西方的民族主义

人类的历史是由我们所遭遇到的困难塑造而成的。这些困难给我们提出了疑问,同时也期望得到我们的解答,而对没能完成这一任务的惩罚则是死亡或是衰退。

世界上不同的民族所遭遇到的困难是不尽相同的,而我们克服这些困难的方式也各有不同。

生活在亚洲历史早期的塞西亚人不得不设法解决他们自然资源匮乏的问题。他们最初想到的解决方法就是将整个部族,不分男女老幼,都组织起来,以团伙的方式去抢劫。而那些主要从事社会协作性质的、建设性工作的人们简直拿他们没有办法。

但所幸的是,人类最初选择的道路并非他的真正道路。如果他的天性不是那么复杂的话,如果他像一群恶狼一样头脑简单的话,那么到此时此刻,那些从事抢劫的游牧部落就会控制整个世界。但是人类,当他遇到困难的时候,一定会承认他是人,他必须对自己天性中更高级别的才能加以利用。如果他忽视了这些,那么即便可能会取得眼下的成功,这成功也必将会成为他的死亡陷阱。因为对于一些低等的生物来说是困难的东西,对于像人类这种更高级的生命来说则是机遇。

印度从其历史的最开端就面临着这样的问题——种族问题。在印度,人种学意义上的不同种族已经有了亲密的接触。这一事实曾经是,将来也一定是这个国家历史上最重要的问题。我们的使命就是正视它,以实事求是的态度对待它,从而证明我们的仁爱。除非我们完成了自己的使命,其他的任何利益都不会与我们有缘。

世界上其他民族要么需要克服其自然环境所带来的困难,要么需要战胜他们的强邻所带来的威胁。他们组织起了自己的力量,以便充分地保障自身不受自然界和邻国的奴役,甚至利用其手中过剩的力量威胁他人。但是在印度,我们的困难来自于内部。我们的历史就是一部不间断的、社会调整的历史,而不是一部讲述将力量组织起来进行防御或是侵略的历史。

无论是苍白含混的世界主义还是对本民族狂热的自我崇拜都不是人类历史的目标。一直以来,印度都在试图完成自己的任务。她一方面对差异进行社会规范,另一方面,则倡导对于团结精神的认同。印度犯下了严重的错误,因为她在种族之间建立了过于森严的壁垒,以使得对于种族三六九等的划分可以无限期的延续;她常常毒害孩子们的思想并且限制他们的生活,以达到将他们划归到特定社会等级的目的。但是几个世纪以来,人们已经进行了新的实验,作出了新的调整。

印度的使命就像是一位家庭主妇的使命:她要为无数的客人提供合适的食宿,而这些客人的习惯和要求却各不相同。这样就产生了极为复杂的情况——要应对这些情况,不仅仅要依靠老练和机智,还要依靠同情心以及人与人之间的真正团结。为了实现这种团结,从早期《奥义书》 〔1〕 的时代一直到现在,许多精神导师一直在努力地工作着,他们的任务之一就是通过全心全意的、对于上帝的觉悟来蔑视所有人与人之间的差异。事实上,我们的历史从来就不是王朝兴衰的历史,不是争夺政治权位的历史。在印度,有关这些方面情况的记载已经为人们所唾弃、忘记,因为它们并不能代表我们人民的真正历史。我们的历史是有关社会生活的历史,是有关实现精神理想的历史。

但是我们感到自己的任务还未完成。世界的洪流已经席卷了我们的国家,新的元素被介绍进来,而更为广泛的调整正在蓄势待发。

因为西方所提供的教导和榜样与我们认为印度所应当完成的任务背道而驰,所以我们更为迫切地认识到了上述这一点。在西方,商业和政治的国家机器制造出了包装整齐的人性的压缩包,它们自有用处并且市场价值高昂;但是,它们是用铁条捆绑好的,以精密和仔细的科学手段进行了分门别类。显然,上帝造的人应当具有人性,但是西方这件现代产品却拥有令人赞叹的、棱角分明的大工业制成品的味道。所以,造物主一定很难相信这件产品拥有什么灵魂,并且是按照他自己的神圣模样生产出来的。

但是我满怀期望。我要说的是,无论你怎样看待她,印度就是印度。一个拥有至少五千年历史的印度。一个试图和平地生活、深刻地思考的印度。她完全不关心政治,不关心政府,她唯一的雄心壮志就是将这个世界当作精神的存在加以认知,在这世界里以温顺而倾慕的精神度过她生命的每一刻,并且高兴地意识到自己与这个世界之间存在着的永恒的、密切的联系。这正是人性中边远的一部分,它的行为如孩子,而智慧却如长者。然而就在此刻,西方民族却突然闯了进来,打破了这里的宁静。

尽管历经了早期历史上的战争、阴谋和欺诈,印度却依然保持着超然的态度。因为她拥有属于自己的家庭、土地、学校和庙宇。在学校里,老师们和学生们在朴素、关爱和求知的气氛中生活在一起,而她的自治村庄则拥有简明的法律以及和平的管理。然而,印度所关心的并非她的王权。王权的更迭于印度就像是过眼云烟——一会儿染上了绚烂的紫色,一会儿又乌云压城,电闪雷鸣。王朝更迭过后留下的是一片狼藉,但是就像是自然灾害一样,人们对它所留下的痕迹不久便忘却了。

但这次却不同了。这次不仅仅是掠过印度生活表层的过眼云烟,例如骑兵和步兵,盛装的大象,白色的帐篷和华盖,驮着王室物品的、四平八稳地走过来的骆驼队,由铜鼓和长笛所组成的乐队,大理石砌成的圆顶的清真寺,宫殿和陵墓等等,就像奢华的起泡酒所漾起的泡沫一样到处都是;也不仅仅是关于叛逆和效忠的故事,财富流转的故事,命运起伏的故事等等;这次来的是西方民族,它将自己机械的触手深深地扎入了这片土地。

因此我对你们说,正是“我们”作为证人被召集起来,来证明所谓的民族对于人类来说意味着什么。大家都知道曾经入侵印度的莫卧尔人和帕坦人的游牧部落,但是对我们来说他们都是人类种族,他们有自己的宗教和习俗,自己的好恶和爱憎——我们从未把他们当作一个民族来看待。我们根据不同的情况,时而爱他们时而恨他们;我们为他们打过仗也曾经与之为敌;我们与他们用同一种语言交谈;而我们在决定王国命运的时候也发挥了积极的作用。但是,这次我们要面对的不是国王,不是人类种族,而是一个民族——而我们自己却还不是一个民族。

现在让我们,从我们自己的经验出发,来回答这样一个问题:到底什么是民族呢?

民族是指,全体人民为了某个机械的目的,即获取政治和经济的利益,而组织在一起所形成的团体。这样的社会团体,其目的非常明确。它自身就是目的。它是人作为一种社会存在的,自然的自我表露。它是对人际关系的自然规范,以便人们能够在与他人的合作过程中产生自己的人生理想。民族还有其有关政治的一面,但是它仅仅服务于特定的目的,即进行自我保护。它仅仅是权力的一面,而非人类的理想。早期的时候,它在社会中有自己单独的活动区域,局限在专业人士的范围之内。但是在科学和日益完善的组织的帮助之下,它的权力开始增长并且开始获得大量的财富。接着,它便以极快的速度跨越出了自己的活动范围。然后,它以对于物质繁荣的贪欲,彼此的相互嫉妒,以及对于对方变得强大而产生的恐惧等等,来刺激它所有毗邻的社会团体。现在它已经是欲罢不能了,因为竞争越来越激烈,组织越来越庞大,而自私自利则变得至高无上。它利用人类的恐惧和贪婪,在社会中占据了越来越大的空间,而且最终成为了统治力量。

你完全有可能,由于习惯所致,没有意识到生机勃勃的社会纽带正在分崩离析,正在让位于单纯的机械的组织。但是它所表露出的迹象其实是随处可见的。正因为如此,我们看到,男人和女人之间已经爆发了战争,因为将他们和谐地连接在一起的自然纽带正在崩断;因为男人们被驱赶上了专业主义的道路,忙于为自己也为他人生产财富,他们不断地为了自己或是为了迎合普遍的官僚作风而转动权力的车轮,然而女人们却被冷落一旁,孤独终老或是孤军奋战。因此,自然的合作状态被竞争所打破。男人和女人对待彼此关系的心理也在发生着变化,变为了一种包含原始的斗争元素的心理,而不再是那种以相互的自我牺牲为基础的,追求完善的人性。那些已经失去了与现实之间联系的元素,同时也就失去了存在的意义。这就像是气体的微粒被打进了过于狭小的容器,它们彼此之间会不断地发生冲突,直到有一天它们会冲破将其困锁在一起的这个容器。

下面,我们看一下那些自称为无政府主义者的人们。他们憎恨以任何一种形式将权力强加给个人。他们之所以如此,唯一的原因就是权力已经变得过于抽象——它是一种在民族的政治的实验室里,通过对人性进行分解而造就的科学产品。

那么,经济领域内的罢工又说明了什么呢?它们就像是从荒芜的土地上突然冒出来的带着刺儿的灌木丛一样,每次被砍倒而每次又都恢复了生机。生产财富的机制正在日益地膨胀变大,并且与其他所有的社会需求之间失去了比例平衡,而真正意义的人则在它的重压下扭曲变形,这又说明了什么呢?这种现状不可避免地导致了从人类理想的整体性和健全性中所释放出来的各种元素间无休止的争斗,而长期的经济冲突则在劳资之间持续地爆发。因为财富和权力的贪婪从来都没有满足的时候,而个人利益所作出的妥协也从来都不可能达到最终的和解。它们一定会继续产生嫉妒和猜疑,直到最后,突然的灾难或是一次精神的重生才会结束这一切。

当这个叫作民族的、政治和经济的组织,在以牺牲高尚的社会生活的和谐为代价的情况之下变得强大有力的时候,人类的灾难也就来临了。当一位父亲变成赌徒的时候,他头脑中对于家庭的责任就会退居次席,于是他便不再是一个人了,而是变成了一个依靠贪婪驱动的机器人。此时,他能够做出来原本在他头脑正常状态下所不耻的事情。社会的情形也与此相同。当社会变成了一个完美的权力组织的时候,就不会有什么罪恶勾当是它所不能为之的,因为此时,获得成功是一台机器的目标和评判其价值的依据,而所谓善良不过是人类所追求的目标而已。当这个组织的引擎开始变得体积庞大,而它机器的零部件则由人来充当的时候,于是乎作为个人的人便被消灭了,取而代之的是机器人。而结果是,所有一切都演变成为一场政策革命——一场由没有同情心和道德责任感的、机器当中由人所组成的零部件来付诸实施的政策革命。也许人类的道德本性会利用这台机器来为自己正名,但是此时,整套的绳索和滑轮会咯吱作响,人类心灵的力量会在人类机器力量的包围下变得纠结混乱,从而,人类道德的目的只会艰难地以某种扭曲的形象展现出来。

这个叫作民族的、抽象的东西,正在统治着印度。我们在印度见过某个品牌的罐装食品在广告中宣称,整个食品的制造和包装过程中都没有接触过人手。这一描述同样适合于对于印度的统治,因为它也极少被人手碰到过。总督们并不需要学会我们的语言,除了作为官员,他们也不需要同我们有什么私人的瓜葛;他们只需要站得远远的就可以帮助或是阻碍我们实现自己的愿望,他们能够带领我们实行某种政策,而后又通过其官僚机构的操控收回成命。在英国的报纸上,我们可以看到相关的栏目以某种庄重哀婉的语气报道伦敦街道上所发生的某些事故,然而对于发生在印度的,某些面积比不列颠群岛还大的地方的灾难却只是蜻蜓点水,一带而过。

但是我们这些被统治的人并不是一个抽象的概念。我们是具有各种感官的个体。强加给我们的、单纯冷酷的政策可能会直接刺入我们生命的要害,阉割掉我们的雄风,带给我们永远的无助,从而威胁到我们人民的全部未来。而与此同时,它却可能永远都不会触及人性的另一面,或是仅仅以最软弱无力的方式对它有所触碰。作为个体的人,永远都不会在浑然不知中做出如此大规模和全面的、履行可怕责任的行动。只有当人类变换成一只代表抽象概念的八爪鱼时,这些行动才有可能被付诸实施——它向四面八方伸出其蠕动的腕足,并且将其不可胜数的吸盘附着在遥远的未来身上。在民族的这种统治之下,被统治的一方成为了怀疑的对象;而且这种怀疑来自于一个体型庞大的、组织有序的血肉之躯。它对我们施以惩罚,在一大片滴血的心灵之上留下痛苦的印记,但是这些惩罚仅仅是来自于一种抽象的力量,而远方某个国家的全体人民则在这一力量之中丧失了自己的人性。

然而我来到这里并不是要讨论影响到我自己国家的问题,而是要探讨影响到全体人类未来的问题。这个问题不是关于英国政府的问题,而是关于民族治下的政府的问题——这个民族代表了其全体人民的私利,它最没有人性,也最没有精神。我们唯一的,有关民族的切身经历是来自于不列颠民族的。只要民族的统治一天不停止,我们就有理由相信不列颠民族的统治是最好的统治之一。于是,我们需要再一次地考虑东西方的关系——对于东方来说,西方确实必不可少。我们东西方是互为补充的,因为我们对待生活有着不同的看法,而这些不同的看法又给我们展现出了真理的不同侧面。因此,如果说西方的精神的确是披着暴风雨的伪装来到了我们的田野的话,那么毋庸讳言,它也在我们这里撒下了不朽的、生命的种子。而在印度,当我们能够将西方文明当中永恒的东西吸收到我们自己的生命之中时,我们就一定可以达成这两个伟大世界的和谐共生。而随后,一方对另外一方的、让人恼怒的统治就会终结。除此之外,我们还要明白,印度的历史并非专属于某个特定的种族,它是一个创造的过程——在这期间,来自世界上的很多不同的种族都作出了自己的贡献。它们包括:德拉威人和雅利安人,古希腊人和波斯人,西方和中亚的伊斯兰教徒,等等。现在终于轮到英国人忠实于印度的历史并且为它作出贡献来了。我们既没有权力也没有力量将英国人从构建印度命运的进程当中排除在外。因此,这里我所谈到的民族,更多的是同人类的历史相关,而非特指印度的历史。

如今的历史已经来到了这样一个阶段:有道德的、完善的人正在浑然不知当中让位于政治的和商业的人——那些仅仅服务于特定目的的人。在科学的巨大进步的帮助下,这种人所占的比例和所拥有的权力正在迅速膨胀,从而引起了人类道德天平的失衡,在没有灵魂的组织的阴影笼罩之下蒙蔽了他人性的一面。我们感觉到,这一现状已经如铁腕一般控制了我们的生命根基。因此,为了人类,我们必须站起来并且对所有人发出警告,告诉人们,民族主义是一种罪恶的、残忍的瘟疫,它正在席卷当今人类世界,并且吞噬掉它的道德活力。

我深爱着作为人类的不列颠种族,并且对它满怀敬意。它曾孕育了豪爽的人们、伟大的思想家和伟大事业的践行者,它曾创造了伟大的文学。我知道,不列颠人民热爱正义和自由,而且痛恨谎言。他们思想纯洁、行为坦率、友谊真挚,在为人处世方面诚实可靠。我与他们文学界的人们相接触的个人经历,使得我不仅仅对他们的思想和表达的能力钦佩有加,而且对他们的侠义人格更是羡慕不已。就像感觉到了太阳的伟大一样,我们也感觉到了不列颠人民的伟大。但是,至于不列颠民族,它就如同将太阳遮盖起来的,在寂静的大自然当中升腾而起的一团厚厚的迷雾。

这个民族统治下的政府既不是英国式的也不是其他什么东西;它是一种应用科学,因此,无论在哪里使用它,它的原理都大同小异。它就像是一台液压机,它的压力是不带有感情的,所以是非常有效的。它力量的大小会随着引擎的不同而不同。有些液压机甚至于是由手工推动的,所以它们在挤压的时候会松松垮垮,较为舒适,然而这些液压机在其精神实质和操作方法上却都大体相同。我们的政府即便是荷兰式的,法国式的,抑或是葡萄牙式的政府,它的基本特点也会跟现在的政府保持一致。只有在某些情况下,当它的组织还不十分完善的时候,一些人性的碎片将会附着在它的残骸之上,允许我们做一些与我们自己的心灵相关联的事情。

在民族统治我们之前我们也有过其他的外国政府,这些外国政府就像其他所有政府一样,自身也有某些机械的元素。但是这些政府与民族统治下的政府之间的区别就像是手工织机与机械织机之间的区别。在手工织机的产品当中我们能够看到人类手指所留下的、活生生的魔法般的印记,而且它的嗡嗡声与生命的韵律和谐共鸣。但是机械织机的产品却是冷酷无情的、没有生命的、精确的和单调乏味的。

我们必须承认,在历史上个人统治的时期曾经有过暴政、不公和敲诈勒索的情形。它们所产生的痛苦和不安是我们唯恐避之不及的。对我们来说,法律的保护不仅仅是恩惠,它还对我们教益颇丰。法律教给我们要遵守规则,而这些规则对于保持文明的稳定和进步的持续是必不可少的。通过法律,我们认识到在这世界上有着普世的正义标准——所有的人,无论他们的社会等级与肤色,都拥有在这一普世的正义标准之下接受平等保护的权利。

印度的现政府所推行的法治已经在这个幅员辽阔的、由不同种族和风俗习惯的人民所聚居的国家建立起了秩序。它已经使得这里的人民能够彼此更加密切地接触,并且培养他们所共同拥有的理想。

但是这种在印度的各个不同种族之间建立起共同的、同志般友谊的纽带的愿望并非来自于西方的民族,而是来自于西方的精神。无论何时,亚洲人民所接受到的,来自于西方的教益,都与西方的民族没有什么关系。只有当日本能够成功地抵御此种西方民族的统治时,她才会在最大程度上得到西方文明的好处。尽管中国已经在其道德和物质生活的最源头被这种民族下了毒,然而如果她能克服它的阻碍,那么她为了学习西方最好的东西所付出的努力就仍然有可能取得成功。就在几天以前,波斯刚刚从其长时间的沉睡中被西方唤醒,然而紧接着就在民族的铁蹄蹂躏之下再次销声匿迹。同样的现象也发生在这个国家——在这里,人民热情好客,但是民族却完全不同——它让一位作为他自己国家中一员的东方的客人在自己的国家感受到了屈辱。

在印度,我们忍受着西方精神同西方民族之间的矛盾所带来的痛苦。民族以一种吝啬的方式向我们少量地施舍西方文明的好处。它试图控制我们所得到的营养物质,使其所包含的活力成分尽可能地接近于零。它分配给我们的教育残缺不全且严重不足,这足以使得西方人的道德准则蒙羞受辱。我们在西方国家看到,他们鼓励、训练,并且提供所有的便利条件给他们自己的人民,为的是使他们能够适应扩散至全球的、伟大的商业和工业运动。然而在印度,我们得到的唯一帮助却是因为贫穷落后而受到的民族的嘲弄。民族剥夺了我们的机会,将我们的教育减少到在一个外国人当权的政府当中供职所需要的最低程度。而与此同时,它通过与我们称兄道弟并且大肆地鼓吹傲慢的市侩思想——东方是东方,西方是西方,东西方永远不会有交集等等方法,来使得它的良心得到安慰。我们的老师说,在他对印度将近两个世纪的调教之后,她不仅仍然不适合建立自治政府,而且在其文化素养方面也仍然没有创新的能力。假如我们必须接受这一嘲弄的话,那么,我们是应当把这一结果归咎于我们所固有的、缺乏学习西方文化本性中的某些东西的能力呢,还是应当将其归咎于已经承担起了教化东方的责任的民族所表现出来的谨小慎微的吝啬呢?我们可能会承认,自己缺乏某些日本人民所具有的品质,但是我们不能接受自己的智力与他们比较起来就是天然地缺乏创造性的说法,即便这些话是出自于那些我们很难加以驳斥的人之口。

事实是,西方民族主义的核心和根源就是对抗和征服的精神;它的根基并不是社会合作。它已经逐渐形成了一套完善的权力组织,而非精神上的理想主义。它就像是一群掠食者,必须占有自己的猎物。它真心真意地不能容忍看到自己的猎场转化成为种植的园地。事实上,这些民族之间也在彼此争斗,为的是扩大它们猎物的品种和保留林地的范围。因此,西方的民族就像是堤坝一样阻碍着西方文明自由地流入到非民族主义的国家。因为这一文明是权力的文明,所以它具有排他性;它自然而然地不愿意向那些已经被它选作是自己剥削对象的国家敞开它力量的源泉。

