French revolution : (1789-1815), considered the first of modern revolutions following which by a series of wars; French rule extended through most of Europe & spread its ideas of Liberty, Equality, & Sovereignty.
... Early Cultural Writings Historical Impressions: The French Revolution The greatness of the French Revolution lies not in what it effected, but in what it thought and was. Its action was chiefly destructive. It prepared many things, it founded nothing. Even the constructive activity of Napoleon only built a halfway house in which the ideas of 1789... admitted the Christian and Asiatic principle of brotherhood. They built according to their knowledge, but the triangle has to be reversed before it can stand permanently. The action of the French Revolution was the vehement death-dance of Kali trampling blindly, furiously on the ruins She made, mad with pity for the world and therefore utterly pitiless. She called the Yatudhani in her to her aid... the old regime wide enough to satisfy his ambitions and passions, the upheaval of 1789 might have found him on the other side. But because the heart and senses of Mirabeau were unsatisfied, the French Revolution triumphed. So it is that God prepares the man and the moment, using good and evil with a divine impartiality for His mighty ends. Without the man the moment is a lost opportunity; without the ...
... that?" "Not exactly, but their actions speak louder than their words. I'll tell you a funny story. Tennyson, the English poet, was a great friend of Carlyle's. Surely you know Garlyle? His French Revolution is truly an admirable book. I believe Nolini, even in his early teens, had already read the entire book. Anyhow, when these two writers met, they often sat by the fireside smoking for hours without... accepted with unquestioning obedience, with the result that women have remained helpless and weak. "But the world around has been slowly changing. The first great awakening was the French Revolution. Then, the 19th century gave us writers like Zola and Ibsen. Later came Shaw and many others who spoke against social evils and injustices. In Turkey, Kamal Ataturk freed women from the burkha... education. Another day it was Danton who announced himself in a terrible voice, 'I am Danton! Terror! Red Terror!' He went on discoursing on the need and utility of all that bloodshed of the French Revolution. Another who came introduced himself thus, 'I am Theramenes.' He gave them a lesson in political matters. So many others came like this, day after day, and taught them many things on various subjects ...
... Napoleon cried out, "What is the French Revolution? I am the French Revolution," he gave utterance to that sense of his being more than a mere man, of his being the very force & power of God in action, which gave him such a stupendous energy & personality; but his mind being muddied by rajas, passion & desire, he could not see that the very fact of his being the French Revolution should have pointed him to... an impostor masquerading in her name. Consider what were the ideas under which as under a banner, the modern spirit overthrew the mediaeval Titan; the final uprush of those ideas we see in the French revolution. The motto of the Revolution we know, liberty, equality & fraternity; the spirit it professed but could not attain we know, humanity. In liberty the union of the individual moral liberty of C ...
... Shelley and Keats and carried again and again the influences then abroad beyond themselves. The influences thus uplifted were those which had found expression in the vehement idealism of the French Revolution and in German transcendentalism and Romanticism. They too were, in several respects, a help against the growing sceptical bent, but they were intellectual in their idea and substance though not... of these influences that underwent in the minds of those five English poets, each a remarkable individuality, a sudden transformation, we must look upon Rousseau as the key figure. Of both the French Revolution and much in German Romanticism and, indirectly, of even the transcendentalist philosophy in Germany he is the original inspirer and he has in him, amidst much miasma, some vague breath of ... of an ecstatic vision caught by a mind of thought tending to move with a brooding as well as soaring intricacy. It is the conjunction of all these factors that made him the progenitor of the French Revolution fired, amidst its various excesses, by the grand slogan of Liberty, Equality and Frater-nity which arose from the political formula given by him in his Contrat Social to his Utopian reveries ...
... First Phase: The Advent of the Avatar Sri Aurobindo was born in 1872 and the Mother in 1878. It is becoming fashionable among historians to write about “the long 19th century” (from the French Revolution till 1914, the beginning of the First World War) and “the short 20th century” (from 1914 till 1989, the collapse of the Communist Bloc). It might be much more appropriate to see the 20th century... of the 19th century. For there was doubtlessly a complex historical period preceding up to the First World War. It is therefore justifiable to consider the 19th century as beginning with the French Revolution and ending with the collapse of the ideological foundations of the bourgeoisie in the last decades of the 19th century, a process directly connected with the outbreak of the First World War. ... let alone what might be the outcome. Kings, queens and other scions of the feudal nobility that had been ruling over Europe since Charlemagne were still on their thrones, a century after the French Revolution and Napoleon, but it was generally felt that most of them were colossi with clay feet and could topple over at any moment. The historians agree that the overall situation at the turn of the 19th ...
... establish themselves by the destruction of the very institution which had been created to preserve Christianity. When the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity were declared at the time of the French Revolution and mankind demanded that society should recognise them as the foundation of its structure, they were associated with a fierce revolt against the relics of feudalism and against the travesty of... wrought an inextricable confusion which is the modern malady of Europe. It was in vain that the genius of Mazzini rediscovered the heart of Christianity and sought to remodel European ideas; the French Revolution had become the starting point of European democracy and coloured the European mind. Now that democracy has returned to Asia, its cradle and home, it will be purged of its foreign elements and ...
... issues of the original Russian idea of a confederation of free self-determining nationalities were greatly complicated by the transitory phenomenon of a revolution which has sought, like the French Revolution before it, to transform immediately and without easy intermediate stages the whole basis not only of government, but of society, and has, moreover, been carried out under pressure of a disastrous... means of united and organised action. Nevertheless, their principle was a more advanced, because a moral principle, than the aggressive nationalism which was all the international result of the French Revolution; it has a greater meaning for the future. For it belongs to a future of free world-union in which precisely this principle of free self-determination must be either the preliminary movement ...
... that they are serviceable and specially-forged instruments of the Power which determines them. Mirabeau helped to create the French Revolution, no man more. When he set himself against it and strove, becoming a prop of monarchy, to hold back the wheel, did the French Revolution stop for the backsliding of France's mightiest? Kali put her foot on Mirabeau and he disappeared; but the Revolution went on ...
... the Roman republic to the empire, the emergence of feudal Europe out of the ruins of Rome, the Christianisation of Europe, the Reformation and Renascence together preparing a new society, the French Revolution, the present rapid movement towards a socialistic State and the replacing of competition by organised cooperation. Because our view of European history is Page 133 chiefly political... more difficult but still possible to appreciate the working of an idea against all obstacles through many centuries; we can comprehend now, for instance, that we must seek the beginnings of the French Revolution, not in Rousseau or Mirabeau or the blundering of Louis XVI, but in movements which date back to the Capet and the Valois, while the precise fact which prepared its tremendous outbreak and victory ...
... Aurobindo was very strongly of the same opinion. “If [Napoleon] had not risen at the time, the [reactionary] European powers would have crushed French democracy. What he did was to stabilize the French Revolution so that the world got the idea of democracy. Otherwise it would have been delayed by two or three centuries.” Napoleon gave not only glory to France, “he gave peace and order, stable government... had many ideas: he was not only a military general, but also an administrator, organizer, legislator and many other things. It was he who organized France and Europe, [and who] stabilized the French Revolution. Besides being a legislator he established the bases of social laws, administration and finance which are followed even today. He is not only the greatest military genius in history but one of ...
... Pavitra now. St. Paul and Vivekananda were seen in the background of Anilbaran. In connection with Nolini we heard of Roman Virgil and the late-renaissance French poet Ronsard as well as the French-revolution poet Andre Chenier. As for Amrita himself, the forces in his past were Moses, Michelangelo and Victor Hugo, powerful personalities quite in contrast to his gentle, amiable present disposition... Caesar and Leonardo da Vinci. To Amrita he said he still felt the edge of the guillotine on his neck. This would indicate that his birth immediately before the present one was associated with the French Revolution. If he was a guillotined front-liner, we can think only of Danton and Robespierre. But the Mother has seen Debu, Pranab's brother, as having been Page 298 the latter. So Danton ...
