A contemporary Vedantic case for action
The Indian saint may reasonably shut his eyes because he is looking at that which is I and Thou and We and They and It.
The inference from spiritual oneness to practical indifference was disputed by an Indian teacher before this book appeared. In Practical Vedanta, Part I, delivered in London on 10 November 1896, Vivekananda explicitly rejects passivity as Vedanta's goal. His argument is that unity supplies a standard for conduct: love expresses unity, while hatred divides. Although vice and virtue differ in degree rather than kind, their distinction still matters; actual conduct must rise toward the ideal.
This presents a precise alternative to Chesterton's deduction. Shared divine being need not mean that a tyrant's actions embody the ideal as fully as a liberator's. Vivekananda is a relevant contemporary comparison, not an identified interlocutor here. His lecture does not prove that nondualism produces political liberty; it shows that the proposed logical route from oneness to moral inactivity is not compulsory.
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