Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/167

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XI
SHANTI NIKETAN
143

After the day's work they retire to bed at half-past nine, and a choir of boys again goes round the school singing evening songs. They begin their days with songs and they end them with songs.

As for the school discipline, that is a matter that has been diligently thought out by the founder. During his visit to America he inquired most carefully into the most intelligent systems of education; he did the same while staying in England. There were no sources of information on the subject that he did not explore. His scheme of education for his boys was to be distinctively national, patriotic, absolutely Indian, of the very soil of Bengal; yet it was to be infused with and aided by the highest and most intelligent thought and method of which the human spirit had hitherto made itself master. What mattered creed or race or caste so that the collective spirit of mankind served and was served? In this Rabindranath has shown himself to be faithful to his belief that the one spirit of life suffuses all creation with its healing rays, no creature being excepted.

It was, I believe, through his knowledge of the successfully applied principle of self-