Number of words: 135

Gandhi is a hero in an age of transition, who, like many others, has been divided between two ideals, that of the past and that of the future, and has been forced to abandon the first only very slowly, with difficulty, as if with regret. Nor must his legal training be forgotten; it has left him with certain habits of thought. He has always kept a natural respect for the state, the law and the military authorities. He is the opposite of a rebel (the opposite by temperament of a man like Vivekananda, whose reason and religion had to fight against his instinctive movements of revolt). Gandhi has become a great rebel only because circumstances forced his moral generosity and his honesty in that direction.

Excerpted from”page number 125, of Romain Rolland and Gandhi Correspondence.”