Author: Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max), 1823-1900; Gifford lectures, 1892. [from old catalog]; W. M., comp. [from old catalog]
Date: 1893-04-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Philosophy and religion; Psychology; Religious; Theism
Description: Book digitized by Google from the library of University of California and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.
Publisher: London and New York, Longmans, Green and co.

Theosophy;

1. Theosophy;

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Theosophy;

Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max), 1823-1900

Gifford lectures, 1892. [from old catalog]

W. M., comp. [from old catalog]

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PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION

MAX MVLLER

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HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

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PREFACE.

rflHE discovery of God, the discovery of the Soul, -*- and the discovery of the oneness of God and the Soul, such have been the three principal themes of my Gifford Lectures, and I have ventured to make at least an attempt to treat each of them, not simply as a philosopher, but as an historian. While the philosophy of religion treats the belief in a First Cause of the universe, and in an Ego or Self, and in the true relation between the two, as matters of psychological development, or of logical consecution, it was my purpose to show, not what the process of each of these discoveries may or must have been, but what it has been in the history of the world, so far as it is known to us at present. I am fully aware that this historical method is beset with grave difficulties, and has in consequence found but little favour in the eyes of speculative philosophers. So long as we look on the history of the human race as something that might or might not have been, we cannot wonder that the student of religion should prefer to form his opinions of the nature of religion and the laws of its growth from the masterwork of Thomas Aquinas,

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VI PREFACE.

the Summa Sacrae Theologiae, rather than from the Sacred Books of the East But when we have learnt to recognise in history the realisation of a rational purpose, when we have learnt to look upon it as in the truest sense of the word a Divine Drama, the plot revealed in it ought to assume in the eyes of the philosopher also a meaning and a value far beyond the speculations of even the most enlightened and logical theologians.

I am not ignorant of the dangers of such an undertaking, and painfully conscious of the imperfections inevitable in a first attempt. The chief danger is that we are very prone to find in the facts of history the lesson which we wish to find. It is well known how misleading the Hegelian method has proved in this respect, because Hegel was bent on seeing in the history of religion what ought to be there according to his view of the logical necessity in the development of the idea, if not of the psychological growth of the human mind. The result has been that the historical side in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion is almost entirely untrustworthy. My endeavour has been on the contrary to yield to no presumptions, but to submit to facts only, such as we find them in the Sacred Books of the East, to try to decipher and understand tbem as we try to decipher and understand the geological annals of the earth, and to discover in them reason, cause and effect, and, if possible, that close genealogical coherence which alone can change empirical into scientific knowledge. This genealogical method is no doubt the most perfect

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PREFACE. Vll
when we can follow the growth of religious ideas, as it were, from son to father, from pupil to teacher, from the negative to the positive stage. But where this is impossible, the analogical method also has its advantages, enabling us to watch the same dogmas springing up independently in various places, and to discover from their similarities and dissimilarities what is due to our common nature, and what must be attributed to the influence of individual thinkers. Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus is not necessarily what is true, but it is what is natural, it constitutes what we have accustomed ourselves to call Natural Religion, though few historical students would now maintain that Supernatural Religion has no right to the name of Natural Religion, or that it forms no part of the Divine Drama of Man as acted from age to age on the historical stage of the world.

It has been my object in these three consecutive courses of Lectures on Physical, Anthropological, and Psychological religion to prove that what in my first volume I put forward as a preliminary definition of religion in its widest sense, namely the Perception of the Infinite, can be shown by historical evidence to have been the one element shared in common by all religions. Only we must not forget that, like every other concept, that of ^he^Infinite also^had^D pass through many phases in its historical evolutitaL be- [^ ginning with the simpleftegaiienof what is-ftnite, and the assertion of an invisible Beyond, and leading up to a perceptive belief in that most real Infinite in which we live and move and have our being. This

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Vlll PBEFACE.

historical evolution of the concept of the objective Infinite I tried to trace in my Lectures on Physical Religion, that of the concept of the subjective Infinite in my Lectures on Anthropological Religion, while this last volume was reserved for the study of the discovery of the oneness of the objective God and the subjective Soul which forms the final consummation of all religion and all philosophy.

The imperfections to which a first attempt in a comparative study of religions is liable arise from the enormous amount of the materials that have to be consulted, and from the ever-increasing number of books devoted to their interpretation. The amount of reading that would be required in order to treat this subject as it ought to be treated is more than any single scholar can possibly force into the small span of his life. It is easy to find fault and say, Qui trop embra88ef Trial tftreint, but in comparative studies it is impossible to embrace too much, and critics must learn to be reasonable and not expect from a scholar engaged in a comparative study of many religions the same thorough acquaintance with every one of them which they have a right to expect from a specialist. No one has felt more keenly than myself the annoyance whenever I had to be satisfied with a mere relata refero, or had to accept the judgments of others, even when I knew that they were better qualified to judge than myself.

fThis applies more particularly to my concluding Lectures, Lect. XII to XV in this volume. These Lectures contain the key to the whole series, and they

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formed from the very beginning my final aim. They are meant as the coping-stone of the arch that rests on the two pillars of Physical and Anthropological Religion, and unites the two into the true gate of the temple of the religion of the future. They are to show that from a purely historical point of view Christianity is not a mere continuation or even reform of Judaism, but that, particularly in its theology or theosophy it represents a synthesis of Semitic and Aryan thought which forms its real strength and its power of satisfying not only the requirements of the heart, but likewise the postulates of reason.

My object was to show that there is a constant action and reaction in the growth of religious ideas, and that the first action by which the Divine was separated from and placed almost beyond the reach of the human mind, was followed by a reaction which tried to reunite the two. This process, though visible in many religions, more particularly in that of the Vedanta, was most pronounced in Judaism in its transition to Christianity. Nowhere had the invisible God been further removed from the visible world than in the ancient Jewish religion, and nowhere have the two been so closely drawn together again and made one as by that fundamental doctrine of Christianity, the divine sonship of man. It has been my chief object to show that this reaction was produced or at least accelerated by the historical contact between Semitic and Aryan thought, chiefly at Alexandria, and on this point I have to confess that I have ventured to go far

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beyond Harnack, Drummond, Westcott, and others. They seem to me to ascribe too little importance to the influence of Greek philosophy in the formation of the earliest Christian theology, while I feel convinced that without that influence, the theology of Alexandria would have been simply impossible, or would probably never have advanced beyond that of the Talmud. What weighs with me more than anything else in forming this opinion are the facts of language, the philosophical terminology which both Jews like Philo and Christians like St. Clement employ, and which is clearly taken over from Greek philosophy. Whoever uses such words as Logos, the Word, Monogenis, the Onlybegotten, PrototokoSy the First-born, Hyios ton theou, the Son of God, has borrowed the very germs of his religious thoughts from Greek philosophy. To suppose that the Fathers of the Church took these words without borrowing the ideas, is like supposing that savages would carry away fire-arms without getting at the same time powder and shot for firing them. Words may be borrowed and their ideas may be modified, purified, magnified by the borrower, but the substance is always the same, and the gold that is in a gold coin will always remain the same gold, even though it is turned into a divine image. I have tried to show that the doctrine of the Logos, the very life-blood of Christianity, is exclusively Aryan, and that it is one of the simplest and truest conclusions at which the human mind can arrive, if the presence of Reason or reasons in the world has once been recognised.

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We all know the words of Lucretius:

'Praeterea caeli rationes ordine certo Et varia annorum cernebant tempora verti.' (v. 1182.)

If the human reason has once recognised Reason or reasons (logoi) in the universe, Lucretius may call it a fatal error to ascribe them to the gods, but are .they to be ascribed to no one ? Is the Reason or the Logos in the world nothing but a name, a mere generalisation or abstraction, or is it a real power, and, if so, whose power is it ? If the Klamaths, a tribe of Red Indians, declared that the world was thought and willed by the Old One on high, the Greeks went only one step further by maintaining that this thought of the Supreme Being, this Logos, as they called it, was the issue, the offspring, the Son of God, and that it consisted of the logoi or ideas or, as we now say, the types of all created things. The highest of these types being the type of manhood, the Alexandrian Fathers of the Church in calling Christ the Logos or the Word or the Son of God, were bestowing the highest predicate which they possessed in their vocabulary on Christ, in whom they believed that the divine thought of manhood had been realised in all its fulness. That predicate, however, was not of their own workmanship, not was it a mere modification of the Semitic Wisdom, which in the beginning was with God. That Wisdom, a feminine, may be recognised in the EpisUmd or knowledge with which the Father begets the Son, but it cannot be taken at the same time as the prototype of the masculine Logos or the spoken Word or the Son of God.

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XU PREFACE.

This philosophical concept of the Son of God cannot be derived from the Old Testament concept of Israel as the son of God, nor from the occasional expressions of personal piety addressed to Yahweh as the Father of all the sons of man. ' Son of God/ as applied to Jesus, loses its true meaning unless we take it in its idiomatic Greek sense, as the Logos *, and unless we learn to understand what the Fathers of the Church had fully understood that the Logos or the Word of God could become manifest to mankind in one form only, namely, in that of man, the ideal or perfect man. I am quite willing to admit, on the other hand, that an expression such as ' Son of Man' is of Semitic growth. It is a solecism even when translated into Greek. No Greek would ever have said son of man in the sense of man, as little as any Roman would ever have spoken of Agnus Dei, except under the influence of Jewish thought. Son of man meant simply man, before it was applied to the Messiah. Thus only can we understand the antithesis which meets us as early as the first century,' the Son of God, not the son of man V

If we have once entered into the thoughts of Philo and St. Clement as the representatives of Jewish and Christian theology at Alexandria, we shall perceive how closely the doctrine of the Incarnation is connected with that of the Logos, and receives its true historical explanation from it and from it alone.

1 In passages such as Matt. viii. 29, Mark xiv. 61, xvi. 39, ' Son of God' }s used in its popular sense, which to the Jews was blasphemous. 3 Barnabas, xii. 10, ovxt vtts wQp&Ttov, dXka vl&s rod ©cov.

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It was only on the strength of their old belief in the Logos that the earliest Greek converts could with perfect honesty, and, in spite of the sneers of Celsus and other Greek philosophers, bring themselves to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnate Logos, as the Word or the Son of God. If they had taken any lower view of Christ, if they had been satisfied with a mythological Son of God, or with a Nazarene Christ, and if they had held, as some theologians held afterwards, nay as some hold even now, that there was between Christ and His brethren what they call a difference of kind, not of degree, however wide, they could not have answered the taunts of their former fellow-students, they could not have joined the Catechetical School at Alexandria or followed such teachers as Athenagoras, Pantaenus, St. Clement, and Origen.

What Athenagoras, one of the earliest apologetes of Christianity, thought about the Son of God, we can learn from his defence which was addressed to Marcus Aurelius, where he says (cap. x): 'Let no one think it ridiculous that God should have a son. For though the poets in their fictions represent the gods as no better than men (that is, as begetting sons), our mode of thinking is not the same as theirs, concerning either God the Father or the Son. But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation ; for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one/

All this refers to Christian theology or theosophy only, and not to what we mean by Christian religion.

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XIV PBEFACB.

This drew its life from another source, from the historical personality of Jesus, and not from the Alexandrian Logos. This distinction is very important for the early history of Christianity, and we must never forget that the Greek philosophers who joined the Christian community, after they had once made their peace with their philosophical conscience, became true disciples of Christ and accepted with all their heart the moral law which He had preached, the law of love on which hang all His commandments. What that personality was they must have known far better than we can, for Clement, having been born in the middle of the second century, may possibly have known Papias or some of his friends, who knew the Apostles, and he certainly knew many Christian writings which are lost to us *. To restore the image of that personality must be left to each believer in Christ, according to the ideals of which his mind is capable, and according to his capacity of comprehending the deep significance of the few words of Christ that have been preserved to us by the Apostles and their disciples. What interests the historian is to understand how the belief of a small brotherhood of Galilean fishermen and their devotion to their Master could have influenced, as they did, the religious beliefs and the philosophical convictions of the whole of the ancient world. The key to that riddle should be sought for, I believe, at Alexandria rather than at Jerusalem. But if that riddle is ever to be solved, it is the duty of the historian to examine the facts and

1 Bigg, Christian Hatoniste, p. 46.

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PREFACE. XV
the facts only, without any bias whether of orthodoxy, of rationalism, or of agnosticism. To the historian orthodoxy has no existence. He has to deal with facts only, and with deductions that can be justified by facts. I cannot give here the names of all the books which have been of use to me in preparing these Lectures. Many of them are quoted in the notes. My earliest acquaintance with the subject treated in this volume goes back to the lectures of Weisse, Lotze, and Niedner at Leipzig, and of Schelling and Neander at Berlin, which I attended more than fifty years ago. Since then the additions to our knowledge of ancient religions, and of Christianity in its most ancient form, have been so enormous that even a bibliographical index would form a volume. I cannot, however, conclude this preface without acknowledging my obligations to the authors of some of the more recent works which have been of the greatest use to me. I feel deeply grateful to Professor Harnack, whose Dogmen-geschichte, 1888, is the most marvellous storehouse of well-authenticated facts in the history of the Christian Church, to Dr. Charles Bigg, whose learned Bampton Lectures on the Christian Platonists, 1888, make us regret that they were never continued, and to Dr. James Drummond, whose work on PhUo Judaeus, 1888, has supplied me not only with most valuable evidence, but likewise with the most careful analysis of whatever evidence there exists in illustration of the epoch of Fhilo Judaeus. That epoch was an epoch in the true sense of the word, for it made both Greeks and Jews pause for a time before

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XVI PREFACE.

they -went on, each on their own way. It was a real epoch in the history of Christianity, for Philo's works were studied by St. Clement and the other Fathers of the Alexandrian Church, and opened their eyes to see the truth in the inspired writings of Moses and the Prophets, and likewise in the inspired writings of Plato and Aristotle. It was a real epoch in the history of the world, if we are right in supposing that we owe to the philosophical defenders of the Christian faith at Alexandria the final victory of Christian philosophy and Christian religion over the religion and philosophy of the whole Roman Empire.

I ought, perhaps, to explain why, to the title of Psychological Religion, originally chosen for this my final course of Gifford Lectures, I have added that of Theosophy. It seemed to me that this venerable name, so well known among early Christian thinkers, as expressing the highest knowledge of God within the reach of the human mind, has of late been so greatly misappropriated that it was high time to restore it to its proper function. It should be known once for all that one may call oneself a theosophist, without being suspected of believing in spirit-rappings, tableturnings, or any other occult sciences and black arts.

I am painfully aware that at seventy my eyes are not so keen as they were at seventeen, and I must not conclude this preface without craving the indulgence of my readers for any misprints or wrong references that may have escaped me.

F. M. M.

Oxford, February, 1893.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGB

Preface V

INTRODUCTORY LECTUBE. The Historical Study of Eeligion.

Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht.—The Fundamental Principle of the Historical School.—History of Eeligion is the True Philosophy of Religion.—Natural Religion the Foundation of our Belief in God.—The Real Purpose of the Biography of Agni.— Natural Revelation.—The True Object of comparing the Christian and other Religions.—Ancient Prayers.—Egyptian, Accadian, Babylonian, Vedic, Avestic, Gathas, Chinese, Mohammedan, Modern Hindu Prayers.—Moses and the Shepherd.—Advantages of a Comparative Study of Religions 1-26

LECTURE II.

The True Value op the Sacked Books Examined.

Historical Documents for Studying the Origin of Religion.— Religious Language.—Literary Documents.—Modern Date of Sacred Books.—Fragmentary Character of the Sacred Books of (4) b

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PAGB

India.—Loss of the Sacred Literature of Persia.—The Relation between the A vesta and the Old Testament.—* I am that I am' 27-57

LECTURE III.

The Histobical Relationship op Ancient Religions and Philosophies.

How to compare Ancient Religions and Ancient Philosophies.— Common Humanity.—Common Language.—Common History.— Common Neighbourhood.—Relation between the Religions of India and Persia.—Independent Character of Indian Philosophy.— The Indian View of Life.—Language, the Common Background of Philosophy.—Common Aryan Religion and Mythology.—Charites — Haritas.—The later Growth of Philosophy.—Help derived by Philosophy from Language.—Independent Character of Indian Philosophy.—Was Greek Philosophy borrowed from the East ?— Indian Philosophy autochthonous . . . . 58-86

LECTURE IV.

The Relation op Psychological to Physical and Anthkopological Religion.

The Constituent Elements of Religion.—My own Division.— The meaning of Psychological Religion.—I. Return of the Soul to God, after death.—II. Knowledge of the unity of the Divine and the Human.—Veda and Vedanta.—Upanishads.—Vedanta-Sutras. —Commentary by &ankara£arya.—Commentary by Ramanu^a.— Three Periods of Vedanta Literature.—Peculiar Character of Indian Philosophy.—Philosophy begins with doubting the Evidence of the Senses.—£ruti or Inspiration.—Tat tvam a si.— Two Vedanta Schools.—The Upanishads difficult to translate 87-112

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LECTURE V.

JOUBNET OP THE SOUL AFTER DEATH.

PAGE

Different Statements from the Upanishads.—Passages from the Upanishads.—Difficulties of Interpretation.—Historical Progress in the Upanishads.—Attempts to harmonise the different Statements of the Upanishads.—Ved&nta-Sutras.—Independent Statements in the Mantras.—Mythological Language misunderstood.— The Devayana or Path of the Gods.—Metempsychosis.—Reality of Invisible Things.—Absence of Hells.—Transmigration as conceived in the Laws of Manu.—The Three Qualities, Darkness, Activity, and Goodness.—The Nine Classes.—Punishments of the Wicked.—Bridges 113-176

LECTURE VI. The Eschatology op the Avesta.

General similarities in Eschatological Legends.—Peculiar relation between the Religions of India and Persia.—Zoroaster teaches neither Fire-worship nor Dualism.—The Problem of the Origin of Evil.—The Angels, originally qualities of Ormazd.— Asuras and Suras.—Abjuration of DaSva Worship.—Immortality of the Soul in the Avesta.—The Pitns or Fathers as conceived in the Yedic Hymns.—Fate of the individual Soul at the general resurrection.—Rewards and Punishments after Death.—Good Works in the shape of a Beautiful Maiden.—Influence on Mohammedanism.—Extract from the Minokhired on the Weighing of the Dead.—Arrival of the Soul before the throne of Bahman and Ahuramazda.—Common background of Avesta and Veda.—Pitaras, the Fathers in the Veda, the Fravashis in the Avesta.—Wider meaning of Fravashi j. 177-207

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LECTURE VII.

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

PAOR

Plato's Authority.—Plato's Mythological Language.—The Tale of the Soul.—The Charioteer and the Horses.—The Procession of the Gods.—Belief in metempsychosis in Plato and the Upanishads.— The Nine Classes of Plato and Manu.—Human Souls migrating into Animal Bodies.—The Story of Er.—Coincidences and Differences.—Truth underlying Myth.—The Haidas on the Immortality of the Soul.—The Polynesians on the Immortality of the SouL—The last result of Physical Keligion . . . 208-282

LECTURE Vm. Tbue Immobtality.

Judaism and Buddhism.—The Vedanta Doctrine on True Immortality. — Personality, a Limitation of the Godhead.— Struggle for higher conception of the Godhead.—Name for the highest Godhead, Brahman, Purusha, Prana, Spirit.—Other Names of the Supreme Being, Skambha.—Names for the Soul.— Ahara, Ego.—Atman.—Dialogue from the ifMndogya-Upanishad. —Deductions from the Dialogue.—&ankara's Remarks.—The True Nature of the Individual Soul.—The Phenomenal and the Real.— The Atman unchanged amidst the changes of the World.— Nescience or Avidya the Cause of Phenomenal Semblance.— Satyabhedavada and Bhedabhedavada.—The Approach of the Soul to Brahman.—Later Speculations.—Identity of the Soul with Brahman 233-281

LECTURE IX.

The Vedanta-Philosophy.

The Vedanta as a Philosophical System.—Identity of Soul and Brahman.—Dialogue from the ITAandogya-Upanishad.—Union, not Absorption.—Knowledge, not Love of God.—Avidya or Nescience.

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PAGE

—Brahman as sat, as £it, and as & nan da.—Philosophy and Keligion. —The Supreme Lord or t«vara.—Upadhis, Sukshmasarira, and Sthulasarlra.—Creation or Emanation.—Brahman and Avidya the Cause of the Phenomenal World.—The Essence of Man.— Karman or Apurva.—Different States of the Soul.—Kramamukti. <?ivanmukti.—Personality of the Soul . . . . 282-311

LECTUEE X.

The Two Schools of the Vedanta.

Equivocal Passages in the Upanishads.—&ankara and Ramanu^a. —Ramanugra.—Sankara.—Moral Character of the Vedanta.— Ascetic Practices.—Esoteric Doctrines.—Difference between India and Greece 312-835

LECTURE XI.

SumsM.

Religion, System of Relations between Man and God.—Sufiism, its Origin.—Abstract of Sufi Doctrines.—Rabia, the earliest Sufi.— Connection of Sufiism with Early Christianity.—Abu Said Abul Cheir, Founder of Sufiism.—Abu Yasid and Junaid.—Sufi, Fakir, Darwlsh.—Asceticism.—The Mesnevi.—Mohammed's Opinion.— The Four Stages.—The Poetical Language of Sufiism.—Morality of Sufiism.—Extracts from Sufi Poets .... 336-360

LECTURE XII. The Logos.

Religion a Bridge between the Visible and the Invisible.— Oriental Influences in Early Christianity.—Borrowing of Religious Thoughts.—Philo and his Allegorical Interpretation.—Synesius.

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XX11 TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGK

—Logos.—The Logos among the Klamaths.—The Historical Antecedents of the Logos.—The Origin of Species.—Heraclitus.— Anaxagoras.—Socrates and Plato.—Aristotle.—The Stoics.— Philo's Inheritance.—Philo's Philosophy.—The Logos a Bridge between God and the World.—Logos as the Son of God.— Wisdom or Sophia.—Monogenes, the Only Begotten.—Jupiter as Son of God 361-423

LECTURE XIII. Alexandrian Christianity.

Stoics and Neo Platonists.—Plotinus.—Letter from Plotinus to Flaccus.—Ecstatic Intuition.—Alexandrian Christianity. St. Clement.—The Trinity of St. Clement.—Origen.—The Alogoi 424-458

LECTURE XIV.

DlONYSIUS THE ArEOPAGITE.

The Logos in the Latin Church.—Tertullian.—Dionysius the Areopagite.—Writings of Dionysius.—Translation by Scot us Erigena.—The Influence of the Diouysian Writings.—Sources of Dionysius.—The Daimones.—Influence of Dionysius during the Middle Ages.—The System of Dionysius.—Milman on Dionysius.— Real Attraction of Dionysius.—The Fifth Century.—Five Stages of Mystic Union.—Mysteries.—Mystic and Scholastic Theology.— Mysticism, and Christian Mysticism.—Objections to Mystic Religion reconsidered.—St. Bernard.—Love of God.—Ecstasis, according to St. Bernard.—St. Bernard's Position in the Church and State.—Hugo of St. Victor, Knowledge more certain than Faith.—Thomas Aquinas. . . . . . . 459-498

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TABLE OF CONTENTS. XX111

LECTURE XV. Christian Theosophy.

PAGE

Mystic Christianity.—The German Mystics.—The Fourteenth Century in Germany.—The Interdict.—The People and the Priesthood.—Dominicans and Franciscans.—Eckhart and Tauler.— Eckhart's Mysticism.—Eckhart's Definition of the Deity.—Creation is Emanation.—The Human Soul.—The Messiah and the Logos.— The Approach to God.—Birth of the Son.—Passages from the Fourth Gospel.—Objections to Mystic Religion.—Excessive Asceticism.—Sinlessness.—Want of Reverence for God.—Religion, the Bridge between the Finite and the Infinite . . 499-544

Index . 545

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7

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INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF RELIGION. Die Weltffeaohiohte 1st das Weltjferlcht.

^ic 2Beltgefc$ic§te ift t>a$ SBeltgerid^t—this is one of those pregnant sayings of Schiller's which have a far wider application than we at first suspect. It is difficult to translate these words literally, without depriving them of their idiomatic force. Literally translated they mean, * the history of the world is the judgment of the world.' But in German, the judgment of the world means at the same time ' the day of judgment,' or 'doom's day/

What Schiller meant therefore was that every day is a day of doom, that the history of the world, if comprehended as a whole, is the true judgment of the world, and that we must learn to understand that judgment, and to accept it as right. If we adopt this view of Schiller's, and learn to look upon the history of the world as an unbroken vindication of the highest wisdom, and of the most perfect justice which, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, govern the world, it would follow that what applies to the history of the world in general, must likewise apply to all that constitutes that history. Schiller's

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dictum would in fact express in general terms what I have tried to explain to you in my former lectures as the fundamental principle of the Historical School.

The Fundamental Principle of the Historical School.

The followers of that school hold with Schiller that the history of religion, for instance, is the truest vindication of religion, the history of philosophy the best judgment of philosophy, the history of art the highest and final test of art. If in this spirit we study the history of the world, or any part of it, we shall learn that many things may seem wrong for the time being, and may, nay must be right for the time to come, for all time or for eternity. Many things which seem imperfect, are seen to be most perfect, if only understood as a preparation for higher objects. If we have once brought ourselves to see that there is an unbroken continuity, a constant ascent, or an eternal purpose, not only a mechanical development, in the history of the world, we shall cease to find fault with what is as yet an imperfect germ only, and not yet the perfect flower or the final fruit; we shall not despise the childhood of the world, nor the childhood of the religions of the world, though we cannot discover therein that mature* and perfect manhood which we admire in later periods of history. We shall learn to understand the imperfect or less perfect as a necessary preparation for the more perfect. No doubt such a view of the history of the world requires faith; we have often to believe, even though we cannot prove, simply from a firm conviction that it cannot be otherwise, that there must be law and order and purpose in the world, and that there must

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be goodness and justice in the Godhead. That faith was expressed by Friedrich Logau in the well-known verse, as translated by Longfellow, * Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small/ And the same faith found utterance long ago in Euripides also, when he said: * Tis true the working of the gods is slow, but it is sure and strong V

Anyhow, those philosophers who have become reconciled to the idea of the survival of the fittest, can hardly object to the principle that what is, is fit, and will in the end prove right, or, to put it into Schiller's words, that the ' Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht'

History of Religion is the True Philosophy of Religion.

You will understand now why I felt so strongly that the most satisfactory way of carrying out the intentions of the founder of this lectureship, the only effective way of studying what is called the philosophy of religion, or the philosophical criticism of religion, is to study the history of religion. History sifts and tests all forms and varieties of religion far more effectively than any single philosopher could possibly hope to do. I do not mean to say that a purely theoretic, as distinguished from an historical treatment of religion, is utterly useless. Far from it. I know that Kant scouts the idea that the history of philosophy is itself philosophy. But is not Kant's own philosophy by this time part and parcel of the history of philosophy ? It is quite true that we can study a science apart from its history. We can, for instance, study the science of Political Economy

1 Bacchae, 882, '0/>/*arcu fi6\i$t dXA' tfias wiarbv r6 y* Oetow aBiyoi.

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apart from all history. We can learn what ought to be and what ought not to be, according to the general principles of that science. All I maintain is that it is better to test the truth of these general principles by history, and not by theory only. Certain theories of Political Economy which seemed quite perfect in the abstract, have been tried and found wanting. We hear it said even now that the principles of free trade and protection are on their trial. What does that mean, except that they are being tried by the judgment of history, by results, by facts, by statistics against which there is no appeal, unless we say with some philosophers * tant pis pour lesfaits? or * tant pis pour VJiistoire?

A strategist in his study may know all the rules of the science of war, but the great general must know how these rules have stood the test of history; he must study the actual battles that have been fought, and thus learn to account for the victories and the defeats of the greatest commanders. In the same way then, as the true science of war is the history of war, the true science of religion is, I believe, the history of religion.

Yatnral Boligion the Foundation of our Belief in Ood.

To show that, given the human mind such as it is, and its environment such as it is, the concept of God and a belief in God would be inevitable, is something, no doubt. Still you know how all the proofs of the existence of God that have been framed by the most eminent philosophers and theologians have been controverted by equally eminent philosophers and theologians. You know that there survive even now some

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half-petrified philosophers and theologians who call it heresy to believe that unassisted human reason could ever attain to a concept of or a belief in God, who maintain that a special revelation is absolutely necessary for that purpose, but that such a revelation was granted to the human race twice only, once in the Old, and once in the New Testament. They point triumphantly to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason which has demolished once for all, they say, such poor human cobwebs as the cosmological, the teleological, and the ontological proofs of the existence of a Divine Being, and has thus proved, from a quite unexpected quarter, that unassisted human reason cannot possibly attain to a sure knowledge even of the mere existence of God.

It may be said that such views are mere survivals, and not exactly survivals of the fittest. Those who maintain them, certainly know not what they do. But such views, though really subversive of all true religion, are very often preached as essential to Christianity, and many who know not the history of religion, are deceived by their reiterated assertion.

You know that in a court of law a clever pleader can defend almost anything; and in the court of philosophy also, I believe that pleaders can always be found to argue most eloquently whether for the plaintiff or for the * defendant. The only evidence, however, which safely tells in the end, consists in facts.

The Beal Purpose of the Biography of Agni.

That being the case, I devoted the principal part of my second course of lectures to* placing before you facts,—facts which cannot be controverted, or which,

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at all events, have not been controverted, and which show how the human mind, unassisted by what is called special revelation, found its way step by step from the lowest perception of something material and visible to the highest concept of a supreme and invisible God. I chose for that purpose what I called the Biography of Agni or fire, that is the succession of the various ideas called forth in the human mind by the various aspects of fire, which beginning with the simplest perception of the fire on the hearth, as giving warmth and light and life to young and old, culminated in the concept oiAgni as the god of light, the creator and ruler of the whole world.

This was an arduous task, and it may have proved as tedious to my bearers as it proved laborious to myself. Still, there was no other way of silencing all gainsayers once for all. If any so-called Christian Divine doubts the fact that in times past' God did not leave himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fire also, that is light and warmth, from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness' (Acts xiv. 17), what I call the biography of Agni will in future supply evidence that ought to convince both those who believe and those who disbelieve the words of St. Paul and Barnabas, and that anyhow cannot be gainsayed. I can quite understand the anger that has been roused by the production of this evidence, though I cannot admire the efforts that have been made to discredit it. It is quite possible that in putting together this biography of Agni, I may have left out some passages from the Veda which would have been helpful for my purpose. Let them be produced, and I shall be most

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grateful. It is quite possible also that here and there I may have misapprehended the exact meaning of a verse taken from the Veda. Again, let it be proved, and I shall be most grateful. I am the last man to claim infallibility, not even in the interpretation of the Veda. But if people wish to controvert any statements of mine of which they disapprove, they ought to know that there are two ways only of doing it. They must show either that my facts are wrong, or that my deductions from these facts are faulty. In either case, no one will feel more grateful to them than I myself. For, if they can show that my facts were wrong, they will of course supply us at the same time with the true facts, and if my conclusions were faulty, that can be settled once for all by the rules of logic. If critics would confine themselves to these two tasks, they would be conferring a benefit on us for which every true scholar would be truly grateful. But if they deal, as so many do, in mere rhetoric or invective, they must not be offended if no notice is taken of their rage and vain imaginings. These matters are far too serious, nay, to my mind, far too sacred for mere wrangling. Though some excellent divines may differ from me, they ought to know that the cause of truth is never served by mere assertions, still less by insinuations, and that such insinuations are far more dishonouring to those who utter them than they could possibly be to those against whom they are uttered.

Natural Revelation.

I maintain, therefore, until any of my statements have been refuted by facts, that we can see in the history of Vedic Religion, how the human mind was led by a

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natural revelation, far more convincing than any socalled special revelation, from the perception of the great phenomena of nature to the conception of agents behind these phenomena. The case of Agni or fire was chosen by me as a typical case, as but one out of many, all showing how the phenomena of nature forced the human mind with a power irresistible to human reason, to the conception of and a belief in agents behind nature, and in the end to a belief in one Agent behind or above all these agents; to a belief in One God of Nature, a belief in a cosmic or objective Deity. Here was my answer to the statement repeated again and again, that the human mind, unassisted by a special revelation, was incapable of conceiving a Supreme Being. My answer was not an argument, nor a mere assertion. My answer consisted in historical facts, in chapter and verse quoted from the Veda; and these facts are stubborn things, not to be annihilated by mere clamour and chiding.

The True Oliject of comparing the Christian and other Religions.

I must confess, however, that I did not expect that the attacks on what I called the historical proof of the existence of a Supreme Being would have come from the quarters from which they came. I thought that those who profess and call themselves Christians would have welcomed the facts which confirm the teaching of St. Paul. I hoped they would have seen that the facts which I collected from the ancient religions of the world formed in reality the only safe foundation of Natural Religion, and indirectly the strongest confirmation of the truth of the Christian

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religion. That religion, I say once more, should challenge rather than deprecate comparison. If we find certain doctrines which we thought the exclusive property of Christianity in other religions also, does Christianity lose thereby, or is the truth of these doctrines impaired by being recognised by other teachers also ? You know that it has often been said that almost every Christian doctrine could be traced back to the Talmud. I am no judge on that subject; but if it were so, what should we lose ? All I can say is that I have never met in the extracts from the Talmud with the most characteristic, nay, the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, the recognition of the divine element in man, or the divine sonship of man. Many things which Christianity shares in common with the Talmud, it shares in common, as we know now, with other religions likewise. It is true that Hillel, when asked to describe the religion of the Jews in a few words, replied, * What thou wouldst not have done to thee, do not that to others. This is the whole law ; all the rest is but interpretation. Go, then, and learn what it means V But it is well known by this time that the same doctrine occurs in almost every religion. Confucius said : ' What I do not wish men to do to me, I also wish not to do to men. We read in the MaMbh&rata: Hear the sum total of duties, and having heard, bear it in mind—Thou shalt not do to others what is disagreeable to thyself (Pandit, 1871, p. 238). Why then should Christians wish to claim an exclusive property in this truth ?

The Talmud, we must remember, sprang from the
same historical soil as Christianity, its authors breathed

1 Talmud babli, Sabbath, fol. 81 a. Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, p. 211.

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the same air as the disciples of Christ. Coincidences between the two are therefore most natural, and it does by no means follow that the Talmud can always claim a priority in time. But whoever may claim priority, whoever may have lent or borrowed, I confess I rejoice whenever I meet with passages from the Talmud or any other Sacred Book, that remind me of the Old or the New Testament. We read, for instance,in the Talmud : ' Be not as slaves that minister to the Lord with a view to receive recompense; but be as slaves that minister to the Lord without a view to receive recompense ; and let the fear of Heaven be upon you' (Antigonus of Sochow, in Pirk^ Abdth I. 3; Kuenen, 1. c. p. 212). And again, * Do His will as if it were thy will, that He may do thy will as if it were His will' (Gamaliel, l.c. II. 4).

These are Christian sentiments; they may or may not have been borrowed from the Talmud. They are rays from a sun that lighteth the whole world. Marcus Aurelius said: ' Love mankind, follow God' (vii. 31); Epictetus said : 'Dare to look up to God and say: Do with me henceforth as Thou wilt. I am of one mind with Thee. I am Thine. I decline nothing that seems good to Thee. Lead me whither Thou wilt. Clothe me as Thou wilt. Wilt thou that I take office or live a private life, remain at home or go into exile, be poor or rich, I will defend Thy purpose with me in respect of all these' (Discourses, H. 16). These are truly Christian sentiments, Christian, because eternal and universal; but it would be very difficult to prove that they were borrowed either from or by Christianity. And why should every truth be borrowed from Christianity ? Why should not Christianity also have borrowed ?

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And why should not certain truths be world-wide and universal ? To me these truths seem to gain rather than to lose in power, if we accept them as springing up spontaneously in different minds, than if we maintain that they were conceived once only, and then borrowed by others.

The reason why people will not see the identity of a truth as enuntiated in different religions, is generally the strangeness of the garb in which it is clothed. No doubt the old heathen names of the Gods, even of their Supreme God, are often offensive to us by what they imply. But is it not all the more interesting to see how, for instance, Aristides the Sophist (176 A.D.), though retaining the name of Jupiter, is striving with all his might for a higher conception of the Deity, purer even than what we find in many portions of the Old Testament. This is how Aristides speaks of Jupiter :

' Jupiter made all things; all things whatever are the works of Jupiter—rivers, and the earth, and the sea, and the heaven, and whatever is between or above, or beneath them, and gods and men, and all living things, and all things visible and intelligible. First of all, he made himself; nor was he ever brought up in the caverns of Crete; nor did Saturn ever intend to devour him ; nor did he swallow a stone in his stead; nor was Jupiter ever in any danger, nor will he ever be. . . . But he is the First, and the most ancient, and the Prince of all things, and Himself from Himself.'

Why should we be less able and willing to see through the mists of mythology than those who were brought up with a belief in their own mythological gods ? Why should we decline to recognise the higher

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purpose that was in these divine names from the beginning, and which the best among the pagans never failed to recognise ?

Anetent Prayers.

It has often been said that what we mean by prayer does not or even cannot exist in any of the pagan religions. It may be true that the loving relation between man and God is absent in the prayers of the heathen world. It is certainly true that there are some religions unfavourable to prayer, particularly if prayer is taken in the sense of praying for worldly blessings. The Buddhists in general know of no prayer addressed to a superintendent deity, because they deny the existence of such a deity; but even prayers addressed to the Buddhas or Buddhist Saints are never allowed to assume the character of petitions. They are praises and meditations rather than solicitations. Prayers in the sense of petitions are considered actually sinful by the Sin-shiu sect of Buddhisis in Japan. It is different with the followers of Confucius. They believe in a God to whom prayers njight be addressed. But Professor Legge tells us that we look in vain for real prayers in their ancient literature, and this is most likely due to that sense of awe and reverence which Confucius himself expressed when he said that we should respect spiritual beings, but keep aloof from them1.

It is true also that when man has once arrived at a philosophical conception of the Deity, his prayers assume a form very different from the prayers addressed by a child to his Father in heaven. Still even such prayers are full of interest. Almost the last 1 Confucian Analects, VI. 20.

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word which Greek philosophy has said to the world, is a prayer which we find at the end of the commentary of Simplicius on Epictetus, a prayer full of honest purpose:

' I beseech Thee, O Lord, the Father, Guide of our reason, to make us mindful of the noble origin Thou hast thought worthy to confer upon us; and to assist us to act as becomes free agents; that we may be cleansed from the irrational passions of the body and may subdue and govern the same, using them as instruments in a fitting manner; and to assist us to the right direction of the reason that is in us, and to its participation in what is real by the light of truth. And thirdly, I beseech Thee, my Saviour, entirely to remove the darkness from the eyes of our souls, in order that we may know aright, as Homer says, both God and men/ (See J. A. Farrer, Paganism and Christianity, p. 44.)

I shall devote the rest of this introductory lecture to reading some extracts which will show, I hope, that the heathen also could utter prayers, and some prayers which require but little modification before we ourselves can join in them.

Egyptian Prayer. ' Hail to Thee, maker of all beings, Lord of law, Father of the Gods; maker of men, creator of beasts; Lord of
grains, making food for the beasts of the field The

One alone without a second King alone, single among
the Gods; of many names, unknown is their number.

I come to Thee, O Lord of the Gods, who hast existed from the beginning, eternal God, who hast made all things that are. Thy name be my protection; prolong my term of life

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to a good age; may my son be in my place (after me); may my dignity remain with him (and his) for ever, as is done to the righteous, who is glorious in the house of his Lord.

Who then art Thou, O my father Amon ? Doth a father forget his son? Surely a wretched lot awaiteth him who opposes Thy will; but blessed is he who knoweth Thee, for Thy deeds proceed from a heart full of love. I call upon Thee, O my father Amon! behold me in the midst of many peoples, unknown to me; all nations are united against me, and I am alone; no other is with me. My many warriors have abandoned me, none of my horsemen hath looked towards me; and when I called them, none hath listened to my voice. But I believe that Amon is worth more to me than a million of warriors, than a hundred thousand horsemen and ten thousands of brothers and sons, even were they all gathered together. The work of many men is nought; Amon will prevail over them.'

(From L. Page Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, p. 227.) An Accadian Prayer. " O my God, the lord of prayer, may my prayer address
thee! O my goddess, the lady of supplication, may my supplication address thee! O Mat6 (Matu), the lord of the mountain, may my prayer
address thee! O Gubarra, lady of Eden (sic), may my prayer address thee! O Lord of heaven and earth, lord of Eridu, may my
supplication address thee! 0 Merodach (Asar-mula-dag), lord of Tin-tir (Babylon)

may my prayer address thee! O wife of him, (the princely offspring (?) of heaven and
earth), may my supplication address thee! O (messenger of the spirit) of the god who proclaims (the
good name), may my prayer address thee!

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O (bride, first-born of) Uras (?), may my supplication
address thee! O (lady, who binds the hostile (?) mouth), may my prayer
address thee! 0 (exalted one, the great goddess, my lady Nana) may
my supplication address thee! May it say to thee: '(Direct thine eye kindly unto me).' May it say to thee: '(Turn thy face kindly to me).' (May it say to thee: 'Let thy heart rest/) (May it say to thee: 'Let thy liver be quieted.') (May it say to thee: ' Let thy heart, like the heart of a
mother who has borne children, be gladdened.') ('As a mother who has borne children, as a father who
has begotten a child, let it be gladdened.')"

(Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 336.) A Babylonian Prayer, 'O my God who art violent (against me), receive (my
supplication). O my Goddess, thou who art fierce (towards me), accept

(my prayer). Accept my prayer, (may thy liver be quieted). O my lord, long-suffering (and) merciful, (may thy heart

•be appeased). By day, directing unto death that which destroys me, O
my God, interpret (the vision). 0 my goddess, look upon me and accept my prayer. May my sin be forgiven, may my transgression be cleansed. Let the yoke be unbound, the chain be loosed. May the seven winds carry away my groaning. May I strip off my evil so that the bird bear (it) up to
heaven. May the fish carry away my trouble, may the river bear

(it) along. May the reptile of the field receive (it) from me; may
the waters of the river cleanse me as they flow.

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Make me shine as a mask of gold.

May I be precious in thy sight as a goblet (?) of glass.

Burn up(?) my evil, knit together my life; bind together
thy altar, that I may set up thine image. Let me pass from my evil, and let me be kept with thee. Enlighten me and let me dream a favourable dream. May the dream that I dream be favourable; may the
dream that I dream, be established. Turn the dream that I dream into a blessing. May Makhir the god of dreams rest upon my head. Yea, let me enter into E-Sagil, the palace of the gods,
the temple of life. To Merodach, the merciful, to blessedness, to prospering
hands, entrust me. Let me exalt thy greatness, let me magnify thy divinity. Let the men of my city honour thy mighty deeds.'

(Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 855.)

A Vedic Prayer. Rig-veda VII. 89:

1. Let me not yet, 0 Varuwa, enter into the house of clay; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

2. If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

3. Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone to the wrong shore; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

4. Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the midst of the waters; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

5. "Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offence before the heavenly host; whenever we break the law through thoughtlessness ; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

(M. M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 540.)

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Another Vedio Prayer.

'Let us be blessed in thy service, O Varuwa, for we always think of thee and praise thee, greeting thee day by day, like the fires lighted on the altar, at the approach of the rich dawns/ 2.

' O Varima, our guide, let us stand in thy keeping, thou who art rich in heroes and praised far and wide! And you, unconquered sons of Aditi, deign to accept us as your friends, Ogods!' 3.

'Aditya, the ruler, sent forth these rivers; they follow the law of Varuwa. They tire not, they cease not; like birds they fly quickly everywhere.' 4.

1 Take from me my sin, like a fetter, and we shall increase, O Varuwa, the spring of thy law. Let not the thread (of life) be cut while I weave my song! Let not the form of the workman break before the time I' 5.

' Take far away from me this terror, O Varuna! Thou, 0 righteous king, have mercy on me! Like as a rope from a calf, remove from me my sin; for away from thee I am not master even of the twinkling of an eye/ 6.

' Do not strike us, Varuwa, with weapons which at thy will hurt the evil-doer. Let us not go where the light has vanished! Scatter our enemies, that we may live/ 7.

'We did formerly, O Varuna, and do now, and shall in future also, sing praises to thee, O mighty one! For on thee, unconquerable hero, rest all statutes, immovable, as if established on a rock/ 8.

'Move far away from me all self-committed guilt, and may I not, O king, suffer for what others have committed! Many dawns have not yet dawned; grant us to live in them, O VaniTia/ 9.

(M. M., India, p. 195, from Rig-veda II. 28.)

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Am ATMrtio Prayer.

1. 'Blessed is he, blessed is every one, to whom Ahuramazda, ruling by his own will, shall grant the two everlasting powers (health and immortality). For this very good I beseech Thee. Mayest Thou through Thy angel of piety, give me happiness, the good true things, and the possession of the good mind.

2. I believe Thee to be the best being of all, the source of light for the world. Every one shall believe in Thee as the source of light; Thee, O Mazda, most beneficent spirit! Thou createdst all good true things by means of the power of Thy good mind at any time, and promisedst us a long life.

4. I will believe Thee to be the powerful benefactor, O Mazda! For Thou givest with Thy hand, filled with helps, good to the righteous man, as well as to the wicked, by means of the warmth of the fire strengthening the good things. For this reason the vigour of the good mind has fallen to my lot.

5. Thus I believed in Thee, O Ahuramazda! as the furtherer of what is good; because I beheld Thee to be the primeval cause of life in the creation; for Thou, who hast rewards for deeds and words, hast given evil to the bad and good to the good. I will believe in Thee, O Ahura! in the last period of the world.

6. In whatever period of my life I believed in Thee, O Mazda, munificent spirit! in that Thou earnest with wealth, and with the good mind through whose actions our settlements thrive '

(M. Haug, Essays on the Parsis, p. 155 seq., from Yasna XLIII. 1-6; see also Mills, 8. B. E., vol. zxxi. p. 98.)

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Verces from Zoroaster's G&thM.

' This I ask Thee, O Ahura ! tell me aright: "When praise is to be offered, how (shall I complete) the praise of One like You, O Mazda ? Let one like Thee declare it earnestly to the friend who is such as I, thus through Thy righteousness to offer friendly help to us, so that One like Thee may draw near us through Thy good mind. 1.

This I ask Thee, O Ahura ! tell me aright: Who by generation was the first father of the righteous order ? Who gave the (recurring) sun and stars their (undeviating) way ? Who established that whereby the moon waxes, and whereby she wanes, save Thee ? These things, 0 Great Creator I would I know, and others likewise still. 3.

This I ask Thee, O Ahura! tell me aright: Who from beneath hath sustained the earth and the clouds above that they do not fall ? Who made the waters and the plants ? Who to the wind has yoked on the storm-clouds, the swift and fleetest ? Who, O Great Creator ! is the inspirer of the good thoughts (within our souls) ? 4.

This I ask Thee, 0 Ahura! tell me aright: Who, as a skilful artizan, hath made the lights and the darkness? Who, as thus skilful, has made sleep and the zest (of waking hours) ? Who spread the dawns, the noontides, and the midnight, monitors to discerning (man), duty's true (guides) ? 5.

This I ask Thee, O Ahura! tell me aright: These things which I shall speak forth, if they are truly thus. Doth the piety (which we cherish) increase in reality the sacred orderliness within our actions? To these Thy true saints hath she given the realm through the Good Mind. For whom hast Thou made the mother-kine, the producer of joy? 6.

This I ask Thee, O Ahura! tell me aright, that I may ponder these which are Thy revelations, O Mazda ! and the

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words which were asked (of Thee) by Thy Good Mind (within us), and that whereby we may attain through Thine order, to this life's perfection. Yea, how may my soul with joyfulness increase in goodness 1 Let it thus be. 8.

This I ask Thee, O Ahura! tell us aright: How shall I banish this Demon of the Lie from us hence to those beneath who are filled with rebellion % The friends of righteousness (as it lives in Thy saints) gain no light (from their teachings), nor have they loved the questions which Thy Good Mind (asks in the soul)/ 13.

(Yasna XLIV : L. H. Mills, S. B. E., vol. xxxi. pp. Ill seq.)

Chinese Prayer. The Emperor's Prayer.

'To Thee, O mysteriously-working Maker, I look up in thought. How imperial is the expansive arch, where Thou dwellest . . . Thy servant, I am but a reed or willow; my heart is but as that of an ant; yet have I received Thy favouring decree, appointing me to the government of the empire. I deeply cherish a sense of my ignorance and blindness, and am afraid lest I prove unworthy of Thy great favours. Therefore will I observe all the rules and statutes, striving, insignificant as I am, to discharge my loyal duty. Far distant here, I look up to Thy heavenly palace. Come in Thy precious chariot to the altar. Thy servant, I bow my head to the earth, reverently expecting Thine abundant grace. All my officers are here arranged along with me, joyfully worshipping before Thee. All the spirits accompany Thee as guards, (filling the air) from the East to the West. Thy servant, I prostrate myself to meet Thee, and reverently look up for Thy coming, O god. O that Thou wouldest vouchsafe to accept our offerings, and regard us, while thus we worship Thee, whose goodness is inexhaustible I'

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* Thou hast vouchsafed, O God, to hear us, for Thou regardest us as a Father. I, Thy child, dull and unenlightened, am unable to show forth my dutiful feelings. I thank Thee that Thou hast accepted the intimation. Honourable is Thy great name. With reverence we spread out these gems and silks, and, as swallows rejoicing in the spring, praise Thine abundant love/

(From the Imperial Prayer-book in the time of the Emperor Keatsing. See James Legge, On the Notions of the Chinese concerning God and Spirits, Hong-kong, 1852, p. 24. The date of this prayer is modern.)

Mohammedan Profession.

Qur'an, II. 255-256:

' O ye who believe! expend in alms of what we have bestowed upon you, before the day comes in which is no barter, and no friendship, and no intercession; and the misbelievers, they are the unjust.

God, there is no god but He, the living, the self-subsistent. Slumber takes Him not, nor sleep. His is what is in the heavens and what is in the earth. TV ho is it that intercedes with Him save by His permission? He knows what is before them and what behind them, and they comprehend not aught cf his knowledge but of what He pleases. His throne extends over the heavens and the earth, and it tires Him not to guard them both, for He is high and grand/

(Palmer, 8. B. E., vi. 89 seq.)

Modern Hindu Prayer.

1. * Whatsoever hath been made, God made. Whatsoever is to be made, God will make. Whatsoever is, God maketh,— then why do any of ye afflict yourselves ?

2. Dadu sayeth, Thou, O God! art the author of all things which have been made, and from thee will originate all things which are to be made. Thou art the maker, and the cause of all things made. There is none other but Thee.

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3. He is my God, who maketh all things perfect. Meditate upon him in whose hands are life and death.

4. He is my God, who created heaven, earth, hell, and the intermediate space; who is the beginning and end of all creation; and who provideth for all.

5. I believe that God made man, and that he maketh everything. He is my friend.

6. Let faith in God characterize all your thoughts, words, and actions. He who serveth God, places confidence in nothing else.

7. If the remembrance of God be in your hearts, ye will be able to accomplish things which are impracticable. But those who seek the paths of God are few!

8. He who understandeth how to render his calling sinless, shall be happy in that calling, provided he be with God.

9. 0 foolish one ! God is not far from you. He is near you. You are ignorant, but he knoweth everything, and is careful in bestowing.

10.(Whatever is the will of God, will assuredly happen; therefore do not destroy yourselves by anxiety, but listen?)

11. Adversity is good, if on account of God; but it is useless to pain the body. Without God, the comforts of wealth are unprofitable.

12. He that believeth not in the one God, hath an unsettled mind; he will be in sorrow, though in the possession of riches: but God is without price.

13. God is my clothing and my dwelling. He is my ruler, my body, and my soul.

14. God ever fostereth his creatures; even as a mother serves her offspring, and keepeth it from harm.

15. O God, thou who art the truth, grant me contentment, love, devotion, and faith. Thy servant Dadu prayeth for true patience, and that he may be devoted to thee.'

