Karmayogi

SR No.: 011075
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Total Pages: 751
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 139 MB

Page 420

4
of the Boer Government previous to the war by helping actively in the British attack on the liberty of the Transvaal. With their slow minds and tenacious memories they are a people not swift to forget and forgive; we do not rely greatly on their present professions of friendship to the Power that, took from them. their freedom, and they are wholly unlikely to put from their minds the unpardonable intrusion of the Indian residents into a quarrel in which they had no concern or
status.
There remains the Indian Goyernment, and what can the Indian Government do? It can forbid, as has been suggested, Indian cooly recruitment for Natal. This would undoubtedly be a great blow to the planters and they would throw their whole influence- into the Indin scale. But, on the other hand, the mass of the Natal whites are full of race prejudice and their desire is for that impossible dream, a white South Africa. A more effective measure would be the
Suspension of trade relations by the boycott of Colonial goods and the cessation of the importation of Indian raw materials into South Afric. But that is a stop which will never be taken. Even if the Indian Government were willing to use any and every means, the decision does not rest with them.
but with the Government in Eng
Land, which will not consent to offending the colonies. The Indian Government would no doubt like to see an end of the situation in the Transvaal as it weakens such moral hold as the still have over India, and they would prefer a favourable termination because the return of ruined Indians from the Transvaal will bring home a mass of bitterness, burning sense. of wrong and standing discontent
trained in the most strenuous methods of passivo resistance. And many of them are Mahomedans,
KARMAYOGIN.
moral sympathy and by educating the whole people of India literate. and illiterate in an accurate know ledge of what is happening in the Transvaal. This is the only help India can give to her children over the seas so long as she is not master of her own destinies.
The one favourable factor in favour of the Transvaal Indians is their own spiritual forco and the chance of its altoring the conditions. by sheer moral woight. It is India's duty to aid thorn by financial succour which they sorely noed and the rich men of the country can casily atford, by the heartening effect of public and frequently expressed
THE NATIONAL VALUE OF ART. IV
-000
We now come to the kernel of the subject, the place of art in the evolution of the race and its value in the education and actual life of a nation. The first question is whether the sense of the beautiful has
any effect on the life of a nation. It is obvious, from what we have already written, that the manners, the social culture and the restraint in action and expression which are so large a part of national prestige and dignity and make a nation admired like the French, loved like the Irish or respected like the higher-class English, is based essentially on the sense of form and beauty, of what is correct, symmetrical, well-adjusted, fair to the eye and pleasing to the imagination. The absence of these qualities is a source of national weakness. The rudeness, coarseness and vulgar violence of the ordinary Englishman, selfishness of the Prussian have the overbearing brusqueness and greatly hampered those powerful nations in their dealings with foreigners, dependencies and even their own friends, allies, colonies. We all know what a large share the manner and ordinary conduct of the average and of the vulgar AngloIndian has bad in bringing about. the revolt of the Indian, accustomed through ages to courtesy, dignity and the amenities of an equal intercourse, against the mastery of an obviously coarse and selfish community. Now the sense of form and beauty, the. correct, symetrical, well-adjusted, fair and pleasing is an artistic senso and can best be fostered in a nation by artistic culture of the perceptions and sensibilities. It is noteworthy that the two great nations who. aro most hampered by the defect of these qualities in action aro also the least imaginativo, poetic and artistic in Europe. It is the Bool Bool Soaps are unrivalled in the market,
South German who contributes the art, poetry and music of Ger many. the Celt and Norman who produce great poets and a few. great artists in England without altering the characteristics tofhe dominant Saxon. Music is even more powerful in this direction than Art and by the perfect expres. sion of harmony insensibly steeps the man in it. And it is noticeable that England has hardly produced a single musician worth the name. Plato in his Republic has dwelt with extraordinary emphasis on the importance of music in education; as is the music to which a pople is accustomed, so, he says in effect, is the character of that people. The importance of painting and sculpture is hardly less. The mind is profoundly influenced by what it sees and, if the eye is trained from the days of childhood to the contemplation and understanding of beauty, harmony and just arrangement in line and colour, the tastes, habits and character will be insensibly trained to follow asimilar law of beauty, harmony and just arrange-ment in the life of the adult man. This was the great importance of the universal proficiency in the arts and crafts or the appreciation of them which was prevalent in ancient Greece, in certain European ages, in Japan and in the better days of our own history. Art galleries cannot be brought into every home, but, if all the appointments of our life and furniture of our homes are things of taste and beauty, it is inevitable that the habits, thoughts and feelings of the people should be raised, ennobled, harmonised, made more sweet and dignified.
A similar result is produced on the emotions by the study of beautiful or noble art. We have spoken of the purification of the heart, the chittasudhi, which Aristotle assigned as the essential office of poetry, and have pointed out that it is done in pootry by the detatched and disinterested enjoyment of the eight rasas or forms of emotional aestheticism which make up life, unalloyed by the disturbance of the lower self-regarding passions. Painting and sculpture work in the same direction by different means. Art sometimes uses the same means as poetry