of love throughout all the world." [Footnote: Cf. Poems Nos. XXI,
XL, XLIII, LXVI, LXXVI.]

It does not need much experience of ascetic literature to
recognize the boldness and originality of this attitude in such a
time and place. From the point of view of orthodox sanctity,
whether Hindu or Mohammedan, Kabîr was plainly a heretic; and his
frank dislike of all institutional religion, all external
observance--which was as thorough and as intense as that of the
Quakers themselves--completed, so far as ecclesiastical opinion
was concerned, his reputation as a dangerous man. The "simple
union" with Divine Reality which he perpetually extolled, as alike
the duty and the joy of every soul, was independent both of ritual
and of bodily austerities; the God whom he proclaimed was "neither
in Kaaba nor in Kailâsh." Those who sought Him needed not to go
far; for He awaited discovery everywhere, more accessible to "the
washerwoman and the carpenter" than to the self--righteous holy man.
[Footnote: Poems I, II, XLI.] Therefore the whole apparatus of
piety, Hindu and Moslem alike--the temple and mosque, idol and holy
water, scriptures and priests--were denounced by this inconveniently
clear-sighted poet as mere substitutes for reality; dead things
intervening between the soul and its love--

/*
The images are all lifeless, they cannot speak:
I know, for I have cried aloud to them.
The Purâna and the Koran are mere words:
lifting up the curtain, I have seen.
*/
[Footnote: Poems XLII, LXV, LXVII.]