No More Learning

What I object to is the artificial arrangement by which foreign
education tends to occupy all the space of our national mind, and thus
kills, or hampers, the great opportunity for the creation of a new
thought-power by a new combination of truths. It is this which makes
me urge that all the elements in our own culture have to be
strengthened, not to resist the Western culture, but truly to accept
and assimilate it; to use it for our sustenance, not as our burden; to
get mastery over this culture, and not to live on its outskirts as the
hewers of texts and drawers of book-learning.

The main river in Indian culture has flowed in four streams,--the
Vedic, the Puranic, the Buddhist, and the Jain. It has its source in
the heights of the Indian consciousness. But a river, belonging to a
country, is not fed by its own waters alone. The Tibetan Brahmaputra
is a tributary to the Indian Ganges. Contributions have similarly
found their way to India's original culture. The Muhammadan, for
example, has repeatedly come into India from outside, laden with his
own stores of knowledge and feeling and his wonderful religious
democracy, bringing freshet after freshet to swell the current. To our
music, our architecture, our pictorial art, our literature, the
Muhammadans have made their permanent and precious contribution. Those
who have studied the lives and writings of our medieval saints, and
all the great religious movements that sprang up in the time of the
Muhammadan rule, know how deep is our debt to this foreign current
that has so intimately mingled with our life.

So, in our centre of Indian learning, we must provide for the
co-ordinate study of all these different cultures,--the Vedic, the
Puranic, the Buddhist, the Jain, the Islamic, the Sikh and the
Zoroastrian. The Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan will also have to be
added; for, in the past, India did not remain isolated within her own
boundaries. Therefore, in order to learn what she was, in her relation
to the whole continent of Asia, these cultures too must be studied.
Side by side with them must finally be placed the Western culture. For
only then shall we be able to assimilate this last contribution to our
common stock. A river flowing within banks is truly our own, and it
can contain its due tributaries; but our relations with a flood can
only prove disastrous.

There are some who are exclusively modern, who believe that the past
is the bankrupt time, leaving no assets for us, but only a legacy of
debts. They refuse to believe that the army which is marching forward
can be fed from the rear. It is well to remind such persons that the
great ages of renaissance in history were those when man suddenly
discovered the seeds of thought in the granary of the past.

The unfortunate people who have lost the harvest of their past have
lost their present age. They have missed their seed for cultivation,
and go begging for their bare livelihood. We must not imagine that we
are one of these disinherited peoples of the world. The time has come
for us to break open the treasure-trove of our ancestors, and use it
for our commerce of life. Let us, with its help, make our future our
own, and not continue our existence as the eternal rag-pickers in
other people's dustbins.

So far I have dwelt only upon the intellectual aspect of Education.
For, even in the West, it is the intellectual training which receives
almost exclusive emphasis. The Western universities have not yet truly
recognised that fulness of expression is fulness of life. And a large
part of man can never find its expression in the mere language of
words. It must therefore seek for its other languages,--lines and
colours, sounds and movements. Through our mastery of these we not
only make our whole nature articulate, but also understand man in all
his attempts to reveal his innermost being in every age and clime. The
great use of Education is not merely to collect facts, but to know
man and to make oneself known to man. It is the duty of every human
being to master, at least to some extent, not only the language of
intellect, but also that personality which is the language of Art. It
is a great world of reality for man,--vast and profound,--this growing
world of his own creative nature. This is the world of Art. To be
brought up in ignorance of it is to be deprived of the knowledge and
use of that great inheritance of humanity, which has been growing and
waiting for every one of us from the beginning of our history. It is
to remain deaf to the eternal voice of Man, that speaks to all men the
messages that are beyond speech. From the educational point of view we
know Europe where it is scientific, or at best literary. So our notion
of its modern culture is limited within the boundary lines of grammar
and the laboratory. We almost completely ignore the aesthetic life of
man, leaving it uncultivated, allowing weeds to grow there. Our
newspapers are prolific, our meeting-places are vociferous; and in
them we wear to shreds the things we have borrowed from our English
teachers. We make the air dismal and damp with the tears of our
grievances. But where are our arts, which, like the outbreak of
spring flowers, are the spontaneous overflow of our deeper nature and
spiritual magnificence?

