Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/250

M. K. Gandhi occasional fast after a series of sumptuous feasts is often a necessity. And as with the body so, I imagine, is the case with the reason. And if your reason this evening is found fasting instead of feasting, I am sure it will enjoy with the greater avidity the feast that Rao Bahadur Pandit Chaddrika Prasad has in store for you for the 12th of January.

Before I take you to the field of my experiences and experiments it is perhaps best to have a mutual understanding about the title of this evening's address. Does economic progress clash with real progress? By economic progress, I take it, we mean material advancement without limit and by real progress we mean moral progress, which again is the same thing as progress of the permanent element in us. The subject may therefore be stated thus: Does not moral progress increase in the same proportion as material progress? I know that this is a wider proposition than the one before us. But I venture to think that we always mean the larger one even when we lay down the smaller. For we know enough of science to realise that there is no such thing as perfect rest or repose in this visible universe of ours. If therefore material 130