但是即便如此,人类毕竟要遵守道德的律法;那些排他性的文明——它们依靠剥削其他文明而发家致了富,却不允许它们共享其利益,必然会在其道德局限性当中携带着它们自己的死亡判决书。它们所带来的奴隶制度会在不知不觉中将它们对于自由的热爱消耗殆尽。对于成为自己猎物的国家的压迫而给它们造成的无助感,会每时每刻地反作用于它的制造者。被民族剥夺了自我持续更生能力的,世界上的大多数国家总有一天会成为它最为可怕的负担,并且将其拉下马,投入到毁灭的深渊。什么时候权力为了能够为所欲为而将其道路上的关卡全部移走,什么时候它就成功地驶向了其最终的灭亡。权力的道德闸线每天都会在其不知不觉中变得懒惰松弛,而它所走的光滑的捷径此时就会成为一条通向死亡的不归之路。

在我们得到的西方文明的所有事物当中,西方民族以最为慷慨的态度给予我们的就是法律和秩序。当我们教育的奶瓶将近枯竭,公共卫生事业在绝望中吮吸着自己大拇指的时候,军事组织、地方官员的衙署、警察部门、犯罪调查科、秘密特工系统,等等,却成长得异常膀大腰圆,占满了我们国家的每一寸土地。这是为了维持秩序。但是,这种秩序难道不正是一种消极的好处吗?它难道是为了给人民的生活带来更多的、自由发展的机会吗?这种秩序的完善就如同一枚鸡蛋壳的完善一样,它的真正价值在于为小鸡提供了安全庇护和营养,而不在于它给吃早餐的人提供了方便。单纯的管理是非生产性的;它不具有创造性,没有活力。它就是一台蒸汽压路机,其重量和力量让人畏惧,其用处显而易见;但是,它并不能使土地变得富饶。当它一番苦干之后就会施与我们和平的恩惠,而我们则只得低声地埋怨道:“和平固然是好,不过怎么也好不过上帝所赐予我们的生命。”

另一方面来说,我们先前的政府严重地缺乏一个现代政府所具备的很多优点。但是,由于这些政府并不是民族统治下的政府,所以它们的质地松散,留有很大的间隙,而正是通过这些间隙,我们的生命在其中得以穿针引线并且留下自己的印记。我敢肯定,在旧政府统治时期,一定有些东西是我们极为厌恶的。但是我们知道,当我们赤脚走在满是砾石的地面上时,我们的双脚会逐渐地适应这反复无常的、不友好的土地;然而,哪怕是最微小的砾石碎块儿在我们的鞋子里找到了立足之地的话,我们都不会忘记,也不会原谅它的入侵。这些鞋子就是民族统治下的政府——它紧箍着我们的双脚,它以一种包裹紧密的系统控制着我们的步伐——在这个系统里面,我们双脚只能获得最低限度的自由以做出调整。因此,当你做出统计数据,拿我们的双脚在先前的政府统治时期所遭遇的砾石数量和在现政府统治下所遇到的少许的砾石碎块儿的数量进行比较的时候,这些数据其实并不能说明问题。因为问题的关键并不在于外在障碍物数量的多少,而在于面对这些障碍物时人们所感到的、无能为力的程度的深浅。这种对于自由的限制是一种更为根本性的罪恶。这并非由于它的数量而是由于它的本质。于是我们不得不承认这样一个看上去似是而非的说法:当西方的精神在自由的旗帜下阔步前进的时候,西方的民族却锻造出了人类历史上史无前例的、组织的钢铁链条——它最冷酷无情,也最牢不可破。

当印度人民还未陷于这种组织的统治之下时,变化的弹性是足够大的,它足以让有力量、有精神的人们感觉到他们能够将自己的命运掌握在自己手中。那时,人们从不缺少对于突发事件的期待,统治者和被统治者双方都拥有更为自由的想象力,而这想象力则对历史进程产生了影响。那时,我们所面对的未来并不是一道死气沉沉的、白色的花岗岩所砌成的围墙——它永远地阻断了我们显示并且增长自己的力量,它之所以给我们带来绝望,是因为,我们的力量正在由于科学的麻醉作用而从其根基上变得萎缩退化。每一个非民族的个人都在一个整体民族的控制之下,而这个民族如同机器一般,时时刻刻都保持着警觉,它不会像人一样疏忽大意或是区别对待。只要轻轻地按下它的按钮,这个怪物组织就会立刻启动,而它那双丑陋的、充满好奇心的大眼睛可以让广大的、被统治的人民群众中的任何一个个人都无处藏身。只要稍微转动一下它的螺丝钉,哪怕只有一丝一毫,它对所有人,包括男人、女人和儿童的控制就会收紧,达到令其窒息的程度;而这些人们想要从自己的国家,甚至于从任何其他的国家中逃离出来都是不可想象的。

在持续、巨大、非人性的力量对人性的至死重压下,现代世界正在痛苦地呻吟着。不仅仅是被压迫的种族,你们这些生活在幻觉中的、自以为是自由的人们,每天都在牺牲掉你们的自由和人性以向民族主义的偶像献祭。你们生活在弥漫着浓浓的、乌烟瘴气的世界里,这里面充斥了怀疑、贪婪和恐惧。

我曾经在日本看到,全体人民都自愿地将思想和自由交给他们的政府,听由其摆布。他们的政府通过各种各样的教育机构规范他们的思想,制造他们的感官,当有迹象表明他们正在倾向于某种精神生活的时候,它就会充满怀疑地警觉起来,将他们领上一条狭窄的道路——不是一条通向真理的道路,而是一条使得他们能够按照它所制定的方案紧密地团结在一起的道路。日本人民愉快地、自豪地接受了这种四处弥漫的精神枷锁,因为,他们焦躁地渴望着自己变身为一台叫作民族的权力的机器,并且在追名逐利的集体活动中与其他机器同流合污。

当我们询问他们这样做的原因是什么的时候,刚刚拜倒在民族主义旗下的狂热的追随者这样回答道:“只要民族在这个世界上蔓延滋生,我们就不可能自由地将我们自己的人性提得更高。我们必须利用自己所拥有的所有本领,通过在最大程度上变得邪恶的方式来对抗邪恶。因为在当今世界上,唯一可能的手足情谊就是与流氓无赖一起沆瀣一气,狼狈为奸。”日本和俄国所结成的兄弟般的友爱关系最近刚刚在日本得到了大张旗鼓的欢呼庆祝。这种友谊并非来自于基督教或是佛教精神的复兴;相反,它是建立在一种现代的、信仰的基础之上的关系——它相信只有彼此之间进行流血的恐吓才能使双方各自变得更安全。没错,我们必须承认这些事实是当今世界上民族的事实;而民族所笃信的唯一道德就是世界上所有的民族都应当竭尽他们的物质、道德和精神资源,以便在权力斗争的竞赛中击败对方。古代的时候,斯巴达千方百计地使自己变得强大;她通过丧失自己的人性达到了这一目的,然而最终,却还是在人性的丧失中死去。

但是,现在的时代正在由于道义的衰微而变得痛苦不堪,而这种道义的衰微不仅仅局限于那些被奴役的种族;对于另外一些种族而言,由于他们被蒙在鼓里,相信自己是自由的,所以这种在隐秘和自愿中所遭受到的伤害则更加严重。因此,了解到这一情况,我们并未感到丝毫的安慰。你们可以自由地选择以更高的人生理想作为筹码来换取利益和权力,而我要将你们留在自己的精神废墟旁边,好好思考一下你们所得到的繁荣昌盛到底为何物。但是,当你们将全体人民自我扩张的本能都组织起来,并使其登峰造极,而自鸣得意的时候,难道你们就永远都不会为此行径受到惩罚吗?我要问问你们:在人类的历史上,在它最黑暗的时期,有过什么样的灾难可以像这种可怕的民族一样,将其毒牙深深地嵌入到世界裸露的肌体之中,并且每时每刻都紧咬牙关,毫不松懈呢?

你们,西方的人们,你们制造出了这种怪胎,你们能想象得出来,在这个人类受苦受难的,鬼魅横行的,由可怕的抽象的人类组织所主宰的世界上凄凉的绝望吗?你们能设身处地地为那些非民族主义国家的人民想一想吗?他们似乎是命中注定要接受对于他们自己人性的永恒诅咒。他们不仅仅要受到持续的、人性的摧残,而且还要高声地为一台机器设备大唱赞歌,歌颂它在无休止的、假冒天意的拙劣表演中所显示出的仁慈。

你们不曾见过吗?自从民族之肇始,它所带来的如同妖魔鬼怪一般的恐怖便让整个世界为之颤抖。哪里有黑暗的角落,哪里可能就会有其隐秘的恶毒;而人们则生活在永远的不信任之中,只恨自己后背没有再多长出一双眼睛。每一个脚步声,每一个邻里做出动作时所发出的沙沙声,都会将恐惧的战栗传遍四方。这种恐惧孕育了所有人性之中最卑鄙可耻的东西。它使得人们几乎是公开地对残忍的暴行不以为耻。聪明的谎言变成了自我麻醉的工具。神圣的誓言则变成了一出闹剧——因为其神圣而引人发笑。民族,尽管它强大有力、繁荣昌盛,尽管它旌旗招展、赞歌飘扬,尽管它在教堂里念诵着亵渎神明的祷告,尽管它装腔作势的文学为其爱国主义大肆吹捧,也不可能掩盖这样一个事实——民族本身就是其最大的罪恶,它所采取的所有预防措施都是与其自身相对立的;而且,这个世界上每诞生一个新的民族都会在其他民族的心目中产生新的恐惧。它的唯一愿望就是利用世界上其他国家的衰微,就像某些依靠被麻痹的猎物的肉为食的昆虫一样,让那些弱国苟延残喘,继续存活下去,以便为自己提供营养丰富的美味佳肴。因此,它乐意将自己有毒的汁液注射到其他活着的、无害的、非民族的要害器官当中去。为了这一目的,民族已经并且还在占据着亚洲最最富饶的牧场。伟大的中国,她富有古代的智慧和社会伦理,她勤劳而且自制,现在就像是一头鲸鱼一样,在民族的心中唤起了强取豪夺的渴望。她颤抖的身体已经被自诩为一贯正确的,科学而自私的民族所投下的几柄鱼叉扎中。而就当她可怜巴巴地试图甩掉自己的人性传统和社会理想,并且竭尽最后一点点资源想要把自己训练成现代的、高效的国家的时候,民族却处处作梗,横加阻挠。它用经济的绳索将中国绑紧,然后试图将她拖上岸并且切成碎片,接下来便公然地举办向上帝感恩的祈祷仪式,感谢他对于现存罪恶的帮扶以及对于可能产生的罪恶的消灭。为了这一切,民族一直在讨要着历史的垂青,祈盼着它的剥削活动能够天长地久;它命令自己的唱诗班到世界各地去演奏,宣扬自己是社会精华,是人类之花,是上帝竭尽全力撒向非民族国家裸露着的脑壳的祝福。

我知道你们的建议是什么。你们会说:你们也发展成为一个民族吧,这样就可以抵抗它的侵犯了。不过,这算得上是真正的,一个人对另外一个人提出的建议吗?这样做难道是必须的吗?我宁可相信你们提出这样的建议:在处理同他人的关系时要更友好、更公正、更真诚;要控制你的贪欲,要生活得淳朴而健康,还要让你对人性中神圣之物的认识更加完美,等等。但是你们会说,对我们自己来说,最有价值的东西不是灵魂而是那台机器;人类的得救所依赖的是他能否将自己训练得完全适合机器轮子和计数轮旋转时的固定节奏;在政治的、永不停息的斗牛场上,机器必须与机器竞争,民族必须与民族对立——难道你们一定要这样认为吗?

你们会说:基于对恐惧的共识,这些机器会达成彼此互不侵犯的协议。但是,这样一个蒸汽锅炉之间所结成的同盟会向你展示一个灵魂,一个拥有自己良知和上帝的灵魂吗?而在世界上其他更多的,没有恐惧可以约束到你们的地方,又会发生什么事呢?无论那些非民族主义的国家现在多么地安全,没有受到熔炉、铁锤和螺丝刀的整治,这也不过是列强间彼此猜忌的结果而已。但是,当列强不再是无数单独的机器,而是结合在一起,成为一个贪婪的、商业的或是政治的集体组织的时候,其他的那些国家,他们享受过生活也遭受过痛苦,曾经爱过也曾经祈祷过,曾经深刻地思考过也曾经任劳任怨地工作过,而他们唯一的过错就是没有像那些机器一样组织起来,他们还会拥有哪怕是最为渺茫的希望吗?

但是你们会说:“这没关系,不适者必失败——他们会死掉,这就是科学。”

不,错了。为了你们自己的得救,我要说,他们要活下去,这才是真理。我这样说是需要极大的勇气的,但是我敢断言,人类的世界是道德的世界,这并不是因为我们盲目地这样相信,而是因为真理就是如此,忽视这一点就会给我们带来危险。而且,人类的这种道德本性不应以方便为由被分割保存。你们不应以保护性的关税壁垒将道德仅仅局限在国内消费,而对外则在自由贸易的许可证下让它随意变通。

这一真理你们还没有认识到吗?残酷的战争已经将其魔爪伸入到欧洲的内脏;而在欧洲的战场上,她囤积的财富正在化为灰烬,她的人性正在片片散落。你们会惊奇地问道:她到底做了什么会落得如此下场?问题的答案是,西方一直以来都在系统地石化其道德本性,目的是为她庞大而高效的组织奠定坚实的基础。她一直以来都在为了这个组织的强大而让每个个人都忍饥挨饿。

在你们欧洲中世纪的时候,人们朴素而自然,他们带着强烈的激情和愿望,试图找到将灵魂与肉体的冲突相调和的办法。在贯穿欧洲的充满青春活力的动荡岁月中,无论是世俗的还是精神的力量都对她的本性施加了巨大的影响,并且为其塑造了具有完整性的道德人格。欧洲伟大的人性正是要归功于那一时期的磨练——对于其人性完整性的磨练。

接下来便是理智的时代、科学的时代。我们都知道理智是非人性的。我们的生命和心灵是合二为一的,但是我们的头脑却可以从人格中分离出去,只有它可以在思想的世界里自由地游移。我们的理智是一位苦行的修道者,它不穿衣服,不吃食物,不睡觉,没有愿望,感觉不到爱或是恨或是对于人性弱点的怜悯,它只是无动于衷地通过生活的变迁兴衰进行推理。它对所有事物都刨根问底,因为它与这些事物本身毫无个人感情的瓜葛。语法专家会径直走过整篇诗歌,毫无障碍地直奔单词的词根,因为他想要探寻的不是诗歌的真相,而是词汇法则。一旦他发现了这一法则,他就可以教会人们如何掌握单词。这是一种力量——它可以满足某种特殊的用途,满足人类的某些特定的需要。

现实的存在就是某个事物的各个组成部分在整体的平衡中所表现出来的和谐。你打破了这种和谐,手里攥着彼此斗争的游离的原子,这一事物也就失去了意义。那些垂涎权力的人们试图掌握这些原始的、斗争的元素,并且通过某些狭窄的渠道将它们强行塞进某个装置,以便让它们为人类的某些特定需要提供暴力的服务。

人类需要的满足事关重大。这可以让他获得在物质世界行动的自由。它可以让他在更为广阔的时间和空间范围内获得利益,让他在更短的时间内完成任务,并且以压倒性的优势占据更大的空间。因此,他便可以轻而易举地超越那些生活在节奏缓慢,且空间没有得到充分利用的世界里的人们。

这种权力前进的步伐越走越快。而且,因为它是从人类整体中分离出来的一部分,所以它不久就超越了人类的整体。有道德的人类落在了后面,因为它不得不应付整个现实的存在,而不仅仅是没有人性的、抽象的事物法则。

于是人类理智和物质的力量远远超过了道德的力量,就像是一头形态夸张的长颈鹿一样,脑袋陡然间竖起,距离身体的其他部分有数英里远,结果使得正常的联系也无法进行。这个贪婪的脑袋拥有巨大的牙齿,一直在用力地咀嚼世界上长得最高的树叶,然而它所获得的营养物质要花太久的时间才能到达它的消化器官,而它的心脏正在由于缺血而痛苦不堪。对于当今人类本性中的不和谐,西方似乎一直在美滋滋地毫无察觉。它所有注意力都被其巨大无比的物质成功引向了对自己肥硕身材的洋洋得意之中。伴随着铁路线无休止的延伸给自己带来的好运气,西方逻辑中的乐观主义精神也继续向前直达永远。如果有谁认为所有的明天不过是今天的翻版,不过是二十四个小时不断的累加,那么就未免有点太过浅薄了。因为他没有注意到,在人类不断膨胀的仓库和他空虚饥饿的人性之间的裂痕正在日益扩大。逻辑并不清楚,在无尽的财富和优越的物质条件的最底层,用来恢复道德世界之平衡的地震正在酝酿当中;总有一天,精神空虚的海湾会将永远眷恋着尘世浮华的仓库拽进自己无底的深渊。

一个完整的人并不体现在他的力量上,而是体现在他的完善上。因此,要想让一个人仅仅获得力量,你就必须尽量地缩小他的灵魂。当我们具有完整的人性的时候,我们是不会彼此掐对方的喉咙的;我们社会生活的本能,我们道德理想的传统不允许我们这样做。如果你想让我去杀人,那么首先你必须通过能使我的意志丧失、思想麻木、行动机械的训练来破坏我的完整人性,然后那种与人类真理没有丝毫关系,因此很容易变得野蛮和机械的,抽象的毁灭力量就会从我已经解体的、复杂的人性当中释放出来了。将人类从他的自然环境中带走,将他带离充实的集体生活,以及在这生活中他与美、爱和社会责任等等建立起的活生生的联系,这样,你就会将他转变成为许多机器的碎片,从而生产出大量的财富。将树木变为柴火,它就会为你而燃烧,但是自此就永远都不会再开出生命的花朵,结出生命的果实了。

这种非人化的过程在商业和政治领域内一直在进行着。这种完全发展成熟的,拥有巨大力量和惊人胃口的机械,在机械能量的长期阵痛中分娩降生了,而西方已经将其命名为民族。就像我之前曾经暗示过的,因为它具有的抽象的品质,它轻而易举地就跑在了完善的、有道德的人类前头。而且,由于它拥有一颗恶灵的心脏以及一个机器人才有的冷酷的完美,所以,它正在制造的灾难让年轻的月球上的火山喷发也自愧弗如。结果是,人与人之间的怀疑就像是荨麻身上的刺毛一样刺痛着这个文明的四肢。每个国家都在向其他国家满是污泥的水底投下间谍的罗网,希望获取他们的秘密——那些在外交的烂泥的深处酝酿着的背信弃义的秘密。而民族的所谓秘密,不外乎是在其腐烂的深处所从事的拐骗、谋杀、背叛以及所有丑陋罪行的地下交易。因为每一个民族都有它自己的盗窃、撒谎和背信弃义的历史,所以国际间的怀疑和嫉妒就会大行其道,而且国际间的鲜廉寡耻就会达到滑稽可笑的程度。民族伸张正义的风笛会根据时间的不同和外交联盟的重新组合而改变调门,所以我们只能将其作为政治音乐厅的另外一种表演形式来欣赏。

我刚刚到访过日本。在那里,我劝告这个新生的民族要站在更高的人类理想的立场上,永远不要效仿西方将民族主义有组织的自私自利奉为圭臬,永远不要因为自己邻国的衰弱而幸灾乐祸,永远不要不择手段地对付弱国,即便是如此举动极为卑鄙却可以免受惩罚,而同时却将自己带着人性光辉的右脸转向那些有能力给它一拳的国家,为的是得到它们赞赏的亲吻。有些报纸以它们富有诗意为由表扬了我的言论,而同时不忘揶揄我,说我的言论是失败民族的诗歌。我觉得它们说得对。日本已经在一所现代的学校里学会了如何变得强大。学习结束了,而她必须要享受课程所带来的收获。西方用她隆隆的炮声在日本的大门口这样说道:民族,出现吧——于是一个民族就出现了。而既然它已经存在了,那么为什么你们不能发自内心地感到纯净的喜悦并且为它祝福呢?为什么我在英国的报纸上看到,当日本吹嘘她自己的文明有多么优越的时候你们却恶语相加呢?要知道,几个世纪以来,英国以及其他的民族一直在像日本这样恬不知耻地吹嘘自己的文明啊。这就是因为自私自利的理想主义必须依靠持续剂量的自我褒扬来维持自己的陶醉状态。但是当它们看到其他民族与自己一样的,似乎是再自然和无害不过的不道德行为时,就会感到震惊和愤怒。所以,当你们看到按照你们自身形象塑造出来,并且开始为自己的民族大声聒噪的、民族主义的日本的时候,你们就摇摇头说,这样做可不好。这难道不就是你们在这里提高了嗓门,呼吁做好准备,来应付又一个能够带来更大伤害的罪恶力量的原因之一吗?日本提出抗议说,她拥有武士道精神,她永远都不会背叛自己心怀感激的美国。但是你们很难相信她的说辞,因为民族的智慧并不在于对人性的信仰,而是在于对人性的完全不信任。你们自言自语道,我们所要对付的不是拥有武士道的日本,不是拥有道德理想的日本,而是作为民族的日本;而只有当两个民族拥有共同的利益,或是至少他们利益不相冲突的时候,他们才能彼此信任对方。事实上,你们的本能告诉自己,当另外一个民族出现在民族的竞技场上时,就说明与人类崇高理想格格不入的罪恶又一次得到了壮大,并且它的成功证明了厚颜无耻是通向繁荣昌盛的道路,而善良只适合于弱者,是上帝留给失败者的唯一慰藉。

