The Soul of the World is in danger. It is a banal truth to write but, nevertheless, it ought to be ceaselessly repeated.
Each passing day sees humanity sliding insensibly towards an abyss of suffering and misery. Each circling year sees the contemporary world becoming more and more an arena where wild beasts-men, our brothers-tear each other to pieces. Soon, a sinister twilight will creep over the earth and the world will be no more than a vast sepulchre in which are entombed humanity's noblest ideals.
In the present world-wide frenzy, there are men who try to dam this tide of hate, discord, struggle, that is precipitating the nations one against the other. These men hope, in spite of all, that like a solitary traveller who enamoured of beauty, force, grandeur, climbs the paths leading to the summits-contemporary humanity (or, if you prefer, the peoples or a fragment of these peoples) will contemplate from the heights of its inner vision the rich and glorious past of certain civilisations, now disappeared or sleeping, in order that it may establish an immense bridge of communication, a pipe-line, so to say, a triumphal way by means of which the modern world may glean from the past some grains of its immortal values, with which alone can be built up a civilisation on the five intangible rocks of true knowledge, liberty, brotherhood, equality, and love.
Have we not learned history? We are stuffed with history and science. We have learned of the slow rise of peoples, from palaeolithic men to the so-called civilised men, who are ourselves. We have, at least, retained the history of our civilisation. We have studied the different social changes which took place in ancient Greece from the Age of the Tyrants until the formation of the Athenian Democracy. We know, equally, from the war of Peloponnesus, how anarchy developed, how little by little the people were impoverished by a rapacious capitalism; then, we also know how, in the heart of the Roman Republic, dictators arose from the discontent of the masses who hoped (O unhappy, naive men!) that these dictator-tyrants would save them from misery. Lastly, we have studied the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire, the eternal causes, namely: economic depression, taxes impossible to support, slavery, the concentration of financial power in the hands of a few, the decrease in births, civil wars or simply wars, luxury, debauchery, the position of woman reduced to the role of servants.... briefly, all that we know so well.
We have read all that in our history manuals. That is the past, some will say, what has it to do with our modern times? And we come to the strange attitude of regarding history as a dusty museum of antiques which has to be visited-in order to pass our examinations -and which we shall never visit when we reach manhood. History, we think, is for children and young people. We still remember, without doubt, how weary we were, our elbows on our desk, our eyes fixed on the springtime trees growing in the college courtyard, listening with absent-minded ears to the insipid lessons delivered in monotonous tones by the professor. And in our brain were rolling confusedly the words: Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Huns.... How beautiful the trees are! thought. If only we could be outside in the sun!
This book was written during the year 1938-39, after a stay made in India in 1937. It should have been published in Paris, but....war broke out.
Certain circumstances, related in our book: "Lights and Shadows Over France,"* brought us once again to India's shores. This volume: "The Fragrance of India-Landmarks for the World of Tomorrow," will therefore see daylight in the very land where it was conceived.
From these pages, we have nothing to subtract with regard to its ideas. They are as much actuality now as if they had been written during the tragedy which is today shaking the world to its foundations. We should be able to add many pages to this book on what we have seen and gleaned again while in this country; however, they would make another volume that we may, perhaps, write in the future.
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