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

immediately prepared for any such transcendence. Even now we hav^not actually progressed be yon d the feasibility of system accommodation between conflicting interests which may minim ise the recurrence of the worst forms of strife. And towa rds th is consummation the metliod, the approach whTcEr^mmahity has been forced by its own nature to adopt, is a monstrous mutual massacre un- parallelled in history ; a univer^l war, full of bitterness and irreconcilable hatred, is^the straight ^y and the triumphant means modern man has found for the establishment of jiniyersal jjeacel That consummation, too, founded not upon any fundamental change in human nature, but upon intellectual notions, economic convenience, vital and sentimental shrinkings from the loss of life, discomfort and horror of war, effected by nothing better than political adjustments, gives no very certain promise of firm foundation and long duration. A day may come, must surely come, we will say, wfien“1Rumanity will be ready spiritually, morally, socially for the rei^^pf universal peace ; n^anwhile the aspect of battle and the nature and function of man”as Jl figTbter have to be accepted and accounted for by ariy practical philosophy and religion. The Gita, ukinglife^as it .i_s and not only as it may be in some distant future, puts the question how this aspect and function of life, which is really an aspect and function of human activity in general, can be harmonised with the spiritual existence.

The Gita is therefore addressed to a %^er, a man of action, one whose duty in iife_is^ that of war and pro^tion, war as a part of government for the protection of those who are excused from that duty, debarred from protecting themselves and therefore at the mercy of the strong and the violent, war, secondly and by a moral extension of this idea, for the protection of the weak and the oppressed and for the maintenance of right and justioe in the world. For aU ^ese ideas, the social and pracikal, the moral and the chivalrous enter into the Indian conception of the Kshatriya, the man who is a w^ior and ruler by function and a knight and king in his nature. Although the more genera^' and universal ideas of the Gita are those which are the most important to us, we ought not to leave out of consideration altogether the colouring and trend they take from the peculiar Indian culture and social system in the midst of which they arose. That system differed from the modern in its conception. To the modem mind man is a thinker, worker or producer and a fighter all in one, and the tendency of the social system is to lump all these activities and to demand from each individual his contribu-^ tion to the intellectual, economical and military life and needs of the community without paying any heed to the demands of his individual nature and temperament. The ancient Indian civilisation laid peculiar stress on the individual mture, tende ncy, tempera m ent and sought to determine by it the etfiical type, function and place in the society. Nor

MAN AND THE BATTLE OF LIFE did it consider man primarily as a social being or the fullness of his social existence as the highest ideal, but rather as a spiritual being in process of formation and development and his social life, ethical law, play of temperament and exercise of function as means and stages of spiritual formation. Thought and Imowledge, w ar and government, production and distribution, labour and service were carefully differentiated functions of society, each assigned to those who were naturally called to it and providing the right means by which they could individually proceed towards their spirituy^develop; ment and self-perfection.