(Verses from Dadu, the founder of the Dadupanthi sect, about 1600 A.D.)

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I confess that my heart beats with joy whenever I meet with such utterances in the Sacred Books of the East. A sudden brightness seems to spread over the darkest valleys of the earth. We learn that no human soul was ever quite forgotten, and that there are no clouds of superstition through which the rays of eternal truth cannot pierce. Such moments are the best rewards to the student of the religions of the world— they are moments of true revelation, revealing the fact that God has not forsaken any of his children, if only they feel after Him, if haply they may find him. I am quite aware how easy it is to find fault with these childish gropings, and how readily people join in a laugh when some strange and to us grotesque expression is pointed out in the prayers of the old world. We know how easy it is to pass from the sublime to the ridiculous, and nowhere is this more the case than in religion. Perhaps Jel&leddin's lesson in his Mesnevi may not be thrown away even on modern scoffers.

Moses and the Shepherd. " Moses once heard a shepherd praying as follows : * O God, show me where Thou art, that I may become Thy servant. I will clean Thy shoes and comb Thy hair, and sew Thy clothes, and fetch Thee milk.' When Moses heard him praying in this senseless manner, he rebuked him, saying, ' O foolish one, though your father was a Mussulman, you have become an infidel. God is a Spirit, and needs not such gross ministrations as, in your ignorance, you suppose/ The shepherd was abashed at his rebuke, and tore his clothes and fled away into the desert. Then a voice from heaven was heard, saying, * O Moses, wherefore have you driven away my servant? Your office is to

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reconcile my people with me, not to drive them away from me. I have given to each race different usages and forms of praising and adoring me. I have no need of their praises, being exalted above all such needs. I regard not the words that are spoken, but the heart that offers them. I do not require fine words, but a burning heart. Men's ways of showing devotion to me are various, but so long as the devotions are genuine, they are accepted.'"

Advantages of a Comparative Study of Religions.

I have never disguised my conviction that a comparative study of the religions of the world, so far from undermining the faith in our own religion, serves only to make us see more clearly what is the distinctive and essential character of Christ's teaching, and helps us to discover the strong rock on which the Christian as well as every other religion must be founded. •

But as a good general, if he wishes to defend a fortress, has often to insist that the surrounding villas and pleasure grounds should be razed, so as not to serve as a protection to the enemy, those also who wish to defend the stronghold of their own religion have often to insist on destroying the outlying intrenchments and useless ramparts which, though they may be dear to many from long association, offer no real security, nay, are dangerous as lending a support to the enemy, that is to say, to those who try to sap the rock on which all true religion, call it natural or supernatural, must be founded.

It is quite true, for instance, that the fact that we meet with so-called miracles in almost every religion, cannot but tell upon us and change our very concep

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THE HISTORICAL STUDY OP RELIGION. 25
tion of a miracle. If Comparative Theology has taught us anything, it has taught us that a belief in miracles, so far from being impossible, is almost inevitable, and that it springs everywhere from the same source, a deep veneration felt by men, women, and children for the founders and teachers of their religion. This gives to all miracles a new, it may be, a more profound meaning. It relieves us at once from the never-ending discussions of what is possible, probable, or real, of what is rational, irrational, natural, or supernatural. It gives us true intra, instead of small miracula, it makes us honest towards ourselves, and honest towards the founder of our own religion. It places us in a new and real world where all is miraculous, all is admirable, but where there is no room for small surprises, a world in which no sparrow can fall to the ground without the Father, a world of faith, and not of sight1. If we compare the treatment which miracles received from Hume with the treatment which they now receive from students of Comparative Theology, we see that, after all, the world is moving, nay even the theological world. Few only will now deny that Christians can be Christians without what was called, a belief in miracles; nay, few will deny that they are better Christians without, than with that belief. What the students of Comparative Theology take away with one hand, they restore a hundredfold with the other. That in our time a man like Professor Huxley should have had to waste his time on disproving the miracle of the Gergesenes by scientific arguments, will rank hereafter as one of the most curious survivals in the history of theology.

1 See some excellent remarks on this point in the Rev. Charles Gore's Bampton Lectures- d. 130.

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26 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

When delivering these lectures, I confess that what I feared far more than the taunts of those who, like Henry VIII, call themselves the defenders of the faith, were the suspicions of those who might doubt my perfect fairness and impartiality in defending Christianity by showing how, if only properly understood, it is infinitely superior to all other religions. A good cause and a sacred cause does not gain, it is only damaged, by a dishonest defence, and I do not blame those who object to a Christian Advocate, an office till lately maintained at Cambridge, pleading the cause of Christianity against all other religions. It is on that account that the attacks of certain Christian Divines have really been most welcome to me, for they have shown at all events that I hold no brief from them, and that if I and those who honestly share my convictions claim a perfect right to the name of Christians, we do so with a good conscience. We have subjected Christianity to the severest criticism and have not found it wanting. We have done what St. Paul exhorts every Christian to do, we have proved everything, we have not been afraid to compare Christianity with any other religion, and if we have retained it, we have done so, because we found it best. All religions, Christianity not excepted, seem really to have suffered far more from their defenders than from their assailants, and I certainly know no greater danger to Christianity than that contempt of Natural Religion which has of late been expressed with so much violence by those who have so persistently attacked both the founder of this lectureship on Natural Religion and the lecturers, nay even those who have ventured to attend their lectures.

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LECTURE H.

THE TRUE VALUE OF THE SACRED BOOKS EXAMINED.

Historical Documents for Studying- the Origin of Beligion.

ORIENTAL scholars have often been charged with exaggerating the value of the Sacred Books of the East for studying the origin and growth of religion. It cannot be denied that these books are much less perfect than we could wish them to be. They are poor fragments only, and the time when they were collected and reduced to writing is in most cases far removed from the date of their original composition, still more from the times which they profess to describe. All this is true; but my critics ought to have known that, so far from wishing to hide these facts, I have myself been the first to call attention to them again and again. Wherever we meet with a religion, it has always long passed its childhood; it is generally full-grown, and presupposes a past which is far beyond the reach of any historical plummet. Even with regard to modern religions, such as Christianity and Islam, we know very little indeed about their real historical beginnings or antecedents. Though we may know their cradle and those who stood around it, the powerful

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personality of the founders seems in each case to have overshadowed all that was around and before them; nay, it may sometimes have been the object of their disciples and immediate followers to represent the new religion as entirely new, as really the creation of one mind, though no historical religion can ever be that; and to ignore all historical influences that are at work in forming the mind of the real founder of an historical religion1. With regard to more ancient religions, we hardly ever reach their deepest springs, as little as we can hope to reach the lowest strata of ancient languages. And yet religion, like language, exhibits everywhere the clear traces of historical antecedents and of a continuous development.

Religious Language.

It has been my object in my former lectures to show that there is but one way by which we may get, so to say, behind that phase of a religion which is represented to us in its sacred or canonical books. Some of the most valuable historical documents of religion lie really imbedded in the language of religion, in the names of the various deities, and in the name which survives in the end as that of the one true God. Certain expressions for sacrifice also, for sin, for breath and soul and all the rest, disclose occasionally some of the religious thoughts of the people among whom these Sacred Books grew up. I have also tried to show how much may be gained by a comparison of these ancient religious terminologies, and how more particularly the religious terminology

1 See Kuenen, Hibbcrt Lectures, p. 189 seq.

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of ancient India sheds the most welcome light on many of the religious expressions that have become obscure or altogether unmeaning even in Greek and Latin.

How should we have known that Zeus meant originally the bright light of the sky, and that deus was at first an adjective meaning bright, but for the evidence supplied to us in the Veda? This lesson of Zeus or Jupiter cannot be dinned too often into the ears of the incredulous, or rather the ignorant, who fail to see that the Pantheon of Zeus cannot be separated from Zeus himself, and that the other Olympian gods must have had the same physical beginnings as Zeus, the father of gods and men. There are still a few unbelievers left who shake their wise heads when they are told that Erinnys meant the dawn, Agni fire, and Marut or Mars the stormwind, quite as certainly as that Eos meant the dawn, Helios the sun, and Selene the moon. If they did not, what did these names mean, unless they meant nothing at all!

When we have once gained in this, the earliest germinal stage of religious thought and language, a real historical background for the religions of India, Greece, and Rome, we have learnt a lesson which we may safely apply to other religions also, though no doubt with certain modifications, namely that there is a meaning in every divine name, and that an intimate relation exists between a religion and the language in which it was born and sent out into the world. When that is done, we may proceed to the Sacred Books and collect from them as much information as we can concerning the great religions of the world in their subsequent historical development.

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Xdterary Doouments.

And here, whatever may be said to the contrary, we have nothing more important, nothing that can more safely be relied upon than the literary documents which some of the ancient religions of the world have left us, and which were recognised as authoritative by the ancients themselves. These materials have become accessible of late years only, and it has been my object, with the assistance of some of my friends, to bring out a very large collection of translations of these Sacred Books of the East. That collection amounts now to forty-two volumes, and will in future enable every student of Comparative Theology to judge for himself of the true nature of the religious beliefs of the principal nations of antiquity.

Modern Date of Sacred Books.

If people like to call these books modern, let them do so, but let them remember that at all events there is nothing more ancient in any literature. In almost every country it may be said that the history of literature begins with Sacred Books, nay, that the very idea of literature took its origin from these Sacred Books. Literature, at least a written literature, and, most of all, a literature in alphabetic writing is, according to its very nature, a very modern invention. There can be no doubt that the origin of all the ancient religions of the world goes back to a time when writing for literary purposes was as yet entirely unknown. I still hold that book-writing or writing for literary purposes does not appear anywhere in the history of the world much before the

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seventh century B.C. I know that I stand almost alone in dating the existence of a written literature, of real books that were meant to be read by the people at large, from so late a period. But I do not know of any facts that enable us to speak with confidence of a literature, in the true sense of the word, before that date. I have been told that the very latest date unanimously assigned by all competent Semitic scholars to the E documents of the O.T. is 750 B.C. But no one has shown in what alphabet, nay, even in what dialect they were then written. I have been reminded also of the much earlier date of an Egyptian and Babylonian literature, but I thought I had carefully guarded against such a reminder, by speaking of books in alphabetic writing only. Books presuppose the existence not only of people who can write, but likewise of people who can read, and their number in the year 750 B.C. must have been very small indeed.

To those who are not acquainted with the powers of the human memory when well disciplined, or rather when not systematically ruined, as ours has been, it may seem almost incredible that so much of the ancient traditional literature should have been composed, and should have survived during so many centuries, before it was finally consigned to writing. Still we have got so far, that everybody now admits that the poets of the Veda did not write their hymns, and that Zoroaster did not leave any written documents. There is no word for writing in the Veda, neither is there, as Dr. Haug {Essays on the Parsis, p. 136 n.) has shown, in the Avesta. I have myself pointed out how familiar the idea of writing seems to have been to

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the authors of some of the books of the Old Testament, and how this affects the date of these books.

We read in the First Book of Kings iv. 3, of scribes and recorders at the court of King Solomon, and the same officers are mentioned again in 2 Kings xviii. 18, at the court of Hezekiah, while in the reign of Josiah we actually read of the discovery of the Book of the Law. But we find the same anachronisms elsewhere. Thrones and sceptres are ascribed to kings who never had them, and in the Sh&hnameh (910, 5) we read of Feridun as having not only built a fire-temple in Baikend, but as having deposited there a copy of the Avesta written in golden (cuneiform ?) letters. Kirjath-sepher, the city of letters, mentioned in the Book of Joshua xv. 15, refers probably to some inscription, in the neighbourhood, not to books.

Of Buddha also it may now be asserted without fear of contradiction that he never left any MSS. of his discourses1. If it had been otherwise, it would certainly have been mentioned, as so many less important things concerning Buddha's daily life and occupations have been mentioned in the Buddhist canon. And although to us it may seem almost impossible that long compositions in poetry, nay even in prose, should have been elaborated and handed down by oral tradition only, it is important to observe that the ancients themselves never express any surprise at the extraordinary achievements of the human memory, whereas the very idea of an alphabet, of alphabetic writing, or of paper and ink, is entirely absent from their minds.

I readily admit therefore that whatever we possess

1 See Der Buddhismus, von Wassiljew, p. 247.

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of sacred literature in writing is comparatively modern; also that it represents a very small portion only of what originally existed. We know that even after a book had been written, the danger of loss was by no means past. We know how much of Greek and Latin literature that was actually consigned to writing has been lost. Aeschylus is said to have composed ninety plays. We possess MSS. of seven only. And what has become of the works of Berosus, Manetho, Sanchoniathan ? What of the complete MSS. of Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Dio Cassius ? what of those of Livy and Tacitus ?

If therefore people will have it that what we possess of sacred books is modern, I do not object, if only they will define what they mean by modern. And if they insist on calling what has been saved out of the general shipwreck mere flotsam and jetsam, we need not quarrel about such names. Much has been lost of the ancient literary monuments of almost every religion, but that makes what is left all the more valuable to us.

Fragmentary Character of the Sacred Books of India.

In Sanskrit literature we frequently meet with references to lost books. It is not an uncommon practice in theological controversy in India to appeal to lost /S&kh&s of the Veda, particularly when customs for which there is no authority in the existing Vedas have to be defended. When, for instance, European scholars had proved that there was no authority for the burning of widows in the Veda, as known to us, native scholars appealed to lost Sakh&s of the Veda

(4) /^rt *-"■'■ ">

34 LECTURE II.

in support of this cruel custom. However, native casuists themselves have supplied us with the right answer to this kind of argument. They call it' the argument of the skull/ and they remark with great shrewdness that you might as well bring a skull into court as a witness, as appeal to a lost chapter of the Veda in support of any prevailing custom or doctrine. #&kh& means a branch, and as the Veda is often represented as a tree, a $&kh& of the Veda is what we also might call a branch of the Veda.

We must not imagine, however, that what we now possess of Vedic literature is all that ever existed, or that it can give us anything like a complete image of Vedic religion.

The Buddhists are likewise in the habit of speaking of some of the words or sayings of Buddha as being lost, or not recorded.

In the Old Testament we have the well-known allusions to the Book of Jasher (2 Sam. i. 18), and the Wars of God (Num. xxi. 14), the Chronicles of David, and the Acts of Solomon, which prove the former existence, if not of books, at least of popular songs and legends under those titles.

And with regard to the New Testament also, not only does St. Luke tell us that ' many had taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word/ but we know that there existed in the early centuries other Gospels and other Epistles which have either been lost or have been declared apocryphal by later authorities, such as the Gospels according to tho

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Hebrews and the Egyptians, the Acts of Andrew, John, and Thomas, the Epistles of St. Paul to the Laodiceans, the Epistles of Barnabas and of St. Clement, &C.1 We read besides, at the end of the Fourth Gospel, that 'there were also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written/ This may be an exaggeration, but it ought to be at the same time a warning against the supposition that the New Testament can ever give us a complete account of the religious teaching of Christ.

Ik>88 of the Sacred Literature of Persia.

There is no religion, however, where we can study the loss of a great portion of its sacred literature so closely as in the religion of Zoroaster and his disciples, and it is well that we should learn a lesson from it. What by a very erroneous name we call the Zend Avesta is a book of very moderate dimensions. I explained to you, I believe, in a former lecture, why Zend Avesta is an erroneous name. The Persians call their sacred writings not Zend Avesta, but Avesta Zend, or in Pehlevi Avist&k va Zand, and this means simply text and commentary. Avesta is the text, Zend the commentary. Avesta is probably derived from vid, to know, from which, you may remember, we have also the name Veda2. But avesta is a participle passive, originally & + vista (for vid-ta), and meant therefore what is known or

1 See J. E. Carpenter, The First Three Gospels, p. 3.

2 Opperfc. (Journ. Asiat, 1872, March) compares the old Persian abastft, law. *

Da

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36 LECTURE ir.

what has been made known, while Zend is derived from the Aryan root *zeno, to know, in Sanskrit gn&y Greek yi-yv<&~<rK<0, an<J meant therefore originally likewise knowledge or understanding of the Avesta. While avista was used as the name of Zarathushtra's ancient teachings, Zend was applied to all later explanations of those sacred texts, and particularly to the translations and explanations of the old text in Pehlevi or Pahlavi, the Persian language as spoken in the Sassanian kingdom. In spite of this, it has become the custom to call the ancient language of Zarathushtra Zend, literally, commentary, and to speak of what is left us of the sacred code of the Zoroastrians as the Zend Avesta. This is one of those mistakes which it will be difficult to get rid of; scholars seem to have agreed to accept it as inevitable, and they will probably continue to speak of the Zend Avesta, and of the Zend language. Some writers, who evidently imagine that Zoroaster worshipped the fire instead of Ormazd, his supreme deity, and who suppose that Vesta was originally a deity of the fire, have actually gone so far as to spell Zenda Vesta as if Vesta was the name of the sacred fire of the Parsis. If we wish to be correct, we should speak of the Avesta as the ancient texts of Zarathushtra, and we should call Zend all that has been written at a later time, whether in the ancient Avestic language or in Pehlevi, by way of translation and interpretation of the Avesta. This Pehlevi is simply the old name for the Persian language, and there can be little doubt that Pehlevi, which is the Persian name for what is ancient, was derived from pahlav, a herowarrior, which pahlav again is a regular modification

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of parthav, the name of the Parthians who were the rulers of Persia for nearly five hundred years (256 B.a-226 A.D.). But though Pehlevi would thus seem to mean the language of the Parthians, it is really the name of the Persian language, as spoken in Persia when under Parthian rule. It is an Aryan language written in a peculiar Semitic alphabet and mixed with many Semitic words. The first traces of Pehlevi have been discovered on coins referred to the third or fourth century B.C., possibly even on some tablets found in Nineveh, and ascribed to the seventh century b.c. (Haug's Essays, p. 81). We find Pehlevi written in two alphabets, as in the famous inscriptions of Hajiabad (third century A.D.), found near the ruins of Persepolis1. Besides the language of the Avesta, which we call Zend, and the language of the glosses and translations, which we call Pehlevi, there is the Pazend, originally not the name of a language, as little as Zend was, but the name of a commentary on a commentary. There are such Pazends written in Avestic2 or in Pehlevi. But when used as the name of a language, Pazend means mediaeval Iranian, used chiefly in the transcriptions of Pehlevi texts, written either in Avestic or Persian characters, and freed from all Semitic ingredients. In fact the language of the great epic poet Firdusi (1000 a.d.) does not differ much from that of Pazend; and both are the lineal descendants of Pehlevi and ancient Persian.

One thing, however, is quite certain, namely, that the sacred literature which once existed in these three

1 See Haug, 1. c. p. 87, and Friedrich Muller, Die Pahlaioi lnschriftm von Hadzidbdd. 1 Haug, 1. c. p. 122.

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successive languages, Avestic, Pehlevi, and Pazend. must have been infinitely larger than what we now

It is important to observe that the existence of this much larger ancient sacred literature in Persia was known even to Greeks and Romans, such as Hermippos1, who wrote his book 'On the Magi* while residing at Smyrna. He lived in the middle of the third century B.C. Though this book is lost, it is quoted by Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, and Pliny. Pliny (H. JV*. xxx. 2) tells us that Hermippos studied the books of Zoroaster, which were then said to comprise two millions of lines. Even so late an authority as Abu Jafir Attavari (an Arabic historian) assures us that Zoroaster's writings covered twelve hundred cowhides (parchments).

These statements of classical writers are confirmed to a great extent by the traditions current among the followers of Zoroaster in Persia, who agree in accusing Alexander the Great of having destroyed or carried off their sacred MSS. We read in the Dinkard (West, p. 412) that the first collection of the sacred texts of Zoroaster took place at the time of Vistasp, the mythical ruler who accepted the religion of Zoroaster. Afterwards, we are told, Darai commanded that two complete copies of the whole Avesta and Zend should be preserved, one in the treasury of Shapigan, and one in the fortress of written documents. This D&r&i is likewise more or less mythical, but he is generally considered by the Persian poets as the predecessor of Alexander. We are on more historical ground when we are told in the Dinkard (West, p. xxxi) that the

1 Diogenes Laertius, Prooem. 6.

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MS. which was in the fortress of documents came to be burnt, while that in the treasury of Shapig&n fell into the hands of the Greeks and was translated by or for Alexander into the Greek language, as' information connected with ancient times.' Now the fact that the Royal Palace at Persepolis was burnt by Alexander in a drunken frolic is confirmed by Greek historians, though nothing is said by them of a Greek translation of the Avestic writings. It is quite possible, however, that Hermippos had before him the very MS. that had been carried away from the treasury of Shapigan by Alexander's soldiers.

We hear nothing more about the Avesta till we come to the time of Valkhas, evidently a Vologeses, possibly Vologeses I, the contemporary of Nero. Though he was a Parthian ruler, we are told in the DinkanZ that he ordered ' the careful preservation and making of memoranda for the royal city, of the Avesta and Zend as it had purely come unto them, and also of whatever instruction, due to it, had remained written about, as well as deliverable by the tongue through a high-priest, in a scattered state in the country of Ir&n, owing to the ravages and devastations of Alexander, and the cavalry and infantry of the Arftmans (Greeks).*

Whatever the exact meaning of these words may be, they clearly imply that an attempt had been made, even before the rise of the Sassanian dynasty, to collect what could still be collected of the old sacred writings, either from scattered fragments of MSS. or from oral tradition. It does not appear that any attempt of the same kind bad been made before that time, and after the devastations ascribed to Alexander.

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It does not seem to me to follow that, as M. Darmesteter suggests (S. B. E. iv. Introd.), the Parthian rulers had actually embraced Zoroastrianism as the state-religion of their kingdom. That was reserved for the Sassanians. But it shows at all events that they valued the ancient faith of their subjects, and it is a fact that some of the Philhellenic Parthian princes had actually adopted it.

The real revival, however, of Zoroastrianism as the national religion of Persia and the final constitution of the Avestic canon were due, no doubt, to the Sassanians. We read in the Dinkard that Artakshatar (Ardeshir), the son of P&pak, king of kings (a.d. 226-240), summoned Tfisar and other priests to the capital to settle the true doctrine of the old religion. His son, Shahpuhar (a. d. 240-271), followed his example, and brought together a number of secular writings also, scattered about, as we are told, in the country, in India, Greece, and elsewhere, and ordered their collocation with the Avesta. After that a correct copy was deposited once more in the treasury of Shaplg&n.

Shahpuhar II (Sapores), the son of Aftharmazd (a.d. 309-379), seems to have done for the Avestic religion very much what Constantino was doing about the same time for Christianity. He convoked a ' tribunal for the controversy of the inhabitants of all regions, and brought all statements to proper consideration and investigation.' The heresy with which Shahpuhar II and Atftrp&d had to deal was probably that of Manichaeism. The doctrines of M&ni had been spreading so widely during the third century that even a king, Shahpuhar I, was supposed to have

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embraced them. Thus while Constantine and Athanasius settled the orthodox doctrines of Christianity at Nicaea, 325 a.d., Shahpuhar II and Aturpad, the son of M&raspand, were engaged in Persia in extinguishing the heresy of MAni and restoring Mazdaism to its original purity. The collecting of the Nasks and the numbering of them as twenty-one, is ascribed to Aturp&d. Prof. Darmesteter (Introd. p. xxxix) supposes that at his time it was still possible to make additions to the Avestic texts, and he points out passages in the Vendid&d which may have reference to the schism of M&ni, if not even to Christianity, as known in the East.

At a still later time, under Khusr6i (Khosroes), called Andsharuv&n, the son of Kav&d (a.d. 531-579), we read that new heresies had to be suppressed, and that a new command was given for 'the proper consideration of the Avesta and Zend of the primitive Magian statements/

Soon after followed the Arab conquest, when we are told that the archives and treasures of the realm were once more devastated. Still the Mohammedan conquerors seem to have been far less barbarous than Alexander and his Greek soldiers, for when, after the lapse of three centuries, a new effort was made to collect the Avestic writings, Atur-farnbagi Farukhoz&dan was able to make a very complete collection of the ancient Nasks. Nay, even at the end of the ninth century, when another high-priest, AtftrpUd, the son of Himtd, the author, or, at all events, the finisher of the Dinkard, made a final collection of the Avesta and Zend, MSS. of all the Nasks seem to have been forthcoming with very few exceptions, whether in the

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ancient Avestic language or in Pehlevi, so that Atftrpad could give in his Dfnkard an almost complete account of the Zoroastrian religion and its sacred literature. According to some authorities it was Atftr-farnbagf Farukho-z&d&n who began the Dinkarrf, while Atftrp&d, the son of Himfd, finished it. This would place the work between 820 and 890 a.d. AMkrp&d, or whoever he was, speaks of the twenty-one Nasks or books of the Avesta, as if he had read them either in the original language or in their Pehlevi translation. The only Nask he failed to obtain was the Vastag Nask, and the Pehlevi version of the N&dar Nask. We owe all this information partly to Dr. Haug. partly to Dr. West, who has recovered large portions of the MS. of the Dinkard and translated them in volume xxxvii of the Sacred Boohs of the East.

Of these twenty-one Nasks which, since the days of Atftrp&d, the son of Maraspand, constituted the Avestic canon, and which are reckoned to have consisted of 345,700 words in Zend, and of 2,094,200 words of Pehlevi (West, 1. c. p. xlv), three only, the 14th, 19th, and 21st, have been saved complete. We are told in one of the Persian Rivfiyats (S. B. E. xxxvii. p. 437), that even at the time when the first attempt was made to collect the sacred literature which had escaped the soldiers of Alexander, portions only of each Nask were forthcoming, and none in its original completeness, except the Vind&d, i. e. the VendidM. If we could trust to this statement, it would prove that the division in the Nasks existed even before the time of Atftrp&d, the son of M&raspand (325 a.d.), and was possibly of Achaemenian origin.

There are fragments of some other Nasks in exist

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ence, such as the VistAsp sAst6, H&d6kht5 and Bako, but what the Parsis now consider as their sacred canon, consists, besides the Vendtd&d, of no more than the Yasna, Vispered, Yashts, &c, which contain the bulk of the two other extant Nasks, the St6d and Bakan Yashts.

The Vendid&d contains religious laws and old legends. The Vispered contains litanies, chiefly for the celebration of the six season-festivals, the so-called Gah&nMrs. The Yasna also contains litanies, but its most important portion consists of the famous Gathas (stem gath&, nom. sing, gatha), metrical portions, written in a more ancient dialect, probably the oldest nucleus round which all the rest of the Avestic literature gathered. The G&thas are found in the Yasna, xxviii-xxxiv, xliii-xlvi, xlvii-1, li, and liii. Each of these three collections, the Vendid&d, Vispered, and Yasna, if they are copied singly, are generally accompanied by a Pehlevi translation and glosses, the socalled Zend. But if they are all copied together, according to the order in which they are required for liturgical purposes, they are without the Pehlevi translation, and the whole collection is then called the Vendidad Sadah, i.e. the Vendidad pure and simple, i. e. without commentary.

The remaining fragments are comprehended under the name of Khorda Avesta or Small Avesta. They consist chiefly of prayers such as the five Gah, the Sir6zeh, the three Afring&n, the five Ny&yish, the Yashts, lit. acts of worship, hymns addressed to the thirty Izads, of which twenty only have been preserved, and some other fragments, for instance, the Hadh6kht Nask (S. B. E. iv. p. xxx ; xxiii. p. 1).

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The Parsis sometimes divide the twenty-one Nasks into three classes: (1) the G&thic, (2) the Hadhamathric, (3) the Law. The G&thic portion represents the higher spiritual knowledge and spiritual duty, the Law the lower worldly duty, and the Hadha-mathric what is between the two (Dinkard, VIII. 1. 5). In many cases, however, these subjects are mixed.

The Gathas are evidently the oldest fragments of the Avestic religion, when it consisted as yet in a simple belief in Ahuramazda as the Supreme Spirit, and in a denial of the Daevas, most of them known to us as worshipped by the poets of the Veda. If Zarathushtra was the name of the founder or reformer of this ancient religion, these G&thas may be ascribed to him. As their language differs dialectically from that of the Achaemenian inscriptions, and as the Pehlevi interpreters, though conversant with the ordinary Avestic language, found it difficult to interpret these G&thas, we are justified in supposing that the Gothic dialect may have been originally the dialect of Media, for it was from Media that the Magi \ or the teachers and preachers of the religion of Ahuramazda, are said to have come2. It has been pointed out that certain deities, well known in the Veda, and in later Avestic texts, are absent from the Gathas ; for instance, Mithra and Homa; also Anahita and the title of Ameshaspenta (Haug, 1. c. p. 259). Many abstract concepts, such as Asha, righteousness, Vohftman6, good thought, have not yet assumed a definite mythological personality in

1 Magi, the Magavas of the G&thas, the Magush in the cuneiform inscription, the Mog of later times, Haug, p. 169 n., possibly the rab mag of Jerem. xxxix. 3.

8 Darmesteter, S. B. E.t iv. p. xlvi, gives all the evidence for assigning the origin of Zoroaster's religion to Media.

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the chapters composed in the G&thic dialect (Haug, p. 171). And what is more important still, the Angrd Mainyu or Ahriman of the later Avestic writings has in the Gathas not yet been invested with the character of the Evil Spirit, the Devil, the constant opponent of Ahuramazda1 (Haug, 1. c. pp. 303-4) I call this important, because in the cuneiform inscriptions also this character does not, and we may probably be justified in saying, does not yet occur. The early Greek writers also, such as Herodotos, Theopompos, and Hermippos, though acquainted with the Magian doctrine of a dualism in nature and even in the godhead, do not seem to have known the name of Ahriman. Plato knew the name of Ahuramazda, for he calls Zoroaster the son of Oromasos, which must be meant for Ahuramazda, but he too never mentions the name of Angrd Mainyu or Areimanios. Aristotle may have known the name of Areimanios as well as that of Oromasdes, though we have only the authority of Diogenes Laertius (Prooem. c. 8) for it. Later writers, both Greek and Roman, are well acquainted with both names.

I mention all this chiefly in order to show that there are signs of historical growth and historical decay in the various portions of what we call Avestic literature. If with Dr. Haug we place the earliest G&tha literature in about 1000 to 1200 B.C., which of course is a purely hypothetical date, we can say at all events that the G&thas are in thought, if not in language also, older than the inscriptions of Darius; that they belonged to Media, and existed there probably before the time of Cyrus and his conquest of the Persian empire.

When we come to the time of Alexander, we see

1 Angra occurs in the G&thas in the sense of evil.

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that there existed then so large an amount of sacred literature, that we cannot be far wrong in ascribing the whole of the twenty-one Nasks to a pre-Achaemenian period, before 500 b.c. Here we can distinguish again between the old and the later Yasna. The Vendidad, Vispered, the Yashts, and the smaller prayers may be ascribed to the end of the Avestic period. Dr. Haug places the larger portion of the original Vendid&d at about 1000-900 b. c, the composition of the later Yasna at about 800-700 B.C.

The Pehlevi literature may have begun soon after Alexander. Linguistic chronology is, no doubt, of a very uncertain character. Still, that there is an historical progress both in language and thought from the G&thas to the Yasna, and from the Yasna to the Yashts, can hardly be doubted. Real historical dates are unfortunately absent, except the mention of Gaotama in the Fravardin Yasht (16). If this is meant for Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, we can hardly be wrong in supposing that this name of Buddha had reached Bactria during the first century after Buddha's death, say 477-S77 B.C. In later times the presence of Buddhists in Bactria cannot be doubted \ About the same time coins had been struck with inscriptions in Pehlevi, which must have been the language of the

1 The presence of Buddhists in Bactria in the first century b.c. is attested by several authorities. Alexander Polyhistor, who wrote between 80-60 b. c. (as quoted by Cyrillus contra Julian.), mentions among philosophers the Samanyioi among the Persian Bactrians, the Magoi among the Persians, and the Gymnosophists among the Indians. These Samanyioi were meant for Buddhists. Later still Clemens of Alexandria, Strom, i. p. 359, speaks of Samanaioi among the Bactrians and of Gymnosophists among the Indians, while Eusebius (Praep. Ev. vii. 10) speaks of thousands of Brahmans among Indians and Bactrians. See Lassen, Ind. Alterthumskunde, ii. p. 1075 ; Spiegel, Eran. Alterthumskunde, i. 671.

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people about the time of Alexander's conquests. The Avestic language, however, continued to be understood for a long time after, so that, under the Parthian and the Sassanian dynasties, interpreters could be found, able to translate and explain the ancient sacred texts. Nay, if M. Darmesteter is right, additions in Avestic continued to be made as late as the fourth century a. d., provided that the passages which he has pointed out in the Vendid&d refer to the suppression of the heresy of Mani by king Shahptir II.

The Relation between the Avesta and the Old Testament.

I thought it necessary to enter thus fully into the history of the rise and decline of the sacred literature of Persia, because I wanted to show how impossible it is to institute a satisfactory comparison between the Persian and any other religion, unless we are fully aware of the historical growth of its sacred canon. Though much light had been shed on this subject by Dr. Haug, it is but lately that the valuable translation of the Dinkard, contributed by Mr. West to my Sacred Books of the East, has enabled us to form an independent judgment on that subject. The Persian religion has often been the subject of comparison both with the religion of India and with that of the Jews, particularly after their return from the exile. The chief doctrines which the Jews are supposed to have borrowed from the followers of Zoroaster are a belief in the resurrection of the body, a belief in the immortality of the soul, and a belief in future rewards and punishments. It is well known that these doctrines were entirely, or almost entirely, absent from the oldest phase of religion among the Jews, so that their presence

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48 LECTURE II.

in some of the Psalms and the Prophets has often been used as an argument in support of the later date now assigned to these compositions. Here there are no chronological difficulties. These doctrines exist, as we shall see, at least in their germinal stage, in the G&thas, while of the more minute details added to these old doctrines in the later portions of the Avesta, or in the still later Pehlevi writings, there is no trace even in post-exilic books of the Old Testament. This point has been well argued by Prof. Cheyne in the Expository Times, June, July, August, 1891 *.

But there is another point on which we can observe an even more striking similarity between the Old Testament and the Avesta, namely, the strong assertion of the oneness of God. Here, however, it seems to me that, if there was any exchange of thought between the followers of Moses and of Zoroaster, it may have been the latter who were influenced. The sudden change from the henotheism of the Veda to the monotheism of the Avesta has never been accounted for, and I venture to suggest, though not without hesitation, that it may have taken place in Media, in the original home of the Zoroastrian religion. It was in the cities of Media that a large Jewish population was settled, after the king of Assyria had carried away Israel, and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes (2 Kings xviii. 11). Now, however difficult an exchange of religious ideas may be between people speaking different languages, the fact of their worshipping either one God or many gods could hardly fail to attract attention. If then the

1 On Possible Zoroastrian Influences on the Religion of Israel, See also Spiegel, Evanische Alterthumskunde, vol. i. pp. 446 seq.

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Jews impressed their neighbours with the conviction that there could be but one God, a conviction which in spite of many backslidings, seems never to have ceased altogether to form part of the national faith of Israel, everything else would naturally have followed, exactly as we find it in the Avesta, as compared with the Veda. One of the ancient gods, the Asura Varu^a, was taken as the one and supreme God, the God above all gods, under the name of Ahura Mazda; the other Devas, if they claimed to be gods, were renounced, and those only who could be treated as secondary spirits, were allowed to remain, nay, were increased in number by such spirits or angels as Ameret&t, Haurvat&t, Vohumand, and all the rest.

I am far from saying that this can be strictly proved. Neither can it be proved that the belief in a resurrection and immortality was necessarily borrowed by the Jews from the Zoroastrians. For, after all, people who deny the immortality of the soul, can also assert it. All I say is that such a supposition being historically possible, would help to explain many things in the Avesta and its development out of a Vedic or pre-Vedic elements, that have not yet any satisfactory explanation.

X am that X am.

But there is a still more startling coincidence. You may remember that the highest expression of this Supreme Being that was reached in India, was one found in the Vedic hymns, * He who above all gods is the only God/ I doubt whether Physical Religion can reach a higher level. We must remember that each individual god had from the first been invested

(4) „ J?

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50 LEOTUBE II.

with a character high above any human character. Indra, Soma, Agni, and whatever other Devas there were in the Vedic Pantheon, had been described as the creators of the world, as the guardians of what is good and right, as all-powerful, all-wise, and victorious over all their enemies. What more then could human language and religious devotion achieve than to speak of one Supreme Being, high above all these gods, and alone worthy of the name of God ?

We saw that in Greece also a similar exalted conception of the true God had at a very early time found expression in a verse of Xenophanes, who in the face of Zeus, and Apollo, and Athene ventured to say, ' There is but one God, the best among mortals and immortals, neither in form nor in thought like unto mortals.' This again seems to me to mark the highest altitude which human language can reach in its desire to give an adequate description of the one true God. For though the existence of other immortals is admitted, yet He is supposed to hold his own preeminent position among or above them, and even a similarity with anything human, whether in shape or thought, is distinctly denied, thus excluding all those anthropomorphic conceptions from which even in the best of religions the Deity seems unable altogether to divest itself. The Hebrew Psalmist uses the same exalted language about Jehovah. ' Among the gods,' he says, as if admitting the possibility of other gods, ' there is none like unto Thee.' And again he calls Jehovah, the great King above all gods, using almost the same expressions as the Vedic Rishi and the old Greek philosopher. The conception of the Supreme Being as we find it in the A vesta, is by no means

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inferior to that of Jehovah in the Old Testament. Dr. Haug (Essays, p. 302) goes so far as to say that it is perfectly identical. Ahura Mazda is called by Zarathushtra 'the Creator of the earthly and spiritual life, the Lord of the whole universe, in whose hands are all creatures. He is the light and the source of light; he is the wisdom and intellect. He is in possession of all good things, spiritual and worldly, such as the good mind (vohu-man6), immortality (ameret&cZ), health (haurvatS.cZ), the best truth (asha vahishta), devotion and piety (ftrmaiti), and abundance of earthly goods (kshathra vairya), that is to say, he grants all these gifts to the righteous man, who is upright in thoughts, words, and deeds. As the ruler of the whole universe, he not only rewards the good, but he is a punisher of the wicked at the same time. All that is created, good or evil, fortune or misfortune, is his work. A separate evil spirit of equal power with Ahura Mazda, and always opposed to him, is foreign to the earlier portions of the Avesta, though the existence of such a belief among the Zoroastrians may be gathered from some of the later writings, such as the Vendid&d.'

Coincidences such as these are certainly startling, but to a student of comparative theology they only prove the universality of truth; they necessitate by no means the admission of a common historical origin or the borrowing on one side or the other. We ought in fact rejoice that with regard to these fundamental truths the so-called heathen religions are on a perfect level with the Jewish and the Christian religions.

But suppose we found the same name, the same proper name of the Deity, say Jehovah in the Avesta,

E2

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or Ahura Mazda in the Old Testament, what should we say? We should at once have to admit a borrowing on one side or the other. Now it is true we do not find the name of Ahura Mazda in the Old Testament, but we find something equally surprising. You may remember how we rejoiced when in the midst of many imperfect and more or less anthropomorphic names given to the deity in the Old Testament, we suddenly were met by that sublime and exalted name of Jehovah, 'I am that I am.' It seemed so different from the ordinary concepts of deity among the ancient Jews. What then should we say, if we met with exactly the same most abstract appellation of the deity in the Avesta ? Yet, in the Avesta also there is among the twenty sacred names of God, the name 'Ahmi ya£ ah mi,' 'I am that I am.5 Shall we read in this coincidence also the old lesson that God has revealed Himself to all who feel after Him, if haply they may find him, or is the coincidence so minute that we have to admit an actual borrowing? And if so, on which side is the borrowing likely to have taken place ? In the Avesta this name occurs in the Yashts. In the Old Testament it occurs in Exodus iii. 13. Chronologically therefore the Hebrew text is anterior to the Avestic text. In Exodus we read:

'And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name ? what shall I say unto them ? And God said unto Moses, 1 am that I am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you.'

This passage, as I am informed by the best authori

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ties, is now unanimously referred to the Elohistic section. Dillmann, Driver, Kuenen, Wellhausen, Cornill, Kittel, &c, all agree on that point. But does it not look like a foreign thought ? What we expect as the answer to the question of Moses, is really what follows in ver. 15, 'And God said [moreover] unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob hath sent me <unto you; this is my name for ever. . . .' This is what we expect, for it was actually in the name of Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that Moses brought the people out of Egypt; nor is there any trace of Moses having obeyed the divine command and having appealed to ' I am that I am/ as the God who sent him. Nay, there is never again any allusion to such a name in the Old Testament, not even where we might fully expect to meet with it.

If we take ver. 14 as a later addition, and the Rev. J. Estlin Carpenter informs me that this is quite possible, in the Elohistic narrative, everything becomes clear and natural, and we can hardly doubt therefore that this addition came from an extraneous, and most likely from a Zoroastrian source. In Zend the connection between Ahura, the living god, and the verb ah, to be, might have been felt. In Sanskrit also the connection between asura and as, to be, could hardly have escaped attention, particularly as there was also the word as-u, breath. Now it is certainly very strange that in Hebrew also ehyeh seems to point to the same root as Jeliovah, but even if this etymology were tenable historically, it does not seem to have struck the Jewish mind except in this passage.

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But let us look now more carefully at our authorities in Zend. The passage in question occurs in the Ormazd Yasht, and the Yashts, as we saw, were some of the latest productions of Avestic literature, in some cases as late as the fourth century b. c. The Elohistic writer, therefore, who is supposed to be not later than 750 B. c, could not have borrowed from that Yasht. The interpolator, however, might have done so. Besides we must remember that this Ormazd Yasht is simply an enumeration of the names of Ahura. The twenty names of Ahura are given, in order to show their efficacy as a defence against all dangers. It cannot be doubted, therefore, that these names were recognised as sacred names, and that they had existed long before the time of their compilation. I shall subjoin the translation of the introductory paragraphs from the S. B. E., vol. xxiii. p. 23:

Zarathushtra asked Ahura Mazda: * 0 Ahura Mazda, most beneficent Spirit, Maker of the material world, thou Holy One, what Holy Word is the strongest? What is the most victorious? What is the most glorious? What is the most effective? What is the most fiend-smiting? What is the best-healing? What destroyeth best the malice of Daevas and men ? What maketh the material world best come to the fulfilment of its wishes? What freeth the material world best from the anxieties of the heart ?' Ahura Mazda answered: ' Our name, 0 Spitama Zarathushtra, who are the Ameshaspentas, that is the strongest part of the Holy Word, that is the most victorious, that is the most glorious, that is the most effective,' &c.

Then Zarathushtra said: * Reveal unto me that name

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of thine, O Ahura Mazda! that is the greatest, the best, the fairest, the most effective,' &c.

Ahura Mazda replied unto him: 'My name is the One of whom questions are asked, O Holy Zarathushtra!'

Now it is curious to observe that Dr. Haug translates the same passage freely, but not accurately, by: ' The first name is Ahmi, I am.'

The text is Frakhshtya nama ahmi, and this means,' One to be asked by name am I.' ' To ask' is the recognised term for asking for revealed truth, so that spento frasna, the holy question, including the answer, came to mean with the Parsis almost the same as revelation. Dr. Haug seems to have overlooked that word, and his translation has therefore been wrongly quoted as showing that / am was a name of Ahura Mazda.

But when we come to the twentieth name we find that Haug's translation is more accurate than Darmesteter's. The text is vlsastemo ahmi ya£ ahmi Mazdau nama. This means, 'the twentieth, I am what I am, Mazda by name/ Here Darmesteter translates: 'My twentieth name is Mazda (the allknowing one)/ Dr. Haug more accurately: 'The twentieth (name is) I am who I am, Mazda1/

Here then in this twentieth name of Ahura Mazda, ' I am that I am/ we have probably the source of the verse in Exodus iii. 14, unless we are prepared to

1 Another translation of the words visastemd ahmi y&t ahmi Mazdau nama has been suggested by West. Ahmi in Zend, he writes, is not only the same as Sk. asmi, I am, but is used also as the locative of the first personal pronoun, corresponding to the Sk. mayi. It is possible, therefore, to translate 'the twentieth name for me is that I am Mazda/ though most scholars would prefer to take the two ahmi's for the same, and to translate, ' the twentieth is I am what I am, Mazda by name.'

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admit a most extraordinary coincidence, and that under circumstances where a mutual influence, nay actual borrowing, was far from difficult, and where the character of the passage in Exodus seems to give clear indication on which side the borrowing must have taken place.

I hope I have thus made it clear in what the real value of the Sacred Books of the East consists with regard to a comparative study of religions. We must freely admit that many literary documents in which we might have hoped to find the traces of the earliest growth of a religion, are lost to us for ever. I have tried to show how, more particularly in the case of the Zoroastrian religion, our loss has been very great, and the recent publication of the Dinkarrf by Mr. E. W. West (S.B. E.y vol. xxxvii) has made us realise more fully how much of the most valuable information is lost to us for ever. We read, for instance (Book ix. cap. 31, 13), that in the Varstmansar Nask there was a chapter on c the arising of the spiritual creation, the first thought of Aftharmaztf ; and, as to the creatures of Aftharmaztf, first the spiritual achievement, and then the material formation and the mingling of spirit with matter; [the advancement of the creatures thereby, through his wisdom and the righteousness of Vohtiman being lodged in the creatures,] and all the good creatures being goaded thereby into purity and joy fulness. This too, that a complete understanding of things arises through Vohftman having made a home in one's reason (v&r6m).'

To have seen the full treatment of these questions in the Avesta would have been of the greatest value to the students of the history of religions, whether

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THE TRUE VALUE OF THE SACRED BOOKS. 57
they admit a direct influence of Persian on Jewish and Christian thought, or whether they look upon the Zoroastrian idea of a spiritual followed by a material creation as simply an instructive parallel to the Philonic concept of the Logos, its realisation in the material world, or the o-ipf, and on Vohftman as a parallel to the Holy Ghost. But there is now no hope of our ever recovering what has been lost so long. We must admit, therefore, that, with all the Sacred Books of the East, our knowledge of ancient religions will always remain very imperfect, and that we are often forced to depend on writings, the date of which as writings is very late, if compared with the times which they profess to describe. It does not follow that there may not be ancient relics imbedded in modern books, but it does follow that these modern books have to be used with great caution, also that their translation can never be too literal. There is a dangerous tendency in Oriental scholarship, namely an almost unconscious inclination to translate certain passages in the Veda, the Zend Avesta, or the Buddhist Canon into language taken from the Old or New Testament. In some respects this may be useful, as it brings the meaning of such passages nearer to us. But there is a danger also, for such translations are apt to produce an impression that the likeness is greater than it really is, so great in fact that it could be accounted for by actual borrowing only. It is right that we should try to bring Eastern thought and language as near as possible to our own thought and language, but we must be careful also not to obliterate the minute features peculiar to each, even though the English translation may sometimes sound strange and unidiomatic.

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LECTURE HI.

THE HISTORICAL RELATIONSHIP OP ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES.

How to compare Ancient Religions and Ancient Philosophies.

WE saw in the case of the Avesta how absolutely necessary it is that we should have formed to ourselves a clear conception of the relation in which the religions and philosophies of the ancient world stand to each other before we venture to compare them.

In former days, when little was known of the more distant degrees of relationship by which the historical nations of the world were bound together, the temptation was great, whenever some similarity was pointed out between the beliefs of different nations, to suppose that one had borrowed from the other. The Greeks, as we saw, actually persuaded themselves that they had borrowed the names of some of their gods from Egypt, because they discovered a certain similarity between their own deities and those of that ancient country. But we know now that there was no foundation whatever for such an opinion. Christian theologians, from the days of Clement of Alexandria to our own time, were convinced that any startling coin

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cidences between the Bible and the Sacred Books of other religions could be due to one cause only, namely, to borrowing on the part of the Gentiles; while there were not wanting Greek philosophers who accused Christian teachers of haying taken their best doctrines from Plato and Aristotle.

Common Humanity.

We must therefore, at the very outset, try to clear our mind on this subject. We may distinguish, I believe, between four different kinds of relationship. The most distant relationship is that which is simply due to our common humanity. Homines sumus, nihil humani a nobis alienum putamus. Much of what is possible in the Arctic regions is possible in the Antarctic regions also; and nothing can be more interesting than when we succeed in discovering coincidences between beliefs, superstitions, and customs, peculiar to nations entirely separated from each other, and sharing nothing but their common humanity. Such beliefs, superstitions, and customs possess a peculiar importance in the eye of the psychologist, because, unless we extend the chapter of accidents very far indeed, they can hardly be deprived of a claim of being founded in human nature, and, in that case, of being, if not true, at all events, humanly speaking, legitimate. It is true that it has been found very difficult to prove any belief or any custom to be quite universal. Speech, no doubt, and, in one sense, certain processes of grammar too, a conception of number and an acceptance of certain numerals, may be called universal; a belief in gods or supernatural powers is almost universal, and so is a sense of shame

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with regard to flex, and a more or less accurate observation of the changes of the moon and the seasons of the year.

But there is one point which, as anthropologists, we ought never to forget. We gain nothing, or very little, by simply collecting similar superstitions or similar customs among different and widely distant nations. This amounts to little more than if, as comparative philologists, we discover that to be in love is in French amoureux and in Mandshu in Northern China amourou. This is curious, but nothing more. Or, if we compare customs, it is well known that a very strange custom, the so-called Couvade, has been discovered among different nations, both in ancient and modem times. It consists, as you know, in the father being put to bed when the mother has given birth to a child. But, besides the general likeness of the custom, which is certainly very extraordinary, its local varieties ought to have been far more carefully studied than they hitherto have been. In some casqs it seems that the husband is most considerately nursed and attended to, in others he is simply kept quiet and prevented from making a noise in the house. In other countries, again, quite a new element comes in. The poor father is treated with the greatest malignity —is actually flogged by the female members of his household, and treated as a great criminal. Until we can discover the real motive of those strange varieties of the same custom, the mere fact that they have been met with in many places is no more than curious. It has no more scientific value than the coincidence between the French amoureux and the Mandshu amourou. Or, to take another instance,

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the mere fact that the Sanskrit Haritas is letter by letter the same word as the Greek Charites, teaches us nothing. It is only when we are able to show why the Haritas in India and the Charites in Greece received the same name, that these outward similarities gain a truly scientific value. To say that something like the Couvade existed till very lately in Spain and likewise in China explains nothing, or only explains ignotum per ignotius. Not till we can discover the common motive of a custom or a superstition, founded in our common humanity, can we claim for these studies the name of Anthropology, can we speak of a real Science of Man1.

Common language.

The second kind of relationship is that of a common language. Most people would think that community of blood was a stronger bond than community of language. But no one has ev«r defined what is meant by blood; it is generally used as a mere metaphor; and there remains in most cases the difficulty, or I should rather say the impossibility, of proving either the purity or the mixture of blood in the most ancient periods of man's existence on earth. Lastly, when we are concerned with beliefs and customs, it is after all the intellect that tells and not the blood. Now the outward or material form of the intellect is language, and when we have to deal with nations who belong to the same family of language, Semitic or Aryan or Polynesian, we ought to be prepared for similarities in their customs, in their religions, nay in their philosophical expressions also.

1 On the Comrade see Academy 1892, Nos. 1059, 1072, 1075.

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Common History.

Thirdly, there is what I should call a real historical relationship, as when nations, whether speaking related or unrelated languages, have been living together for a certain time before they became politically separated. The inhabitants of Iceland, for instance, not only speak a dialect closely connected with the Scandinavian languages, but they actually passed through the early periods of their history under the same political sway as the people of Norway, Common customs, therefore, found in Iceland and Norway admit of an historical explanation. The same applies to existing American customs as compared with earlier English or Irish customs.

Common neighbourhood.

