in power: ideal householder, ideal judge, ideal ruler. Such is the anthropomorphism of the West.
How strangely different is that of India! There, life has one test, one standard, and one alone. Does a man know God or not? That is all. No question of fruits, no question of activity, no question of happiness. Only—has the soul set out on the quest of realisation?
How literally this is the one passion we may see in popular drama. There, the romantic motive is of no account. That Jack should have his Joan (or not have her) is a mere incident, passed over with no superfluous words, at the beginning of things. But we sit for hours absorbed, enthralled, to know—when shall these men attain to God? Or even, when shall they discover that nothing but God is worth the having?
And of this stage of developement, renunciation is accepted as the outward sign. For in that moment when the red rose of the love of God springs and blossoms in a
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