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CHAPTER XI

SHANTI NIKETAN

Then they said to the mind, "Do you sing for us." "Yes," said the mind, and sang.—Upanishads.

To know how education can be made musical, both in the old way and the new, we should turn to the school of peace at Shanti Niketan.

In our idea of the Eastern mind the end of its intelligence was meditation; all Indian doctrine in our estimate pointed to a gradual absorption of the principle of life into the final perfection of rest. The path towards such a perfection being long and difficult, the exercises which were followed in order to attain it were correspondingly difficult and obscure. The whole of education seems to have consisted in the study of a moral and physical philosophy of definite character.

The many gorgeous arts of India, her music, her science of healing, her language, her crafts, belonged to the domain of active life. Such accumulated knowledge of the arts of life was

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