没错,这就是民族的逻辑。它永远都不会倾听真理和善良的声音。它会继续跳这种道德败坏的圆圈舞,将钢铁与钢铁连接,机器与机器连接,将所有朴素的信仰和人类生活理想的甜蜜花朵都踩在自己脚下加以蹂躏。

但是我们自欺欺人地认为,现代的人类比以往任何时候都要站得靠前。这种自我欺骗的原因在于,人类现在可以得到比以往更为丰富的生活必需品,而他所患的疾病也能得到更为有效的治疗。但是造成所有这些的主要原因并不是道德的贡献,而要归功于智慧的力量。它数量巨大,但是它源自表面且只在表面铺开。知识和效率在其外在的影响方面显得强大而有力,但是它们只是人类的奴仆,而非人类自身。它们的服务就像是宾馆里所提供的服务,尽管周到详尽,却缺乏地主之谊;它更多的是提供方便而不是热情好客。

因此我们不要忘了,散布在各个领域内的科学组织正在增强的是我们的力量,而不是我们的人性。随着我们力量的增长,民族的自我崇拜占据了支配的地位,每个个人都自愿地允许民族像骑驴那样骑在我们自己的身上;于是便出现了这种具有灾难性后果的怪现象:个人奉献出所有的祭品来崇拜一个神,而这个神却通常在道德方面比他还要低级。如果这个神像每个个人那样真实存在的话,这种情况是不大可能出现的。

下面我再解释一下这一点。在印度的有些地方,寡妇们每隔两周都会有一天不吃不喝,这被看作是一种极为虔诚的举动。尽管人们的本性并非这样残忍,此种行为还是会经常导致残忍、无意义和不人道的结果。然而,这种非真实的、抽象的虔诚极大地削弱了人们的道德感,这就像是一个不会无端地伤害一只动物的人,当他给自己的感觉器官灌下抽象的、“运动”的汤药的时候,就会使得大量无辜的动物遭受可怕的痛苦。因为这些抽象的观念来自于我们的理智,它们属于逻辑的范畴,所以,它们能够轻易地让个人在其薄雾中踪迹难寻。

民族的观念是人类发明的最为强有力的麻醉剂之一。在它乌烟瘴气的影响下,整个民族,在对民族的道德扭曲全然无知的情况下,会将其最恶毒的、利己主义的、系统的行动纲领付诸实施——而事实上,如果有谁指出了这一点,他反而会招致来自持有这种民族主义观念之人们的危险的愤恨。

但是,这种情况会无限期地持续,不断地在我们人类的天性上制造出大面积的道德感知力的荒原吗?它会永远都逃脱报应吗?难道这种机械组织的巨大力量会没有任何限制,而它在同这个世界的斗争中,不会因为自己的可怕力量和速度而将自身更为彻底地摧毁吗?你相信罪恶可以通过与同其他罪恶的竞争来实现永远的相互制约吗?你相信费尽心机的讨论就可以将魔鬼锁在彼此妥协的临时牢笼里吗?

这场爆发在民族间的欧洲战争就是一种报应。人类一定不要在自己的生活中堆满了物质的东西而不是心灵,堆满了制度和政策而不是活的人际关系。现在是时候了,为了整个愤怒的世界,欧洲应当充分地认识到,在她自己的身上有一种叫作民族的、可怕而荒谬的东西。

民族依靠残缺的人性而发迹。人类,作为上帝最美好的造物,以好战而贪财的木偶形象被大量地从民族主义的工厂中生产了出来,而他们却对自己如机械一般可怜的完美愚蠢地感到洋洋得意。人类社会变得越来越像一出牵线木偶秀,在高效的牵线装置的操控下,政客们、士兵们、厂商们和官僚们都一一献演。

但是,将自私自利当作神一样来崇拜永远都不可能使其无尽的仇恨和嫉妒、恐惧和虚伪、怀疑和专制自己画上句号。这些妖魔鬼怪会长得身形巨大,却永远都不可能协调发展。这种民族可能会长到你想象不到的肥胖的程度,然而它仍然不是一个活着的躯体,而是一堆钢铁,一团蒸汽,或是一座座办公大楼。它会一直长到自己畸形的外壳再也装不下它那丑陋而肥硕的躯体,于是它便会开始噼啪开裂,急促地喷火冒烟,并且在加农炮的吼叫声中发出濒死的哀鸣。在这场战争中,民族开始了其死亡前的阵痛。突然间,它所有的机械装置都发了疯。它开始跳起了复仇女神的舞蹈,将它自己的四肢打碎并且将它们散落在尘埃中。这是这场虚幻悲剧的最后一幕。

那些对人类怀有信心的人们一定会热切地希望,民族的暴政一定不要恢复其先前的爪牙,恢复其无所不及的铁臂和巨大无比的内腔——里面只有胃而没有心;他们希望人类会摆脱包裹着自己的抽象的含混,并且获得个性的新生。

面纱已经撩起。在这场可怕的战争中,西方已经直面了自己的造物——她曾经将自己的灵魂出卖给它的那个造物。她应该清楚它的真面目了。

在过去,西方从来没有察觉出自己的道德本性正在秘密地、缓慢地腐烂分解。这一过程常常以怀疑主义的教条的形式显现;而更多的时候,它是以更为危险且微妙的形式表现出来——她对这个世界的大部分进行了破坏和侮辱,然而自己却浑然不知。现在她必须清楚,真相已经站在自家门口了。

然后,就会有一些西方的孩子们从这种幻觉,这种建立在自私自利的基础之上的,扭曲的手足之情的奴役之中解放出来;他们将会成为上帝的孩子而不是作为机器的奴仆,因这些机器将灵魂变成了商品,将生命变成了零件,并且以其铁爪刨出了世界的心脏,而与此同时,却对自己的所作所为全然无知。

我们这些一直以来低着头的非民族的国家将会明白,我们所低头相向的这片土地要比用来建造傲慢权力的砖头更为神圣。因为这片肥沃的土地充满了生机、美丽和对神的崇拜。我们要感谢上帝,是他创造了我们,是他让我们挨过寂静的、绝望的黑夜,忍受着傲慢者所施以的凌辱,背负着强大者才有的负担;然而,尽管经历了所有这一切,尽管我们的心灵曾经因为怀疑和恐惧而战栗,我们却从来没有盲目地相信过机器能够给人类带来拯救,相反,我们紧握着对上帝的信仰,紧握着人类灵魂的真谛。我们仍然怀抱着希望,希望当权力羞于占据它的宝座并且乐意为爱让路的时候,希望当黎明为了清洗民族所遗留下的斑斑血迹而沿着人性的大道走来的时候,我们能够受到上帝召唤,召唤我们带上自己的一坛圣水——一坛信仰的圣水——来滋润、净化人类的历史,并且以其喷洒的水滴向几个世纪以来饱受践踏的土地献上祝福,保佑它硕果累累。

注释

〔1〕 《奥义书》:一组有关形而上学的论述。它包括大约200篇散文和诗歌,写作年代可追溯到公元前400年左右。

印度的民族主义

我们印度的真正问题不在于政治,而是在于社会。其实这种情况普遍地存在于所有的国家,而非印度所独有。我不相信有什么孤立存在的政治利益。西方的政治支配了西方的理想,而我们印度则正在试图模仿你们。我们必须记住,欧洲文明自然而然地具有政治和经济的侵略性的特点,因为,欧洲的各个民族自其肇始就具有种族的统一性,而欧洲的自然资源对其居民来说又是匮乏的。所以,一方面他们没有内部的混乱,而另一方面则要对付他们强大而贪婪的邻国。于是在他们彼此之间便进行了完美的联合,同时对其他国家采取了警惕、敌意的态度,这便成为了他们解决自己问题的办法。过去,他们组织起来去抢劫;现在,他们秉承同样的精神,组织起来共同剥削整个世界。

但是,印度自有史以来就一直面对着这样的问题——种族问题。每一个民族都一定要弄清楚自己的使命是什么,而我们印度人一定要认识到,当我们要在政治上有所作为的时候,我们就会露出丑态,原因就在于我们还没有能够最终完成上帝下达给我们的旨意。

你们美国也同我们一样,多年以来面对着一直想要设法解决的种族团结问题。在这里很多人问我有关印度的种姓歧视的情况。但是他们向我问起这个事情的时候,总是带有一种优越感。所以,我也想把这个问题稍加修正之后问一问你们美国的批评家们:“你们是怎样对待红种印第安人和黑人的呢?”你们并没有改变对于他们的种族歧视的态度。你们使用了暴力的方法来使自己远离其他种族。所以,在这一问题没有得到解决之前,在这里,在美国,你们就没有权利指责印度。

尽管困难重重,印度还是有所作为的。她试着对种族关系进行了调整,承认了种族间确实存在的、真正的不同之处,并且试图找出各个种族间团结的基础。这个基础来自于我们的圣人,例如那纳克,卡比尔,柴塔尼亚 〔1〕 ,等等,他们倡导印度的各个种族信仰同一个上帝。

在解决我们自己问题的时候,我们同样应当致力于解决世界的问题。印度所经历的一切就是世界现在的样子。整个世界正在科学的帮助下变为一个国家。现在已经是时候了,你们必须要为这个世界找到一个团结的、非政治的基础。如果印度能够给这个世界提交她的解决方案的话,那么这将是对于全体人类的贡献。这世界上只有一部历史,那就是人类的历史。所有国家的历史不过是这部历史当中的各个章节而已。我们在印度愿意为这一伟大的事业受苦受难。

每个人都会爱他自己。因此,他残忍的本能会使得他为了追逐单纯的个人私利而与其他人争斗。但是同时人类还拥有更高级的同情和互助的本能。那些缺乏这一更高级别的道德力量的人们将不能同其他人结为伙伴的关系,所以他们注定会灭亡或生活在低级的状态。只有那些拥有这种强烈合作精神的民族才会生存下来并且创造出文明。所以我们发现,自有史以来,人类就不得不在彼此斗争和联合之间作出选择,在满足他们自己私欲和满足所有人共同利益之间作出选择。

在人类历史的早期,每个国家都受到地理疆域和交流手段的局限,所以这个问题相对来说并不突出,因为人类在他们各自独立的区域里发展他们对于团结的理解就已经足够了。那时候,他们自己之间联合起来与其他人斗争。但是,他们真正的伟大之处正是在于这种联合起来的道德精神,而正是这种精神塑造了他们的艺术、科学和宗教。那时候,人类所关注的最重要的一个事情就是某个特定种族的成员彼此之间的密切接触。那些通过他们更崇高的本性而真正做到了这种密切接触的种族会在人类的历史上留下他们的印记。

当今时代最重要的事情就是人类的不同种族已经聚集在了一起。我们又一次地面临着两个选择:不同的族群是继续彼此间的争斗,还是找出某些和解和互助的真正基础;不同的族群之间是继续无休止的竞争,还是展开彼此间的合作。

我会毫不犹豫地说,那些拥有爱的道德力量和团结精神的人们,那些对外来人抱有最少的敌意并且具有设身处地为他人着想的同情心的人们,会在我们当今这个时代占据永久的位置,成为最适应这个时代的人;而那些不断地发展自己与外来人为敌的,具有偏狭的本能的人将会被淘汰出局。因为这就是我们所面临的问题,而我们不得不借助更为崇高的本性来解决它,从而证明我们的人性。那些伤害他人并且避免被他人所伤害的庞大组织,那些靠损人利己而发财的庞大组织,它们是不会帮助我们的。恰恰相反,由于它们的千钧重力、巨额成本,以及对人类活力的抑制,它们会严重地阻碍我们在一个更为崇高的文明所提供的更为广大的生活空间中获得自由。

在民族的演变过程中兄弟友谊的道德文化受到了地理边界的限制,因为那时候这些边界是真实存在的。现在这些边界已经成为想象中的传统界限,而不具备真正的阻隔性质。所以现在人类的道德本性一定要严肃地对待这种情况,否则它将会有灭顶之灾。这种环境改变所造成的第一个冲动是人类卑鄙的贪婪和残忍的仇恨的膨胀。如果这种情况无限期地持续下去,军事力量继续壮大到难以想象的荒谬程度,机器和仓库以它们的尘灰、烟雾和丑陋覆盖了这个美丽的地球的话,那么这世界终将会在自杀式的熊熊烈焰中走向灭亡。因此,人类将不得不竭尽其爱的全力,擦亮他的眼睛,再一次做出巨大的道德修正;这种道德修正将在整个人类世界中进行,而不仅仅局限于少数的几个民族。生活在当今时代的每个人都接到了这样的召唤:要为迎接新时代的曙光作好自身和周边环境的准备,因为在新的时代里人们将会在全体人类的精神团结中发现自己的灵魂。

如果西方想要从这些低矮斜坡的混乱中挣扎出来,爬上人类精神的制高点的话,那么我想,美国就要肩负起其特殊的使命,完成这一上帝和人类的愿望。你们的国家充满了期待,希望能够推陈出新。欧洲有其敏锐的思维习惯和约定俗成的社会习俗,但是美国还没有定型。我知道美国很少受到过去传统的束缚,而且我意识到实验主义是美国年轻的标志。美国的荣耀在于未来而不是过去;而且,如果谁具有洞悉未来的本领的话,那么他一定会爱上未来的美国。

美国注定要向东方证明西方文明的正当性。欧洲已经对人性失去了信心,已经变得狐疑而病弱。而另一方面,美国则并不悲观失望或是麻木不仁。作为一个民族你们知道,没有最好只有更好,而你们进步的动力就来自于对这一点的认知。有一些习惯不光是被动的,同时还是高傲的和富于侵略性的。它们不仅仅像是一堵围墙,而更像是带刺儿的荨麻围成的树篱。欧洲多年以来一直都在培育着这种习惯的树篱,直到它们浓密地、茁壮地、高高地将欧洲围拢起来。欧洲对于自己传统的自豪感已经扎根在了她的心灵深处。我并不认为这种自豪感是毫无道理的。但是,任何一种形式的傲慢都会最终导致愚昧无知。像所有人造的兴奋剂一样,傲慢的最初影响只是一种反应水平的提升;而接下来,随着掺加剂量的增大,就会产生一种误导性的狂喜。欧洲的傲慢,在其外表和内在的习惯上面,都在逐渐地变得顽固。她不仅不能忘了自己是西方,而且还会利用每一次机会抛出这一事实,从而羞辱他人。这就是为什么,欧洲变得没有能力将自己最好的东西与东方分享;而与此同时,不能够以正确的态度接受东方已经储藏了多达数百年的智慧。

美国的民族习惯和传统还没有来得及将它们的根须紧紧地束缚住你们自己的心灵。当你们将自己不停漂泊的生活同欧洲固定的传统相比较的时候,你们经常会感到并且抱怨自己所处的劣势,因为欧洲可以将自己的伟大之处放到其历史背景之中最大程度地展现出来。但是在当今这个过渡的时代,当文明的新纪元跨越无限的未来时空向世界上的各个种族吹响其召唤的号角的时候,正是这种毫无挂碍的自由将会让你们响应它的号召,并且实现它的目标——为了这一目标,欧洲曾经开始其旅程,但是却在半路迷失了自我。之所以会如此是因为,欧洲被她自己的傲慢的权力和贪婪的占有所蛊惑,从而误入了歧途。

不仅仅是你们美国人的思维不受习惯的束缚,你们的历史也没有受到任何肮脏的、陈年旧账的羁绊,所以你们美国适合于扛起未来文明大旗的重任。所有欧洲伟大的民族都在世界的其他地方造下罪孽。这使得它们的同情心在道德和理智方面都受到了破坏,而这种同情心是理解其他与己不同的种族所必需的。英国人永远都不会真正地理解印度,因为他们在考虑有关印度的问题时并非没有私利。如果将英国同德国或法国进行比较的话,你就会发现,在英国,带着一定程度的同情心的洞察力或是一丝不苟的精神对印度的文学和哲学进行研究的学者是最少的。在当两国的关系并不正常,而且是建立在民族的自私和傲慢的基础之上的时候,这种冷漠和蔑视的态度就再自然不过了。但是你们美国的历史是没有私利的历史,这就是为什么你们能够帮助日本学习西方文明,这就是为什么中国在其最黑暗、最危险的时期对你们却抱有最大的信赖。事实上,你们肩负着一个伟大未来的全部责任,因为你们没有受到贪婪吝啬的过去历史的羁绊。因此,在世界上所有的国家当中,美国必须清醒地认识到这一未来;她一定要擦亮眼睛,在青春活力的鼓舞下对人类充满信心。

美国和印度之间存在着共同之处——两个国家都要将各个不同的种族团结在一起。

在印度,我们一直以来都在试图找到所有种族的某些共同之处,而这些共同之处将是各个种族真正团结的明证。仅仅将政治或是经济作为种族团结的基础是不够的。有思想、有能力的人们会找到种族团结的精神基础,并且实现这一精神上的团结,宣扬这一精神上的团结。

印度从来都没有过真正意义上的民族主义观念。尽管从孩提时代开始,我就被灌输以“对于民族的崇拜要好于对于上帝和人性的敬畏”的思想,可是我还是相信自己已经摆脱了这种说教的桎梏;而且我深信不疑的是,通过与“国家要比人类的理想更为伟大的说教”的斗争,我的同胞们会真正地收获他们的印度。

目前,受过教育的印度人正试图从历史当中吸取某些与我们祖先的经验教训截然相反的经验教训。事实上,东方正在努力学习它的历史——一个并非是它自己生活写照的历史。例如,日本认为她正在靠采用西方的方法而变得强大;但是,当她用光了自己祖上的遗产之后,所剩下的便仅仅是从西方文明那里借来的武器。她并没有从自身内部得到发展。

欧洲有自己的过去。因此欧洲的力量来自于她的历史。我们印度一定要下定决心,不能从其他民族那里借来他们的历史,而且,如果我们割断了自己的历史那就等同于自杀。当你们借来本不属于自己生活的东西的时候,这些东西就会毁了你们的生活。

因此,我相信,与西方文明在它自己的运动场上展开竞争对于印度来说毫无益处。但是,如果我们不顾外界的污言秽语,坚持走自己的路的话,我们就会收获颇丰。

有一些课程会给我们传递信息或是为了提高理智而训练我们的头脑。这些课程简单易学,便于利用。但是还有其他的课程会影响到我们的深层本性并且改变我们的人生轨迹。在我们学习这些课程并且以我们自己的遗产作为代价为此买单之前,我们一定要暂停并且好好考虑一下。在人类历史上的某些年代,人们发明了烟花爆竹,并且以其力量和动感让我们头晕目眩。这些烟花爆竹不仅仅嘲笑我们家里朴素的灯盏,而且嘲笑永恒的星辰。但是我们不要由于这种刺激就草率地决定舍弃我们的灯盏。我们要耐心地忍受暂时的侮辱,并且意识到它们尽管灿烂却不持久,因为这种极端的爆炸在产生力量的同时又让它筋疲力尽。与它们的收获和产出相较而言,这些烟花爆竹所耗费的能量和物质是致命的。

总之,我们的理想是在我们自己的历史当中演化而来的。即便是我们只希望将自己的理想制成拙劣的烟花爆竹也改变不了这一点,因为构成我们理想的材料与你们的材料是不同的,而它们的道德目的也是不同的。如果我们下定决心要不惜一切代价买进政治上的民族主义的话,那么其荒唐可笑的程度就如同瑞士为了自己的生存而野心勃勃地建造一支强大的、足以比肩英国的海军一样。我们所犯的错误就在于,我们认为人类想要变得伟大,其途径只有一条——就是这条以其极端傲慢的姿态摆在我们面前的痛苦之路。

我们必须确定自己拥有未来,而且这一未来属于那些拥有丰富的道德理想而不仅仅是拥有物质财富的人。人类拥有这样的特权:他为了收获果实而工作,而这些果实并非触手可及;他调整自己的生活不是为了与某些眼下成功的范例,甚至于不是与他自己谨小慎微的、胸无大志的过去保持被动的一致,而是要与无限的、心中怀抱着的、最最期待的理想未来相向而行。

我们必须承认西方来到印度是命中注定的。然而一定要有人向西方展示东方,并且说服西方相信东方为人类的文明史作出了贡献。印度不是西方的乞丐。即便是西方这样认为,我也不赞成印度应当摆脱所有西方的文明并且在我们的独立中与世隔绝。我们应当紧密相连。如果上帝让英国成为我们沟通的、紧密相连的渠道的话,那么我愿意以自己最大的谦恭接受这一事实。我对于人类的本性怀有极大的信心,而且我认为西方将会发现什么才是她真正的使命。当我意识到西方文明正在背叛人们对它的信任,阻挠实现自己的初衷的时候,我对它进行了严厉的批评。西方一定不要为了她的私利而在这个世界上引起祸端;而是要通过对无知者施以教化,对弱者给予帮助,让他们获得足够的力量,从而抵抗她的侵略方式,将自身从最大的、强大者容易遭遇的险境中拯救出来。而且,西方一定不要将物质主义作为最终追求的目标,而是要意识到,她所提供的服务是要将精神从物质的暴政下解放出来。

我并非反对某个特定的民族,而是反对所有民族的共同理念。那么什么是民族呢?

