Indian Philosophy v2.c28.s2.10

v2.c28.s2.10

Those who are untouched by the Western influence are for a large part intellectual and moral aristocrats, who are indifferent to political issues, and adopt a gospel not of confident hope but of resignation and detachment. They think that they have little to learn or to unlearn, and that they do their duty with their gaze fixed on the eternal dharma of the past. They realise that other forces are at work, which they cannot check or control, and ask us to face the storms and disillusionment of life with the unruffled calm of self-respect. This was the class which in better times was more elastic and was ever renewing the attempts to reconcile rational philosophy with revealed religion. It had always explained and defended the faith in the face of heretics and unbelievers, and had recourse to the allegorical method as the instrument of theological interpretation. Religion, for it, embraced within its scope the whole nature of man, his intelligence as much as his practical and emotional aspirations. If to-day the representatives of the ancient learning had the inspiration of the past, they would, instead of non-co-operating with other forces, build a fresh scheme with originality and freedom and in the strength of the legacy of ancient wisdom. But they have an exaggerated respect for authority in thought and action, in things spiritual and things secular, and have thus exposed themselves to the charges of mental servility and obscurantism. While, in pre-Mohammadan times, appeal to authority was no bar to intellectual independence, and while men were able and ready to offer rational grounds for allegiance to the authorities of their choice, be they the Vedas or the Āgamas, and while authority was made to speak in the voice of reason by means of a critical selection and philosophical interpretation, now reverence for authority has become the imprisonment of the human spirit. To question the belief of the scriptures is to question the authority of the great dead. To accept them is a sign of loyalty. Inquiry and doubt are silenced by the citation of ancient texts, scientific truths are slighted, if they cannot be fitted into the procrustean bed of established belief. Passivity, docility and acquiescence become the primary intellectual virtues. No wonder the philosophical writings of recent times are far below the level of the best work of the past ages. If thought had been less strained, it would have been more spacious.