THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

IV. ApsarasThere is nothing more charming, more attractive in Kalidasa thanhis instinct for sweet and human beauty; everything he touchesbecomes the inhabitant of a moonlit world of romance and yet— there is the unique gift, the consummate poetry — remainsperfectly natural, perfectly near to us, perfectly human. Shelley'sWitch of Atlas and Keats' Cynthia are certainly lovely creations,but they do not live; misty, shimmering, uncertain, seenin some half-dream where the moon is full and strange indefinableshapes begin to come out from the skirts of the forest; theycharm our imagination, but our hearts take no interest in them.They are the creations of the mystic Celtic imagination with itssingular intangibility, its fascinating other-worldliness. The Hinduhas been always decried as a dreamer and mystic. There istruth in the charge but also a singular inaccuracy. The Hindumind, in one sense, is the most concrete in the world. It seeksafter abstraction, yet is it never satisfied so long as it remainsabstraction. To make the objects and concepts of this world concrete,that is comparatively easy; sun and rain or air are, at theirmost ethereal, the sublimated secrets of matter. The Hindu isnot contented till he has seized things behind the sunlight also asconcrete realities. He is passionate for the infinite, the unseen,the spiritual, but he will not rest satisfied with conceiving them,he insists on mapping the infinite, on seeing the unseen, on visualisingthe spiritual. The Celt throws his imagination into theinfinite and is rewarded with beautiful phantoms, out of whichhe evolves a pale, mystic and intangible poetry. The Hindu sendshis heart and his intellect and eventually his whole being afterhis imagination and for his reward he has seen God and interpretedexistence. It is this double aspect of Hindu temperamentwhich is the secret of our civilisation, our religion, our life andliterature; extreme spirituality successfully attempting to workin harmony with extreme materialism. On the one side we spiritualisethe material out of all but a phenomenal and illusoryexistence, on the other we materialise the spiritual in the mostdefinite and realistic forms; this is the secret of the high