Chapter (অধ্যায়): I IN LONDON, 1895 PAGE-6Page: 6 of 336
temples were not associated in India with the highest kind of religion: and the statement that the desire to reach Heaven was in that country regarded, by the most religious people, "as a little vulgar."
He must have made some statement of the ideal of the freedom of the soul, which brought it into apparent conflict with our Western conception of the service of humanity, as the goal of the individual. For I remember very clearly that I heard him use that word "society" for the first time that afternoon, in the sense that I have never been quite sure of having fully understood. He had, as I suppose, stated the ideal, and he hastened to anticipate our opposition. “You will say,” he said, “that this does not benefit society. But before this objection can be admitted you will first have to prove that the maintenance of society is an object in itself.”
At the time, I understood him to mean 'humanity' by 'society,' and to be preaching the ultimate futility of the world, and therefore of the work done to aid it. Was this his meaning? In that case, how is one to reconcile it with the fact that the service of humanity was always his whole hope? Or was he merely stating an idea, and standing aside to give it its full value? Or was his word 'society,' again, only a faulty translation of the curious Eastern word Samaj, coloured, as that is, with theocratic associations, and meaning something which includes amongst other things, our idea of the church?
He touched on the question of his own position