{"id":3247,"date":"2013-07-13T01:46:56","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3247"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:46:56","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:56","slug":"05-a-rationalistic-critic-on-indian-culture-vol-the-foundations-of-indian-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/the-foundations-of-indian-culture\/05-a-rationalistic-critic-on-indian-culture-vol-the-foundations-of-indian-culture","title":{"rendered":"-05_A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\nII<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nA RATIONALISTIC CRITIC ON INDIAN CULTURE<\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nCHAPTER I<\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nWHEN<\/font> we try to appreciate a culture, and when that
\nculture is the one in which we have grown up or from which we draw our governing
\nideals and are likely from overpartiality to minimise its deficiencies or from
\noverfamiliarity to miss aspects or values of it which would strike an
\nunaccustomed eye, it is always useful as well as interesting to know how others
\nsee it. It will not move us to change our view-point for theirs, but we can get
\nfresh light from a study of this kind and help our self-introspection. But there
\nare different ways of seeing a foreign civilisation and culture. There is the
\neye of sympathy and intuition and a close appreciative self-identification :
\nthat gives us work like Sister Nivedita’s Web of Indian Life<\/i> or Mr.
\nFielding’s book on Burma or Sir John Woodroffe’s studies of Tantra. These are
\nattempts to push aside all concealing veils and reveal the soul of a people. It
\nmay well be that they do not give us all the hard outward fact, but we are
\nenlightened of something deeper which has its greater reality, we get not the
\nthing as it is in the deficiencies of life, but its ideal meaning. The soul, the
\nessential spirit is one thing, the forms taken in this difficult human actuality
\nare another and are often imperfect or perverted; neither can be neglected if we
\nwould have a total vision. Then there is the eye of the discerning and
\ndispassionate critic who tries to see the thing as it is in its intention and
\nactuality, apportion the light and shade, get the balance of merit and defect,
\nsuccess and failure, mark off that which evokes appreciative sympathy from that
\nwhich calls for critical censure. We may not always agree; the standpoint is
\ndifferent and by <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201349 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nits externality, by failure of intuition and
\nself-identification it may miss things that are essential or may not get the
\nwhole meaning of that which it praises or condemns: still we profit, we can add
\nto our sense of shade and tone or correct our own previous judgment. Finally
\nthere is the eye of the hostile critic, convinced of the inferiority of the
\nculture in question, who gives plainly and honestly without deliberate
\novercharging what he conceives to be sound reason for his judgment. That too has
\nits use for us; hostile criticism of this kind is good for the soul and the
\nintellect, provided we do not allow ourselves to be afflicted, beaten down or
\nshaken from the upholding centre of our living faith and action. Most things in
\nour human world are imperfect and it is sometimes well to get a strong view of
\nour imperfections. Or, if nothing else, we can at least learn to appreciate
\nopposite standpoints and get at the source of the opposition; wisdom, insight
\nand sympathy grow by such comparisons. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut hostile criticism to be of any sound value must
\nbe criticism, not slander and false witness, not vitriol-throwing :it must state
\nthe facts without distortion, preserve consistent standards of judgment, observe
\na certain effort at justice, sanity, measure. Mr. William Archer’s well-known
\nbook on India, which on account of its very demerits I have taken as the type of
\nthe characteristic Western or anti-Indian regard on our culture, was certainly
\nnot of this character. It is not only that here we have a wholesale and
\nunsparing condemnation, a picture all shade and no light: that is a
\nrecommendation, for Mr. Archer’s professed object was to challenge the
\nenthusiastic canonisation of Indian culture by its admirers in the character of
\na devil’s advocate whose business is to find out and state in its strongest
\nterms everything that can be said against the claim. And for us too it is useful
\nto have before us an attack which covers the whole field so that we may see in
\none comprehensive view the entire enemy case against our culture. But there are
\nthree vitiating elements in his statement. First, it had an ulterior<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201350<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\na political object; it started with the underlying
\nidea that India must be proved altogether barbarous in order to destroy or
\ndamage her case for self-government. That sort of extraneous motive at once puts
\nhis whole pleading out of court; for it means a constant deliberate distortion
\nin order to serve a material interest, foreign altogether to the disinterested
\nintellectual objects of cultural comparison and criticism. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIn fact this book is not criticism; it is literary
\nor rather journalistic pugilism. There too it is of a peculiar kind; it is a
\nfurious sparring at a lay-figure of India which is knocked down at pleasure
\nthrough a long and exuberant dance of misstatement and exaggeration in the hope
\nof convincing an ignorant audience that the performer has prostrated a living
\nadversary. Sanity, justice, measure are things altogether at a discount: <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\na show-off of the appearance of staggering and
\nirresistible blows is the object held in view, and for that anything comes in
\nhandy,\u2014the facts are altogether misstated or clumsily caricatured, the most
\nextraordinary and unfounded suggestions advanced with an air of obviousness, the
\nmost illogical inconsistencies permitted if an apparent point can be scored. All
\nthis is not the occasional freak of a well-informed critic suffering from a fit
\nof mental biliousness and impelled to work it off by an extravagant intellectual
\nexercise, an irresponsible fantasia or a hostile war-dance around a subject with
\nwhich he is not in sympathy. That is a kind of extravagance, which is sometimes
\npermissible and may be interesting and amusing. It is a sweet and pleasant
\nthing, cries the Roman poet, to play the fool in place and right season, dulce est desipere in loco.<\/i> But Mr. Archer’s constant departures into irrational
\nextravagance are not by any means in loco.<\/i> We discover very soon,\u2014in
\naddition to his illegitimate motive and his deliberate unfairness this is a
\nthird and worst cardinal defect,\u2014that for the most part he knew absolutely
\nnothing about the things on which he was passing his confident damnatory
\njudgments. What he has done is to collect together in his mind all the
\nunfavourable comments <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201351<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nhe had read about India, eke them out with casual
\nimpressions of his own and advance this unwholesome and unsubstantial compound
\nas his original production., although his one genuine and native contribution is
\nthe cheery cocksureness of his secondhand opinions. The book is a journalistic
\nfake, not <\/b>an honest critical production. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe writer was evidently no authority on
\nmetaphysics, which he despises as a misuse of the human mind; yet he lays down
\nthe law at length about the values of Indian philosophy. He was a rationalist to
\nwhom religion is an error, a psychological disease, a sin against reason, yet he
\nadjudges here between the comparative claims of religions, assigning a
\nproximo accessit<\/i> to Christianity, mainly, it seems, because Christians do
\nnot seriously believe in their own religion,\u2014let not the reader laugh, the
\nbook advances quite seriously this amazing reason,\u2014and bestowing the wooden
\nspoon on Hinduism. He admits his incompetence to speak about music, yet that has
\nnot prevented him from relegating Indian music to a position of hopeless
\ninferiority. His judgment on art and architecture is of the narrowest kind; but
\nhe is generously liberal of his decisive depreciations. In drama and literature
\none would expect from him better things; but the astonishing superficiality of
\nhis standards and his arguments here leaves one wondering how in the world he
\ngot his reputation as a dramatic and literary critic : one concludes that either
\nhe must have used a very different method in dealing with European literature or
\nelse it is very easy to get a reputation of this kind in England. An
\nill-informed misrepresentation of facts, a light-hearted temerity of judgment on
\nthings he has not cared to study constitute this critic’s title to write on
\nIndian culture and dismiss it authoritatively as a mass of barbarism. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIt is not then for a well-informed outside view or
\neven an instructive adverse criticism of Indian civilisation that I have turned
\nto Mr. William Archer. In the end it is only those who possess a culture who can
\njudge the intrinsic value <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201352<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof its productions, because they alone can enter
\nentirely into its spirit. To the foreign critic we can only go for help in
\nforming a comparative judgment,\u2014which too is indispensable. But if for any
\nreason we had to depend on a foreign judgment for the definitive view of these
\nthings, it is evident that in each field it is to men who can speak with some
\nauthority that we must turn. It matters very little to me what Mr. Archer or
\nDr.<\/b> Gough or Sir John Woodroffe’s unnamed English professor may say about
\nIndian philosophy; it is enough for me to know what Emerson or Schopenhauer or
\nNietzsche, three entirely different minds of the greatest power in this field,
\nor what thinkers like Cousins and Schlegel have to say about it or to mark the
\nincreasing influence of some of its conceptions, the great parallel lines of
\nthought in earlier European thinking and the confirmations of ancient Indian
\nmetaphysics and psychology which are the results of the most modem research and
\ninquiry. For religion I shall not go to Mr. Harold Begbie or any European
\natheist or rationalist for a judgment on our spirituality, but see rather what
\nare the impressions of open-minded men of religious feeling and experience who
\ncan alone be judges, a spiritual and religious thinker such as Tolstoi, for
\ninstance. Or I may study even, allowing for an inevitable bias, what the more
\ncultured Christian missionary has to say about a religion which he can no longer
\ndismiss as a barbarous superstition. In art I shall not turn to the opinion of
\nthe average European who knows nothing of the spirit, meaning or technique of
\nIndian architecture, painting and sculpture. For the first I shall consult some
\nrecognised authority like Ferguson; for the others if critics like Mr. Havell
\nare to be dismissed as partisans, I can at least learn something from Okakura or
\nMr. Laurence Binyon. In literature I shall be at a loss, for I cannot remember
\nthat any Western writer of genius or high reputation as a critic has had any
\nfirst-hand knowledge of Sanskrit literature or of the Prakritic tongues, and a
\njudgment founded on translations can only deal with the substance,\u2014and even that
\nin<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201353 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nmost translations of Indian work is only the dead
\nsubstance , with the whole breath of life gone out of it. Still even here
\nGoethe’s well-known epigram on the Shakuntala will be enough by itself to show
\nme that all Indian writing is not of a barbarous inferiority to European
\ncreation. And perhaps we may find a scholar here and there with some literary
\ntaste and judgment, not a too common combination; who will be of help to us.
\nThis sort of excursion will certainly not give us an entirely reliable scheme of
\nvalues, but at any rate we shall be safer than in a resort to the great lowland
\nclan of Goughs, Archers and Begbies.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIf I still find it necessary or useful to notice
\nthese lucubrations, it is for quite another purpose. Even for that purpose all
\nthat Mr. Archer writes is not of utility, much of it is so irrational,
\ninconsequent or unscrupulous in suggestion that one can only note and pass on.
\nWhen for instance he assures his readers that Indian philosophers think that
\nsitting cross-legged and contemplating one’s own navel is the best way of
\nascertaining the truths of the universe and that their real object is an
\nindolent immobility and to live upon the alms of the faithful, his object in
\nthus describing one of the postures of abstracted meditation is to stamp the
\nmeditation itself in the eyes of ignorant English readers with the character of
\na bovine absurdity and a selfish laziness; that is an instance of his<\/i>
\nunscrupulousness which helps us to observe the kinks of his own rationalistic
\nmind, but is useful for nothing else. When he denies that there is any real
\nmorality in Hinduism or affirms that it has never claimed moral teaching as one
\nof its functions, statements which are the exact contrary of the facts, when he
\ngoes so far as to say that Hinduism is the character of the people and it
\nindicates a melancholy proclivity towards whatever
\n<\/i>is monstrous and unwholesome, one can only conclude that truth-speaking is
\nnot one of the ethical virtues which
\n<\/b>Air.
\n<\/b>William Archer thought it necessary to practise or at least that it need be
\nno part of a rationalist’s criticism of religion. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201354<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nBut no, after all Mr. Archer does throw a grudging
\ntribute on the altar of truth; for he admits in the same breath that Hindusim
\ntalks much of righteousness and allows that there are in the Hindu writings many
\nadmirable ethical doctrines. But that only proves that Hindu philosophy is
\nillogical,\u2014 the morality is there indeed, but it ought not to be; its presence
\ndoes not suit Mr. Archer’s thesis. Admire the logic, the rational consistency of
\nthis champion of rationalism ! Mark that at the same time one of his objections
\nto the Ramayana, admitted to be one of the Bibles of the Hindu people, is that
\nits ideal characters, Rama and Sita, the effective patterns of the highest
\nIndian manhood and womanhood, are much too virtuous for his taste. Rama is too
\nsaintly for human nature. I do not know in fact that Rama is more saintly than
\nChrist or St. Francis., yet I had always thought they were within the pale of
\nhuman nature; but perhaps this critic will reply that, if not beyond that pale,
\ntheir excessive virtues are at least like the daily practice of the Hindu
\ncult,\u2014shall we say for example, scrupulous physical purity and personal
\ncleanliness and the daily turning of the mind to God in worship and meditation,
\n\u2014"sufficient to place them beyond the pale of civilisation." For he tells us
\nthat Sita, the type of conjugal fidelity and chastity, is so excessive in her
\nvirtue "as to verge on immorality." Meaningless smart extravagance has reached
\nits highest point when it can thus verge on the idiotic. I am as sorry to use
\nthe epithet as Mr. Archer to harp on Indian "barbarism," but there is really no
\nhelp for it; "it expresses the essence of the situation." If all were of this
\ncharacter,\u2014there is too much of it and it is deplorable,\u2014a contemptuous silence
\nwould be the only possible reply. But fortunately Apollo does not always stretch
\nhis bow thus to the breaking-point; all Mr. Archer’s shafts are not of this
\nwildgoose flight. There is much in his writing that expresses crudely, but still
\nwith sufficient accuracy the feeling of recoil of the average Occidental mind at
\nits first view of the unique characteristics of <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201355<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nIndian culture and that is a thing worth noting and
\nsounding; it is necessary to understand it and find out its value. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis is the utility I wish to seize on, for it is
\nan utility and even more. It is through the average mind that we get best at the
\nbedrock of the psychological differences which divide from each other great
\nblocks of our common humanity. The cultured mind tends to diminish the force of
\nthese prejudices or at least even in difference and opposition to develop points
\nof similarity or of contact. In the average mentality we have a better chance of
\ngetting them in their crude strength and can appreciate their full force and
\nbearing. Mr. Archer helps us here admirably. Not that we have not to clear away
\nmuch rubbish to get at what we want. I should have preferred to deal with a
\nmanual of misunderstanding which had the same thoroughness of scope, but
\nexpressed itself with a more straightforward simplicity and less of vicious
\nsmartness and of superfluous ill-will; but none such is available. Let us take
\nMr. Archer then and dissect some of his prejudices to get at their inner
\npsychology. We shall perhaps find that through all this unpleasant crudity we
\ncan arrive at the essence of a historic misunderstanding of continents. An
\ne’^act understanding of it may even help us towards an approach to some kind of
\nreconciliation. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201356<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nCHAPTER II <\/font>
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nIT<\/font> is best to start with a precise idea of the species of critic
\nfrom whom we are going to draw our estimate of oppositions.
\nWhat we have before us are the ideas of an average and typical
\nOccidental mind on Indian culture, a man of sufficient education and wide reading, but no genius or exceptional capacity,
\nrather an ordinary successful talent, no flexibility or broad
\nsympathy of mind, but pronounced and rigid opinions which
\nare backed up and given an appearance of weight by the
\nhabit of using to good effect a varied though not always sound
\ninformation. This is in fact the mind and standpoint of an
\naverage Englishman of some ability formed in the habit "of
\njournalism. That is precisely the kind of thing we want in
\norder to seize the nature of the antagonism which led Mr. Rudyard Kipling,\u2014himself a super-journalist and "magnified
\nnon-natural" average man, the average lifted up, without
\nceasing to be itself, by the glare of a kind of crude and barbaric
\ngenius,\u2014to affirm the eternal incompatibility of the East and
\nthe West. Let us see what strikes such a mentality as unique
\nand abhorrent in the Indian mind and its culture : if we can
\nput aside all sensitiveness of personal feeling and look dispassionately at this phenomenon, we shall find it an interesting
\nand illuminative study. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nA certain objection may be advanced against taking a
\nrationalistic critic with a political bias, a mind belonging at
\nbest to the today which is already becoming yesterday, in this
\nwidely representative capacity. The misunderstanding of
\ncontinents has been the result of a long-enduring and historic
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage\u201357<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ndifference, and this book gives us only one phase of it which
\nis of a very modem character. But it is in modern times,
\nin an age of scientific and rationalistic enlightenment, that
\nthe difference has become most pronounced, the misunderstanding most aggressive and the sense of cultural incompatibility most conscious and self-revealing. An ancient Greek,
\nfull of disinterested intellectual curiosity and a flexible aesthetic appreciation, was in spite of his feeling of racial and
\ncultural superiority to the barbarian much nearer to the
\nIndian mind than a typical modern European. Not only could
\na Pythagoras or a philosopher of the Neo-platonist school,
\nan Alexander or a Menander understand with a more ready
\nsympathy the root ideas of Asiatic culture, but an average
\nman of ability, a Megasthenes for instance, could be trusted
\nto see and understand, though not inwardly and perfectly,
\nyet in a sufficient measure. The mediaeval European, for all
\nhis militant Christianity and his prejudice against the infidel
\nand paynim, yet resembled his opponent in many characteristic ways of seeing and feeling to an extent which is no longer
\npossible to an average European mind, unless it has been
\nimbued with the new ideas which are once more lessening the
\ngulf between the continents. It was the rationalising of the
\nOccidental mind, the rationalising even of its religious ideas
\nand sentiments, which made the gulf so wide as to appear
\nunbridgeable. Our critic represents this increased hostility
\nin an extreme form, a shape given to it by the unthinking
\nfreethinker, the man who has not thought out originally these
\ndifficult problems, but imbibed his views from his cultural
\nenvironment and the intellectual atmosphere of the period.
\nHe will exaggerate enormously the points of opposition, but
\nby his very exaggeration he will make them more strikingly
\nclear and intelligible. He will make up for his want of correct
\ninformation and intelligent study by a certain sureness of
\ninstinct in his attack upon things alien to his own mental
\noutlook. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage\u2013<\/font>58<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nIt is this sureness of instinct which has led him to direct
\nthe real gravamen of his attack against Indian philosophy and
\nreligion. The culture of a people may be roughly described
\nas the expression of a consciousness of life which formulates
\nitself in three aspects. There is a side of thought, of ideal,
\nof upward will and the soul’s aspiration, there is a side of
\ncreative self-expression and appreciative aesthesis, intelligence
\nand imagination; and there is a side of practical and outward
\nformulation. A people’s philosophy and higher thinking
\ngive us its mind’s purest, largest and most general formulation of its consciousness of life and its dynamic view of existence. Its religion formulates the most intense form of its
\nupward will and the soul’s aspirations towards the fulfilment
\nof its highest ideal and impulse. Its art, poetry, literature
\nprovide for us the creative expression and impression of its
\nintuition, imagination, vital turn and creative intelligence.
\nIts society and politics provide in their forms an outward
\nframe in which the more external life works out what it can
\nof its inspiring ideal and of its special character and nature*
\nunder the difficulties of the environment. We can see how
\nmuch it has taken of the crude material of living, what it has
\ndone with it, how it has shaped as much of it as possible into
\nsome reflection of its guiding consciousness and deeper spirit.
\nNone of them express the whole secret spirit behind, but they
\nderive from it their main ideas and their cultural character.
