مقاصد «تهذيب الأخلاق»

This journal of ours is now a year and a quarter old, and sixty-three essays have appeared in it. Now we must consider what hope we have of gaining national civilisation and national progress from it.

Man is a being who cannot know the future; but from the experience of the past he can form some idea of what the future may hold. So, to make a prediction about the future of this journal, we must look at past conditions and events.

When we cast our eyes over the world of a little more than a hundred and fifty years ago, we find that in London, too, the times were just as they now are in India, and that there too, in that age, journals of this same kind were launched, through which refinement and good manners came into everything. So first we shall describe those journals a little, then compare this journal, Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq, with them, and then, judging the future state of India by that, make a prediction about our own national progress.

In the days when Europe was torn by wars between its countries, newspapers had already begun to be printed and spread in many great cities, and in London itself newspapers had begun to appear. But in no country had anyone thought of criticising the daily life of his own people, their temper, habits and character, of drawing out the evil in it and of fostering good and noble qualities. The French, it is true, had given it some thought. In the sixteenth century Montaigne, a famous French scholar, had published some essays on character and habit. After him La Bruyère, also a French scholar, published a book in which he described the affectations of the court of Louis the Fourteenth, King of France, with very skilful satire. But it had occurred to no one that there should be a journal or magazine which would appear frequently, at a fixed interval, point out the faults of the nation and keep encouraging people towards the national good. God had written this work in the fate of the prophets of London and the gods of civilisation, Sir Richard Steele and Mr Addison.

In 1709 Sir Richard Steele brought out a journal called The Tatler. Steele was its real editor, but Addison also helped from time to time. It appeared three times a week. Its first issue came out on the twelfth of April 1709.

Sir Richard Steele himself said that his aim in bringing out this journal was to free human life, which is spoiled by false affectations, from its faults; to wipe out cunning and false boasting; to strip off artificial dress; and to bring a general simplicity into the dress, conversation and conduct of his people.

Two hundred and seventy-one numbers of this journal appeared. Its last issue came out on the second of January 1711, and then it closed.

After that Sir Richard Steele and Mr Addison together brought out another journal and named it The Spectator. It appeared every day, and the same two gentlemen wrote its essays to the end. Its first issue appeared on the first of March 1711, and only three hundred and thirty-five numbers of it were published.

This journal was without equal in its time. It not only made people forget The Tatler, but surpassed every book of its kind written in that age. Excellent morals and manners were set out in it. Excellent rules for dealing with one's kin and relations were explained in it. It described with great skill how a man should examine and consider before spending that power of his which is called desire, and on what. Every essay was full of great excellence, gravity and a wonderful wit.

This journal deserves boundless praise also because it taught people how to write, and corrected their conversation, which had been spoiled by foul words, bad idioms and filthy oaths.

Every morning this journal came out, and by breakfast time it had reached people's houses, and they read it at the breakfast table. In 1713 its publication stopped.

After that Sir Richard Steele, with the help of Mr Addison, brought out another journal called The Guardian. It too appeared daily, and only one hundred and seventy-five numbers had come out when it closed.

After that, in the eighteenth century, many journals came out with the same aim; but of them only The Rambler, The Adventurer, The Idler, The World, The Mirror and The Lounger won some fame, and none of the others made any mark.

The launching of these journals did the greatest good to the morals, habits and religious life of the English, and they affected every heart. At the time when The Tatler first appeared, the ignorance, ill manners and coarseness of the people of England were hateful. People of fashion, men and women alike, despised the pursuit of learning, called study self-display and vanity, and thought it the work of low people. Learning, which is now spread among ordinary people, was found only here and there, rarely; far from anyone claiming learning, no one was even ashamed of ignorance. For a woman to be educated was a cause of scandal. At the gatherings of gentlefolk there was talk of affairs of state, and the women spoke ill of one another. Swearing oath upon oath and talking against all decency was counted a mark of high fashion. There was no limit to gambling, drunkenness and brawling. The vices of the reign of Charles the Second had become, as it were, the habits of the noble and well-born. Setting dogs on bulls and bears, paying men to fight each other, and taking pleasure in watching such spectacles was the favourite amusement of every man of rank.

Steele and Addison were extremely zealous in correcting all these evils, and they had as much success as the zeal with which they set about it.

