Edward Carpenter

“ How different from Ceylon! There is a certain severity about India, both climate and people. The dry soil, the burning sun (for though so much farther north the sun has a more wicked quality about it here) , are matched by a certain aridity and tension in the people. Ceylon is idyllic, romantic—the plentiful foliage and shade everywhere, the easy-going nature of the Cinghalese themselves, the absence of caste—even the English are softened towards such willing subjects. ”

“ It should be as easy to expel an obnoxious thought from your mind as to shake a stone out of your shoe; and till a man can do that, it is just nonsense to talk about his ascendancy over Nature, and all the rest of it. He is a mere slave, and a prey to the bat-winged phantoms that flit through the corridors of his own brain.
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Yet the weary and careworn faces that we meet by thousands, even among the affluent classes of civilisation, testify only too clearly how seldom this mastery is obtained. How rare indeed to meet a man! ”

“ The East seeks the universal consciousness, and in those cases where its quest succeeds individual self and life thin away to a mere film, and are only the shadows cast by the glory revealed beyond.
The individual consciousness takes the form of Thought, which is fluid and mobile like quicksilver, perpetually in a state of change and unrest, fraught with pain and effort; the other consciousness is not in the form of Thought. ”

“ All round the little lake, thronging the steps and the sides in the great glare of the torches, were hundreds of men and boys, barebodied, barehead and barefoot, but with white loin-cloths—all in a state of great excitement—not religious so much as spectacular, as at the commencement of a theatrical performance, myself and companion about the only persons clothed,—except that in a corner and forming a pretty mass of color were a few women and girls, of the poorer class of Tamils, but brightly dressed, with nose-rings and ear-rings profusely ornamented. ”

“ It seems as if the portico ought to open back on a vast interior; but it doesn’t. There is no mysterious gloom anywhere—not a cranny for a hobgoblin even. There is no nice Virgin Mary in the niches, or nasty gurgoyle on the angles, no meditative Buddha or terrifying Kali with necklace of skulls, no suggestion of companionship human or divine, no appeal to sense. It doesn’t give one a chance of even having a make-believe god. How different from Hinduism with its lingams and sexual symbols deified in the profound gloom of the temple’s innermost recess! ”

“ Blacktown reminds one of Pompeii—as it may have been in its time—mostly one-storied buildings, stuccoed brick with little colonnades or lean-to thatches in front, cool dark stone interiors with little or no furniture—a bit of a court somewhere inside, with a gleam of the relentless sun—a few mango leaves over the door in honor of the Pongal festival (now going on) , and saffron smeared on doorposts; a woman standing half lost in shadow, men squatting idling in a verandah, a brahman cow with a bright brass necklace lying down just in the street— (sometimes in the verandah itself) ”

“ If one ascends the Abhayagiria dágoba, from its vantage height of 300 feet he has a good bird’s-eye view of the region. Before him to the west and north stretches as far as the eye can see a level plain almost unbroken by hills. This plain is covered, except for a few reservoirs and an occasional but rare oasis of coco-nut palm, by dense woods. On all sides they stretch, like a uniform grey-green carpet over the earth; even the present village of Anurádhapura hardly makes a break,—so small is it, and interspersed with trees. ”

“ There is no necessity to suppose that desire, in itself, is an evil; indeed it is quite conceivable that it may fall into place as a useful and important element of human nature—though certainly one whose importance will be found to dwindle and gradually disappear as time goes on. The trouble for us is, in our present state, that desire is liable to grow to such dimensions as to overcloud the world for us, emprison, and shut us out from inestimable Freedom beneath its sway. ”

“ By will to surrender the will; by determination and concentration to press inward and upward to that portion of one’s being which belongs to the universal, to conquer the body, to conquer the thoughts, to conquer the passions and emotions; always will, and will-power. And here again we have a paradox, because in their quiescent, gentle, and rather passive external life—so different from the push and dominating energy of the Western nations—there is little to make one expect such force. ”

“ The money and commercial interest, which is now by far the most powerful interest in all modern states, is not such a fool as to favor a system of national economy which would be its own ruin. No; it must encourage trade in every way, at all costs. Trade, commerce, exchange, exports and imports—these are the things which bring dividends and interest, which fill the pockets of the parasites at the expense of the people ”

“ The Taj stands on a terrace which falls perpendicular into the Jumna river (behind the building in the above illustration) . A mile and a half away to the west lies the sombre line of the fort walls crowned with the marble kiosks and minarets of the royal palace. A mile or two beyond that again lies the city of Agra, with one or two spires of English churches or colleges; while to the east the lovely tomb looks out over a wild ravine land, bare and scarred, which suggests a landscape in the moon as much as anything. ”

“ There is a lovely view of cloudland from the summit now the moon has risen. All the lower lands and mountains are wrapped in mist, and you look down upon a great white rolling sea, silent, remote from the world, with only the moon and stars above, and the sound of the Buddhist priests chanting away in a low tone round the fire in their own little cabin or pansela. ”

“ Anyhow they teach a certain power and control over the thoughts; and it is a doctrine much insisted on by the Gurus that in life generally the habit of the undivided concentration of the mind on that which one is doing is of the utmost importance. The wandering of the mind, its division and distraction, its openness to attack by brigand cares and anxieties, its incapacity to heartily enjoy itself in its work, not only lame and cripple and torment it in every way, but are a mark of the want of that faith which believes in the Now as the divine moment, and takes no thought for the Morrow. ”

