Majjhima Nikāya I (Further Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. I: suttas 1-76)

There is a good story, by the way, that after Mr. Wells had become famous he was met one day on the steps of his club by an "ex-comrade of the ribbons and lace department.” “They tell me you’ve got on fine, Mr. Wells, since you left us” remarked the friend of his shop days. “Thank you, I’m not doing so badly” was the modest reply. "Yes”, said the former fellow apprentice, “they tell me you’re at Harrod’s (a big depart¬ ment store in London) now!” The story is in Mr. Reginald Auberon’s "The Nineteen Hundreds.” It is very interesting to compare Mr. Wells’s vision of Utopia, especially in "Men Like Gods”, not only with the scientific Mr. Haldane’s pro¬ phecies already referred to, but also with the anticipations of Mr. Bernard Shaw in “Back to Mcthusalch.” Mr. Wells is less mystical, more human, and his manlike gods offer a strange contrast to Mr. Shaw’s children bom out of eggs in adolescence and developing rapidly into love- less sages wrapped in ecstatic contemplation (another rapprochement, surely, with the East). But of course Mr. Shaw was looking forward 30,000 years ! Had there not been so many things to use up my space this time, I ought certainly to have had more to say about Mr. Bernard Shaw and his brilliant new play, "St. Joan”, but this is a thing that will not be out of date in a few months later.

The subject of poetry brings me to a valuable little book, Milton Agonistes : A Metaphysical Criticism by E. H. Viziak (Philpot 3/6). Until I read Mr. Viziak’s study I did not suspect that hatred of Milton was a prevalent disease of modern mentality. I had feared something far worse, a prevalent indifference, and therefore I was accordingly cheered to read : "The Milton-hatcrs of today consist of two classes; one of which may be styled neo-Catholics and (although Milton was not a Puritan in the sterile sense) anti-Puritans. The mpre militant and literary members of this class are under the spell of the Middle Ages, which they conceive, or rather misconceive, in a glamour. The other class (which merit respectful sympathy) comprise that remnant of Jacobites who continue to cherish the memory of their ‘martyred’ Charles, whose statue at the last anniversary of his execution was wreathed with flowers. It is no wonder the author of the Eikonoklasles is obnoxious to them, so that, in an angry mood, they might have applauded Judge Jefferies’ question at Chalfont St. Giles Do you not consider the loss of your sight a judgment from heaven for your treatment of the King?’— but scarcely Milton’s rejoinder: Is not the loss of his head a still greater judgment on the King?’ ”

. W ^r- V iziak analyses the operation of Milton’s genius as “inverted power" in the “Paradise Lost” is most suggestive, though it is a pity that he uses terms like ’’supraconscious" and ’ subconscious” without a little more regard for the reader who may not have read W. H. Myers’ great work on "Human Personality and its Survival After Bodily Death”. His assurance is also timely that "Paradise Lost” was originally intended to take the shape of an Athenian tragedy. But above all I am grateful to the author of Milton Agonistes for his exposition of Milton’s sublimity, and his martyrdom of spirit and unbending intolerance of the religious and patriotic shams of contemporary society. Sir Thomas Browne gave voice to the more ordinary temperament that "would not perish upon a ceremony, politik i>oints, or indifferency”. But the gallic spirit of Anatole France has gone far beyond this. Sir Thomas Browne could praise Socrates "that suffered on a fundamental point of religion”, but the author of "Notes on Life and Letters' can praise Rabelais on grounds that might have surprised even Rabelais, because lie "maintained his opinions, but not up to the burning point, reckoning in advance of and with * lontaigne, that to die for an idea is to put a very

high value on one’s opinions . Martyrs are [519] Wonderful, Ananda, marvellous, how the Lord has specified these four antitheses. What now are those four comfortless vocations he speaks of? Take the case of a teacher who is ' all-knowing and all-seeing, with nothing outside his ken and vision, who claims that, whether he is walking or standing still, whether he is asleep or awake, his ken and vision stand ready, aye ready.’ This teacher goes to a house which is empty and gets no alms given him ; is bitten by a dog ; encounters a violent elephant or horse or bullock ; asks a man or woman their name and clan ; or needs to ask the name of, or the way to, a village or township. When asked how he explains this, he answers that he had to do each of these things and was constrained to do as he did. In a hearer of intelligence, this pronouncement awakens the following reflections : — All-knowing and all-seeing though he is, this reverend teacher yet does all these things and must ! So, observing this to be a comfortless form of the higher life, off he goes in disgust.

Such, Sandaka, is the first comfortless vocation which the Lord who knows and sees, Arahat all-enlightened, has indicated as one [520] wherein a man of intelligence will not follow the higher life, or, if he does follow it, will not advance to knowledge, the doctrine, and what is right. Then, there is the teacher who derives from tradi¬ tion and holds by traditional truth, preaching a doc¬ trine which is traditional, which has been handed down the line, and is scriptural. Now traditional orthodoxy is partly sound and partly unsound, right here and wrong there. In a hearer of intelligence, this awakens the reflec¬ tions that it is all hearsay, and a comfortless vocation ; and off he goes in disgust. Such is the second comfortless vocation indicated by the Lord. Next there is the teacher who is a rationalist of pure reason and criticism, preaching a doctrine of his own devising evolved for him by his own reasoning. Now your rationalist teacher reasons sometimes well and sometimes badly, being right here and wrong there. In a hearer of intelligence, this awakens the reflec¬ tion that it is individual speculation, partly right and partly wrong, and a comfortless vocation ; and off he goes in disgust.

Such is the third comfortless vocation indicated by the Lord. Lastly, there is the teacher who is stupid and defi¬ cient, so that he [521] meets this or that question by equivocation and tortuosity, — saying: I do not affirm this, I do not affirm that, I do not affirm other¬ wise, I do not affirm the negative, nor do I deny the negative. In a hearer of intelligence, this awakens the reflec¬ tions that the teacher is stupid and deficient, that he is sitting on the fence, that this is a comfortless vocation ; and so off he goes in disgust. Such is the fourth of the comfortless vocations in¬ dicated by the Lord who knows and sees, the Arahat all-enlightened, as those wherein a man of intelligence will assuredly not follow the higher life, or, if he does follow it there, will not advance to knowledge, the Doctrine, and what is right. It is wonderful and marvellous, Ananda, how the Lord has exposed the futility of these four comfortless vocations. Tell me now his own gospel of the higher life and of the advance to knowledge, the Doctrine, and what is right. There appears in the world here, Sandaka, a Truthfinder, Arahat all-enlightened — and so forth as in the Kandaraka Sutta (No. 51) — dwells in the First Ecstasy with all its zest and satisfaction, a state bred of inward aloofness but not divorced from observation and reflection. Under whatever teacher a disciple attains to this degree of excellence, [522] there indeed will a man of intelligence follow the higher life, and, if he does, there will he advance to knowledge, to the Doctrine and what is right.

Irony in this sense, “which refuses to receive anything seriously and laughs away sublime verities, is an intellectual martyrdom,” says Mr. Viziak, “a voluntary confinement in a mock monastery... ‘Charity’ was Milton’s corrective, as ‘Wisdom’ was that of Sir Thomas Browne... religion was no Puritannieal system of inhibitions to Milton any more than it was to Sir Thomas Browne, who was constitutionally a Catholic.” It is a valuable privilege to be able to go back to a fresh study of a great genius like Milton, and to do so for pleasure instead of as a task will increase our discoveries. College students are especially apt to get together a few hasty im¬ pressions of these master-minds of literature in order to meet the requirements of an examina¬ tion. The “pass” being secured, there’s an end on’t as far as most of them are concerned ; which is a pity, for it means that education has closed, instead of flinging wide open, the gates of litera¬ ture. There are excuses for the busy students who have time only to skirmish hastily through some easily-read book about the author they ought to read ; but there is little good to be said for the universal system which replaces genuine culture with smartness in the examination-room. The problem of competitive education is, of course, a very troublesome one (there seems to be a glut of troublesome problems in my first Causerie for the Hindustan Review !) but until it is solved in favour of study for pleasure, we who have left college days behind may always, if we will, return to the treasures that we once passed so lightly on one side.

About the time this appears in print a new novel from Mr. Arnold Bennett will be published. This is to be a continuation of his last one, “Riceyman Steps”, a study of a miser and his household living in the slum area of Clerkenwell in North London. “Riceyman Steps” was one of the big literary events of last autumn and caused no little astonishment once more at this author’s versatility. Enoch Arnold Bennett was born 56 years ago, and lived his early youth in the potteries region of Staffordshire, “the Black Country” as it is appropriately called on account of its endlessly smoking furnaces. Mr. Bennett is a complex personality. His temperament as well as his work have inspired the most divergent opinions. I confess that I believed him to be a somewhat cynical and hard man until, for the first time, I saw him in the flesh. The occasion was a WestEnd theatre “first-night.” He sat in the stalls immediately in front of me. He was waving gently an unlit cigar to the tune of the music played in the entr’acte. He turned to a friend beside him and began speaking, and I heard a soft, shy voice. The air of sharp concentration which is a characteristic of his features had given way to a smiling amusement, smoothing his brow, and making humorous little creases about his eyes and mouth. I happened to be acting as a deputy that night to a dramatic critic. Mr. Bennett himself at the outset of his career attend ed “first nights” as a dramatic critic for about five years. He has described (in "The Truth About an Author”) his feeling of isolation sitting among the stalls in a dress-suit which looked too obvious¬ ly cheap for his comfort of mind. But that was before the war, and we are a little less ceremoni¬ ous now.

This little aside, however, helps to explain the assumed self-confidence — justified by events — which has marked Mr. Bennett’s career. He has never made any bones about the importance to his own happiness of money. Money, he has explained, means culture as well as pleasure; we may not agree, but the candour was impres¬ sive. In his teens he fancied himself (like Mr. G. K. Chesterton) as an artist, and wasted a lot of good paint imitating Turner's skies. Sketching with a brush is still his hobby when yachting, a recreation in which he delights. He has quite an enviable skill as a yachtsman, and his brush has pleasantly illustrated an account of a cruise in Holland. You never know where, and in what guise Mr. Bennett is going to appear next before the public. "Riceyman Steps” was by no means the first big surprise he has sprung upon his very mixed public. Ilis career has been astonishing to everybody except, perhaps, himself. Novelist, playwright pocket-philosopher, journalist, and essayist, he is; but these terms do not exhaust his infinite variety because the novels, plays and miscellaneous writings range over nearly the whole gamut of literary tones. He steps from the cheapest sensationalism to art of enduring excellence with the superb insouciance of a fault¬ less prestidigitateur.

The man who could write a successful shocker like "The Grand Babylon Hotel” in IQ02. turns out “Riceyman Steps”, which puts him in the And so too in succession with the Second, Third and Fourth Ecstasies. With heart thus stedfast, thus clarified and puri¬ fied, clean and cleansed of things impure, tempered and apt to serve, stedfast and immutable, — it is thus that he now applies his heart to the knowledge of re¬ calling his former existences; he calls to mind his divers existences in the past . . . (etc., as in Sutta No. 4) . . . in all their details and features. Under whatever teacher . . . and what is right. That same stedfast heart he now applies to the knowledge of the passing hence, and the reappearance elsewhere, of other creatures. With the Eye Celestial . . . (etc., as in Sutta No. 4) . . . states of happiness in heaven. Under whatever teacher . . . and what is right. That same stedfast heart he next applies to the knowledge of the eradication of Cankers. He comes to know as what they really are — Ill, the origin of Ill, the cessation of Ill, and the path which leads to the cessation of Ill ; he comes to know for what they really are — Cankers, the origin of Cankers, the cessation of Cankers, and the path which leads to the cessation of Cankers.

When he knows and sees this, his heart is delivered from the Canker of lusts, from the Canker of continuing existence, and from the Canker of ignorance ; and to him thus Delivered comes the knowledge of his Deliverance in the conviction that — Rebirth is no more ; I have lived the highest life ; my task is done ; and now for me there is no more of what I have been ! At the feet of whatever teacher a disciple attains to this degree of excellence, there indeed will a man of intel¬ ligence follow the higher life, and, if he does, there will he advance to knowledge, the Doctrine, and what is right.

