The News of the Month

August ­ September 1914

The News of the Month

 "L'IDÉE NOUVELLE"

In close connection with the intellectual work of synthesis undertaken by this Review a Society has been founded in French India under the name of the New Idea, (L'Idée Nouvelle) Its object is to group in a common intellectual life and fraternity of sentiment those who accept the spiritual tendency and idea it represents and who aspire to realise it in their own individual and social action.

The Society has already made a beginning by grouping together young men of different castes and religions in a common ideal All sectarian and political questions are necessarily foreign to its idea and its activities It is on a higher plane of thought superior to external differences of race, caste, creed and opinion and in the solidarity of the spirit that unity can be realised.

The Idée Nouvelle has two rules only for its members, first, to devote some time every day to meditation and self-culture, the second, to use or create daily at least one opportunity of being helpful to others This is, naturally, only the minimum of initial self-training necessary for those who have yet to cast the whole trend of their thought and feeling into the mould of a higher life and to enlarge the egoistic into a collective consciousness.

The Society has its headquarters at Pondicherry with a reading-room and library A section has been founded at Karikal and others are likely to be opened at Yanaon and Mahe.

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 AN INDO-FRENCH COMMITTEE IN PARIS

An Indo-French Committee (Comite Franco-Hindou) has been founded in Paris and M Pierre Loti has been invited to become its Honorary President The Committee proposes to develop intellectual, scientific, artistic and economic relations between France and India It is a good deal for one Committee! Let us at least hope that it will be able to carry out the first item of its programme No doubt, everything that brings men and nations nearer to each other helps in the formation of a general intelligence more synthetic and comprehensive than the old divided mind of humanity; but it is above all in the realm of thought and by the exchange of ideas and the deeper experiences that the best fruits are likely to be borne Every new tie, especially every tie of the spirit between Europe and India, between the West of today and the East of yesterday and tomorrow, is a welcome sign of the times for those who know how much the world's progress depends on their union.

M Pierre Loti, in a letter addressed to the President of the Committee, thus expresses his veneration for India: —

"And now I salute thee with awe, with veneration and wonder, ancient India of whom I am the adept, the India of the highest splendours of Art and Philosophy, the India also of monstrous mysteries that terrify, India our cradle, India where all that has been produced since her beginnings was ever impetuous and colossal May thy awakening astonish that Occident, decadent, mean, daily dwindling, slayer of nations, slayer of gods, slayer of souls, which yet bows down still, ancient India, before the prodigies of thy primordial conceptions"

We cannot but subscribe to the sentiment, if not to all the phrases, of this fine piece of literature.

But what are these monstrous and terrifying mysteries of which M Loti speaks? Terror is no longer in the mode, the age of mysteries is over and the age of monstrosities has never been Ignorance is the only monstrosity  

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MR. TILAK'S BOOK ON THE GITA

In an interview with the representative of an Indian journal Mr Bal Gangadhar Tilak has given a brief account of the work on the Gita which he has been writing during his six years' internment in Mandalay He begins: —

"You know that the Gita is regarded generally as a book inculcating quietistic Vedanta or Bhakti For myself, I have always regarded it as a work expounding the principles of human conduct from a Vedantic ethical point of view, that is, reconciling the philosophy of active life with the philosophy of knowledge and the philosophy of devotion to God".

Mr Tilak then expresses his belief that before Shankara and Ramanuja, the great Southern philosophers, wrote their commentaries, the Gita was understood in its natural sense, but from that time forward artificial and sectarian interpretations prevailed and the element of Karmayoga in the Song Celestial was disregarded His book is intended to restore this natural sense and central idea of the famous Scripture It will contain a word for word rendering preceded by an introduction of some fifteen chapters in which he discusses the Vedanta and the ethics of the Gita and compares the ethical philosophy of Western thinkers with that of the Indian schools of thought Although the book will be published first in Marathi, we are promised a version also in English.

We look forward with interest to a work which, proceeding from a scholar of such eminence and so acute an intellect, one especially whose name carries weight with all Hindus, must be considered an event of no small importance in Indian religious thought We welcome it all the more because it seems to be conceived in the same free and synthetic spirit as animates this Review It is a fresh sign of the tendency towards an increasingly liberal movement of religious opinion in orthodox India, the dissolution of the old habit of unquestioning deference to great authorities and the consequent rediscovery of the true catholic sense of the ancient Scriptures.

Those who have studied the Gita with a free mind, still more  

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those who have tried to live it, cannot doubt for a moment the justice of Mr Tilak's point of view But is not the tendency of the Gita towards a supra-ethical rather than an ethical activity? Ethics is, usually, the standardising of the highest current social ideals of conduct; the Song Celestial, while recognising their importance, seeks to fix the principle of action deeper in the centre of a man's soul and points us ultimately to the government of our outward life by the divine self within.

August 1914

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THE WAR

The "Arya", a Review of pure Philosophy, has no direct concern with political passions and interests and their results But neither can it ignore the enormous convulsion which is at present in progress, nor at such a time can it affect to deal only with the pettier happenings of the intellectual world as if men were not dying in thousands daily, the existence of great empires threatened and the fate of the world hanging in the balance The War has its aspects, of supreme importance to a synthetic Philosophy, with which we would have the right to deal But now is not the hour, now in this moment of supreme tension and wide-spread agony Therefore, for the time, we suppress this heading in our Review and shall replace it by brief notes on subjects of philosophical interest, whether general or of the day Meanwhile, with the rest of the world, we await in silence the predestined result.

September 1914  

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