evolved, but the seeds of both had been sown, and had even, under the forcing influences of the nascent sacerdotalism begun to germinate. The seeds were still under the foot, still in the earth, while the Vedic Rishis lived, but in the centuries which followed those seeds grew into forests, in which their sons were inextricably entangled and hopelessly bewildered. 2. THE BRAHMANAS.* neath it, a circle of ideas evolved from, but destructive of, the old. In harmony with these general tendencies, the belief in a life after death has alike on its material and formal sides developed. There is the clear conception of another life conditioned, as to its nature and issues, by the present. The rewards received in it are determined by the sacrifices offered here. The greater the latter in number and value, the higher the former. These rewards are, indeed, on one side, continued individual life, proportioned in its felicity and duration to the quantity and quality of the sacrifices performed; but they point, on another side, to a union with Brahma, or a transmuta These mark the next point at which the inquiry into the Hindu belief in the soul's life after death can be resumed, and its growth measured. Sacerdotalism is now "full-blown." † The Aryans have penetrated further into India. The consequent tion into other gods, which is hardly comchanges and conquests have contributed to the growth of Brahmanical pretensions. The priest has extended and deepened his command over time and eternity. The number of the sacrifices has been increased, their efficacy heightened, their minutest details made essential. The supersession of the old Vedic naturalism is complete. The names of the old gods remain, but their natures are changed. The speculative principles which form the basis of this full-blown sacerdotalism have also developed. Thought has changed the formal into the material element. To it sacrifice had first pleased, then commanded, then become greater than the gods, and, finally, the source of gods, man, and the universe. Prayer or devotion rises by similar processes to Brahma (Neuter), the supreme the self-existent. The gods became immortal by sacrifice. Brahma generated out of himself the universe, § was, as to his essence, in the Brahman, pervaded and so made the once mortal gods immortal. Sacerdotal thought, pursuing its career of abstraction, has thus deified its own conceptions. Brahmanical sacrifice is the source and basis and very substance of the universe. Brahmanical thought is eternal, its vehicle divine. The old worship still stands, only in more developed forms, but sacerdotal thought, at once idealizing and abstractive, has explained into, or inserted be patible with continued individuality. Thus it is said that he who sacrifices in a certain way "conquers for himself an union with these two gods (Aditya and Agni), and an abode in the same sphere. "* Again, those who offer particular sacrifices "become Agni, Varuna, or Indra, attain to union and the same spheres with these gods respectively."† Again," he who sacrifices with a burnt offering arrives by Agni as the door to Brahma, and, having so arrived, he attains to a union with Brahma, and abides in the same sphere with him." And he who reached this union was not, while he who did not reach it was, subject to repeated births and changes. Thus, a passage of the S'atapatha Brahmana represents the gods as made immortal by certain sacrifices, and then proceeds: - "Death saith to the gods, in the very same way, all men (also) shall become immortal, then what portion will remain for me?" The gods replied, "Henceforward no other being shall become immortal with his body, when thou shalt have seized that part. Now, everyone who is to become immortal through knowledge, or by work, shall become immortal after parting with his body." This, which they said "by knowledge or by work," means that knowledge which is Agni, that work which is Agni. Those who so know this, or who perform this rite, are born again after death, and, by being so born, they attain immortality. Whilst those who do not so know, or who do not perform this rite, are, indeed, born again after death, but become again and again his food.§ The first italicized clause plainly prom- the differences between the old and the ises final emancipation from death; the new belief, quite a Dantesque picture of second as plainly implies successive pa- their sufferings. Bhrigu, the son of Varpearances in a bodily form, subject to mor- una, is sent by his father to the four points tality. And the same thought is, in of the compass to be instructed by what he another passage, thus expressed: "He sees there. He goes and finds in each quarwho does so (studies the Veda) is freed ter men being either hacked in pieces or from dying a second time, and attains to eaten by other men, who keep saying, a union with Brahma."