Page:Letters from Abroad.pdf/88

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I say again and again that I am a poet; that lam not a fighter by nature. I would give everything to be one with my surroundings. I love my fellow-beings and I prize their love, Yet I have been chosen by destiny to ply my boat there, where the current is against me. What irony of fate is this that I should be preaching co-operation of cultures between East and West on this side of the sea just at the moment when the doctrine of non-co-operation is preached on the other side ? You know that do not believe in the material civilisation of the West, just as I do not believe the physical body to be the highest truth in man. But I still less believe in the destruction of the physical body, and the ignoring of the material necessities of life. What is needed is establishment of harmony between the physical and spiritual nature of man, the maintaining of balance between the foundation and superstructure. I believe in the true meeting of the East and the West. Love is the ultimate truth of soul. We should do all we can, not to outrage that truth, but to carry its banner against all opposition. The idea of non-co-operation unnecessarily hurts that truth. It is not our hearth-fire, but the fire that burns out our hearth and home.

Things that are stationary have no responsibility and need no law. For death, even the tombstone is