:

6

when

writings Mind cannot be the source of life and motion, for if this had been the case, this power had been pursuing something else, the body would have become inanimate.'1 The understanding, though not the cause of light, in consequence of its nearness to spirit, possesses a degree of radiance superior to every other part of nature." The understanding receives the forms of things, and they are reflected upon spirit. It is through the operations of the understanding that things are perceived.'3 'The understanding is without beginning, for

as a seed is said to contain the future tree, so the understanding contains the habits produced by fate.' 4 Empedocles, maintained that not only man but brute animals are allied to the divinity, for that one spirit which pervades the universe unites all animated beings to itself and to one another. It is therefore unlawful to kill or eat animals which are allied to us in their principle of life.'

Having thus brought man on the stage of action, the Hindoo sages point out three modes of religion, the lowest of which relates to the popular ceremonies, and the fruit of which will be a religious mind, and a portion of merit and happiness. If these religious works are splendid, a residence with the gods is promised. The next mode is that of devotion, the blessings promised to which are comprised in a dwelling near God in a future state. But that which these sages most exalted was the pursuit of divine wisdom, either in connection with ceremonies or without them, by discrimination, subjection of the passions, and abstraction of mind. The fruit promised to this abstraction is liberation or absorption. On these subjects we have the following opinions: Future happiness is to be obtained by devotion, assisted by a sight of the image, by touching it, by meditation on its form, worshipping its feet or in its presence, bowing to it, serving it from affection,' &c.5 Those ceremonies by which the knowledge of the divine nature is obtained, and by which all evil is for ever removed, we call religion.16— 'Perform the appointed ceremonies for subduing the passions; listen to discourses on the divine nature, fix the mind unwaveringly on God, purify the body by incantations and other ceremonies, and pursuade thyself that thou and the deity are one.'7 'The inferior fruit following works is happiness with the gods.'8 Ashwülayǎnǎ and Védă-Vyasă, however, protest against the performance of works for the sake of reward: the former says, 'It is improper to seek for a recompense for works ;' and the latter says, 'Works are not to be considered as a bargain.' Other philosophers, and among them Shunkŭracharyă, are opposed to all works:

1 Goutůmů, page 399. page 337. 5 Jümüdŭgnee, page 254. 8 Védŭ-Vyasů, page 360.

2 Pǎtǎnjulee, page 394.

3 Kupilů, page 341. 6 Kŭnadů, page 428.

4 Kŭpilů,

7 Ugustyŭ, page 246.

the latter says, 'Works are wholly excluded, and knowledge alone, realizing every thing as Brúmhů, procures liberation.'1-In direct opposition to this, Gürgü says, "The man who is animated by an ardent devotion, whatever opinions he embraces, will obtain final emancipation.'2 Narŭdů suggests another way to beatitude: Reliance on a religious guide, singing the praises of God, and abstraction, lead to future blessedness."3 All these philosophers agreed with Shutatupů, that 'The candidate for future bliss must renounce the indulgence of the passions.'

Although many things are found in the philosophical writings of the Hindoos favourable to the practice of religious ceremonies and to devotion, yet the ancient system, it is evident, strongly recommended abstraction and the practice of those austerities which were intended to annihilate the passions. In this work, wisdom, or rather discrimination, was considered as the most effective agent, united to bodily austerities. On this subject Kupilů thus speaks: 'We call that discriminating wisdom which distinguishes spirit from matter according to their different natures: the immateriality of the one from the materiality of the other, the good of the one from the evil of the other, the value of the one from the worthlessness of the other.' "Nothing destroys false ideas so much as discrimination.' 'Every one through visible objects knows something of God, but abstract ideas of God none possess, except as discrimination is acquired.' 'Discrimination, seeing it prevents false ideas, is the cause of liberation.'5 The reader will perceive that this discrimination was to be connected with yogŭ, which is thus described: The restraining of the mind, and confining it to internal motions, is called yogu.' 'Of the eight parts of yogň, the first five serve the purpose of subduing the passions.26 When the yogee renounces all assistance from the understanding, and remains without the exercise of thought, he is identified with Brùmhu, and remains as the pure glass when the shadow has left it." The exalted powers possessed by the yogēē are thus mentioned by Půtůnjulee: 'The yogee will hear celestial sounds, the songs and conversation of celestial choirs.8 He will have the preception of their touch in their passage through the air. The yogee is able to trace the progress of intellect through the senses, and the path of the animal spirit through the nerves. He is able to enter a dead or a living body by the path of the senses, and in this body to act as though it were his own." The happy state of stoicism to which he is raised is thus described by Kůpilů: To a yogēē, in whose mind all things are identified as spirit,