Would the Almsman, Ananda, who is an Arahat — in whom Cankers are dead, who has greatly lived, whose task is done, who has cast off his burthen, who has won his weal, whose bonds are no more, and who by utter knowledge has been entirely Delivered — , would he [528] indulge in pleasures of sense ? literary company of the Balzac of “Pore Goriot” and “Eugenie Grandet”. The fact is he has always been a good craftsman, even at his inexcusable levels. That Beau Brummel of criticism, Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, in "Thus to Revisit” speaks of his technique with the utmost respect, even when the theme is Mr. Bennett's “commercial employment of his pen”. Mr. Hueffer has no doubt that Mr. Bennett “very obviously acquired an immense knowledge of ‘technique’ during years spent in Paris.” But there is no necessary connection between Paris and the craftmanship of a writer who has practis¬ ed assiduously for over 30 years. Yet it is true that Mr. Bennett has admired and studied the French so-called “realists" of the late nineteenth century. He began as a writer when that first fever of painting had subsided, supplying a local paper with paragraphs. This phase came to an end and he left the Black Country to become a solicitor’s clerk in London. On Sundays he would go in for prize-story competitions— and win. Of course he would win. He had reached the comparative opulence of £200 a year as clerk when once more he burnt his boats after careful deliberation, and accepted .£150 a year as a sub-editor of a woman’s paper. Besides social gossip and captions for illustrations, he contributed a weekly column of literary criticism, signed "Barbara”. This caught the approving eye of a lady who was then

president of the Society of Women Journalists. She wrote to him a letter saying : “Here at last is a woman who does not write like other women.0 Mr. Bennett’s fiction, like Balzac’s is general¬ ly and crudely classified as “photographic”, but this is partly his own fault. He once declared that fiction should be photographic or nothing. He has spared no pains to get a photographic accuracy in his descriptions, whether of the Five Towns, or of highways and byeways, shops and business offices in metropolitan London. His last novel was not only a sensitive and subtle study of Earlfoward, the second-hand book¬ seller and rich miser who starved his wife and himself to death. It is also a wonderful picture of the locality of “the gentle, broad acclivity of Ricevman Steps, which lead from King’s Cross Road up to Riceyman Square, in the great metro¬ politan industrial district of Clerkenwell.” This conscientious attention to appearances and facts is doubtless due to Mr. Bennett’s almost lifelong practice of jotting down in notebooks every night the things seen and heard which have struck his mind during the day. But his best work cannot be explained by note-taking alone. It is imbued with a personal vision; it has that 1 quality of mind called genius, which transforms a piece of craftsmanship into the living organism that is a work of art.

THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. A PLEA FOR A RATIONAL SOCIAL THEORY. By Mr. K. M. Panikkar, m.a., Oxon. Ideas like currency have a habit of becoming inflated. The national feeling which is prolong¬ ed backwards in attempting to see in the past a golden age is such an inflation of the ideal of nationalism. We attribute to the past an increased meaning in relation to the present and put a value on it which is fiduciary and fictitious and passes current only by what the students of primitive culture characterise as Representation Colleciif. The confessional ideas of to-day are traced Ixack to the past. For our weaknesses * of the present we satisfy ourselves that the past was a glorious one. The attempt to trace back into Indian history the existence of a well developed system of representative institutions is .111 instance in point. There is no doubt that representative institutions of a type did exist in ancient India but they were crude, primitive and tnhal. Their existence two thousands years age has no more than a historical value to us. Still the false sense of exaggerated nationalism which tickles our pride to see the germs of everything imbedded in our past makes us seriously claim it as a source of present day political inspiration.

The fact is that this dependence on the past is a sign of our decay. For a living nation tile present is more important than the past. The past has no value to them except in so far as the present is its result. It is when rejuvenation has come to a deadstop that nations cast their eyes backwards. Nations like organisms live only in growth and this implies that a slow process of change operates on the collective mind of the group which while leaving the relation of the past with the present indisputable, gives it new ideas, a new shape and a new outlook. This constant rejuvenation is of the very essence of national life. It is the greatest indictment against the British rule that for India as a whole this movement has at least for the time stopped completely, as a result of forces generated by the inevitable evils of a foreign Government. It cannot be denied that pre-British period in India when states and dynasties were fighting for ascendency was not' so ‘civilised’ a place as the India of to-day. But during the whole period of history when Islam came to be the tilling power in Hindustan Indian national life continued to live and grow-. The great religious awakening of the Hindus from Ramanuja to Guru Govind which embraces the whole Bhakti movement, the rise of Sikhism and the elabora¬ tion of Vnislinava Philosophy — the development of the great systems of Hindu law, the grow’th of a distinctive school in painting, architecture and music and what is more the recurring mani¬ festations of natioual spirit in all parts of India clearly showed that the Hindus far from being an inert mass were during all the six centuries of Muslim contact very much alive socially and politically.

Mahomiucdau conquest was never really effec¬ tive except in the Punjab, in the domains immediately surrounding Delhi and Agra and in Sindh. The local dynasties of Bengal and Gujerat liad become national. < >ne has only to glance at the architecture of Ahctnadabad to know how in Gujerat the Muslim kings had contributed to the growth of a new spirit of Iiindu-Muslim unity. The traditional methods of oriental govern¬ ments which left local institutions undisturbed, the central authority being a mere super-imposed structure, was the greatest factor which helped to keep alive the national spirit. The actual administration fell a great deal on the local Zamiudars and chiefs who so long as they paid their quota to the Imperial treasury were left unmolested. That is why Muslim rule even in areas where it became more or less a permanent factor never became a foreign rule. Except during the comparatively short time when the Grand Moghuls held sway, there was no attempt of any kind to rule through a bureaucracy, through Imperial Officers who considered it their business to interfere in everything. The result was that though the rulers of the major portion of India were foreign by birth, the current of national life flowed in a placid stream without any attempt at being dammed or being irrigated. Both Hindus and Mussalmans lived their lives without the State trying to influence their thoughts or trying to spiritually mould them.

The continual rejuvenation of life from inside went on. Worn out ideas were rejected, new impulses and new doctrines took their place with vast groups. The rise of the Sikhs and the impulse behind the Maharatta power arc ex¬ amples of this. There was no fear then of reject¬ ing old ideas merely because they were old. The Brahmo-Samaj was the last light of that period of mental growth. But with the establish¬ ment of a modern bureaucratic state which considers itself morally bound to interfere in every aspect of our national life this growth has virtually come to a stop. The development of a system of exotic education aits us off from our moral inheritance. We began to accept ideas to which we could lay no intellectual claim. The result was a moral bankruptcy which did not show sufficient courage to reject what honestly we have come to think to be the dead weight of past tradition. We cling to worn out ideas and to institutions from which life has flown many centuries ago. We live in the past, without There are five things, Sandaka, which the Arahat of entire Deliverance is incapable of having truck with ; — he is incapable of taking life wittingly, of stealing, of fornication, of deliberate lying, or of revelling in pleasures of sense as in the days when he still had a home.

In the Almsman of Entire Deliverance — whether he is walking or standing still, asleep or awake — is his ken and vision ready, aye ready, to assure him that his Cankers are extirpated ? I will give you an illustration, — which often helps a man of intelligence to comprehend. It is just like a man whose hands and feet have been cut off ; whether walking or standing still, whether asleep or awake, his hands and feet remain always off, — as observation assures him. It is just the same with that Arahat of Entire Deliverance ; whether walking or standing still, whether asleep or awake, his Cankers remain always extirpated, — as observation assures him. How many such shining lights are there in this Doctrine and Rule, Ananda ? Not a mere hundred; not two, three, four or five hundreds ; we have many more of them than that. Wonderful and marvellous, Ananda! And there¬ withal no extolling of fellow-believers, no disparaging of non-believers! Let the scope of the teaching but be example enough, f524] and there will appear many a shining light ! As for these Mendicants, they are children of a childless mother; they extol themselves and disparage others, yet have only produced three shining lights, to wit Nanda Vaccha, Kisa Sankicca, and Makkhali Gosala. Addressing then his own follow¬ ing, Sandaka said : — Come, sirs ; our higher life is with the recluse Gotama, though it is no light matter for us to abandon presents, repute and fame. With these words the Wanderer Sandaka counselled his followers to lead the higher life with the Lord.

courage to reject it and renew our life by the acceptance of new ideas. The real reason for this deplorable state is that we have not sufficient faith in the new ideas by which wc want to re¬ place the old. They did not come to us as truth. They were taught us by our foreign masters. Hence when the renewal of life impetus has stopped we have begun to look backwards to see in the past all that English education claims to teach us. But this is dangerous process; for the wont out ideas of one age as Dr. Schweitzer says often become like rejected products of metabolism and act as poisons. This is the poison that has enervated us. It is this that interferes with the free circulation of our blood. We have been afraid to question ; wc have been afraid to reject. Instead of purposive activity and genuine social thought a kind of dynamic orthodoxy took up cudgels in favour of everything that existed. The painted past in which we live has almost suffocated us. Wc have resisted the acceptance of new ideas from an entirely false sense of national prestige arising out of the inflation of the doctrine of nationalism.

The time has come when we must set our hearts to the disagreeable but not the less necessary operation of removing the decayed ideas from our body politic. No society was reformed and no community saved by merely continuing in the old grooves of settled tradition. What is required for it primarily is a clear understanding of the relation between the past and the present. The true perspective in which any living nation will look upon its past is merely as being continuous and alive through its results, in the present day. The past is not to be worshipped because it is past, and is not to be accepted without question of its utility and justice for the mere reason that it once was. In India at the present time for this reasonable and normal relationship between the present and the past we have enthroned the idea of the greatness of an imaginary golden age. Our histories arc written with that view. Our common modes of thought take it for granted. This unreal and fallacious doctrine must be replaced by a belief in the possibilities of shaping the present and of direct¬ ing the future if India is to attain greatness. There is no use in legitimising our claims to greatness as a nation by appealing to a past which exists only in our imagination. If we are to be accepted as a community which contri¬ butes its quota to the well being of humanity and is thus entitled to respect then we must depend upon our present, on our ideals and achievements of to-day.

That is possible only when we have dropped the beautified mask of the past which we have put on to hide our ugliness. An ugly man alive if he is animated by noble ideals and is devoted to service is of greater value to humanity than the most beauti¬ ful man who is dead. The question must be frankly and squarely faced. It would indeed have been an easy matter if the cause of truth and reason won merely on its inherent strength. But the walls of Jericho do not fall by them¬ selves and truth and justice triumph only when the hand and mind of man actively work for it. That is what is required in India now. The false gods of a dead social theory must be dethroned, and in their place we must plant the banner of a rational social theory which while taking its inspiration from the past looks to the present and the future and is not content to worship the Golden calf of a byegone age.

By Mr. K. C. Sen. Elucidation of the Curse of Adam. The Curse of Adam stands recorded in the Book of Genesis thus r — “Thou Shalt Eat bread in the sweat of thy face”. The curse does not mean that the process of eating or consuming bread is accompanied by sweating. On the other hand, as experience shows, the process of eating is a pleasant fact ; and is more calculated to dry 8 up drops of sweat if they arc already in the face. Eating implies producing. “The curse implies that to eat bread a man must produce it, that is, he that eats bread produces it, or conversely, that he that produces bread cats it; he is at least entitled to cat it. Negatively, no man should eat bread without producing it. Here lies the foundation of socialism. The next point is, did God intend the curse to be hereditary ? It is generally understood and believed that He did so intend. The law of heredity shows that the offspring inherits the evil as well as the good in the nature of the progenitor. Biological Science has confirmed this primitive interpretation and belief. In the third place, the curse implies that there is a constant ratio between the quantity of bread eaten and the quantity of sweat shed through the pores of the skin and as eating is identified with producing, the curse implies the law of constant ratio between the value of the commo¬ dity produced and the cost of producing it. The curse of Cain made the curse of Adam more severe by ordaining that this rat o between pro¬ duction and its cost was variable and that if the unit of labour produces the unit of commodity two units of labour will not produce two units of commodity but less — This is the law of ‘diminishing return.’

