A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

theTHE MISSION OF THE VEDANTA. 437Idea whicfr the world wants from us to-day and which them\ite masses of India want for their uplifting, for none canregei&rate this land of ours without the practical application and effective operation of this ideal of oneness of,The rational West is earnestly bent upon seekingthings.out the rationality, the raison d etre of all its philosophyand i j -ethics ;and youall know well that ethics cannot"be derived from the mere sanction of any personage,fiowever great and divine he may have been, of one whohaving been born but yesterday has had to die a fewminutes after. Such an explanation of the authority ofethics no more appeals to the highest of the world sthinkers :they want something more than human sanctionfor ethical and moral codes to be binding, they want someeternal principle of truth as the sanction of ethics. Andwhere is that eternal sanction to be found except in theonly infinite reality that exists, in you and in me and inall, in the self, in the soul ? The infinite oneness of theSoul is the eternal sanction of all morality, that you and Iare not only brothers every literature voicing man sstruggle towards freedom says that, children have preachedthat for you but that you and I are really one. This is thedictate of Indian philosophy.This oneness is the rationaleof all ethics and all spirituality! Europe wants it to-dayjust as much as our downtrodden masses do, and thisgreat principle is even now unconsciously forming the basisof all the latest political and social aspirations that arecoming up in England, in Germany, in France, and inAmerica. And mark it, my friends, that in and throughall the literature voicing man s struggle towards freedom,towards universal freedom, again and again you find theIndian Vedantic ideals coming out prominently. In somecases the writers do not know the source of their inspira ^