saying that the truth of ,buddhism is there4 ,the oil has to be burnt1 not for the purpose of diminishing it1 but for the purpose of giving light to the lamp4 ,and when the ,buddha said that the self must go1 he said at the same moment that love must be realised4 ,thus originated the doctrine of the ,dharma-kaya1 the ,infinite ,wisdom and ,love manifested in the ,buddha4 ,it was the first instance1 as ,i have said1 when men felt that the ,universal and the ,eternal ,spirit was revealed in a human individual whom they had known and touched4 ,the joy was too great for them1 since the very idea itself came to them as a freedom--a freedom from the sense of their measureless insignificance4 ,it was the first time1 ,i repeat1 when the individual1 as a man1 felt in himself the ,infinite made concrete4 ,what was more1 those men who felt the love welling forth from the heart of ,buddhism1 as one with the current of the ,eternal ,love itself1 were struck with the idea that such an effluence could never have been due to a single cataclysm of history--unnatural and therefore untrue4 ,they felt instead that it was in the eternal nature of truth1 that the event must belong to a series of manifestations2 there must have been numberless other revelations in the past and endless others to follow4 ,the idea grew and widened until men began to feel that this ,infinite ,being was already in every one of them1 and that it rested with themselves to remove the sensual obstructions and reveal him in their own lives4 ,in every individual there was1 they realised1 the potentiality of ,buddha--that is to say1 the ,infinite made manifest4 ,we have to keep in mind the great fact that the preaching of the ,buddha in ,india was not followed by stagnation of life--as would surely have happened if humanity was without any positive goal and his teaching was without any permanent value in itself4 ,on the contrary1 we find the arts and sciences springing up in its wake1 institutions started for alleviating the misery of all creatures1 human and non-human1 and great centres of education founded4 ,some mighty power was suddenly roused from its obscurity1 which worked for long centuries and changed the history of man in a large part of the world4 ,and that power came into its full activity only by the individual being made conscious of his infinite worth4 ,it was like the sudden discovery of a great mine of living wealth4 ,during the period of ,buddhism the doctrine of deliverance flourished1 which reached all mankind and released man's inner resources from neglect and self-insult4 ,even to-day we see in our own country human nature1 from its despised corner of indignity1 slowly and painfully finding its way to assert the inborn majesty of man4 ,it is like the imprisoned tree finding a rift in the wall1 and sending out its eager branches into freedom1 to prove that darkness is not its birthright1 that its love is for the sunshine4 ,in the time of the ,buddha the individual discovered his own immensity of worth1 first by witnessing a man who united his heart in sympathy with all creatures1 in all worlds1 through the power of a love that knew no bounds2 and then by learning that the same light of perfection lay confined within himself behind the clouds of selfish desire1 and that the ,bodhi-hridaya--the heart of the ,eternal ,enlightenment--every moment claimed its unveiling in his own heart4 ,nagarjuna speaks of this ,bodhi-hridaya 7another of whose names is ,bodhi-,citta7 as follows3 ,one who understands the nature of the ,bodhi-hridaya1 sees everything with a loving heart2 for love is the essence of ,bodhi-hridaya4#a ,footnote #a3 ,outlines of ,mahayana ,buddhism1 by ,dr4 ,d4 ,t4 ,suzuki4 ,my object in writing this paper is to show1 by the further help of illustration from a popular religious sect of ,bengal1 that the religious instinct of man urges him towards a truth1 by which he can transcend the finite nature of the individual self4 ,man would never feel the indignity of his limitations if these were inevitable4 ,within him he has glimpses of the ,infinite1 which give him assurance that this truth is not in his limitations1 but that this truth can be attained by love4 ,for love is the positive quality of the ,infinite1 and love's sacrifice accordingly does not lead to emptiness1 but to fulfilment1 to ,bodhi-hridaya1 the heart of enlightenment4 ,the members of the religious sect ,i have mentioned call themselves ,bauel4 ,they live outside social recognition1 and their very obscurity helps them in their seeking1 from a direct source1 the enlightenment which the soul longs for1 the eternal light of love4 ,it would be absurd to say that there is little difference between ,buddhism and the religion of these simple people1 who have no system of metaphysics to support their faith4 ,but my object in bringing close together these two religions1 which seem to belong to opposite poles1 is to point out the fundamental unity in them4 ,both of them believe in a fulfilment which is reached by love's emancipating us from the dominance of self4 ,in both these religions we find man's yearning to attain the infinite worth of his individuality1 not through any conventional valuation of society1 but through his perfect relationship with ,truth4 ,they agree in holding that the realisation of our ultimate object is waiting for us in ourselves4 ,the ,bauel likens this fulfilment to the blossoming of a bud1 and sings3 ,make way1 ,o bud1 make way1 ,burst open thy heart and make way4 ,the opening spirit has overtaken thee1 ,canst thou remain a bud any longer8 ,,ii ,one day1 in a small village in ,bengal1 an ascetic woman from the neighbourhood came to see me4 ,she had the name ,sarva-khepi given to her by the village people1 the meaning of which is the woman who is mad about all things4 ,she fixed her star-like eyes upon my face and startled me with the question1 ,when are you coming to meet me underneath the trees8 ,evidently she pitied me who lived 7according to her7 prisoned behind walls1 banished away from the great meeting-place of the ,all1 where she had her dwelling4 ,just at that moment my gardener came with his basket1 and when the woman understood that the flowers in the vase on my table were going to be thrown away1 to make place for the fresh ones1 she looked pained and said to me1 ,you are always engaged reading and writing2 you do not see4 ,then she took the discarded flowers in her palms1 kissed them and touched them with her forehead1 and reverently murmured to herself1 ,beloved of my heart4 ,i felt that this woman1 in her direct vision of the infinite personality in the heart of all things1 truly represented the spirit of ,india4 ,in the same village ,i came into touch with some ,bauel singers4 ,i had known them by their names1 occasionally seen them singing and begging in the street1 and so passed them by1 vaguely classifying them in my mind under the general name of ,vairagis1 or ascetics4 ,the time came when ,i had occasion to meet with some members of the same body and talk to them about spiritual matters4 ,the first ,bauel song1 which ,i chanced to hear with any attention1 profoundly stirred my mind4 ,its words are so simple that it makes me hesitate to render them in a foreign tongue1 and set them forward for critical observation4 ,besides1 the best part of a song is missed when the tune is absent2 for thereby its movement and its colour are lost1 and it becomes like a butterfly whose wings have been plucked4 ,the first line may be translated thus3 ,where shall ,i meet him1 the ,man of my ,heart8 ,this phrase1 the ,man of my ,heart1 is not peculiar to this song1 but is usual with the ,bauel sect4 ,it means that1 for me1 the supreme truth of all existence is in the revelation of the ,infinite in my own humanity4 ,the ,man of my ,heart1 to the ,bauel1 is like a divine instrument perfectly tuned4 ,he gives expression to infinite truth in the music of life4 ,and the longing for the truth which is in us1 which we have not yet realised1 breaks out in the following ,bauel song3 ,where shall ,i meet him1 the ,man of my ,heart8 ,he is lost to me and ,i seek him wandering from land to land4 ,i am listless for that moonrise of beauty1 which is to light my life1 which ,i long to see in the fulness of vision1 in gladness of heart4 ,the name of the poet who wrote this song was ,gagan4 ,he was almost illiterate2 and the ideas he received from his ,bauel teacher found no distraction from the self-consciousness of the modern age4 ,he was a village postman1 earning about ten shillings a month1 and he died before he had completed his teens4 ,the sentiment1 to which he gave such intensity of expression1 is common to most of the songs of his sect4 ,and it is a sect1 almost exclusively confined to that lower floor of society1 where the light of modern education hardly finds an entrance1 while wealth and respectability shun its utter indigence4 ,in the song ,i have translated above1 the longing of the singer to realise the infinite in his own personality is expressed4 ,this has to be done daily by its perfect expression in life1 in love4 ,for the personal expression of life1 in its perfection1 is love2 just as the personal expression of truth in its perfection is beauty4 ,in the political life of the modern age the idea of democracy has given mankind faith in the individual4 ,it gives each man trust in his own possibilities1 and pride in his humanity4 ,something of the same idea1 we find1 has been working in the popular mind of ,india1 with regard to its religious consciousness4 ,over and over again it tries to assert1 not only that ,god is for each of us1 but also that ,god is in each of us4 ,these people have no special incarnations in their simple theology1 because they know that ,god is special to each individual4 ,they say that to be born a man is the greatest privilege that can fall to a creature in all the world4 ,they assert that gods in ,paradise envy human beings4 ,why8 ,because ,god's will1 in giving his love1 finds its completeness in man's will returning that love4 ,therefore ,humanity is a necessary factor in the perfecting of the divine truth4 ,the ,infinite1 for its self-expression1 comes down into the manifoldness of the ,finite2 and the ,finite1 for its self-realisation1 must rise into the unity of the ,infinite4 ,then only is the ,cycle of ,truth complete4 ,the dignity of man1 in his eternal right of ,truth1 finds expression in the following song1 composed1 not by a theologian or a man of letters1 but by one who belongs to that ninety per cent of the population of ,british ,india whose education has been far less than elementary1 in fact almost below zero3 ,my longing is to meet you in play of love1 my ,lover2 ,but this longing is not only mine1 but also yours4 ,for your lips can have their smile1 and your flute its music1 only in your delight in my love2 and therefore you are importunate1 even as ,i am4 ,if the world were a mere expression of formative forces1 then this song would be pathetic in its presumption4 ,but why is there beauty at all in creation--the beauty whose only meaning is in a call that claims disinterestedness as a response8 ,the poet proudly says3 ,your flute could not have its music of beauty if your delight were not in my love4 ,your power is great--and there ,i am not equal to you--but it lies even in me to make you smile1 and if you and ,i never meet1 then this play of love remains incomplete4 ,if this were not true1 then it would be an utter humiliation to exist at all in this world4 ,if it were solely our business to seek the ,lover1 and his to keep himself passively aloof in the infinity of his glory1 or actively masterful only in imposing his commands upon us1 then we should dare to defy him1 and refuse to accept the everlasting insult latent in the one-sided importunity of a slave4 ,and this is what the ,bauel says--he who1 in the world of men1 goes about singing for alms from door to door1 with his one-stringed instrument and long robe of patched-up rags on his back3 ,i stop and sit here on the road4 ,do not ask me to walk farther4 ,if your love can be complete without mine1 let me turn back from seeing you4 ,i have been travelling to seek you1 my friend1 for long2 ,yet ,i refuse to beg a sight of you1 if you do not feel my need4 ,i am blind with market dust and midday glare1 and so wait1 my heart's lover1 in hopes that your own love will send you to find me out4 ,the poet is fully conscious that his value in the world's market is pitifully small2 that he is neither wealthy nor learned4 ,yet he has his great compensation1 for he has come close to his ,lover's heart4 ,in ,bengal the women bathing in the river often use their overturned water jars to keep themselves floating when they swim1 and the poet uses this incident for his simile3 ,it is lucky that ,i am an empty vessel1 ,for when you swim1 ,i keep floating by your side4 ,your full vessels are left on the empty shore1 they are for use2 ,but ,i am carried to the river in your arms1 and ,i dance to the rhythm of your heart-throbs and heaving of the waves4 ,the great distinguished people of the world do not know that these beggars--deprived of education1 honour1 and wealth--can1 in the pride of their souls1 look down upon them as the unfortunate ones1 who are left on the shore for their worldly uses1 but whose life ever misses the touch of the ,lover's arms4 ,the feeling that man is not a mere casual visitor at the palace-gate of the world1 but the invited guest whose presence is needed to give the royal banquet its sole meaning1 is not confined to any particular sect in ,india4 ,let me quote here some poems from a mediaeval poet of ,western ,india--,jnandas--whose works are nearly forgotten1 and have become scarce from the very exquisiteness of their excellence4 ,in the following poem he is addressing ,god's messenger1 who comes to us in the morning light of our childhood1 in the dusk of our day's end1 and in the night's darkness3 ,messenger1 morning brought you1 habited in gold4 ,after sunset1 your song wore a tune of ascetic grey1 and then came night4 ,your message was written in bright letters across the black4 ,why is such splendour about you1 to lure the heart of one who is nothing8 ,this is the answer of the messenger3 ,great is the festival hall where you are to be the only guest4 ,therefore the letter to you is written from sky to sky1 ,and ,i1 the proud servant1 bring the invitation with all ceremony4 ,and thus the poet knows that the silent rows of stars carry ,god's own invitation to the individual soul4 ,the same poet sings3 ,what hast thou come to beg from the beggar1 ,o ,king of ,kings8 ,my ,kingdom is poor for want of him1 my dear one1 and ,i wait for him in sorrow4 ,how long will you keep him waiting1 ,o wretch1 who has waited for you for ages in silence and stillness8 ,open your gate1 and make this very moment fit for the union4 ,it is the song of man's pride in the value given to him by ,supreme ,love and realised by his own love4 ,the ,vaishnava religion1 which has become the popular religion of ,india1 carries the same message3 ,god's love finding its finality in man's love4 ,according to it1 the lover1 man1 is the complement of the ,lover1 ,god1 in the internal love drama of existence2 and ,god's call is ever wafted in man's heart in the world-music1 drawing him towards the union4 ,this idea has been expressed in rich elaboration of symbols verging upon realism4 ,but for these ,bauels this idea is direct and simple1 full of the dignified beauty of truth1 which shuns all tinsels of ornament4 ,the ,bauel poet1 when asked why he had no sect mark on his forehead1 answered in his song that the true colour decoration appears on the skin of the fruit when its inner core is filled with ripe1 sweet juice2 but by artificially smearing it with colour from outside you do not make it ripe4 ,and he says of his ,guru1 his teacher1 that he is puzzled to find in which direction he must make salutation4 ,for his teacher is not one1 but many1 who1 moving on1 form a procession of wayfarers4 ,bauels have no temple or image for their worship1 and this utter simplicity is needful for men whose one subject is to realise the innermost nearness of ,god4 ,the ,bauel poet expressly says that if we try to approach ,god through the senses we miss him3 ,bring him not into your house as the guest of your eyes2 but let him come at your heart's invitation4 ,opening your doors to that which is seen only1 is to lose it4 ,yet1 being a poet1 he also knows that the objects of sense can reveal their spiritual meaning only when they are not seen through mere physical eyes3 ,eyes can see only dust and earth1 ,but feel it with your heart1 it is pure joy4 ,the flowers of delight blossom on all sides1 in every form1 but where is your heart's thread to weave them in a garland8 ,these ,bauels have a philosophy1 which they call the philosophy of the body2 but they keep its secret2 it is only for the initiated4 ,evidently the underlying idea is that the individual's body is itself the temple1 in whose inner mystic shrine the ,divine appears before the soul1 and the key to it has to be found from those who know4 ,but as the key is not for us outsiders1 ,i leave it with the observation that this mystic philosophy of the body is the outcome of the attempt to get rid of all the outward shelters which are too costly for people like themselves4 ,but this human body of ours is made by ,god's own hand1 from his own love1 and even if some men1 in the pride of their superiority1 may despise it1 ,god finds his joy in dwelling in others of yet lower birth4 ,it is a truth easier of discovery by these people of humble origin than by men of proud estate4 ,the pride of the ,bauel beggar is not in his worldly distinction1 but in the distinction that ,god himself has given to him4 ,he feels himself like a flute through which ,god's own breath of love has been breathed3 ,my heart is like a flute he has played on4 ,if ever it