CHAPTER IX Civilisation and Culture NATURE starts from Matter, develops out of it its hidden Life, releases out of involution in life all the crude material of Mind and, when she is ready, turns Mind upon itself and upon Life and Matter in a -great mental effort to understand all three in their phenomena, their obvious action, their secret laws, their normal and abnormal possibilities and powers so that they may be turned to the richest account, used in the best and most harmonious way, elevated to their highest as well as extended to their widest potential aims by the action of that faculty which man alone of terrestrial creatures clearly possesses, the inte

CHAPTER XX The Drive towards Economic Centralisation THE objective organisation of a national unity is not yet complete when it has arrived at the possession of a single central authority and the unity and uniformity of its political, military and strictly administrative functions. There is another side of its organic life, the legislative and its corollary, the judicial function, which is equally important; the exercise of legislative power becomes eventually indeed, although it was not always, the characteristic sign of the sovereign. Logically, one would suppose that the conscious and organised determination of its own rules of life should

CHAPTER XXXI The Conditions of a Free World-Union A FREE world-union must in its very nature be a complex unity based on a diversity and that diversity must be based on free self- determination. A mechanical unitarian system would regard in its idea the geographical groupings of men as so many conveniences for provincial division, for the convenience of administration, much in the same spirit as the French Revolution reconstituted France with an entire disregard of old natural and historic divisions. It would regard mankind as one single nation and it would try to efface the old separative national spirit altogether; it would arrange its system pr

CHAPTER III The Group and the Individual IT IS a constant method of Nature, when she has two elements of a harmony to reconcile, to proceed at first by a long continued balancing in which she sometimes seems to lean entirely on one side, sometimes entirely to the other, at others to correct both excesses by a more or less successful temporary adjustment and moderating compromise. The two elements appear then as opponents necessary to each other who therefore labour to arrive at some conclusion of their strife. But as each has its egoism and that innate tendency of all things which drives them not only towards self-preservation but towards self-a

CHAPTER XXI The Drive towards Legislative and Social Centralisation and Uniformity                                THE gathering of the essential powers of administration into the hands of the sovereign is completed when there is unity and uniformity of judicial administration, - especially of the criminal side; for this is intimately connected with the maintenance of order and internal peace. And it is, besides, necessary for the ruler to have the criminal judicial authority in his hands so that he may use it to crush all rebellion against him- self as treason and even, so far as may be possible, to stifle criticism and opposition and penalise that f

CHAPTER VIII The Problem of a Federated Heterogeneous Empire IF THE building up of a composite nation in the British Isles was from the beginning a foregone conclusion, a geographical and economical- necessity only prevented in its entire completion by the most violent and perverse errors of statesmanship, the same cannot be said of the swifter, but still gradual and almost unconscious process by which the colonial empire of Great Britan has been evolving to a point at which it can become a real unity. It was not so long ago that the eventual separation of the colonies carrying with it the evolution of Australia and Canada at least in

.. 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