Page:The Renaissance In India.djvu/36

 that it may take, we must dismiss the idea that the tedency of metaphysical abstraction is the one note of the Indian spirit which dominates or inspires all its cadences. Its real key-note is the tendeney of spiritual realisation, not cast at all into any white monotone, but many- facetted. many-coloured, as supple in its adaptability as it is intense in its highest pitches. The note of spirituality is domi- nant, initial, constant, always recur- rent ; it is the support of all the rest. The first age of India’s greatness was a spiritual age when she sought passion- ately for the truth of existence through an intuitive mind and through an inner experience and interpretation both of the psychic and the physical existence. The stamp put on her by that beginning she has never lost, but rather always enriched it with fresh spiritual experience and discovery at each step of the national life. Even in her hour of decline it was the one thing she could never lose.