The Spectator once wrote: "I shall enliven morality with wit, and temper wit with morality, so that, as far as possible, my readers may find instruction in both; and until people recover from all the follies into which the people of this age have fallen, I shall remind them every day of the lessons of good advice. For in a heart that lies idle even for a single day, countless faults take root, whose fibres are removed only with the greatest difficulty. It was said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from heaven to dwell among men; but I wish only this to be said of me: that I brought philosophy out of the closets of libraries, schools and colleges, spread it into assemblies and tea-tables and coffee-houses, and settled it in every heart."

The writings of Steele and Addison were so excellent that their effect was not only on the refinement of society and the polish of its language and conversation; they also had the finest effect on the authors of that age.

Dr Drake says that a taste for literature among ordinary people began only when The Tatler began to appear, and that The Spectator and The Guardian fanned this taste still higher. The influence of these journals did not last a moment or two; it spread very firmly among people of every class in England. The service these journals did to learning will always be remembered. It was they who first, with great grace, pointed out the excellent and worthy authors of the past and present and inspired people to value their merits. It is well known that Milton's Paradise Lost, a most excellent and peerless book, became famous through these very journals. The taste of their writing and the manner of their thought exposed the causes of bad writing, and drove entirely out of writing the false ornament and empty rhetoric that were like the paint and finery of courtesans, and the taunts of loose women and the abuse of street boys. They created the ability to tell good writing from bad, and a taste for sober, serious criticism and inquiry. They advanced both wit and gravity, and fixed in people's minds the idea of fitness and refinement in writing. Through these things the readers of these journals began to take delight in the works of able and learned authors and to value them with discernment.

Through Addison's writings in particular, prose style became far clearer, more polished, smoother and more delightful than before; indeed Addison's writing brought about a great revolution in the art of English prose. Even though in the present age people judge the faults and merits of writing very closely, they can say nothing of Addison's writing but praise.

Besides this, the papers of The Spectator explained with great skill and grace the sources of human thought and the distinctions between the pleasures that come from those thoughts. The result was that the ideas of poets and the imagery of their verses became excellent and sound. Empty and senseless themes went out of poetry, and moving ones took their place. Everyone gained the ability to judge the writings of able and worthy authors, to value them and to enjoy them, and gradually the whole nation came to deserve the title of learned and discerning. The readers of The Spectator came to know that beauty of prose which was in Addison's mind. Everyone began to praise the charm and clarity of his writing, and everyone gained the ability to judge the writings of those who sought fame in the art of prose.

These journals brought progress not only in literature and prose but also in morals, habits and character. In the practice of goodness, in all that concerns a man's own self and his kin and relations, friends and acquaintances, those near him and strangers, the highest degree of refinement was attained, and refinement and good manners themselves received a polish that has had no equal to this day. The heat, hostility and enmity that arise in debates on public affairs became much less within a short time, and the ability that had been spent only on argument and dispute began to flow like sweet water in beautiful canals, which watered morals and learning and cleansed and purified the bad and foul passions of people's hearts.

In India the condition of our people is even worse than that age. If our people suffered only from ignorance, it would not be so hard. The difficulty is that the whole nation suffers from compound ignorance: ignorance that does not know itself. The sciences that were or are current among our people, and with whose pride and conceit everyone is puffed up, are of no use either for religion or for the world. Following false and baseless things; taking baseless notions of one's own making for facts and realities and then piling up imaginary arguments upon them; refusing to accept anything else, however true and real it may be; resting all learning and merit on arguments about words: these are their fruits.

The beauty of literature and prose depends only on piling up words, matching words of equal measure and similar sound, expressing far-fetched ideas, and writing exaggerations. Even friendly letters and little everyday notes are full of all these faults. There will hardly be a letter or note that does not contain a lie, something that is not really in the heart. From reading formal letters one can never tell whether the writer is truly as much our friend as he writes, or whether this is merely the ordinary phrasing that has generally become customary. So this style of writing has taken the power of writing out of our hearts and made us used to false and artificial writing.

Nothing could be worse than the art of poetry as it is, corrupt and defective, in our age. Its subject is nothing but love, and even that does not express the noble feelings of man, but points to those base feelings which are the opposite of true refinement and morality.

The method of imagery and the rules of simile and metaphor have become so corrupt and defective that they produce a kind of surprise in the mind, but have no effect at all on the heart, or on character, or on the human feeling to which they relate. Poets have no idea how deeply it moves the heart to express natural feelings, their natural impulse and their innate condition, in some form of allusion, hint, simile or metaphor. Milton's Paradise Lost is nothing except a picture of the state of human nature, every verse of which makes its home in the heart. There is nothing in Shakespeare except that he has described human nature, that is, the natural make of the human temperament, which acts most powerfully upon the human mind.

