E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeslower still, how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of theUnited Kingdom, private and public, would fetch, as compared with thecontents of its wine- cellars?'The same iconoclastic spirit permeates Unto This Last: Four Essays on the FirstPrinciples of Political Economy, first published serially in the London CornhillMagazine and in Harper's, New York, in 1860 and later in book form. Of thiswork, forty years later, Gandhi said that it was written with 'blood and tears'.'Riches', Ruskin declared, 'are a power like that of electricity, acting throughinequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in yourpocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour's pocket. Ifhe did not want it, it would be of no use to you.' When he is poor and long outof work the guinea is more valuable to you. Therefore, 'what is really desired,under the name of riches, is essentially, power over men'.Consequently, men should seek 'not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; nothigher fortune but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, selfpossession;and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuitsof peace'.Remembering that 'what one person has, another cannot have', the rich shouldabstain from luxuries until all, the poorest too, shall have enough, 'until thetime come and the kingdom, when Christ's gifts of bread and bequest of peaceshall be unto this last as unto thee...'To Gandhi it meant: only that economy is good which conduces to the good ofall. This Gandhi had known. The second lesson, which he had 'dimly realized',was that 'a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's, inasmuch as allhave the same right of earning their livelihood for their work'. Gandhi derivedthis interpretation from one sentence in Ruskin's book: 'A labourer serves hiscountry with his spade, just as a man in the middle rank of life serves it withthe sword, the pen, or the lancet.' But Ruskin did not say, as Gandhi did, thatthe work of all lias the same value'. On the contrary, Ruskin stressed, morethan anything else, 'the impossibility of Equality' between men. He merelycontended that the underprivileged must find protection in the morality of thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 78