A HINDU FATALIST.-But tell me, my profound philosopher, if your virtue will save you from being born again. Why need an inseparable companion at all? Is it not a nuisance to have an inseparable companion? I say, have true knowledge, and virtue will take care of itself. If there is life around us and in us, it will take good care of itself and of us. Is not this the only true knowledge? Why then trouble yourself with vain fantasies? Does not our Shâstra say:

By works, a creature is bound; by knowledge he is liberated; wherefore devotees gifted with perfect insight perform no works. Through works a creature is born again, after death, with a body (of one or other) of sixteen descriptions; by knowledge he becomes the Eternal, Imperceptible and Undecaying. Some Some men of little understanding eulogise works, and so embrace with delight the entanglements of corporeal existence. But those who have reached the highest intelligence and a perfect comprehension of righteousness, do not commend works, as a person drinking from a river thinks little of a well. The results which a man obtains from works are pleasure and pain, prosperity and adversity; by knowledge, he gains that condition in which his griefs are at an end, in which he dies not, in which his birth is not repeated, from which he does not return, in which that Supreme Brahma exists Imperceptible, Unchanging, etc., etc.'

A HINDU LAWYER.-I think this is an excellent doctrine. Let us all practise it; let us give up our professions; leave the National Congress as well as the Social Conference to its fate; retire quietly into the closet of our own consciousness, and contemplate ourselves from the navel upwards, and starve ourselves, if need be, into euthanasia. It is really absurd to make any effort to improve our condition in any way, for "Life's best is that it leads to Death."

AN ANTI-REFORMER.-I suppose you do not believe that Christ was a Vedantist or a Yogi, and yet he is reported to

* Mahâbhârata XII, 8,810 p. p. Muir V.—327.

have said: "This is Life Eternal that they may know Thee; the only true God"*. It is in this sense that knowledge is contrasted with works in the passage quoted by our friend. As one of our Upanishads says: "All this is Soul. He who perceives this, thinks this, knows this, delights in Soul, sports with Soul, takes pleasure in Soul; he becomes self resplendent."+ And this old doctrine is also the latest result of Western thought. Turn to that thoughtful work "Natural Law in the Spiritual World", and you find that the author, a scientific man and a Christian, says, after quoting Herbert Spencer's definition of "perfect life :"+ "There lies a something at the back of the correspondences of the spiritual organism, just as there lies a something at the back of the natural correspondences. To say that Life is a correspondence, is only to express a partial truth. There is something behind. Life manifests itself in correspondences. But what determines them? The organism exhibits a variety of correspondences. What organizes them? As in the natural, so in the spiritual

* John XVII.

+ Chandogya Upanishad VII. 2—52, Muir III.—178.

"It is manifest á priori, that since changes in the physical state of the environment, as also those mechanical actions, and those variations of available food which occur in it, are liable to stop the processes going on in the organism; and since the adaptive changes in the organism have the effects of directly or indirectly counter-balancing those changes in the environment, it follows that the life of the organism will be short or long, low or high, according to the extent to which changes in the environment are met by corresponding changes in the organism. Allowing a margin for perturbations, the life will continue only while the correspondence continues; the completeness of the life will be proportioned to the completeness of the correspondence, and the life will be perfect only when the correspondence is perfect" Principles of Biology, p. 82. Again, "Perfect correspondence would be perfect life. Were there no changes in the environment but such as the organism had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which it met them, there would be eternal existence and eternal knowledge,"

there is a Principle of Life........The relation between the spiritual man and his environment is......a filial relation. With the new spirit, the filial correspondence, he knows the Father, and this is Life Eternal. This is not only the real relation, but the only possible relation.........It takes the Divine to know the Divine, but in no more mysterious sense than it takes the human to know the human. Such being the quality of the new relation.........it contains the guarantee of its eternity. Here at last is a correspondence which will never cease... It, and it only, will stretch beyond the grave, and be found inviolate,

"When the Moon is old,

And the Stars are cold,

And the books of the Judgment Day unfold."

......

Thus the latest phase of enlightened Christianity is exactly the oldest phase of Hindu Yoga.

