# The Modern Review/Volume 30/Number 5/The Union of Cultures

THE MODERN REVIEW
THE UNION OF CULTURES
By Rabindranath Tagore.
IT cannot but be admitted that this is a day of victory for the people of the West. The world is theirs to draw upon as they please and their stores are overflowing. We are left standing at a distance, agape, watching our share growing less and less; and with the fire of our hunger blazes the fire of our wrath. We wish we could have the opportunity of getting hold of the man who has been eating our share of the food. But so far he has got hold of us, and the opportunity still remains in his hands, and has not reached us at all.
But why does the chance not come to us? Why is the enjoyment of the earth's plenty for them alone? Surely because of some underlying truth. It is not a case of banding ourselves together in a particular way so as to be able to deprive them and provide for ourselves. The matter is not quite so simple as that. It is mere folly to expect to get the locomotive under control by hitting the driver on the head: for it is not the man but his science which makes the engine go. So the fire of our wrath will not serve the purpose; we must acquire the requisite science, if we covet the boon which Truth has in her gift.
It is like a father with two sons. The father drives his own motor car and has promised it to the son who learns first how to drive. One of the sons is alert and full of curiosity. His eye is always on the driving to see how it is done. The other one is excessively good natured. His reverent gaze is always on his father's face. He pays no regard to what the hands are doing with lever and wheel. The clever one soon picks up the science of motor driving, and one fine day he drives off all by himself, with exultant toots of the horn. So absorbed does he become in the joy of his new acquisition that he forgets even the existence of his father. But the father does not punish him for the liberty he is taking, nor take the car away from him; for he is pleased that his son should succeed. The other son, when he sees his brother careering madly over his fields, playing havoc with his corn, dare not stand in the way to protest, even in the name of their father; for that would mean certain death. So he keeps his gaze fixed on his father's face, saying that this is all in all to him.
But whoever contemns the useful, saying he has no use for it, simply courts suffering. Every utility has its rightful claim, the ignoring of which entails a permanent slavery in the way of payment of interest until its dues are fully met. The only way to get rid of the school master's importunity is to do one's lessons properly.
There is an outside aspect of the world where it is simply an immense machine. In this aspect, its laws are fixed and do not yield by a hair's breadth either this way or that. This mechanical world gets in our way at every step; and he who, through laziness or folly, tries to evade its laws, does not succeed in cheating the machine, but only himself. On the other ​hand, he who has taught himself its working is able not only to avoid its obstruction, but to gain it for an ally, and so is enabled to ride swiftly over the paths of the material world. He reaches the place of his quest first, and has his fill of the good things there. But those who have lagged behind, jogging along unaided, arrive late to find very little left over for themselves.
Since these are the facts, merely to revile the science by which Westerners have gained their victory in the modern world, will not tend to relieve our sufferings, but will rather add to the burden of our sins. For this science which the West has mastered is true. If you say, it is not their science, but their satanic abuse of it to which you object, that point need not disturb us; for we may be certain that the satanic part of it will be the death of them, because Satan's way is not true.
The beasts live if they get food, and die if they get hurt. They accept what comes, without question. But one of the greatest traits of man is his habit of protesting. Unlike the beast, he is a rebel by nature. Man has achieved his glorious position in the history of the world because he has never been able to accept as final what has been imposed upon him without his concurrence or co-operation. In short, man is by no means a mild creature only; he is ever in revolt. From the beginning of his career, man has sworn to sway the world of events. How? By conquering it, or else coming to an understanding with the forces of which it is the resultant. He will never be content to be merely a fact; he needs must be a factor. He began with magical practices, because at first it seemed to him that whatever was happening was due to some wonderful magic at work behind the scenes. He felt that he also could take a hand in it, if he could but master the art. The activities which began as magic ended in science, but the motive in both cases has been the refusal to be subservient to the blind forces of nature. Those, whose efforts were successful, attained the mastery over the material world, and were no longer its slaves.