民族是指一国的全体人民以一个有组织的力量呈现出来的样子。这个组织不停地致力于使其全体成员变得更强大、更高效。但是,在做出这种为了变得强大和高效的努力之后,人类自我牺牲和富于创造性的更高本性的力量就会消耗殆尽。之所以如此是因为,人类牺牲的力量被从它终极的、道德的目标上转移到了对于这个机械的、组织的维护上来。然而在这个过程中,因为他拥有了所有道德提升的满足感,所以对于人性来说变得极度危险。当人类能够将自己的责任转化到这台由他的理智,而非由他完全的道德人格所创造出来的机器之上的时候,他便会感到自己从良知的规范之下解脱了出来。通过这台机器,热爱自由的民族让奴隶制在这个世界上的广大地区永久地持续,而他们却因为履行了自己的职责而骄傲地感到心安理得;那些生来正直的人们在其行动和思想上变得残忍而不公,而同时他们却感到自己是在帮助这个世界得到其应有的惩罚;那些诚实的人们会为了自我的膨胀而继续盲目地剥夺其他人的人权,而与此同时却辱骂那些受害者,说他们罪有应得。我们在自己的生活中见到过,即便是小的商业和行业组织也会在本性并不坏的人们身上产生感情的冷漠;而且我们完全可以想象得出来,它在这个所有民族都在疯狂地组织起来捞取财富和权力的世界上引起了多么大的道德浩劫。

民族主义是一个巨大的威胁。它是一种独特的东西,并且已经在印度的麻烦堆中潜藏了多年。因为我们已经被一个在其态度上具有严格政治性的民族统治、控制了多年,所以,尽管我们继承了过去的遗产,我们还是试图在自己的身上发展出一种对于自己最终政治命运的信仰。

印度有不同的政党,它们有不同的理想。其中一些政党正在为政治独立而斗争。而另外一些政党则认为争取政治独立还为时尚早。它们认为印度应当取得与英国其他殖民地一样的权利,并且希望印度尽量争取自治。

在印度的政治纷争的早期历史当中,并不存在像今天这样的政党间的冲突。那时候有一个政党叫作印度国大党 〔2〕 ;它并没有真正的纲领。他们会对当局发一些牢骚或是提出抗议,期望他们予以改正。他们希望在地方议会中获得更大的代表权,在市政府中得到更多的自由。他们要的东西都很琐碎,然而却缺乏建设性的理想。因此我对他们的方法不感兴趣。我深信,印度最需要的是来自自身的建设性的工作。尽管在这种工作中,我们每前进一步所取得的道义上的胜利,都是在严酷的迫害下,以失败和痛苦为代价换来的,然而,我们仍然要甘冒所有的风险,继续履行我们本应履行的职责。我们必须向高高在上的统治者表明,我们拥有道德的力量,拥有为真理而受难的力量。如果我们无所证明我们就只有乞讨。如果我们希望得到的东西即刻就能得到满足的话,那么反而是有害的。我曾经反复地告诉过我的同胞们,要团结起来,一起为了弘扬我们自我牺牲的精神去创造机会,而不要一同去乞讨。

然而,国大党失去了权力,因为人们不久就意识到他们所采取的残缺的政策是徒劳无益的。于是国大党分裂了 〔3〕 ,出现了极端主义分子。他们主张行动上的独立,并且抛弃乞讨的方法——他们认为这种乞讨的方法是让一个人摆脱对自己国家的责任的最简便易行的方法。他们的理想是以西方的历史为基础的。他们并不关心印度存在的特殊问题。他们不承认这样一个显而易见的事实:我们的社会组织当中的某些因素使得印度人民难以与外国人相抗衡。如果出于某种原因,英国被赶走了,那么我们将会怎么办呢?我们不过是会沦为其他民族的牺牲品而已。同样的社会问题仍将持续。我们印度人民不得不考虑的是这样一个问题:将那些产生缺少自尊并且完全依赖统治者的社会习俗和理念摈弃掉——这种问题完全是由于印度的种姓制度的控制,以及盲目、懒惰地依赖传统的权威性的习惯所造成的,而这些传统是与当今时代难以协调的时代错误。

我再一次地提醒你们注意印度无法回避的困难和她为了克服这些困难而进行的斗争。印度的问题就是世界问题的缩影。印度的疆域太过广大,种族太过多样。她相当于很多的国家聚集在了一个地理区域内。她与欧洲的情况恰恰相反;在那里,就相当于一个国家分裂成了多个国家。因此,欧洲在其文化和成长壮大方面不仅得益于其一国的优势,而且得益于其多国的力量。反观印度,由于她生来具有多样性,而后天又成为一个国家,所以她自始至终都蒙受其松散的多样性和衰弱的一致性所带来的痛苦。真正的一致性就如同一只圆球;它滚动起来,很容易地携带其自身的负荷。但是多样性就像是一个有很多棱角的物体,要想推拉它就要费尽全力。应当说明的是,印度的这种多样性并非她自身的创造,而是从她历史的开端就不得不接受的一个事实。在美国和澳大利亚,欧洲人几乎是通过消灭原住民的方式让问题得到了简化。即便是在当今时代,我们同样能看到种族灭绝的幽灵在徘徊——它冷淡地将外国人拒之门外,而这样做的人们自己在其所霸占的这片土地上,其实就是外国人。而印度自其肇始就容忍了种族的多样性,而且这种包容的精神贯穿了她的整个历史。

印度的种姓制度就是这种包容精神的产物。因为,她一直以来就做着各种实验,希望创造出一种能将不同的民族结合在一起的社会团结,而与此同时,各个民族又能充分地享受、保有自己独特性的自由。所以这种纽带一直保持尽可能的松散,而同时又在环境的允许下保持尽可能的紧密。这就产生了一种类似于社会同盟的合众国的东西,她的常见名称就是印度教。

印度曾经感到,无论种族的多样性有多少缺点,它都是必不可少的;而且你永远都不可能逼迫天性进入到你出于方便而设置的狭窄范围之内,而无需终究有一天为此付出高昂的代价。在这一点上印度是正确的;但是她却没有认识到人类彼此间的差异并非像阻隔的群山那样,永远地固定在那里——它们是随着生命的流动而流动的,它们正改变着自己的轨迹、形状和大小。

因此,在种姓制度的规章里面,印度承认了差别,然而她却没有承认易变性的生命法则。为了避免冲突,印度建立起了不可移动的边界壁垒,从而给她众多的种族带来了和平和秩序的、消极的好处,然而并没有给他们带来发展和变化的、积极的机会。她接受了产生多样性的自然,但是却忽略了自然正是利用这种多样性从事其有着无穷的变化和组合方式的世界游戏。她真实地面对生命的丰富多彩,但是却无视其永远变动的事实。因此,生命就从她的社会体系当中脱离了出来,取而代之的是她竭尽一切仪式所膜拜的,由无数她亲手打造的隔间所构成的,宏大无比的牢笼。

在印度试图避免行业利益的冲突的时候,发生了同样的事情。她将不同的行业和职业与不同的种姓相联系。这种做法可以一劳永逸地减轻竞争所带来的无休止的嫉妒和仇恨——这种竞争滋生了残忍,制造了浓重的、充满了谎言和欺骗的氛围。然而印度的这种做法同样强调了遗传的法则,忽略了变化的规律,因此逐渐地将艺术退化成为工艺,将天才堕落成为技工。

然而,西方的观察家们却没能洞悉这样一个事实:印度在其种姓制度当中很严肃地承担起了,以避免所有的矛盾和摩擦为目的的,解决种族问题的责任。她给每个种族在其活动范围内以自由。毋庸讳言,印度在这方面还没有获得完全的成功。但是,你们必须承认,尽管西方在种族同一性方面拥有更大的优势,然而她却从来没有关注过这个问题;而且,每当遇到这样的问题时,她都会试图通过采取置之不理的方式将它轻描淡写。这也是西方反亚风潮的原因所在——她剥夺了外国人在西方国家诚实谋生的权利。在大多数的殖民地国家,你们只在他们从事伐木和取水的工作时才会接纳他们。你们要么对外国人大门紧闭,要么就奴役他们,而这就是你们对于种族矛盾问题的解决之道。无论这样做可能存在什么样的好处,你们都必须承认,这种做法并非源自文明的、更为高尚的动机,而是来自于更为低级的、贪婪和仇恨的骚动。你们说这就是人类的本性——不过别忘了,印度在通过固定的、社会等级的藩篱来强行地划分种族差别的时候,也认为自己了解人类的本性。但是只有当吃过了苦头之后,我们才发现人类的本性并非它看上去的那个样子;而是存在于现实当中,存在于它无限的可能性当中。当我们盲目地攻击人性,说它衣衫褴褛的时候,它便会脱下伪装,露出庐山真面目——我们所攻击的竟然是我们的上帝。我们出于傲慢或是自私的目的对别人进行丑化的同时,同样也会丑化我们自己的人性——这是一种最为严厉的惩罚,因为当我们发现它的时候已经为时已晚了。

不单单是你们与外国人的关系,你们自己社会中不同阶层间的关系也都没有达到和谐一致。矛盾和竞争的精神在你们这里可以自由地横冲直撞。由于它的起源是对于财富和权力的贪婪,所以它的最终结局除了暴毙之外别无选择。在印度,商品的生产是根据社会调解的规律进行的。它的基础是合作,其目的是充分地满足社会的需求。但是在西方,商品生产是在竞争的催动下进行的,它的目标是为个人捞取财富。但是个人就像是几何线条一样;它有长度却没有宽度,并且还没有达到足以长久地容纳什么东西的深度。因此,它的贪婪或攫取是永无止境的。在这种几何线条不断的成长过程中,它会与其他的线条交织、纠缠在一起,但是在其与世隔绝的、纤细的状态下,永远都不会获得完善的理想。

我们知道自己的胃口是有一定限度的,而且我们知道超越了这一限度就会有损我们的健康。但是,对于占有财富和权力的贪欲来说,难道就没有超越它就会陷入死亡的界限吗?在这些民族的、物质主义的狂欢节上,西方的各个民族不正是在单纯地生产财富而忽略创造理想的过程中挥霍着他们的生命活力吗?难道说一个文明可以忽略道德健康的法则,并且通过大肆地吞咽物质财富而无休止地膨胀下去吗?人类按照其社会理想,会自然而然地限制自己的贪欲,使其从属于人类本性当中的、更为高尚的目的。但是在经济领域里,我们的贪欲除了受到供给和需求的限制以外不受其他任何的限制;而供给和需求则是可以人为地创造的,这就给个人提供了机会,让他沉溺于一场无尽的、让人肚满肠肥的盛宴之中。在印度,我们的社会本能对我们的贪欲加以限制——可能这种限制造成了极端的压抑——但是在西方,没有道德目的的经济组织的幽灵,却驱赶着人们永久地追逐着财富;难道对于这种行为就没有有益于身心的界限吗?

在各种社会制度中努力成形的理想有两个目标。一个是为了人类和谐的发展而管控我们的激情和贪欲,另外一个就是帮助人类养成对其同类的无私的爱。因此,社会就是人类道德和精神渴望的表现形式,而这些渴望则属于人类更为崇高的本性。

我们的食物是具有创造性的,它能强健我们的身体;但是酒则不然,它只能给我们以刺激。我们的社会理想创造了人类世界,但是当我们的思想偏离了这些社会理想,转而贪婪地追求权力的时候,在这种醉酒的状态之下,我们就会生活在一个不正常的世界里面。在这里,我们的力量并非健康的标志,我们的解放也并非是获得了自由。因此,当我们的思想不自由的时候,政治的自由并不能给予我们自由。一辆汽车并不能自由地行动,因为它不过是台机器而已。只有当我自己是自由的时候,我才能利用这台车达到我自由的目的。

我们永远都不要忘记,在当今,那些已经获得了政治自由的人们不见得就是自由的;他们不过是强大而已。他们放纵的激情正在创造出披着自由伪装的,巨大的奴役性质的组织。那些把赚钱当作他们最高目标的人们正在无意识中出卖他们的生命和灵魂给富人或是给某些代表金钱的联合体。那些迷恋政治权力,并且为自己扩大了对于其他种族的控制而感到洋洋自得的人们,逐渐地放弃了他们的自由和人性,将其交给了那些为了奴役其他民族而必须建立起来的组织。在那些所谓的自由国家中,大多数的人们并不自由;他们正在少数人的驱使之下去完成他们自己也不清楚的任务。这种情况之所以产生是因为,人们并没有将道德的和精神的自由看作是自己的目标。他们以自己的激情制造出巨大的漩涡;他们因为自己快速的旋转而感到头晕眼花、如醉如痴,并且就此以为那就是自由。但是,伺机袭击他们的厄运就像是死亡一样不可避免——因为人类的真理是道德的真理,人类的解放是精神生活的解放。

印度当今大多数民族主义者的通行观点就是,我们在社会和精神理想方面已经达到了尽善尽美的程度,社会建设性工作在我们出生前的几千年前就已经开始了,而且现在,我们可以自由地在政治方面大展拳脚。我们从来没有想过将我们如今的软弱无能归咎于我们的社会缺陷,因为我们已经将下面这一点当作了我们民族主义的信条:我们祖先所创立的这一制度将会永远适用,因为他们拥有洞悉古今的超人的眼光,并且拥有为未来提供无限滋养的神奇力量。因此,我们认为自己的痛苦和缺陷都是由历史上来自于外部的突然袭击所造成。这就是为什么我们认为自己的唯一任务就是要在社会奴役的流沙之上建造一个自由的政治奇迹。事实上,我们是要阻断自己的历史河流的本来路径,并且单纯地从其他民族的历史源泉那里借来力量。

我们印度有些人妄想着单纯的政治自由就可以让我们获得自由。他们把西方的说教当作了绝对的真理,却丢掉了自己对于人性的信仰。我们一定不要忘记,我们在自己的社会中所抱有的任何缺陷都会在政治方面成为危险的策源地。那种导致我们盲目地崇拜社会制度中陈规陋习的惯性,同样会在我们的政治中建造出由不可移动的壁垒围成的监狱牢房。狭隘的同情心使得我们有可能将令人恼怒的奴役强加给相当大的一部分人类,而与此同时,它会在政治中坚持不懈地制造出不公正的专制。

当我们的民族主义者们谈论理想的时候,他们忘了我们民族主义的基础是不牢固的。那些赞成这些理想的人们,自己在其社会实践方面却往往最为保守。例如,民族主义者说:看一看瑞士吧,尽管那里有种族差异,但其人民还是团结成了一个民族。可是,诸位不要忘了,瑞士的各个种族是可以彼此交往的,是可以通婚的,因为他们有着相同的血统。然而在印度却没有与生俱来的共同权利。当我们谈论西方民族的时候,我们忘了,那里的各个民族之间并不存在彼此间的,像我们各个种姓之间所存在着的,生理上的排斥。一个血脉不相连通的民族中的各个种族,会在没有强迫或是没有金钱利诱的情况下为了彼此而流血牺牲吗?全世界范围之内有这样的例子吗?我们可以希冀这些阻碍我们种族融合的,道德的藩篱不会阻碍我们在政治上的团结吗?

于是,我们必须再次完全地承认这个事实:我们的社会限制仍然是如此残暴,以至于它可以将人们变成懦夫。如果有人告诉我他持有异端的观点,但是他不能坚持自己的看法,因为那样的话他就会为社会所不容,那么我会原谅他为了生存而在谎言中生活。强迫我们过同伴的生活——他们即便是在食物的选择方面也与我们不同,成为他们负担的社会思维习惯一定会在我们的政治组织当中持续下去,并且最终导致高压政治的机器被创造出来,用以摧毁每一个显示着生命迹象的合理的差异。暴政只会在我们的政治生活中增加不可避免的谎言和伪善。自由的名号就那么值钱吗?我们宁愿牺牲掉自己的道德自由来同它作交换吗?

当我们拥有年轻活力的时候,我们对于自己习惯的放纵并不会马上产生影响。但是这种放纵会逐渐地吞噬我们的活力,而且当我们的生命开始走下坡路的时候,我们就不得不为此买单,并且还清债务,从而导致我们的破产。在西方,尽管你们的人性正在由于它在每一次运用权力的过程中所发作的间发性酒狂而受到折磨,可是你们仍然能够趾高气扬。印度也处在她年富力强的时期,所以能够在自己的内脏器官中携带僵化而完善的、社会组织的致死的重量;但是这一重量对她来说事关重大,并且已经逐渐地让她的生命天性麻痹瘫痪。这就是印度的知识阶层对社会需求变得麻木不仁的原因。他们以为静止的社会结构正是说明了它们的完美无瑕——而且,因为我们的社会有机体已经失去了健康的、疼痛的感觉,所以他们就误以为它并不需要帮助。因此他们认为,他们所有的能量只需在政治领域内发挥就可以了。这就像一个人,他的双腿已经萎缩并且失去了功能,可是他却试图欺骗自己,说自己的双腿不能动了是因为它们已经获得了最终的解脱,而自己唯一的过错就是缺少拐杖而已。

关于印度的社会和政治重建就说这么多吧。现在我们谈一下印度的工业。经常有人问我,自从英国政府到来以后,印度是否有过工业的重建。我们必须记住,在英国统治印度之初,我们的工业就受到了抑制;而且从那时候起,我们没有得到过任何真正的帮助或是鼓励,以使我们能够同世界上的商业组织的怪兽进行对抗。各个民族都号令我们要保持一个纯粹农业国的地位,甚至于永远都忘了如何使用武力。于是印度就被变成了很多份的、易消化的食物,随时准备提供给任何一个,哪怕是牙齿还没有发育完全的民族进行吞咽。

因此,印度在其工业创新方面鲜有作为。我个人并不相信当今臃肿的商业组织。它们的丑陋的事实表明,它们与所谓创新是格格不入的。自然的巨大力量不是在丑陋,而是在美丽当中展露其真理。美丽是当造物主对自己的造物感到满意的时候,在其上面签下的自己的姓名。所有傲慢地忽略了完美法则的,厚颜无耻地展示其丑陋的产品,都是对上帝永远的冒犯。只要你们的商业缺乏优雅的高贵,它就不是真正的商业。“美丽”和她的双胞胎哥哥“真理”在成长的过程中要求得到的是闲情雅致和自我控制。但是庞大的、占有的贪欲却总要超越时空的限制。它的唯一目标就是生产和消费。它对于美丽的自然和活着的人类均没有怜悯。它会冷酷地、毫不犹豫地将他们的美丽和生命榨取出来,然后将其铸成钱币。在人类早期的时候,我们鄙视这种商业的丑陋和粗俗,因为那时候我们拥有闲暇的时光,能够拨开云雾,透视人性当中的完美。那时候,人类正直地以自己单纯谋财的本能为耻。但是,在这个科学的年代,金钱由于其变态膨胀的体积而为自身赢得了王位。而且,当金钱聚集了大量的财富而羞辱人类更为崇高的本性,并且在其周边驱除掉美丽和高尚的情感的时候,我们便屈服了。因为我们已经卑鄙地接受了它双手奉上的贿赂,而且,我们的想象力已经在它硕大无比的肉身面前卑躬屈膝。

