190 ESSAYS JN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

-a few moments with your host, and so goes away. And
then you forget for a time this dreamer, in the heauty of
•the dance and the clamour of the drums. Of the dance
you never weary ; there is eternal wonder in the perfect
refinement of its grace, and the mental concentration
needed to control each muscle so completely; for this is
not the passionate posturing born of a passing mood, but
the elaborated art of three thousand years, an art that
deceives you by its seeming simplicity., but in reality
idealizes every passion, human and divine ; for it tells of
the intensity of Badha's love for Krishna. Badha was
the leader of the herd-girls in Brindaban, and she, more
than any, realised the depth and sweetness of the love of
Krishna.

"Whatever place is held in the heart of Europe by
the love of Dante for his Lady Beatrice, of Paolo for
Francesca, of Deirdre for ISTaoisi, is held in India by the
love stories of Bama and Sita, of Padmavati and Batan
Sen, and the love of Badha and Krishna. Most wonder-
ful of these was the love of Badha; in the absolute
self-surrender of the human soul in her to the Divine in
Krishna is summed up all love. In this consecration of
humanity there is no place for the distinction—always
foreign to Indian thought—of sacred and profane. But
when in love the finite is brought into the presence of the
-infiiiite, when the consciousness of inner and outer is des-
troyed in the ecstasy of union with one beloved, the
moment of realisation is expressed in Indian poetry, under
the symbol of the speech of Badha, the leader of the Gopis,
with Krishna, the Divine Cowherd. And Krishna is the
Lord, Badha, the soul that strives in self-surrender, for
inseparable oneness. And so both have told of the Lord,
—the ascetic, for whom all earthly beaxity is a vain thing,