The curses did not indicate what quantity of bread each man should eat, and whether to obtain relief from excessive inspiration a man might reduce his consumption of bread without detri¬ ment to his health. It has been believed for long ages, and it is still believed by most people that the more bread a man eats the better he is, that though perspiring is painful, eating is compara¬ tively more pleasant, and it is better to perspire more in order to eat more than to perspire less with the prospect of eating less. Misapplication of the law pf conservation of mechanical energy has for long supported the idea that the more a man eats the stronger he grows. But food is not by itself energy. It is not the quantity of comestibles eaten, not even the quantity digested, but the quantity assimi¬ lated that constitutes physiological energy. The relation between nervous energy and muscular energy is still obscure, and it will be a long time yet before science can determine the natnre and quantity of food a particular man should consume for the purpose of obtaining and retaining the maximum energy. The general idea on the sub¬ ject so far has been that every man has a fixed power of assimilation and that it is better for him to make available to that power more substance than it can assimilate than to present less to it, it being understood that the rejected substance would pass out of the system without leaving any harmful trace behind. But this idea is gradually

changing, and it is now being increasingly held that a comparatively small quantity of food con¬ sumed is better than a comparatively large quantity, the standard being the unknown quantity which taxes the power of assimilation to the best advantage. Fasting is better than surfeit. Deficit is better than excess ; modera¬ tion is better than intemperance and gluttony. The problem however is in the experimental stage. The ratio between the quantify of bread con¬ sumed and the quantity of sweat exuded being fixed, the pain of sweating might be partially evaded by reducing the pleasure of eating. But man, as a rule, is so ardent in his desire for this pleasure that he is prepared to submit to the paiu of sweating for the purpose of enjoying it. This desire was created while man was yet in paradtse where food was like manna. Among the robust Western people, the most civilized of modem times, the best thing in life is a good dinner. The "good th:ngs of life" are laid on the table every evening. Johnson said not very long ago that "a man may travel all over the world without finding any thing better than dinners.” The western people are to be congratulated even for being able to imagine that any thing better than dinner can be found in this world But so far their nomadism on land and water has been almost invariably inspired by the prospect of good dinner and its continuance through life.

They work hard in fields and factories for dinner. They wage war against neighbours for dinner. They depopulate countries and continents for dinner. They enslave people wholesale for dinner. They send their children to- school that they may have dinner when they grow old. Education for the sake of knowledge is now sincerely repudiated as camou¬ flage. When it is said that man does not live by bread alone, no spiritual idea is necessarily intended to Ik- conveyed ; for a man can live by cake also, if lie is shrewd enough. When the King of France said, “if they have no bread why don’t they eat cake?” he probably had this idea of the life-supporting value of cake in his mind.

Another implication of the curse of Adam is that the perspiration caused by the exertion to produce food should be still present when it is eaten, that is to say, that man shall consume immediately what he produces, which has for its corollary that he shall save nothing. The habit of saving and of creating capital, it will appear, has been the most potent factor, first, in disturb¬ ing the ratio between the bread consumed and the sweat exuded, and then in completely divorcing the pleasure of consumption from the pain of production, and lastly in creating a hereditary class of parasites. Lastly, it may be mentioned here as a relevant fact that the prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread,” standing in the face of the curse of Adam, by persons who have accumulated enough wealth for themselves and their progen y sounds like a piece of unredeemed irreverence. This prayer was probably intended for the time, subsequent to the establishment of the kingdom of God on Earth. But that kingdom was not established by Christ in his first advent, and the second advent is still waited far. The prayer virtually asks God to withdraw the Curse of Adam, and cleverly reminds Him that it has failed and is therefore unworthy of being retained in the Bible. But probably Christ meant the prayer not for the rich, but for the poor, who sweated for finding food for others while they themsdves starved Lettered by them the prayer contains a request for retributive justice without any vindictive implications.

The labourers of the present day however do not appeal to God for help, but assert themselves in strikes and in other ways, and compel their parasitic oppressors to part with a fraction of their profits to be converted into wages. The iron law of wage* has made the law of profits soft and plastic by its heated blows. But after all the conflict between capital and labour is a conflict for dinner, and has no high spiritual inspiration behind it.

Evasion of the Curse of Adam. A very important implication of the curse of Adam is that it has no application to the procultural stages of life ; for bread is made of wheat, and wheat is produced by agriculture. An astute rich man living in the West in modern times might perhaps, lawyer-like cleverly argue that he is not, except in a small measure, subject to the curse, because though society has advanced to the industrial, often having success¬ fully passed through the agricultural, stage of human life, bread forms only an insignificant part of his food, most of which belongs to the pastoral and hunting stages of progress. The change from the pastoral to the agri¬ cultural mode of life is accompanied by a corresponding change in the character of food ; surely our ancestors did not sweat in the fields for mere aesthetic gratification. It is not known that in any civilization in the past the food of pastoral life has been entirely supplanted by that of agricultural life, but the tendency has always been towards that consummation. Instead of eating the flesh of the cow man has resorted to milk and its products, possibly out of growing reverence for life. But with the progress of western civilization animal food is growingly reasserting itself, and the con¬ sumption of wheat in all its variety of forms is gradually dwindling among the richer, that is to say, among the more advanced sections of society.

Wheat forms a mere supplement in the good things of life with which the rich man’s table is loaded. Poor people sweat in the field and live mainly on bread. They do not draw for their food upon the slaughter houses of Chicago ; and as to Smithficld, it is all but inaccessible to them. In India the consumption of animal food is nominal. It is almost, absent among the higher castes of Hindus ; and the Mussulmans, inspite of the reported cases of fighting with the Hindus on fcstivcl occasions, do not consume much cow's flesh. Cow slaughter in India is chiefly intended for the Christian ruling classes, who keep the memory of their home traditions green. Irreverence for life is characteristic of western civilization with all its implications of lack of genuine sympathy and compunction, and the historian has no difficulty in perceiving that this irreverence is the prime factor in the progress of that civilisa¬ tion. It has rendered exploitation easy, and has kept the ape and tiger quality in man in sound and efficient condition. It has enabled him to evade the Curse of Adam more effectively than the highest achievements of science.

Evasion of the curse is possible in two ways, namely, (i) by the power of science designed to enable man to produce much with little labour, arid (2) by the power of systematically con¬ suming what others produce. 'Flic first power is intellectual and the second moral. The two powers are mutually helpful in western civiliza¬ tion. They are so blended in actual operation that they look like a single undivided and indivisible faculty. There is a third method of evading the curse, which proved partially successful in India in the past, but which under the pressure of foreign culture is being increasingly abandoned. To avoid the pain of - r y— - 1 Date of Return ^ that is shut is but a block lease help ns to keep the book clean and moving. sweating Indian sages suggested, from a high spiritual point of view, abstention from the pleasure of eating bread. Of course no man can live without eating food for any length of time. At the same time excessive eating, which implies excessive sweating is now scientifically regarded as injurious to life. The minimum quantity of food required for maintaining health, if it could be found, would be the most important dis¬ covery in hygiene and most beneficial to mankind. But it will be a long time before that discovery can be made. Besides a general formula will perhaps be futile. And so long as that discovery is not made the struggle between work and wages will go on and ever>’ man will try to work less and to consume more.

wealth, instead of spending it lavishly, because of its solicitude for the interests of future generations. There can be no doubt that it is accumulating wealth, which may be available to future generations, but it can not be asserted that the interests of tbe future generations openly or directly enter into the consciousness of the final cause of the accumulation. Professor Keynes seems to regard the accumulative instinct as the result of a deep-seated superstition or illusion. He says : — “The capitalist classes were allowed to call the best part of the cake (accumulated wealth) theirs and were theoretically forced to consume it, on the tacit underlying condition that they consumed very little of it in practice. The duty of saving became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion. There grew round the non-consumption of the cake all those instincts of puritanism which in other ages has withdrawn itself from the world and has neglected the arts pf production as well as those of enjoyment. And so the cake increased ; but to what end was not clearly con¬ templated. Individuals would be exhorted not so much to abstain as to defer, and to cultivate the pleasures of security and anticipation.”

Thus it will appear that excessive exploita¬ tion pf nature is not morally defensible, though its rcprehcnsibleness is not easily detected and constitutes a delicate problem in casuistry. It is remarkable that the principle of optimism being the cult of western civilization any thing calculated to give rise to pessimistic prognostica¬ tion should be avoided. Pessimists of a cultured type are, however, already springing up by hundreds. Should the spirit of unbelief in the principle of optimism, to say nothing of the spirit of pessimism, come to dominate the heart of the majority of the cultured people, the bottom of western civilization will be knocked out of it like the spangled head of the snake, which in the mind of the uncultivated Hindu supports the earth in the void of infinite space. The principle of optimism is that though men do come and men do go society lives for ever, and progressively. Its ideal, as a cult, is that society is approaching to a state of perfection when wage will bear no proportion to work, and all men will eat bread and also cake without sweating ; when the law of conservation of energy will be completely relaxed in favour of man. Excessive exploitation of nature on the other hand will make that law run in the

opposite direction and make man’s life extremely miserable. It invites, in short, the destruction of western civilization, and is there¬ fore open to moral animadversion. 'The history ot this type of exploitation is quite modern and does not extend beyond one hundred and fifty years. But within this short period it has per¬ formed stupendous Harikari in the bowels of the earth, and has rendered the comforts and conveniences of life more costly than before. No doubt the great war is largely responsible for this, but great wars are inseparable accidents of western civilization, and can no more be eliminated from it than hydrogen can be eliminated from water. As to exploitation of neighbour the theory is quite sound while men believe in its necessity and righteousness. It becomes shaky and unstable when the belief begins to oscillate. The fight between cosmic necessity and sentimental morality obstructs human progress, upward as well as downward, by its indecisive results. The history of western civilization exhibits periods of decisive victories gained by cosmic necessity, and it is by the results of these victories that western civilization stands erect, though the victories themselves are condemned by historians as inhuman. It is like denouncing robbery which fattens on stolen property, that is, property stolen by ancestors, near or remote, better if remote.

Midway between the two kinds of exploita¬ tion mentioned above lies the exploitation of animal energy. God gave man "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth”. This dominion did not explicitly extend to the privilege of eating the flesh of the animals. Herbs and fruits were his meat in paradise, and when expelled from it man at once took to the habit of eating mutton, beef and bread. We afterwards learnt to use cattle as carriers and drawers. He was privileged to so use them. The cattle drew his plough and carried his crops home and to the market, and when wheels were discovered the exploitation of cattle as drawers was much enlarged. Cruelty to animals was largely practised. But the term had a limited signification. Merely making the animals work against their will was not cruelty, for this was covered by the term ’dominion’. Cruelty meant only such torture as was practised for its own sake, and not for the purpose of exploitation. Slaughter of cattle is not an offence, but the causing of unnecessary pain in the process is sinful. The exploitation of cattle, except for purjHJses of eating their flesh, is being substitut¬ ed by the exploitation of inanimate nature and ploughs and vehicles are now drawn by steam and electricity.

This substitution is not the result of kindness and compunction, but is due to the fact that the exploitation of animal energy is less efficient and more costly. There is likeness between this substitution and that of free labour for slave labour. The abolition of slavery has no moral significance. All its value lies in the sphere of economics. The credit for the abolition belongs not to the advancing morality of man, but to his intellectuality. The partial abolition ot the exploitation of animal energy does not proclaim the triumph of Christian morality, but of the science of civilization.

The slaughter of cattle goes on increasing with the progress of western civilization. Ter. thousand heads are killed every day at Chicago, and the flesh distributed over the world in tin cans and Chicago is one of many slaughtering places. In India there was a king who killed 250 heads daily for the use of his guests. But Chicago caters for the entire world, for countless paying guests. A refined form of exploitation is practised in the shape of milcliing. The milk is transformed in numerous ways for final consumption. Curd, butter, cheese, ghee, chhana, ghol, etc. are some of the names of the forms in which milk is consumed. The calf is given enough to live upon. It is sometimes killed to supply meat, while the milking is carried on by painful processes. Towns which consume most milk and meat keep an organization for the prevention of cruelty to animals ; and much cruelty is practised in the name of prevention of cruelty. Mysterious are the ways of civilization. Nothing is done in a straight-forward way. Complicity and camou¬ flage add relish to civilization. The curse, as it stands recorded in the Book of Genesis, and as interpreted above, condemns all men and women and their children and children’s children to sweating toil on penalty of death to the end of time. This curse stands as a divinely ordained law, or as a law of Nature, as we now designate such ordinances in science. The laws cf Nature are ordinarily supposetl to be perpetual and inexorable. But scientific men who are also philosophers do not consider it

impossible that they are subject to modification or termination, though practically and for all human purposes they are immutable. It cannot be said that the curse, once passed, limited the power of God to change it or to put an end to its further operation. God afterwards promised that he would send his son to put an end to it after man had been disciplined enough to receive the boon. God also in his infinite wisdom endowed man with freedom of choice subject of course to limitations specifically imposed by Him. It was open to man to try to eat bread without sweat in his face, and his success depended on the condition that he would respect the commandments, and one of these command¬ ments was that every man should love his neighbour as himself. Any act or behaviour showing that he loved himself more than his neighbour world eventually defeat his en¬ deavour, whatever success he might attain temporarily The evasion of the curse during the last five thousand years has been effected by a more or less violent disobedience of the above commandment. Tins disobedience has been most pronounced and emphatic during the last four hundred years, that is to say, since the in¬ auguration of what is known as — western civili¬ zation, and among people who rhetorically call themselves Christians, or devoted followers of the son of God to make the disobedience shine more brightly in the blazing success of their evasive operations. But their success has lasted for some generations, and most of them believe that it will not only last for ever, but will show increasing brightness. There are perceptible, however, quickly growing signs that the success will terminate in disastrous failure.

