Nationalism
in Japan
I
THE WORST FORM of
bondage is the bondage of dejection which keeps men hopelessly chained in loss
of faith in themselves. We have been repeatedly told, with some justification,
that Asia lives in the past, - it is like a rich mausoleum which displays all
its magnificence in trying to immortalize the dead. It was said of Asia that it
could never move in the path of progress, its face was so inevitably turned
backwards. We accepted this accusation, and came to believe it. In India, I
know, a large section of our educated community, grown tired of feeling the
humiliation of this charge against us, is trying all its resources of
self-deception to turn it into a matter of boasting. But boasting is only a
masked shame, it does not truly believe in itself.
When things stood
still like this, and we in Asia hypnotized ourselves into the belief that it
could never by any possibility be otherwise, Japan rose from her dreams, and in
giant strides left centuries of inaction behind, overtaking the present time in
its foremost achievement. This has broken the spell under which we lay in
torpor for ages, taking it to be the normal condition of certain races living
in certain geographical limits. We forgot that in Asia great kingdoms were
founded, philosophy, science, arts and literatures flourished, and all the
great religions of the world had their cradles. Therefore it cannot be said,
that there is anything inherent in the soil and climate of Asia that produces
mental inactivity and atrophies the faculties which impel men to go forward.
For centuries we did hold torches of civilization in the East when the West
slumbered in darkness, and that could never be the sign of sluggish mind or
narrowness of vision.
Then fell the
darkness of night upon all the lands of the East. The current of time seemed to
stop at once, and Asia ceased to take any new food, feeding upon its own past,
which is really feeding upon itself. The stillness seemed like death, and the
great voice was silenced which sent forth messages of eternal truth that have
saved man's life from pollution for generations, like the ocean of air that
keeps the earth sweet, ever cleansing its impurities.
But life has its
sleep, its periods of inactivity, when it loses its movements, takes no new
food, living upon its past storage. Then it grows helpless, its muscles
relaxed, and it easily lends itself to be jeered at for its stupor. In the
rhythm of life, pauses there must be for the renewal of life. Life in its
activity is ever spending itself, burning all its fuel. This extravagance
cannot go on indefinitely, but is always followed by a passive stage, when all
expenditure is stopped and all adventures abandoned in favour of rest and slow
recuperation.
The tendency of mind
is economical, it loves to form habits and move in grooves which save it the
trouble of thinking anew at each of its steps. Ideals once formed make the mind
lazy. It becomes afraid to risk its acquisitions in fresh endeavours. It tries
completely to enjoy security by shutting up its belongings behind
fortifications of habits. But this is really shutting oneself up from the
fullest enjoyment of one's own possessions. It is miserliness. The living
ideals must not lose their touch with the growing and changing life. Their real
freedom is not within the boundaries of security, but in the highroad of
adventures full of the risk of new experiences.
One morning the
whole world looked up in surprise, when Japan broke through her walls of old
habits in a night and came out triumphant. It was done in such an incredibly
short time, that it seemed like a change of dress and not like the building up
of a new structure. She showed the confident strength of maturity and the
freshness and infinite potentiality of new life at the same moment. The fear
was entertained that it was a mere freak of history, a child's game of Time,
the blowing up of a soap bubble, perfect in its rondure and colouring, hollow
in its heart and without substance. But Japan has proved conclusively that this
sudden revealment of her power is not a short-lived wonder, a chance product of
time and tide, thrown up from the depth of obscurity to be swept away the next
moment into the sea of oblivion.
The truth is that
Japan is old and new at the same time. She has her legacy of ancient culture
from the East, - the culture that enjoins man to look for his true wealth and
power in his inner soul, the culture that gives self-possession in the face of
loss and danger, self-sacrifice without counting the cost or hoping for gain,
defiance of death, acceptance of countless social obligations that we owe to
men as social beings. In a word modern Japan has come out of the immemorial
East like a lotus blossoming in easy grace, all the while keeping its firm hold
upon the profound depth from which it has sprung.
And Japan, the child
of the Ancient East, has also fearlessly claimed all the gifts of the modern
age for herself. She has shown her bold spirit in breaking through the
confinements of habits, useless accumulations of the lazy mind, seeking safety
in its thrift and its locks and keys. Thus she has come in contact with the
living time and has accepted with eagerness and aptitude the responsibilities
of modern civilization.
This it is which has
given heart to the rest of Asia. We have seen that the life and the strength
are there in us, only the dead crust has to be removed. We have seen that
taking shelter in the dead is death itself, and only taking all the risk of
life to the fullest extent is living.
I, for myself,
cannot believe that Japan has become what she is by imitating the West. We
cannot imitate life, we cannot simulate strength for long, nay, what is more, a
mere imitation is a source of weakness. For it hampers our true nature, it is
always in our way. It is like dressing our skeleton with another man's skin,
giving rise to eternal feuds between the skin and the bones at every movement.
The real truth is
that science is not man's nature, it is mere knowledge and training. By knowing
the laws of the material universe you do not change your deeper humanity. You
can borrow knowledge from others, but you cannot borrow temperament.
But at the imitative
stage of our schooling we cannot distinguish between the essential and the
non-essential, between what is transferable and what is not. It is something
like the faith of the primitive mind in the magical properties of the accidents
of outward forms which accompany some real truth. We are afraid of leaving out
something valuable and efficacious by not swallowing the husk with the kernel.