... affirmed from the Mother's answer on January 23, 1960 to a student's inquiry about Sri Aurobindo's earlier births: "It is said that Sri Aurobindo in a past life took an active part in the French Revolution. Is it true?" She wrote back: "You can say that all through history Sri Aurobindo played an active part. Especially in the most important movements of history he was there — and playing the... Sri Aurobindo did not manifest Avatarhood every time. Secondly, even when he was the moving spirit he did not invariably occupy the forefront. The Mother did not directly refer to the French Revolution, But Sri Aurobindo's presence in it was disclosed to me by Amrita. Amrita said: "Sri Aurobindo told us that he could still feel the edge of the guillotine across his neck. The memory was so ...
... Pavitra now. St. Paul and Vivekananda were seen in the background of Anilbaran. In connection with Nolini we heard of Roman Virgil and the late-renaissance French poet Ronsard as well as the French-revolution poet Andre Chenier. As for Amrita himself, the forces in his past were Moses, Michelangelo and Victor Hugo, powerful personalities quite in contrast to his gentle, amiable present disposition... Caesar and Leonardo da Vinci. To Amrita he said he still felt the edge of the guillotine on his neck. This would indicate that his birth immediately before the present one was associated with the French Revolution. If he was a guillotined front-liner, we can think only of Danton and Robespierre. But the Mother has Page 82 seen Debu, Pranab's brother, as having been the latter. So Danton has ...
... he does not deny the role of institutional circumstances and intervention. It is from this aspect of his thought, besides his version of the Social Contract Theory, that he high priests of the French Revolution drew their inspiration. Traces of developmental approach to moral education are evident in the writings of educational psychologists like Jean Piaget and L. Kohlbarg. Unlike Rousseau's their... of national prosperity. Page 59 A moment's consideration would also show that values, which stem from secular sources like the Constitution of a country or the Renaissance or the French Revolution or the Communist Revolution or the Internet Revolution are transient and temporary, and change with the times. The only values that have stood the test of time and are held dear by most people ...
... discussion. So I paused for a while. But Princess asked : "Which factors?" "First was the idealism that lay behind the Russian Revolution; in fact, the parent of that idealism was the French Revolution with its ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. And the second Page 19 was the resurgence of Asia. But, as you know, socialism has turned into state socialism. It has brought... am immortal, I am immortal, I am immortal.' Page 55 "I began to ask myself more seriously than ever as to why I had that vision. Yes, since the time I had studied the story of the French Revolution, I was looking for the real spirit behind that Revolution. I had studied Rousseau and Voltaire; I had studied also Mirabeau, Robespierre and several other leaders of that great epoch. And then ...
... — how did it come about that this man, after his death, triumphed over Voltaire, revived religion, transformed education, elevated the morals of France, inspired the Romantic movement and the French Revolution, influenced the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer, the plays of Schiller, the novels of Goethe, the poems of Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley, the socialism of Marx, the ethics of Tolstoi, and... Europe in the nineteenth century and inspired the poetry of Wordsworth. Thomas Jefferson derived the Declaration of Independence partly from Rousseau, and it is said that Napoleon ascribed the French Revolution more to Rousseau than to any other writer. Not least significant, education still feels repercussions from Emile. The book's educational ideas stimulated Pestalozzi in Switzerland, Maria ...
... heard of Cagliostro? He was a mystic freemason with a great prophetic power. He never charged anyone any money and yet he was affluent. It was said he could make gold. He prophesied about the French Revolution, the taking of the Bastille and the guillotining of the King and Queen. He used to prophesy about race-horses too. This got him into trouble. He was imprisoned and died in prison. (After a... Ramakrishna and Vivekananda worked from. behind. The Movement and the Secret Society became so formidable that in any other country with a political past they would have led to something like the French Revolution. The sympathy of the whole nation was on our side. Even shopkeepers were reading Jugantar. I'll tell you an instance. While a young man was fleeing after killing a police officer in Shyam Bazar ...
... their values to man in course of time. Take the French Revolution as an illustration : one who lived during the Revolution would have felt it as the worst time in human history. Five hundred people Page 46 were being guillotined every day in the Reign of Terror. But if one goes a hundred years forward the view changes. The French Revolution is seen as a great historical event that ushered ...
... Free Masons had something when it was started. Have you heard of Kaliostro? He was a mystic and a Free Mason with a great prophetic Page 19 power. He prophesied about the French Revolution, the raising of Bastille and guillotining of the King and Queen. He used to prophesy about race-horses. He got into trouble and was imprisoned and died in prison. He never charged any money from... and Vivekananda's influence worked from behind. The movement with the secret society became so formidable that in any other country with a political past it would have led to something like the French Revolution. The sympathy of the whole race was on our side. Even shopkeepers were reading Yugantar. I will tell you an instance; while a young man was running away after killing a police officer in Shambazar ...
... not statistics, not citations from Burke and Mill and Morley, not appeals to British precedents like the Witenagemot and the Magna Carta and the Reform Bill, not even a harking back to the French Revolution or the American Declaration of Independence. Just an invocation to God and an exhortation to his audience that they should realise God in themselves and thereby Page 278 shape the... the human reason before the whirlwind of His breath." Has any war gone exactly according to the calculations of the war-lords? Was Mirabeau or Danton able to regulate the lava-flow of the French Revolution? What then? Does it mean the total abdication of reason? Not altogether - only, one has to be ready always to listen to the other Voice when it comes, one must be willing to permit the heart's ...
... that this date marks the very birth of the power by which international politics was gigantically rocked into the manifold commotion that gave shape to our modern world. For, though it is the French Revolution that brought modern history into being, the forces that exploded in 1789 could never have found a firm organised life if there had not arisen the military colossus we call Napoleon Bonaparte,... never been materialised in the full sense because either their true order has not quite been understood or else, if it has been understood, the ultimate conno-tation of them has been elusive. The French Revolution and its Napoleonic consolidation laid the stress on liberty Indeed this was not unnatural, for it was liberty that was most denied in the days before the taking of the Bastille. The fall of the... entire creation were one family of brothers. It is because democracy is not exclusive, as a collectivist dictatorship is, of such possibilities of inner and outer growth that the formula of the French Revolution, for all its shortcomings, is a valuable step in human history and those countries that have erected their political and social order on some form or other of its teachings are the true friends ...
... and the French Revolution? The French Revolution was only a revolutionary paroxysm which settled soon into a normal life. There were also persecutions but they were not like Hitler's persecutions. Hitler's persecution is on principle. He wants power to be kept in the hands of a few people who will rule over the whole world and thus perpetuate the rule of power, while the French Revolution, as soon ...
... the great French Revolution. A violence came out from somewhere and seized man and society: man was thrown out of his gear, society broken to pieces. There came a change in the very character and even nature of man: and society had to be built upon other foundations. The past was gone. Divasa gatah Something very similar has happened again more recently, in Russia. The French Revolution brought in... anonymous, however, have no single nucleus or centre of reference: they are multi-nuclear. The names that adorn the Renaissance are many, it had no single head; the men through whom the great French Revolution unrolled itself were many in number, that is to say, the chiefs, who represented each a face or phase of the surging movement. The cosmic spirit works itself out in the world and ...
... the great French Revolution. A violence came out from somewhere and seized man and society: man was thrown out of his gear, society broken to pieces. There came a change in the very character and even nature of man: and society had to be built upon other foundations. The past was gone. Divasa gatah. Something very similar has happened again more recently, in Russia. The French Revolution brought in... anonymous, however, have no single nucleus or centre of reference: they are multinucleur. The names that adorn the Renaissance are many, it had no single head; the men through whom the great French Revolution unrolled itself were many in number, that is to say, the chiefs, who represented each a face or phase of the surging movement. The cosmic spirit works itself out in the world and in human ...
... Part I — Recollections and Diary Notes Champaklal Speaks During French Revolution 1952-01-03 Speaking of the French Revolution, Mother said: “Pujalal was there. But I did not know that Bansidhar also was there, helping me. Strange!” ...
