Page:The Renaissance In India.djvu/23

 practice there was ingrained in her her spirituality, her powerful psychic tenden-cy, her great yearning to grapple with the infinite and possess it, her ineradicable religious sense, her idealism, her Yoga, the constant turn of her art and her philo-sophy. But this was not and could not be her whole mentality, her entire spirit ; spiri- tuality itself does not flourish on earthin the void, even as our mountaintops do not rise like those of an enchantment of dream out of the clouds without a base. When we look at the past of India, what strikes us next is her stupendous vita-lity, her inexhaustible power of life and joy of life, her almost unimaginably prolific creativeness. For three thousad years at least,—it is indeed much longer,— she has been creating abundantly and in cessantly, lavishly, with an inexhaustible many-sidedness, republics and kingdoms and empires, philosophies and cosmogo-nies and sciences and creeds and arts and