But while our greed delights in wholesale appropriation, it is the function of
our vital nature to assimilate, which is the only true appropriation for a
living organism. Where there is life it is sure to assert itself by its choice
of acceptance and refusal according to its constitutional necessity. The living
organism does not allow itself to grow into its food, it changes its food into
its own body. And only thus can it grow strong and not by mere accumulation, or
by giving up its personal identity.
Japan has imported
her food from the West, but not her vital nature. Japan cannot altogether lose
and merge herself in the scientific paraphernalia she has acquired from the
West and be turned into a mere borrowed machine. She has her own soul which
must assert itself over all her requirements. That she is capable of doing so,
and that the process of assimilation is going on, have been amply proved by the
signs of vigorous health that she exhibits. And I earnestly hope that Japan may
never lose her faith in her own soul in the mere pride of her foreign
acquisition. For that pride itself is a humiliation, ultimately leading to
poverty and weakness. It is the pride of the fop who sets more store on his new
head-dress than on his head itself.
The whole world
waits to see what this great Eastern nation is going to do with the
opportunities and responsibilities she has accepted from the hands of the
modern time. If it be a mere reproduction of the West, then the great
expectation she has raised will remain unfulfilled. For there are grave
questions that the Western civilization has presented before the world but not
completely answered. The conflict between the individual and the state, labour
and capital, the man and the woman; the conflict between the greed of material
gain and the spiritual life of man, the organized selfishness of nations and
the higher ideals of humanity; the conflict between all the ugly complexities
inseparable from giant organizations of commerce and state and the natural
instincts of man crying for simplicity and beauty and fulness of leisure, - all
these have to be brought to a harmony in a manner not yet dreamt of.
We have seen this
great stream of civilization choking itself from debris carried by its innumerable
channels. We have seen that with all its vaunted love of humanity it has proved
itself the greatest menace to Man, far worse than the sudden outbursts of
nomadic barbarism from which men suffered in the early ages of history. We have
seen that, in spite of its boasted love of freedom, it has produced worse forms
of slavery than ever were current in earlier societies, - slavery whose chains
are unbreakable, either because they are unseen, or because they assume the
names and appearance of freedom. We have seen, under the spell of its gigantic
sordidness, man losing faith in all the heroic ideals of life which have made
him great.
Therefore you cannot
with a light heart accept the modern civilization with all its tendencies,
methods and structures, and dream that they are inevitable. You must apply your
Eastern mind, your spiritual strength, your love of simplicity, your
recognition of social obligation, in order to cut out a new path for this great
unwieldy car of progress, shrieking out its loud discords as it runs. You must
minimize the immense sacrifice of man's life and freedom that it claims in its
every movement. For generations you have felt and thought and worked, have
enjoyed and worshipped in your own special manner; and this cannot be cast off
like old clothes. It is in your blood, in the marrow of your bones, in the
texture of your flesh, in the tissue of your brains; and it must modify
everything you lay your hands upon, without your knowing, even against your
wishes. Once you did solve the problems of man to your own satisfaction, you
had your philosophy of life and evolved your own art of living. All this you
must apply to the present situation and out of it will arise a new creation and
not a mere repetition, a creation which the soul of your people will own for
itself and proudly offer to the world as its tribute to the welfare of man. Of
all countries in Asia, here in Japan you have the freedom to use the materials
you have gathered from the West according to your genius and your need.
Therefore your responsibility is all the greater, for in your voice Asia shall
answer the questions that Europe has submitted to the conference of Man. In
your land the experiments will be carried on by which the East will change the
aspects of the modern civilization, infusing life in it where it is a machine,
substituting human heart for cold expediency, not caring so much for power and
success as for harmonious and living growth, for truth and beauty.
I cannot but bring
to your mind those days when the whole of Eastern Asia from Burma to Japan was
united with India in the closest tie of friendship, the only natural tie which
can exist between nations. There was a living communication of hearts, a
nervous system evolved through which messages ran between us about the deepest
needs of humanity. We did not stand in fear of each other, we had not to arm
ourselves to keep each other in check; our relation was not that of
self-interest, of exploration and spoliation of each other's pockets; ideas and
ideals were exchanged, gifts of the highest love were offered and taken; no
difference of languages and customs hindered us in approaching each other heart
to heart; no pride of race or insolent consciousness of superiority, physical
or mental, marred our relation; our arts and literatures put forth new leaves
and flowers under the influence of this sunlight of united hearts; and races
belonging to different lands and languages and histories acknowledged the
highest unity of man and the deepest bond of love. May we not also remember
that in those days of peace and goodwill, of men uniting for those supreme ends
of life, your nature laid by for itself the balm of immortality which has
helped your people to be born again in a new age, to be able to survive its old
outworn structures and take on a new young body, to come out unscathed from the
shock of the most wonderful revolution that the world has ever seen?
