His all-pervading Presence, His all-embracing Love and Power. Then we
turned to the study of Man, and we saw that man evolved, grew from a
Seed of Divinity into the tree in the likeness of the father-tree,
whence the seed was thrown into the world. That he evolved under two
great Laws: the "Law of Reincarnation" and the "Law of Causation,
or Karma". Yesterday, we considered the complex problem of Right
and Wrong, tried to understand the tangled path of action, and to
understand also how, by realising our highest capacities of the moment,
we could rise higher and higher in Knowledge, in Power, and in Love.
To-day we close our study by looking at the "Law of Brotherhood,"
trying to understand what it means, seeing what it implies,
endeavouring then, in the understanding, to see the principles on
which a stable Society may be builded, and to glance forward into the
near future of Humanity, with the changed ideals which will illuminate
the Coming Race.
Now, this word, "Brotherhood," has been used for many ages and held to
cover many different ideals. First of all, let us take the fact that
"Brotherhood" does not and cannot connote equality, save in blood, in
essence; rather does it connote inequality of age and development. As
you know, you have the proclamation talked of so much in the French
Revolution, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," and it has been taken for
granted by many that Liberty and Fraternity imply the middle term,
Equality. Now what is meant by the word "Equality"? If it be meant that
all men are equal in their origin, that every man is born of the Divine
Nature, that every man ultimately will reach the manifested Divinity,
in that sense Equality is true. We all come forth from God, we all
return to God, bearing with us the harvest of our long evolution,
having unfolded potentiality into power. In the beginning and the
ending, men are equal, equally divine in their beginning, equally
divine in their ending; there all men stand on a common platform. But
in the long course of evolution from the seed to the full-grown tree,
in the long unfolding of Divinity, of God manifest in the flesh, in
the long changing struggle between Spirit and Matter, there the races
of mankind stand at different stages of their pilgrimage, and they are
not on a common level, but are divorced the one from the other: While
in Spirit all men are equal, in the flesh men are radically unequal;
for Nature, in her long evolution, knows nothing of equality, and
protests continually by facts against the theory of the eighteenth and
the early nineteenth century. Where is the equality between the man
of genius and the fool? Where is the equality between the stalwart
and healthy man and the man who has inherited a terrible disease?
Where is the equality between the cripple and the athlete? Between
the Saint who has nearly accomplished his pilgrimage, and the savage
who stands at the beginning? It is of no use to repeat a phrase that
flies in the very face of facts and of Nature. Brotherhood connotes
inequality of age, inequality of capacity, and inequality of duty. The
duty of the elder brother is not the duty of the babe in the cradle.
You do not crush the infant of a year old with the heavy burden of the
family that lies on the elder brother, who has passed out into the
struggle of life; and you need to get rid of the cant of a phrase and
to understand the reality of life. You have to realise that the most
that can be asked--because the most that is possible--in the building
up of Society, is that no man shall artificially, by a man-made law or
custom, be placed at an unfair disadvantage so far as those around
him are concerned, but that there shall be equality before the law,
equality of rich and poor before the law, equality of every citizen
in the face of the law. Moreover, you ought to make it your ideal to
give to every man equal opportunities; but you must remember that the
radical inequality lies _in the power to grasp an opportunity_ when it
comes; there is the radical natural inequality that no human society
and no human law can obviate.
But if you realise Brotherhood then you come to a new conception. You
imagine the building of a social system, in which every man who is
born into it shall have the opportunity of developing every faculty
he brings with him into the world. A social system wherein from every
member of the Society there shall be demanded social service according
to his capacity, and to every member shall be given social helping
according to his needs. You change the law of struggle into the law
of life; you change the brute law of the struggle for existence into
the social law of sacrifice. You begin to realise, as Huxley said,
quoting a statement of a Master, an Indian Ṛṣhi, that while the
brute progresses by the law of the survival of the fittest, the man
progresses by the law of self-sacrifice.[1] There you come to the
higher ideal and you see that in an elder brother there is inequality
of age, and therefore inequality of capacity, therefore inequality of
power, and therefore inequality of duty. By the law of love, the strong
exist not for tyranny but for service, and where the weakest members
are found there the tenderest compassion protects them, and saves them
from being trampled under foot. Therefore was it said by one of the
great Prophets of our race, by the Christ of Judæa: "Let the greatest
among you be as he that doth serve." Great is the strength evolved, but
for helping not for trampling; and so the inequalities of Nature are
redressed by an infinite compassion.
