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question in pinpof this agitable resort 19, the foreigner be so regu: lated as to assist, materially the progress of the boots and prepare the future industrial independence of the nation? This is the subject we propose to consider in our next isque.
THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS.
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(BY BIPIN CHANDRA PAL) Nationalism and Nationalists.
What is Nationlism? Who are Nationalists ? So many things good, bad, and indifferent, are being preached in the name of Nationalism; and so many people, holding so many views, have commenced to claim the name Nationalist, that a little calm and careful consideration of these questions may not be quite useless at this juncture. Both the idea and the words are somewhat new in current Indian literature. The concept has yet to be coined in institutions, crystailised in traditions and supported by sanctified authorities. It is still. so to any, in the melting-pot. Some confusion is inevitablo in this transitional and formative stage. Yet it is just at these chaotic stages that great ideas have to be most carefully watched, and the mind of the people trained to differentiate the real from the formal elements in them.
What is Nationalism? The concept is new. Mazzini, I think, was the first prophet of this idea in moders Europe. It was he who, firet saw the limitations of that madden ing gospel of individual freedom, which the French Revolution, had preached. The French Revolution was, really, the last word of Christian Protestantism. Voltaire and Rousseau carried out the inexorable logic of the teachings of Erasmus and Luther, even as Erasmus' and Luther's were the last word, practically, of Christianity.
KARMAYOGIN,
to identify himself with the unversal, who attained this right. Thus while in the first two orders of the student or Brahmacharin and the householder or Grihastha, subjec tion to authority was the rule, in the last two orders of the Vanprastha and the Sannyasin, when the individual at first partially and then completely gave himself up to the higher and the contemplative life, and was, therefore, freed from the conflicts of selfish passions and interests of the ordinary social duties and activities-freedom was the law. In Sannyasa the individual was a law unto himself. And it was so because he was at least supposed in that stage to have really ceased to be an individual, that is an individual with
private and personal ends and desires, but completely identified himself with the Universal. This identification with the Universal has always been the highest conception of freedom in India, anong the Hindus. It was the peculiar fruit of the Hindu race-conscious ness which has had from prehistoric times an overwhelining sense of the spiritual and the universal as an original and organic element of its intellectual and moral life.
Outside India, however, in all the ancient social economies, the individual as having an end unto himself received but scant recognitjon. The individual was a part, society was the whole: the individual was a limb, society was the body: the individual was an organ, society was the organism. The whole must regulate its parts: the body must control the limbs, the organism must rule the organs to its own noeds, this was the old social philosophy. This was the old pagan view in Greece and Romie.
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the members were the limbs. Thus the old abjection continued, only the authority that controlled the individual was transferred from pagan society to the Christian Church.
But even this transference of authority, due to the personal election of the individual, was a distinct advance towards personal freedom. It conferred upon the individual the right of choosing, though perhaps not of actually making, the laws that shall govern him. Even this choice was a great thing. It was a first step towards personal freedom. In taking converts from pagan religions, Christianity, thus, started with a recognition of that right of private judgment, upon which the subsequent Lutheran protest was based. The right of private judgment was fully recog nised in the acceptance of Christianity by every convert. The Lutheran protest, therefore, did not discover a new principle, but simply expanded somewhat the field of the application of an old principle. The authority of the individual was valid and absolute in his choosing Christianity against paganism. It was valid and absolute in his first act of choosing, but it ceased with. that first act. That was Catholicism. Luther denied that this right ceased with that first act of choice. He claimed that as originally it was the reason and conscience of the individual which was vested with the right of deciding the truth of Christianity against other religions, so the same individual reason and conscience must have the right of deciding what is true and what is false in the traditional interpreta tions of the Christian Scriptures and the Christian dogma.
The first protest against this view was raised in the Western The human personality, hav- world by Christianity. But even ing an end unto itself, had but Christianity failed to free the indiscant recognition in the social eco- vidual from the old social bondage nomy of the ancients, outside altogether. All that it did was India. In India alone, among the really to substitute a new social Hindus, the human individuality re- whole, more comprehensive and ceived the fullest recognition. In the cosmopolitan than the old ones. Hindu economy alone was the right The now Church was substituted the individual to be a law anto for the old social authority, but the himself, fully recognised. It was,subjection of the individual practihowever, the Individual perfectdd chily continued. The Church was through long and laborious course the whole, the members were the of stay tips and thus trained parts, the Church was the body, ool Boel Soaps are unrivalled in the market.
national or
This is the necessary logic of all missionary religions. This is the essential implication of all credal systems, mis-called universal in con-tradistinction from ethnic systems. There is no need or room for the exercise of personal choice in ethnic religions. Every man belonging, to an ethnic religion is born into it. But missionary religions are different. Not the accident of birth, but the a creed, is the acceptance of soul of missionary religions. Accep tance implies exercise of choice. All missionary religions appear before"