The political
civilization which has sprung up from the soil of Europe and is overrunning the
whole world, like some prolific weed, is based upon exclusiveness. It is always
watchful to keep at bay the aliens or to exterminate them. It is carnivorous
and cannibalistic in its tendencies, it feeds upon the resources of other
peoples and tries to swallow their whole future. It is always afraid of other
races achieving eminence, naming it as a peril, and tries to thwart all
symptoms of greatness outside its own boundaries, forcing down races of men who
are weaker, to be eternally fixed in their weakness. Before this political
civilization came to its power and opened its hungry jaws wide enough to gulp
down great continents of the earth, we had wars, pillages, changes of monarchy
and consequent miseries, but never such a sight of fearful and hopeless
voracity, such wholesale feeding of nation upon nation, such huge machines for
turning great portions of the earth into mincemeat, never such terrible
jealousies with all their ugly teeth and claws ready for tearing open each
other's vitals. This political civilization is scientific, not human. It is
powerful because it concentrates all its forces upon one purpose, like a
millionaire acquiring money at the cost of his soul. It betrays its trust, it
weaves its meshes of lies without shame, it enshrines gigantic idols of greed
in its temples, taking great pride in the costly ceremonials of its worship,
calling this patriotism. And it can be safely prophesied that this cannot go
on, for there is a moral law in this world which has its application both to
individuals and to organized bodies of men. You cannot go on violating these
laws in the name of your nation, yet enjoy their advantage as individuals. This
public sapping of the ethical ideas slowly reacts upon each member of society,
gradually breeding weakness, where it is not seen, and causing that cynical
distrust of all things sacred in human nature, which is the true symptom of
senility. You must keep in mind that this political civilization, this creed of
national patriotism, has not been given a long trial. The lamp of ancient
Greece is extinct in the land where it was first lighted, the power of Rome
lies dead and buried under the ruins of its vast empire. But the civilization,
whose basis is society and the spiritual ideal of man, is still a living thing
in China and in India. Though it may look feeble and small, judged by the
standard of the mechanical power of modern days, yet like small seeds it still
contains life and will sprout and grow, and spread its beneficent branches,
producing flowers and fruits when its time comes, and showers of grace descend
upon it from heaven. But ruins of sky-scrapers of power and broken machinery of
greed, even God's rain is powerless to raise up again; for they were not of
life, but went against life as a whole, - they are relics of the rebellion that
shattered itself to pieces against the eternal.
But the charge is
brought against us that the ideals we cherish in the East are static, that they
have not the impetus in them to move, to open out new vistas of knowledge and
power, that the systems of philosophy which are the mainstays of the time-worn
civilizations of the East despise all outward proofs, remaining stolidly
satisfied in their subjective certainty. This proves that when our knowledge is
vague, we are apt to accuse of vagueness our object of knowledge itself. To a
Western observer our civilization appears as all metaphysics, as to a deaf man
piano playing appears to be mere movements of fingers and no music. He cannot
think that we have found some deep basis of reality upon which we have built
our institutions.
Unfortunately all
proofs of reality are in realization. The reality of the scene before you
depends only upon the fact that you can see, and it is difficult for us to
prove to an unbeliever that our civilization is not a nebulous system of
abstract speculations, that it has achieved something which is a positive
truth, - a truth that can give man's heart its shelter and sustenance. It has
evolved an inner sense, - a sense of vision, the vision of the infinite reality
in all finite things.
But he says, 'You do
not make any progress, there is no movement in you.' I ask him, 'How do you
know it? You have to judge progress according to its aim. A railway train makes
its progress towards the terminus station, - it is movement. But a full-grown
tree has no definite movement of that kind, its progress is the inward progress
of life. It lives, with its aspiration towards light tingling in its leaves and
creeping in its silent sap.' We also have lived for centuries, we still live, and
we have our aspiration for a reality that has no end to its realization, - a
reality that goes beyond death, giving it a meaning, that rises above all evils
of life, bringing its peace and purity, its cheerful renunciation of self. The
product of this inner life is a living product. It will be needed when the
youth returns home weary and dust-laden, when the soldier is wounded, when the
wealth is squandered away and pride is humbled, when man's heart cries for
truth in the immensity of facts and harmony in the contradiction of tendencies.
Its value is not in its multiplication of materials, but in its spiritual
fulfilment.
There are things
that cannot wait. You have to rush and run and march, if you must fight or take
the best place in the market. You strain your nerves and are on the alert, when
you chase opportunities that are always on their wings. But there are ideals
which do not play hide and seek with our life; they slowly grow from seed to
flower, from flower to fruit; they require infinite space and heaven ' s light
to mature and the fruits that they produce can survive years of insult and
neglect. The East with her ideals, in whose bosom are stored the ages of
sunlight and silence of stars, can patiently wait till the West, hurrying after
the expedient, loses breath and stops. Europe, while busily speeding to her
engagements, disdainfully casts her glance from her carriage window to the
reaper reaping his harvest in the field, and in her intoxication of speed
cannot but think him as slow and ever receding backwards. But the speed comes
to its end, the engagement loses its meaning and the hungry heart clamours for
food, till at last she comes to the lowly reaper reaping his harvest in the
sun. For if the office cannot wait, or the buying and selling, or the craving
for excitement, love waits and beauty and the wisdom of suffering and the
fruits of patient devotion and reverent meekness of simple faith. And thus
shall wait the East till her time comes.