The revolt of the minority of mankind against the curse of Adam would have been futile but for the curse of Eve, which in the first place made woman a dependant of man, and in the second, filled the world with more men than there was bread. The curse of Cain helped the minority by making the majority mere vagabonds and fugitives on earth. They were like the Jews of the middle ages who, scattered over Europe, accumulated wealth for the benefit of the rich among the settled population. The several curses united to produce the same result. God’s curse is another name for the Devil’s blessing. The supreme being has two sides. The Devil represents the dark side, and what is ordinarily known as God is the bright side of that Being. The anthropomorphic God can never be identifi¬ ed with the absolute. Mankind became divided into exploiters and exploited. The exploited bore the curses, and the exploiters remained as near to paradise as Adam and Eve before the fall, with the important difference that they have the tree of knowledge in their possession, and can eat its fruits without further mole-tatiou. Indeed they have been eating it for a long time in the past, and arc expecting to cat it for a long time in the future, though Bolshevism is threatening them.

The history of pre-social life is not accurately known to man. He has discovered no reliable record of any kind, in stone or bone, to enlighten him on the subject under discussion. Shortly after the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise the entire population, albeit infinitesimal in number was reduced to hard labour. We know Cain became a cultivator, while Abel lived a pastoral life. Spencer thinks they were chiefs of agricultural and pastoral communities respectively. Abel was not cursed like Cain. He lived in the favour of God, and as he did not eat bread, he had no sweat dripping from his face. But how long his offsprings continued to live the pastoral life is not known. His family have cither disappeared or changed their mode of living. At the present moment out of seventeen hundred million people about sixteen hundred million toil and moil for their daily bread under precarious conditions which compel them, ac¬ cording to Christian doctrines, daily to look for the mercy of God, and to appeal to Him every morning with the object of inducing Him not to withhold from them the daily ration soaked in salt water. For this alone can be the meaning

of the daily prayer, "Give us this day’ our daily bread.” The other hundred million souls having secured enough bread coated with butter, with cake added unto it, have gradually ceased to say their morning prayer as an unprofit¬ able waste of time and thought. During the last hundred and fifty years the total population of the world inspitc of wars, and massacres, famines and pestilences, cyclones and earthquakes, cannibalism and infanticide, to say nothing of less impressive forms of death, has increased five fold, i.e. from about three hundred million to seventeen hundred million. This increase is enormous, having regard to the fact that what man had failed to accomplish in a hundred thousand years he has accomplished in one hundred and fifty. This is the period covered by the mechanical and industrial revolu¬ tion. The supply of subsistence also lias no doubt increased. But it is inconceivable that it has increased in the same ratio as the population, for though much virgin soil has been brought under cultivation, at the same time that the methods of cultivation have improved, yet it is hard to believe that the total quantity of food crops has kept pace with the geometrically increasing population, specially in those parts of the world where the population has been dense for many hundred years. The most advanced countries in the old world now live upon food largely imported from the new world. England is unable to produce more than a fourth part of tire food grains consumed by her people.

If the above rate of progress of populatipn be maintain¬ ed during the next hundred and fifty years the total population of the world will be more than a billion by the end of the twenty second centuryFurther progress will make the world over crowded in the sense that the average individual will not have more than twTelve square feet of ground, the area required for his burial. The density of population threatens in the near future to exceed the final limit fixed by the laws of economics and of hygiene. We are thus passing through an interesting period in human history to its final crisis. This crisis is not likely to be put off by schemes of disarmament and compulsory cessation of war. Some scheme of world-wide importance must be found to arrest the surging tide of growing population, or Nature will be constrained to exercise unutterably monstrous cruelties to prevent the world from bursting, or running into utter Chaos, — cruelties compared with which Japanese earthquakes,

For the purpose of effectively evading the curse of Adam man has divided himself into three primary selves, viz., the personal self, the group self and the human self. The first self takes care of his personal interests, the second those of the group to which he belongs or attaches himself by choice, and the third takes care of the interests of humanity as a whole. The three selves have three different standards of Ethics or Moral life, and they assert them¬ selves sometimes severally and sometimes jointly and confusedly. Occasionally one of the selves, cither by the power of impulse or by the strong urge of reason, triumphs over the other two and controls the activities of the personal organism. As a rule in the routine course of life the per¬ sonal self stands supreme, and the interests of the other two selves are taken into account only so far as they are conducive to the interests of the personal self. On rare occasions the group self dictates to the other two selves, and calls on them to make sacrifices great or small. This is specially observed in time of war, w'hen men rush to the front regardless of discomforts and risks. The third self is the weakest in the organism of selves, so far as the past history of man discloses their relative strength. Idealists hope that in the remote future this self will reign supreme in peace and perpetuity, the other two selves surrendering themselves to its dictates. But if the past is the prophet of the future in any sense the optimism of Idealism

seems to be unsubstantial. The different races arc knowing one another more intimately than before, but instead of loving, the more they know the more they hate. One race hugs another with the lpve of Dhrilarastra who reduced Ultima's iron image to mere pulp. The group self is subdivided chiefly into the family self, the class or communal self, the national self and the racial self. These are other forms of group self already in existence and more may be invented hereafter for the purpose of evading god’s curse respecting the relation between cost and compensation in self and race conservation. Every man is consciously or subconsciously trying to imi>osc upon others his share of the sweat that the curse of Adam demands. Every group of men is trying to impose upon other groups the sweat required of it. Among the groups the nation is the most powerful and widespread. Every nation tries to exploit other nations, directly by force, or diplomatically by fraud. Exploitation means that the exploited nation should place its services at the disposal of the exploiting nation without demanding adequate remuneration. Force and fraud are both at the back of exploitation. Sometimes force and sometimes fraud plays the supreme part, but as a rule they play together. After all force and fraud are not such monstrosities as we suppose them to be. They have made the world what it is. They have civilized it. It is inconsistent to denounce them and at the same time to praise civilization, particularly the Western variety of it. Some people think they can retain civilization as an accomplished fact, and send the means by which it has been attained to the gallows, as if they were like a ladder which might be kicked down when the roof had been reached.

A group of men instead of making the interest of humanity the guiding principle of conduct follow the shorter and smoother line suggested by the interest of the group to which they belong ; and it is to be noted that the group interest is wider and nobler than the interest of the individual ; and that one group succeeds in exploiting another in proportion as its members subordinate the personal self to the group self. This subordination sometimes extends to conscious annihilation, as an extremely probable fact, of the personal self. The reward of the hero lies in posthumous applause. Whether imperative impulse or calculating reason forms 9 the real urge of the suicidal jump, the hero is esteemed all over the world for the bare fact that the group self has subordinated his person¬ al self. Sometimes it is even suspected that the human self of the hero has for the moment triumphed over his personal self, and when this genuinely occurs the hero really deserves the highest praise. In him for the time being the lower selves have sacrificed themselves at the altar of the highest ; true love has displaced hatred of neighbour ; the love of God has dis¬ placed the love of life ; reality has annihilated illusion.

Some people think the group self is higher than the personal self and that to reach the human self the personal self must part through it. The human self is perhaps not an aggrega¬ tion of personal selves or of group selves and neither philanthropy nor federalism can truly make man human. Exploitation has made such a big jump during the last century and a half that we are apt to suppose that it is an invention of Modern times, and especially of Western civilization. The truth is that exploitation had its origin in the desire to eat bread without sweat in the face, in the desire to evade the curse of Adam. It has received statutory sanction from the original compact by which society was formed, and it has ever since been developing with a growing rate of progress until now its intensive¬ ness as well as its extensiveness has nearly reached the climax. This double progress is due not merely to the growing debauchment of the moral sentiment, but to a greater extent to the development of the inventive genius of man. The glamour of intellectuality obscures the black spots of restless morality quivering behind it. The power of applied science backed by the subtleties of a meandering morality, which challenges criticism by its dimensionless mass¬ iveness, while its perfection of continuity has raised Western civilization to the top of the world, which is ceaselessly scheming to evade God’s curse, i.e., to defeat his law.

Thus the difference between the ruler and ruled, the powerful and the weak, the superior and the inferior, grew in width and depth increasingly facilitating ex¬ ploitation, which was ramified in diverse direc¬ tions. Free barter of service or commodity made room for contract executed on the part of the weak with the sword of hunger hanging over them, and the result was that pinched by the necessity pf immediate relief they feared to press for terms without which their future would become worse, and their faces suffused with a thicker layer of perspiration, while sitt'ng with their wives and children down to dinner. The weak became weaker, and the strong grew stronger until the relationship of Master and Slave was established between them. This was the lowest depth to which exploitation could mprally descend. Exploitation next took a backward turn because there was no lower depth to descend to ; and after a thousand years it was also discovered that slavery did not symbolise an economically profitable form of exploitation. The natural result was that slavery was raised to serfdom, and in course of time serfdom was transformed into villienage. A further advance found the villiens turned into

The creation of a third class between the commanding and the obeying sections has given a character of complexity to the process of exploitation. This third class combined the traits of the exploiting and the exploited classes. It is a hermaphrodite class that largely blurred the conceptual distinction between the two main groups of society, while it has made the con¬ dition of the lowest class worse by the multipli¬ cation of new modes of exploitation, and making the evasion of the old modes difficult." Sambo and Quimbo, two famous personalities in H. B. Stowe’s I'ncle Tom’s Cabin, belong to this third class, which has now ramified into diverse sub-classes, as service-holders, professionals and vocational. They are tnulattocs by descent and character. They are like bats, birds or beasts at convenience. They are liberals in possession of the borderland between labour and conser¬ vatives. They sometimes keep the balance between the two parties, but generally obstruct the progress of society towards equality, liberty and fraternity. In England at the present moment, as a political class, they are in a sad plight. IS INDIA LIGHTLY TAXED? By Mr. A. S. Vkxkataramax. “India is lightly taxed” is a facile remark oft-repeated and oft-quoted, rapidly gaining currency among people, who without caring to examine all about it, not only satisfy themselves but also sedulously propagandise and win neophytes whose zeal becomes proverbial. As is often the case, such statements, whose truth it is often difficult to probe, are readily believed in and acted upon so much so, that after a time, truth finds itself overgrown with a thick layer of shrubs and thorns that the search after it, however assiduous, becomes a lost endeavour.

Leaving aside the globe-trotter wiio airs forth bis views on the Indian political situation and India’s economic condition, statesmen whose knowledge of Indian affairs, if well used, is sure to bring credit, going home, lose that imagina¬ tive sympathy, quite essential for the proper understanding of the needs and conditions of an alien country. Strachey need not be classed among these statesmen but certainly his remarks “There is certainly no country in the world possessing a civilized government in which the public burdens are so light,” cannot withstand close scrutiny while the further remark “In England taxation supplies 5/6 and in India not much more than % of the public income,” must be more fully gone into.

The Indian government derives its revenue from three different sources such as (1) Property, (2) Commercial undertakings, (3) Contributions from the people. The first category includes the income from lands, forests, railways leased out to and managed by companies, while statemanaged railways, posts, telegraphs, canals, monopolies of sale, etc., constitute the com¬ mercial undertakings of the State. Lastly the contributions from the people embrace direct and indirect taxes, the first comprising land tax Income-tax, the second comprising customs, excise, stamp and registration duties. The railways, a decided liability for 50 years at the rate of a crore of rupees per year, have become since 1904 a valuable asset and just at this time the separation of railway from general finance has been sanctioned. They come under two categories, as they are managed by the company or by the state itself, all of them being owned by the state. The railways under company management give a share of their profits. People obsessed with a desire for logical division and exactitude, are tempted to adopt the principle of division by dichotomy in classifying revenue into tax revenue (revenue from taxes) and non-tax revenue. Non-tax revenue com¬ prises revenue from forests, opium sales, railw'ays, irrigation works, post office and telegraph and other minor items as departmental receipts aud fees for services rendered to the public. Opium revenue once considerable, is now declining owing to the agreement with China and may dwindle into a vanishing quantity. The steady increase in the income from forests depends upon the utilization of forest products for industrial purposes. The management of public utilities like posts and telegraphs by the state has proved immensely useful to the people. The place of the English income-tax as a single tax making a large contribution to the revenues of the country, is in India occupied by the Land Revenue and the difference is, while the English Income-tax is capable of adjustment year after

With this ideal in view we tried to enlist the sympathies of all the social classes. It is true that here and there wc got the sympathy from a few of the upper “fourhundred”, but we failed to lodge our ideal amongst the masses. And until the non-co-operation movement was inaugurated the masses had never been won over to the popular cause. This was the reason why so long the cause of freedom never found a universal res¬ ponse. In our days what we few spoke in w hispers, is to-day spoken by the masses in public. To-day the masses arc aroused and it is they who are the mainstay of the non-cooperation movement, which is committed to the policy of non-violence, non-resistance and other passive means.

