পাতা:সবুজ পত্র (পঞ্চম বর্ষ) - প্রমথ চৌধুরী.pdf/১৯৯

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৫ম বর্ষ, তৃতীয় সংখ্যা roata for breasta ture our people discovered a new mental hemisphere, a new world of knowledge-the knowledge of the facts of this world,--and a dormant faculty of our soul awoke into life. What the German philosophers call the" will to know," suddenly manifested itself amongst our people in all its freshness and vigour. The Indian mind showed no hostility--not even the faintest— towards the message of science; on the contrary, our fathers displayed an extraordinary eager- ness to acquire and spread the new learning which came from the West. The opening years of the nine- teenth century thus saw the birth of a new literature, largely and deeply influenced by Western thought and Western feeling. The first half of the last cen- tury did not produce any permanent literature, be- cause it was an experimental age-an age of text- books and translations. If we take the example of Bengal, we find that her period of literary apprentice- ship came to an end with the close of the first century of British rule. The birth of this literature, which is at once modern and national, was synchron- ous with the assumption of the government of India by the Crown. Our new literature is the expression of our new psychology, into the composition of which elements both European and Indian equally enter. I know of no process by which these can be separated, because