Different from these three relationships is that of mere neighbourhood which may lead to a borrowing of certain things ready made on one side or the other, very different from a sharing in a common ancestral property. We know how much the Fins, for instance, have borrowed from their Scandinavian neighbours in customs, legends, religion, and language. It happens not unfrequently that two, if not three, of these relationships exist at the same time. Thus, if we take the Semitic and the Aryan religions, any coincidences between them can be due to their common humanity only, except in cases where we can prove at a later time historical contact between an Aryan and a Semitic race. No one can doubt that the Phenicians were the schoolmasters, or at least the writing masters, of the Greeks; also that in several parts of the world

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Greeks and Phenicians were brought into close relations by commercial intercourse. Hence we can account by mere borrowing for the existence of Semitic names, such as Melikertes in Greek mythology; likewise for the grafting of Semitic ideas on Greek deities, as in the case of Aphrodite or Heracles. No Greek scholar, however, would suppose that the Greeks had actually borrowed their original concept and name of Aphrodite or Heracles from Semitic sources, though the grafting of Semitic ideas on Greek stems may have led in certain cases to a complete transfusion of Semitic thought into Greek forms. Generally the form of a name, and the phonetic laws which determine the general character of Semitic and Aryan words, are sufficient to enable us to decide who was the borrower and who was the lender in these exchanges; still, there are some cases where for the present we are left in doubt.

Though no satisfactory Aryan etymology of Aphrodite has yet been discovered, yet no one would claim a Semitic origin for such a word, as little as one would claim a Greek etymology for Melikertes. It is disappointing when we see the old idea of deriving Greek mythological names straight from Hebrew, not even from Phenician, revived and countenanced by so respected a Journal as the Jahrbilcher filr classische Philologie. In the volume for 1892, pp. 177 seq., an article is published in which Dr. Heinrich Lewy derives Elysion from 'Elish&, one of the four sons of Javan (Gen. x. 4), and supposed to be a representative of Sicily and Lower Italy *. Suppose it were so, are we to

1 The Sirens are supposed by Dr. Lewy to have derived their name from Shir-ch3n, song of favour; Eileithyias from chilith,

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64 LECTURE III.

believe that not only the Greeks, but other Aryan nations also, derived their belief in the West, as the abode of the Blessed, inHesperia and the MaKaptov rijaot, from the Jews ? I do not mean to say that we have a satisfactory etymology of Elysion in Greek; all I say is, that there is nothing to suggest a foreign origin. Elysion seems to be connected with the Greek rjKvB in f)kv6ov 7r/)Off^Avros, and with Sk. ruh, to rise and to move. In Sk. we have both &-ruh, to mount, and ava-ruh, to descend. We actually find Rv. I. 52, 9, r6haiiamdivaA, the ascent or summit of heaven, and Rv. I. 105, 10. m&dhye &rodhane divaA, where, if we could take rudh for ruh, we should have a strong analogy of an Elysion, as a heavenly abode; while in IX. 113, 8, avar6dhanam div&A is another expression for the abode of the blessed. The Greek r\\v<riov would stand for rfXvd-Tiov x.

We saw in our last lecture that if there are any coincidences between the ancient philosophy of the Greeks and that of the Brahmans, they should be accounted for by their common humanity only. In some cases we may perhaps appeal to the original community of language between Brahman and Greek, for language
travails of birth ; Upis in Artemis Upis from chdphith, the goddess of chdph, seashore; dlen from Hebrew chdlSm, a seer; BeUerophon from 'El raphdn, the El of healing; Sarpedon from Zarpadin, the rock of rescue; Europe from 'Arubha, the darkened; Minos from M6ne, the ordainer; Radamanthys from Rdde'emeth, ruling in truth ; Adrasteia from Ddrasheth, requiring vengeance; Endymion from 'En dim yon, non-destruction ; Kronos from Gardn, the jaws ; Orion from Orari'dn, the hurler of strength, or, as we are now told, from the Accadian Ur-ana, light of heaven {Athenaeum, June 25, 1892, p. 816) ; Niobe from Ni-iyy6bh6, the complaint of the persecuted; Apollon, Etruscan Aplun from Ablu, the son. What should we say to such derivations, if they were from Sanskrit, and not from Hebrew ? 1 See Fick in K. Z., xix, note.

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forms a kind of inclined plane determining the general direction or inclination of any intellectual structure erected upon it. Communication, however, or exchange in historical times seems here, so far as we can judge, to be entirely out of the question.

Relation between the Religion* of India and Persia.

If on the contrary we compare the ancient religious and philosophical ideas of India with those of Persia, we have to admit not only what may be called an underlying community of language, but an historical community between the ancestors of Indians and Persians, that lasted long after the other Aryan nations had been finally separated. The mere occurrence of such technical names, for instance, as zaotar, the title of the supreme priest, the Vedic hotar, or &tharvan, fire-priest, the Sanskrit &thar van, or of haoma, name of a plant used for sacrificial purposes both in the Veda and in the Avesta, while no trace of them occurs in any of the other Aryan languages, are sufficient to show that the believers in the Veda and the believers in the Avesta remained socially united up to a time when a minute sacrificial ceremonial had been fully elaborated. Of a later borrowing between the two, except in quite modern times, there is no evidence whatever.

A comparison of the ancient Indian and Persian religions must therefore be of a totally different character from a comparison of the earliest religious and philosophical ideas in India and Greece. There is the common deep-lying linguistic substratum in both cases, but whereas the Greek and the Indian streams of thought became completely separated before there was any attempt at forming definite half-philosophical half-religious concepts, the Indian and Persian streams
v

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of thought continued running in the same bed, long after the point had been reached where the Greek stream had separated from them.

That being the case, it follows that any coincidences that may be discovered between the later phases of religious or philosophical thought of Greeks and Hindus, should not be accounted for by any historical contact, while coincidences between Indian and Persian thought, whether religious or philosophical, admit of such an explanation.

Independent Character of Indian Philosophy.

This, from one point of view, may seem disappointing. But it lends a new charm to the study of Indian philosophy, as compared with the philosophy of Greece —because we can really recognise in it what may be called a totally independent venture of the human mind.

The discovery of a rich philosophical literature in India has never attracted as yet the attention which it deserves. Most of our philosophers cannot get over the idea that there is one way only of treating philosophy, namely that which was followed in Greece and was afterwards adopted by most of the philosophers of Europe. Nearly all our philosophical terminology comes to us from Greece, but without wishing to say a word against its excellence, we ought not to look upon every other philosophy that does not conform to our own formulas, as unworthy of serious attention.

I shall try therefore to bring this Indian philosophy, and more particularly the Ved&nta philosophy, as near as I can to our own sphere of philosophical interests. I shall try to show that it treats the same

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problems which have occupied the thoughts of Greek philosophers, nay, which occupy our own thoughts, though it treats them in a way that at first sight may seem to us strange or even repellent. This very strangeness, however, exercises its own peculiar attraction, for whatever we possess of philosophy, whether it comes from Greece or Italy or Germany, or now from America and the most distant colonies, has been touched directly or indirectly by the rays of those great luminaries that arose in Greece in the fifth century B.C. In India alone philosophy was never, so far as we know, touched by any external influences. It sprang up there spontaneously as it did in Greece, and if the thinkers of Greece strike us as a marvel, because we know nothing like them in any other part of the world, we are filled with the same surprise, if we meet with complete systems of philosophy south of the Himalayan mountains, in a country where, till it was subdued by nations, superior to the inhabitants of India in physical strength and military organisation, though by no means in intellectual vigour or originality, religion and philosophy seem to have formed during centuries the one absorbing subject of meditation. If we form our notion of the ancient Aryan settlers in India from what they have left us in their literature, no doubt we have to remember that nearly all we have comes from one source, or has passed through one channel, that of the Brahmans. There is therefore no doubt some danger that we may draw too bright, too ideal a picture of these Indian Aryas, as if they had been a nation consisting entirely of pious worshippers of the gods, and of philosophers bent on solving the great problems of this life and of the realities that lie behind it, or beneath it. There

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must have been dark sides to their life also, and we catch glimpses of them even in their own sacred literature. But these darker sides of human life we can study everywhere;—what we can study nowhere but in India is the all-absorbing influence which religion and philosophy may exercise on the human mind. So far as we can judge, a large class of people in India, not only the priestly class, but the nobility also, not only men but women also, never looked upon their life on earth as something real. What was real to them was the invisible, the life to come. What formed the theme of their conversations, what formed the subject of their meditations, was the real that alone lent some kind of reality to this unreal phenomenal world. Whoever was supposed to have caught a new ray of truth was visited by young and old, was honoured by princes and kings, nay, was looked upon as holding a position far above that of kings and princes. That is the side of the life of ancient India which deserves our study, because there has been nothing like it in the whole world, not even in Greece or in Palestine.

The Indian View of Life. Our idea of life on earth has always been that of a struggle for existence, a struggle for power and dominion, for wealth and enjoyment. These are the ideas which dominate the history of all nations whose history is known to us. Our own sympathies also are almost entirely on that side. But was man placed on this earth for that one purpose only ? Can we not imagine a different purpose, particularly under conditions such as existed for many centuries in India and

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nowhere else ? In India the necessaries of life were few, and those which existed were supplied without much exertion on the part of man, by a bountiful nature. Clothing, scanty as it was, was easily provided. Life in the open air or in the shades of the forest was more delightful than life in cottages or palaces. The danger of inroads from foreign countries was never dreamt of before the time of Darius and Alexander, and then on one side only, on the north, while more than a silver streak protected all around the far-stretching shores of the country. Why should the ancient inhabitants of India not have accepted their lot ? Was it so very unnatural for them, endowed as they were with a transcendent intellect, to look upon this life, not as an arena for gladiatorial strife and combat, or as a market for cheating and huckstering, but as a resting-place, a mere waiting-room at a station on a journey leading them from the known to the unknown, but exciting for that very reason their utmost curiosity as to whence they came, and whither they were going. I know quite w$ll that there never can be a whole nation of philosophers or metaphysical dreamers. The pleasures of life and sensual enjoyments would in India as elsewhere dull the intellect of the many, and make them satisfied with a mere animal existence, not exempt from those struggles of envy and hatred which men share in common with the beasts. But the ideal life which we find reflected in the ancient literature of India, must certainly have been lived by at least the few, and we must never forget that, all through history, it is the few, not the many, who impress their character on a nation, and have a right to represent it, as a whole What do we know of Greece at the time of the Ionian and Eleatic

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philosophers, except the utterances of Seven Sages 1 What do we know of the Jews at the time of Moses, except the traditions preserved in the Laws and the Prophets ? It is the Prophets, the poets, the lawgivers and teachers, however small their number, who speak in the name of the people, and who alone stand out to represent the nondescript multitude behind them, to speak their thoughts and to express their sentiments. I confess it has always seemed to me one of the saddest chapters in the history of the world to see the early inhabitants of India who knew nothing of the rest of the world, of the mighty empires of Egypt and Babylon, of their wars and conquests, who wanted nothing from the outside world, and were happy and content in their own earthly paradise, protected as it seemed by the mountain ramparts in the north, and watched on every other side by the jealous waves of the Indian ocean, to see these happy people suddenly overrun by foreign warriors, whether Persians, Greeks or Macedonians, or at a later time, Scythians, Mohammedans, Mongolians, and Christians, and conquered for no fault of theirs, except that they had neglected to cultivate the art of killing their neighbours. They themselves never wished for conquests, they simply wished to be left alone, and to be allowed to work out their view of life which was contemplative and joyful, though deficient in one point, namely the art of self-defence and destruction. They had no idea that a tempest could break upon them, and when the black clouds came suddenly driving across the northern and western mountain-passes, they had no shelter, they were simply borne down by superior brute force. They remind us of Archimedes imploring the cruel invader, not to dis

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turb his philosophical circles, but there was no help for them. That ideal of human life which they had pictured to themselves, and which to a certain extent they seemed to have realised before they were discovered and disturbed by the ' outer barbarians,' had to be surrendered. It was not to be, the whole world was to be a fighting and a huckstering world, and even the solution of the highest problems of religion and philosophy was in future to be determined, not by sweet reasonableness, but by the biggest battalions. We must all learn that lesson, but even to the hardened historian it is a sad lesson to learn.

But it may be said, What then are these dreamers to us? We have to learn our lessons of life from Greeks and Romans. They are our light and our leaders. The blood that runs in our veins is the blood of vigorous Saxons and Normans, not of the pensive gymnosophists of India.

True, and yet these pensive gymnosophists are not entire strangers to us. Whatever the blood may be that runs through our veins, the blood that runs through our thoughts, I mean our language, is the same as that of the Aryas of India, and that language has more to do with ourselves than the blood that feeds our body and keeps us alive for a time.

Language, the Common Background of Philosophy.

Let us therefore try, before we begin to compare the philosophy of the Hindus with our own, or with that of Greeks and Romans, to make it quite clear to ourselves, first of all, whether there may be a common foundation for both, or secondly whether we shall have to admit a later historical contact between the

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philosophers of the East and those of the West. I think people have learnt by this time to appreciate how much we are dependent in all our thoughts on our language, nay how much we are helped, and, of course, hindered also by our language in all our thoughts, and afterwards in the deeds that follow on our thoughts. Still we must be careful and distinguish between two things,—the common stock of words and thoughts which the Aryan nations shared in common before they separated, and the systems of thought which in later times they elaborated each on their own soil. The common intellectual inheritance of the Aryan nations is very considerable,—much larger than was at one time supposed. There are sufficient words left which, as they are the same in Greek and Sanskrit, must have existed before the Aryan family broke up into two branches, the one marching to the West and North, the other to the South and East. It is possible with the help of these words to determine the exact degree of what may be called civilisation, which had been reached before the great Aryan separation took place, thousands of years before the beginning of any history. We know that the only real historical background for the religion, the mythology and the laws of the Greeks and Romans has been discovered in the fragments left to us of the common stock of words of the Aryan nations.

Common Aryan 'Religion and Mythology.

To treat of Greek religion, mythology, nay even of legal customs without a consideration of their Aryan antecedents, would be like treating of Italian without a knowledge of Latin. This is now a very old truth,

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though there are still, I believe, a few classical scholars left, who are shocked at the idea that the Greek Zeus could have anything to do with the Vedic Dyaus. You know that there are some people who occasionally publish a pamphlet to show that, after all, the earth is not round, and who even offer prizes and challenge astronomers to prove that it is round. It is the same in Comparative Philology and Religion. There are still some troglodytes left who say that Zeus may be derived from (fjv, to live, that Varum shows no similarity to Ouranos, that deva, bright and god, cannot be the Latin deus, that tfarvara is not Kerberod, and that Sarawyu cannot be Erinnys. To them Greek mythology is like a lotus swimming on the water without any stem, without any roots. I am old enough to remember the time when the world was startled for the first time by the discovery that the dark inhabitants of India should more than three thousand years ago have called their gods by the same names by which the Romans and the Romanic nations called God and still call Him to the present day. But the world has even been more startled of late at the recrudescence of this old classical prejudice, which looked upon an Aryan origin of Greek thought and Greek language as almost an insult to classical scholarship. One of the greatest discoveries of our century, a discovery in which men such as Humboldt, Bopp, Grimm and Euhn have gained their never-fading laurels, was treated once more as schoolmasters would treat the blunders of schoolboys, and that by men ignorant of the rudiments of Sanskrit, ignorant of the very elements of Comparative Philology. I call it one of the

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74s LEOTUBE III.

greatest discoveries of our age, for it has thrown light on one of the darkest chapters in the history of the world, it has helped us to understand some of the most perplexing riddles in the growth of the human mind, it has placed historical facts, where formerly we had nothing but guesses as to the history of the Aryan nations, previous to their appearance on the historical stage of Asia and Europe.

I should not venture to say that some mistakes have not been made in the reconstruction of the picture of the Aryan civilisation previous to their separation, or in identifying the names of certain Greek and Vedic gods; but such mistakes, as soon as they were discovered, have easily been corrected. Besides, we know that what were supposed to be mistakes, wei*& often no mistakes at all. One of the strongest arguments against a comparison of Greek and Vedic deities has always been that the Greeks of Homers time, for instance, had no recollection that Zeus was originally a name of the bright sky or Erinnys a name of the dawn. Nothing is so easy as to disprove what no one has ever wished to prove. •No Frenchman is conscious that the name Spider has anything to do with species, and in the end, with Plato's ideas; and yet we know that an unbroken historical chain connects the two names. Mythological studies will never gain a safe scientific basis, unless they are built up on the same common Aryan foundation on which all linguistic studies are admitted to rest. It is now the fashion to explain the similarities between the religion, the mythology, the folklore of the Aryan nations, not by their common origin, but by our common humanity, not by historical evidence,

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but by psychological speculation. It is perfectly true that there are legends, stories, customs and proverbs to be found among the South Sea Islanders and the inhabitants of the Arctic regions which bear a striking likeness to those of the Aryan nations. Many such had been collected long ago by anthropologists such as Bastholm, Klemm, Waitz, and more recently by Bastian, Tylor and others. I have myself been one of the earliest labourers in this interesting field of Psychological Mythology. But the question is, What conclusions have we a right to draw from such coincidences? First of all, we know by sad experience how deceptive such apparent similarities have often proved, for the simple reason that those who collected them misunderstood their real import. Secondly, we must never forget the old rule that if two people say or do the same thing, it is not always the same. But suppose the similarity is complete and well made out, all we have a right to say is that man, if placed under similar influences, will sometimes react in the same manner. We have no right as yet to speak of universal psychological instincts, of innate ideas and all the rest. Psychological Mythology is a field that requires much more careful cultivation than it has hitherto received. Hitherto its materials have mostly proved untrustworthy, and its conclusions, in consequence, fanciful and unstable.

We move in a totally different atmosphere when we examine the legends, stories, customs and proverbs of races who speak cognate languages. We have here an historical background, we stand on a firm historical foundation.

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Cliarltea = Haritas.

Let me give you one instance. I proposed manyyears ago the mythological equation H aritas=C%ar£tes. All sorts of objections have been raised against it, not one that I had not considered myself, before I proposed it, not one that could for one moment shake my conviction. If then the Sanskrit Haritas is the same word, consonant by consonant and vowel by vowel, as the Greek Charites or Graces, have we not a right to say that these two words must have had the same historical beginning, and that however widely the special meaning of the Greek Graces has diverged from the special meaning of Haritas in Sanskrit, these two diverging lines must have started from a common centre? You know that in Sanskrit the Haritas are the bright horses of the sun, while in Greek the Charites are the lovely companions of Aphrodite. The common point from which these two mythological conceptions have started must be discovered and has been discovered in the fact that in the Veda Haritas meant originally the brilliant rays of the rising sun. These in the language of the Vedic poets became the horses of the sun-god, while in Greek mythology they were conceived as beautiful maidens attending on the orient sun, whether in its male or its female character. If therefore we compare the Vedic Haritas with the Greek Charites, all we mean is that they have both the same antecedents. But when the Greek Charis becomes the wife of Hephaistos, the smith, there is no longer any contact here between Greek and Indian thought. This legend has sprung from the soil of Greece, and those who

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framed it had no recollection, however vague, of the Vedic Haritas, the horses of the Vedic sun-god.

The later Growth, of Philosophy.

Now with regard to the early philosophy of the Greeks no one would venture to say that, such as we know it, it had been developed previous to the Aryan separation. If I say, no one, this is perhaps too strong, for how can we guard against occasional outbreaks of hallucination, and what strait jacket is there to prevent anybody who can drive a pen from rushing into print? Only it is not fair to make a whole school responsible for one or two black sheep. Greek philosophy and Indian philosophy are products respectively of the native soil of Greece and of India, and to suppose that similarities such as have been discovered between the Ved&nta philosophy and that of the Eleatic philosophers, between the belief in metempsychosis in the Upanishads and the same belief in the schools of the Pythagoreans, were due to borrowing or to common Aryan reminiscences, is simply to confound two totally distinct spheres of historical research.

Kelp derived by Philosophy from Kanffuage.

The utmost we can say is that there is an Aryan atmosphere pervading both philosophies, different from any Semitic atmosphere of thought, that there are certain deep grooves of thought traced by Aryan language in which the thoughts both of Indian and Greek philosophers had necessarily to move. I shall mention a few only. You know what an important part the verbal copula acts in all philosophical operations. There are languages which have no verbal

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78 LECTUBE III.

copula, while the Aryan languages had their copula ready made before they separated, the Sanskrit asti, the Greek iari9 the Latin est, the Teutonic isb. The relative pronoun too is of immense help for the close concatenation of thought; so is the article, both definite and indefinite. The relative pronoun had been elaborated before the Aryans separated, the definite article existed at least in its rudimentary form. We can hardly imagine any philosophical treatment without the help of indicative and subjunctive, without the employment of prepositions with their at first local and temporal, but very soon, causal and modal meanings also, without participles and infinitives, without comparatives and superlatives. Think only of the difficulty which the Romans experienced and which we ourselves experience, in finding an equivalent for such a participle as to ovy still more for the Greek ovaia. Sanskrit has no such difficulty. It expresses to ov by sat, and ovaCa by sat-tva. All this forms the common property of Greek and Sanskrit and the other Aryan languages. There are many other ingredients of language which we accept as a matter of course, but which, if we come to consider it, could only have been the result of a long intellectual elaboration. Such are, for instance, the formation of abstract nouns. Without abstract nouns philosophy would hardly deserve the name of philosophy, and we are justified in saying that, as the suffixes by which abstract nouns are formed are the same in Greek and in Sanskrit, they must have existed before the Aryan separation. The same applies to adjectives which may likewise be called general and abstract terms, and which in many cases are formed by the same suffixes

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in Greek and in Sanskrit. The genitive also was originally a general and abstract term, and was called ycviKrj because it expressed the genus to which certain things belonged. A bird of the water was the same as an aquatic bird, ' of the water' expressing the class to which certain birds belong. There are languages deficient in all or many of these points, deficient also in infinitives and participles, and these deficiencies have clearly proved fetters in the progress of philosophical thought, while Aryan philosophers were supplied by their common language with wings for their boldest flights of speculation. There are even certain words which contain the result of philosophical thought, and which must clearly have existed before the Greek language separated from Sanskrit. Such common Aryan words are, for instance, man, to think, (ncnova, memini), m anas, mind (jacW), as distinguished from corpus (Zend Kehrp), body; n&man, name; vkk, speech; veda, I know, otba; iraddadhau, I believe, credidi\ mrityu, death; amnta, immortal.

All this is true and justifies us in speaking of a kind of common Aryan atmosphere pervading the philosophy of Greeks and Hindus,—a common, though submerged stratum of thought from which alone the materials, whether stone or clay, could be taken with which to build the later temples of religion, and the palaces of philosophy. All this should be remembered ; but it should not be exaggerated.

Independent Character of Indian Philosophy.

Real Indian philosophy, even in that embryonic form in which we find it in the Upanishads, stands completely by itself. We cannot claim for it any

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80 lectube in.

historical relationship with the earliest Greek philosophy. The two are as independent of each other as the Greek Charis, when she has become the wife of Hephaistos, is of the red horses of the Vedic dawn.

And herein, in this very independence, in this autochthonic character, lies to my mind the real charm of Indian philosophy. It sprang up when the Indian mind had no longer any recollection, had no longer even an unconscious impression, of its original consanguinity with the Greek mind. The common Aryan period had long vanished from the memory of the speakers of Sanskrit and Greek, before Thales declared that water was the beginning of all things; and if we find in the Upanishads such passages as ' In the beginning all this was water,' we must not imagine that there was here any historical borrowing, we have no right even to appeal to prehistoric Aryan memories—all we have a right to say is that the human mind arrived spontaneously at similar conclusions when feeing the old problems of the world, whether in India or in Greece. The more the horizon of our researches is extended, the more we are driven to admit that what was real in one place was possible in another.

Was Greek Philosophy borrowed from the Bast?

In taking this position I know I am opposed to men of considerable authority, who hold that the ancient Greek philosophers borrowed their wisdom from the East, that they travelled in the East, and that whenever we find any similarity between early Greek and Oriental philosophy it is the Greeks who must be supposed to have borrowed, whether from

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Egypt or from Babylon, or even from India. This question of the possibility of any influence having been exercised on early Greek philosophy by the philosophers of Egypt, Persia, Babylon and India requires a more careful consideration before we proceed further. It has been very fully discussed by Zeller in his great work Die Philosophic der Griechen. I entirely agree with his conclusions, and I shall try to give you as concisely as possible the results at which he has arrived. He shows that the Greeks from very early times were inclined to admit that on certain points their own philosophers had been influenced by Oriental philosophy. But they admitted this with regard to special doctrines only. That the whole of Greek philosophy had come from the East was maintained at a later time, particularly by the priests of Egypt after their first intercourse with Greece, and by the Jews of Alexandria after they had become ardent students of Greek philosophy. It is curious, however, to observe how even Herodotus was completely persuaded by the Egyptian priests, not indeed that Greek philosophy Was borrowed from the Nile, but that certain gods and forms of worship such as that of Dionysos, and likewise certain religious doctrines such as that of metempsychosis, had actually been imported into Greece from Egypt. He went so far as to say that the Pelasgians had originally worshipped gods in general only, but that they had received their names, with few exceptions, from Egypt. The Egyptian priests seem to have treated Herodotus and other Greek travellers very much in the same way in which Indian priests treated Wilford and Jacolliot, assuring them that everything they

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asked for, whether in Greek mythology or in the Old Testament, was contained in their own Sacred Books. If, however, the study of Egyptian antiquities has proved anything, it has proved that the names of the Greek gods were not borrowed from Egypt. Krantor, as quoted by Proclus (in Tim. 24 B), was perhaps the first who maintained that the famous myth told by Plato, that of the Athenians and the Atlantidae, was contained in inscriptions still found in Egypt. In later times (400 A. D.) Diodorus Siculus appealed freely to books supposed to be in the possession of Egyptian priests, in order to prove that Orpheus, Musaeus, Homer, Lykurgus, Solon, and others had studied in Egypt; nay, he adds that relics of Pythagoras, Plato, Eudoxus, Demokritus were shown there to attest their former presence on the shores of the Nile. Pythagoras is said to have acquired his knowledge of geometry and mathematics and his belief in metempsychosis in Egypt; Demokritus, his astronomy; Lykurgus, Solon, and Plato, their knowledge of laws. What was first stated by Egyptian priests from national" vanity was afterwards, when the East was generally believed to have been the cradle of all wisdom, willingly repeated by the Greeks themselves. The Neo-Platonists, more particularly, were convinced that all wisdom had its first home in the East. The Jews at Alexandria readily followed their example, trying to prove that much of Greek religion and philosophy had been borrowed from their sacred writings. Clement spoke of Plato as the philosopher of or from the Hebrews (6 i£ cE/3paiW <£iAoVotf>oy, Strom, i. 274 B).

Zeller has shown how little historical value can be

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ascribed to these statements. He might have pointed out at the same time that the more critical Greeks themselves were very doubtful about these travels of their early philosophers and lawgivers in the East. Thus Plutarch in his life of Lykurgus says that it was told that Lykurgus travelled not only to Crete and Asia Minor, where he became acquainted for the first time with the poems of Homer, but that he went also to Egypt. But here Plutarch himself seems sceptical, for he adds that the Egyptians themselves say so, and a few Greek writers, while with regard to his travels to Africa, Spain, and India, they rest, he adds, on the authority of one writer only, Aristokrates, the son of Hipparchus.

On the other hand there seems to be some kind of evidence that an Indian philosopher had once visited Athens, and had some personal intercourse with Sokrates. That Persians came to Greece and that their sacred literature was known in Greece, we can gather from the fact that Zoroaster's name, as a teacher, was known perfectly well to Plato and Aristotle, and that in the third century B.C. Hermippus had made an analysis of the books of Zoroaster. This rests on the authority of Pliny (Science of Language, i. p. 280). As Northern India was under Persian sway, it is not impossible that not only Persians, but Indians also, came to Greece and made there the acquaintance of Greek philosophers. There is certainly one passage which deserves more attention than it has hitherto received. Eusebius (Prep. Ev.9 xi. 3) quotes a work on Platonic Philosophy by Aristocles, who states therein on the authority of Aristoxenos, a pupil of Aristotle, that an Indian

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84 LEOTUBE III.

philosopher came to Athens and had a discussion with Sokrates. There is nothing in this to excite our suspicion, and what makes the statement of Aristoxenos more plausible is the observation itself which this Indian philosopher is said to have made to Sokrates. For when Sokrates had told him that his philosophy consisted in inquiries about the life of man, the Indian philosopher is said to have smiled and to have replied that no one could understand things human who did not first understand things divine. Now this is a remark so thoroughly Indian that it leaves the impression on my mind of being possibly genuine.

But even granting this isolated case, I have no doubt that all classical scholars will approve of Zeller's judicious treatment of this question of the origin of Greek philosophy. Greek philosophy is autochthonous, and requires no Oriental antecedents. Greek philosophers themselves never say that they borrowed their doctrines from the East. That Pythagoras went to Egypt may be true, that he became acquainted there with the solutions of certain geometrical problems may be true also, but that he borrowed the whole of his philosophy from Egypt, is simply a rhetorical exaggeration of Isokrates. The travels of Demokritus are better attested, but there is no evidence that he was initiated in philosophical doctrines by his barbarian friends. That Plato travelled in Egypt need not be doubted, but that he went to Phoenicia, Chaldaea, and Persia to study philosophy, is mere guesswork. What Plato thought of the Egyptians he has told us himself in the Republic (436) when he says that the special characteristic of

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ANCIENT BELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES. 85
the Greeks is love of knowledge, of the Phoenicians and Egyptians love of money. If he borrowed no money, he certainly borrowed no philosophy from his Egyptian friends.

When of late years the ancient literature of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, India, and China, came to be studied, there were not wanting Oriental scholars who thought they had discovered some of the sources of Greek philosophy in every one of these countries. But this period also has passed away. The opinions of Bohlen, Roth, Gladisch, Lorinser, and others, are no longer shared by the best Oriental scholars. They all admit the existence of striking coincidences on certain points and special doctrines between Oriental and Occidental philosophical thought, but they deny the necessity of admitting any actual borrowing. Opinions like those of Thales that water is the origin of all things, of Heraclitus that the Divine pervades all things, of Pythagoras and Plato that the human soul migrates through animal bodies, of Aristotle that there are five elements, of Empedokles and the Orphics that animal food is objectionable, all these may easily be matched in Oriental philosophy, but to prove that they were borrowed, or rather that they were dishonestly appropriated, would require far stronger arguments than have yet been produced.

Indian Philosophy autochthonous.

Let us remember then that the conclusion at which we have arrived enables us to treat Indian philosophy as a perfectly independent witness. It was different with Indian religion and mythology. In comparing Indian religion and mythology with the religion and

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mythology of Greeks and Romans, Celts and Teutons, the common Aryan leaven could still be clearly perceived as working in all of them. Their rudiments are the same, however different their individual growth. But when we come to compare Indian philosophy with the early philosophies of other Aryan nations, the case is different. M. Reville, in his learned work on the American religions, has remarked how the religions of Mexico and Peru come upon us like the religions of another planet, free from all suspicion of any influence having ever been exercised by the thought of the old on the thought of the new world. The same applies not indeed to the religion, but to the philosophy of India. Apart from the influence which belongs to a common language and which must never be quite neglected, we may treat the earliest philosophy of India as an entirely independent witness, as the philosophy of another planet; and if on certain points Indian and Greek philosophy arrive at the same results, we may welcome such coincidences as astronomers welcomed the coincidences between the speculations of Leverrier and Adams, both working independently in their studies at Paris and Cambridge. We may appeal in fact to the German proverb, Au8 zweier Zeugen Mund, Wird alle Wahrheit kund, and look upon a truth on which B&dar&yawa and Plato agree, as not very far from proven.

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LECTURE IV.

THE BELATION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TO PHYSICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL RELIGION.

Tlie Constituent Elements of Beliglon.

ONE of the greatest difficulties in studying ancient religions is the entire absence of any systematic arrangement in their Sacred Books. We look in vain for anything like creeds, articles of faith, or a welldigested catechism. It is left therefore to ourselves to reduce the chaos of thoughts which they contain to some kind of order.

This has been attempted in various ways.

Sometimes the doctrines contained in them have been arranged in two classes, as dogmas to be believed (theology), and as rules of conduct to be obeyed (ethics). Sometimes scholars have collected all that refers to the outward ceremonial, and have tried to separate it from what was believed about the gods. But in most religions it would be almost impossible to separate ethics from dogma, while in its origin at least ceremonial is always the outward manifestation only of religious belief. Of late these outward or sacrificial elements of religion have received great attention, and a long controversy has been carried on

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as to whether sacrifice was the real origin of all religion, or whether every sacrifice, if properly understood, presupposes a belief in gods to whom the sacrifices were offered.

The theory, supported chiefly by Professor Gruppe, that sacrifice comes first and a belief in gods afterwards seems to me utterly untenable, if not selfcontradictory. An offering surely can only be an offering to somebody, and even if that somebody has not yet received a name of his own, he must have been conceived under a general name, such as celestial, immortal, divine, powerful, and all the rest.

It is no new discovery, for instance, that many of the hymns of the Rig-veda presuppose the existence of a highly developed ceremonial, but to say that this is the case with all, or that no hymns were composed except as auxiliary to a sacrifice, betrays a strange ignorance of palpable facts. Even the hymns which were composed for sacrificial purposes presuppose a belief in a number of gods to whom sacrifices are offered. If a hymn was to be used at the morning sacrifice, that very morning sacrifice owed its origin to a belief in a god manifested in the rising sun, or in a goddess of the dawn. The sacrifice was in fact as spontaneous as a prayer or a hymn, before it became traditional, technical, and purely ceremonial. On this point there cannot be two opinions, so long as we deal with facts and not with fancies.

My own. Dtrlston.

In my Lectures on Natural Religion, I have preferred a different division, and have assigned one course to each of what I consider the constituent

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parts of all religions. My first course of Lectures was purely introductory, and had for its object a definition of Natural Religion in its widest sense. I also thought it necessary, before approaching the subject itself, to give an account of the documents from which we may derive trustworthy information about Natural Religion as it presents itself to us in the historical growth of the principal religions of the world.

My second course, which treated of Physical Religion, was intended to show how different nations had arrived at a belief in something infinite behind the finite, in something invisible behind the visible, in many unseen agents or gods of nature, till at last, by the natural desire for unity, they reached a belief in one god above all those gods. We saw how what I called the Infinite in nature, or that which underlies all that is finite and phenomenal in our cosmic experience, became named, individualised, and personified, till in the end it was conceived again as beyond all names.

My third course, which treated of Anthropological Religion, was intended to show how different nations arrived at a belief in a soul, how they named its various faculties, and what they imagined about its fate after death.

While thus my second course was intended as a history of the discovery of the Infinite in nature, my third course was intended to explain the discovery of the Infinite in man.

It remains for me to treat, in this my last course, of the relation between these two Infinites, if indeed there can be two Infinites, or to explain to you the ideas which some of the principal nations of the world

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have formed on this relation between the soul and God. It has been truly said, and most emphatically by Dr. Newman, that neither a belief in God by itself, nor a belief in the soul by itself, would constitute religion, and that real religion is founded on a true perception of the relation of the soul to God and of God to the soul. What I want to prove is that all this is true, not only as a postulate, but as an historical fact.

Nor can it be doubted that our concept of God depends to a great extent on our concept of the soul, and it has been remarked that it would have been better if I had treated Anthropological before Physical Religion, because a belief in the Infinite in nature, in invisible powers, behind the great phenomena of the physical world, and at last in a soul of the Universe would be impossible, without a previous belief in the Infinite in man, in an invisible agent behind the acts of man, in fact, in a soul or a spirit. The same idea was evidently in the mind of Master Eckhart, when he said,' The nearer a man in this life approaches to a knowledge of the nature of the soul, the nearer he approaches to a knowledge of God V

From an historical point of view, however, the great phenomena, perceived in the objective world, seem to have been the first to arouse in the human mind the idea of something beyond, of something invisible, yet real, of something infinite or transcending the limits of human experience. And it was probably in this sense that an old Rabbi remarked: ' God sees and is not seen; so the soul sees and is not seen2.' The

1 ' Als Til ein mensche in disem leben mit sinem bekenntnisse je naher kamt dem wisen der sele, je naher er ist dem bekenntnisse gotes' (ed. Pfeiffer, p. 617, 1. 32).

9 Bigg, Bampton Lectures, pp. 8 ; 10, n. 3.

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two processes, leading to a belief in an invisible God, the Infinite in its objective character, and to a belief in an invisible soul, or the Infinite in its subjective character, are really so intimately connected that it is difficult to say which of the two ought to be treated first, or which of the two came first in the historical development of religion. What is quite clear, however, is this, that Psychological Religion presupposes both Physical and Anthropological Religion, and that before the soul and God can be brought into relation with each other, both the concept of God and the concept of soul had to be elaborated. Nay, God had to be conceived as soul-like, and the soul of man as God-like, for like only can know like, like only can love like, like only can be united with like.

The meaning1 of Psychological Beligion.

If I use the name of Psychological Religion in order to comprehend under it all attempts at discovering the true relation between the soul and God, it is because other names, such as TkeosophiCtPsychiCyOrMystiCjh&ve been so much misused that they are sure to convey a false impression. Theosophic conveys the idea of wild speculations on the hidden nature of God; Psychic reminds us of trances, visions, and ghosts; Mystic leaves the impression of something vague, nebulous, and secret, while to the student of Psychological Religion the true relation of the two souls, the human soul and the divine, is, or ought to be, as clear as the most perfect logical syllogism. I shall not be able to avoid these names altogether, because the most prominent representatives of Theosophy and mystic religion have prided themselves on these names, and they are

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92 LECTURE IV.

very appropriate, if only clearly defined. Nothing, of course, is easier, and therefore to certain minds more tempting than to use the same word in its opprobrious sense, and thus by a mere name to condemn doctrines which have been held by the wisest and best of men. This kind of criticism need not detain us, or keep us from adopting the name of Theosophy for our own purposes.

In most of the religions of the ancient world, the relation between the soul and God has been represented as a return of the soul to God. A yearning for God, a kind of divine home-sickness, finds expression in most religions. But the road that is to lead us home, and the reception which the soul may expect in the Father's house, have been represented in very different ways, in different countries and different languages.

I. Seturn of the Soul to God, after death.

We can divide the opinions held and the hopes expressed on this subject into two classes. According to some religious teachers, a return of the soul to God is possible after death only, and we shall see ever so many attempts, ever so many bridges thrown by hope and faith across the gulph which seems to separate the Human from the Divine. Most of these bridges, however, lead only to the home, or to the throne of God, and there leave the soul wrapt in intuition and adoration of an unrelated objective deity. Everything is still more or less mythological. The deity site on a golden throne, and the souls, though divested of their material bodies, are still like the shadows of their earthly bodies, approaching the foot of the throne, but always kept at a certain distance from its divine occupant.

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ZX. Knowledge of the u&lty of the DiYine and the Human.

According to other religious teachers, the final beatitude of the soul can be achieved even in this life, nay must be achieved in this life, if it is to bear fruit in the next. That beatitude requires no bridges, it requires knowledge only, knowledge of the necessary unity of what is divine in man with what is divine in God. The Brahmaois call it self-knowledge, that is to say, the knowledge that our true self, if it is anything, can only be that Self which is All in All, and beside which there is nothing else. Sometimes this conception of the intimate relation between the human and the divine natures comes in suddenly, as the result of an unexplained intuition or self-recollection. Sometimes, however, it seems as if the force of logic had driven the human mind to the same result. If God had once been recognised as the Infinite in nature, and the soul as the Infinite in man, it seemed to follow that there could not be two Infinites. The Eleatics had clearly passed through a similar phase of thought in their own philosophy. 'If there is an infinite/ they said,** it is one, for if there were two, they could not be infinite, but would be finite one towards the other. But that which exists is infinite, and there cannot be more such (kovra). Therefore that which exists is one V

Nothing can be more decided than this Eleatic Monism, and with it the admission of a soul, the Infinite in man, as different from God, the Infinite in nature, would have been inconceivable. In India the

1 El & avtipov, tv (I ydp fivo ttrj, ovk hv hvvairo avupa ttvcw dAA.' i\01 &v vclpara irpbs a\\7)\a- &vupov & rb t6v, ovk &pa w\iu rcL kovra" %v dpa rb iov. (Melissus, Fragm. 3.)

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94 LBOTUEB IV.

process was not quite the same, but it led in the end to the same result. The infinite in nature or Brahman had been recognised as free from all predicates except three, sat, being, &it, perceiving, &nanda, blessedness. When it was afterwards discovered that of the infinite in man also, the soul, or rather the self, Atman, nothing could be predicated except the same triad of qualities, being, perceiving, and rejoicing, the conclusion was almost irresistible that these two, Brahman and Atman, were in their nature one. The early Christians also, at least those who had been brought up in the schools of Neo-platonist philosophy, had a clear perception that, if the soul is infinite and immortal in its nature, it cannot be anything beside God or by the side of God, but that it must be of God and in God. St. Paul gave but his own bold expression to the same faith or knowledge, when he uttered the words which have startled so many theologians : ' In Him we live and move and have our being/ If anyone else had uttered these words, they would at once have been condemned as pantheism. No doubt they are pantheism, and yet they express the* very key-note of Christianity. The divine sonship of man is only a metaphorical expression, but it was meant originally to embody the same idea. Nor was that sonship from the first restricted to one manifestation only of the Divine. The power at all events to become the sons of God was claimed for all men. And when the question was asked how the consciousness of this divine sonship could ever have been lost, the answer given by Christianity was, by sin, the answer given by the Upanishads was, by avidy &, nescience. This marks the similarity, and at the same time the charac

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teristic difference between these two religions. The question how nescience laid hold of the human soul, and made it imagine that it could live or move or have its true being anywhere but in Brahman, remains as unanswerable in Hindu philosophy as in Christianity the question how sin first came into the world1.

Veda and Vedanta.

If for the study of Physical Religion, more particularly of the initial phases of Physical Religion, we depended chiefly, if not entirely, on the Veda, you will find that for a study of Psychological Religion also and its first beginnings, the Veda is likewise, nay, even more, our most important, if not our only authority. It is no longer, however, in the hymns of the Veda that we shall have to discover the fullest realisation of Psychological Religion, but in what is called the Ved&nta, the end of the Veda. That is the name, as you may remember, given to the Upanishads or to the Gnsniak&nda,, the knowledge-portion as opposed to the Kaxmakarafa, the work-portion of the Veda. It is doubtful whether Vedltnta was meant originally for the end, i. e. the last portion of the Veda, or, as it is sometimes explained, for the end, that is the highest object of the Veda. Both interpretations can be defended. The Upanishads have really their place as the last portions of the Veda, but they are also looked upon as conveying the last and highest lesson of the religion and philosophy of the Veda.

1 Harnack, i. p. 103. Clemens Alex. (Strom, v. 14, 113) says : oZtojs dhvaiuv Xa&ovoa tcvptcuc^v 4) tyux*) ft«Acr$ cfccu 0t6s, tccucdv /a& ovlttv dWo vkty dyvoias ttvai vofu(w<ra.

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The Upanishads.

What these Upanishads are is indeed not easy to describe. I have published in the Sacred Books of the East the first complete translation of the twelve most important Upanishads. The characteristic feature of them, to which I wish to call your attention now, is their fragmentary style. They are not systematic treatises, such as we are accustomed to in Greek philosophy, but they are fragments, they are mere guesses at truth, sometimes ascribed to sages whose names are given, sometimes represented in the form of dialogues. They are mostly in prose, but they contain frequent remnants of philosophical poetry also. It is curious, however, that though unsystematic in form, they are not without a system underlying them all. We often find that the same subjects are treated in a similar, nay, in the same manner, sometimes in the same words, in different Upanishads, reminding us in this respect of the three synoptic Gospels with their striking similarities and their no less striking dissimilarities. In some cases we see even opinions diametrically opposed to each other, maintained by different authorities. While in one place we read, 'In the beginning there was £> a-V to or, we read in another, ' In the beginning there was A sat,' to fxrf 6v. Other authorities say, * In the beginning there was darkness ; In the beginning there was water; In the beginning there was Pragr&pati, the lord of all created things; In the beginning there was Brahman; In the beginning there was the Self/

It would seem difficult at first sight to construct a well-arranged building out of such heterogeneous

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materials, and yet that is the very thing that has been achieved by the builders of what is called the Vedanta system of philosophy.

The difficulties of the framers of that system were increased a hundredfold by the fact that they had to accept every word and every sentence of the Upanishads as revealed and as infallible. However contradictory at first sight, all that was said in the Upanishads had to be accepted, had to be explained, had to be harmonised somehow (samanvaya). And it was harmonised and welded into a system of philosophy that for solidity and unity will bear comparison with any other system of philosophy in the world. This was done in a work which is called the Ved&ntas&tras.

V*d&nta-Sfctra«.

Sfttra means literally a string, but it is here used as the name of short and almost enigmatical sentences which contain the gist, as it were, of each chapter in the most concise language, forming a kind of table of contents of the whole system of philosophy. I do not know anything like this Sfttra-style in any literature, while in India there is a whole period of literature during which everything that is elsewhere treated, either in prose or in poetry, has been reduced to these short aphorisms. The earlier of these SAtras are still to a certain extent intelligible, though always difficult to understand. But after a time they became so condensed, their authors employed so many merely algebraic contrivances, that it seems to me that by themselves they must often have been utterly useless. It would seem that they were meant to be learnt by heart at first, and then to be followed by an oral

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98 LECTUBE IV.

explanation, but it is difficult to say whether they were composed independently, or whether they were from the beginning a mere abstract of an already existing work, a kind of table of contents of a completed work. I must confess that whether these S&tras were composed at a time when writing was as yet unknown, or whether they were meant at first as the headings of written treatises, their elaboration seems to me far beyond anything that we could achieve now. They must have required a concentration of thought which it is difficult for us to realise. As works of art they are of course nothing, but for the purpose for which they were intended, for giving a complete and accurate outline of a whole system of philosophy, they are admirable; for, if properly explained, they leave no doubt whatever as to the exact meaning of the authors of systems of philosophy on any point of their teaching. The same applies to the manuals of grammar, of ceremonial, of jurisprudence, and all the rest, composed likewise in the form of Sfttras.

The number of these Sfttras or headings for the system of the Vedanta philosophy amounts to about 555. They form four books (adhyayas), each divided into four chapters (pada).

Besides Vedanta-s&tras this gigantic work is also known by the name of Mimamsa-stitras. Other names are Brahma-s&tras, or #arlraka Mimamsasfttras, or Vy&sa-sfttras. Mimamsa is a desiderative form of the root man, to think, and a very appropriate name, therefore, for philosophy. A distinction, however, is made between the Pftrva and the Uttara Mimamsa, that is, the former and later

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Mim&ms&, the former Mim&ms& being an attempt to reduce the ceremonial and the sacrificial rules of the Veda to a consistent system, the latter having for its object, as we saw, the systematic arrangement of the utterances scattered about in the Upanishads and having reference to Brahman as the Self of the universe and at the same time the Self of the soul. The Sfttras of the former Mlmhmsh are ascribed to Gaimini, those of the latter to Badar&yaTia.

Who B&dar&yaTia was and when he lived, as usual in Indian literature, we do not know. All we can say is that his Sfttras presuppose the existence not only of the principal Upanishads, but likewise of a number of teachers who are quoted by name, but whose works are lost to us.

Commentary by Sankaraftarya.

The most famous, though possibly not the oldest extant commentary on these Sfttras is that by #ankara or #aiLkar&M,rya. He is supposed to have lived in the eighth or seventh century A. d.1 His commentary has been published several times in Sanskrit, and there are two translations of it, one in German by Professor Deussen, the other in English by Professor Thibaut, forming the XXXTVth volume of the Sacred

1 Mr. Pathaka in the Ind. Ant. XI, 174, fixes his date as Kaliyuga 8889 to 8921 = 787 to 789 a.d., a date accepted by Weber (History of Indian Literature, p. 51) and other scholars. Sankara's birth is generally supposed to have taken place at Kalapi in Kerala in the Kaliyuga year 8889, in the Vikramayear 845, that is about 788 a.d. (Deussen, System, p. 87). Mr. Telang, however, fixes Sankara's date as early as 590 a.d., and Fleet places the Nepalese King Vnshadeva, who knew Sankara and called his son after him Sankaradeva, between 680655 a.d. (Deussen, Sutras, p. vii). See Fleet in Ind. Ant., Jan. 1887, p. 41.

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Boohs of the East There is one more volume still to follow. But though #aiikaras commentary enjoy& the highest authority all over India, there are other commentaries which hold their own by its side, and which differ from it on some very essential points.

Commentary toy B4mfcnugra.

The best known is the so-called /Sri-bh&shya by R&manugra, a famous Vaislmava theologian who is supposed to have lived in the twelfth century a.d. He often opposes &a&kara's theories, and does it not in his own name only, but as representing an altogether independent stream of tradition. In India, where, even long after the introduction of writing, intellectual life and literary activity continued to run in the old channels of oral teaching, we constantly meet with a number of names quoted as authorities, though we have no reason to suppose that they ever left anything in writing. Ramanugra does not represent himself as starting a new theory of the Vedanta, but he appeals to Bodhayana, the author of a vritti or explanation of the Brahma-s&tras, as his authority, nay he refers to previous commentao^ or Vrittik&ras on Bodhayana, as likewise supporting his opinions. It has been supposed that one of these, Drajnirfa, the author of a Dramidabhashya or a commentary on Bodhayana, is the same as the Dr&vkZa whose Bh&shya on the ifMndogya-upanishad is several times referred to by &afikara in his commentary on that Upanishad (p. 1,1. 2 infra), ajid whose opinions on the Vedantas&tras are sometimes supported by &aftkara (see Thibaut, S. B. E. XXXIV, p. xxii). Badarayam himself, the author of the Ved&nta-sfttras, quotes a

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number of earlier authorities \ but it does by no means follow that there ever existed SAtras in the form of books composed by them.

Three Periods of Vedanta Literature.

In studying the Ved&nta philosophy, we have to distinguish three successive layers of thought. We have first of all the Upanishads, which presuppose a large number of teachers, these teachers often differing from each other on essential, and likewise on trivial points. We have secondly the Sfttras of B&dar&yawa, professing to give the true meaning of the Upanishads, reduced to a systematic form, but admitting the existence of different opinions, and referring to certain authors as upholding divergent views. We have thirdly the commentaries of /SaAkara, Bodh&yana, R&m&nugra, and many others. These commentaries, however, are not mere commentaries in our sense of the word, they are really philosophical treatises, each defending an independent view of the Sfitras, and indirectly of the Upanishads.

Peculiar Character of Indian Philosophy.

It is not surprising that philosophers, on reading for the first time the Upanishads or the Ved&nta-s&tras should find them strange, and miss in them that close concatenation of ideas to which they are accustomed in the philosophy of the West. It is difficult to overcome the feeling that the stream of philosophical thought, as we know it in Europe, passing from Greece

1 For instance, Atreya, Asmarathya, Aurfulomi, Karshnagrini, Kasakntana, Gaimini, Badari. Thibaut, XXXIV, p. xix.

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through the middle ages to our own shores, is the only stream on which we ourselves can freely move. It is particularly difficult to translate the language of Eastern philosophy into the language of our own philosophy, and to recognise our own problems in their philosophical and religious difficulties. Still we shall find that beneath the surface there is a similarity of purpose in the philosophy of the East and of the West, and that it is possible for us to sympathise with the struggles after truth, even though they are disguised under a language that sounds at first strange to students of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Spinoza, of Locke and Hegel.

Philosophy begins with doubting1 the Evidence of the Senses.

Both philosophies, that of the East and that of the West, start from a common point, namely from the conviction that our ordinary knowledge is uncertain, if not altogether wrong. This revolt of the human mind against itself is the first step in all philosophy. The Ved&nta philosophy represents that revolt in all its fulness. Our knowledge, according to Hindu philosophers, depends on two pram&was, that is, measures or authorities, namely, pratyaksha, sensuous perception, and anum&na, that is, deduction.

Srutl or Inspiration.