* The Brahmanas," This to thee, this to me." Bhrigu asks then, did not regard the state after death as necessarily final. It was so to the good who attained the abode of the gods, or union with Brahma, but was not so to the bad. Hence the balances in which a man's deeds are weighed may be either in this world or the next. If a man places himself in the balances here he escapes them hereafter, but, if not, then he must be weighed there, and follow the result; † i.e., the pious in this life escape all changes in the next, others shall be subjected to change, determined by the relative proportions of the good and evil deeds placed in the balances. Again, the theory alike of reward and retribution is that like seeks like, or, rather, that the reward is of the same nature as the merit, the punishment as the sin. "Hence they say that a man is born into the world which he has made." "So many sacrifices as a man has performed when he departs from this world, with so many is he born in the other world after his death." § Certain sacrifices "free from the mortal body" and raise to heaven, certain others "conquer" for the offerer much less. Certain sacrifices secure a more, others a less, spiritual body.T Some become the soul of the sacrificer, and ensure his birth with his whole body in the next world, but others are of more limited efficacy.** On the other hand, the punishments of the wicked are akin in nature, and proportioned in degree, to their sins here. Thus a legend which Professor Weber extracts from the S'atapatha Brahmanatt gives, while illustrating section will be found in the sixth chapter of 18th Section of latter volume. S'atap. Brah. xi. 5, 6, 9. ↑ Ib., xi. 2, 7, 33. Ib., vi. 2, 2, 27. S'atap. Brah., x. 6, 3, 1. Ib., xi. 2. 6, 13. Ib., x. 1, 5, 4. Ib. iv. 6, 11; xi. 1, 8, 6; xii. 8, 3, 31. tt Eine Legende des Satapatha-Brahmana, uber the Strafende Vergeltung nach dem Tode, Indische Streifen, i. pp. 20-30. See an epitome with ample and instructive illustrations in Dr. Muir's Sans. Texts, v. 314. ff. Professor Weber attempts, in his remarks on the above legend. to explain the origin of the belief in transmigration. He says:-"The Brahmanas do not speak distinctly concerning the duration of their rewards and punishments, and here manifestly is the starting-point of the dogma of transmigration to be sought. To men of the why they do so, and is told, "These did so to us in the other world, we do so to them again here." This is the legend in its original and ethical form; the explanation shows it transmuted into the later or sacerdotal. The men are made to represent respectively the wood, milk, grass, and water used in the Agnihotra sacrifice. He who sacrifices conquers the powers of nature these typify. He who does not becomes, in the next world, their victim; is divided and eaten there by plants and animals as he divided and ate them here. The change significantly illustrates the tendencies of Brahmanical thought. There is a certain community of nature between man and the world; the one can suffer at the hands of the other. Sacrifice has power to unite man to God, or to deliver him to punitive material forces. He can be assimilated to the Highest or subordinated to the lowest. The Brahmanas thus show our belief in a much more developed state than the Vedas. Their future state is not necessarily final; it may and it may not be so. Its highest reward, union with Brahma, gives finality, but not its lower. A man may become again and again the food of death. Then its punishments are received at the hands of Nature unconquered by sacrifice. And the ideas that form the roots of these representations are monistic. Speculation more or less consciously recognizes the essence of all beings as one; mild disposition and thoughtful spirit of the Indians, an eternity of reward or punishment would not appear probable. To them it must have seemed possible to expiate by atonement and purification the punishment due to the sins committed in this short life. And, according to their opinion, the reward for virtues exercised in the same brief period could not endure for ever." (Loc. cit., p. 22.) But the roots of the doctrine are to be sought in the metaphysical, not in the moral, ideas of the Indians. The notion of everlasting reward, though not perhaps in a European or Christian sense, had been reached in the Brahmanas, and was the result of sacerdotalism crudely conceiving its wn efficacy. Everlasting punishment was not conceived under a final form. but there was what might stand as its equivalent. Sacerdotalism could not allow those who had despised its authority to pass for ever out of its power. Transmigration did for the Eastern priesthood what purgatory did for the Western, but the dominant sacerdotalism in each case only developed and translated into a form suitable to its own use the matter of the general belief. 