-66_In the Society's Chambers.htm In the Society's Chambers Professor : Let me assure you, my friends, that the method of enquiry is alone responsible for all the error in the world. Mankind is in a hurry to know and prefers to catch at half-truths rather than wait for the full truth to dawn on him. Now a half-truth is a few degrees more mischievous than absolute error. It is the devil himself in the disguise of an angel. The Practical Man : But surely, Professor, half-truths are the preparation for whole truths. And mankind must have something to go by. We are not all College Professors who can wait comfortably in our studies for Truth to call on us at her leisure. I have got to get to my pla

FIVE His Literary History BANKIM'S literary activity began for any serious purpose at Khulna, but he had already trifled with poetry in his student days. At that time the poet Iswara Chandra Gupta was publishing two papers, the Sangbad Prabhakar and the Sudhiranjan, which Dwarakanath Mitra and Dinabandhu Mitra were helping with clever schoolboy imitation of Iswara Chandra's style. Bankim also entered these fields, but his striking originality at once distinguished him from the mere cleverness of his competitors, and the fine critical taste of Iswara Chandra easily discovered in this obscure student a great and splendid genius. Like Madhusudan Dutt Bankim began by

Two Pictures THE Modern Review and Prabasi are doing monthly a service to the country the importance of which cannot be exaggerated. The former review is at present the best conducted and the most full of valuable matter of any in India. But good as are the articles which fill the magazine from month to month, the whole sum of them is outweighed in value by the single page which gives us the reproduction of some work of art by a contemporary Indian painter. To the lover of beauty and the lover of his country every one of these delicately executed blocks is an event of importance in his life within. The Reviews by bringing these masterpieces to the thousands who have no oppor

III. MINOR CHARACTERS Nothing more certainly distinguishes the dramatic artist from the poet who has trespassed into drama than the careful pains he devotes to his minor characters. To the artist nothing is small; he bestows as much of his art within the narrow limit of his small characters as within the wide compass of his greatest. Shakespeare lavishes life upon his minor characters; but in Shakespeare it is the result of an abounding creative energy; he makes living men as God made the world, because he could not help it, because it was in his nature and must out. But Kalidasa's dramatic gift, always suave and keen, had not this godlike abundance; it is therefore well

Fate and Free-Will A QUESTION which has hitherto divided human thought and received no final solution, is the freedom of the human being in his relation to the Power intelligent or unintelligent that rules the world. We strive for freedom in our human relations, to freedom we move as our goal, and every fresh step in our human progress is a further approximation to our ideal. But are we free in ourselves? We seem to be free, to do that which we choose and not that which is chosen for us; but it is possible that the freedom may be illusory and our apparent freedom may be a real and iron bondage. We may be bound by predestination, the will of a Supreme Intelligent Power

Indian Art and an Old Classic WE HAVE before us a new edition of Krittibas' Ramayana, edited and published by that indefatigable literary and patriotic worker, Sj. Ramananda Chatterji. Ramananda Babu is well known to the Bengali public as a clear minded, sober and fearless political speaker and writer; as editor of the Modern Review and the Prabasi he has raised the status and quality of Indian periodical literature to an extraordinary extent, and has recently been doing a yet more valuable and lasting service to his country by introducing the masterpieces of the new school of Art to his readers. His present venture is not in itself an ambitious one, as it p

-06_The Evolutionary Process— Ascent and Integration.htm CHAPTER XVIII The Evolutionary Process— Ascent and Integration As he mounts from peak to peak... Indra makes him conscious of that goal of his movement. Rig Veda.¹ A son of the two Mothers, he attains to kingship in his discoveries of knowledge, he moves on the summit, he dwells in his high foundation. Rig Veda.² I have arisen from earth to the mid-world, I have arisen from the mid-world to heaven, from the level of the firmament of heaven I have gone to the Sun-world, the Light.³ Yajur Veda.4 IT IS now possible and necessary, since we have formed a sufficiently clear idea of the

BOOK II Part II THE KNOWLEDGE AND THE IGNORANCE THE SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION CHAPTER XV Reality and the Integral Knowledge This Self is to be won by the Truth and by an integral knowledge. Mundaka Upanishad.¹ Hear how thou shalt know Me in My totality... for even of the seekers who have achieved, hardly one knows Me in all the truth of My being. Gita.² THIS then is the origin, this the nature, these the boundaries of the Ignorance. Its origin is a limitation of knowledge, its distinctive character a separation of the being from its own integrality and entire reality; its boundari

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Our Life Divine first appeared serially in the Arya from August 1914 to January 1919. Volume I, revised and enlarged, was first published in book from in November 1939: Volume II, recast and enlarged, followed in July 1940, in two parts. These were reprinted in 1943 and 1947. the Sri Aurobindo Library, New York, Issued a single volume edition in 1949 and reprinted it in 1951. an edition under the imprint of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, also in a single volume, appeared in 1955 and was reprinted in 1960. The India Library Society Education (New York) came out in 1965. The present edition in two volumes forms part of