I must not hesitate
to acknowledge where Europe is great, for great she is without doubt. We cannot
help loving her with all our heart, and paying her the best homage of our
admiration, - the Europe who, in her literature and art, is pouring an
inexhaustible cascade of beauty and truth fertilizing all countries and all
time; the Europe who, with a mind which is titanic in its untiring power, is
sweeping the height and the depth of the universe, winning her homage of
knowledge from the infinitely great and the infinitely small, applying all the
resources of her great intellect and heart in healing the sick and alleviating
those miseries of man which up till now we were contented to accept in a spirit
of hopeless resignation; the Europe who is making the earth yield more fruit
than seemed possible, coaxing and compelling the great forces of nature into
man's service. Such true greatness must have its motive power in spiritual
strength. For only the spirit of man can defy all limitations, have faith in
its ultimate success, throw its search-light beyond the immediate and the
apparent, gladly suffer martyrdom for ends which cannot be achieved in its
lifetime and accept failure without acknowledging defeat. In the heart of
Europe runs the purest stream of human love, of love of justice, of spirit of
self-sacrifice for higher ideals. The Christian culture of centuries has sunk
deep in her life's core. In Europe we have seen noble minds who have ever stood
up for the rights of man irrespective of colour and creed; who have braved
calumny and insult from their own people in fighting for humanity's cause and
raising their voices against the mad orgies of miltarism, against the rage for
brutal retaliation or rapacity that sometimes takes possession of a whole
people; who are always ready to make reparation for wrongs done in the past by
their own nations and vainly attempt to stem the tide of cowardly injustice
that flows unchecked because the resistance is weak and innocuous on the part
of the injured. There are these knight-errants of modern Europe who have not
lost their faith in the disinterested love of freedom, in the ideals which own
no geographical boundaries or national self-seeking. These are there to prove
that the fountainhead of the water of everlasting life has not run dry in
Europe, and from thence she will have her rebirth time after time. Only there,
where Europe is too consciously busy in building up her power, defying her
deeper nature and mocking it, she is heaping up her iniquities to the sky
crying for God's vengeance and spreading the infection of ugliness, physical
and moral, over the face of the earth with her heartless commerce heedlessly
outraging man's sense of the beautiful and the good. Europe is supremely good
in her beneficence where her face is turned to all humanity; and Europe is
supremely evil in her malefic aspect where her face is turned only upon her own
interest, using all her power of greatness for ends which are against the
infinite and the eternal in Man.
Eastern Asia has
been pursuing its own path, evolving its own civilization, which was not
political but social, not predatory and mechanically efficient, but spiritual
and based upon all the varied and deeper relations of humanity. The solutions
of the life problems of peoples were thought out in seclusion and carried out
behind the security of aloofness, where all the dynastic changes and foreign
invasions hardly touched them. But now we are over-taken by the outside world,
our seclusion is lost forever. Yet this we must not regret, as a plant should
never regret when the obscurity of its seed-time is broken. Now the time has
come when we must make the world problem our own problem; we must bring the
spirit of our civilization into harmony with the history of all nations of the
earth; we must not, in foolish pride, still keep ourselves fast within the
shell of the seed and the crust of the earth which protected and nourished our
ideals; for these, the shell and the crust, were meant to be broken, so that
life may spring up in all its vigour and beauty, bringing its offerings to the
world in open light.
In this task of
breaking the barrier and facing the world Japan has come out the first in the
East. She has infused hope in the heart of all Asia. This hope provides the
hidden fire which is needed for all works of creation. Asia now feels that she
must prove her life by producing living work, she must not lie passively
dormant, or feebly imitate the West, in the infatuation of fear or flattery.
For this we offer our thanks to this land of the rising sun and solemnly ask
her to remember that she has the mission of the East to fulfil. She must infuse
the sap of a fuller humanity into the heart of the modern civilization. She
must never allow it to get choked with the noxious undergrowth, but lead it up
towards light and freedom, towards the pure air and broad space, Where it can
receive, in the dawn of its day and the darkness of its night, heaven's
inspiration. Let the greatness of her ideals become visible to all men like her
snow-crowned Fuji rising from the heart of the country into the region of the
infinite, supremely distinct from its surroundings, beautiful like a maiden in
its magnificent sweep of curve, yet firm and strong and serenely majestic.
II
I have travelled in
many countries and have met with men of all classes, but never in my travels
did I feel the presence of the human so distinctly as in this land. In other
great countries, signs of man's power loomed large, and I saw vast
organizations which showed efficiency in all their features. There, display and
extravagance, in dress, in furniture, in costly entertainments, are startling.
They seem to push you back into a corner, like a poor intruder at a feast; they
are apt to make you envious, or take your breath away with amazement. There,
you do not feel man as supreme; you are hurled against a stupendousness of
things that alienates. But in Japan, it is not the display of power, or wealth,
that is the predominating element. You see everywhere emblems of love and
admiration, and not mostly of ambition and greed. You see a people, whose heart
has come out and scattered itself in profusion in its commonest utensils of
everyday life, in its social institutions, in its manners, which are carefully
perfect, and in its dealings with things which are not only deft, but graceful
in every movement.
What has impressed
me most in this country is the conviction that you have realized nature's
secrets, not by methods of analytical knowledge, but by sympathy. You have
known her language of lines, and music of colours, the symmetry in her
irregularities, and the cadence in her freedom of movements; you have seen how
she leads her immense crowds of things yet avoids all frictions; how the very
conflicts in her creations break out in dance and music; how her exuberance has
the aspect of the fulness of self-abandonment, and not a mere dissipation of
display. You have discovered that nature reserves her power in forms of beauty;
and it is this beauty which, like a mother, nourishes all the giant forces at
her breast, keeping them in active vigour, yet in repose. You have known that
energies of nature save themselves from wearing out by the rhythm of a perfect
grace, and that she with the tenderness of her curved lines takes away fatigue
from the world's muscles. I have felt that you have been able to assimilate these
secrets into your life, and the truth which lies in the beauty of all things
has passed into your souls. A mere knowledge of things can be had in a short
enough time, but their spirit can only be acquired by centuries of training and
self-control. Dominating nature from outside is a much simpler thing than
making her your own in love's delight, which is a work of true genius. Your
race has shown that genius, not by acquirements, but by creations; not by
display of things, but by manifestation of its own inner being. This creative
power there is in all nations, and it is ever active in getting hold of men's
natures and giving them a form according to its ideals. But here, in Japan, it
seems to have achieved its success, and deeply sunk into the minds of all men,
and permeated their muscles and nerves. Your instincts have become true, your
senses keen, and your hands have acquired natural skill. The genius of Europe
has given her people the power of organization which has specially made itself
manifest in politics and commerce and in co5rdinating scientific knowledge. The
genius of Japan has given you the vision of beauty in nature and the power of
realizing it in your life.
