Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1933-34

Fragment ID: 16731

1933-34

If God is indifferent to both vices and virtues, what is the need of divinising the world at all? It would naturally mean that everything here is O. K. – in harmony with His divinity.

Of course not. It is only Z who is in perfect harmony with the Divine (he and two others like him); for he is a man without a single vice, all virtues from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe. He is the type of the truly great man as you conceive him. But do you really believe that men like Napoleon, Caesar, Shakespeare were not great men and did nothing for the world or for the cosmic purpose? that God was deterred from using them for his purpose because they had defects of character and vices? What a singular idea!