但是,正是它的笨拙和无尽的复杂表明了它的失败。一位专业的游泳者不会通过激烈的动作展示其肌肉的力量,而是以看不到的、完美的优雅和安静显露其力量。人类与动物的真正区别就在于,人类的力量和价值是内在的和隐形的。但是,如今人类的商业文明却不仅仅是占据了大量的时间和空间,而且正在浪费时间和空间。它的动作激烈、噪音大而不和谐。它携带着对于自己的诅咒,因为它正在将自己所依赖的人性践踏得扭曲变形。它正在竭尽全力,以幸福为代价捞取金钱。人类正在将自身最小化,为的是能够给这些商业组织提供宽敞的空间。人类正在嘲弄他的情感使其蒙羞,因为这些情感会挡住他的机器们前进的道路。

在我们的神话中有这样一个故事,如果有谁想要通过苦修以求达到永生的话,那么他就一定会受到来自不朽之神因陀罗的诱惑。如果他禁不住这些诱惑,他就会迷失。几百年来,西方一直在致力于追求不朽。因陀罗已经给她送去了诱惑来考验她。这个华丽的诱惑就是财富。西方接受了它,因此她的人性的文明便在机器的荒原上迷失了方向。

这种以丑恶装点门面的、残忍的商业主义对于全体人类来说都是威胁,因为它正在把权力的理想凌驾于完善的理想之上。它正在使得利己主义的歪理邪说在无耻的赤裸中欢呼雀跃。我们的神经要比我们的肌肉更加脆弱。宝贵的东西因其宝贵而需要我们悉心的呵护;如果失去了我们的呵护,它们就会像失去了呵护的婴儿一样变得无助。因此,当无情的、野蛮的权力在人性的大道上横冲直撞的时候,它便以其粗野吓跑了我们几个世纪以来以牺牲为代价所珍爱的理想。

诱惑对于强者来说是致命的,对于弱者来说更是如此。即便是不朽之神所送上的诱惑,我也不欢迎它来到印度。让我们的生命外表简朴而内在丰富吧。让我们的文明牢牢地建立在社会合作,而非经济盘剥和对抗的基础之上吧。如何在经济恶魔嗜血的利齿间做到这一切,则是摆在所有对于人类灵魂拥有信仰的,东方各民族的思想家面前的任务。接受那些与我们有不同理想的人们所开出的条件只会证明我们的懒惰和无能。我们应当积极地促使世界诸强国引领历史的发展,使其达到完善的彼岸。

从上面我说的话你们就知道我并不是一个经济学家。我愿意承认供需规律的存在,承认人类的痴迷——他们想要占有更多的东西,而不是于己有益的东西。然而我坚信,在人性之中存在着一种完美的和谐。在那里,贫穷不能带走他的财富;在那里,失败可能导致成功,死亡可能让他不朽;在那里,作为永恒正义之神所做出的补偿,那些落后的民族会将他们所受到的凌辱转化为金灿灿的胜利。

注释

〔1〕 那纳克:Nanak(1469-1533),卡比尔:Kabir(1440-1518),柴塔尼亚:Chaitanya(1485-1533)。

〔2〕 印度国民大会党(The Indian National Congress)创建于1885年。

〔3〕 分裂出现在1907年,在苏拉特(Surat)举行的印度国大党的年会上。

Rabindranath Tagore

Nationalism









PENGUIN BOOKS — GREAT IDEAS

Nationalism in Japan

The worst form of bondage is the bondage of dejection, which keeps men hopelessly chained in loss of faith in themselves. We have been repeatedly told, with some justification, that Asia lives in the past — it is like a rich mausoleum which displays all its magnificence in trying to immortalize the dead. It was said of Asia that it could never move in the path of progress, its face was so inevitably turned backwards. We accepted this accusation, and came to believe it. In India, I know, a large section of our educated community, grown tired of feeling the humiliation of this charge against us, is trying with all its resources of self-deception to turn it into a matter of boasting. But boasting is only a masked shame, it does not truly believe in itself.

When things stood still like this, and we in Asia hypnotized ourselves into the belief that it could never by any possibility be otherwise, Japan rose from her dreams, and in giant strides left centuries of inaction behind, overtaking the present time in its foremost achievement. This has broken the spell under which we lay in torpor for ages, taking it to be the normal condition of certain races living in certain geographical limits. We forgot that in Asia great kingdoms were founded, philosophy, science, arts and literatures flourished, and all the great religions of the world had their cradles. Therefore it cannot be said that there is anything inherent in the soil and climate of Asia to produce mental inactivity and to atrophy the faculties which impel men to go forward. For centuries we did hold torches of civilization in the East when the West slumbered in darkness, and that could never be the sign of sluggish minds or narrowness of vision.

Then fell the darkness of night upon all the lands of the East. The current of time seemed to stop at once, and Asia ceased to take any new food, feeding upon its own past, which is really feeding upon itself. The stillness seemed like death, and the great voice was silenced which sent forth messages of eternal truth that have saved man's life from pollution for generations, like the ocean of air that keeps the earth sweet, ever cleansing its impurities.

But life has its sleep, its periods of inactivity, when it loses its movements, takes no new food, living upon its past storage. Then it grows helpless, its muscles relaxed, and it easily lends itself to be jeered at for its stupor. In the rhythm of life, pauses there must be for the renewal of life. Life in its activity is ever spending itself, burning all its fuel. This extravagance cannot go on indefinitely, but is always followed by a passive stage, when all expenditure is stopped and all adventures abandoned in favour of rest and slow recuperation.

The tendency of the mind is economical: it loves to form habits and move in grooves which save it the trouble of thinking anew at each of its steps. Ideals once formed make the mind lazy. It becomes afraid to risk its acquisitions in fresh endeavours. It tries to enjoy complete security by shutting up its belongings behind fortifications of habits. But this is really shutting oneself up from the fullest enjoyment of one's own possessions. It is miserliness. The living ideals must not lose their touch with the growing and changing life. Their real freedom is not within the boundaries of security, but on the high-road of adventures, full of the risk of new experiences.

One morning the whole world looked up in surprise when Japan broke through her walls of old habits in a night and came out triumphant. It was done in such an incredibly short time that it seemed like a change of dress and not like the building up of a new structure. She showed the confident strength of maturity, and the freshness and infinite potentiality of new life at the same moment. The fear was entertained that it was a mere freak of history, a child's game of Time, the blowing up of a soap-bubble, perfect in its rondure and colouring, hollow in its heart and without substance. But Japan has proved conclusively that this sudden revealment of her power is not a short-lived wonder, a chance product of time and tide, thrown up from the depth of obscurity to be swept away the next moment into a sea of oblivion.

The truth is that Japan is old and new at the same time. She has her legacy of ancient culture from the East — the culture that enjoins man to look for his true wealth and power in his inner soul, the culture that gives self-possession in the face of loss and danger, self-sacrifice without counting the cost or hoping for gain, defiance of death, acceptance of countless social obligations that we owe to men as social beings. In a word, modern Japan has come out of the immemorial East like a lotus blossoming in easy grace, all the while keeping its firm hold upon the profound depth from which it has sprung.

And Japan, the child of the Ancient East, has also fearlessly claimed all the gifts of the modern age for herself. She has shown her bold spirit in breaking through the confinements of habits, useless accumulations of the lazy mind, which seeks safety in its thrift and its locks and keys. Thus she has come in contact with the living time and has accepted with eagerness and aptitude the responsibilities of modern civilization.

This it is which has given heart to the rest of Asia. We have seen that the life and the strength are there in us; only the dead crust has to be removed. We have seen that taking shelter in the dead is death itself, and only taking all the risk of life to the fullest extent is living.

I, for myself, cannot believe that Japan has become what she is by imitating the West. We cannot imitate life, we cannot simulate strength for long, nay, what is more, a mere imitation is a source of weakness. For it hampers our true nature; it is always in our way. It is like dressing our skeleton with another man's skin, giving rise to eternal feuds between the skin and the bones at every movement.

The real truth is that science is not man's nature, it is mere knowledge and training. By knowing the laws of the material universe you do not change your deeper humanity. You can borrow knowledge from others, but you cannot borrow temperament.

But at the imitative stage of our schooling we cannot distinguish between the essential and the non-essential, between what is transferable and what is not. It is something like the faith of the primitive mind in the magical properties of the accidents of outward forms which accompany some real truth. We are afraid of leaving out something valuable and efficacious by not swallowing the husk with the kernel. But while our greed delights in wholesale appropriation, it is the function of our vital nature to assimilate, which is the only true appropriation for a living organism. Where there is life it is sure to assert itself by its choice of acceptance and refusal according to its constitutional necessity. The living organism does not allow itself to grow into its food; it changes its food into its own body. And only thus can it grow strong and not by mere accumulation, or by giving up its personal identity.

Japan has imported her food from the West, but not her vital nature. Japan cannot altogether lose and merge herself in the scientific paraphernalia she has acquired from the West and be turned into a mere borrowed machine. She has her own soul, which must assert itself over all her requirements. That she is capable of doing so, and that the process of assimilation is going on, have been amply proved by the signs of vigorous health that she exhibits. And I earnestly hope that Japan may never lose her faith in her own soul, in the mere pride of her foreign acquisition. For that pride itself is a humiliation, ultimately leading to poverty and weakness. It is the pride of the fop who sets more store on his new head-dress than on his head itself.

The whole world waits to see what this great eastern nation is going to do with the opportunities and responsibilities she has accepted from the hands of the modern time. If it be a mere reproduction of the West, then the great expectation she has raised will remain unfulfilled. For there are grave questions that western civilization has presented before the world but not completely answered. The conflict between the individual and the state, labour and capital, the man and the woman; the conflict between the greed of material gain and the spiritual life of man, the organized selfishness of nations and the higher ideals of humanity; the conflict between all the ugly complexities inseparable from giant organizations of commerce and state and the natural instincts of man crying for simplicity and beauty and fulness of leisure — all these have to be brought to a harmony in a manner not yet dreamt of.

We have seen this great stream of civilization choking itself from debris carried by its innumerable channels. We have seen that with all its vaunted love of humanity it has proved itself the greatest menace to Man, far worse than the sudden outbursts of nomadic barbarism from which men suffered in the early ages of history. We have seen that, in spite of its boasted love of freedom, it has produced worse forms of slavery than ever were current in earlier societies — slavery whose chains are unbreakable, either because they are unseen, or because they assume the names and appearance of freedom. We have seen, under the spell of its gigantic sordidness, man losing faith in all the heroic ideals of life which have made him great.

Therefore you cannot with a light heart accept the modern civilization with all its tendencies, methods and structures, and dream that they are inevitable. You must apply your eastern mind, your spiritual strength, your love of simplicity, your recognition of social obligation, in order to cut out a new path for this great unwieldy car of progress, shrieking out its loud discords as it runs. You must minimize the immense sacrifice of man's life and freedom that it claims in its every movement. For generations you have felt and thought and worked, have enjoyed and worshipped in your own special manner; and this cannot be cast off like old clothes. It is in your blood, in the marrow of your bones, in the texture of your flesh, in the tissue of your brains; and it must modify everything you lay your hands upon, without your knowing, even against your wishes. Once you did solve the problems of man to your own satisfaction, you had your philosophy of life and evolved your own art of living. All this you must apply to the present situation, and out of it will arise a new creation and not a mere repetition, a creation which the soul of your people will own for itself and proudly offer to the world as its tribute to the welfare of man. Of all countries in Asia, here in Japan you have the freedom to use the materials you have gathered from the West according to your genius and your need. Therefore your responsibility is all the greater, for in your voice Asia shall answer the questions that Europe has submitted to the conference of Man. In your land the experiments will be carried on by which the East will change the aspects of modern civilization, infusing life in it where it is a machine, substituting the human heart for cold expediency, not caring so much for power and success as for harmonious and living growth, for truth and beauty.

I cannot but bring to your mind those days when the whole of eastern Asia from Burma to Japan was united with India in the closest tie of friendship, the only natural tie which can exist between nations. There was a living communication of hearts, a nervous system evolved through which messages ran between us about the deepest needs of humanity. We did not stand in fear of each other; we had not to arm ourselves to keep each other in check; our relation was not that of self-interest, of exploration and spoliation of each other's pocket; ideas and ideals were exchanged, gifts of the highest love were offered and taken; no difference of languages and customs hindered us in approaching each other heart to heart; no pride of race or insolent consciousness of superiority, physical or mental, marred our relation; our arts and literatures put forth new leaves and flowers under the influence of this sunlight of united hearts, and races belonging to different lands and languages and histories acknowledged the highest unity of man and the deepest bond of love. May we not also remember that in those days of peace and goodwill, of men uniting for those supreme ends of life, your nature laid by for itself the balm of immortality which has helped your people to be born again in a new age, to be able to survive its old outworn structures and take on a new young body, to come out unscathed from the shock of the most wonderful revolution that the world has ever seen?

The political civilization which has sprung up from the soil of Europe and is overrunning the whole world, like some prolific weed, is based upon exclusiveness. It is always watchful to keep the aliens at bay or to exterminate them. It is carnivorous and cannibalistic in its tendencies, it feeds upon the resources of other peoples and tries to swallow their whole future. It is always afraid of other races achieving eminence, naming it as a peril, and tries to thwart all symptoms of greatness outside its own boundaries, forcing down races of men who are weaker, to be eternally fixed in their weakness. Before this political civilization came to its power and opened its hungry jaws wide enough to gulp down great continents of the earth, we had wars, pillages, changes of monarchy and consequent miseries, but never such a sight of fearful and hopeless voracity, such wholesale feeding of nation upon nation, such huge machines for turning great portions of the earth into mince-meat, never such terrible jealousies with all their ugly teeth and claws ready for tearing open each other's vitals. This political civilization is scientific, not human. It is powerful because it concentrates all its forces upon one purpose, like a millionaire acquiring money at the cost of his soul. It betrays its trust, it weaves its meshes of lies without shame, it enshrines gigantic idols of greed in its temples, taking great pride in the costly ceremonials of its worship, calling this patriotism. And it can be safely prophesied that this cannot go on, for there is a moral law in this world which has its application both to individuals and to organized bodies of men. You cannot go on violating these laws in the name of your nation, yet enjoy their advantage as individuals. This public sapping of ethical ideals slowly reacts upon each member of society, gradually breeding weakness where it is not seen, and causing that cynical distrust of all things sacred in human nature, which is the true symptom of senility. You must keep in mind that this political civilization, this creed of national patriotism, has not been given a long trial. The lamp of ancient Greece is extinct in the land where it was first lighted; the power of Rome lies dead and buried under the ruins of its vast empire. But the civilization, whose basis is society and the spiritual ideal of man, is still a living thing in China and in India. Though it may look feeble and small, judged by the standard of the mechanical power of modern days, yet like small seeds it still contains life and will sprout and grow, and spread its beneficent branches, producing flowers and fruits when its time comes and showers of grace descend upon it from heaven. But ruins of skyscrapers of power, and broken machinery of greed, even God's rain is powerless to raise up again; for they were not of life, but went against life as a whole — they are relics of the rebellion that shattered itself to pieces against the eternal.

But the charge is brought against us that the ideals we cherish in the East are static, that they have not the impetus in them to move, to open out new vistas of knowledge and power, that the systems of philosophy which are the mainstays of the time-worn civilizations of the Fast despise all outward proofs, remaining stolidly satisfied in their subjective certainty. This proves that when our knowledge is vague we are apt to accuse of vagueness our object of knowledge itself. To a western observer our civilization appears as all metaphysics, as to a deaf man piano-playing appears to be mere movements of fingers and no music. He cannot think that we have found some deep basis of reality upon which we have built our institutions.

Unfortunately all proofs of reality are in realization. The reality of the scene before you depends only upon the fact that you can see, and it is difficult for us to prove to an unbeliever that our civilization is not a nebulous system of abstract speculations, that it has achieved something which is a positive truth — a truth that can give man's heart its shelter and sustenance. It has evolved an inner sense — a sense of vision, the vision of the infinite reality in all finite things.

But he says, 'You do not make any progress; there is no movement in you.' I ask him, 'How do you know it? You have to judge progress according to its aim. A railway train makes its progress towards the terminus station — it is movement. But a full-grown tree has no definite movement of that kind; its progress is the inward progress of life. It lives, with its aspiration towards light tingling in its leaves and creeping in its silent sap.'

We also have lived for centuries; we still live, and we have our aspiration for a reality that has no end to its realization — a reality that goes beyond death, giving it a meaning, that rises above all evils of life, bringing its peace and purity, its cheerful renunciation of self. The product of this inner life is a living product. It will be needed when the youth returns home weary and dust-laden, when the soldier is wounded, when the wealth is squandered away and pride is humbled, when man's heart cries for truth in the immensity of facts, and harmony in the contradiction of tendencies. Its value is not in its multiplication of materials, but in its spiritual fulfilment.

There are things that cannot wait. You have to rush and run and march if you must fight or take the best place in the market. You strain your nerves and are on the alert when you chase opportunities that are always on the wing. But there are ideals which do not play hide-and-seek with our life; they slowly grow from seed to flower, from flower to fruit; they require infinite space and heaven's light to mature, and the fruits that they produce can survive years of insult and neglect. The East with her ideals, in whose bosom are stored the ages of sunlight and silence of stars, can patiently wait till the West, hurrying after the expedient, loses breath and stops. Europe, while busily speeding to her engagements, disdainfully casts her glance from her carriage window at the reaper reaping his harvest in the field, and in her intoxication of speed cannot but think of him as slow and ever receding backwards. But the speed comes to its end; the engagement loses its meaning and the hungry heart clamours for food, till at last she comes to the lowly reaper reaping his harvest in the sun. For if the office cannot wait, or the buying and selling, or the craving for excitement, love waits, and beauty, and the wisdom of suffering and the fruits of patient devotion and reverent meekness of simple faith. And thus shall wait the East till her time comes.

I must not hesitate to acknowledge where Europe is great, for great she is without doubt. We cannot help loving her with all our heart and paying her the best homage of our admiration — the Europe who, in her literature and art, pours out an inexhaustible cascade of beauty and truth fertilizing all countries and all time; the Europe who, with a mind which is titanic in its untiring power, is sweeping the height and the depth of the universe, winning her homage of knowledge from the infinitely great and the infinitely small, applying all the resources of her great intellect and heart in healing the sick and alleviating those miseries of man which up till now we were contented to accept in a spirit of hopeless resignation; the Europe who is making the earth yield more fruit than seemed possible, coaxing and compelling the great forces of nature into man's service. Such true greatness must have its motive power in spiritual strength. For only the spirit of man can defy all limitations, have faith in its ultimate success, throw its searchlight beyond the immediate and the apparent, gladly suffer martyrdom for ends which cannot be achieved in its lifetime and accept failure without acknowledging defeat. In the heart of Europe runs the purest stream of human love, of love of justice, of spirit of self-sacrifice for higher ideals. The Christian culture of centuries has sunk deep in her life's core. In Europe we have seen noble minds who have ever stood up for the rights of man irrespective of colour and creed; who have braved calumny and insult from their own people in fighting for humanity's cause and raising their voices against the mad orgies of militarism, against the rage for brutal retaliation or rapacity that sometimes takes possession of a whole people; who are always ready to make reparation for wrongs done in the past by their own nations and vainly attempt to stem the tide of cowardly injustice that flows unchecked because the resistance is weak and innocuous on the part of the injured. There are these knight-errants of modern Europe who have not lost their faith in the disinterested love of freedom, in the ideals which own no geographical boundaries or national self-seeking. These are there to prove that the fountainhead of the water of everlasting life has not run dry in Europe, and from thence she will have her rebirth time after time. Only there, where Europe is too consciously busy in building up her power, defying her deeper nature and mocking it, she is heaping up her iniquities to the sky, crying for God's vengeance and spreading the infection of ugliness, physical and moral, over the face of the earth with her heartless commerce heedlessly outraging man's sense of the beautiful and the good. Europe is supremely good in her beneficence where her face is turned to all humanity; and Europe is supremely evil in her maleficent aspect where her face is turned only upon her own interest, using all her power of greatness for ends which are against the infinite and eternal in Man.

Eastern Asia has been pursuing its own path, evolving its own civilization, which was not political but social, not predatory and mechanically efficient but spiritual and based upon all the varied and deeper relations of humanity. The solutions of the life problems of peoples were thought out in seclusion and carried out behind the security of aloofness, where all the dynastic changes and foreign invasions hardly touched them. But now we are overtaken by the outside world, our seclusion is lost for ever. Yet this we must not regret, as a plant should never regret when the obscurity of its seed-time is broken. Now the time has come when we must make the world problem our own problem; we must bring the spirit of civilization into harmony with the history of all nations of the earth; we must not, in foolish pride, still keep ourselves fast within the shell of the seed and the crust of the earth which protected and nourished our ideals; for these, the shell and the crust, were meant to be broken, so that life may spring up in all its vigour and beauty, bringing its offerings to the world in open light.

