The Wheel of Fortune

Many critics and some friends of Mahatma Gandhi have found fault with his desire to introduce simpler methods of spinning and weaving and to do away with much of the complicated machinery of Modern Civilisation. The reason why they object is that they fear such methods mean not progress towards a higher state but relapse into a primitive condition of civilization or even of barbarism. His denunciation of the age of machinery and of the Industrial System has been criticised by many as the ravings of a visionary and of one who is merely an impracticable idealist. This is a strange criticism to come from those who give their allegiance to a form of civilization or 'Culture' which has led to the unprecedented horrors of the late European War and the century-old disgraces of the Industrial System. Is this present modern civilization so very desirable that we should wish it to continue in perpetuity? Every civilization in the History of Man has reached a certain point after which there has been one possibility only for it and that was an absolute relapse into semi-darkness in order to give place to a new and higher civilization. The common starting point of all the civilizations is a kind of night-time. In order that the Babylonian (or Despotic) Civilisation might give way to the Roman (or Heroic), and the Roman gives way to the Modern (or Intellectual) Civilisation, it was necessary for each, in turn, to sink completely into this common night-time. Without this entire destruction of the ancient structure, there would have been only a patchwork of the old, and not a harmonious building of the New. As Christ said: "Ye cannot put old wine into new bottles." The debris of the Past has to be cleared away in order to make way for the structure of the Future. Now with regard to Modern Civilisation, all the signs of the times show that it has failed lamentably and is gradually tottering to a dishonored grave. Why make any attempts to prop up what Nature so evidently has decided to throw on the scrap-heap? Such attempts are contrary to the teaching of past history. But anything, which tends to reach the common roots of all civilizations, should be encouraged. In order that the spiritual civilization of the Future may have a real chance of growing in an atmosphere congenial to it, Mahatma Gandhi's demonstration of the right path should be welcomed. His emphasis on simplicity of life and on the simplification of the machinery of living must be realized as a supremely essential condition of the coming of the New Era. In the civilization of the Future, an Era of natural harmonious living will be inaugurated, and artificial, luxurious and pompous living will be entirely rooted out.