I
The impotent man says: "That which has come to my share is mine."
And the weak man assents. But the lesson of the whole world is:
"That is really mine which I can snatch away." My country does
not become mine simply because it is the country of my birth. It
becomes mine on the day when I am able to win it by force.
Every man has a natural right to possess, and therefore greed is
natural. It is not in the wisdom of nature that we should be
content to be deprived. What my mind covets, my surroundings
must supply. This is the only true understanding between our
inner and outer nature in this world. Let moral ideals remain
merely for those poor anaemic creatures of starved desire whose
grasp is weak. Those who can desire with all their soul and
enjoy with all their heart, those who have no hesitation or
scruple, it is they who are the anointed of Providence. Nature
spreads out her riches and loveliest treasures for their benefit.
They swim across streams, leap over walls, kick open doors, to
help themselves to whatever is worth taking. In such a getting
one can rejoice; such wresting as this gives value to the thing
taken.
Nature surrenders herself, but only to the robber. For she
delights in this forceful desire, this forceful abduction. And
so she does not put the garland of her acceptance round the lean,
scraggy neck of the ascetic. The music of the wedding march is
struck. The time of the wedding I must not let pass. My heart
therefore is eager. For, who is the bridegroom? It is I. The
bridegroom's place belongs to him who, torch in hand, can come in
time. The bridegroom in Nature's wedding hall comes unexpected
and uninvited.
Ashamed? No, I am never ashamed! I ask for whatever I want, and
I do not always wait to ask before I take it. Those who are
deprived by their own diffidence dignify their privation by the
name of modesty. The world into which we are born is the world
of reality. When a man goes away from the market of real things
with empty hands and empty stomach, merely filling his bag with
big sounding words, I wonder why he ever came into this hard
world at all. Did these men get their appointment from the
epicures of the religious world, to play set tunes on sweet,
pious texts in that pleasure garden where blossom airy nothings?
I neither affect those tunes nor do I find any sustenance in
those blossoms.
What I desire, I desire positively, superlatively. I want to
knead it with both my hands and both my feet; I want to smear it
all over my body; I want to gorge myself with it to the full.
The scrannel pipes of those who have worn themselves out by their
moral fastings, till they have become flat and pale like starved
vermin infesting a long-deserted bed, will never reach my ear.
I would conceal nothing, because that would be cowardly. But if
I cannot bring myself to conceal when concealment is needful,
that also is cowardly. Because you have your greed, you build
your walls. Because I have my greed, I break through them. You
use your power: I use my craft. These are the realities of life.
On these depend kingdoms and empires and all the great
enterprises of men.
As for those __avatars__ who come down from their paradise to
talk to us in some holy jargon--their words are not real.
Therefore, in spite of all the applause they get, these sayings
of theirs only find a place in the hiding corners of the weak.
They are despised by those who are strong, the rulers of the
world. Those who have had the courage to see this have won
success, while those poor wretches who are dragged one way by
nature and the other way by these ava tars, they set one foot in
the boat of the real and the other in the boat of the unreal, and
thus are in a pitiable plight, able neither to advance nor to
keep their place.
There are many men who seem to have been born only with an
obsession to die. Possibly there is a beauty, like that of a
sunset, in this lingering death in life which seems to fascinate
them. Nikhil lives this kind of life, if life it may be called.
Years ago, I had a great argument with him on this point.
"It is true," he said, "that you cannot get anything except by
force. But then what is this force? And then also, what is this
getting? The strength I believe in is the strength of
renouncing."
"So you," I exclaimed, "are infatuated with the glory of
bankruptcy."
"Just as desperately as the chick is infatuated about the
bankruptcy of its shell," he replied. "The shell is real enough,
yet it is given up in exchange for intangible light and air. A
sorry exchange, I suppose you would call it?"
When once Nikhil gets on to metaphor, there is no hope of making
him see that he is merely dealing with words, not with realities.
Well, well, let him be happy with his metaphors. We are the
flesh-eaters of the world; we have teeth and nails; we pursue and
grab and tear. We are not satisfied with chewing in the evening
the cud of the grass we have eaten in the morning. Anyhow, we
cannot allow your metaphor-mongers to bar the door to our
sustenance. In that case we shall simply steal or rob, for we
must live.
People will say that I am starting some novel theory just because
those who are moving in this world are in the habit of talking
differently though they are really acting up to it all the time.
Therefore they fail to understand, as I do, that this is the only
working moral principle. In point of fact, I know that my idea
is not an empty theory at all, for it has been proved in
practical life. I have found that my way always wins over the
hearts of women, who are creatures of this world of reality and
do not roam about in cloud-land, as men do, in idea-filled
balloons.
Women find in my features, my manner, my gait, my speech, a
masterful passion--not a passion dried thin with the heat of
asceticism, not a passion with its face turned back at every step
in doubt and debate, but a full-blooded passion. It roars and
rolls on, like a flood, with the cry: "I want, I want, I want."
Women feel, in their own heart of hearts, that this indomitable
passion is the lifeblood of the world, acknowledging no law but
itself, and therefore victorious. For this reason they have so
often abandoned themselves to be swept away on the flood-tide of
my passion, recking naught as to whether it takes them to life or
to death. This power which wins these women is the power of
mighty men, the power which wins the world of reality.
Those who imagine the greater desirability of another world
merely shift their desires from the earth to the skies. It
remains to be seen how high their gushing fountain will play, and
for how long. But this much is certain: women were not created
for these pale creatures--these lotus-eaters of idealism.
"Affinity!" When it suited my need, I have often said that God
has created special pairs of men and women, and that the union of
such is the only legitimate union, higher than all unions made by
law. The reason of it is, that though man wants to follow
nature, he can find no pleasure in it unless he screens himself
with some phrase--and that is why this world is so overflowing
with lies.
"Affinity!" Why should there be only one? There may be affinity
with thousands. It was never in my agreement with nature that I
should overlook all my innumerable affinities for the sake of
only one. I have discovered many in my own life up to now, yet
that has not closed the door to one more--and that one is clearly
visible to my eyes. She has also discovered her own affinity to
me.
And then?
Then, if I do not win I am a coward.