The orthodox philosopher, however, adds a third authority, namely #ruti, or revelation. This, from a philosophical point of view, may seem to us a weakness, but even as such it is interesting, and we know

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that it is shared by other philosophers nearer home. #ruti means hearing or what has been heard, and it is generally explained as meaning simply the Veda. The Veda is looked upon, from the earliest times of which we know anything in India, as superhuman; not as invented and composed, but only as seen by men, that is, by inspired seers, as eternal, as infallible, as divine in the highest sense.

We are apt to imagine that the idea of inspiration and a belief in the inspired character of Sacred Books is our own invention, and our own special property. It is not, and a comparative study of religion teaches us that, like the idea of the miraculous, the idea of inspiration also is almost inevitable in certain phases in the historical growth of religion. This does not lower the meaning of inspiration, it only gives it a larger and a deeper meaning.

If we take Veda in the ordinary sense in which it is generally taken by Indian philosophers, we must admit that to place its authority on a level with the evidence of the senses and the conclusions of reason, seems difficult to understand. It is reason alone that calls inspiration inspiration; reason therefore stands high above inspiration. But if we take Veda as knowledge, or as it sometimes is explained as &ptava£ana, i. e. language, such as it has been handed down to us, the case is different. The language which has come down to us, the words in which thought has been realised, the world of ideas in which we have been brought up, form an authority, and exercise a sway over us, second only, if second at all, to the authority of the senses. If the Hindu philosopher looks upon the great words of our language as eternal, as communicated from

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above, as only seen, not as made by us, he does no more than Plato when he taught that his so-called ideas are eternal and divine.

But though this more profound concept of $ruti breaks forth occasionally in Hindu philosophy, the ordinary acceptation of $ruti is simply the Veda, such as we possess it, as consisting of hymns and Br&hmaTias, though no doubt at the same time also, as the ancient depository of language and thought, not so much in what it teaches, but in the instruments by which it teaches, namely in every word that conveys an idea.

But the Ved&nta philosopher, after having recognised these three authorities, turns against them and says that they are all uncertain or even wrong. The ordinary delusions of the senses are as familiar to him as they are to us. He knows that the sky is not blue, though we cannot help our seeing it as blue ; and as all deductions are based on the experience of the senses, they are naturally considered as equally liable to error.

As to the Veda, however, the Yedkntist makes an important distinction between what he calls 'the practical portion, the Karmak&nifa,' and ' the theoretical portion, the Gn&nakhnda,' The former comprises hymns and Br&hmanas, the latter the Upanishads. The former, which includes all that a priesthood would naturally value most highly, is readily surrendered. It is admitted that it may be useful for a time, that it may serve as a necessary preparation, but we are told that it can never impart the highest knowledge which is to be found in the second portion alone. Even that second portion, the Upanishads, may seem to contain many imperfect expressions of the highest

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truth, but it is the object of the Ved&nta philosopher to explain away these imperfect expressions or to bring them into harmony with the general drift of the Ved&nta. This is done with all the cleverness of the philosophical pleader, though it often leaves the unprejudiced student doubtful whether he should follow the philosophical pleader, or whether he should recognise in these imperfect expressions traces of an historical growth, and of individual efforts which in different Brahmanic settlements need not always have been equally successful.

Tat tvam asi.

If we ask what was the highest purpose of the teaching of the Upanishads we can state it in three words, as it has been stated by the greatest Ved&nta teachers themselves, namely Tat tvam asi. This means, Thou art that. That stands for what I called the last result of Physical Religion which is known to us under different names in different systems of ancient and modern philosophy. It is Zeus or the Els ®cbs or to Sv in Greece; it is what Plato meant by the Eternal Idea, what Agnostics call the Unknowable, what I call the Infinite in Nature. This is what in India is called Brahman, as masculine or neuter, the being behind all beings, the power that emits the universe, sustains it and draws it back again to itself. The Thou is what I called the Infinite in Man, the last result of Anthropological Religion, the Soul, the Self, the being behind every human Ego, free from all bodily fetters, free from passions, free from all attachments. The expression Thou art that, means Thine Atman, thy soul, thy self is the Brahman,

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or, as we can also express it, the last result, the highest object discovered by Physical Religion is the same as the last result, the highest subject discovered by Anthropological Religion; or, in other words, the subject and object of all being and all knowing are one and the same. This is the gist of what I call Psychological Religion, or Theosophy, the highest summit of thought which the human mind has reached, which has found different expressions in different religions and philosophies, but nowhere such a clear and powerful realisation as in the ancient Upanishads of India.

For let me add at once, this recognition of the identity of the that and the thou, is not satisfied with mere poetical metaphor such as that the human soul emanated from the divine soul or was a portion of it; no, what is asserted and defended against all gainsayers is the substantial identity of what had for a time been wrongly distinguished as the subject and object of the world.

The Self, says the Vedanta philosopher, cannot be different from Brahman, because Brahman comprehends all reality, and nothing that really is can therefore be different from Brahman. Secondly, the individual self cannot be conceived as a modification of Brahman, because Brahman by itself cannot be changed, whether by itself, because it is one and perfect in itself, or by anything outside it. Here we see the Vedantist moving in exactly the same stratum of thought in which the Eleatic philosophers moved in Greece. * If there is one Infinite,' they said,' there cannot be another, for the other would limit the one, and thus render it finite/ Or, as applied to God, the

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Eleatics argued,c If God is to be the mightiest and the best, he must be one \ for if there were two or more, he would not be the mightiest and best/ The Eleatics continued their monistic argument by showing that this One Infinite Being cannot be divided, so that anything could be called a portion of it, because there is no power that could separate anything from it2. Nay, it cannot even have parts, for, as it has no beginning and no end3, it can have no parts, for a part has a beginning and an end 4.

These Eleatic ideas—namely, that there is and there can be only One Absolute Being, infinite, unchangeable, without a second, without parts and passions— are the same ideas which underlie the Upanishads and have been fully worked out in the Ved&ntasfitras.

Two Vedanta School*.

But they are not adopted by all Ved&ntists. Though all Ved&ntists accept the Upanishads as inspired and infallible, and though they all recognise the authority of the Ved&nta-sfttras, they, like other orthodox philosophers, claim the freedom of interpretation, and by that freedom, have become divided into two schools which to the present day divide the Ved&ntist philosophers of India into the followers of /Sankara, and the followers of BAmftnugra. The latter, R&m&nu^a,

1 Zeller, p. 463.

a Zeller, p. 472 ; Parm. v. 78,
ovft &uuptr6v i<rrtvt intl vav i<rr\v 8/xotov oM4 ti rp paWov t6k€v ctpyot fuv £vv4x«r0ai ob&i ti \<up6r€pov' vav dk irXiov karlv Iopto*.

3 Zeller, p. 511, fragm. 2.

4 Melissus, Fr. 16, d ptv k6v lori, fci aM kv ftvar fcv 8i k6v ticiaM auffxa pi) i\tiv* €l Si €XO* v&X°*> ^X01 &v A*^/*0 Kc& ovxin hv ttr] tv.

Fr. 3, (I Si dweipov, iv ci *ycl/> Sbo ctrj, ovtc Av Svvcuto dnapa c&oi* &KX' ix01 &v vdpa™ wpdj &\\r)\a' tiireipov Si rb &k, oitc &pa v\4u Tcfc tdvra* tv dpa rd kov.

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holds to what we should call the theory of evolution; he looks upon Brahman as the cause, upon the world as the effect, the two being different in appearance, though in reality one and the same. Everything that is, is Brahman, but Brahman contains in itself the real germs of that variety which forms the object of our sensuous perception. The Brahman of R&m&nugra may almost be called a personal God, and the soul an individual being sprung from Brahman. Though never really apart from him, it is supposed to remain for ever a personality by itself. The former, SaAkara, holds to the theory of illusion (vivarta) or nescience (avidya). He also maintains that everything that exists is Brahman, but he looks upon the world, with its variety of forms and names, as the result of illusion. Brahman with #atikara is impersonal and without attributes. It becomes personal (as Isvara, or the Lord) when under the influence of avidyft, just as the individual soul deems itself personal when turned away from the highest Brahman, but is never in reality anything else but Brahman. These two doctrines continue to divide the Ved&ntists to the present day, and the school of B&m&nugra is the more popular of the two. For it must not be supposed that this ancient Ved&nta philosophy is extinct, or studied by professed philosophers only. It is even now the prevailing philosophy and almost religion of India, and no one can gain an insight into the Indian mind, whether in the highest or in the lowest ranks of society, who is not familiar with the teachings of the Vedanta.

In order to explain how the same texts, the Upanishads, and even the Vedanta-s&tras, could lend themselves to such different explanations, it will be

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necessary to say a few words on the difficulty of rightly understanding these ancient sacred texts of the Br&hmans.

The TTpanishads difficult to translate.

In my lectures on Physical Religion, when quoting from the hymns of the Rig-veda, I had often to warn you that there are many passages in these ancient hymns which are as yet obscure or extremely difficult to translate. The great bulk of these hymns is clear enough, but whether owing to corruptions in the text, or to the boldness of ancient thought, all honest scholars are bound to confess that their translations do not quite reach the originals, and are liable to correction in the future. To an outsider this may seem to be a desperate state of things, and if he finds two Vedic scholars differing from each other, and defending each his own interpretation with a warmth that often seems to arise from conceit rather than from conviction, he thinks he is justified in thanking God that he is not as other men are. Of course, this is simply childish. If we had waited till every hieroglyphic text had been interpreted from beginning to end, or till every Babylonian inscription had been fully deciphered, before saying anything about the ancient religion of the Egyptians and Babylonians, we should not now possess the excellent works of Lepsius, Brugsch, Maspero, of Schrader, Smith, Sayce, Pinches and Haupt. The same applies to Vedic literature. Here also the better is the enemy of the good, and as long as scholars are careful to distinguish between what is certain and what is as yet doubtful, they need not mind the jeers of would-be critics, or the taunts of obstructionists. The honest labourer must not

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wait till he can work in the full light of the noontide sun—he must get up early, and learn to find his way in the dim twilight of the morning also.

I think it right therefore to warn you that the texts of the Upanishads also, on which we shall have chiefly to depend in our lectures, are sometimes very obscure, and very difficult to translate accurately into English or any other modern language. They often lend themselves to different interpretations, and even their ancient native commentators who have written long treatises on them, often differ from each other. Some hold this opinion, they often say, others that, and it is not always easy for us to choose and to say positively which of the ancient interpreters was right and which was wrong. When I undertook to publish the first complete translation of the twelve most important Upanishads, I was well aware that it was no easy task. It had never before been carried out in its completeness by any Sanskrit scholar. As I had myself pointed out that certain passages lent themselves to different explanations, nothing was easier to the faultfinding critic than to dwell on these passages and to point out that their translation was doubtful or that the rendering I had adopted was wrong, or that at all events another rendering was equally possible. My translation has not escaped this kind of criticism, but for all that, even my most severe critics have not been able to deny that my translation marked a decided progress over those that had been hitherto attempted, and this, as Professor Boehtlingk has truly remarked, is after all, all that an honest scholar should care for. The best authority on this subject, Professor Deussen, has warned our ill-natured and ill-informed critics that in

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CHARACTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION. Ill
the translation of the Upanishads, as in other works of the same tentative character, le mieux est Vennemi du bien. We ought to advance step by step beyond our predecessors, well knowing that those who come after us will advance beyond ourselves. Nor do I wonder that native scholars should be amazed at our hardihood in venturing to differ from such men as Saiikara, EAmatirtha, and others, whom they look upon as almost infallible. All I can say in self-defence is that even the native commentators admit the possibility of different explanations, and that in claiming for ourselves the right to choose between them, we do no more than what they would wish us to do in giving us the choice. I have a great respect for native commentators, but I cannot carry my respect for these learned men so far as a native Indian scholar who when I asked him which of two conflicting interpretations he held to be the right one, answered without any misgivings, that probably both were right, and that otherwise they would not have been mentioned by the ancient commentators.

I have often been told that it is not wise to lay so much stress on the uncertainties attaching to the translation of Oriental texts, particularly of the Vedas, that the same uncertainties exist in the interpretation of the Bible, nay even of Greek and Latin classics, to say nothing of Greek and Latin inscriptions. The public at large, they say, is sufficiently incredulous, as it is, and it is far better to give the last results of our researches as certain for the time being, leaving it to the future to correct such mistakes as are inevitable in the deciphering of ancient texts. This advice has been followed by many students, more particularly

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by the decipherers of hieroglyphic and 'cuneiform inscriptions; but what has been the result? As every year has corrected the results of the previous year, hardly anyone now ventures to make use of the results of these researches, however confidently they are put forward as final, and as beyond the reach of doubt. It is quite true that the warnings given by conscientious scholars as to the inevitable uncertainty in the translation of Vedic texts, may produce the same effect. My having called the Veda a book with seven seals has been greedily laid hold of by certain writers to whom the very existence of the Veda was an offence and a provocation, in order to show the insecurity of all systems of comparative philology, mythology and theology, based on evidence derived from this book with seven seals. True scholars, however, know better. They know that in a long Latin inscription certain words may be quite illegible, others difficult to decipher and to translate, and that yet a considerable portion may be as clear and as intelligible as any page of Cicero, and may be used for linguistic or historical purposes with perfect safety. Scholars know that the same applies to the Veda, and that many words, many lines, many pages are as clear as any page of Cicero.

When I am asked what can be the use of a book with seven seals for a comparative study of religion and mythology, my answer is that it stimulates us to remove those seals. In the case of the Veda I may safely say that several of these seals have by this time been broken, and there is every reason to hope that with honesty and perseverance the remaining seals also will in time be removed.

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LECTURE V.

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. Different Statements from the TTpanlshads.

WE have now to consider what the Upanishads themselves teach on the relation of the soul to God, and more particularly of the return of the soul to Brahman. Here we shall find that both schools of the Vedantists, that of Ramanugra and that of Safikara, can appeal to texts of the Upanishads in support of their respective opinions, so that it seems as if the Upanishads combined both and rejected neither of the leading Ved&nta theories. Of course there have been long discussions among Vedantists in India, and likewise among students of the Vedanta in Europe, as to which of the two schools represents the true spirit of the Upanishads. If we take the Upanishads as a whole, I should saythat #ankara is the more thorough and faithful exponent of their teaching; but if we admit an historical growth in the Upanishads themselves, Ramanugra may be taken as representing more accurately an earlier period of Upanishad doctrines, which were cast into the shade, if not superseded, by a later growth of Ved&ntic speculation. That later growth, represented by the denial of any reality except that of the highest Brahman, is almost ignored by Ramanugra or interpreted by him with great freedom. If we under

(4) I

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stand R&m&nugra rightly, he would seem satisfied with the soul being at death emancipated from sams&ra or further births, passing on to the world of Brahman, masc, and there enjoying everlasting bliss in a kind of heavenly paradise. iSankara, on the contrary, goes beyond, and looks upon final emancipation as a recovering of true self-consciousness, self-consciousness meaning with him the consciousness of the self as being in reality the whole and undivided Brahman.

We shall best be able to follow this twofold development of Ved&ntic thought, if we first examine the more important passages in the Upanishads which treat of the return of the soul to the Lower Brahman, and then see how these passages have been harmonised in the Ved&nta-s&tras1.

We begin with the descriptions of the road that is to be taken by the soul after death. Here we find the following more or less differing accounts in different Upanishads.

Pasaaffea from the Upanishads.

I. Brihad-arawyaka VI. (8) 2, 13:

* A man lives so long as he lives, and then when he dies, they take him to the fire, (the funeral pile); and then the fire is his fire, the fuel is his fuel, the

1 The translations here given differ in several places from those given in my translation in the S. B. E.t vols, i and iv. In my translation in the S. B. E, I placed myself more completely on the standpoint of Sankara, except in cases where he was clearly wrong. In the present translations I have tried, as much as possible, not to allow myself to be influenced by Sankara, in order to be quite fair towards Ramanupa and other interpreters of the Upanishads and the Vedanta-sutras. I have also availed myself of some conjectural emendations, proposed by other scholars, wherever they seemed to me reasonable.

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smoke his smoke, the light his light, the coals his coals, and the sparks his sparks. In that fire the Devas, the gods, offer man (as a sacrifice), and from that sacrifice man (purusha) rises, brilliant in colour. ' Those who thus know this and those who in the forest worship the True as faith1, go to light, from light to day, from day to the waxing half of the moon (new moon), from the waxing half of the moon to the six months when the sun goes North2, from those six months to the world of the Devas, from the world of the Devas to the sun, from the sun to the place of lightning3. When they have reached the place of lightning, a person, not a man4, comes near them

1 Yaj/flavalkya III. 192 explains this by sraddhaya paraya yutaA, endowed with the highest faith. The exact meaning is not clear. The True is meant for Brahman.

54 Cf. Deussen, Sutr., p. 19 ; Syst., p. 509.

8 On the connection of lightning with the moon, see Hillebrandt, Ved. Myihologie, vol. i. pp. 345, 421.

4 The right reading here and in the XAandogya-Upanishad IV. 15, 5, seems to be purusho amanavaA. We have, however, for the other reading manasaA the authority of Yagrftavalkya III. 194, but amanavaA is strongly supported by the Vedanta-sutras and by the commentators (see p. 134). Professor Boehtlingk prefers manasaA, and translates: ' Now comes the spirit who dwells in the thinking organ and takes them to the places of Brahman.' This cannot be.

Sankara here explains purusho manasaA as a man produced by Brahman through his mind. This is possible, and better at all events than Boehtlingk's translation. For purusho manasaA, if it means the spirit that dwells in the thinking organ, as, for instance, in Taitt. Up. I. 6, could not be said to approach the souls, for they would be themselves the purushas who have reached the lightning. If we read man as a, we could only take it for a purusha, a person, though not a material being, who may therefore be called manasaA, either as a being visible to the mind (manas) only, or as a being created by the mind, in fact a kind of spirit in the form of a man, though not a real man. I prefer, however, to read amanava. What confirms me in this belief is that in the Avesta also, which shares many ideas about the journey of the souls after death with the Upanishads. we read that when the soul of the departed approaches the Paradise of the

Is

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and leads them to the worlds of Brahman. In these worlds of Brahman they dwell for ever and ever (par&A par&vataA)x, and there is no return for them.' Here you see a distinctly mythological view of a future life, some of it hardly intelligible to us. The departed is supposed to rise from the pile on which his body was burnt, and to move on to the light (ar&is)2. This is intelligible, but after the light follows the day, and after the day the six months of the suns journey to the North. What can be the meaning of that ? It might mean that the departed has to wait a day and then six months before he is admitted to the world of the Devas, and then to the sun, and then to the place of lightning. But it may mean also that there are personal representatives of all these stations, and that the departed has to meet these half-divine beings on his onward journey. This is B&dar&yawa's view. Here you see the real difficulties of a transEndless Lights, a spirit, or, as we read in one of the Yashts (S. B. E., xxiii. p. 317), one of the faithful, who has departed before him, approaches the new comer and asks him several questions, before Ahura Mazda gives him the oil and the food that are destined in heaven for the youth of good thoughts, words, and deeds. This shows how careful we should be not to be too positive in />ur translations of difficult passages. We may discard the authority of Sankara, possibly even that of Badarayana, who takes purusho amanavaft as a person, not a man. But before we can do this, we ought to show by parallel passages that purusho manasaA, not manomayaA, has ever been used in the Upanishads in the sense of the spirit who dwells in the thinking organ. Till that is done, it would be better for Professor Boehtlingk not to treat the traditional interpretations of Badarayana and Sankara with such undisguise4 contempt.

1 This seems to correspond to sasvati* ua.rn.kh in 10, 1, and to have a temporal rather than local meaning.

2 This cannot be meant for the fire of the funeral pile by which he has been burnt, for the dead is supposed to be in the fire, and consumed by it. It is sometimes supposed to be meant for the Agniloka, the world of Agni.

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lation. The words are clear enough, but the difficulty is how to connect any definite ideas with the words.

So much for those who pass on the Devay&na, the Path of the Gods, from the funeral pile to the worlds of Brahman, and who are not subject to a return, i. e. to new births. If. however, the departed has not yet reached a perfect knowledge of Brahman, he proceeds after death on the Yitriy&na,, the Path of the Fathers. Of them the BWhad-fixawyaka (VI. (8) 2, 16)says:

'But they who conquer the worlds by sacrifice, charity, and austerity go to smoke, from smoke to night, from night to the waning half of the moon, from the waning half of the moon to the six months when the sun moves South; from these months to the world of the Fathers, from the world of the Fathers to the moon. Having reached the moon, they become food, and the gods consume them there, as they consume Soma (moon) the King, saying, Wax and wane! But when this is over, they go back to the same ether1, from ether to air, from air to rain, from rain to the earth. And when they have reached the earth, they become food, they are offered again in the fire which is man, and thence are born in the fire of woman2. Then they rise upwards to the worlds, and go the same round as before. Those, however, who know neither of the two paths, become worms, insects, and creeping things.'

We have now to examine some other passages in the Upanishads, where the same two paths are described.

1 See JfMnd. Up. V. 10, 4.

a This sentence is left out by Boehtlingk; why ? See Kh&nd. Up. V. 7 and 8.

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II. Br/had-&ra?iyaka V. (7) 10, 1:

* When the person goes away from this world, he comes to the wind. Then the wind makes room for him, like the hole of a wheel, and through it he mounts higher. He comes to the sun. Then the sun makes room for him, like the hole of a lambara (drum ?), and through it he mounts higher. He comes to the moon. Then the moon makes room for him, like the hole of a drum, and through it he mounts higher, and arrives at the world where there is no sorrow, and no snow. There he dwells eternal years' (dtavattA samM).

III. Jf Mndogya-Upanishad VIII. 6, 5 :

'When he departs from this body he mounts upwards by those very rays (the rays of the sun which enter the arteries of the body), or he is removed while saying Oml. And quickly as he sends off his mind (as quick as thought), he goes to the sun. For the sun is the door of the world (lokadv&ram), an entrance for the knowing, a bar to the ignorant/

IV. JTA&ndogya-Upanishad V. 10, 1:

' Those who know this, and those who in the forest follow austerity as faith, go to the light (ar/cis), from light to day, from day to the waxing half of the moon, from the waxing half of the moon to the six months when the sun goes to the North, from the six months when the sun goes to the North to the year, from the year to the sun, from the sun to the moon, from the moon to the lightning. There is a person, not a man, he leads them to Brahman. This is the Path of the Gods.

1 Boehtlingk's conjectural emendations of this passage seem to me unnecessary.

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' But those who in their village practise charity as sacrifice and pious works, go to the smoke, from smoke to night, from night to the other (waning) half of the moon, from the other half of the moon to the six months when the sun moves to the South. But they do not reach the year. From the months they go to the world of the Fathers, from the world of the Fathers to the ether, from the ether to the moon. That is Soma, the King. That is the food of the gods, the gods feed on it. Having tarried there, as long as there is a rest (of works), they return again on the way on which they came, to the ether, from the ether to the air (v&yu). When he has become air he becomes smoke, having become smoke he becomes mist, having become mist he becomes a cloud, having become a cloud he rains down. Then they are born1 as rice and corn, herbs and trees, sesamum and beans. From thence the escape is very difficult. For whoever they are who eat that food and scatter seed, he becomes like unto them. Those whose conduct has been good will probably attain some good birth, the birth of a Brahmawa, or a Kshatriya, or a Vaisya. But those whose conduct has been evil will probably attain an evil birth, the birth of a dog, or a hog, or a ka,nd&la,. On neither of these two roads do those small, oft-returning creatures proceed. Theirs is the third state, of which it is said, " Live and die." *

V. JTA&ndogya-Upanishad VIII. 4, 3 :

'To those only who find that Brahma-world by means of Brahma£ary& (study and abstinence), does

1 It should be remembered that in the Rig-veda already Soma is the retodhaA, the giver of seed and fertility.

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that Brahma-world belong, and they move about freely in all worlds/

VI. .KMndogya-Upanishad VIII. 13 :

' I go from Sykma>, the black (the moon), to the #abala, the speckled (the sun), and from the speckled to the black. Like a horse shaking his hairs (I shake off) evil, like the moon, freeing himself from the mouth of R&hu, having shaken off the body, I go purified in mind to the eternal world of Brahman V

VII. Murafaka-Upanishad V. 2,11:

' But those who practise penance and faith in the forest, tranquil, wise, and living on alms, depart, free from passions (dust), through the gate of the sun, where that immortal Person dwells whose nature is imperishable.'

VIII. Kaushitaki-Upanishad I. 2:

* And iTitra said: All who depart from this world (or this body) go to the moon. In the former, (the waxing) half, the moon waxes big by their vital spirits, but in the other, (the waning) half, the moon causes them to be born. Verily, the moon is the door of the Svarga-world (heavenly world). Now, if a man answer the moon (rightly)2, the moon sets him free. But if a man does not answer the moon, the moon showers him down, having become rain, upon this earth. And according to his deeds, and according to his knowledge, he is born again here as a worm, or as an insect, or as a fish, or as a bird, or as a lion, or as a boar, or as a serpent (?), or as a tiger, or as a man, or

1 See Bloomfield, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xv. p. 168 ; Boehtlingk, £/iandogya-Upanishad, p. 92.

1 Cf. Boehtlingk, Uber eine bisher arg missverstandene Stelle in der Kaushitaki-Brahmana-Upanishad.

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as somebody else in different places. But when he has arrived, the moon asks him: " Who art thou ? " And he shall answer: "O seasons1, the seed was brought from the bright moon who was poured forth (in rain); who consists of fifteen parts, who harbours our fathers2; raise me now in a vigorous man, and pour me through a vigorous man into a mother.

'"Then I am born as the twelfth or thirteenth additional month through the twelve- or thirteen-fold father (the year). I know that, I remember that. O seasons, bring me then to immortality. By this truth and by this penance I am a season3, a child of the seasons. I am thou." Thereupon the moon sets him free.

' Having reached the Path of the gods, he comes to the world of Agni (fire), to the world of Vayu (air), to the world of Varuna, to the world of Indra, to the world of Pragr&pati, to the world of Brahman. In that world there is the lake Ara, the moments called Yeshfiha, the river VigarS, (ageless), the tree Ilya, the city S&la#ya, the palace Apar&grita (unconquerable), the door-keepers Indra and Prag&pati, the hall of Brahman, called Vibhu, the throne Vi&akshawa (intelligence), the couch Amitau(/as (endless splendour), and the beloved Manasi (mind), and her image if&kshushi (eye), who, taking flowers, are weaving the worlds, and the Apsaras, the Amb&s (scriptures ?), and AmMyavis (understanding ?), and the rivers Ambay&s. To this world he who knows this approaches. Brahman

1 The seasons are sometimes called the brothers of Soma, the moon.

a When only the fifteenth part is left of the moon, the Pitns enter it. Ludwig takes the itibhus also for the genii of the seasons.

3 The seasons are parts of the lunar year that seem to come and go like the lives of mortal men.

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says, " Run towards him with such worship as is due to myself. He has reached the river Vigrarfi, (ageless), he will never age/'

4 Then five hundred Apsaras go towards him, one hundred with fruit in their hands, one hundred with ointments in their hands, one hundred with garlands in their hands, one hundred with garments in their hands, one hundred with perfumes in their hands. They adorn him with an adornment worthy of Brahman, and when thus adorned with the adornment of Brahman, the knower of Brahman moves towards Brahman. He (the departed) approaches the lake Ara. and crosses it by the mind, while those who come to it without knowing the truth, are drowned in it. He comes to the moments called Yeshttha, and they flee from him. He comes to the river VigrarS,, and crosses it by the mind alone, and then shakes off his good and evil deeds3. His beloved relatives obtain the good, his unbeloved relatives the evil he has done. And as a man driving in a chariot, might look at the two wheels, thus he will look at day and night, thus at good and evil deeds, and at all pairs (correlative things). Eeing freed from good and evil he, the knower of Brahman, moves towards Brahman.

'He approaches the tree Ilya, and the odour of Brahman reaches him. He approaches the city S&lagrya, and the flavour of Erahman reaches him. He approaches the palace Apar&grita, and the splendour of Brahman reaches him. He approaches the door-keepers Indra and Pragrapati, and they run away from him. He approaches the hall Vibhu, and the

1 Cf. Khknd. Up. VIII. 13.

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glory of Brahman reaches him. He approaches the throne Viiakshan^. The S&man verses, BWhat and Rathantara, are the eastern feet of that throne; the S&man verses, $yaita and Naudhasa, its western feet; the S&man verses, Vair&pa and Vair%a, its sides, lengthways; the Sauian verses, $&kvara and Baivata, its sides, crossways. That throne is Pragr/7& (knowledge), for by knowledge he sees clearly. He approaches the couch Amitaugras. That is pnbia (breath, speech). The past and the future are its eastern feet; prosperity and earth its western feet; the Saman verses, Brihat and Rathantara, are the two sides lengthways of the couch; the S&man verses, Bhadra and Yagrlkj&gfilya,, are the cross-sides at the head and feet (east and west); the Rik and S&man are the long sheets, the Yagrus the cross-sheets, the moonbeams the cushion, the Udgttha the coverlet; prosperity the pillow. On this couch sits Brahman, and he who knows this, mounts it first with one fqot. Then Brahman says to him: " Who art thou ?" and he shall answer: "I am a season, and the child of the seasons, sprung from the womb of endless space, the seed of the wife, the light of the year, the self of all that is. Thou art the self of all that is ; what thou art, that am I." '

Difficulties of Interpretation.

This is as close a translation as I can give. But I must confess that many of the names here used in describing the reception given by the god Brahman to the departed, are unintelligible to me. They were equally unintelligible to the native commentators, who, however, try to discover a meaning in some of them,
as when they explain the lake Ara, which the departed has to cross, as derived from Ari, enemy, these enemies being the passions and inclinations of the heart. We are told afterwards that those who come to that lake without knowing the truth, are drowned in it. When the throne, on which Brahman is seated, is called Vikaksh&nA, this seems to mean Intelligence, and Manasi also is probably a personification of the mind of which .K&kshushi, representing the eye, may well be called the image. But there is such a mixture of symbolical and purely picturesque language in all this, and the text seems so often quite corrupt, that it seems hopeless to discover the original intention of the poet, whoever he was, that first imagined this meeting between the departed and the god Brahman. On some points we gain a little light, as, for instance, when we are told that the departed, after having crossed the river VigraoA (the ageless) by his mind, shakes off his good and his evil deeds, and that he leaves the benefit of his good deeds to those among his relatives who are dear to him, while his evil deeds fall to the share of his unbeloved relations. We also see more clearly that the throne on which Brahman sits is meant for Pra#n& or wisdom, while the couch Amitaugras is identified with pr&wa, that is breath and speech, and the coverings with the Vedas.

Though there is a general likeness in these different accounts of the fate of the soul after death, still we see how each Upanishad has something peculiar to say on the subject. In some the subject is treated very briefly, as in the MuraZaka-Upanishad I. 2, 11, where we are only told that the soul of the pious man passes through the gate of the sun where the immortal Person

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(spirit) dwells. In the ifMndogya-Upanishad VIII. 6, 5, one account is equally brief. Here we are told that the soul departs upwards by the rays of the sun, reaches the sun, which is the door to the worlds (loka) for the wise, but* a bar to the foolish. The Brihad&rawyaka also gives in one passage (V. 10, 1) a short account of the soul's journey from the body to the air, from the air to the sun, from the sun to the moon, from the moon to the painless world where the soul dwells for eternal years. Similar short accounts occur in Taitt. Up. I. 6, and Prasna Up. I. 9.

Historical Progress in the Upanishads.

If we look at the fuller accounts, we can easily perceive that the earliest conception of life after death was that represented by the Pitriy&wa, the Path of the Fathers, that is, the path which led the soul to the moon, where the Fathers, or those who have gone before him, dwell. The description of this path is much the same in the Brihad-Hrawyaka and in the -KMndogyaUpanishad. The soul enters into smoke (probably of the funeral pile), then comes to the night, then to the waning half of the moon, then to the six months when the sun moves towards the South. But it does not reach the year, but moves straight to the abode of the Fathers and to the moon. When this abode in the moon came to be considered as temporary only, and as followed by a new cycle of existences, it was natural to imagine a Devay&na which led beyond to the gods and to eternal happiness without any return to new transmigrations. But this abode in the Devaloka also did not satisfy all desires, and a further progress was admitted from the sun to the moon, or

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direct from the sun to the abode of lightning, from whence a spirit led the souls to the world of Brahman. This world, though still conceived in mythological phraseology, was probably for a long time the highest point reached by the thinkers and poets of the Upanishads, but we shall see that after a time even this approach to a personal and objective God was not considered final, and that there was a higher bliss which could be reached by knowledge only, or by the consciousness of the soul's inseparateness from Brahman. We see traces of this in passages of the Upanishads such as BWh. Ar. Up. V. 4, 8, ' Wise people who know Brahman go on this road (devay&na) to the heaven-world (svarga), and higher up from thence, as quite freed/ Or Maitr. Br&hm. Up. VI. 30, ' Stepping over the world of Brahman, they go by it to the highest path.'

While to our minds the belief in the soul's journey to the world of the Fathers, the world of the gods, and the world of the mythological Brahman (masc), seems to present an historical development, it was not so with Ved&nta philosophers. They looked upon every passage in the Upanishads as equally true, because revealed, and they tried to combine all the accounts of the soul's journey, even when they clearly differed from one another, into one harmonious whole.

Attempts to harmonise the different Statements of the

How they achieved this, I shall best be able to show you by translating some portion of the Ved&ntas&tras with the commentary by &ankara. Though some of it may seem tedious, yet it will be useful in

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giving you Borne idea of the style and spirit of the later Ved&nta philosophers. You will observe how the S&tras by themselves are almost unintelligible, though we see, after reading Ankara's comments, that they really contain the gist of the whole argument.

VEDANTA-StJTRAS.

fourth book, third chapter.

Fibst SOtba.

On the road beginning with light, <$c, because this is
widely recognised.

/Sankara explains: From the beginning of the journey (of the departed) the process, as stated, is the same. But the actual journey is revealed differently in different sacred texts. One, by means of the junction of the arteries with the solar rays, is found in the Khkn<L Up. VIII. 6, 5,' Then he mounts upwards by those very rays/ Another, beginning with the light (arMs) is found in Khknd. Up. V. 10, 1, «They go to the light, from light to day.' Another occurs in the Kaush. Up. I. 3, * Having reached the path of the gods, he comes to the world of Agni, or fire/ Again, another occurs in the Brih. Ar. V. 10, 1, ' When the person goes away from this world, he comes to the wind/ And one more in the M.xmd. Up. I. 2, 11, says, ' They depart free from passions through the gate of the sun/

Here then a doubt arises, whether these roads are really different from each other, or whether it is one and the same road, only differently described. It is assumed, by way of argument, that they are different roads, be

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128 LECTURE V.

♦
cause they occur intheUpanishads under different heads and belong to different kinds of religious meditation (up&samU); also because the limitation that he mounts upward by these very rays, would be contradicted, if we regarded what is said about light (arHs) and the rest; and the statement about the quickness, when it it said, ' as quickly as he sends off the mind \ he goes to the sun/ would also be upset. If on these grounds it is said that these roads are different from one another, we reply: No, * On the road beginning with light; 9 that is, We answer that every one who desires Brahman, hastens on by the road that begins with the light. And why ?—Because that road is so widely recognised. For that road is known indeed to all sages. Thus it is said in the chapter on the Five Fires, ' And those also, who in the forest worship the True (i. e. Brahman) as faith, &c, clearly proclaiming that this road beginning with the light, is meant for those also who practise other kinds of knowledge.' This might pass, we are told, and with regard to those kinds of knowledge for which no road whatever is mentioned, the road beginning with the light might be admitted. But if another and another road are proclaimed, why should the road beginning with the light be accepted ? Our answer to all this is simply this. This might be so, if these roads were entirely different, but it is really one and the same road with different

1 The words sa yavat kshipyen manas tavat are difficult to translate. They are meant to express quickness (kshipratvam from kship), wind, mind, and horse being the general representationso f quickness. I had translated formerly, and * while his mind is failing,' which Boehtlingk should not have adopted, rendering it by ' Wahrend das Denkorgan verschwindet;' but it is clear that quickness, and not fainting, was intended, and it was so understood by the author of the Vedanta-sutras.

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attributes, leading to the world of Brahman, and sometimes determined by one, sometimes by another predicate. For whenever one part has been recognised, the relation should be that as between what determines and what is to be determined \ and the various determinations of the road must be summed up together, just as we sum up the several attributes of a science which is one and the same, though its treatments may vary. And even if the subject (under which a certain road to Brahman is taught) is different, the road is the same, because its goal is the same, and because one part of the road has been recognised (as the same). For in all the followng passages one and the same object, viz. the obtainment of the Brahma-world, is clearly shown. We read (Brih. Ar. VI 2, 15): 'In these worlds of Brahman they dwell for ever and ever;'—(Brih. V. 10,1): * There he dwells eternal years;'—(Kaush. I. 7): ' Whatever victory, whatever greatness belongs to Brahman, that victory he gives, that greatness he reaches;'—(Kh&nd. VIII. 4,3):' That world of Brahman belongs to those only who find it by Brahma&arya.' And if it is said that in admitting the approach to the light, there would be no room for the restriction expressed in the words,' By these very rays/ that is no fault; for its true object is the reaching of these rays. The same word which includes the obtainment of the rays, need not exclude the light, &c. Therefore we must admit that this very union with the rays is here emphasised. And what is said about the speed is

1 The technical meaning of ekadesa is a part, while ekadesin is the whole. But the translation is unsatisfactory, nor does Professor Deussen make the drift of the sentence clearer. The ekadesa here is simply meant for the beginning and the end of the road.

(4) K

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not upset, if we confine ourselves to the road beginning with light, for the object is quickness, as if it were said, one gets there in the twinkling of an eye.

And the passage (JTMnd. V. 10, 8): «On neither of these two ways/ which attests the third or the evil road, shows at the same time that besides the Pitriyana, the road to the Fathers, there is but one other road, the Devay&na, the road to the Gods, one station of which is the light. And if in the passage on the light, the road-stations are more numerous, while elsewhere they are less numerous, it stands to reason that the less numerous should be explained in conformity with the more numerous. On these grounds also the Sfttra says, 'On the road beginning with light, &c, because this is widely recognised/

Second SCtba.

From the year to the wind, on account of the presence and
absence of determinants.

flankara explains: But by what peculiar combination or insertion can there be the mutual relation of what determines (attributes), and what is determined (subject) between the various attributes of the road? The teacher out of kindness to us, combines them as follows. By the Kaushitaka (I. 3) the Devay&na is described in these words: 'He, having reached the path of the gods, comes to the world of Agni (fire), to the world of V&yu (air), to the world of Varcma, to the world of Indra, to the world of Pragr&pati (Yix&g), to the world of Brahman (Hiranyagarbha).' Now here the words light and world of Agni mean the same thing, as both express burning, and there is no necessity here for looking for any succession. But

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V&yu (the wind) is not mentioned in the road beginning with light, how then is he here to be inserted ? The answer is : In the passage (KA&nd. V* 10, 1) we read: * They go to the light, from light to day, from day to the waxing half of the moon, from the waxing half of the moon to the six months when the sun goes to the North, from the six months when the sun goes to the North to the year, from the year to the sun.' Here then they reach V&yu, the wind, after the year and before the sun; and why ? Because there is both absence and presence of determinants. For in the words, ' He goes to the world of V&yu' (Kaush. I. 3), V&yu is mentioned without any determinant, while in another passage a determinative occurs, where it is said (Brih. V. 10, 1): ' When the person goes away from this world, he comes to the wind. Then the wind makes room for him, like the hole of a wheel, and through it he mounts higher, he comes to the sun/ Therefore from the determination, showing the priority of V&yu before the sun, Vayu is to be inserted between the year and the sun.

Why then, as there is a determination, showing his following after light, is not Vayu inserted after light ? Because we see that there is no determination here. But was there not a text quoted (Kaush. 1.3): ' Having reached the path of the gods, he comes to the world of Agni, to the world of Vayu.' Yes, but here the sooner and later only is enunciated, but there is not a word said about direct succession. A simple statement of facts is here made, in saying that he goes to this and to that, but in the other text a regular succession is perceived, when it is said, that after having mounted on high through an opening as large as the wheel of

K 2

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a chariot, supplied by V&yu, he approaches the sun. Hence it is well said in the Sfttra,' on account of the presence and absence of determinants.'

The Vagrasaneyins (Brih. VI. 2, 15), however, say that he proceeds from the months to the world of the gods, and from the world of the gods to the sun. Here, in order to maintain the continuity with the sun, he would have to go from the world of the gods to Vayu. And when the S&tra says, from the year to Vayu, this was done on account of the text in the ifA&ndogya. As between the V&grasaneyaka and the KAiLndogya, the world of the gods is absent in the one, the year in the other. As both texts have to be accepted, the two have to be combined, and then on account of the connection with the months, the distinction has to be made that the year comes first, the world of the gods last. (1) Year (XMnd.), (2) World of gods (Brih.), (3) World of V&yu (Kaush.), (4) Sun (Kkknd.).

Thikd Sutra.

Above the lightning Varuna, an account of the connection.

#ankara explains: When it is said (Khknd. V. 10,2): ' From the sun to the moon, from the moon to lightning,' Vanma is brought in so that above that lightning he goes to the world of Vanma. For there is a connection between lightning and Vanma, there being a Brahma/ia which says: 'When the broad lightnings dance forth from the belly of the cloud with the sound of deep thunder, the water falls down, it lightens, it thunders, and it will rain.' But the lord of water is Varuna according to $ruti and

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SmWti. And above Varuwa follow Indra and PrajApati, because there is no other place for them, and according to the meaning of the text. Also Varcma, &c, should be inserted at the end, because they are additional, and because no special place is assigned to them. As to the lightning, it is the last on the road that begins with light.

Fourth S#tra.

Tliey are conductors, because this is indicated.

&ankara explains: With regard to those beginning with light there is a doubt, whether they are signs of the road, or places of enjoyment, or leaders of travellers. It is supposed at first that light and the rest are signs, because the information has this form. For as in the world a man wishing to go to a village or a town is told,' Go from hence to that hill, then thou wilt come to a fig-tree, then to a river, then to a village, then to the town,* thus he says here also,' From light to day, from day to the waxing half of the moon/ Or it is supposed that they are meant for places of enjoyment. For he connects Agni and the rest with the word loka (world), as when he says, he comes to the world of Agni. And world is used for places of enjoyment of living beings, as when they say, the world of men, the world of the Fathers, the world of the gods. And there is also a Br&hmawa which says (Sat. Br. X. 2, 6, 8): ' They remain fixed in the worlds which consist of day and night/ Therefore light and the rest are not conductors. Besides, they cannot be conductors, because they are without intelligence. For in this world intelligent men are appointed by the king to

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conduct those whom they have to conduct over difficult roads.

In answer to all this we say: After all, they are meant for conductors, because this is clearly indicated. For we read: 'From the moon to the lightning; there a person not being a man, leads them to Brahman/ and this shows clearly their conductorship. If you think that according to the rule that a sentence says no more than what it says, this sentence, being restricted to its own object (the person, not being a man), falls to the ground, we say No, for the predicate (am&navaA) is only intended to exclude his supposed humanity. Only if with regard to light, &c, personal conductors are admitted, and these human, is it right, that in order to exclude this (humanity), there should be the attribute, amanava, not being a man.

If it is objected that a mere indication is not sufficient, because there is no proof, we say there is no fault in this.

Fifth Sutba. Because as both are beurildered, this is right.

#ankara explains: Those who go on the road beginning with light, as they are without a body, and as all their organs are wrapt up, are not independent, and the light, &c, as they are without intelligence, are likewise not independent. Hence it follows that the individual intelligent deities who represent light and the rest, have been appointed to the conductorship. For in this world also drunken or fainting people whose sense-organs are wrapt up, follow a road as commanded by others. Again, light and the rest cannot be taken for mere signs of the road, because they are not always there. For a man who dies in the night,

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cannot come to the actual manifestation of the day. For there is no waiting, as we said before. But as the nature of the gods is eternal, this objection does not apply to them. And it is quite right to call the gods light and all the rest, because they represent light and the rest. And the expression from light to day, &c, is not objectionable if the sense of conductorship is adopted, for it means, through the light, as cause, they come to the day, through the day, as cause, to the waxing half of the moon. And such an instruction is seen also in the case of conductors as known in the world, for they say, Go hence to Balavarman, thence to Gayasimha, thence to Krishna," gupta. Besides in the beginning, when it is said they go to the light, a relation only is expressed, not a special relation; at the end, however, when it is said, he leads them to Brahman, a special relation is expressed, that between conducted and conductor. Therefore this is accepted for the beginning also. And as the organs of the wanderers are wrapt up together, there is no chance of their enjoying anything, though the word world (loka) may be applied to wanderers also who do not enjoy anything, because the worlds may be places of enjoyment for others who dwell there. Therefore we must understand that he who has reached the world of Agni is conducted by Agni, and he who has reached the world belonging to Vayu, by Vayu. But how, if we adopt this view that they are conductors, can this apply to VaruTia and the rest 1 For above the lightning Varuwa and the rest were inserted, and after the lightning till the obtainment of Brahman the leadership of the person who is not a man, has been revealed. This objection is answered by

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The Sixth Sutba.

From thence by him who belongs to the lightning, because the Veda says so.

&ankara explains: It must be understood that from thence, that is, after they have come to the lightning, they go to the world of Brahman, having been conducted across the worlds of VaruTia, &c, by the person who is not a man, and who follows immediately after the lightning. That he conducts them is revealed by the words, 'When they have reached the place of lightning, a person, not a man1, leads them to the world of Brahman' (Brih. VI. 2, 15). But Varuwa and the rest, it must be understood, are showing their kindness either by not hindering, or by assisting him. Therefore it is well said that light and the rest are the gods who act as conductors.

These extracts from Ankara's commentary on the Vedanta-sutras, difficult to follow as they are, may serve to give you some idea how almost impossible it is to reduce the component parts of ancient sacred literature to a consistent system, and how the Vedic apologists endeavoured vainly to remove contradictions, and to bring each passage into harmony with all the rest. With us this difficulty does not exist, at least not to the same degree. We have learnt that sacred books, like all other books, have a history, that they contain the thoughts of different men and different ages, and that instead of trying to harmonise statements which vary from each other, nay which even contradict each other, we should simply accept them and see in them 1 Here amanavaA, but in the text manasaA.

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the strongest proof of the historical origin and genuine character of these books. Brakmanic theologians, however, after once having framed to themselves an artificial conception of revelation, could not shake off the fetters which they had forged themselves, and had therefore to adopt the most artificial contrivances in order to prove that there was no variance, and no contradiction between any of the statements contained in the Veda. As they were convinced that every word of their #ruti came direct from the deity, they concluded that it must be their own fault, if they could not discover the harmony of discordant utterances.

Independent Statements in the Mantras.

It is strange, however, to observe that while so great an effort is made to bring all the passages which occur in the Upanishads into order and harmony, hardly any attempt has been made to reconcile the statements of the Upanishads with passages in the hymns which allude to the fate of the soul after death. These passages are by no means in harmony with the passages in the Upanishads, nor are they always in harmony with themselves. They are simply the various expressions of the hopes and fears of individual poets, and free, as yet, from the elaborate details concerning the journey to the Fathers, to the gods, and to Brahman with which the Upanishads abound.

If we examine the hymns of the Eig-veda we find there the simple belief that those who have led agood life go with a new and perfect body to the Fathers in the realm of Yama ; Yama being originally a represen

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tative of the setting sun \ the first immortal, and afterwards the first mortal, who entered the blessed abode beyond the West. Thus in a hymn used at the funeral, we read, Rv. X. 14, 7 2:

* Go forth, go forth on those ancient paths on which our forefathers departed. Thou shalt see the two kings delighting in Svadha (libation), Yama and the god Varuwa.

* Come together with the Fathers, and with Yama in the highest heaven, as the fulfilment of all desires. Haying left all sin, go home again, and radiant in thy body, come together with them.'

Yama is never called the first of mortals except in the Atharva-veda3. In the Rig-veda we can still clearly perceive his divine character, and its physical substratum, the setting sun. Thus we read X. 14, 2 :

'Yama was the first to find the path for us, a pasture that can never be taken from us, whither our fathers have travelled formerly, being born there, each according to his ways.'

That path of the departed (prapatha) is conceived as dangerous, and Pfishan's protection is implored on it (Rv. X. 17, 4). In one place a boat is spoken of for crossing a river (X. 63, 10), two dogs also are mentioned which the departed has to pass. Another verse introduces an entirely new thought. There (Rv. X. 16, 3) we read :

'May the eye go to the sun, the breath to the wind; go to the sky and the earth, as is right, or

1 According to Professor Hillebrandt, the physical background of Yama is the Moon, and not the nocturnal Sun. This is not impossible.

2 Anthropological Religion, p. 250.

3 Ath.-veda XVIII. 3, 15, is a corruption of Rv. X. 14, 1.

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go to the waters, if it is good for thee there, rest in the plants.'

It has been supposed that some of the Vedic poets placed the abode of the blessed not in the West but in the East, but that depends simply on the right interpretation of one passage, Rv. 1.115, 2. Here a sunrise is described, * The bright face of the gods has risen, the eye of Mitra, Varuna, Agni; it filled heaven and earth and the air, the sun is the self of all that moves and stands. . •

' The sun goes from behind towards the Dawn, as a man follows a woman, in the place where pious people prolong the generations from happiness to happiness.'

This last line has been translated in various ways, but the general idea has always been that the pious people are here as elsewhere meant for the departed *• There is, however, no necessity for this interpretation. I see in these words an idea often expressed in the Veda, that the pious worshippers prolong their lives or their progeny by offering sacrifices to the gods in the morning, the morning-sun being the symbol of renewal and prolonged life. Anyhow, the abode of Yama and of the departed is near the setting, not near the rising of the sun.

The abode of the departed, however, is by no means described as dark or dreary. At all events when Soma, the moon, is implored to grant immortality, we read (IX. 113, 7):

' Where there is imperishable light, in the world where the sun is placed, in that immortal, eternal world place me, O Soma!

1 Kaegi, Siebenzig Liedery p. 55 ; Zimmer, Altind. Lelen, p. 410.

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' Where Vaivasvata (Yama) is king, where there is the descent (or the interior) of heaven, where the everflowing waters are, there make me immortal, O Soma!

' Where one moves as one listeth, in the third light, the third heaven of heaven, where every place is full of light, there make me immortal, O Soma!

' Where there are all wishes and desires, where the red sun culminates, where there are offerings and enjoyment, there make me immortal, O Soma!

c Where there are delights and pleasures, where joys and enjoyments dwell, where the wishes of the heart are fulfilled, there make me immortal, O Soma!'

It does not follow, however, that the abode of the departed to which they are led by Soma, is always conceived in exactly the same manner. The poetic fancy of the Vedic poets is still very free. Thus we read in another hymn (I. 24, 1, 2) that Agni, the first among the immortal gods, is to restore man to Aditi (the infinite), where the son may see his father and mother again. In another hymn (X. 15) the departed are actually divided into different classes, as dwelling either in the air, or on the earth, and in the villages. Dirghatamas (I. 154, 5) speaks of the beloved place of Vislmu, where pious men rejoice, as the abode of the blessed. This place of Vishwu would be the place where the sun culminates, not where it sets. Another poet (X. 135, 1) speaks of a beautiful tree, where Yama is drinking with the gods. In the Atharva-veda we get still more details. There we read of milk-cows, soft winds, cooling rain, cakes of ghee, rivers running with milk and honey, and a large number of women, all meant for the enjoyment of the departed.

It seems very strange that not one of these statements

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regarding the fate of the soul after death which are contained in the hymns of the Rig-veda, is discussed in the Ved&nta-sutras. No effort is made to bring them into harmony with the teaching of the Upanishads. The same applies to many passages occurring in the Brahma?ias, though they can claim the character of /Sruti or revelation with the same right as the Upanishads, nay, from an historical point of view, with even a better right. This is a point which native Ved&ntists should take into consideration, before they represent the Ved&nta philosophy as founded on /Sruti or revelation in the general sense of that word.