\nTogether they make up its soul, mind and body. In Indian
\ncivilisation philosophy and religion, philosophy made dynamic by religion, religion enlightened by philosophy have led,
\nthe rest follow as best they can. This is indeed its first distinctive character, which it shares with the more developed Asiatic
\npeoples, but has carried to an extraordinary degree of thoroughgoing pervasiveness. When it is spoken of as a Brahminical
\ncivilisation, that is the real significance of the phrase. The
\nphrase cannot truly imply any domination of sacerdotalism,
\nthough in some lower aspects of the culture the sacerdotal mind <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage\u201359<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

<\/p>\n

has been only too prominent, for the priest as such has had
\nno hand in shaping the great lines of the culture. But it is
\ntrue that its main motives have been shaped by philosophic
\nthinkers and religious minds, not by any means all of them of
\nBrahmin birth. The fact that a class, has been developed whose
\nbusiness was to preserve the spiritual traditions, knowledge
\nand sacred law of the race,\u2014for this and not a mere priest
\ntrade was the proper occupation of the Brahmin,\u2014and that
\nthis class could for thousands of years maintain in the greatest
\npart, but not monopolise, the keeping of the national mind and
\nconscience, and the direction of social principles, forms and
\nmanners, is only a characteristic indication. The fact behind
\nis that Indian culture has been from the beginning and has
\nremained a spiritual, an inward-looking religio-philosophical
\nculture. Everything else in it has derived from that one central
\nand original peculiarity or has been in some way dependent
\non it or subordinate to it; even external life has been subjected
\nto the inward look of the spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

 Our critic has felt the importance of this central point
\nand directed upon it his most unsparing attack; in other quarters he may make concessions, allow attenuations, here he will
\nmake none. All here must be bad and harmful, or if not deleterious, then ineffective, by the very nature of the central
\nideas and motives, for any real good. This is a significant
\nattitude. Of course there is the polemical motive. That which
\nis claimed for the Indian mind and its civilisation is a high
\nspirituality, high on all the summits of thought and religion,
\npermeating art and literature and religious practice and social
\nideas and affecting even the ordinary man’s attitude to life.
\nIf the claim is conceded, as it is conceded by all sympathetic
\nand disinterested inquirers even when they do not accept the
\nIndian view of life, then Indian culture stands, its civilisation
\nhas a right to live. More, it has a right even to throw a challenge to rationalistic modernism and say, "Attain first my
\nlevel of spirituality before you claim to destroy and supersede <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Page\u201360<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

<\/p>\n

me or call on me to modernise myself entirely in your sense.
\nNo matter if I have myself latterly fallen from my own heights
\nor if my present forms cannot meet all the requirements of
\nthe future mind of humanity; I can reascend, the power is there
\nin me. I may even be able to develop a spiritual modernism
\nwhich will help you in your effort to exceed yourself and arrive
\nat a larger harmony than any you have reached in the past or
\ncan dream of iii the present." The hostile critic feels that he
\nmust deny this claim at its roots. He tries to prove Indian
\nphilosophy to be unspiritual and Indian religion to be an
\nirrational animistic cult of monstrosity. In this effort" which
\nis an attempt to stand Truth on her head and force her to
\nsee facts upside down, he lands himself in a paradoxical
\nabsurdity and inconsistency which destroy his case by sheer
\noverstatement. Still there arise even from this farrago two
\nquite genuine issues. First, we can ask whether the spiritual
\nand religio-philosophical view of life and the government of
\ncivilisation by its ideas and motives or the rationalistic and
\nexternal view of life and the satisfaction of the vital being
\ngoverned by the intellectual and practical reason give the best
\nlead to mankind. And granting the value and power of a
\nspiritual conception of life, we can ask whether the expression
\ngiven to it by Indian culture is the best possible and the most
\nhelpful to the growth of humanity towards its highest level.
\nThese are the real questions at issue between this Asiatic or
\nancient mind and the European or modem intelligence. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

The typical Occidental mind, which prolongs still the
\nmentality of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has been
\nalmost entirely fashioned by the second view; it has grown
\ninto the mould of the vitalistic rational idea. Its attitude to
\nlife has never been governed by a philosophic conception of
\nexistence, except during a brief period of Graeco-Roman
\nculture and then only in a small class of thinking and highly
\ncultivated minds; always it is dominated by environmental
\nnecessity and the practical reason, It has left behind it too the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Page\u201361<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nages in which spiritual and religious conceptions which invaded
\nit from the East, strove to impose themselves on the vitalistic
\nand rational tendency, it has largely rejected them or thrust
\nthem into a corner. Its religion is the religion of life, a religion
\nof earth and of terrestrial humanity, an ideal of intellectual
\ngrowth, vital efficiency, physical health and enjoyment, a rational social order. This mind confronted by Indian culture
\nis at once repelled, first by its unfamiliarity and strangeness,
\nthen by a sense of irrational abnormality and a total difference
\nand often a diametrical opposition of standpoints and finally
\nby an abundance and plethora of unintelligible forms. These
\nforms appear to its eye to teem with the supranatural and
\ntherefore, as it thinks, with the false. Even the unnatural is
\nthere, a persistent departure from the common norm, from
\nright method and sound device, a frame of things in which
\neverything, to use Mr. Chesterton’s expression, is of the wrong
\nshape. The old orthodox Christian point of view might regard this culture as a thing of hell, an abnormal creation of
\ndemons, the modern orthodox rationalistic standpoint looks
\nat it as a nightmare not only irrational, but antirational, a
\nmonstrosity, an out-of-date anomaly, at best a coloured fantasia of the oriental past. That is no doubt an extreme attitude,\u2014it is Mr. Archer’s,\u2014but incomprehension and distaste
\nare the rule. One continually finds traces of these feelings
\neven in minds which try to understand and sympathise, but
\nto the average Occidental content with his first raw natural
\nimpressions all is a repellent confusion. Indian philosophy
\nis an incomprehensible, subtly unsubstantial cloud-weaving; Indian religion meets his eye as a mixture of absurd asceticism
\nand an absurder gross, immoral and superstitious polytheism.
\nHe sees in Indian art a riot of crudely distorted or conventional
\nforms and an impossible seeking after suggestions of the infinite\u2014whereas all true art should be a beautiful and rational
\nreproduction or fine imaginative representation of the natural
\nand finite. He condemns in Indian society an anachronistic <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage\u201362<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nand semibarbaric survival of old-world and mediaeval ideas and institutions. This view, which has recently undergone some modification and is less loud and confident in expression, but still subsists, is the whole
\nfoundation of Mr.
\nArcher’s philippic. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis is evident from the nature of all the objections he
\nbrings against Indian civilisation. When you strip them of
\ntheir journalistic rhetoric, you find that they amount simply
\nto this natural antagonism of the rationalised vital and practical
\nman against a culture which subordinates reason to a suprarational spirituality
\nand life and action to a feeling after something which is greater than life and action. Philosophy and religion are the soul of Indian culture, inseparable from each other
\nand interpenetrative. The whole objective of Indian philosophy, its entire raison d’etre,<\/i> is knowledge of the spirit, the
\nexperience of it and the right way to a spiritual existence, its
\nsingle aim coincides with the highest significance of religion.
\nIndian religion draws all its characteristic value from the spiritual philosophy which illumines its supreme aspiration and
\ncolours even most of what is drawn from an inferior range of
\nreligious experience. But what are Mr. Archer’s objections,
\nfirst to Indian philosophy ? Well, his first objection simply
\ncomes to this that it is too philosophical. His second accusation
\nis that even as that worthless thing, metaphysical philosophy,
\nit is too metaphysical. His third charge, the most positive and
\nplausible, is that it enervates and kills the personality and the
\nwill-power by false notions of pessimism, asceticism. Karma
\nand reincarnation. If we take his criticism under each of these
\nheads, we shall see that it is really not a dispassionate intellectual criticism, but the exaggerated expression of a mental dislike and a fundamental difference of temperament and
\nstandpoint. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nMr. Archer cannot deny,\u2014the denial would go beyond
\neven his unequalled capacity for affirming absurdities,\u2014that
\nthe Indian mind has displayed an unparalleled activity and <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage\u201363<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nfruitfulness in philosophical thinking. He cannot deny that a
\nfamiliarity with metaphysical conceptions and the capacity
\nof discussing with some subtlety a metaphysical problem is
\nmuch more wide-spread in India than in any other country.
\nEven an ordinary Indian intellect can understand and deal
\nwith questions of this kind where an Occidental mind of corresponding culture and attainments would be as hopelessly out
\nof its depth as is Mr. Archer in these pages. But he denies
\nthat this familiarity and this subtlety are any proof of great
\nmental capacity\u2014"necessarily," he adds, I suppose in order
\nto escape the charge of having suggested that Plato, Spinoza
\nor Berkeley did not show a great mental capacity. Perhaps
\nit is not "necessarily" such a proof; but it does show in one
\ngreat order of questions, in one large and especially difficult
\nrange of the mind’s powers and interests a remarkable and
\nunique general development. The European journalist’s
\ncapacity for discussing with some show of acumen questions of
\neconomy and politics or, for that matter, art, literature and
\ndrama, is not "necessarily" proof of a great mental capacity; but it does show a great development of the European mind
\nin general, a wide-spread information and normal capacity
\nin these fields of its action. The crudity of his opinions and
\nhis treatment of his subjects may sometimes seem a little
\n"barbaric" to an outsider; but the thing itself is a proof that
\nthere is a culture, a civilisation, a great intellectual and civic
\nachievement and a sufficient wide-spread interest in the achievement. Mr. Archer has to avoid a similar conclusion in another
\nsubtler and more difficult range about India. He does it by
\ndenying that philosophy is of any value; this activity of the
\nIndian mind is for him only an unequalled diligence in knowing
\nthe unknowable and thinking about the unthinkable. And why
\nso ? Well, because philosophy deals with a region where there
\nis no possible "test of values" and in such a region thought
\nitself, since it is simply unverifiable speculation, can be of little or no value, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage\u201364<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nThere we come to a really interesting and characteristic
\nopposition of standpoints, more, a difference in the very grain
\nof the mind. As stated, it is the sceptical argument of the atheist
\nand agnostic, but after all that is only the extreme logical
\nstatement of an attitude common to the average European turn
\nof thinking which is inherently a positivist attitude. Philosophy
\nhas been pursued in Europe with great and noble intellectual
\nresults by the highest minds, but very much as a pursuit apart
\nfrom life, a thing high and splendid, but ineffective. It is
\nremarkable that while in India and China philosophy has
\nseized hold on life, has had an enormous practical effect on the
\ncivilisation and got into the very bones of current thought and
\naction, it has never at all succeeded in achieving this importance in Europe. In the days of the Stoics and Epicureans it
\ngot a grip, but only among the highly cultured; at the present
\nday, too, we have some renewed tendency of the kind. Nietzsche
\nhas had his influence, certain French thinkers also in France,
\nthe philosophies of James and Bergson have attracted some
\namount of public interest; but it is a mere nothing compared
\nwith the effective power of Asiatic philosophy. The average
\nEuropean draws his guiding views not from the philosophic,
\nbut from the positive and practical reason. He does not absolutely disdain philosophy like Mr. Archer, but he considers
\nit, if not a "man-made illusion," yet a rather nebulous, remote
\nand ineffective kind of occupation. He honours the philosophers, but he puts their works on the highest shelf of the library
\nof civilisation, not to be taken down or consulted except by a
\nfew minds of an exceptional turn. He admires, but he distrusts
\nthem. Plato’s idea of philosophers as the right rulers and
\nbest directors of society seems to him the most fantastic and
\nunpractical of notions; the philosopher, precisely because
\nhe moves among ideas, must be without any hold on real life.
\nThe Indian mind holds on the contrary that the Rishi, the
\nthinker, the seer of spiritual truth is the best guide not only of
\nthe religious and moral, but the practical life. The seer, the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage\u201365<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nRishi is the natural director of society; to the Rishis he attributes the ideals and guiding intuitions of his civilisation.
\nEven today he is very ready to give the name to anyone who
\ncan give a spiritual truth which helps his life or a formative
\nidea and inspiration which influences religion, ethics, society, even politics. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis is because the Indian believes that the ultimate truths
\nare truths of the spirit and that truths of the spirit are the
\nmost fundamental and most effective truths of our existence,
\npowerfully creative of the inner, salutarily reformative of the
\nouter life. To the European the ultimate truths are more often
\ntruths of the ideative intellect, the pure reason; but, whether
\nintellectual or spiritual, they belong to a sphere beyond the
\nordinary action of the mind, life and body where alone there
\nare any daily verifying "tests of values." These tests can
\nonly be given by living experience of outward fact and the
\npositive and practical reason. The rest are speculations and
\ntheir proper place is in the world of ideas, not in the world of
\nlife. That brings us to a difference of standpoint which is
\nthe essence of Mr. Archer’s second objection. He believes
\nthat all philosophy is speculation and guessing; the only verifiable truth, we must suppose, is that of the normal fact, the
\noutward world and our responses to it, truth of physical science
\nand a psychology founded on physical science. He reproaches
\nIndian philosophy for having taken its speculations seriously,
\nfor presenting speculation in the guise of dogma, for the "unspiritual" habit which mistakes groping for seeing and guessing
\nfor knowing,\u2014in place, I presume, of the very spiritual habit
\nwhich holds the physically sensible for the only knowable
\nand takes the knowledge of the body for the knowledge of the
\nsoul and spirit. He waxes bitterly sarcastic over the idea that
\nphilosophic meditation and Yoga are the best way to ascertain
\nthe truth of Nature and the constitution of the universe.
\nMr. Archer’s descriptions of Indian philosophy are a grossly
\nignorant misrepresentation of its idea and spirit, but in their <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage\u201366<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nessence they represent the view inevitably taken by the normal
\npositivist mind of the Occident. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIn fact, Indian philosophy abhors mere guessing and speculation. That word is constantly applied by European critics
\nto the thoughts and conclusions of the Upanishads, of the
\nphilosophies, of Buddhism; but Indian philosophers would
\nreject it altogether as at all a valid description of their method.
\nIf our philosophy admits an ultimate unthinkable and unknowable, it does not concern itself with any positive description or analysis of that supreme Mystery,\u2014the absurdity the
\nrationalist ascribes to it; it concerns itself with whatever is
\nthinkable and knowable to us at the highest term as well as
\non the lower ranges of our experience. If it has been able to
\nmake its conclusions articles of religious faith,\u2014dogmas, as
\nthey are here called,\u2014it is because it has been able to base
\nthem on an experience verifiable by any man who will take
\nthe necessary means and apply the only possible tests. The
\nIndian mind does not admit that the only possible test of values
\nor of reality is the outward scientific, the test of a scrutiny *of
\nphysical Nature or the everyday normal facts of our surface
\npsychology, which is only a small movement upon vast hidden
\nsubconscious and superconscious heights, depths and ranges.
\nWhat are the tests of these more ordinary or objective values ?
\nEvidently, experience, experimental analysis and synthesis,
\nreason, intuition,\u2014for I believe the value of intuition is admitted nowadays by modem philosophy and science. The
\ntests of this other subtler order of truths are the same, experience, experimental analysis and synthesis, reason, intuition.
\nOnly, since these things are truths of the soul and spirit, it
\nmust necessarily be a psychological and spiritual experience,
\na psychological and psycho-physical experimentation, analysis
\nand synthesis, a larger intuition which looks into higher realms,
\nrealities, possibilities of being, a reason which admits something
\nbeyond itself, looks upward to the suprarational, tries to give
\nas far as may be an account of it to the human intelligence,<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage\u201367 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nYoga, which Mr. Archer invites us so pressingly to abandon,
\nis itself nothing but a well-tested means of opening up these greater realms of experience. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nMr. Archer and minds of his type cannot be expected to
\nknow these things; they are beyond the little narrow range of
\nfacts and ideas which is to them the whole arc of knowledge.
\nBut even if he knew, it would make no difference to him; he
\nwould reject the very thought with scornful impatience, without
\nany degrading of his immense rationalistic superiority by any
\nsort of examination into the possibility of an unfamiliar truth.
\nIn this attitude he would have the average positivist mind on
\nhis side. To that mind such notions seem in their very nature
\nabsurd and incomprehensible,\u2014much worse than Greek and
\nHebrew, languages which have very respectable and creditworthy professors; but these are hieroglyphs which can only
\nbe upheld as decipherable signs by Indians and Theosophists
\nand mystical thinkers, a disreputable clan. It can understand
\ndogma and speculation about spiritual truth, a priest, a Bible,
\nwhether disbelieving them or giving them a conventional acceptance; but profoundest verifiable spiritual truth, firmly ascertainable spiritual values ! The idea is foreign to this mentality
\nand sounds to it like jargon. It can understand, even when it
\ndismisses, an authoritative religion, an "I believe because it is
\nrationally impossible"; but a deepest mystery of religion, a
\nhighest truth of philosophical thinking, a farthest ultimate discovery of psychological experience, a systematic and ordered
\nexperimentation of self-search and self-analysis, a constructive
\ninner possibility of self-perfection, all arriving at the same
\nresult, assenting to each other’s conclusions, reconciling spirit
\nand reason and the whole psychological nature and its deepest
\nneeds,\u2014this great ancient and persistent research and triumph
\nof Indian culture baffles and offends the average positivist
\nmind of the West. It is bewildered by the possession of a knowledge which the West never more than fumbled after and
\nended by missing. Irritated, perplexed, contemptuous, it refuses <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage\u201368<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nto recognise the superiority of such a harmony to its own
\nlesser self-divided culture. For it is accustomed only to a religious seeking and experience which is at war with science and
\nphilosophy or oscillates between irrational belief and a troubled
\nor else a self-confident scepticism. In Europe philosophy
\nhas been sometimes the handmaid\u2014not the sister\u2014of religion; but more often it has turned its back on religious belief in
\nhostility or in a disdainful separation. The war between
\nreligion and science has been almost the leading phenomenon
\nof European culture. Even philosophy and science have been
\nunable to agree; they too have quarrelled and separated. These
\npowers still coexist in Europe, but they are not a happy family; civil war is their natural atmosphere. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nNo wonder that the positivist mind to which this seems
\nthe natural order of things, should turn from a way of thinking
\nand knowing in which there is a harmony, a consensus, a
\nunion between philosophy and religion and a systematised
\nwell-tested psychological experience. It is easily moved to
\nescape from the challenge of this alien form of knowledge by
\nreadily dismissing Indian psychology as a jungle of self-hypnotic
\nhallucinations, Indian religion as a rank growth of antirational
\nsuperstitions, Indian philosophy as a remote cloud-land
\nof unsubstantial speculation. It is unfortunate for the peace of
\nmind which this self-satisfied attitude brings with it and for
\nthe effect of Mr. Archer’s facile and devastating method of
\ncriticism that the West too has recently got itself pushed into
\npaths of thinking and discovery which seem dangerously likely
\nto justify all this mass of unpleasant barbarism and to bring
\nEurope herself nearer to so monstrous a way of thinking. It is
\nbecoming more and more clear that Indian philosophy has
\nanticipated in its own way most of what has been or is being
\nthought out in metaphysical speculation. One finds even scientific thought repeating very ancient Indian generalisations
\nfrom the other end of the scale of research. Indian psychology
\nwhich Mr. Archer dismisses along with Indian cosmology and <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage\u201369<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nphysiology as baseless classification and ingenious guessing,
\n\u2014it is anything but that, for it is based rigorously on experience,\u2014is justified more and more by all the latest psychological
\ndiscoveries. The fundamental ideas of Indian religion look
\nperilously near to a conquest by which they will become the
\nprominent thought and sentiment of a new and universal
\nreligious mentality and spiritual seeking. Who can say that the
\npsycho-physiology of Indian Yoga may not be justified if certain
\nlines of "groping and guessing" in the West are pushed a little
\nfarther ? And even perhaps the Indian cosmological idea that
\nthere are other planes of being than this easily sensible kingdom
\nof Matter, may be rehabilitated in a not very distant future ?