The belief in universal, immutable laws, is the basis of science, and loyalty to this belief has led to victory. Secure in this loyalty, the people of the West are winning their way through the obstructions and difficulties of the material world. But those who have held on to a lingering faith in magic have failed to acquire control over the world's mechanism, and are being defeated at every turn. At a time when we were still busy invoking the exorciser against ill and the fortune-teller against poverty and misfortune, while we were content to seek protection against small-pox from Sitala Devi, and relied on charms and spells for the destruction of our enemies, in Europe a woman asked Voltaire, whether it was true that incantations could kill a flock of sheep. She got the reply that doubtless they could, provided there was enough arsenic. I do not mean that there is no belief in magic in any corner of Europe today; but certainly belief in the efficacy of arsenic is universal. That is why they can kill when they want to, and we have to die even when we do not.
It is a platitude to be saying today that the phenomenal world is only a manifestation of universal law, and that, through the law of reason, we realise the laws of the material world. It is because we know such power to be inherent in us, that we can take our ultimate stand on our own selves. But he who, in his commerce with the universe, cannot get rid of the habit of looking to accidental interventions, tends to rely on anything and everything except himself. One who doubts that his intelligence will avail, ceases to question, or to experiment. He casts about for some external master, and as a result is exploited, right and left, beginning from police officers and ending with malaria-breeding mosquitos. Cowardliness of intellect is a fertile source of feebleness of power.
From what period did political liberty begin to evolve in the West? In other words, when did the people of the West begin to realise, that political power was not the privilege of special individuals or classes, but depended on their own ​consent? It was from the time that their pursuit of Science freed them from nameless fears, and they discovered that only those laws were true which could not be distorted or diverted by anyone's whim or fancy.
Giant Russia was so long the slave of her Czars, because her people relied in every matter on Providence and not in their own powers. Even now, when her Czar is gone that power which has taken his place is but dragging her through a sea of blood to the barren shore of starvation. The reason is that self-rule cannot be established through outside agency, but must be based on that self-reliance which is born of trust in one's own intellect.
I was once engaged in trying to improve one of our Bengal villages. There had been a fire and I asked the villagers how it was they had not been able to save a single homestead? "It was our fate!" they exclaimed. "Not fate," said I, "but the lack of wells. Why not make wells?" "That will be as the master pleases," was the reply. So it comes to pass that the people, whose homesteads are gutted by fate and whose wells await the master's pleasure, may lack all else but never a master.
From the very beginning God has given us Swarajya in His universe. That is to say He has given us for ourselves universal laws independent of Himself. We can not be prevented from bringing these under our control by anyone or anything except our own folly. So the Upanishat has it, that God has given us laws for our own material provisions, immutable for all time. That is to say those laws hold good for all people, and all periods, and all occasions. Had this not been so, man would have remained weakly dependent on God at every step, all his energies exhausted in propitiating, now this intermediary, now the other, in a chronic state of abject fear. But our God-given Magna Charta of Swaraj sets us for ever free from the wiles of all pretending intermediaries,— with our freedom firmly based on well-ordered and enduring laws. In the glowing letters of sun, moon and stars, God gives us his message: "You have no need of my help at every turn in the material world. I stand aside. On the one hand, you have the laws of matter; on the other, the laws of your mind. Use them together, and grow in greatness. The empire of the universe is yours; yours its wealth, yours its armoury of forces. May yours be the victory!"
He who accepts this charter of material Swaraj has the opportunity to achieve all other kinds of Swaraj and also to keep them when achieved. But those, who surrender their intellect to the slave-driver, have no help but to be slaves in politics as well. Those who insist on invoking masters, where God Himself has refrained from asserting His own mastery, those who court insult where God has granted them dignity,— their self-rule will certainly mean rule after rule, the only doubt being as to that little prefix "self".
The science of material existence is in the keeping of the professors of the West. This is the science which gives us food and clothing, health and longevity and preserves us from the attacks of matter, brute and barbarian. This is the science of the unchangeable laws of matter, and self-rule can only be achieved when these are brought into harmony with the laws of our mind. There is no other way.
