The Spirit of Japan   By: Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

Library of Adelbert College of Western Reserve University

Gift of the Publisher

THE SPIRIT OF JAPAN

A LECTURE

BY

SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Delivered for the Students of the Private Colleges of Tokyo and the Members of the Indo Japanese Association, at the Keio Gijuku University.

PUBLISHED BY THE INDO JAPANESE ASSOCIATION, TOKYO

JULY 2, 1916.

Copyrighted in U. S. A.

I am glad to have this opportunity once more of speaking to you before I leave Japan. My stay here has been so short that one may think I have not earned my right to speak to you about anything concerning your country. I feel sure that I shall be told, that I am idealising certain aspects, while leaving others unnoticed, and that there are chances of my disillusionment, if I remain here for long. For I have known foreigners, whose long experience has made them doubtful about your moral qualifications, even of your full efficiency in modern equipments of progress.

But I am not going to be brow beaten by the authority of long experience, which is likely to be an experience of blindness carried through long years. I have known such instances in my own country. The mental sense, by the help of which we feel the spirit of a people, is like the sense of sight, or of touch, it is a natural gift. It finds its objects, not by analysis, but by direct apprehension. Those who have not this vision, merely see events and facts, and not their inner association. Those who have no ear for music, hear sounds, but not the song. Therefore when, by the mere reason of the lengthiness of their suffering, they threaten to establish the fact of the tune to be a noise, one need not be anxious about music. Very often it is mistakes that require longer time to develop their tangles, while the right answer comes promptly.

You ask me how I can prove, that I am right in my confidence that I can see. My answer is, because I see something which is positive. There are others, who affirm that they see something contrary. It only shows, that I am looking on the picture side of the canvas, and they on the blank side. Therefore my short view is of more value than their prolonged stare.

It is a truism to say that shadows accompany light. What you feel, as the truth of a people, has its numberless contradictions, just as the roundness of the earth is contradicted at every step by its hills and hollows. Those who can boast of a greater familiarity with your country than myself, can bring before me loads of contradictions, but I remain firm upon my vision of a truth, which does not depend upon its dimension, but upon its vitality.