THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA
tellectual knowledge had long been dead or petrified into a mere scholastic Pundit-ism,—all pointing to a nadir of setting energy, the evening-time from which according to the Indian idea of the cycles a new age has to start. It was that moment and the pressnre of a super- imposed European culture which followed it that made the reawakening necessary.
We have practically to take three facts into consideration, the great past of Indian culture and life with the moment of ina-daptive torpor into which it had lapsed, the first period of the Western contact in which it seemed for a moment likely to perish by slow decomposition, and the ascending movement which first broke into some clarity of expression only a decade or two ago. Mr. Cousins has his eye fixed on Indian spirituality which has always maintained itself even in the decline of the national vitalily ; it was certainly that which saved India always at every critical moment of her destiny, and it has
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