Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 2.pdf/234

538 who consistenly [sic] keep to the tea-garden-manager outlook on the universe; for they have enlisted the services of the genie of efficiency. The good natured man invariably gets caught by their recruiters, and once in their net, there is no escape. He has no conception of the value of fixed laws of the world. He insists on pinning his faith just where he should not, whether it be on the unluckiness of Thursday, the virtue of talismans, the trustworthiness of touts, or the honesty of tea-garden recruiters. But ever the most helplessly good natured man has a place, beyond the reach of laws, where he can take his stand and say: "God grant I may never be born, despite my trials and troubles, to be a tea-garden manager!"

And yet the tea-garden manager also has his own methods of benevolence. He makes sanitary dwellings for his coolies, soundly and symmetrically built, and his arrangements for their supplies are admirable. But this non-human benevolence is but an appendage of efficiency. It helps to increase the profits; it bestows a kind of benefit upon the human tools. But from that springs not even a fraction of true happiness.

Let no one imagine that I am referring to the relations between the Western masters and their Eastern servants only. The undue stress laid on the mechanical side of the world, both in external and internal relations, has similarly created a split in the polity of the West. If the mechanical bonds of association be made into a fetish, the living bonds of voluntary fellowship slacken. And this, in spite of the fact that these mechanical bonds make for extraordinary mechanical efficiency. Commodities multiply, markets spread, tall buildings pierce the sky. Not only so, but in education, healing and the amenities of life, man also gains real success. That is because the machine has its own truth. But this very success makes the man, who is obsessed by its mechanism, hanker for more and more mechanism. And as his greed continually increases, he has less and less compunction in lowering man's true value to the level of his own machine.

Greed is not an ideal,—it is a passion. Passion cannot create. So when any civilisation gives the first place to greed, the soul relation between man and man is severed; and the more luxurious such a civilisation grows in pomp and power, the poorer it becomes in truth of soul. A picture is a creation, because it is the harmony of many lines, related to one another. An engineer's plan is not a picture, because the lines there are bound to each other by some external necessity. When greed of success is the main nexus between man and man, Society becomes a huge plan and ceases to be a picture of the ideal. Man's spiritual relations are lost sight of; money becomes the prime mover; the capitalist the driver; and the rest of mankind merely the fuel for the running of the machine. It is possible to measure the value of such civilisation in terms of the speed of its progress. But man, at the bottom of his heart, does not worship Mammon, and so has no real happiness in the triumphal progress of his car. Because his faith in Mammon is wanting, the cords, by which man is bound to Mammon's service, are not bonds of loyalty, but shackles. And man ever revolts when he feels himself shackled. The dark clouds of this social revolt lower only too dismally over the West. There the union, devised for exploitation, has ended in disruption. In India the union, imposed by customary rule, has resulted in emasculation. Because traditional customs and professional dealings are not ideals, therefore they make their arrangements by keeping man's soul out of the account.

What is the ideal? Jesus Christ said: "I and my father are one." Here is one ideal. "My unity with my father," is a true unity. But the unity of the coolie with the manager is not true. Again a great ideal has been given utterance to in the Isha Upanishat. "All that moves in this moving world is enveloped by God. Therefore enjoy by renunciation; never covet others' possessions." I have already referred in terms of condemnation to the greed which has become the dominant motive in the West. Why do we condemn it? The Rishi tells us the reason,—"Do not covet." Why should we not covet? Be-