IV

To-day the real East remains unexplored. The blindness of contempt is

more hopeless than the blindness of ignorance; for contempt kills the

light which ignorance merely leaves unignited. The East is waiting to

be understood by the Western races, in order not only to be able to

give what is true in her, but also to be confident of her own mission.

In Indian history, the meeting of the Mussulman and the Hindu produced

Akbar, the object of whose dream was the unification of hearts and

ideals. It had all the glowing enthusiasm of a religion, and it

produced an immediate and a vast result even in his own lifetime.

But the fact still remains that the Western mind, after centuries of

contact with the East, has not evolved the enthusiasm of a chivalrous

ideal which can bring this age to its fulfilment. It is everywhere

raising thorny hedges of exclusion and offering human sacrifices to

national self-seeking. It has intensified the mutual feelings of envy

among Western races themselves, as they fight over their spoils and

display a carnivorous pride in their snarling rows of teeth.

We must again guard our minds from any encroaching distrust of the

individuals of a nation. The active love of humanity and the spirit of

martyrdom for the cause of justice and truth which I have met with in

the Western countries have been a great lesson and inspiration to me.

I have no doubt in my mind that the West owes its true greatness, not

so much to its marvellous training of intellect, as to its spirit of

service devoted to the welfare of man. Therefore I speak with a

personal feeling of pain and sadness about the collective power which

is guiding the helm of Western civilisation. It is a passion, not an

ideal. The more success it has brought to Europe, the more costly it

will prove to her at last, when the accounts have to be rendered. And

the signs are unmistakable, that the accounts have been called for.

The time has come when Europe must know that the forcible parasitism

which she has been practising upon the two large Continents of the

world--the two most unwieldy whales of humanity--must be causing to

her moral nature a gradual atrophy and degeneration.

As an example, let me quote the following extract from the concluding

chapter of _From the Cape to Cairo_, by Messrs. Grogan and Sharp, two

writers who have the power to inculcate their doctrines by precept and

example. In their reference to the African they are candid, as when

they say, "We have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limbs."

These two sentences, carefully articulated, with a smack of

enjoyment, have been more clearly explained in the following

statement, where some sense of that decency which is the attenuated

ghost of a buried conscience, prompts the writers to use the phrase

"compulsory labour" in place of the honest word "slavery"; just as the

modern politician adroitly avoids the word "injunction" and uses the

word "mandate." "Compulsory labour in some form," they say, "is the

corollary of our occupation of the country." And they add: "It is

pathetic, but it is history," implying thereby that moral sentiments

have no serious effect in the history of human beings.

Elsewhere they write: "Either we must give up the country

commercially, or we must make the African work. And mere abuse of

those who point out the impasse cannot change the facts. We must

decide, and soon. Or rather the white man of South Africa will

decide." The authors also confess that they have seen too much of the

world "to have any lingering belief that Western civilisation benefits

native races."

The logic is simple--the logic of egoism. But the argument is

simplified by lopping off the greater part of the premise. For these

writers seem to hold that the only important question for the white

men of South Africa is, how indefinitely to grow fat on ostrich

feathers and diamond mines, and dance jazz dances over the misery and

degradation of a whole race of fellow-beings of a different colour

from their own. Possibly they believe that moral laws have a special

domesticated breed of comfortable concessions for the service of the

people in power. Possibly they ignore the fact that commercial and

political cannibalism, profitably practised upon foreign races, creeps

back nearer home; that the cultivation of unwholesome appetites has

its final reckoning with the stomach which has been made to serve it.

For, after all, man is a spiritual being, and not a mere living

money-bag jumping from profit to profit, and breaking the backbone of

human races in its financial leapfrog.

Such, however, has been the condition of things for more than a

century; and to-day, trying to read the future by the light of the

European conflagration, we are asking ourselves everywhere in the

East: "Is this frightfully overgrown power really great? It can bruise

us from without, but can it add to our wealth of spirit? It can sign

peace treaties, but can it give peace?"