\nBut the positivist mind may yet be of good courage : for its
\nhold is still strong and it has still the claim of intellectual orthodoxy and the prestige of the right of possession, many streams
\nmust swell and meet together before it is washed under and a
\ntide of uniting thought sweeps humanity towards the hidden
\nshores of the Spirit. <\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage\u201370<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nCHAPTER III<\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nTHIS criticism so far is not very formidable; its edge, if it has
\nany apart from the edge of trenchant misrepresentation,
\nturns against the assailant. To have put a high value on philosophy, sought by it the highest secrets of our being, turned an
\neffective philosophic thought on life and called in the thinkers,
\nthe men of profoundest spiritual experience, highest ideas,
\nlargest available knowledge to govern and shape society, to
\nhave subjected creed and dogma to the test of the philosophic
\nmind and founded religious belief upon spiritual intuition,
\nphilosophical thought and psychological experience, are signs,
\nnot of barbarism or of a mean and ignorant culture, but marks
\nof the highest possible type of civilisation. There is nothing
\nhere that would warrant us in abasing ourselves before the
\nidols of the positivist reason or putting the spirit and aim of
\nIndian culture at all lower than the spirit and aim of Western civilisation
\nwhether in its high ancient period of rational enlightenment and the speculative idea or in its modern period
\nof broad and minute scientific thought and strong applied
\nknowledge. Different it is, inferior it is not, but has rather
\na distinct element of superiority in the unique height of its
\nmotive and the spiritual nobility of its endeavour. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIt is useful to lay stress on this greatness of spirit and aim,
\nnot only because it is of immense importance and the first
\ntest of the value of a culture, but because the assailants take
\nadvantage of two extraneous circumstances to create a prejudice and confuse the real issues. They have the immense
\nadvantage of attacking India when she is prostrate and in <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201371 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe dust and, materially, Indian civilisation seems to have
\nended in a great defeat and downfall. Strong in this temporary advantage they can afford to show a superb and generous courage in kicking the surrounding dust and mire with
\ntheir hooves upon the sick and wounded lioness caught in
\nthe nets of the hunters and try to persuade the world that
\nshe had never any strength and virtue in her. It is an easy
\ntask in this age of the noble culture of Reason and Mammon
\nand Science doing the works of Moloch, when the brazen
\nidol of the great goddess Success is worshipped as she was
\nnever before worshipped by cultured human beings. But
\nthey have too the yet greater advantage of representing her
\nto the world in a period of the eclipse of her civilisation when
\nafter at least two thousand years of the most brilliant and
\nmanysided cultural activity she had for a time lost everything
\nexcept the memory of her past and her long depressed and
\nobscured but always living and now strongly reviving
\nreligious spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nI have touched elsewhere on the significance of this
\nfailure and this temporary eclipse. I may have to deal with
\nit again at closer quarters, since it has been raised
\nas an objection to the value of Indian culture and
\nIndian spirituality. At present it will be enough to say that
\nculture cannot be judged by material success, still less can
\nspirituality be brought to that touchstone. Philosophic,
\naesthetic, poetic, intellectual Greece failed and fell while
\ndrilled and militarist Rome triumphed and conquered, but
\nno one dreams of crediting for that reason the victorious
\nimperial nation with a greater civilisation and a higher culture.
\nThe religious culture of Judea is not disproved or lessened
\nby the destruction of the Jewish State, any more than it is
\nproved and given greater value by the commercial capacity
\nshown by the Jewish race in their dispersion. But I admit,
\nas ancient Indian thought admitted, that material and economic capacity and prosperity are a necessary, though not the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201372<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nhighest or most essential part of the total effort of human
\ncivilisation. In that respect India throughout her long period
\nof cultural activity can claim equality with any ancient or
\nmediaeval country. No people before modern times reached
\na higher splendour of wealth, commercial prosperity, material
\nappointment, social organisation. That is the record of
\nhistory, of ancient documents, of contemporary witnesses; to deny it is to give evidence of a singular prepossession
\nand obfuscation of the view, an imaginative, or is it unimaginative, misreading of present actuality into past actuality.
\nThe splendour of Asiatic and not least of Indian prosperity,
\nthe wealth of Ormuz and of Ind, the "barbaric doors rough
\nwith gold," barbaricae postes squalentes auro,<\/i> were once stigmatised by the less opulent West as a sign of barbarism.
\nCircumstances are now strangely reversed, the opulent
\nbarbarism and a much less artistic ostentation of wealth are
\nto be found in London, New York and Paris, and it is the
\nnakedness of India and the squalor of her poverty which are
\nflung in her face as evidence of the worthlessness of her
\nculture. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIndia’s ancient and mediaeval political, administrative,
\nmilitary and economic organisation was no mean achievement,
\nthe records stand and can be left to contradict the ignorance
\nof the uninstructed and the rhetoric of the journalistic critic
\nor the interested politician. There was no doubt an element
\nof failure and defect, almost unavoidable in the totality of a
\nproblem on so large a scale and in the then conditions. But
\nto exaggerate that into a count against her civilisation would
\nbe a singular severity of criticism which few civilisations
\nwatched to their end could survive. Failure in the end, yes,
\nbecause of the decline of her culture, but not as a result of its
\nmost valuable elements. A later eclipse of the more essential
\nelements of her civilisation is not a disproof of their original
\nvalue. Indian civilisation must be judged mainly by the
\nculture and greatness of its millenniums, not by the ignorance <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201373<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nand weakness of a few centuries. A culture must be judged,
\nfirst by its essential spirit, then by its best accomplishment
\nand, lastly, by its power of survival, renovation and adaptation to new phases of the permanent needs of the race. In
\nthe poverty, confusion and disorganisation of a period of temporary decline, the eye of the hostile witness refuses to see
\nor to recognise the saving soul of good which still keeps this
\ncivilisation alive and promises a strong and vivid return to
\nthe greatness of its permanent ideal. Its obstinate elastic
\nforce of rebound, its old measureless adaptability are again
\nat work; it is no longer even solely on the defence, but boldly
\naggressive. Not survival alone, but victory and conquest
\nare the promise of its future. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut our critic does not merely deny the lofty aim and
\ngreatness of spirit of Indian civilisation, which stand too
\nhigh to be vulnerable to an assault of this ignorant and prejudiced character. He questions its leading ideas, denies its
\npractical life-value, disparages its fruits, efficacy, character.
\nHas this disparagement any critical value or is it only a temperamental expression of the misunderstanding natural to a
\nwidely different view of life and to a diametrically opposite
\nestimate of our nature’s highest significances and realities ?
\nIf we consider the character of the attack and its terms, we
\nshall see that it amounts to no more than a condemnation
\npassed by the positivist mind attached to the normal values
\nof life upon the quite different standards of a culture which
\nlooks beyond the ordinary life of man, points to something
\ngreater behind it and makes it a passage to something eternal,
\npermanent and infinite. India, we are told, has no spirituality,
\n\u2014a portentous discovery ; on the contrary she has succeeded,
\nit would seem, in killing the germs of all sane and virile spirituality. Mr. Archer evidently puts his own sense, a novel
\nand interesting and very Occidental sense, on the word.
\nSpirituality has meant hitherto a recognition of something
\ngreater than mind and life, the aspiration to a consciousness <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201374<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\npure, great, divine beyond <\/b> our normal mental and vital nature,
\na surge and rising of the soul in man out of the littleness and
\nbondage of our lower parts towards a greater thing secret
\nwithin him. That at least is the idea, the experience, which
\nis the very core of Indian thinking. But the rationalist does
\nnot believe in the spirit in this sense, life, human will-force
\nand reason are his highest godheads. Spirituality then,\u2014
\nit would have been simpler and more logical to reject the
\nword when the thing on which it rests is denied,\u2014has to be
\ngiven another sense, some high passion and effort of the
\nemotions, will and reason, directed towards the finite, not
\ntowards the infinite, towards things temporary, not towards
\nthe eternal, towards perishable life, not towards any greater
\nreality which overpasses and supports the superficial phenomena of life. The thought and suffering which seam and
\nfurrow the ideal head of Homer, there, we are told, is the
\nsane and virile spirituality. The calm and compassion of
\nBuddha victorious over ignorance and suffering, the meditation of the thinker tranced in communion with the Eternal,
\nlifted above the seekings of thought into identity with a
\nsupreme Light, the rapture of the saint made one by love in
\nthe pure heart with the transcendent and universal Love, the
\nwill of the Karmayogin raised above egoistic desire and passion
\ninto the impersonality of the divine and universal Will, these
\nthings on which India has set the highest value and which
\nhave been the supreme endeavour of her greatest spirits, are
\nnot sane, not virile. This, one may be allowed to say, is a
\nvery Occidental and upto-date idea of spirituality. Homer,
\nShakespeare, Raphael, Spinoza, Kant, Charlemagne, Abraham Lincoln, Lenin, Mussolini, these, shall we suggest, are
\nto figure henceforth not only as great poets and artists or heroes
\nof thought and action, but as our typical heroes and exemplars
\nof spirituality. Not Buddha, not Christ, Chaitanya, St. Francis,
\nRamakrishna; these are either semibarbaric Orientals or
\ntouched by the feminine insanity of an Oriental religion. The <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201375<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nimpression made on an Indian mind resembles the reaction
\nthat a cultured intellectual might feel if he were told that
\ngood cooking, good dressing, good engineering, good school-mastering are the true beauty and their pursuit the right,
\nsane, virile aesthetic cult, and literature, architecture, sculpture and painting are only a useless scribbling on paper, an
\ninsane hacking of stone and an effeminate daubing of canvas; Vauban, Pestolozzi, Dr. Parr, Vatal and Beau Brummel are
\nthen the true heroes of artistic creation and not da Vinci,
\nAngelo, Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare or Rodin. Whether
\nMr. Archer’s epithets and his accusations against Indian
\nspirituality stand in the comparison, let the judicious deter
\nmine. But meanwhile we see the opposition of the stand
\npoints and begin to understand the inwardness of the difference
\nbetween the West and India. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis forms the gravamen of the charge against the effective
\nvalue of Indian philosophy, that it turns away from life, nature, vital will and the effort of man upon earth. It denies
\nall value to life ; it leads not towards the study of nature, but
\naway from it. It expels all volitional individuality; it preaches
\nthe unreality of the world, detachment from terrestrial interests, the unimportance of the life of the moment compared
\ni<\/i> with the endless chain of past and future existences. It is an
\nenervating metaphysic tangled up with false notions of pessimism, asceticism. Karma and reincarnation,\u2014all of them
\nideas fatal to that supreme spiritual thing, volitional individuality. This is a grotesquely exaggerated and false notion
\nof Indian culture and philosophy, got up by presenting one
\nside only of the Indian mind in colours of a sombre emphasis,
\nafter a manner which I suppose Mr. Archer has learned from
\nthe modem masters of realism. But in substance and spirit
\nit is a fairly correct statement of the notions which the European mind has formed in the past about the character of
\nIndian thought and culture, sometimes in ignorance, some
\ntimes in defiance of the evidence. For a time even it managed <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201376<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nto impress some strong shadow of this error on the mind
\nof educated India. It is best to begin by setting right the
\ntones of the picture; that done, we can better judge the
\nopposition of mentality which is at the bottom of the
\ncriticism. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nTo say that Indian philosophy has led away from the
\nstudy of nature is to state a gross unfact and to ignore the
\nmagnificent history of Indian civilisation. If by nature is
\nmeant physical Nature, the plain truth is that no nation before
\nthe modem epoch carried scientific research so far and with
\nsuch signal success as India of ancient times. That is a truth
\nwhich lies on the face of history for all to read; it has been
\nbrought forward with great force and much wealth of detail
\nby Indian scholars and scientists of high eminence, but it
\nwas already known and acknowledged by European savants
\nwho had taken the trouble to make a comparative study in
\nthe subject. Not only was India in the first rank in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, surgery, all the
\nbranches of physical knowledge which were practised in ancient
\ntimes, but she was, along with the Greeks, the teacher of the
\nArabs from whom Europe recovered the lost habit of scientific
\nenquiry and got the basis from which modern science started.
\nIn many directions India had the priority of discovery,\u2014to
\ntake only two striking examples among a multitude, the decimal
\nnotation in mathematics or the perception that the earth is a
\nmoving body in astronomy,\u2014calā prthvī sthirā bhāti,<\/i> the earth
\nmoves and only appears to be still, said the Indian astronomer
\nmany centuries before Galileo. This great development would
\nhardly have been possible in a nation whose thinkers and men
\nof learning were led by its metaphysical tendencies to turn away
\nfrom the study of nature. A remarkable feature of the Indian
\nmind was a close attention to the things of life, a disposition
\nto observe minutely its salient facts, to systematise and to
\nfound in each department of it a science, Shastra, well-founded
\nscheme and rule. That is at least a good beginning of the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201377<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nscientific tendency and not the sign of a culture capable-only
\nof unsubstantial metaphysics. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIt is perfectly true that Indian science came abruptly to a
\nhalt somewhere about the thirteenth century and a period of
\ndarkness and inactivity prevented it from proceeding forward
\nor sharing at once in the vast modem development of scientific
\nknowledge. But this was not due to any increase or intolerance
\nof the metaphysical tendency calling the national mind away
\nfrom physical nature. It was part of a general cessation of new
\nintellectual activity, for philosophy too ceased to develop al
\nmost at the same time. The last great original attempts at
\nspiritual philosophy are dated only a century or two later
\nthan the names of the last great original scientists. It is true
\nalso that Indian metaphysics did not attempt, as modem
\nphilosophy has attempted without success, to read the truth
\nof existence principally by the light of the truths of physical
\nNature. This ancient wisdom founded itself rather upon an
\ninner experimental psychology and a profound psychic science,
\nIndia’s special strength,\u2014but study of mind too and of our
\ninner forces is surely study of nature,\u2014in which her success
\nwas greater than in physical knowledge. This she could not
\nbut do, since it was the spiritual truth of existence for which
\nshe was seeking; nor is any really great and enduring philosophy
\npossible except on this basis. It is true also that the harmony
\nshe established in her culture between philosophical truth and
\ntruth of psychology and religion was not extended in the
\nsame degree to the truth of physical Nature; physical Science
\nhad not then arrived at the great universal generalisations which
\nwould have made and are now making that synthesis entirely
\npossible. Nevertheless from the beginning, from as early as
\nthe thought of the Vedas, the Indian mind had recognized
\nthat the same general laws and powers hold in the spiritual,
\nthe psychological and the physical existence. It discovered too
\nthe omnipresence of life, affirmed the evolution of the soul in
\nNature from the vegetable and the animal to the human form, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201378<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nasserted on the basis of philosophic intuition and spiritual and
\npsychological experience many of the truths which modem
\nscience is reaffirming from its own side of the approach to know
\nledge. These things too were not the results of a barren and
\nempty metaphysics, not the inventions of bovine navel-gazing
\ndreamers. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nEqually is it a misrepresentation to say that Indian culture
\ndenies all value to life, detaches from terrestrial interests
\nand insists on the unimportance of the life of the moment.
\nTo read these European comments one would imagine that in
\nall Indian thought there was nothing but the nihilistic school
\nof Buddhism and the monistic illusionism of Shankara and
\nthat all Indian art, literature and social thinking were nothing
\nbut the statement of their recoil from the falsehood and vanity
\nof things. It does not follow that because these things are
\nwhat the average European has heard about India or what
\nmost interests or strikes the European scholar in her thought,
\ntherefore they are, however great may have been their influence,
\nthe whole of Indian thinking. The ancient civilisation of India
\nfounded itself very expressly upon four human interests; first, desire and enjoyment, next, material, economic and other
\naims and needs of the mind and body, thirdly, ethical conduct
\nand the right law of individual and social life, and, lastly
\nspiritual liberation; kāma, artha, dharma, moksa.<\/i> The business
\nof culture and social organisation was to lead, to satisfy, to
\nsupport these things in man and to build some harmony of the
\nforms and motives. Except in very rare cases the satisfaction
\nof the three mundane objects must run before the other; fullness of life must precede the surpassing of life. The debt
\nto the family, the community and the gods could not be scamped; earth must have her due and the relative its play, even if
\nbeyond it there was the glory of heaven or the peace of the
\nAbsolute. There was no preaching of a general rush to the
\ncave and the hermitage. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe symmetric character of ancient Indian life and the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201379<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nvivid variety of its literature were inconsistent with any exclusive other-worldly direction. The great mass of Sanskrit
\nliterature is a literature of human life; certain philosophic and
\nreligious writings are devoted to the withdrawal from it, but
\neven these are not as a rule contemptuous of its value. If the
\nIndian mind gave the highest importance to a spiritual release,
\n\u2014and whatever the positivist mood may say, a spiritual liberation of some kind is the highest possibility of the human
\nspirit,\u2014it was not interested in that alone. It looked equally
\nat ethics, law, politics, society, the sciences, the arts and crafts,
\neverything that appertains to human life. It thought on these
\nthings deeply and scrutinisingly and it wrote of them with
\npower and knowledge. What a fine monument of political
\nand administrative genius is the Sukra-Nīti,<\/i> to take one example only, and what a mirror of the practical organisation
\nof a great civilised people ! Indian art was not always solely
\nhieratic,\u2014it seemed so only because it is in the temples and
\ncave cathedrals that its greatest work survived; as the old
\nliterature testifies, as we see from the Rajput and Mogul
\npaintings, it was devoted as much to the court and the city
\nand to cultural ideas and the life of the people as to the temple
\nand monastery and their motives. Indian education of women
\nas well as of men was more rich and comprehensive and many
\nsided than any system of education before modern times.
\nThe documents which prove these things are now available
\nto any one who cares to study. It is time that this parrot talk
\nabout the unpractical, metaphysical, quietistic, anti-vital
\ncharacter of Indian civilisation should cease and give place to
\na true and understanding estimate. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut it is perfectly true that Indian culture has always
\nset the highest value on that in man which rises beyond the
\nterrestrial preoccupation; it has held up the goal of a supreme
\nand arduous self-exceeding as the summit of human endeavour.
\nThe spiritual life was to its view a nobler thing than the life
\nof external power and enjoyment, the thinker greater than <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201380<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe man of action, the spiritual man greater than the thinker.
