SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

34 S 6AIVA1SM IN ITS RELATION TO OTHER SYSTEMS.
It will not do for one to try to convert the other. We are
yet to see persons who have been converted by argument.
There must be a predisposing state of the mind in all conversions.
For argument also to be useful, there must be a pure heart
and an unprejudiced mind. If one enters into a controversy with
prepossessions of all kinds, and each is convinced of his own
truth, no agreement will be ever possible. Even in my private
talks, I avoid discussing with any person whose mind, I know
is prejudiced. With this one element absent, I have talked to
persons of all persuasions, free-thinkers included, and by the
time we parted, we had become dearer to each other.
t
However, our scheme is this. It takes stock of the f2ct
that there are essential differences between man anfd man.
Owing to differences of heridity and environment, facilities for
acquiring knowledge and their absence, and a hundred other
similar causes, people differ in their intellectual, moral and
spiritual equipments. If in a single family of half a dozen
children, fostered under the loving care of the same parents,
one should turn out to be an idiot and another an intellectual
giant, one a vagabond and another a saint, it is not merely
heridity alone that seems to count. There seems to be some
thing behind all these to account for the disparity. Our Hindu
writers try to account for it by the 4aw^^f-Jarma and past
experience or Purva Puny a. Be this as it may, the differences
in the moral and intellectual calibre of people are a fact and no
amount of education or correction seems to be of any use in
such cases. Apart from cases of physical and mental deforrriities,
one cannot minimise the difficulties of the mind itself.
Man must think. You cannot shut out his mind. As we
imbibe knowledge and acquire learning, our minds begin to
think and ponder over the same problems which have agitated
men s minds from the very beginning of time. And with all
the guides and mentors and correctives we possess, we take to
particular lines of thought which, in the end, are all limited.
But it is never too late to mend. We can outgrow our
thoughts and can change; and we do change, both consciously
and, in most cases, unconsciously. Even in the case of a single
individual, with a little introspection, it might be perceived,