As for religious learning, it has been spoiled as thoroughly as anything has a right to be spoiled. Into the commands of God, which that innocent, straightforward, simple, truthful and good-natured Prophet delivered with such directness, clarity and plainness to the ignorant, unlettered desert people of Arabia, such quibbles and subtleties have been thrust, and such philosophical questions and logical proofs mixed in, that no trace of that clarity, directness and simplicity remains in it. People have been forced to abandon the original commands that were in the Quran and the reliable traditions, and to follow principles made by Tom, Dick and Harry.

The manners of society, morals and friendship have fallen into a pattern worse even than hypocrisy. Good manners have become merely the making of sweet speeches to a man's face and a show of outward warmth. Two men will speak to each other with such love and concern that those who see and hear them think them one kernel in two shells; but look into their hearts, and they are more ill-matched than two kernels in one shell. Mere cunning and keeping up appearances are now called good manners, and dishonesty and deceit are called cleverness.

Consider conversation, and a strange pleasure presents itself. Though coarse words may not be used, thousands of coarse meanings come from the tongue. Even the most refined, sensible, respectable, good and religious men pay no attention at all to courtesy and good breeding in their talk. To call a friend's word a lie, or to accuse a friend of lying, is a trivial everyday matter. A very good man, in the very midst of warmth, courtesy and an outpouring of affection, was telling the son of his greatly revered friend: "Your father is the king of liars; he spins hundreds of tall tales day and night. What trust can be put in his word?" So we grieve over ourselves, that we have such friends.

If you go into a gathering of young gentlemen friends, listen to the abuse and obscenities they use about one another. A most respected man of noble family, an author of books and famous in Urdu letters, talked with me in a friendly way for thirty minutes, and I counted carefully: thirty-six words of abuse came from his mouth, some of them about himself, some about the book and author under discussion, and some about the people sitting and listening round about.

Look at the state of the rich: day and night they have no work or business but quail-fighting, cock-fighting, pigeon-flying and similar follies in which to spend their lives.

When they turn to goodness, they squeeze it so hard that it loses all its taste; and when they take to wickedness, they outdo the Devil himself.

In short, everything that existed in Europe in that age, and even more, exists now in India, and without doubt a Tatler and a Spectator were needed here. Thank God, this journal has been launched in India for the Muslims to take their place. But alas, there is no Steele or Addison here.

Steele and Addison had one great advantage in their time: their writing and their ideas were confined, as far as they went, to refinement, good manners and the art of living together. There was no meddling with religious questions in them. We too very much wish to avoid religious matters; but among us all customs and habits have become so mixed up with religion that without religious argument we cannot take a single step on the road of refinement and good manners. Tell people to give up something, and at once the answer comes that it is a religious merit; tell them to learn something, and at that very moment someone says that religion forbids it. So we are compelled to argue about religion in teaching refinement, good manners and the art of living together.

Religious argument is a strange chain: arguing over one small matter brings great questions and the fundamentals of religion into the argument. So we are forced sometimes to argue with jurisprudence and sometimes with the principles of jurisprudence, sometimes with the Traditions and sometimes with the principles of the Traditions, sometimes with commentary on the Quran and sometimes with the principles of commentary. So India needs not only a Steele and an Addison but very greatly a holy Luther as well.

It was the good fortune of Steele and Addison that the people of their time read their writings and valued them; and it is our misfortune that our writings are called contrary to religion and that reading them is thought to bring damnation. Steele and Addison, after each paper was published, must have eased the strain of their labour and thought by hearing cries of "Bravo!"; and after our writings are published we expect to hear nothing but curses and reproach. Steele and Addison heard good from those to whom they did good. We get evil from those whose good we seek; we hear ill of ourselves from those of whom we speak well. It was no hard thing for Steele and Addison to win thousands of hearts; for us it is very hard to win even one. Steele and Addison had only to incline hearts that were already formed; our difficulty is that we must both form the heart and incline it ourselves.

People call these ideas of ours madness and melancholia; but the madman is sane enough in his own affairs. We understand very well what we are doing, and what we have done in this short time. So we hope from God for better things to come, and we foretell that good days are coming. Though we do not know when they will come, we are certain that they will surely, without doubt, come.

We do not say that through this humble journal we shall do in India what Steele and Addison did in England. We say only that, as far as we are able, we are doing our duty. And how well he spoke who said: the striving is mine, and the completion is from God Most High.