3. THE UPANISHADS.* The sacerdotal, as the formal and sensible, can never be to thoughtful minds the ultimate and highest element of religion. Worship in any form is a mediator, a mode in which man tries by articulate or inarticulate expression to speak to God. Intense and subtle spirits always seek to dispense with this mediator, to get face to face with God, discover what he is, and what their ultimate relations to Him. sacerdotalism quite consciously determines | book contains, not only the products of under what mode man shall exist. Its abstract thought, but praises of (tapas) being is so bound up with the faith in a austerity, rigorous abstraction. Right and future life that it cannot allow that faith truth are represented as springing from to perish. kindled austerity.* The sages of a thousand songs become by austere fervour invincible, went by it to heaven.† And in the speculative hymns its influence is indicated. That one which breathed breathless, while as yet death was not, nor immortality, was developed by the power of fervour (tapas).‡ This was the first step in the path of pure theosophic speculation. By austerity a limit was put to sacerdotalism-it might avail for the many, not for the elect few. In austere fervour there was generated the thought which strove to find a footing on the Ultimate Reality, to stand face to face with the first and final cause. And so the rishi became ambitious to practise austere fervour, the Brahman to leave sacerdotalism for asceticism, to become a úλóßios, absorbed in the study of the Veda or the contemplation of Brahma.§ Hence arose the theosophic speculation which stands expressed in the Upanishads. Worship, whether sacerdotal or devotional, reposes upon and expresses certain doctrinal or speculative principles, and the more clearly these are comprehended, the more does the worship seem, so far as the instructed or initiated are concerned, a circuitous and unnecessary medium of intercourse and what it may involve. Hence, within every sacerdotal religion, yet above it, its contradiction, yet its offspring, a These embody attempts of generic simimystical or theosophic tendency is sure to larity, but with specific differences, to conrise. On the other hand, a doctrinal reli- struct the universe on the basis of abstract gion, i.e., one which consists of formulated thought. Ascetic speculation must alprinciples, or propositions addressed to the ways, indeed, have either an accepted preintellect, is as a rule antagonistic to mysti- mise or a foregone conclusion, though it cism. Thus, Greek theosophic thought is may so transform the formulas under which found, as in the Orphici, Pythagoreans, these are expressed as to change their and Neo-Platonists, allied with elaborate meaning. Thus Brahma remains in the and symbolical worships. Thus, too, Ro- Upanishads as the supreme, the self-existman Catholicism has been rich, Protestant-ent, but has lost his sacerdotal extraction ism comparatively poor, in eminent mystics. and relations, and been transmuted into Tauler and Eckhart, Saint Theresa and the Soul of the World. The metaphysical Saint Catherine, Fenelon and Madame conception of life or soul has replaced the Guion, are natural products of the former, priestly conception of deified prayer or dehardly to be matched in the latter. Thus, votion. How then is this universal soul too, Lutheranism as compared with Cal- to be conceived? If as absolute, it bevinism, has been prolific in mystics, and comes a congeries of contradictions, defined can boast of Jacob Behmen and Emanuel yet undefined, endowed with, yet devoid Swedenborg, two of the most eminent. of, form, without limit yet limited. This The reason seems to be, that a doctrinal simply meant as it always must mean, that religion has, but a sacerdotal has not, the you cannot think an object without thinksemblance of ultimate truth, and so an in- ing a quality, and predication is limitation. tense intellect, while it may rest satisfied with the first, cannot with the second, but craves to pierce the temporal forms to the eternal God behind. This theosophic phase of thought, inevitable in India from its peculiar religious development, receives distinct expression in the Upanishads. It had existed as a tendency even in the Rig-Veda. The tenth For the literary questions connected with the Upanishads, see Professor Max Muller's Anc. Sans. Lit., pp. 315, ff.; Colebrooke's Essays, Essay on the Sacred writings of the Hindus, particularly, p. 55. R.-V., x. 190, 1. ↑ R.-V., 125, 2. In x. 167, 1. it is said of Indra, By performing austerity thou didst conquer heavR.