Through this great deficiency of our modern education, we are
condemned to carry to the end a dead load of dumb wisdom. Like
miserable outcasts, we are deprived of our place in the festival of
culture, and wait at the outer court, where the colours are not for
us, nor the forms of delight, nor the songs. Ours is the education of
a prison-house, with hard labour and with a drab dress cut to the
limits of minimum decency and necessity. We are made to forget that
the perfection of colour and form and expression belongs to the
perfection of vitality,--that the joy of life is only the other side
of the strength of life. The timber merchant may think that the
flowers and foliage are mere frivolous decorations of a tree; but if
these are suppressed, he will know to his cost that the timber too
will fail.

During the Moghal period, music and art in India found a great impetus
from the rulers, because their whole life--not merely their official
life--was lived in this land; and it is the wholeness of life from
which originates Art. But our English teachers are birds of passage;
they cackle to us, but do not sing,--their true heart is not in the
land of their exile.

Constriction of life, owing to this narrowness of culture, must no
longer be encouraged. In the centre of Indian culture which I am
proposing, music and art must have their prominent seats of honour,
and not be given merely a tolerant nod of recognition. The different
systems of music and different schools of art which lie scattered in
the different ages and provinces of India, and in the different strata
of society, and also those belonging to the other great countries of
Asia, which had communication with India, have to be brought there
together and studied.

I have already hinted that Education should not be dragged out of its
native element, the life-current of the people. Economic life covers
the whole width of the fundamental basis of society, because its
necessities are the simplest and the most universal. Educational
institutions, in order to obtain their fulness of truth, must have
close association with this economic life. The highest mission of
education is to help us to realise the inner principle of the unity of
all knowledge and all the activities of our social and spiritual
being. Society in its early stage was held together by its economic
co-operation, when all its members felt in unison a natural interest
in their right to live. Civilisation could never have been started at
all if such was not the case. And civilisation will fall to pieces if
it never again realises the spirit of mutual help and the common
sharing of benefits in the elemental necessaries of life. The idea of
such economic co-operation should be made the basis of our University.
It must not only instruct, but live; not only think, but produce.

Our ancient _tapovanas_, or forest schools, which were our natural
universities, were not shut off from the daily life of the people.
Masters and students gathered fruit and fuel, and took their cattle
out to graze, supporting themselves by the work of their own hands.
Spiritual education was a part of the spiritual life itself, which
comprehended all life. Our centre of culture should not only be the
centre of the intellectual life of India, but the centre of her
economic life also. It must co-operate with the villages round it,
cultivate land, breed cattle, spin cloths, press oil from oil-seeds;
it must produce all the necessaries, devising the best means, using
the best materials, and calling science to its aid. Its very existence
should depend upon the success of its industrial activities carried
out on the co-operative principle, which will unite the teachers and
students and villagers of the neighbourhood in a living and active
bond of necessity. This will give us also a practical industrial
training, whose motive force is not the greed of profit.

Before I conclude my paper, a delicate question remains to be
considered. What must be the religious ideal that is to rule our
centre of Indian culture? The one abiding ideal in the religious life
of India has been _Mukti_, the deliverance of man's soul from the grip
of self, its communion with the Infinite Soul through its union in
_ananda_ with the universe. This religion of spiritual harmony is not
a theological doctrine to be taught, as a subject in the class, for
half an hour each day. It is the spiritual truth and beauty of our
attitude towards our surroundings, our conscious relationship with the
Infinite, and the lasting power of the Eternal in the passing moments
of our life. Such a religious ideal can only be made possible by
making provision for students to live in intimate touch with nature,
daily to grow in an atmosphere of service offered to all creatures,
tending trees, feeding birds and animals, learning to feel the immense
mystery of the soil and water and air.