Let us consider the case of a departure from this truth. Take the idea that, if a Mussalman draws water from the well of a Hindu, the water becomes impure. This is a confusion indeed! For, water belongs to the world of matter, and impurity to the realm of the spirit. Had it been said, that if the Hindu contemns the Mussalman, this shows the impurity of his mind, the proposition would have been intelligible, it would be wholly a spiritual question. But when impurity is imputed to the Mussalman's vessel, then that which belongs to the category of the material is taken entirely outside the scope of material laws. The intellect is defrauded of its legitimate scope. The Hindu disciple of the West will urge that this imputation of impurity is only a religious way of promulgating a sanitary doctrine. Sanitation, however, takes no account of moral purity. The answer is given us: "But it is only ​put thus in order to induce people, who have no faith in Science, to obey its laws." This is not a right reply. For if external compulsion be once brought in, it comes to stay. Those for whom it is made necessary, lose all initiative of their own and get into the habit of depending on injunctions. Furthermore, if truth has to be bolstered up by untruth, it ends by getting smothered. By using the phrase 'morally impure' where 'physically unclean' is meant, truth is made difficult of apprehension, Whether a thing is unclean or not can be proved. And if uncleanliness be the charge, a comparative inquiry into the vessels and wells of Hindu and Moslem should be made, and we should find out if there is anything less sanitary in the Moslem water arrangements than in those of the Hindu. Uncleanliness itself being an external fault, it can be remedied by external means. But an allegation of impurity takes the question out of the jurisdiction of the ordinary mind, and makes it a matter of religion. Is that a sound method of achieving the desired object? To keep the intellect in a state of delusion cannot be the way to attain high moral excellence. Untruth from the teacher, together with blindness in the pupil, will never create a spiritually healthy society.
So if we call Western Science 'impure', merely because it was discovered in the West, we shall not only be unable to master it, but shall also be placing in a bad light that Eastern Science which teaches of moral purity.
Here I am apprehensive of another argument. Many will ask, Whether, when the West was still savage, clothed in skins and living by hunting, we in the East had not been able to feed and clothe ourselves? When they fared forth merely for plunder, had we not evolved a political commonwealth? Certainly, we were then far more advanced than the West. But the reason was that, in those days, we in the East had a superior knowledge of Science and its laws. We had then the knowledge of cultivation and weaving. That scientific knowledge went far further than mere skill in hunting which the West then possessed. It requires more science to conduct a stable government than to hunt wild beasts. How then did the parts become reversed? It was not by any trick of fate. It was by no luck or magic. Rather it was due to the West learning the same Science which the East had learnt before, and to a still more useful purpose. Therefore, it is not by looking to some external force that we can now compete with the West. We can resist their onslaught only if we make their Science our own. To say this implies that the greatest of our problems in India is the problem of Education.
But at this point in the argument, I have to answer the further question, whether I have found satisfaction in that aspect of power, which the West is now presenting to mankind. My answer would be, 'No'. What I saw did not satisfy me. The picture was that of self-aggrandisement, not that of happiness. For seven months at a stretch I have lived in the giant's Castle of Wealth, in America. Through my hotel window, sky-scrapers frowned on me. They only made me think of the difference between Lakshmi, the Goddess of grace, who transmutes wealth into well-being, and the ugly god Mammon, who represents the spirit of insensate accumulation. The process of piling up has no ultimate end in view. Twice two are four, twice four are eight, twice eight are sixteen, the figures leap frog-like over increasing spans. He, who is obsessed by their stride, becomes intoxicated by it and revels in the glory of mere multiplication, But, what oppressiveness it produces in the mind of an onlooker, I can best explain by an analogy.