Mythological Aanguaffe misunderstood.

Another weak point in the authors of the Ved&ntastitras seems to me their inability to understand that in the early periods of language it is impossible to express any thought except metaphorically, hieroglyphically, or, what is the same, mythologically. Ancient sages think in images rather than in concepts. With us these images have faded, so as to leave nothing behind but the solid kernel. Thus when we speak of approaching or drawing near to God, we do no longer think of miles of road which we have to traverse, or of bridges and lakes which we have to cross. Nor when we speak of a throne of God do we allow ourselves to picture a royal throne with legs and supports and canopies. But with the ancient speakers it was different. Their thoughts were not yet free of the imagery of language. Their approach to God could only be represented as a long journey along steep roads and narrow bridges, and the throne of God or Brahman was graphically described as

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golden, and as covered with precious shawls and cushions. We must say, however, to the credit of the poets of the Upanishads that they soon began to correct themselves. They tell us that the throne of Brahman is not a golden throne, but is meant for intelligence, while its coverings represent the sacred scriptures or the Vedas. In the same way a river which the soul in its journey to Brahman has to cross is called Vigrar&, that is, the Age-less; a man who has crossed it, casts off old age, and never grows old again. He is supposed to have shaken off his good and evil deeds, and to leave the benefit of the former to those among his relatives on earth who were dear to him, while his evil deeds fall to the share of his unbeloved relations. A lake again which bars the way to Brahman is called Ara, and this name is supposed to be derived from Ari, enemy, these enemies being the passions and attachments of the heart, all of which must be left behind before an entrance can be found into the city of God, while those who do not know the truth, are believed to be drowned in that lake.

Even at present there are few, if any, among the most enlightened students of Vedic literature in India, who would admit the possibility of an historical growth with regard to the Veda, and would not prefer the most artificial interpretations to the frank admission that, like other sacred books, the Veda also owes its origin to different localities, to different ages, and to different minds.

Unless we learn to understand this metaphorical or hieroglyphic language of the ancient world, we shall look upon the Upanishads and on most of the

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Sacred Books of the East as mere childish twaddle; but if we can see through the veil, we shall discover behind it, not indeed, as many imagine, profound mysteries or esoteric wisdom, but at all events intelligent and intelligible efforts in an honest search after truth.

We must not imagine, however, that we can always reach the original intention of mythological phraseology, nor does it follow that the interpretation accepted by Indian commentators is always the right one. On the contrary, these native interpretations, by the very authority which naturally might seem to belong to them, are often misleading, and we must try to keep ourselves, as much as possible, independent of them.

In the circumstantial accounts, for instance, which I read to you from some of the Upanishads as to the return of the soul to Brahman, the soul rising with the smoke of the funeral pile and reaching the night, and then the waning half of the moon, and then the six months during which the sun travels to the South, and then only arriving in the world of the Fathers, we find it difficult, if not impossible, to connect any definite thoughts with these wanderings of the soul. What can be meant by the six months during which the sun travels to the South or to the North ? It might seem to imply that the soul has to tarry for six months while the sun is moving South, before it can hope to reach the world of the Fathers and the Moon. But this is by no means the interpretation of native commentators. They are impressed with a passage where it is said that the soul travels onward with the quickness of thought, and they there

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fore would object to admit anything like delay in the soul's joining the northern or the southern progress of the sun. They may be right in this, but they leave the difficulty of the six months as a station in the souls journey unexplained. I can only produce one parallel that may perhaps throw some light on this point.

It occurs in Porphyrius, Be Antro Nympharum. This cave of the nymphs, mentioned by Homer (Odyss. XIII. 104), was taken by Porphyrius and other philosophers, such as Numenius and Cronius, as a symbol of the earth with its two doors,—

8v<u Bi ri ol Ovpcu eialv al filv vp&s Bopiao, Karcu0arai dvOparrroicriv, at 8* av vpbs N6rov elal Oe&rcpcu* oi>8c ti tceivp dvbpes MpxovTOt, dAA* aQavarojv 6$6s kffrtv.

These doors of the cave have been explained as the gates leading from and to the earth. Thus Porphyrius says that there are two extremities in the heavens, viz. the winter solstice, than which no part is nearer to the South, and the summer solstice which is situated next to the North. But the summer tropic, that is the solstitial circle, is in Cancer, and the winter tropic in Capricorn. And since Cancer is the nearest to the earth, it is deservedly attributed to the Moon, which is itself proximate to the earth. But since the southern pole by its greatest distance is inconspicuous to us, Capricorn is ascribed to Saturn, who is the highest and most remote of all the planets . . . Theologians admitted therefore two gates, Cancer and Capricorn, and Plato also meant these by what he calls the two mouths. Of these they affirm that Cancer is the gate through which souls descend, but Capricorn that

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through which they ascend [and exchange a material for a divine condition of being]. And indeed the gates of the cave which look to the North are with great propriety said to be pervious to the descent of men: but the northern gates are not the avenues of the gods, but of souls ascending to the gods. On this account the poet does not say it is the passage of the gods, but of immortals, which appellation is also common to our souls, which by themselves or by their essence are immortal1.

The idea that the place to which the sun returns, whether in its northward or southward progress, is a door by which the souls may ascend to heaven, is at least conceivable, quite as much as the idea which Macrobius in the twelfth chapter of his comment on Scipio's dream ascribes to Pythagoras, who, as he tells us, thought that the empire of Pluto began downwards with the Milky Way, because souls falling from thence appear already to have receded from the gods.

It should also be stated, as Mr. Bal Gangadhar Tilak in his Researches into the antiquity of the Vedas remarks, that 'the summer solstice which begins the southern passage of the sun is called the ayana of the Pitris, and that the first month or fortnight in this ayana of the Pitris is pre-eminently the month or the fortnight of the Pitris or the Fravashis or the Manes. The Hindus, he adds, up to this day regard the dark half of Bhadrapada as the fortnight of the Manes, and likewise the Parsis whose year commenced with the summer solstice, the first month of the year being dedicated to the Manes/ (Geiger, Civilization of East Iranians, vol. i. p. 153.)

1 See Aelian, Porphyrins, PhUo, ed. Didot, p. 94, § 21.

(4) - X

He goes still further and calls attention to the fact that, when the vernal equinox was in Orion, that constellation, together with the Milky Way and Canis, formed, so to speak, the boundary of heaven and hell, the Devaloka and Yamaloka which, in Vedic works, mean the hemispheres North and South of the equator. This would also explain, he thinks, why heaven and hell are separated by a river according to the Parsic, the Greek, and the Indian traditions, and why the four-eyed or three-headed dogs came to be at the gates of hell to guard the way to Yama's regions, these being the constellations of Canis Major and Minor. He undertakes to explain several more of the ancient Vedic traditions by a reference to these constellations, but he has hardly proved that these constellations and their names as Canis Major and Minor were known so early as the time of the poets of the Rig-veda.

Whatever may be uncertain in these speculations, so much seems clear, that originally the place where the sun turned on its northern course was conceived as the place where the soul might approach the world of the Fathers.

But it is the fate that awaits the soul while in the moon that is most difficult to understand. For here in the moon we are told the departed become the food of the gods. The literal meaning is, they are eaten by the gods, but the commentators warn us not to take eating in its literal sense, but in the more general sense of assimilating or enjoying or loving. The departed, they say, are not eaten by the Devas by morsels, but what is meant is that they form the delight of the gods, as food forms the delight of men.

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Nay, one commentator goes still further, and says, ' If it is said that women are loved by men, they are in being loved loving themselves. Thus these souls also, being loved by the gods or Devas love the gods in return, and are happy rejoicing with the Devas.' This seems at first a rational explanation, and we know that in the language of the New Testament also eating and drinking or feeding on must be understood in certain well-known passages in the sense of receiving, enjoying, or loving.

Still this does not explain the whole of this legend, and it is clear that some other mythological conceptions of the moon must have influenced the thoughts of the poets of the Upanishads. It was evidently a familiar idea with the common people in ancient India that the moon was the source of life and immortality, and that it consisted of something like the Greek nectar which gave immortality to the gods. The waning of the moon was ascribed to this consumption of Soma (moon-juice) by the gods, while its waxing was accounted for by the entrance of the departed spirits into the moon, the recognised abode of the Fathers. If then after the moon was full again, the gods were supposed to feed on it once more, it is conceivable that the gods should be supposed to be feeding on the souls of the departed that had entered into the moon1. I do not mean to say that this explanation is certain, nor is it hinted at by the commentators of the Upanishads, but it is at all events coherent and intelligible, which is more than can be said of tfankara's interpretation.

It is not impossible, however, that some older

1 See Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, vol. i. p. 394.

L2

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148 LECTURE V.

mythological conceptions of the moon may have influenced the thoughts of the poets of the Upanishads. It is not in India only that the moon was looked upon as a symbol of life and immortality. When people counted by moons, the moon became naturally the source and giver of life. People asked for more moons, they lived so many moons, so that moon and life became almost synonymous. Next, as to the idea of immortal life after death, this was seen symbolised in the waning or dying of the moon and in the resurrection of the new moon. Traces of this have been discovered even among the lowest races, such as the Hottentots, who have a well-known legend of the moon sending a messenger to men to tell them, * As I die and dying live, so shall ye also die and dying live V

By combining these two conceptions, people were easily led on to the idea that as the departed went to the moon, and as the moon increased and decreased, they also increased and decreased with the moon. Then again, there was in India another tradition that the moon, the giver of rain and fertility, constituted the favourite food of the gods, so that it required no more than a combination of these traditions to arrive at the saying that, during the waning half, the gods fed on the departed who were dwelling in the moon. Some of these thoughts are expressed in the Rv. X. 85,19:

NavaA navaA bhavati grayamanaA Ahnam ketuh ushasam eti agram Bhagam devSbhyaft vi dadhati a-yan Pra fcandramaA tirate dirgham ayuA.

1 He (the moon) becomes new and new when born ; the light of days, he goes at the head of the dawns; when he arrives, he distributes to the gods their share, the moon prolongs a long life.'

1 Selected Essays, i. p. 610.

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Here it is clear that the moon is considered as the source and giver of life, particularly of a long life, while the share which he distributes to the gods maymean either the sacrificial share for each god, which is determined by the moon, as the regulator of seasons and sacrifices, or the rain as the support of life, which is supposed to come from the moon and to be almost synonymous with it.

I do not maintain that all these ideas were clearly present to the minds of the authors of the Upanishads. I only suggest that they formed the component elements of that legendary language in which they expressed their doctrines, trusting that they would be understood by the people to whom their doctrines were addressed.

We now come to a new phase of half-legendary, half-philosophical speculation.

The Devayana or. Path of the Gods.

The souls of those who form the delight of the gods, or who enjoy the company of the gods and Fathers while dwelling in the moon, are said to have reached this blessedness by their pious works, by sacrifice, charity, and austerity, not by real knowledge. Hence, when they have enjoyed the full reward of their good works they are supposed to return again to this life, while those who have acquired true knowledge, or what we should call true faith, do not return, but press forward till they reach Brahman, the Supreme God. This they achieve by the Devay&naor the Path of the Gods, as distinct from the Pitriyawa, or the Path of the Fathers. For those who have discovered this Path of the gods that leads

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to Brahman, and which can be discovered by knowledge only, there is no return, that is to say, they are not born again. To be born again and to enter once more into the vortex of cosmic existence is to the authors of the Upanishads the greatest misfortune that can possibly be conceived. The chief object of their philosophy is therefore how to escape from this cosmic vortex, how to avoid being born again and again.

It seems to me that, if we take all this into account, we can clearly distinguish three successive stages in the thoughts which the authors of the Upanishads formed to themselves as to the fate of the soul after death. In the Upanishads themselves these different theories stand side by side. No attempt is made to harmonise them, till we come to the Ved&nta philosophers, who looked upon all that is found in the Veda as one complete revelation. But if we may claim the liberty of historical criticism, or rather of historical interpretation, we should ascribe the simple belief in the so-called Pitriyana, the path of the Fathers, and the journey of the soul to the moon, as the home of the Fathers, to the earliest period. It is no more than a popular belief, which we find elsewhere also, that the soul will go where the Fathers went, and that their abode is, not in the sun, but in the moon, the luminary of the dark night.

Then came the new idea that this happy life with the gods and the Fathers in the moon was the reward for good works on earth, and that the reward for these good works must after a time become exhausted. What then ? If in the meantime the concept of One Supreme God, of an objective Brahman, had been gained, and if it had been perceived that true blessed

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ness and immortality consisted, not in such halfearthly enjoyments as were in store for the departed in the moon, and must after a time come to an end, but in an approach to and an approximative knowledge of the Supreme Being, the conclusion followed by itself that there must be another path besides that of the Fathers leading to the moon, namely the path of the gods (Devayana), leading through different worlds of the gods, to the throne of Brahman or the Supreme God. That road was open to all who had gained a true knowledge of Brahman, and even those who for a time had enjoyed the reward of their good works in the moon might look forward after having passed through repeated existences to being born once more as human beings, gaining in the end a true knowledge of the One Supreme God, and then proceeding on the path of the gods to the throne of the Supreme Deity, whether they call it Brahman, Hirawyagarbha, or any other name, from whence there is no return.

We shall see, however, that even this was not final, but that there followed afterward a third phase of thought, in which even this approach to the throne of God was rejected as unsatisfactory. But before we proceed to consider this, we have still to dwell for a few moments on what was supposed to be the fate of the souls, when they had to leave the moon and to enter on a new course of being bom and reborn, till at last they gained complete freedom from cosmic existence through a truer knowledge of God.

Metempsychosis.

This is a curious and important chapter, because we can clearly discover in it the first beginnings of a

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belief in Metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls. The ancients were convinced that this belief came from the East, and they imagined that Pythagoras and others could have got their belief in Metempsychosis from India only. We saw how little foundation there was for this, and it can easily be shown that a belief in the transmigration of souls sprang up in other countries also, which could not possibly have been touched by the rays of Indian or Greek philosophy. But it is interesting nevertheless to watch the first beginnings of that belief in India, because we have here to deal with facts, and not with mere theories, such as have been started by recent students of Anthropology as to the origin of Metempsychosis. They consider that a belief in the migration of souls, particularly the migration of human souls into animal bodies, has something to do with what is called Animism. Now Animism is a very useful word, if only it is properly defined. It is a translation of the German Beseelung, and if it is used simply as a comprehensive term for all attempts to conceive inanimate objects as animate subjects, nothing can be said against it. There is, however, a very common mistake which should be carefully guarded against. When travellers meet with tribes that speak of trees or stones as sentient beings, and attribute to them many things which of right belong to animate or human beings only, we are told that it is a case of Animism: No doubt, it is. But is not Animism in this case simply another name for the belief that certain inanimate objects are animate? It may sound more learned, but of course, the name explains nothing. What we want to know is how

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human beings, themselves animate, could be so mistaken as to treat inanimate things as animate. Even animals seldom mistake a lifeless thing for a living thing. I believe that this tendency of the human mind to attribute life and soul to lifeless and soulless objects, can be and has been accounted for by a more general tendency, nay, by what may almost be called a necessity under which the human mind is laid by human language, which cannot form names of any objects except by means of roots, all of which are expressive of acts. It was impossible to name and therefore to conceive the sun or the moon, or a tree or even a stone, except as doers of something, which something is expressed in one of those four or five hundred roots that formed the capital of language. This, which has been called Energism, is the highest generalisation, and comprehends, and at the same time accounts for Animism, Personification, Anthropomorphism, Spiritism, and several other isms.

But the question now before us is this, Did a belief in Transmigration of souls have anything to do with Animism, or that general belief that not only animals have souls like men, but that inanimate objects also may be inhabited by souls? for it must be remembered that from the very first Metempsychosis meant the migration of the souls, not only into animals, but likewise into plants.

Whatever may have been the origin of a belief in Metempsychosis in other parts of the world, in India, at all events so far as we may judge by the Upanishads, this belief had nothing to do with the ordinary Animism. Its deepest source seems to have been purely ethical. The very reason why the soul, after

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154 LECTURE V.

having dwelt for some time in the world of the Fathers, had to be born again was, if you remember, that the stock of its good works had been exhausted. Let us hear then what the ancient Hindus thought would happen to the soul after its descent from the moon. Here we must be prepared again for a great deal of childish twaddle; but you know that philosophers, to say nothing of fond fathers and grandfathers, are able to discover a great deal of wisdom even in childish twaddle. The soul, we read in the Upanishads, returns through ether or through space, and then descends to the earth in the form of rain. On earth something that has thus been carried down in the rain, becomes changed into food. This food, it is said, is offered in a new altar-fire, namely in man, and thence born of a woman, that is to say, man eats the food and with it the germs of a new life. These germs are invisible, but according to the Upanishads, not the less real.

Reality of Invisible Things.

This belief in invisible realities is fully recognised in the Upanishads. It applied not only to the invisible agents in nature, their Devas or gods, whom they carefully distinguished from their visible manifestations. They believed in a visible Agni or fire who performed the sacrifice, but they carefully distinguished him from the invisible and divine Agni who was hidden in the dawn, in the morn, nay even in the two fire-sticks, unseen by any human eye, but ready to appear, when the priests had properly rubbed the fire-sticks. The same belief gave them their clear concept of the soul, never to be seen or

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to be touched, yet more real to them than anything else. Lastly their belief in something invisible that constituted the life of every part of nature, meets us on every page of the Upanishads. Thus we read in the l£Mndogya-Upanishad a dialogue between a son and his father, who wants to open the eyes of his son as to the reality of the Unseen or the Infinite in nature, which is also the Unseen and Infinite in man, which is in fact both Brahman and Atman, the Self:

The father said: ' My son, fetch me a fruit of the fig-tree.'

The son replied: ' Here is one, sir/

' Break it/ said the father.

The son replied: ' It is broken, sir/

The father: ' What do you see there ?'

The son: ' These seeds, almost infinitesimal.'

The father: ' Break one of them.'

The son: ' It is broken, sir.'

The father: * What do you see there ?'

The son: ' Not anything, sir/

The father: 'My son, that subtle essence, which you do not see there, of that very essence this great fig-tree exists/

* Believe it, my son. That which is the invisible, subtle essence, in it sii). that exists, has its self. It is the True, it is the Self, and thou, O son, art it.'

If people have once arrived at this belief in subtle, invisible germs, their belief in the germs of living souls descending in rain and being changed into grains of corn, and being, when eaten, changed into seed, and at last being born of a mother, whatever we, as biologists, may think of it, is not quite so unmeaning metaphysically as it seems at first sight.

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But while in this case we have only a transmigration of the human soul across rain and food into a new human body, we find in another passage (Khkndogya, V. 10, 3) far more minute details. Here we are told that the rain which carries the soul back to earth is taken up into rice, barley, herbs of every kind, trees, sesamum, or beans. It is very difficult to escape from these vegetable dwellings, and whoever the persons may be that eat this food and afterwards beget offspring, the germ of the soul, becomes like unto them. And yet we are told that everything is not left to accident, but that those whose conduct has been good will quickly attain a good birth in the family of Br&hma/nas or Kshatriyas or Vaisyas, while those whose conduct has been bad, will quickly attain an evil birth in the family of a ITara&la, an outcast, or,—and here we come for the first time on the idea of a human soul migrating into the bodies of animals,—he will become a dog or a hog. I think we can clearly see that this belief in a human soul being reborn as an outcast, or as a dog or a hog, contains what I called an ethical element. This is very important, at least as far as an explanation of the idea of metempsychosis in India is concerned. Whatever the influence of Animism may have been in other countries in suggesting a belief in metempsychosis, in India it was clearly due to a sense of moral justice. As a man, guilty of low and beastly acts, might be told even in this life that he was an outcast, or that he was a dog or a hog, so the popular conscience of India, when it had once grasped the idea of the continued existence of the soul after death, would say in good earnest that he would hereafter

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be an outcast or a dog or a hog. And after this idea of metempsychosis had once been started, it soon set the popular mind thinking on all the changes and chances that might happen to the soul in her strange wanderings. Thus we read that the soul may incur great dangers, because while the rain that falls from the moon (retodhaA) on the earth, fructifies and passes into rice, corn, and beans, and is eaten and then born as the offspring of the eater, some of the rain may fall into rivers and into the 6ea, and be swallowed by fishes and sea-monsters. After a time they will be dissolved in the sea, and after the seawater has been drawn upwards by the clouds, it may fall down again on desert or dry land. Here it may be swallowed by snakes or deer, and they may be swallowed again by other animals, so that the round of existences, and even the risk of annihilation become endless. For some rain-drops may dry up altogether, or be absorbed by bodies that cannot be eaten. Nay, even if the rain has been absorbed and has become rice and corn, it may be eaten by children or by ascetics who have renounced married life, and then the chance of a new birth seems more distant than ever. Fortunately the soul, though it is conscious in its ascent, is supposed to be without consciousness in its descent through all these dangerous stages. The Brahmans have always some quaint illustrations at hand. The soul is like a man, they say, who in climbing up a tree is quite conscious, but on falling headlong down a tree loses his consciousness. Well, in spite of all this folly or childish twaddle, there are nevertheless some great thoughts running through it all. First of all, there is the unhesitating belief that

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the soul does not die when the body dies; secondly, there is the firm conviction that there is a moral government of the world, and that the fate of the soul hereafter is determined by its life here on earth, to which was soon added as an inevitable corollary, that the fate of the soul here on earth, must have been determined by its acts of a former life. All these thoughts, particularly on their first spontaneous appearance, are full of meaning in the eyes of the student of religion, and there are few countries where we can study their spontaneous growth so well as in ancient India.

Absence of Hells.

This belief in metempsychosis accounts for the absence of hells as places of punishment, at least in the earlier phases of the Upanishads. A difference is made between souls that only pass through the manifold stages of animal and vegetable life in order to be born in the end as human beings, and those who are made to assume those intermediate forms of rice and corn and all the rest as a real punishment for evil deeds. The latter remain in that state till their evil deeds are completely expiated, and they have a real consciousness of their state of probation. But when their debts are paid and the results of their evil deeds are entirely exhausted, they have a new chance. They may assume a new body, like caterpillars when changed into butterflies. Even then the impressions of their former misdeeds remain, like dreams. Still in the end, by leading a virtuous life they may become men once more, and rise to the world of the Fathers in the moon. Here a distinction is made, though not

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very clearly, between those whom the moon sets free and those whom he showers down for a new birth. Those who can answer the moon well, and assert their identity with the moon, as the source of all things, are set free to enter the Svargaloka by the Path of the gods. Those who cannot, return to the earth, may in time gain true knowledge, and finally likewise reach the Path of the gods and the world of the Devas, the home of the lightnings, and the throne of Brahman. Some of the later Upanishads, particularly the Kaushitaki-Upanishad, enter into far fuller details as to this last journey to the throne of Brahman. But, as is generally the case, though there may be some rational purpose in the general plan, the minor details become almost always artificial and unmeaning.

Now, however, when the soul has reached the world of the gods and the abode of Brahman, from whence there is no return to a new circle of cosmic existence, a stream of new ideas sets in, forming a higher phase philosophically, and probably a later phase historically, as compared with the Path of the Fathers and the Path of the Gods. We are introduced to a dialogue, similar to that between the soul and the moon, but now between the departed, standing before the throne of Brahman, and Brahman himself.

Brahman asks him: ' Who art thou ?'

And he is to answer in the following mysterious words:

' I am like a season, and the child of the seasons, sprung from the womb of endless space, sprung from light. This light, the source of the year, which is the past, which is the present, which is all living things

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and all elements, is the Self. Thou art the Self, and what thou art, that am I.'

The meaning of this answer is not quite clear. But it seems to mean that the departed when asked by Brahman what he is or what he knows himself to be, says that he is like a season \ that is, like something that comes and goes, but that he is at the same time the child of space and time or of that light from which all time and all that exists in time and space proceeds. This universal source of all existence he calls the Self, and after proclaiming that Brahman before him is that Self, he finishes his confession of faith, by saying, ' What thou art, that am I.'

In this passage, though we still perceive some traces of mythological thought, the prevailing spirit is clearly philosophical. In the approach of the soul to the throne of Brahman we can recognise the last results that can be reached by Physical and Anthropological Religion, as worked out by the Indian mind. In Brahman sitting on his throne we have still the merely objective or cosmic God, the highest paint reached by Physical Religion; in the soul of the departed standing face to face with God, we see the last result of Anthropological Religion. We see there the human soul as a subject, still looking upon the Divine Soul as an object. But the next step, represented by the words, 'What thou art, that am /,' opens a new vista of thought. The human soul, by the very fact that it has gained true knowledge of Brahman, knows that the soul also is Brahman, recovers its own Brahmahood, becomes in fact what it always has been, Brahman or the Universal Self. Knowledge, true knowledge, self-knowledge

1 The Sufi also calls himself the son of the season, see p. 357.

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suffices for this, and there is no longer any necessity of toilsome travellings, whether on the Path of the Fathers or on the Path of the Gods.

Transmigration as conceived in the Laws of Mann.

Before, however, we enter on a consideration of this highest flight of Indian philosophy, and try to discover to what phases of thought this similarity or rather this oneness with God, this Homoiosis or Henosis, corresponds in other religions, we have still to dwell for a short time on the later development of the theory of transmigration as we find it in the Laws of Manu and elsewhere, and as it is held to the present day by millions of people in India. These Laws of Manu are, of course, much later than the Upanishads. Though they contain ancient materials, they can hardly, in their present metrical form, be assigned to a much earlier date than about the fourth century A.D. In their original form they must have existed as S&tras ; in their present metrical form, they belong to the /Slokaperiod of Indian literature. There existed many similar collections of ancient laws and customs, composed both in Sfttras and afterwards in metre, but as the Laws of Manu, or, as they ought to be more correctly called, the Laws of the Manavas, have acquired a decided pre-eminence in India, it is in them that we can best study the later development of the belief in metempsychosis.

As I said before, when the idea of the migration of the soul through various forms of animal and vegetable life had once been started, the temptation was great to carry it out in fuller detail. Whereas in the Upanishads we are only told that a man who has led (4) M

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an evil life, attains an evil birth, and may actually come to life again as a dog or a hog, Manu is able to tell us in far more minute detail what particular birth is assigned to any particular crime. Thus we read in V. 164, IX. 30, that a wife who has violated her duty towards her husband is born as a jackal. In another passage (VI. 63) we read of ten thousand millions of existences through which the soul passes after it has left this body. A Br&hmaTia, we are told (XI. 25), who has begged any property for a sacrifice, and does not use the whole of it for the sacrifice, but keeps some of it for himself, becomes for a hundred years a vulture or a crow. In the last book of Manu this subject is most fully treated. We read there, XII. 39:

I will briefly declare in due order what transmigrations in the whole world a man obtains through each of the three qualities. These qualities have been defined before (35-37) as darkness, activity, and goodness.

The Three Qualities, Darkness, Activity, and Goodness.

Acts of darkness are those of which a man feels ashamed.

Acts of activity or selfishness are those by which a man hopes to gain profit or fame in the world, but of which he need not feel ashamed. They may be called selfish acts, but, from a moral point of view, they are indifferent.

Acts of goodness are when a man desires knowledge, with his whole heart, and his soul rejoices, and there is no sense of shame.

Manu then continues:

Those endowed with goodness reach the state of gods, those endowed with activity the state of men,

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and those endowed with darkness sink to the condition of beasts; this is the threefold course of transmigration. But know this threefold course of transmigration that depends on the three qualities to be again threefold, low, middling, and high, according to the particular nature of the acts and of the knowledge of each man.

The Vine Classes.

Immovable beings, insects both small and great, fishes, snakes, tortoises, cattle, and wild animals are the lowest condition to which the quality of darkness leads.

Elephants, horses, #&dras5 and despicable barbarians, lions, tigers, and boars are the middling states caused by the quality of darkness.

Ijf&raT&as (probably wandering minstrels and jugglers), Supamas (bird-deities) and hypocrites, R&kshasas and "Piskkaa (goblins) belong to the highest rank of conditions among those produced by darkness.

QkaHaa, Mallas, Nates, men who subsist by despicable occupations and those addicted to gambling and drinking form the lowest order of conditions caused by activity.

Kings and Kshatriyas (noblemen), the domestic priests of kings, those who delight in the warfare of disputants constitute the middling rank of the states caused by activity.

The Gandharvas, Guhyakas, and the servants of the gods, likewise the Apsaras, belong to the highest rank of conditions produced by activity.

Hermits, ascetics, Brahmarais, the crowds of the Vaim&nika deities (spirits moving in mid-air on their

M a

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vim&nas, or chariots), the gods of the lunar mansions and the Daityas form the first and lowest rank of the existences caused by goodness.

Sacrificers, the sages, the gods, the Vedas, the heavenly lights, the years, the manes, and the S&dhyas constitute the second order of existences caused by goodness.

The sages declare Brahm&, the creators of the Universe, the law, the Great One, and the Undiscernible One to constitute the highest order of things produced by goodness.

Thus the result of the threefold action, the whole system of transmigrations which consists of three classes, each with three subdivisions, and which includes all created things, has been explained.

This systematic statement of the different stages of transmigration is obscure in some points, particularly when not only living beings, but heavenly lights, the years, and even the Veda are mentioned as the result of acts of goodness. We shall hereafter meet with something very similar in the Hierarchies of Proclus and of Dionysius the Areopagite. The place assigned to certain classes of men, gods, and demi-gods is curious and instructive, as showing the estimation in which each of them was held at the time.

I am afraid it was rather tedious to follow Manu through all the nine classes of beings through which the human soul may pass. Yet these nine classes of Manu acquire some interest, if we remember that Plato also gives us a similar scheme of nine classes into which the human soul may be reborn.

This coincidence in the number nine need not be more than accidental. A comparison, however, of these two

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lists (Enneads) is instructive, as showing the different estimation in which certain occupations were held in India and in Greece. In India the nine steps of the ladder of existences rise from the lowest animals to the world of human beings in their various occupations, then to the demons, to the Vedas, the heavenly lights, the years, the Fathers, and the gods, in their various spheres of action, and lastly to the creator of the world and to Brahman himself. In this we are often reminded not only of the nine classes of Plato, but likewise of the nine stages of the so-called heavenly Hierarchy, as we find them in Proclus, and in Dionysius the Areopagite. There also, the number is nine, nay the three triads are here, exactly as in India, subdivided each into three stages, and room is made as in India, not only for animate beings, whether men or angels, but likewise for inanimate, such as Thrones, Powers, and Dominions. Whether these coincidences are too great to be accepted as mere fortuitous coincidences, we shall be better able to judge when we come to consider the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, and their extraordinary influence both on the scholastic and the mystic, that is, the psychological theology of the Middle Ages.

Punishments of the Wicked.

Another important feature which marks the later date of Manu's Laws is his acquaintance not only with metempsychosis, but with punishments inflicted on the wicked in places which we must call hells—for hells are a late invention in most religions. Thus we read (XII. 54),' Those who have committed mortal sins (mah&p&takas) having passed

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through a large number of years through dreadful hells, obtain after the expiration of that term of punishment, the following births:

'The slayer of a Br&hmana enters the womb of a dog, a pig, a camel, a cow, a goat, a sheep, a deer, a bird, a ifara&la, and a Pukkasa.'

Here we have clearly the idea of punishment in hell, apart from the punishment entailed by simply being bom again as a low animal. And what is curious is that Tama, who at first was only conceived as the ruler among the departed, as a kind deity with whom the Pitris enjoyed themselves, is now mentioned as inflicting torments on the wicked (XII. 17), a part which he continues to act in the later literature of India.

In the hymns of the Rig-veda we find very little that could be compared to the later ideas of hell. Nor is there any reason to suppose, as both Roth and Weber seem to do, that the Vedic Indians had realised the idea of annihilation, and that they believed annihilation to be the proper punishment of the wicked. As they spoke of the abode of the blessed in very general terms as the realms of light, they speak of the wicked as being thrown or falling into karta, a pit (Rv. H. 29, 6; IX. 73, 8-9). They also speak of a deep place (padam gabhlram, IV. 5, 5) and of lower darkness (adharam tamaA, X. 152, 4) as their abode.

There are some more passages in the Rig-veda which may refer to punishment after death. Thus we read (II. 29, 6),' Protect us, O gods, from being devoured by the wolf, or from falling into the pit.' And again (IX. 73, 8-9), ' The wise guardian of the law is not to be deceived; he has placed purifiers

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(conscience) in the heart; he knowing looks upon all things, and hurls the wicked and lawless into the pit.'

In the Atharva-veda the description of the abode of the wicked becomes more and more minute. We read (II. 14, 3) of a house (griha) for evil spirits, and even the modern name of Naraka for hell occurs in it. All this agrees with what we know from other sources of the chronological relation of Vedic hymns, Upanishads, and Manu's Laws. The Upanishads speak of a third path, besides the two paths that lead to the Fathers and to the Gods, and they say (Brih. Ar. VI. 2, 16): ' Those who do not know these two paths become worms, birds and creeping things.' We also read in some Upanishads, that these are unblessed or asurya worlds, covered with blind darkness whither fools go after death. The Br&hmawas are sometimes more explicit in their accounts of hell \ and in one passage of the Satapatha Brahmawa (XL 7, 2, 33), we actually find a mention of the weighing of the soul, a conception so well known from Egyptian tombs.

Bridge*.

The more we advance, the fuller the details become about the two roads, the road leading to the PitWs and the road leading to the Devas. I shall here call your attention to one passage only in the Mahabh&rata which is highly important, because the two roads are here for the first time2 called Setus, or bridges (Anu

1 Weber, Z. D. M. G., ix. p. 240.

2 How familiar the idea of a bridge between this world and the next must have been in Vedic times also, is shown by the frequent allusions to the Atman, as the true bridge from SoheintoSein; A'Aand. Up. VIII. 4, 1, &c.

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gitft,, XX. p. 816), bridges of virtue or piety. It was generally supposed that the idea of a bridge connecting this world with the next was peculiar to Persia, where the famous l£inva£ bridge forms so prominent a feature in the ancient religion. But the relation between the Veda and the A vesta is so peculiar and so intimate, that we can hardly doubt that the belief in bridges between this world and the next was either borrowed directly by the Persians from the Vedic poets, or that it was inherited by both from their common ancestors. It is quite true that the same idea of a bridge between this and the next world occurs in other countries also, where a direct influence of Indian thought is out of the question, as, for instance, among some North-American Indiansl. But it is not a bridge of virtue or of judgment as in India and Persia. The idea of a bridge or a mere communication between this and the next world is in fact so natural that it may be called the easiest and probably the earliest solution of the problem with which, though from a higher point of view, we are occupied in this course of lectures, the relation between the natural and the supernatural. When people had once learnt to believe in a Beyond, they felt a gap between the here and the there, which the human mind could not brook, and which it tried, therefore, to bridge over, at first mythologically, and afterwards philosophically. The earliest, as yet purely mythological, attempt to connect the world of men and the world of the gods is the belief in a bridge called Bifrost, lit. trembling rest, such as We find it in Northern mythology. It was clearly in^

1 Jones, Traditions qf tfie North-American Indians, vol. i. p. 227.

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tended originally for the rainbow. We are told that it was created by the gods, and was called the bridge of the Ases or the gods, the As-bru. It had three colours, and was supposed to be very strong. But however strong it was, it is believed that it will break at the end of the world, when the sons of Muspel come to ride across it. The Ases or gods ride every day across that bridge to their judgment seat near the well of Urd. It has a watchman also, who is called Heimdall.

This is a purely mythological expedient to connect heaven and earth, for which Physical Religion chose very naturally the emblem of the rainbow.

In India and Persia, however, the case is different. First of all the bridge there is not taken from anything in nature. It is rather an ethical postulate. There must be a way, they argued, on which the soul can approach the deity or by which it can be kept away from the deity,—hence they imagined that there was such a way. That way in India was the Road of the Fathers and afterwards the Road of the Gods. But it is very important to observe that in India also this road (y&na) was called setu, bridge, though it had not yet received a proper name. In the Veda, Rv. I. 38, 5, the path of Yama is mentioned, which is really the same as the Road of the Fathers, for Yama was originally the ruler of the Fathers. If therefore the poets say, M& vo grarita patha Yamasya g&d upa, May your worshipper not go on the path of Yama, they simply mean, may he not yet die. When there was once a bridge, a river also would soon be imagined which the bridge was to cross. Such a river, though it does not occur in the hymns, occurs

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in the Brahma%as under the name of Vaitarani, which simply means 'what leads on or what has to be crossed/ It is probably but another name for the river Vigrara, the ageless, which, as we saw in the Upanishads, the departed had to pass.

You may remember that at the funeral ceremonies of the Vedic Indians a cow (Anustarawi) had to be sacrificed. This cow was supposed to carry the departed across the Vaitarawi river, and later it became the custom in India, and, I am told, it is so now, to make a dying man lay hold of the tail of a cow, or, as among the Todas, of the horns of a buffalo. But though in India the belief in a Road of the Fathers and a Road of the Gods seems to have arisen from a moral conviction that there must be such & path to lead the departed, whether as a reward or as a punishment, to the world of the Fathers, and to the world of the Gods, that path was identified in India also not only with the rainbow, but likewise, as Professor Kuhn has tried to show (K. Z.y ii. p. 318), with the Milky Way. In the Vishrai-puraTia (p. 227) the Devayana is placed north of Taurus and Aries, and south of the Great Bear, which is the exact situation of the starting-point of the Milky Way. Professor Kuhn has pointed out a most curious coincidence. Let us remember that in order to reach the Devayana, supposed to be the Milky Way, the departed had to be carried across the Vaitarawi river by a cow. Is it not strange that in the North of Germany to the present day the Milky Way should be called Eaupat, that is; cow-path, and that the Slavonians should call it Mavra or Mavriza, which means a black speckled cow. Nay, in the poem of Tundalus (ed. Hahn, pp.

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40-50), we read that the soul has to drive a stolen cow across that bridge. Such coincidences are very startling. One hardly knows how to account for them. Of course, they may be due to accident, but, if not, what an extraordinary pertinacity would they show even in the folklore of the Aryan nations.

However, though in some places the Devay&na has been identified with the Milky Way, in others and more ancient passages it was clearly conceived as the rainbow, as when we read in the Brihad-fixafiyaka Upanishad IV. 4, 8 :

'The small, old path stretching far away (vitataA or vitaraA) has been found by me. On it, sages who know Brahman move on to the Svargaloka (heaven), and thence higher, as entirely free.

* On that path they say that there is white and blue, yellow, green, and red; that path was found by Brahman, and on it goes whoever knows Brahman, and who has done good, and obtained splendour/ We have here the five colours of the rainbow, while the Bifrost rainbow had only three.

The idea that the wicked cannot find the path of the Fathers or the Gods is not entirely absent in the TJpanishads. For we read (Brih. Ar. IV. 4, 10):

' All who worship what is not knowledge, enter into blind darkness;' and again, * There are indeed those unblessed worlds covered with blind darkness. Men who are ignorant, not enlightened, go after death to these worlds.' Nay, in the #atapatha Br&hma?ia I. 9, 3, 2, we actually read of flames on both sides of the path which burn the wicked, but do not touch the pure soul.

' The same path leads either to the Gods or to the

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Fathers. On both sides two flames are ever burning: they scorch him who deserves to be scorched, and allow him to pass who deserves to pass/

There is also a line quoted in the Nirukta which may refer to this path, where women say:

net gdhmayantyo narakam patama.

' May we not walk crooked and fall into hell.'

It is, however, in the ancient religion of Persia that this bridge becomes most prominent. It has there received the name of iTinvatf, which can only mean the searching, the revenging, the punishing bridge, ki being connected with Greek rfo>, rCvio, and nViy.

Of this bridge we read in the Vendid&d, XIX. 29:

'Then the fiend, named Vtzaresha, carries off in bonds the soul of the wicked DaSva-worshippers who live in sin. The soul enters the way made by time, and open both to the wicked and to the righteous. And at the head of the K'mv&t bridge, the holy bridge made by Mazda, they ask for their spirits and souls the reward for the worldly goods which they gave away here below.'

This bridge, which extends over hell and leads to paradise, widens for the soul of the righteous to the length of nine javelins, for the souls of the wicked it narrows to a thread, and they fall into hell1.

When we find almost the same circumstantial account among the Mohammedans, it seems to me that we shall have to admit in this case an actual historical borrowing, and not, as in the case of

1 Arda Viraf, V. 1. Darmesteter, Vendidad, S. B. E., iv. p. 212 note.

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Indians and Persians, a distant common origin. The idea of the bridge was probably adopted by the Jews in Persia1, and borrowed by Mohammed from his Jewish friends. It is best known under the name of Es-Sir&t. The seventh chapter of the Koran, called Al Aar&f, gives the following account of the bridge :

' And betwixt the two there is a veil, and on al Aar&f are men who know each (the good and the wicked) by marks, and they shall cry out to the fellows of Paradise: Peace be upon you! They cannot enter it, although they so desire. But when their sight is turned towards the fellows of Fire, they say : O Lord, place us not with the unjust people! And the fellows in al Aar&f will cry out to the men whom they know by their marks, and say, Of no avail to you were your collections, and what you were so big with pride about; are these those ye swore that God would not extend mercy to? Enter Paradise, there is no fear for you, nor shall ye be grieved. Eut the fellows of Fire shall cry out to the fellows of Paradise, " Pour out upon us water, or something of what God has provided you with." '

When we find a similar account among the Todas in Southern India, it is difficult to say whether they derived it from the Brahmans or possibly from a Mohammedan source. It resembles the latter more than the former, and it might be taken by some > ethnologists as of spontaneous growth among the Dravidian inhabitants of India. According to a writer

1 In the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century, Jewish doctors are known to have been all-powerful at the Sassanian court, under Sapor II and Yazdagard. Academy, Nov. 28, 1891, p. 483.

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in the Nineteenth Century, June, 1892, p. 959, the Todas have a heaven and a hell, the latter a dismal stream full of leeches, across which the souls of the departed have to pass upon a single thread, which breaks beneath the weight of those burdened with sin, but stands the slight strain of a good man's souL

In the Talmud, as I am informed by the Rev. Dr. Gaster, this bridge does not seem to be known. It is mentioned, however, in the 21st chapter of the Jana debe Eliahu, a work of the tenth century, but containing fragments of much earlier date. Here we read: 'In that hour (of the last judgment) God calls back to life the idols of the nations, and he says: "Let every nation with their god cross the bridge of Gehinom, and when they are crossing it, it will appear to them like a thread, and they fall down into Gehinom, both the idols and their worshippers."' The passage occurs once more in the Yalkut Shimeani, ii. §500, ed. pr. (Salonica, 1526), f. 87 seq., and according to the best judges, the legend itself goes back to pre-islamitic times.

So far we are still on safe and almost historical ground. But the belief in such a bridge is not confined to the East; and yet, when we are told that the peasants in Yorkshire spoke not so long ago of a ' Brig o' Dread, Na broader than a thread1/ we can hardly believe that this Brig o' Dread is the modern representative of the northern Bifrost bridge, because that bridge was never a very narrow bridge, to be crossed by the good only. I think we must here again admit a real historical communication. It is more likely, I think, that

1 J. Thorns, Anecdotes and Traditions, pp. 89-90; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 794.

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JOUBNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 175
the idea of this bridge caught the fancy of some crusader, and that he spoke or sang of it on his return to France, and that with the Normans the Brig o* Dread travelled into England. In France also the peasants of Nifevre know of this bridge as a small plank which Saint Jean d'Archange placed between the earth and paradise, and of which they sing:

Pas pu longue, pas pu large Qu'un ch'veu de la Sainte Viarge, Ceux qu'savont la raison d' Dieu, Far dessus passeront, Ceux qu' la sauront pas Au bout mourront.

' Not longer, not larger than a hair of the Holy Virgin, those who know the reason of God (or the prayer of God) will pass over it; those who do not know it, will die at the end/

From the folk-lore of the peasants this belief in a bridge leading from this to a better world found its way into the folk-lore of mediaeval theologians, and we read of a small bridge leading from purgatory to paradise in the Legenda Aurea, c. 50 (De S. Patricio), and in other places1.

Is it not curious to see these ideas either cropping up spontaneously in different parts of the world, or handed on by a real historical tradition from India to Persia, from Persia to Palestine, from Palestine to France, and from France even to Yorkshire ? And at the root of all, there is that simple but ineradicable belief that the Human and the Divine cannot be separated for ever, and that as the rainbow bridges heaven and earth, or as the galaxy shows us a bright way through myriads of stars to the highest Empyrean, there must be a bridge between Earth and

1 Cf. Liebrecht zu Gervasius, OHa imperidlia, Hanover, 1856, p. 90.

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Heaven, between the soul and God; there must be a Way, and a Truth, and a Life to guide the soul to its real home, or, as another religion expresses it, there must be a faith to take us home, and to make us all one in God. (Cf. St. John xvii. 21.)

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LECTURE VI.

THE E3CHAT0L0GY OF THE AVESTA. General similarities In Escnatologleal Legends.

I MENTIONED at the end of my last Lecture a number of traditions gathered from different parts of the world, and all having reference to a bridge between earth and heaven. Some of these traditions were purely mythological, and were suggested, as it seemed, by actual phenomena of nature, such as the rainbow and the Milky Way. Others, on the contrary, spiang evidently from a moral conviction that there must be a way by which the human soul could return to God, a conviction which, however abstract in its origin, could not altogether resist being likewise clothed in the end in more or less fanciful and mythological phraseology.

When we have to deal with common traditions found in India, Greece, and Germany, we must generally be satisfied if we can discover their simplest j germs, and show how these germs grew and assumed

! a different colouring on Indian, Greek, or German

. soil I explained this to you before in the case of
the Greek Charites, the Sanskrit Haritas. Here we find that the words are identically the pame, only pronounced differently according to the phonetic peculiarities of the Greek and the Sanskrit languages.

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The common germ was found in the bright rays of the sun, conceived as horses in the Veda, as beautiful maidens in Greece. The same applies, as I showed many years ago, to the Greek Daphne. Daphne would in Sanskrit be represented by D ah and, and this would mean the burning or the bright one. This root dah has yielded the name for day and dawn in German. In Sanskrit it has been replaced by Ahan k-1. There is in the Veda a clear reference to the Dawn dying whenever the sun tries to approach her, and we have a right therefore to interpret the Greek legend of Daphne, trying to escape from the embraces of Phoebus, as a repetition of the same story, that the Dawn, when she endeavours to fly from the approaches of the sun, either dies or is changed into a laurel tree. This change into a laurel tree, however, was possible in a Greek atmosphere only, where daphne had become the name of the laurel tree, which was called daphne because the wood of the laurel tree was easy to kindle and to burn.

The lessons which we have learnt from Comparative Mythology hold good with regard to Comparative Theology also. If we find similar religious or even philosophical ideas or traditions in Greece and in India, we must look upon them simply as the result of the common humanity or the common language of the people, and be satisfied with very general features; but when we proceed to compare the ideas of the ancient Parsis with those of the Vedic poets, we have a right to expect coincidences of a different and a much more tangible nature.

1 See Hopkins, On English day and Sanskrit (d)ahan. Proceedings of American Oriental Society, 1892.

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Peculiar relation between the Religions of India and Persia.

The exact historical relation, however, between the most ancient religions of India and Persia is very peculiar, and by no means as yet fully elucidated. It has been so often misconceived and misrepresented that we shall have to examine the facts very carefully in order to gain a clear conception of the real relationship of these two religions. No religion of the ancient world has been so misrepresented as that contained in the Avesta. We shall therefore have to enter into some details, and examine the ipsissima verba of the Avesta. In doing this I am afraid that my lecture to-day on the Avesta and its doctrines touching the immortality of the soul, will not contain much that can be of interest to any but Oriental scholars. But what I have always been most anxious about, is that those who follow these lectures should get an accurate and authentic knowledge of the facts of the ancient religions. Many people are hardly aware how difficult it is to give a really accurate account of any of the ancient Oriental religions. But think how difficult it is to say anything about the real teaching of Christ, without being contradicted by some Doctor of Divinity, whether hailing from Rome or from Edinburgh. And yet the facts lie here within a very narrow compass, very different from the voluminous literature of the religions of the Brahmanist or Buddhists. The language of the New Testament is child's play compared to Vedic Sanskrit or Avestic Zend. If then one sees the wrangling going on in churches and chapels about the right interpretation of some of the simplest passages in the Gospels, it might seem almost hopeless

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180 LECTURE VI.

to assert anything positive about the general character of the Vedic or Avestic religions. Yet, strange to say, it has happened that the same persons who seem to imagine that no one but a Doctor of Divinity has any right to interpret the simplest verses of the New Testament, feel no hesitation in writing long essays on Zoroaster, on Buddhism and Mohammedanism, without knowing a word of Zend, P&li, or Arabic. They not only spread erroneous opinions on the ancient Eastern religions, but they think they can refute them best, after having thus misrepresented them. If the Avestic religion has once been represented as Fire-worship and Dualism, what can be easier than to refute Fire-worship and Dualism ? But if we consult the original documents, and if we distinguish, as we do in the case of the New Testament, between what is early and what is late in the sacred canon of the Zoroastrians, we shall see that Zoroaster taught neither fire-worship nor dualism.

Zoroaster teaches neither Fire-worship nor Dualism.

The supreme deity of Zoroaster is Ahuramazda, not Atar, fire, though Atar is sometimes called the son of Ahuramazda *. Fire no doubt is a sacred object in all ancient sacrifices, but the fire, as such, is no more worshipped as the supreme God in the Avesta than it is in the Veda.

If we want to understand the true nature of the religion of Zoroaster we must remember, first of all, that the languages in which the Veda and Avesta are composed are more closely related to each other than any other language of the Aryan family. They are

1 Physical Religion, p. 231.

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in fact dialects, rather than two different languages. We must also remember that the religions of Zoroaster and of the Vedic Bishis share a certain number of their deities in common. It used to be supposed that because deva in the Veda is the name for gods, and in the Avesta the name for evil spirits, therefore the two religions were entirely antagonistic. But that is not the case. The name for gods in the Veda is not only deva, but likewise asura. This name, if derived from asu, breath, meant originally the living, he who lives and moves in the great phenomena of nature, or, as we should say, the living God. Certain Vedic gods, particularly Vanma, are in the Veda also called Asura in the good sense of the word. But very soon the Sanskrit asura took a bad sense, for instance, in the last book of the Big-veda and in the Atharva-veda, and particularly in the Br&hmanas. Here we constantly find the Asuras fighting against the Devas. Deva, as you remember, was the common Aryan name for gods, as the bright beings of nature. But while Asura became the name of the highest deity in the Avesta, namely Ahuramazda or Ormazd, deva occurs in the Avesta always in a bad sense, as the name of evil spirits. These Devas (da&vas),the modern Persian div, are the originators of all that is bad, of every impurity, of sin and death, and are constantly thinking of causing the destruction of the fields and trees and of the houses of religious men. The spots most liked by them, according to Zoroastrian notions, are those most filled with dirt and filth, and especially cemeteries, which places are therefore objects of the greatest abomination to a true Ormazd worshipper *.

1 Haug, Essays on tfie Parsis, p. 268.

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1B2 LECTUKE VI.

