Page:Heroes of the hour- Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer.djvu/169

 as a consequence of the short-sightedness or wrong-headedness of his own following, that he had no right to suppress the freedom of thought and expression in anyone simply because that one desired to take his lead, and that to break away from real, advanced thought merely because the exponents of that thought did not run in the same groove as he himself ran, was only to shun the duty of co-operating with mankind for its good in so far as that co-operation was possible without detriment to self-respect. The moderate leaders of the day it is absolutely no disrespect to them were much more calculating. They somehow imagined that getting concessions lay in their power, that a mistake here or a mistake there would spoil all prospect of improvement, that what they believed to be right all their followers should implicitly believe to be right, and that if perfect co-operation were not possible, co-operation itself should not be sought. It is this difference of view-point, this impatience to stand extreme forms of thought, this solicitude to dictate the good of the world, that has stood in the way of real progress. The mistake has occured a thousand times in the history of the world and it is