Page:The Renaissance In India.djvu/40

 the great endeavour which is the whoa meaning of Indian culture, a falling short in the progress towards the perfect spiri- tualisation of the mind and the life. The beginnings were superlative, the develop- ments very great, but at a eertahi point where progress, adaptation, a new flower- ing should have come in, the old civi- lisatiou stopped short, partly drew back, partly lost its way. The essential no doubt remained and still remains in the heart of the race and not only in its habits and memories, but in its action it was covered up in a great smoke of confusion. The caus es internal and external we need not now discuss ; but the fact is there. It was the cause of the momentary helplessness of the Indian mind in the face of new and unpre- cedented conditions. It was at this moment that the Eu- ropean wave swept over India. The first effect of this entry of a new and quite opposite civilisation was the destruction of much that had no longer the power to