It is said that this policy is the onlv one that is left for the Indians to resort to and India being a country which has peculiarity in even,’ thing in History and Politics” that "The British administration in India is the costliest in the World and a not unnatural mark for Indian critics who complain of the heavy financial drain which it involves and in particular of the large sums devoted to the payment of pensions.” We can try and make a case for enhanced salaries for people leaving their homes and serving in other lands ; but at the same time even the worst enemy of Indian aspirations will have to admit that the Indian Civil Service is the costliest service. The Prime Minister in Eng¬ land — though as such he is entitled to no salary, as the office is unknown to the constitution — gets only £5,000/- only per annum. He is the highest officer and gets the salary of a High Court Judge in our country. The Provincial Governor is paid twice as much, while the Governor-General’s salary is fourfold. Corres¬ pondingly the officers in the Indian Civil Service, not to speak of other Imperial Services, Forests, Education, Police, Engineering, Finance, and Medicine, etc., are paid, and their prospects arc likely to be made more princely as a result of the Lee Commission labours. The third postulate relates to the voice of the people in the affairs of the country.

Without hesitation it must be admitted that a measure of responsible government had been granted and that India stands to profit by it. Unfortunately however the system of Government, vis., dyarchy, has has been found wanting and even responsible statesmen have pronounced an unfavourable verdict. It is perhaps rather hard to speculate — happily it is not our province — what the course the events would have taken if there had been no Reforms Act. What we notice now is that responsible public opinion has declared dyarchy to be a failure and is almost unanimously insistent on making it go. Expenditure and taxation are not subject to effective popular con¬ trol, and no scrutiny of the existing scale of

taxation. The figure for earnings divided by the population yields the per capita taxation. As regards the revenue opinions are divided with regard to the items that must go in. English critics harping on the lightness of taxation proceed on the assumption that the land revenue is rent. Some Indian economists of repute are for deducting the 11011-tax revenue while they treat the land revenue as a tax. Again there are others who while including the commercial undertakings, delete opium ami forests. Opium is fast diminishing by reason of agreement with China and it is difficult to find what portion of the opium revenue is taxation, seeing that in the absence of government monopoly the profits of cultivators and merchants are yet to be calculated on a sound basis. The forest receipts must also be excluded as they are uncertain and as they depend for their increase on the utilisa¬ tion of the products for industrial purposes. To that extent we wall be erring on the safe side. Similarly interest, receipts by civil department, military receipt miscellaneous, other public works must also be excluded. They all form fees or receipts on account of services rendered directly. The question whether a particular charge is heavy or light is beside the point. When the above are omitted, the items that enter into our basis of calculation arc land revenue, salt, stamp, excise, provincial rates, customs, income-tax, registration, railways, post and telegraph, mint and irrigation. The total figures are given below’ for the following years —

Rather it will recoil on itself. What now seems to be helpful will prove destructive in the end. The basis of unity of the people or peoples lies else¬ where. The Economic Interpretation of History is at the bottom of every human motive. We must never lose sight of that fact. In a country like India religion cannot be the binding force. The bond of union must be sought elsewhere. Therefore before the mas-es are asked to sacrifice themselves for a Swaraj, one has the right to ask the nature of it. A clear ideal together with a programme of systematic action must be put before the masses.

To-day the Indian masses — the Demos — are not yet class conscious. Long years of servitude have dehumanised them. They have been bereft of all rights. It will therefore take time to make them self-conscious. But the time will come when they will be class conscious and demand their rights and their proper position in society They cannot be kept down for ever. They will demand a new order of things. In the Indian and especially the Hindu social-polity the “lowly” have no place. Indian society is still feudalistic and is based on social inequalities. There is a huge landless agrarian population, besides the “submerged tenth” who have gone down with¬ out redemption. Besides the economic exploita¬ tion there is religious exploitation by the priest¬ craft. As a result of all these exploitations and social injustice the Indian masses have sunk down to the position where they are to-day. Specially the case of the Hindu Is the most pathetic in the whole world. From birth to death the Hindu is a slave, rights he lias none, but only orders to obey. There is no social polity in the world which keeps the man so bound down as entirely to hamper his development, as the Hindu socialpolity.

Thus we see that in the Indian body politic the masses do no enjoy any right or liberty and as it happens every where, a handful of men forming the upper classes of the society rule the others and enjoy all the benefits. Yet in full view of these facts these masses are asked to sacrifice themselves for what is called “national freedom.” This no doubt provides food for reflection for the Indian sociological thinkers and leaders. Granting of only a concession here and a few rights there can never remedy the disease which is rotting the whole Indian social-polity. A radical change is necessary. A new social-polity has to be intro¬ duced in the Indian society. Truth is always unpleasant, but it must be said, the solution of the Indian problem cannot be found merely by getting rid of the foreigners. It may leave the administration to the hands of the Indian Bourgeoisie but it cannot help the masses to attain the maximum development of manhood. Hence a new “watch word” should be found for the masses, a new world view should be given to them. A new' ideal must be held up to them by which they can realise true manhood. A posi¬ tive and concrete program dealing with the vital interests of the masses must be put forward. It is of no use shutting over eyes to the conditions as they exist in Indian society. We must face the facts broadly and try our best to find out a solution of the problem. The masses are being asked to fight the battle of freedom, but what benefits arc they going to get thereby? They are asked to make a solid national front against

the enemy, but nothing as yet has been set on foot to bring the different classes on the same social level. After the struggle for freedom of 1857, the feudal aristrocats went out of the arena, after playing out their role. Next came the Liberal bourgeoisie to play its part. At present the third and most important factor, the masses — are going to play their role, and the future of the movement lies in their hands. In this matter the same historic process of develop¬ ment is going on in India as has taken place in other oppressed countries of the world. Only in this following respect India is lagging behind the other civilised countries. In India the Third Estate is trying to assert itself, while in the other civilised lands the Fourth Estate is now trying to do the same. Unfortunately the Indians living, as they do, within the narrow’ limits of their own country appear to be amazingly ignorant of the outside world. The political, social and economic conditions as they exist in other parts of the world find no place in the Indian mind. The isolation of India from the outside world had been a curse to her in the past and it is continuing the same even to-day. The leaders of the Indian masses have built a Chinese Wall around the country, and lead by preaching emo¬ tional hatred against everything English. But the world’s prosperity is built on mutual aid and co-operation.

Hence it behooves the Indian thinkers to look forward and analyse the social conditions. Those who have no prejudices or interests to warp their judgment will discern that the struggle for freedom does not end with getting self-government — swaraja — “within or without the British Empire.” That this kind of qualified freedom may better the conditions of the privileg¬ ed classes but will not bring the masses up to a higher level of civilisation and manhood. Swaraj to be Defined. What they need is an all round egalitarianism, political, social, and economic. The term Swaraj therefore must be defined. The masses must know what they are going to get as it is on them that the brunt of the fight is going to fall in future. A patched-up truce can never put off the inevitable. The Asiatics as a rule are individualists, especially the Hindus. But it is not the indivi¬ dualism according to the Spencerian sense but the selfish habit which is the outcome of slavery. It is "every one for himself the devil take care of the rest” principle engendered by thousands of years of political, social, religious and economic oppression and exploitation. Collective principle and co-operation are unknown to them, particularly to the Hindus. Nowhere in the affairs of life can the Hindus co-operate with one another. As a result of this slavish instinct mutual aid and co-operation arc unknown to the Indians; but the world is built on mutual aid.

The biological principles do not controvert this fact. In an inter-racial group, individual com¬ petition is not necessary for its development, and the principles of economics show that society is based on collectivism. The old individualist doctrine emanating from the principles of the Physioeratic School and developed later on by Adam Smith and ending with Spencer’s Laissez Fairs theory, does not hold good any longer except in the case of those who have need of it for selfish ends. Commuuality on social and economical lines is absolutely necessary for the uplift of the Asiatics. The principle of natural selection does not imply the cut-throat principle euphemistically called individualism. In an inter-racial group, natural selection plays but a small part as Karl Pearson says, “All the evidences, however, that I have been individually able to gather from a naturally limited examina¬ tion of Anthropometric Statistics and anthro¬ pological facts, distinctly point to the very small part played by intragroup selections in the case of civilised man. If this be so, then the manu¬ facture of Biological bogies for socialists is idle, being an occupation like that process of planting economic scarecrows round the field of social reform, by which the Manchester school strove for a time to delay their political bankruptcy”. (Chances of Death Page 13S — 139).

Thus communality on social and economic lines is what is wanted for India. But what we need for India is not a blind imitation of the old Fnglish systems, but a sound rational socio¬ political system, which has to be evolved in India. Unfortunately, we have not as yet developed any political philosophy of our own, only we are led by emotion and try to assert ourselves in the world only by sentimentalism No movement for freedom has been so poor in Philosophy as the one in India. A positive hatred towards the British, and a negative idea of getting freedom, will lead us no where. The thing wanted is that our leaders and thinkers should study what is going on all over the world, and try in the light of that to uplift the Indian masses to their fullest capacity. . To get rid of Class Rule. The exploited classes of the world arc trying to get rid of class rules and apply the principles of social democracy based on economic equality or communism. We cannot lag behind the other nations of the world for ever. Now that a movement for freedom has been started we must try to conduct it on rational lines. For this reason what \vc want should be clearly defined. The masses must know where the movement is leading to. By appealing to sentiments or arousing enthusiasm only we cannot achieve much. The masses cannot be made the food of the cannon, unless they regain by it what they have lost.

It will be better to recapitulate the two systems before proceeding to compare them. Spinoza starts with the cartasinn principle that substance has, as nature, independence of every¬ thing else for its existence. It is unconditioned, unlimited and infinite. Its existence is spontane¬ ous. A plurality of substances is therefore im¬ possible aud a contradiction in terms. There is only one substance. But what is its nature? How about its positive characteristics? This question is inqiossible to answer for a definition means limitation and substance is unlimited. I his is the reason why Spinoza speaks of it only m negatives as that it' is not this and not that. The next main conception is that of attributes. Substance has two of these : mind and matter. It appears either as a mental phenomenon or as a material one. It cannot appear as any other. Hut its limitation in this manner is not due to anything inherent in itself but to the finite nature of man which cannot comprehend it in any other form. The limitation is in man and not in substance which is by nature unlimited. These attributes are mutually exclusive ; a mental thing ecoming by no possibility a material one and v,Ce versa. But in so far as they are both the aspects of the same thing, they arc not so. The

third important idea of Spinoza is that of modes. The various individual things seen under the aspect of mind or of matter are so many mani festations of the substance and they are all conditioned by necessity. As to his practical philosophy man being only a modus he can have no free will. Good and bad are not things which are true in themselves but exist only in our minds. Where everything is substance there cannot be anything bad in itself. But we call that bad which does not fall in with our scheme of right and wrong. Only that however can be called truly good which leads us to a knowledge of God. The Vedanta system is not as easy to summarise. It starts with pramanas pr measures of truth and recognises three of them. One is the pratyaksha pramana or the standard of sensuous perception ; a second is anumatta pramana or the method of getting at truth by means of inference as when we know the existence of fire by the perception of smoke ; the third is sabda pramana or the criterion of authority. This consists for the Vedantists only of the Vedas. Next comes a long argument at the end of which it is established that subject and object are mutually exclusive and that the common of the world consists in translating one to the other as when we say “We are strong or we are right.” In this way is established the illusory character of the connection between the Ego and the non-ego and the sole reality of only the former.

