THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

V. 2. The Age of Kalidasa219existing forms and materials of society were used to the bestand purest advantage, and an equally marvellous picture of anothernon-human world in which aristocratic violence, strength,self-will, lust and pride ruled supreme and idealised or rathercolossalised. He brought these two worlds into warlike collisionby the hostile meeting of their champions and utmost evolutionsof their peculiar character-types, Rama and Ravana, and so createdthe Ramayana, the grandest and most paradoxical poem inthe world which becomes unmatchably sublime by disdaining allconsistent pursuit of sublimity, supremely artistic by putting asideall the conventional limitations of art, magnificently dramatic bydisregarding all dramatic illusion, and uniquely epic by handlingthe least as well as the most epic material. Not all perhaps canenter at once into the spirit of this masterpiece; but those whohave once done so, will never admit any poem in the world asits superior.My point here, however, is that it gives us the picture of anentirely moralised civilisation, containing indeed vast materialdevelopment and immense intellectual power, but both moralisedand subordinated to the needs of purity of temperament anddelicate ideality of action. Valmiki's mind seems nowhere to befamiliarised with the high-strung intellectual gospel of a high andsevere Dharma culminating in a passionless activity, raised to asupreme spiritual significance in the Gita, which is one greatkey-note of the Mahabharata. Had he known it, the strong leavenof sentimentalism and feminity in his nature might well haverejected it; such temperaments when they admire strength, admireit manifested and forceful rather than self-contained. Valmiki'scharacters act from emotional or imaginative enthusiasm, notfrom intellectual conviction; an enthusiasm of morality actuatesRama, an enthusiasm of immorality tyrannises over Ravana.Like all mainly moral temperaments, he instinctively insistedon one old established code of morals being universallyobserved as the only basis of ethical stability, avoided casuisticdevelopments and distasted innovators in metaphysical thoughtas by their persistent and searching questions dangerous to theestablished bases of morality, especially to its wholesome ordinarinessand everydayness. Valmiki, therefore, the father of our