Sri Aurobindo

Bande Mataram

Political Writings and Speeches. 1890–1908

Part One. Writings and a Resolution 1890 – 1906

Ethics East and West¹

[..... if the] natural disparity which is so confidently asserted by Europeans and reasserted in echo by not a few Anglicised or revolted Hindus, be a truth and not a fiction of racial pride, the national movement in India becomes a blunder and a solecism. For this movement proceeds on two assertions which the European position directly traverses, the natural equality of the Asiatic to the European, which justifies us in aspiring to liberty and the control of our own destinies and the immense superiority of our own religion, ethics and social ideals to the Western. In traffic with the West we seek only to import the scientific knowledge, the mechanical apparatus of war and communication and the method of efficient organisation in Government which have made it so eminently formidable, but we wish to bar out, if may be, all that disease of the intellect and social constitution born of individualistic materialism which makes it so eminently miserable. If we are right, our spiritual and moral strength without which material greatness cannot endure lies in the use and development of our own religion and ideals. Otherwise, our whole aspiration is an unhealthy dream and there is no reason in Nature why we should not remain for ever the subjects and servants of European races with an occasional change of masters as our sole relief in the long monotony of servitude. It is therefore essential for us to know the truth. In the following pages I have sought to provide the materials for a correct judgment, aiming chiefly at a right presentation of the spirit and truth of our ancient philosophy, religion and ethics, which have hitherto been presented to the world by European expositors who show at every step their imperfect and often utterly erroneous understanding of what they pretend to explain. It is necessary to understand aright before we praise or condemn; and the ethical aspect of Hinduism is like everything Hindu so much a part and a thing of itself that it is only those of whose blood and bone it has become a part who can be trusted to put it before others from a right perspective and in the true proportions. Only then can the issue between the East and West be justly decided.

Chapter I. The Ethical Basis in Europe

Morality is like all else in this world of perceptions, phenomenal in its nature; it is neither eternal nor unchanging, but depends on two things, that in which it lives and moves and the conditions that surround and work upon its receptacle. It is true that certain virtues, purity, humanity, truth, self-sacrifice are at present vaguely recognized as moral standards by all civilized peoples; but they were not recognized at all times and places in the past and there is no guarantee that they will be recognized at all times and places in the future. Moreover the definite meaning and extent of these names and the limits within which men are willing to honour them in practical life, varies immensely in different countries. The standard of morality is determined not by the profession of the community, but by the actual though unwritten code of actions which the community as a whole strives to practise and which, even if it does not succeed in attaining, it honestly approves and honours in those who do attain it. Indeed the extraordinary variations and flat contradiction of the ethical standard as determined by place and time, has become so much a commonplace that it is hardly worth while to dwell upon it. The no less extraordinary variations and flat contradictions of the ethical standard as practised in the same place and the same time, have not received so much attention, and yet they are of even greater psychological value.

Determined by time and place. All things move indeed in space and time and are to a certain extent conditioned by them; but they are not determined by these mental abstractions. The determining forces are always two, the adhara or receptacle or field and the conditions which act on the receptacle. The field of morality is triple, the individual, the collective mind of the community, race, nation or body of nations that profess it and the collective mind of all humanity, the latter attaining especial importance in these days when all parts of the world are in some sort of touch with each other. The conditions which act on it are the various physical and other influences which have acted or are now acting on the individual and collective mind and most of all its spiritual history.

This work was not included in SABCL, vol.1 and it was not compared with other editions.

¹ A fragment from the opening of a proposed work of political philosophy. Editorial title. Circa 1902 – 6. There is no positive evidence by which this fragment might be dated. The handwriting is that of the Baroda period. It was seized when Sri Aurobindo’s house was searched in May 1908, put in as evidence in the Alipore Bomb Trial, and reproduced in a government file containing transcripts of documentary evidence and later in Terrorism in Bengal (see footnote 13). Published here for the first time in a book of Sri Aurobindo’s writings.

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