Page:The Renaissance In India.djvu/16

 bud of the soul has only partly opened. The Titaness has not yet arisen. Mr. Cousins puts the question in hisbook whether the word renaissance at all applies since India has always been awake and stood in no need of reawaken-ing. There is a certain truth behind that and to one coming in with a fresh mind from outside and struck by the living continuity of past and present India, it may be especially apparent; but that is not quite how we can see it who are her children and are still suffering from the bitter effects of the great decline which came to a head in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Undoubtedly there was a period, a brief but very disastrous period of the dwindling of that great fire of life, even a moment of incipient dis- integration, marked politically by the anarchy which gave European adventure its chance, inwardly by an increasing torpor of the creative spirit in religion and art, -science and philosophy and in-