The seeming nature of the connec¬ tion however is due to Maga or ignorance which is not individual but universal. Truly, it is only the Ego that exists. Though this is the truth, we must grant the reality for all practical pur poses, Vyavaharartham as Sankara says, of the universe as it appears to us from day to day. We have thus two kinds of realities, the real and only Reality and the Phenomenal one. Corres¬ ponding to this duplication of reality we have knowledge also divided as higher and lower, the first consisting in the way of freeing the Self from its illusion as to its connection with the Universe for all eternity and the second being the way in which man by doing works and worshipping Brahman attains liberation. The former emphasises knowledge, the latter action. Two Brahmans are also given, the Nirguna Braluuan, the qualityless Brahman and the Saguna Brahman, the “quality-ed" Brahman. The former is of course the true Brahman, the latter

being meant only for phenomenal purposes. For such purposes also the doctrine of Karma is introduced. It only carries beyond one life the law of cause and effect and applies it to moral relations as well as to material ones. It explains why there arc the existing differences in the world and indicates what the way is to improve oneself in coming lives. In fine we may say the Vedanta teaches the truth of the Brahman and the unreality of the universe. The ego can not be anything else than that Brahman. But for practical purposes the world shall be real, mau shall do good actions and worship a Brahman as living, as human as he himself. The position of this school has been very beautifully put in the three words “That thwam asi”. “'Hiat, thou art”. Now for a comparative review of the two systems. And first to the criteria of truth, the sources of knowledge. The Vedanta, as we have seen recognises three of them, the pratyaksha pramana, the anumana pramana and the sabda pramana, that is, sensuous perception inference and authority. For the purpose in hand, we shall say that the first two are dependent only on reason so that the Vedanta might be said to count upon only two things as sources of knowledge, reason and authority. Spinoza however takes only one of these reasons as his criterion and indeed we could not expect any¬ thing else from a lineal descendant of Dascartes who started Modern Philosophy in Europe after rigorously eliminating all prejudices and writing on the clean slate, as his first point of speculation “Cogito ergo sum” "I think, therefore, I am.” In a sense we may say that Descartes rejected all authority but we must be careful of what we mean by that term.

If it implies such a thing as was used to stifle rational inquiry in the Middle Ages then certainly it must be set aside. But if it refers to authority’, not on account of reason but on that of a faculty higher than reason, it is but right that reason should submit. In fine the Vedanta recognises, as means of knowledge both reason and a higher faculty in man than that, whatever we might call it, intui¬ tion or anything else while Descartes and like him Spinoza both recognise only reason. To the very pertinent enquiry as to whether such a faculty exists one should think that it is too late in the day, with Bergson staring in the face, to give an elaborate answer. In any case, Indian philosophy assumes such a faculty and is prepared to justify the assumption. It rests on those who deny it to substantiate their position.

Both the systems arrive at the sole existence of only one Reality but they do so in different ways. Spinoza starts with the Cartesian principle that' Substance is the thing which does not depend on anything else for its existence. But while Descartes very inconsistently assumed two such substances mind and matter, Spinoza rightly came to the conclusion that plurality must mean dependence in some way or other and real independence can be posited of only one. Sankara who also holds that only one exists comes to his position in a different way. He starts with the diametrical apposition of subject and object, Ego and the non-ego and with the natural corollary that one cannot be attributed of the other. Of the two things it is self-evident that the Ego is real egp, the non-ego is unreal. But the real is unlimited, independent and unconditioned. The "I” therefore is the Real, the whole world is un¬ real. Thus we reach the same destination by both the paths. Moreover l>oth the philosophers decline to describe the nature of the Reality in any definite and positive manner and for the same reason. The attribution of i»ositivc qualities implies the negation of their opposites and negation is limita¬ tion, a thing which is opposed to the nature of Substance. Spinoza says that it is not finite, it is not limited and so on while Sankara summarily says, it is Nirguna Brahman, the qualityless Brahman.

He is afraid of saying that It is one lest his statement might be construed to mean It is not two. He merely says It is adwaitam, not two. After all, the true explanation of Its nature seems to be that given by the ancient Rishi who when asked what the nature of Atmam was, did not reply but kept silence. He was asked the same question a second time but did not reply then also. The increasingly anxious pupil put the same question a third time when he got the reply from the Rishi. "My son, I answered you twice but you did not understand me. Yon want more preparation to do so”. Brahman is not a matter for words but one for experience.

Sankara says that though in reality Brahman alone is existing, we see so many things in the world because of ignorance which is not indivi¬ dual but generic. That ignorant is Maga. In short, he holds that appearances are desistful. At the same time however, he discerns that as Brahman is infinite, those appearances also can not be devoid of reality. He grants them there¬ fore what we might call phenomenal reality. Spinoza also holds the same doctrine of Maga in a way. Of course he never called it by the Indian name and might not have even thought of it as such. But his position regarding the appearance is very similar to that of the Vedantin, for he says that man by his finite nature is constrained to get a view of substance only in two aspects, mental and moral. There must be, there are, he admits various other aspects in which substance can be seen but the nature of man incapacitates him to do so. That is, the nature of man limits his vision. At least in so far as this limitation goes, have we not a distant echo of the doctrine of Maga? A difference however soon crops up between the two philosophies. For Sankara, the world as we see it. is only phenomenally real, that is the true and only reality is Brahman who is beyond and above the appearances we sec in experience, and those appearances are deceitful and to be taken as true only so long and so far as the Reality is not reached. They are real only for the purpose of every day life not for that of truth.

Spinoza however holds that his modes are really real. There is no phenomenal reality or real reality for him. He has only one kind of it. We may shortly put the difference between him and Sankara on this point thus. Appearance for him has for him reality while for Sankara it has not. W'e have seen the two kinds of realities the Indian philosophar arrives at. His distinction necessitated a division of knowledge also into Higher and Lower. The former helps a man to know the nature of Brahman in its true form. It aids him in gaining freedom for the Self from all the Upadhis and to do so for all eternity, not tor this life only. Tire latter also helps him to gain, the same object' but in a different way. It enjoins on him the worship of the phenomenal Brahman, the Saguna Brahman as distinguished from the real one, the Nirguna one, the dis¬ charge of worldly duties in a strictly moral wav and to do other good things in life as though the world with its appearances is the real one. Spinoza of course has nothing of this kind. I be psychology of the Indian is much deeper than that of the Jew. Whereas the latter recognises, in all probability, only three states of consciousness, the former speaks of four. For Spinoza, they are conscious stage, subconscious one and the dreaming one. But for Sankara there ire the conscious one, the dreaming one, the stage of deep dreamless sleep and what is merely

called the turiya stage, or the fourth ouc. In the first the Self is perceiving with the aid of Manas and the Indrivas; in the second, the Indriyas cease to work hut the mind does not ; in the third mind also ceases to work and the Atman is separated from it ; and in the last stage the Self goes out of the material body with the SukmaSariram. Coming to practical philosophy, the two systems are quite opposed in the matter of free¬ will. According to Sankara our actions are determined by Karma, that is, by what we do, we are bound. Here it is wise to clear an existing confusion. Karma does not inculcate fatalism. The latter by binding an individual hand and foot denies to him all initiative and makes him dispirited and worthless but Karma far from doing any of these things gives him hope for the future. "Do not be discouraged by your plight now," it says, "but do good actions and you will be better, if not in this life, certainly in the lives to come." This is anything but make a man useless and implies free-will on his part. According however to Spinoza, modes being all determined and an individual soul being a mode, it and free-will are antipodes. It is the same with the notions of good and bad. The Jewish philosopher deriving everything from Substance cannot consistently say that some things are good and some are bad for everything is Substance. Such conceptions are only in the mind of man who as soon as he sees some object which does not square with his preconceived scheme of things at once classifies it as bad, other¬

wise calling it good. According to the Vedantiii however, it is clear that what contributes to the freedom of the soul is good and what does not bad. But it is interesting to observe that the realisation of God is the end of man according to both. One word about the criticism levelled at Spinoza that his God is all devouring. He is a negative gulf, a lion’s den lo which there arc many steps but from which none. This is essentially just in his case for he has failed to bring experience in its fullness out of his abstract substance which he has taken all pains to sub¬ sume under it. In the case of Sankara such a criticism is obviated for plurality is derived from Oneness by means of Maga. On the whole we can see that their abstract monism is the central point in both the systems. “There is no reality but God and Substance is his name" Spinoza would say. “There is no reality but God and Brahman in his name” would say Sankara. Both are God intoxicated. Schwegler says that Spinoza’s system is the most abstract monism that can possibly be conceived and such a conception is a consequence of his nationality, an echo of the East. May not the same be said of Sankara and his nationality ? And in praise of the Upanishads, Schopenhauer says "In the whole world there is no study except that of the original (of the Upanishads) so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Oupnckhat (Persian translation of the Upanishads) It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death”. And may not the same be said of Spinoza and his system?

THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. Mr. N. K. Vknxataswaran, b.a. The schoolmaster is not quite a happy individual. He is often positively discontented. But he puts a good face on things and seldom complains. This is particularly so in India where there is so little of the spirit to oppose and hit out. The schoolmaster lias patiently borne no end of negligence, disrespect and obloquy. Tlve public pay him slight attention or at best pat him occasionally on the back with patronizing condescension. Altogether his position is not enviable. But he has to thank himself for all that. He has been too meek and seldom got out of his shell. He has always been willing to put up with any amount of annoyance and overwork himself. He has been content to live in the illusion of claptraps and if anybody eve' suggested that his w’as the noblest of professions, he straightaway mounted the high horse and felicitated himself to the immense amusement of less simple folk. No wonder people often carry about them a smile, however slight, of pity if not of contempt for the schoolmaster. There is, however, an end to everything in the world. It is nature’s inexorable law. Therefore the school-master has become dimly aware that his proverbial patience is not for aye and that already past* are its halcyon days. Indeed the urge of restlessness has begun to haunt his breast and latterly his snug vocabulary has been rudely stirred by the irruption of such disturbers of peace as Messrs. Whys and Wherefores. The newcomers do not allow him now-a-days to show the other cheek to his enemy or to plod along with unquestioning obedience. He has nearly turned a new leaf and entered a new existence.

His discontent has broken its shackles and found its voice. He is no longer of that sagely fraternity known as dumb, driven cattle. He has begun to feel the joy of thinking and doing, of asking questions and solving them. He looks about him and says “The world is in a precious mess and bankrupt statesmanship is of little avail. Is there no way out? Cries Bernard Shaw, “There is no way out through the school¬ master.” He thinks otherwise, positively other¬ wise. “The only way out is through the school¬ master!” Education and Education of the right sort, he believes, is the only remedy for the chronic convulsions of a suffering humankind. The school-master alone can pour oil on the troubled waters. In him lies the sublime duty of evangelizing future generations to the gospel of peace and goodwill and he will do it if his hands are not tied. If a decade ago, the schoolmaster had sug¬ gested that his art had any such potentialities or claimed to have at least a finger in the pie, his so-called betters would have pelted him with their jeers and sternly commanded him to hold his tongue and keep his head cool. But to-day the jaded world is pathetically looking about for some means of relief and in certain quarters the schoolmaster has come to be regarded as a jxjssible physician. Yes, the call of a new Edu¬ cation is heard in the distance and humanity is straining its ears to hearken to it as the call of

hoi>e. Really arc great things in store for the But what is this new Education and its missionary the new schoolmaster like? This is a question well worth answering. Current ideas about Education are funda¬ mentally wrong. People usually equate Education with knowledge and knowledge with information. Education is not know¬ ledge and knowledge is not what is stowed away in memory. Education is a process co-extcnsive with life. It gives life its harmony and equilibrium. It makes it mellow and sweet. It liberates its potentialities and develops them. It unfolds personality and enriches it. It purifies it, spiritualises it and makes it as near as possible to the life of Him in whose image we are created. Education, in a word, is the sublimation and exaltation of life or at least it ought to be. Knowledge, on the other hand, is only a product of Education, but not its sole nor even its most important product. Knowledge is experience. It guides us in our efforts to make the best of our talents and to live our lives fully and happily. Knowledge is the ability to think, to decide, to do. Education is an inspiration and knowledge an achievement accomplished under the spell of that inspiration. Education is the source and knowledge is the stream.

