salvation of an emptied self-consciousness, and the proclamation has been followed by a signal success. But why? Because Christianity has pointed out a source of self-forgetfulness exactly opposite to that indicated by Lâo-tze. Lâo-tze proposes to make man unconscious by giving him less life; Christianity, by giving him more. Lâo-tze would purchase individual peace by suppressing the emotions of the heart; Christianity would bring peace to the heart by giving it a new and an additional emotion. Lâotze teaches that to impart stillness to the spirit, it must cease to be; Christ teaches that it can only reach its stillness by being more abundantly. If China would attain the goal of Christianity, it must follow the method of Christianity; it must press forward after having gone backward. No man can attain spiritual unconsciousness by losing physical consciousness. Spiritual unconsciousness is not death but life, and it is to be reached only by the influx of a larger life. If the self-life is to be extinguished, it must be not by going in but by going out, by extending itself into the life of the universe and identifying its own interests with the interests of universal nature. Such a consummation can only be reached in the method opposite to Lâo-tze-can only be attained by forgetting the things which are behind, and pressing forward to the things which are before. It is by transcending

the life of the plant, by surpassing the life of the animal, by leaving in the background even the life of the primitive man, and by entering into a life which shall be in sympathy with universal development, that humanity alone can hope to see the day when the dream of the Chinaman can be realised.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MESSAGE OF INDIA.

THE message of India! The expression seems almost self-contradictory. If there is one thing which India does not suggest, it is the proclamation of a single message. It seems to exhibit rather a clash of opposing voices striving for the mastery in the temple of truth. It has been said that the soil of Palestine unites within its compass the specimens of every kind of plant. It may be said, with still more accuracy, that the soil of India unites within its compass the specimens of every kind of soul. There is not a phase of religious thought which is not intensely represented here; there is not an aspect of philosophic speculation which does not find here a congenial home. Here dwell the worshippers of tradition-the men who place their reverence in the outward letter of Scripture. Here repose the mystics-the men who seek to lose themselves in a light inaccessible and full of glory. Here rest the followers of human reason-the men who claim to

take their sole guidance from experience. Here live the materialists-the men who in the elements of sense would recognise the origin of all things. Here are the pioneers of reconciliation-the men who would find a place where matter and spirit could dwell side by side. Here, finally, are those in search of a personal divine love-the men who look neither to tradition, nor abstract mysticism, nor rationalism, nor materialism, nor even to an attempt at the reconciliation of all, but simply and solely to an unveiling of that face of God in whose vision and fruition the human spirit may find communion.1

Nor, if we turn from the inward to the outward life of the people, are we less impressed with the variety in their types and characters. The moment we have decided to assign a special quality to the Indian race, there starts up an exception to the rule so gigantic and so prominent as almost to nullify it. When we look on one side we say, "This is a nation of ascetics-of men who have abandoned all interest in the world and its concerns;" presently we are confronted, on the very surface of her earliest religious book, with the spectacle of a people in full employment and enjoyment of most of the arts of

1 These tendencies respectively indicate the names of the six Indian schools-Mimansa, Vedanta, Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Sankhya, Yoga. The most interesting Western account I know is Victor Cousin, 'Cours de l'Histoire de la Philosophie,' 1827, vol. i. Also see Professor Monier Williams' 'Indian Wisdom,' pp. 48-154.

life.1 When we turn in one direction we are impressed with the belief that we are in a land of dreamers; yet no nation in the world has ever exhibited such a one-sided tendency towards the practical, as appears in Buddhism. When we keep our eye on a single point we are impelled to say, This is a religion of despair." And yet when we turn to the earliest records-to the very fountainhead of the Indian faith-our judgment is immediately reversed. Here, as we shall see in the sequel, all is hope; pessimism has no place within its borders, and everything is gilded by the morning sun. Amid such varieties of aspect and thought, one is tempted to ask if there is any principle of unity at all. Is it possible, in any sense, to regard these contrary manifestations as parts of a single whole? Is it possible to view such different products of the human mind as in reality the produce of one soil? Have we any right, in short, to speak of the “religion of India"? Has India one message to the world? Is there anywhere a connecting cord between her diverging faiths? Is there to be found, amid the apparent dissonance of her tendencies and her systems, one central, one comprehensive idea, which binds together her seeming elements of conflict, and blends her diverse colours in a rainbow's form?

1 See Wilson's 'Rigveda,' vol. i., re-edited by F. E. Hall, vols. ii., iii., iv., edited by E. B. Cowell. London : 1850-1866.