It was about two thousand years ago that all-powerful Rome in one of

its eastern provinces executed on a cross a simple teacher of an

obscure tribe of fishermen. On that day the Roman governor felt no

falling off of his appetite or sleep. On that day there was, on the

one hand, the agony, the humiliation, the death; on the other, the

pomp of pride and festivity in the Governor's palace.

And to-day? To whom, then, shall we bow the head?

Kasmai devaya havisha vidhema?

(To which God shall we offer oblation?)

We know of an instance in our own history of India, when a great

personality, both in his life and voice, struck the keynote of the

solemn music of the soul--love for all creatures. And that music

crossed seas, mountains, and deserts. Races belonging to different

climates, habits, and languages were drawn together, not in the clash

of arms, not in the conflict of exploitation, but in harmony of life,

in amity and peace. That was creation.

When we think of it, we see at once what the confusion of thought was

to which the Western poet, dwelling upon the difference between East

and West, referred when he said, "Never the twain shall meet." It is

true that they are not yet showing any real sign of meeting. But the

reason is because the West has not sent out its humanity to meet the

man in the East, but only its machine. Therefore the poet's line has

to be changed into something like this:

Man is man, machine is machine,

And never the twain shall wed.

You must know that red tape can never be a common human bond; that

official sealing-wax can never provide means of mutual attachment;

that it is a painful ordeal for human beings to have to receive

favours from animated pigeonholes, and condescensions from printed

circulars that give notice but never speak. The presence of the

Western people in the East is a human fact. If we are to gain anything

from them, it must not be a mere sum-total of legal codes and systems

of civil and military services. Man is a great deal more to man than

that. We have our human birthright to claim direct help from the man

of the West, if he has anything great to give us. It must come to us,

not through mere facts in a juxtaposition, but through the

spontaneous sacrifice made by those who have the gift, and therefore

the responsibility.

Earnestly I ask the poet of the Western world to realise and sing to

you with all the great power of music which he has, that the East and

the West are ever in search of each other, and that they must meet not

merely in the fulness of physical strength, but in fulness of truth;

that the right hand, which wields the sword, has the need of the left,

which holds the shield of safety.

The East has its seat in the vast plains watched over by the

snow-peaked mountains and fertilised by rivers carrying mighty volumes

of water to the sea. There, under the blaze of a tropical sun, the

physical life has bedimmed the light of its vigour and lessened its

claims. There man has had the repose of mind which has ever tried to

set itself in harmony with the inner notes of existence. In the

silence of sunrise and sunset, and on star-crowded nights, he has sat

face to face with the Infinite, waiting for the revelation that opens

up the heart of all that there is. He has said, in a rapture of

realisation:

"Hearken to me, ye children of the Immortal, who dwell in the Kingdom

of Heaven. I have known, from beyond darkness, the Supreme Person,

shining with the radiance of the sun."

The man from the East, with his faith in the eternal, who in his soul

had met the touch of the Supreme Person--did he never come to you in

the West and speak to you of the Kingdom of Heaven? Did he not unite

the East and the West in truth, in the unity of one spiritual bond

between all children of the Immortal, in the realisation of one great

Personality in all human persons?

Yes, the East did once meet the West profoundly in the growth of her

life. Such union became possible, because the East came to the West

with the ideal that is creative, and not with the passion that

destroys moral bonds. The mystic consciousness of the Infinite, which

she brought with her, was greatly needed by the man of the West to

give him his balance.

On the other hand, the East must find her own balance in Science--the

magnificent gift that the West can bring to her. Truth has its nest as

well as its sky. That nest is definite in structure, accurate in law

of construction; and though it has to be changed and rebuilt over and

over again, the need of it is never-ending and its laws are eternal.

For some centuries the East has neglected the nest-building of truth.

She has not been attentive to learn its secret. Trying to cross the

trackless infinite, the East has relied solely upon her wings. She has

spurned the earth, till, buffeted by storms, her wings are hurt and

she is tired, sorely needing help. But has she then to be told that

the messenger of the sky and the builder of the nest shall never

meet?