BROTHERHOOD
Friends:
We have arrived now at the last of the four Convention Lectures, and I will ask you to recall for a moment the path that we have trodden on these three days.
First you remember we considered the nature, the existence of God, His all-pervading Presence, His all-embracing Love and Power. Then we turned to the study of Man, and we saw that man evolved, grew from a Seed of Divinity into the tree in the likeness of the father-tree, whence the seed was thrown into the world. That he evolved under two great Laws: the "Law of Reincarnation" and the "Law of Causation, or Karma". Yesterday, we considered the complex problem of Right and Wrong, tried to understand the tangled path of action, and to understand also how, by realising our highest capacities of the moment, we could rise higher and higher in Knowledge, in Power, and in Love. To-day we close our study by looking at the "Law of Brotherhood," trying to understand what it means, seeing what it implies, endeavouring then, in the understanding, to see the principles on which a stable Society may be builded, and to glance forward into the near future of Humanity, with the changed ideals which will illuminate the Coming Race.
Now, this word, "Brotherhood," has been used for many ages and held to cover many different ideals. First of all, let us take the fact that "Brotherhood" does not and cannot connote equality, save in blood, in essence; rather does it connote inequality of age and development. As you know, you have the proclamation talked of so much in the French Revolution, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," and it has been taken for granted by many that Liberty and Fraternity imply the middle term, Equality. Now what is meant by the word "Equality"? If it be meant that all men are equal in their origin, that every man is born of the Divine Nature, that every man ultimately will reach the manifested Divinity, in that sense Equality is true. We all come forth from God, we all return to God, bearing with us the harvest of our long evolution, having unfolded potentiality into power. In the beginning and the ending, men are equal, equally divine in their beginning, equally divine in their ending; there all men stand on a common platform. But in the long course of evolution from the seed to the full-grown tree, in the long unfolding of Divinity, of God manifest in the flesh, in the long changing struggle between Spirit and Matter, there the races of mankind stand at different stages of their pilgrimage, and they are not on a common level, but are divorced the one from the other: While in Spirit all men are equal, in the flesh men are radically unequal; for Nature, in her long evolution, knows nothing of equality, and protests continually by facts against the theory of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. Where is the equality between the man of genius and the fool? Where is the equality between the stalwart and healthy man and the man who has inherited a terrible disease? Where is the equality between the cripple and the athlete? Between the Saint who has nearly accomplished his pilgrimage, and the savage who stands at the beginning? It is of no use to repeat a phrase that flies in the very face of facts and of Nature. Brotherhood connotes inequality of age, inequality of capacity, and inequality of duty. The duty of the elder brother is not the duty of the babe in the cradle. You do not crush the infant of a year old with the heavy burden of the family that lies on the elder brother, who has passed out into the struggle of life; and you need to get rid of the cant of a phrase and to understand the reality of life. You have to realise that the most that can be asked—because the most that is possible—in the building up of Society, is that no man shall artificially, by a man-made law or custom, be placed at an unfair disadvantage so far as those around him are concerned, but that there shall be equality before the law, equality of rich and poor before the law, equality of every citizen in the face of the law. Moreover, you ought to make it your ideal to give to every man equal opportunities; but you must remember that the radical inequality lies in the power to grasp an opportunity when it comes; there is the radical natural inequality that no human society and no human law can obviate.
But if you realise Brotherhood then you come to a new conception. You imagine the building of a social system, in which every man who is born into it shall have the opportunity of developing every faculty he brings with him into the world. A social system wherein from every member of the Society there shall be demanded social service according to his capacity, and to every member shall be given social helping according to his needs. You change the law of struggle into the law of life; you change the brute law of the struggle for existence into the social law of sacrifice. You begin to realise, as Huxley said, quoting a statement of a Master, an Indian Ṛṣhi, that while the brute progresses by the law of the survival of the fittest, the man progresses by the law of self-sacrifice.[1] There you come to the higher ideal and you see that in an elder brother there is inequality of age, and therefore inequality of capacity, therefore inequality of power, and therefore inequality of duty. By the law of love, the strong exist not for tyranny but for service, and where the weakest members are found there the tenderest compassion protects them, and saves them from being trampled under foot. Therefore was it said by one of the great Prophets of our race, by the Christ of Judæa: "Let the greatest among you be as he that doth serve." Great is the strength evolved, but for helping not for trampling; and so the inequalities of Nature are redressed by an infinite compassion.
