Let Harmony Prevail

A clarion call for assimilation, not destruction, that rings true nearly 124 years later.

- Swami Vivekananda

SECTARIANISM, BIGOTRY and, its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death knell of all fanaticism.

You have heard [an] eloquent speaker say, “Let us cease from abusing each other,” and he was very sorry that there should be always so much variance. But I think I should tell you a story, which would illustrate the cause of this variance. A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time … for our story’s sake, we must take it for granted that it had its eyes, and that it cleansed the water of all the worms and bacilli that lived in it. In this way it went on and became a little sleek and fat. One day another frog that lived in the sea fell into the well.