Once I was in a house-boat on the brimming autumn river, seated at the window on the eve of the full moon. Not far off, moored along-side the bank, there was an up country cargo boat, whose crew were enthusiastically engaged in entertaining themselves. Some of them had tom-toms, others had cymbals; none of them had a voice; but all of them had muscles beyond any possibility of question! And the beats of their clanging sped on from double-quick to quadruple-quick time, with the stimulus of its own frenzy. Ten o'clock passed, ​eleven o'clock passed; it was well on towards midnight, yet they would not stop. Why should they? Had there been a song, there would have been some natural pause. Anarchic rhythm, on the other hand, has movement, but no rest: excitement, but no satisfaction. Those rhythm-maniacs on the cargo boat had no doubt that they were scaling the topmost heights of enjoyment. But what of poor me?
I was much in the same plight over there on the other side of the Atlantic. The crescendo of their rhythmic advance like a wilderness of bricks and mortar was obvious. But where was the song? That was the burdening question. And standing before the forbidding might of their towering opulence, the son of indigent downtrodden India was left cold, murmuring—"What then?"
I am not for emptiness, in the garb of renunciation. External restraint is true, only when it is the expression of internal fulness,—just as time and tune are kept properly regulated because the artist is full of his song. Unmitigated noise has no occasion for disciplined restraint. If there be the truth called Love, at the heart, enjoyment must be restrained, service must be true, that is to say, such a process of realisation needs the spirit of charity to help it. The renunciation, which is in the chastity of love, is the true renunciation. The union of the Goddess of Plenitude with the God who needs no wealth is the true union.
When I was in Japan, the spirit of old Japan gave me a profound pleasure. Old Japan had found Beauty reigning on the lotus throne of her heart. In her dress and ornament, in her dwellings and furniture, in her work and play, in her rites and ceremonials, she expressed in various forms the One who is beauty. Utter penury is as unmeaning as lavish profusion. The spirit of old Japan represented neither, but rather the fulness of perfection. Such fulness makes man's heart hospitable,—its passion is for welcome and not for rejection. Side by side with the old, I have also seen the modern Japan. Here the spirit of the rhythm-maniac has assumed control, and its din mocks the moonlight.
By all this, I do not mean that railways and telegraphs are not needed. They have their use, but not their message. Where man has needs, he must furnish himself with materials; but where he has fulness, there is manifest his immortality; Man's envy and hatred are in the region of his material needs, the region where he is in want. Here he erects his barricades and maintains his guards. Here he is for self-aggrandisement and for the exclusion of others. But where he is immortal he displays, not things, but his soul. He invites all to enter. His distribution does not mean diminution; and so peace reigns.
When Europe was opening out the mystery chambers of the Universe with the keys of Science, she found at every step fixed laws. And their constant presence in her field of vision ever since has caused her to forget that there is something more behind these laws, which has its harmony of delight in accord with our complete humanity. By the help of natural laws we achieve success, but man aspires to gain something greater than success. The laws which the tea-garden manager imposes on his coolies, if well devised, tend to increase his output. But where the manager's friends are concerned, he does not dream of efficient laws. In dealing with his friends he does not increase his output; he spends his tea in entertainment. It is well to believe in the laws which make for efficiency. But if ever it is believed, that the truth of friendship is not a part of an infinite truth, then that belief tends to destroy our humanity itself. We cannot make friends with a machine. Therefore, if we cease to be aware of anything beyond mechanism, then our personality which is ever seeking its own affinity in other persons, finds no permanent refuge. The West, in its one-sided pursuit of Science, has been steadily thrusting personality further and further into the back-ground till hardly any room has been left for it. If our own one-sided spiritual tendency of mind has made us lose our way and left us stranded in the quagmire of weakness and poverty, the limping gait of the West has taken it no nearer, from its own side, to humanity's goal.
True, it is difficult to cope with those ​who consistenly keep to the tea-garden-manager outlook on the universe; for they have enlisted the services of the genie of efficiency. The good natured man invariably gets caught by their recruiters, and once in their net, there is no escape. He has no conception of the value of fixed laws of the world. He insists on pinning his faith just where he should not, whether it be on the unluckiness of Thursday, the virtue of talismans, the trustworthiness of touts, or the honesty of tea-garden recruiters. But ever the most helplessly good natured man has a place, beyond the reach of laws, where he can take his stand and say: "God grant I may never be born, despite my trials and troubles, to be a tea-garden manager!"