Let us see how in the ancient world these principles, or the denial of these principles, has worked. Now the ancient ideal of Kingship is drawn from the perfect example in the great White Brotherhood of the Ṛṣhis of the race, wherein you find a graded order. They call themselves the "Elder Brothers" of mankind. Those whom we call Masters, because of Their greatness, They love better the name of Elder Brothers on whom lies the duty of guidance, of protection, of helping, in order that the younger brothers of our Humanity may come to stand where They are standing. There is the perfect Brotherhood. These, older in evolution than ourselves, wiser because of that longer evolution, these Jīvanmukṭas, these liberated Spirits, They, who are free by right, become bound to our earth by love. They remain waiting for the growth of Their younger brethren; They use Their wisdom to guide them; They use Their power to protect them; They use Their age to strengthen and sustain them. There is the ideal of Brotherhood, where Brother means the Servant of mankind.
And from that early recognition of the Elders in the childhood of the Root Races of the world, you come to the first great historical exemplification, the Divine Dynasties, the Divine Kings, as you find them in Egypt, as you find them in India, to go no further back to that earlier civilisation of the fourth Race, where in the City of the Golden Gate, of which the Chinese tell us, the Divine Emperor ruled with mighty power, and built the great Toltec race into a world-wide dominion. I will not go back so far, nor will I pause on Egypt, because here, in India, we have in the still living literature of the ancient days, the duties laid down which fall upon the Elder Brother in a Nation, who in those ancient days was the recognised King of the people. You find ideal Kings, like Shrī Rāmachanḍra, and you can see in His life, as you can see in the description of the duty of the King, what, from the standpoint of the Elder Brothers of the race, was meant by the position of the King. His life is not a life of enjoyment, but of service and of sacrifice. It is written, that the King remains awake, in order that his subjects may sleep; that the King toils, in order that his subjects may enjoy; that the King faces danger, in order that his people may be protected; that he is the Supporter of the State, the Guardian of the weak, the Dispenser of Justice to his people, the Father of the fatherless, and the Husband of the widow. And so in early days the Ṛṣhi comes to the court of the King, and questions him how he is ruling his younger brothers. "Have you seen," asked Nāraḍa, when He came to a later dynasty, no longer divine; "have you seen that the artisans are provided with all the materials that they need for their manufactures and industries? Have you seen that the agriculturists have a store of seeds, that they are provided with water, and with agricultural implements? Do you take care that your soldiers receive their wages? Do you take care that the widows and orphans of those who have died for you in battle are well provided for and carefully tended?" And so, this Elder Brother of the race, coming to this man, divine no longer, but only a human copy of the once manifested Divine King, pressed on him the duties of his station, and demanded whether those duties were being rightly exercised. Out of that great ideal of Kingship has grown the reverence for the modern King, though he be of smaller stature, and has not often fulfilled his duties well; for that ideal has printed itself on the heart of mankind, and the passionate love, the intense loyalty, that go out to a King, who is in any sense worthy of Kingship, show how the human heart loves to reverence and to honour, where high power and great position are in any way worthy of the privileges enjoyed.
