this vast community? Is it natural effervescence, or is it deadly
fermentation? Is India with all its heterogeneous populations--is it
moving slowly and steadily to new and undreamt of unity? It is the
vagueness of the discontent, which is not universal--it is the
vagueness that makes it harder to understand, harder to deal with.
Some of them are angry with me. Why? Because I have not been able to
give them the moon. I have got no moon, and if I had I would not part
with it. I will give the moon, when I know who lives there, and what
kind of conditions prevail there.

I want, if I may, to make a little literary digression. Much of this
movement arises from the fact that there is now a large body
of educated Indians who have been fed, at our example and our
instigation, upon some of the great teachers and masters of this
country, Milton, Burke, Macaulay, Mill, and Spencer. Surely it is a
mistake in us not to realise that these masters should have mighty
force and irresistible influence. Who can be surprised that educated
Indians who read those high masters and teachers of ours, are
intoxicated with the ideas of freedom, nationality, self-government,
that breathes the breath of life in those inspiring and illuminating
pages. Who of us that had the privilege in the days of our youth, at
college or at home, of turning over those golden chapters, and seeing
that lustrous firmament dawn over our youthful imaginations--who of us
can forget, shall I call it the intoxication and rapture, with which
we strove to make friends with truth, knowledge, beauty, freedom? Then
why should we be surprised that young Indians feel the same movement
of mind, when they are made free of our own immortals. I would only
say this to my idealist friends, whether Indian or European, that for
every passage that they can find in Mill, or Burke, or Macaulay,
or, any other of our lofty sages with their noble hearts and potent