Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Himself and the Ashram
The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35
Remarks on Public Figures in India
Subhas Chandra Bose [6]
The day before
yesterday I was telling someone how Bertrand Russell, in his
In Praise of Idleness, predicted with almost irrefutable logic the coming
collapse of war-mad Europe seized with lunacy born of horror on the one hand and
greed on the other. Just listen: “We are all more aware of our fellow-citizens
than we used to be, more anxious, if we are virtuous, to do them good,” — like
Dr. Stanley Jones, what? — “and in any case to make them do us good. We do not
like to think of anyone lazily enjoying life, however refined may be the quality
of his enjoyment. We feel that everybody ought to be doing something to help on
the great cause (whatever it may be), the more so as so many bad men are working
against it and ought to be stopped. We have not leisure of mind, therefore, to
acquire any knowledge except such as will help us in the fight for whatever it
may happen to be that we think {{0}}important.”[[Bertrand Russell, In
Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1935), pp.
35 – 36.]] What would the rational Subhas, himself a worshipper of Russell’s
keen logic, say to this cynicism?
Poor Subhas! But he is a politician and the rationality
of politicians has perforce to move within limits; if they were to allow
themselves to be as clear-minded as that, their occupation would be gone. It is
not everybody who can be as cynical as Birkenhead or as philosophical as C. R.
Das and go on with political reason or political humbug in spite of knowing what
it all came to — from arrivisme in the one and from patriotism in the
other case.
In another essay, Russell writes: “When the
indemnities were imposed, the Allies regarded themselves as consumers: they
considered that it would be pleasant to have the Germans work for them as
temporary slaves, and to be able themselves to consume, without labour, what the
Germans had produced. Then, after the Treaty of Versailles had been concluded,
they suddenly remembered that they were also producers, and that the influx of
German goods which they had been demanding would ruin their industries.... The
plain fact is that the governing classes of the world are too ignorant and
stupid to be able to think through such a problem, and too conceited to ask advice of those who might help them” [pp.
66 – 67]. Well, what would Subhas as a ruling patriot say to this? How
support his reason? All these meeting-makers are reasonable people, aren’t they?
Yes, but human reason is a very convenient and
accommodating instrument and works only in the circle set for it by interest,
partiality and prejudice. The politicians reason wrongly or insincerely and have
power to enforce the results of their reasoning, so make a mess of the world’s
affairs,— the intellectuals reason and see what their minds show them, which is
far from being always the truth, for it is generally decided by intellectual
preference and the mind’s inborn or education-inculcated angle of vision,— but
even when they see it, they have no power to enforce it. So between blind power
and seeing impotence the world moves, achieving destiny through a mental muddle.
To conclude, Russell writes in the same essay: “When a
nation, instead of an individual, is seized with lunacy, it is thought to be
displaying remarkable industrial wisdom” [p. 67].
Qu’en dites-vous?
Seized with lunacy? But that implies the nation is
ordinarily led by reason? Is it so? Or even by common sense? Masses of men act
upon their vital push, not according to reason — individuals too mostly, though
they frequently call in their reason as a lawyer to plead the vital’s case.
30 January 1936