Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/13

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PREFACE
ix

same topic. In one, occurring in Sādhanā he points out that the rival energies of the nations in the West tend to become aggressive. They are employed "in extending man's power over his surroundings, and the peoples are straining every nerve upon the path of conquest; they are ever disciplining themselves to fight Nature and other races; their armaments are getting more and more stupendous every day; their machines, their appliances, their organisations are for ever multiplying.…" The ancient civilisation of India, he goes on to say, had another ideal, which was that of the perfect comprehension of all, the inclusion of every element in the universe, and not the shutting out of any atom of God's creatures. Man's freedom and his fulfilment were not to be gained, in that Eastern belief, through war and the argument of the strong hand, but by love.

Once Gautama, we are told, saw a man bowing to the Four Quarters of the Heavens, the Nadir and the Zenith. It was an old rite he was performing—"with streaming hair, wet gar-