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ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES
policy will again and again flout and shout down public opinion by their power to strike and strike hard, and in vain shall we search for a philanthropist from without to lay down the fourteen points of Equity and Law. Self-help, my friends, but not importunity, nor begging, nor the assassin's dagger, nor the revolutionary 's bomb, nor even the suicidal non-co-operation is the guiding principle for you. The aim is not to paralyse or to be crushed in retaliatory vengeance but to get on so that every day finds us nearer the goal in view.
Is it a bitter pill that I ask you to swallow? Much of the bitterness of our lot is, however, caused through the hands of our own brethren, which should certainly cease if they refuse to be seduced from the path of duty through fear and favour. As for insults and humiliations, they seldom proceed from gentlemen, and as regards bullies and knaves, the cur that delights in teasing and terrifying small puppies immediately takes to fawning and cringing when brought face to face with superior force. And so far as injustice is concerned, that should be simply impossible where true satyagrahi doctrines, ahimsa (non-injuring others), truthfulness, non-stealing, continence and indifference to worldly goods are deeply inculcated in the mind. I should like to add that wealth eternally wedded to industry, hard work, and economy implied in self-denial, and cannot be long kept away from where they reside.
There is much to be learnt and much more still to be unlearnt by you, before you may hope to be admitted into the Council of the great nations of the World. The most important thing to know in this connection is that you should henceforth try to stand on your own legs instead of seeking credit on the greatness of a glorious ancestry which others might or might not be willing to acknowledge. As for reform, there is hardly a department of our life that does not call for it urgently; but it will more than suffice generally to go back to the ancient Jaina ideal of a householder's life for true excellence. You must not in any case suffer yourselves to be denationalized, though you should endeavour, to the utmost of your power, to reform existing evil wherever necessary, checking, at the same time, the tendency of our educated young men to blindly imitate the civilization of the West which is too artificial and costly to enable any one to
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