... events were the physical expression of the ongoing spiritual transformation. Sri Aurobindo once wrote that the French Revolution of 1789 was made possible because of the siddhi of Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood realised by some unknown yogi in the Himalayas. (“If the French Revolution took place, it was because a soul on the Indian snows dreamed of God as freedom, brotherhood and equality.” 27 ...
... everything else in life. Acquiring the ideals of the Enlightenment – among them equal rights for all human beings – the “third estate”, the merchant or bourgeois class, grew conscious of itself. The French Revolution would be the revolution of this “third estate”. To work out the impetus of its ideas the revolution of 1789 needed subsequent revolutions in the nineteenth century, the high time of the bourgeoisie... labourers, servants and peasants, of the workers of all kinds? They too were human beings, after all, and therefore entitled to equal rights like anybody else. When in parallel with the unexpected French Revolution a no less surprising Industrial Revolution came about, the role of the workers, of the shudras , grew in importance: they were the manpower with which to make that gigantic industrial development ...
... organizations. The great hero of the romantic period was Napoléon Bonaparte, much admired and not less hated, riding through Europe at the head of his armies and implementing the ideals of the French Revolution, which were the ideals of the Enlightenment. “Napoleon burst upon the Germans like a hurricane. He dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, replacing hundreds of separate sovereignties with thirty-eight;... from the sky and the lions in the farthest deserts of Africa will draw their tails between their legs and crawl into their royal dens. A play will be enacted in Germany compared to which the French revolution was but an innocent idyll. And that time shall come.” 391 ...
... hardly capable of becoming civilized, and the yellow race has a place somewhere in between. The nobleman Gobineau was a devout Catholic, shocked by the turn things were taking because of the French Revolution, the titanic actions of Napoleon and the industrial revolution. He, like so many others still deeply rooted in the ancient régime , felt like a fish out of water in a century which ideals had... There was no doubt in the minds of Gobineau and many of his disoriented contemporaries that the world was sliding towards its doom. It should be kept in mind what a traumatic series of events the French Revolution had been for the ancien régime , in the first place for the nobility and the clergy, and how firmly they were still anchored in the religious, social and cultural structures of the Middle Ages ...
... later part of the nineteenth and earlier part of the twentieth centuries very much as the evolution of the free democratised nation governed the age which preceded ours. The dominant idea of the French Revolution was the formula of the free and sovereign people and, in spite of the cosmopolitan element introduced into the revolutionary formula by the ideal of fraternity, this idea became in fact the assertion... doubted by any careful observer. Whatever modifications may arrive, whatever new tendencies intervene, whatever reactions oppose, it could hardly then be doubted that the principal gifts of the French Revolution must remain and be universalised as permanent acquisitions, indispensable elements Page 344 in the future order of the world,—national self-consciousness and self-government, freedom ...
... eighteenth century and it took some kind of voice in the first idealistic stages of the French Revolution. But at that time, it was rather a vague intellectual sentiment than a clear idea seeing its way to practice; it found no strong force in life to help it to take visible body. What came out of the French Revolution and the struggle that grew around it, was a complete and self-conscious nationalism ...
... triumphs of the European enlightenment to which we bow our heads. For these Augustus created Europe, Charlemagne re founded civilisation, Louis XIV regulated society. Napoleon systematised the French Revolution. For these Goethe thought, Shakespeare imagined and created, St. Francis loved, Christ was crucified. What a bankruptcy! What a beggary of things that were rich and noble! Europe boasts of... considers how Page 79 many and swift her bankruptcies have been, the imagination is appalled by the swiftness of this motor ride to ruin. The bankruptcy of the ideas of the French Revolution, the bankruptcy of utilitarian Liberalism, the bankruptcy of national altruism, the bankruptcy of humanitarianism, the bankruptcy of religious faith, the bankruptcy of political sincerity, the ...
... with shoes on and the Muezzin has been abolished. PURANI: Coming to Europe, I want to ask you if it can be said that there was an inrush of forces from the subtle worlds at the time of the French Revolution and in Napoleon's time, changing the course of History. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, There was. It changed the course of European history and gave the world new political and social ideas. NIRODBARAN:... government and security to France. He was not only one of the conquerors but also one of the greatest administrators and organisers the world has seen. If it had not been for him, the whole idea of French Revolution would have been crushed by the European Powers. It was he who stabilised the ideas of the Revolution. The only trouble was that he was not bold enough. If he had pushed on with the idea of ...
... long poems. SRI AUROBINDO: By "long poems" they mean long like epics. PURANI: Thomas Hardy or somebody else has written some short poems on the French Revolution which seem to have creative force. SRI AUROBINDO: Poems on the French Revolution? Who on earth is the author? NIRODBARAN: I suppose Tagore will score highly in the matter of creative force. He has a lot of it. SRI AUROBINDO: ...
... of my other articles came out in Dharma afterwards. My writings in English began much later. Now we started collecting a few books. At the very outset he suggested two titles: Carlyle's French Revolution and Green's History of the English People, perhaps in consideration of our taste for history and revolution. Arrangements soon came to be made, ail of a sudden and it seemed as if by accident... day, somebody else appeared and immediately announced himself in a terrible voice, "I am Danton! Terror! Red Terror!" He went on discoursing on the need and utility of all that bloodshed of the French Revolution. Another who came introduced himself thus, "I am Theramenes." Theramenes was a political leader of ancient Greece. He spoke in a calm and subdued tone and gave us a lesson in political matters ...
... of my other articles came out in Dharma afterwards. My writings in English began much later. Now we started collecting a few books. At the very outset he suggested two tides: Carlyle's French Revolution and Green's History of the English People, perhaps in consideration of our taste for history and revolution. Arrangements soon came to be made, all of a sudden and it seemed as if by accident... somebody else appeared and immediately announced himself in a terrible voice, "I am Dan ton! Terror! Red Terror!" He went on discoursing on the need and utility of all that bloodshed of the French Revolution. Another who came introduced himself thus, "I am Theramenes." Theramenes was a political leader of ancient Greece. He spoke in a calm and subdued tone and gave us a lesson in political matters ...
... English and next of the American and French revolutions, the notion of political equality was brought to the future with anew hopefulness. At the same time, accelerated by the wars of the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic wars, there began and spread what is known as the Industrial Revolution. What gave it a truly revolutionary character, says Heilbronner, ... was not... more, would become more wise and, wiser, they would be better, more impartial and just. Well, this has certainly been belied by the subsequent course of events. The great catchwords of the French Revolution - Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - which had aroused so much enthusiasm, have lost most of their content and become mere shadows of themselves. The democratic institutions, for whose establishment ...
... cardinal tendencies of the national character asserted themselves and assimilated what was salutary in the Western influence to enrich their own cultural content. The magnificent watchword of the French Revolution, the inspiring teachings and thoughts of Mazzini, the examples of Ireland and America, Italy and Germany fired the nationalist sentiment and political idealism in India. Historical research, pioneered... Another day someone else appeared and announced in a strident, dreadful voice: 'I am Danton! Terror! Red Terror!', and harangued us on the necessity and justification of bloodshed in the French Revolution. Yet another day somebody came and introduced himself thus: 'I 184. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on The Mother, pp. 108-10. Page 143 am Theramenes.' Theramenes was a ...
... soldier of Revolution. He could not have done the work he did, hampered by an effervescent French Page 520 Parliament ebullient in victory, discouraged in defeat. He had to organise the French Revolution so far as earth could then bear it, and he had to do it in the short span of an ordinary lifetime. He had also to save it. The aggression of France upon Europe was necessary for self-defence, ...
... they kick, Is that sufficient reason to feel sick? Page 268 No, though they thrash and cudgel, kick and beat, Cling like the devil to their sacred feet! Where are we? Is this the French Revolution Infects our sacred Ind with its pollution? Is Minto Louis? Kitchener Duke Broglie? Away, away with revolutionary folly! What, is this France or Russia? Are we men, Servitude to reject and ...
