234 The Future Poetry
our psychical self, our spirit, our self of knowledge and will, our
self of love and joy, our self of life and action. This too, though
not the same thing in form, is akin to the higher work of poetry
when it acts, as the ancients would have had it consciously act,
as a purifier and builder of the soul.
The initial function of religion again is to make clear the
approaches of the soul to the Highest, to God. And it does that
at first by laying on the mind a scheme of religious knowledge
or guiding creed and dogma, a taming yoke of moral instruction
or purifying law of religious conduct and an awakening call of
religious emotion, worship, cult, and so far it is a thing apart
in its own field, but in its truly revealing side of intuitive being
and experience we find that the essence of religion is an aspira-
tion and adoration of the soul towards the Divine, the Self, the
Supreme, the Eternal, the Infinite, and an effort to get close to
and live with or in that or to enjoy in love and be like or one with
that which we adore. But poetry also on its heights turns to the
same things in ourselves and the world, not indeed with religious
adoration, but by a regarding closeness and moved oneness in
beauty and delight. The characteristic method and first field of
all these things is indeed wide apart, but at their end when
they come into their deepest spirit, they begin to approach each
other and touch; and because of this greater affinity philosophy,
psychic and spiritual science and religion are found in the ancient
Indian culture woven into one unity, and when they turn to the
expression of their most intimate experience, it is always the
poetic word which they use.
The steps of Poetry rise to these heights on her own side of
the mountain of the gods. Poetry comes into being at the direct
call of three powers, inspiration, beauty and delight, and brings
them to us and us to them by the magic charm of the inspired
rhythmic word. If it can do that at all perfectly, its essential work
has been done. It is in its beginning concerned with close and
simple natural things and, when it grows more subtle, still it has
only to create a power of beauty, move the soul with aesthetic
delight and make it feel and see, and its function seems at an
end. The kind does not seem to matter, and it has nothing to do