Let us see how in the ancient world these principles, or the denial
of these principles, has worked. Now the ancient ideal of Kingship
is drawn from the perfect example in the great White Brotherhood of
the Ṛṣhis of the race, wherein you find a graded order. They call
themselves the "Elder Brothers" of mankind. Those whom we call Masters,
because of Their greatness, They love better the name of Elder Brothers
on whom lies the duty of guidance, of protection, of helping, in order
that the younger brothers of our Humanity may come to stand where
They are standing. There is the perfect Brotherhood. These, older in
evolution than ourselves, wiser because of that longer evolution, these
Jīvanmukṭas, these liberated Spirits, They, who are free by right,
become bound to our earth by love. They remain waiting for the growth
of Their younger brethren; They use Their wisdom to guide them; They
use Their power to protect them; They use Their age to strengthen and
sustain them. There is the ideal of Brotherhood, where Brother means
the Servant of mankind.
And from that early recognition of the Elders in the childhood of
the Root Races of the world, you come to the first great historical
exemplification, the Divine Dynasties, the Divine Kings, as you find
them in Egypt, as you find them in India, to go no further back to
that earlier civilisation of the fourth Race, where in the City of the
Golden Gate, of which the Chinese tell us, the Divine Emperor ruled
with mighty power, and built the great Toltec race into a world-wide
dominion. I will not go back so far, nor will I pause on Egypt,
because here, in India, we have in the still living literature of the
ancient days, the duties laid down which fall upon the Elder Brother
in a Nation, who in those ancient days was the recognised King of the
people. You find ideal Kings, like Shrī Rāmachanḍra, and you can see in
His life, as you can see in the description of the duty of the King,
what, from the standpoint of the Elder Brothers of the race, was meant
by the position of the King. His life is not a life of enjoyment, but
of service and of sacrifice. It is written, that the King remains
awake, in order that his subjects may sleep; that the King toils, in
order that his subjects may enjoy; that the King faces danger, in
order that his people may be protected; that he is the Supporter of
the State, the Guardian of the weak, the Dispenser of Justice to his
people, the Father of the fatherless, and the Husband of the widow.
And so in early days the Ṛṣhi comes to the court of the King, and
questions him how he is ruling his younger brothers. "Have you seen,"
asked Nāraḍa, when He came to a later dynasty, no longer divine; "have
you seen that the artisans are provided with all the materials that
they need for their manufactures and industries? Have you seen that
the agriculturists have a store of seeds, that they are provided with
water, and with agricultural implements? Do you take care that your
soldiers receive their wages? Do you take care that the widows and
orphans of those who have died for you in battle are well provided
for and carefully tended?" And so, this Elder Brother of the race,
coming to this man, divine no longer, but only a human copy of the once
manifested Divine King, pressed on him the duties of his station, and
demanded whether those duties were being rightly exercised. Out of that
great ideal of Kingship has grown the reverence for the modern King,
though he be of smaller stature, and has not often fulfilled his duties
well; for that ideal has printed itself on the heart of mankind, and
the passionate love, the intense loyalty, that go out to a King, who
is in any sense worthy of Kingship, show how the human heart loves to
reverence and to honour, where high power and great position are in any
way worthy of the privileges enjoyed.
And always one great warning went out to those ancient Kings, as spoken
by Bhīṣhma, the Master of Ḍharma, when the blameless King
Yuḍhiṣhthira went to him to ask as to the duties of the Elder Brother
of the Nation. He bade him remember that behind the King was the Law,
the Divine Law, which none might break with impunity. And then those
famous words were spoken that every King should daily remember: "Take
care, O King, of the weak, not of the strong; take care of the weak,
for the tears of the weak undermine the throne of Kings." That is the
great lesson for modern rulers. You may have enemies, you can fight
them and conquer them; you may have difficulties, you can surmount
them and turn them into steps upwards; but take care of the poor, take
care of the miserable, take care of the starving of your realm. For
of these, said Bhīṣhma, to whose cry no man listens, the cry enters
into the ears of God, who calls on His representative to give account
for the miseries of the poor, and who avenges their wrongs by the
destruction of the careless King. Now there lies the old ideal.
