THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA
hecn the starting-point too of her ren-ascence. Any other nation under the same pressure would have long ago perish-ed soul and body. But certainly the out-ward members we-e becoming gangrened ; the powers of renovation seemed for a moment to be beaten by the powers of stagnation, and stagnation is death. Now that the salvation, the reawakening has come, India will certainly keep her essenti-al spirit, will keep her characteristic soul, but there is likely to be a great change of the body The shaping for itself of a new body, of new philosophical, artistic, lite-rary, cultural, political, social forms by the same soul rejuvenescent will, 1 should think, be the type of the Indian renas-cence,—-forms not contradictory of the truths of life which the old expressed, but rather expressive of those truths restated, cured of defect, completed.
What was this ancient spirit and char-acteristic soul of India ? European writers, struck by the general metaphysical bent
7