\nThe soul that lives in God is more perfect than the soul that
\nlives only in outward mind or only for the claims and joys of
\nthinking and living matter. It is here that the difference comes
\nin between the typical Western and the typical Indian mentality. The West has acquired the religious mind rather than
\npossessed it by nature and it has always worn its acquisition
\nwith a certain looseness. India has constantly believed in
\nworlds behind of which the material world is only the ante
\nchamber. Always she has seen a self within us greater than
\nthe mental and vital self, greater than the ego. Always she has
\nbowed her intellect and heart before a near and present Eternal
\nin which the temporal being exists and to which in man it
\nincreasingly turns for transcendence. The sentiment of the
\nBengali poet, the wonderful singer and rapt devotee of the
\nDivine Mother,\u2014 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nHow rich an estate man lies fallow here !<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n If this were tilled, a golden crop would spring, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n\u2014expresses the real Indian feeling about human life. But it is
\nmost attracted by the greater spiritual possibilities man alone
\nof terrestrial beings possesses. The ancient Aryan culture
\nrecognised all human possibilities, but put this highest of all
\nand graded life according to a transitional scale in its system
\nof the four classes and the four orders. Buddhism first gave
\nan exaggerated and enormous extension to the ascetic ideal
\nand the monastic impulse, erased the transition and upset
\nthe balance. Its victorious system left only two orders, the
\nhouseholder and the ascetic, the monk and the layman, an
\neffect which subsists to the present day. It is this upsetting
\nof the Dharma for which we find it fiercely attacked in the
\nVishnu Purana under the veil of an apologue, for it weakened
\nin the end the life of society by its tense exaggeration and its hard system of opposites. But Buddhism too had another
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201381<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nside, a side turned towards action and creation, and gave a
\nnew light, a new meaning and a new moral and ideal power
\nto life. Afterwards there came the lofty illusionism of Shankara
\nat the close of the two greatest known millenniums of Indian
\nculture. Life thenceforward was too much depreciated as an
\nunreality or a relative phenomenon, in the end not worth
\nliving, not worth our assent to it and persistence in its motives.
\nBut this dogma was not universally accepted, nor admitted
\nwithout a struggle; Shankara was even denounced by his
\nadversaries as a masked Buddhist. The later Indian mind has
\nbeen powerfully impressed by his idea of May a; but popular
\nthought and sentiment was never wholly shaped by it. The
\nreligions of devotion which see in life a play or Lila of God and
\nnot a half-sombre, half-glaring illusion defacing the white silence
\nof eternity had a closer growing influence. If they did not
\ncounteract, they humanised the austere ideal. It is only recently
\nthat educated India accepted the ideas of English and German
\nscholars, imagined for a time Shankara’s Mayavada to be the one highest thing, if not the whole of our philosophy, and put
\nit in a place of exclusive prominence. But against that tendency
\ntoo there is now a powerful reaction, not towards replacing the
\nspirit without life by life without the spirit, but towards a spiritual possession of mind, life and matter. Still it is true that
\nthe ascetic ideal which in the ancient vigour of our culture was
\nthe fine spire of life mounting into the eternal existence, became
\nlatterly its top-heavy dome and tended under the weight of its
\nbare and imposing sublimity to crush the rest of the edifice. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut here also we should get the right view, away from all
\nexaggeration and false stress. Mr. Archer drags in Karma
\nacid Reincarnation into his list of anti-vital Indian notions.
\nBut it is preposterous, it is a stupid misunderstanding to speak
\nof reincarnation as a doctrine which preaches the unimportance of the life of the moment compared with the endless
\nchain of past and future existences. The doctrine of reincarnation and Karma tells us that the soul has a past which shaped <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201382<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nits present birth and existence; it has a future which our present
\naction is shaping; our past has taken and our future will take
\nthe form of recurring terrestrial births and Karma, our own
\naction, is the power which by its continuity and development
\nas a subjective and objective force determines the whole nature
\nand eventuality of these repeated existences. There is nothing
\nhere to depreciate the importance of the present life. On the
\ncontrary the doctrine gives it immense vistas and enormously
\nenhances the value of effort and action. The nature of the
\npresent act is of an incalculable importance because it deter
\nmines not only our immediate but our subsequent  future.
\nThere will be found too insistently pervading Indian literature
\nand deeply settled in the mind of the people the idea of a whole
\nhearted concentrated present action and energy, tapasyā,<\/i> as
\na miraculous all-powerful force for the acquisition of our
\ndesires, whether the material or the spiritual desires of the
\nhuman will. No doubt, our present life loses the exclusive
\nimportance which we give to it when we regard it only as an
\nephemeral moment in Time never to be repeated, our one
\nsole opportunity, without any after-existence beyond it. But
\na narrow exaggerated insistence on the present shuts up the
\nhuman soul in the prison of the moment: it may give a feverish intensity to action, but it is inimical to calm and joy
\nand greatness of the spirit. No doubt, too, the idea that our
\npresent sufferings are the results of our own past action, imparts a calm, a resignation, an acquiescence to the Indian
\nmind which the restless Western intelligence finds it difficult
\nto understand or tolerate. This may degenerate in a time of
\ngreat national weakness, depression and misfortune, into a
\nquietistic fatalism that may extinguish the fire of the reparative endeavour. But that is not its inevitable turn, nor is it the
\nturn given to it in the records of the more vigorous past of our
\nculture. The note there is of action, of tapasyā.<\/i> There is
\ntoo another turn given to this belief which increased with time,
\nthe Buddhistic dogma of the succession of rebirths as a chain, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201383<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof Karma from which the soul must escape into the eternal
\nsilence. The notion has strongly affected Hinduism; but
\nwhatever is depressing in it, belongs not properly to the doctrine of rebirth but to other elements stigmatised as an ascetic
\npessimism by the vitalistic thought of Europe. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPessimism is not peculiar to the Indian mind: it has been
\nan element in the thought of all developed civilisations. It is
\nthe sign of a culture already old, the fruit of a mind which has
\nlived much, experienced much, sounded life and found it full
\nof suffering, sounded joy and achievement and found that all
\nis vanity and vexation of spirit and there is nothing new under
\nthe sun or, if there is, its novelty is but of a day. Pessimism
\nhas been as rampant in Europe as in India and it is certainly
\na singular thing to find the materialist of all people bringing
\nagainst Indian spirituality this accusation of lowering the
\nvalues of existence. For what can be more depressing than
\nthe materialistic view of the quite physical and ephemeral
\nnature of human life? There is nothing in the most ascetic
\nnotes of the Indian mind like the black gloom of certain kinds
\nof European pessimism, a city of dreadful night without joy
\nhere or hope beyond, and nothing like the sad and shrinking
\nattitude before death and the dissolution of the body which
\npervades Western literature. The note of ascetic pessimism
\noften found in Christianity is a distinctly Western note; for it
\nis absent in Christ’s teachings. The mediaeval religion with
\nits cross, its salvation by suffering, its devil-ridden and flesh
\nridden world and the flames of eternal hell waiting for man
\nbeyond the grave has a character of pain and terror alien to
\nthe Indian mind, to which indeed religious terror is a stranger.
\nThe suffering of the world is there; but it fades into a bliss of
\nspiritual peace or ecstasy beyond the sorrow line. Buddha’s
\nteaching laid heavy stress on the sorrow and impermanence
\nof things, but the Buddhist Nirvana won by the heroic spirit
\nof moral self-conquest and calm wisdom is a stats of ineffable
\ncalm and joy, open not only to a few like the Christian heavens, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201384<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nbut to all, and very different from the blank cessation which
\nis the mechanical release of our pain and struggle, the sorry
\nNirvana of the western pessimist, the materialist’s brute flat
\nend of all things. Even illusionism preached, not a gospel of
\nsorrow, but the final unreality of joy and grief and the whole
\nworld-existence. It admits the practical validity of life and
\nallows its values to those who dwell in the Ignorance. And
\nlike all Indian asceticism it places before man the possibility
\nof a great effort, a luminous concentration of knowledge, a
\nmighty urge of the will by which he can rise to an absolute
\npeace or an absolute bliss. A not ignoble pessimism there has
\nbeen about man’s normal life as it is, a profound sense of its
\nimperfection, a disgust of its futile obscurity, smallness and
\nignorance; but an unconquerable optimism as regards his
\nspiritual possibility was the other side of this mood. If it did
\nnot believe in the ideal of an immense material progress of the
\nrace or a perfection of the normal man with earth as its field,
\nit believed in a sure spiritual progress for every individual and
\nan ultimate perfection lifted above subjection to the shocks
\nof life. And this pessimism with regard to life is not the sole
\nnote of the Indian religious mind; its most popular forms
\naccept life as a game of God and see beyond our present conditions for every human being the eternal nearness to the Divine.
\nA luminous ascent into godhead was always held to be a con
\nsummation well within man’s grasp. That can hardly be called
\na depressing or pessimistic theory of existence. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThere can be no great and complete culture without
\nsome element of asceticism in it; for asceticism means the self
\ndenial and self-conquest by which man represses his lower
\nimpulses and rises to greater heights of his nature. Indian
\nasceticism is not a mournful gospel of sorrow or a painful
\nmortification of the flesh in morbid penance, but a noble
\neffort towards a higher joy and an absolute possession of the
\nspirit. A great joy of self-conquest, a still joy of inner peace
\nand the forceful joy of a supreme self-exceeding are at the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201385<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nheart of its experience. It is only a mind besotted with the
\nflesh or too enamoured of external life and its restless effort
\nand inconstant satisfactions that can deny the nobility or
\nidealistic loftiness of the ascetic endeavour. But there are
\nthe exaggerations and deflections that all ideals undergo.
\nThose which are the most difficult to humanity suffer from
\nthem most, and asceticism may become a fanatic self-torture,
\na crude repression of the nature, a tired flight from existence
\nor an indolent avoidance of the trouble of life and a weak recoil
\nfrom the effort demanded of our manhood. Practised not by
\nthe comparatively few who are called to it, but preached in
\nits extreme form to all and adopted by unfit thousands, its
\nvalues may be debased, counterfeits may abound and the vital
\nforce of the community lose its elasticity and its forward
\nspring. It would be idle to pretend that such defects and un
\ntoward results have been absent in India. I do act accept the
\nascetic ideal as the final solution of the problem of human
\nexistence, but even its exaggerations have a nobler spirit behind
\nthem than the vitalistic exaggerations which are the opposite defect of Western culture. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAfter all, asceticism and illusionism are minor issues.
\nThe point to be pressed is that Indian spirituality in its greatest
\neras and in its inmost significance has not been a tired quietism
\nor a conventional monasticism, but a high effort of the human
\nspirit to rise beyond the life of desire and vital satisfaction and
\narrive at an acme of spiritual calm, greatness, strength, illumination, divine realisation, settled peace and bliss. The question
\nbetween the culture of India and the vehement secular activism
\nof the modern mind is whether such an endeavour is or is not
\nessential to man’s highest perfection. And if it is, then the
\nother question arises whether it is to be only an exceptional
\nforce confined to a few rare spirits or can be made the main
\ninspiring motive-power of a great and complete human civilisation.<\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201386<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nCHAPTER IV <\/font>
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nA RIGHT<\/font> judgment of the life-value of Indian philosophy
\nis intimately bound up with a right appreciation of the life-value of Indian religion; religion and philosophy are too intimately one in this culture to be divided from each other.
\nIndian philosophy is not a purely rational gymnastic of speculative logic in the
\nair, an ultra-subtle process of thought-spinning and word-spinning like the greater part of philosophy
\nin Europe; it is the organised intellectual theory or the intuitive
\nordering perception of all that is the soul, the thought, the
\ndynamic truth, the heart of feeling and power of Indian religion.
\nIndian religion is Indian spiritual philosophy put into action
\nand experience. Whatever in the religious thought and practice
\nof that vast, rich, thousand-sided, infinitely pliable, yet very
\nfirmly structured system we call Hinduism, does not in intention come under this description,\u2014whatever its practice,
\n\u2014is either social framework or projection of ritual buttresses
\nor survival of old supports and additions. Or else it is an excrescence and growth of corruption, a degradation of its truth and
\nmeaning in the vulgar mind, part of the debased mixtures
\nthat overtake all religious thinking and practice. Or, in some
\ninstances, it is dead habit contracted in periods of fossilisation
\nor ill-assimilated extraneous matter gathered into this giant
\nbody. The inner principle of Hinduism, the most tolerant and
\nreceptive of religious systems, is not sharply exclusive like
\nthe religious spirit of Christianity or Islam; as far as that could
\nbe without loss of its own powerful idiosyncrasy and law of
\nbeing, it has been synthetic, acquisitive, inclusive. Always it <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201387<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nhas taken in from every side and trusted to the power of assimilation that burns in its spiritual heart and in the white heat
\nof its naming centre to turn even the most unpromising material
\ninto forms for its spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut before we turn to see what it is that so fiercely irritates
\nand exasperates our hostile Western critic in Indian religious
\nphilosophy, it is as well to consider what he has to say about
\nother sides of this ancient, dateless and still vigorously living,
\ngrowing, all-assimilating Hinduism. For he has a great deal to
\nsay and it is unsparing and without measure. There is not
\nthe intemperate drunkenness of denunciation and vomit of
\nfalse witness, hatred, uncharitableness and all things degrading
\nand unspiritual and unclean that are the mark of a certain type
\nof "Christian literature" on the subject,\u2014for example the
\nsuperlative specimen of this noxious compound which Sir
\nJohn Woodroffe has cited from the pages of Mr. Harold Begbie,
\n"virile" perhaps if violence is virile, but certainly not sane.
\nBut still it is a mass of unsparing condemnation, exaggerated
\nwhere it has any foundation at all and serenely illogical in its
\nblithe joy of deliberate misrepresentation. Still, even from this
\ncrude mass it is possible to disengage the salient and typical
\nantipathies that recommend it to the uncritical and even
\nto many critical minds, and it is these alone that it is useful to discover. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe total irrationality of Hinduism is the main theme of
\nthe attack. Mr. Archer does casually admit a philosophical,
\nand one might therefore suppose a rational element in the
\nreligion of India, but he disparages and dismisses as false
\nand positively harmful the governing ideas of this religious
\nphilosophy as he understands or imagines he understands
\nthem. He explains the pervading irrational character of Hindu
\nreligion by the allegation that the Indian people have always
\ngravitated towards the form rather than the substance and
\ntowards the letter rather than the spirit. One would have supposed that this kind of gravitation is a fairly universal feature <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201388<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof the human mind, not only in religion, but in society, politics,
\nart, literature, even in science. la every conceivable human
\nactivity a cult of the form and forgetfulness of the spirit, a turn
\ntowards convention, externalism, unthinking dogma has
\nbeen the common drift of the human mind from China to Peru
\nand it does not skip Europe on its way. And Europe where
\nmen nave constantly fought, killed, burned, tortured, imprisoned, persecuted in every way imaginable by human stupidity and cruelty for the sake of dogmas, words, rites and
\nforms of church government, Europe where these things
\nhave done duty for spirituality and religion, has hardly a
\nrecord which would entitle it to cast this reproach in the face
\nof the East. But, we are told, this gravitation afflicts the Indian
\nreligion more than any other creed. Higher Hinduism can be
\nscarcely said to exist except in certain small reforming sects
\nand current Hinduism, the popular religion, is the cult of a
\nmonstrous folk-lore oppressive and paralysing to the imagination,\u2014although here again one would think that if anything
\nan excess rather than a paralysis of the creative imagination
\nmight be charged against the Indian mind. Animism and
\nmagic are the prevailing characteristics. The Indian people
\nhas displayed a genius for obfuscating reason and formalising,
\nmaterialising and degrading religion. If India has possessed
\ngreat thinkers, she has not extracted from their thoughts a
\nrational and ennobling religion : the devotion of the Spanish
\nor the Russian peasant is rational and enlightened by comparison. Irrationalism, anti-rationalism,\u2014that in this laboured
\nand overcharged accusation is the constant cry; it is the
\nkeynote of the Archer tune. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe phenomenon that has astonished and disgusted the
\nmind of the critic is the obstinate survival in India of the old
\nreligious spirit and large antique religious types unsubmerged
\nby the flood of modernism and its devastating utilitarian free
\nthought. India, he tells us, still clings to what not only the
\nWestern world, but China and Japan have outgrown for ages. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201389<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nThe religion is a superstition full of performances of piety
\nrepulsive to the free enlightened secular mind of the modem
\nman. Its daily practices put it far outside the pale of civilisation.
\nPerhaps, if it had confined its practice decorously to church
\nattendance on Sundays and to marriage and funeral services
\nand grace before meat, it might have been admitted as human
\nand tolerable ! As it is, it is the great anachronism of the
\nmodern world; it has not been cleansed for thirty centuries,
\nit is paganism, it is a wholly unfiltered paganism; its tendency
\ntowards pollution rather than purification marks out its place
\nas incomparably the lowest in the scale of world religions. An
\ningenious remedy is proposed. Christianity destroyed Paganism
\nin Europe; therefore, since any immediate or very rapid triumph
\nof sceptical free-thought would be too happily abrupt a transition to be quite feasible, we unenlightened, polluted, impure
\nHindus are advised to take up for a time with Christianity,
\npoor irrational thing that it is, dark and deformed though it
\nlooks in the ample light of the positivist reason, because Christianity and especially Protestant Christianity will be at least a
\ngood preparatory step towards the noble freedom and stainless
\npurities of atheism and agnosticism. But if even this little
\ncannot be hoped for in spite of numerous famine conversions,
\nat any rate Hinduism must somehow or other get itself filtered,
\nand until that hygienic operation, has been executed, India
\nmust be denied fellowship on equal terms with the civilised nations. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIncidentally, to support this charge of irrationalism and its companion charge of Paganism, we find a third and more damaging count brought against us and our religious culture,
\nan alleged want of all moral worth and ethical substance. There
\nis now an increasing perception, even in Europe, that reason
\nis not the last word of human mind, not quite the one and only
\nsovereign way to truth and certainly not the sole arbiter of
\nreligious and spiritual truth. The accusation of paganism too
\ndoes not settle the question, since plenty of cultivated minds <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201390<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nare well able to see that there were many great, true and beautiful things in the ancient religions that were lumped together
\nby Christian ignorance under that inappropriate nickname.
\nNor has the world been entirely a gainer by losing these
\nhigh ancient forms and motives. But whatever the actual
\npractice of men,\u2014and in this respect the normal human
\nbeing is a singular mixture of the sincere but quite ineffective,
\nthe just respectable, would-be ethical man and the self-deceiving or semi-hypocritical Pharisee, one can always
\nappeal with force to a moralistic prejudice. All religions raise
\nhigh the flag of morality and, whether religious or "secular-minded, all but the antinomian, the rebel and the cynic, profess
\nto follow or at least to admit that standard in their lives. This
\naccusation is therefore about the most prejudicial charge that
\ncan be brought against any religion. The self-constituted
\nprosecuting judge whose diatribe we are examining brings it
\nwithout scruple and without measure. He has discovered that
\nHinduism is not an ennobling or even a morally helpful religion; if it has talked much of righteousness, it has never claimed
\nmoral teaching as one of its functions. A religion that can talk
\nmuch of righteousness without performing the function of
\nmoral teaching, sounds rather like a square which can make no
\nclaim to be a quadrilateral; but let that pass. If the Hindu
\nis comparatively free from the grosser Western vices,\u2014as
\nyet, only and only until he enters "the pale of civilisation"
\nby adopting Christianity or otherwise,\u2014it is not because there
\nis any ethical strain in his character; it is because these vices
\ndo not come in his way. His social system founded on the barbarous idea of the Dharma, of the divine and the human,
\nthe universal and the individual, the ethical and the social
\nlaw, and supported on it at every point, has stupidly neglected
\nto supply him with the opportunities of departing from it so
\nliberally provided by Western civilisation ! And yet the whole
\ncharacter of Hinduism, which is the character of the people,
\nindicates, we are calmly told, a melancholy proclivity towards <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201391<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nwhatever is monstrous and unwholesome ! On that highest
\nnote of unmeasured denunciation we may leave Mr. Archer’s
\nmonstrous and unwholesome dance of disparagement and turn
\nto disengage the temperamental sources of his dislike and anger. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nTwo things especially distinguish the normal European
\nmind,\u2014for we must leave aside some great souls and some
\ngreat thinkers or some moments or epochs of abnormal religiosity and look at the dominant strain. Its two significant
\ncharacters are the cult of the inquiring, defining, effective, practical reason and the cult of life. The great high tides of European civilisation, Greek culture, the Roman world before
\nConstantine, the Renaissance, the modern age with its two
\ncolossal idols, Industrialism and physical Science, have come
\nto the West on the strong ascending urge of this double force.
