is not with Japan of the Bushido, the Japan of
the moral ideals, that you have to deal — it is with
the abstraction of the popular selfishness, it is
with the Nation ; and Nation can only trust
Nation where their interests coalesce, or at least
do not conflict. In fact your instinct tells you
that the advent of another people into the arena
of nationality makes another addition to the evil
which contradicts all that is highest in Man and
proves by its success that unscrupulousness is
the way to prosperity, — and goodness is good
NATIONALISM IN THE WEST 41
for the weak and God is the only remaining
consolation of the defeated.
Yes, this is the logic of the Nation. And it
will never heed the voice of truth and goodness.
It will go on in its ring-dance of moral corrup-
tion, linking steel unto steel, and machine unto
machine ; trampling under its tread all the sweet
flowers of simple faith and the living ideals of
man.
But we delude ourselves into thinking that
humanity in the modern days is more to the
front than ever before. The reason of this self-
delusion is because man is served with the neces-
saries of life in greater profusion, and his physical
ills are being alleviated with more efficacy. But
the chief part of this is done, not by moral sacri-
fice, but by intellectual power. In quantity it is
great, but it springs from the surface and spreads
over the surface. Knowledge and efficiency are
powerful in their outward effect, but they are
the servants of man, not the man himself. Their
service is like the service in a hotel, where it is
elaborate, but the host is absent ; it is more
convenient than hospitable.
Therefore we must not forget that the
scientific organizations vastly spreading in all
directions are strengthening our power, but not
42 NATIONALISM
our humanity. With the growth of power the
cult of the self-worship of the Nation grows in
ascendancy ; and the individual willingly allows
the Nation to take donkey-rides upon his back ;
and there happens the anomaly which must have
such disastrous effects, that the individual
worships with all sacrifices a god which is morally
much inferior to himself. This could never have
been possible if the god had been as real as the
individual.
Let me give an illustration of this in point.
In some parts of India it has been enjoined as
an act of great piety for a widow to go without
food and water on a particular day every fort-
night. This often leads to cruelty, unmeaning
and inhuman. And yet men are not by nature
cruel to such a degree. But this piety being a
mere unreal abstraction completely deadens the
moral sense of the individual, just as the man,
who would not hurt an animal unnecessarily,
would cause horrible suffering to a large number
of innocent creatures when he drugs his feelings
with the abstract idea of " sport." Because these
ideas are the creations of our intellect, because
they are logical classifications, therefore they can
so easily hide in their mist the personal man.
And the idea of the Nation is one of the most
NATIONALISM IN THE WEST 43
powerful aiifiesthetics that man has mvented.
Under the influence of its fumes the whole
people can carry out its systematic programme of
the most virulent self-seeking without being in
the least aware of its moral perversion, — in fact
feeling dangerously resentful if it is pointed out.
But can this go on indefinitely ? continually
producing barrenness of moral insensibility upon
a large tract of our living nature ? Can it escape
its nemesis for ever ? Has this giant power of
mechanical organization no limit in this world
against which it may shatter itself all the more
completely because of its terrible strength and
velocity ? Do you believe that evil can be per-
manently kept in check by competition with
evil, and that conference of prudence can keep
the devil chained in its makeshift cage of mutual
agreement ?
This European war of Nations is the war of
retribution. Man, the person, must protest for
his very life against the heaping up of things
where there should be the heart, and systems
and policies where there should flow living
human relationship. The time has come when,
for the sake of the whole outraged world, Europe
should fully know in her own person the terrible
absurdity of the thing called the Nation.
44 NATIONALISM
The Nation has thriven long upon mutilated
humanity. Men, the fairest creations of God,
came out of the National manufactory in huge
numbers as war - making and money - making
puppets, ludicrously vain of their pitiful perfec-
tion of mechanism. Human society grew more
and more into a marionette show of politicians,
soldiers, manufacturers and bureaucrats, pulled
by wire arrangements of wonderful efficiency.
