Page:Bal Gangadhar Tilak, his writings and speeches.djvu/29

 classes of political mind : one is pre-occupied with details for their own sake, revels in the petty points of the moment and puts away into the background the great principles and the great necessities, the other sees rather these first and always and details only in relation to them. The one type moves in a routine circle which may or may not have an issue; it cannot see the forest for the trees and it is only by an accident that it stumbles, if at all, on the way out. The other type takes a mountain-top view of the goal and all the directions and keep that in their mental compass through all the deflections, retardations and tortuosities which the character of the intervening country may compel them to accept but these they abridge as much as possible. The former class arrogate the name of statesman in their own day; it is to the latter that posterity concedes it and sees in them the true leaders of great movements. Mr. Tilak, like all men of pre-eminent political genius, belongs to this second and greater order of mind.

Moreover in India, owing to the divorce of political activity from the actual government and administration of the affairs of the country, an academical turn of thought is too common in our dealings with politics. But Mr. Tilak has never been an academical politician, a" student of politics" meddling with action; his turn has always been to see actualities and move forward in their light. It was impossible for him to view the facts and needs