_Children, do you want to know by what your hearts should be guided?
Throw aside your longings and strivings after that which is null and
void; get rid of your erroneous thoughts about happiness and wisdom, and
your empty and insincere desires. Dispense with these and you will know
Love._ KRISHNA.
_Be not the destroyers of yourselves. Arise to your true Being, and then
you will have nothing to fear._ KRISHNA.
New justifications have now appeared in place of the antiquated,
obsolete, religious ones. These new justifications are just as
inadequate as the old ones, but as they are new their futility cannot
immediately be recognized by the majority of men. Besides this, those
who enjoy power propagate these new sophistries and support them so
skilfully that they seem irrefutable even to many of those who
suffer from the oppression these theories seek to justify. These new
justifications are termed 'scientific'. But by the term 'scientific' is
understood just what was formerly understood by the term 'religious':
just as formerly everything called 'religious' was held to be
unquestionable simply because it was called religious, so now all that
is called 'scientific' is held to be unquestionable. In the present case
the obsolete religious justification of violence which consisted in the
recognition of the supernatural personality of the God-ordained ruler
('there is no power but of God') has been superseded by the 'scientific'
justification which puts forward, first, the assertion that because the
coercion of man by man has existed in all ages, it follows that such
coercion must continue to exist. This assertion that people should
continue to live as they have done throughout past ages rather than
as their reason and conscience indicate, is what 'science' calls
'the historic law'. A further 'scientific' justification lies in the
statement that as among plants and wild beasts there is a constant
struggle for existence which always results in the survival of
the fittest, a similar struggle should be carried on among human
beings--beings, that is, who are gifted with intelligence and love;
faculties lacking in the creatures subject to the struggle for
existence and survival of the fittest. Such is the second 'scientific'
justification.
The third, most important, and unfortunately most widespread
justification is, at bottom, the age-old religious one just a little
altered: that in public life the suppression of some for the protection
of the majority cannot be avoided--so that coercion is unavoidable
however desirable reliance on love alone might be in human intercourse.
The only difference in this justification by pseudo-science consists in
the fact that, to the question why such and such people and not others
have the right to decide against whom violence may and must be
used, pseudo-science now gives a different reply to that given by
religion--which declared that the right to decide was valid because it
was pronounced by persons possessed of divine power. 'Science' says
that these decisions represent the will of the people, which under a
constitutional form of government is supposed to find expression in all
the decisions and actions of those who are at the helm at the moment.
Such are the scientific justifications of the principle of coercion.
They are not merely weak but absolutely invalid, yet they are so much
needed by those who occupy privileged positions that they believe in
them as blindly as they formerly believed in the immaculate conception,
and propagate them just as confidently. And the unfortunate majority of
men bound to toil is so dazzled by the pomp with which these 'scientific
truths' are presented, that under this new influence it accepts these
scientific stupidities for holy truth, just as it formerly accepted
the pseudo-religious justifications; and it continues to submit to the
present holders of power who are just as hard-hearted but rather more
numerous than before.
V
_Who am I? I am that which thou hast searched for since thy baby eyes
gazed wonderingly upon the world, whose horizon hides this real life
from thee. I am that which in thy heart thou hast prayed for, demanded
as thy birthright, although thou hast not known what it was. I am
that which has lain in thy soul for hundreds and thousands of years.
Sometimes I lay in thee grieving because thou didst not recognize me;
sometimes I raised my head, opened my eyes, and extended my arms calling
thee either tenderly and quietly, or strenuously, demanding that thou
shouldst rebel against the iron chains which bound thee to the earth._