\nWhenever the tide of these powers has ebbed, the European
\nmind has entered into much confusion, darkness and weakness.
\nChristianity failed to spiritualise Europe, whatever it may
\nhave done towards humanising it in certain ethical directions,
\nbecause it ran counter to these two master instincts; it denied
\nthe supremacy of the reason and put its anathema on a satisfied
\nor strenuous fullness of life. But in Asia there has been neither
\nthis predominance of reason and the life-cult nor any incompatibility of these two powers with the religious spirit. The
\ngreat ages of Asia, the strong culminations of her civilisation
\nand culture,\u2014in India the high Vedic beginning, the grand
\nspiritual stir of the Upanishads, the wide flood of Buddhism,
\nVedanta, Sankhya, the Puranic and Tantric religions, the
\nflowering of Vaishnavism and Shaivism in the Southern kingdoms\u2014have come in on a surge of spiritual light and a massive
\nor intense climbing of the religious or the religio-philosophic
\nmind to its own heights, its noblest realities, its largest riches
\nof vision and experience. It was in such periods that intellect,
\nthought, poetry, the arts, the material life flowered into splendour. The ebbing of spirituality brought in, always on the
\ncontrary, the weakness of these other powers, periods of fossilisation <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201392<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nor at least depression of the power of life, tracts of decline, even beginnings of decay. This is a clue to which we have
\nto hold if we would understand the great lines of divergence
\nbetween the East and the West. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nTowards the spirit if not all the way to it man must rise
\nor he misses his upward curve of strength; but there are different
\nways of approach to its secret forces. Europe, it would seem,
\nmust go through the life and the reason and find spiritual truth
\nby their means as a crown and a revelation; she cannot at once
\ntake the kingdom of heaven by violence, as the saying of Christ
\nwould have men do. The attempt confuses and obscures her
\nreason, is combated by her life instincts and leads to revolt,
\nnegation, a return to her own law of nature. But Asia, or at any
\nrate, India lives naturally by a spiritual influx from above; that
\nalone brings with it a spiritual evocation other higher powers of
\nmind and life. The two continents are two sides of the integral
\norb of humanity and until they meet and fuse, each must move
\nto whatever progress or culmination the spirit in humanity seeks,
\nby the law of its being, its own proper Dharma. A one-sided
\nworld would have been the poorer for its uniformity and the
\nmonotone of a single culture; there is a need of divergent lines
\nof advance until we can raise our heads into that infinity of the
\nspirit in which there is a light broad enough to draw together
\nand reconcile all, highest ways of thinking, feeling and living.
\nThat is a truth which the violent Indian assailant of a materialistic Europe or the contemptuous enemy or cold disparager
\nof Asiatic or Indian culture agree to ignore. There is here no
\nreal question between barbarism and civilisation, for all masses
\nof men are barbarians labouring to civilise themselves. There
\nis only one of the dynamic differences necessary for the
\ncompleteness of the growing orb of human culture. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nMeanwhile the divergence unfortunately gives rise to a
\nconstant warring opposition of outlooks in religion and in most
\nother matters, and the opposition brings with it more or less of
\nan incapacity for mutual understanding and even a positive <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201393<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nenmity or dislike. The emphasis of the Western mind is on
\nlife, the outer life above all, the things that arc grasped, visible,
\ntangible. The inner life is taken only as an intelligent reflection of the outer world, with the reason for a firm putter of
\nthings into shape, an intelligent critic, builder, refiner of the
\nexternal materials offered by Nature. The present use of living,
\nto be wholly in this life and for this life, is all the preoccupation of Europe. The present life of the individual and the
\ncontinuous physical existence and developing mind and
\nknowledge of humanity make up her one absorbing interest.
\nEven from religion the West is apt to demand that it shall
\nsubordinate its aim or its effect to this utility of the immediate
\nvisible world. The Greek and the Roman looked on religious
\ncult as a sanction for the life of the "polls" or a force for the
\njust firmness and stability of the State. The Middle Ages
\nwhen the Christian idea was at its height were an interregnum; it was a period during which the Western, mind was trying to
\nassimilate in its emotion and intelligence an Oriental ideal.
\nBut it never succeeded in firmly living it and had eventually
\nto throw it aside or keep it only for a verbal homage. The
\npresent moment is in the same way for Asia an interregnum
\ndominated by an attempt to assimilate in its intellect and life
\nin spite of a rebellious soul and temperament the Western
\noutlook and its earthbound ideal. And it may be safely predicted that Asia too will not succeed in living out this alien
\nlaw firmly or for a long time. But in Europe even the Christian idea, marked in its purity by the emphasis of its introspective tendency and an uncompromising other-worldliness,
\nhad to compromise with the demands of the Occidental temperament and in doing that it lost its own inner kingdom.
\nThe genuine temperament of the West triumphed and in an
\nincreasing degree rationalised, secularised and almost annihilated the religious spirit. Religion became more and more
\na pale and ever thinning shadow pushed aside into a small
\ncorner of the life and a still smaller comer of the nature and <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201394<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nawaiting sentence of death or exile, while outside the doors of the vanquished Church marched on their victorious way
\nthe
\ntriumphant secular pomps of the outward life and the positive reason and materialistic science. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe tendency to secularism is a necessary consequence of the cult of life and reason divorced from their inmost inlook.
\nAncient Europe did not separate religion and life; but that was
\nbecause it had no need for the separation. Its religion, once it
\ngot rid of the Oriental element of the mysteries, was a secular
\ninstitution which did not look beyond a certain supraphysical
\nsanction and convenient aid to the government of (his life.
\nAnd even then the tendency was to philosophise and reason
\naway the relics of the original religious spirit, to exile the little
\nshadow that remained of the brooding wings of a suprarational
\nmystery and to get into the clear sunlight of the logical and
\npractical reason. But modem Europe went farther and to the
\nvery end of this way. The more effectually to shake off the
\nobsession of the Christian idea, which like all oriental
\nreligious thought claims to make religion commensurate with
\nlife and, against whatever obstacles may be opposed to it by
\nthe unregenerate vital nature of the animal man, spiritualise
\nthe whole being and its action, modern Europe separated
\nreligion from life, from philosophy, from art and science, from
\npolitics, from the greater part of social action and social existence.. And it secularised and rationalised too the ethical
\ndemand so that it might stand in itself on its own basis and
\nhave no need of any aid from religious sanction or mystic
\ninsistence. At the end of this turn is an antinomian tendency,
\nconstantly recurring in the life-history of Europe and now
\nagain in evidence. This force seeks to annul ethics also, not
\nby rising above it into the absolute purity of the spirit, as
\nmystic experience claims to do, but by breaking out of its barriers below into an exultant freedom of the vital play. In
\nthis evolution religion was left aside, an impoverished system
\nof belief and ceremony to which one might or might not subscribe <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201395<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nwith very little difference to the march of the human mind
\nand life. Its penetrating and colouring power had been reduced
\nto a faint minimum; a superficial pigmentation of dogma,
\nsentiment and emotion was all that survived this drastic process. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nEven the poor little corner that was still conceded to it,
\nintellectualism insisted on flooding as much as possible with
\nthe light of reason. The trend has been to reduce, not only
\nthe infrarational, but equally the suprarational refuges of the
\nreligious spirit. The old pagan polytheistic symbolism had
\nclothed with its beautiful figures the ancient idea of a divine
\nPresence and supraphysical Life and Power in all Nature and
\nin every particle of life and matter and in all animal existence
\nand in all the mental action of man, but this idea, which to the
\nsecularist reason is only an intellectualised animism, had already been ruthlessly swept aside. The Divinity had abandoned
\nthe earth and lived far aloof and remote in other worlds, in a
\ncelestial heaven of saints and immortal spirits. But why should
\nthere be any other worlds ? I admit, cried the progressing
\nintellect, only this material world to which our reason and
\nsenses bear witness. A vague bleak abstraction of spiritual
\nexistence without any living habitation, without any means of
\ndynamic nearness was left to satisfy the wintry remnants of
\nthe old spiritual sense or the old fantastic illusion. A blank
\nand tepid Theism remained or a rationalised Christianity
\nwithout either the name of Christ or his presence. Or why
\nshould that even be allowed by the critical light of the intelligence ? A Reason or Power, called God for want of a better
\nname, represented by the moral and physical Law in the
\nmaterial universe, is quite sufficient for any rational mind,
\nand so we get to Deism, to a vacant intellectual formula. Or
\nwhy should there be any God at all ? The reason and the senses
\nby themselves give no witness to God; at best they can make of
\nHim only a plausible hypothesis. But there is no need of an
\nunsubstantial hypothesis, since Nature is enough and the
\nsole thing of which we have knowledge. Thus by an inevitable <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201396<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nprocess we reach the atheistic or agnostic cult of secularism,
\nthe acme of denial, the zenith of the positive intelligence. And
\nthere reason and life may henceforward take their foundation
\nand reign well satisfied over a conquered world,\u2014if only that
\ninconvenient veiled ambiguous infinite Something behind
\nwill leave them alone for the future ! <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nA temperament, an outlook of this kind must necessarily
\nbe impatient of any such thing as an earnest straining after
\nthe suprarational and the infinite. It may tolerate some moderate play of these fine hallucinations as an innocent indulgence
\nof the speculative mind or the artistic imagination, provided
\nit is not too serious and does not intrude upon life. But asceticism and other-worldliness are abhorrent to its temperament
\nand fatal to its outlook. Life is a thing to be possessed and enjoyed rationally or forcefully according to our power, but this
\nearthly life, the one thing we know, our only province. At
\nmost a moderate intellectual and ethical asceticism is permissible, the simple life, plain living, high thinking; but an
\necstatic spiritual asceticism is an offence to the reason, almost a
\ncrime. Pessimism of the vitalistic kind may be allowed its mood
\nor its hour; for it admits that life is an evil that has to be lived
\nand does not cut at its roots. But the obvious right standpoint is to take life as it is and make the most of it, either practically for the best ordering of its mixed good and evil or
\nideally with some hope of a relative perfection. If spirituality
\nis to have any meaning, it can only signify the aim or the high
\nlabour of a lofty intelligence, rational will, limited beauty and
\nmoral good which will try to make the best of tills life that is,
\nbut not vainly look beyond to some unhuman, unattainable,
\ninfinite or absolute satisfaction. If religion is to survive, let
\nits function be to serve this kind of spiritual aim, to govern
\nconduct, to give beauty and purity to our living, but let it minister only to this sane and virile spirituality, let it keep within the
\nbounds of the practical reason and an earthly intelligence. This
\ndescription no doubt isolates the main strands and ignores <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201397<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ndepartures to one side or the other; and in all human nature
\nthere must be departures, often of an extreme kind. But
\nit would not, I think, be an unfair or exaggerated description
\nof the persistent ground and characteristic turn of the Western
\ntemperament and its outlook and the normal poise of its intelligence. This is its self-fulfilled static poise before it proceeds
\nto that deflection or that self-exceeding to which man is inevitably moved when he reaches the acme of his normal nature.
\nFor he harbours a power in Nature that must either grow or
\nelse stagnate and cease and disintegrate, and until he has
\nfound all himself, there is for him no static abiding and no permanent home for his spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nNow when this Western mind is confronted with the still
\nsurviving force of Indian religion, thought, culture, it finds
\nthat all its standards are denied, exceeded or belittled; all that
\nit honours is given a second place, all that it has rejected is still
\nheld in honour. Here is a philosophy which founds itself on
\nthe immediate reality of the Infinite, the pressing claim of the
\nAbsolute. And this is not as a thing to speculate about, but as
\na real Presence and a constant Power which demands the soul
\nof man and calls it. Here is a mentality which sees the Divine
\nin Nature and man and animal and inanimate thing. God at
\nthe beginning. God in the middle. God at the end. God everywhere. And all this is not a permissible poetical play of the imagination that need not be taken too seriously by life, but is put
\nforward as a thing to be lived, realised, put at the back even
\nof outward action, turned into stuff of thought, feeling and
\nconduct ! And whole disciplines are systematised for this
\npurpose, disciplines which men still practise! And whole lives
\nare given up to this pursuit of the supreme Person, the universal
\nGodhead, the One, the Absolute, the Infinite ! And to pursue
\nthis immaterial aim men are still content to abandon the outward life and society and home and family and their most
\ncherished pursuits and all that has to a rational mind a substantial and ascertainable value ! Here is a country which <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201398<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nis still heavily coloured with the ochre tint of the garb of the
\nSannyasin, where the Beyond is still preached as a truth and
\nmen have a living belief in other worlds and reincarnation
\nand a whole army of antique ideas whose truth is quite unverifiable by the instruments of physical Science. Here the
\nexperiences of Yoga are held to be as true or more true than the
\nexperiments of the laboratory. Is this not a thinking of things
\nevidently unthinkable since the rational Western mind has
\nceased to think about them ? Is it not an attempt to know
\nthings evidently unknowable since the modern mind has
\nabandoned all attempt to know them ? There is amongst these
\nirrational half-savages an endeavour even to make this unreal
\nthing the highest flight of life, its very goal, and a governing
\nforce, a shaping power in art and culture and conduct. But
\nart and culture and conduct are things which, this rational
\nmind tells us, Indian spirituality and religion ought logically
\nnot to touch at all; for they belong to the realm of the finite
\nand can only be founded on the intellectual reason and the
\npractical environment and the truths and suggestions of physical.
\ncal Nature. There in its native form is the apparent gulf between the two mentalities and it looks unbridgeable. Or rather,
\nthe Indian mind can understand well enough, even when it
\ndoes not share, the positivist turn of the Occidental intelligence; but it is itself to the latter a thing, if not damnable, at least
\nabnormal and unintelligible. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe effects of the Indian religio-philosophical standpoint
\non life are to the Occidental critic still more intolerable. If
\nhis reason was already offended by this suprarational and to
\nhim antirational urge, it is the strongest instincts of his temperament that are now violently shocked by their own direct contrasts and opposites. Life, the thing on which he puts an entire
\nand unquestioning value, is questioned here. It is belittled and
\ndiscouraged by the extremest consequences of one side of the
\nIndian outlook or inlook and is nowhere accepted as it is for
\nits own sake. Asceticism ranges rampant, is at the head of <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u201399<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthings, casts its shadow on the vital instincts and calls man to
\nexceed the life of the body and even the life of the mental
\nwill and intelligence. The Western mind lays an enormous
\nstress upon force of personality, upon the individual will,
\nupon the apparent man and the desires and demands of his
\nnature. But here is an opposing stress on a high growth towards
\nimpersonality, on the widening of the individual into the
\nuniversal will, on an increasing or breaking beyond the apparent
\nman and his limits. The flowering of the mental and vital ego
\nor at most its subservience to the larger ego of the community
\nis the West’s cultural ideal. But here the ego is regarded as the
\nchief obstacle to the soul’s perfection and its place is proposed
\nto be taken not by the concrete communal ego, but by something inward, abstract, transcendental, something supramental, supraphysical, absolutely real. The Western temperament is rajasic, kinetic, pragmatic, active; thought for it turns
\nalways to action and has little value except for the sake of
\naction or else for a fine satisfaction of the mind’s play and vigour. But here the type proposed for admiration is the self-possessed sattwic man for whom calm thought, spiritual knowledge and the inner life are the things of the greatest importance
\nand action is chiefly of consequence not for its own sake, not
\nfor its rewards and fruits, but for its effects on the growth
\nof the inner nature. Here too is a disconcerting quietism which
\nlooks forward to the cessation or Nirvana of all thought and action in a perpetual light and peace. It is not surprising that a
\ncritic with an unreleased Occidental mind should look upon
\nthese contrasts with much dissatisfaction, a recoil of antipathy, an almost ferocious repugnance. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut at any rate these things, however remote they may seem
\nto his understanding, contain something that is lofty and
\nnoble. He can disparage them as false, antirational and depressing, but not denounce them as evil and ignoble. Or be
\ncan dc this only on the strength of such misrepresentations as
\nsome of those we have noted in Mr. Archer’s more irresponsible <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013100<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nstrictures. These things may be signs of an antique
\nor an antiquated mind, but are certainly not the fruits of a barbaric culture.
\nBut when he surveys the forms of the religion which they enlighten and animate,
\nit does look to him as if he was in the presence of a pure barbarism, a savage
\nignorant muddle. For here is an abundance of everything of which
\nhe has so long been steadily emptying religion in his own
\nculture, well content to call that emptiness reformation, enlightenment and the rational truth of things. He sees a gigantic
\npolytheism, a superabundance of what seems to his intelligence
\nrank superstition, a limitless readiness of belief in things that
\nare to him without significance or incredible. The Hindu is
\npopularly credited with thirty crores and more of gods, as many
\ninhabitants for all the many heavens as there are men in this
\nsingle earthly peninsula India, and he has no objection to
\nadding, if need be, to this mighty multitude. Here are temples,
\nimages, a priesthood, a mass of unintelligible rites and ceremonies, the daily repetition of Sanskrit Mantras and prayers,
\nsome of them of a prehistoric creation, a belief in all kinds
\nof supraphysical beings and forces, saints. Gurus, holy days,
\nvows, offerings, sacrifice, a constant reference of life to powers
\nand influences of which there can be no physical evidence,
\ninstead of a rational scientific dependence on the material
\nlaws which alone govern the existence of mortal creatures.
\nIt is to him an unintelligible chaos; it is animism; it is a monstrous folk-lore. The meaning which Indian thought puts
\nupon these things, their spiritual sense, escapes him altogether
\nor it leaves him incredulous or else strikes his mind as a vain
\nand mad symbolism, subtle, useless, futile. And not only
\nis the cult and belief of this people antiquated and mediaeval
\nin kind, but it is not kept in its proper place. Instead of putting
\nreligion into an unobtrusive and ineffective corner, the Indian
\nmind has the pretension, the preposterous pretension which
\nrational man has outgrown for ever, of filling with it the whole
\nof life.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013101 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nIt would be difficult to convince the too positive average
\nEuropean intelligence which has "outgrown" the religious
\nmentality or is only struggling back towards it after a not
\nyet liquidated bankruptcy of rationalistic materialism that
\nthere is any profound truth or meaning in these Indian religious
\nforms. It has been well said that they are rhythms of the spirit,
\nbut one who misses the spirit must necessarily miss too the connection of the spirit and the rhythm. The gods of this worship
\nare, as every Indian knows, potent names, divine forms, dynamic
\npersonalities, living aspects of the one Infinite. Each Godhead
\nis a form or derivation or dependent power of the supreme
\nTrinity, each Goddess a form of the universal Energy, Conscious-Force or Shakti. But to the logical European mind
\nmonotheism, polytheism, pantheism are irreconcilable warring
\ndogmas; oneness, many-ness, all-ness are not and cannot be
\ndifferent but concordant aspects of the eternal Infinite. A
\nbelief in one Divine Being superior to cosmos, who is all cosmos
\nand who lives in many forms of godhead, is a hotch-potch,
\nmush, confusion of ideas; for synthesis, intuitive vision, inner
\nexperience are not the forte of this strongly external, analytic
\nand logical mind. The image to the Hindu is a physical symbol
\nand support of the supraphysical; it is a basis for the meeting
\nbetween the embodied mind and sense of man and the supraphysical power, force or presence which he worships and with
\nwhich he wishes to communicate. But the average European
\nhas small faith in disembodied entities and, if they are at all,
\nhe would put them away into a category apart, another unconnected world, a separate existence. A nexus between the
\nphysical and supraphysical is to his view a meaningless subtlety
\nadmissible only in imaginative poetry and romance. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe rites, ceremonies, system of cult and worship of
\nHinduism can only be understood if we remember its fundamental character. It is in the first place a non-dogmatic
\ninclusive religion and would have taken even Islam and Christianity into itself, if they had tolerated the process. All that it <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013102<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nhas met on its way it has taken into itself, content if it could
\nput its forms into some valid relation with the truth of the supraphysical worlds and the truth of the Infinite. Again it has
\nalways known in its heart that religion, if it is to be a reality
\nfor the mass of men and not only for a few saints and thinkers,
\nmust address its appeal to the whole of our being, not only to
\nthe suprarational and the rational parts, but to all the others.
