The Movement of Modern Literature – 1 111and the intellect and the soul of sensibility that this approach
is made; but there is also a certain endeavour to get through
these instruments to a closer spiritual relation and, if not yet to
embrace Nature by the Spirit in man, to harmonise and unite
the spiritual soul of man with the spiritual Presence in Nature.
Another widening of experience which modern poetry ren-
ders much more universally and with a constant power and
insistence is a greater awakening of man to himself, to man in
this warp and weft of Space and Time and in the stress of the uni-
verse, to all that is meant by his present, his past and his future.
Here too we have a parallel imaginative movement in poetry to
the intellectual movement of thought and science with its large
and its minute enquiry into the origins and antiquity and history
of the race, into the sources of its present development, into all
its physical, psychological, sociological being and the many ideal
speculations and practical aspirations of its future which have
arisen from this new knowledge of the human being and his
possibilities. Formerly, the human mind in its generality did not
go very far in these directions. Its philosophy was speculative and
metaphysical, but with little actuality except for the intellectual
and spiritual life of the individual, its science explorative of
superficial phenomenon rather than opulent both in detail and
fruitful generalisation; its view of the past was mythological,
traditional and national, not universal and embracing; its view
of the present was limited in objective scope and, with certain
exceptions, of no very great subjective profundity; an outlook
on the future was remarkable by its absence. The constant self-
expansion of the modern mind has broken down many limiting
barriers; a vast objective knowledge, an increasingly subtle sub-
jectivity, a vivid living in the past, present and future, a universal
view of man as of Nature are its strong innovations. This change
has found inevitably its vivid reflections in the wider many-
sided interests, the delicate refinements, fine searchings, large
and varied outlook and profound inlook of modern poetry.
The first widening breadth of this universal interest in man,
not solely the man of today and our own country and type or
of the past tradition of our own culture, but man in himself in