THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

IX. 5. Epistles from Abroad459able. Whether it is not worth while, in this respect, to go backto the savage, is a question my logical friend refuses to discuss.To entertain it would be an insult to civilisation. Another gentlemanof equal clarity poohpoohed the idea of considering the existenceof God and immortality on the ground that the very motionwould be retrograde. “It would be going back,” he cried, “itwould be going back. We have got rid of God; we have finishedwith the superstition of immortality. Will you deny the progressof enlightenment? My friend, let these ghosts rest in their shadows.”And nothing would induce him to give God a chance. Darwinand Huxley and Haeckel had settled the Creator's hash for Him;it was res judicata. It is wonderful how easily man tramples onone formula merely to bow reverently before another. Naturereplaces God, Progress dethrones Immortality. Yet, in fact, theseare merely different names for one thing in its varying aspects.Nature is God manifest in Matter; Progress is possible becausethe soul of man is immortal.This talk wearies you. You would prefer perhaps that I shouldwrite of the municipality in Paris, the merits and defects of thesewer system, the latest plays at the theatres, a description ofboulevard and café or the debates in the Chamber or some hintas to whether I have made acquaintance with any of the FrenchAcademicians. “Plague take the fellow!” you will cry, “he is likethe Englishman who marches about in the full panoply of Europein the heats of a Calcutta summer; wherever he goes hetakes India with him.” Pardon me, my friend; that is not whollycorrect. I have forgotten for the time what a detective looks like.I no longer look round at every fifty yards to see how many policemenin plain clothes are following me. Dacoits and approversare growing as far away from my mind as Titus Oates or Tiberius.I no longer pant to know our excellent Baikuntha Babu's latestblank question or withdrawn resolution in Bengal's new Parliamentor what Bengal's only Maharajadhiraj thinks about Englishcoolies. I have left India behind; I have not brought it with me.But in the sense you mean, I have brought India with me,that which is eternal in India. Danton, when pressed to escapefrom the coming doom to Switzerland, answered, “One does not