Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1935

Letter ID: 1266

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

February 12, 1935

But how terrifying is your “Look here”! What I have heard about your extreme seriousness in former days,¹ is quite enough not to invite it farther on my poor head!

Bad logic again! when I write “Look here!” it means I am not serious, however terrifying I may be.

Only I find that you have beaten me right and left for what I did not even intend to say.

Of course! One is most responsible for what one does not intend. It is besides the nature of bad logic to imply what the logician did not mean or did not know that he meant. Ignorance is no defence in law and non-intention is no defence in logic. Such is the beauty of life!

G.L. came for glycerine. Rajangam asked me to see his throat, since he has been going on applying it mechanically. I thought it was not my business in absence of any complaint from him. There is chronic catarrh which subsides with present remedies, he says. Shall we use stronger throat-paints? R says that it is our duty to see how a man is getting on, even though he doesn’t himself volunteer for examination or treatment.

R’s theory is excessive. We are doubtful about the advisability of stronger paintings – it tends to dull down the natural resistance in the throat.

¹ “The man who never smiles”, said Henry W. Nevinson, English writer and journalist who met Sri Aurobindo in 1907 during his full revolutionary activities.

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