fall into other hands1-- let him fling it away4 ,my lover's flute is dear to him4 ,therefore1 if to-day alien breath have entered it and sounded strange notes1 ,let him break it to pieces and strew the dust with them4 ,so we find that this man also has his disgust of defilement4 ,while the ambitious world of wealth and power despises him1 he in his turn thinks that the world's touch desecrates him who has been made sacred by the touch of his ,lover4 ,he does not envy us our life of ambition and achievements1 but he knows how precious his own life has been3 ,i am poured forth in living notes of joy and sorrow by your breath4 ,morning and evening1 in summer and in rains1 ,i am fashioned to music4 ,yet should ,i be wholly spent in some flight of song1 ,i shall not grieve1 the tune is so precious to me4 ,our joys and sorrows are contradictory when self separates them in opposition4 ,but for the heart in which self merges in ,god's love1 they lose their absoluteness4 ,so the ,bauel's prayer is to feel in all situations--in danger1 or pain1 or sorrow--that he is in ,god's hands4 ,he solves the problem of emancipation from sufferings by accepting and setting them in a higher context3 ,i am the boat1 you are the sea1 and also the boatman4 ,though you never make the shore1 though you let me sink1 why should ,i be foolish and afraid8 ,is the reaching the shore a greater prize than losing myself with you8 ,if you are only the haven1 as they say1 then what is the sea8 ,let it surge and toss me on its waves1 ,i shall be content4 ,i live in you1 whatever and however you appear4 ,save me or kill me as you wish1 only never leave me in others' hands4 ,,iii ,it is needless to say1 before ,i conclude1 that ,i had neither the training nor the opportunity to study this mendicant religious sect in ,bengal from an ethnological standpoint4 ,i was attracted to find out how the living currents of religious movements work in the heart of the people1 saving them from degradation imposed by the society of the learned1 of the rich1 or of the high-born2 how the spirit of man1 by making use even of its obstacles1 reaches fulfilment1 led thither1 not by the learned authorities in the scriptures1 or by the mechanical impulse of the dogma-driven crowd1 but by the unsophisticated aspiration of the loving soul4 ,on the inaccessible mountain peaks of theology the snows of creed remain eternally rigid1 cold1 and pure4 ,but ,god's manifest shower falls direct on the plain of humble hearts1 flowing there in various channels1 even getting mixed with some mud in its course1 as it is soaked into the underground currents1 invisible1 but ever-moving4 ,i can think of nothing better than to conclude my paper with a poem of ,jnandas1 in which the aspiration of all simple spirits has found a devout expression3 ,i had travelled all day and was tired2 then ,i bowed my head towards thy kingly court still far away4 ,the night deepened1 a longing burned in my heart4 ,whatever the words ,i sang1 pain cried through them--for even my songs thirsted-- ,o my ,lover1 my ,beloved1 my ,best in all the world4 ,when time seemed lost in darkness1 thy hand dropped its sceptre to take up the lute and strike the uttermost chords2 ,and my heart sang out1 ,o my ,lover1 my ,beloved1 my ,best in all the world4 ,ah1 who is this whose arms enfold me8 ,whatever ,i have to leave1 let me leave2 and whatever ,i have to bear1 let me bear4 ,only let me walk with thee1 ,o my ,lover1 my ,beloved1 my ,best in all the world4 ,descend at whiles from thy high audience hall1 come down amid joys and sorrows4 ,hide in all forms and delights1 in love1 ,and in my heart sing thy songs1-- ,o my ,lover1 my ,beloved1 my ,best in all the world4 ,,east ,,and ,,west ,i ,it is not always a profound interest in man that carries travellers nowadays to distant lands4 ,more often it is the facility for rapid movement4 ,for lack of time and for the sake of convenience we generalise and crush our human facts into the packages within the steel trunks that hold our travellers' reports4 ,our knowledge of our own countrymen and our feelings about them have slowly and unconsciously grown out of innumerable facts which are full of contradictions and subject to incessant change4 ,they have the elusive mystery and fluidity of life4 ,we cannot define to ourselves what we are as a whole1 because we know too much2 because our knowledge is more than knowledge4 ,it is an immediate consciousness of personality1 any evaluation of which carries some emotion1 joy or sorrow1 shame or exaltation4 ,but in a foreign land we try to find our compensation for the meagreness of our data by the compactness of the generalisation which our imperfect sympathy itself helps us to form4 ,when a stranger from the ,west travels in the ,eastern world he takes the facts that displease him and readily makes use of them for his rigid conclusions1 fixed upon the unchallengeable authority of his personal experience4 ,it is like a man who has his own boat for crossing his village stream1 but1 on being compelled to wade across some strange watercourse1 draws angry comparisons as he goes from every patch of mud and every pebble which his feet encounter4 ,our mind has faculties which are universal1 but its habits are insular4 ,there are men who become impatient and angry at the least discomfort when their habits are incommoded4 ,in their idea of the next world they probably conjure up the ghosts of their slippers and dressing-gowns1 and expect the latchkey that opens their lodging-house door on earth to fit their front door in the other world4 ,as travellers they are a failure2 for they have grown too accustomed to their mental easy-chairs1 and in their intellectual nature love home comforts1 which are of local make1 more than the realities of life1 which1 like earth itself1 are full of ups and downs1 yet are one in their rounded completeness4 ,the modern age has brought the geography of the earth near to us1 but made it difficult for us to come into touch with man4 ,we go to strange lands and observe2 we do not live there4 ,we hardly meet men3 but only specimens of knowledge4 ,we are in haste to seek for general types and overlook individuals4 ,when we fall into the habit of neglecting to use the understanding that comes of sympathy in our travels1 our knowledge of foreign people grows insensitive1 and therefore easily becomes both unjust and cruel in its character1 and also selfish and contemptuous in its application4 ,such has1 too often1 been the case with regard to the meeting of ,western people in our days with others for whom they do not recognise any obligation of kinship4 ,it has been admitted that the dealings between different races of men are not merely between individuals2 that our mutual understanding is either aided1 or else obstructed1 by the general emanations forming the social atmosphere4 ,these emanations are our collective ideas and collective feelings1 generated according to special historical circumstances4 ,for instance1 the caste-idea is a collective idea in ,india4 ,when we approach an ,indian who is under the influence of this collective idea1 he is no longer a pure individual with his conscience fully awake to the judging of the value of a human being4 ,he is more or less a passive medium for giving expression to the sentiment of a whole community4 ,it is evident that the caste-idea is not creative2 it is merely institutional4 ,it adjusts human beings according to some mechanical arrangement4 ,it emphasises the negative side of the individual--his separateness4 ,it hurts the complete truth in man4 ,in the ,west1 also1 the people have a certain collective idea that obscures their humanity4 ,let me try to explain what ,i feel about it4 ,,ii ,lately ,i went to visit some battlefields of ,france which had been devastated by war4 ,the awful calm of desolation1 which still bore wrinkles of pain--death-struggles stiffened into ugly ridges--brought before my mind the vision of a huge demon1 which had no shape1 no meaning1 yet had two arms that could strike and break and tear1 a gaping mouth that could devour1 and bulging brains that could conspire and plan4 ,it was a purpose1 which had a living body1 but no complete humanity to temper it4 ,because it was passion--belonging to life1 and yet not having the wholeness of life--it was the most terrible of life's enemies4 ,something of the same sense of oppression in a different degree1 the same desolation in a different aspect1 is produced in my mind when ,i realise the effect of the ,west upon ,eastern life--the ,west which1 in its relation to us1 is all plan and purpose incarnate1 without any superfluous humanity4 ,i feel the contrast very strongly in ,japan4 ,in that country the old world presents itself with some ideal of perfection1 in which man has his varied opportunities of self-revelation in art1 in ceremonial1 in religious faith1 and in customs expressing the poetry of social relationship4 ,there one feels that deep delight of hospitality which life offers to life4 ,and side by side1 in the same soil1 stands the modern world1 which is stupendously big and powerful1 but inhospitable4 ,it has no simple-hearted welcome for man4 ,it is living2 yet the incompleteness of life's ideal within it cannot but hurt humanity4 ,the wriggling tentacles of a cold-blooded utilitarianism1 with which the ,west has grasped all the easily yielding succulent portions of the ,east1 are causing pain and indignation throughout the ,eastern countries4 ,the ,west comes to us1 not with the imagination and sympathy that create and unite1 but with a shock of passion--passion for power and wealth4 ,this passion is a mere force1 which has in it the principle of separation1 of conflict4 ,i have been fortunate in coming into close touch with individual men and women of the ,western countries1 and have felt with them their sorrows and shared their aspirations4 ,i have known that they seek the same ,god1 who is my ,god--even those who deny ,him4 ,i feel certain that1 if the great light of culture be extinct in ,europe1 our horizon in the ,east will mourn in darkness4 ,it does not hurt my pride to acknowledge that1 in the present age1 ,western humanity has received its mission to be the teacher of the world2 that her science1 through the mastery of laws of nature1 is to liberate human souls from the dark dungeon of matter4 ,for this very reason ,i have realised all the more strongly1 on the other hand1 that the dominant collective idea in the ,western countries is not creative4 ,it is ready to enslave or kill individuals1 to drug a great people with soul-killing poison1 darkening their whole future with the black mist of stupefaction1 and emasculating entire races of men to the utmost degree of helplessness4 ,it is wholly wanting in spiritual power to blend and harmonise2 it lacks the sense of the great personality of man4 ,the most significant fact of modern days is this1 that the ,west has met the ,east4 ,such a momentous meeting of humanity1 in order to be fruitful1 must have in its heart some great emotional idea1 generous and creative4 ,there can be no doubt that ,god's choice has fallen upon the knights-errant of the ,west for the service of the present age2 arms and armour have been given to them2 but have they yet realised in their hearts the single-minded loyalty to their cause which can resist all temptations of bribery from the devil8 ,the world to-day is offered to the ,west4 ,she will destroy it1 if she does not use it for a great creation of man4 ,the materials for such a creation are in the hands of science2 but the creative genius is in ,man's spiritual ideal4 ,,iii ,when ,i was young a stranger from ,europe came to ,bengal4 ,he chose his lodging among the people of the country1 shared with them their frugal diet1 and freely offered them his service4 ,he found employment in the houses of the rich1 teaching them ,french and ,german1 and the money thus earned he spent to help poor students in buying books4 ,this meant for him hours of walking in the mid-day heat of a tropical summer2 for1 intent upon exercising the utmost economy1 he refused to hire conveyances4 ,he was pitiless in his exaction from himself of his resources1 in money1 time1 and strength1 to the point of privation2 and all this for the sake of a people who were obscure1 to whom he was not born1 yet whom he dearly loved4 ,he did not come to us with a professional mission of teaching sectarian creeds2 he had not in his nature the least trace of that self-sufficiency of goodness1 which humiliates by gifts the victims of its insolent benevolence4 ,though he did not know our language1 he took every occasion to frequent our meetings and ceremonies2 yet he was always afraid of intrusion1 and tenderly anxious lest he might offend us by his ignorance of our customs4 ,at last1 under the continual strain of work in an alien climate and surroundings1 his health broke down4 ,he died1 and was cremated at our burning-ground1 according to his express desire4 ,the attitude of his mind1 the manner of his living1 the object of his life1 his modesty1 his unstinted self-sacrifice for a people who had not even the power to give publicity to any benefaction bestowed upon them1 were so utterly unlike anything we were accustomed to associate with the ,europeans in ,india1 that it gave rise in our mind to a feeling of love bordering upon awe4 ,we all have a realm1 a private paradise1 in our mind1 where dwell deathless memories of persons who brought some divine light to our life's experience1 who may not be known to others1 and whose names have no place in the pages of history4 ,let me confess to you that this man lives as one of those immortals in the paradise of my individual life4 ,he came from ,sweden1 his name was ,hammargren4 ,what was most remarkable in the event of his coming to us in ,bengal was the fact that in his own country he had chanced to read some works of my great countryman1 ,ram ,mohan ,roy1 and felt an immense veneration for his genius and his character4 ,ram ,mohan ,roy lived in the beginning of the last century1 and it is no exaggeration when ,i describe him as one of the immortal personalities of modern time4 ,this young ,swede had the unusual gift of a far-sighted intellect and sympathy1 which enabled him even from his distance of space and time1 and in spite of racial differences1 to realise the greatness of ,ram ,mohan ,roy4 ,it moved him so deeply that he resolved to go to the country which produced this great man1 and offer her his service4 ,he was poor1 and he had to wait some time in ,england before he could earn his passage money to ,india4 ,there he came at last1 and in reckless generosity of love utterly spent himself to the last breath of his life1 away from home and kindred and all the inheritances of his motherland4 ,his stay among us was too short to produce any outward result4 ,he failed even to achieve during his life what he had in his mind1 which was to found by the help of his scanty earnings a library as a memorial to ,ram ,mohan ,roy1 and thus to leave behind him a visible symbol of his devotion4 ,but what ,i prize most in this ,european youth1 who left no record of his life behind him1 is not the memory of any service of goodwill1 but the precious gift of respect which he offered to a people who are fallen upon evil times1 and whom it is so easy to ignore or to humiliate4 ,for the first time in the modern days this obscure individual from ,sweden brought to our country the chivalrous courtesy of the ,west1 a greeting of human fellowship4 ,the coincidence came to me with a great and delightful surprise when the ,nobel ,prize was offered to me from ,sweden4 ,as a recognition of individual merit it was of great value to me1 no doubt2 but it was the acknowledgment of the ,east as a collaborator with the ,western continents1 in contributing its riches to the common stock of civilisation1 which had the chief significance for the present age4 ,it meant joining hands in comradeship by the two great hemispheres of the human world across the sea4 ,,iv ,to-day the real ,east remains unexplored4 ,the blindness of contempt is more hopeless than the blindness of ignorance2 for contempt kills the light which ignorance merely leaves unignited4 ,the ,east is waiting to be understood by the ,western races1 in order not only to be able to give what is true in her1 but also to be confident of her own mission4 ,in ,indian history1 the meeting of the ,mussulman and the ,hindu produced ,akbar1 the object of whose dream was the unification of hearts and ideals4 ,it had all the glowing enthusiasm of a religion1 and it produced an immediate and a vast result even in his own lifetime4 ,but the fact still remains that the ,western mind1 after centuries of contact with the ,east1 has not evolved the enthusiasm of a chivalrous ideal which can bring this age to its fulfilment4 ,it is everywhere raising thorny hedges of exclusion and offering human sacrifices to national self-seeking4 ,it has intensified the mutual feelings of envy among ,western races themselves1 as they fight over their spoils and display a carnivorous pride in their snarling rows of teeth4 ,we must again guard our minds from any encroaching distrust of the individuals of a nation4 ,the active love of humanity and the spirit of martyrdom for the cause of justice and truth which ,i have met with in the ,western countries have been a great lesson and inspiration to me4 ,i have no doubt in my mind that the ,west owes its true greatness1 not so much to its marvellous training of intellect1 as to its spirit of service devoted to the welfare of man4 ,therefore ,i speak with a personal feeling of pain and sadness about the collective power which is guiding the helm of ,western civilisation4 ,it is a passion1 not an ideal4 ,the more success it has brought to ,europe1 the more costly it will prove to her at last1 when the accounts have to be rendered4 ,and the signs are unmistakable1 that the accounts