1 Page, 362.

2 Page 252. 3 Page 233. 4 Page 242. 5 Kopilů, p. 321, 323 and 342. 6 Pătănjŭlee, page 384. 7 Védŭ-Vyasů, page 374. 8 Pythagoras is said to have been permitted to hear the celestial music of the sphere. 9 Pages 388, 889.

what is infatuation? what is grief? He sees all things as one: he is destitute of affections; he neither rejoices in good, nor is offended with evil.'1 'A wise man sees so many false things in those which are called true, so many disgusting things in those which are called pleasant, and so much misery in what is called happiness, that he turns away with disgust.' 'He who in the body has obtained liberation, is of no cast, of no sect, of no order, attends to no duties, adheres to no shastrus, to no formulas, to no works of merit; he is beyond the reach of speech; he remains at a distance from all secular concerns; he has renounced the love and the knowledge of sensible objects; he is glorious as the autumnal sky; he flatters none, he honours none, he is not worshipped, he worships none; whether he practises and follows the customs [of his country] or not, this is his character."2 Still Putůnjulee admits the possibility of this abstraction being broken: If the gods succeed in exciting desire in the mind of the yogee, he will be thrown back to all the evils of future transmigrations."

On the subject of death, these philosophers entertained no idea either just or solemn. Shoonă-Shéphŭ says, 'Material things undergo no real change; birth and death are only appearances.'4 Goutumŭ says, 'Some affirm, that death is to be identified with the completion of those enjoyments or sufferings which result from accountability for the actions performed in preceding births." Others call the dissolution of the union between the soul and the body, death; and others contend that death is merely the dissolution of the body.'5 Kunadŭ expresses similar ideas in these words: 'Religion and irreligion, at birth, taking the form of the understanding, the body, and the senses, become united to them, and the dissolution of this union is death.'6

Actions per

'He who at

but when he

Of transmigration these philosophers thus speak: The impress of actions [the mark of merit or demerit left on the mind by actions] is to be attributed to illusion. formed under the influence of illusion are followed by eight millions of births.' death loses the human form, loses the impressions received in the human state; is born again as a man, all the impressions of humanity are revived."—"It is the thirstproducing seed of desire that gives birth to creatures.' 8 Passion is the chief cause of reproThe five sources of misery, that is, ignorance, selfishness, passion, hatred, and

duction.'

1 Zeno imagined his wise man void of all passions and emotions, and capable of being happy in the midst of torture.-Plato says, 'Theoretical philosophy produces a contemplative life, in which the mind, occupied on meditations purely intellectual, acquires a resemblance to the divinity.'

2 Kŏpilů,

fear, which spring from the actions of former births, at the moment of a person's birth become assistants to actions: the existence of pride, passion, or envy, infallibly secures a birth con nected with earthly attachment.. Men who are moved by attachment, envy, or fear, become that upon which the mind is stedfastly fixed.' The Pythagoreans taught, that after the rational mind is freed from the chains of the body, it assumes an ethereal vehicle, and passes into the regions of the dead, where it remains till it is sent back to this world, to be the inhabitant of some other body, brutal or human. These ideas were the foundation of their abstinence from animal food, and of the exclusion of animal sacrifices from their religious ceremonies.' 'The rational soul,' adds Pythagoras, is a demon sprung from the divine soul of the world, and sent down into the body as a punishment for its crimes in a former state.'

