A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

^ CONQUEST OF THE WORLD BY INDIA. 563have drunk deep of the cup of pleasure and found itvasity. Now is the time to work for India s spiritualideas penetrating deep into the "West. 2he?efore, youyoung men of Madras, I specially ask you to rememberthis. We must go out, we must conquer the worldthrough our spirituality and philosophy. There is noith*r alternative ;we must do it or die. The*****only conditioftof national life, of awakened and vigorous nationallife, is the conquest of the world by Indian thought.You hear of clainvs made by every one of the differentreligions as being the universal religion of the world.Let me tell you in the first place that perhaps there neverwfll be such a thing, but if there is a religion which canlay that claim, it is only ours and none else, because,everyother religion depends on some person or persons. Allthe other religions have been built round the life of whatthey think a historical man, and what they think thestrength of religion is really the weakness ; for, smash thehistorically of the man and the whole building tumblesto the ground. Half the lives of these great centres of religions have been broken into pieces,and the other halfdoubted very seriously. As such, every truth that had itsonly sanction in their words vanishes into air again. Butthe truths of our religion, although we have persons bythe bushelful, do not depend on them. The glory ofKrishna is not that He was Krishi)^, but that He was thegreat teacher of Yedanta. If He had not been, His namewould have died out of India as the name of Buddha hao>.Thus our allegiance is to the principle always and not tothe persons. Persons are but the embodiments, the illustrations of the principles. If tyJe principles are there, thepersons will come by the thousandsand millions. If the