But more pathetic than the identification of Education with knowledge is the identification of knowledge with what are called facts or informa¬ tion. The mistake is serious because it, more than any other, is responsible for making Edu¬ cation a tragic failure of high purposes. If there is anything that we can boldly assert is not Education it is our present-day schooling which givt-s our boys a snippety smattering cf the subjects in the curriculum. We give them, of course, some rudiments of reading, writing and ciphering, a few rules of grammar, a few names and dates in history, a few’ geographical terms, chemical formulae and things pf that kind and we put all that together and call the motlev crew an Education. That is why our “schooling” is so indisputably removed from life and that is why it is so unreal, mechanical, false and injurious. This tragic translation of Education into practice has produced an amputated humanity with unnatural cravings. Obsessions and manias have preyed on it at will. It has produced an educated class steeped in superstition and ignor- ance. It has given them power and the capacity to make that power monstrous. It has giver, them a thousand giants’ strength and ten thousand giants’ unscrupulousness to use it like giants. It has furnished old Adam with liquid fire, poison gas and all the rest of it. It has released primitive passions and jealousies and made man the greatest enemy of mankind.

The supreme thing in this spurious Educa¬ tion is the cramming in of facts. Things that really matter are left alone. Cliaracter shifts for itself. Instincts and emotions are smothered tinder a heavy avalanche of information. Per¬ sonality goes under. “The training for citizen¬ ship” is a worn platitude fit only to be consigned to the limbo of oblivion. All real Education goes by the board and only one thing remains and that is the tyranny of facts. Nor is this all. There is the other thing — the natural sequence to this veneration of a MurnboJumbo. That is the examination system. Wc not only hammer into these young heads all this stuff and nonsense passing for knowledge, wc also want to find out exactly the amount of such false knowledge that we have been able to put into them. The examination is the time-honored machinery to weigh out the amount. Of late the patient toil of disinterested workers has brought tp life certain palpable absurdities of the examination system. The human psychology is so complex and varies so much from indivi¬ dual to individual that examinees and examiners respond to it with the most unequal stimuli. Say, A and B are of equal abilities in most things that matter. A and B sit for the examination. A docs ill and is ploughed. B does well and gets a first class. Agaiu, say, A and B are of equal abilities an.

I answer their examination papers equally well. X, the examiner, marks A’s paper and passes him ; Y marks B’s paper and plucks him. If both A and B are to get their desires, they must • equally be apt at examinations and their answer papers must be marked by the same examiner or examiners having the same mind. This is a combination of circumstances that fall to the lot of only those who are born under exceptionally lucky stars, but unfortunately such stars are few in the heavens and there is a close scramble for their patronage. With the result that examina¬ tions often prove the ruin of many an ambition and ability, if occasionally also the exaltation of mediocrity, of even of unworthiness. ii

Here is a classical story which, although has nearly become a chestnut by constant repetition, may perhaps bear re-telling yet once more. P. B. Ballard relates it in his book, The New Examiner. It refers to an examination in history in an American University. The passing mark was 60. There were six examiners. Papers that secured less than 60 were handed on to the other examiners so that examinees on the borderliue might be given full justice. One pious examiner with a rather disturbing “still small voice” within prepared a model answer to each question before setting out to marx the papers. Mischance always on the look-out to play its pretty pranks got the good Professor’s model answers mixed up with the pa[iers which he forwarded for the perusal of his colleagues. It was valued by them as a bond fide paper and, as with die others, met with different fortunes at different hands, the marks it received ranging between 40 and So. The Professor came to the very verge of failure on his own examination. And this is not a solitary instance. Examina¬ tions therefore stand self-condemned ; but the schools of to-day are not jxast the totem-stage yet. They still venerate facts and allow themselves to be dominated by examinations. That is why the present Education is justly stigmatized as l>eing unpractical. Indeed, it is so completely divorced from every-day life.

And what are the practical results of this divorce between life and Education? It is un¬ doubtedly one of the causes of the general dis¬ contentment on the part of pupils and teachers alike. The former, living as they have been on this kind of chaff, crave for something better. The latter tired of vending this niggardly nutri¬ tion are anxious to offer something richer and more abundant. Dissatisfaction smoulders under a false discipline. Given an opportunity youth would break the bondage of despotic Government which a hostile fraternity of school-masters has imposed on them. Given an opportunity school¬ masters themselves would rebel against their own despotism. A couple of years ago the Travancore school-boys went out on strike, breaking all the tics of age-old conventions. The underlying causes of this open defiance lie in the galling defects of School Education. The immediate cause, whatever that is, served only to open the sluices of accumulated disquiets and dissatisfac¬ tions. The strikes have come and gone and school-masters are where they were. When the evangel of Non-co-operation sancti¬ fied by tlie breath of one of the purest and sincerest souls that ever lived, came with its exhortations to youth to leave the schools of a “satanic Government”, ardent adolescence hearing with its impetuosities gave it a response which continues to shake the foundations of discipline to this day. Our boys live in an electrified atmosphere of restlessness and it requires stout hearts and lusty hands to stand sentinel to their safety.

Rut alas ! the influence of teachers is waning with tragic rapidity just at the time when it ought to grow from more to more. Any wandering tub-thumpers are able to attract their wards and set them adrift on the unsteady waters of impassioned eloquence No, they must not have them to their tender mercies. They must win them by their affection, open the portals of their confidence by the golden key of love, touch and elevate them by the magic wand of personality and broaden their minds with the sweet intimations of mellowed culture. They must no more be mere fact mongers or axemen at the examination block. Theirs is a glorious mission and they must rise to the occasion or they will be unworthy of themselves and the great profession they represent. Be not satisfied with daily injections of dozes of English, Mathematics and all the rest of it.

The Function of the School-Master. Dr. T. P. Nunn of the University of London tells us: “They now regarded school as a real society in which free persons mingled together, not necessarily on the same level but free from prohibitions and having room for give and take. That change had been the most blessed thing they had seen in the field of educa¬ tion in the last half century, and it promised more in the way of training in citizenship than anything else. The teacher should be the interpreter between the greater society of the outside world and the smaller microcosm of the school. Citizenship should mean a consciousness of belonging to a gTeat historical community which had contributed great things to the world’s spiritual wealth. It was in this consciousness of those great spiritual traditions that our schools had hitherto been unduly weak. “One of the great needs of the day was to introduce in the school a consciousness of great human movements that made up the glory of civilization. The quality of the citizenship would be greatly raised if our teachers were men and women of culture acutely conscious of those great human movements, keeping in touch with the springs of knowledge and duty.”

That is a fine picture and gives a glimpse of what the new school-master will be like. He must give them life, more life and still more life. He must give them freedom, more freedom and still more freedom. He must inspire them and guide them to lead their lives in amity and good¬ will with all the world. "Teaching is lighting a lamp and not filling a bucket.” This is the greatest secret of the school -master’s art. Let them make it their gospel and live up to it with courage and faith unfathomable. The message of Dean Inge, one of the greatest thinkers of the day, a person who has seen the ups and downs of a long experience is wortn their perusal. In one of his recent sermons he said “that the whole object of a good teacher was to make himself unnecessary. He unlocked the outer gate of the treasure-house of knowledge ; he imbued his pupils with a lively faith in the riches within, and with a keen desire to make them their own. And then he put the bunch of keys in his pupils’ hands and bade them go in and explore for themselves. It was not the quantity of knowledge imparted that tested the teacher s fitness. It was the intellectual love that he had nurtured, the spiritual longings he hail fostered. In the higher walks of education the greatest school-masters that his country produced in the last century were men who possessed this gift in a pre-eminent degree. Thev sometimes had nearly every other fault a school¬ master could have. .Some were bad disci¬ plinarians, very hoti-tempcred, and unmethodical, but they kindled enthusiasm, and their pupils many of whom became famous distinguished their memory.”

But few school-masters set their eyes on such an ideal and fewer still strive to reach it. The fault is partly the school-master’s, and partly of the system within whose tentacles they have, perhaps unwittingly, fallen. But the rising tide of discontent docs, in many cases, prove an eyeopener and straightaway they start to put their houses in order. The defects of the system, however are deep-rooted. The gateways of ihe bastille can be rushed only by a well-organized and persistant propaganda. Evil outlives itself with the die-hardest of obstinacies. When a storm lashes the sea into fury and the good ship is in distress, you jettison cargo overboard. The Ship of Education is in imminent danger. Heavy trucks of fact, unrelated heaps of dry-as-dust that cluster thick in unfrequented haunts far removed from life, these have no place on the deck at such an hour. Jettison them. Nor can the crushing weight of examination* be allowed to add to the peril. Instead of the dead weight of mere facts, give them the joy of abundant knowledge. Instead of these essay-examinations which have won our University the unsavoury reputation of being a cracker of young bones, test them by the rational method of the new-examination into which none may dip with the hope of snatching something \aluablc. In the field of Education, lucky-bag methods, indeed, have no place. The New Ex¬ amination would test the real knowledge of the candidates which is assumed to be large.

Scarce¬ ly any writing will be demanded of them. The Truc-and-Falsc Test, for example, asks the candidates to indicate by simple marks which of a number of statements on a certain subject are true or false. Thus the candidates' mental depth is measured by the unerring plummet of truth. In a short paper like the present, it is not possible to exhaust this branch of the subject which alone is enough to fill a volume. Dr. P. B. Ballard in his New Examiner has treated it with illuminative insight.

But scrapping the present-day examinationsystem and the cult of facts is not enough. Teachers cannot halloo yet. They are still in the wood. The teacher cannot cast aside his old inertia and evolve a new outlook or imbue his personality with the fascination of real and ripe culture or browse leisurely — hurry is impossible in such matters — on the pastures of luscious literature so lie might make his contact with his pupils fruitful and inspiring unless he has a far lesser amount of work to do and a far greater amount of time which he might call his own. Now-a-days a teacher usually works between 18 and 28 periods a week, of 50 minutes each. Good teaching is impossible wherever such a volume of output is enforced. Trashy, shoddy teaching, however big in quantity, is of no good and those on whose shoulders the burden of such sweated work rests are no better than day- lalxmrers. They cannot lay the foundations of the future of humanity — no, not in the least. One thing alone they do. They earn their bread under the sweat of their brows. But their efforts wither away in tragic futility and bear no fruit. Reduce his work by one half at any rate and the turbid stream of wasted energy may be turned to fertilize the lovely, tender little plants growing in the garden of Life.

It must be remembered that teachers whose lot it is to live in the closest intimacy with immature minds must, by way of compensation, be given the widest scope to move in society and to keep themselves abreast of all the progressive movements and the trends of the best thought. They must on occasion be afforded opportunities of travel in foreign lands and strengthen their minds with the surge of new ideas. They must for ever be drinking at the fountain of knowledge and slaking an unquenchable thirst. They must, they must ; for otherwise they go to the wall — and with them humanity ! A Glimpse of the Future. Such in brief are the conditions for the coming of the New School-master. But when he comes — and he is coming as certain as tomorrow — he will assuredly change the face of things and ac¬ complish the greatest task of all, to get man to love his kind. For, when this is done the millennium of which lie has been trying to catch a glimpse through the endless vistas of bleak centuries, shall have come and our present-day blustering jingo nationalisms shall have broken into the sweetest flowers of love for the whole of human kind sojourning in this wonderful Earth of God.