have been called for4 ,the time has come when ,europe must know that the forcible parasitism which she has been practising upon the two large ,continents of the world--the two most unwieldy whales of humanity--must be causing to her moral nature a gradual atrophy and degeneration4 ,as an example1 let me quote the following extract from the concluding chapter of ,from the ,cape to ,cairo1 by ,messrs4 ,grogan and ,sharp1 two writers who have the power to inculcate their doctrines by precept and example4 ,in their reference to the ,african they are candid1 as when they say1 ,we have stolen his land4 ,now we must steal his limbs4 ,these two sentences1 carefully articulated1 with a smack of enjoyment1 have been more clearly explained in the following statement1 where some sense of that decency which is the attenuated ghost of a buried conscience1 prompts the writers to use the phrase compulsory labour in place of the honest word slavery2 just as the modern politician adroitly avoids the word injunction and uses the word mandate4 ,compulsory labour in some form1 they say1 is the corollary of our occupation of the country4 ,and they add3 ,it is pathetic1 but it is history1 implying thereby that moral sentiments have no serious effect in the history of human beings4 ,elsewhere they write3 ,either we must give up the country commercially1 or we must make the ,african work4 ,and mere abuse of those who point out the impasse cannot change the facts4 ,we must decide1 and soon4 ,or rather the white man of ,south ,africa will decide4 ,the authors also confess that they have seen too much of the world to have any lingering belief that ,western civilisation benefits native races4 ,the logic is simple--the logic of egoism4 ,but the argument is simplified by lopping off the greater part of the premise4 ,for these writers seem to hold that the only important question for the white men of ,south ,africa is1 how indefinitely to grow fat on ostrich feathers and diamond mines1 and dance jazz dances over the misery and degradation of a whole race of fellow-beings of a different colour from their own4 ,possibly they believe that moral laws have a special domesticated breed of comfortable concessions for the service of the people in power4 ,possibly they ignore the fact that commercial and political cannibalism1 profitably practised upon foreign races1 creeps back nearer home2 that the cultivation of unwholesome appetites has its final reckoning with the stomach which has been made to serve it4 ,for1 after all1 man is a spiritual being1 and not a mere living money-bag jumping from profit to profit1 and breaking the backbone of human races in its financial leapfrog4 ,such1 however1 has been the condition of things for more than a century2 and to-day1 trying to read the future by the light of the ,european conflagration1 we are asking ourselves everywhere in the ,east3 ,is this frightfully overgrown power really great8 ,it can bruise us from without1 but can it add to our wealth of spirit8 ,it can sign peace treaties1 but can it give peace8 ,it was about two thousand years ago that all-powerful ,rome in one of its eastern provinces executed on a cross a simple teacher of an obscure tribe of fishermen4 ,on that day the ,roman governor felt no falling off of his appetite or sleep4 ,on that day there was1 on the one hand1 the agony1 the humiliation1 the death2 on the other1 the pomp of pride and festivity in the ,governor's palace4 ,and to-day8 ,to whom1 then1 shall we bow the head8 ,kasmai devaya havisha vidhema8 7,to which ,god shall we offer oblation87 ,we know of an instance in our own history of ,india1 when a great personality1 both in his life and voice1 struck the keynote of the solemn music of the soul--love for all creatures4 ,and that music crossed seas1 mountains1 and deserts4 ,races belonging to different climates1 habits1 and languages were drawn together1 not in the clash of arms1 not in the conflict of exploitation1 but in harmony of life1 in amity and peace4 ,that was creation4 ,when we think of it1 we see at once what the confusion of thought was to which the ,western poet1 dwelling upon the difference between ,east and ,west1 referred when he said1 ,never the twain shall meet4 ,it is true that they are not yet showing any real sign of meeting4 ,but the reason is because the ,west has not sent out its humanity to meet the man in the ,east1 but only its machine4 ,therefore the poet's line has to be changed into something like this3 ,man is man1 machine is machine1 ,and never the twain shall wed4 ,you must know that red tape can never be a common human bond2 that official sealing-wax can never provide means of mutual attachment2 that it is a painful ordeal for human beings to have to receive favours from animated pigeonholes1 and condescensions from printed circulars that give notice but never speak4 ,the presence of the ,western people in the ,east is a human fact4 ,if we are to gain anything from them1 it must not be a mere sum-total of legal codes and systems of civil and military services4 ,man is a great deal more to man than that4 ,we have our human birthright to claim direct help from the man of the ,west1 if he has anything great to give us4 ,it must come to us1 not through mere facts in a juxtaposition1 but through the spontaneous sacrifice made by those who have the gift1 and therefore the responsibility4 ,earnestly ,i ask the poet of the ,western world to realise and sing to you with all the great power of music which he has1 that the ,east and the ,west are ever in search of each other1 and that they must meet not merely in the fulness of physical strength1 but in fulness of truth2 that the right hand1 which wields the sword1 has the need of the left1 which holds the shield of safety4 ,the ,east has its seat in the vast plains watched over by the snow-peaked mountains and fertilised by rivers carrying mighty volumes of water to the sea4 ,there1 under the blaze of a tropical sun1 the physical life has bedimmed the light of its vigour and lessened its claims4 ,there man has had the repose of mind which has ever tried to set itself in harmony with the inner notes of existence4 ,in the silence of sunrise and sunset1 and on star-crowded nights1 he has sat face to face with the ,infinite1 waiting for the revelation that opens up the heart of all that there is4 ,he has said1 in a rapture of realisation3 ,hearken to me1 ye children of the ,immortal1 who dwell in the ,kingdom of ,heaven4 ,i have known1 from beyond darkness1 the ,supreme ,person1 shining with the radiance of the sun4 ,the man from the ,east1 with his faith in the eternal1 who in his soul had met the touch of the ,supreme ,person--did he never come to you in the ,west and speak to you of the ,kingdom of ,heaven8 ,did he not unite the ,east and the ,west in truth1 in the unity of one spiritual bond between all children of the ,immortal1 in the realisation of one great ,personality in all human persons8 ,yes1 the ,east did once meet the ,west profoundly in the growth of her life4 ,such union became possible1 because the ,east came to the ,west with the ideal that is creative1 and not with the passion that destroys moral bonds4 ,the mystic consciousness of the ,infinite1 which she brought with her1 was greatly needed by the man of the ,west to give him his balance4 ,on the other hand1 the ,east must find her own balance in ,science--the magnificent gift that the ,west can bring to her4 ,truth has its nest as well as its sky4 ,that nest is definite in structure1 accurate in law of construction2 and though it has to be changed and rebuilt over and over again1 the need of it is never-ending and its laws are eternal4 ,for some centuries the ,east has neglected the nest-building of truth4 ,she has not been attentive to learn its secret4 ,trying to cross the trackless infinite1 the ,east has relied solely upon her wings4 ,she has spurned the earth1 till1 buffeted by storms1 her wings are hurt and she is tired1 sorely needing help4 ,but has she then to be told that the messenger of the sky and the builder of the nest shall never meet8 ,,the ,,modern ,,age ,i ,wherever man meets man in a living relationship1 the meeting finds its natural expression in works of art1 the signatures of beauty1 in which the mingling of the personal touch leaves its memorial4 ,on the other hand1 a relationship of pure utility humiliates man--it ignores the rights and needs of his deeper nature2 it feels no compunction in maltreating and killing things of beauty that can never be restored4 ,some years ago1 when ,i set out from ,calcutta on my voyage to ,japan1 the first thing that shocked me1 with a sense of personal injury1 was the ruthless intrusion of the factories for making gunny-bags on both banks of the ,ganges4 ,the blow it gave to me was owing to the precious memory of the days of my boyhood1 when the scenery of this river was the only great thing near my birthplace reminding me of the existence of a world which had its direct communication with our innermost spirit4 ,calcutta is an upstart town with no depth of sentiment in her face and in her manners4 ,it may truly be said about her genesis3--,in the beginning there was the spirit of the ,shop1 which uttered through its megaphone1 ,let there be the ,office6 and there was ,calcutta4 ,she brought with her no dower of distinction1 no majesty of noble or romantic origin2 she never gathered around her any great historical associations1 any annals of brave sufferings1 or memory of mighty deeds4 ,the only thing which gave her the sacred baptism of beauty was the river4 ,i was fortunate enough to be born before the smoke-belching iron dragon had devoured the greater part of the life of its banks2 when the landing-stairs descending into its waters1 caressed by its tides1 appeared to me like the loving arms of the villages clinging to it2 when ,calcutta1 with her up-tilted nose and stony stare1 had not completely disowned her foster-mother1 rural ,bengal1 and had not surrendered body and soul to her wealthy paramour1 the spirit of the ledger1 bound in dead leather4 ,but as an instance of the contrast of the different ideal of a different age1 incarnated in the form of a town1 the memory of my last visit to ,benares comes to my mind4 ,what impressed me most deeply1 while ,i was there1 was the mother-call of the river ,ganges1 ever filling the atmosphere with an unheard melody1 attracting the whole population to its bosom every hour of the day4 ,i am proud of the fact that ,india has felt a most profound love for this river1 which nourishes civilisation on its banks1 guiding its course from the silence of the hills to the sea with its myriad voices of solitude4 ,the love of this river1 which has become one with the love of the best in man1 has given rise to this town as an expression of reverence4 ,this is to show that there are sentiments in us which are creative1 which do not clamour for gain1 but overflow in gifts1 in spontaneous generosity of self-sacrifice4 ,but our minds will nevermore cease to be haunted by the perturbed spirit of the question1 ,what about gunny-bags8 ,i admit they are indispensable1 and am willing to allow them a place in society1 if my opponent will only admit that even gunny-bags should have their limits1 and will acknowledge the importance of leisure to man1 with space for joy and worship1 and a home of wholesale privacy1 with associations of chaste love and mutual service4 ,if this concession to humanity be denied or curtailed1 and if profit and production are allowed to run amuck1 they will play havoc with our love of beauty1 of truth1 of justice1 and also with our love for our fellow-beings4 ,so it comes about that the peasant cultivators of jute1 who live on the brink of everlasting famine1 are combined against1 and driven to lower the price of their labours to the point of blank despair1 by those who earn more than cent per cent profit and wallow in the infamy of their wealth4 ,the facts that man is brave and kind1 that he is social and generous and self-sacrificing1 have some aspect of the complete in them2 but the fact that he is a manufacturer of gunny-bags is too ridiculously small to claim the right of reducing his higher nature to insignificance4 ,the fragmentariness of utility should never forget its subordinate position in human affairs4 ,it must not be permitted to occupy more than its legitimate place and power in society1 nor to have the liberty to desecrate the poetry of life1 to deaden our sensitiveness to ideals1 bragging of its own coarseness as a sign of virility4 ,the pity is that when in the centre of our activities we acknowledge1 by some proud name1 the supremacy of wanton destructiveness1 or production not less wanton1 we shut out all the lights of our souls1 and in that darkness our conscience and our consciousness of shame are hidden1 and our love of freedom is killed4 ,i do not for a moment mean to imply that in any particular period of history men were free from the disturbance of their lower passions4 ,selfishness ever had its share in government and trade4 ,yet there was a struggle to maintain a balance of forces in society2 and our passions cherished no delusions about their own rank and value4 ,they contrived no clever devices to hoodwink our moral nature4 ,for in those days our intellect was not tempted to put its weight into the balance on the side of over-greed4 ,but in recent centuries a devastating change has come over our mentality with regard to the acquisition of money4 ,whereas in former ages men treated it with condescension1 even with disrespect1 now they bend their knees to it4 ,that it should be allowed a sufficiently large place in society1 there can be no question2 but it becomes an outrage when it occupies those seats which are specially reserved for the immortals1 by bribing us1 tampering with our moral pride1 recruiting the best strength of society in a traitor's campaign against human ideals1 thus disguising1 with the help of pomp and pageantry1 its true insignificance4 ,such a state of things has come to pass because1 with the help of science1 the possibilities of profit have suddenly become immoderate4 ,the whole of the human world1 throughout its length and breadth1 has felt the gravitational pull of a giant planet of greed1 with concentric rings of innumerable satellites1 causing in our society a marked deviation from the moral orbit4 ,in former times the intellectual and spiritual powers of this earth upheld their dignity of independence and were not giddily rocked on the tides of the money market4 ,but1 as in the last fatal stages of disease1 this fatal influence of money has got into our brain and affected our heart4 ,like a usurper1 it has occupied the throne of high social ideals1 using every means1 by menace and threat1 to seize upon the right1 and1 tempted by opportunity1 presuming to judge it4 ,it has not only science for its ally1 but other forces also that have some semblance of religion1 such as nation-worship and the idealising of organised selfishness4 ,its methods are far-reaching and sure4 ,like the claws of a tiger's paw1 they are softly sheathed4 ,its massacres are invisible1 because they are fundamental1 attacking the very roots of life4 ,its plunder is ruthless behind a scientific system of screens1 which have the formal appearance of being open and responsible to inquiries4 ,by whitewashing its stains it keeps its respectability unblemished4 ,it makes a liberal use of falsehood in diplomacy1 only feeling embarrassed when its evidence is disclosed by others of the trade4 ,an unscrupulous system of propaganda paves the way for widespread misrepresentation4 ,it works up the crowd psychology through regulated hypnotic doses at repeated intervals1 administered in bottles with moral labels upon them of soothing colours4 ,in fact1 man has been able to make his pursuit of power easier to-day by his art of mitigating the obstructive forces that come from the higher region of his humanity4 ,with his cult of power and his idolatry of money he has1 in a great measure1 reverted to his primitive barbarism1 a barbarism whose path is lit up by the lurid light of intellect4 ,for barbarism is the simplicity of a superficial life4 ,it may be bewildering in its surface adornments and complexities1 but it lacks the ideal to impart to it the depth of moral responsibility4 ,,ii ,society suffers from a profound feeling of unhappiness1 not so much when it is in material poverty as when its members are deprived of a large part of their humanity4 ,this unhappiness goes on smouldering in the subconscious mind of the community till its life is reduced to ashes or a sudden combustion is produced4 ,the repressed personality of man generates an inflammable moral gas deadly in its explosive force4 ,we have seen in the late war1 and also in some of the still more recent events of history1 how human individuals freed from moral and spiritual bonds find a boisterous joy in a debauchery of destruction4 ,there is generated a disinterested passion of ravage4 ,through such catastrophe we can realise what formidable forces of annihilation are kept in check in our communities by bonds of social ideas2 nay1 made into multitudinous manifestations of beauty and fruitfulness4 ,thus we know that evils are1 like meteors1 stray fragments of life1 which need the attraction of some great ideal in order to be assimilated with the wholesomeness of creation4 ,the evil forces are literally outlaws2 they only need the control and cadence of spiritual laws to change them into good4 ,the true goodness is not the negation of badness1 it is in the mastery of it4 ,goodness is the miracle which turns the tumult of chaos into a dance of beauty4 ,in modern society the ideal of wholeness has lost its force4 ,therefore its different sections have become detached and resolved into their elemental character of forces4 ,labour is a force2 so also is ,capital2 so are the ,government and the ,people2 so are ,man and ,woman4 ,it is said that when the forces lying latent in even a handful of dust are liberated from their bond of unity1 they can lift the buildings of a whole neighbourhood to the height of a mountain4 ,such disfranchised forces1 irresponsible free-booters1 may be useful to us for certain purposes1 but human habitations standing secure on their foundations are better for us4 ,to own the secret of utilising these forces is a proud fact for us1 but the power of self-control and the self-dedication of love are truer subjects for the exultation of mankind4 ,the genii of the ,arabian ,nights may have in their magic their lure and fascination for us4 ,but the consciousness of ,god is of another order1 infinitely more precious in imparting to our minds ideas of the spiritual power of creation4 ,yet these genii are abroad everywhere2 and even now1 after the late war1 their devotees are getting ready to play further tricks upon humanity by suddenly spiriting it away to some hill-top of desolation4 ,,iii ,we know that when1 at first1 any large body of people in their history became aware of their unity1 they expressed it in some popular symbol of divinity4 ,for they felt that their combination was not an arithmetical one2 its truth was deeper than the truth of number4 ,they felt that their community was not a mere agglutination but a creation1 having upon it the living touch of the infinite ,person4 ,the realisation of this truth having been an end in itself1 a fulfilment1 it gave meaning to self-sacrifice1 to the acceptance even of death4 ,but our modern education is producing a habit of mind which is ever weakening in us the spiritual apprehension of truth--the truth of a person as the ultimate reality of existence4 ,science has its proper sphere in analysing this world as a construction1 just as grammar has its legitimate office in analysing the syntax of a poem4 ,but the world1 as a creation1 is not a mere construction2 it too is more than a syntax4 ,it is a poem1 which we are apt to forget when grammar takes exclusive hold of our minds4 ,upon the loss of this sense of a universal personality1 which is religion1 the reign of the machine and of method has been firmly established1 and man1 humanly speaking1 has been made a homeless tramp4 ,as nomads1 ravenous and restless1 the men from the ,west have come to us4 ,they have exploited our ,eastern humanity for sheer gain of power4 ,this modern meeting of men has not yet received the blessing of ,god4 ,for it has kept us apart1 though railway lines are laid far and wide1 and ships are plying from shore to shore to bring us together4 ,it has been said in the ,upanishads3 ,yastu sarvani bhutani atmanyevanupashyati ,sarva bhuteshu chatmanam na tato vijugupsate4 7,he who sees all things in atma1 in the infinite spirit1 and the infinite spirit in all beings1 remains no longer unrevealed47 ,in the modern civilisation1 for which an enormous number of men are used as materials1 and human relationships have in a large measure become utilitarian1 man is imperfectly revealed4 ,for man's revelation does not lie in the fact that he is a power1 but that he is a spirit4 ,the prevalence of the theory which realises the power of the machine in the universe1 and organises men into machines1 is like the eruption of ,etna1 tremendous in its force1 in its outburst of fire and fume2 but its creeping lava covers up human shelters made by the ages1 and its ashes smother life4 ,,iv ,the terribly efficient method of repressing personality in the individuals and the races who have failed to resist it has1 in the present scientific age1 spread all over the world2 and in consequence there have appeared signs of a universal disruption which seems not far off4 ,faced with the possibility of such a disaster1 which is sure to affect the successful peoples of the world in their intemperate prosperity1 the great ,powers of the ,west are seeking peace1 not by curbing their greed1 or by giving up the exclusive advantages which they have unjustly acquired1 but by concentrating their forces for mutual security4 ,but can powers find their equilibrium in themselves8 ,power has to be made secure not only against power1 but also against weakness2 for there lies the peril of its losing balance4 ,the weak are as great a danger for the strong as quicksands for an elephant4 ,they do not assist progress because they do not resist2 they only drag down4 ,the people who grow accustomed to wield absolute power over others are apt to forget that by so doing they generate an unseen force which some day rends that power into pieces4 ,the dumb fury of the downtrodden finds its awful support from the universal law of moral balance4 ,the air which is so thin and unsubstantial gives birth to storms that nothing can resist4 ,this has been proved in history over and over again1 and stormy forces arising from the revolt of insulted humanity are openly gathering in the air at the present time4 ,yet in the psychology of the strong the lesson is despised and no count taken of the terribleness of the weak4 ,this is the latent ignorance that1 like an unsuspected worm1 burrows under the bulk of the prosperous4 ,have we never read of the castle of power1 securely buttressed on all sides1 in a moment dissolving in air at the explosion caused by the weak and outraged besiegers8 ,politicians calculate upon the number of mailed hands that are kept on the sword-hilts3 they do not possess the third eye to see the great invisible hand that clasps in silence the hand of the helpless and waits its time4 ,the strong form their league by a combination of powers1 driving the weak to form their own league alone with their ,god4 ,i know ,i am crying in the wilderness when ,i raise the voice of warning2 and while the ,west is busy with its organisation of a machine-made peace1 it will still continue to nourish by its iniquities the underground forces of earthquake in the ,eastern ,continent4 ,the ,west seems unconscious that ,science1 by providing it with more and more power1 is tempting it to suicide and encouraging it to accept the challenge of the disarmed2 it does not know that the challenge comes from a higher source4 ,two prophecies about the world's salvation are cherished in the hearts of the two great religions of the world4 ,they represent the highest expectation of man1 thereby indicating his faith in a truth which he instinctively considers as ultimate--the truth of love4 ,these prophecies have not for their vision the fettering of the world and reducing it to tameness by means of a close-linked power forged in the factory of a political steel trust4 ,one of the religions has for its meditation the image of the ,buddha who is to come1 ,maitreya1 the ,buddha of love2 and he is to bring peace4 ,the other religion waits for the coming of ,christ4 ,for ,christ preached peace when he preached love1 when he preached the oneness of the ,father with the brothers who are many4 ,and this was the truth of peace4 ,christ never held that peace was the best policy4 ,for policy is not truth4 ,the calculation of self-interest can never successfully fight the irrational force of passion--the passion which is perversion of love1 and which can only be set right by the truth of love4 ,so long as the powers build a league on the foundation of their desire for safety1 secure enjoyment of gains1 consolidation of past injustice1 and putting off the reparation of wrongs1 while their fingers still wriggle for greed and reek of blood1 rifts will appear in their union2 and in future their conflicts will take greater force and magnitude4 ,it is political and commercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war4 ,by different combinations it changes its shape and dimensions1 but not its nature4 ,this egoism is still held sacred1 and made a religion2 and such a religion1 by a mere change of temple1 and by new committees of priests1 will never save mankind4 ,we must know that1 as1 through science and commerce1 the realisation of the unity of the material world gives us power1 so the realisation of the great spiritual ,unity of ,man alone can give us peace4 ,,the ,,spirit ,,of ,,freedom 7,a ,,letter ,,from ,,new ,,york ,,to ,,the ,,author',s ,,own ,,countrymen7 ,when freedom is not an inner idea which imparts strength to our activities and breadth to our creations1 when it is merely a thing of external circumstance1 it is like an open space to one who is blindfolded4 ,in my recent travels in the ,west ,i have felt that out there freedom as an idea has become feeble and ineffectual4 ,consequently a spirit of repression and coercion is fast spreading in the politics and social relationships of the people4 ,in the age of monarchy the king lived surrounded by a miasma of intrigue4 ,at court there was an endless whispering of lies and calumny1 and much plotting and planning among the conspiring courtiers to manipulate the king as the instrument of their own purposes4 ,in the present age intrigue plays a wider part1 and affects the whole country4 ,the people are drugged with the hashish of false hopes and urged to deeds of frightfulness by the goadings of manufactured panics2 their higher feelings are exploited by devious channels of unctuous hypocrisy1 their pockets picked under anaesthetics of flattery1 their very psychology affected by a conspiracy of money and unscrupulous diplomacy4 ,in the old order the king was given to understand that he was the freest individual in the world4 ,a greater semblance of external freedom1 no doubt1 he had than other individuals4 ,but they built for him a gorgeous prison of unreality4 ,the same thing is happening now with the people of the ,west4 ,they are flattered into believing that they are free1 and they have the sovereign power in their hands4 ,but this power is robbed by hosts of self-seekers1 and the horse is captured and stabled because of his gift of freedom over space4 ,the mob-mind is allowed the enjoyment of an apparent liberty1 while its true freedom is curtailed on every side4 ,its thoughts are fashioned according to the plans of organised interest2 in its choosing of ideas and forming of opinions it is hindered either by some punitive force or by the constant insinuation of untruths2 it is made to dwell in an artificial world of hypnotic phrases4 ,in fact1 the people have become the storehouse of a power that attracts round it a swarm of adventurers who are secretly investing its walls to exploit it for their own devices4 ,thus it has become more and more evident to me that the ideal of freedom has grown tenuous in the atmosphere of the ,west4 ,the mentality is that of a slave-owning community1 with a mutilated multitude of men tied to its commercial and political treadmill4 ,it is the mentality of mutual distrust and fear4 ,the appalling scenes of inhumanity and injustice1 which are growing familiar to us1 are the outcome of a psychology that deals with terror4 ,no cruelty can be uglier in its ferocity than the cruelty of the coward4 ,the people who have sacrificed their souls to the passion of profit-making and the drunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic and suspicion1 and therefore they are ruthless even where they are least afraid of mischances4 ,they become morally incapable of allowing freedom to others1 and in their eagerness to curry favour with the powerful they not only connive at the injustice done by their own partners in political gambling1 but participate in it4 ,a perpetual anxiety for the protection of their gains at any cost strikes at the love of freedom and justice1 until at length they are ready to forgo liberty for themselves and for others4 ,my experience in the ,west1 where ,i have realised the immense power of money and of organised propaganda1--working everywhere behind screens of camouflage1 creating an atmosphere of distrust1 timidity1 and antipathy1--has impressed me deeply with the truth that real freedom is of the mind and spirit2 it can never come to us from outside4 ,he only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to extend it to others4 ,he who cares to have slaves must chain himself to them2 he who builds walls to create exclusion for others builds walls across his own freedom2 he who distrusts freedom in others loses his moral right to it4 ,sooner or later he is lured into the meshes of physical and moral servility4 ,therefore ,i would urge my own countrymen to ask themselves if the freedom to which they aspire is one of external conditions4 ,is it merely a transferable commodity8 ,have they acquired a true love of freedom8 ,have they faith in it8 ,are they ready to make space in their society for the minds of their children to grow up in the ideal of human dignity1 unhindered by restrictions that are unjust and irrational8 ,have we not made elaborately permanent the walls of our social compartments8 ,we are tenaciously proud of their exclusiveness4 ,we boast that1 in this world1 no other society but our own has come to finality in the classifying of its living members4 ,yet in our political agitations we conveniently forget that any unnaturalness in the relationship of governors and governed which humiliates us1 becomes an outrage when it is artificially fixed under the threat of military persecution4 ,when ,india gave voice to immortal thoughts1 in the time of fullest vigour of vitality1 her children had the fearless spirit of the seekers of truth4 ,the great epic of the soul of our people--the ,mahabharata--gives us a wonderful vision of an overflowing life1 full of the freedom of inquiry and experiment4 ,when the age of the ,buddha came1 humanity was stirred in our country to its uttermost depth4 ,the freedom of mind which it produced expressed itself in a wealth of creation1 spreading everywhere in its richness over the continent of ,asia4 ,but with the ebb of life in ,india the spirit of creation died away4 ,it hardened into an age of inert construction4 ,the organic unity of a varied and elastic society gave way to a conventional order which proved its artificial character by its inexorable law of exclusion4 ,life has its inequalities1 ,i admit1 but they are natural and are in harmony with our vital functions4 ,the head keeps its place apart from the feet1 not through some external arrangement or any conspiracy of coercion4 ,if the body is compelled to turn somersaults for an indefinite period1 the head never exchanges its relative function for that of the feet4 ,but have our social divisions the same inevitableness of organic law8 ,if we have the hardihood to say yes to that question1 then how can we blame an alien people for subjecting us to a political order which they are tempted to believe eternal8 ,by squeezing human beings in the grip of an inelastic system and forcibly holding them fixed1 we have ignored the laws of life and growth4 ,we have forced living souls into a permanent passivity1 making them incapable of moulding circumstance to their own intrinsic design1 and of mastering their own destiny4 ,borrowing our ideal of life from a dark period of our degeneracy1 we have covered up our sensitiveness of soul under the immovable weight of a remote past4 ,we have set up an elaborate ceremonial of cage-worship1 and plucked all the feathers from the wings of the living spirit of our people4 ,and for us1--with our centuries of degradation and insult1 with the amorphousness of our national unity1 with our helplessness before the attack of disasters from without and our unreasoning self-obstructions from within1--the punishment has been terrible4 ,our stupefaction has become so absolute that we do not even realise that this persistent misfortune1 dogging our steps for ages1 cannot be a mere accident of history1 removable only by another accident from outside4 ,unless we have true faith in freedom1 knowing it to be creative1 manfully taking all its risks1 not only do we lose the right to claim freedom in politics1 but we also lack the power to maintain it with all our strength4 ,for that would be like assigning the service of ,god to a confirmed atheist4 ,and men1 who contemptuously treat their own brothers and sisters as eternal babies1 never to be trusted in the most trivial details of their personal life1--coercing them at every step by the cruel threat of persecution into following a blind lane leading to nowhere1 driving a number of them into hypocrisy and into moral inertia1--will fail over and over again to rise to the height of their true and severe responsibility4 ,they will be incapable of holding a just freedom in politics1 and of fighting in freedom's cause4 ,the civilisation of the ,west has in it the spirit of the machine which must move2 and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel1 keeping up the steam-power4 ,it represents the active aspect of inertia which has the appearance of freedom1 but not its truth1 and therefore gives rise to slavery both within its boundaries and outside4 ,the present civilisation of ,india has the constraining power of the mould4 ,it squeezes living man in the grip of rigid regulations1 and its repression of individual freedom makes it only too easy for men to be forced into submission of all kinds and degrees4 ,in both of these traditions life is offered up to something which is not life2 it is a sacrifice1 which has no ,god for its worship1 and is therefore utterly in vain4 ,the ,west is continually producing mechanical power in excess of its spiritual control1 and ,india has produced a system of mechanical control in excess of its vitality4 ,,the ,,nation ,the peoples are living beings4 ,they have their distinct personalities4 ,but nations are organisations of power1 and therefore their inner aspects and outward expressions are everywhere monotonously the same4 ,their differences are merely differences in degree of efficiency4 ,in the modern world the fight is going on between the living spirit of the people and the methods of nation-organising4 ,it is like the struggle that began in ,central ,asia