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SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
characterized the freedom-loving people of the active West. In the opinion of the Swami, the Orient would be benefited by greater activity and energy like that of the West, as the latter would profit by a mixture of Eastern introspection and the meditative habit. The Swami made Mr. Francis H. Leggett, one of the wealthy and influential residents of the city of New York, the President of this newly formed Vedanta Society. The universal teachings and profound learning of the Swami made a deep impression upon the minds of the American intelligentsia. He was even offered the Chair of Oriental Philosophy at Harvard university and at Columbia the Chair of Sanskrit. Besides the distinguished psychologists and philosophers, influential persons of other fields of thought also were charmed with his erudition and knowledge of science and arts. The fearless outspokenness of the Swami often alienated that general approval for which so many public workers slave and sacrifice their true views and their principles. But, after all, he found that the American public, though at first it might appear to resent, would afterwards regard with great admiration one who dared to speak openly of what he felt were the drawbacks of its civilization. At the end of his American work the Swami was thoroughly tired. Everything he did, said, or wrote