All particular
civilization is the interpretation of particular human experience. Europe seems
to have felt emphatically the conflict of things in the universe, which can
only be brought under control by conquest. Therefore she is ever ready for
fight, and the best portion of her attention is occupied in organizing forces.
But Japan has felt, in her world, the touch of some presence, which has evoked
in her soul a feeling of reverent adoration. She does not boast of her mastery
of nature, but to her she brings, with infinite care and joy, her offerings of
love. Her relationship with the world is the deeper relationship of heart. This
spiritual bond of love she has established with the hills of her country, which
the sea and the streams, with the forests in all their flowery moods and varied
physiognomy of branches; she has taken into her heart all the rustling whispers
and sighing of the woodlands and sobbing of the waves; the sun and the moon she
has studied in all the modulations of their lights and shades, and she is glad
to close her shops to greet the seasons in her orchards and gardens and
corn-fields. This opening of the heart to the soul of the world is not confined
to a section of your privileged classes, it is not the forced product of exotic
culture, but it belongs to all your men and women of all conditions. This
experience of your soul, in meeting a personality in the heart of the world,
has been embodied in your civilization. It is a civilization of human
relationship. Your duty towards your state has naturally assumed the character
of filial duty, your nation becoming one family with your Emperor as its head.
Your national unity has not been evolved from the comradeship of arms for
defensive and offensive purpose, or from partnership in raiding adventures,
dividing among each member the danger and spoils of robbery. It is not an
outcome of the necessity of organization for some ulterior purpose, but it is
an extension of the family and the obligations of the heart in a wide field of
space and time. The ideal of 'maitri' is at the bottom of your culture, -
'maitri' with men and 'maitri' with Nature. And the true expression of this
love is in the language of beauty, which is so abundantly universal in this
land. This is the reason why a stranger, like myself, instead of feeling envy
or humiliation before these manifestations of beauty, these creations of love,
feels a readiness to participate in the joy and glory of such revealment of the
human heart.
And this has made me
all the more apprehensive of the change, which threatens Japanese civilization,
as something like a menace to one's own person. For the huge heterogeneity of
the modern age, whose only common bond is usefulness, is nowhere so pitifully
exposed against the dignity and hidden power of reticent beauty, as in Japan.
But the danger lies
in this, that organized ugliness storms the mind and carries the day by its
mass, by its aggressive persistence, by its power of mockery directed against
the deeper sentiments of heart. Its harsh obtrusiveness makes it forcibly
visible to us, overcoming our senses, - and we bring to its altar sacrifices,
as does a savage to the fetich which appears powerful because of its
hideousness. Therefore its rivalry to things that are modest and profound and
have the subtle delicacy of life is to be dreaded.
I am quite sure that
there are men in your country who are not in sympathy with your inherited
ideals; whose object is to gain, and not to grow. They are loud in their boast
that they have modernized Japan. While I agree with them so far as to say, that
the spirit of the race should harmonize with the spirit of the time, I must
warn them that modernizing is a mere affectation of modernism, just as
affectation of poesy is poetizing. It is nothing but mimicry, only affectation
is louder than the original, and it is too literal. One must bear in mind, that
those who have the true modern spirit need not modernize, just as those who are
truly brave are not braggarts. Modernism is not in the dress of the Europeans;
or in the hideous structures, where their children are interned when they take
their lessons; or in the square houses with flat straight wall-surfaces,
pierced with parallel lines of windows, where these people are caged in their
lifetime; certainly modernism is not in their ladies' bonnets, carrying on them
loads of incongruities. These are not modern, but merely European. True
modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. It is independence of
thought and action, not tutelage under European school-masters. It is science,
but not its wrong application in life, - a mere imitation of our science
teachers who reduce it into a superstition absurdly invoking its aid for all
impossible purposes.
Life based upon mere
science is attractive to some men, because it has all the characteristics of
sport; it feigns seriousness, but is not profound. When you go a-hunting, the
less pity you have the better; for your one object is to chase the game and
kill it, to feel that you are the greater animal, that your method of
destruction is thorough and scientific. And the life of science is that
superficial life. It pursues success with skill and thoroughness, and takes no
account of the higher nature of man. But those whose minds are crude enough to
plan their lives upon the supposition, that man is merely a hunter and his
paradise the paradise of sportsmen, will be rudely awakened in the midst of
their trophies of skeletons and skulls.
I do not for a
moment suggest, that Japan should be unmindful of acquiring modern weapons of
self-protection. But this should never be allowed to go beyond her instinct of
self-preservation. She must know that the real power is not in the weapons
themselves, but in the man who wields those weapons; and when he, in his
eagerness for power, multiplies his weapons at the cost of his own soul, then
it is he who is in even greater danger than his enemies.
Things that are
living are so easily hurt; therefore they require protection. In nature, life
protects itself within its coverings, which are built with life's own material.
