Sri Aurobindo
Early Cultural Writings
(1890 — 1910)
Part Seven. Epistles / Letters From Abroad
Letters from Abroad [5.2]
No, it is not in the stress of an intolerant patriotism that I turn an eye of disparagement upon Europe.
The immediate past of these Western peoples I can admire more than I admire the immediate past of our Indian nations.
It is their present that shocks my aspirations for humanity.
Europe is full of the noise and the apparel1 of life, of its luxurious trappings, of a myriad-footed material clang and tread, but of that which supports life she is growing more and more empty.
When they had less information2, her people had wiser and stronger souls.
They had a literature, a creative intellectual force, a belief, a religion good or bad, a light3 that led onwards, a fixed path.
Now they have only hungers, imaginations, sentiments and passions.
The hungers are made to 
look decent4; they even5 disguise6 themselves and parade about as ideals and rights7.
The sentiments are deftly8 intellectualised, — some even9 care to moralise them superficially, but that is growing out of fashion10.
The imaginations are tricked out to look like reason11 and carefully placarded on the forehead, with the names of rationalism, science and enlightenment, though they are only a whirl of ephemeral theories when all is said and done.
The passions are most decorously12 masked, well-furnished and lodged, sumptuously clothed13.
But a dress does not change truth and God is not deceived.