... fast, see under hunger strike federation (for India ), 249 fight, see under battle force (spiritual), see under power forests, 220 France, 202, 227 -228 freedom, 26, 79, 213 , 2 14, 228 French Revolution, 77, 80 Freud, Sigmund, 218 future, 25,26, 57, 60 , 65, 72, 74, 76 , 92, 94 ,99,101 , 110, 112, 118-119, 129, 141, 142,201,236, 241 ,247, G Gandhi, Deva das , 170 Gandhi ...
... great change and revolution in the world would powerfully and rapidly abolish all the obstacles, as the obstacles of the old regime to a uniform democratic system were abolished in France by the French Revolution. But any such arrangement would be quite impracticable unless and until the actual sentiments of the peoples corresponded with these systems Page 434 of rational convenience: the state ...
... throughout the world of the political doctrine and the coming to political power of a party of socialistic and internationalistic doctrinaires alike in mentality to the unitarian Jacobins of the French Revolution who would have no tenderness for the sentiments of the past or for any form of group individualism and would seek to crush out of existence all their visible supports so as to establish perfectly ...
... sense. There are even historians who deny or put aside as of a very subsidiary importance the working of the idea and the influence of the thinker in the development of human institutions. The French Revolution, it is thought, would have happened just as it did and when it did, by economic necessity, even if Rousseau and Voltaire had never written and the eighteenth-century philosophic movement in the ...
... at present. Always in times of great and passionate struggle between conflicting political ideas,—between oligarchy and democracy in ancient Greece, between the old regime and the ideas of the French Revolution in modern Europe,—the principle of political non-interference has gone to the wall. But now we see another phenomenon—the opposite principle of interference slowly erecting itself into a conscious ...
... unitarian system would regard in its idea the geographical groupings of men as so many conveniences for provincial division, for the convenience of administration, much in the same spirit as the French Revolution reconstituted France with an entire disregard of old natural and historic divisions. It would regard mankind as one single nation and it would try to efface the old separative national spirit ...
... new type of society. This miracle of human energy is in itself no more than that, a repetition under more unfavourable circumstances of the extraordinary achievement of the Jacobins during the French Revolution. More important Page 673 is the power of the idea that is behind these successes and has made them possible. It is a fact of only outward significance that the Bolsheviks not so long ...
... faltering and poor in its achievement. When a greater force came streaming in, the influences that were abroad were those which elsewhere found expression in the revolutionary idealism of the French Revolution and in German transcendentalism and romanticism. Intellectual in their idea and substance, they were in the mind of five or six English poets, each of them a remarkable individuality, carried ...
... Heaven, has brought about disastrous deterioration. Conquering Europe on the other hand, for the first time flooded with sattwa as a distinct social influence by the liberating outburst of the French Revolution, has moved forward. The sattwic impulse of the 18th century, though sorely abused and pressed into the service of rajasic selfishness and tamasic materialism, has yet been so powerful an agent ...
... a turn which is the first step to what Sri Aurobindo has called the Future Poetry. All the more astonishing is Mallarme in the context of the poetry of France. We may even dub him the second French Revolution. The French spirit is the spirit of clarity — the lucid thought and the limpid word. I have mentioned Anatole France. Well, his name is most appropriate. Anatole France is in an important respect ...
... other 'That is not done'. Romanticism seems to me, essentially, an attempt to drown these two voices and liberate the unconscious life from their tyrannical repressions. Like the accom-panying French Revolution, it is the insurrection of a submerged population; but this time, a population of the mind." 3 Even when Lucas concedes that "the description of Romantic literature as simply 'dream-work' does ...
... highly respectable and conservative sage who never let any suggestion of sensuality or of lawlessness enter his poetic works had been a sower of wild oats in his youth. He was a young man when the French Revolution broke out and in the early phase of it he was actually in France, one of the little group of fiery orators who called themselves Girondins and with whom probably he would have gone to the guillotine ...
... Revolution by a people unaccustomed to political action has put advantages into his hands to which he has no right. But it is significant that the revolution still smoulders. As Carlyle wrote of the French Revolution, it is unquenchable and cannot be stamped down, for the fire-spouts that burst out are no slight surface conflagration but the flames of the pit of Tophet. Murder and hatred rising from below ...
... upon us. A similar law holds in politics and society. The political evolution of the human race follows certain lines of which the most recent formula has been given in the watchwords of the French Revolution, freedom, equality and brotherhood. But the forces of the old world, the forces of despotism, the forces of traditional privilege and selfish exploitation, the forces of unfraternal strife and ...
... under the influence of the new ideas that emanated from France and that he lost his Romanticism when he lost his ideal of political liberty as a result of his disillusionment with the French Revolution when it gave rise to a dictator like Napoleon. The visionary poet and Nature-lover in him yielded place to the dry intellectual and prosaic moraliser of the Augustan age; the beautiful blend ...
... desirable than the strictness I have just mentioned.” 7 Checking the dates and the events in Lamarck’s life, it will be obvious that much of his scientific career was intertwined with the French Revolution and the Empire, the period in French history from 1789 to 1815. The Botanical Garden and the Muséum were creations of the Republic, and Lamarck’s mental outlook was that of the Enlightenment ...
... Francois Clouet; Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s councillor and spy-master; André Le Nôtre, who designed the gardens of the palace of Louis XIV at Versailles; and André de Chenier, the poet of the French Revolution, who died on the guillotine. [^102]: The difference between an incarnation of an ordinary human being and an incarnation of the Mother or Sri Aurobindo is that, in the first case, the divine ...
... the philosophes. On the contrary, as has been mentioned, some philosophes, e.g. Voltaire and d’Alembert, were caustically anti-Semitic. But it was the Enlightenment which had prepared the French Revolution and the emancipation of the Jews, and in the Napoleonic Code they had acquired an equal status with all others, something Napoleon implemented in the countries he conquered. From then onwards ...
... very strong-minded woman – at one time compared by her daughter to ‘an iron rod’ – thoroughly influenced by the spirit of the nineteenth century and by the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. She was a confirmed materialist and atheist to whom only what one touches and sees was important, but she believed in unending progress and self-perfection. After her first baby had died, the ...
... Napoleon". This poem ridiculed Hitler's pretensions to equal "the immense colossus of the past" who had arisen as a master-militarist to save the results of that progressive uprising, the French Revolution, from being submerged by the old-world powers ranged against it in all Europe outside France. Indeed, Napoleon was an autocrat, but Sri Aurobindo always pictured him paradoxically as a despotic ...
... came to be formulated in the West under the interrelated concepts of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which, in turn, have been imprinted powerfully on humanity under the impress of the French Revolution. The history of modern West, as also of developing nations in the world, can be studied as an account of social, economic and political experimentation the aim of which has been to implement these ...
... own and affirm themselves powerfully. In the West, too, where individual freedom which flourished under the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, which were pronounced powerfully by the French Revolution, came under a great constraint because of the powerful rise of Nazism and Communism, and even though the latter have now Page 28 fallen to a great extent, and the ideal of individual ...
... what we already have. Page 652 *A moment's consideration would show that values, which stem from secular sources like the Constitution of a country or the Renaissance or the French Revolution or the Communist Revolution or the Internet Revolution are transient and temporary, and change with the times. The only values that have stood the test of time and are held dear by most people ...
... Page 68 idealism, Voltaire was skeptical about the solution of the great philosophical problems. Voltaire disliked his great contemporary thinker, but their ideas influenced deeply the French Revolution. In 1761 he wrote to Rousseau: "One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work." "Liberty of thought is the life of the soul." {Essay on Epic Poetry, 1727) François-Marie ...
... people’s misery and humble submission. A people whose backwardness she as an autocrat and absolutist ruler of her time did not understand nor accept; as late in life she would not understand the French Revolution and, horrified by the fate dealt to the French crowned heads, would part altogether with Voltaire's ideas which she had earlier endorsed and promoted. She, the woman, who through her fortunate ...
... of the study of: 1. Greek Culture, Renaissance and contemporary scientific climate; 2. Religions of the past and the contemporary attitudes; 3. Relevance of lessons of French Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Russian Revolution, Discovery and development of USA, to the contemporary world; 4. World of Science and the Future; 5. World of Industry and Commerce and ...
