Page 100 - Hinduism

CHAPTER XI RELIGION AND SOCIETY
Man is a social creature as well as an individual seeker. He is therefore a person who seeks the four purusārthas as an individual, and as a social creature he participates in the strivings of all the rest of the community. He has social ties which he cannot shake off. There are natural instincts of social activity such as co-operation and working for group unity and welfare. Hinduism recognizes both the individual and the social aspects of each person within the community even as it recognizes the physical and the material and the spiritual aspects of every individual. Just as his efforts are to be for the realisation of himself as spiritual, so also his social activities must be directed towards his realisation of unity or brotherhood with all the members of the community.
Hinduism is most catholic. Its one-pointed effort has always been towards the realisation of social unity amid differences. Through its formulation of the metaphysical principle of one Īśvara who is worshipped in different forms and names, it had kept up the ideal of religion as the realisation in the life of each of its members of the Īśvara so as to create a common or one Humanity. Hinduism does not appeal merely to the heart or to the head but to
something more valuable. It appeals to the soul, the 100