Children of India, I am here to speak to you to-day about some
practical things, and my object in reminding you about the
glories of the past is simply this. Many times have I been told
that looking into the past only degenerates and leads to
nothing, and that we should look to the future. That is true.
But out of the past is built the future. Look back, therefore,
as far as you can, drink deep of the eternal fountains that are
behind, and after that, look forward, march forward, and make
India brighter, greater, much higher than she ever was. Our
ancestors were great. We must recall that. We must learn the
elements of our being, the blood that courses in our veins; we
must have faith in that blood, and what it did in the past: and
out of that faith, and consciousness of past greatness, we must
build an India yet greater than what she has been.

And again:

I know for certain that millions, I say deliberately, millions,
in every civilised land are waiting for the message that will
save them from the hideous abyss of materialism into which
modern money-worship is driving them headlong, and many of the
leaders of the new Social Movements have already discovered
that Vedanta in its highest form can alone spiritualise their
social aspirations.

The process was continued by the admiration of Sanskrit literature
expressed by European scholars and philosophers. But the effect of these
was confined to the few and did not reach the many. The first great
shock to the belief in white superiority came from the triumph of Japan