It is difficult to account for these facts, but we must always remember that while some of the principal Vedic deities, such as Indra1, for instance, occur in the Avesta as demons, other Devas or divine beings in the Veda have retained their original character in the Avesta, for instance Mithra, the Vedic Mitra, the sun, Airyaman, the Vedic Aryaman, likewise a name of the sun, a deity presiding over marriages. Bhaga, another solar deity in the Veda, occurs in the Avesta as bagha, and has become there a general name for god. This word must be as old as deva, for it occurs in the Slavonic languages as bog, god. It is known also from the name of Behistun, the mountain on which Darius engraved his great inscriptions, in cuneiform letters. The Greeks call it Bayaarava, i.e. the place of the gods. Other divine names which the Avesta and the Veda share in common are the Avestic Armaiti, the Vedic Aramati, the earth, Nar&samsa, lit. renowned among men (a name of Agni, Pushan, and other gods in the Veda), the Avestic Nairy&sawha, a messenger of Ormazd. Lastly, we find that while Indra has become a demon under the name of Andra, one of his bestknown Vedic epithets, namely, VWtrahan, slayer of Vritra, occurs in the Avesta as Verethraghna, meaning simply the conqueror, the angel who grants victory. His name becomes in the end Behr&m, and one of the Yashts is addressed to him, the Behr&m Yasht. It has generally been supposed, therefore, that a religious schism took place, and that Zarathushtra seceded from the worshippers of the Vedic

1 Also Saurva da&va, i.e. -Sarva, and Naonhaithya daeva, the Nasatyau.

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Devas. There is some truth in this, but though there was a severance, there always remained a common background for the two religions. Many of the Vedic deities were retained, subject only to the supremacy of Ahuramazda. It is the idea of one supreme God, the Ahuramazda, which forms the characteristic distinction between the Avestic and the Vedic religions. Only Zarathushtras monotheism does not exclude a belief in a number of deities, so long as they are not conceived as the equals of Ahuramazda. In his moral character Ahuramazda may really be looked upon as a development of the Vedic Vanma, but the moral character of this deity has become far more prominent in the Avesta than in the Veda.

The Avestic religion, as we know it from its own sacred books, is in fact a curious mixture of monotheism, polytheism, and dualism. Ahuramazda is no doubt the supreme God, the creator and ruler of all things, but there are many other divine beings who, though subject to him, are yet considered worthy of receiving adoration and sacrificial worship. Again, Ahuramazda, so far as he represents the good spirit, spenta mainyu, the spirit of light, is constantly opposed by Angra mainyu, best known in our times as Ahriman, the evil spirit, the spirit of darkness. But these two spirits were not originally conceived as two separate beings. In the ancient G&thas there is no trace as yet of a personal conflict between Ormazd and Ahriman. The enemy against whom Ormazd fights there, is Drukh, the Vedic Druh, 'the lying spirit.' Darius also in the cuneiform inscriptions does not yet mention Ahriman as the opponent of Ormazd.

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184 LECTURE VI.

Tho Vroblom of tho Origin of Bril.

Dr. Haug seems quite right in stating that Zarathushtra, having arrived at the idea of the unity and indivisibility of the Supreme Being, had afterwards to solve the great problem which has engaged the attention of so many wise men of antiquity and even of modern times, namely, how to reconcile the imperfections discernible in the world, the various kinds of evil, wickedness, and baseness, with the goodness and justice of the one God. He solved this question philosophically, by the admission of two primeval causes, which, though different, were united, and produced the world of material things as well as that of the spirit. This doctrine may best be studied in the thirtieth chapter of the Yasna. The one who produced all reality (gaya) and goodness is called there the good mind (vohu mand), the other, through whom the unreality (agyaiti) originated, bears the name of the evil mind (akem mand). All good, and true, and perfect things, which fall under the category of reality, are the productions of the c good mind,' while all that is bad and delusive belongs to the sphere of ' non-reality/ and is traced to the evil mind. These are the two moving causes in the universe, united from the beginning, and therefore called twins (ydma, Sk. yamau). They are present everywhere, in Ahuramazda as well as in men. These two primeval principles, if supposed to be united in Ahuramazda himself, are called spenta mainyu, his beneficent spirit, and angra mainyu, his hurtfiil spirit. That Angra mainyu was not conceived then as a separate being, opposed to Ahuramazda, Dr. Haug has proved from Yasna XIX. 9, where Ahuramazda is mentioning these two

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spirits as inherent in his own nature, though he distinctly called them the ' two masters' (p&yft), and the ' two creators/ But while at firet these two creative spirits were conceived as only two parts or ingredients of the Divine Being, this doctrine of Zarathushtra's became corrupted in course of time by misunderstandings and false interpretations. Spenta mainyu, the beneficent spirit, was taken as a name of Ahuramazda himself, and the Angra mainyu, by becoming entirely separated from Ahuramazda, was then regarded as the constant adversary of Ahuramazda. This is Dr. Haug's explanation of the Dualism in the later portions of the Avesta, and of the constant conflict between God and the Devil which we see for instance in the first fargard of the Vendfd&d. The origin of good and evil would thus have been trans-' ferred unto the Deity itself, though there the possible evil was always overcome by the real good. Zoroaster had evidently perceived that without possible evil there can be no real good, just as without temptation there can be no virtue. The same contest which is supposed to be carried on within the deity, is also carried on by each individual believer. Each believer is exhorted to take part in the fight against the evil spirit, till at last the final victory of good over evil will be secured.

This, of course, is not stated in so many words, but it follows from passages gathered from different parts of the Avesta.

The Angels, originally qualities of OrmasA.

The same process of changing certain qualities of the Divine Being into separate beings can be clearly

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186 lecture vr.

watched in the case of the Ameshaspentas. The Ameshaspentas of the Avesta are lit. the immortal benefactors. These were clearly at first mere qualities of the Divine Being, or gifts which Ormazd might grant to his worshippers, but they became afterwards angelic or half-divine beings, such as Vohu mano (Bahman), good mind, Asha vahishta (Ardi bahisht), the best truth, Armaiti (Spendarmad), devotion and piety, Ameretkd (Amardad), immortality, Haurvatkd (Khord&d), health, Kshathra vairya (Shahrivar), abundance of earthly goods.

As these angels formed in later times the great council of Ormazd, Ahriman also was supposed to be surrounded by a similar council of six. They were Akem mano, the evil spirit, Indra,#aurva, Naowhaithya, and two personifications of Darkness and Poison. In this way the original Monotheism of the Zoroastrian religion came to be replaced by that Dualism which is wrongly supposed to be the characteristic feature of the ancient Persian religion, and offers many points of similarity with the belief in God and His angels, and in a devil also, as we find it in the later portions of the Old Testament. From thence this belief was transferred to the New Testament, and is still held by many as a Christian dogma. Whether this belief in God and a devil and the angels forming their respective councils was actually borrowed by the Jews from Persia, is still an open question. If any of the Persian names of these angels or devils had been discovered in the Old Testament, the question would at once have been settled; but there is only one really Persian name of one of these evil spirits attached to Ahriman, which actually has found

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its way into the Old Testament in the apocryphal book of Tobit, iii. 8, namely Asmodms, which is the Persian A&hma daeva, the demon of anger and wrath. This name could have been borrowed from a Persian source only, and proves therefore the existence of a real historical intercourse between Jews and Persians at the time when the book of Tobit was written. We look in vain for any other Persian name of a good or an evil spirit in the genuine books of the Old Testament1, though there is no doubt great similarity between the angels and archangels of the Old Testament and the Ameshaspentas of the Avesta, as has been shown by Dr. Kohut in his very learned essay on this subject.

Of all this, of the original supremacy of Ahuramazda, of the later dualism of Ahuramazda and Angra niainyu, and of the councils of these two hostile powers there is no trace in the Veda. Traces, however, of a hostile feeling against the Asuras in general appear in the change of meaning of that word in some portions of the Rig-veda and the Atharvaveda, and more particularly in the Br&hmanas.

Asuras and Suras.

A new change appears in the later Sanskrit literature. Here the Asuras, instead of fighting with the Devas, are represented as fighting against the Suras; that is to say, by a mere mistake the * A' of Asura has been taken as a negative ' a/ whereas it is the radical 'a' of asu, breath, and a new name has been formed, Sura, which seemed to be connected with

1 See, however, my remarks on p. 52, on the appellation Ahmi yai ahmi.

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svar, the sky, and was used as a name of the gods, opposed to the Asuras, the Non-gods \ This is howmythology is often made. All the fights between the Suras and Asuras, of which we read so much in the Puranas are really based on a misunderstanding of the old name of the living God, namely Asu-ra, not A-sura.

In whatever way we may try to account for the change of the Vedic Devas, gods, into the Avestic DaSvas, evil spirits, there can be no doubt that we have to deal here with an historical fact. For some reason or other the believers in the true Asuras and in Ahuramazda must have separated at a certain time from the believers in the Vedic Devas. They differed on some points, but they agreed on others. In fact, we possess in the Yasna, in one of the more ancient remnants of Zarathushtra's religion, some verses which can only be taken as an official formula in which his followers abjured their belief in the Devas. There (Yasna XII) we read:

Abjuration of Daova Worship.

' I cease to be a Deva (worshipper). I profess to be a Zoroastrian Mazdayaznian (a worshipper of Ahuramazda), an enemy of the Devas, and a devotee of Ahura, a praiser of the immortal benefactors (Ameshaspentas). In sacrificing to the immortal Ameshaspentas I ascribe all good things to Ahuramazda, who is good and has (all that is) good, who is righteous, brilliant, glorious, who is the originator of all the best things, of the spirit of nature (g&ush),

1 By the same process, sita, bright, seems to have been formed from asita, dark.

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of righteousness, of the luminaries, and the selfshining brightness which is in the luminaries.

'I forsake the Devas, the wicked, bad, wrongful originators of mischief, the most baneful, destructive, and basest of beings. I forsake the Devas and those like Devas, the sorcerers and those like sorcerers, and any beings whatever of such kinds. I forsake them with thoughts, words, and deeds, I forsake them hereby publicly, and declare that all lies and falsehood are to be done away with.'

I do not see how after this any one can doubt that the separation of the followers of Zarathushtra, the believers in Ahuramazda, from the worshippers of the Vedic Devas, was a real historical event, though it does by no means follow that their separation was complete, and that the followers of Zoroaster surrendered every belief which they formerly shared in common with the Vedic Rishis.

I think we shall be perfectly right if we treat the Avestic as a secondary stage, as compared with the old Vedic religion, only we must guard against the supposition that the Avesta could not have preserved a number of ideas and religious traditions older even and simpler than what we find in the Veda. The Vedic poets, and more particularly the Vedic philosophers, have certainly advanced much beyond the level that had been reached before they were deserted by the Zoroastrians, but the Zoroastrians may have preserved much that is old and simple, much that dates from a period previous to their separation, much that we look for in vain in the Veda.

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180 LECTURE VI.

Immortality of the Soul in the A vesta.

This seems certainly to be the case when we com pare the Persian accounts of the immortality of the soul and its migrations after death with those which we examined before in the Upanishads. The idea that knowledge or faith is better than good works, and that a higher immortality awaits the thinker than the doer, an idea so familiar to the authors of the Upanishads, is quite foreign to the Avesta. The Avestic religion is before all things an ethical religion. It is meant to make people good. It holds out rewards for the good, and punishments for the bad in this life and in the life to come. It stands in this respect much more on the old level of the Vedic hymns than on that of the Upanishads. In the hymns, as we saw, the departed was simply told to run on the good path, past the two dogs, the brood of Sarama, the four-eyed, the grey, and then to go towards the wise Pitris or Fathers who were happily rejoicing with Yama. Or the departed was told to go forth on those ancient roads on which his forefathers had departed, and to meet the two kings delighting in (svadha) offerings, Yama and the god Varuwa. Nothing is said there of the smoke carrying him to the sky, nor of the sun moving towards the south or the north, or of the departed rising upwards till he reaches the moon or the place of lightning. The goal of the journey of the departed is simply the place where he will meet the Fathers, those who were distinguished for piety and penance, or those who fell in battle, or those who during life were generous with their wealth.

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The FitWs or Fathers as conceived in the Vedio Hymns.

All this is much more human than the account given in the Upanishads. And when we read in the Rig-veda the invocations addressed to the PitWs or the three generations of ancestors, we find there too again a much more childlike conception of their abode than what is given us in the Upanishads. Sometimes the great-grandfathers are supposed to be in heaven, the grandfathers in the sky, and the fathers still somewhere on the earth, but all are invited together to accept the offerings made to them at the Sr&ddhas, nay, they are supposed to consume the viands placed before them. Thus we read (Rigveda X. 15):

1. May the Soma-loving Fathers1, the lowest, the highest, and the middle arise! May the gentle and righteous Fathers who have come to life (again), protect us in these invocations!

2. May this salutation be for the Fathers to-day, for those who have departed before or after; whether they now dwell in the sky above the earth, or among the blessed people!

3. I invited the wise Fathers .... may they come hither quickly, and sitting on the grass readily partake of the poured-out draught!

4. Come hither to us with your help, you Fathers sitting on the grass! We have prepared these libations for you, accept them ! Come hither with your most blessed protection, and give us health and wealth without fail!

1 The Fathers who have reached the moon.

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5. The Soma-loving Fathers have been called hither to their dear viands which are placed on the grass. Let them approach, let them listen, let them bless, let them protect us!

6. Bending your knee and sitting on my right accept all this sacrifice. Do not hurt us, O Fathers, for any wrong that we may have committed against you, men as we are!

7. When you sit down on the lap of the red dawns, grant wealth to the generous mortal! 0 Fathers, give of your treasure to the sons of this man here, and bestow vigour here on us!

8. May Yama, as a friend with friends, consume the offerings according to his wish, united with those old Soma-loving Fathers of ours, the VasishtfAas, who arranged the Soma draught!

9. Come hither, O Agni, with those wise and truthful Fathers who like to sit down near the hearth, who thirsted when yearning for the gods, who knew the sacrifice, and who were strong in praise with their songs!

-10. Come, O Agni, with those ancient Fathers who like to sit down near the hearth, who for ever praise the gods, the truthful, who eat and drink our oblations, making company with Indra and the gods!

11. O Fathers, you who have been consumed by Agni, come here, sit down on your seats, you kind guides! Eat of the offerings which we have placed on the turf, and then grant us wealth and strong offspring!

12. O Agni, O Cratavedas, at our request thou hast carried the offerings, having first rendered them sweet. Thou gavest them to the Fathers, and they

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fed on their share. Eat also, O god, the proffered oblations!

13. The Fathers who are here, and the Fathers who are not here, those whom we know, and those whom we know not, thou, (?atavedas, knowest how many they are, accept the well-made sacrifice with the sacrificial portions!

14. To those who, whether burnt by fire or not burnt by fire, rejoice in their share in the midst of heaven, grant thou, O King, that their body may take that life which they wish for !

Compared with these hymns, the Upanishads represent a decidedly later development and refinement; they represent, in fact, the more elaborate views of speculative theologians, and no longer the simple imaginings of sorrowing mourners.

If we now turn to examine the ideas which the followers of Zoroaster had formed to themselves about the fates of the soul after death and its approach to God, we shall find that they also represent a much simpler faith, though there are some points on which they are clearly dependent on, or closely allied with the Upanishads, unless we suppose that both the Zoroastrians and the authors of the Upanishads arrived independently at the same ideas.

Fate of the individual Soul at tie general resurrection.

We read in the Vendtd&d XIX. 27«:

' Creator of the settlements supplied with creatures, righteous one! What happens when a man shall give up his soul in the world of existence?

* Then said Ahuramazda: After a man is dead, when

1 8.B.E., vol. iv. p. 212.

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his time is over, then the hellish evil-doing Da£vas assail him, and when the third night1 is gone, when the dawn appears and brightens up, and makes Mithra, the god with the beautiful weapons, reach the all-happy mountains and the sun is rising—

'Then the fiend, named Vizaresha, carries off in bonds the souls of the wicked DaSva-worshippers who live in sin. The soul enters the way made by time, and open both to the wicked and to the righteous. At the head of the Kinv&t bridge made by Mazda, they ask for their spirits and souls the reward for the worldly good which they gave away here below/

This UTinvai bridge of which I spoke in a former lecture, is known as early as the Gathas (XLVI. 12), and it is called there the judgment bridge (p. 133)2, also the bridge of earth (p. 183). In one place (p. 173) we read of the bridges, just as in the Upanishads we read of two roads, one leading to the Fathers, the other leading to the gods. There can be little doubt therefore that this bridge of the Avesta has the same origin as the bridge in the Upanishads. We read in the Kh&nd. Up. VIII. 4, 2, that 'day and night do not pass this bridge, nor old age, death and grief, neither good nor evil deeds; that all evil-doers turn away from it, because the world of Brahman is free from all evil. Therefore he who has crossed that bridge, if blind, ceases to be blind; if wounded, ceases to be wounded; if afflicted, ceases to be afflicted. Therefore when that bridge has been crossed, night becomes day indeed.' It is true that here this bridge

1 This shows that rising after the third night, or on the fourth day, was the recognised belief in Persia; not on the third day, as among the Jews.

* S.B.E., vol. xxxi.

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is already taken in a more metaphysical sense and identified with the Atman, the self; which, from a Ved&nta point of view, is called the only true bridge between the self and the Self; still the original conception of a bridge which separates (vidhriti) and at the same time connects this and the other world, which evil-doers fear to cross, and where all that is of evil is left behind, is clearly there. As the commentary explains that this bridge is made of earth, and as in the Avesta also, it is called the bridge of earth, we must take it as having been conceived originally as a bank of earth, a pathway (a pons) across a river (Khknd. Up. VIII. 4, 1, note), rather than a suspended bridge over an abyss.

Rewards and Punishments after Death.

I shall now read you another and fuller account of what the Zoroastrians have to say about that bridge, and about the fate of the soul after death, and more particularly about rewards and punishments. This account is taken from the Hadhokht Nask1:

1. Zarathushtra asked Ahuramazda:c O Ahuramazda, most beneficent Spirit, Maker of the material world, thou Holy One!

* When one of the faithful departs this life, where does his soul abide on that night ?'

2. Ahuramazda answered: 'It takes its seat near the head, singing (the Ustavaiti G&tha) and proclaiming happiness: "Happy is he, happy the man, whoever he be, to whom Ahuramazda gives the full accomplishment of his wishes!" On that night his soul tastes as much of pleasure as the whole of the living world can taste/

1 Of. Hang, p. 220; Darmesteter, ii. 314.

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3. ' On the second night, where does his soul abide ?'

4. Ahuramazda answered: ' It takes its seat near the head, singing (the U&tavaiti G&tha) and proclaiming happiness: " Happy is he, happy the man, whoever he be, to whom Ahuramazda gives the full accomplishment of his wishes!" On that night his soul tastes as much of pleasure as the whole of the living world can taste.'

5. c On the third night, where does his soul abide ?'

6. Ahuramazda answered: * It takes its seat near the head, singing (the Ustavaiti G&tha) and proclaiming happiness: "Happy is he, happy the man, whoever he be, to whom Ahuramazda gives the full accomplishment of his wishes!" On that night his soul tastes as much of pleasure as the whole of the living world can taste/

7. At the end of the third night, when the dawn appears, it seems to the soul of the faithful one, as if it were brought amidst plants and scents : it seems as if a wind were blowing from the region of the south, from the regions of the south, a sweet-scented wind, sweeter-scented than any other wind in the world.

8. And it seems to the soul of the faithful one as if he were inhaling that wind with the nostrils, and he thinks: ' Whence does that wind blow, the sweetestscented wind I ever inhaled with my nostrils ?'

9. And it seems to him as if his own conscience were advancing to him in that wind, in the shape of a maiden fair, bright, white-armed, strong, tall-formed, high-standing, full-breasted, beautiful of body, noble, of a glorious seed, of the size of a maid in her fifteenth year, as fair as the fairest thing in the world.

10. And the soul of the faithful one addressed her.

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asking: 'What maid art thou, who art the fairest maid I have ever seen ?'

11. And she, being his own conscience, answers him: 4 O thou youth of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, of good religion, I am thy own conscience !

1 Everybody did love thee for that greatness, goodness, fairness, sweet-scentedness, victorious strength, and freedom from sorrow, in which thou dost appear to me;

12. * And so thou, O youth of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, of good religion! didst love me for that greatness, goodness, fairness, sweet-scentedness, victorious strength, and freedom from sorrow, in which I appear to thee.

13. ' When thou wouldst see a man making derision and deeds of idolatry, or rejecting (the poor) and shutting his door, then thou wouldst sit singing the Gathas and worshipping the good waters and Atar, the son of Ahuramazda, and rejoicing the faithful that would come from near or from afar.

14. 'I was lovely and thou madest me still lovelier; I was fair and thou madest me still fairer; I was desirable and thou madest me still more desirable: I was sitting in a forward place and thou madest me sit in the foremost place, through this good thought, through this good speech, through this good deed of thine; and so henceforth men worship me for having long sacrificed unto and conversed with Ahuramazda.

15. ' The first step that the soul of the faithful man made, placed him in the Good-Thought Paradise;

' The second step that the soul of the faithful man made, placed him in the Good-Word Paradise.

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198 LECTURE VI.

' The third step that the soul of the faithful man made, placed him in the Good-Deed Paradise;

' The fourth step that the soul of the faithful man made, placed him in the Endless Lights.'

16. Then one of the faithful, who had departed before him, asked him, saying: ' How didst thou depart this life, thou holy man ? How didst thou come, thou holy man! from the abodes full of cattle and full of the wishes and enjoyments of love? From the material world into the world of the spirit? From the decaying world into the undecaying one? How long did thy felicity last ?'

17. And Ahuramazda answered: 'Ask him not what thou askest him, who has just gone the dreary way, full of fear and distress, where the body and the soul part from one another.

18; ' [Let him eat] of the food brought to him, of the oil of Zaremaya: this is the food for the youth of good thoughts, of good words, of good deeds, of good religion, after he has departed this life; this is the food for the holy woman, rich in good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, well-principled and obedient to her husband, after she has departed this life.'

The fate of the soul of the wicked is throughout the opposite of what happens to the soul of a righteous man. During three nights it sits near the skull and endures as much suffering as the whole of the living world can taste. At the end of the third night, when the dawn appears, it seems as if it were brought amidst snow and stench, and as if a wind were blowing from the North, the foulest-scented of all the winds in the world. The wicked soul has to inhale that wind and then to pass through the Evil-Thought Hell, the Evil

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Word Hell, and the Evil-Deed Hell. The fourth step lays the soul in Endless Darkness. Then it has to eat food of poison and poisonous stench, whether it was the soul of a wicked man or of a wicked woman. You will have perceived how much of real truth there is, hidden beneath all this allegorical language of the Avesta. The language is allegorical, but no one could have used that language who was not convinced of its underlying truth, namely, that the soul of the righteous will be rewarded in the next life by his own good thoughts, his own good words, and his own good deeds. The idea that these good thoughts, words, and deeds meet him in the shape of a beautiful maiden, whom at first he does not know, till she tells him who she is, is peculiar to the Avesta, though some faint indications of it may again be discovered in the Upanishads.

Good Works in the shape of a Beautiful Maiden.

For we read in the Kaushitaki-Upanishad, I. 3, that when the departed approaches the hall of Brahman he is received by beautiful maidens, called Apsaras. But what we look for in vain in the Upanishads is the ethical character which pervades the whole Avesta. It is good thoughts, words, and deeds that are rewarded in the next world, not knowledge which, as we saw, carried off the highest reward according to the teaching of the Upanishads. The sweet scents also by which the departed is greeted in the next world form a common element shared by the Upanishads and by the Avesta.

Influence on Mohammedanism.

It would be curious to find out whether this allegorical conception of the rewards of men in Paradise

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may have influenced the mind of Mohammed, when he promised his warriors that they would be received there by beautiful maidens. It would seem a curious misapplication of a noble conception. But it is perfectly true that even in the A vesta the beauty of the young maiden who receives the righteous soul, is painted in what we should call warm and sensuous colours, though there was nothing in her description that would seem objectionable to an Oriental mind. Such changes have happened in the history of other religions also. The most probable historical channel between Mohammed and the Avesta would be the same again as that through which the idea of the bridge Es Sir&t reached Mohammed, namely, his Jewish friends and teachers.

It is true there is no trace of a belief in Houris among the Jews, but Dr. Eohut pointed out many years ago, in the Zeitsehrift der Deutschen Morgenl. GeseUschaft, xxi. p. 566, that the Rabbis believed and taught that when man comes near death, all his acts appear before his soul, and that his good works promise to guide him to the judgment-seat of God. They hold that the souls of the pious are not admitted at once into Paradise, but that they have first to render an account and to suffer punishment for some defects that still cling to them. This lasts for a twelvemonth, when the body is supposed to be entirely decayed, so that the soul may rise freely and remain in heaven. ' The body/ says God,' is taken from the earth, not from heaven, but thou, O soul, art a citizen of heaven, thou knowest its laws and thou alone shalt render an account.' This shows no doubt clear traces of Persian influence, but at the same time an independent treatment of Persian

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ideas, such as we find them first in the A vesta. At ajl events these Kabbis had advanced far beyond the ideas which are found in the Old Testament as to the fate of the soul after death.

There is another curious passage quoted by Dr. Kohut from the Talmud (Synhedr. 916, Midrash, Genes. Rabba 169), for which, however, I know no parallel in the Avesta. There we are told that at the time of the resurrection the soul will justify itself and say: ' The body alone is guilty, he alone has sinned. I had scarcely left it when, pure like a bird, I flew through the air.' But the body will say: * The soul alone was guilty, she has driven me to sin. She had scarcely left me, when I lay on the ground motionless and sinned no more.' Then God places the soul once^nore into the body and says : ' See, how you have sinned, now render an account, both of you/

Extract from the Minokhired on the Weighing* of the Dead.

In the Minokhired we get a still fuller account than in the Avesta of the journey of the soul across the bridge. There we read, II. 100 :

' Thou shouldest not become presumptuous through life, for death cometh upon thee at last, the dog. the bird lacerate the corpse, and the perishable part (sagrinako) falls to the ground. During three days and nights the soul sits at the crown of the head of the body. And the fourth day, in the light of dawn, (with the) cooperation of Srdsh the righteous, V&i the good, and Vfihr&m the strong, and with the opposition of Astfividkd, VM the bad, Frazisht6 the demon, and Niztet6 the demon, and the evil-designing Aeshm, the evildoer, the impetuous assailant it goes up to the awful

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JJindvar bridge (here iTinvatf has been corrupted into iHndvar), to which every one, righteous and wicked, is coming. And many opponents have watched there, with the desire of evil of Aeshm, the impetuous assailant, and Ast6vid&d, who devours creatures of every kind and knows no satiety, and the meditation of Mitr6 and Srdsh and Rashnft, and the weighing of Rashnfi, the just, with the balance of spirits which renders no favour on any side, neither for the righteous nor yet the wicked, neither for the lords nor yet the monarchs. As much as a hair's breadth it will not turn and has no partiality, and he who is a lord and monarch it considers equally in its decision with him who is the least of mankind. And when a soul of the righteous passes upon the bridge the width of the bridge becomes as it were a league, and the righteous soul passes over with the co-operation of Sr6sh the righteous/ Then follows what we had before, namely, his meeting a maiden who is handsomer and better than any maiden in the world. And the righteous soul speaks thus, ' Who mayest thou be, that a maiden who is handsomer and better than thou was never seen by me in the worldly existence/ In reply that maiden says: * I am no maiden, but I am thy virtuous deeds, thou youth who art well thinking, well speaking, well doing, and of good religion/

The only new feature in this account is the weighing of the soul by Rashnft, the righteous. Of this there is no trace in the Upanishads, though we saw that it is alluded to in the Br&hmanas (see p. 167). It is an idea well known in Egypt, but it is impossible to suppose that at that early time there was any communication between Egypt and Persia. It is one of

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those coincidences which can only be accounted for by our remembering that what was natural in one country may have been natural in another also.

Arrival of the Soul before the throne of Bahman and Ahuramazda.

Let us now follow the fate of the soul, after it has crossed the Kiixva.t bridge. When the ifinva£ bridge has been crossed, the archangel Bdhman (Vohu-mano) rises from a golden throne, and exclaims: c How hast thou come hither to us, O righteous one! from the perishable life to the imperishable life.'

The souls of the righteous then proceed joyfully to Ahuramazda, to the Ameshaspentas, to the golden throne, to paradise (Garo-nemgtna), that is the residence of Ahuramazda, the Ameshaspentas, and of the other righteous ones.

Thus we see that the journey of the soul from this life to a better life ends in the Avesta very much as it ended in the Upanishads. The soul stands before the throne of Ahuramazda in the Avesta as it stands before the throne of Brahman in the Upanishads. Only while the Upanishads say very little about the punishments inflicted on the wicked, the Avesta explains that the unrighteous soul is received with scorn even by the damned, its future fellow-sufferers, and is tormented at the command of Angra mainyu, though himself the spirit of evil, with poison and hideous viands.

Common background of Avesta and Veda.

If we compare the theories on the soul and its fate after death, as we find them in the Upanishads and in the Avesta, we see that a general belief in a soul

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and its life after death is common to both, and that they likewise agree in believing that the righteous soul is led to the throne of God, whether he is called Brahman or Ahuramazda. But in several respects the account of the soul's journey seems more simple in the Avesta than in the Upanishads. We saw that it agrees more with the notions which we find ex> pressed in the Vedic hymns about the departed, it insists more on the virtuous character of the soul, and distributes rewards and punishments in strict accordance with the good thoughts, words, and deeds of the departed. It says little or nothing about the different stations on the two roads that lead to the Fathers or to the gods, but it is more full in the-description of the bridge and the weighing of the soul. The idea that knowledge or faith is better than good thoughts, words, and deeds has not yet dawned on the Persian mind, still less is there a trace of the belief in metempsychosis or the migration of the human soul into the bodies of lower animals.

The common background of the two religions is clear enough, though whether what is peculiar to each is a remnant of an earlier period or the result of later thoughts is more difficult to determine.

Pltaras, the Fathers in the Veda, the Fravashia in the Avesta.

We saw that in the hymns of the Veda the departed were often spoken of as Pitaras, the Fathers, and that after receiving for three generations the sr&ddha offering of their descendants, they were raised to a rank equal almost to that of the Devas, nay at a later time even superior to them. In the place of these Pitaras we find in the Avesta the Fravashis, or

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in an earlier form the Fravardin. This would correspond to a Sanskrit word pravartin, which, however, does not occur in Sanskrit. Pravartin might mean what moves forward or sets in motion, like pravartaka, a promoter, but it is explained in Zend as meaning protector. The Persian name Phraortes is probably a Greek corruption of Pravarti.

It is curious that the name of Pitaras should not occur in the Avesta, nor that of Pravartin in the Veda, though the two were clearly meant at first for exactly the same thing.

Wider meaning' of Fravashi.

The Fravashis, however, are not restricted to the departed, though their Fravashis are most frequently invoked. Every being, whether living or dead, has its Fravashi, its unseen agent, which is joined to the body at the time of birth, and leaves it again at the time of death. The Fravashis remind us of the Greek Daimones and the Roman Genii. The Fravashis belong to the spiritual, the body to the material creation. Not only men, but the gods also, Ormazd, the sacred word, the sky, the water, the plants, all have their Fravashis. We may call the Fravashi the genius of anything. Dr. Haug, however, goes further and identifies the Fravashis with the ideas of Plato, which is going too far, for the Fravashis are always selfconscious, if not personal beings. Thus we read in the Fravardin Yasht1:

' Ahuramazda spake to Spitama Zarathushtra: To thee alone I shall tell the power and strength, glory, usefulness, and happiness of the holy guardian angels,

1 Haug, p. 207.

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the strong and victorious, O righteous Spitama Zarathushtra! how they come to help me. By means of their splendour and glory I uphold the sky, which is shining so beautifully and which touches and surrounds this earth; it resembles a bird which is ordered by God to stand still there; it is high as a tree, wide-stretched, iron-bodied, having its own light in the three worlds. Ahuramazda, together with Mithra, Rashnu, and Spenta Armaiti, puts on a garment decked with stars, and made by God in such a way that nobody can see the ends of its parts. By means of the splendour and glory of the Fravashis, I uphold the high strong Anahita (the celestial water) with bridges, the salutary, who drives away the demons, who has the true faith and is to be worshipped in the world

12. ' If the strong guardian-angels of the righteous should not give me assistance, then cattle and men, the two last of the hundred classes of beings, would no longer exist for me; then would commence the devil's power, the devil's origin, the whole living creation would belong to the devil.

16. 'By means of their splendour and glory, the ingenuous man Zarathushtra, who spoke such good words, who was the source of wisdom, who was born before Gotama, had such intercourse with God. By means of their splendour and glory, the sun goes on his path; by means of their splendour and glory, the moon goes on her path; by means of their splendour and glory, the stars go on their path/

Thus we see that almost everything that Ahuramazda does is done by him with the assistance of the Fravashis, originally the spirits of the departed, after

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THE ESCHAT0L0GY OP THE AVESTA. 207
wards the spirits of almost everything in nature. But that they were originally, like the Vedic Pitaras, the spirits of the departed, we see from such passages as:

*I praise, I invoke, and extol the good, strong, beneficent guardian angels of the righteous. We praise those who are in the houses, those who are in the countries, those who are in the Zoroastrian communities, those of the present, those of the past, those of the future, righteous, all those invoked in countries where invocation is practised,

' Who uphold heaven, who uphold water, who uphold earth, who uphold nature, &c.

'We worship the good and beneficent guardian angels of the departed, who come to the village in the season called Hamaspathmaeda. Then they roam about there ten nights, wishing to learn what assistance they might obtain, saying, " Who will praise us ? who will worship us? who will adore us? who will pray to us ? who will satisfy us with milk and clothes in his hand and with a prayer for righteousness? whom of us will he call here? whose soul is to worship you? To whom of us will he give that offering in order to enjoy imperishable food for ever and ever?"'

Nowhere perhaps can the process by which the spirits of the departed were raised to the rank of gods be perceived more clearly than in the case of the Persian Fravashis, but nowhere again is there stronger evidence for what I hold against Mr. Herbert Spencer, namely that this deification of the departed spirits presupposes a belief in gods to whose rank these spirits could be raised.

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LECTURE VII.

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO. Plato's Authority.

BEFORE I proceed to explain to you more in detail the ideas of the later Hindu philosophers on the fate of the soul after death, it may be useful, if only to refresh our memory, to devote one lecture to a consideration of the best and highest thoughts which the same problem has elicited in Greece. If we should find hereafter that there are certain similarities between the thoughts of Plato and the thoughts of the poets and prophets of the Upanishads and the Avesta, such similarities are no doubt interesting, and perhaps all the more so because, as I pointed out before, we cannot ascribe them either to the community of language or to historical tradition. We can only account for them by that common human nature which seems to frame these ideas by some inward necessity, though without any tangible evidence in support of any of them. You will not be surprised if I turn at once to Plato.

Plato, though called a philosopher only, speaks of the fate of the soul after death with authority, with the same authority at least as the authors of the Upanishads. Both Plato, however, and the

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authors of the Upanishads were far too deeply impressed with the real truth of their teaching to claim for it any adventitious or miraculous sanction. Unfortunately they could not prevent their less inspired and less convinced followers from ascribing to their utterances an inspired, a sacred, nay a miraculous character.

Plato's Mythological language.

It cannot be denied that the similarity between Plato's language and that of the Upanishads is sometimes very startling. Plato, as you know, likes to clothe his views on the soul in mythological phraseology, just as the authors of the Upanishads do, nor can I see what other language was open to them. It is an absurd anachronism, if some would-be critics of ancient religions and ancient philosophies fasten with an air of intellectual superiority on this mythological phraseology, and speak contemptuously of the childish fables of Plato and other ancient sages as unworthy of the serious consideration of our age. Who could ever have believed, they say, that a soul could grow wings, or lose her wings. Who could have believed that there was a bridge between earth and heaven, and that a beautiful maiden was standing at the end of it to receive the soul of the departed ? Should we not rather say, Who can be so obtuse as not to see that those who used such language were trying to express a deep truth, namely, that the soul would be lifted up by noble thoughts and noble deeds, as if by wings, and that the highest judge to judge the soul after death would be a man's own conscience, standing before him in all its beauty and innocence, like the most beautiful and innocent maiden of fifteen
years. Think only of the intellectual efforts that were required before even such parables could have been thought of, and then instead of wondering at the language in which they were expressed, we shall wonder rather that anybody could have misunderstood them, and have asked to have such simple and transparent parables declared.

The Tale of the Sonl.

Plato asserts without fear of contradiction that the soul is immortal. The Upanishads hardly assert it, because they cannot conceive that doubt is possible on that point. 'Who could say that the soul was mortal?' Mortal means decay of a material organic body, it clearly has no sense if applied to the soul.

* I have heard,' Plato writes,' from men and women wise in divine matters a true tale as I think, and a noble one. My informants are those priests and priestesses whose aim is to be able to render an account of the subjects with which they deal. They are supported also by Pindar and many other poets— by all, I may say, who are truly inspired. Their teaching is that the soul of man is immortal; that it comes to an end of one form of existence, which men call dying, and then is born again, but never perishes. Since then the soul is immortal \ and has often been born, and has seen the things here on earth and the things in Hades; all things, in short there is nothing which it has not learned, so that it is no marvel that it should be possible for it to recall what it certainly knew before, about virtue and other topics. For since all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things,

1 Westcott, Religious Thought in the West, p. 27.

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there is no reason why a man who has recalled one fact only, which men call learning, should not by his own power find out everything else, should he be courageous, and not lose heart in the search. For seeking and learning is all an art of recollection/

The next passage occurs in the Phaedrus, where we meet with the myth of the chariot, guided by a charioteer, and drawn by two winged steeds, of which in the case of man, the one is good, the other bad. I must give you some of Plato's sentences in full, in order to be able to compare them afterwards with certain passages from the Upanishads.

The Charioteer and the Horses.

Plato (Phaedrus 246, transl., p. 123) says: c Enough of the soul's immortality, her form is a theme of divine and large discourse; the tongue of man may, however, speak of this briefly, as in a figure. Let our figure be a composite nature—a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the winged horses and the charioteer of the gods are all of them noble, and of noble breed, but our horses are mixed; moreover, our charioteer drives them in a pair, and one of them is noble and of noble origin, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble origin, and the driving, as might be expected, is no easy matter with us/

If we turn to the Ka£Aa-TJpanishad III. 3, we read there: 'Know the soul to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect (buddhi) the charioteer, and the mind the reins. The senses they call the horses, the objects of the senses their roads ... He who has no understanding, and he whose mind (the reins) is never firmly held, his senses (horses) are

Pa

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unmanageable, like vicious horses of a charioteer. But he whose understanding and whose mind are always firmly held, his senses are under control, like good horses of a charioteer. He who has no understanding, who is unmindful and always impure, never reaches the goal, but enters into the round of births (sams&ra). But he who has understanding, who is mindful and always pure, reaches indeed the goal, from whence he is not born again* (from whence there is no return).

Some people have thought that the close coincidence between the simile used by Plato and by the Upanishad, and the resemblance is certainly very close, shows that there must have been some kind of historical contact even at that early time between the religious thought of India and the philosophical thought of Greece. We cannot deny the possibility of such a view, though we must confess our ignorance as to any definite channel through which Indian thought could have reached the shores of Greece at that period.

The Procession of the Gods.

Let us now explore Plato's speculations about the soul a little further. There is his splendid description of the procession of the gods in heaven, a myth, if you like, but a myth full of meaning, as every myth was meant to be.

Zeus, we read, advances first, driving his winged car, ordering all things and superintending them. A host of deities and spirits follow him, marshalled in eleven bodies, for Hestia remains alone in the dwelling of the gods. Many then and blessed are the spectacles and movements within the sphere of heaven

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which the gods go through, each fulfilling his own function; and whoever will and can, follows them, for envy is a stranger to the divine company. But when they afterwards proceed to a banquet, they advance by what is now a steep course along the inner circumference of the heavenly vault. The chariots of the gods being well balanced and well driven, advance easily, others with difficulty; for the vicious horse, unless the charioteer has thoroughly broken it, weighs down the car by his proclivity towards the earth. Whereupon the soul is put to the extremity of toil and effort. For the souls of the immortals, when they reach the summit, go outside and stand upon the surface of heaven, and as they stand there, the revolution of the sphere bears them round, and they contemplate the objects that are beyond it. That supercelestial realm no earthly poet ever yet sung or will sing in worthy strains. It is occupied by the colourless, shapeless, intangible, absolute essence which reason alone can contemplate, and which is the one object of true knowledge. The divine mind, therefore, when it sees after an interval that which really is, is supremely happy, and gains strength and enjoyment by the contemplation of the True (Satyam), until the circuit of the evolution is completed, in the course of which it obtains a clear vision of the absolute (ideal) justice, temperance, and knowledge; and when it has thus been feasted by the sight of the essential truth of all things, the soul again enters within the vault of heaven and returns home.

Now here I must again stop for a moment, to point out a significant coincidence between Plato and the Upanishads.

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Belief in metempsychosis in Plato and the Upanishads.

You may remember that the Upanishads represent the soul, even after it has reached the abode of the Fathers, as liable to return to a new round of existences, and how this led in India to a belief in metempsychosis. Now let us see how Plato arrives by the same road, yet quite independently, at the same conclusion l:

' This is the life of the gods/ he says,' but of other souls that which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer world and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds and with difficulty beholding true being (rd oz;=satyam), while another rises and falls, and sees and again fails to see, by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world, and they all follow; but not being strong enough, they are carried round in the deep below, plunging, treading on one another, striving to be first, and there is confusion and extremity of effort, and many of them are lamed and have their wings broken through the ill driving of the charioteer; and all of them after a fruitless toil depart, without being initiated into the mysteries of the true being (rrjs tov ovtos 04as), and departing feed on opinion. The reason of their great desire to behold the plain of truth is that the food which is suited to the highest part of the soul comes out of that meadow; and the wing on which the souls soar is nourished with this. And there is a law of destiny that the soul which attains any vision of truth in company with the god is

1 Phaedrus, p. 248, translated by Professor Jowett.

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preserved from harm until the next period, and if attaining, is always unharmed. But when she is unable to follow, and fails to behold the vision of truth, and through some ill hap sinks beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and her feathers fall from her, and she drops to earth, then the law ordains that this soul shall at her first birth pass, not into any other animal but only into man, and the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher or artist, or some musical and loving nature; that which has seen truth in the second degree shall be a righteous king or lordly warrior; the soul which is of the third class shall be a politician or economist or trader; the fourth shall be a lover of gymnastic toils or a physician; the fifth a prophet or hierophant; to the sixth a poet or some other imitative artist will be appropriate; to the seventh the life of an artisan or husbandman; to the eighth that of a sophist or demagogue; to the ninth that of a tyrant; all these are states of probation, in which he who lives righteously improves, and he who lives unrighteously deteriorates his lot/

The Vine Classes of Plato and Mann.

I have already pointed out in a former lecture the curious parallelism between Indian and Greek thought. You may remember that Manu also establishes exactly the same number of classes, namely nine, and that we could judge of the estimation in which his contemporaries held certain occupations by the place which he assigned to each. Plato places the philosopher first, the tyrant last; Manu places kings and warriors in the fifth class, and assigns the third class

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to hermits, ascetics, and Br&hmans, while he reserves the first class to Brahman and other gods. Thus you find here also as before a general similarity, but likewise very characteristic differences.

Plato then continues: 'Ten thousand years must elapse before the soul can return to the place from whence she came, for she cannot grow her wings in less; only the soul of a philosopher, guileless and true, or the soul of a lover, who is not without philosophy, may acquire wings in the third recurring period of a thousand years; and if they choose this life three times in succession, then they have their wings given them, and go away at the end of three thousand years. But the others receive judgment, when they have completed their first life, and after the judgment they go, some of them to the houses of correction which are under the earth, and are punished; others to some place in heaven, where they are lightly borne by justice, and then they live in a manner worthy of the life which they led here when in the form of men. And at the end of the first thousand years the good souls and also the evil souls both come to draw lots and choose their second life, and they may take any which they like/

Here there are not many points of similarity between Plato and Manu, except that we see how Plato also admits places of punishment and correction which we may call Hells, in addition to the inevitable chain of cause and effect which determines the fate of the soul in its migrations after death. In another passage Plato (Phaedo 113) gives a more detailed account, not quite worthy of a philosopher, of these hells and of the punishments inflicted on evil

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doers. Here the souls are supposed to become purified and chastened, and when they have suffered their welldeserved penalties, they receive the rewards of their good deeds according to their deserts. ' Those, however, who are considered altogether incorrigible, are hurled into Tartarus, and they never come out. Others, after suffering in Tartarus for a year, may escape again if those whom they have injured pardon them. Those on the contrary who have been pre-eminent for holiness of life are released from this earthly prison and go to their pure home which is above and dwell in the purer earth; and those who have duly purified themselves with philosophy,live henceforth altogether without the body, in mansions fairer than these,—which may not be described and of which the time would fail me to tell.'

Human Souls migrating1 into Animal Bodies.

We now come to what has always been considered the most startling coincidence between Plato and the philosophers of India, namely, the belief in the migration of souls from human into animal bodies. Though we have become -accustomed to this idea, it cannot be denied that its first conception was startling. Several explanations have been attempted to account for it. It has often been supposed that a belief in ancestral spirits and ghosts haunting their former homes is at the bottom of it all. But judging from the first mention of this kind of metempsychosis in the Upanishads, we saw that it was really based on purely moral grounds. We find the first general allusion to it in the KatfAa-Upanishad.

There we read (II. 5): ' Fools dwelling in darkness, wise in their own conceit and puffed up with vain

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knowledge, go round and round, staggering to and fro, like blind men led by the blind.

' The Hereafter never rises before the eyes of the careless child, deluded by the delusion of wealth.

c This is the world, he thinks, there is no other, and thus he falls again and again under my sway' (the sway of death).

The speaker here is Yama, the ruler of the Fathers, afterwards the god of death, and he who punishes the wicked in Hell.

With Plato also the first idea of metempsychosis or the migration of human souls into animal bodies seems to have been suggested by ethical considerations. At the end of the first thousand years, he says, the good souls and also the evil souls both come to draw lots and choose their second life, and they may take any which they like \ The soul of man may pass into the life of a beast, or from the beast return again into the man. Here it is clearly supposed that a man would choose according to his taste and character, so that his next life should correspond to his character, as formed in a former life. This becomes still clearer when we read the story of Er at the end of the Republic.

The Story of Er.

You all remember Er2, the son of Armenius, the Pamphylian, who was slain in battle, and ten days afterwards when the bodies of the dead were taken up already in a state of corruption, his body was found unaffected by decay and carried away home to

1 Phaedrus, p. 249.

8 For similar stories see Liebrecht in his Notes to Gtervasius of Tilbury, p. 89.

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be burnt. But on the twelfth day, as he was lying on the funeral pile, he returned to life and told all he had seen in the other world. His soul, he said, left the body and he then went on a long journey with a great company. I cannot read to you the whole of this episode—you probably all know it—at all events it is easily accessible, and a short abstract will suffice for our purposes. Er relates how he came first of all to a mysterious place, where there were two openings in the earth, and over against them two openings in the heaven. And there were judges sitting between, to judge the souls, who sent the good souls up to heaven, and the bad down into the earth. And while these souls went down into the earth and up to heaven by one opening, others came out from the other opening descending from heaven or ascending from the earth, and they met in a meadow and embraced each other, and told the one of the joys of heaven, and the others of the sufferings beneath the earth during the thousand years they had lived there. After tarrying seven days on the meadow the spirits had to proceed further. This further journey through the spheres of heaven is fully described, till it ends with the souls finding themselves in the presence of the three Fates, Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos. But here, instead of receiving their lot for a new life as a natural consequence of their former deeds, or misdeeds, they are allowed to choose their own lot, and they choose it naturally according to their experience in a former life, and according to the bent of their character as formed there. Some men, disgusted with mankind, prefer to be born as animals, as lions or eagles, some animals delight in trying their luck as

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men. Odysseus, the wisest of all, despises the lot of royalty and wealth, and chooses the quiet life of a private person, as the happiest lot on earth. Then after passing the desert plain of Forgetfulness, and the river of Unmindfulness, they are caught by an earthquake, and driven upwards to their new birth. Plato then finishes the vision of the Pamphylian Er with the following words : * Wherefore my counsel is that we hold for ever to the heavenly way, and follow after justice and virtue, always considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil. Then shall we live dear to one another and to the gods, both while remaining here and when, like conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we receive our reward. And it shall be well with us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand years which we have been describing.'

Coincidences and Differences.

This has justly been called the most magnificent myth in the whole of Plato, a kind of philosophical apocalypse which has kept alive a belief in immortality among the Greeks, and not among the Greeks only, but among all who became their pupils. There is no doubt a certain similarity in the broad outlines of this Platonic myth, illustrating the migration of the soul after death, with the passages which we quoted before from the Upanishads. The fact that Er was a Pamphylian has even been supposed to indicate an Eastern origin of the Platonic legend, but I cannot persuade myself that we should be justified in tracing the source of any of Plato's thoughts to India or Persia. The differences between the Indian and

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the Greek legends seem to me quite as great as their coincidences. It may seem strange, no doubt, that human fancy should in Greece as well as in India have created this myth of the soul leaving the body, and migrating to the upper or lower regions to receive its reward or its punishment; and more particularly its entrance into animal bodies seems very startling, when we find it for the first time in Greece as well as in India. Still it is far easier to suppose that the same ideas burst forth spontaneously from the same springs, the fears and hopes of the human heart, than to admit an exchange of ideas between Indian and Greek philosophers in historical times. The strongest coincidence is that between the nine or three times three classes of the souls occupations as admitted by Manu and by Plato; and again between the river VigrarS,, the Ageless, where a man leaves all his good and his evil deeds behind him, and the draught of the Zaramaya oil by which in the A vesta the soul is supposed to become oblivious of all worldly cares and concerns before entering paradise; and again the plain of Forgetfulness and the river of Unmindfulness mentioned by Plato ; or still more the river Lethe or forgetfulness in general Greek mythology. Still, even this may be a thought that presented itself independently to Greek and Indian thinkers. All who believed the soul to be immortal, had to believe likewise in the pre-existence of the soul or in its being without a beginning, and as no soul here on earth has any recollection of its former existences, a river of Lethe or forgetfulness, or a river Vigrarfi, and the oil of forgetfulness, were not quite unnatural expedients to account for this.

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Truth underlying- Myth.

No one would go so far as to say, because some of these theories are the same in India and in Greece, and sprang up independently in both countries, that therefore they are inevitable or true. All we have any right to say is that they are natural, and that there is something underlying them which, if expressed in less mythological language, may stand the severest test of philosophical examination.

In order to see this more clearly, in order to satisfy ourselves as to what kind of truth the unassisted human mind may reach on these subjects, it may be useful to examine here the theories of some of the so-called savage races. In their case the very possibility of an historical intercourse with India or Greece is excluded.

The Haldaa on the Immortality of the Soul.

I choose for this purpose first of all the Haidas, who inhabit the Charlotte Islands and have lately been described to us by the Rev. C. Harrison, who is thoroughly conversant with their language.

According to his description the religion of these savage Haidas would seem to be very like the religion of the ancient Persians. They believe in two principal deities, one the god of light, who is good, the other the god of darkness, who is evil. Besides these two, there are a number of smaller deities whom the Haidas pray to and to whom they offer small sacrifices. They fear these smaller deities, such as the god of the sun and of the sea, more than the two great powers of light and darkness, though these two are supposed to have created everything, not excluding even these smaller deities.

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The Haidas believe in the immortality of the soul, and their ideas about the journey of the soul after death are nearly as elaborate as those of the Upanishads. When a good Haida is about to die, he sees a canoe manned by some of his departed friends, who come with the tide to bid him welcome to their domain. They are supposed to be sent by the god of death. The dying man sees them and is rejoiced to know that after a period passed within the city of death, he will with his friends be welcomed to the kingdom of the god of light. His friends call him and bid him come. They say: 'Come with us, come into the land of light; come into the land of great things, of wonderful things ; come into the land of plenty where hunger is unknown; come with us and rest for evermore. . . . Come with us into our land of sunshine and be a great chief attended with numerous slaves. Come with us now, the spirits say, for the tide is about to ebb and we must depart.' At last the soul of the deceased leaves his body to join the company of his former friends, while his body is buried with great pomp and splendour. The Haidas believe that the soul leaves the body immediately after death, and is taken possession of either by Chief Cloud or Chief Death. The good soul is taken possession of by Chief Death, and during its sojourn in the domain of Death, it is taught many wonderful things and becomes initiated into the mysteries of heaven (just as the soul of Na&iketas was in the domain of Yama). At last he becomes the essence of the purest light and is able to revisit his friends on earth. At the close of the twelve months' probation the time of his redemption from the kingdom of

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Death arrives. As it is impossible that the pure essence of light should come into contact with a depraved material body, the good Indian assumes its appearance only, and then the gates are thrown open and his soul which by this time has assumed the shape of his earthly body, but clothed in the light" of the kingdom of light, is discovered to the Chief of Light by Chief Death, in whose domains he has been taught the customs to be observed in heaven.

