The Kamala Lectures. Rationalism in Practice

One can see the same narrow racialism in the treatment of the Negroes and the coloured races in America and Africa, and the same at the root of the treatment of the depressed classes in this country. [...] Even the last great war vas ultimately due to the want of r. space for Germany's increasing millions, and the murder of the Archduke at Serajevo, the violation of the Belgian frontier, or the submarine activities (which frPaught America into the wary) were merely proxi- mate causes which did not go to the root of the matter. [...] The importance of the question of legislation in matters of social reform is seen from the fact that in the one supreme social problem of India, viz. , caste, not much real progress can be made without some kind of enabling or permissive legislation to regularise the position of persons prepared to break the accepted rules of caste. [...] This being the case the proper constitution of the state or the prover machinery for making and administering laws is a. matter of vital need for the good of the people. "RATIONALISM IN PRACTICE 49 rt is obviOus that a person or a class of persons is best‘ble to decide what is best for himself or themselves, and ordiiarily that constitution is likely to be the better one in which the larger number [...] The primary duty of the stat is the protection of person and property, and while as regards the pro- tection of person the duty may be said to be absolute except in so far as it is subordinate4 to the even more fundamental necessity of the protection of the state iffiglf, in the case of property i4 cannot be said to be of the same absolute nature.