And yet the tea-garden manager also has his own methods of benevolence. He makes sanitary dwellings for his coolies, soundly and symmetrically built, and his arrangements for their supplies are admirable. But this non-human benevolence is but an appendage of efficiency. It helps to increase the profits; it bestows a kind of benefit upon the human tools. But from that springs not even a fraction of true happiness.
Let no one imagine that I am referring to the relations between the Western masters and their Eastern servants only. The undue stress laid on the mechanical side of the world, both in external and internal relations, has similarly created a split in the polity of the West. If the mechanical bonds of association be made into a fetish, the living bonds of voluntary fellowship slacken. And this, in spite of the fact that these mechanical bonds make for extraordinary mechanical efficiency. Commodities multiply, markets spread, tall buildings pierce the sky. Not only so, but in education, healing and the amenities of life, man also gains real success. That is because the machine has its own truth. But this very success makes the man, who is obsessed by its mechanism, hanker for more and more mechanism. And as his greed continually increases, he has less and less compunction in lowering man's true value to the level of his own machine.
Greed is not an ideal,—it is a passion. Passion cannot create. So when any civilisation gives the first place to greed, the soul relation between man and man is severed; and the more luxurious such a civilisation grows in pomp and power, the poorer it becomes in truth of soul. A picture is a creation, because it is the harmony of many lines, related to one another. An engineer's plan is not a picture, because the lines there are bound to each other by some external necessity. When greed of success is the main nexus between man and man, Society becomes a huge plan and ceases to be a picture of the ideal. Man's spiritual relations are lost sight of; money becomes the prime mover; the capitalist the driver; and the rest of mankind merely the fuel for the running of the machine. It is possible to measure the value of such civilisation in terms of the speed of its progress. But man, at the bottom of his heart, does not worship Mammon, and so has no real happiness in the triumphal progress of his car. Because his faith in Mammon is wanting, the cords, by which man is bound to Mammon's service, are not bonds of loyalty, but shackles. And man ever revolts when he feels himself shackled. The dark clouds of this social revolt lower only too dismally over the West. There the union, devised for exploitation, has ended in disruption. In India the union, imposed by customary rule, has resulted in emasculation. Because traditional customs and professional dealings are not ideals, therefore they make their arrangements by keeping man's soul out of the account.
What is the ideal? Jesus Christ said: "I and my father are one." Here is one ideal. "My unity with my father," is a true unity. But the unity of the coolie with the manager is not true. Again a great ideal has been given utterance to in the Isha Upanishat. "All that moves in this moving world is enveloped by God. Therefore enjoy by renunciation; never covet others' possessions." I have already referred in terms of condemnation to the greed which has become the dominant motive in the West. Why do we condemn it? The Rishi tells us the reason,—"Do not covet." Why should we not covet? Be​cause truth cannot be obtained through greed. But if I say, "I want my enjoyment rather than truth."— Well, the Rishi also says, "Enjoy." But there can be no enjoyment outside truth. What then is the truth? It is this: "All that moves in this moving world is enveloped by God." Had "all that moves in the world" been itself the ultimate truth, then to keep piling up would have been the best thing to do; and greed would have been the most efficient of man's virtues. But the truth being this, that God is there, enveloping all things, we have to enjoy this truth with our soul, and for such enjoyment renunciation is needed, not greed. During my seven months' stay in America, the land of mountain-high piles of lucre, I have watched this striving in the reverse direction. There, "all that moves in this moving world" has become prominent. God, who "envelops all things" has become obscured in the thick dust of dollars. Therefore, in America, the injunction to enjoy is not observed with the help of truth, but with the help of money. Truth gives us Unity. Money sets up separation. Furthermore, it keeps our soul empty. Therefore, it causes in us a hankering to fill that emptiness from outside, and we pursue the path of multiplying numbers in hot haste. While our desire runs at a break-neck pace, jumping from one figure to another in the multiplication table, we grow dizzy and forget that whatever else we may have been acquiring, it is not happiness.
