A Letter to a Hindu | Page 4

who have
done evil unto him.__
__If a man causes suffering even to those who hate him without any
reason, he will ultimately have grief not to be overcome.__

__The punishment of evil doers consists in making them feel ashamed
of themselves by doing them a great kindness.__
__Of what use is superior knowledge in the one, if he does not
endeavour to relieve his neighbour's want as much as his own?__
__If, in the morning, a man wishes to do evil unto another, in the
evening the evil will return to him.__
THE HINDU KURAL.
Thus it went on everywhere. The recognition that love represents the
highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was
so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted
it, that finally nothing of it remained but words. It was taught that this
highest morality was only applicable to private life--for home use, as it
were--but that in public life all forms of violence--such as
imprisonment, executions, and wars--might be used for the protection
of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were
diametrically opposed to any vestige of love. And though common
sense indicated that if some men claim to decide who is to be subjected
to violence of all kinds for the benefit of others, these men to whom
violence is applied may, in turn, arrive at a similar conclusion with
regard to those who have employed violence to them, and though the
great religious teachers of Brahmanism, Buddhism, and above all of
Christianity, foreseeing such a perversion of the law of love, have
constantly drawn attention to the one invariable condition of love
(namely, the enduring of injuries, insults, and violence of all kinds
without resisting evil by evil) people continued--regardless of all that
leads man forward--to try to unite the incompatibles: the virtue of love,
and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence.
And such a teaching, despite its inner contradiction, was so firmly
established that the very people who recognize love as a virtue accept
as lawful at the same time an order of life based on violence and
allowing men not merely to torture but even to kill one another.
For a long time people lived in this obvious contradiction without
noticing it. But a time arrived when this contradiction became more and
more evident to thinkers of various nations. And the old and simple
truth that it is natural for men to help and to love one another, but not to
torture and to kill one another, became ever clearer, so that fewer and
fewer people were able to believe the sophistries by which the

distortion of the truth had been made so plausible.
In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and
thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the
rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs, and other heads of states. But
the longer humanity lived the weaker grew the belief in this peculiar,
God--given right of the ruler. That belief withered in the same way and
almost simultaneously in the Christian and the Brahman world, as well
as in Buddhist and Confucian spheres, and in recent times it has so
faded away as to prevail no longer against man's reasonable
understanding and the true religious feeling. People saw more and more
clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, the senselessness and
immorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people just like
themselves, when they are bidden to do what is contrary not only to
their interests but also to their moral sense. And so one might suppose
that having lost confidence in any religious authority for a belief in the
divinity of potentates of various kinds, people would try to free
themselves from subjection to it. But unfortunately not only were the
rulers, who were considered supernatural beings, benefited by having
the peoples in subjection, but as a result of the belief in, and during the
rule of, these pseudodivine beings, ever larger and larger circles of
people grouped and established themselves around them, and under an
appearance of governing took advantage of the people. And when the
old deception of a supernatural and God-appointed authority had
dwindled away these men were only concerned to devise a new one
which like its predecessor should make it possible to hold the people in
bondage to a limited number of rulers.

IV
__Children, do you want to know by what your hearts should be guided?
Throw aside your longings and strivings after that which is null and
void; get rid of your erroneous thoughts about happiness and wisdom,
and your empty and insincere desires. Dispense with these and you will
know Love.__ KRISHNA.
__Be