Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)
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help sattwa, the principle of light, in quelling the strength and excess of their rajasic passions. But this way is not for the developed Aryan man who has to grow not by weakness, but by an ascension from strength to strength. Arjuna is the divine man, the inasterrman in the making;^ and as.such he has been chosen by die gods. He has a work given to^Tiim,^ he his; Godlh^^ in his chariot, he has the heavenly bow Gandiva in his hand, he has the champions of unrighteousness, the opponents of the divine leading of the world in his front. Not his is the right to determine what he shall do or npt do according to his emotions and his passions, or to shrink from a necessary destruction by the claim of his egoistic heart and reason, or to 4€clme his work because it will bring sorrow and emptin^s'fo his life o r because its earthly result has no value to him in the absence of the thousands who must perish. All that is a weak falling from his h^her ngture. Hellas to see, only^tHe work that ihusrbe done, kartavy am^J ^ma^ to h^r^qnly^the divine commanir breathed through his warrior nature, to jeeT only for jh^ world and the destiny of manWnd calling to him as its god-sent manlblSsist its march and clear its path of the dark armies that beset it.
Arjuna in his reply to Krishna admits the rebuke even while he strives against and refuses the command. He is a ware of his w^kness and yet accepts subjection to it. It is po orness of , spirit, he owns, that has smitten away from him his true heroic nature ; his whole consciousness is bewildered THE CREED OF THE ARYAN FIGHTER in its view of right and wrong and he accepts the 4mne Friend as his teacher ; but the emotional and intSleauar on whicE he had supported his sense of righteousness have been entirely cast down and he cannot accept a command which seems to appeal only to his old standpoint and gives him no new basis for action. He auempte still to justify his refusal of the work and puts forward in its suj^mt the claim of His nervous and sensational being which shrinks from the slaughter with its sequel of bloodstained enjoyments, the_claim of his hgart which recoils from the soirow and emptiness of life that will follow his act, the. xlaim of his customary moral notions which are appalled by the necessity of slaying his gurus, Bhishma and Drona, the claim of his reason which sees no good but only evil results of the terrible and violent work assigned to him. He is resolved that on the^old basis of thought and xngtiye he ^11 not Egfit anB he awaits iiT silence the answer to objections that seem to him unanswerable. It is t hese jclaims of Arjuna's egoistic beinjg^ ^at Krishna sets out first to destro^ in order to make place for the higher law which shall tr ansc end all ego istic motives of actmn.
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