... even when they showed interest, they did nothing to promote his methods. In 1792, Pestalozzi was proclaimed an honorary French citizen by the French Parliament, but after having looked upon the French Revolution with hope, he f became a disillusioned spectator of the growing violence and continuous upheavals. The twenty years that Pestalozzi spent as a writer were very frustrating for a t man who ...
... pedagogy. During this period she made a thorough study of the works of two French doctors, Jean Itard and Edouard Seguin, who had looked after deficient children. Itard lived at the time of the French Revolution and was best known for having educated an idiot boy found abandoned in a forest. He also made a study of deaf mutes. Seguin was Itards student. He founded a school for mental deficients in Paris ...
... lives secure A steadfast life. In 1790, Wordsworth undertook a walking tour of France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany. He was quite enthused about the hope held out by the French Page 218 Revolution. He took another trip to France in 1791. Shortage of funds and the war between England and France necessitated his coming back to England. When the Terror broke out in France, he became ...
... cataclysms in physical Nature. The hardening and contraction of the outer crust of earth increases in proportion to the inner heat and pressure. Likewise on the human level, the red seed of the French Revolution was planted the very day when the Valois autocrat declared his divine right of kingship. In Russia, Lenin's antithesis was posited along with Peter the Great's thesis. A similar fateful crisis ...
... of the Upanishads, nayam atma balahinena labhyah. 'This soul no weakling can attain. Strength! More strength! Strength evermore! One remembers the motto of Danton, the famous leader in the French Revolution: De I'audace, encore de I'audace, toujours de I'audace! The gospel, of strength that Vivekananda spread was very characteristic of the man. For it is not mere physical or nervous bravery ...
... They had taken it as self-evident that England's difficulty was going to be our opportunity. From a larger point of view, the first Great War can be taken as ushering a finale to the French Revolution. The Revolution had rolled to the dust the heads of a single monarch and his queen. But the end of this War saw the disappearance of practically all the crowned heads of Europe. Those that remained ...
... Reformation), life of Mohammed and the expansion of Islam, the Mauryan period, the Gupta period, Charlemagne and his empire, the Renaissance in Europe, the great geographical discoveries, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Napoleonic Conquests and the Social Movement, the American War of Independence, the War of Secession, the First World War, the Liberation of India, etc. At ...
... East. The Indian term for Right is also the term for Duty— adhik ā ra means both. In Europe too, in more recent times, when after the frustration of the dream of the new world envisaged by the French Revolution, man was called upon again to rise and hope, it was Mazzini who brought forward the new or discarded principle as a mantra replacing the other more dangerous one. A hierarchy of duties was given ...
... On another occasion, he told me how Sri Aurobindo took upon himself the responsibility of he educating him. They would all sit round Sri Aurobindo and would recount to them the stories of the French Revolution even while he continued to directly translate on his typewriter the Mahabharata into English poetry. One day, Sri Aurobindo told Sudhir-da that unless one read the Mahabharata, it was ...
... debatable proposition. I believe the results would have naturally varied. If he had not risen at the time, the European powers would have crushed French democracy. What he did was to stabilise the French Revolution so that the world got the idea of democracy. Otherwise it would have been delayed by two or three centuries. Again, as to destiny, what is meant by it? It is a word that can have several meanings ...
... was he who founded the greatness of Imperial Rome which gave us one of the greatest periods of human civilisation. And we admire Napoleon because he was a great organiser and he stabilised the French Revolution. He organised France and, through France, the whole of Europe. His immense powers and abilities—are these things not great? PURANI: I suppose men admire them because they find in them the ...
... with it during a long period of Page 154 time. But that is what was – Troja fuit. Europe has outgrown her nonage and for a century and a half, since the mighty upheaval of the French Revolution, she has been rapidly shaking off the last vestiges of her mediaevalism. Today she stands clean shorn of all superstition, which she only euphemistically calls religion or spirituality. Not Theology ...
... Yes, Daladier said he would drag down many others with him. SRI AUROBINDO: If politicians were made responsible for their mistakes, then many would have to go to the scaffold. It is like the French Revolution: when a General failed, his head was cut off! SATYENDRA: Is it some new poetry you are writing now, Sir? SRI AUROBINDO: No, it is Savitri. NIRODBARAN: Is it not finished yet? SRI ...
... of the Upanishads, nāyam ātmā balahīnena labhyah . 'This soul no weakling can attain.' Strength! More strength! Strength evermore! One remembers the motto of Danton, the famous leader in the French Revolution: De l'audance, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace! The gospel of strength that Vivekananda spread was very characteristic of the man. For it is not mere physical or nervous bravery ...
... Napoleon had many sides: he was not only a military general, but also an administrator, organiser, legislator and many other things. It was he who organised France and Europe, stabilised the French Revolution. Besides being a legislator he established the bases of social laws, administration and finance which are followed even today. He is not only the greatest military genius in history but one of ...
... the various aspects pertaining to the text. 24 Page 52 The method must have yielded salutary results, especially when applied to a classic like Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, which Sri Aurobindo taught in 1902. After the first years, Sri Aurobindo seems to have taken the measure of his wards and they too seem to have made the most of their exceptional opportunities ...
... European 'Inn of the 1800s,' we can watch the road and see the march of Time. Shall we? There goes Napoleon Bonaparte. From being the First Consul of the First Republic —established after the French Revolution of 1789 which abolished monarchy —he has crowned himself Emperor in 1804. Emperor Bonaparte's armies run all over Europe; and Napoleon sows everywhere the new ideas that had sprouted with the ...
... It was a Marathi student of Sri Aurobindo's, Sanker B. Didmishe, who gave another comprehensive statement (in Marathi). "I was in Inter at that time. Sri Aravind was teaching Burke's French Revolution. As his method of teaching consisted in going to the roots, one could never forget what he taught, even though the whole text was not completed. His mastery of the English language was phenomenal ...
... Prince Edward, son of George V, would lose the throne because of a woman. Then there was Cagliostro, "a mystic freemason with great prophetic power," said Sri Aurobindo, "who prophesied about the French Revolution, the taking of the Bastille and the guillotining of the King and Queen." And who has not heard of Nostradamus? "He wrote a book of prophecy in an obscure language," said Sri Aurobindo to his disciples ...
... harmonise, must now be conceded to all men and harmonised as well as the present development of humanity will allow. It is this claim that arose, red with fury and blinded with blood, in the French Revolution. This is Democracy, this Socialism, this Anarchism; and, however fiercely the privileged and propertied classes may rage, curse and denounce these forerunners of Demogorgon, they can only temporarily ...
... hope. When one considers how many and swift her bankruptcies have been, the imagination is appalled by the discouraging swiftness of this motor ride to ruin. The bankruptcy of the ideas of the French Revolution, the bankruptcy of Utilitarian Liberalism, the bankruptcy of national altruism, the bankruptcy of humanitarianism, the bankruptcy of religious faith, the bankruptcy of political sincerity, the ...
... triumphs of the European enlightenment to which we bow our heads. For these Augustus created Europe, Charlemagne refounded civilisation, Louis XIV regulated society, Napoleon systematised the French Revolution. For these Goethe thought, Shakespeare imagined and created, St. Francis loved, Christ was crucified. What a Page 545 bankruptcy! What a beggary of things that were rich and noble ...
... CMS III: 3-5. A defective version of this piece was published in The Standard Bearer on 19 December 1920, and subsequently in The Harmony of Virtue . Historical Impressions: The French Revolution. 1910. CMS I: 7-10. A defective version of this piece was published in The Standard Bearer on 28 November and 5 December 1920, and subsequently in The Hour of God and Other Writings (1972) ...
... one of great quickness, extreme briskness and progress. Everyone should rush forward at this moment. Courage is wanted. Daring is required. Boldness is necessary. A writer at the time of the French Revolution said, "There is nothing to be dreaded. Run forward with firm devotion, go on, rush on, push on!" In Germany and Japan there was such a rapid progress. Perhaps our attempts to bring about compromise ...