The bad Indian in the region of the clouds is tortured continually. In the first place his soul has to witness the chief of that region feasting on his dead body until it is entirely consumed. Secondly, he is so near to this world that he evinces a longing desire to return to his friends and gain their sympathy. Thirdly, he has the dread of being conducted to Hell (Hetywanlana) ever before his mind. No idea of atonement for his past wicked life is ever permitted, since his soul after death is incapable of reformation and consequently incapable of salvation. This is very different from Plato and the Upanishads, where there is always a hope of final salvation.

Sometimes permission is granted to souls in the clouds to revisit the earth. Then they can only be seen by the Saaga, the great medicine man, who describes them as destitute of all clothing. They are looked upon as wicked and treacherous spirits, and the medicine man's duty is to prevent them entering any of the houses ; and not only so, but as soon as the Saaga makes the announcement that a certain soul has descended from the clouds, no one will leave their homes, because the sight of a wicked soul would cause sickness and trouble, and his touch death. Some

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times it happens that the souls in the domain of Death are not made pure and holy within twelve months, and yet when their bodies died they were not wicked enough to be captured by Chief Cloud. Then it becomes necessary that the less sanctified souls return to earth and become regenerated. Every soul not worthy of entering heaven is sent back to his friends and reborn at the first opportunity. The Saaga enters the house to see the newly-born baby, and his attendant spirits announce to him that in that child is the soul of one of their departed friends who died during the preceding years. Their new life has to be such as will subject them to retribution for the misdeeds of their past life (the same idea which we met with in India and in Greece), and thus the purgation of souls has to be carried on in successive migrations until they are suitable to enter the region of eternal light.

It sometimes happens that some souls are too depraved and wicked after twelve months in the clouds to be conducted to Hetywanlana; they also are sent back to this earth, but they are not allowed to re-enter a human body. They are allowed to enter the bodies of animals and fish, and compelled to undergo great torture.

We see here how the Haidas arrived at the idea of metempsychosis very much by the same road on which the Hindus were led to it. It was as a punishment that human souls were supposed to enter the bodies of certain animals. We likewise meet among the Haidas with the idea which we discovered in the Upanishads and in Plato, that certain souls are born again as human beings in order to undergo (4) Q

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a new purgation before they could be allowed to enter the region of eternal light. This intermediate stage, the simplest conception of a purgatory, for souls who are neither good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell, occurs in the later Persian literature also. It is there called the place of the Hamistak&n, the intermediate place between heaven and hell, reserved for those souls whose good works exactly counterbalance their sins, and where they remain in a stationary state till the final resurrection1.

The Polynesians on the Immortality of the Soul.

I have chosen the Haidas, the aborigines of the North-west coast of America, as a race that could not possibly have been touched by one single ray of that civilisation which had its seat in Mesopotamia, or in Persia, or in Egypt or Greece. Their thoughts on the immortality of the soul, and of the fate which awaits the soul after death, are clearly of independent growth, and if on certain important points they agree with the views of the Upanishads, the Zendavesta, or Plato, that agreement, though it does not prove their truth, proves at all events what I call their naturalness, their conformity with the hopes and fears of the human heart.

I shall now take another race, equally beyond the reach of Mesopotamian, Persian, Egyptian, and Greek thought, and as far removed as possible from the inhabitants of North-western America, I mean the races inhabiting the Polynesian Islands. I choose them because they give us a measure of what amount of similarity is possible on religious or philosophical

1 Haug, l.o. p. 389n.

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topics without our having to admit either a common historical origin, or an actual borrowing at a later time. I choose them for another reason also, namely, because they are one of the few races of whom we possess scholarlike and trustworthy accounts from the pen of a missionary who has thoroughly mastered the language and thoughts of the people, and who has proved himself free from the prejudices arising from theological or scientific partisanship. I mean the Rev. W. Wyatt Gill. Speaking more particularly of the islands of the Hervey group, he says :

' Each island had some variety of custom in relation to the dead. Perhaps the chiefs of Atiu were the most outrageous in mourning. I knew one to mourn for seven years for an only child, living all that time in a hut in the vicinity of the grave, and allowing his hair and nails to grow, and his body to remain unwashed. This was the wonder of all the islanders. In general, all mourning ceremonies were over in a year.'

But what did these islanders think about the life to come? It is seldom that we can get a clear account of the ideas of savages concerning the fate of their departed friends. Many avoid the subject altogether, and even those who are ready to communicate their thoughts freely to white men, often fail to be understood by their questioners. Mr. Gill is in this respect a favourable exception, and this is what he tells us about the conception of the spiritworld, as entertained by his Polynesian friends:

' Spirit-land proper is underneath, where the sungod Ra reposes when his daily task is done.' This reminds us of Yama, the son of Vivasvat (the sun),

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who by the Vedic Indians was believed to dwell in the world of the Fathers and to be the ruler of the spirits of the departed. This spirit-world 'is variously termed Po (Night), Avaiki, Hawai'i, Hawaiki, or home of the ancestors. Still, all warrior spirits, i.e. those who have died a violent death, are said to ascend to their happy homes in the ten heavens above. Popularly, death in any form is referred to as "going into night," in contrast with day (ao), i.e. life. Above and beneath are numerous countries and a variety of inhabitants—invisible to mortal eye; but these are but a facsimile of what we see around us now.

'The Samoan heaven was designated Pulotu or Purotu, and was supposed to be under the sea. The Mangaian warrior hoped to " leap into the expanse," "to dance the warrior's dance in Tain" (above), " to inhabit Speck-land (Poepod)" in perfect happiness. The Rarotongan warrior looked forward to a place in the house of Tiki, in which are assembled the brave of past ages, who spend their time in eating, drinking, dancing, or sleeping. The Aitutakian brave went to a good land (Iva) under the guardianship of the benevolent Tukaitaua, to chew sugar-cane for ever with uncloyed appetite. Tahitians had an elysium named " Miru." Society Islanders looked forward to " Rohutu noanoa," i.e. u sweet-scented Rohutu," full of fruit and flowers.

6 At Mangaia the spirits of those who ignobly " died
on a pillow"1 wandered about disconsolately over the
rocks near the margin of the ocean, until the day
appointed by their leader comes (once a year), when

1 I te urunga piro, i. e. a natural death.

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they follow the sun-god Ra over the ocean and descend in his train to the under-world. As a rule, these ghosts were well disposed to their own living relatives; but often became vindictive if a pet child was illtreated by a step-m other or other relatives, &c. But the esoteric teaching of the priests ran thus: Unhappy l ghosts travel over the pointed rocks round the island until they reach the extreme edge of the cliff facing the setting sun, when a large wave approaches to the base, and at the same moment a gigantic " bua" tree (Fagraea berteriaria), covered with fragrant blossoms, springs up from Avaiki to receive these disconsolate human spirits. Even at this last moment, with feet almost touching the fatal tree, a friendly voice may send the spirit-traveller back to life and health. Otherwise, he is mysteriously impelled to climb the particular branch reserved for his own tribe, and conveniently brought nearest to him. Immediately the human soul is safely lodged upon this gigantic <; frua," the deceitful tree goes down with its living burden to the nether-world. Akaanga and his assistants catch the luckless ghost in a net, half drown it in a lake of fresh water, and then usher it into the presence of dread Miru, mistress of the nether-world, where it is made to drink of her intoxicating bowl. The drunken ghost is borne off to the ever-burning oven, cooked, and devoured by Miru, her son, and four peerless daughters. The refuse is thrown to her servants, Akaanga and others. So that, at Mangaia, the end of the coward is annihilation, or, at all events, digestion. 'At Rarotonga the luckless spirit-traveller who had

1 Because they had the misfortune 'to die on a pillow,' and because they had to leave their old pleasant haunts and homes.

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no present for Tiki was compelled to stay outside the house where the brave of past ages are assembled, in rain and darkness for ever, shivering with cold and hunger. Another view is, that the grand rendezvous of ghosts was on a ridge of rocks facing the setting sun. One tribe skirted the sea margin until it reached the fatal spot. Another (the tribe of Tangiia, on the eastern part of Rarotonga) traversed the mountain range forming the backbone of the island until the same point of departure was attained. Members of the former tribe clambered on an ancient " bua" tree (still standing). Should the branch chance to break, the ghost is immediately caught in the net of " Muru." But it sometimes happens that a lively ghost tears the meshes and escapes for a while, passing on by a resistless inward impulse towards the outer edge of the reef, in the hope of traversing the ocean. But in a straight line from the shore is a round hollow, where Akaanga's net is concealed. In this the very few who escape out of the hands of Muru are caught without fail. The delighted demons (taae) take the captive ghost out of the net, dash his brains out on the sharp coral, and carry him off in triumph to the shades to eat.

'For the tribe of Tangiia an iron-wood tree was reserved. The ghosts that trod on the green branches of this tree came back to life, whilst those who had the misfortune to crawl on the dead branches were at once caught in the net of Muru or Akaanga, brained, cooked, and devoured!

' Ghosts and cowards, and those who were impious at Aitutaki, were doomed likewise to furnish a feast to the inexpressibly ugly Miru1 and her followers. 1 Miru of Mangaia and Aitutaki is the Muru of Rarotonga.

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ESCHA.TOLOGY OP PLATO. 231

'The ancient faith of the Hervey Islanders was substantially the same. Nor did it materially differ from that of the Tahitian and Society Islanders, the variations being such as we might expect when portions of the same great family had been separated from each other for ages/

We see in these Polynesian legends a startling mixture of coarse and exalted ideas as to the fate of the soul after death.

Mr. Gill says that there is no trace of transmigration of human souls in the Eastern Pacific. Yet he tells us that the spirits of the dead are fabled to have assumed, temporarily, and for a specific purpose, the form of an insect, bird, fish, or cloud. He adds that gods, specially the spirits of deified men, were believed permanently to reside in, or to be incarnate in, sharks, sword-fish, &c, eels, the octopus, the yellow and black-spotted lizards, several kinds of birds and insects. The idea of souls dwelling in animal bodies cannot therefore be said to have been unknown to the inhabitants of the Polynesian Islands.

If it is asked, what we gain from a comparison of the opinions on the fate of the soul after death as entertained not only by highly civilised nations, such as the Hindus, the Persians, and the Greeks, but likewise by tribes on a very low level of social life, such as the Haidas and Polynesians, my answer is that we learn from it, that a belief in a soul and in the immortality of the soul is not simply the dream of a few philosophical poets or poetical philosophers, but the spontaneous outcome of the human mind, when brought face to face with the mystery of death.

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The last result of Physical Religion.

The last result of what I called Physical Religion and Anthropological Religion is this very belief that the human soul will after death enter the realm of light, and stand before the throne of God, whatever name may have been assigned to him. This seems indeed the highest point that has been reached by natural religion. But we shall see that one religion at least, that of the Ved&nta, made a decided step beyond.

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LECTURE VIII.

TRUE IMMORTALITY. Judaism and Buddhism.

IT is strange that the two religions in which we find nothing or next to nothing about the immortality of the soul or its approach to the throne of God or its life in the realm of light, should be the Jewish and the Buddhist, the one pre-eminently monotheistic, the other, in the eyes of the Bra\hmans, almost purely atheistic. The Old Testament is almost silent, and to be silent on such a subject admits of one interpretation only. The Buddhists, however, go even beyond this. Whatever the popular superstitions of the Buddhists may have been in India and other countries, Buddha himself declared in the most decided way that it was useless, nay, wrong to ask the question what becomes of the departed after death. When questioned on the subject, Buddha declined to give any answer. From all the other religions of the world, however, with these two exceptions, we receive one and the same answer, namely, that the highest blessedness of the soul after death consists in its approaching the presence of God, possibly in singing praises and offering worship to the Supreme Being.

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The Vedanta Doctrine on Time Immortality.

There is one religion only which has made a definite advance beyond this point. In other religions we meet indeed with occasional longings for something beyond this mere assembling round the throne of a Supreme Being, and singing praises to his name; nor have protests been wanting from very early times against the idea of a God sitting on a throne and having a right and left hand. But though these old anthropomorphic ideas, sanctioned by creeds and catechisms, have been rejected again and again, nothing has been placed in their stead, and they naturally rise up anew with every new rising generation. In India alone the human mind has soared beyond this point, at first by guesses and postulates, such as we find in some of the Upanishads, afterwards by strict reasoning, such as we find in the Ved&nta-s&tras, and still more in the commentary of Sankara. The Ved&nta, whether we call it a religion or a philosophy, has completely broken with the effete anthropomorphic conception of God and of the soul as approaching the throne of God, and has opened vistas which were unknown to the greatest thinkers of Europe.

These struggles after a pure conception of Deity began at a very early time. I have often quoted the passage where a Vedic poet says— 'That which is one, the poets call by many names,

They call it Agni, Yama, M&tarisvan.'

(Rv. I. 164, 46.)

You observe how that which is spoken of as one is here, as early as the hymns of the Rig-veda, no

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longer a masculine, no longer personal, in the human sense of the word; it has not even a name.

Personality, a Limitation of the Godhead.

No doubt this step will by many be considered not as a step in advance, but as a backward step. We often hear it said that an impersonal God is no God at all. And yet, if we use our words wisely, if we do not simply repeat words, but try to realise their meaning, we can easily understand why even those ancient seekers after truth declined to ascribe human personality to the Deity. People are apt to forget that human personality always implies limitation. Hence all the personal gods of ancient mythology were limited. Jupiter was not Apollo, Indra was not Agni. When people speak of human personality, they often include in it every kind of limitation, not only age, sex, language, nationality, inherited character, knowledge, but also outward appearance and facial expression. All these qualifications were applied to the ancient gods, but with the dawn of a higher conception of the Deity a reaction set in. The earliest philosophers of Greece, who were religious even more than philosophical teachers, protested, as for instance, through the mouth of Xenophanes, against the belief that God, if taken as the highest Deity, could be supposed to be like unto man in body or mind. Even at the present day the Bishop of London thought it right and necessary to warn a Christian congregation against the danger of ascribing personality, in its ordinary meaning, to God. 'There is a sense/ he says \ ' in which we cannot ascribe personality to the

1 Temple, Bampton Lectures, p. 57.

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Unknown Absolute Being; for our personality is of necessity compassed with limitations, and from these limitations we find it impossible to separate our conception of person. When we speak of God as a person, we cannot but acknowledge that this personality far transcends our conceptions. ... If to deny personality to Him is to assimilate Him to a blind and dead rule, we cannot but repudiate such denial altogether. If to deny personality to Him is to assert His incomprehensibility, we are ready at once to acknowledge our weakness and incapacity.'

It is strange that people should not see that we must learn,with regard to personality, exactly the same lesson which we have had to learn with regard to all other human qualities, when we attempt to transfer them to God. We may say that God is wise and just, holy and pitiful, but He is all this in a sense which passes human understanding. In the same way, when we say that God is personal, we must learn that His personality must be high above any human personality, high above our understanding, always supposing that we understand what we mean when we speak of our own personality. Some people say that the Deity must be at least personal; yes, but at the same time the Deity must be at least above all those limitations which are inseparable from human personality.

We may be fully convinced that God cannot be personal in the human sense of the word, and yet as soon as we place ourselves in any relation to God, we must for the time being conceive Him as personal. We cannot divest ourselves of our human nature. We know that the sun does not rise, but we cannot help seeing it rise. We know that the sky is not

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blue, and yet we cannot help seeing it blue. Even the Bishop can only tell us how not to think about God, but how to think about Him except as personal he does not tell us. When we see Xenophanes attempting to represent this Supreme Being as <r<£aipo€i8?/9, or like a ball, we see what any attempts of this kind would lead to. The same intellectual struggle which we can watch in the words of a living Bishop, we can follow also in the later utterances of the Vedic poets. They found in their ancient faith names of ever so many personal gods, but they began to see that these were all but imperfect names of that which alone is, the Unknown Absolute Being, as Dr. Temple calls it, the Ekam sat of the Vedic sages.

Struggle for higher conception of the Godhead.

How then was the Ekam sat, rd iv'Kat, to 6v, to be called? Many names were attempted. Some Vedic sages called it Prkna,, that is breath, which comes nearest to the Greek yffvxVi breath or spirit or soul. Others confessed their inability to comprehend it under any name. That it is, and that it is one, is readily admitted. But as to any definite knowledge or definite name of it, the Vedic sages declare their ignorance quite as readily as any modern agnostic. This true agnosticism, this docta ignorantia of mediaeval divines, this consciousness of man's utter helplessness and inability to arrive at any knowledge of God, is most touchingly expressed by some of these ancient Vedic poets.

I shall quote some of their utterances.

Rv. X. 82, 7. ' You will not find Him who has created these things; something else stands between

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238 LECTTJBE VIII.

you and Him. Enveloped in mist and with faltering voices the poets walk along, rejoicing in life/

Rv. 1.164,4-6. 4 Who has seen the First-born, when He who had no bones, i. e. no form, bore him that had bones. The life, the blood, and the soul of the earth— where are they ? Who went to ask it to one who knew it ? Simple-minded, not comprehending it in my mind, I ask for the hidden places of the gods. . . . Ignorant I ask the knowing sages, that I, the not-knowing, may know, what is the One in the form of the Unborn which has settled these six spaces.'

Still stronger is this confession as repeated again and again in the Upanishads.

For instance, #vet. Up. IV. 19. ' No one has grasped Him above, or across, or in the middle. There is no likeness of Him whose name is Great Glory.'

Or, Mund. Up. HI. 1,8. ' He is not apprehended by the eye, nor by speech, nor by the other senses, not by penance or good works.'

Ken. Up. I. 3. ' Thy eye does not go thither, nor speech, nor mind. We do not know, we do not understand, how any one can teach it. It is different from the known, it is also above the unknown, thus we have heard from those of old who taught us this/

J£Mnd. Up. IV. 3, 6. ' Mortals see Him not, though He dwells in many places/

In the Taitt. Up. II. 4, it is said that words turn back from it with the mind, without having reached it—and in another place, K&th. Up. III. 15, it is distinctly called nameless, intangible, formless, imperishable. And again, Mum?. Up. 1,1, 6, invisible, and not to be grasped.

These very doubts and perplexities are most touchy

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ing. I doubt whether we find anything like them anywhere else. On one point only these ancient searchers after God seem to have no doubt whatever, namely, that this Being is one and without a second. We saw it when the poet said,' That which is one the poets call it in many ways/ and in the Upanishads, this One without a second becomes a constant name of the Supreme Being. Thus the Ka£A. Up. V. 12, says: 'There is one ruler, the soul within all things, who makes the one form manifold.' And the /Svet&svataraUp. VI. 11, adds: 'He is the one God, hidden in all things, all-pervading, the soul within all beings, watching over all works, dwelling in all, the witness, the perceiver, the only one, free from all qualities, He is the one ruler of many who (seem to act, but really) do not act.'

The Kh&nd. Up. VI. 2, 1, says: 'In the beginning there was that only which is, one only, without a second; * and the Brih. Ar. Up. IV. 3, 32, adds: ' That one seer (subject) is an ocean, and without any duality.'

Mxmd. Up. H. 2, 5. 'In Him the heaven, the earth, and the sky are woven, the mind also with all the senses. Know Him alone as the Self, and leave off other names. He is the bridge of the Immortal, i. e. the bridge by which we reach our own immortality.'

These are mere gropings, gropings in the dark, no doubt; but even thus, where do we see such gropiugs after God except in India ?

The human mind, however, cannot long go on without names, and some of the names given to the One Unknowable and Unnameable Being, which we shall now have to examine, have caused and are still causing great difficulty.

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Name for tbe highest Godhead, Brahman.

One of the best-known names is B r a h m an, originally a neuter, but used often promiscuously as a masculine also. It would be an immense help if we were certain of the etymology of Brahman. We should then know, what is always most important, its first conception, for it is clear, and philosophers ought by this time to have learnt it, that every word must have meant at first that which it means etymologically. Many attempts have been made to discover the etymology of Brahman, but neither that nor the successive growth of its meanings can be ascertained with perfect certainty. It has been supposed1 that certain passages in the Ka£AaUpanishad (II. 13; VI. 17) were meant to imply a derivation of brahman from the root barh or bWh, to tear off, as if brahman meant at first what was torn off or separated, absolutum; but there is no other evidence for the existence of this line of thought in India. Others have derived brahman from the root barh or bWh, in the sense of swelling or growing. Thus Dr. Haug, in his paper on Brahman und die BrahTnanen, published in 1871, supposed that brahman must have meant originally what grows, and he saw a proof of this in the corresponding Zend word Baresman (Barsom), a bundle of twigs (virgae) used by the priests, particularly at thelzeshan sacrifices. He then assigns to brahman the more abstract meaning of growth and welfare, and what causes growth and welfare, namely, sacred songs. In this way he holds that brahman came to mean the Veda, the holy word. Lastly, he assigns to brahman the meaning of

1 Deussen, Veddnta, p. 128,

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force as manifested in nature, and that of universal force, or the Supreme Being, that which, according to #ankara,' is eternal, pure, intelligent, free, omniscient and omnipotent.'

When by a well-known grammatical process this neuter br&hman (nom. brahma) is changed into the masculine brahm&n (nom. brahma), it comes to mean a man conversant with Brahman, a member of the priestly caste; secondly, a priest charged with the special duty of superintending the sacrifice, but likewise the personal creator, the universal force conceived as a personal god, the same as Pragrapati, and in later times one of the Trimurti, Brahman, Vishmi, and /Siva. So far Dr. Haug.

Dr. Muir, in his Sanskrit Texts, i. p. 240, starts from br&hman in the sense of prayer, hymn, while he takes the derivative masculine brahman as meaning one who prays, a poet or sage, then a priest in general, and lastly a priest charged with special duties.

Professor Roth also takes the original sense of Brahman to have been prayer, not, however, praise or thanksgiving, but that kind of invocation which, with the force of will directed to the god, desires to draw him to the worshipper, and to obtain satisfaction from him.

I must confess that the hymns of the Veda, as we now read them, are hardly so full of fervent devotion that they could well be called outbursts. And there always remains the question why the creative force of the universe should have been called by the same name. It seems to me that the idea of creative force or propelling power might well have been expressed by

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242 LECTURE VIII.

Br&hman, as derived from a root barh1, to break forth, or to drive forth; but the other br&hman, before it came to mean hymn or prayer, seems to have had the more general meaning of speech or word. There are indeed a few indications left to show that the root barh had the meaning of uttering or speaking. Brihas-pati, who is also called Brahmanas-pati, is often explained as Vil&as-pati, the lord of speech, so that brih seems to have been a synonym of v&&. But what is still more important is that the Latin verbum, as I pointed out many years ago, can be traced back letter by letter to the same root. Nay, if we accept vridh as a parallel form of vrih, the English word also can claim the same origin. It would seem therefore that br&hman meant originally utterance, word, and then only hymn, and the sacred word, the Veda, while when it is used in the sense of creative force, it would have been conceived originally as that which utters or throws forth or manifests. Tempting as it is, we can hardly suppose that the ancient framers of the Sanskrit language had any suspicion of the identity of the Logos prophorikds and endidthetos of the Stoics, or of the world as word or thought, the Logos of the Creator. But that they had some recollection of brahman having originally meant word, can be proved by several passages from the Veda. I do not attach any importance to such passages as Brih. Ar. IV. 1, 2, vSg vai Brahma, speech is Brahma, for Brahman is here in the same way identified with pr&Tia, breath, manas mind, Aditya, sun, and many other things. But when we

1 Brahma is sometimes combined with brihat, growing or great, see Svet. Up. III. 7.

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read, Rv. I. 164, 35, Brahm£ ay dm vkk&h param&m vy6ma, what can be the meaning of Brahma masc. being called here the highest heaven, or, it may be, the highest woof, of speech, if there had not been some connection between br&hman and v&&? There is another important passage in a hymn addressed to Brihaspati, the lord of speech, where we read, X. 71, 1: * O Brihaspati (lord of brih or speech), when men, giving names, sent forth the first beginning of speech, then whatever was best and faultless in them, hidden within them, became manifested through desire.' I believe therefore that the word brahman had a double history, one beginning with brahman, as neuter, to ovrm ov, the propelling force of the universe, and leading on to Brahman, masc, as the creator of the world, who causes all things to burst forth, later one of the Hindu Triad or Trimftrti, consisting of Brahman, #iva, and Vishnu; the other beginning with br&h-man, word or utterance, and gradually restricted to brahman, hymn of praise, accompanied by sacrificial offerings, and then, with change of gender and accent, brahmin, he who utters, prays, and sacrifices, a member of the priestly caste.

Brdhman, even when used as a neuter, is often followed by masculine forms. And there are many passages where it must remain doubtful whether Brahman was conceived as an impersonal force, or as a personal being, nay, as both at the same time. Thus we read, Taitt. Up. III. 1,1: * That from whence these beings are born, that by which when born they live, that into which they enter at their death, try to know that, that is Brahman/

In the Atharva-veda X. 2, we read: ' By whom was

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244 LECTUKE Till.

this earth ordered, by whom was the upper sky created ? By whom was this uplifted ?' &c.

The answer is: ' By Brahma was this earth ordered/ &c.

Sometimes Brahman is identified with Pr^na, breath, as in Brih. Ar. Up. III. (s), 9, 9: * He asked, who is the one God? Y&gr/favalkya replied: Breath or spirit, and he is Brahman.'

Sometimes again it is said that Pr&na, spirit, arose from Brahman, as when we read, Muriel. Up. II. 1, 8: * Brahman swells by means of heat; hence is produced food (or matter), from food breath (pr&na), mind/ &c.

However, this Brahman is only one out of many names, each representing an attempt to arrive at the concept of a Supreme Being, free, as much as possible, from all mythological elements, free from purely human qualities, free also from sex or gender.

Furuslia.

Another of these names is Purusha, which means originally man or person. Thus we read, MuraZ. Up. II. 1, 1-3: ' As from a blazing fire sparks, being like fire, fly forth a thousandfold, thus are various beings brought forth from the Imperishable, and return thither also. That heavenly Person (Purusha) is without body, he is both within and without, not produced, without breath and without mind, higher than the high, imperishable. From him is born breath, spirit, mind, and all organs of sense, ether, air, light, water, and the earth, the support of all.'

Nothing in fact is, to my mind, more interesting than to watch these repeated attempts at arriving at higher and higher, purer and purer, concepts of

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deity. These so-called heathens knew as well as we do, that their ancient names were imperfect and unworthy of the deity, and though every new attempt proved but a new failure, yet the very attempts are creditable, and if we consider the time and the circumstances under which these struggles took place, there can hardly be a sight in the whole history of the human mind more strongly appealing to our sympathy, and more truly deserving of our most careful study. Some people may say, that all this lies behind us, but for that very reason that it lies behind us, it ought to make us look behind us; that is to say, it ought to make us true historians, for after all, history is looking back, and while looking back on the past of the human race, reading in it our own history. Every one of us has had to pass through that very phase of thought through which the ancient Rishis passed when the early names and concepts of God were perceived to be too narrow, too human, too mythological.

Pr&na, Spirit.

As we had to learn, and have still to learn, that God is a spirit, the Vedic Indians also spoke of the highest deity as Pr&Tia, here no longer used in the sense of breath, but of spirit, as for instance, in a hymn of the Atharva-veda, XI. 4, addressed to Pr&na, where we read: * Prstaia is the Lord of all that does and does not breathe. Do not turn away from me, O Praria, thou art no other than I.'

Let us translate Pr&fta by Spirit or Divine Spirit, and this would read:' The Divine Spirit is Lord of alL O Divine Spirit, do not turn away from me; thou art no other than L'

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Again, we read in the Prasna-Up. II. 13: * All this is in the power of Pr&wa, whatever exists in the three heavens. Protect us as a mother protects her sons, and give us happiness and wisdom.1

In the Kaush. Up. III. 8 we find a still more important statement: ' He, the Pr&wa, the Spirit, is the keeper of the world, he is the king of the world, he is the lord of the universe, he is my self, thus let it be known.' In our own language this would mean: The Divine Spirit rules the world, and in Him we live and move and have our being.

As to Purusha, though it generally means man, yet, when applied to the highest Deity, we can only translate it by Person, freed from all that is purely human, although occasionally endowed with attributes which belong properly to human beings only. There is this constant conflict going on in the minds of the Br&hmans which is going on in our own minds also. They want to exclude all that is limited and conditional, all that is human and personal, from their concept of deity, and yet their language will not submit, and the masculine god constantly prevails over the neuter.

Purusha, we are told in a famous hymn of the Big-veda, X. 90, has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand feet. This is clearly metaphorical and mythological. But immediately afterwards the poet says: ' Purusha is all this, what has been and what will be.'

Then follows a curious passage, in which the creation of the world is represented as a sacrifice of this Purusha, in which from his mind arose the moon, from his eye the sun, from his mouth Indra. Again,

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from his breath V&yu, the wind. In the same hymn occurs the earliest reference to the four castes, when we are told that the Br&hmafta was his mouth, his arms became the R%anya, the warrior caste, his legs the Vaisya, while the #&dra was produced from his feet.

Other Names of the Supreme Being", Skambha.

There are many more names of a similar kind. Skambha, literally the support, becomes a name of the Supreme Being. Thus we read in the Atharvaveda: ' Skambha is all that is animated, whatever breathes and whatever shuts the eyes.'

In the Rig-veda already Skambha is celebrated as Supreme, X. 7. Pragr&pati, the lord of creation, it is said, rested on Skambha, when he made the worlds firm. The thirty-three gods are supposed to form the limbs of his body (27), the whole world rests on him, he has established heaven and earth, and he pervades the universe (35). Darkness is separated from him, he is removed from all evil (40).

In these and many other different ways the Indian mind tried to free itself more and more from the earlier imagery of Physical Religion, and it reached in Brahman, in Purusha, in Pr&na, in Skambha the most abstract phase of thought that can find expression in any human language.

These words are, in fact, far more abstract, and less personal than other names which likewise occur in the Veda, and which we should, perhaps, feel more readily inclined to tolerate in our own religious language, such as, for instance, Pra#&pati, lord of creatures, Visvakarman, the maker of all things,

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248 * LECTURE VIII.

Svayambhft, the self-existing, names which satisfied the Vedic thinkers for a time, but for a time only, till they were all replaced by Brahman, as a neuter, as that which is the cause of all things, the Infinite and Divine, in its widest and highest sense.

Names for the SonL

But while this process of divesting the Divine of all its imperfect attributes was going on, there was another even more important process which we can likewise watch in the language of the Veda, and which has for its object the Soul, or the Infinite in man.

After asking what constituted the true essence of Divinity, the early thinkers began to ask themselves what constituted the true essence of Humanity.

Aham, Ego.

Language at first supplied the name of Ego, the Sanskrit a ham. This was probably in its origin no more than a demonstrative pronoun, meaning like the Greek o5e, this man there, without committing the speaker to anything more. Man said i" am I, as he had made the Godhead say, I am L But it was soon perceived that what was meant by this /, included many mere accidents, was in fact the result of external circumstances, was dependent on the body, on life, on age, on sex, on experience, on character, and knowledge, and signified not a simple, but a most composite being.

Sometimes what constituted man, was called by the same name as the Deity, pr&wa, spirit, or asu, vital

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breath, also flriva, the living soul, and manas, the mind. Still all these names expressed different sides of the Ego only, and none of them satisfied the Indian thinkers for any length of time. They were searching for something behind all this, and they tried to grasp it by a new name, by the name of Atman. This Atman is again very difficult to explain etymologically. It is supposed to have meant originally breath, then soul, then self, as a substantive, till like ipse or avr6s it became the recognised reflexive pronoun. Many scholars identify this atmdn with the A. S. sedm, the O.H.G. &dum, Athem or Odem in modern German, but both the radical and the derivative portions of the word are by no means satisfactorily made out.

When &tman is used as the name of the true essence of man, it is difficult to say whether it was taken over in its meaning of breath, or whether it had already become the pronoun self, and was taken over in that sense, to take the place of Ah am, Ego, I. It is generally translated by soul, and in many places this is no doubt the right translation. Only soul itself has so many meanings on account of its many attributes, and several of them are so inapplicable to Atman, that I prefer to translate &tnian by Self, that is the true essence of man, free, as yet, from all attributes.

Atman represents in fact on the side of subjective humanity what Brahman represents on the side of objective Divinity; it was the most abstract name for what I call the infinite or the divine in man.

Of course there have been philosophers in ancient times, and there are philosophers even now who deny

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that there is something divine in man, as they denythat there is something divine in nature. By divine in man I mean as yet no more than the non-phenomenal agent on whom the phenomenal attributes of feeling, thinking, and willing depend. To the Hindu philosophers this agent was self-evident (svayam-prakasa), and this may still be called the common-sense view of the matter. But even the most critical philosophers who deny the reality of anything that does not come into immediate contact with the senses, will have to admit that the phenomena of feeling, thinking, and willing are conditioned on something, and that that something must be as real at least as the phenomena which are conditioned by it.

This Self, however, was not discovered in a day. We see in the Upanishads many attempts to discover and grasp it. I shall give you at least one extract, a kind of allegory representing the search after the true Self in man. It is a valuable fragment of the most primitive psychology, and as such deserves to be quoted in full.

Dialogue from the -gAandogya-UpanlHhad.

It is a dialogue in the ifMndogya-Upanishad, VIII. 7, that is supposed to have taken place between Pragf&pati, the lord of creation, and Indra, as representing the Devas, the bright gods, and Viro&ana, representing the Asuras, who are here mentioned in their later character already, namely, as the opponents of the Devas.

Pragf&pati is said to have uttered the following sentence: * The Self (Atman) free from sin, free from age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst,

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which desires nothing but what it ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, that is what we must search out, that is what we must try to understand. He who has searched out that Self and understands it, obtains all worlds and desires'—that is, final beatitude.

The Devas (the gods) and the A suras (the demons) both heard these words, and said: ' Well, let us search for that Self by which, if one has searched it out, all worlds and all desires are obtained.'

Thus saying, Indra went from the Devas, Viro&ana from the Asuras, and both, without having communicated with each other, approached Pragr&pati, holding fuel in their hands, as is the custom with pupils approaching their master.

They dwelt there as pupils for thirty-two years. (This reflects the early life in India, when pupils had to serve their masters for many years, almost as menial servants, in order to induce them to communicate their knowledge.)

After Indra and Viro^ana had dwelt with Pra#&pati for thirty-two years, Pragr&pati at last turned to them to ask:

'For what purpose have you both been dwelling here?'

They replied that they had heard the saying of Pragr&pati, and that they had both dwelt near him, because they wished to know the Self.

Pragrapati, however, like many of the ancient sages, does not show himself inclined to part with his knowledge at once. He gives them several answers which, though not exactly wrong, are equivocal and open to a wrong interpretation.

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He says first of all: * The person (purusha) that is seen in the eye, that is the Self. This is what I have said. This is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.'

If his pupils had understood this as meant for the person that sees through the eye, or out of the eye, they would have received a right though indirect idea of the Self. But when they thought that the reflection of man in the eye of another person was meant, they were wrong. And they evidently took it in the latter sense, for they asked: ' Sir, he who is perceived in the water, and he who is perceived in a mirror, who is be?'

He replied: ' He, the Self himself indeed is seen in all these.'

' Look at yourself in a pan of water, and whatever you do not understand of yourself, come and tell me.'

They looked in the water-pan. Then Pra#Spati said to them:

* What do you see ?'

They said: * We both see the Self thus altogether, a picture even to the very hairs and nails/

Pragrapati said to them: * After you have adorned yourselves, have put on your best clothes and cleansed yourselves, look again into the water-pan.'

They, after having adorned themselves, having put on their best clothes and cleansed themselves, looked into the water-pan.

Prag&pati said: ' What do you see?'

They said: * Just as we are, well adorned, with our best clothes and clean, thus we are both there, Sir, well adorned, with our best clothes and clean.'

Pragrapati said: * That is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.'

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They both went away, satisfied in their hearts.

And Pragr&pati, looking after them, said: 'They both go away without having perceived and without having known the Self, and whoever of these two, whether Devas or Asuras, will follow this doctrine (upanishad) will perish.'

Now Viro&ana, satisfied in his heart, went to the Asuras and preached that doctrine to them, that the Self alone is to be worshipped, that the Self alone is to be served, and that he who worships the Self and serves the Self, gains both worlds, this and the next.

Therefore they call even now a man who does not give alms here, who has no faith, and offers no sacrifices, an Asura, for this is the doctrine of the Asuras. They deck out the body of the dead with perfumes, flowers, and fine raiment, by way of ornament, and think they will thus conquer the world.

But Indra, before he had returned to the Devas, saw this difficulty. As this Self (the shadow in the water) is well adorned, when the body is well adorned, well dressed when the body is well dressed, well cleaned when the body is well cleaned, that Self will also be blind if the body is blind, lame if the body is lame, crippled if the body is crippled, and perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. Therefore I see no good in this doctrine.

Taking fuel in his hand he came again as a pupil to Fragr&pati. Pragf&pati said to him: ' Maghavat, as you went away with Viro^ana, satisfied in your heart, for what purpose did you come back?'

He said: ' Sir, as this Self is well adorned when the body is well adorned, well dressed when the body is well dressed, well cleaned when the body is well

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cleaned, that Self will also be blind if the body is blind, lame if the body is lame, crippled if the body is crippled, and perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. Therefore I see no good in this doctrine.'

' So it is indeed, Maghavat/ replied Pragr&pati, ' but I shall explain him (the true Self) further to you. Live with me another thirty-two years.' He lived with him another thirty-two years, and then PragrS,pati said:

' He who moves about happy in dreams, he is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.'

Then Indra went away satisfied in his heart. But before he had returned to the Devas, he saw this difficulty. * Although it is true that that Self is not blind, even if the body is blind, nor lame if the body is lame, though it is true that that Self is not rendered faulty by the faults of it (the body), nor struck when it (the body) is struck, nor lamed when it is lamed, yet it is as if they struck him (the Self) in dreams, as if they chased him. He becomes even conscious, as it were, of pain and sheds tears (in his dreams). Therefore I see no good in this/

Taking fuel in his hands, he went again as a pupil to Pragr&pati. Pra^apati said to him: * Maghavat, as you went away satisfied in your heart, for what purpose did you come back?'

He said: ' Sir, although it is true that that Self is not blind even if the body is blind, nor lame if the body is lame, though it is true that that Self is not rendered faulty by the faults of the body, nor struck when it (the body) is struck, nor lamed when it is lamed, yet it is as if they struck him (the Self) in

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dreams, as if they chased him. He becomes even conscious, as it were, of pain and sheds tears. Therefore I see no good in this.'

' So it is indeed, Maghavat/ replied Pragr&pati,' but I shall explain him (the true Self) further to you. Live with me another thirty-two years.' He lived with him another thirty-two years. Then Pragr&pati said: 'When a man, being asleep, reposing, and at perfect rest, sees no dreams, that is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman/

Then Indra went away satisfied in his heart. But before he had returned to the Devas he saw this difficulty. * In truth he thus does not know himself (his Self) that he is I, nor does he know anything that exists. He is gone to utter annihilation. I see no good in this.'

Taking fuel in his hand, he went once more as a pupil to Pragr&pati. Pragr&pati said to him: * Maghavat, as you went away satisfied in your heart, for what purpose did you come back?'

He said: € Sir, in that way he does not know himself that he is I, nor does he know anything that exists. He is gone to utter annihilation. I see no good in this.'

' So it is indeed, Maghavat/ replied Pragrapati, ' but I shall explain him (the true Self) further to you, and nothing more than this. Live here other five years/

He lived there other five years. This made in all one, hundred and one years, and therefore it is said that Indra Maghavat lived one hundred and one years as a pupil with Pragr&patL

Pragr&pati said to him: 'Maghavat, this body is mortal and always held by death. It is the abode of

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that Self which is immortal and without body. When in the body (by thinking this body is I and I am this body), the Self is held by pleasure and pain. So long as he is in the body, he cannot get free from pleasure and pain. But when he is free of the body (when he knows himself different from the body) then neither pleasure nor pain touches him. The wind is without body, the cloud, lightning, and thunder are without body (without hands, feet, &c). Now as these, arising from this heavenly ether (space), appear in their own form, as soon as they have approached the highest light, thus does that serene being, arising from this body, appear in its own form, as soon as it has approached the highest light (the knowledge of Self). He (in that state) is the highest person (uttama pftrusha). He moves about there laughing (or eating), playing, and rejoicing (in his mind), be it with women, carriages, or relatives, never minding that body into which he was born.

'Like a horse attached to a cart, so is the spirit (pr&raa, pragw&tman) attached to this body.

'Now where the sight has entered into the void (the open space, the black pupil of the eye) there is the person of the eye, the eye itself is but the instrument of seeing. He who knows, let me smell this, he is the Self, the nose is but the instrument of smelling. He who knows, let me say this, he is the Self, the tongue is but the instrument of saying. He who knows, let me hear this, he is the Self, the ear is but the instrument of hearing.

'He who knows, let me think this, he is the Self, the mind is but the divine eye. He, the Self, seeing these pleasures (which to others are hidden like $

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buried treasure of gold) through his divine eye, i. e. through the mind,—rejoices.

' The Devas who are in the world of Brahman meditate on that Self (as taught by Prac/Spati to Indra, and by Indra to the Devas). Therefore all worlds belong to them, and all desires. He who knows that Self and understands it, obtains all worlds and all desires/ Thus said Pragr&pati, yea, thus said Pragf&pati.

This is a kind of psychological legend which in spite of certain expressions that strike us as strange, perhaps as unintelligible, it would be difficult to match in any ancient literature. Are there many people even now, after more than two thousand years have elapsed, that trouble themselves about these questions? If a man goes so far as to speak about his Ego, he begins to consider himself something of a philosopher. But it enters into the mind of very few thinkers, and even of philosophers by profession, to ask what this Ego is, what it can be and what it cannot be, what lies behind it, what is its real substance. Language supplies them with the name of soul ready made. 'I have a soul,' they say, but who or what it is that has a soul, and whence that soul originates, does not trouble them much. They may speak of / and of / myself, but who and what that self is which they call my self, and who the my is to whom that self belongs, is but seldom asked. No Hindu philosopher would say, I have an Atman or a soul. And here we find these ancient thinkers in India, clearly perceiving the question that has to be asked, and answering it too better than it has ever been answered. It may be said we all know that our garments have nothing to do with our self, and that (4) S

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258 LECTUKE VIII.

not philosophers only, but people at large, have learnt even in the nursery that their body is but a garment and has nothing to do with their soul. But there are garments and garments. A man may say that he is the same when he is eighty years old and when he was eight weeks old, that his body has changed, but not his self. Sex too is but one of many garments which we wear in this life. Now a Ved&ntist might ask, if a man were born again as a woman, would his self be still the same, would he be the self-same person ? Other such garments are language, nationality, religion. A Vedantist might ask, supposing that a man in the next life were denuded of all these coverings, would he still be the self-same person? We may imagine that we have an answer ready for all these questions, or that they deserve no answer at all from wise people such as we are, and yet when ^we ask ourselves the simple question how we hope to meet the souls of those who have been dear to us in this life, we shall find that our ideas of a soul have to be divested of many garments, have to be purified quite as much as the ideas of the questioners in the ancient Upanishad. Old as these questioners are, distant as they are from us, strange as their language may sound to us, they may still become to us at least Friends in Council.

That the legend which I translated for you from the Upanishads is an old legend, or that something like it existed before the chapter in our Upanishad was composed, we may conclude from the passage where it said: * Therefore it is said/ or more literally, that is what they say, * Maghavat lived one hundred and one years as a pupil of Pragr&pati.' On the other

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hand, the legend cannot be ascribed to the earliest Vedic literature, for in the hymns Indra is a supreme god who would scorn the idea of becoming the pupil of Prag&pati. This Prag&pati, i. e. the lord of creatures, or of all created things, is himself, as we saw, a later deity, a personification of the creative force, a name of the supreme, yet of a personal and more or less mythological deity.

But whatever the origin of this legend may have been, we have it here in one of the old and recognised Upanishads, and can hardly place it later than the time of Plato and his pupils. I call it a psychological legend, because it seems to have preserved to us some of the earliest attempts of Indian thought to conceive and to name what we without much reflection call by the inherited name of soul. You may remember that certain anthropologists hold the opinion that the first conception of soul had everywhere, and more particularly among savage races, been that of a shadow, nay that some savages believed even now that the shadow was the soul of a living man, and that therefore a corpse threw no shadow. I wonder that anthropologists have never quoted our Dialogue in support of their opinion; only that in this case it is held not by uncivilised, but by a highly civilised race, and is held by it, only in order to be refuted.

The next opinion also that the soul is that which in sleep, and as it were, without the body, sees visions in dreams, might be quoted in support of another opinion, often put forward by anthropologists, that the first idea of a soul, as without the body, arose from dreams, and that even now certain savage races believe that

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in a dream the soul leaves the body and travels about by itself. This may be so in isolated cases; we saw, however, that the real origin of the name and concept of soul was far more rational, that people took breath, the tangible sign of the agent within, as the name of the soul, divesting it in time of all that was incompatible with an invisible agent. But however that may be, anthropologists may possibly begin to see that the Veda also contains remnants of ancient thought, though it likewise supplies a warning against too rapid generalisation and against seeing in the Veda a complete picture of savage, or what they call primitive, man.

Deductions from the Dialogue.

But now let us see what the later Ved&nta philosophy makes out of this legend. The legend itself, as we find it in the Upanishad, shows already that there was a higher purpose in it than simply to show that the soul was not a mere appearance, not the picture reflected in the eye, not the shadow in the water, not the person dreaming a dream, or losing all consciousness in dreamless sleep. One of Pragrapati's pupils, Virofcana, is no doubt satisfied with the idea that the body as seen reflected in the eye or in the water is the self, is what a man really is. But Indra is not. He is not satisfied even with the soul being the person in a dream, for, he says, that even in a dream a man becomes conscious of pain, and actually sheds tears, and that therefore, if the soul were a dream, it would not be perfect, it would not be free from suffering. Nay, if it is said that the soul is the person in a deep and dreamless sleep, even that would not satisfy Indra, for, in that case, as he says, all consciousness would be

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gone, he would not know, as he expresses it, that he, the self, is I, or that there is a myself.

Pragr&pati then gives him the highest instruction which he can communicate, by saying that the soul can become free by knowledge only, that it exists by knowledge only, by knowing itself as free from the body and all other limitations. It then can rise from the body, a serene being in its own form, and approach the highest light, the highest knowledge, the knowledge that its own Self is the Highest, is in fact the Divine Self.

So far all would be intelligible. It would not require death to free the soul from the body, knowledge would effect that liberation far better, and leave the soul even in this life a mere spectator of its bodily abode, of its bodily joys and its bodily sufferings, a silent spectator even of the decay and death of the body.

But the Ved&nta philosopher is not so easily satisfied ; and I think it will be interesting and give you a better idea of the philosophical acumen of the Ved&ntist, if I read you /Sankara's treatment of our psychological legend. This is, of course, a much later phase of thought, at least as late as the seventh century A.D. Yet what is recent and modern in India, is not so recent and modern with us.

&ankara's Remarks.

&aftkara, the commentator on the Vedanta-sfitra, is much exercised when he has to discuss this Dialogue between Pragr&pati, Indra, and Viro&ana on the true nature of the self, or man's soul. There is an apparent want of truthfulness on the part of Pra#3,pati,

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he thinks, in conveying to his pupils a false impression of the real nature of the Atman or the human soul, and its relation to Brahman, the Highest Deity. It is quite true that his words admit of two meanings, a wrong one and a right one ; still Pragrapati knows that one at least of his pupils, Viro&ana, when he returns to the Asuras has not understood them in their true sense ; and yet he lets him depart.

Next comes a more important difficulty. Pragdpati had promised to teach what the true Atman is, the immortal, the fearless, the Self which is free from sin, free from old age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst; but his answers seem to apply to the individual Self only. Thus when he says at first that the person as seen in the eye is the Self (ya esho 'kshmi drisyate), it is quite clear that Viro&ana takes this for the small image or the reflection which a man sees of himself in the pupil of his friend's eye. And he therefore asks whether the Self that is perceived as reflected in the eye, is the same as that which is perceived as reflected in the water or in a mirror. Prag&pati assents, though evidently with a mental reservation. He had not meant from the first the small figure reflected in the eye, but the seer within the eye, looking out from the eye, the seer, as the subject of all seeing, who sees, and may be said to be seen in the eye. Still, as in an indirect way even the reflection in the eye maybe called the reflection of the true Atman, he invites Viro&ana to test his assertion by a kind of experiment, an experiment that ought ttf have opened his eyes, but did not. He asks both his pupils to look at their images in the water or in a mirror, first as they are, and again after they

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have adorned themselves. He thought they would have perceived that these outward adornments could not possibly constitute their own self, as little as the body, but the experiment is lost on them. While Pragr&pati means that in whatever reflection they see themselves, they see, though hidden, their true Self, they imagine that what they see, namely the body, reflected in the water, even the body with its adornments, is their true Self. Pragr&pati is sorry for them, and that he was not entirely responsible for their mistake, is shown soon after by the doubts that arise in the mind of at least one of his pupils. For while Viro&ana returns to the Asuras to teach them that the body, such as it is seen reflected in the water, even with its adornments, is the Self, Indra hesitates, and returns to Pragr&pati. He asks how the body reflected in the water can be the Self, proclaimed by Pra#Spati, and of which he had said that it was perfect and free from all defects, seeing that if the body is crippled its image in the water also is crippled, so that if that were the Self, the Self would not be what it must be, perfect and immortal, but would perish, whenever the body perishes.

Exactly the same happens again in the second lesson. No doubt, the person in a dream is free from certain defects of the body—a blind person if in a dream sees, a deaf person hears. But even thus, he also seems liable to suffering, for he actually may cry in a dream. Therefore even the dreaming soul cannot be the true Self perfect and free from all suffering.

When in his third lesson Prag&pati calls the soul in the deepest sleep the Self, because it then suffers

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no longer from anything, Indra replies that in that case the soul knows nothing at all, and is gone to destruction (vinasam eva upeti).

It is only at this last moment that Pragr&pati, like other sages of antiquity, reveals his full knowledge to his pupil. The true Self, he says, has nothing to do with the body. For the body is mortal, but the Self is not mortal. The Self dwells in the body, and as long as he thinks that the body is I and I am this body, the Self is enthralled by pleasure and pain, it is not the perfect, it is not the immortal Self. But as soon as the Self knows that he is independent of the body and becomes free from it, not by death, but by knowledge, then he suffers no longer; neither pain nor pleasure can touch him. When he has approached this highest light of knowledge, then there is perfect serenity. He knows himself to be the highest Self, and therefore is the highest Self, and though while life lasts, he moves about among the pleasant sights of the world, he does not mind them, they concern his body only or his bodily self, his Ego, and he has learnt that all this is not himself, not his Self, not his absolute Self.

But there remains a far greater difficulty which the commentators have to solve, and which tbey do solve each in his own way. To us the story of Pra#&pati is simply an old legend, originally intended, it would seem, to teach no more than that there was a soul in man, and that that soul was independent of the body. That would have been quite enough wisdom for early days, particularly if we are right in supposing that the belief in the soul as a shadow or a dream was a popular belief current at the time, and that it really required refutation. But when at a later time this

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legend had to be used for higher purposes, when what had to be taught about the soul was not only that it was not the body, nor its appearance, nor its shadow, nor the vision of a dream, but that it was something higher, that it could ascend to the world of Brahman and enjoy perfect happiness before his throne, nay, when it was discovered at a still later time, that the soul could go beyond the throne of Brahman and share once more the very essence of Brahman, then new difficulties arose. These difficulties were carefully considered by Sankara and other Ved&ntist philosophers, and they still foian a subject on which different sections of the Vedantist school of philosophy hold divergent views.