A HINDU SOCIAL REFORM MISSIONARY:-Granted. But what is your conclusion? Is Yoga within the reach of all? Can a complete filial correspondence be established without works or intellectual advancement? Can man become Divine in less time than it has taken him to become a man? This organism of ours which has not yet succeeded in adapting itself to a tithe of the changes of the natural half of its environment, cannot at once become perfectly en rapport with the spiritual half. True, there is Life all around us, and we are at liberty to drink as much of it as we can. But can we drink it without a capacity to drink it? Can we have such capacity without advancing higher than the low plane of our existence? And can we so advance without any effort? Did man evolve mind, did man evolve language, did man evolve a will, without trying at all? Had he not always an Actual and an Ideal, and is not his life-history nothing more than a series of struggles to rise-a series of progressive Actuals and progressive Ideals? Has he not always had an Ideal far in advance of his Actual, and has not every expansion of his

Actual-every increase in his correspondences with his environment--every accession of more life, meant the attainment of a longed-for Ideal, and has not every such attainment been but a prelude to the burst of a higher Ideal on his vision? "The situation", says Carlyle, "that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor, miserable, hampered despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere, is thy Ideal; work it out therefrora and working, believe, live and be free." Is not this exactly what our own classic Rishi, Mudgala, said and practised? Does not the Christian Paul say the same thing"Work out your own salvation"? Can salvation be worked out without working out self-purification, and can we work out self-purification without self-denial and without righteousness? There may be higher types of man whose store of hereditary purity, accumulated by the self-denial and self-sacrifice of generations of ancestors, or whose store of self-acquired purity, due to the favourable influence of their spiritual environment, may fit them at once for the higher plane of ideal ethereal life, without any troublesome preliminary apprenticeship to the Actual. But such men-the prophets and saints of all lands -are very few. They are the salt of the earth, and help us to grow by their example. The rank and file of humanity have still to work their way to higher goals, by realising their conditions, by utilising their surroundings-surroundings vital with a Heavenly Presence-by acting well their part on earth -by hoping for a higher life—and by that 'divine discontent' which has always been the fore-runner of progress. Icarus could not fly like a bird, but a modern balloonist, by utilising Nature, can soar high into space, and unlike a bird, can even take a companion or two with him into the higher regions. The old astronomer in the fable, with his eyes turned towards the stars and his feet going astray, terminated his studies in a cold well, but the modern astronomer, well knowing that negligence is as great a crime as rashness, takes care both of his eyes and his feet, and, with telescope in hand, sweeps the

heavens from his observatory in perfect security. Friends and brethren, let us not befool ourselves with idle phrases. Go to the root of the question, if you please; look into its ins and outs, and survey it in all its aspects; but you cannot get over the invincible truth that progress is impossible without effort. We are day by day curtailing our old inheritance, and doing next to nothing to improve our surroundings. And yet we have only to exert ourselves in right earnest, and the traditions of our race, the memories of our fathers, nay, their living presences around us-for good men never die—will infuse a new life into us, and make us better, purer, holier, happier. Every year, we make our offerings to the manes of our progenitors out of an ever-diminishing stock of righteousness, and every year, by walking after the stubbornness of our hearts in devious ways, we decrease the chances of a better progeny. We care as little for our ancestry as for our posterity; we listen neither to reason nor to authority; we worship forms without understanding, and, forsaking the fountain of living waters, "hew out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." How long, dear brethren, are we to disobey the clear laws of Nature, pervert our plain path, persist in our trespasses, and gradually make our old "heritage an abomination," and cur ancient "pleasant portion" a wild desolation? How long are we to continue this prodigal waste of hereditary vigour and virtue, in utter forgetfulness of the undying Nemesis that dogs the heels of every inordinate act, every inordinate omission? Is it not yet time for us all to awake from our sleep of ages, and put our households once more in order? Is it not yet time for a combined, sustained struggle against our new vice of blood, against that fatal blight which so often nips our youth in its bud, or sears the flower of our manhood in its bloom, which turns tender maidens into women before their time, which fades their beauty, stifles their growth, eats into the roots of their life, and riddles them with untold maladies? Surely, my brothers, you do not believe that the Almighty Lawgiver is dead! Surely, you do not believe