Our Rishis have told us that satisfaction is only to be found in the One. Apples fall one after another. The truth about their falling cannot be arrived at by counting them: arithmetical progression marches on indefinitely and the mind turns away unsatisfied from each fresh enumeration, saying: "What does it all mean?" But when innumerable falls find their unity in the principle of gravitation, the intellect at last finds satisfaction and can say: "Enough, I have found the truth."
And what of the truth of Man. It is not in the Census Report, not in an interminable series of figures. Man is expressed, says the Upanishat, when he realises all creation in himself and himself in all creation. Otherwise his truth is obscured. There is a telling example of this in our history. When the Lord Buddha realised humanity in a grand synthesis of unity, his message went forth to China as a draught from the fountain of immortality. But when the modern empire-seeking merchant, moved by his greed, refused allegiance to this truth of unity, he had no qualms in sending to China the deadly opium poison, nay, in thrusting it down her throat at the cannon's mouth. What could be a better illustration of how the soul of man is revealed, and how it is obscured?
Many at the present moment will exclaim: "That is just what we were saying. How can we possibly maintain relations with those, who only know how to divide, whose rapacious maw continually opens wider and wider? They know nothing of the spirit of the Infinite which is all in all to us. They follow the cult of the finite. Must we not keep at arm's length their pernicious teaching and culture?"
But this attitude is also one of division, while it has not even the merit of worldly prudence behind it. India's ancient teaching was not this. Manu says: "Restraint cannot be practised so well by leaving the world, as by remaining in it purified by wisdom." That is because the responsibility of the material world is also on us and cannot be shirked, if we would do justice to the responsibilities of the world of the spirit. So the Upanishat says: "Rescue yourself from death by the cult of the finite, and then by the cult of the infinite you shall attain immortality." Shukra, the preceptor of the Titans, was master of the art of material existence; and in his school Kacha, the emissary of the Gods, had to gain admission in order to learn the secret of immortality.
One of the first steps in the culture of the Soul is to free it from the tyranny of matter. This is the basic effort which must be made to start with; and unless the foundation be thus well and truly laid, the powers of the majority of men will be exhausted in their struggles to stave off sheer physical starvation. It is quite true, ​that the West has kept its head bent to the ground and become so absorbed in the spade work that no time has been left to lift its head upwards. Nevertheless, it will not do for those, who aspire to live in the light and air of the upper storey, to despise the spade work itself. In the region of the spirit, our seers have told us, ignorance is bondage, knowledge is freedom. The same is true in the material world. Those who do not know its laws are its slaves, those who do are emancipated. The bondage of external forces is an illusion which science alone can dispel.
Anyhow, the Western continents have been striving for liberation from the maya of matter, striking hard whenever they encounter any of the roots of that ignorance which breeds hunger and thirst, disease and want, or other ills of mundane life. In a word, they have been engaged in securing for man protection against physical death. On the other hand, the striving of the Eastern peoples has been to win for man his spiritual kingdom, to lead him to immortality. By their present separateness, East and West alike are now in danger of losing the fruits of their age-long labours. That is why the Upanishat, from the beginning, has enunciated the principle, which yet may serve to unite them. "Gain protection," it says, "from death by the cult of the finite, and then by the cult of the infinite you shall attain immortality." "All that moves in the moving world" is the province of Science. "God envelops all this" is the province of the philosophy of the Infinite. When the Rishi enjoins us to combine them both, then that implies the union of the East and the West. For want of that union, the East is suffering from poverty and inertia and the West from lack of peace and happiness.
There is a danger of my being misunderstood as to what I mean by Union. I should like to make that point quite plain to my readers. Uniformity is not unity. Those who destroy the independence of other races, destroy the unity of all races of humanity. Modern Imperialism is that idea of Unity, which the python has in swallowing other live creatures. I have said before, that, if the spiritual altogether swallows up the material interest of man that cannot be called harmony. But when the spiritual and the material keep separate, in their own respective provinces, then they can find their unity. In like manner, when we respect the true individuality of men, then we can discover their true unity.
