A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

VEDANTA IN INDIAN LIFE. 415up of the best in the body. What says it of criminals ? Ittakes for granted that however low a criminal may be,there is still the divinity within which dies not, we must treat-criminals as such.All these things have become changed.People now call jails penitentiaries. So with everything ;consciously or[unconsciously that divinity which is inside andoutside is India expressing itself. And in your books is the^explanation ; men have got to take it. The treatment ofman to man fcdll become entirely revolutionised and theseold, old ideas of pointing to the weakness of mankind willlipye to go. They w T ill have received their deathblowwithin this century. Now people may stand up andCriticise us. I have been criticised from one end of theworld to the other as one who preaches the diabolicalideathat there is no sin !,Very good The decendants of thesevery men will bless me as the preacher of virtue andnot of sin. I am the preacher of virtue, not of sin.I glory in being the preacher of light and not of darkness.The second great idea which the world is waiting toreceive from our Upanishads is the solidarity of this universe.These old, old lines of demarcation and differentiation arevanishing rapidly. Electricity and steam power are placingdifferent parts of the world in intercommunication witheach other and as a result, we Hindus no more say thatevery country beyond our own land is peopled with demonsand hobgoblins ;nor do the people of Christian countriessay that India is only peopled by cannibals and savages.We go out of our country, we find the same brother manwith the same strong hand to help, with the same lips tosay god-speed and sometimes better than in the countrywe are born. They, when they come here find the samebrotherhood, the same cheers, the same god-speed.Well, our Upanishads say that the cause of all misery is