________________
KARMAYOGIN.
THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS.
(BY BIPIN CHANDRA PAL) .. III Nationalism and Nationalists.
The Mazzinian Creed, upon which the whole philosophy of nationalism of the Young Italy School was based, may be briefly summed up as faith (1) in God, (2) in Law, (3) in Humanity, and (4) in Association. The French Revolution was essentially lacking in the sense of the Unseen. What Is known as the God-idea found no
the French Illumination. While it tried in its own way to arrive at Home sort of a social synthesis, seeking to discover a new principle of the social life, it almost entirely neglected the religious factor which had hitherto formed the basin of that life. To the authors of the French Revolution, religion meant a supernatural scripture and an infallible Pope, crippling and killing the freedom of thought and speculation of the dividual; a priesthood, dominating the social and personal activities of the individual and oftentimes allied to the political autocracy on the one side, which denied the individual his rights of free citizenship, and with the aristocracy on the other, which kept him out of
established in the country-set up. a travesty of the old and discarded religious forms and ceremonies, to symboliso the new faith and philosophy which they preached, and called the new cult the religion of humanity. Mazzini saw that neither pure individ talism, nor humanitarianism, nor the two combined, one supplementing the other, can supply the basis of a rational synthesis. A synthesis means always the harmony of parts in a perfected whole. The conception place in the dominant thought of of this perfected whole was practical ly wanting in the philosophy of the French Revolution. This was a fatal weakness, which really foredoomed the whole movement to failure, it lofty idealism. notwithstanding. Mazzini fully recognised it. But the recognition of it did not drive him back to Catholicism, nor oven to Christianity, as popularly understood; that would have meart a mere reaction. And a reaction is never a real synthesis, though it may help a synthesis by bringing out its need, and, perhaps, even to Rome extent indicating the foundamental lines along which it must be worked out. Mazzini did not go hack to the old formulas and symbols of religion, but simply took up the eternal fact which they all tried to represent. That eternal fact of man's religious experience
expressed universally by the
term God. In his conception of the Divine Unity, Mazzini sought and found the key so that higher synthesis which he proclaimed in Europe.
his legitimate share of the fruits of his own labour and his rightful participation in the general econonic life of his country and nation. Swayed by the inevitable passions and prejudices of turbulent revolutionary times, they were almost physically incapacitated from differerntiating the real from the mere formal elements of the religious life, and thereby discarding the current errors of that life without denying er destroying the eternal verities that underlie it and from association with which alone do even religious errors and superstitions derive their sanction and anthority. Indeed, if anything, the authors of the French Revolution themselves, when they realised the need of a religious impalee to awaken and keep up. the enthusiasm of the populace in the new order they
The gospel of the French Revolution had proclaimed one Law for all. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, are meaningless terms if there be no law. Law is the principle of association upon which all these are based. There can be neither liberty nor equality nor fraternity in real anarchism or a state of absolute lawlessness. But what is law? Law really means a relation, either actual or ideal. And a relation implies two or more factors of relation and a principle of relation which combines thom, and, by so doing, makes the relation possible. This principle of relation must, on the
-
face of it, be such as will include all the different factors of the ra lation, but which shall not be confined to any of the particular factors, nor shall be exhausted by them all collectively. In other words. the principle of relation mast n cessarily be a universal principio. on its own plane, in the series of factors which it controls and relates to one another. If this series be an infinite series, then the principl of relation here must be an abs
lately universal principle. The universe is infinite. Man stands in this universe in the midst of an infinitude of relations. The prin ciple of relation which makes th Law of the universe and the Law of humanity, must, of necessity, be a Universal Principle. It in this Universal Principle, pervading this "congeries of relations" which we call the universe, holding together the infinite factors of this system of relations, and yet transcending them all, severally and collectively both.-the basis of their existence, the source of their law, it is this which Mazzini call-s ed. God, This conception of the Godhead followed, directly and as of necessity, from the idea of Law upon which the gospel of the French Revolution was based. Thus, in reply to the question-Whence come you? In whose name do you preach-Mazzini said:
"We coine in the name of God and Humanity.
We believe in. one God; the author of all existence; the absolute living Thought, of whom our world. is a ray, the universe an incarnation."
And as if to indicate the basis. of his theisin, he next declared his conception of Law:
"We believe in a general, im-. mutable law: a law which consti tutes our mode of existence; embraces the whole series of possi ble phenomena; exercises a conti nuous action upon the universe And all therein cmprehended, both in its physical and moral Aspect."
But law has no. menning unless there is an airn to be reached. No lation is really stationary. And
If you are really after the best thing in the market use THE ORIENTAL FACTORY'S SOAPS. They are talk of the day, the pride of the Swadeshi, have the largest of all Sales Keep the Skin bent.
Are the cheap
cat for the value, and available every where. THE ORIENTAL SOAP FACTORY
GOABAGAN, CALCUTTA. Tel Address:" KOWSTOVE."
