Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/100

 &6 VI. ^ THE niGNITY I OF: SEX-

excellence^ the poet of human desires, sensuous passions, and physical beauty. If his songs have been partly- or virhoUy taken as symbolical of the super-human, it is because, of the names, Radha and Krishna, which, in popular imagination, have always had a religious associa- tion. But '' higher criticism " must disentangle humanism from mediaeval symbolism- forced upon it by this des- potism of tradition. The Beatrice of Dante'a New Life is different from the Beatrice of . his Divine Comedy^ So there are Radhas and Radhas in mediaeval Vaish- nava lore.

(d) ■ The Futurism of Young India.

Vikramorvcisie, Paflabali and Chitra, are all studies in humanism. Their theme is sensuous love, the dignity of sex. This Hindu conception is a distinct contribtition to the world culture of the present .day. It has been brought to the forefront at a time when the dignity of sex has been attracting universal attention. For what-j ever be the. value of the sex-movements and the sex^ sciences of the last two decades or so, interest in sex as sex has come to stay. ; During the last century the "dignity of work," i.e., the "sanctity of labour," has been planted as an axiom in human consciousness through the efforts of Carlyle and Morris, Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassale, Louis Blanc and Mazzirii, Whit-f man and Emerson, Dayananda and Vivek-ananda. Simi- larly the dignity of sex is going. to' be established as one of the A.B.C.'s of modern ^ thought by the middle of the twentieth cerityry. . _ i

The hunjaoism revived by Aurobinda. Ghosh> Coo*