Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)

^ Then, as lifc in its actiialities, we have to accept ifa J ^pect of a s trug gle and a battle 2mounting into supreme crises such as that of Kurukshetra. The Gi ta, as we have seen, takes for its frame such a peri og of tranrition and arisis m humanity periodically experiences ui its histo^, in which great forces ^cj^h together ^or a hu^ dekruction anSf reconstruction, iatdli^ual, social, moral, rel^ious, political, and these jn the actual psychological and social stage of_hunwn evolu^on culminate usually through a violent physiral convulsion of strife, war or revolution. The .Gite prgceec^ from the acceptance of the necessity in Nature for such vehement crises and it accepts not only the moral aspect, the struggle betw^n righteousness and unrighteousness, between the self- affirming law of Good and the forces that oppose its progression, but also the physical aspect, the actvral armed war or other vehement physical strife between the human beings who represent the antagonistic “powers. We must remember that the Gita was composed at a time when war t^ even more iban it is now a necessary part of hum an activity and the idea of its elimination from the scheme of life would have been an absolute chimera. The gospel of universal peace and gcx^- will among men — ^for without a universal and entire mutual goodwill there can be no real and abiding peace — has never succeeded for a moment in possess- ing itself of human life during the historic cycle of our progress, because morally, socially, spiritually the race was not prepared and the poise of Nature in its evolution would not admit of its being