Along with this, there should be some common sharing of life with the
tillers of the soil and the humble workers in the neighbouring
villages; studying their crafts, inviting them to the feasts, joining
them in works of co-operation for communal welfare; and in our
intercourse we should be guided, not by moral maxims or the
condescension of social superiority, but by natural sympathy of life
for life, and by the sheer necessity of love's sacrifice for its own
sake. In such an atmosphere students would learn to understand that
humanity is a divine harp of many strings, waiting for its one grand
music. Those who realise this unity are made ready for the pilgrimage
through the night of suffering, and along the path of sacrifice, to
the great meeting of Man in the future, for which the call comes to us
across the darkness.

Life, in such a centre, should be simple and clean. We should never
believe that simplicity of life might make us unsuited to the
requirements of the society of our time. It is the simplicity of the
tuning-fork, which is needed all the more because of the intricacy of
strings in the instrument. In the morning of our career our nature
needs the pure and the perfect note of a spiritual ideal in order to
fit us for the complications of our later years.

In other words, this institution should be a perpetual creation by the
co-operative enthusiasm of teachers and students, growing with the
growth of their soul; a world in itself, self-sustaining, independent,
rich with ever-renewing life, radiating life across space and time,
attracting and maintaining round it a planetary system of dependent
bodies. Its aim should lie in imparting life-breath to the complete
man, who is intellectual as well as economic, bound by social bonds,
but aspiring towards spiritual freedom and final perfection.


THE END

_Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.




BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE


=GITANJALI. (Song Offerings. )= Translated by the Author. With an
Introduction by W. B. YEATS, and a Portrait by W. ROTHENSTEIN. Crown
8vo. 5s. net.

_ATHENAEUM. _--"Mr. Tagore's translations are of trance-like beauty. . . .
The expanding sentiment of some of the poems wins, even through the
alien medium of our English prose, a rhythm which in its strength and
melody might recall familiar passages in the Psalms or Solomon's
Song. "


=FRUIT-GATHERING. A Sequel to "Gitanjali. "= Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

_ATHENAEUM. _--"The eighty-six pieces that fill this volume are pure
jets of lyric feeling, aphorisms expressed in moving symbols, or fully
developed parables and allegories . . . several are as perfect in form
as they are beautiful and poignant in content. "


=GITANJALI AND FRUIT-GATHERING. =

With Illustrations in colour and half-tone by NANDALAL BOSE,
SURENDRANATH KAR, ABANINDRANATH TAGORE, and NOBINDRANATH TAGORE. Crown
8vo. 10s. net.


=THE GARDENER. Lyrics of Love and Life. = Translated by the Author. With
Portrait. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

_DAILY MAIL. _--"Flowers as fresh as sunrise. . . . One cannot tell what
they have lost in the translation, but as they stand they are of
extreme beauty. . . . They are simple, exalted, fragrant--episodes and
incidents of every day transposed to faery. "


=THE CRESCENT MOON. Child-Poems. = Translated by the Author. With 8
Illustrations in Colour. Pott 4to. 5s. net.

_NATION. _--"A vision of childhood which is only paralleled in our
literature by the work of William Blake. "


=STRAY BIRDS. = Poems. With a Frontispiece by WILLY POGANY. Crown 8vo.
4s. 6d. net.

_SCOTSMAN. _--"The richness of this volume in thought and in imagery,
in tracing analogies and in discovering apologues, is such as to yield
pleasure and profit to the most fertile and cultured minds. "


=LOVER'S GIFT AND CROSSING. = Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

_ATHENAEUM. _--"The poems often touch extreme heights of passion and
sublimity, and the diction has a beauty and a music that few have
attained in this particular medium. "


=THE FUGITIVE. = Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

_SUNDAY TIMES. _--"In 'The Fugitive' the lovers of Tagore will not be
disappointed. He has all his powers still undimmed. Indeed, the poet
never, in our judgment, has surpassed this work. "


=CHITRA. A Play. = Translated by the Author. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

_OBSERVER. _--"An allegory of love's meaning, clear as a pool in the
sunshine. It was written, we are told, twenty-five years ago. . . . Even
then Mr. Tagore had that calm intensity of vision which we have all
come to love in his later work. We find in him that for which Arjuna
groped in his love, 'that ultimate _you_, that bare simplicity of
truth,' and never more than in this little work of beauty, 'Chitra. '"


=THE KING OF THE DARK CHAMBER. = =A Play. = Translated by KSHITISH CHANDRA
SEN. Crown 8vo. 6s. net.