But the apotheosis of selfishness can never
make its interminable breed of hatred and greed,
fear and hypocrisy, suspicion and tyranny, an
end in themselves. These monsters grow into
huge shapes but never into harmony. And
this Nation may grow on to an unimaginable
corpulence, not of a living body, but of steel
and steam and office buildings, till its deformity
can contain no longer its ugly voluminousness,
— till it begins to crack and gape, breathe gas
and fire in gasps, and its death-rattles sound
in cannon roars. In this war the death-throes of
the Nation have commenced. Suddenly, all its
mechanism going mad, it has begun the dance
of the Furies, shattering its own limbs, scattering
them into the dust. It is the fifth act of the
tragedy of the unreal.
Those who have any faith in Man cannot but
NATIONALISM IN THE WEST 45
fervently hope that the tyranny of the Nation
will not be restored to all its former teeth and
claws, to its far - reaching iron arms and its
immense inner cavity, all stomach and no heart ;
that man will have his new birth, in the freedom
of his individuality, from the enveloping vague-
ness of abstraction.
The veil has been raised, and in this frightful
war the West has stood face to face with her
own creation, to which she had offered her soul.
She must know what it truly is.
She had never let herself suspect what slow
decay and decomposition were secretly going on
in her moral nature, which often broke out in
doctrines of scepticism, but still oftener and in
still more dangerously subtle manner showed
itself in her unconsciousness of the mutilation
and insult that she had been inflicting upon a
vast part of the world. Now she must know
the truth nearer home.
And then there will come from her own
children those who will break themselves free
from the slavery of this illusion, this perversion
of brotherhood founded upon self-seeking, those
who will own themselves as God's children and
as no bond-slaves of machinery, which turns
souls into commodities and life into compart-
46 NATIONALISM
ments, which, with its iron claws, scratches out
the heart of the world and knows not what it
has done.
And we of no nations of the world, whose
heads have been bowed to the dust, will know
that this dust is more sacred than the bricks
which build the pride of power. For this dust
is fertile of life, and of beauty and worship.
We shall thank God that we were made to
wait in silence through the night of despair,
had to bear the insult of the proud and the
strong man's burden, yet all through it, though
our hearts quaked with doubt and fear, never
could we blindly believe in the salvation which
machinery offered to man, but we held fast to
our trust in God and the truth of the human
soul. And we can still cherish the hope that,
when power becomes ashamed to occupy its
throne and is ready to make way for love,
when the morning comes for cleansing the
blood - stained steps of the Nation along the
highroad of humanity, we shall be called upon
to bring our own vessel of sacred water — the
water of worship — to sweeten the history of
man into purity, and with its sprinkling make
the trampled dust of the centuries blessed with
fruitfulness.
NATIONALISM IN JAPAN
47
NATIONALISM IN JAPAN
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 humilia-
tion 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
49 E
50 NATIONALISM
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. There-
fore it cannot be said that there is anything
inherent in the soil and climate of Asia to
produce mental inactivity and to atrophy 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,
NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 51
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 help-
less, 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 to enjoy complete 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 posses-
sions. 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 high-
52 NATIONALISM
road 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 fresh-
ness 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 pro-
duct 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
NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 53
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, which
seeks 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, canmot 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
54 NATIONALISM
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 some-
thing 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
NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 55
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 parapher-
nalia 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 oppor-
tunities 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
56 NATIONALISM
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 innumer-
able 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 sordid-
ness, man losing faith in all the heroic ideals of
life which have made him great.
NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 57
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 obliga-
tion, 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.
58 NATIONALISM
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 respon-
sibility is all the greater, for in your voice Asia
shall answer the questions that Europe has sub-
mitted to the conference of Man. In your land
the experiments will be carried on by which
the East will change the aspects of modern
civilization, infusing life in it where it is a.
machine, substituting the 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 livincj com-
munication 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 explora-
tion and spoliation of each other's pockets ; ideas
and ideals were exchanged, gifts of the highest
/
NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 59
love were offered and taken ; no difference of
languages and customs hindered us in approach-
ing 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 the aliens at bay or to exterminate them.
It is carnivorous and cannibalistic in its tenden-
cies, it feeds upon the resources of other peoples
60 NATIONALISM
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 bound-
aries, 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 mince-meat, 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 cere-
monials 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
NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 61
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 ethical ideals 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
62 NATIONALISM
up again ; for they were not of life, but went
against life as a whole, — they are relies 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 |
