120 REV. FR. HOFFMANN, S.J., ON MUNDARI POETRY, ETC. 



Schiller said : — 



Wo man singt, da lass dich frohlich nieder ; 

 Bose Menschen haben keine Iyieder. 



If he was right, then this abundance of songs points to a fundamentally good 

 trait in the natural character of the Mundas, a trait which still wins a good side from 

 life, however hard that life may be in its struggle with nature and with other races 

 pressing on it from all sides. 



Finally, if we consider it in itself as presented to us, we find in its very mechanism, 

 i.e., in the means it uses, a striking evidence of that wonderful instinctive and nnate 

 versatility and resourcefulness of the human mind which knows how to attain the 

 highest ends with the simplest means. Here is a race which, partly owing to adverse 

 circumstances and more probably through its own mental indolence, has so far neglected 

 to evolve its own language into a fit and pliable instrument for the expression of highly 

 abstract thought. Its words are vague and comparatively few, its sentences rigid, 

 often obscure and dependent on trivial circumstances for perfect intelligibility ; yet, 

 when the racial mind feels impelled to manifest and express itself in that high class of 

 abstraction which poetry implies, it is not at a loss to do so with the scanty material at 

 its disposal. The vagueness of its words seems poverty to us. The racial mind turns 

 that very feature to account for its purpose ; out of that very poverty it draws the 

 material form of its poetry, that innate treasure of the soul which does more to really 

 enrich and ennoble life than any amount of ringing coin could ever do What else 

 indeed is the creation of the numerous synonyms out of the very indefiniteness and 

 vagueness of their words, but a tour de force, if I may say so, of that mind which refuses 

 to be checkmated by material difficulties when it is really bent on accomplishing the 

 outward expression of one of its strongest and highest impulses or instincts ? What else 

 but this again is the expression of complex and highly abstract ideas by means of a 

 mere collocation in two lines of contrary or generically the same but specifically differ- 

 ing terms, which considered in themselves are both incapable of expressing such 

 ideas ? 



(To be continued.) 



