পাতা:বঙ্কিম-প্রসঙ্গ.djvu/৭

( 2 ) his time, most of what he had written to be blotted out. He regretted the waste of time and power which they symbolised, for he had discovered his serious function, his chief mission in life, to be the exposition of the philosophy of religion and in particular of Hinduism in its different aspects. Great is our own regret that he should have been cut off from us so soon after he had realised a great purpose in life, and, by retirement from service, had acquired leisure to pursue it, a purpose moreover which he was so well fitted by endowment and acquisition to accomplish. His paper on the Vedas to which we made a slight allusion last week was even more . valuable as a promise than as a performance. That promise, alas ! is destined to remain an unrealised dream. Not the least remarkable feature of Babu Bankim Chandra's intellect was its versatility. It is not often that the constructive imagination of the novelist is associated with the abstract, analytical, generalising faculty of the philosopher, but Babu Bankim Chandra was rich in both the powers. Indeed we are inclined to suspect that by mature he was more of a thinker than a romancist, just as Disraeli was more of a statesman than a writer of fiction. In academic life, we are informed, Bankim Chandra's manifold capacity was the general theme of admiration. He was good in mathematics, in history, and, of course, the languages. He lived, however, to be something more than a clever school-boy, and in life he proved that he had as keen an eye for the real as for the ideal. There is no doubt that he could see a man through and through ; and all that pertains to society,+national character, the tendencies of the collective mind, the under-currents of corporate life—as little escaped his piercing gaze as the deep and subtle workings of the individual heart. He had not merely seen life; he had felt its springs. We should not however be just to his memory if we failed to acknowledge