MODERN AGE MESSAGE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5442, 1 July 1929, Page 4

MODERN AGE MESSAGE.

SPIRITUAL NEED OF HUMANITY. INDIAN WRITER’S ADDRESS. In an address before the National Council of Education which met at Victoria (British Columbia) at the beginning of April, the famous Indian writer, Sir Rabindranath Tagore, told of the spiritual needs of humanity. It was one of the largest gatherings of the kind ever held in Victoria, hundreds being unable to obtain admission. Reporters were present representative of the North American Continent, and the Daily Chroni’.le thus commented :— “The great gathering hung on the words of the ancient seer, steeped in the culture of the Orient, as he unfolded in poetic language avenues fcr higher living, for the appreciation of idealism and the avoidance of ‘spiritual clovenliness.’ ” Extracts from the Address. “Man unlocked the hidden resources of Nature, utilising them for his own purpose. So long as the upward movement is maintained it gives us a taste of the infinite, but if we stop we lose our dignity of soul and are doomed to stagnation. There are races of men who have allowed themselves to become stranded on the moveless sterility of their past achievement. The spirit of progress becomes a menace to humanity when we allow ourselves to be overcome by the material profit it promises and ignore its great spiritual meaning, the expansion of power, which gives us the divine right to transform this world into a perfect habitation for mankind.

“The process of the packing of fruit gains in merit according to the speed it attains by efficient organisation, by economising time through mechanical co-ordination of movements. But an innei’ quality of perfection, flavour, and mellowness, which may be described as its wealth of personality, is gained by the fruit, not by any impatient ignoring of time, but by surrendering itself to the subtle caresses of the sunlit leisure.

“The modern age is riding on a tornado of speed. Let us not forget that slow and mature productions are of immense value to man, for these alone can give balance to a bloated accumulation, and rhythm to the life that ever misses its happiness by missing the cadence of chastity in its enjoyment. All civilisations have been harvested from the deep soils of leisure. The perfection of our personality does not owe its quality to cleverness or deftness, or accuracy of observation, or the rationality that analyses and forms generalisations, but on our training in truth and love, upon ideals that go to the root of our being. And these require the ministration of quiet time for their adequate recognition.

“A true gentleman is the product of bounteous centuries of cultivated leisure. The ideals that: imparted life and body to civilisation, had been nourished in the reverend hopes of generations through ages which were not principally occupied with the pursuit of a runaway arithmetic, .which had large tracts of leisure in them for the blossoming of lifers beauty and ripening of her wisdom. “What should give us cause for anxiety is the fact that the spirit of progress occupies -a good deal more of our mind to-day than the deeper life process of our being, which requires depth of leisure for its sustenance. In the present age the larger part of, our growth takes place on the outside, and our inner spirit has not the time to accept and harmonise it. We grow accustomed to a spiritual slovenliness, the sweepings of an enormous traffic with the disordered fragments waiting to be relegated to their properplaces, which requires time. We say that time is money, but forget, that leisure is wealth —the wealth Vhadt is a creation of human spirit. Invention and organisation are spreading fast along the high road of our history, but the creative genius of man is losing its dignity and the gracious ideals of social life are becoming obscured. Compressed and crowded life has its use when dealing with material things, but living truths must have for then’ significance a full accommodation of leisure. The mind constantly pursued by a frenzied haste develops a chronic dyspepsia and becomes irritated with existence. “There was a time when man was growing aware of an infinite realm of spiritual personality. And he went oh his path of delivery from the narrow bounds of self towards true civilisation. This was the age of the distime. And he is still living on the covery of man by himself, for he had stored wealth of ideas that he won in those days. But the faith which help* to throb in his heartbeats and fire life with the living flame of lovtl is wearing away under the wheels pf the heavily laden car of time. A n<i to-day the ideals of humanity which he still maintains are mere habits acquired from dead and despised ccMCttrie'j.”