Liberation, or absorption, was thus treated of by the Hindoo sages: 'Emancipation consists in the extinction of all sorrow."2 Future happiness consists in being absorbed in that God who is a sea of joy.'3- Exemption from future birth can be obtained only by a person's freeing himself from all attachment to sensible objects.' 'Discriminating wisdom produces emancipation. The Védantă teaches, that discriminating wisdom produces absorption into Brümhu; the Sankhyŭ says, absorption into life. Emancipation is to be obtained by perfect abstraction of mind. Liberation is to be obtained only by divine wisdom, which, however, cannot exist in the mind without wholly extinguishing all consciousness of outward things by meditation on the one Brůmhů. In this manner the soul may obtain emancipation even in a bodily' state. By ascending through the states of a student, a secular, and a hermit, a person will obtain absorption. The practice of ceremonies and divine knowledge are both necessary to procure liberation.'8 Absorption will immediately succeed the removal of mistake respecting matter, or the value of material things.'9 Pythagoras thought, that the soul after successive purgations would return to the eternal source from which it first proceeded.—Chrysippus and Cleanthes taught, that even the gods would at length return to Jupiter, and in him lose their separate existence. Jumůdugnee, a Hindoo sage, however, rejects this idea of the extinction of all identity of existence in a future state: The idea of losing a distinct existence by ab

1 'Souls,' says Plato, ' are sent down into the human body as into a sepulchre or prison.' 2 Goutŭmů, p. 227. 3 Vishisht'hü, p. 237. 4 Kúpilă, pages 221, 321 and 323. 'It is only,' says Plato, by disengaging itself from all animal passions, that the soul of man can be prepared to return to its original habitation.' 5 Pútănjulee, p. 228. 6 Védu-Vyasů, p. 232. 7 Joiminee, page 232. 8 Bhrigoo, page 238," 9 Vrihüspătee, page 239.

F

sorption, as a drop is lost in the ocean, is abhorrent: it is pleasant to feed on sweetmeats, but no one wishes to be the sweetmeat itself.'1

The Hindoo sages were not all agreed respecting the dissolution of the universe, or in what the Greeks called the periodical revolution of nature, or the Platonic or Great Year. Küpilu and others clearly taught that the world would be dissolved: Kopilă says, 'That in which the world will be absorbed is called by some crude matter, by others illusion, and by others atoms." ,2 Zeno says,At this period, all material forms are lost in one chaotic mass; all animated nature is reunited to the deity, and nature again exists in its original form as one whole, consisting of God and matter. From this chaotic state, however, it again emerges, by the ener gy of the Efficient Principle, and gods and men, and all the forms of regulated nature, are renewed, to be dissolved and renewed in endless succession.' The Egyptians 'conceived that the universe undergoes a periodical conflagration, after which all things are restored to their original form, to pass again through a similar succession of changes.'-Joiminee, on the other hand, maintains, that "The doctrine of the total dissolution of the universe is not just."3 The world had no beginning, and will have no end :4 as long as there are works, there must be birth, and a world like the present as a theatre on which they may be performed, and the effects passed through.'s Goutůmů, Dikshŭ and others taught, that some parts of the universe, or of the order of things, were eternal: among these they included space, time, the védŭ, the animal soul, the primary atoms, &c.

Having thus carried this summary through the most distinguished parts of the Hindoo philosophy, the reader may be anxious to know how far these philosophers, thus incessantly contradicting each other, were persuaded of the truth of the doctrines they taught: Goutumũ says, 'Evidence of the truth of things is to be obtained through the senses, by inference, by comparison, and by sensible sigus or words.'6 Joiminee says, 'Truth is capable of the clearest demonstration, without the possibility of mistake," while Katyayŭnů maintains, that "nothing is certain but existence and non-existence,'s and Goutumă adds, God has placed in our nature a disposition to err.'9 Arcesilaus taught, that every thing is uncertain to the human understanding.' Protagoras is said to have taught, that contradictory arguments may be advanced upon every subject; that all natural objects are perpetually varying; that the senses convey different reports to different persons, and even to the same person, at different 1 Page 255. 4 Dicæarchus maintained that the human race always existed.-Pherecydes was of opinon that Jupiter, duration, and chaos, were eternal. 5 Page 413.

2 Page 310.

6 Page 225.

3 Page 232.

7 Page 232.

8 Page 250.

9 Page 408.