Therefore they are in harmony with life's growth, or else when the time comes
they easily give way and are forgotten. The living man has his true protection
in his spiritual ideals, which have their vital connection with his life and
grow with his growth. But, unfortunately, all his armour is not living, - some
of it is made of steel, inert and mechanical. Therefore, while making use of
it, man has to be careful to protect himself from its tyranny. If he is weak
enough to grow smaller to fit himself to his covering, then it becomes a
process of gradual suicide by shrinkage of the soul. And Japan must have a firm
faith in the moral law of existence to be able to assert to herself that the
Western nations are following that path of suicide, where they are smothering
their humanity under the immense weight of organizations in order to keep
themselves in power and hold others in subjection.
What is dangerous
for Japan is, not the imitation of the outer features of the West, but the
acceptance of the motive force of the Western nationalism as her own. Her
social ideals are already showing signs of defeat at the hands of politics. I
can see her motto, taken from science, 'Survival of the Fittest,' writ large at
the entrance of her present-day history - the motto whose meaning is, 'Help
yourself, and never heed what it costs to others'; the motto of the blind man
who only believes in what he can touch, because he cannot see. But those who
can see, know that men are so closely knit, that when you strike others the
blow comes back to yourself. The moral law, which is the greatest discovery of
man, is the discovery of this wonderful truth, that man becomes all the truer,
the more he realizes himself in others. This truth has not only a subjective
value, but is manifested in every department of our life. And nations, who sedulously
cultivate moral blindness as the cult of patriotism, will end their existence
in a sudden and violent death. In past ages we had foreign invasions, but they
never touched the soul of the people deeply. They were merely the outcome of
individual ambitions. The people themselves, being free from the
responsibilities of the baser and more heinous side of those adventures, had
all the advantage of the heroic and the human disciplines derived from them.
This developed their unflinching loyalty, their single-minded devotion to the
obligations of honour, their power of complete self-surrender and fearless
acceptance of death and danger. Therefore the ideals, whose seats were in the
hearts of the people, would not undergo any serious change owing to the policies
adopted by the kings or generals. But now, where the spirit of the Western
nationalism prevails, the whole people is being taught from boyhood to foster
hatreds and ambitions by all kinds of means, - by the manufacture of
half-truths and untruths in history, by persistent misrepresentation of other
races and the culture of unfavourable sentiments towards them, by setting up
memorials of events, very often false, which for the sake of humanity should be
speedily forgotten, thus continually brewing evil menace towards neighbours and
nations other than their own. This is poisoning the very fountainhead of
humanity. It is discrediting the ideals, which were born of the lives of men,
who were our greatest and best. It is holding up gigantic selfishness as the
one universal religion for all nations of the world. We can take anything else
from the hands of science, but not this elixir of moral death. Never think for
a moment, that the hurts you inflict upon other races will not infect you, and
the enmities you sow around your homes will be a wall of protection to you for
all time to come. To imbue the minds of a whole people with an abnormal vanity
of its own superiority, to teach it to take pride in its moral callousness and
ill-begotten wealth, to perpetuate humiliation of defeated nations by
exhibiting trophies won from war, and using these in schools in order to breed
in children's minds contempt for others, is imitating the West where she has a
festering sore, whose swelling is a swelling of disease eating into its
vitality.
Our food crops,
which are necessary for our sustenance, are products of centuries of selection
and care. But the vegetation, which we have not to transform into our lives,
does not require the patient thoughts of generations. It is not easy to get rid
of weeds; but it is easy, by process of neglect, to ruin your food crops and
let them revert to their primitive state of wildness. Likewise the culture,
which has so kindly adapted itself to your soil, - so intimate with life, so
human, - not only needed tilling and weeding in past ages, but still needs
anxious work and watching. What is merely modern - as science and methods of
organization - can be transplanted; but what is vitally human has fibres so
delicate, and roots so numerous and far reaching, that it dies when moved from
its soil. Therefore I am afraid of the rude pressure of the political ideals of
the West upon your own. In political civilization, the state is an abstraction
and relationship of men utilitarian. Because it has no root in sentiments, it
is so dangerously easy to handle. Half a century has been enough for you to
master this machine; and there are men among you, whose fondness for it exceeds
their love for the living ideals, which were born with the birth of your nation
and nursed in your centuries. It is like a child who, in the excitement of his
play, imagines he likes his playthings better than his mother.
Where man is at his
greatest, he is unconscious. Your civilization, whose mainspring is the bond of
human relationship, has been nourished in the depth of a healthy life beyond
reach of prying self-analysis. But a mere political relationship is all
conscious; it is an eruptive inflammation of aggressiveness. It has forcibly
burst upon your notice. And the time has come, when you have to be roused into
full consciousness of the truth by which you live, so that you may not be taken
unawares. The past has been God's gift to you; about the present, you must make
your own choice.
So the questions you
have to put to yourselves are these, - 'Have we read the world wrong, and based
our relation to it upon an ignorance of human nature? Is the instinct of the
West right, where she builds her national welfare behind the barricade of a
universal distrust of humanity?'