But many of the States of the past were built on the denial of this
great Law of Brotherhood. Look at Babylonia; look at the later Egypt;
look at the so-called Republics of Greece; look at the masses of
the people under the Roman Empire; what do you find? You find that
every great Empire of the later past has been built on a foundation
of the misery of the lowest of the people. You find that the vast
majority in these Empires were slaves--slaves in name, as well as in
reality. Brotherhood was denied; the weak were trampled on; strength
was used to plunder and not to cherish; with the result that every
such Empire has faded from the pages of history. When we want to know
their stories we have to burrow in their sepulchres, for they built
against the Law of Brotherhood, and the Law has broken them into
pieces, and they are dead. Now of all the ancient Empires, Babylonia,
Assyria, Nineveh, Egypt, Greece, Rome, all these have passed away;
only one Nation remains of that splendid circle of civilisations in
the past; only one people, contemporary with those mighty Empires, is
still a living Nation; they are dead, nay, they are buried, and only
the fragments of their bones remain; but one of their contemporaries
lives in our modern days, for the India, that traded with Babylonia
in the might of her prosperity, is a living Nation in the twentieth
century. And why? because in her teaching, because in her religion,
because in her literature, she taught the Law of Brotherhood, though
later she ceased to live it out in practice, and then began her long
downward course. The old theory of the castes was a law of Brotherhood;
the Shūḍra who serves, said Manu, he is to be the younger child in
your family. There is no humiliation in being a younger child in a
family; there is no shame in being one of the juniors of the circle
of brothers and sisters; nay, it means the enjoyment of the tenderest
compassion; it means a gentle protective attitude; it means that when
anything is wanted, the younger shall have what there is and the elder
shall go without. That was the old ideal of the Shūḍra, who was to
be the young and undeveloped soul. Let him in the National household
be the cherished youngling of the family; let him be as your younger
son. Then came restrictions with the growing age of the soul. The
Vaishya--he was to accumulate wealth; he was to enjoy; he was to be
the centre of the great family life, the parent, the supporter of the
whole National household. Certainly wealth was to be acquired, but in
order to be dispensed--wealth to support the remaining Orders in the
State. And that charity that you still find in India, the charity which
is of the older days rather than of to-day, is still ingrained in the
whole Vaishya caste. For though they will gather wealth--pie by pie,
anna by anna, rupee by rupee, they give it away in lakhs and crores
for the use of the people. All that is wanted in this charity is to
change the direction. There is no use in letting fertilising water run
over rocks, because they were once fields; turn it into the fields of
to-day, which will then blossom as the rose. I say of the charity of
this great wealth-caste, the merchants, the traders, of modern India,
that they should turn the wealth they give away so largely into the
fertilising streams which will nourish the National fields. Their
duty as brothers who are working for the National household, is not
only to build temples, to gild the outside of those temples of Ḍevas.
What is the use of a temple, if the worshippers are not there? And if
you let your youths grope through their studies without knowledge of
religion, of what avail to build a temple which will be left empty by
them in their manhood? It is the young who need training in religion
and in morality, and such education is stopped for lack of the Vaishya
liberality. Education is left in the hands of Government, whereas it is
the duty of the householders of the Nation. Education under National
control, Education in which religion shall form an integral part of
the curriculum, that is what India is demanding to-day, and what many
are struggling to gain. That Central Hinḍū College which we built
in Benares, which has now flowered into the great Hinḍū University,
in that you have an attempt, partly frustrated, I admit, to have a
University under National control; down in the South, in the great
foundation of a merchant of Madras, Pachaiyappa, there you have also
the possibility of building up out of a College, a University under
National control.
And remember that in this matter, the Indian States under their own
Princes are showing the way in which Education should be developed.
H. H. the Nizam, the Ruler of Hyderabad, was first of the Indian
Princes who gave the order that in every State school in his realm
religion should be taught. The religion of Islām to the Musalmāns,
the Hinḍū religion to the Hinḍūs. And he took our textbooks from the
Central Hinḍū College in order that his Hinḍū subjects might be
taught along liberal orthodox lines; it was a Musalmān Minister of
Education who sent out the decree that through the kingdom of Hyderabad
every child should be trained in his father's religion, and that
religious education should be a part of the duty of the State. And
then, H. H. the Maharaja of Mysore took up the same line, and in the
State Schools of Mysore, religion is an integral part of education. So
it is in some of the Rājput States; so it is in some of the Kathiawar
States; and these Indian Princes are showing the way to a religious
education, that shall be National without being sectarian, that shall
not proselytise, that shall not turn boys away from their ancestral
faith, but shall respect the religion of the parents, and bring up the
children in the faith into which they were born. But you see how the
realisation of this needs the charity of the great Vaishya caste, in
order that the money may be available which shall make the schools
under National control the equals of the Government establishments.
