LETTERS FROM ABROAD
sweet to realise appreciation from one’s fellow-beings, but because it has helped me to feel how near we are to the people who in all appearance are so different from ourselves.
Such an opportunity has become rare to us in. India because we have been segregated from the rest of the world. This has acted upon the minds of our people in two contrary ways. It has generated that provincialism of vision in us, which either leads to an immoderate boastfulness, urging us to assert that India is unique in every way— absolutely different from other countries--or to a self-depreciation which has the sombre attityde of suicide. If we san come into real touch with the West through the disinterested medium of intellectual co-operation, we shall gain a true perspective of the human world, realise our own position in it, and have faith in the possibility of widening «nd deepening our connection with it. "We ought to know that a perfect isolation of life and culture is not a thing of which any race can be proud. The dark stars are isolated, but stars that are luminous belong to the eternal chorus of lights.
Greece was not shut up in the solitude of her culture, nor was India, when she was in the full radiance of her glor: We have a Sanskrit expression, ‘that which is not given is lost’. India, in order to find herself, must give herself. But this power of giving can only be perfected when it is accompanied by the power of receiving. That