between cultivated areas of man's habitation and the continually encroaching desert sands1 till the human region of life and beauty was choked out of existence4 ,when the spread of higher ideals of humanity is not held to be important1 the hardening method of national efficiency gains a certain strength2 and for some limited period of time1 at least1 it proudly asserts itself as the fittest to survive4 ,but it is the survival of that part of man which is the least living4 ,and this is the reason why dead monotony is the sign of the spread of the ,nation4 ,the modern towns1 which present the physiognomy due to this dominance of the ,nation1 are everywhere the same1 from ,san ,francisco to ,london1 from ,london to ,tokyo4 ,they show no faces1 but merely masks4 ,the peoples1 being living personalities1 must have their self-expression1 and this leads to their distinctive creations4 ,these creations are literature1 art1 social symbols and ceremonials4 ,they are like different dishes at one common feast4 ,they add richness to our enjoyment and understanding of truth4 ,they are making the world of man fertile of life and variedly beautiful4 ,but the nations do not create1 they merely produce and destroy4 ,organisations for production are necessary4 ,even organisations for destruction may be so4 ,but when1 actuated by greed and hatred1 they crowd away into a corner the living man who creates1 then the harmony is lost1 and the people's history runs at a break-neck speed towards some fatal catastrophe4 ,humanity1 where it is living1 is guided by inner ideals2 but where it is a dead organisation it becomes impervious to them4 ,its building process is only an external process1 and in its response to the moral guidance it has to pass through obstacles that are gross and non-plastic4 ,man as a person has his individuality1 which is the field where his spirit has its freedom to express itself and to grow4 ,the professional man carries a rigid crust around him which has very little variation and hardly any elasticity4 ,this professionalism is the region where men specialise their knowledge and organise their power1 mercilessly elbowing each other in their struggle to come to the front4 ,professionalism is necessary1 without doubt2 but it must not be allowed to exceed its healthy limits1 to assume complete mastery over the personal man1 making him narrow and hard1 exclusively intent upon pursuit of success at the cost of his faith in ideals4 ,in ancient ,india professions were kept within limits by social regulation4 ,they were considered primarily as social necessities1 and in the second place as the means of livelihood for individuals4 ,thus man1 being free from the constant urging of unbounded competition1 could have leisure to cultivate his nature in its completeness4 ,the ,cult of the ,nation is the professionalism of the people4 ,this cult is becoming their greatest danger1 because it is bringing them enormous success1 making them impatient of the claims of higher ideals4 ,the greater the amount of success1 the stronger are the conflicts of interest and jealousy and hatred which are aroused in men's minds1 thereby making it more and more necessary for other peoples1 who are still living1 to stiffen into nations4 ,with the growth of nationalism1 man has become the greatest menace to man4 ,therefore the continual presence of panic goads that very nationalism into ever-increasing menace4 ,crowd psychology is a blind force4 ,like steam and other physical forces1 it can be utilised for creating a tremendous amount of power4 ,and therefore rulers of men1 who1 out of greed and fear1 are bent upon turning their peoples into machines of power1 try to train this crowd psychology for their special purposes4 ,they hold it to be their duty to foster in the popular mind universal panic1 unreasoning pride in their own race1 and hatred of others4 ,newspapers1 school-books1 and even religious services are made use of for this object2 and those who have the courage to express their disapprobation of this blind and impious cult are either punished in the law-courts1 or are socially ostracised4 ,the individual thinks1 even when he feels2 but the same individual1 when he feels with the crowd1 does not reason at all4 ,his moral sense becomes blurred4 ,this suppression of higher humanity in crowd minds is productive of enormous strength4 ,for the crowd mind is essentially primitive2 its forces are elemental4 ,therefore the ,nation is for ever watching to take advantage of this enormous power of darkness4 ,the people's instinct of self-preservation has been made dominant at particular times of crisis4 ,then1 for the time being1 the consciousness of its solidarity becomes aggressively wide-awake4 ,but in the ,nation this hyper-consciousness is kept alive for all time by artificial means4 ,a man has to act the part of a policeman when he finds his house invaded by burglars4 ,but if that remains his normal condition1 then his consciousness of his household becomes acute and over-wrought1 making him fly at every stranger passing near his house4 ,this intensity of self-consciousness is nothing of which a man should feel proud2 certainly it is not healthful4 ,in like manner1 incessant self-consciousness in a nation is highly injurious for the people4 ,it serves its immediate purpose1 but at the cost of the eternal in man4 ,when a whole body of men train themselves for a particular narrow purpose1 it becomes a common interest with them to keep up that purpose and preach absolute loyalty to it4 ,nationalism is the training of a whole people for a narrow ideal2 and when it gets hold of their minds it is sure to lead them to moral degeneracy and intellectual blindness4 ,we cannot but hold firm the faith that this ,age of ,nationalism1 of gigantic vanity and selfishness1 is only a passing phase in civilisation1 and those who are making permanent arrangements for accommodating this temporary mood of history will be unable to fit themselves for the coming age1 when the true spirit of freedom will have sway4 ,with the unchecked growth of ,nationalism the moral foundation of man's civilisation is unconsciously undergoing a change4 ,the ideal of the social man is unselfishness1 but the ideal of the ,nation1 like that of the professional man1 is selfishness4 ,this is why selfishness in the individual is condemned1 while in the nation it is extolled1 which leads to hopeless moral blindness1 confusing the religion of the people with the religion of the nation4 ,therefore1 to take an example1 we find men more and more convinced of the superior claims of ,christianity1 merely because ,christian nations are in possession of the greater part of the world4 ,it is like supporting a robber's religion by quoting the amount of his stolen property4 ,nations celebrate their successful massacre of men in their churches4 ,they forget that ,thugs also ascribed their success in manslaughter to the favour of their goddess4 ,but in the case of the latter their goddess frankly represented the principle of destruction4 ,it was the criminal tribe's own murderous instinct deified--the instinct1 not of one individual1 but of the whole community1 and therefore held sacred4 ,in the same manner1 in modern churches1 selfishness1 hatred and vanity in their collective aspect of national instincts do not scruple to share the homage paid to ,god4 ,of course1 pursuit of self-interest need not be wholly selfish2 it can even be in harmony with the interest of all4 ,therefore1 ideally speaking1 the nationalism1 which stands for the expression of the collective self-interest of a people1 need not be ashamed of itself if it maintains its true limitations4 ,but what we see in practice is1 that every nation which has prospered has done so through its career of aggressive selfishness either in commercial adventures or in foreign possessions1 or in both4 ,and this material prosperity not only feeds continually the selfish instincts of the people1 but impresses men's minds with the lesson that1 for a nation1 selfishness is a necessity and therefore a virtue4 ,it is the emphasis laid in ,europe upon the idea of the ,nation's constant increase of power1 which is becoming the greatest danger to man1 both in its direct activity and its power of infection4 ,we must admit that evils there are in human nature1 in spite of our faith in moral laws and our training in self-control4 ,but they carry on their foreheads their own brand of infamy1 their very success adding to their monstrosity4 ,all through man's history there will be some who suffer1 and others who cause suffering4 ,the conquest of evil will never be a fully accomplished fact1 but a continuous process like the process of burning in a flame4 ,in former ages1 when some particular people became turbulent and tried to rob others of their human rights1 they sometimes achieved success and sometimes failed4 ,and it amounted to nothing more than that4 ,but when this idea of the ,nation1 which has met with universal acceptance in the present day1 tries to pass off the cult of collective selfishness as a moral duty1 simply because that selfishness is gigantic in stature1 it not only commits depredation1 but attacks the very vitals of humanity4 ,it unconsciously generates in people's minds an attitude of defiance against moral law4 ,for men are taught by repeated devices the lesson that the ,nation is greater than the people1 while yet it scatters to the winds the moral law that the people have held sacred4 ,it has been said that a disease becomes most acutely critical when the brain is affected4 ,for it is the brain that is constantly directing the siege against all disease forces4 ,the spirit of national selfishness is that brain disease of a people which shows itself in red eyes and clenched fists1 in violence of talk and movements1 all the while shattering its natural restorative powers4 ,but the power of self-sacrifice1 together with the moral faculty of sympathy and co-operation1 is the guiding spirit of social vitality4 ,its function is to maintain a beneficent relation of harmony with its surroundings4 ,but when it begins to ignore the moral law which is universal and uses it only within the bounds of its own narrow sphere1 then its strength becomes like the strength of madness which ends in self-destruction4 ,what is worse1 this aberration of a people1 decked with the showy title of patriotism1 proudly walks abroad1 passing itself off as a highly moral influence4 ,thus it has spread its inflammatory contagion all over the world1 proclaiming its fever flush to be the best sign of health4 ,it is causing in the hearts of peoples1 naturally inoffensive1 a feeling of envy at not having their temperature as high as that of their delirious neighbours and not being able to cause as much mischief1 but merely having to suffer from it4 ,i have often been asked by my ,western friends how to cope with this evil1 which has attained such sinister strength and vast dimensions4 ,in fact1 ,i have often been blamed for merely giving warning1 and offering no alternative4 ,when we suffer as a result of a particular system1 we believe that some other system would bring us better luck4 ,we are apt to forget that all systems produce evil sooner or later1 when the psychology which is at the root of them is wrong4 ,the system which is national to-day may assume the shape of the international to-morrow2 but so long as men have not forsaken their idolatry of primitive instincts and collective passions1 the new system will only become a new instrument of suffering4 ,and because we are trained to confound efficient system with moral goodness itself1 every ruined system makes us more and more distrustful of moral law4 ,therefore ,i do not put my faith in any new institution1 but in the individuals all over the world who think clearly1 feel nobly1 and act rightly1 thus becoming the channels of moral truth4 ,our moral ideals do not work with chisels and hammers4 ,like trees1 they spread their roots in the soil and their branches in the sky1 without consulting any architect for their plans4 ,,woman ,,and ,,home ,creative expressions attain their perfect form through emotions modulated4 ,woman has that expression natural to her--a cadence of restraint in her behaviour1 producing poetry of life4 ,she has been an inspiration to man1 guiding1 most often unconsciously1 his restless energy into an immense variety of creations in literature1 art1 music and religion4 ,this is why1 in ,india1 woman has been described as the symbol of ,shakti1 the creative power4 ,but if woman begins to believe that1 though biologically her function is different from that of man1 psychologically she is identical with him2 if the human world in its mentality becomes exclusively male1 then before long it will be reduced to utter inanity4 ,for life finds its truth and beauty1 not in any exaggeration of sameness1 but in harmony4 ,if woman's nature were identical with man's1 if ,eve were a mere tautology of ,adam1 it would only give rise to a monotonous superfluity4 ,but that she was not so was proved by the banishment she secured from a ready-made ,paradise4 ,she had the instinctive wisdom to realise that it was her mission to help her mate in creating a ,paradise of their own on earth1 whose ideal she was to supply with her life1 whose materials were to be produced and gathered by her comrade4 ,however1 it is evident that an increasing number of women in the ,west are ready to assert that their difference from men is unimportant4 ,the reason for the vehement utterance of such a paradox cannot be ignored4 ,it is a rebellion against a necessity1 which is not equal for both the partners4 ,love in all forms has its obligations1 and the love that binds women to their children binds them to their homes4 ,but necessity is a tyrant1 making us submit to injury and indignity1 allowing advantage over us to those who are wholly or comparatively free from its burden4 ,such has been the case in the social relationship between man and woman4 ,along with the difference inherent in their respective natures1 there have grown up between them inequalities fostered by circumstances4 ,man is not handicapped by the same biological and psychological responsibilities as woman1 and therefore he has the liberty to give her the security of home4 ,this liberty exacts payment when it offers its boon1 because to give or to withhold the gift is within its power4 ,it is the unequal freedom in their mutual relationships which has made the weight of life's tragedies so painfully heavy for woman to bear4 ,some mitigation of her disadvantage has been effected by her rendering herself and her home a luxury to man4 ,she has accentuated those qualities in herself which insidiously impose their bondage over her mate1 some by pandering to his weakness1 and some by satisfying his higher nature1 till the sex-consciousness in our society has grown abnormal and overpowering4 ,there is no actual objection to this in itself1 for it offers a stimulus1 acting in the depth of life1 which leads to creative exuberance4 ,but a great deal of it is a forced growth of compulsion bearing seeds of degradation4 ,in those ages when men acknowledged spiritual perfection to be their object1 women were denounced as the chief obstacle in their way4 ,the constant and conscious exercise of allurements1 which gave women their power1 attacked the weak spots in man's nature1 and by doing so added to its weakness4 ,for all relationships tainted with repression of freedom must become sources of degeneracy to the strong who impose such repression4 ,balance of power1 however1 between man and woman was in a measure established when home wielded a strong enough attraction to make men accept its obligations4 ,but at last the time has come when the material ambition of man has assumed such colossal proportions that home is in danger of losing its centre of gravity for him1 and he is receding farther and farther from its orbit4 ,the arid zone in the social life is spreading fast4 ,the simple comforts of home1 made precious by the touch of love1 are giving way to luxuries that can only have their full extension in the isolation of self-centred life4 ,hotels are being erected on the ruins of homes2 productions are growing more stupendous than creations2 and most men have1 for the materials of their happiness and recreation1 their dogs and horses1 their pipes1 guns1 and gambling clubs4 ,reactions and rebellions1 not being normal in their character1 go on hurting truth until peace is restored4 ,therefore1 when woman refuses to acknowledge the distinction between her life and that of man1 she does not convince us of its truth1 but only proves to us that she is suffering4 ,all great sufferings indicate some wrong somewhere4 ,in the present case1 the wrong is in woman's lack of freedom in her relationship with man1 which compels her to turn her disabilities into attractions1 and to use untruths as her allies in the battle of life1 while she is suffering from the precariousness of her position4 ,from the beginning of our society1 women have naturally accepted the training which imparts to their life and to their home a spirit of harmony4 ,it is their instinct to perform their services in such a manner that these1 through beauty1 might be raised from the domain of slavery to the realm of grace4 ,women have tried to prove that in the building up of social life they are artists and not artisans4 ,but all expressions of beauty lose their truth when compelled to accept the patronage of the gross and the indifferent4 ,therefore when necessity drives women to fashion their lives to the taste of the insensitive or the sensual1 then the whole thing becomes a tragedy of desecration4 ,society is full of such tragedies4 ,many of the laws and social regulations guiding the relationships of man and woman are relics of a barbaric age1 when the brutal pride of an exclusive possession had its dominance in human relations1 such