Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/78

;64 : VI. JHE DIGNITY OF SEX. Vidyapati is the Shelley of this " amorous love." The Paduball is ablaze at the boiling-point of love's heat. We notice here the convection-currents which set in along with the ebullition of feeling under the magic wand of Madana. Shelley, however, is more compre- hensive, more sweeping than Vidyapati. Shelley's heat consumes the whole world of man's activities and thoughts. Shelley is Revolution in all its branches — the " wild West Wind" of every passion. Vidyapati covers a very small ground. He is the Shelley of only " the heart of a woman," the Whitman ox: Rossetti of a single rasa, the singer, pure and simple, of the dignity of sex-function, of the ioys and griefs of carnal life, the idealizer of mighty sexual impulse on the lines, so to speak, of Morris' Chaucerian romantic tales in the Earthly Paradise.

The " Everlasting Nay " of Positivism is the ultima thule of world-culture in every stage of its history. But the mystery of one generation becomes a truism of the next. The ultima ihules are vanishing every decade-^ - poetry giving way to plain prose, romance to solid facts, scepticism to science. Human brain is ever de- priving the eternal world of ideals of its, treasures.

Religion has thus been driven out of its citadel of romance and mystery. We no longer approach the ' mysteries of religious experience from the top coming downwards, we begin with them at the bottom and proceed upwards. We commence our studies in religion with anthropology and end in psychology. We do not