\nThe imagination, the emotions, the aesthetic sense, even the
\nvery instincts of the half-subconscient parts must be taken into
\nthe influence. Religion must lead man towards the suprarational, the spiritual truth and it must take the aid of the
\nillumined reason on the way, but it cannot afford to neglect to
\ncall Godwards the rest of our complex nature. And it must
\ntake too each man where he stands and spiritualise him through
\nwhat he can feel and not at once force on him something which
\nhe cannot yet grasp as a true and living power. That is the sense
\nand aim of all those parts of Hinduism which are specially
\nstigmatised as irrational or antirational by the positivist intelligence. But the European mind has failed to understand this
\nplain necessity or has despised it. It insists on "purifying"
\nreligion, by the reason and not by the spirit, on "reforming"
\nit, by the reason and not by the spirit. And we have seen what
\nwere the results of this kind of purification and reformation in
\nEurope. The infallible outcome of that ignorant doctoring
\nhas been first to impoverish and then slowly to kill religion; the patient has fallen a victim to the treatment, while he might
\nwell have survived the disease. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe accusation of a want of ethical content is almost
\nmonstrously false, it is the direct opposite of the truth; but we
\nmust look for its explanation in some kind of characteristic
\nmisunderstanding; for it is not new. Hindu thought and
\nliterature might almost be accused of a tyrannously pervading
\nethical obsession; everywhere the ethical note recurs. The idea
\nof the Dharma is, next to the idea of the Infinite, its major
\nchord; Dharma, next to spirit, is its foundation of life. There <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013103<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nis no ethical idea which it has not stressed, put in its most ideal
\nand imperative form, enforced by teaching, injunction, parable,
\nartistic creation, formative examples. Truth, honour, loyalty,
\nfidelity, courage, chastity, love, long-suffering, self-sacrifice,
\nharmlessness, forgiveness, compassion, benevolence, beneficence are its common themes, are in its view the very stuff
\nof a right human life, the essence of man’s Dharma. Buddhism
\nwith its high and noble ethics, Jainism with its austere ideal
\nof self-conquest, Hinduism with its magnificent examples
\nof all sides of the Dharma are not inferior in ethical teaching
\nand practice to any religion or system, but rather take the
\nhighest rank and have had the strongest effective force. For
\nthe practice of these virtues in older times there is abundant
\ninternal and foreign evidence. A considerable stamp of them
\nstill remains in spite of much degeneracy even though there
\nhas been some depression of the manlier qualities which only
\nflourish in their fullest power on the soil of freedom. The
\nlegend to the contrary began in the minds of English scholars
\nwith a Christian bias who were misled by the stress which
\nIndian philosophy lays on knowledge rather than works as
\nthe means of salvation. For they did not note or could not
\ngrasp the meaning of the rule well-known to all Indian spiritual seekers that a pure sattwic mind and life are presupposed
\nas the first step towards the divine knowledge\u2014the doers of
\nevil find me not, says the Gita. And they were unable to
\nrealise that knowledge of the truth means for Indian thought
\nnot intellectual assent or recognition, but a new consciousness
\nand a life according to the truth of the Spirit. Morality is
\nfor the Western mind mostly a thing of outward conduct,
\nbut conduct for the Indian mind is only one means of expression and sign of a soul-state. Hinduism only incidentally
\nstrings together a number of commandments for observance,
\na table of moral laws; more deeply it enjoins a spiritual or
\nethical purity of the mind with action as one outward index.
\nIt says strongly enough, almost too strongly, "Thou shouldst <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013104<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nnot kill," but insists more firmly on the injunction, "Thou
\nshalt not hate, thou shall not yield to greed, anger or malice,"
\nfor these are the roots of killing. And Hinduism admits relative standards, a wisdom too hard for the European intelligence. Non-injuring is the very highest of its laws, ahimsā
\nparamo dharmah;<\/i> still it does not lay it down as a physical
\nrule for the warrior, but insistently demands from him mercy,
\nchivalry, respect for the non-belligerent, the weak, the unarmed, the vanquished, the prisoner, the wounded, the fugitive, and so escapes the unpracticality of a too absolutist rule
\nfor all life. A misunderstanding of this inwardness and this
\nwise relativity is perhaps responsible for much misrepresentation. The Western ethicist likes to have a high standard
\nas a counsel of perfection and is not too much concerned if
\nit is honoured more by the breach than by the observance; Indian ethics puts up an equally high and often higher standard; but less concerned with high professions than with the
\ntruth of life, it admits stages of progress and in the lower
\nstages is satisfied if it can moralise as much as possible those
\nwho are not yet capable of the highest ethical concepts and
\npractice. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAll these criticisms of Hinduism are therefore either
\nfalse in fact or invalid in their very nature. It remains to be
\nconsidered whether the farther yet more common charge is
\njustified in full or in part,\u2014the damaging accusation that
\nIndian culture depresses the vital force, paralyses the will,
\ngives no great or vigorous power, no high incentive, no fortifying and ennobling motive to human life. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013105<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nCHAPTER V<\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nTHE<\/font> question before us is whether Indian culture has a
\nsufficient power for the fortifying and ennobling of our normal
\nhuman existence. Apart from its transcendental aims, has it
\nany pragmatic, non-ascetic, dynamic value, any power for
\nexpansion of life and for the right control of life ? This is a
\nquestion of central importance. For if it has nothing of this
\nkind to give us, then whatever its other cultural greatness, it
\ncannot live. It becomes an abnormal cis-Himalayan hot-house splendour which could subsist in its peninsular seclusion, but must perish in the keen and arduous air of the modem
\nstruggle of life. No anti-vital culture can survive. A too intellectual or too ethereal civilisation void of strong vital stimulus and motive must languish for want of sap and blood.
\nA culture to be permanently and completely serviceable to
\nman must give him something more than some kind of rare
\ntranscendental uprush towards an exceeding of all earthly
\nlife-values. It must do more even than adorn with a great
\ncuriosity of knowledge, science and philosophic enquiry or
\na rich light and blaze of art, poetry and architecture, the
\nlong stability and orderly well-being of an old, ripe and
\nhumane society. All this Indian culture did in the past to a noble purpose. But
\nit must satisfy too the tests of a progressive Life-power. There must be some inspiration for the
\nterrestrial endeavour of man, an object, a stimulus, a force
\nfor development and a will to live. Whether or not our end is
\nsilence and Nirvana, a spiritual cessation or a material death,
\nthis is certain that the world itself is a mighty labour of a vast
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013106<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nLife-Spirit and man the present doubtful crown on earth and
\nthe struggling but still unsuccessful present hero and protagonist of its endeavour or its drama. A great human culture
\nmust see this truth in some fullness; it must impart some
\nconscious and ideal power of self-effectuation to this upward effort. It is not enough to found a stable base for life,
\nnot enough to adorn it, not enough to shoot up sublimely
\nto summits beyond it; the greatness and growth of the race
\non earth must be our equal care. To miss this great intermediate reality is a capital imperfection and in itself a seal
\nof failure. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nOur critics will have it that the whole body of Indian
\nculture bears the stamp of just such a failure. The Western
\nimpression has been that Hinduism is an entirely metaphysical and other-worldly system dreaming of things beyond,
\noblivious of the now and here: a depressing sense of the
\nunreality of life or an intoxication of the Infinite turns it
\naway from any nobility, vitality and greatness of human aspiration and the earth’s labour. Its philosophy may be sublime, its religious spirit fervent, its ancient social system strong,
\nsymmetrical and stable, its literature and its art good in their
\nown way, but the salt of life is absent, the breath of willpower, the force of a living endeavour. This new journalistic
\nApollo, our Archer who is out to cleave with his arrows the
\npython coils of Indian barbarism, abounds in outcries in this
\nsense. But, if that is so, evidently India can have done nothing
\ngreat, contributed no invigorating power to human life, produced no men of mighty will, no potent personalities, no strong
\nsignificant human lives, no vital human figures in art and
\npoetry, no significant architecture and sculpture. And that
\nis what our devil’s advocate tells us in graphic phrases. He
\ntells us that there is in this religion and philosophy a general
\nundervaluing of life and endeavour. Life is conceived as a shoreless expanse in which generations rise and fall as helplessly and purposelessly as waves in mid-ocean; the individual <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013107<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nis everywhere dwarfed and depreciated; one solitary great
\ncharacter, Gautama Buddha, who "perhaps never existed,"
\nis India’s sole contribution to the world’s pantheon, or for
\nthe rest a pale featureless Asoka. The characters of drama
\nand poetry are lifeless exaggerations or puppets of supernatural powers ; the art is empty of reality ; the whole history
\nof the civilisation makes a drab, effete, melancholy picture.
\nThere is no power of life in this religion and this philosophy,
\nthere is no breath of life in this history, there is no colour of
\nlife id this art and poetry , that is the blank result of Indian
\nculture. Whoever has seen at first hand and felt the literature, followed, the history, studied the civilisation of India
\ncan see that this is a bitter misrepresentation, a violent caricature, an absurd falsehood. But it is an extreme and unscrupulous way of putting an impression often given to the European mind and, as before, we must see why different eyes see
\nthe same object in such different colours. It is the same primary misunderstanding that is at the root. India has lived
\nand lived richly, splendidly, greatly, but with a different will
\nin life from Europe. The idea and plan of her life have been
\npeculiar to her temperament, original and unique. Her values
\nare not easy to seize for an outsider and her highest things are
\neasily open to hostile misrepresentation by the ignorant, precisely because they are too high for the normal untrained mind and apt to shoot beyond its limits. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThere are three powers that we must grasp in order to
\njudge the life-value of a culture. There is, first, the power
\nof its original conception of life ; there is, next, the power of
\nthe forms, types and rhythms it has given to life; there is,
\nlast, the inspiration, the vigour, the force of vital execution
\nof its motives manifested in the actual lives of men and of
\nthe community that flourished under its influence. The European conception of life is a thing with which we in India are
\nnow very familiar, because our present thought and effort are
\nobscured with its shadow when they are not filled with its <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013108<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\npresence. For we have been trying hard to assimilate something of it, even to shape ourselves, and especially our political,
\neconomic and outward conduct into some imitation of its
\nforms and rhythms. The European idea is the conception
\nof a Force that manifests itself in the material universe and a
\nLife in it of which man is almost the only discoverable meaning. This anthropocentric view of things has not been altered
\nby the recent stress of Science on the vast blank inanities of
\nan inconscient mechanical Nature. And in man, thus unique
\nin the inert drift of Nature, the whole effort of Life is to
\narrive at some light and harmony of the understanding and
\nordering reason, some efficient rational power, adorning
\nbeauty, strong utility, vital enjoyment, economic welfare. The
\nfree power of the individual ego, the organised will of the
\ncorporate ego, these are the great needed forces. The development of individual personality and an organised efficient
\nnational life are the two things that matter in the European
\nideal. These two powers have grown, striven, run riot at
\ntimes, and the restless and often violent vividness of the
\nhistoric stir and the literary and artistic vivacity of Europe
\nare due to their powerful colours. The enjoyment of life
\nand force, the gallop of egoistic passion and vital satisfaction
\nare a loud and insistent strain, a constant high-voiced motive.
\nAgainst them is another opposite effort, the endeavour to
\ngovern life by reason, science, ethics, art; a restraining and
\nharmonising utility is here the foremost motive. At different
\ntimes different powers have taken the lead. Christian religiosity too has come in and added new tones, modified some
\ntendencies, deepened others. Each age and period has increased the wealth of contributory lines and forces and helped
\nthe complexity and largeness of the total conception. At
\npresent the sense of the corporate life dominates and it is
\nserved by the idea of a great intellectual and material progress, an ameliorated political and social state governed by
\nscience. There is an ideal of intelligent utility, liberty and <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013109<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nequality or else an ideal of stringent organisation and efficiency
\nand a perfectly mobilised, carefully marshalled uniting of
\nforces in a ceaseless pull towards the general welfare. This
\nendeavour of Europe has become terribly outward and mechanical in its appearance; but some renewed power of a more
\nhumanistic idea is trying to beat its way in again and man
\nmay perhaps before long refuse to be tied on the wheel of
\nhis own triumphant machinery and conquered by his apparatus. At any rate we need not lay too much emphasis on what
\nmay be a passing phase. The broad permanent European
\nconception of life remains and it is in its own limits a great
\nand invigorating conception,\u2014imperfect, narrow at the top,
\nshut in under a heavy lid, poor in its horizons, too much
\nof the soil, but still with a sense in it that is strenuous and
\nnoble. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Indian conception of life starts from a deeper centre
\nand moves on less external lines to a very different objective.
\nThe peculiarity of the Indian eye of thought is that it looks
\nthrough the form, looks even through the force, and searches
\nfor the spirit in things everywhere. The peculiarity of the
\nIndian will in life is that it feels itself to be unfulfilled, not in
\ntouch with perfection, not permanently justified in any intermediate satisfaction if it has not found and does not live in
\nthe truth of the spirit. The Indian idea of the world, of Nature and of existence is not physical, but psychological and
\nspiritual. Spirit, soul, consciousness are not only greater
\nthan inert matter and inconscient force, but they precede
\nand originate these lesser things. All force is power, or means
\nof a secret spirit; the force that sustains the world is a conscious Will, and Nature is its machinery of executive power.
\nMatter is the body or field of a consciousness hidden within
\nit, the material universe a form and movement of the Spirit.
\nMan himself is not a life and mind born of Matter and eternally
\nsubject to physical Nature, but a spirit that uses life and
\nbody. <\/b> It is an understanding faith m this conception <\/b> of existence,<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013110<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nit is the attempt to live it out, it is the science and practice of this high endeavour, and it is the aspiration to break out
\nin the end from this mind bound to life and matter into a
\ngreater spiritual consciousness that is the innermost sense of
\nIndian culture. It is this that constitutes the much talked of
\nIndian spirituality. It is evidently very remote from the
\ndominant European idea; it is different even from the form
\ngiven by Europe to the Christian conception of life. But it
\ndoes not mean at all that Indian culture concedes no reality
\nto life, follows no material or vital aims and satisfactions, or
\ncares to do nothing for our actual human existence. It cannot
\ntruly be contended that a conception of this kind can give no
\npowerful and inspiring motive to the human effort of man.
\nCertainly, in this view, matter, mind, life, reason, form are
\nonly powers of the spirit and valuable not for their own sake,
\nbut because of the Spirit within them, ātmārtham;<\/i> they
\nexist for the sake of the Self, says the Upanishad, and this is
\ncertainly the Indian attitude to these things. But that does
\nnot depreciate them or deprive them of their value; on the
\ncontrary it increases a hundredfold their significance. Form
\nand body immensely increase in importance if they are felt
\nto be instinct with the life of the Spirit and are conceived as
\na support for the rhythm of its workings. And human life
\nwas in ancient Indian thought no vile and unworthy existence ; it is the greatest thing known to us; it is desired, the
\nPurana boldly says, even by the gods in heaven. The deepening and raising of the richest or the most potent energies of
\nour minds, our hearts, our life-power, our bodies are all
\nmeans by which the spirit can proceed to self-discovery and
\nthe return to its own infinite freedom and power. For when
\nmind and heart and reason heighten to their greatest lights
\nand powers, they bring embodied life to the point where it can
\nopen to a still greater light and power beyond them; the
\nindividual mind widens into a vast universal consciousness
\nand lifts towards a high spiritual transcendence. These are <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013111<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nat least no sterilising and depressing ideas ; they exalt the life
\nof man and make something like godhead its logical outcome. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe dignity given to human existence by the Vedantic
\nthought and by the thought of the classical ages of Indian
\nculture exceeded anything conceived by the western idea of
\nhumanity. Man in the West has always been only an ephemeral
\ncreature of Nature or a soul manufactured at birth by an arbitrary breath of the whimsical Creator and set under impossible
\nconditions to get salvation, but far more likely to be thrown
\naway into the burning refuse-heap of Hell as a hopeless failure.
\nAt best-he is exalted by a reasoning mind and will and an
\neffort to be better than God or Nature made him. Far more
\nennobling, inspiring, filled with the motive-force of a great
\nidea is the conception placed before us by Indian culture.
\nMan in the Indian idea is a spirit veiled in the works of energy,
\nmoving to self-discovery, capable of Godhead. He is a soul
\nthat is growing through Nature to conscious self-hood; he is a
\ndivinity and an eternal existence, he is an ever-flowing wave
\nof the God-ocean, an inextinguishable spark of the supreme
\nFire. Even, he is in his uttermost reality identical with the
\nineffable Transcendence from which he came and greater
\nthan the godheads whom he worships. The natural half-animal creature that for a while he seems to be is not at all
\nhis whole being and is not in any way his real being. His
\ninmost reality is the divine Self or at least one dynamic eternal
\nportion of it, and to find that and exceed his outward, apparent,
\nnatural self is the greatness of which he alone of terrestrial
\nbeings is capable. He has the spiritual capacity to pass to a
\nsupreme and extraordinary pitch of manhood and that is the
\nfirst aim which is proposed to him by Indian culture. Living
\nno more in the first crude type of an undeveloped humanity to
\nwhich most men still belong, na yathā prākrto janah,<\/i> he can
\neven become a free perfected semi-divine man, mukta, siddha.
