Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/381

 we have always recognised that it is a fall from the ideal. It is a beautiful thing to know that the weal- thiest among us have often felt that to have remained voluntarily poor would have been a higher state for them. That you cannot serve God and Mammon is an economic truth of the highest value. We have to make our choice. Western nations are to-day groaning under the heal of the monster god of materialism, Their moral growth has become stunted. They measure their progress in. s. d. American wealth has become the standard. She is the envy of the other nations. I have heard many of our countrymen say that we will' gain American wealth but avoid its methods. I venture to suggest that such an attempt, if it were made, is foredoomed to failure. We cannot be 'wise, temperate and furious* in a moment. I would have our leaders teach us to be morally supreme in the world. This land of ours was once, we are told, the abode of the Gods. It is not possible to conceive Gods inhabiting a land which is made hideous by the smoke and the din of mill chimneys and factories and whose roadways are traversed by rushing engines, dragging numerous cars crowded with men who know not for the most pirt what they are after, who are often absent-minded, and whose tempers do not improve Dy being uncomfortably packed like sardines in boxes and finding themselves in the midst of utter strangers, who would oust them if they could and whom they would, in their turn, oust similarly. I refer to these things because they are held to be symbolical of material progress. But they add not an atom to our happiness. This is what Wallace, the great scientist, has Aid as his deliberate judgment :

�� �