.. Page-22 Quantitative Experiments   Cry of the ocean's surges, the long hexameter rolling,               Covers my spirit as tides roll over rapturous shores. Foam on its tops1 the pentameter curls to its cadenced closing,               Two high waves, then a hush swoons on the ear in its fall.            Horse hooves trampled the crumbling plain with their four-footed gallop. * Fiercer griefs you have suffered; to these too God will give ending * Him shall not copious eloquence leave nor clearness and order.     1 Or, head. Page-23 The Ganges   Suddenly out from the wonderful Last like a

Page-1 On the Barisal Proclamation         WITH a Fraser and a Fuller holding the bureaucratic sceptre there could be little doubt which of the two alternatives would recommend itself to the authorities. Sir Andrew Fraser, hampered with the traditions of legality and bureaucratic formalism, has begun cautiously, thundering loudly but sparing the lightning flash. Mr. Fuller, violent, rude and truculent in character and accustomed to the autocracy of a non-regulated province, has rushed like a mad bull at the obnoxious object; his violence may or may not temporarily defeat itself by compelling the Government of India or the Secretary of State to i

Hymn to Dawn         LO, DAWN, the Beloved, appears in her gleaming young body. She impels all Life on the path towards the goal. Fire, the Divine Force, is born to be kindled in man. Dawn drives away all Darkness and fulfils herself in creating Light.       She, the Goddess, rises lifting her forward gaze towards the Vast, the Universal. She has put on the robe of Light and displays the white brilliance of her subtle norms of Truth. Heaven-gold is her hue, her vision is all-round seeing: verily, she is the mother of the herd of brilliances of knowledge, a leader of our bright days; her luminous body is disclosed.       The Goddess, All-Enjoyment she is: she comes carrying

Originality in National Literatures         It is a singular and as yet unexplained phenomenon in the psychology of mankind that out of so many magnificent civilisations, so many powerful, cultured and vigorous nations and empires whose names and deeds crowd the pages of history, only a select few have been able to develop a thoroughly original and self-revealing literature. Still fewer have succeeded in maintaining these characteristics from beginning to end of their literary development. There have been instances in which a nation at some period of especial energy and stress of life has for a moment arrived at a perfect self-expression, but with the effort the

The Cosmic Divine         I UNDERSTAND now what is your difficulty about the Cosmic Divine. It was not present to my mind because I look at these things from the point of view of facts as they are both to our spiritual and our outward experience — whereas the point of view on which you lay stress is that they are not what they ought to be or what the mind, ethical feeling and the vital in man feel that they ought to be. That this world is full of queer, ugly and inharmonious things is the very plain and self-evident fact which we have to start with, — wherever we may want or hope to arrive. But the whole question is there, whether there is something behind, something that warr

         Page-1 Page-2 Page-3 Page-4 Page-5 Page-6 Page-7 Page-8 Page-9 Page-10 A Letter of Sri Aurobindo to His Brother Pondicherry Date unfixable [April 1920] Dear Barin,       I have received your three letters (and another one today), but up till now I have not managed to write a reply. That now I sit to write is itself a miracle, because I write letters once in a blue moon, especially letters in Bengali. This is something I have not done even once in the last five or six years. If I c

went to Mr. Tilak on the night of 27th and the morning of 28th to ascertain the views of his party, and to each of them Mr. Tilak gave the following assurance in writing :-         Surat, 28th December. 1907         "Dear Sir, — With reference to our conversation, and principally in the best interests of the Congress, I and my party are prepared to waive our opposition to the election of Dr. Rash Behari Ghosh as President of 23rd Indian National Congress, and are prepared to act in the spirit of forget and forgive, provided, firstly, the last year's resolutions on Swaraj, Swadeshi, Boycott and National Education are adhered to and each expressly reaffirmed; and secondly, such passa

The Mother Awakes   It is midnight; the world is asleep in silence, The Earth is asleep in the lap of darkness; Asleep are the heavens, breathless the wrathful winds; The stars twinkle not in the dense blackness of the clouds. The birds wrap their eyes with their wings And rest self-absorbed in their nests; Animals wander not, nor are footsteps heard. Then the Mother awakes; The Mother awakes with a terrible cry. The Mother awakes; opens Her frightful eyes, As though a pair of suns.       The Mother awakes, not a leaf moves; The still flame of the lamp is dying in the room: In the lonely paths of the city, in the fi

The Life Divine       Chapter V THE SOUL, CAUSALITY AND LAW OF NATURE         What then of this causality that we see everywhere? What then of this law and fixed process in all Nature which is at least the indispensable condition of all human activities? How can the supposed freedom of the soul be reconciled with the actual despotism in fact of an ordered Cosmic Energy?       Vedanta does not deny either Law of Causality or Law of Nature nor their fixity nor their imperative control over individual activities; it rather affirms them categorically and, as we shall see, with an inexorable thoroughness far more unsparing than the affirmations of modern Rationalism.