While Europe, after the great war, has been yearning for peace, the smaller nations have been more and more insistent in claiming self-determination. If a new era is really to be ushered in, it must be signalised by the overthrow of the monster, Wealth, and the monster, Empire, and also of the enormity of organisations. The true unity must be established upon true units. Those who co-operate with the New Age must cultivate their own individuality in order to attain successfully the spirit that shall unite. They must remember that Freedom (which is the great quest) is not of this or that nation, but of universal man.
The truth that "the man who knows others as himself is truly revealed" is not only to be found in the pages of man's scriptures. Its working can be seen throughout human history. In the beginning, we see man gathered into separate groups within barriers of mountain and ocean. As soon as man came into touch with man, the problem of his truth as a member of the human race demanded attention. Whenever men came together, but were unable to unite, they lost their truth. Those of them, who, having come into contact, hit out wildly against one another, none trusting the other, each trying to gain the advantage, have all disappeared from the face of the earth. And those, who have tried to realise the one Soul in the souls of all, have developed into great peoples.
Thanks to Science, so many vehicles of communication are speeding over land and water and even through the air, that today there are no longer any geographical barriers. Now, not only individual men, but whole nations have come into contact, and the problem has become ​acute. Those whom—Science has brought together how shall man put asunder? If the conjunction of man is a real union, then all goes well, otherwise nearness produces conflict. Such an age of universal conflict has come. The outward forces which are bringing men together are running at a great speed; the inner forces which make men united are lagging behind. It is as if a locomotive were to rush on with its train, the driver left behind wringing his hands in despair, while a cheering crowd of onlookers are lost in admiration at its headlong speed, crying "This is progress indeed!" And we, the mild men of the East, who are in the habit of trudging along on foot, how can we possibly bear the brunt of the collision? Things which are near us and yet keep aloof, if they have their movement, always give us shocks. Such a conjuction of shocks may not be comfortable, but, in certain circumstances, it may be wholesome.
However that may be, nothing is more obvious than the fact, that nations have come together, but yet are not united. The agony of this presses on the whole world. Why is it, that, in spite of its torture, the world can find no solution? Because even those, who had mastered the art of uniting within their own boundaries, have not yet learnt the secret of uniting outside them. The barrier, by limiting truth, makes truth itself at first easier of comprehension; so man is apt to give the credit to the barrier and not to the truth; he worships the priest to the exclusion of the divinity, and fears the policemen more than the king.
Nations have risen on the strength of truth, but it was not their Nationalism which was true. And yet human sacrifices are being offered to this barrier-god. So long as the victims were of alien race no question arose; but all of a sudden, in 1914, the votaries developed a mania for sacrificing one another. Then the doubt arose: "Is this after all the right kind of household god, who fails to distinguish between kindred and stranger?" While he was fastening his fangs on the limbs of the offerings from the East, sucking out their substance, the festivity of the sacrificial rites waxed fast and furious, for stimulants were not lacking either. Today some of them are to be seen with bowed heads, oppressed with the misgiving, that perhaps this kind of riotous worship might not be altogether healthy. While the war was at its height, there was some hope that the orgy of Nationalism might soon be brought to an end. But the war, which disappeared in one aspect came back wearing the mask of peace. The thinkers of the West are bemoaning the tragic fact, that, the infatuation from which this disaster has been caused, is still as vigorous as ever. This infatuation is Nationalism, the collective Egotism of the whole nation. It is a passion whose tendency is against the ideal of Unity. Its pull is towards itself.