“ In many of these villages the face of a white man is seldom or never seen. Even such centres as Allahabad are mere specks in an ocean; the railway is a slender line of civilisation whose influence hardly extends beyond the sound of the locomotive whistle; over the northern borders of the plain the great snows of the Himalayas dawn into sight and fade away again mornings and evenings, and through its midst wind the slow broad-bosomed waters of the sacred Ganges. ”

“ I think if the English have infested and plagued poor India, it is greatly the fault of the Indians themselves who in their passiveness and lethargy have allowed it to be so. And I think—taking perhaps on my side a too optimistic view—that this growing industrialism and mechanical civilisation may (for a time) do much good, in the way of rousing up the people, giving definition, so much needed, to their minds and work, and instilling among them the Western idea of progress, which in some ways fallacious has still its value and use. ”

“ Good old John Bull pays through the nose for being ruler of this country. He overwhelms the people by force, but they turn upon him—as the weaker is prone to do—through craft; and truly they have their revenge. Half believing in the idea that as sahib and ruler of the country he must live in such and such style, have so many servants, etc., or he would lose his prestige, he acquiesces in a system of impositions; he is pestered to death, and hates it all, but he must submit. ”

“ To know the people, and to be so trusted by them that they will open out to us the inmost recesses of their hearts; to see them daily; to come to love them as those who have in their nature but an average share of affection cannot help loving them when they know them well—this is our ideal for the Indian civilian. ”

“ They spring from ignorance and are the products of darkness. On no word did the “Grammarian” insist more strongly than on the word Non-differentiation. You are not even to differentiate yourself in thought from others; you are not to begin to regard yourself as separate from them. Even to talk about helping others is a mistake; it is vitiated by the delusion that you and they are twain. So closely does the subtle Hindu mind go to the mark! What would our bald commercial philanthropy, our sleek æsthetic altruism, our scientific isophily, say to such teaching? ”

“ Most of the images of Buddha in the present temples108 of Ceylon are painfully crude productions; but this has caught something of the grace of the great Guru. The eyelids are just shut, yet so slightly as to suggest that the figure is not lost in the ordinary material sleep, but only in that luminous slumber which, while closing itself to the outward and transitory world, opens on the eternal and steadfast consciousness behind. A deep calm overspreads the face—so deep that it insensibly affects the passerby. ”

“ One understands (or thinks one does) how these immense plains have contributed to the speculative character of the Hindu mind. Mountains and broken ground call out energy and invention, but here there is no call upon one to leave the place where one is, or to change one’s habits of life, for the adjoining hundreds of miles present nothing new. Custom undisturbed consolidates itself; society crystallises into caste. The problem of external life once solved presents no more interest, and mechanical invention slumbers; the mind retires inward to meditate and to conquer. ”

“ It was very curious to me, as a contrast to English ways, to see all these youngish fellows sitting round listening to this rather stupid old man playing by the hour—so quiescent and resigned if one might use the word. They are so fond of simply doing nothing; their legs crossed and heads meditatively bent forward; clerks, small foremen and bookkeepers, and some probably manual workers—looking very nice and clean withal in their red turbans and white or black shawls or coats.
There is a certain tastefulness and grace always observable in India. ”

“ There are a few souls, born travelers and such like, for whom race-barriers do not exist, and who are everywhere at home, but they are rare. For the world at large the great race-divisions are very deep, very insuperable. Here is a vast problem. The social problem which to-day hangs over the Western lands is a great one; but this looms behind it, even vaster. Anyhow in India the barrier is plain enough to be seen—more than physical, more than intellectual, more than moral—a deepset ineradicable incompatibility. ”

“ We all know that they have to be surpassed—we all know that the ultimate and common humanity must disentangle itself and rise superior to them in the end. The Gñáni knows it—it is almost the central fact of his religious philosophy and practice; the Western democrat knows it—it is also the central fact of his creed. But the way to its realisation is long and intricate and bewildering. ”

“ Taking it at its worst the general population is dirty, lazy and rapacious. As in our slums, a kind of listlessness and despair marks the people in the poorest quarters—who, instead of congregating as with us round a beershop, may be seen perching about on doorsteps and even on the tops of walls, sitting on their heels with knees drawn up to the chin, and a draggled garment about them—looking painfully like vultures, and generally chewing betel, that common resource against hunger. ”

“ I have walked alone through a crowded city in this part of India for two or three hours without seeing a single white face—one among scores of thousands—and the people officiously pushing each other out of the way to make room for me, the native police and soldiers saluting and shouldering arms as one went by, and if one chanced to look too straight at a man he covered his face with his hands and bowed low to the ground! This does not happen fortunately in the great centres like Bombay and Calcutta, but it does in some of the up-country cities ”

“ The evils of a commercial class-government which we are beginning to realise so acutely at home—the want of touch between the rulers and the ruled, the testing of all politics by the touchstone of commercial profits and dividends, the consequent enrichment of the few at the expense of the many, the growth of slum and factory life, and the impoverishment of the peasant and the farmer, are curiously paralleled by what is taking place in India ”