In this task of breaking the barrier and facing the world Japan has come out the first in the East. She has infused hope in the heart of all Asia. This hope provides the hidden fire which is needed for all works of creation. Asia now feels that she must prove her life by producing living work; she must not lie passively dormant, or feebly imitate the West, in the infatuation of fear and flattery. For this we offer our thanks to this Land of the Rising Sun and solemnly ask her to remember that she has the mission of the East to fulfil. She must infuse the sap of a fuller humanity into the heart of modern civilization. She must never allow it to get choked with noxious undergrowth, but lead it up towards light and freedom, towards the pure air and broad space where it can receive, in the dawn of its day and the darkness of its night, heaven's inspiration. Let the greatness of her ideals become visible to all men like her snow-crowned Fuji rising from the heart of the country into the region of the infinite, supremely distinct from its surroundings, beautiful like a maiden in its magnificent sweep of curve, yet firm and strong and serenely majestic.

I have travelled in many countries and have met with men of all classes, but never in my travels did I feel the presence of the human so distinctly as in this land. In other great countries signs of man's power loomed large, and I saw vast organizations which showed efficiency in all their features. There, display and extravagance, in dress, in furniture, in costly entertainments, are startling. They seem to push you back into a corner, like a poor intruder at a feast; they are apt to make you envious, or take your breath away with amazement. There, you do not feel man as supreme; you are hurled against a stupendousness of things that alienate. But in Japan it is not the display of power or wealth that is the predominating element. You see everywhere emblems of love and admiration, and not mostly of ambition and greed. You see a people whose heart has come out and scattered itself in profusion in its commonest utensils of everyday life, in its social institutions, in its manners, which are carefully perfect, and in its dealings with things which are not only deft but graceful in every movement.

What has impressed me most in this country is the conviction that you have realized nature's secrets, not by methods of analytical knowledge, but by sympathy. You have known her language of lines, and music of colours, the symmetry in her irregularities, and the cadence in her freedom of movements; you have seen how she leads her immense crowds of things yet avoids all frictions, how the very conflicts in her creations break out in dance and music, how her exuberance has the aspect of the fulness of self-abandonment, and not a mere dissipation of display. You have discovered that nature reserves her power in forms of beauty; and it is this beauty which, like a mother, nourishes all the giant forces at her breast, keeping them in active vigour, yet in repose. You have known that energies of nature save themselves from wearing out by the rhythm of a perfect grace, and that she, with the tenderness of her curved lines, takes away fatigue from the world's muscles. I have felt that you have been able to assimilate these secrets into your life, and the truth which lies in the beauty of all things has passed into your souls. A mere knowledge of things can be had in a short enough time, but their spirit can only be acquired by centuries of training and self-control. Dominating nature from outside is a much simpler thing than making her your own in love's delight, which is a work of true genius. Your race has shown that genius, not by acquirement but by creation, not by display of things but by manifestation of its own inner being. This creative power there is in all nations, and it is ever active in getting hold of men's natures and giving them a form according to its ideals. But here, in Japan, it seems to have achieved its success, and deeply sunk into the minds of all men, and permeated their muscles and nerves. Your instincts have become true, your senses keen, and your hands have acquired natural skill. The genius of Europe has given her people the power of organization, which has specially made itself manifest in politics and commerce and in coordinating scientific knowledge. The genius of Japan has given you the vision of beauty in nature and the power of realizing it in your life.

All particular civilization is the interpretation of particular human experience. Europe seems to have felt emphatically the conflict of things in the universe, which can only be brought under control by conquest. Therefore she is ever ready for fight, and the best portion of her attention is occupied in organizing forces. But Japan has felt, in her world, the touch of some presence, which has evoked in her soul a feeling of reverent adoration. She does not boast of her mastery of nature, but to her she brings, with infinite care and joy, her offerings of love. Her relationship with the world is the deeper relationship of heart. This spiritual bond of love she has established with the hills of her country, with the sea and the streams, with the forests in all their flowery moods and varied physiognomy of branches; she has taken into her heart all the rustling whispers and sighing of the woodlands and sobbing of the waves; the sun and the moon she has studied in all the modulations of their lights and shades, and she is glad to close her shops to greet the seasons in her orchards and gardens and cornfields. This opening of the heart to the soul of the world is not confined to a section of your privileged classes; it is not the forced product of exotic culture, but it belongs to all your men and women of all conditions. This experience of your soul, in meeting a personality in the heart of the world, has been embodied in your civilization. It is a civilization of human relationship. Your duty towards your state has naturally assumed the character of filial duty, your nation becoming one family with your Emperor as its head. Your national unity has not been evolved from the comradeship of arms for defensive and offensive purpose, or from partnership in raiding adventures, dividing among each member the danger and spoils of robbery. It is not an outcome of the necessity of organization for some ulterior purpose, but it is an extension of the family and obligations of the heart in a wide field of space and time. The ideal of maitri is at the bottom of your culture — maitri with men and maitri with Nature. And the true expression of this love is in the language of beauty, which is so abundantly universal in this land. This is the reason why a stranger like myself, instead of feeling envy or humiliation before these manifestations of beauty, these creations of love, feels a readiness to participate in the joy and glory of such revealment of the human heart.

And this had made me all the more apprehensive of the change which threatens Japanese civilization, as something like a menace to one's own person. For the huge heterogeneity of the modern age, whose only common bond is usefulness, is nowhere so pitifully exposed against the dignity and hidden power of reticent beauty as in Japan.

But the danger lies in this, that organized ugliness storms the mind and carries the day by its mass, by its aggressive persistence, but its power of mockery is directed against the deeper sentiments of the heart. Its harsh obtrusiveness makes it forcibly visible to us, overcoming our senses — and we bring sacrifices to its altar, as does a savage to the fetish which appears powerful because of its hideousness. Therefore its rivalry with things that are modest and profound and have the subtle delicacy of life is to be dreaded.

I am quite sure that there are men in your country who are not in sympathy with your inherited ideals, whose object is to gain and not to grow. They are loud in their boast that they have modernized Japan. While I agree with them so far as to say that the spirit of the race should harmonize with the spirit of the time, I must warn them that modernizing is a mere affectation of modernism, just as an affectation of poesy is poetizing. It is nothing but mimicry, only affectation is louder than the original, and it is too literal. One must bear in mind that those who have the true modern spirit need not modernize, just as those who are truly brave are not braggarts. Modernism is not in the dress of the Europeans, or in the hideous structures where their children are interned when they take their lessons, or in the square houses with flat, straight wall-surfaces, pierced with parallel lines of windows, where these people are caged in their lifetime; certainly modernism is not in their ladies' bonnets, carrying on them loads of incongruities. These are not modern, but merely European. True modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. It is independence of thought and action, not tutelage under European schoolmasters. It is science, but not its wrong application in life — a mere imitation of our science teachers who reduce it into a superstition, absurdly invoking its aid for all impossible purposes.

Life based upon mere science is attractive to some men, because it has all the characteristics of sport; it feigns seriousness, but is not profound. When you go a-hunting, the less pity you have the better; for your one object is to chase the game and kill it, to feel that you are the greater animal, that your method of destruction is thorough and scientific. And the life of science is that superficial life. It pursues success with skill and thoroughness, and takes no account of the higher nature of man. But those whose minds are crude enough to plan their lives upon the supposition that man is merely a hunter and his paradise the paradise of sportsmen will be rudely awakened in the midst of their trophies of skeletons and skulls.

I do not for a moment suggest that Japan should be unmindful of acquiring modern weapons of self-protection. But this should never be allowed to go beyond her instinct of self-preservation. She must know that the real power is not in the weapons themselves, but in the man who wields those weapons; and when he, in his eagerness for power, multiplies his weapons at the cost of his own soul, then it is he who is in even greater danger than his enemies.

Things that are living are so easily hurt; therefore they require protection. In nature, life protects itself within its coverings, which are built with life's own material. Therefore they are in harmony with life's growth, or else when the time comes they easily give way and are forgotten. The living man has his true protection in his spiritual ideals which have their vital connection with his life, and grow with his growth. But, unfortunately, all his armour is not living — some of it is made of steel, inert and mechanical. Therefore, while making use of it, man has to be careful to protect himself from its tyranny. If he is weak enough to grow smaller to fit himself to his covering, then it becomes a process of gradual suicide by shrinkage of the soul. And Japan must have a firm faith in the moral law of existence to be able to assert to herself that the western nations are following that path of suicide, where they are smothering their humanity under the immense weight of organizations in order to keep themselves in power and hold others in subjection.

What is dangerous for Japan is not the imitation of the outer features of the West, but the acceptance of the motive force of western nationalism as her own. Her social ideals are already showing signs of defeat at the hands of politics. I can see her motto, taken from science, 'Survival of the fittest', writ large at the entrance of her present-day history — the motto whose meaning is, 'Help yourself, and never heed what it costs to others', the motto of the blind man who only believes in what he can touch, because he cannot see. But those who can see know that men are so closely knit that when you strike others the blow comes back to yourself. The moral law, which is the greatest discovery of man, is the discovery of this wonderful truth, that man becomes all the truer the more he realizes himself in others. This truth has not only a subjective value, but is manifested in every department of our life. And nations who sedulously cultivate moral blindness as the cult of patriotism will end their existence in a sudden and violent death. In past ages we had foreign invasions, but they never touched the soul of the people deeply. They were merely the outcome of individual ambitions. The people themselves, being free from the responsibilities of the baser and more heinous side of those adventures, had all the advantage of the heroic and the human disciplines derived from them. This developed their unflinching loyalty, their singleminded devotion to the obligations of honour, their power of complete self-surrender and fearless acceptance of death and danger. Therefore the ideals, whose seats were in the hearts of the people, would not undergo any serious change owing to the policies adopted by the kings or generals. But now, where the spirit of western nationalism prevails, the whole people is being taught from boyhood to foster hatreds and ambitions by all kinds of means — by the manufacture of half-truths and untruths in history, by persistent misrepresentation of other races and the culture of unfavourable sentiments towards them, by setting up memorials of events, very often false, which for the sake of humanity should be speedily forgotten, thus continually brewing evil menace towards neighbours and nations other than its own. This is poisoning the very fountainhead of humanity. It is discrediting the ideals which were born of the lives of men who were our greatest and best. It is holding up gigantic selfishness as the one universal religion for all nations of the world. We can take anything else from the hands of science, but not this elixir of moral death. Never think for a moment that the hurts you inflict upon other races will not infect you, or that the enmities you sow around your homes will be a wall of protection to you for all time to come. To imbue the minds of the whole people with an abnormal vanity of its own superiority, to teach it to take pride in its moral callousness and ill-begotten wealth, to perpetuate the humiliation of defeated nations by exhibiting trophies won from war, and using these in schools in order to breed in children's minds contempt for others, is imitating the West where she has a festering sore, whose swelling is a swelling of disease eating into its vitality.

Our food crops, which are necessary for our sustenance, are products of centuries of selection and care. But the vegetation, which we have not to transform into our lives, does not require the patient thoughts of generations. It is not easy to get rid of weeds; but it is easy, by process of neglect, to ruin your food crops and let them revert to their primitive state of wildness. Likewise the culture, which has so kindly adapted itself to your soil — so intimate with life, so human — not only needed tilling and weeding in past ages, but still needs anxious work and watching. What is merely modern — as science and methods of organization — can be transplanted; but what is vitally human has fibres so delicate, and roots so numerous and far-reaching, that it dies when moved from the soil. Therefore I am afraid of the rude pressure of the political ideals of the West upon your own. In political civilization, the state is an abstraction and the relationship of men utilitarian. Because it has no root in sentiments, it is so dangerously easy to handle. Half a century has been enough for you to master this machine; and there are men among you whose fondness for it exceeds their love for the living ideals, which were born with the birth of your nation and nursed in your centuries. It is like a child who, in the excitement of his play, imagines he likes his play-things better than his mother.

Where man is at his greatest, he is unconscious. Your civilization, whose mainspring is the bond of human relationship, has been nourished in the depth of a healthy life beyond reach of prying self-analysis. But a mere political relationship is all-conscious; it is an eruptive inflammation of aggressiveness. It has forcibly burst upon your notice. And the time has come when you have to be roused into full consciousness of the truth by which you live, so that you may not be taken unawares. The past has been God's gift to you; about the present, you must make your own choice.

So the questions you have to put to yourselves are these: 'Have we read the world wrong, and based our relation to it upon an ignorance of human nature? Is the instinct of the West right, where she builds her national welfare behind the barricade of a universal distrust of humanity?'

You must have detected a strong accent of fear whenever the West has discussed the possibility of the rise of an eastern race. The reason of it is this, that the power by whose help she thrives is an evil power; so long as it is held on her own side she can be safe, while the rest of the world trembles. The vital ambition of the present civilization of Europe is to have the exclusive possession of the devil. All her armaments and diplomacy are directed upon this one object. But these costly rituals for invocation of the evil spirit lead through a path of prosperity to the brink of cataclysm. The furies of terror, which the West has let loose upon God's world, come back to threaten herself and goad her into preparations of more and more frightfulness; this gives her no rest, and makes her forget all else but the perils that she causes to others and incurs herself. To the worship of this devil of politics she sacrifices other countries as victims. She feeds upon their dead flesh and grows fat upon it, so long as the carcasses remain fresh — but they are sure to rot at last, and the dead will take their revenge by spreading pollution far and wide and poisoning the vitality of the feeder. Japan had all her wealth of humanity, her harmony of heroism and beauty, her depth of self-control and richness of self-expression; yet the western nations felt no respect for her till she proved that the bloodhounds of Satan are not only bred in the kennels of Europe but can also be domesticated in Japan and fed with man's miseries. They admit Japan's equality with themselves only when they know that Japan also possesses the key to open the floodgate of hell-fire upon the fair earth whenever she chooses, and can dance in their own measure the devil dance of pillage, murder and ravishment of innocent women, while the world goes to ruin. We know that, in the early state of man's moral immaturity, he only feels reverence for the god whose malevolence he dreads. But is this the ideal of man which we can look up to with pride: after centuries of civilization nations fearing each other like the prowling wild beasts of the night-time; shutting their doors of hospitality; combining only for purpose of aggression or defence; hiding in their holes their trade secrets, state secrets, secrets of their armaments; making peace-offerings to each other's barking dogs with the meat which does not belong to them; holding down fallen races which struggle to stand upon their feet; with their right hands dispensing religion to weaker peoples, while robbing them with their left — is there anything in this to make us envious? Are we to bend our knees to the spirit of this nationalism, which is sowing broadcast over all the world seeds of fear, greed, suspicion, unashamed lies of its diplomacy, and unctuous lies of its profession of peace and goodwill and universal brotherhood of Man? Can our minds be free from doubt when we rush to the western market to buy this foreign product in exchange for our own inheritance? I am aware how difficult it is to know one's self; and the man who is intoxicated furiously denies his drunkenness; yet the West herself is anxiously thinking of her problems and trying experiments. But she is like a glutton, who has not the heart to give up his intemperance in eating, and fondly clings to the hope he can cure his nightmares of indigestion by medicine. Europe is not ready to give up her political inhumanity, with all the baser passions of man attendant upon it; she believes only in modification of systems, and not in change of heart.

We are willing to buy their machine-made systems, not with our hearts, but with our brains. We shall try them and build sheds for them, but not enshrine them in our homes or temples. There are races who worship the animals they kill; we can buy meat from them when we are hungry, but not the worship which goes with the killing. We must not vitiate our children's minds with the superstition that business is business, war is war, politics is politics. We must know that man's business has to be more than mere business, and so should be his war and politics. You had your own industry in Japan; how scrupulously honest and true it was, you can see by its products — by their grace and strength, their conscientiousness in details, where they can hardly be observed. But the tidal wave of falsehood has swept over your land from that part of the world where business is business, and honesty is followed merely as a best policy. Have you never felt shame when you see the trade advertisements, not only plastering the whole town with lies and exaggerations, but invading the green fields, where the peasants do their honest labour, and the hilltops, which greet the first pure light of the morning? It is so easy to dull our sense of honour and delicacy of mind with constant abrasion, while falsehoods stalk abroad with proud steps in the name of trade, politics and patriotism, that any protest against their perpetual intrusion into our lives is considered to be sentimentalism, unworthy of true manliness.

And it has come to pass that the children of those who would keep their word at the point of death, who would disdain to cheat men for vulgar profit, who even in their fight would much rather court defeat than be dishonourable, have become energetic in dealing with falsehoods and do not feel humiliated by gaining advantage from them. And this has been effected by the charm of the word 'modern'. But if undiluted utility be modern, beauty is of all ages; if mean selfishness be modern, the human ideals are no new inventions. And we must know for certain that however modern may be the proficiency which cripples man for the sake of methods and machines, it will never live to be old.

But while trying to free our minds from the arrogant claims of Europe and to help ourselves out of the quicksands of our infatuation, we may go to the other extreme and bind ourselves with a wholesale suspicion of the West. The reaction of disillusionment is just as unreal as the first shock of illusion. We must try to come to that normal state of mind by which we can clearly discern our own danger and avoid it without being unjust towards the source of that danger. There is always the natural temptation in us of wishing to pay back Europe in her own coin, and return contempt for contempt and evil for evil. But that again would be to imitate Europe in one of her worst features, which comes out in her behaviour to people whom she describes as yellow or red, brown or black. And this is a point on which we in the East have to acknowledge our guilt and own that our sin has been as great, if not greater, when we insulted humanity by treating with utter disdain and cruelty men who belonged to a particular creed, colour or caste. It is really because we are afraid of our own weakness, which allows itself to be overcome by the sight of power, that we try to substitute for it another weakness which makes itself blind to the glories of the West. When we truly know that Europe which is great and good, we can effectively save ourselves from the Europe which is mean and grasping. It is easy to be unfair in one's judgement when one is faced with human miseries — and pessimism is the result of building theories while the mind is suffering. To despair of humanity is only possible if we lose faith in truth which brings to it strength, when its defeat is greatest, and calls out new life from the depth of its destruction. We must admit that there is a living soul in the West which is struggling unobserved against the hugeness of the organizations under which men, women and children are being crushed, and whose mechanical necessities are ignoring laws that are spiritual and human — the soul whose sensibilities refuse to be dulled completely by dangerous habits of heedlessness in dealings with races for whom it lacks natural sympathy. The West could never have risen to the eminence she has reached if her strength were merely the strength of the brute or of the machine. The divine in her heart is suffering from the injuries inflicted by her hands upon the world — and from this pain of her higher nature flows the secret balm which will bring healing to these injuries. Time after time she has fought against herself and has undone the chains which with her own hands she fastened round helpless limbs; and though she forced poison down the throat of a great nation at the point of the sword for gain of money, she herself woke up to withdraw from it, to wash her hands clean again. This shows hidden springs of humanity in spots which look dead and barren. It proves that the deeper truth in her nature, which can survive such a career of cruel cowardliness, is not greed, but reverence for unselfish ideals. It would be altogether unjust, both to us and to Europe, to say that she has fascinated the modern eastern mind by the mere exhibition of her power. Through the smoke of cannons and dust of markets the light of her moral nature has shone bright, and she has brought to us the ideal of ethical freedom, whose foundation lies deeper than social conventions and whose province of activity is worldwide.

The East has instinctively felt, even through her aversion, that she has a great deal to learn from Europe, not merely about the materials of power, but about its inner source, which is of the mind and of the moral nature of man. Europe has been teaching us the higher obligations of public good above those of the family and the clan, and the sacredness of law, which makes society independent of individual caprice, secures for it continuity of progress, and guarantees justice to all men of all positions in life. Above all things Europe has held high before our minds the banner of liberty, through centuries of martyrdom and achievement — liberty of conscience, liberty of thought and action, liberty in the ideals of art and literature. And because Europe has won our deep respect, she has become so dangerous for us where she is turbulently weak and false — dangerous like poison when it is served along with our best food. There is one safety for us upon which we hope we may count, and that is that we can claim Europe herself as our ally in our resistance to her temptations and to her violent encroachments; for she has ever carried her own standard of perfection, by which we can measure her falls and gauge her degrees of failure, by which we can call her before her own tribunal and put her to shame — the shame which is the sign of the true pride of nobleness.

But our fear is that the poison may be more powerful than the food, and what is strength in her today may not be a sign of health, but the contrary; for it may be temporarily caused by the upsetting of the balance of life. Our fear is that evil has a fateful fascination when it assumes dimensions which are colossal — and though at last it is sure to lose its centre of gravity by its abnormal disproportion, the mischief which it creates before its fall may be beyond reparation.