... much carried away by an unreasonable fear as to wreck his own reputation as Page 799 a sedate and practical statesman by setting to work to write that hysterical diatribe against the French Revolution which even his admirers could not help regretting. It is no wonder therefore that the Nationalists should be assailed with the most unjustifiable vehemence in their attempt to awaken and organise ...
... affection. Even if they kick, Is that sufficient reason to feel sick? No, though they thrash and cudgel, kick and beat, Cling like the devil to their sacred feet! Where are we? Is this the French Revolution Infects our sacred Ind with its pollution? Is Minto Louis? Kitchener Duke Broglie? Away, away with revolutionary folly! What, is this France or Russia? Are we men, Servitude to reject and ...
... sation of the world through India, of the great awakening of the East and its ideals are of an infinite application like the ideas of fraternity, liberty, equality which were preached in the French Revolution until every man had them on his lips and in his heart. The prophet of the movement must repeat these ideas and popularise them until they are on the lips and in the heart of every man, so that ...
... are erased from the books of the future. The mediaeval movement of civic liberty in France and Italy failed and gave place to Teutonic despotism, but it revived with a hundredfold force in the French Revolution and it was the impetuous rush earthwards of the souls that had fought for it hundreds of years before that shattered to pieces the once victorious feudal system. But if, as we are assured, the ...
... Aurobindo’s orders, by Puraniji, changed from time to time, but was never taken off, nor shrugged off. He breathed his last, yoked. The Mother had once told him that he was, in a previous life, the French Revolution leader Barat who later opposed Robespierre. I wonder what and how many “inner voyages” brought him from that violent way to this peaceful Haven. He did retain vestiges of that “Barat” fire till ...
... to their cause, for at first he had greeted their rise with enthusiasm; when he openly professed his growing disillusion, he was allowed to withdraw in silence till his death, in 1936.) “The French Revolution”, wrote Spengler, “is no more than a result of rationalism. The Western races carry the dynastic sense in their blood, which is the reason why they loathe the mind. For a dynasty represents history ...
... effects of the specifically German idea of a nationalism based on race and Volk came about as a reaction to the stormy conquests of Napoleon and his imposition of the guiding principles of the French Revolution. The Germans fell back on what they considered their true origins, the rural, and the military temperament of their elders, thus creating the Prussian spirit and the Prussian state. “East Prussia ...
... conquered, breaking with the tradition of ages and giving their peoples a first taste of equality in freedom. Like all new beverages it tasted strange and some rejected it. The ideals of the French Revolution pervaded the minds and the political practice only gradually, in the advancing and retiring waves of the nineteenth century revolutions with repercussions in all European countries. Hitler and ...
... therefore essential to a human humanity and deserve the highest esteem. Then why is reason devalued by all postmodern viewpoints? Why hold reason – once enthroned as the presiding deity of the French revolution as la Déesse de la Raison, the Goddess of Reason – responsible for the evils that befell humankind in the 20th century and for the uncertainty, anxiety and nihilism of the present time? The ...
... Revolution – the Revolution which had required three more revolutions to make it firm and established.” 1136 We know how essential Sri Aurobindo considered the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution for the future development of humanity, and how Hitler and Nazism represented the exact opposite. “Hitler will see to it that France has no power to rise again … France will be terribly im ...
... disdain for the masses, one of the new social phenomena of the times. It seems that he never thought beyond the rise of the bourgeoisie, “the third estate” which carried the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and was therefore hindered by a blind spot to mark the rise of the fourth estate, the proletariat. Socialism, Marxism and their masses remained beyond his ken. He was an out-and-out individualist ...
... ), a social order soon expanded with the merchants ( vaishyas ). So strong became the presence of the latter, rightly called “the third estate,” that it resulted in the upheaval known as the French Revolution, which was almost immediately followed by the rise of the proletariat ( shudras ) and their mass movements of socialism and communism. Thus we may conclude that, according to Sri Aurobindo ...
... established European, mainly Christian values opened the gates for the principles of materialism, atheism, liberalism, science and progress. Most of the British intelligentsia had been shocked by the French Revolution, but even in Britain the rise of the new ideas could not be halted. The result was the Victorian age, named after the dapper and long-reigning Queen Victoria (1819-1901), and symbolizing a period ...
... the common workers (shudra), most of whom had been serfs, in other words, slaves. Thanks to the philosophical evolution of the European mind during the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the dominant classes of the clergy and the nobility had lost most of their privileges and the bourgeois class had taken over. (A look at the environment in which young Mirra grew up has given ...
... case, of what was expected in general about several of us in the early phase of Ashram life, which coincided with our own youth. Do you remember Wordsworth's lines about the beginning of the French Revolution which seemed to promise a new age and in which he took some part? - Page 28 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven... With a per ...
... the Eastern bloc, something more expansive than the so-called liberty of the Western. And this something is, as Sri Aurobindo said long ago, the third term of the triple slogan raised in the French Revolution which marked with a blood-stained glory the difficult birth of the modem world. Not "Liberty", not "Equality" but "Fraternity" is the true summons of the future - the instinct in us of ...
... Aurobindo, Second Revised and Enlarged Edition; by K.D. Sethna. Reviewed in The Hindu dated 13 April 1993.) 4 While Romanticism was the stimulating culture of the French Revolution, French romantic poetry had its efflorescence much later, say with Victor Hugo's Hernani (1830). Almost three decades after, Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil (1857) "created a new shudder" ...
... order in which the master race of the Germanic-Nordic-Aryans rules over the other races, the subjugated subhuman slaves. It may be noted in passing that “no Jew played a noteworthy role in the [French] Revolution nor in the philosophical revolution by which it was preceded”. 331 On the contrary, leading writers like Voltaire were outspoken anti-Semites. In his stance against the Enlightenment and progress ...
... crises and chances of failure. A failure anywhere means a retardation and a fresh expenditure of energy to start again. There is not the general excitement and vital enthusiasm that supported the French revolution. There is instead a more intelligent intellectual force and centre acting on a more complex and contradictory national psychology which is itself by no means strong either in intellectuality or ...
... wave-crests in certain exceptional individuals, Page 168 vibhūtis , whose action leading the general action is sufficient for the change intended. The Reformation in Europe and the French Revolution were crises of this character; they were not great spiritual events, but intellectual and practical changes, one in religious, the other in social and political ideas, forms and motives, and the ...
... its mountaintops, heroes and prophets spring up in the material world to proclaim and accomplish. 275) The Theosophists are wrong in their circumstances but right in the essential. If the French Revolution took place, it was because a soul on the Indian snows dreamed of God as freedom, brotherhood and equality. 276) All speech and action comes prepared out of the eternal Silence. 277) There ...
... its mountain-tops, heroes and prophets spring up in the material world to proclaim and accomplish. 276—The Theosophists are wrong in their circumstances but right in the essential. If the French Revolution took place, it was because a soul on the Indian snows dreamed of God as freedom, brotherhood and equality. This is simply to show us that the power of the spirit is far greater than all ...
... Aurobindo has always presided over the great earthly transformations, under one form or another, one name or another. It is said that Sri Aurobindo in a past life took an active part in the French Revolution. Is it true? You can say that all through history Sri Aurobindo played an active part. Especially in the most important movements of history he was there—and playing the most important, the ...
... miss them. It is better to have a selected few than a commonplace mass. Blessings. 5 October 1967 Mother, Last night I was reading what Sri Aurobindo has written about the French Revolution. After this, one feels that all that we read, study or learn is only a heap of falsehood, so why strive to attain that falsehood? I suppose it is only as a gymnastic for the mind! Love ...
... strengthened all the more his old ideal of political liberty. But the growing resentment he felt against Napoleon led him to believe that a phenomenon like Napoleon would have been impossible if the French Revolution had not occurred and under-mined the ancient order of feudal Europe. Liberalism he saw as a danger everywhere, a potential mother of revolutions and a poten-tial grandmother of Napoleonic despotisms ...
... finishing touches on some of his paintings and to rearrange and edit his notebooks. Leonardo died on May 2, 1519, and was buried in the palace Church of Saint Florine, which was destroyed during the French Revolution and completely torn down in the early nineteenth century. Except for his creations, no trace of Leonardo remains. But he once wrote: "A day well spent makes it sweet to sleep, so a life well ...