The peoples have come together. This great truth cannot be crushed beneath the triumphal car of any imperialistic ambition. Then we must establish relations with this truth. Otherwise there will be no end to these wars of annihilation. Since it is essential that education should fit in with the spirit of the time, the high priests of Nationalism will avail themselves of every pretext and opportunity to inculcate by means of education the doctrine of national pride in the growing generation. When Germany frankly made her Universities the servitors of her political ambitions, other European nations condemned her. But which of the greater European nations has not followed suit? The only difference has been that Germany being the greater master of scientific method, carried on the nationalistic propaganda more thoroughly. She made her education into a scientific incubator for hatching the eggs of Nationalism, and the chickens produced have been more vigorous than those of the neighbouring nations. The same has become the function of the press,—the unremitting circulation of plausible national untruths.
An Education which can free the nations from this ungodly fetish of Nationalism is what is chiefly needed today. Tomorrow is to begin the chapter of the federation of races. Any evil tendencies of thought and sinful habits, which militate against the spirit of federation will unfit us to take our part in the history of tomorrow. ​I hope I can claim to be duly conscious of the glories of my own country, but my fervent prayer is that such consciousness may never make me forgetful of the earliest message of our seers, the message of unity, in which the forces of disruption have no place. I can hear, from over the seas the wailing of men questioning themselves: "Wherein was our sin,—in what part of our thoughts, of our education,—that this terrible suffering is ours today?" May the reply of our Rishis reach them: "There can be no blindness and sorrow, where all beings are known as oneself and the Unity is realised." I can hear, from over the seas, the cry for Peace. We must give them the message of our great forefathers: "Peace is where the Good is; the Good is where there is Unity."
Shantam, Shivam, Advaitam.
Unity is peace; for Unity is the Good.
I am fully conscious of the glories of my motherland, so it shames me even to think, that now, on the eve of the new age, when the command of Rudra, the Terrible, has gone forth to sweep away the rubbish of decayed ages, this same rubbish should be piled up into an altar for her worship. He who is Peace, who is Good, is the One Universal Refuge of all the different Nations of men. Cannot the chanting of the mantra,—Shantam, Shivam, Advaitam,—with the first fresh glow of the dawning era, rouse in us once more our ancient love of truth?
It is the dream of my heart, that the culture-centre of our country should also be the meeting ground of the East and West. In the field of business, antagonism still prevails; it struggles hard against reconcilement. In the field of culture, there is no such obstacle. The householder, who is exclusively occupied with his domestic concerns and is chary of his hospitality, is poor in spirit. No great country can afford to be confined to its kitchen, it must have its reception room where it can do honour to itself by inviting the world.
India has only government institutions, or their prototypes, for her education. By far the greater part of it consists in begging for the crumbs of other people's attaining. When begging becomes a habit, the lack of hospitality ceases to cause shame. So the Indian Universities have no compunction in proclaiming themselves mendicants with nothing to offer in return for what they receive. It is not true, that nothing is expected from them. I have often been confronted in Europe with the question: "Where is India's voice?" But when the enquirer from the West comes to India, and listens at her door, he says: "The words which we hear are only the feeble echoes of our own words,— the mere parodies of things preached by us." To me, it has always seemed that, when the Indian disciple of Max Muller boasts in strident tones of his Aryan descent, there is heard all the blatant noise of the Western brass band; and also when in a frenzy of condemnation he rejects the West, there is heard only the most discordant sounds of the Western tunes.
It is my prayer that India should, in the name of all the East, establish a centre for the culture of Truth to which all may be invited. I know she lacks material wealth, but she has no lack of spiritual wisdom. On the strength of the latter she may invite the world, and be invited into every part of the world, not to hang round the threshold, but to take the seat prepared for her in the inmost chamber. But even that honour may be left out of sight. The real object of our endeavour should be to realise truth in our inner nature and then to manifest it in the outer world,—not for the sake of expediency: not for gaining honour, but for emancipating man's spirit from its obscurity. The ideal revelation of soul must be expressed, through all our education and through all our work, and then by honouring all men we shall ourselves be honoured, and by welcoming the new age we shall ourselves be freed from the burden of senility. The mantra of that education is this:
"He, who realises all creatures in himself and himself in all creatures, is never obscured."