\n<\/i>But he can do more; released into the cosmic consciousness,
\nhis spirit can become one with God, one self with the Spirit <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013112<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof the universe or rise into a Light and Vastness that transcends the universe, his nature can become one dynamic power
\nwith universal Nature or one Light with a transcendental
\nGnosis. To be shut up for ever in his ego is not his ultimate
\nperfection; he can become a universal soul, one with the supreme
\nUnity, one with others, one with all beings. This is the high
\nsense and power concealed in his humanity that he can aspire
\nto this perfection and transcendence. And he can arrive at it
\nthrough any or all of his natural powers if they will accept
\nrelease, through his mind and reason and thought and their
\nilluminations, through his heart and its unlimited power of
\nlove and sympathy, through his will and its dynamic drive
\ntowards mastery and right action, through his ethical nature
\nand its hunger for the universal Good, through, his aesthetic
\nsense and its seekings after delight and beauty, or through
\nhis inner soul and its power of absolute spiritual calm,
\nwideness, joy and peace. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis is the sense of that spiritual liberation and perfection
\nof which Indian thought and inner discipline have been full
\nsince the earliest Vedic times. However high and arduous this
\naim may be it has always seemed to it possible and even in a
\nway near and normal, once spiritual realisation has discovered
\nits path. The positivist Western mind finds it difficult to give
\nthis conception the rank of a living and intelligible idea. The
\nstatus of the siddha, bhāgavata, mukta<\/i> appears to it a baseless
\nchimera. It seems to its Christian associations a blasphemy
\nagainst the solitary greatness of God, before whom man is
\nonly a grovelling worm, to its fierce attachment to the normal
\nego a negation of personality and a repellent menace, to its earthbound rationalism a dream, a self-hypnotic hallucination or a
\ndeluding mania. And yet in ancient Europe the Stoics, Platonists, Pythagoreans had made some approach to this aspiration,
\nand even afterwards, a few rare souls have envisaged or pursued
\nit through occult ways. And now it is again beginning to percolate into the Western imagination, but less as a dynamic  <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013113<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nlife-motive than in poetry and in certain aspects of general
\nthought or through movements like Theosophy that draw from
\nancient and oriental sources. Science and philosophy and
\nreligion still regard it with scorn as an illusion, with indifference
\nas a dream or with condemnation as a heathen arrogance. It
\nis the distinction of Indian culture to have seized on this great
\ndynamic hope, to have kept it a living and practicable thing
\nand to have searched out all the possible paths to this spiritual
\nway of perfect existence. Indian thought has made this great
\nthing the common highest aim and universal spiritual destiny
\nof the soul that is in every human creature. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe value of the Indian conception for life must depend
\non the relations and gradations by which it connects this
\ndifficult and distant perfection with our normal living and
\npresent everyday nature. Put over against the latter without
\nany connection or any gradations that lead up to it and make
\nit possible, it would either be a high unattainable ideal or the
\ndetached remote passion of a few exceptional spirits. Or even
\nit would discourage the springs of our natural life by the too
\ngreat contrast between the spiritual being and our own poor
\nimperfect nature. Something of the kind has happened in later
\ntimes, the current Western impression about the exaggerated
\nasceticism and other-worldliness of Indian religion and philosophy is founded on the growing gulf created by a later thought
\nbetween man’s spiritual possibilities and his terrestrial status.
\nBut we must not be misled by extreme tendencies or the
\noveremphasis put upon them in a period of decline. If we
\nwould get at the real meaning of the Indian idea of life, we must
\ngo back to its best times. And we must not look at this or that
\nschool of philosophy or at some side of it as the whole of
\nIndian thought; the totality of the ancient philosophical thinking, religion, literature, art, society must be our ground of
\nenquiry. The Indian conception in its early soundness made
\nno such mistake as to imagine that this great thing can or even
\nought to be done by some violent, intolerant, immediate <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013114<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nleap from one pole of existence <\/b> to its opposite. Even the most
\nextreme philosophies do not go so far. The workings of the
\nSpirit in the universe were a reality to one side of the Indian
\nmind, to another only a half reality, a self-descriptive Lila
\nor illusory Maya. To the one the world was an action of the
\nInfinite Energy, Shakti, to the other a figment of some secondary paradoxical consciousness in the Eternal, Maya : but life
\nas an intermediate reality was never denied by any school
\nof Indian thinking. Indian thought recognised that the normal
\nlife of man has to be passed through with a conscientious
\nendeavour to fulfil its purpose : its powers must be developed
\nwith knowledge, its forms must be perused, interpreted and
\nfathomed, its values must be worked out, possessed and lived,
\nits enjoyments must be fully taken on their own level. Only
\nafterwards can we go on to self-existence or a supra-existence.
\nThe spiritual perfection which opens before man is the crown
\nof a long, patient, millennial outflowering of the spirit in life
\nand nature. This belief in a gradual spiritual progress and evolution here is indeed the secret of the almost universal Indian
\nacceptance of the truth of reincarnation. It is only by millions
\nof lives in inferior forms that the secret soul in the universe,
\nconscious even in the inconscient, cetanah acetanesu,<\/i> has arrived
\nat humanity: it is only by hundreds or thousands, perhaps
\neven millions of human lives that man can grow into his divine
\nself-existence. Every life is a step which he can take backward
\nor forward; his action in life, his will in life, his thought and
\nknowledge by which he governs and directs his life, determine
\nwhat he is yet to be from the earliest stages to the last transcendence. Yathā karma yathā srutam.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis belief in a gradual soul evolution with a final perfection or divine transcendence and human life as its first
\ndirect means and often repeated opportunity, is the pivot of
\nthe Indian conception of existence. This gives to our life the
\nfigure of an ascent in spirals or circles; and the long period of
\nthe ascent has to be filled in with human knowledge and human <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013115<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\naction and human experience. There is room within it for all
\nterrestrial aims, activities and aspirations, there is place in the
\nascent for all types of human character and nature. For the
\nspirit in the world assumes hundreds of forms and follows
\nmany tendencies and gives many shapes to his play or Lila.
\nAll are part of the total mass of our necessary experience; each
\nhas its justification, each has its natural or true law and reason
\nof being, each has its utility in the play and the process. The
\nclaim of sense satisfaction was not ignored, it was given its
\njust importance. The soul’s need of labour and heroic action
\nwas not stifled, it was urged to its fullest action and freest
\nscope. The hundred forms of the pursuit of knowledge were
\ngiven an absolute freedom of movement; the play of the emotions was allowed, refined, trained till they were fit for the
\ndivine levels; the demand of the aesthetic faculties was encouraged in its highest rarest forms and in life’s commonest
\ndetails. Indian culture did not deface nor impoverish the
\nrichness of the grand game of human life; it never depressed
\nor mutilated the activities of our nature. On the contrary,
\nsubject to a certain principle of harmony and government, it
\nallowed them their full, often their extreme value. Man was
\nallowed to fathom on his way all experience, to give to his
\ncharacter and action a large rein and heroic proportions, and
\nto fill in life opulently with colour and beauty and enjoyment.
\nThis life side of the Indian idea is stamped in strong relief
\nover the epic and the classical literature. It is amazing indeed
\nthat anyone with an eye or a brain could have read the Ramayana, Mahabharata, the dramas, the literary epics, the romances,
\nand the great abundance of gnomic and lyric poetry in Sanskrit and in the later tongues (to say nothing of the massive
\nremains of other cultural work and social and political system
\nand speculation), and yet failed to perceive this breadth, wealth
\nand greatness. One must have read without eyes to see or
\nwithout a mind to understand; most indeed of the adverse critics
\nhave not read or studied at all, but only flung about their pre<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013116<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nconceived notions with a violent or a high-browed ignorant
\nassurance. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut while it is the generous office of culture to enrich,
\nenlarge and encourage human life, it must also give the vital
\nforces a guiding law, subject them to some moral and rational
\ngovernment and lead them beyond their first natural formulations, until it can find for life the clue to a spiritual freedom,
\nperfection and greatness. The pre-eminent value of the ancient
\nIndian civilisation lay in the power with which it did this work,
\nthe profound wisdom and high and subtle skill with which it
\nbased society and ordered the individual life, and encouraged
\nand guided the propensities of human nature and finally
\nturned them all towards the realisation of its master idea. The
\nmind it was training, while not called away from its immediate
\naims, was never allowed to lose sight of the use of life as a discipline for spiritual perfection and a passage to the Infinite. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Indian mind whether in the government of life or in
\nthe discipline of spirituality, kept always in sight two main
\ntruths of our existence. First, our being in its growth has
\nstages through which it must pass : if there are sometimes leaps
\nforward, yet most of its growth is a developing progression; the swiftest race has its stadia. Then again, life is complex
\nand the nature of man is complex; in each life man has to
\nfigure a certain sum of his complexity and put that into some
\nkind of order. But the initial movement of life is that form of it
\nwhich develops the powers of the natural ego in man; self-interest and hedonistic desire are the original human motives,\u2014
\nkāma, artha.<\/i> Indian culture gave a large recognition to this
\nprimary turn of our nature. These powers have to be accepted
\nand put in order; for the natural ego-life must be lived and the
\nforces it evolves in the human being must be brought to fullness. But this element must be kept from making any too
\nunbridled claim or heading furiously towards its satisfaction; only so can it get its full results without disaster and only so
\ncan it be inspired eventually to go beyond itself and turn in the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013117<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nend to a greater spiritual Good and Bliss. An internal or external anarchy cannot be the rule; a life governed in any
\nabsolute or excessive degree by self-will, passion, sense-attraction, self-interest and desire cannot be the natural whole of a
\nhuman or a humane existence. The tempting imagination
\nthat it can and that this is the true law is a lure with which
\nthe Western mind has played in characteristic leanings or outbursts; but this turn unjustly called Paganism,\u2014for the
\nGreek or Pagan intelligence had a noble thought for law and
\nharmony and self-rule,\u2014is alien to the Indian spirit. India
\nhas felt the call of the senses not less than Greece, Rome or
\nmodern Europe; she perceived very well the possibility of a
\nmaterialistic life and its attraction worked on certain minds
\nand give birth to the philosophy of the Charvakas : but this
\ncould not take full hold or establish even for a rime any dominant empire. Even if we can see in it, when lived on a grand
\nscale, a certain perverse greatness, still a colossal egoism indulgent of the sole life of the mind and the senses was regarded
\nby her as the nature of the Asura and Rakshasa. It is the
\nTitanic, gigantic or demoniac type of spirit, permitted in its
\nown plane, but not the proper law for a human life. Another
\npower claims man and overtops desire and self-interest and
\nself-will, the power of the Dharma. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Dharma, at once religious law of action and deepest
\nlaw of our nature, is not, as in the Western idea, a creed, cult
\nor ideal inspiring an ethical and social rule; it is the right law
\nof functioning of our life in all its parts. The tendency of man
\nto seek after a just and perfect law of his living finds its truth
\nand its justification in the Dharma. Everything indeed has
\nits dharma, its law of life imposed on it by its nature; but for
\nman the dharma is the conscious imposition of a rule of ideal
\nliving on all his members. Dharma is fixed in its essence, but
\nstill it develops in our consciousness and evolves and has its
\nstages; there are gradations of spiritual and ethical ascension
\nin the search for the highest law of our nature. All men cannot <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013118<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nfollow in all things one common and invariable rule. Life
\nis too complex to admit of the arbitrary ideal simplicity which
\nthe moralising theorist loves. Natures differ, the position, the
\nwork we have to do has its own claims and standards; aim and
\nbent, the call of life, the call of the spirit within is not the same
\nfor everyone : the degree and turn of development and the
\ncapacity, adhikāra,<\/i> are not equal. Man lives in society and by
\nsociety, and every society has its own general dharma, and the
\nindividual life must be fitted into this wider law of movement.
\nBut there too the individual’s part in society, and his nature
\nand the needs of his capacity and temperament vary and have
\nmany kinds and degrees : the social law must make some
\nroom for this variety and would lose by being rigidly one for
\nall. The man of knowledge, the man of power, the productive
\nand acquisitive man, the priest, scholar, poet, artist, ruler,
\nfighter, trader, tiller of the soil, craftsman, labourer, servant
\ncannot usefully have the same training, cannot be shaped in
\nthe same pattern, cannot all follow the same way of living.
\nAll ought not to be put under the same tables of the
\nlaw; for that would be a senseless geometric rigidity that
\nwould spoil the plastic truth of life. Each has his type of nature
\nand there must be a rule for the perfection of that type; each
\nhas his own proper function and there must be a canon and
\nideal for the function. There must be in all things some wise
\nand understanding standard of practice and idea of perfection
\nand living rule,\u2014that is the one thing needful for the Dharma.
\nA lawless impulsion of desire and interest and propensity cannot be allowed to lead human conduct; even in the frankest
\nfollowing of desire and interest and propensity there must be
\na governing and restraining and directing line, a guidance.
\nThere must be an ethic or a science, a restraint as well as a
\nscope arising from the truth of the thing sought, a standard
\nof perfection, an order. Differing with the type of the man
\nand the type of the function these special dharmas would yet
\nrise towards the greater law and truth that contains and overtops <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

 
\n 
\n<\/font>Page\u2013119<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe others and is universally effective. This then was
\nthe Dharma, special for the special person, stage of development, pursuit of life or individual field of action, but universal too in the broad lines which all ought to pursue. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe universal embracing dharma in the Indian idea is a
\nlaw of ideal perfection for the developing mind and soul of
\nman; it compels him to grow in the power and force of certain
\nhigh or large universal qualities which in their harmony build
\na highest type of manhood. In Indian thought and life this
\nwas the ideal of the best, the law of the good or noble man, the
\ndiscipline laid down for the self-perfecting individual, ārya,
\nsrestha, sajjana, sādhu.<\/i> This ideal was not a purely moral or
\nethical conception, although that element might predominate; it was also intellectual, religious, social, aesthetic, the flowering of the whole ideal man, the perfection of the total human
\nnature. The most varied qualities met in the Indian conception of the best, srestha,<\/i> the good and noble man,
\nārya.<\/i> In
\nthe heart benevolence, beneficence, love, compassion, altruism,
\nlong-suffering, liberality, kindliness, patience; in the character
\ncourage, heroism, energy, loyalty, continence, truth, honour,
\njustice, faith, obedience and reverence where these were due,
\nbut power too to govern and direct, a fine modesty and yet a
\nstrong independence and noble pride; in the mind wisdom
\nand intelligence and love of learning, knowledge of all the
\nbest thought, an openness to poetry, art and beauty, an educated capacity and skill in works; in the inner being a strong
\nreligious sense, piety, love of God, seeking after the Highest,
\nthe spiritual turn; in social relations and conduct a strict
\nobservance of all the social dharmas, as father, son, husband,
\nbrother, kinsman, friend, ruler or subject, master or servant,
\npriest or warrior or worker, king or sage, member of clan or
\ncaste : this was the total ideal of the Arya, the man of high
\nupbringing and noble nature. The ideal is clearly portrayed
\nin the written records of ancient India during two millenniums
\nand it is the very life-breath of Hindu ethics. It was the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013120<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ncreation of an at once ideal and rational mind, spirit-wise and
\nworldly-wise, deeply religious, nobly ethical firmly yet flexibly
\nintellectual, scientific and aesthetic, patient and tolerant of
\nlife’s difficulties and human weakness, but arduous in self-discipline. This was the mind that was at the base of the
\nIndian civilisation and gave its characteristic stamp to all the
\nculture. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut even this was only the foundation and preparation for
\nanother highest thing which by its presence exalts human life
\nbeyond itself into something spiritual and divine. Indian
\nculture raised the crude animal life of desire, self-interest and
\nsatisfied propensity beyond its first intention to a noble self-exceeding and shapeliness by infusing into it the order and
\nhigh aims of the Dharma. But its profounder characteristic
\naim\u2014and in this it was unique\u2014was to raise this nobler
\nlife too of the self-perfecting human being beyond its own
\nintention to a mightiest self-exceeding and freedom; it laboured
\nto infuse into it the great aim of spiritual liberation and perfection, mukti, moksa.<\/i> The Law and its observance are neither
\nthe beginning nor the end of man; there is beyond the field
\nof the Law a larger realm of consciousness in which, climbing,
\nhe emerges into a great spiritual freedom. Not a noble but
\never death-bound manhood is the highest height of man’s
\nperfection: immortality, freedom, divinity are within his
\ngrasp. Ancient Indian culture held this highest aim constantly
\nbefore the inner eye of the soul and insistently inspired with
\nits prospect and light the whole conception of existence. The
\nentire life of the individual was ennobled by this aim, the whole
\nordering of society was cast into a scale of graduated ascension
\ntowards this supreme summit. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nA well-governed system of the individual and communal
\nexistence must be always in the first instance an ordering of
\nthe three first ‘powers recognised by Indian thought. The
\nclaim of the natural functionings must be recognised in it to
\nthe full; the pursuit of personal and communal interest and the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013121<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

<\/p>\n

satisfaction of human desires as of human needs must be amply
\nadmitted and there must be an understanding combination
\nof knowledge and labour towards these ends. But all must be
\ncontrolled, uplifted and widened to greater aims by the ideal
\nof the Dharma. And if, as India believes, there is a higher
\nspiritual consciousness towards which man can rise, that
\nascent must be kept throughout in view as the supreme goal
\nof life. The system of Indian culture at once indulged and controlled man’s nature; it fitted him for his social role, it stamped
\non his mind the generous ideal of an accomplished humanity
\nrefined} harmonised in all its capacities, ennobled in all its
\nmembers, but it placed before him too the theory and practice
\nof a highest change, familiarised him with the conception of a
\nspiritual existence and sowed in him a hunger for the divine
\nand the infinite. The symbols of his religion were filled with
\nsuggestions which led towards it; at every step he was reminded
\nof lives behind and in front and of worlds beyond the material
\nexistence; he was brought close to the nearness, even to the
\ncall and pressure of the Spirit that is greater than the life it
\ninforms, of the final goal, of a high possible immortality, freedom, God-consciousness, divine Nature. Man was not allowed
\nto forget that he had in him a highest self beyond his little
\npersonal ego and that always he and all things live, move and
\nhave their being in God, in the Eternal, in the Spirit. There
\nwere ways and disciplines provided in number by which
\nhe could realise this liberating truth or could at least turn
\nand follow at a distance this highest aim according to his
\ncapacity and nature, adhikāra.<\/i> Around him he saw and revered
\nthe powerful practicants and mighty masters of these disciplines.
\nThese men were in early times the teachers of his youth,
\nthe summits of his society, the inspirers and fountain-heads
\nof his civilisation, the great lights of his culture. Spiritual
\nfreedom, spiritual perfection were not figured as a far-off
\nintangible ideal, but presented as the highest human aim
\ntowards which all must grow in the end and were made
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013122<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nnear and possible to his endeavour from a first practicable
\nbasis of life and the Dharma. The spiritual idea governed,
\nenlightened and gathered towards itself all the other
\nlife-motives of a great civilised people. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013123<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n
\nCHAPTER VI <\/font><\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nTHESE<\/font> are the principal lines upon which the structure of
\nIndian civilisation was founded and they constitute the power
\nof its conception of life. I do not think it can be said that
\nthere is here any inferiority to other human cultures or to any
\nestablished conception of life that has ever held sway over the
\nmind of man in historic times. There is nothing here that
\ncan be said to discourage life and its flowering or to deprive it
\nof impetus and elevation and a great motive. On the contrary
\nthere is a full and frank recognition and examination of the
\nwhole of human existence in all its variety and range and
\npower, there is a clear and wise and noble idea for its right
\ngovernment and there is an ideal tendency pointing it upward
\nand a magnificent call to a highest possible perfection and
\ngreatness. These are the serious uses of culture, these are the things that
\nraise the life of man above a crude, primitive barbarism. If a civilisation is to be judged by the power of its
\nideas, their power for these great uses, Indian civilisation was inferior to
\nnone. Certainly, it was not perfect or final or complete; for that can be alleged of no past or present cultural idea
\nor system. Man is in his inmost self an infinite being, in his
\nmind and life too he is continually growing, with whatever
\nstumblings and long relapses, and he cannot be permanently
\nbound in any one system of ideas or frame of living. The structures in which he lives are incomplete and provisional; even
\nthose which seem the most comprehensive lose their force
\nto stand and are convicted by time of insufficiency and must
\nbe replaced or change. But this at least can be said of the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013124<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nIndian idea that it seized with a remarkable depth and comprehensiveness on the main truths and needs of the whole being,
\non his mind and life and body, his artistic and ethical and intellectual parts of nature, his soul and spirit, and gave them a
\nsubtle and liberal, a profoundly large and high and wise, a
\nsympathetic and yet nobly arduous direction. More cannot
\nbe said for any past or any existing culture. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut there must be in any culture aiming at completeness, not only great and noble governing and inspiring ideas,
\nbut a harmony of forms and rhythms, a mould into which the
\nideas and the life can run and settle. Here we must be prepared
\nfor a lesser perfection, a greater incompleteness. And the
\nreason is that just as the spirit is vaster than its ideas, the ideas
\ntoo are larger than their forms, moulds and rhythms. Form has
\na certain fixity which limits; no form can exhaust or fully
\nexpress the potentialities of the idea or force that gave it birth.