You must have
detected a strong accent of fear, whenever the West has discussed the
possibility of the rise of an Eastern race. The reason of it is this, that the
power, by whose help she thrives, is an evil power; so long as it is held on
her own side she can be safe, while the rest of the world trembles. The vital
ambition of the present civilization of Europe is to have the exclusive
possession of the devil. All her armaments and diplomacy are directed upon this
one object. But these costly rituals for invocation of the evil spirit lead
through a path of prosperity to the brink of cataclysm. The furies of terror, which
the West has let loose upon God's world, come back to threaten herself and goad
her into preparations of more and more frightfulness; this gives her no rest
and makes her forget all else but the perils that she causes to others and
incurs her-elf. To the worship of this devil of politics she sacrifices other
countries as victims. She feeds upon their dead flesh and grows fat upon it, so
long as the carcasses remain fresh, - but they are sure to rot at last, and the
dead will take their revenge, by spreading pollution far and wide and poisoning
the vitality of the feeder. Japan had all her wealth of humanity, her harmony
of heroism and beauty, her depth of self-control and richness of
self-expression; yet the Western nations felt no respect for her, till she
proved that the bloodhounds of Satan are not only bred in the kennels of
Europe, but can also be domesticated in Japan and fed with man's miseries. They
admit Japan's equality with themselves, only when they know that Japan also
possesses the key to open the floodgate of hell-fire upon the fair earth,
whenever she chooses, and can dance, in their own measure, the devil dance of
pillage, murder and ravishment of innocent women, while the world goes to ruin.
We know that, in the early stage of man's moral immaturity, he only feels
reverence for the god whose malevolence he dreads. But is this the ideal of man
which we can look up to with pride? After centuries of civilization nations
fearing each other like the prowling wild beasts of the night-time; shutting
their doors of hospitality; combining only for purpose of aggression or
defence; hiding in their holes their trade secrets, state secrets, secrets of
their armaments; leaking peace offerings to the barking dogs of each other with
the meat which does not belong to them; holding down fallen races struggling to
stand upon their feet; with their right hands dispensing religion to weaker
peoples, while robbing them with their left, - is there anything in this to
make us envious? Are we to bend our knees to the spirit of this nationalism,
which is sowing broadcast over all the world seeds of fear, greed, suspicion,
unashamed lies of its diplomacy, and unctuous lies of its profession of peace
and good-will and universal brotherhood of Man? Can we have no doubt in our
minds, when we rush to the Western market to buy this foreign product in
exchange for our own inheritance? I am aware how difficult it is to know one's
self; and the man who is intoxicated furiously denies his drunkenness; yet the
West herself is anxiously thinking of her problems and trying experiments. But
she is like a glutton, who has not the heart to give up his intemperance in
eating, and fondly clings to the hope that he can cure his nightmares of
indigestion by medicine. Europe is not ready to give up her political
inhumanity, with all the baser passions of man attendant upon it; she believes
only in modification of systems, and not in change of heart.
We are willing to
buy their machine-made systems, not with our hearts, but with our brains. We
shall try them and build sheds for them, but not enshrine them in our homes, or
temples. There are races who worship the animals they kill; we can buy meat
from them, when we are hungry, but not the worship which goes with the killing.
We must not vitiate our children's minds with the superstition, that business
is business, war is war, politics is politics. We must know that man's business
has to be more than mere business, and so have to be his war and politics. You
had your own industry in Japan; how scrupulously honest and true it was, you
can see by its products, - by their grace and strength, their conscientiousness
in details, where they can hardly be observed. But the tidal wave of falsehood
has swept over your land from that part of the world, where business is
business and honesty is followed in it merely as the best policy. Have you
never felt shame, when you see the trade advertisements, not only plastering
the whole town with lies and exaggerations, but invading the green fields,
where the peasants do their honest labour, and the hill-tops, which greet the
first pure light of the morning? It is so easy to dull our sense of honour and delicacy
of mind with constant abrasion, while falsehoods stalk abroad with proud steps
in the name of trade, politics and patriotism, that any protest against their
perpetual intrusion into our lives is considered to be sentimentalism, unworthy
of true manliness.
And it has come to
pass that the children of those heroes who would keep their word at the point
of death, who would disdain to cheat men for vulgar profit, who even in their
fight would much rather court defeat than be dishonourable, have become
energetic in dealing with falsehoods and do not feel humiliated by gaining
advantage from them. And this has been effected by the charm of the word
'modern.' But if undiluted utility be modern, beauty is of all ages; if mean
selfishness be modern, the human ideals are no new inventions. And we must know
for certain, that however modern may be the proficiency which cripples man for
the sake of methods and machines, it will never live to be old.
But while trying to
free our minds from the arrogant claims of Europe and to help ourselves out of
the quicksands of our infatuation, we may go to the other extreme and blind
ourselves with a wholesale suspicion of the West. The reaction of
disillusionment is just as unreal as the first shock of illusion. We must try
to come to that normal state of mind, by which we can clearly discern our own
danger and avoid it, without being unjust towards the source of that danger.
There is always the natural temptation in us of wishing to pay back Europe in
her own coin, and return contempt for contempt and evil for evil. But that
again would be to imitate Europe in one of her worst features which comes out
in her behaviour to people whom she describes as yellow or red, brown or black.
And this is a point on which we in the East have to acknowledge our guilt and
own that out sin has been as great, if not greater, when we insulted humanity
by treating with utter disdain and cruelty men who belonged to a particular
creed, colour or caste. It is really because we are afraid of our own weakness,
which allows itself to be overcome by the sight of power, that we try to
substitute for it another weakness which makes itself blind to the glories of
the West. When we truly know the Europe which is great and good, we can
effectively save ourselves from the Europe which is mean and grasping. It is
easy to be unfair in one's judgment when one is faced with human miseries, -
and pessimism is the result of building theories while the mind is suffering.
