Respected Madam,
Taking the liberty of addressing you these few lines regarding our Society we send you under separate cover a few of our Tracts and Pamphlets which we trust, will give you an idea, however [meager], of our aims and endeavor.
We are a group of young people brought together by a common desire to know and to strive to t raise individual conduct and social practice as much into line wit as possible with the new knowledge. As a means to our growth we organize, among other things, weekly study classes [through] Reading Circles, Discourses on topics of serious interest; publish Pamphlets and Tracts written by earnest students and by persons of maturer experience; and from Lay Workers Parties into Study and Lecture Programs for Vocations.
Finding it indispensable for a live endeavor we have been attempting to form a Library, which have been ↑if it does↓ not become very big, we desire to develop so as to make it [page 2] thoroughly representative by bringing together all significant literature bearing on the chief problems of life particularly as discussed from the stand-point of modern thought and modern science and embodying the results of the magnificent research and investigation conducted on behalf of Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, Religion and Biology and other sciences.
This is an earnest appeal on behalf of our Library.
Our zeal to make the best of modern Western Culture and our effort to lessen the disparity between life and knowledge do not evoke much sympathy in the people immediately around us with cast-iron divisions, with customs, creeds and conventions too "ancient" to allow the votaries any movement forward, with [illegible]complacency as appalling as the ignorance is deep; with an increasingly narrowing patriotism which under the new name of "Nationalism" has been only helping our people to indiscriminately love all things Indian as passionately as despise all that are not. With these and several circumstances equally opposed to progress most of our people look upon us with suspicious for the attitude of the free and fearless inquiry which we have been attempting so earnestly to express in all forms of [page 3] action and which, also, we have been encouraging in others in the measure of our opportunities. An uncompromising attitude with which we endeavor is worth the making these means an inadequate support. Hence this appeal across this distance to you as a friend of culture and progressive endeavor.
Won’t you kindly give for our Library a set of your writings, or as many of them you can conveniently give, if a complete set were not possible. In spite of of our work to profit by your invaluable contributions we shall have to remain for a long while more without them unless your generosity intervenes for each year has been bringing in a new deficit in spite of all economy and in spite of all our services being honorary. We feel certain that you not will find it easy to send us back with our appeal unanswered unless we failed to tell you how earnest has been our search and our endeavor.
It was our desire to take you over to our place here in Madras, show you the nature of our endeavor and get the advantage of personal exhortation at the time of your visit to our place some time ago. But a large group of us who generally do the biggest part of the work were out of the city and we didn't know of your visit sufficiently [page 4] early to be able to come back. So we missed you.
On two different occasions we sent you our literature appealed for some of your Books -- the most characteristics at least. On each occasion we got an answer from your secretary that you were out on a Tour and would be shown our literature and our appeal when you return.
Evidently they must have got lost in the volume of Papers etc that arrive there.
Generous cooperation from liberals has enabled us place on our shelves about 2000 vols. The best of them would not be there except for the ready sympathy of author-friends among whom are Prof R. M. MacIver, Prof E. B. Holt, Prof. E. Huntington, Prof E. M East, Dr. Morton Prince, Dr. William White, Dr. Kammerer, Prof J. B. Pratt, Prof Wm McDougall, Prof J. M. Baldwin, Prof J. H. Leuba, Prof C. A. Ellwood, Prof. G. E. Moore, Prof. A. S. Eddington, Prof J. A. Thomson, Prof C. Lloyd Morgan, Prof A. S. Pringle-Pattison, Prof James Wood, Prof S. Alexander, Dr. A. F. Shaw, Viscount Haldane, Sir Charles Eliot, Sir J. G. Frazer, The Earl of Balfour, Dr. J. C. S. Schiller, Mr. Betrand Russell, Dr. Ernest Jones, Dr. T. W. Mitchell and others.
Won’t you kindly give us the privilege of counting you as one of those whose valued sympathy is a source of inspiration for sustained endeavor for the fuller and larger life?
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