salt thrown into the ocean, which immediately disappears. Its in- dividuaUtv is lost. This absorption of the soul is the highest beati- fication which Pantheism offers to its votaries. But this, in the case of the vast majority of men, can be attained only after a long process of transmigrations extending, it may be, through millions of years. If a man be faithful and punctilious in his religious ob- servances, he comes into the world after death in a higher state. Thus, a Soudra may become a Brahmin. But if unfaithful, he will be born in a lower form, it may be, in that of a reptile. It is thus, by these alternations, that the wished for absorption in Brahm is ultimately attained. With regard to the sacred, or Brahminical caste, the process may be shorter. A Brahmin's life is divided, ac- cording to the Institutes of Menu, into four periods : childhood ; student life ; life as householder ; and finally, the ascetic period. As soon as a Brahmin feels the approach of old age, he is directed to retire fi-om the world ; to live as a hermit ; to subsist only on herbs ; to deny himself all business and enjoyment, that by con- tinued self-negation he may not only destroy the power of the body, and free himself from the influence of the things seen and temporal, but also lose the consciousness of his individuality, and be able at last to say, " I am Brahm," and then he is lost in the infinite.
The Hindu life is dominated by this doctrine of absorption in God after a long series of transmigrations, and by the division of the people into castes, which has in like manner its foundation in their theory of the relation of God to the world, or, of the Infi- nite to the Finite. The Brahminical, or sacred class, is a higher manifestation of God than the military class ; the military, than the mercantile ; the mercantile, than the servile. This is popularly expressed by saying that the first proceeds from the head, the sec- ond from the arms, the third from the body, and the fourth from the feet of Brahm. The member of one of the lower castes can- not pass into either of those above him, except that by merit (rit- ual observances) he may on his next birth into the world be ad- vanced to a higher grade ; and one of a higher caste, by neglect of the prescribed rule of living, may at his next birth find himself degraded into a lower caste, or even into a beast or a reptile. Hence the horror of losing caste, which places a man out of the line of advancement, and consigns him to an almost endless state of degradation.
316 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. HI. — Anti-Thewm.
The Effect of Pantheism on the Social Life of the Hindus.
6. The whole religious and social life of the Hindu is controlled by the radical principle that all things are God, .or modes of his existence, and all destined to retui'n to Him again. To a Hindu his individual existence is a burden. It is a fall from God. Hence to get back, to be lost in the Infinite, is the one great object of desire and effort. As this end is not to be attained by virtue, but by asceticism, by propitiation of the gods, their religion is simply a round of immeaning ceremonies, or acts of self-denial, or self- torture. Their religion, therefore, tends to destroy all interest in the present life, which is regarded as a burden and degradation. It cuts the nerves of exertion. It presents no incentive to virtue. It promotes vice. It has all the effects of fatalism. The influence of the worship of deities without moral excellence, some of them monsters of iniquity ; the belief that cruelty and obscenity are ac- ceptable to these deities, and secure their favor, cannot be other- wise than debasing. The world, therefore, sees in India the prac- tical working of Pantheism. The system has been in unrestricted operation, not as a philosophy, but as a practical religious belief, for thousands of years, and among a people belonging to the most favored of the various races of men, and the result is before our eyes.
" Greece and India," says Max Miiller, " are, indeed, the two opposite poles in the historical development of the Aryan man. To the Greek, existence is full of life and reality ; to the Hindu it
is a dream, an illusion The Hindu enters this world as a
stranger ; all his thoughts are directed to another world ; he takes no part even where liQ is driven to act ; and when he sacrifices his life, it is but to be delivered from it. No wonder that a nation like the Indian cared so little for history ; no wonder that social and political virtues were little cultivated, and the ideas of the useful and the beautiful scarcely known to them. With all this, how- ever, they had what the Greek was as little capable of imagining as they were of realizing the elements of Grecian life. They shut their eyes to this world of outward seeming and activity, to open them full on the world of thought and rest. Their life was a yearning after eternity ; their activity a struggle to return into that divine essence from which this life seemed to have severed them. Believing as they did in a divine and really existing eternal Being
1 A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primilive Religion \f the Brahmans, pp. 18, 19.