THE MISSION OF THE VEDANTA : 5.

Ay, it is a curious fact that while nations after nations have come upon the stage of the world, played their parts vigorously for a few moments, and died almost without leaving a mark or a ripple on the ocean of time, here we are living, as it were, an eternal life. 


They talk a great deal of the new theories about the survival of the fittest, and they think that it is the strength of the muscles which is the fittest to survive. 


If that were true, any one of the aggressively known old world nations would have lived in glory today, and we, the weak Hindus, who never conquered even one other race or nation, ought to have died out; yet we live here three hundred million strong! 


(A young English lady once told me: What have the Hindus done? They never even conquered a single race!) 


And it is not at all true that all its energies are spent, that atrophy has overtaken its body: that is not true. 


There is vitality enough, and it comes out in torrents and deluges the world when the time is ripe and requires it.


We have, as it were, thrown a challenge to the whole world from the most ancient times. 


In the West, they are trying to solve the problem how much a man can possess, and we are trying here to solve the problem on how little a man can live. 


This struggle and this difference will still go on for some centuries. 


But if history has any truth in it and if prognostications ever prove true, it must be that those who train themselves to live on the least and control themselves well will in the end gain the battle, and that those who run after enjoyment and luxury, however vigorous they may seem for the moment, will have to die and become annihilated. 


There are times in the history of a man's life, nay, in the history of the lives of nations, when a sort of world-weariness becomes painfully predominant.


 It seems that such a tide of world-weariness has come upon the Western world. 


There, too, they have their thinkers, great men; and they are already finding out that this race after gold and power is all vanity of vanities; many, nay, most of the cultured men and women there, are already weary of this competition, this struggle, this brutality of their commercial civilisation, and they are looking forward towards something better. 


There is a class which still clings on to political and social changes as the only panacea for the evils in Europe, but among the great thinkers there, other ideals are growing. 


They have found out that no amount of political or social manipulation of human conditions can cure the evils of life. 


It is a change of the soul itself for the better that alone will cure the evils of life. 


No amount of force, or government, or legislative cruelty will change the conditions of a race, but it is spiritual culture and ethical culture alone that can change wrong racial tendencies for the better. 


Thus these races of the West are eager for some new thought, for some new philosophy; the religion they have had, Christianity, although good and glorious in many respects, has been imperfectly understood, and is, as understood hitherto, found to be insufficient.


 The thoughtful men of the West find in our ancient philosophy, especially in the Vedanta, the new impulse of thought they are seeking, the very spiritual food and drink for which they are hungering and thirsting.


 And it is no wonder that this is so.


Continues...