Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 26th February 1910 — No.34
Passing Thoughts
Great Consequences
The events that sway the world are often the results of trivial circumstances.
When immense changes and irresistible movements are in progress, it is astonishing how a single event, often a chance event, will lead to a train of circumstances that alter the face of a country or the world.
At such times a slight turn this way or that produces results out of all proportion to the cause.
It is on such occasions that we feel most vividly the reality of a Power which disposes of events and defeats the calculations of men.
The end of many things is brought about by the sudden act of a single individual.
A world vanishes, another is created almost at a touch.
Certainty disappears and we begin to realise what the pralaya of the Hindus, the passage from one age to another, really means and how true is the idea that it is by rapid transitions long-prepared changes are induced.
Such a change now impends all over the world, and in almost all countries events are happening, the final results of which the actors do not foresee.
Small incidents pass across the surface of great countries and some of them pass and are forgotten, others precipitate the future.
In England, in Prussia, in Greece, still more in Turkey, Persia and China a slight movement of one or two men may be sufficient at the present moment to alter the destinies of the country.