"The worship of Saraswati, - by which he meant perfect emotional solitude and self-restraint - he believed with his whole heart to be an essential preparation for any task demanding the highest powers, whether of heart, mind, or body.
Such worship had been recognised in India for ages, as part of the training of the athlete, and the significance of this fact was that a man must dedicate all the force at his disposal, if he were now and again to reach that height of superconscious insight, which appears to others as illumination, inspiration, or transcendent skill. Such illumination was as necessary to the highest work in art or science, as in religion. No man who was spending himself in other ways selfish or ignoble, could ever have painted a great Madonna, or enunciated the Laws of Gravitation.
The civic ideal called as loudly for monastic devotion as the spiritual. The vows of celibacy meant renunciation of the private for the public good. Thus he saw that true manhood could not be, without control of manhood; that the achievement of real greatness, by whatever path, meant always the superiority of the soul to the personal impulse; and finally, that the great monk was also potentially the great worker or great citizen."
Narendra Nath Dutta
