Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3. 1936-37

Fragment ID: 18049

1936-37

My English teacher and I read the following passage from your book:

“What has to be surpassed and changed is the intellectual reason which sees things from outside only, by analysis and inference when it does not do it rather by taking a hasty look and saying ‘so it is’, or ‘so it is not’.”

Here, did you mean to say that the intellect usually judges things after forming hasty conclusions and that when it cannot do so it tries analysis and inference? That is how my teacher interpreted the passage. My understanding of it is just the opposite! It is only when the intellect cannot decide by analysis and inference, which is its usual process, that it forms hasty conclusions. Well, which of the two explanations is really correct?

Neither is correct. Each of these statements is a hasty conclusion of the intellect.

Both the interpretations are absurd. I have said nothing about “cannot”. I have said “when it does not rather”, and that means that what it ordinarily does is to take a hasty look, that is what most people usually do, and the habit of careful analysis and inference (which is no doubt the proper function of the intellect) is the exception.