Therefore I ask you to have the strength of faith and clarity of mind to know for certain that the lumbering structure of modern progress, riveted by the iron bolts of efficiency, which runs upon the wheels of ambition, cannot hold together for long. Collisions are certain to occur, for it has to travel upon organized lines; it is too heavy to choose its own course freely, and once it is off the rails its endless train of vehicles is dislocated. A day will come when it will fall in a heap of ruin and cause serious obstruction to the traffic of the world. Do we not see signs of this even now? Does not the voice come to us through the din of war, the shrieks of hatred, the wailings of despair, through the churning of the unspeakable filth which has been accumulating for ages in the bottom of this nationalism — the voice which cries to our soul that the tower of national selfishness, which goes by the name of patriotism, which has raised its banner of treason against heaven, must totter and fall with a crash, weighed down by its own bulk, its flag kissing the dust, its light extinguished? My brothers, when the red light of conflagration sends up its crackle of laughter to the stars, keep your faith upon those stars and not upon the fire of destruction. For when the conflagration consumes itself and dies down, leaving its memorial in ashes, the eternal light will again shine in the East — the East which has been the birthplace of the morning sun of man's history. And who knows if that day has not already dawned, and the sun not risen, in the easternmost horizon of Asia? And I offer, as did my ancestor rishis, my salutation to that sunrise of the East, which is destined once again to illumine the whole world.

I know my voice is too feeble to raise itself above the uproar of this bustling time, and it is easy for any street urchin to fling against me the epithet of 'unpractical'. It will stick to my coat-tail, never to be washed away, effectively excluding me from the consideration of all respectable persons. I know what a risk one runs from the vigorously athletic crowds in being styled an idealist in these days, when thrones have lost their dignity and prophets have become an anachronism, when the sound that drowns all voices is the noise of the market-place. Yet when, one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama town bristling with its display of modern miscellanies, I watched the sunset in your southern sea, and saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad hills — with the great Fujiyama growing faint against the golden horizon, like a god overcome with his own radiance — the music of eternity welled up through the evening silence, and I felt that the sky and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the dayfall are with the poets and idealists, and not with the marketmen robustly contemptuous of all sentiment — that, after all the forgetfulness of his divinity, man will remember again that heaven is always in touch with his world, which can never be abandoned for good to the hounding wolves of the modern era, scenting human blood and howling to the skies.

Nationalism in the West

Man's history is being shaped according to the difficulties it encounters. These have offered us problems and claimed their solutions from us, the penalty of non-fulfilment being death or degradation.

These difficulties have been different in different peoples of the earth, and in the manner of our overcoming them lies our distinction.

The Scythians of the earlier period of Asiatic history had to struggle with the scarcity of their natural resources. The easiest solution that they could think of was to organize their whole population, men, women, and children, into bands of robbers. And they were irresistible to those who were chiefly engaged in the constructive work of social co-operation.

But fortunately for man the easiest path is not his truest path. If his nature were not as complex as it is, if it were as simple as that of a pack of hungry wolves, then, by this time, those hordes of marauders would have overrun the whole earth. But man, when confronted with difficulties, has to acknowledge that he is man, that he has his responsibilities to the higher faculties of his nature, by ignoring which he may achieve success that is immediate, perhaps, but that will become a death-trap to him. For what are obstacles to the lower creatures are opportunities to the higher life of man.

To India has been given her problem from the beginning of history — it is the race problem. Races ethnologically different have in this country come into close contact. This fact has been and still continues to be the most important one in our history. It is our mission to face it and prove our humanity by dealing with it in the fullest truth. Until we fulfil our mission all other benefits will be denied us.

There are other peoples in the world who have to overcome obstacles in their physical surroundings, or the menace of their powerful neighbours. They have organized their power till they are not only reasonably free from the tyranny of Nature and human neighbours, but have a surplus of it left in their hands to employ against others. But in India, our difficulties being internal, our history has been the history of continual social adjustment and not that of organized power for defence and aggression.

Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history. And India has been trying to accomplish her task through social regulation of differences on the one hand, and the spiritual recognition of unity on the other. She has made grave errors in setting up the boundary walls too rigidly between races, in perpetuating in her classifications the results of inferiority; often she has crippled her children's minds and narrowed their lives in order to fit them into her social forms, but for centuries new experiments have been made and adjustments carried out.

Her mission has been like that of a hostess who has to provide proper accommodation for numerous guests, whose habits and requirements are different from one another. This gives rise to infinite complexities whose solution depends not merely upon tactfulness but upon sympathy and true realization of the unity of man. Towards this realization have worked, from the early time of the Upanishads 〔1〕 up to the present moment, a series of great spiritual teachers, whose one object has been to set at naught all differences of man by the overflow of our consciousness of God. In fact, our history has not been of the rise and fall of kingdoms, of fights for political supremacy. In our country records of these days have been despised and forgotten, for they in no way represent the true history of our people. Our history is that of our social life and attainment of spiritual ideals.

But we feel that our task is not yet done. The world-flood has swept over our country, new elements have been introduced, and wider adjustments are waiting to be made.

We feel this all the more because the teaching and example of the West have entirely run counter to what we think was given to India to accomplish. In the West the national machinery of commerce and politics turns out neatly compressed bales of humanity which have their use and high market value; but they are bound in iron hoops, labelled and separated off with scientific care and precision. Obviously God made man to be human, but this modern product has such marvellous square-cut finish, savouring of gigantic manufacture, that the Creator will find it difficult to recognize it as a thing of spirit and a creature made in His own divine image.

But I am anticipating. What I was about to say is this. Take it in whatever spirit you like, here is India, of about fifty centuries at least, who tried to live peacefully and think deeply, the India devoid of all politics, the India of no nations, whose one ambition has been to know this world as of soul, to live here every moment of her life in the meek spirit of adoration, in the glad consciousness of an eternal and personal relationship with it. It was upon this remote portion of humanity, childlike in its manner, with the wisdom of the old, that the Nation of the West burst in.

Through all the fights and intrigues and deceptions of her earlier history India had remained aloof. Because her homes, her fields, her temples of worship, her schools, where her teachers and students lived together in the atmosphere of simplicity and devotion and learning, her village self-government with its simple laws and peaceful administration — all these truly belonged to her. But her thrones were not her concern. They passed over her head like clouds, now tinged with purple gorgeousness, now black with the threat of thunder. Often they brought devastations in their wake, but they were like catastrophes of nature whose traces are soon forgotten.

But this time it was different. It was not a mere drift over her surface of life — drift of cavalry and foot soldiers, richly caparisoned elephants, white tents and canopies, strings of patient camels bearing the loads of royalty, bands of kettledrums and flutes, marble domes of mosques, palaces and tombs, like the bubbles of the foaming wine of extravagance; stories of treachery and loyal devotion, of changes of fortune, of dramatic surprises of fate. This time it was the Nation of the West driving its tentacles of machinery deep down into the soil.

Therefore I say to you, it is we who are called as witnesses to give evidence as to what our Nation has been to humanity. We had known the hordes of Mughals and Pathans who invaded India, but we had known them as human races, with their own religions and customs, likes and dislikes — we had never known them as a nation. We loved and hated them as the occasions arose; we fought for them and against them, talked with them in a language which was theirs as well as our own, and guided the destiny of the Empire in which we had our active share. But this time we had to deal, not with kings, not with human races, but with a nation — we, who are no nation ourselves.

Now let us, from our own experience, answer the question: what is this Nation?

A nation, in the sense of the political and economic union of a people, is that aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose. Society as such has no ulterior purpose. It is an end in itself. It is a spontaneous self-expression of man as a social being. It is a natural regulation of human relationships, so that men can develop ideals of life in co-operation with one another. It has also a political side, but this is only for a special purpose. It is for self-preservation. It is merely the side of power, not of human ideals. And in the early days it had its separate place in society, restricted to the professionals. But when with the help of science and the perfecting of organization this power begins to grow and brings in harvests of wealth, then it crosses its boundaries with amazing rapidity. For then it goads all its neighbouring societies with greed of material prosperity, and consequent mutual jealousy, and by the fear of each other's growth into powerfulness. The time comes when it can stop no longer, for the competition grows keener, organization grows vaster, and selfishness attains supremacy. Trading upon the greed and fear of man, it occupies more and more space in society, and at last becomes its ruling force.

It is just possible that you have lost through habit the consciousness that the living bonds of society are breaking up, and giving place to merely mechanical organization. But one sees signs of it everywhere. It is owing to this that war has been declared between man and woman, because the natural thread is snapping which holds them together in harmony; because man is driven to professionalism, producing wealth for himself and others, continually turning the wheel of power for his own sake or for the sake of the universal officialdom, leaving woman alone to wither and to die or to fight her own battle unaided. And thus there, where co-operation is natural, has intruded competition. The very psychology of men and women about their mutual relation is changing and becoming the psychology of the primitive fighting elements, rather than of humanity seeking its completeness through the union based upon mutual self-surrender. For the elements which have lost their living bond of reality have lost the meaning of their existence. Like gaseous particles forced into a too narrow space, they come in continual conflict with each other till they burst the very arrangement which holds them in bondage.

Then look at those who call themselves anarchists, who resent the imposition of power, in any form whatever, upon the individual. The only reason for this is that power has become too abstract — it is a scientific product made in the political laboratory of the Nation, through the dissolution of personal humanity.

And what is the meaning of these strikes in the economic world, which like the prickly shrubs in a barren soil shoot up with renewed vigour each time they are cut down? What but that the wealth-producing mechanism is incessantly growing into vast stature, out of proportion to all other needs of society, and the full reality of man is more and more crushed under its weight? This state of things inevitably gives rise to eternal feuds among the elements freed from the wholeness and wholesomeness of human ideals, and interminable economic war is waged between capital and labour. For greed of wealth and power can never have a limit, and compromise of self-interest can never attain the final spirit of reconciliation. They must go on breeding jealousy and suspicion to the end — the end which only comes through some sudden catastrophe or a spiritual rebirth.

When this organization of politics and commerce, whose other name is the Nation, becomes all-powerful at the cost of the harmony of the higher social life, then it is an evil day for humanity. When a father becomes a gambler and his obligations to his family take the secondary place in his mind, then he is no longer a man, but an automaton led by the power of greed. Then he can do things which, in his normal state of mind, he would be ashamed to do. It is the same thing with society. When it allows itself to be turned into a perfect organization of power, then there are few crimes it is unable to perpetrate, because success is the object and justification of a machine, while goodness only is the end and purpose of man. When this engine of organization begins to attain a vast size, and those who are mechanics are made into parts of the machine, then the personal man is eliminated to a phantom, everything becomes a revolution of policy carried out by the human parts of the machines, with no twinge of pity or moral responsibility. It may happen that even through this apparatus the moral nature of man tries to assert itself, but the whole series of ropes and pulleys creak and cry, the forces of the human heart become entangled among the forces of the human automaton, and only with difficulty can the moral purpose transmit itself into some tortured shape of result.

This abstract being, the Nation, is ruling India. We have seen in our country some brand of tinned food advertised as entirely made and packed without being touched by hand. This description applies to the governing of India, which is as little touched by the human hand as possible. The governors need not know our language, need not come into personal touch with us except as officials; they can aid or hinder our aspirations from a disdainful distance, they can lead us on a certain path of policy and then pull us back again with the manipulation of office red tape. The newspapers of England, in whose columns London street accidents are recorded with some decency of pathos, need take but the scantiest notice of calamities which happen in India over areas of land sometimes larger than the British Isles.

But we, who are governed, are not a mere abstraction. We, on our side, are individuals with living sensibilities. What comes to us in the shape of a mere bloodless policy may pierce into the very core of our life, may threaten the whole future of our people with a perpetual helplessness of emasculation, and yet may never touch the chord of humanity on the other side, or touch it in the most inadequately feeble manner. Such wholesale and universal acts of fearful responsibility man can never perform, with such a degree of systematic unawareness, where he is an individual human being. These only become possible where the man is represented by an octopus of abstractions, sending out its wriggling arms in all directions of space, and fixing its innumerable suckers even into the far-away future. In this reign of the nation, the governed are pursued by suspicions; and these are the suspicions of a tremendous mass of organized brain and muscle. Punishments are meted out which leave a trail of miseries across a large bleeding tract of the human heart, but these punishments are dealt by a mere abstract force in which a whole population of a distant country has lost its human personality.

I have not come here, however, to discuss the question as it affects my own country, but as it affects the future of all humanity. It is not a question of the British government, but of government by the Nation — the Nation which is the organized self-interest of a whole people, where it is least human and least spiritual. Our only intimate experience of the Nation is with the British Nation, and as far as the government by the Nation goes there are reasons to believe that it is one of the best. Then, again, we have to consider that the West is necessary to the East. We are complementary to each other because of our different outlooks upon life which have given us different aspects of truth. Therefore if it be true that the spirit of the West has come upon our fields in the guise of a storm it is nevertheless scattering living seeds that are immortal. And when in India we become able to assimilate in our life what is permanent in western civilization we shall be in a position to bring about a reconciliation of these two great worlds. Then will come to an end the one-sided dominance which is galling. What is more, we have to recognize that the history of India does not belong to one particular race but to a process of creation to which various races of the world contributed — the Dravidians and the Aryans, the ancient Greeks and the Persians, the Mohammedans of the West and those of central Asia. Now at last has come the turn of the English to become true to this history and bring to it the tribute of their life, and we neither have the right nor the power to exclude this people from the building of the destiny of India. Therefore what I say about the Nation has more to do with the history of Man than specially with that of India.

This history has come to a stage when the moral man, the complete man, is more and more giving way, almost without knowing it, to make room for the political and the commercial man, the man of the limited purpose. This process, aided by the wonderful progress in science, is assuming gigantic proportion and power, causing the upset of man's moral balance, obscuring his human side under the shadow of soulless organization. We have felt its iron grip at the root of our life, and for the sake of humanity we must stand up and give warning to all, that this nationalism is a cruel epidemic of evil that is sweeping over the human world of the present age and eating into its moral vitality.

I have a deep love and a great respect for the British race as human beings. It has produced great-hearted men, thinkers of great thoughts, doers of great deeds. It has given rise to a great literature. I know that these people love justice and freedom, and hate lies. They are clean in their minds, frank in their manners, true in their friendships; in their behaviour they are honest and reliable. The personal experience which I have had of their literary men has roused my admiration not merely for their power of thought or expression but for their chivalrous humanity. We have felt the greatness of this people as we feel the sun; but as for the Nation, it is for us a thick mist of a stilling nature covering the sun itself.

This government by the Nation is neither British nor anything else; it is an applied science and therefore more or less similar in its principles wherever it is used. It is like a hydraulic press, whose pressure is impersonal, and on that account completely effective. The amount of its power may vary in different engines. Some may even be driven by hand, thus leaving a margin of comfortable looseness in their tension, but in spirit and in method their differences are small. Our government might have been Dutch, or French, or Portuguese, and its essential features would have remained much the same as they are now. Only perhaps, in some cases, the organization might not have been so densely perfect, and therefore some shreds of the human might still have been clinging to the wreck, allowing us to deal with something which resembles our own throbbing heart.

Before the Nation came to rule over us we had other governments which were foreign, and these, like all governments, had some element of the machine in them. But the difference between them and the government by the Nation is like the difference between the hand-loom and the power-loom. In the products of the hand-loom the magic of man's living fingers finds its expression, and its hum harmonizes with the music of life. But the power-loom is relentlessly lifeless and accurate and monotonous in its production.

We must admit that during the personal government of former days there have been instances of tyranny, injustice and extortion. They caused sufferings and unrest from which we are glad to be rescued. The protection of law is not only a boon, but it is a valuable lesson to us. It is teaching us the discipline which is necessary for the stability of civilization and for continuity of progress. We are realizing through it that there is a universal standard of justice to which all men, irrespective of their caste and colour, have their equal claim.

This reign of law in our present government in India has established order in this vast land inhabited by peoples different in their races and customs. It has made it possible for these peoples to come in closer touch with one another and cultivate a communion of aspiration.

But this desire for a common bond of comradeship among the different races of India has been the work of the spirit of the West, not that of the Nation of the West. Wherever in Asia the people have received the true lesson of the West it is in spite of the western Nation. Only because Japan had been able to resist the dominance of this western Nation could she acquire the benefit of western civilization in fullest measure. Though China has been poisoned at the very spring of her moral and physical life by this Nation, her struggle to receive the best lessons of the West may yet be successful if not hindered by the Nation. It was only the other day that Persia woke up from her age-long sleep at the call of the West to be instantly trampled into stillness by the Nation. The same phenomenon prevails in this country also, where the people are hospitable, but the Nation has proved itself to be otherwise, making an eastern guest feel humiliated to stand before you as a member of the humanity of his own motherland.

In India we are suffering from this conflict between the spirit of the West and the Nation of the West. The benefit of western civilization is doled out to us in a miserly measure by the Nation, which tries to regulate the degree of nutrition as near the zero-point of vitality as possible. The portion of education allotted to us is so raggedly insufficient that it ought to outrage the sense of decency of western humanity. We have seen in these countries how the people are encouraged and trained and given every facility to fit themselves for the great movements of commerce and industry spreading over the world, while in India the only assistance we get is merely to be jeered at by the Nation for lagging behind. While depriving us of our opportunities and reducing our education to the minimum required for conducting a foreign government, this Nation pacifies its conscience by calling us names, by sedulously giving currency to the arrogant cynicism that the East is east and the West is west and never the twain shall meet. If we must believe our schoolmaster in his taunt that, after nearly two centuries of his tutelage, India not only remains unfit for self-government but unable to display originality in her intellectual attainments, must we ascribe it to something in the nature of western culture and our inherent incapacity to receive it or to the judicious niggardliness of the Nation that has taken upon itself the white man's burden of civilizing the East? That Japanese people have some qualities which we lack we may admit, but that our intellect is naturally unproductive compared to theirs we cannot accept even from them whom it is dangerous for us to contradict.

The truth is that the spirit of conflict and conquest is at the origin and in the centre of western nationalism; its basis is not social co-operation. It has evolved a perfect organization of power, but not spiritual idealism. It is like the pack of predatory creatures that must have its victims. With all its heart it cannot bear to see its hunting-grounds converted into cultivated fields. In fact, these nations are fighting among themselves for the extension of their victims and their reserve forests. Therefore the western Nation acts like a dam to check the free flow of western civilization into the country of the No-Nation. Because this civilization is the civilization of power, therefore it is exclusive; it is naturally unwilling to open its sources of power to those whom it has selected for its purposes of exploitation.

But all the same, moral law is the law of humanity, and the exclusive civilization which thrives upon others who are barred from its benefit carries its own death-sentence in its moral limitations. The slavery that it gives rise to unconsciously drains its own love of freedom dry. The helplessness with which it weighs down its world of victims exerts its force of gravitation every moment upon the power that creates it. And the greater part of the world which is being denuded of its self-sustaining life by the Nation will one day become the most terrible of all its burdens, ready to drag it down into the bottom of destruction. Whenever the Power removes all checks from its path to make its career easy, it triumphantly rides into its ultimate crash of death. Its moral brake becomes slacker every day without its knowing it, and its slippery path of ease becomes its path of doom.

Of all things in western civilization, those which this western Nation has given us in a most generous measure are law and order. While the small feeding-bottle of our education is nearly dry, and sanitation sucks its own thumb in despair, the military organization, the magisterial offices, the police, the Criminal Investigation Department, the secret spy system, attain to an abnormal girth in their waists, occupying every inch of our country. This is to maintain order. But is not this order merely a negative good? Is it not for giving people's life greater opportunities for the freedom of development? Its perfection is the perfection of an egg-shell, whose true value lies in the security it affords to the chick and its nourishment and not in the convenience it offers to the person at the breakfast table. Mere administration is unproductive; it is not creative, not being a living thing. It is a steam-roller, formidable in its weight and power, having its uses, but it does not help the soil to become fertile. When after its enormous toil it comes to offer us its boon of peace we can but murmur under our breath that 'peace is good, but not more so than life, which is God's own great boon'.

