Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 2.pdf/233

Rh eleven o'clock passed; it was well on towards midnight, yet they would not stop. Why should they? Had there been a song, there would have been some natural pause. Anarchic rhythm, on the other hand, has movement, but no rest: excitement, but no satisfaction. Those rhythm-maniacs on the cargo boat had no doubt that they were scaling the topmost heights of enjoyment. But what of poor me?

I was much in the same plight over there on the other side of the Atlantic. The crescendo of their rhythmic advance like a wilderness of bricks and mortar was obvious. But where was the song? That was the burdening question. And standing before the forbidding might of their towering opulence, the son of indigent downtrodden India was left cold, murmuring—"What then?"

I am not for emptiness, in the garb of renunciation. External restraint is true, only when it is the expression of internal fulness,—just as time and tune are kept properly regulated because the artist is full of his song. Unmitigated noise has no occasion for disciplined restraint. If there be the truth called Love, at the heart, enjoyment must be restrained, service must be true, that is to say, such a process of realisation needs the spirit of charity to help it. The renunciation, which is in the chastity of love, is the true renunciation. The union of the Goddess of Plenitude with the God who needs no wealth is the true union.

When I was in Japan, the spirit of old Japan gave me a profound pleasure. Old Japan had found Beauty reigning on the lotus throne of her heart. In her dress and ornament, in her dwellings and furniture, in her work and play, in her rites and ceremonials, she expressed in various forms the One who is beauty. Utter penury is as unmeaning as lavish profusion. The spirit of old Japan represented neither, but rather the fulness of perfection. Such fulness makes man's heart hospitable,—its passion is for welcome and not for rejection. Side by side with the old, I have also seen the modern Japan. Here the spirit of the rhythm-maniac has assumed control, and its din mocks the moonlight.

By all this, I do not mean that railways and telegraphs are not needed. They have their use, but not their message. Where man has needs, he must furnish himself with materials; but where he has fulness, there is manifest his immortality; Man's envy and hatred are in the region of his material needs, the region where he is in want. Here he erects his barricades and maintains his guards. Here he is for self-aggrandisement and for the exclusion of others. But where he is immortal he displays, not things, but his soul. He invites all to enter. His distribution does not mean diminution; and so peace reigns.

When Europe was opening out the mystery chambers of the Universe with the keys of Science, she found at every step fixed laws. And their constant presence in her field of vision ever since has caused her to forget that there is something more behind these laws, which has its harmony of delight in accord with our complete humanity. By the help of natural laws we achieve success, but man aspires to gain something greater than success. The laws which the tea-garden manager imposes on his coolies, if well devised, tend to increase his output. But where the manager's friends are concerned, he does not dream of efficient laws. In dealing with his friends he does not increase his output; he spends his tea in entertainment. It is well to believe in the laws which make for efficiency. But if ever it is believed, that the truth of friendship is not a part of an infinite truth, then that belief tends to destroy our humanity itself. We cannot make friends with a machine. Therefore, if we cease to be aware of anything beyond mechanism, then our personality which is ever seeking its own affinity in other persons, finds no permanent refuge. The West, in its one-sided pursuit of Science, has been steadily thrusting personality further and further into the back-ground till hardly any room has been left for it. If our own one-sided spiritual tendency of mind has made us lose our way and left us stranded in the quagmire of weakness and poverty, the limping gait of the West has taken it no nearer, from its own side, to humanity's goal.

True, it is difficult to cope with those