as those of parents and children1 husbands and wives1 masters and servants1 teachers and disciples4 ,the vulgarity of it still persists in the social bond between the sexes because of the economic helplessness of woman4 ,nothing makes us so stupidly mean as the sense of superiority which the power of the purse confers upon us4 ,the powers of muscle and of money have opportunities of immediate satisfaction1 but the power of the ideal must have infinite patience4 ,the man who sells his goods1 or fulfils his contract1 is cheated if he fails to realise payment1 but he who gives form to some ideal may never get his due and be fully paid4 ,what ,i have felt in the women of ,india is the consciousness of this ideal--their simple faith in the sanctity of devotion lighted by love which is held to be divine4 ,true womanliness is regarded in our country as the saintliness of love4 ,it is not merely praised there1 but literally worshipped2 and she who is gifted with it is called ,devi1 as one revealing in herself ,woman1 the ,divine4 ,that this has not been a mere metaphor to us is because1 in ,india1 our mind is familiar with the idea of ,god in an eternal feminine aspect4 ,thus the ,eastern woman1 who is deeply aware in her heart of the sacredness of her mission1 is a constant education to man4 ,it has to be admitted that there are chances of such an influence failing to penetrate the callousness of the coarse-minded2 but that is the destiny of all manifestations whose value is not in success or reward in honour4 ,woman has to be ready to suffer4 ,she cannot allow her emotions to be dulled or polluted1 for these are to create her life's atmosphere1 apart from which her world would be dark and dead4 ,this leaves her heart without any protection of insensibility1 at the mercy of the hurts and insults of life4 ,women of ,india1 like women everywhere1 have their share of suffering1 but it radiates through the ideal1 and becomes1 like sunlight1 a creative force in their world4 ,our women know by heart the legends of the great women of the epic age--,savitri who by the power of love conquered death1 and ,sita who had no other reward for her life of sacrifice but the sacred majesty of sorrow4 ,they know that it is their duty to make this life an image of the life eternal1 and that love's mission truly performed has a spiritual meaning4 ,it is a religious responsibility for them to live the life which is their own4 ,for their activity is not for money-making1 or organising power1 or intellectually probing the mystery of existence1 but for establishing and maintaining human relationships requiring the highest moral qualities4 ,it is the consciousness of the spiritual character of their life's work1 which lifts them above the utilitarian standard of the immediate and the passing1 surrounds them with the dignity of the eternal1 and transmutes their suffering and sorrow into a crown of light4 ,i must guard myself from the risk of a possible misunderstanding4 ,the permanent significance of home is not in the narrowness of its enclosure1 but in an eternal moral idea4 ,it represents the truth of human relationship2 it reveals loyalty and love for the personality of man4 ,let us take a wider view1 in a perspective truer than can be found in its present conventional associations4 ,with the discovery and development of agriculture there came a period of settled life in our history4 ,the nomad ever moved on with his tents and cattle2 he explored space and exploited its contents4 ,the cultivator of land explored time in its immensity1 for he had leisure4 ,comparatively secured from the uncertainty of his outer resources1 he had the opportunity to deal with his moral resources in the realm of human truth4 ,this is why agricultural civilisation1 like that of ,india and ,china1 is essentially a civilisation of human relationship1 of the adjustment of mutual obligations4 ,it is deep-rooted in the inner life of man4 ,its basis is co-operation and not competition4 ,in other words1 its principle is the principle of home1 to which all its outer adventures are subordinated4 ,in the meanwhile1 the nomadic life with its predatory instinct of exploitation has developed into a great civilisation4 ,it is immensely proud and strong1 killing leisure and pursuing opportunities4 ,it minimises the claims of personal relationship and is jealously careful of its unhampered freedom for acquiring wealth and asserting its will upon others4 ,its burden is the burden of things1 which grows heavier and more complex every day1 disregarding the human and the spiritual4 ,its powerful pressure from all sides narrows the limits of home1 the personal region of the human world4 ,thus1 in this region of life1 women are every day hustled out of their shelter for want of accommodation4 ,but such a state of things can never have the effect of changing woman into man4 ,on the contrary1 it will lead her to find her place in the unlimited range of society1 and the ,guardian ,spirit of the personal in human nature will extend the ministry of woman over all developments of life4 ,habituated to deal with the world as a machine1 man is multiplying his materials1 banishing away his happiness and sacrificing love to comfort1 which is an illusion4 ,at last the present age has sent its cry to woman1 asking her to come out from her segregation in order to restore the spiritual supremacy of all that is human in the world of humanity4 ,she has been aroused to remember that womanliness is not chiefly decorative4 ,it is like that vital health1 which not only imparts the bloom of beauty to the body1 but joy to the mind and perfection to life4 ,,an ,,eastern ,,university ,in the midst of much that is discouraging in the present state of the world1 there is one symptom of vital promise4 ,asia is awakening4 ,this great event1 if it be but directed along the right lines1 is full of hope1 not only for ,asia herself1 but for the whole world4 ,on the other hand1 it has to be admitted that the relationship of the ,west with the ,east1 growing more and more complex and widespread for over two centuries1 far from attaining its true fulfilment1 has given rise to a universal spirit of conflict4 ,the consequent strain and unrest have profoundly disturbed ,asia1 and antipathetic forces have been accumulating for years in the depth of the ,eastern mind4 ,the meeting of the ,east and the ,west has remained incomplete1 because the occasions of it have not been disinterested4 ,the political and commercial adventures carried on by ,western races--very often by force and against the interest and wishes of the countries they have dealt with--have created a moral alienation1 which is deeply injurious to both parties4 ,the perils threatened by this unnatural relationship have long been contemptuously ignored by the ,west4 ,but the blind confidence of the strong in their apparent invincibility has often led them1 from their dream of security1 into terrible surprises of history4 ,it is not the fear of danger or loss to one people or another1 however1 which is most important4 ,the demoralising influence of the constant estrangement between the two hemispheres1 which affects the baser passions of man1--pride1 greed and hypocrisy on the one hand2 fear1 suspiciousness and flattery on the other1--has been developing1 and threatens us with a world-wide spiritual disaster4 ,the time has come when we must use all our wisdom to understand the situation1 and to control it1 with a stronger trust in moral guidance than in any array of physical forces4 ,in the beginning of man's history his first social object was to form a community1 to grow into a people4 ,at that early period1 individuals were gathered together within geographical enclosures4 ,but in the present age1 with its facility of communication1 geographical barriers have almost lost their reality1 and the great federation of men1 which is waiting either to find its true scope or to break asunder in a final catastrophe1 is not a meeting of individuals1 but of various human races4 ,now the problem before us is of one single country1 which is this earth1 where the races as individuals must find both their freedom of self-expression and their bond of federation4 ,mankind must realise a unity1 wider in range1 deeper in sentiment1 stronger in power than ever before4 ,now that the problem is large1 we have to solve it on a bigger scale1 to realise the ,god in man by a larger faith and to build the temple of our faith on a sure and world-wide basis4 ,the first step towards realisation is to create opportunities for revealing the different peoples to one another4 ,this can never be done in those fields where the exploiting utilitarian spirit is supreme4 ,we must find some meeting-ground1 where there can be no question of conflicting interests4 ,one of such places is the ,university1 where we can work together in a common pursuit of truth1 share together our common heritage1 and realise that artists in all parts of the world have created forms of beauty1 scientists discovered secrets of the universe1 philosophers solved the problems of existence1 saints made the truth of the spiritual world organic in their own lives1 not merely for some particular race to which they belonged1 but for all mankind4 ,when the science of meteorology knows the earth's atmosphere as continuously one1 affecting the different parts of the world differently1 but in a harmony of adjustments1 it knows and attains truth4 ,and so1 too1 we must know that the great mind of man is one1 working through the many differences which are needed to ensure the full result of its fundamental unity4 ,when we understand this truth in a disinterested spirit1 it teaches us to respect all the differences in man that are real1 yet remain conscious of our oneness2 and to know that perfection of unity is not in uniformity1 but in harmony4 ,this is the problem of the present age4 ,the ,east1 for its own sake and for the sake of the world1 must not remain unrevealed4 ,the deepest source of all calamities in history is misunderstanding4 ,for where we do not understand1 we can never be just4 ,being strongly impressed with the need and the responsibility1 which every individual to-day must realise according to his power1 ,i have formed the nucleus of an ,international ,university in ,india1 as one of the best means of promoting mutual understanding between the ,east and the ,west4 ,this ,institution1 according to the plan ,i have in mind1 will invite students from the ,west to study the different systems of ,indian philosophy1 literature1 art and music in their proper environment1 encouraging them to carry on research work in collaboration with the scholars already engaged in this task4 ,india has her renaissance4 ,she is preparing to make her contribution to the world of the future4 ,in the past she produced her great culture1 and in the present age she has an equally important contribution to make to the culture of the ,new ,world which is emerging from the wreckage of the ,old4 ,this is a momentous period of her history1 pregnant with precious possibilities1 when any disinterested offer of co-operation from any part of the ,west will have an immense moral value1 the memory of which will become brighter as the regeneration of the ,east grows in vigour and creative power4 ,the ,western ,universities give their students an opportunity to learn what all the ,european peoples have contributed to their ,western culture4 ,thus the intellectual mind of the ,west has been luminously revealed to the world4 ,what is needed to complete this illumination is for the ,east to collect its own scattered lamps and offer them to the enlightenment of the world4 ,there was a time when the great countries of ,asia had1 each of them1 to nurture its own civilisation apart in comparative seclusion4 ,now has come the age of co-ordination and co-operation4 ,the seedlings that were reared within narrow plots must now be transplanted into the open fields4 ,they must pass the test of the world-market1 if their maximum value is to be obtained4 ,but before ,asia is in a position to co-operate with the culture of ,europe1 she must base her own structure on a synthesis of all the different cultures which she has4 ,when1 taking her stand on such a culture1 she turns toward the ,west1 she will take1 with a confident sense of mental freedom1 her own view of truth1 from her own vantage-ground1 and open a new vista of thought to the world4 ,otherwise1 she will allow her priceless inheritance to crumble into dust1 and1 trying to replace it clumsily with feeble imitations of the ,west1 make herself superfluous1 cheap and ludicrous4 ,if she thus loses her individuality and her specific power to exist1 will it in the least help the rest of the world8 ,will not her terrible bankruptcy involve also the ,western mind8 ,if the whole world grows at last into an exaggerated ,west1 then such an illimitable parody of the modern age will die1 crushed beneath its own absurdity4 ,in this belief1 it is my desire to extend by degrees the scope of this ,university on simple lines1 until it comprehends the whole range of ,eastern cultures--the ,aryan1 ,semitic1 ,mongolian and others4 ,its object will be to reveal the ,eastern mind to the world4 ,of one thing ,i felt certain during my travels in ,europe1 that a genuine interest has been roused there in the philosophy and the arts of the ,east1 from which the ,western mind seeks fresh inspiration of truth and beauty4 ,once the ,east had her reputation of fabulous wealth1 and the seekers were attracted from across the sea4 ,since then1 the shrine of wealth has changed its site4 ,but the ,east is famed also for her storage of wisdom1 harvested by her patriarchs from long successive ages of spiritual endeavour4 ,and when1 as now1 in the midst of the pursuit of power and wealth1 there rises the cry of privation from the famished spirit of man1 an opportunity is offered to the ,east to offer her store to those who need it4 ,once upon a time we were in possession of such a thing as our own mind in ,india4 ,it was living4 ,it thought1 it felt1 it expressed itself4 ,it was receptive as well as productive4 ,that this mind could be of any use in the process1 or in the end1 of our education was overlooked by our modern educational dispensation4 ,we are provided with buildings and books and other magnificent burdens calculated to suppress our mind4 ,the latter was treated like a library-shelf solidly made of wood1 to be loaded with leather-bound volumes of second-hand information4 ,in consequence1 it has lost its own colour and character1 and has borrowed polish from the carpenter's shop4 ,all this has cost us money1 and also our finer ideas1 while our intellectual vacancy has been crammed with what is described in official reports as ,education4 ,in fact1 we have bought our spectacles at the expense of our eyesight4 ,in ,india our goddess of learning is ,saraswati4 ,my audience in the ,west1 ,i am sure1 will be glad to know that her complexion is white4 ,but the signal fact is that she is living and she is a woman1 and her seat is on a lotus-flower4 ,the symbolic meaning of this is1 that she dwells in the centre of life and the heart of all existence1 which opens itself in beauty to the light of heaven4 ,the ,western education which we have chanced to know is impersonal4 ,its complexion is also white1 but it is the whiteness of the white-washed class-room walls4 ,it dwells in the cold-storage compartments of lessons and the ice-packed minds of the schoolmasters4 ,the effect which it had on my mind when1 as a boy1 ,i was compelled to go to school1 ,i have described elsewhere4 ,my feeling was very much the same as a tree might have1 which was not allowed to live its full life1 but was cut down to be made into packing-cases4 ,the introduction of this education was not a part of the solemn marriage ceremony which was to unite the minds of the ,east and ,west in mutual understanding4 ,it represented an artificial method of training specially calculated to produce the carriers of the white man's burden4 ,this want of ideals still clings to our education system1 though our ,universities have latterly burdened their syllabus with a greater number of subjects than before4 ,but it is only like adding to the bags of wheat the bullock carries to market2 it does not make the bullock any better off4 ,mind1 when long deprived of its natural food of truth and freedom of growth1 develops an unnatural craving for success2 and our students have fallen victims to the mania for success in examinations4 ,success consists in obtaining the largest number of marks with the strictest economy of knowledge4 ,it is a deliberate cultivation of disloyalty to truth1 of intellectual dishonesty1 of a foolish imposition by which the mind is encouraged to rob itself4 ,but as we are by means of it made to forget the existence of mind1 we are supremely happy at the result4 ,we pass examinations1 and shrivel up into clerks1 lawyers and police inspectors1 and we die young4 ,universities should never be made into mechanical organisations for collecting and distributing knowledge4 ,through them the people should offer their intellectual hospitality1 their wealth of mind to others1 and earn their proud right in return to receive gifts from the rest of the world4 ,but in the whole length and breadth of ,india there is not a single ,university established in the modern time where a foreign or an ,indian student can properly be acquainted with the best products of the ,indian mind4 ,for that we have to cross the sea1 and knock at the doors of ,france and ,germany4 ,educational institutions in our country are ,india's alms-bowl of knowledge2 they lower our intellectual self-respect2 they encourage us to make a foolish display of decorations composed of borrowed feathers4 ,this it was that led me to found a school in ,bengal1 in face of many difficulties and discouragements1 and in spite of my own vocation as