BIOGRAPHY OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

enunciation, and truth as taught by Christ, and so show him the highestveneration as a Saviour of mankind. How significant were his words: 'It is wellto be born in a church, but it is terrible to die there!' Needless to say, he meantby the word church all organized religious institutions. How like a thunderboltthe words fell upon the ears of his audience when one day he exclaimed: 'Christ,Buddha, and Krishna are but waves in the Ocean of Infinite Consciousness thatI am!'Then there were the leaders of the cranky, selfish, and fraudulent organizations,who tried to induce the Swami to embrace their cause, first by promises ofsupport, and then by threats of injuring him if he refused to ally himself withthem. But he could be neither bought nor frightened — 'the sickle had hit on astone,' as the Polish proverb says. To all these propositions his only answer was:'I stand for Truth. Truth will never ally itself with falsehood. Even if all theworld should be against me, Truth must prevail in the end.'But the more powerful enemies he had to face were among the so-called freethinkers,embracing the atheists, materialists, agnostics, rationalists, and othersof similar breed who opposed anything associated with God or religion. Thinkingthat they would easily crush his ancient faith by arguments drawn from Westernphilosophy and science, they organized a meeting in New York and invited theSwami to present his views.'I shall never forget that memorable evening' wrote an American disciple, 'whenthe Swami appeared single-handed to face the forces of materialism, arrayed inthe heaviest armour of law, and reason, and logic, and common sense, of matter,and force, and heredity, and all the stock phrases calculated to awe and terrifythe ignorant. Imagine their surprise when they found that far from beingintimidated by these big words, he proved himself a master in wielding theirown weapons, and as familiar with the arguments of materialism as with thoseof Advaita philosophy. He showed them that their much vaunted Westernscience could not answer the most vital questions of life and being, that theirimmutable laws, so much talked of, had no outside existence apart from thehuman mind, that the very idea of matter was a metaphysical conception, andthat it was much despised metaphysics upon which ultimately rested the verybasis of their materialism. With an irresistible logic he demonstrated that theirknowledge proved itself incorrect, not by comparison with that which was true,but by the very laws upon which it depended for its basis; that pure reason couldnot help admitting its own limitations and pointed to something beyond reason;and that rationalism, when carried to its last consequences, must ultimatelyland us at something which is above matter, above force, above sense, abovethought, and even consciousness, and of which all these are but manifestations.'As a result of his explaining the limitations of science, a number of people from