... ideas at the end of the first part, he could not keep up that height. PURANI: There is an idea that the new form may be a combination of epic and drama or like the odes of Meredith on the French Revolution. They give some clue to a possible epic form in the future. SRI AUROBINDO: There has been such an effort by Victor Hugo. His Legendes des siecles is an epic in conception, thought, tone and ...
... entire malady of the collective life. Then came the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution which brought to a head the great crisis and initiated the change-over to new conditions. The French Revolution called up from the rear of social ranks and set in front the Third Estate and gradually formed and crystallised, with the aid of the Industrial Revolution, what is known as the Bourgeoisie. The ...
... disease society suffers from and not as a remedy. The disease is a twofold bondage from which man has always been trying to free himself. It is fundamentally the same "bondage which the great French Revolution sought most vigorously and violently to shake off – an economic and an ideological bondage, that is to say, translated in the terms of those days, the tyranny of the court and the nobility and ...
... catholicity of temper and a richness in varied interest – a humanistic culture, as it is called – which constituted a living and unifying ideal for Europe. That spirit culminated in the great French Revolution which was the final coup de grace to all that still remained of mediaevalism, even in its outer structure, political and economical. In India the spirit of renascence came very late ...
... of his soul and being and not the law given him by the shastras. He violates the shastras, modifies them, utilises them according to the greater imperative of his Swabhava. The French Revolution wanted to remould human society and its ideal was liberty, equality and fraternity. It pulled down the old machinery and set up a new one in its stead. And the result? "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" ...
... does not go beyond the sixteenth or the fifteenth century when the first seeds were sown by the Humanists of the Renaissance. It sprouted with the rationalists of the eighteenth century and the French Revolution cleared the ground for its free and untrammelled growth. But only in the nineteenth Page 149 and the twentieth centuries has it reached such vast and disconcerting proportions ...
... Existentialists, the, 348-50, 359, 362 FIRDAUSI, 197 Flanders, 74 France, 16, 69, 89-90, 101, 128, 145, 159, 197, 241, 244-6 France, Anatole, 145 French Revolution, 32, 52, 59, 101, 105,. 126, 149, 155, 207-8 Francis I, 90, 120 GALILEO, 308, 322 Germany, 32, 70, 72, 87-9 Gibbon, 238 -The Decline & Fall of the Roman EmPire ...
... together in durable peace and progressive harmony as in one united family. In this context, Sri Aurobindo finds the three great ideals that were put forward explicitly and forcefully during the French Revolution to be most significant, namely the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. He finds that these three ideals served the purpose of motivating the Page 125 great experiments that ...
... own and affirm themselves powerfully. In the West, too, where individual freedom which flourished under the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, which were pronounced powerfully by the French Revolution, came under a great constraint because of the powerful rise of Nazism and Communism, and even though the latter have now fallen to a great extent, and the ideal of individual freedom has come ...
... been there either at Kurukshetra or somewhere else, which has brought all of us here in this life. I think the Mother said once that we have all met before in previous lives; either in the French Revolution or in the Russian Revolution or in the Indian Revolution; wherever They have been, we must have been there too somehow, somewhere; otherwise we would not have met today in this field of the ...
... history was made.4 Pazhassi Raja The late 18th century was a time of wars for the British. The Americans had declared Independence from the British, in 1776 and the French Revolution took place between 1789 and 1799. King George III ruled Britain while George Washington was the President of United States in the 1790s. In South Asia at that time, the Marathas and Tipu Sultan ...
... depicted by Juvenal and Petronius. The fact that morals became exemplary about two centuries before the fall of the Western Empire is unknown or ignored. English children are taught one view of the French Revolution, French children are taught another; neither is true, but in each case it would be highly imprudent to disagree with the teacher, and few feel any inclination to do so. Teachers ought to encourage ...
... cannot ensure their own progress or control their own future. And the Community itself is only a stage on the way to the organized world of tomorrow. 6 One is reminded here of the men of the French revolution. They too at certain moments could get a glimpse of the future world that was to be born out of the huge upheaval whose first jolts they had triggered. In these moments of grace their voice ...
... with it during a long period of Page 115 time. But that is what was— Troja fuit. Europe has outgrown her nonage and for a century and a half, since the mighty upheaval of the French Revolution, she has been rapidly shaking off the last vestiges of her mediaevalism. Today she stands clean shorn of all superstition, which she only euphemistically calls religion or spirituality. Not Theology ...
... brought a catholicity of temper and a richness in varied interest—a humanistic culture, as it is called—which constituted a living and unifying ideal for Europe. That spirit culminated in the great French Revolution which was the final coup de grace to all that still remained of mediaevalism, even in its outer structure, political and economical. In India the spirit of renascence came very late, late ...
... laws of his soul and being and not the law given him by the shastras. He violates the shastras, modifies them, utilises them according to the greater imperative of his Swabhava. The French Revolution wanted to remould human society and its ideal was liberty, equality and fraternity. It pulled down the old machinery and set up a new one in its stead. And the result? "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" ...
... Euripides, 73, 86 Europe, 58, 60, 199, 243, 253, 273, 284-5, 289 FAKIRS, 221, 223 Fascism, 253, 262 Flaubert, 88 France, 66, 193, 198, 205, 253, 284, 298 Francisco, 173-4 French Revolution, 103, 266, 274 Freud, Sigmund, 126 GANDHARVAS,26 Gargi, 5-6 Germany, 253 Ghcse, Prof. Manmohan, 230, 234 Gita, the, 7, 17, 24, 51, 53, 58, 73, 114, 117-18, 12In., 145, 149, 166 ...
... with their destiny. The whole difficulty centres upon the question: who rouses whom, and what is the principle that is meant to rouse. There is a slogan that incited the Red Terror of the French Revolution; there is the other one which inspired the Nazis; there is Page 266 still another one rampant that had the seal and sanction of Stalin and his politbureau. These have spread their ...
... book, The Social Contract, almost the Bible of an age; Man is born free. And the first considerable mass rising seeking to vindicate and realise that ideal came with the toxin of the mighty French Revolution. I t was really an awakening or rebirth of the individual that was the true source and sense of that miraculous movement. It meant the advent of democracy in politics and romanticism in art. The ...
... sometimes announced himself saying he was such and such a person. Sometimes great historical persons also came, as for example, I have described in my Reminiscences, the famous leader of the great French Revolution, Danton. In a terrible voice he cried out: I am Danton, terror, red terror, etc. Once a great politician of the ancient days, of the Greek times, appeared and started to give lessons on politics ...
... power. They had taken it as self evident that England's difficulty was going to be our opportunity. From a larger point of view, the first Great War can be taken as ushering a finale to the French Revolution. The Revolution had rolled to the dust the heads of a single monarch and his queen; But the end of this War saw the disappearance of practically all the crowned heads of Europe. Those that remained ...
... familiar and commonplace. But a whole nation rushing away from its old moorings in search of the unknown – this was a rather extraordinary spectacle. Something like it had been seen during the French Revolution, in the storming of the Bastille, for example, but the Indian awakening had a different form and character. I myself attended a number of meetings, particularly at Hedua, in Panti's Math and ...
... had spoken and they could hardly act otherwise. They had no alternative but to accept the decision, though with a heavy heart. The story of Danton comes to mind – Danton the leader of the French Revolution. For a long time he had been on the crest of the wave of revolution, a leader revered of all. The wheel of his fortune was now on the downward turn and another party, the extremists, had reached ...
... entire malady of the collective life. Then came the First World War and the Bolshevic Revolution which brought to a head the great crisis and initiated the change-over to new conditions. The French Revolution called up from the rear of social ranks and set in front the Third Estate and gradually formed and crystallised, with the aid of the Industrial Page 62 Revolution, what is known ...
... clarification he gives of the meaning of "association", the exalted spiritual sense he attaches to the Motherland worshipped as the Mother, the interpretation he gives of the triple gospel of the French Revolution - Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity - and explains how it is being progressively Page 316 realised in mankind, and the distinction he draws between the parallel lines of advance ...