\nNeither can any idea, however great, or any limited play of
\nforce or form bind the infinite spirit : that is the secret of
\nearth’s need of mutation and progress. The idea is only a partial
\nexpression of the spirit. Even within its own limits, on its
\nown lines it ought always to become more supple, to fill itself
\nout with other views, to rise and broaden to new applications,
\nand often it has to lose itself in uplifting transformations of its
\nown meaning into vaster significances or fuse itself into new
\nand richer syntheses. In the history of all great cultures therefore we find a passage through three periods, for this passage
\nis a necessary consequence of this truth of things. There is a
\nfirst period of large and loose formation; there is a second period
\nin which we see a fixing of forms, moulds and rhythms; and
\nthere is a closing or a critical period of superannuation, decay
\nand disintegration. This last stage is the supreme crisis in the
\nlife of a civilisation; if it cannot transform itself, it enters
\ninto a slow lingering decline or else collapses in a death agony
\nbrought about by the rapid impact of stronger and more immediately living though not necessarily greater or truer powers <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013125<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nor formations. But if it is able to shake itself free of limiting
\nforms, to renovate its ideas and to give a new scope to its
\nspirit, if it is willing to understand, master and assimilate novel
\ngrowths and necessities, then there is a rebirth, a fresh lease
\nof life and expansion, a true renascence. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIndian civilisation passed in its own large and leisurely manner through all these stages. Its first period was that of a great
\nspiritual outflowering in which the forms were supple, flexible
\nand freely responsive to its essential spirit. That fluid movement
\npassed away into an age of strong intellectuality in which all
\nwas fixed into distinct, sufficiently complex, but largely treated
\nand still supple forms and rhythms. There came as a consequence a period of richly crystallised fixity shaken by crises
\nwhich were partly met by a change of ideas and a modification
\nof forms. But the hard binding of set forms triumphed at
\nlast and there was a decline of the inspiring spirit, a stagnation
\nof living force, a progressive decay of the outward structure.
\nThe decay was accompanied and at once arrested for a moment
\nand hastened in the end by the impact of other cultures. Today
\nwe are in the midst of a violent and decisive crisis brought
\nabout by the inflooding of the West and of all for which it stands.
\nAn upheaval resulted that began with the threat of a total death
\nand irretrievable destruction of the culture; but its course is
\nnow uplifted on the contrary by the strong hope of a great
\nrevival, transmutation and renascence. Each of these three
\nstages has its special significance for the student of culture. If
\nwe would understand the essential spirit of Indian civilisation,
\nwe must go back to its first formative period, the early epoch
\nof the Veda and the Upanishads, its heroic creative seed-time.
\nIf we would study the fixed forms of its spirit and discern
\nthe thing it eventually realised as the basic rhythm of its life,
\nwe must look with an observing eye at the later middle period
\nof the Shastras and the classic writings, the age of philosophy
\nand science, legislation and political and social theory and
\nmany-sided critical thought, religious fixation, art, sculpture, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013126<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\npainting, architecture. If we would discover the limitations,
\nthe points at which it stopped short and failed to develop its
\nwhole or its true spirit, we must observe closely the unhappy
\ndisclosures of its period of decline. If, finally, we would discover the directions it is likely to follow in its transformation,
\nwe must try to fathom what lies beneath the still confused
\nmovements of its crisis of renascence. None of these can indeed
\nbe cut clean apart from each other; for what developed in one
\nperiod is already forecast and begun in the preceding age : but still on a certain large and imprecise scale we can make these
\ndistinctions and they are necessary for a discerning analytic
\nview. But at present we are only concerned with the developed forms and the principal rhythms which persisted through
\nits greater eras. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe problem which Indian culture had to solve was that
\nof a firm outward basis on which to found the practical development of its spirit and its idea in life. How are we to take
\nthe natural life of man and, while allowing it sufficient scope
\nand variety and freedom, yet to subject it to a law, canon,
\ndharma, a law of function, a law of type, a law of each actual
\nunideal human tendency and a law too of highest ideal intention ? And how again are we to point that dharma towards its
\nexceeding by fulfilment and cessation of its disciplinary purpose
\nin the secure freedom of the spiritual life ? Indian culture
\nfrom an early stage seized upon a double idea for its own
\nguidance which it threw into a basic system of the individual
\nlife in the social frame. This was the double system of the
\nfour Varnas and the four Ashramas,\u2014four graded classes
\nof society and four successive stages of a developing human
\nlife. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe ancient Chaturvarnya must not be judged by its
\nlater disintegrated degeneration and gross meaningless parody,
\nthe caste system. But neither was it precisely the system of
\nthe classes which we find in other civilisations, priesthood,
\nnobility, merchant class and serfs or labourers. It may have <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013127<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nhad outwardly the same starting-point, but it was given a very
\ndifferent revealing significance. The ancient Indian idea was
\nthat man falls by his nature into four types. There are, first
\nand highest, the man of learning and thought and knowledge; next, the man of power and action, ruler, warrior, leader,
\nadministrator; third in the scale, the economic man, producer
\nand wealth-getter, the merchant, artisan, cultivator : these
\nwere the twice-born, who received the initiation. Brahmin,
\nKshatriya, Vaishya. Last came the more undeveloped human
\ntype, not yet fit for these steps of the scale, unintellectual,
\nwithout force, incapable of creation or intelligent production,
\nthe man fit only for unskilled labour and menial service, the
\nShudra. The economic order of society was cast in the form
\nand gradation of these four types. The Brahmin class was
\ncalled upon to give the community its priests, thinkers, men of
\nletters, legislators, scholars, religious leaders and guides.
\nThe Kshatriya class gave it its kings, warriors, governors
\nand administrators. The Vaishya order supplied it with
\nits producers, agriculturists, craftsmen, artisans, merchants
\nand traders. The Shudra class ministered to its need of menials
\nand servants. As far as this went, there was nothing peculiar
\nin the system except its extraordinary durability and, perhaps,
\nthe supreme position given to religion, thought and learning,
\nnot only at the top of the scale,\u2014for that can be parallelled
\nfrom one or two other civilisations,\u2014but as the dominant
\npower. The Indian idea in its purity fixed the status of a man
\nin this order not by his birth, but by his capacities and his
\ninner nature, and, if this rule had been strictly observed, that
\nwould have been a very clear mark of distinctness, a superiority of a unique kind. But even the best society is always
\nsomething of a machine and gravitates towards the material
\nsign and standard, and to found truly the social order upon
\nthis finer psychological basis would have been in those times a
\ndifficult and vain endeavour. In practice we find that birth
\nbecame the basis of the Varna. It is elsewhere that we must <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013128<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nlook for the strong distinguishing mark which has made of
\nthis social structure a thing apart and sole in its type. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAt no time indeed was the adherence to the economic rule
\nquite absolute. The early ages show a considerable flexibility
\nwhich was not quite lost in the process of complex crystallisation into a fixed form. And even in the greater rigidity of the
\nlatter-day caste system there has been in practice a confusion
\nof economic functions. The vitality of a vigorous community
\ncannot obey at every point the indications of a pattern and
\ntradition cut by the mechanising mind. Moreover there was
\nalways a difference between the ideal theory of the system and
\nits rougher unideal practice. For the material side of an idea
\nor system has always its weaknesses even in its best times, and
\nthe final defect of all systems of this kind is that they stiffen
\ninto a fixed hierarchy which cannot maintain permanently its
\npurity or the utility it was meant to serve. It becomes a soulless form and prolongs itself in a state of corruption, degeneracy
\nor oppressive formalism when the uses that justified it are no
\nlonger in existence. Even when its ways can no longer be made
\nconsistent with the developing needs of the growth of humanity,
\nthe formal system persists and corrupts the truth of life and
\nblocks progress. Indian society did not escape this general
\nlaw; it was overtaken by these deficiencies, lost the true sense
\nof the thing with which it set out to embody and degenerated
\ninto a chaos of castes, developing evils which we are now
\nmuch embarrassed to eliminate. But it was a well-devised and
\nnecessary scheme in its time; it gave the community the firm
\nand nobly built stability it needed for the security of its cultural
\ndevelopment,\u2014a stability hardly parallelled in any other
\nculture. And, as interpreted by the Indian genius, it became
\na greater thing than a mere outward economic, political and
\nsocial mechanism intended to serve the needs and convenience
\nof the collective life. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nFor the real greatness of the Indian system of the four Varnas did not lie in its well-ordered division of economic  <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013129<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nfunction; its true originality and permanent value was in the
\nethical and spiritual content which the thinkers and builders
\nof the society poured into these forms. This inner content
\nstarted with the idea that the intellectual, ethical and spiritual
\ngrowth of the individual is the central need of the race. Society
\nitself is only the necessary framework for this growth; it is a
\nsystem of relations which provides it with its needed medium,
\nfield and conditions and with a nexus of helpful influences.
\nA secure place had to be found in the community for the
\nindividual man from which he could at once serve these relations, helping to maintain the society and pay it his debt of
\nduty and assistance, and proceed to his own self-development
\nwith the best possible aid from the communal life. Birth
\nwas accepted in practice as the first gross and natural indicator ; for heredity to the Indian mind has always ranked as
\na factor of the highest importance : it was even taken in later
\nthought as a sign of the nature and as an index to the surroundings which the individual had prepared for himself
\nby his past soul-development in former existences. But
\nbirth is not and cannot be the sole test of Varna. The intellectual capacity of the man, the turn of his temperament,
\nhis ethical nature, his spiritual stature, these are the important
\nfactors. There was erected therefore a rule of family living,
\na system of individual observance and self-training, a force
\nof upbringing and education which would bring out and
\nformulate these essential things. The individual man was
\ncarefully trained in the capacities, habits and attainments,
\nand habituated to the sense of honour and duty necessary for
\nthe discharge of his allotted function in life. He was scrupulously equipped with the science of the thing he had to do,
\nthe best way to succeed in it as an interest, artha,<\/i> and to
\nattain to the highest rule, canon and recognised perfection
\nof its activities, economic, political, sacerdotal, literary,
\nscholastic or whatever else they might be. Even the most
\ndespised pursuits had their education, their law and canon, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013130<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ntheir ambition of success, their sense of honour in the discharge
\nand scruple of well-doing, their dignity of a ‘fixed standard of
\nperfection, and it was because they had these things that
\neven the lowest and least attractive could be in a certain degree
\na means of self-finding and ordered self-satisfaction. In addition to this special function and training there were the general
\naccomplishments, sciences, arts, graces of life, those which
\nsatisfy the intellectual, aesthetic and hedonistic powers of
\nhuman nature. These in ancient India were many and various,
\nwere taught with minuteness, thoroughness and subtlety and
\nwere available to all men of culture. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut while there was provision for all these things and it
\nwas made with a vivid liberality of the life-spirit and a noble
\nsense of order, the spirit of Indian culture did not like other
\nancient cultures, stop here. It said to the individual: "This
\nis only the substructure : it is of a pressing importance indeed,
\nbut still not the last and greatest thing. When you have paid
\nyour debt to society, filled well and admirably your place in
\nits life, helped its maintenance and continuity and taken
\nfrom it your legitimate and desired satisfactions, -there still
\nremains the greatest thing of all. There is still your own
\nself, the inner you, the soul which is a spiritual portion of
\nthe Infinite, one in its essence with the Eternal. This self,
\nthis soul in you have to find. you are here for that, and
\nit is from the place I have provided for you in life and by this
\ntraining that you can begin to find it. For to each Varna I
\nhave supplied its highest ideal of manhood, the highest ideal
\nway of which your nature is capable. By directing your life
\nand nature in its own law of being towards that perfection,
\nyou can not only grow towards the ideal and enter into harmony
\nwith universal nature but come also into nearness and contact
\nwith a greater nature of divinity and move towards transcendence. That is the real object before you. From the life-basis I give you, you can rise to the liberating knowledge
\nwhich brings a spiritual release, moksa.<\/i> Then you can grow <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013131<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nout of all these limitations in which you are being trained; you can grow through the fulfilled Dharma and beyond it
\ninto the eternity of your self, into the fullness, freedom, greatness and bliss of the immortal spirit; for that is what each
\nman is behind the veils of his nature. When you have done
\nthat you are free. Then you have gone beyond all the dharmas; you are then a universal soul, one with all existence,
\nand you can either act in that divine liberty for the good of
\nall living things or else turn to enjoy in solitude the bliss of
\neternity and transcendence." The whole system of society,
\nfounded on the four Varnas, was made a harmonious means
\nfor the elevation and progress of the soul, mind and life from
\nthe natural pursuit of interest and desire, first to the perfection of the law of our being, Dharma, and at the end to
\na highest spiritual freedom. For man’s true end in life must
\nbe always this realisation of his own immortal self, this entry
\nin its secret of an infinite and eternal existence. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Indian system did not entirely leave this difficult
\ngrowth to the individual’s unaided inner initiative. It supplied him with a framework ; it gave him a scale and gradation
\nfor his life which could be made into a kind of ladder rising
\nin that sense. This high convenience was the object of the
\nfour Ashramas. Life was divided into four natural periods
\nand each of them marked out a stage in the working out of
\nthis cultural idea of living. There was the period of the
\nstudent, the period of the householder, the period of the
\nrecluse or forest-dweller, the period of the free super-social
\nman, parivrājaka.<\/i> The student life was framed to lay the
\ngroundwork of what the man had to know, do and be. It gave
\na thorough training in the necessary arts, sciences, branches
\nof knowledge, but it was still more insistent on the discipline
\nof the ethical nature and in earlier days contained as an indispensable factor a grounding in the Vedic formula of spiritual
\nknowledge. In the earlier days this training was given in
\nsuitable surroundings far away from the life of cities and the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013132<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nteacher was one who had himself passed through the round
\nof this circle of living and, very usually, even, one who had
\narrived at some remarkable realisation of spiritual knowledge.
\nBut subsequently education became more intellectual and
\nmundane; it was imparted in cities and universities and
\naimed less at an inner preparation of character and knowledge
\nand more at instruction and the training of the intelligence.
\nBut in the beginning the Aryan man was really prepared in
\nsome degree for the four great objects of his life, artha, kama,
\ndharma, moksa.<\/i> Entering into the householder stage to live
\nout his knowledge, he was able to serve there the three first
\nhuman objects; he satisfied his natural being and its interests
\nand desire to take the joy of life, he paid his debt to the society
\nand its demands and by the way he discharged his life functions he prepared himself for the last greatest purpose of his
\nexistence. In the third stage he retired to the forest and
\nworked out in a certain seclusion the truth of his spirit. He
\nlived in a broad freedom from the stricter social bonds; but
\nif he so willed, gathering the young around him or receiving
\nthe inquirer and seeker, he could leave his knowledge to the
\nnew rising generation as an educator or a spiritual teacher.
\nIn the last stage of life, he was free to throw off every remaining tie and to wander over the world in an extreme
\nspiritual detachment from all the forms of social life, satisfying
\nonly the barest necessities, communing with the universal
\nspirit, making his soul ready for eternity. This circle was not
\nobligatory on all. The great majority never went beyond the
\ntwo first stages; many passed away in the vānaprastha<\/i> or
\nforest stage. Only the rare few made the last extreme venture and took the life of the wandering recluse. But this
\nprofoundly conceived cycle gave a scheme which kept the
\nfull course of the human spirit in its view; it could be taken
\nadvantage of by all according to their actual growth and in its
\nfullness by those who were sufficiently developed in their
\npresent birth to complete the circle. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013133<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nOn this first firm and noble basis Indian civilisation grew
\nto its maturity and became a thing rich, splendid and unique.
\nWhile it filled the view with the last mountain prospect of a
\nsupreme spiritual elevation, it did not neglect the life of the
\nlevels. It lived between the busy life of the city and village,
\nthe freedom and seclusion of the forest and the last overarching
\nillimitable ether. Moving firmly between life and death it
\nsaw beyond both and cut out a hundred high roads to immortality. It developed the external nature and drew it into
\nthe inner self, it enriched life to raise it into the spirit. Thus
\nfounded, thus trained, the ancient Indian race grew to astonishing heights of culture and civilisation; it lived with a
\nnoble, well-based, ample and vigorous order and freedom; it developed a great literature, sciences, arts, crafts, industries ; it rose to the highest possible ideals and no mean
\npractice of knowledge and culture, of arduous greatness and
\nheroism, of kindness, philanthropy and human sympathy
\nand oneness, it laid the inspired basis of wonderful spiritual
\nphilosophies; it examined the secrets of external nature and
\ndiscovered and lived the boundless and miraculous truths of
\nthe inner being, it fathomed self and understood and possessed
\nthe world. As the civilisation grew in richness and complexity, it lost indeed the first grand simplicity of its early
\norder. The intellect towered and widened, but intuition
\nwaned or retreated into the hearts of the saints and adepts and
\nmystics. A greater stress came to be laid on scientific system,
\naccuracy and order, not only in all the things of the life and
\nmind, but even in the things of the spirit; the free flood of
\nintuitive knowledge was forced to run in hewn channels.
\nSociety became more artificial and complex, less free and
\nnoble; more of a bond on the individual, it was less a field
\nfor the growth of his spiritual faculties. The old fine integral
\nharmony gave place to an exaggerated stress on one or other
\nof its elemental factors. Artha<\/i> and kāma,<\/i> interest and desire
\nwere in some directions developed at the expense of the <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013134<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ndharma.<\/i> The lines of the dharma<\/i> were filled and stamped in
\nwith so rigid a distinctness as to stand in the way of the freedom of the spirit. Spiritual liberation was pursued in hostility
\nto life and not as its full-orbed result and high crowning.
\nBut still some strong basis of the old knowledge remained to
\ninspire, to harmonise, to keep alive the soul of India. Even
\nwhen deterioration came and a slow collapse, even when the
\nlife of the community degenerated into an uneasily petrified
\nignorance and confusion, the old spiritual aim and tradition
\nremained to sweeten and humanise and save in its worst days
\nthe Indian peoples. For we see that it continually swept
\nback on the race in new waves and high outbursts of life-giving energy or leaped up in intense kindlings of the spiritualised mind or heart, even as it now rises once more in all
\nits strength to give the impulse of a great renascence. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage\u2013135<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

II   A RATIONALISTIC CRITIC ON INDIAN CULTURE   CHAPTER I   WHEN we try to appreciate a culture, and when that culture is the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-foundations-of-indian-culture","wpcat-66-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}