Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Himself and the Ashram

Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

CWSA 35

Fragment ID: 8524

See letter itself (letter ID: 694)

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

January 30, 1936

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Subhas Chandra Bose [6]

The day before yesterday I was telling someone how Bertrand Russell, in his In Praise of Idleness, predicted with almost irrefutable logic the coming collapse of war-mad Europe seized with lunacy born of horror on the one hand and greed on the other. Just listen: “We are all more aware of our fellow-citizens than we used to be, more anxious, if we are virtuous, to do them good,” – like Dr. Stanley Jones, what? – “and in any case to make them do us good. We do not like to think of anyone lazily enjoying life, however refined may be the quality of his enjoyment. We feel that everybody ought to be doing something to help on the great cause (whatever it may be), the more so as so many bad men are working against it and ought to be stopped. We have not leisure of mind, therefore, to acquire any knowledge except such as will help us in the fight for whatever it may happen to be that we think important.”¹ What would the rational Subhas, himself a worshipper of Russell’s keen logic, say to this cynicism?

Poor Subhas! But he is a politician and the rationality of politicians has perforce to move within limits; if they were to allow themselves to be as clear-minded as that, their occupation would be gone. It is not everybody who can be as cynical as Birkenhead or as philosophical as C. R. Das and go on with political reason or political humbug in spite of knowing what it all came to – from arrivisme in the one and from patriotism in the other case.

In another essay, Russell writes: “When the indemnities were imposed, the Allies regarded themselves as consumers: they considered that it would be pleasant to have the Germans work for them as temporary slaves, and to be able themselves to consume, without labour, what the Germans had produced. Then, after the Treaty of Versailles had been concluded, they suddenly remembered that they were also producers, and that the influx of German goods which they had been demanding would ruin their industries.... The plain fact is that the governing classes of the world are too ignorant and stupid to be able to think through such a problem, and too conceited to ask advice of those who might help them” [pp. 66 – 67]. Well, what would Subhas as a ruling patriot say to this? How support his reason? All these meeting-makers are reasonable people, aren’t they?

Yes, but human reason is a very convenient and accommodating instrument and works only in the circle set for it by interest, partiality and prejudice. The politicians reason wrongly or insincerely and have power to enforce the results of their reasoning, so make a mess of the world’s affairs,– the intellectuals reason and see what their minds show them, which is far from being always the truth, for it is generally decided by intellectual preference and the mind’s inborn or education-inculcated angle of vision,– but even when they see it, they have no power to enforce it. So between blind power and seeing impotence the world moves, achieving destiny through a mental muddle.

To conclude, Russell writes in the same essay: “When a nation, instead of an individual, is seized with lunacy, it is thought to be displaying remarkable industrial wisdom” [p. 67]. Qu’en dites-vous?

Seized with lunacy? But that implies the nation is ordinarily led by reason? Is it so? Or even by common sense? Masses of men act upon their vital push, not according to reason – individuals too mostly, though they frequently call in their reason as a lawyer to plead the vital’s case.