a poet1 who finds his true inspiration only when he forgets that he is a schoolmaster4 ,it is my hope that in this school a nucleus has been formed1 round which an indigenous ,university of our own land will find its natural growth--a ,university which will help ,india's mind to concentrate and to be fully conscious of itself2 free to seek the truth and make this truth its own wherever found1 to judge by its own standard1 give expression to its own creative genius1 and offer its wisdom to the guests who come from other parts of the world4 ,man's intellect has a natural pride in its own aristocracy1 which is the pride of its culture4 ,culture only acknowledges the excellence whose criticism is in its inner perfection1 not in any external success4 ,when this pride succumbs to some compulsion of necessity or lure of material advantage1 it brings humiliation to the intellectual man4 ,modern ,india1 through her very education1 has been made to suffer this humiliation4 ,once she herself provided her children with a culture which was the product of her own ages of thought and creation4 ,but it has been thrust aside1 and we are made to tread the mill of passing examinations1 not for learning anything1 but for notifying that we are qualified for employments under organisations conducted in ,english4 ,our educated community is not a cultured community1 but a community of qualified candidates4 ,meanwhile the proportion of possible employments to the number of claimants has gradually been growing narrower1 and the consequent disaffection has been widespread4 ,at last the very authorities who are responsible for this are blaming their victims4 ,such is the perversity of human nature4 ,it bears its worst grudge against those it has injured4 ,it is as if some tribe which had the primitive habit of decorating its tribal members with birds' plumage were some day to hold these very birds guilty of the crime of being extinct4 ,there are belated attempts on the part of our governors to read us pious homilies about disinterested love of learning1 while the old machinery goes on working1 whose product is not education but certificates4 ,it is good to remind the fettered bird that its wings are for soaring2 but it is better to cut the chain which is holding it to its perch4 ,the most pathetic feature of the tragedy is that the bird itself has learnt to use its chain for its ornament1 simply because the chain jingles in fairly respectable ,english4 ,in the ,bengali language there is a modern maxim which can be translated1 ,he who learns to read and write rides in a carriage and pair4 ,in ,english there is a similar proverb1 ,knowledge is power4 ,it is an offer of a prospective bribe to the student1 a promise of an ulterior reward which is more important than knowledge itself4 ,temptations1 held before us as inducements to be good or to pursue uncongenial paths1 are most often flimsy lies or half-truths1 such as the oft-quoted maxim of respectable piety1 ,honesty is the best policy1 at which politicians all over the world seem to laugh in their sleeves4 ,but unfortunately1 education conducted under a special providence of purposefulness1 of eating the fruit of knowledge from the wrong end1 does lead one to that special paradise on earth1 the daily rides in one's own carriage and pair4 ,and the ,west1 ,i have heard from authentic sources1 is aspiring in its education after that special cultivation of worldliness4 ,where society is comparatively simple and obstructions are not too numerous1 we can clearly see how the life-process guides education in its vital purpose4 ,the system of folk-education1 which is indigenous to ,india1 but is dying out1 was one with the people's life4 ,it flowed naturally through the social channels and made its way everywhere4 ,it is a system of widespread irrigation of culture4 ,its teachers1 specially trained men1 are in constant requisition1 and find crowded meetings in our villages1 where they repeat the best thoughts and express the ideals of the land in the most effective form4 ,the mode of instruction includes the recitation of epics1 expounding of the scriptures1 reading from the ,puranas1 which are the classical records of old history1 performance of plays founded upon the early myths and legends1 dramatic narration of the lives of ancient heroes1 and the singing in chorus of songs from the old religious literature4 ,evidently1 according to this system1 the best function of education is to enable us to realise that to live as a man is great1 requiring profound philosophy for its ideal1 poetry for its expression1 and heroism in its conduct4 ,owing to this vital method of culture the common people of ,india1 though technically illiterate1 have been made conscious of the sanctity of social relationships1 entailing constant sacrifice and self-control1 urged and supported by ideals collectively expressed in one word1 ,dharma4 ,such a system of education may sound too simple for the complexities of modern life4 ,but the fundamental principle of social life in its different stages of development remains the same2 and in no circumstance can the truth be ignored that all human complexities must harmonise in organic unity with life1 failing which there will be endless conflict4 ,most things in the civilised world occupy more than their legitimate space4 ,much of their burden is needless4 ,by bearing this burden civilised man may be showing great strength1 but he displays little skill4 ,to the gods1 viewing this from on high1 it must seem like the flounderings of a giant who has got out of his depth and knows not how to swim4 ,the main source of all forms of voluntary slavery is the desire of gain4 ,it is difficult to fight against this when modern civilisation is tainted with such a universal contamination of avarice4 ,i have realised it myself in the little boys of my own school4 ,for the first few years there is no trouble4 ,but as soon as the upper class is reached1 their worldly wisdom--the malady of the aged--begins to assert itself4 ,they rebelliously insist that they must no longer learn1 but rather pass examinations4 ,professions in the modern age are more numerous and lucrative than ever before4 ,they need specialisation of training and knowledge1 tempting education to yield its spiritual freedom to the claims of utilitarian ambitions4 ,but man's deeper nature is hurt2 his smothered life seeks to be liberated from the suffocating folds and sensual ties of prosperity4 ,and this is why we find almost everywhere in the world a growing dissatisfaction with the prevalent system of teaching1 which betrays the encroachment of senility and worldly prudence over pure intellect4 ,in ,india1 also1 a vague feeling of discontent has given rise to numerous attempts at establishing national schools and colleges4 ,but1 unfortunately1 our very education has been successful in depriving us of our real initiative and our courage of thought4 ,the training we get in our schools has the constant implication in it that it is not for us to produce but to borrow4 ,and we are casting about to borrow our educational plans from ,european institutions4 ,the trampled plants of ,indian corn are dreaming of recouping their harvest from the neighbouring wheat fields4 ,to change the figure1 we forget that1 for proficiency in walking1 it is better to train the muscles of our own legs than to strut upon wooden ones of foreign make1 although they clatter and cause more surprise at our skill in using them than if they were living and real4 ,but when we go to borrow help from a foreign neighbourhood we are apt to overlook the real source of help behind all that is external and apparent4 ,had the deep-water fishes happened to produce a scientist who chose the jumping of a monkey for his research work1 ,i am sure he would give most of the credit to the branches of the trees and very little to the monkey itself4 ,in a foreign ,university we see the branching wildernesses of its buildings1 furniture1 regulations1 and syllabus1 but the monkey1 which is a difficult creature to catch and more difficult to manufacture1 we are likely to treat as a mere accident of minor importance4 ,it is convenient for us to overlook the fact that among the ,europeans the living spirit of the ,university is widely spread in their society1 their parliament1 their literature1 and the numerous activities of their corporate life4 ,in all these functions they are in perpetual touch with the great personality of the land which is creative and heroic in its constant acts of self-expression and self-sacrifice4 ,they have their thoughts published in their books as well as through the medium of living men who think those thoughts1 and who criticise1 compare and disseminate them4 ,some at least of the drawbacks of their academic education are redeemed by the living energy of the intellectual personality pervading their social organism4 ,it is like the stagnant reservoir of water which finds its purification in the showers of rain to which it keeps itself open4 ,but1 to our misfortune1 we have in ,india all the furniture of the ,european ,university except the human teacher4 ,we have1 instead1 mere purveyors of book-lore in whom the paper god of the bookshop has been made vocal4 ,a most important truth1 which we are apt to forget1 is that a teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself4 ,a lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame4 ,the teacher who has come to the end of his subject1 who has no living traffic with his knowledge1 but merely repeats his lessons to his students1 can only load their minds2 he cannot quicken them4 ,truth not only must inform but inspire4 ,if the inspiration dies out1 and the information only accumulates1 then truth loses its infinity4 ,the greater part of our learning in the schools has been wasted because1 for most of our teachers1 their subjects are like dead specimens of once living things1 with which they have a learned acquaintance1 but no communication of life and love4 ,the educational institution1 therefore1 which ,i have in mind has primarily for its object the constant pursuit of truth1 from which the imparting of truth naturally follows4 ,it must not be a dead cage in which living minds are fed with food artificially prepared4 ,it should be an open house1 in which students and teachers are at one4 ,they must live their complete life together1 dominated by a common aspiration for truth and a need of sharing all the delights of culture4 ,in former days the great master-craftsmen had students in their workshops where they co-operated in shaping things to perfection4 ,that was the place where knowledge could become living--that knowledge which not only has its substance and law1 but its atmosphere subtly informed by a creative personality4 ,for intellectual knowledge also has its aspect of creative art1 in which the man who explores truth expresses something which is human in him--his enthusiasm1 his courage1 his sacrifice1 his honesty1 and his skill4 ,in merely academical teaching we find subjects1 but not the man who pursues the subjects2 therefore the vital part of education remains incomplete4 ,for our ,universities we must claim1 not labelled packages of truth and authorised agents to distribute them1 but truth in its living association with her lovers and seekers and discoverers4 ,also we must know that the concentration of the mind-forces scattered throughout the country is the most important mission of a ,university1 which1 like the nucleus of a living cell1 should be the centre of the intellectual life of the people4 ,the bringing about of an intellectual unity in ,india is1 ,i am told1 difficult to the verge of impossibility owing to the fact that ,india has so many different languages4 ,such a statement is as unreasonable as to say that man1 because he has a diversity of limbs1 should find it impossible to realise life's unity in himself1 and that only an earthworm composed of a tail and nothing else could truly know that it had a body4 ,let us admit that ,india is not like any one of the great countries of ,europe1 which has its own separate language2 but is rather like ,europe herself1 branching out into different peoples with many different languages4 ,and yet ,europe has a common civilisation1 with an intellectual unity which is not based upon uniformity of language4 ,it is true that in the earlier stages of her culture the whole of ,europe had ,latin for her learned tongue4 ,that was in her intellectual budding time1 when all her petals of self-expression were closed in one point4 ,but the perfection of her mental unfolding was not represented by the singularity of her literary vehicle4 ,when the great ,european countries found their individual languages1 then only the true federation of cultures became possible in the ,west1 and the very differences of the channels made the commerce of ideas in ,europe so richly copious and so variedly active4 ,we can well imagine what the loss to ,european civilisation would be if ,france1 ,italy and ,germany1 and ,england herself1 had not through their separate agencies contributed to the common coffer their individual earnings4 ,there was a time with us when ,india had her common language of culture in ,sanskrit4 ,but1 for the complete commerce of her thought1 she required that all her vernaculars should attain their perfect powers1 through which her different peoples might manifest their idiosyncrasies2 and this could never be done through a foreign tongue4 ,in the ,united ,states1 in ,canada and other ,british ,colonies1 the language of the people is ,english4 ,it has a great literature which had its birth and growth in the history of the ,british ,islands4 ,but when this language1 with all its products and acquisitions1 matured by ages on its own mother soil1 is carried into foreign lands1 which have their own separate history and their own life-growth1 it must constantly hamper the indigenous growth of culture and destroy individuality of judgement and the perfect freedom of self-expression4 ,the inherited wealth of the ,english language1 with all its splendour1 becomes an impediment when taken into different surroundings1 just as when lungs are given to the whale in the sea4 ,if such is the case even with races whose grandmother-tongue naturally continues to be their own mother-tongue1 one can imagine what sterility it means for a people which accepts1 for its vehicle of culture1 an altogether foreign language4 ,a language is not like an umbrella or an overcoat1 that can be borrowed by unconscious or deliberate mistake2 it is like the living skin itself4 ,if the body of a draught-horse enters into the skin of a race-horse1 it will be safe to wager that such an anomaly will never win a race1 and will fail even to drag a cart4 ,have we not watched some modern ,japanese artists imitating ,european art8 ,the imitation may sometimes produce clever results2 but such cleverness has only the perfection of artificial flowers which never bear fruit4 ,all great countries have their vital centres for intellectual life1 where a high standard of learning is maintained1 where the minds of the people are naturally attracted1 where they find their genial atmosphere1 in which to prove their worth and to contribute their share to the country's culture4 ,thus they kindle1 on the common altar of the land1 that great sacrificial fire which can radiate the sacred light of wisdom abroad4 ,athens was such a centre in ,greece1 ,rome in ,italy2 and ,paris is such to-day in ,france4 ,benares has been and still continues to be the centre of our ,sanskrit culture4 ,but ,sanskrit learning does not exhaust all the elements of culture that exist in modern ,india4 ,if we were to take for granted1 what some people maintain1 that ,western culture is the only source of light for our mind1 then it would be like depending for daybreak upon some star1 which is the sun of a far distant sphere4 ,the star may give us light1 but not the day2 it may give us direction in our voyage of exploration1 but it can never open the full view of truth before our eyes4 ,in fact1 we can never use this cold starlight for stirring the sap in our branches1 and giving colour and bloom to our life4 ,this is the reason why ,european education has become for ,india mere school lessons and no culture2 a box of matches1 good for the small uses of illumination1 but not the light of morning1 in which the use and beauty1 and all the subtle mysteries of life are blended in one4 ,let me say clearly that ,i have no distrust of any culture because of its foreign character4 ,on the contrary1 ,i believe that the shock of such extraneous forces is necessary for the vitality of our intellectual nature4 ,it is admitted that much of the spirit of ,christianity runs counter1 not only to the classical culture of ,europe1 but to the ,european temperament altogether4 ,and yet this alien movement of ideas1 constantly running against the natural mental current of ,europe1 has been a most important factor in strengthening and enriching her civilisation1 on account of the sharp antagonism of its intellectual direction4 ,in fact1 the ,european vernaculars first woke up to life and fruitful vigour when they felt the impact of this foreign thought-power with all its oriental forms and affinities4 ,the same thing is happening in ,india4 ,the ,european culture has come to us1 not only with its knowledge1 but with its velocity4 ,then1 again1 let us admit that modern ,science is ,europe's great gift to humanity for all time to come4 ,we1 in ,india1 must claim it from her hands1 and gratefully accept it in order to be saved from the curse of futility by lagging behind4 ,we shall fail to reap the harvest of the present age if we delay4 ,what ,i object to is the artificial arrangement by which foreign education tends to occupy all the space of our national mind1 and thus kills1 or hampers1 the great opportunity for the creation of a new thought-power by a new