Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 2.pdf/236

540 that the West has kept its head bent to the ground and become so absorbed in the spade work that no time has been left to lift its head upwards. Nevertheless, it will not do for those, who aspire to live in the light and air of the upper storey, to despise the spade work itself. In the region of the spirit, our seers have told us, ignorance is bondage, knowledge is freedom. The same is true in the material world. Those who do not know its laws are its slaves, those who do are emancipated. The bondage of external forces is an illusion which science alone can dispel.

Anyhow, the Western continents have been striving for liberation from the maya of matter, striking hard whenever they encounter any of the roots of that ignorance which breeds hunger and thirst, disease and want, or other ills of mundane life. In a word, they have been engaged in securing for man protection against physical death. On the other hand, the striving of the Eastern peoples has been to win for man his spiritual kingdom, to lead him to immortality. By their present separateness, East and West alike are now in danger of losing the fruits of their age-long labours. That is why the Upanishat, from the beginning, has enunciated the principle, which yet may serve to unite them. "Gain protection," it says, "from death by the cult of the finite, and then by the cult of the infinite you shall attain immortality." "All that moves in the moving world" is the province of Science. "God envelops all this" is the province of the philosophy of the Infinite. When the Rishi enjoins us to combine them both, then that implies the union of the East and the West. For want of that union, the East is suffering from poverty and inertia and the West from lack of peace and happiness.

There is a danger of my being misunderstood as to what I mean by Union. I should like to make that point quite plain to my readers. Uniformity is not unity. Those who destroy the independence of other races, destroy the unity of all races of humanity. Modern Imperialism is that idea of Unity, which the python has in swallowing other live creatures. I have said before, that, if the spiritual altogether swallows up the material interest of man that cannot be called harmony. But when the spiritual and the material keep separate, in their own respective provinces, then they can find their unity. In like manner, when we respect the true individuality of men, then we can discover their true unity.

While Europe, after the great war, has been yearning for peace, the smaller nations have been more and more insistent in claiming self-determination. If a new era is really to be ushered in, it must be signalised by the overthrow of the monster, Wealth, and the monster, Empire, and also of the enormity of organisations. The true unity must be established upon true units. Those who co-operate with the New Age must cultivate their own individuality in order to attain successfully the spirit that shall unite. They must remember that Freedom (which is the great quest) is not of this or that nation, but of universal man.

The truth that "the man who knows others as himself is truly revealed" is not only to be found in the pages of man's scriptures. Its working can be seen throughout human history. In the beginning, we see man gathered into separate groups within barriers of mountain and ocean. As soon as man came into touch with man, the problem of his truth as a member of the human race demanded attention. Whenever men came together, but were unable to unite, they lost their truth. Those of them, who, having come into contact, hit out wildly against one another, none trusting the other, each trying to gain the advantage, have all disappeared from the face of the earth. And those, who have tried to realise the one Soul in the souls of all, have developed into great peoples.

Thanks to Science, so many vehicles of communication are speeding over land and water and even through the air, that today there are no longer any geographical barriers. Now, not only individual men, but whole nations have come into contact, and the problem has become