And always one great warning went out to those ancient Kings, as spoken by Bhīṣhma, the Master of Ḍharma, when the blameless King Yuḍhiṣhthira went to him to ask as to the duties of the Elder Brother of the Nation. He bade him remember that behind the King was the Law, the Divine Law, which none might break with impunity. And then those famous words were spoken that every King should daily remember: "Take care, O King, of the weak, not of the strong; take care of the weak, for the tears of the weak undermine the throne of Kings." That is the great lesson for modern rulers. You may have enemies, you can fight them and conquer them; you may have difficulties, you can surmount them and turn them into steps upwards; but take care of the poor, take care of the miserable, take care of the starving of your realm. For of these, said Bhīṣhma, to whose cry no man listens, the cry enters into the ears of God, who calls on His representative to give account for the miseries of the poor, and who avenges their wrongs by the destruction of the careless King. Now there lies the old ideal.
But many of the States of the past were built on the denial of this great Law of Brotherhood. Look at Babylonia; look at the later Egypt; look at the so-called Republics of Greece; look at the masses of the people under the Roman Empire; what do you find? You find that every great Empire of the later past has been built on a foundation of the misery of the lowest of the people. You find that the vast majority in these Empires were slaves—slaves in name, as well as in reality. Brotherhood was denied; the weak were trampled on; strength was used to plunder and not to cherish; with the result that every such Empire has faded from the pages of history. When we want to know their stories we have to burrow in their sepulchres, for they built against the Law of Brotherhood, and the Law has broken them into pieces, and they are dead. Now of all the ancient Empires, Babylonia, Assyria, Nineveh, Egypt, Greece, Rome, all these have passed away; only one Nation remains of that splendid circle of civilisations in the past; only one people, contemporary with those mighty Empires, is still a living Nation; they are dead, nay, they are buried, and only the fragments of their bones remain; but one of their contemporaries lives in our modern days, for the India, that traded with Babylonia in the might of her prosperity, is a living Nation in the twentieth century. And why? because in her teaching, because in her religion, because in her literature, she taught the Law of Brotherhood, though later she ceased to live it out in practice, and then began her long downward course. The old theory of the castes was a law of Brotherhood; the Shūḍra who serves, said Manu, he is to be the younger child in your family. There is no humiliation in being a younger child in a family; there is no shame in being one of the juniors of the circle of brothers and sisters; nay, it means the enjoyment of the tenderest compassion; it means a gentle protective attitude; it means that when anything is wanted, the younger shall have what there is and the elder shall go without. That was the old ideal of the Shūḍra, who was to be the young and undeveloped soul. Let him in the National household be the cherished youngling of the family; let him be as your younger son. Then came restrictions with the growing age of the soul. The Vaishya—he was to accumulate wealth; he was to enjoy; he was to be the centre of the great family life, the parent, the supporter of the whole National household. Certainly wealth was to be acquired, but in order to be dispensed—wealth to support the remaining Orders in the State. And that charity that you still find in India, the charity which is of the older days rather than of to-day, is still ingrained in the whole Vaishya caste. For though they will gather wealth—pie by pie, anna by anna, rupee by rupee, they give it away in lakhs and crores for the use of the people. All that is wanted in this charity is to change the direction. There is no use in letting fertilising water run over rocks, because they were once fields; turn it into the fields of to-day, which will then blossom as the rose. I say of the charity of this great wealth-caste, the merchants, the traders, of modern India, that they should turn the wealth they give away so largely into the fertilising streams which will nourish the National fields. Their duty as brothers who are working for the National household, is not only to build temples, to gild the outside of those temples of Ḍevas. What is the use of a temple, if the worshippers are not there? And if you let your youths grope through their studies without knowledge of religion, of what avail to build a temple which will be left empty by them in their manhood? It is the young who need training in religion and in morality, and such education is stopped for lack of the Vaishya liberality. Education is left in the hands of Government, whereas it is the duty of the householders of the Nation. Education under National control, Education in which religion shall form an integral part of the curriculum, that is what India is demanding to-day, and what many are struggling to gain. That Central Hinḍū College which we built in Benares, which has now flowered into the great Hinḍū University, in that you have an attempt, partly frustrated, I admit, to have a University under National control; down in the South, in the great foundation of a merchant of Madras, Pachaiyappa, there you have also the possibility of building up out of a College, a University under National control.