206 The Future Poetry
the soul through which it finds expression or the level of mind
from which it speaks which we must distinguish to get a right
idea of the progress of poetry. All else is subsidiary, variations
of rhythm, language, structure; they are the form, the vehicle;
they derive subtly and get their character and meaning from the
psychological power and the fundamental motive.
If poetry is a highly charged power of aesthetic expression
of the soul of man, it must follow in its course of evolution
the development of that soul. I put it that from this point of
view the soul of man like the soul of Nature can be regarded as
an unfolding of the spirit in the material world. Our unfolding
has its roots in the soil of the physical life; its growth shoots
up and out in many directions in the stalk and branches of the
vital being; it puts forth the opulence of the buds of mind and
there, nestling in the luxuriant leaves of mind and above it,
out from the spirit which was concealed in the whole process
must blossom the free and infinite soul of man, the hundred-
petalled rose of God. Man indeed, unlike other forms of being
in terrestrial Nature, though rooted in body, proceeds by the
mind and all that is characteristic of him belongs to the wonder-
ful play of mind taking up physicality and life and developing
and enriching its gains till it can exceed itself and become a
spiritual mind, the divine Mind in man. He turns first his view
on the outward physical world and on his own life of outward
action and concentrates on that or throws into its mould his
life-suggestions, his thought, his religious idea, and, if he arrives
at some vision of an inner spiritual truth, he puts even that
into forms and figures of the physical life and physical Nature.^1
Poetry at a certain stage or of a certain kind expresses this turn
of the human mentality in word and in form of beauty. It can
reach great heights in this kind of mental mould, can see the
physical forms of the gods, lift to a certain greatness by its
vision and disclose a divine quality in even the most obvious,
material and outward being and action of man; and in this type
we have Homer. Arrived to a greater depth of living, seeing from
(^1) As in the hymns of the Vedic Rishis.