However true, all this does not give us the right to grow indignant
when Europeans say they do not like our music, as long as their
ears are not accustomed to it, and their minds cannot understand
its spirit.... To a certain extent we can explain to you its technical
character, and give you a right idea of it as a science. But nobody
can create in you, in a moment, what the Aryans used to call Rakti;
the capacity of the human soul to receive and be moved by the
combinations of the various sounds of nature. This capacity is
the alpha and omega of our musical system, but you do not possess
it, as we do not possess the possibility to fall into raptures
over Bellini."
"But why should it be so? What are these mysterious virtues of
your music, that can be understood only by yourselves? Our skins
are of different colors, but our organic mechanism is the same.
In other words, the physiological combination of bones, blood,
nerves, veins and muscles, which forms a Hindu, has as many parts,
combined exactly after the same model as the living mechanism known
under the name of an American, Englishman, or any other European.
They come into the world from the same workshop of nature; they
have the same beginning and the same end. From a physiological
point of view we are duplicates of each other."
"Physiologically yes. And it would be as true psychologically,
if education did not interfere, which, after all is said and done,
could not but influence the mental and the moral direction taken
by a human being.
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