To despair of humanity is only possible, if we lose faith in truth which brings
to it strength, when its defeat is greatest, and calls out new life from the
depth of its destruction. We must admit that there is a living soul in the West
which is struggling unobserved against the hugeness of the organizations under
which men, women and children are being crushed, and whose mechanical
necessities are ignoring laws that are spiritual and human, - the soul whose
sensibilities refuse to be dulled completely by dangerous habits of
heedlessness in dealings with races for whom it lacks natural sympathy. The
West could never have risen to the eminence she has reached, if her strength
were merely the strength of the brute, or of the machine. The divine in her
heart is suffering from the injuries inflicted by her hands upon the world, and
from this pain of her higher nature flows the secret balm which will bring
healing to those injuries. Time after time she has fought against herself and
has undone the chains, which with her own hands she had fastened round helpless
limbs; and though she forced poison down the throat of a great nation at the
point of sword for gain of money, she herself woke up to withdraw from it, to
wash her hands clean again. This shows hidden springs of humanity in spots
which look dead and barren. It proves that the deeper truth in her nature,
which can survive such a career of cruel cowardliness, is not greed, but reverence
for unselfish ideals. It would be altogether unjust, both to us and to Europe,
to say that she has fascinated the modern Eastern mind by the mere exhibition
of her power. Through the smoke of cannons and dust of markets the light of her
moral nature has shone bright, and she has brought to us the ideal of ethical
freedom, whose foundation lies deeper than social conventions and whose
province of activity is world-wide.
The East has
instinctively felt, even through her aversion, that she has a great deal to
learn from Europe, not merely about the materials of power, but about its inner
source, which is of mind and of the moral nature of man. Europe has been
teaching us the higher obligations of public good above those of the family and
the clan, and the sacredness of law, which makes society independent of
individual caprice, secures for it continuity of progress, and guarantees
justice to all men of all positions in life. Above all things Europe has held
high before our minds the banner of liberty, through centuries of martyrdom and
achievement, liberty of conscience, liberty of thought and action, liberty in
the ideals of art and literature. And because Europe has won our deep respect,
she has become so dangerous for us where she is turbulently weak and
false,-dangerous like poison when it is served along with our best food. There
is one safety for us upon which we hope we may count, and that is, that we can
claim Europe herself, as our ally, in our resistance to her temptations and to
her violent encroachments; for she has ever carried her own standard of
perfection, by which we can measure her falls and gauge her degrees of failure,
by which we can call her before her own tribunal and put her to shame, the
shame which is the sign of the true pride of nobleness.
But our fear is,
that the poison may be more powerful than the food, and what is strength in her
to-day may not be the sign of health, but the contrary; for it may be
temporarily caused by the upsetting of the balance of life. Our fear is that
evil has a fateful fascination, when it assumes dimensions which are
colossal,-and though at last it is sure to lose its centre of gravity by its
abnormal disproportion, the mischief which it creates before its fall may be
beyond reparation.
Therefore I ask you
to have the strength of faith and clarity of mind to know for certain, that the
lumbering structure of modern progress, riveted by the iron bolts of
efficiency, which runs upon the wheels of ambition, cannot hold together for
long. Collisions are certain to occur; for it has to travel upon organized
lines, it is too heavy to choose its own course freely; and once it is off the
rails, its endless train of vehicles is dislocated. A day will come, when it
will fall in a heap of ruin and cause serious obstruction to the traffic of the
world. Do we not see signs of this even now? Does not the voice come to us,
through the din of war, the shrieks of hatred, the wailings of despair, through
the churning up of the unspeakable filth which has been accumulating for ages
in the bottom of this nationalism, - the voice which cries to our soul, that
the tower of national selfishness, which goes by the name of patriotism, which
has raised its banner of treason against heaven, must totter and fall with a
crash, weighed down by its own bulk, its flag kissing the dust, its light
extinguished? My brothers, when the red light of conflagration sends up its
crackle of laughter to the stars, keep your faith upon those stars and not upon
the fire of destruction. For when this conflagration consumes itself and dies
down, leaving its memorial in ashes, the eternal light will again shine in the
East, - the East which has been the birth-place of the morning sun of man's
history. And who knows if that day has not already dawned, and the sun not
risen, in the Easternmost horizon of Asia? And I offer, as did my ancestor
rishis, my salutation to that sunrise of the East, which is destined once again
to illumine the whole world.
I know my voice is
too feeble to raise itself above the uproar of this bustling time, and it is
easy for any street urchin to fling against me the epithet of 'unpractical.' It
will stick to my coat-tail, never to be washed away, effectively excluding me
from the consideration of all respectable persons. I know what a risk one runs
from the vigorously athletic crowds to be styled an idealist in these days,
when thrones have lost their dignity and prophets have become an anachronism,
when the sound that drowns all voices is the noise of the market-place. Yet
when, one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama town, bristling with its
display of modern miscellanies, I watched the sunset in your southern sea, and
saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad hills,- - with the great
Fujiyama growing faint against the golden horizon, like a god overcome with his
own radiance, - the music of eternity welled up through the evening silence,
and I felt that the sky and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the
dayfall are with the poets and idealists, and not with the marketmen robustly
contemptuous of all sentiments, - that, after the forgetfulness of his own
divinity, man will remember again that heaven is always in touch with his
world, which can never be abandoned for good to the bounding wolves of the
modern era, scenting human blood and howling to the skies.
[RABINDRANATH TAGORE]
0 Comments
