Chapter (অধ্যায়): PART I : AMERICAN NEWSPAPER REPORTS PAGE-482Page: 482 of 548
ABOU BEN ADHEM'S IDEAL1
[New York World, December 8, 1895]
Swami Vivekananda the Yogi, Comes from Bombay, Preaching Love for His Fellow‑Man.
To find an ascetic of the Highest Eastern type clad in a red and flowing Hindoo cloak over unmistakable American trousers is necessarily a surprise. But in other things besides dress is Swami Vivekananda astonishing. In the first place he declares that your religion or any one else's religion is just as good as his own, and if you should happen to be a Christian or Mussulman, Baptist or Brahmin, atheist, agnostic or Catholic, it will make no difference to him. All that he asks is that you act righteously according to your lights.
The Yogi, with his peculiar notions of dress and worship, arrived Friday on the Brittanic. He went to No. 228 West Thirty‑ninth street. While in New York he will lecture upon metaphysics and psychology, and will also disseminate in a general way his ideas on the universal religion which asks no man to take another by the throat because his creed happens to be different. "Let me help my fellowman; that is all I seek," he says.
"There are four general types of men," he says,
the rational, the emotional, the mystical and the worker. For them we must have their proper worship. There comes the rational man, who says, "I care not for this form of worship. Give me the philosophical, the rational__that I can appreciate." So for the rational man is the rational, philosophic worship.
There comes the worker. He says: "I care not for the worship of the philosopher. Give me work to do for my fellow‑men." So for him is made a worship, as for the mystical the emotional. In the religion for all these men are the elements of their faith.
1 New Discoveries, Vol. 3, pp. 316‑18.
Abou Ben Adhem, the hero of Leigh Hunt's famous poem, asked a recording angel to list him as loving his fellowmen.