_PALL MALL GAZETTE. _--"Altogether, the play is a beautiful piece of
fanciful writing with a veiled purpose at the back of it. "


=THE POST OFFICE. A Play. = Translated by DEVABRATA MUKERJEA. Crown 8vo.
3s. 6d. net.

_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.
_--"'The Post Office' is a delicate, wistful
thing, coloured with beautiful imagery; for a moment it lifts a corner
of the veil of worldly existence. The translation is throughout
extremely happy. "


=THE CYCLE OF SPRING. A Play. = Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN. _--"The whole little drama is a spring-gift such
as England has seldom received. "


=SACRIFICE and other Plays. = Crown 8vo. 6s. net.

_SCOTSMAN. _--"All the pieces have a rare beauty of their own. "


=THE HOME AND THE WORLD. A Novel. = Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

_SATURDAY REVIEW. _--"In these days of indiscriminating praise, it is
hard for a reviewer to find words with which to welcome properly a
book so good as this. "


=THE WRECK. A Novel. = Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.

_MORNING POST. _--"The story cannot fail to interest and delight. "


=MASHI and other Stories. = Crown 8vo. 6s. net.

_OXFORD MAGAZINE. _--"Full of pregnant pictures of Indian life and
character, subdued but vivid in tone. "


=HUNGRY STONES and other Stories. = Crown 8vo. 6s. net.

_DAILY TELEGRAPH. _--"Contains descriptive passages of rare vigour and
beauty, and is embellished with imagery of a delicate and distinctive
character. "


=S? DHAN? : The Realisation of Life. Lectures. = Extra Crown 8vo. 6s.
net.

=NATIONALISM. = Extra Crown 8vo. 6s. net.

=PERSONALITY. Lectures delivered in America. = Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
6s. net.

=CREATIVE UNITY. Essays. = Extra Crown 8vo.

=MY REMINISCENCES. = Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

=GLIMPSES OF BENGAL. Selected from the Letters of Rabindranath Tagore,
1885 to 1895. = Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

=ONE HUNDRED POEMS OF KABIR. = Translated by RABINDRANATH TAGORE,
assisted by EVELYN UNDERHILL. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

=RABINDRANATH TAGORE. = A Biographical Study. By ERNEST RHYS.
Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.

=SIX PORTRAITS OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE. = By W. ROTHENSTEIN. Reproduced in
Collotype. With Prefatory Note by MAX BEERBOHM. Imperial 4to. 10s.
net.

=THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MAHARSHI DEVENDRANATH TAGORE= (Father of
RABINDRANATH TAGORE). Translated by SATYENDRANATH TAGORE and INDIRA
DEVI. With Introduction by EVELYN UNDERHILL, and Portrait. Extra Crown
8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

=THE PHILOSOPHY OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE. = By Prof. S. RADHAKRISHNAN. 8vo.
8s. 6d. net.

=SHANTINIKETAN: The Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore. = By W. W.
PEARSON. With Introduction by RABINDRANATH TAGORE. Illustrated. 8vo.
4s. 6d. net.

LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. , LTD.




TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. The page numbers
in the Table of Contents have been adjusted to match the actual page
numbers.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Creative Unity, by Rabindranath Tagore

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE UNITY ***

***** This file should be named 23136-0. txt or 23136-0. zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www. gutenberg. org/2/3/1/3/23136/

Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Irma Spehar and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www. pgdp. net


Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you! ) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.



*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg. net/license).


Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works

1. A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1. E. 8.

1. B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1. C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1. E below.

1. C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.

1. D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.

1. E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1. E. 1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www. gutenberg. net

1. E. 2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1. E. 1
through 1. E. 7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1. E. 8 or
1. E. 9.

1. E. 3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1. E. 1 through 1.