-V., x. 129, 2, 3. en." § Lassen, Ind. Alterthumsk, i. 693 (2nd ed.); 580 (1st ed.) The Atman, which was the offspring and finite individualization of the paramatman, belongs to the theosophic rather than sacerdotal thought of India As to the relation between the two words, see Max Muller's Anc. Sans. Lit., pp. 19, g.; Lassen. Ind. Alterthumsk. i. pp. 916, f. Taittariya Upanishad, ii. 6; Roer's Translation, Bibliotheca Indica, xv, p. 15; Katha Up., iii. 15; Ib., p. 108. And similarly often. Determinatio est negatio. If conceived as and recognized relation with the idea of God. The former attempts to understand the Universe from its notion of the ultimate or highest Being; the latter from its own claims and modes of worship. The one, since it educes all beings from the ab solute Unity, asserts the eternity of the soul; but the other, since mainly anxious to found and extend its own claims, asserts an immortality whose good or evil states it can command. Theosophic speculation, How, again, shall the relation of the again, does not, like philosophic, construct many to the one, the individual soul to the its idea of God out of its idea of man, universal, be conceived? As there was in but conversely, its idea of man out of its reality only one Being, Brahma,† individual idea of God. Hence, since it starts with existence was but seeming, the result of the absolute, it loses the notion of personignorance. Those who knew Brahma be-ality both as regards God and man, and came Brahma, those who did not know the only relations it can conceive are metahim were, in the degree of their ignorauce, physical, not moral, necessary and evolumiserable, of their (comparative) knowi- tional, not voluntary and creational. It is edge, exalted and blest.§ For this old not concerned with the question of imintra-sacerdotal speculation had, like every mortality as such—that is settled by its similar phase of thought similarly devel- fundamental assumption. Nothing that oped, to evolve the distinction between has issued from the universal soul can esoterics and exoterics. There are two sci- perish. The only questions that can conences, the higher and the lower, and for cern it touch the processes of evolution. those incapable of either, there are works. and involution, emanation from God and Those who perform works, i.e., the custom- return into Him. The first process can ary sacrifices, gain only a perishable and admit indefinite gradations of being betransient reward, and must "undergo again tween God and man, as the gnostic systems decay and death," "go round and round, witness; the second can admit as many oppressed by misery, like blind people led stages and transmutations of being, as by blind." The lower knowledge com- Brahmanism can best exemplify. The prehends the several Vedas, accentuation, Upanishads have thus developed the noritual, grammar, &c.; but this, while secur- tion of immortality into that of eternity, ing a higher reward than works, still leaves and made individuality an evil and a prithe individual soul the victim of birth and vation, since the detention of the indideath. Knowledge of Brahma as the uni-vidual from return into the universal soul. versal soul, of the individual soul as Brah- | And so, at this point, theosophic speculama, can alone give rest. "Thus knowing, tion and sacerdotalism join hands; both he (Vámadéva), after the destruction of this seeking union with Brahma, renounce the body, being elevated (from this world), belief in a personal immortality. and having obtained all desires in the place of heaven, became immortal."**"Whoever knows this supreme Brahma becomes even Brahma, so overcomes grief, he overcomes sin, he becomes immortal."+t In the Upanishads the belief in immortality thus receives marked development. Theosophic, as distinguished from sacerdotal speculation, now beings it into clear Mundaka Up., i. 1, 7; Roer, ut supra, 151; Katha Up., vi. 1; Roer, 116. † Ch'handogya Up. v., a dialogue from which is quoted by Colebrooke, Essays, pp. 50-53 (Williams & Norgate's ed.); Vajasaneya Up., 5-7; Roer, p. 72, ‡ Mundaka Up., iii, 2, 4, 6, and 8; Roer, pp. 163 § Vajasaneya Up., 9-14, with notes; Roer, p. 73. Mundaka Up, 1, 1, 45; Roer, p. 151. See also Kena and Katha Ups., with Roer's introductions and notes. Mundaka Up., i, 2, 7-8; Roer, 154. Aitareya Up., ii, 4. 6; Roer, p. 32, tt Mundaka Up., iii, 2, 9; Roer, 164. The following dialogue well illustrates the doctrine and spirit of the Upanishads. Yajnavalkya about to withdraw into the forest to meditate upon Brahma and attain immortality, wishes to take farewell of his wife Maitreyi. She asks him "What my Lord knoweth (of immortality) may he tell that to me? Yajnavalkya replied, "Thou who art truly dear to me, thou speakest dear words. Sit down, I will explain it to thee, and listen well to what I say." And he said, "A husband is loved, not because you love the husband, but because you love in him the Divine Spirit (atma, the absolute self). A wife is loved, not because we love the wife, but because we love in her the Divine Spirit; children are loved, not because we love the children, but because we love the Divine Spirit in them. The spirit it is which we love when we seem to love wealth, Brahmans, Kshattriyas, this world, the gods, all beings, this universe. The Divine Spirit, O beloved wife, is to be seen, to be heard, to be perceived, and to be meditated upon. If we see, hear, perceive, and know him, O Maitreyi, then this whole universe is known to us."