Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/256

M. K. Gandhi stronger if possible than the Biblical extracts. I have drawn your attention to, perhaps the strongness of all the testimonies in favour of the affirmative answer to the question before us are the lives of the greatest teachers of the world. Jesus, Mahomed, Buddha, Nanak, Kabir, Chaitanya, Sankara, Dayanand, Ramakrishna were men who exercised an immense influence over and moulded the character of thousands of men. The world is the richer for their having lived in it. And they were all men who deliberately embraced poverty as their lot.

I should not have laboured my point as I have done, if I did not believe that, in so far as we have made the modern materialistic craze our goal, in so far are we going down hill in the path of progress. I hold that economic progress in the sense I have put it is antagonistic to real progress. Hence the ancient ideal has been the limitation of activities promoting wealth. This does not put an end to all material ambition. We should still have as we have always had in our midst people who make the pursuit of wealth their aim in life. But we have always recognised that it is a fall from the ideals. It is a 136