Then, in that caste system, you come to the Kṣhaṭṭriya, from whom
more was demanded than from the Vaishya. He had the right to splendour;
he had the right to enjoy; he had the right to wealth; but on one
condition: he must be willing to sacrifice everything, if the safety
of the people demanded it. From him was asked the offering of limb,
the offering of life. If he ruled, he must be first in the battle
as well as first in the pageant, and he must learn to give up life,
family, love, and all that makes life joyous, if the people were in
need of protection, and if the order of the State were threatened.
And then came the Brāhmaṇa, the teacher, the wise man, the educator
of the people. He was not to be wealthy save in wisdom; he was not
to gratify desires, but was to be the mouth of God, pure in conduct,
ascetic in life; he was to show that the wise man needed not wealth,
and that the duty of wisdom was to teach the people. A splendid theory,
carried out for many ages. All is in confusion now. The ḍharmas of the
castes have broken into pieces, and with the ḍharmas the reality has
disappeared. And so the Brāhmaṇa the elder brother, is a lawyer, a
merchant, a physician, or anything else, an engine driver sometimes,
but seldom a teacher from a sense of ḍharma. And with the old duty, the
old reverence has passed away; for only when the elders live up to
their duties can the youngers be asked to give them reverence. And so
now, Indian Society has to be rebuilt. It has lived, as I have said,
because the Law of Brotherhood was its centre, its theory, though its
practical denial brought on it the judgment of decay. We find now in
our India a mass of conquered people, a slave population in everything
but name. The "untouchable" too often goes so foul in body, so foul
in speech, in food, that the cleanly shrink from personal contact,
and they are left in their foulness, their degradation. But if it be
true that the tears of the weak undermine the throne of Kings, what
of the denial of Brotherhood which has made this lowest population in
our midst? The sweeper, the scavenger, those who perform the hardest
duties in Society, they are trampled under foot. India cannot live, if
she persist in that denial of Brotherhood, which leaves one section of
her population untouchable by the remaining cleanlier people. They were
conquered, they were trampled on, they were made outcastes, every foul
duty was made their work; they were sacrificed to keep you clean; they
were untouchable that you might be refined; they were left in ignorance
that you might be educated; and they were degraded that you might be
raised. Do you think that the cries of the miserable have not entered
into the ears of God? And He looked upon India, and made a stern
decree: As you enslave your brethren, you shall yourselves be enslaved.
What ought to be the attitude of Society towards the man, the class,
that makes possible cleanliness, refinement and delicacy of life? If
you had to clean out your own foul places, if you had to sweep your
yards and your streets, would you be as delicate, as refined, as you
are to-day? But if these men and women do these humble offices in order
that you may live in cleanliness, ought you not to repay them with
gratitude and not with contempt, with respect and not with opprobrium?
They make your lives possible; your children will have to do these
things, your wife and your children, if the scavengers are not there to
do the work, and you treat contemptuously those who make possible your
civilised life. There lies your crime as a Nation against Brotherhood,
and India need not expect to stand high among the Nations of the world,
until she sets herself to this work of redeeming her own outcaste
population. You are not alone. Other Nations are similar to you. In the
country whence my body comes one-tenth of the population is degraded,
like your one-sixth. One-tenth of the London population die in the
work-house, the prison, the hospital. But I am bound to say to you,
though I am sorry to say it, that you remain asleep while England is
awake to her duty to her outcaste population, and she is beginning to
redeem them from the degradation in which hitherto they have lived. She
is educating them, and where education is, there refinement inevitably
follows. She is beginning to realise that the lowest work ought to be
the shortest. That the lowest work has a right to decent living. That
if a man be sacrificed to social necessities, he should be repaid by a
leisure which would enable him to live above the degrading tendencies
of the necessary surroundings of his work. The British are building
houses for them, they are educating their children, they are helping
them to live in decency, and so, they are gaining the right to enjoy
the freedom they have won. And to you, my Indian brethren, I would say,
that if you hold up your hands to Īshvara and pray that liberty may be
your own, those hands will never be filled with liberty until you have
poured out freedom among your own people, and have begun to redeem your
miserable slave population. For Justice is the Divine Law. Those who
oppress shall be oppressed; those who trample shall be trampled on;
those who make others outcastes shall be outcastes themselves. Until
you obey the law of Brotherhood in your dealings with these younger
brothers, ignorant, degraded, helpless, you will not win the smile of
the Ḍeva of India, nor have His mighty force running upon your side to
redeem. But you are waking up, you are beginning to realise your duty.
Schools must be scattered over the whole country for the education of
the submerged classes; every such school is a temple of Brotherhood,
and is quickening the coming of the salvation of the Indian Nation.