For, he the coming one, will bring a race of manly, benevolent, happy, aspiring, hopeful citizens who will forge ahead with heart within and God overhead, who will make their voice heard in the councils of the world and who will have their rightful seats in the galaxy of nations, true and worthy sons of mother earth able to guard her honour in her old age and make her young in the holy ashes of voluntary action. Yes, he will bring up a race who shall eschew an education that docs not impart to them imperish¬ able lessons on the sanctity of existence and oneness of humanity, on virtue’s eight-fold ijath, on the wickedness of war that never conquers, on the sublimity of love that ever conquers and on the vileness of passions, communal rivalries and clannish prejudices. They will never forget this supreme lesson that History has taught ns and is still teaching us that empires carved and kept by the sword have come and gone. Your Caesars and Alexanders are dead. The empires of the mind acquired by the unconquerable weapon of love and liound together by its elastic cords still continue to flourish. The Buddhas and Jesuses,

no ancient music but imagined that the notes of (■ttagovindam must exist, if anywhere, in one of the Southern provinces where the poet was born.” Is this not quaint, especially when we know as a historical fact that Jayadeva was born and flourished in Bengal near Dr. Tagore’s Shanthimkethan and had nothing to dp whatso¬ ever with South India ? Be that as it may, if Sir \\ . Jones had been driven from one comer to another, he would have to thank himself for it For, how could he “hope” to procure the original music of Gilagovindam, merely with the help of modes, prefixed to each of its Prabandhas?* The truth is that there was neither the Notation to record the songs of Jaya¬ deva nor any scientific treatment in his book whereby to teach or even suggest the methods of singing them. 3* Again, Tanscn is said to have electrified his audience with his enrapturing music. Mira Bai is said to have bewitched her audience with her soul-stirring music. Maha Vylhinathicr, Peria \ ythi and Shadkala Govindan are all said to have spell-bound their respective audiences with their inimitable performances. But where arc they heard now sung? They are all lost for want of notation. The four remarkable Oratorios of South India, viz., (i) Arunachala Kavi’s Rdma Sdtakam, (2) Gopalakrishna Bharathi's Nandan

C harilhram, (3) Kavi Kunjara's Skdnda Purana Kirthanas, and (4) Kamaswnmi Aiyar’s Peria Purdna Kirthanas — arc every moment running the risk of getting into oblivion. Why? For want of notation. The learning process of a pupil takes an unduly long time. Why? Again for want of notation. Krithis and Kirthanas are nowadays sung in different ways by different men in different places ; and some pf them are slowly getting out of use. Why ? Once again for want of notation. 4. Cau we drift in this way any longer ? Can we, who see unmistakable signs of progress in all other directions, suffer ourselves to be blind¬ folded in the matter of preserving music for ages ? Surely not. We must therefore leave no stone unturned to fiud out the ways and means whereby to record the superior airs, whenceso¬ ever they may come, and transmit them over to our contemporaries and down to our succes¬ sors too. 5. But tp find out a uniform Notation for Indian Music is no easy task. Mr. V. N. Bhatkhandc wrote to me on 28th September, 1921 : — "Tlie Girl-Schools of Bombay follow my Notation.’’ Mr. Digambar of Bombay Gandharva Mahavidyalaya si>eaks of his notation. Mr. Snbkarama Dikshithar contemplated a third kind of notation. Mr. K. V. Sriuivasa Aiyangar employs a fourth kind. Quite recently Mr.

Abdul Karim put into my hands his own inusicbpok, wherein I noted a fifth kind of notation. Hence to make the whole country of India recog¬ nise and acknowledge one particular kind of notation as a uniform and even national one — is certainly no smooth sailing. 6. The foreigners take advantage of our differences and move heaven and earth to foist their Staff Notation into our System. Thus the problem of Notation has been made doubly diffi¬ cult. In addition to the task of settling our own differences, wc have been confronted with another new problem as to whether the Notation for Indian Music should be the European Staff or the Indian Sargam. 7. Let me first consider the arguments adduced by the advocates of the Staff and dis¬ pose of them one by one: — I. "The Staff Notation is more economical of space than an elaborate Sa— Ri — Ga — Ma — method of writing.” As against this contention, I submit that in an article, with the spirit of which I fully concur, in the Hindu, dated 5th November, 1921, the following remarks were found : — "The Staff music is uneconomical to lie used, for it occu¬ pies much space and it-, printing costly.” Now, put both the systems of writing a scale in juxtaposition ; and you will see which of the two is more economical of space.

V. “The European Notation has signs to indicate which note is sharp and which note is flat. Much confusion is created in the Indian Notation for want of such signs.” That, in the Sargam Notation, such or similar signs are not made use of, in the body of a music-piece while writing it, is at once admitted. But it is submitted that no confusion is created thereby. An average student of Indian Music who is familiar with Venkatamakhi’s Milakartliacliakra knows which notes in a given scale or raga arc sharp and which flat. You will have merely to tell him “Melam — S” ; and he will at once understand it to be Hanuniathodi (Hindustani Dhairavi) and sound all the notes flatly. Or tell him “Melam — 65” ; and lie will forthwith understand it tp be Mecliakalyani (Hindustani Yaman) and sound all the notes sharply. At the head of each music-piece, the names of the Raga and Thfila are usually given ; just as the treble or bass clef, the time-signature and the signs of sharp or flat notes are placed at the beginning of the stave. Nowadays the number of the Melam is also added. These headings alone arc more than enough for an Indian music-student to know what sharp or flat notes he has to sound in a given piece. If desirable, the heading of a music-picce, say, Niravad hisukada may be as follows : —

Mela. 28 Janya Raga — Ravi Chnmlrifcn. Harifcamboji I ThaJa— Adi. ^Hindustani Jinjoti) I Kola — Madliyama. Arohana : — Sa — Rij — Go*— Ma,— Dhaj — Nij — Dbaj Sa Avnroliann : — Sa — Nij — Dlia* — Maj — Ca» — Ria — Sa In the body of the music-piece, it is enough that mere swara letters are written, inasmuch as the number 1 or 2, indicating respectively the flatness or sharpness of the notes, is correctly inserted in the heading. Be it noted that “Sa” denotes the key-note and “Sa” denotes rts octave and that the theory of flat and sharp notes applies only to Ri — Ga — Ma — Dha — Ni and never to Sa — Pa. Here the Huropean Music would make confusion. We call the first black key in a Harmonium ‘Flat Ri’ ; but the Europeans would call it C Sharp or D Flat. Again we call the second black key ‘Flat Ga' ; but the Europeans would call it D Sharp or E Flat and so forth. Is npt our clear and un¬ ambiguous nomenclature decidedly better than the confused one of the Europeans ? VI. The following sixth contention was raised by an educated Indian lady with University honors in a letter written to me on 26-1 1-2 1. To be fair to her, I shall quote her letter at length : “I request you to kindly think over the question of having a Staff Notation for our music.

With the Staff Notation, our music will be studied and appreciated by the Americans, the English, etc. ; and there is the chance of Indian Music becoming universal and popular and still Indian. If we wish to be recog¬ nised as a nation, we must make others see the greatness and the superiority of all that we possess. How did our great religion find its way to the United States of America ? It was through the common medium — English. At present, the western people make fun of our music ; and a

few like Mrs. - , who honestly and sincerely wish to know something about our music, are handicapped for want of a common notation. So if we allow our music to be written in the Staff Notation, I don’t think we need fear of its becoming corrupted. On the other hand, I think it will become rich by absorbing the western music and yet remaining Indian. The time has now come when we should no longer be content with con¬ fining ourselves but should go out more and assert to the world that we are a nation.” Which reader of this letter will fail to appreciate the noble sentiment of patriotism and the nobler spirit of independence that run throughout it ? O ! how I wish for many more such learned ladies in our country ! But all the sahie I fear the writer of the letter under reference has not caught my point and all her arguments have therefore overshot the real issue. My contention is, and shall ever be, that the Indians should learn and practise Indian Notation for Indian Music. Her main conten¬ tion seems to be that the Indian Music should be reduced to the Staff Notation for a twofold purpose, Ti2., (1) for the benefit of the Europeans and the Americans and (2) for ourselves going out auo asserting to the world at large that we are a nation. If so, 1 hasten to agree with her.

Staff) Notation. How many of those "few Europeans,” I ask, availed them¬ selves of Mr. Chituiasami Mudaliar’s OrientalMusic, wherein spine of Thiagaraja’s Krithis had been reduced to the Staff Notation? For ought I know, the Europeans discarded it, because there was the Indian Music in it ; and the Indians equally discarded it, because there was the Staff in it. Nor does the learned lady’s complaint, viz., “the V estern people make fun of our music”, frighten us into adopting the Staff, l or if the westerners make fun of our music,

they really make full of themselves. Fpr, it is a truism that different races possess different auditory faculties aud hence different systems of music came rightly into existence. The Frenchman cannot enjoy the English music, nor can the German enjoy the French music, nor can even the Hindustani Gavayi eujoy the Karnatic music. Hon’ble Sir Charles Turner, Kt. C.I.E.,* observed in this connection: “the Southern Englishman and the Scotch are within 400 miles of each other ; and yet the former canuot honestly enjoy the latter’s bagpipe. This difference in taste is due tp the difference ill the structure of the ear and more to habits and other circumstances of life.” If therefore the wester¬ ners make fun of our music, the inference is that the funny element is, not in our music, but in themselves. Reduction of Indian Music into the Staff Notation cannot be a remedy to such "funny” people. They must be prepared to have their tastes changed or modified, before they can approach our music. VII. As though a seventh contention were raised, a European friend of mine wrote to me on 7-9-1922 : “I have now got a native musician, quite ignorant of English, who tells me that it is not impossible for him to reduce all the Indian airs into the Staff Notation.”

My reply was: “Possible or impossible — that's a different question. Inasmuch as the mother’s milk of the Indian (or Sargam) Nota¬ tion is plentiful for the Indians, why should a foreign Doctor hoarsely cry and unduly praise to the skies the unnecessary Mellin’s Food of the Staff Notation?” VIII "If the Staff Notation is not accepted, why should not the Tonic Solfa Nota¬ tion be adopted, inasmuch as it has been advocated by no less a person than Abbe Dubois?" 1 don’t know whether Abbe Dubois ever advocated the Tonic Solfa ; but he expressed his over-anxiety to give the whole credit of inventing the music scale to Guy of Arezzo. The French Missionary had, however, to feel surprised to find that the Hindu Music had also the same scale. Here arc his owm words : “The Hindu Scale bears a striking resemblance •Vide Madras Mail u i 17-11-jtSiq. to ours, being composed of the same number of notes, arranged in the same way, as follows : — Do— Re— M i— Fa— So— La— Si— Do Sa— Ri— Ga— Ma— Pa— Dha— Ni— Sa Are we then to deny the merit of this invention to Guy of Arezzo?” My answer to this last question of the ill-informed Missionary is an emphatic "yes.”

(1) In the Hindu system there are half notes, quarter notes and infinite¬ simally minute and delicate shades, as in a painting by a master artist ; (2) The Vocalist or Instrumentalist very often glides over a whole gamut or half gamut, backward pr forward, in an unbroken easy flow. (3) In European Music, there is no such thing as Raga, w'hicli in the Hindu system is a thing permanently and scientifically established from time immemorial. Any man possessing the most ordinary know¬ ledge of music will at once recognise the particular RAga, in whatever form of composi- tion (and there are innumerable forms) it is sung to him ; and one mis-placed swara will immediately jar in his ears. Indeed with all deference to European Music and appreciation of its soul-stirring effects, I must say that Hindu Music is far more scientific and systematic. In the meanwhile what I have said will in a manner indicate the great inherent difficulties which must present themselves to one who attempts a ‘translation’ as it were.” 10. Mr. V. N. Bhatkhaude of Bombay wr.ote to me : ‘‘I am strongly opposed to making the Staff Notation the sole medium of instruction. My idea is that an Indian notation will go certainly, if not further, at least as far as the Staff Notation, with prpper signs and symbols. If, for our gamakas and grace notes, new signs would be necessary even in the Staff Notation, why should we not introduce them in the Indian notation and make it serviceable?

12. While thus even in Europe the Staff Notation is not universally accepted, it would be an unpardonable crime and sin to attempt to thrust it as a compulsory notation into India, where there has been from time immemorial a ‘Sargam’ Notation from Mount Kailas to Cape Camorin. By all means, join with us in im¬ proving our Sargam ; but, pray, do not think of throwing it overboard. 13. Enough, I believe, has been said to convince you that the system of Notation, most suitable to Indian music, is neither the Staff nor the Tonic Sol fa but the Sargam. T must now proceed to place before you what occurs to me the best possible uniform — and I may even say “national”— system of Sargam Notation for the whole of India, which is the main, if not the sole, way to resuscitate our fallen music. 14- But a preliminary point has first to be settled, for at the very outset we are confronted with the question : “At what stage in a pupil’s course of music should Notation he com¬ menced? Doubtless it is in human nature that, as between the thing and its symbol, preference is given to the former rather than to the latter. A hungry man cannot lie satisfied with the symbol of bread but wants the bread itself. In educa¬ tion, symbols are needed and employed only when the things they denote are not available or procurable. The true function of Notation, which is but a symbol of music, begins only when the sounding material, the living music teacher, is not available or procurable. Hence the teaching of Notation may be postponed to a ater stage, when the chances of the pupils’ leaving the school and of being away from the living teacher become greater and greater and may, in fact, be commenced from the First I-orm, according to my Syllabus. The pupils of

“The early steps of any art,” observed Florence Wickins, “are and must be slow at first ; and these begin¬ nings should on no account be hurried (or avoided). For once the elementary lessons are thoroughly and clearly understood and grasped by the pupil, the rest of the teacher’s work is easy.’’ It is those that are impatient of the necessarily slow progress of the early steps of the art who would generally sympathise with the objectors of Swara-teaching.