THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

4WE have stated, as succinctly as is consistentwith clearness, the main psychological principles on whichthe ancient Indians based their scheme of education. By the trainingof Brahmacharya they placed all the energy of which the systemwas capable and which could be spared from bodily functions,at the service of the brain. In this way they not only strengthenedthe medhÀ or grasping power, the dhÈ or subtlety and swiftnessof thought conception, the memory and the creative intellectualforce, making the triple force of memory, invention, judgmentcomprehensive and analytic, but they greatly enlarged the range,no less than the intensity, of the absorbing, storing and generativemental activities. Hence those astonishing feats of memory,various comprehension and versatility of creative work of whichonly a few extraordinary intellects have been capable in Occidentalhistory, but which in ancient India were common and usual.Mr. Gladstone was considered to be the possessor of an astonishingmemory because he could repeat the whole of Homer'sIliad, beginning from any passage suggested to him and flowingon as long as required; but to a Brahmin of the old times thiswould have been a proof of a capacity neither unusual nor astonishing,but rather, petty and limited. The many-sidedness ofan Eratosthenes or the range of a Herbert Spencer have createdin Europe admiring or astonished comment; but the universalityof the ordinary curriculum in ancient India was for every studentand not for the exceptional few, and it implied, not a tastingof many subjects after the modern plan, but the thoroughmastery of all. The original achievement of a Kalidasa accomplishingthe highest in every line of poetic creation is so incredibleto the European mind that it has been sought to cleavethat mighty master of harmonies into a committee of three. Yetit is paralleled by the accomplishment in philosophy of Shankarain a short life of thirty-two years and dwarfed by the universalmastery of all possible spiritual knowledge and experience ofSri Ramakrishna in our own era. These instances are not so