On the other hand, our former governments were woefully lacking in many of the advantages of the modern government. But because those were not the governments by the Nation, their texture was loosely woven, leaving big gaps through which our own life sent its threads and imposed its designs. I am quite sure in those days we had things that were extremely distasteful to us. But we know that when we walk barefooted upon ground strewn with gravel, our feet come gradually to adjust themselves to the caprices of the inhospitable earth; while if the tiniest particle of gravel finds its lodgement inside our shoes we can never forget and forgive its intrusion. And these shoes are the government by the Nation — it is tight, it regulates our steps with a closed-up system, within which our feet have only the slightest liberty to make their own adjustments. Therefore, when you produce your statistics to compare the number of gravels which our feet had to encounter in former days with the paucity in the present regime, they hardly touch the real point. It is not a question of the number of outside obstacles but the comparative powerlessness of the individual to cope with them. This narrowness of freedom is an evil which is more radical, not because of its quantity but because of its nature. And we cannot but acknowledge this paradox: that while the spirit of the West marches under its banner of freedom, the Nation of the West forges its iron chains of organization which are the most relentless and unbreakable that have ever been manufactured in the whole history of man.

When the humanity of India was not under the government of the Organization, the elasticity of change was great enough to encourage men of power and spirit to feel that they had their destinies in their own hands. The hope of the unexpected was never absent, and a freer play of imagination, on the part of both the governor and the governed, had its effect in the making of history. We were not confronted with a future, which was a dead white wall of granite blocks eternally guarding against the expression and extension of our own powers, the hopelessness of which lies in the reason that these powers are becoming atrophied at their very roots by the scientific process of paralysis. For every single individual in the country of the No-Nation is completely in the grip of a whole nation, whose tireless vigilance, being the vigilance of a machine, has not the human power to overlook or to discriminate. At the least pressing of its button the monster organization becomes all eyes, whose ugly stare of inquisitiveness cannot be avoided by a single person amongst the immense multitude of the ruled. At the least turn of its screw, by the fraction of an inch, the grip is tightened to the point of suffocation around every man, woman and child of a vast population, for whom no escape is imaginable in their own country or even in any country outside their own.

It is the continual and stupendous dead pressure of the inhuman upon the living human under which the modern world is groaning. Not merely the subject races, but you who live under the delusion that you are free, are every day sacrificing your freedom and humanity to this fetish of nationalism, living in the dense poisonous atmosphere of world-wide suspicion and greed and panic.

I have seen in Japan the voluntary submission of the whole people to the trimming of their minds and clipping of their freedom by their government, which through various educational agencies regulates their thoughts, manufactures their feelings, becomes suspiciously watchful when they show signs of inclining towards the spiritual, leading them through a narrow path not towards what is true but what is necessary for the complete welding of them into one uniform mass according to its own recipe. The people accept this all-pervading mental slavery with cheerfulness and pride because of their nervous desire to turn themselves into a machine of power, called the Nation, and emulate other machines in their collective worldliness.

When questioned as to the wisdom of its course, the newly converted fanatic of nationalism answers that 'so long as nations are rampant in this world we have not the option freely to develop our higher humanity. We must utilize every faculty that we possess to resist the evil by assuming it ourselves in the fullest degree. For the only brotherhood possible in the modern world is the brotherhood of hooliganism.' The recognition of the fraternal bond of love between Japan and Russia, which has lately been celebrated with an immense display of rejoicing in Japan, was not owing to any sudden recrudescence of the spirit of Christianity or of Buddhism, but it was a bond established according to the modern faith in a surer relationship of the mutual menace of bloodshedding. Yes, one cannot but acknowledge that these facts are the facts of the world of the Nation, and the only moral of it is that all the peoples of the earth should strain their physical, moral and intellectual resources to the utmost to defeat one another in the wrestling match of powerfulness. In ancient days Sparta paid all her attention to becoming powerful; she did become so by crippling her humanity, and died of the amputation.

But it is no consolation to us to know that the weakening of humanity from which the present age is suffering is not limited to the subject races, and that its ravages are even more radical because insidious and voluntary in peoples who are hypnotized into believing that they are free. This bartering of your higher aspirations of life for profit and power has been your own free choice, and I leave you there, at the wreckage of your soul, contemplating your protuberant prosperity. But will you never be called to answer for organizing the instincts of self-aggrandizement of whole peoples into perfection and calling it good? I ask you: what disaster has there ever been in the history of man, in its darkest period, like this terrible disaster of the Nation fixing its fangs deep into the naked flesh of the world, taking permanent precautions against its natural relaxation?

You, the people of the West, who have manufactured this abnormality, can you imagine the desolating despair of this haunted world of suffering man possessed by the ghastly abstraction of the organizing man? Can you put yourself into the position of the peoples, who seem to have been doomed to an eternal damnation of their own humanity, who not only must suffer continual curtailment of their manhood, but even raise their voices in paeans of praise for the benignity of a mechanical apparatus in its interminable parody of providence?

Have you not seen, since the commencement of the existence of the Nation, that the dread of it has been the one goblin-dread with which the whole world has been trembling? Wherever there is a dark corner, there is the suspicion of its secret malevolence; and people live in a perpetual distrust of their back where they have no eyes. Every sound of a footstep, every rustle of movement in the neighbourhood, sends a thrill of terror all around. And this terror is the parent of all that is base in man's nature. It makes one almost openly unashamed of inhumanity. Clever lies become matters of self-congratulation. Solemn pledges become a farce — laughable for their very solemnity. The Nation, with all its paraphernalia of power and prosperity, its flags and pious hymns, its blasphemous prayers in the churches, and the literary mock thunders of its patriotic bragging, cannot hide the fact that the Nation is the greatest evil for the Nation, that all its precautions are against it, and any new birth of its fellow in the world is always followed in its mind by the dread of a new peril. Its one wish is to trade on the feebleness of the rest of the world, like some insects that are bred in the paralysed flesh of victims kept just enough alive to make them toothsome and nutritious. Therefore it is ready to send its poisonous fluid into the vitals of the other living peoples who, not being nations, are harmless. For this the Nation has had and still has its richest pasture in Asia. Great China, rich with her ancient wisdom and social ethics, her discipline of industry and self-control, is like a whale awakening the lust of spoil in the heart of the Nation. She is already carrying in her quivering flesh harpoons sent by the unerring aim of the Nation, the creature of science and selfishness. Her pitiful attempt to shake off her traditions of humanity, her social ideals, and spend her last exhausted resources in drilling herself into modern efficiency, is thwarted at every step by the Nation. It is tightening its financial ropes around her, trying to drag her up on the shore and cut her into pieces, and then go and offer public thanksgiving to God for supporting the one existing evil and shattering the possibility of a new one. And for all this the Nation has been claiming the gratitude of history and all eternity for its exploitation, ordering its band of praise to be struck up from end to end of the world, declaring itself to be the salt of the earth, the flower of humanity, the blessing of God hurled with all His force upon the naked skulls of the world of No-Nations.

I know what your advice will be. You will say: form yourselves into a nation, and resist this encroachment of the Nation. But is this the true advice, that of a man to a man? Why should this be a necessity? I could well believe you if you had said: be more good, more just, more true in your relation to man; control your greed, make your life wholesome in its simplicity and let your consciousness of the divine in humanity be more perfect in its expression. But must you say that it is not the soul, but the machine, which is of the utmost value to ourselves, and that man's salvation depends upon his disciplining himself into a perfection of the dead rhythm of wheels and counterwheels, that machine must be pitted against machine, and nation against nation, in an endless bullfight of politics?

You say: these machines will come into an agreement for their mutual protection, based upon a conspiracy of fear. But will this federation of steam-boilers supply you with a soul, a soul which has her conscience and her God? What is to happen to that larger part of the world where fear will have no hand in restraining you? Whatever safety they now enjoy, those countries of No-Nation, from the unbridled licence of forge and hammer and turnscrew, results from the mutual jealousy of the powers. But when, instead of being numerous separate machines they become riveted into one organized gregariousness of gluttony, commercial and political, what remotest chance of hope will remain for those others, who have lived and suffered, have loved and worshipped, have thought deeply and worked with meekness, but whose only crime has been that they have not organized?

But, you say, 'That does not matter, the unfit must go to the wall — they shall die, and this is science.'

No, for the sake of your own salvation, I say, they shall live, and this is truth. It is extremely bold of me to say so, but I assert that man's world is a moral world, not because we blindly agree to believe it, but because it is so in truth which would be dangerous for us to ignore. And this moral nature of man cannot be divided into convenient compartments for its preservation. You cannot secure it for your home consumption with protective tariff walls, while in foreign parts making it enormously accommodating in its free trade of licence.

Has not this truth already come home to you now, when this cruel war has driven its claws into the vitals of Europe, when her hoard of wealth is bursting into smoke and her humanity is shattered into bits on her battlefields? You ask in amazement: what has she done to deserve this? The answer is that the West has been systematically petrifying her moral nature in order to lay a solid foundation for her gigantic abstractions of efficiency. She has all along been starving the life of the personal man into that of the professional.

In your medieval age in Europe, the simple and the natural man, with all his violent passions and desires, was engaged in trying to find out a reconciliation in the conflict between the flesh and the spirit. All through the turbulent career of her vigorous youth the temporal and the spiritual forces both acted strongly upon her nature, and were moulding it into completeness of moral personality. Europe owes all her greatness in humanity to that period of discipline — the discipline of the man in his human integrity.

Then came the age of intellect, of science. We all know that intellect is impersonal. Our life and our heart are one with us, but our mind can be detached from the personal man and then only can it freely move in its world of thoughts. Our intellect is an ascetic who wears no clothes, takes no food, knows no sleep, has no wishes, feels no love or hatred or pity for human limitations, who only reasons unmoved through the vicissitudes of life. It burrows to the roots of things, because it has no personal concern with the thing itself. The grammarian walks straight through all poetry and goes to the root of words without obstruction, because he is seeking not reality, but law When he finds the law, he is able to teach people how to master words. This is a power — the power which fulfils some special usefulness, some particular need of man.

Reality is the harmony which gives to the component parts of a thing the equilibrium of the whole. You break it, and have in your hands the nomadic atoms fighting against one another, therefore unmeaning. Those who covet power try to get mastery of these aboriginal fighting elements, and through some narrow channels force them into some violent service for some particular needs of man.

This satisfaction of man's needs is a great thing. It gives him freedom in the material world. It confers on him the benefit of a greater range of time and space. He can do things in a shorter time and occupies a larger space with more thoroughness of advantage. Therefore he can easily outstrip those who live in a world of a slower time and of space less fully occupied.

This progress of power attains more and more rapidity of pace. And, for the reason that it is a detached part of man, it soon outruns the complete humanity. The moral man remains behind, because it has to deal with the whole reality, not merely with the law of things, which is impersonal and therefore abstract.

Thus man, with his mental and material power far outgrowing his moral strength, is like an exaggerated giraffe whose head has suddenly shot up miles away from the rest of him, making normal communication difficult to establish. This greedy head, with its huge dental organization, has been munching all the topmost foliage of the world, but the nourishment is too late in reaching his digestive organs, and his heart is suffering from want of blood. Of this present disharmony in man's nature the West seems to have been blissfully unconscious. The enormity of its material success has diverted all its attention towards self-congratulation on its bulk. The optimism of its logic goes on basing the calculations of its good fortune upon the indefinite prolongation of its railway lines towards eternity. It is superficial enough to think that all tomorrows are merely todays, with the repeated additions of twenty-four hours. It has no fear of the chasm, which is opening wider every day, between man's ever growing storehouses and the emptiness of his hungry humanity. Logic does not know that, under the lowest bed of endless strata of wealth and comforts, earthquakes are being hatched to restore the balance of the moral world; and one day the gaping gulf of spiritual vacuity will draw into its bottom the store of things that have their eternal love for the dust.

Man in his fulness is not powerful, but perfect. Therefore, to turn him into mere power, you have to curtail his soul as much as possible. When we are fully human, we cannot fly at one another's throats; our instincts of social life, our traditions of moral ideals stand in the way. If you want me to take to butchering human beings, you must break up that wholeness of my humanity through some discipline which makes my will dead, my thoughts numb, my movements automatic, and then from the dissolution of the complex personal man will come out that abstraction, that destructive force, which has no relation to human truth, and therefore can be easily brutal or mechanical. Take away man from his natural surroundings, from the fulness of his communal life, with all its living associations of beauty and love and social obligations, and you will be able to turn him into so many fragments of a machine for the production of wealth on a gigantic scale. Turn a tree into a log and it will burn for you, but it will never bear living flowers and fruit.

This process of dehumanizing has been going on in commerce and politics. And out of the long birth-throes of mechanical energy has been born this fully developed apparatus of magnificent power and surprising appetite which has been christened in the West as the Nation. As I have hinted before, because of its quality of abstraction it has, with the greatest ease, gone far ahead of the complete moral man. And having the conscience of a ghost and the callous perfection of an automaton, it is causing disasters with which the volcanic dissipations of the youthful moon would be ashamed to be brought into comparison. As a result, the suspicion of man for man stings all the limbs of this civilization like the hairs of the nettle. Each country is casting its net of espionage into the slimy bottom of the others, fishing for their secrets, the treacherous secrets which brew in the oozy depths of diplomacy. And what is their secret service but the Nation's underground trade in kidnapping, murder and treachery and all the ugly crimes bred in the depth of rottenness? Because each Nation has its own history of thieving and lies and broken faith, therefore there can only flourish international suspicion and jealousy, and international moral shame becomes anaemic to a degree of ludicrousness. The Nation's bagpipe of righteous indignation has so changed its tune according to the variation of time and to the altered groupings of the alliances of diplomacy, that it can be enjoyed with amusement as the variety performance of the political music hall.

I am just coming from my visit to Japan, where I exhorted this young Nation to take its stand upon the higher ideals of humanity and never to follow the West in its acceptance of the organized selfishness of Nationalism as its religion, never to gloat upon the feebleness of its neighbours, never to be unscrupulous in its behaviour to the weak, where it can be gloriously mean with impunity, while turning its right cheek of brighter humanity for the kiss of admiration to those who have the power to deal it a blow. Some of the newspapers praised my utterances for their poetical qualities, while adding with a leer that it was the poetry of a defeated people. I felt they were right. Japan had been taught in a modern school the lesson how to become powerful. The schooling is done and she must enjoy the fruits of her lessons. The West in the voice of her thundering cannon had said at the door of Japan: let there be a Nation — and there was a Nation. And now that it has come into existence, why do you not feel in your heart of hearts a pure feeling of gladness and say that it is good? Why is it that I saw in an English paper an expression of bitterness at Japan's boasting of her superiority of civilization — the thing that the British, along with other nations, have been carrying on for ages without blushing? Because the idealism of selfishness must keep itself drunk with a continual dose of self-laudation. But the same vices which seem so natural and innocuous in its own life make it surprised and angry at their unpleasantness when seen in other nations. Therefore, when you see the Japanese nation, created in your own image, launched in its career of national boastfulness, you shake your head and say, it is not good. Has it not been one of the causes that raise the cry on these shores for preparedness to meet one more power of evil with a greater power of injury? Japan protests that she has her bushido, that she can never be treacherous to America to whom she owes her gratitude. But you find it difficult to believe her — for the wisdom of the Nation is not in its faith in humanity but in its complete distrust. You say to yourself that it is not with Japan of the bushido, the Japan of the moral ideals, that you have to deal — it is with the abstraction of the popular selfishness, it is with the Nation; and Nation can only trust Nation where their interests coalesce, or at least do not conflict. In fact your instinct tells you that the advent of another people into the arena of nationality makes another addition to the evil which contradicts all that is highest in Man and proves by its success that unscrupulousness is the way to prosperity — and goodness is good for the weak and God is the only remaining consolation of the defeated.

Yes, this is the logic of the Nation. And it will never heed the voice of truth and goodness. It will go on its ring-dance of moral corruption, linking steel unto steel, and machine unto machine, trampling under its tread all the sweet flowers of simple faith and the living ideals of man.

But we delude ourselves into thinking that humanity in these modern days is more to the front than ever before. The reason for this self-delusion is because man is served with the necessaries of life in greater profusion and his physical ills are being alleviated with more efficacy. But the chief part of this is done, not by moral sacrifice, but by intellectual power. In quantity it is great, but it springs from the surface and spreads over the surface. Knowledge and efficiency are powerful in their outward effect, but they are the servants of man, not the man himself. Their service is like the service in a hotel, where it is elaborate but the host is absent; it is more convenient than hospitable.

Therefore we must not forget that the scientific organizations vastly spreading in all directions are strengthening our power, but not our humanity. With the growth of power the cult of the self-worship of the Nation grows in ascendancy, and the individual willingly allows the Nation to take donkey-rides upon his back; and there happens the anomaly which must have such disastrous effects, that the individual worships with all sacrifices a god which is morally much inferior to himself. This could never have been possible if the god had been as real as the individual.

Let me give an illustration of this point. In some parts of India it has been enjoined as an act of great piety for a widow to go without food and water on a particular day every fortnight. This often leads to cruelty, unmeaning and inhuman. And yet men are not by nature cruel to such a degree. But this piety being a mere unreal abstraction completely deadens the moral sense of the individual, just as the man who would not hurt an animal unnecessarily would cause horrible suffering to a large number of innocent creatures when he drugs his feelings with the abstract idea of 'sport'! Because these ideas are creations of our intellect, because they are logical classifications, therefore they can so easily hide in their mist the personal man.

And the idea of the Nation is one of the most powerful anaesthetics that man has invented. Under the influence of its fumes the whole people can carry out its systematic programme of the most virulent self-seeking without being in the least aware of its moral perversion — in fact it can feel dangerously resentful if it is pointed out.

But can this go on indefinitely, continually producing barrenness of moral insensibility upon a large tract of our living nature? Can it escape its nemesis for ever? Has this giant power of mechanical organization no limit in this world against which it may shatter itself all the more completely because of its terrible strength and velocity? Do you believe that evil can be permanently kept in check by competition with evil, and that conference of prudence can keep the devil chained in its makeshift cage of mutual agreement?

This European war of Nations is the war of retribution. Man, the person, must protest for his very life against the heaping up of things where there should be the heart, and systems and policies where there should flow living human relationship. The time has come when, for the sake of the whole outraged world, Europe should fully know in her own person the terrible absurdity of the thing called the Nation.

The Nation has thriven long upon mutilated humanity. Men, the fairest creations of God, came out of the National manufactory in huge numbers as war-making and money-making puppets, ludicrously vain of their pitiful perfection of mechanism. Human society grew more and more into a marionette show of politicians, soldiers, manufacturers and bureaucrats, pulled by wire arrangements of wonderful efficiency.

But the apotheosis of selfishness can never make its interminable breed of hatred and greed, fear and hypocrisy, suspicion and tyranny, an end in themselves. These monsters grow into huge shapes but never into harmony. And this Nation may grow on to an unimaginable corpulence, not of a living body, but of steel and steam and office buildings, till its deformity can contain no longer its ugly voluminousness — till it begins to crack and gape, breathe gas and fire in gasps, and its death-rattles sound in cannon roars. In this war the death-throes of the Nation have commenced. Suddenly, all its mechanism going mad, it has begun the dance of the Furies, shattering its own limbs, scattering them into the dust. It is the fifth act of the tragedy of the unreal.

Those who have any faith in Man cannot but fervently hope that the tyranny of the Nation will not be restored to all its former teeth and claws, to its far-reaching iron arms and its immense inner cavity, all stomach and no heart; that man will have his new birth, in the freedom of his individuality, from the enveloping vagueness of abstraction.

The veil has been raised, and in this frightful war the West has stood face to face with her own creation, to which she had offered her soul. She must know what it truly is.

She had never let herself suspect what slow decay and decomposition were secretly going on in her moral nature, which often broke out in doctrines of scepticism, but still oftener and in still more dangerously subtle manner showed itself in her unconsciousness of the mutilation and insult that she had been inflicting upon a vast part of the world. Now she must know the truth nearer home.

And then there will come from her own children those who will break themselves free from the slavery of this illusion, this perversion of brotherhood founded upon self-seeking, those who will own themselves as God's children and as no bond-slaves of machinery, which turns souls into commodities and life into compartments, which, with its iron claws, scratches out the heart of the world and knows not what it has done.

And we of the No-Nations of the world, whose heads have been bowed to the dust, will know that this dust is more sacred than the bricks which build the pride of power. For this dust is fertile of life, and of beauty and worship. We shall thank God that we were made to wait in silence through the night of despair, had to bear the insult of the proud and the strong man's burden, yet all through it, though our hearts quaked with doubt and fear, never could we blindly believe in the salvation which machinery offered to man, but we held fast to our trust in God and the truth of the human soul. And we can still cherish the hope that, when power becomes ashamed to occupy its throne and is ready to make way for love, when the morning comes for cleansing the blood-stained steps of the Nation along the highroad of humanity, we shall be called upon to bring our own vessel of sacred water — the water of worship — to sweeten the history of man into purity, and with its sprinkling make the trampled dust of the centuries blessed with fruitfulness.

注释

〔1〕 About 200 prose and verse treatises on metaphysical philosophy, dating from around 400 BC.