Page:The Renaissance In India.djvu/47

 their most considerable changes ; and timeless India being what she is, the complexity of this transition was predes-tined and unavoidable. It was impossible that she should take a rapid wholesale imprint of western motives and their forms and leave the ruling motives of her own past to accommodate themselves to the foreign change as best they could after-wards. A swift transformation scene like that which brought into being a new modernised Japan, would have been out of the question for her, even if the external circumstances had been equally favourable. For Japan lives centrally in her temperament and in her aesthetic sense, and therefore she has always been rapidly assimilative ; her strong tempera-mental persistence has been enough to preserve her national stamp and her artistic vision a sufficient power to keep her soul alive. But India lives centrally in the spirit, with less ready and adaptive-