combination of truths4 ,it is this which makes me urge that all the elements in our own culture have to be strengthened1 not to resist the ,western culture1 but truly to accept and assimilate it2 to use it for our sustenance1 not as our burden2 to get mastery over this culture1 and not to live on its outskirts as the hewers of texts and drawers of book-learning4 ,the main river in ,indian culture has flowed in four streams1--the ,vedic1 the ,puranic1 the ,buddhist1 and the ,jain4 ,it has its source in the heights of the ,indian consciousness4 ,but a river1 belonging to a country1 is not fed by its own waters alone4 ,the ,tibetan ,brahmaputra is a tributary to the ,indian ,ganges4 ,contributions have similarly found their way to ,india's original culture4 ,the ,muhammadan1 for example1 has repeatedly come into ,india from outside1 laden with his own stores of knowledge and feeling and his wonderful religious democracy1 bringing freshet after freshet to swell the current4 ,to our music1 our architecture1 our pictorial art1 our literature1 the ,muhammadans have made their permanent and precious contribution4 ,those who have studied the lives and writings of our medieval saints1 and all the great religious movements that sprang up in the time of the ,muhammadan rule1 know how deep is our debt to this foreign current that has so intimately mingled with our life4 ,so1 in our centre of ,indian learning1 we must provide for the co-ordinate study of all these different cultures1--the ,vedic1 the ,puranic1 the ,buddhist1 the ,jain1 the ,islamic1 the ,sikh and the ,zoroastrian4 ,the ,chinese1 ,japanese1 and ,tibetan will also have to be added2 for1 in the past1 ,india did not remain isolated within her own boundaries4 ,therefore1 in order to learn what she was1 in her relation to the whole continent of ,asia1 these cultures too must be studied4 ,side by side with them must finally be placed the ,western culture4 ,for only then shall we be able to assimilate this last contribution to our common stock4 ,a river flowing within banks is truly our own1 and it can contain its due tributaries2 but our relations with a flood can only prove disastrous4 ,there are some who are exclusively modern1 who believe that the past is the bankrupt time1 leaving no assets for us1 but only a legacy of debts4 ,they refuse to believe that the army which is marching forward can be fed from the rear4 ,it is well to remind such persons that the great ages of renaissance in history were those when man suddenly discovered the seeds of thought in the granary of the past4 ,the unfortunate people who have lost the harvest of their past have lost their present age4 ,they have missed their seed for cultivation1 and go begging for their bare livelihood4 ,we must not imagine that we are one of these disinherited peoples of the world4 ,the time has come for us to break open the treasure-trove of our ancestors1 and use it for our commerce of life4 ,let us1 with its help1 make our future our own1 and not continue our existence as the eternal rag-pickers in other people's dustbins4 ,so far ,i have dwelt only upon the intellectual aspect of ,education4 ,for1 even in the ,west1 it is the intellectual training which receives almost exclusive emphasis4 ,the ,western universities have not yet truly recognised that fulness of expression is fulness of life4 ,and a large part of man can never find its expression in the mere language of words4 ,it must therefore seek for its other languages1--lines and colours1 sounds and movements4 ,through our mastery of these we not only make our whole nature articulate1 but also understand man in all his attempts to reveal his innermost being in every age and clime4 ,the great use of ,education is not merely to collect facts1 but to know man and to make oneself known to man4 ,it is the duty of every human being to master1 at least to some extent1 not only the language of intellect1 but also that personality which is the language of ,art4 ,it is a great world of reality for man1--vast and profound1--this growing world of his own creative nature4 ,this is the world of ,art4 ,to be brought up in ignorance of it is to be deprived of the knowledge and use of that great inheritance of humanity1 which has been growing and waiting for every one of us from the beginning of our history4 ,it is to remain deaf to the eternal voice of ,man1 that speaks to all men the messages that are beyond speech4 ,from the educational point of view we know ,europe where it is scientific1 or at best literary4 ,so our notion of its modern culture is limited within the boundary lines of grammar and the laboratory4 ,we almost completely ignore the aesthetic life of man1 leaving it uncultivated1 allowing weeds to grow there4 ,our newspapers are prolific1 our meeting-places are vociferous2 and in them we wear to shreds the things we have borrowed from our ,english teachers4 ,we make the air dismal and damp with the tears of our grievances4 ,but where are our arts1 which1 like the outbreak of spring flowers1 are the spontaneous overflow of our deeper nature and spiritual magnificence8 ,through this great deficiency of our modern education1 we are condemned to carry to the end a dead load of dumb wisdom4 ,like miserable outcasts1 we are deprived of our place in the festival of culture1 and wait at the outer court1 where the colours are not for us1 nor the forms of delight1 nor the songs4 ,ours is the education of a prison-house1 with hard labour and with a drab dress cut to the limits of minimum decency and necessity4 ,we are made to forget that the perfection of colour and form and expression belongs to the perfection of vitality1--that the joy of life is only the other side of the strength of life4 ,the timber merchant may think that the flowers and foliage are mere frivolous decorations of a tree2 but if these are suppressed1 he will know to his cost that the timber too will fail4 ,during the ,moghal period1 music and art in ,india found a great impetus from the rulers1 because their whole life--not merely their official life--was lived in this land2 and it is the wholeness of life from which originates ,art4 ,but our ,english teachers are birds of passage2 they cackle to us1 but do not sing1--their true heart is not in the land of their exile4 ,constriction of life1 owing to this narrowness of culture1 must no longer be encouraged4 ,in the centre of ,indian culture which ,i am proposing1 music and art must have their prominent seats of honour1 and not be given merely a tolerant nod of recognition4 ,the different systems of music and different schools of art which lie scattered in the different ages and provinces of ,india1 and in the different strata of society1 and also those belonging to the other great countries of ,asia1 which had communication with ,india1 have to be brought there together and studied4 ,i have already hinted that ,education should not be dragged out of its native element1 the life-current of the people4 ,economic life covers the whole width of the fundamental basis of society1 because its necessities are the simplest and the most universal4 ,educational institutions1 in order to obtain their fulness of truth1 must have close association with this economic life4 ,the highest mission of education is to help us to realise the inner principle of the unity of all knowledge and all the activities of our social and spiritual being4 ,society in its early stage was held together by its economic co-operation1 when all its members felt in unison a natural interest in their right to live4 ,civilisation could never have been started at all if such was not the case4 ,and civilisation will fall to pieces if it never again realises the spirit of mutual help and the common sharing of benefits in the elemental necessaries of life4 ,the idea of such economic co-operation should be made the basis of our ,university4 ,it must not only instruct1 but live2 not only think1 but produce4 ,our ancient tapovanas1 or forest schools1 which were our natural universities1 were not shut off from the daily life of the people4 ,masters and students gathered fruit and fuel1 and took their cattle out to graze1 supporting themselves by the work of their own hands4 ,spiritual education was a part of the spiritual life itself1 which comprehended all life4 ,our centre of culture should not only be the centre of the intellectual life of ,india1 but the centre of her economic life also4 ,it must co-operate with the villages round it1 cultivate land1 breed cattle1 spin cloths1 press oil from oil-seeds2 it must produce all the necessaries1 devising the best means1 using the best materials1 and calling science to its aid4 ,its very existence should depend upon the success of its industrial activities carried out on the co-operative principle1 which will unite the teachers and students and villagers of the neighbourhood in a living and active bond of necessity4 ,this will give us also a practical industrial training1 whose motive force is not the greed of profit4 ,before ,i conclude my paper1 a delicate question remains to be considered4 ,what must be the religious ideal that is to rule our centre of ,indian culture8 ,the one abiding ideal in the religious life of ,india has been ,mukti1 the deliverance of man's soul from the grip of self1 its communion with the ,infinite ,soul through its union in ananda with the universe4 ,this religion of spiritual harmony is not a theological doctrine to be taught1 as a subject in the class1 for half an hour each day4 ,it is the spiritual truth and beauty of our attitude towards our surroundings1 our conscious relationship with the ,infinite1 and the lasting power of the ,eternal in the passing moments of our life4 ,such a religious ideal can only be made possible by making provision for students to live in intimate touch with nature1 daily to grow in an atmosphere of service offered to all creatures1 tending trees1 feeding birds and animals1 learning to feel the immense mystery of the soil and water and air4 ,along with this1 there should be some common sharing of life with the tillers of the soil and the humble workers in the neighbouring villages2 studying their crafts1 inviting them to the feasts1 joining them in works of co-operation for communal welfare2 and in our intercourse we should be guided1 not by moral maxims or the condescension of social superiority1 but by natural sympathy of life for life1 and by the sheer necessity of love's sacrifice for its own sake4 ,in such an atmosphere students would learn to understand that humanity is a divine harp of many strings1 waiting for its one grand music4 ,those who realise this unity are made ready for the pilgrimage through the night of suffering1 and along the path of sacrifice1 to the great meeting of ,man in the future1 for which the call comes to us across the darkness4 ,life1 in such a centre1 should be simple and clean4 ,we should never believe that simplicity of life might make us unsuited to the requirements of the society of our time4 ,it is the simplicity of the tuning-fork1 which is needed all the more because of the intricacy of strings in the instrument4 ,in the morning of our career our nature needs the pure and the perfect note of a spiritual ideal in order to fit us for the complications of our later years4 ,in other words1 this institution should be a perpetual creation by the co-operative enthusiasm of teachers and students1 growing with the growth of their soul2 a world in itself1 self-sustaining1 independent1 rich with ever-renewing life1 radiating life across space and time1 attracting and maintaining round it a planetary system of dependent bodies4 ,its aim should lie in imparting life-breath to the complete man1 who is intellectual as well as economic1 bound by social bonds1 but aspiring towards spiritual freedom and final perfection4 ,,the ,,end ,printed in ,great ,britain by ,r4 ,r4 ,,clark1 ,,limited1 ,edinburgh4 ,,by ,,rabindranath ,,tagore ,,gitanjali4 7,song ,offerings47 ,translated by the ,author4 ,with an ,introduction by ,w4 ,b4 ,,yeats1 and a ,portrait by ,w4 ,,rothenstein4 ,crown #hvo4 #es4 net4 ,,athenaeum4--,mr4 ,tagore's translations are of trance-like beauty4444 ,the expanding sentiment of some of the poems wins1 even through the alien medium of our ,english prose1 a rhythm which in its strength and melody might recall familiar passages in the ,psalms or ,solomon's ,song4 ,,fruit-,,gathering4 ,a ,sequel to ,gitanjali4 ,crown #hvo4 #es4 net4 ,,athenaeum4--,the eighty-six pieces that fill this volume are pure jets of lyric feeling1 aphorisms expressed in moving symbols1 or fully developed parables and allegories 444 several are as perfect in form as they are beautiful and poignant in content4 ,,gitanjali ,,and ,,fruit-,,gathering4 ,with ,illustrations in colour and half-tone by ,,nandalal ,,bose1 ,,surendranath ,,kar1 ,,abanindranath ,,tagore1 and ,,nobindranath ,,tagore4 ,crown #hvo4 #ajs4 net4 ,,the ,,gardener4 ,lyrics of ,love and ,life4 ,translated by the ,author4 ,with ,portrait4 ,crown #hvo4 #es4 net4 ,,daily ,,mail4--,flowers as fresh as sunrise4444 ,one cannot tell what they have lost in the translation1 but as they stand they are of extreme beauty4444 ,they are simple1 exalted1 fragrant--episodes and incidents of every day transposed to faery4 ,,the ,,crescent ,,moon4 ,child-,poems4 ,translated by the ,author4 ,with #h ,illustrations in ,colour4 ,pott #dto4 #es4 net4 ,,nation4--,a vision of childhood which is only paralleled in our literature by the work of ,william ,blake4 ,,stray ,,birds4 ,poems4 ,with a ,frontispiece by ,,willy ,,pogany4 ,crown #hvo4 #ds4 #f;d4 net4 ,,scotsman4--,the richness of this volume in thought and in imagery1 in tracing analogies and in discovering apologues1 is such as to yield pleasure and profit to the most fertile and cultured minds4 ,,lover',s ,,gift ,,and ,,crossing4 ,crown #hvo4 #es4 net4 ,,athenaeum4--,the poems often touch extreme heights of passion and sublimity1 and the diction has a beauty and a music that few have attained in this particular medium4 ,,the ,,fugitive4 ,crown #hvo4 #gs4 #f;d4 net4 ,,sunday ,,times4--,in ',the ,fugitive' the lovers of ,tagore will not be disappointed4 ,he has all his powers still undimmed4 ,indeed1 the poet never1 in our judgment1 has surpassed this work4 ,,chitra4 ,a ,play4 ,translated by the ,author4 ,crown #hvo4 #cs4 #f;d4 net4 ,,observer4--,an allegory of love's meaning1 clear as a pool in the sunshine4 ,it was written1 we are told1 twenty-five years ago4444 ,even then ,mr4 ,tagore had that calm intensity of vision which we have all come to love in his later work4 ,we find in him that for which ,arjuna groped in his love1 'that ultimate you1 that bare simplicity of truth1' and never more than in this little work of beauty1 ',chitra4' ,,the ,,king ,,of ,,the ,,dark ,,chamber4 ,a ,play4 ,translated by ,,kshitish ,,chandra ,,sen4 ,crown #hvo4 #fs4 net4 ,,pall ,,mall ,,gazette4--,altogether1 the play is a beautiful piece of fanciful writing with a veiled purpose at the back of it4 ,,the ,,post ,,office4 ,a ,play4 ,translated by ,,devabrata ,,mukerjea4 ,crown #hvo4 #cs4 #f;d4 net4 ,,manchester ,,guardian4--',the ,post ,office' is a delicate1 wistful thing1 coloured with beautiful imagery2 for a moment it lifts a corner of the veil of worldly existence4 ,the translation is throughout extremely happy4 ,,the ,,cycle ,,of ,,spring4 ,a ,play4 ,crown #hvo4 #cs4 #f;d4 net4 ,,manchester ,,guardian4--,the whole little drama is a spring-gift such as ,england has seldom received4 ,,sacrifice and other ,plays4 ,crown #hvo4 #fs4 net4 ,,scotsman4--,all the pieces have a rare beauty of their own4 ,,the ,,home ,,and ,,the ,,world4 ,a ,novel4 ,crown #hvo4 #gs4 #f;d4 net4 ,,saturday ,,review4--,in these days of indiscriminating praise1 it is hard for a reviewer to find words with which to welcome properly a book so good as this4 ,,the ,,wreck4 ,a ,novel4 ,crown #hvo4 #hs4 #f;d4 net4 ,,morning ,,post4--,the story cannot fail to interest and delight4 ,,mashi and other ,stories4 ,crown #hvo4 #fs4 net4 ,,oxford ,,magazine4--,full of pregnant pictures of ,indian life and character1 subdued but vivid in tone4 ,,hungry ,,stones and other ,stories4 ,crown #hvo4 #fs4 net4 ,,daily ,,telegraph4--,contains descriptive passages of rare vigour and beauty1 and is embellished with imagery of a delicate and distinctive character4 ,s,a,,dhan,a3 ,the ,realisation of ,life4 ,lectures4 ,extra ,crown #hvo4 #fs4 net4 ,,nationalism4 ,extra ,crown #hvo4 #fs4 net4 ,,personality4 ,lectures delivered in ,america4 ,illustrated4 ,crown #hvo4 #fs4 net4 ,,creative ,,unity4 ,essays4 ,extra ,crown #hvo4 ,,my ,,reminiscences4 ,illustrated4 ,extra ,crown #hvo4 #gs4 #f;d4 net4 ,,glimpses ,,of ,,bengal4 ,selected from the ,letters of ,rabindranath ,tagore1 #ahhe to #ahie4 ,crown #hvo4 #gs4 #f;d4 net4 ,,one ,,hundred ,,poems ,,of ,,kabir4 ,translated by ,,rabindranath ,,tagore1 assisted by ,,evelyn ,,underhill4 ,crown #hvo4 #es4 net4 ,,rabindranath ,,tagore4 ,a ,biographical ,study4 ,by ,,ernest ,,rhys4 ,illustrated4 ,extra ,crown #hvo4 #ajs4 #f;d4 net4 ,,six ,,portraits ,,of ,,rabindranath ,,tagore4 ,by ,w4 ,,rothenstein4 ,reproduced in ,collotype4 ,with ,prefatory ,note by ,,max ,,beerbohm4 ,imperial #dto4 #ajs4 net4 ,,the ,,autobiography ,,of ,,maharshi ,,devendranath ,,tagore 7,father of ,,rabindranath ,,tagore74 ,translated by ,,satyendranath ,,tagore and ,,indira ,,devi4 ,with ,introduction by ,,evelyn ,,underhill1 and ,portrait4 ,extra ,crown #hvo4 #gs4 #f;d4 net4 ,,the ,,philosophy ,,of ,,rabindranath ,,tagore4 ,by ,prof4 ,s4 ,,radhakrishnan4 #hvo4 #hs4 #f;d4 net4 ,,shantiniketan3 ,the ,bolpur ,school of ,rabindranath ,tagore4 ,by ,w4 ,w4 ,,pearson4 ,with ,introduction by ,,rabindranath ,,tagore4 ,illustrated4 #hvo4 #ds4 #f;d4 net4 ,,london3 ,,macmillan ,,and ,,co41 ,,ltd4 ,,transcriber',s ,,notes ,obvious typographic errors have been corrected4 ,the page numbers in the ,table of ,contents have been adjusted to match the actual page numbers4