________________
THE AWAKENING SOUL OF INDIA
illiterate Hindu ascetic; a self-illuminated ecstatic and "mystic" without a single trace or touch of the alien thought or education upon him that the battle was won. The going forth of Vivekananda, marked out by the Master as the heroic soul destined to take the world between his two hands and change it, was the first visible sign to the world that India was awake not only to survive but to conquer. Afterwards when the awakening was complete a section of the nationalist movement turned in imagination to a reconstruction of the recent pre-British past in all its details. This could not be inertia, the refusal to expand and alter is what our philosophy calls "tamas," and an excess of "tamas" tends to disintegration and disappearance. Aggression is necessary for self-preservation and when a force ceases to conquer, it ceases to live-thąt which remains stationary and stands merely on the defensive, that which retires into and keeps within its own Kot or base as
37
