It is not man’s duty to develop all his faculties to perfection: his duty is to develop all his God ward faculties to perfection and to suppress completely those of contrary tendencies.

Man is neither mere intellect, nor the gross animal body, nor the heart or soul alone. A proper and the harmonious combination of all the three is required for the making of the whole man and constitutes the true economics of education.

I hold that true education of the intellect can only come through a proper exercise and training of the bodily organs, e.g., hands, feet, eyes, ears, nose, etc. In other words, an intelligent use of the bodily organs in a child provides the best and quickest way of developing his intellect.   

But unless the development of the mind and body goes hand in hand with a corresponding awakening of the soul, the former alone would prove to be a poor lop-sided affair. By spiritual training I mean education of the heart. A proper and all round development of the mind, therefore, can take place only when it proceeds pari passu with the education of the physical and spiritual faculties of the child. They constitute an indivisible whole.

In my scheme of things the h and will handle tools before it draws or traces the writing. The eyes will read the pictures of letters and words as they will know other things in life, the ears will catch the manes and meanings of things and sentences. The whole training will be natural, responsive, and therefore the quickest and the cheapest in the world.

Literary education should follow the education of the hand the one gift that visibly distinguishes man from the beast. It is a superstition to think that the fullest development of man is impossible without knowledge of the art of reading and writing. The knowledge undoubtedly adds grace to life, but is in no way indispensable for man’s moral, physical or material growth.

The introduction of manual training will serve a double purpose in a poor country like ours. It will pay for the education of our children and teach them an occupation, on which they can fall back in after life, if they choose, for earning a living. Such a system must make our children self-reliant. Nothing will demoralize the nation so much as that we should learn to despise labour.

Among the many evils of foreign rule, this blighting imposition of a foreign medium upon the youth of the country will be counted by history as one of the greatest. It has sapped the energy of the nation, it has shortened the lives of the pupils. It has estranged them from the masses, it has made education unnecessarily expensive. If this process is still persisted in, it bids fair to rob the nation of its soul.

If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won’t have to struggle; we won’t have to pass fruitless idle resolution, but we shall go from love to love and peace top peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering.

Real education consists in drawing the best out of yourself. What better book can there be than the book of humanity?

A nation building programme can leave no part of the nation untouched. Students have to react upon the dumb millions. They have to learn to think, not in terms of province, or a town, or a class or a caste, but in terms of a continent and of the millions who include untouchables, drunkards, hooligans and even prostitutes, for whose existence in our midst every one of us is responsible.

All true art is an expression of the soul. The outward forms have value only in so far as they are expression of the inward spirit of man.

What conscious art of man can give me the panoramic scenes that open out before me, when I look up to the sky above with all its shining stars? This, however, does not mean that I refuse to accept the value of productions of art, accept the value of productions of art, generally accepted as such, but only that generally accepted as such, but only that I personally feel how inadequate these are compared with the eternal symbols of beauty in Nature. These productions of man’s art have their value only in so far as they help the soul onward towards self-realization.

To a true artist only that face is beautiful which, quite apart from its exterior, shines with the Truth within the soul. There is no Beauty apart from Truth. On the other hand, Truth may manifest itself in forms which may not be outwardly beautiful at all.

I see and find Beauty in Truth or through Truth. All Truth, not merely true ideas but truthful faces, truthful pictures, or songs are highly beautiful. People generally fail to see Beauty in Truth, the ordinary man runs away from and becomes blind to the Beauty in it. Whenever men begin to see Beauty in Truth, then true art will arise.

When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the creator. I try to see Him and Him mercies in all these creations. But even the sunsets and sunrises would be mere hindrances if they did not help me to think of Him. Anything, which is a hindrance to the fight of the soul, is a delusion  and snare; even like the body, which often does actually hinder you in the path of salvation.

Life is greater than all art. I would go even further and declare that the man whose life comes nearest to perfection is the greatest artist; for what is art without the sure foundation and framework of a noble life?

After all true art can only be expressed not through inanimate power-driven machinery designed for mass production, but only through the delicate living touch of the hands of men and women.

Purity of life is the highest and truest art. The art of producing good music from a cultivated voice can be achieved by many, but the art of producing that music from the harmony of a pure life is achieved very rarely.

No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive. There is no such thing as pure Aryan culture in existence today in India. Whether the Aryans were indigenous to India or were unwelcome visitors, does not interest me much. What does interest me is the fact that my remote ancestors blended with one another with the utmost freedom and we of the present generation are a result of that blend.
Whether we are doing any good to the country of our birth and the tiny globe that sustains us or whether we are a burden, the future alone will show.

I am no indiscriminate superstitious worshipper of all that goes under the name of ‘ancient’. I never hesitated to endeavour to demolish all that is evil immoral, no matter how ancient it may be, but with this reservation. I must confess to you that I am an adorer of ancient institutions and it hurts me to think that people in their mad rush for everything modern despise all their ancient traditions and ignore them in their lives.

We have to decide whether we shall indiscriminately copy this civilization. We may well pause in the face of the awful revelations that come to us from the West from time to time, and ask ourselves, whether after all it is not better to hold by our own civilization an seek in the light of the comparative knowledge that is available to us, to reform it by removing its known excrescences.

It is perhaps unnecessary, if not useless, to weigh the merits of the two civilizations. It is likely that the West has evolved a civilization suited to its climate and surroundings and similarly, we have a civilization suited to our conditions and both are good in their own respective spheres.

Cowardliness which often springs from pacific training, and obsequiousness which comes from the restraint that is handed down from generation to generation, have some how to be avoided , if the ancient civilization is not to perish before the mad modern rush.

The distinguishing characteristic of modern civilization is an indefinite multiplicity of human wants. The characteristic of ancient civilization is an imperative restriction upon and a strict regulating these wants.

The modern or Western insatiableness arises really from want of a living faith in a future state and therefore also in Divinity. The restraint of ancient or Eastern civilization arises from a belief, often in spite of ourselves in future state and the existence of a Divine Power.

Some of the immediate and brilliant results of modern inventions are too maddening to resist. But I have no manner of doubt that the victory of man lies in that resistance. We are in danger of bartering away the permanent good for a momentary pleasure.

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides an y my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other people’s houses as an interloper, a beggar or a slave.