... had spoken and they could hardly act otherwise. They had no alternative but to accept the decision, though with a heavy heart. The story of Danton comes to mind: Danton the leader of the French Revolution. For a long time he had been on the crest of the wave of revolution, a leader revered by all. The wheel of his fortune was now on the downward turn and another party, the extremists, had reached ...
... and a richness in varied interest—a Page 76 humanistic culture, as it is called—which constituted a living and unifying ideal for Europe. That spirit culminated in the great French Revolution which was the final coup de grace to all that still remained of mediaevalism, even in its Outer structure, political and economical. In India the spirit of renascence came very late, ...
... disease society suffers from and not as a remedy. The disease is a twofold bondage from which man has always been trying to free himself. It is fundamentally the same bondage which the great French Revolution sought most vigorously and violently to shake off—an economic and an ideological bondage, that is to say, Page 123 translated in the terms of those days, the tyranny of the court ...
... England, but France." This attachment to France was very significant. Was it the literature and culture of France that attached him to that country? Or, was it the epoch-making watchword of the French Revolution that might have struck a responsive chord in his heart? But the roots of the attachment lay deeper, as we shall see when we come to the later developments of his life-story. He now prepared ...
... and Burke's ¹ Alternate reading: its. ². Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972), p. 138. Page 52 reflections on the French Revolution were the text books in the first two classes. Sri Aurobindo presided over Sarat Chandra Mallick's lecture in the college. This year Sri Aurobindo went to Midnapur for the first time during ...
... August 21, 1909), and three "Historical Impressions" which had been written for the Karmayogin but were first published in the Standard Bearer : "Napoleon" (November 20, 1920) and "The French .Revolution" (November 28 and December 5, 1920). In SABCL the first five of the above essays are included in Section Seven of Volume 3; "The Need in Nationalism" appears under its original title ...
... conception of the shape of things that would follow a successful revolution, is, in my opinion, only too childish, and would be putting the cart before the horse. Let Mr. Hemchandra remember that the French Revolution did not give the French people the ghost of an idea as to what exactly was to follow the revolution, and that the Italian Revolution was no more clear about its shape before it succeeded. These ...
... Mahabharata into English verse and write articles for Bande Mataram , the most prominent newspaper in those days, and at the same time he would explain things to me, such as Carlyle’s idea of the French Revolution and Hero-worship. For the first time I observed that it was quite possible to direct one’s mind towards three or four activities at the same time. Once I could not help asking how this was possible ...
... seems that after his death, the British severed his head from his body and sent it to Calcutta for evidence. The Mother: Oh, how cruel! To behead a patriot! They did the same thing during the French Revolution. It is horrible…. But look at his eyes — they tell you everything. He looks so innocent and at the same time very happy to sacrifice his life for the country. The fire of patriotism is burning ...
... things from the Post Office, French Treasury etc." and her smile made him always happy. Once she seems to have told him that in a previous life he had been Marat, one of the characters in the French Revolution; and she it was who brought into Rajangam the godhead of Adoration. 17 Page 224 The fact is that at one and the same time the inmates found Mirra entrancingly youthful and beautiful ...
... Ghosh, as our acting Principal, declared a prize in an essay-cum-debate competition on 'Japan and the Japanese'........ "We became ardent revolutionaries. We talked of Garibaldi and the French Revolution, and hoped to win India's freedom by a few hundred drachms of picric acid. "I remember only one occasion when I directly talked to Prof. Arvind Ghosh. 'How can nationalism be developed?' ...
... martyrs Raja Subodh Chandra Mullick in Wellington Square. The gathering, by its thought and inspiration, resembled that of the French Encyclopaedists, the intellectuals who paved the way of the French Revolution. That was before Sri Aurobindo was prosecuted in the Alipore Bomb Case and before his historic 'flight' to Pondicherry. "At home, in the domestic sphere, at the college, I had rare glimpses ...
... inoperative. The meeting of the two changes the destinies of nations and the poise of the world is altered by what seems to the superficial an accident." He was giving his impressions of the French Revolution of 1789 and its four central personalities. In India the 'moment' was the partition of Bengal. From the spontaneous outpourings from his countrymen Sri Aurobindo stands out as the 'man.' ...
... revolutionary activities." He reflected a moment. "The Movement and the Secret Society became so formidable that in any other country with a political past they would have led to something like the French Revolution. The sympathy of the whole nation was on our side." The Movement could no longer be dismissed. Nationalism had become "a force which has shaken the whole of India, trampled the traditions ...
... . Another day someone else appeared and announced in a strident, dreadful voice: 'I am Danton! Terror ! Red Terror!', and harangued us on the necessity and justification of bloodshed in the French Revolution. Yet another day somebody came and introduced himself thus: 'I am Theramenes.'" Adds Nolini, "Theramenes was a political leader in ancient Greece. In a quiet mellow voice, he gave us a lecture ...
... Karikal on the Coromandel coast, Mahe in Kerala, Yanam in Andhra Pradesh, and Chandernagore in Bengal. France. The centuries-old monarchical system of government was overthrown during the French Revolution of 1789-93. Its motto: Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, caught the imagination of the world. The first Republic came into being. In 1791 the French Company's privileges were abolished. On 30 October ...
... they were a rich minority and so they were made the scapegoat. He said, the same thing Page 209 happened in France against the aristocracy during the revolution, and in Spain against the clergy. Sri Aurobindo : Regarding France, the revolution was not particularly against the aristocracy; it was against all history of the past. And in Spain, it was against the past repression... passed some anxious days. They were relieved when Belgium was made the route. The dictators may decide to take route through Switzerland. If they attack the Italian and German speaking Canton then the French speaking Cantons would be in difficulty. Sri Aurobindo : It is said that Czechoslovakian frontier was so strongly fortified that Germany would have found it difficult to take it. Disciple ...
... This rejection of reality was not an individual impulse but a widespread mood of the day.” 480 The nineteenth century had been the century of the bourgeoisie. The ideals of the American and French revolutions had never gained the spontaneous adherence of the religious creed they had replaced. The result was a dry, conventional morality, of which the norms were constantly breeched by the vital urges ...
... Renaissance (its leaders, Luther included, were learned Renaissance men); it was followed by the Enlightenment, the high tide of Reason in the West; the Enlightenment resulted in the American and French Revolutions, followed by the positivist Nineteenth Century, a period of industrialisation, science and progress; and then ensued the “existentialist” Twentieth Century in which the rational systems would... for prominence in the public life of the city: they were philosophers “in the true sense of the term”, whose innovating views freed the spirit. They initiated “a veritable intellectual and moral revolution”. Though Socrates did not take money for his teachings, he, the Vibhuti of the rational mind for the West, was after all a sophist and regarded as such by the Athenians. Referring to the role... freedom to be themselves in ways unprecedented in history. Countless are the individuals in Greece, among the first Christians, during the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment and the two great revolutions to which it led, who dedicated and even sacrificed their lives to this freedom of self-mastery. Never has individualism been more widespread than now – more used and, what still is inevitable among ...
... note: "an important figure in Blake's mythological system, which was still embryonic at this date; like the Tyger, he stands for the natural energies such as those liberated by the American and French Revolutions." So, whether we agree or not with Bateson's interpretation of our poem's carnivore as being no more than primitive or natural energy, we may point out that if it is Blakean to figure "the... the Earth-element and to the Auricular Nerves which are constituted by it in the Divine Humanity and in which Los has his special function. Unmistakably a joyous revolution of day and night in Heaven is declared. Again, if such a revolution were not there, Tharmas in his fallen condition would hardly be able to talk of Eternity and tell about his emanation Enion: "A portion of my Life ... In forests of night: then all the eternal forests were divided Into earths rolling in circles of space... Then was the serpent temple form'd, image of infinite Shut up in finite revolutions... 107 These "forests of night" are Urizen's and their division by him opens a cosmic prospect - stellar bodies seen moving in their fixed orbits through darkness. And what the prospect ...
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