Note 111 — ROMAIN HOLLAND (continued 2)

To my mind Gandhi is as universal as Tagore, but in a different way. Gandhi is a universalist through his religious feeling; Tagore is intellectually universal. Gandhi does not exclude any one from the communion of prayer and daily duties, just as the first apostles did not differentiate between Jews and Gentiles but imposed the same moral discipline on both. This is what Gandhi aspires to do, and herein lies his narrowness; not in his heart, which is as large as that of a Christ, but in his spirit of intellectual asceticism and renunciation. (And this, too, is of a Christ!) Gandhi is a universalist of the Middle Ages. While venerating him, we understand and approve Tagore.