* "It is with us when we enter into the Divine Spirit, as if a lump of salt was thrown into the sea: it becomes dissolved into the water from which it was produced, and is not to be taken out again. But wherever you take the water and taste it, it is salt. Thus is this great endless and boundless Being but one mass of knowledge. As the water becomes salt and the salt becomes water again, thus has the Divine Spirit appeared from out the elements and disappears again into them. When we have passed away there is no longer any name. This I tell thee, my wife," said, Yajnavalkya. Maitreyi said," My Lord, here thou hast bewildered me, saying that there is no longer any name when we have passed away." 4. THE LAWS OF MANU.* Theosophic speculation elaborated the notion of God as the world-soul, from which, by necessary evolution, individual souls emanated, into which by knowledge, possible only after many changes of form, they returned. Sacerdotalism accepted and assimilated the notion, and made it the basis of its authority and claims. Of men, the Brahman stood nearest to Brahma, and was "the lord of the whole creation."t The other classes had their position and dignity determined by their several degrees of distance from the universal soul, and so the caste system was founded in the divine order of the universe. Veritable divinity was made to hedge the Brahman. He was an incarnation of Dharma. He was born above the world, the chief of all creatures. The wealth of the universe was, in fact, though not in form, his.§ But the peculiar province of sacerdotalism is the future. Its sovereignty is possible only in an age of intense faith in a hereafter, whose graduated rewards and punishments are in the hands of the priesthood. The Divina Commedia is the creation of the same century and system as And Yajnavalkya replied, "My wife, Innocent III. and Boniface VIII. The what I say is not bewildering, it is suffi- faith embodied in the detested Pope incient for the highest knowledge. For if spired the detesting poet. The same there be as it were two beings then the schoolmen, who proved in detail the claims one sees the other, the one hears, perceives, of the Papacy, painted in detail the horand knows the other. But if the one Di-rors of hell. So while the Brahmans made vine Self be the whole of all this, whom, or through whom should he see, hear, perceive, or know? How should he know himself, by whom he knows everything (himself)? How, my wife, should he know himself the knower? Thus thou hast been taught, Maitreyi; this is immortality." Having said this, Yajnavalkya left his wife for ever, and went into the solitude of the forests.t This early Hindu mysticism is far nobler than the later mysticism of the Bhagavad-Gita, where the existence of all things in God is prostituted to the basest uses, to teach indifference to the character and results of all actions. The earlier mysticism, as exhibited in the dialogue quoted in the text, may be compared with the German mysticism of the fourteenth century, to which it bears in some respects a remarkable resemblance. The doctrine of love in the one paragraph may be compared with Eckhart's (Wackernagel's Altdeutsches Lesebuch, p. 891). The doctrine of the other paragraph with Ruysbroek's, that all who are "raised above the creaturely condition into a contemplative life are one with the divine glory, yea, are that glory," become "one with the same light, by means of which they see, and which they see." (Ruysbroek's Vier Schriften, p. 144.) †The above dialogue, extracted from the Brihadaranyaka, is abridged from a translation in Professor Max Muller's Anc. Sans. Lit., pp. 22-25. See also Colebrooke's Essays, p. 39 (W. & N.'s ed.) the theosophic theory of emanation the basis of their claims, the sanctions which enforced them were drawn from the migrations of the soul before it could attain union with Brahma. Souls were seen everywhere and in everything. The generic difference between minerals and vegetables, animals and men, men and gods was abolished. The present stood connected alike with past and future, determined by the one, determining the other. The theories of individual existence and transmigration were, in a manner, combined. There were heavens for the reward of merit, hells for the punishment of demerit, each with a graduated scale, glorious enough in the one case, horrible enough in the other. When the rewards of the one, |