A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

THE TRUE METHOD OF SOCIAL REFORM. 541of luxuy is the great bane that is upon the race. Heremeti want to commit suicide because they have nothingeat. There they commit suicide because th?y 1mve so muchto eat. Evil* is everywhere, like rheumatism. Drive itfrom the foot, it goes to the head drive it from there, itgoes somewhere else. It is a question of chasing it from^plae to place ;that is all.Aye, children, to remedy evilis the true way. Our philosophy teaches that evil andgo*od are eternally conjoined,&the obverse and the reverseof the same metal. Have one, you have to get the other ;"make one billow in tfce ocean, it must be at the cost ofsome hollow somewhere. Nay, all life is evil. No breath.can be breathed without killing some one else ;not a morsel of food can be eatenwithoyt depriving somebodyof it.This is the law. This is philosophy. Therefore, tlte onlything we can do is to understand that all this work againstevil is more subjective than objective. The work againstevil is more educational than actual, however big men maytalk. Aye, this is the first of all the idea to be realisedwith respect to work against evil,and this ought to makeus calmer, this ought to take fanaticism out of our blood ;and then the history of the world teaches us that whereverthere have been fanatical reforms the only result wasthatthey defeated their own ends. No greater upheaval forthe establishment of right and liberty can be imaginedthan the war for the abolition of slavery in America. Youall know about it. And what has been its result ? Theslaves are a hundred times worse to-day than they werebefore the abolition. Before the abolition these poornegroes were the property of somebody, and, as properties,they had to be looked after so that they might not deteriorate. To-day they are the property of nobody. Theirlives are of no value ; they are burnt alive on mere pre-