The principal difficulty was to determine what was the true relation of the individual soul to Brahman, whether there was any essential difference between the two, and whether when it was said that the soul was perfect, fearless, and immortal, this could apply to the individual soul. This view that the individual soul is meant, is upheld in the Ved&nta philosophy by what is called the P&rvapakshin, a most excellent institution in Indian philosophy. This Pfirvapakshin is an imaginary person who is privileged in every disputed question to say all that can possibly be said against the view finally to be upheld. He is allowed every possible freedom in objecting, as long as he is not entirely absurd; he is something like the man of straw whom modern writers like to set up in their arguments in order to be able to demolish him with great credit to themselves. From the Hindu point of view, however, these objections are like piles, to be driven in by every blow that is aimed at them, and

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meant in the end to support the true conclusion that is to be built up upon them. Frequently the objections contained in the pftrvapaksha are bon& fide objections, and may have been held by different authorities, though in the end they have all to be demolished, their demolition thus serving the useful purpose of guarding the doctrine that has to be established against every imaginable objection.

In our case the objector says that it is the individual that must be meant as the object of Pra^r&pati's teaching. The seer in the eye, he says, or the person that is seen in the eye, i& referred to again and again as the same entity in the clauses which follow, when it is said,' I shall explain him still further to you/ and in the explanations which follow, it is the individual soul in its different states (in dreams or in deep sleep) which is referred to, so that the clauses attached to both these explanations, viz. that is the perfect, the immortal, the faultless, that is Brahman, can refer to the individual soul only, which is said to be free from sin and the like. After that, when Pra$4pati has discovered a flaw in the condition of the soul in deep sleep also, he enters on a further explanation. He blames the soul's connexion with the body, and finally declares that it is the individual soul, but only after it has risen from out the body. Hence the opponent argues that the text admits the possibility of the qualities of the highest Self belonging to the individual soul.

$ankara, however, proceeds at once to controvert this opinion, though we shall see that the original words of Pragr&pati certainly lend themselves to the opponent's interpretation. We do not admit, he says,

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that it is the individual soul in its phenomenal reality that is the highest self, but only the individual soul, in so far as its true nature has become manifest within it (Hvirbhutasvarupa), that is to say, after, by means of true knowledge, it has ceased to be an individual soul, or after it has recovered its absolute reality. This equivocality runs through the whole system of the Ved&nta as conceived by /Sankara. Pragr&pati could apparently assert a number of things of the individual self, which properly apply to the highest Self only, because in its true nature, that is after having recovered a knowledge of its true nature, the individual self is really the highest Self, and in fact never was anything else. /Sankara says, this very expression (* whose true nature has become manifest') qualifies the individual soul with reference to its previous state. Therefore Pragrapati must be understood to speak at first of the seer, characterised by the eye, and then to show in the passage treating of the reflection in the water or the mirror, that he, the seer, has not its true Self in the body or in the reflection of the body. Pragr&pati then refers to this seer again as the subject to be explained, saying,' I shall explain him further/ and having then spoken of him as subject to the states of dreaming and of sleeping a deep sleep, he finally explains the individual soul in its real nature, that is, in so far as it is the highest Brahman, not in so far as it appears to be an individual soul. The highest light mentioned in the passage last quoted, as what is to be approached, is nothing else but the highest Brahman which is distinguished by such attributes as perfection, freedom from sin, freedom from old age, from death, and all im

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perfections and desires. All these are qualities which cannot be ascribed to the individual soul or to the Ego in the body. They belong to the Highest Being only. It is this Highest Being, this Brahman alone, that constitutes the essence of the individual soul, while its phenomenal aspect which depends on fictitious limitations and conditions (up&dhis) or on Nescience cannot be its real nature. For as long as the individual soul does not free itself from Nescience, or a belief in duality, it takes something else for itself. True knowledge of the Self, or true self-knowledge, expresses itself in the words, 'Thou art That/ or 'I am Brahman,' the nature of Brahman being unchangeable, eternal cognition. Until that stage has been reached, the individual soul remains the individual soul, fettered by the body, by the organs of sense, nay, even by the mind and its various functions. It is by means of Sruti or revelation alone, and by the knowledge derived from it, that the soul perceives that it is not the body, that it is not the senses, that it is not the mind, that it forms no part of the transmigratory process, but that it is and always has been, the True, the Beal, to ov, the Self whose nature is pure intelligence. When once lifted above the vain conceit of being one with the body, with the organs of sense and with the mind, it becomes or it knows itself to be and always to have been the Self, the Self whose nature is unchanging, eternal intelligence. This is declared in such passages as, 'He who knows the highest Brahman, becomes even Brahman. And this is the real nature of the individual soul, by means of which it arises from the body and appears in its own form.'

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The True Nature of the Individual Soul.

Here a new objection is raised ? How, it is asked, can we speak of the manifestation of the true nature (svarfipa) of that which is unchanging and eternal? How, in fact, can we speak of it as being hidden for a time, and then only reappearing in its own form or in its true nature ? Of gold and similar substances, the true nature of which becomes hidden, while its specific qualities are rendered non-apparent by their contact with some other substance, it may indeed be said that their true nature was hidden, and is rendered manifest when they are cleaned by the application of some acid substance. So it may be said likewise, that the stars, whose light during daytime is overpowered by the superior brilliancy of the sun, become manifest in their true nature at night when the overpowering sun has departed. But it is impossible to speak of an analogous overpowering of the eternal light of intelligence by any agency whatsoever, since it is free from all contact. How then did this momentous change take place ?

The Phenomenal and the Seal.

In our own philosophical language we might express the same question by asking, How did the real become phenomenal, and how can the phenomenal become real again? or, in other words, How was the infinite changed into the finite, how was the eternal changed into the temporal, and how can the temporal regain its eternal nature ? or, to put it into more familiar language, How was this world created, and how can it be uncreated again ?

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We must remember that, like the Eleatic philosophers, the ancient Ved&ntists also started with that unchangeable conviction that God, or the Supreme Being, or Brahman, as it is called in India, is one and all, and that there can be nothing besides. This is the most absolute Monism. If it is called Pantheism, there is nothing to object, and we shall find the same Pantheism in some of the most perfect religions of the world, in all which hold that God is or will be All in All, and that if there really existed anything besides, He would no longer be infinite, omnipresent, and omnipotent, He would no longer be God in the highest sense. There is, of course, a great difference between saying that all things have their true being in and from God, and saying that all things, as we see them, are God. Or, to put it in another way, as soon as we say that there is a phenomenal world, we imply by necessity that there is also a non-phenomenal, a noumenal, or an absolutely real world, just as when we say darkness, we imply light. Whoever speaks of anything relative, conditioned, or contingent, admits at the same time something non-relative, non-conditioned, non-contingent, something which we call real, absolute, eternal, divine, or any other name. It is easy enough for the human understanding to create a noumenal or non-phenomenal world; it is, in fact, no more than applying to our experience the law of causality, and saying that there must be a cause for everything, and that that cause or that Creator is the One Absolute Being. But when we have done that, then comes the real problem, namely, how was the cause ever changed into an effect, how did the absolute become relative, how did the noumenal become phenomenal ? or, to put

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it into more theological language, how was this world created? It took a long time before the human mind could bring itself to confess its utter impotence and ignorance on this point, its agnosticism, its Docta ignorantia, as Cardinal Cusanus called it. And it seems to me extremely interesting to watch the various efforts of the human mind in every part of the world to solve this greatest and oldest riddle, before it was finally given up.

The Indian Ved&ntist treats this question chiefly from the subjective point of view. He does not ask at once how the world was created, but first of all, how the individual soul came to be what it is, and how its belief in an objective created world arose. Before there arises the knowledge of separateness, he says, or aloofness of the soul from the body, the nature of the individual soul, which consists in the light of sight and all the rest, is as it were not separate from the so-called Up&dhis, or limiting conditions such as body, senses, mind, sense-objects, and perception. Similarly as in a pure rock-crystal when placed near a red rose, its true nature, which consists in transparency and perfect whiteness, is, before its separateness has been grasped, as it were non-separate from its limiting conditions (the Upadhis), that is, the red rose, while, when its separateness has once been grasped, according to legitimate authority, the rock-crystal reassumes at once its true nature, transparency and whiteness, though, in reality, it always was transparent and white,—in the same manner there arises in the individual which is not separate as yet from the limiting conditions (Upadhi) of the body and all the rest, knowledge of separate*

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272 LECTUBE VIII.

ness and aloofness, produced by Sruti; there follows the resurrection of the Atman from the body, the realisation of its true nature, by means of true knowledge, and the comprehension of the one and only Atman. Thus the embodied and non-embodied states of the Self are due entirely to discrimination and non-discrimination, as it is said (Ka^a-Up. L 2, 22): 'Bodyless within the bodies.' This nondifference between the embodied and non-embodied state is recorded in the Smriti also (Bhag. GitA, XIII. 31) when it is said: ' O Friend, though dwelling in the body, it (the Atman, the Self or the soul) does not act and is not tainted/

The Atman unchanged amidst the changes of the World.

You see now that what /Sankara wishes to bring out, and what he thinks is implied in the language of the Upanishads, is that the Atman is always the same, and that the apparent difference between the individual soul and the Supreme Soul is simply the result of wrong knowledge, of Nescience, but is not due to any reality. He is very anxious to show that Pragrapati also in the teaching which he imparted to Indra and Viro&ana could not have meant anything else. Pragrapati, he says, after having referred to the individual or living soul (the #iva), seen, or rather seeing, in the eye, &c, continues,' This is (if you only knew it) the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman/ He argues that if the seer in the eye, the individual seer, were in reality different from Brahman, the immortal and fearless, it would not be co-ordinated (as it is by Pra^apati) with the immortal, the fearless Brahman.

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The reflected Self, on the other hand, is not spoken of as he who is characterised by the eye (the seer within the eye), for that would indeed render Pragr&pati obnoxious to the reproach of saying deceitful things.

Sankara, however, is honest enough to tell us that his explanation is not the only one that has been proposed. Others, he tells us, think that Pragr&pati speaks throughout of the free and faultless Self (Atman), not of the individual soul at all.. But he points out that the pronouns used in the text point clearly to two subjects, the individual soul on the one hand, and the highest soul on the other; and all that we have to learn is that the individual soul is not what it seems to be; just as, for our own peace of mind, we have to find out that what seemed to us a serpent, and then frightened us, is not a serpent, but a rope, and need not frighten us any more.

Heecienoe or Avidya the Cause of Phenomenal Semblance.

There are others again, he continues, some of our own friends (possibly the followers of R&m&nu#a), who hold that the individual soul, as such, is absolutely real; but to this he objects, remarking that the whole of the Ved&nta-sfttras are intended to show that the one Supreme Being only is the highest and eternal intelligent reality, and that it is only the result of Nescience if we imagine that the many individual souls may claim any independent reality. It comes to this, that according to /Safikara, the highest Self may for a time be called different from the individual soul, but the individual soul is never substantially anything but the highest Self, except through its own temporary Nescience. This slight concession

(4) T

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274 lectube vin.

of a temporary reality of the individual soul seemed necessary to Sankara, who, after all, is not only a philosopher, but a theologian also, because the Veda, which in his eyes is infallible, gives all its sacrificial and moral precepts for individual souls, whose existence is thereby taken for established, though no doubt such precepts are chiefly meant for persons who do not yet possess the full knowledge of the Self.

There are many more points connected with the relation of the individual to the Highest Self, which £aiikara argues out most minutely, but we need not here dwell on them any longer, as we shall have to return to that subject when treating of the systematic philosophy of &aftkara. What distinguishes Sankara's view on the union of the individual soul with the Supreme Soul, is the complete Henosis or oneness which according to him always exists, but in the individual soul may for a time be darkened by Nescience. There are other modes of union also which he fully discusses, but which in the end he rejects. Thus referring to the teaching of Asmarathya (I. 4, 20), #ankara argues,' If the individual soul were different from the Highest Self, the knowledge of the Highest Soul would not imply the knowledge of the individual soul, and thus the promise given in one of the Upanishads, that through the knowledge of the one thing (the Highest Soul) everything is to be known, would not be fulfilled.' He does not admit that the individual soul can be called in any sense the creation of the Highest Soul, though the reason which he gives is again theological rather than philosophical. He says that when the Veda relates the creation of fire and the

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other elements, it does never at the same time relate any separate creation of the individual soul. A Vedantist, therefore, has, as ^ankara argues, no right to look on the soul as a created thing, as a product of the Highest Self, different from the latter. You see how this question can be argued ad infinitum, and it was argued ad infinitum by various schools of Ved&nta philosophers.

Satyabhedav&da and Bhedabhedav&da.

Two names were given to these different views, one the Satyabhedav&da, the teaching of real separation or difference between the individual and the Highest Self, the other the Bhed&bhedavada, the teaching of both separation and of non-separation. They both admit that the individual soul and the universal soul are essentially one. The difference between them turns on the question whether the individual soul, before it arrives at the knowledge of its true nature, may be called independent, something by itself, or not. A very popular simile used is that of fire and sparks. As the sparks, it is said1, issuing from a fire are not absolutely different from the fire, because they participate in the nature of fire, and, on the other hand, are not absolutely nondifferent, because in that case they would not be distinguishable either from the fire or from each other, so the individual souls also, if considered as effects of Brahman, are neither absolutely different from Brahman, for that would mean that they are not of the nature of intelligence (i. e. Brahman), nor absolutely non-different from Brahman, because in

1 See Bhamati on Ved. Sutra I. 4, 21; Thibaut, part i. p. 277.

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that case they would not be distinguished from each other, also because, if they were identical with Brahman and therefore omniscient, it would be useless to give people any instruction, such as the Upanishads give. You see that Indian philosophers excel in their similes and illustrations, and this idea of the souls being scintillations of God will meet us again and again in other religions also.

In fact, these thoughts of the Upanishads could not be expressed more correctly in our own language than they were by Henry More, the famous Cambridge theologian, when he says:—

* A spark or ray of the Divinity

Clouded in earthy fogs, yclad in clay, A precious drop, sunk from Eternity,

Spilt on the ground, or rather slunk away; For then we fell when we 'gan first to assay

By stealth of our own selves something to been, Uncentring ourselves from our great Stay, Which fondly we new liberty did ween, And from that prank right joUy wights ourselves did deem/

Those who defend the other theory, the Satyabhedav&da, argue as follows: The individual soul is for a time absolutely different from the Highest Self. But it is spoken of in the Upanishads as non-different, because after having purified itself by means of knowledge and meditation it may pass out of the body and become once more one with the Highest Self. The text of the Upanishads thus transfers a future state of non-difference to that time when difference still actually exists. Thus the Pawfair&trikas say: Up to the moment of emancipation being reached, the soul and the Highest Self are different. But the emancipated or enlightened soul is no longer different

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from the Highest Self, since there is no further cause of difference.

The Approach of the Soul to Brahman.

If we keep this idea clearly in view, we may now return to the first legend which we examined, and which was taken from the BWhad&ra/nyaka-Upanishad. You may remember that there also we saw philosophical ideas grafted on ancient legends. The journey of the soul on the Path of the Fathers to the moon was evidently an old legend. From the moon, as you may remember, the soul was supposed to return to a new life, after its merits had been ex-hausted. In fact the Path of the Fathers did not lead out of what is called Sams&ra, the course of the world, the circle of cosmic existence, the succession of births and deaths. We do not read here, at the end of the chapter, that * there is no return.'

The next step was the belief in a Devay&na, the Path of the Gods, which really led to eternal blessedness, without any return to a renewed cosmic existence. We left the soul standing before the throne of Brahman, and enjoying perfect happiness in that divine presence. Nothing more is said in the old Upanishads. It is generally admitted, however, that even those who at first go on the Path of the Fathers, and return from the moon to enter upon a new cycle of life, may in the end attain higher knowledge and then proceed further on the Path of the Gods till they reach the presence of Brahman. The Upanishad ends with one more paragraph stating that those who know neither of these two roads become worms, birds, and creeping things. This is all which the old Upanishads had to say.

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But after the psychological speculation had led the Indian mind to a new conception of the soul, as something no longer limited by the trammels of earthly individuality, the very idea of an approach of that soul to the throne on which Brahman sat became unmeaning.

later Speculations.

Brahman was no longer an objective Being that could be approached as a king is approached by a subject, and thus we find in another Upanishad, the Kaushitaki, where the same legend is told of the soul advancing on the road of the gods till it reaches the throne of Brahman, quite a new idea coming in, the idea on which the whole of Sankara's Vedantism hinges. The legendary framework is indeed preserved in full detail, but when the soul has once placed one foot on the throne of Brahman, Brahman, you may remember, is represented as saying, ' Who art thou ?' Then, after some more or less intelligible utterances, comes the bold and startling answer of the soul: ' I am what thou art. Thou art the Self, I am the Self. Thou art the True (satyam), I am the True.1

And when Brahman asks once more, * What then is the True, to SvV the soul replies: c What is different from the gods (you see that Brahman is here no longer considered as a mere god), and what is different from the senses (namely the phenomenal world), that is Sat, rd ovy but the gods and the senses are tyam, or it/

This is a mere play on words (of which the old philosophers in India as well as in Greece are very fond). Sattyam (for satyam) is a regular derivative,

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meaning truth, but by dividing it into Sat, rb Sv, and tya, it, #a6kara wished to show that Brahman is what we should call both the absolutely and the relatively Real, the phenomenal as well as the noumenal universe. And thus the Upanishad concludes: 'Therefore by that name of Sattya is called all this, whatever there is. All this thou art.'

Identity of the Soul with Brahman.

You see in this Upanishad a decided advance beyond the older Upanishads. Brahman is no longer a god, not even the Supreme God; his place is taken by Brahman, neuter, the essence of all things; and the soul, knowing that it is no longer separated from that essence, learns the highest lesson of the whole Ved&nta doctrine, Tat tvam asi, 'Thou art that/ that is to say, * Thou, who for a time didst seem to be something by thyself, art that, art really nothing apart from the divine essence/ To know Brahman is to be Brahman, or, as we should say,' in knowledge of Him standeth our eternal life/ Therefore even the idea of an approach of the individual towards the universal soul has to be surrendered. As soon as the true knowledge has been gained, the two, as by lightning, are known to be one, and therefore are one; an approach of the one towards the other is no longer conceivable. The Ved&ntist, however, does not only assert all this, but he has ever so many arguments in store to prove with scholastic and sometimes sophistic ingenuity that the individual soul could never in reality be anything separate from the Highest Being, and that the distinction between a Higher and a Lower Brahman is temporary only, and dependent on our knowledge

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280 LEOTUBE VIII.

or ignorance, that the Highest Being or Brahman can be one only, and not two, as it might appear when a distinction is made between the Lower and Higher Brahman. Almost in the same words as the Eleatic1 philosophers and the German Mystics of the fourteenth century, the Ved&ntist argues that it would be self-contradictory to admit that there could be anything besides the Infinite or Brahman, which is All in All, and that therefore the soul also cannot be anything different from it, can never claim a separate and independent existence.

Secondly, as Brahman has to be conceived as perfect, and therefore as unchangeable, the soul cannot be conceived as a real modification or deterioration of Brahman.

Thirdly, as Brahman has neither beginning nor end, neither can it have any parts2; therefore the soul cannot be a part of Brahman, but the whole of Brahman must be present in every individual soul. This is the same as the teaching of Flotinus, who held with equal consistency that the True Being is totally present in every part of the universe. He is said to have written a whole book on this subject. Dr. Henry More calls this theory the Hdenmerian, from the Greek ovaia iXtvixcpris, an essence that is all in each part.

So much on what the Upanishads hint and what Ved&ntist philosophers, such as /Sankara, try to establish by logical argument as to the true nature of the soul and its relation to the Divine and Absolute

1 ZeUer, p. 472. f Zeller, p. 511, fragm. III.

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TBUE IMMORTALITY. 281

Being. From a purely logical point of view, SaAkara's position seems to me impregnable, and -when so rigorous a logician as Schopenhauer declares his complete submission to Sankara's arguments, there is no fear of their being upset by other logicians.

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LECTURE IX.

THE VEDiNTA-PHILOSOPHY. The Ved&nta as a Philosophical System.

THOUGH it is chiefly the relation between the human soul and God which interests us in the teaching of the Upanishads and of the Ved&nta-sfttras, yet there are some other topics in that ancient philosophy which deserve our attention and which may help to throw light on the subject with which we are more specially concerned. I know it is no easy task to make Indian philosophy intelligible or attractive to English students. It is with Indian philosophy as with Indian music.

We are so accustomed to our own, that at first Indian music sounds to our ears like mere noise, without rhythm, without melody, without harmony. And yet Indian music is thoroughly scientific, and if we are but patient listeners, it begins to exercise its own fascination upon us. It will be the same with Indian philosophy, if only we make an effort to learn to speak its language and to think its thoughts.

Identity of Soul and Brahman.

Let us remember then that the Ved&nta-philosophy rests on the fundamental conviction of the Ved&ntist,

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the vedAnta-philosophy. 283
that the soul and the Absolute Being or Brahman, are one in their essence. We saw in the old Upanishads how this conviction rose slowly, like the dawn, on the intellectual horizon of India, but how in the end it absorbed every thought, whether philosophical or religious, in its dazzling splendour. When it had once been recognised that the soul and Brahman were in their deepest essence one, the old mythological language of the Upanishads, representing the soul as travelling on the road of the Fathers, or on the road of the gods towards the throne of Brahman was given up. We read in the Ved&nta-philosophy (in the 29th paragraph of the third chapter of the third book), that this approach to the throne of Brahman has its proper meaning so long only as Brahman is still considered as personal and endowed with various qualities (saguwa), but that, when the knowledge of the true, the absolute and unqualified Brahman, the Absolute Being, has once risen in the mind, these mythological concepts have to vanish. How would it be possible, #ankara says (p. 593), that he who is free from all attachments, unchangeable and unmoved, should approach another person, should move or go to another place. The highest oneness, if once truly conceived, excludes anything like an approach to a different object, or to a distant place1.

The Sanskrit language has the great advantage that it can express the difference between the qualified and the unqualified Brahman, by a mere change of gender, Brahman (nom. Brahma) being used as a masculine, when it is meant for the qualified, and as a neuter (nom. Brahma), when it is meant for the unqualified

1 III. 3, 29.

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Brahman, the Absolute Being. This is a great help, and there is nothing corresponding to it in English.

We must remember also that the fundamental principle of the Vedanta-philosophy, was not ' Thou art He,' but Thou art That, and that it was not Thou wilt be, but Thou art. This ' Thou art' expresses something that is, that has been, and always will be, not something that has still to be achieved, or is to follow, for instance, after death (p. 599).

Thus Sankara says, * If it is said that the soul will go to Brahman, that means that it will in future attain, or rather, that it will be in future what, though unconsciously, it always has been, viz. Brahman. For when we speak of some one going to some one else, it cannot be one and the same who is distinguished as the subject and as the object. Also, if we speak of worship, that can only be, if the worshipper is different from the worshipped. By true knowledge the individual soul does not become Brahman, but is Brahman, as soon as it knows what it really is, and always has been. Being and knowing are here simultaneous.

Here lies the characteristic difference between what is generally called mystic philosophy and the Vedantic theosophy of India. Other mystic philosophers are fond of representing the human soul as burning with love for God, as filled with a desire for union with or absorption in God. We find little of that in the Upanishads, and when such ideas occur, they are argued away by the Vedanta-philosophers. They always cling to the conviction that the Divine has never been really absent from the human soul, that it always is there, though covered by darkness or Nescience, and

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THE VEDANTA-PHILOSOPHY. 285
that as soon as that darkness or that Nescience is removed, the soul is once more and in its own right what it always has been; it is, it does not become Brahman.

Dialogue from the -EMndogrya-Upanieliad.

There is a famous dialogue in the JTMndogyaUpanisbad between a young student Svetaketu and his father Udd&laka Anmi, in which the father tries to convince the son that with all his theological learning he knows nothing, and then tries to lead him on to the highest knowledge, the Tat tvam asi, or Thou art that (VI. 1):

There lived once Svetaketu Arutieya. And his father said to him: * Svetaketu, go to school, for there is none belonging to our race, darling, who, not having studied, is, as it were, a Br&hma'fia by birth only/

Having begun his apprenticeship (with a teacher) when he was twelve years of age, Svetaketu returned to his father, when he was twenty-four, having then studied all the Vedas,—conceited, considering himself well read, and very stern.

His father said to him: ' /Svetaketu, as you are so conceited, considering yourself so well-read, and so stern, my dear, have you ever asked for that instruction by which we hear what is not audible, by which we perceive what is not perceptible, by which we know what is unknowable ?'

' What is that instruction, Sir?' he asked.

The father replied: 'My dear, as by one clod of clay all that is made of clay is known, the difference being only a name, arising from speech, but the truth being that all is clay;

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' And as, my dear, by one nugget of gold all that is made of gold is known, the difference being only a name, arising from speech, but the truth being that all is gold;

'And as, my dear, by one pair of naitscissors all that is made of iron (k&rsh?i&yasam) is known, the difference being only a name, arising from speech, but the truth being that all is iron,—thus, my dear, is that instruction.'

The son said: 'Surely those venerable men (my teachers) did not know that. For if they had known it, why should they not have told it me ? Do you, Sir, therefore, tell me that.'

You see what the father is driving at. What he means is that when you see a number of pots and pans and bottles and vessels of all kinds and of different names, they may seem different, and have different names, but in the end they are all but clay, varying in form and name. In the same manner, he wishes to say, that the whole world, all that we see and name, however different it seems in form and in name, is in the end all Brahman. Form and name, called namartipa in the philosophical language of India, that is name and form,—name coming before form, or, as we should say, the idea coming before the eidos, the species,—come and go, they are changing, if not perishing, and there remains only what gives real reality to names and forms, the eternal Brahman.

The father then continues:

'In the beginning, my dear, there was that only which is (rd Sv), one only, without a second. Others say, in the beginning there was that only which is

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not (rd ixrj 8v)9 one only, without a second; and from that which is not, that which is was born.

'But how could it be thus, my dear?' the father continued. 'How could that which is, be born of that which is not ? No, my dear, only that which is, was in the beginning, one only, without a second.

'It thought, may I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth fire.

'That fire thought, may I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth water.

' Water thought, may I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth earth (food)x.

' Therefore whenever it rains anywhere, most food is then produced. From water alone is eatable food produced.'

* As the bees (VI. 9), my son, make honey by collecting the juices of distant trees, and reduce the juice into one form,

' And as these juices have no discrimination, so that they might say, I am the juice of this tree or of that tree, in the same manner, my son, all these creatures, when they have become merged in the True (either in deep sleep or in death), know not that they are merged in the True.

' Whatever these creatures are here, whether a lion, or a wolf, or a boar, or a worm, or a midge, or a gnat, or a musquito, that they become again and again.

' Now that which is that subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it/

' Please, Sir, inform me still more,' said the son.

1 Nearly the same succession of fire, air, water, earth is found in Plato, Timaeus, 56.

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288 LEOTUBE IX.

* Be it so, my child/ the father replied (VI. 10). 'These rivers, my son, run, the eastern (like the

Gang&) toward the east, the western (like the Sindhu) toward the west. They go from sea to sea (i. e. the clouds lift up the water from the sea to the sky, and send it back as rain to the sea). They become indeed sea. And as those rivers, when they are in the sea, do not know, I am this or that river,

4 In the same manner, my son, all these creatures, when they have come back from the True, know not that they have come back from the True. Whatever these creatures are here, whether a lion, or a wolf, or a boar, or a worm, or a midge, or a gnat, or a musquito, that they become again and again.

'That which is that subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O #vetaketu, art it.'

* Please, Sir, inform me still more/ said the son. ' Be it so. my child/ the father replied (VI. 11).

' If some one were to strike at the root of this large tree here, it would bleed, but live. If he were to strike at its stem, it would bleed, but live. If he were to strike at its top, it would bleed, but live. Pervaded by the living Self that tree stands firm, drinking in its nourishment and rejoicing;

' But if the life (the living Self) leaves one of its branches, that branch withers; if it leaves a second, that branch withers; if it leaves a third, that branch withers. If it leaves the whole tree, the whole tree withers. In exactly the same manner, my son, know this/ Thus he spoke :

'This (body) indeed withers and dies when the living Self has left it; the living Self never dies.

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' That which is that subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O #vetaketu, art it.'

' Please, Sir, inform me still more/ said the son.

i Be it so, my child,' the father replied (VI. 13).

'Place this salt in water, and then wait on me in the morning.'

The son did as he was commanded.

The father said to him: ' Bring me the salt, which you placed in the water last night.'

The son having looked for it, found it not, for, of course, it was melted.

The father said: ' Taste it from the surface of the water. How is it ?'

The son replied: c It is salt.'

* Taste it from the middle. How is it ?' The son replied: ' It is salt.'

' Taste it from the bottom. How is it ?'

The son replied: ' It is salt.'

The father said: * Throw it away and then wait on me.'

He did so; but salt exists for ever.

Then the father said: 'Here also, in this body, forsooth, you do not perceive the True (Sat), my son; but there indeed it is.

'That which is the subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O #vetaketu, art it.'

' Please, Sir, inform me still more,' said the son.

* Be it so, my child,' the father replied (VI. 15).

' If a man is ill, his relatives assemble round him and ask: "Dost thou know me? Dost thou know me?" Now as long as his speech is not merged in

(4) U

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his mind, his mind in breath, his breath in heat (fire), heat in the Highest Godhead (devat&), he knows them.

'But when his speech is merged in his mind, his mind in breath, breath in heat (fire), heat in the Highest Godhead, then he knows them not.

'That which is the subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O #vetaketu, art it/

Union not Absorption.

In this dialogue as given in the Upanishad we have before us a more popular and not yet systematised view of the Vedsbnta. There are several passages indeed which seem to speak of the union and absorption of the soul rather than of its recovery of its true nature. Such passages, however, are always explained away by the stricter Vedanta-philosophers, and they have no great difficulty in doing this. For there remains always the explanation that the qualified personal Brahman in the masculine gender is meant, and not yet the highest Brahman which is free from all qualities. That modified personal Brahman exists for all practical purposes, till its unreality has been discovered through the discovery of the Highest Brahman; and as, in one sense, the modified masculine Brahman is the highest Brahman, if only we know it, and shares all its true reality with the Highest Brahman, as soon as we know it, many things may in a less strict sense be predicated of Him, the modified Brahman, which in truth apply to It only, the Highest Brahman. This amphiboly runs through the whole of the Ved&nta-sutras, and a

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considerable portion of the S&tras is taken up with the task of showing that when the qualified Brahman seems to be meant, it is really the unqualified Brahman that ought to be understood. Again, there are ever so many passages in the Upanishads which seem to refer to the individual soul, but which, if properly explained, must be considered as referring to the Highest Atman, that gives support and reality to the individual soul. This at least is the view taken by #ankara, whereas, as I hinted before,, from an historical point of view, it would seem as if there had been different stages in the development of the belief in the Highest Brahman and in the highest Atman, and that some passages in the Upanishads belong to earlier phases of Indian thought, when Brahman was still conceived simply as the highest deity, and true blessedness was supposed to consist in the gradual approach of the soul to the throne of God.

Knowledge, not Love of God.

Anything like a passionate yearning of the soul after God, which forms the key-note of almost all religions, is therefore entirely absent from the Ved&ntasfttras. The fact of the unity of soul and God is taken for granted from the beginning, or at all events as sufficiently proved by the revealed utterances of the Upanishads.

The Tat tvam asi, 'Thou art that/ is accepted by the Vedantists in a dry and matter-of-fact spirit. It forms the foundation of a most elaborate system of philosophy, of which I shall now try to give you an idea, though it can be very general only,

Ua

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Avidy& or Vescienoe.

The fundamental principle of the Ved&nta-philosophy that in reality there exists and there can exist nothing but Brahman, that Brahman is everything, the material as well as the efficient cause of the universe, is of course in contradiction with our ordinary experience. In India, as anywhere else, man imagines at first that he, in his individual, bodily, and spiritual character, is something that exists, and that all the objects of the outer world also exist, as objects. Idealistic philosophy has swept away this world-old prejudice more thoroughly in India than anywhere else. The Ved&nta-philosopher, however, is not only confronted with this difficulty which affects every philosophy, but he has to meet another difficulty peculiar to himself. The whole of the Veda is in his eyes infallible, yet that Veda enjoins the worship of many gods, and even in enjoining the worship (upiLsaml) of Brahman, the highest deity, in his active, masculine, and personal character, it recognises an objective deity, different from the subject that is to offer worship and sacrifice to him.

Hence the Ved&nta-philosopher has to tolerate many things. He tolerates the worship of an objective Brahman, as a preparation for the knowledge of the subjective and objective, or the absolute Brahman, which is the highest object of his philosophy. He admits one Brahman endowed with quality, but high above the usual gods of the Veda. This Brahman is reached by the pious on the path of the gods; he can be worshipped, and it is he who rewards the pious for their good works. Still, even he is in that character the result of nescience (Avidy&), of the same

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nescience which prevents the soul of man, the Atman, from distinguishing itself from its incumbrances (the so-called Up&dhis), such as the body, the organs of sense and their works.

This nescience can be removed by science or knowledge only, and this knowledge or vidy& is imparted by the Ved&nta, which shows that all our ordinary knowledge is simply the result of ignorance or nescience, is uncertain, deceitful, and perishable, or as we should say, is phenomenal, relative, and conditioned. The true knowledge, called samyagdarsana or complete insight, cannot be gained by sensuous perception (pratyaksha) nor by inference (anum&na), nor can obedience to the law of the Veda produce more than a temporary enlightenment or happiness. According to the orthodox Ved&ntist, #ruti alone, or what is called revelation, can impart that knowledge and remove that nescience which is innate in human nature.

Of the Higher Brahman nothing can be predicated but that it is, and that through our nescience, it appears to be this or that.

When a great Indian sage was asked to describe Brahman, he was simply silent—that was his answer. But when it is said that Brahman is, that means at the same time that Brahman is not; that is to say, that Brahman is nothing of what is supposed to exist in our sensuous perceptions.

Brahman as gat, as £it, and as ananda.

There are two other qualities, however, which may safely be assigned to Brahman, namely, that it is intelligent, and that it is blissful; or rather, that it is intelligence and bliss. Intelligent seems the nearest

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approach to the Sk. kit and feaitanya. Spiritual would not answer, because it would not express more than that it is not material. But kit means that it is, that it perceives and knows, though as it can perceive itself only, we may say that it is lighted up by its own light or knowledge, or as it is sometimes expressed, that it is pure knowledge and pure light. Perhaps we shall best understand what is meant by Mt, when we consider what is negatived by it, namely, dulness, deafness, darkness, and all that is material. In several passages a third quality is hinted at, namely, blissfulness, but this again seems only another name for perfection, and chiefly intended to exclude the idea of any possible suffering in Brahman. It is in the nature of this Brahman to be always subjective, and hence it is said that it cannot be known in the same way as all other objects are known, but only as a knower knows that he knows and that he is.

Philosophy and Relifflon.

Still, whatever is and whatever is known,—two things which in the Ved&nta, as in all other idealistic systems of philosophy, are identical,—all is in the end Brahman. Though we do not know it, it is Brahman that is known to us, when conceived as the author or creator of the world, an office, according to Hindu ideas, quite unworthy of the Godhead in its true character. It is the same Brahman that is known to us in our own self-consciousness. Whatever we may seem to be, or imagine ourselves to be for a time, we are in truth the eternal Brahman, the eternal Self. With this conviction in the background, the Ved&ntist

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retains his belief in what he calls the Lord God, the creator and ruler of the world, but only as phenomenal, or as adapted to the human understanding. Men are to believe in a personal God, with the same assurance with which they believe in their own personal self; and can there be a higher assurance? They are to believe in him as the creator and ruler of the world (samsara), and as determining the effects or rewards of good and evil works (karman). He may be worshipped even, but we must always remember that what is worshipped is only a person, or, as the Brahmans call it, a pratika, an aspect of the true eternal Essence, as conceived by us in our inevitably human and limited knowledge. Thus the strictest observance of religion is insisted on while we are what we are. We are told that there is truth in the ordinary belief in God as the creator or cause of the world, but a relative truth only, relative to the human understanding, just as there is truth in the perception of our senses, and in the belief in our personality, but a relative truth only. This relai^ve truth must be carefully distinguished from falsehood. His belief in the Veda would suffice to prevent the Ved&ntist from a denial of the gods or from what we should call Atheism, or rather, as I explained, Adevism.

The Supreme Lord or larar*.

In deference to the Veda the Ved&ntist has even to admit, if not exactly a creation, at least a repeated emanation of the world from Brahman and reabsorption of it into Brahman, from kalpa to kalpa, or from age to age.

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Upadhis, Suksnmasarira, and Sthnlagarira.

If we ask, what led to a belief in individual souls, the answer we get is the Up&dhis, the surroundings or incumbrances, that is, the body with the breath or life in it, the organs of sense, and the mind. These together form the subtle body (the sukshmasarira) and this s&kshmaaarira is supposed to survive, while death can destroy the coarse body only (the sthftlasartra). The individual soul is held by this subtle body, and its fates are determined by acts which are continuing in their consequences, and which persist in their effects for ever, or at least until true knowledge has arisen, and put an end even to the subtle body and to all phantasms of nescience.

Creation or Emanation.

How the emanation of the world from Brahman is conceived in the Ved&nta-philosophy is of small interest. It is almost purely mythological, and presents a very low stage of physical science. Brahman is not indeed represented any longer as a maker, or a creator, as an architect or a potter. What we translate by creation (srishti) means really no more than a letting out; and corresponds closely with the theory of emanation, as held by some of the most eminent Christian philosophers. There are few opinions that have not been condemned by some Council or Pope as heretical; but I know of no Council that has condemned as heretical the theory of Emanation instead of Creation or Fabrication. But if belief in emanation instead of creation has been condemned by the Church,

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the vedAnta-philosophy. 297
then the Church has condemned some of its strongest supporters as heretics. It would be easy to put such men as Dionysius and Scotus Erigena, or even St. Clement, out of court, as claiming the character of orthodox theologians. But what should we say of Thomas Aquinas, the very bulwark of catholic orthodoxy? And yet he too declares in so many words (Summa p. 1. 9-19a4) that creatio is emanatio totius entw ab uno. Eckhart and the German Mystics all hold the same opinion, an opinion which, though it may run counter to Genesis, seems in no way incompatible with the spirit of the New Testament.

The Upanishads propose ever so many similes by which they wish to render the concept of creation or emanation more intelligible. One of the oldest similes applied to the production of the world from Brahman is that of the spider drawing forth, that is producing, the web of the world from itself. If we were to say, No, the world was created out of Nothing, the Ved&ntist would say, By all means, but he would remind us that, if God is All in All, then even the Nothing could not be anything else, anything outside the Absolute Being, for that Being cannot be conceived as encompassed or limited whether by anything or by nothing.

Another simile which is meant to do away with what there is left of efficient, besides material causality in the simile of the spider, which after all wills the throwing out and drawing back of the threads of the world, is that of the hair growing from the skuU.

Nor is the theory of what we, as the most recent invention, call Evolution or development, wanting in

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298 LECTURE IX.

the Upanishads. One of the most frequent similes used for this, is the change of milk into curds, the curds being nothing but the milk, only under a different form. It was soon found, however, that this simile violated the postulate, that the One Being must not only be One, but that, if perfect in itself, it must be unchangeable. Then a new theory came in, which is the theory adopted by #aiikara. It is distinguished by the name of Vivarta from the Pariw&ma or Evolution theory which is held by R&m&nugra. Vivarta means turning away. It teaches that the Supreme Being remains always unchanged, and that our believing that anything else can exist beside it, arises from Avidy&, that is, Nescience. Most likely this AvidysL or ignorance was at first conceived as purely subjective, for it is illustrated by the ignorance of a man who mistakes a rope for a snake. In this case the rope remains all the time what it is; it is only our own ignorance which frightens us and determines our actions. In the same way Brahman always remains the same; it is our ignorance only which makes us see a phenomenal world and a phenomenal God. Another favourite simile is our mistaking mother-of-pearl for silver. The Ved&ntist says: We may take it for silver, but it always remains motherof-pearl. So we may speak of the snake and the rope, or of the silver and the mother-of-pearl, as being one. And yet we do not mean that the rope has actually undergone a change, or has turned into a snake, or that mother-of-pearl has turned into silver. After that, the Ved&ntists argue, that what the rope is to the snake, the Supreme Being is to the world (NilakawtfAa Gore, lib. cit., p. 179). They go on to

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THE VEDANTA-PHIL0S0PHY. 299
explain that when they hold that the world is Brahman, they do not mean that Brahman is actually transformed into the world, for Brahman cannot change and cannot be transformed. They mean that Brahman presents itself as the world, or appears to be the world. The world's reality is not its own, but Brahman's; yet Brahman is not the material cause of the world, as the spider is of the web, or the milk of the curds, or the sea of the foam, or the clay of the jar which is made by the potter, but only the substratum, the illusory material cause. There would be no snake without the rope, there would be no world without Brahman, and yet the rope does not become a snake, nor does Brahman become the world. With the Ved&ntist the phenomenal and the noumenal are essentially the same. The silver, as we perceive and call it, is the same as the mother-ofpearl; without the mother-of-pearl, there would be no silver for us. We impart to mother-of-pearl the name and the form of silver, and by the same process by which we thus create silver, the whole world was created by words and forms. A modern Ved&ntist, Pramadad&sa Mitra, employs another simile in order to explain to European scholars the true meaning of the Ved&nta. c A man/ he says, * is created a Peer, by being called a Peer, and being invested with a Peer s robe. But what he really is, is not a Peer—he is what he always has been, a man—he is, as we should say, a man for all that.' Framadad&sa Mitra concludes, * In the same manner as we see that a Peer can be created, the whole world was created, by simply receiving name and form.' If he had known Plato, instead of name and form, he would have

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spoken of ideas, as imparting form and name to what was before formless and nameless.

Far be it from me to say that these similes or the theories which they are meant to adumbrate can be considered as a real solution of the old problem of the creation or of the relation between the absolute and the relative ; but after all we think very much in similes, and these Vedantic similes are at least original, and deserve a place by the side of many others. Besides, the Ved&ntist is by no means satisfied with these similes. He has elaborated his own plan of creation. He distinguishes a number of stages in the emanation of the world, but to us these stages are of less interest than the old similes. The first stage is called a k& s a, which may be translated by ether, though it corresponds very nearly to what we mean by space. It is, we are told, all-pervading (vibhu), and often takes its place as the fifth element and therefore as something material. It is from this ether that air emanates (v&yu), from air, fire (agni, tegras), from fire, water (&pas), from water, earth (pWthivi or annam, lit. food). Corresponding to these five elements as objects, there emanate likewise from Brahman the five senses, the sense of hearing corresponding to ether, the senses of touch and hearing as corresponding to air, the senses of sight, touch, and hearing as corresponding to fire, the senses of taste, sight, touch, and hearing as corresponding to water, and lastly, the senses of smelling, tasting, seeing, touching, and hearing as corresponding to earth.

After this emanation of the elements, and of the senses which correspond to them, has taken place, Brahman is supposed to enter into them. The indi

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the vedAnta-philosophy. 301
vidual souls also, which after each return of the world into Brahman, continue to exist in Brahman, are supposed to awake from their deep slumber (m&y&mayi mah&sushupti), and to receive each according to its former works, a body, either divine, or human, or animal, or vegetable. Their subtle bodies then assume again some of the coarser elements, and the senses become developed and differentiated, while the Self or Atman keeps aloof, or remains as a simple witness of all the causes and effects which form the new body and its surroundings. Each body grows by absorbing portions of the coarser elementary substances, everything grows, decays, and changes, but the grown-up man is nevertheless the same as the young child or the embryo, because the Self, the witness in all its aloofness, remains throughout the same. The embryo, or the germ of the embryo, was, as we saw in a former lecture, supposed to have entered into the father in the shape of heavenly food, conveyed by the rain from the sky or the moon. When it has been absorbed by man, it assumes the nature of seed, and while dwelling in the womb of a mother changes its subtle body into a material body. Whenever this material body decays again and dies, the soul with its subtle body leaves it, but though free from the material body, it retains its moral responsibility, and remains liable to the consequences of the acts which it performed while in the coarse material body. These consequences are good or evil; if good, the soul may be born in a more perfect state, nay, even as a divine being and enjoy divine immortality, may, in fact become a god like Indra and the rest; but even that

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divine immortality will have an end whenever the universal emanation returns to Brahman.

If we distinguish, as many philosophers have done, between existence (Dasein) and Being (Sein), then all being is Brahman, nothing can be except Brahman, while all that exists is simply an illusory, not a real modification of Brahman, and is caused by name and form (n&ma-rfipa). The whole world is therefore said to be v&jfc&rambhaua, beginning with the word, the word being here taken in the sense of idea, or concept or Logos. We must never forget that the world is only what it is conceived to be, or what by name and form it has been made to be, while from the highest point of view all these names and forms vanish, when the Samyagdargana, the true knowledge, arises, and everything becomes known as Brahman only. We should probably go a step further, and ask, whence the names and forms, and whence all that phantasmagoria of unreality? The Ved&ntist has but one answer: it is simply due to Avidy&, to nescience; and this nescience too is not real or eternal, it is only for a time, and it vanishes by knowledge. We cannot deny the fact, though we cannot explain the cause. There are again plenty of similes which the V edantist produces; but similes do not explain facts. For instance, we see names and forms in a dream, and yet they are not real. As soon as we awake, they vanish, and we know they were but dreams. Again, we imagine in the dark that we see a serpent and try to run away, but as soon as there is light, we are no longer frightened, we know that it is a rope only. Or again, there are certain affections of the eye, when the eye sees two moons. We know that there can be

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THE VEDANTA-PHIL0S0PHY.

only one, as we know that there can be only one Brahman; but till our eyes are really cured, we cannot help seeing two moons.

Again, it seems that Indian jugglers knew how to make people believe that they saw two or three jugglers, while there was only one. The juggler himself remained one, knew himself to be one only, like Brahman, but to the spectators he appeared as many.

There is another simile to which I have already alluded. If blue or red colour touches a pure crystal, however much we may be convinced that the crystal is pure and transparent, we cannot separate the blue colour from it till we remove all surrounding objects, like the upadhis or surroundings of the soul. But all these are similes only, and with us there would always remain the question, Whence this nescience ?

Brahman and Avidya the Cause of the Phenomenal World.

The Vedantist is satisfied with the conviction that for a time we are, as a matter of fact, nescient, and what he cares for chiefly is to find out, not how that nescience arose, but how it can be removed. After a time that nescience or Avidy& came to be considered as a kind of independent power, called Maya, illusion; she became even a woman. But in the beginning M&ya meant nothing but absence of true knowledge, that is, absence of the knowledge of Brahman,

From the Ved&ntist point of view, however, there is no real difference between cause and effect. Though he might admit that Brahman is the cause, and the phenomenal world the effect, he would at once qualify that admission by saying that cause and effect must

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804 LECTUBE IX.

never be considered as different in substance, that Brahman always remains the same, whether looked upon as cause or as effect, just as the substance is the same in milk and curds, though from our nescience we may call the one cause, and the other effect.

You see that if we once grant to the Ved&ntist that there exists one Infinite Being only, it follows that there is no room for anything else by the side of it, and that in some way or other the Infinite or Brahman must be everywhere and everything.

The Essence of Man.

There is only one thing which seems to assert its independence, and that is the subjective Self, the Self within us, not the Ego or the person, but what lies behind the Ego and behind the person. Every possible view as to what man really is, that has been put forward by other philosophers, is carefully examined and rejected by the Ved&ntist. It had been held that what constituted the essence of man was a body endowed with intelligence, or the intellectual organs of sense, or the mind (manas) or mere knowledge, or even absolute emptiness, or again the individual soul reaching beyond the body, active and passive in its various states, or the Self that suffers and enjoys. But not one of these views is approved of by the Ved&ntist. It is impossible, he says, to deny the existence of a Self in man, for he who denies it would himself be that Self which he denies. No Self can deny itself. But as there is no room in the world for anything but Brahman, the Infinite Being, it follows that the Self of man can be nothing but that very Brahman in its entirety, not only a portion or a

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modification of it, so that whatever applies to Brahman applies also to the Self in man. As Erahman is altogether knowledge, so is the Self; as Brahman is omnipresent or all-pervading (vibhu), so is the Self. As Brahman is omniscient and omnipotent, so is the Self. As Brahman is neither active nor passive, neither enjoying nor suffering, so is the Self, or rather, so must be the Self, if it is what it is, the only thing that it can be, namely Brahman. If for the present the Self seems to be different, seems to be suffering and en-joying, active and passive, limited in knowledge and power, this can be the result of nescience only, or of a belief in the Upadhis or hindrances of true knowledge. It is owing to these Up&dhis that the omnipresent Self in the individual is not omnipresent, but confined to the heart; is not omniscient, is not omnipotent, but ignorartt and weak; is not an indifferent witness, but active and passive, a doer and an enjoyer, and fettered or determined by its former works. Sometimes it seems as if the UpMhis were the cause of nescience, but in reality it is nescience that causes the Upadhis*. These Up&dhis or incumbrances are, besides the outer world, and the coarse body, the mukhya pr&wa, the vital spirit, the Manas, mind, the Indriyas, the senses. These three together form the vehicle of the soul after death, and supply the germ for a new life. The sftkshmasarira, the fine body, in which they dwell, is invisible, yet material, extended, and transparent (p. 506). I believe it is this fine body, the sftkshmatarira, which the modern Theosophists have changed

1 Ved. Siitras III. 2,15, upadhinam fcavidyapratyupasthitatvat. (4) X

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into their astral body, taking the theories of the ancient Jfashis for matters of fact. It is called the asraya or abode of the soul, it consists of the finest parts of the elements that form the germ of the body (dehavfgr&ni bhfttasfikshm&ni), or, according to some passages, it consists of water (p. 401), or something like water. This fine body never quits the soul, and so long as the world (sams&ra) lasts, the soul clothed in this fine body assumes new and coarser bodies again and again. Even when it has reached the path of the gods and the throne of Brahman, the soul is still supposed to be clothed in its fine body. This fine body, however, consists not only of the faculties of sensuous perception (indriyaTii), of mind (manas), and of vital breath (mukhyapr&na), but its character is likewise determined by former acts, by k arm an.

Zarman or Ap&rva.

In the Pftrvamim&ms& this continuity between acts and their consequences is called Apftrva, literally, that which did not exist before, but was brought about in this life or in a former life. When the work has been done and is past, but its effect has not yet taken place, there remains something which after a time is certain to produce a result, a punishment for evil deeds, a reward for good deeds. This idea of Gaimini is not, however, adopted without modification by Badaraya?ia. Another teacher attributes rewards and punishments of former acts to the influence of tsvara, the lord, though admitting at the same time that the Lord or the Creator of the world does no more than superintend the universal working of cause and effect. This is explained by the following illustration. We see a

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the vedAnta-philosophy. 307
plant springing from its seed, growing, flowering, and at last dying. But it does not die altogether. Something is left, the seed, and in order that this seed may live and thrive rain is necessary. What is thus achieved by the rain in the vegetable world, is supposed to be achieved by the Lord in the moral world, in fact in the whole creation. Without God or without the rain, the seed would not grow at all, but that it grows thus or thus is not due to the rain, but to the seed itself.

And this serves in the Ved&nta-philosophy as a kind of solution for the problem of the existence of evil in the world. God is not the author of evil. He did not create the evil, but He simply allowed or enabled the good or evil deeds of former worlds to bear fruit in this world. The Creator therefore does not in His creation act at random, but is guided in His acts by the determining influence of karman or work done.

Different States of the Soul.

We have still to consider some rather fanciful theories with regard to the different states of the individual soul. It is said to exist in four states, in a state of wakefulness or awareness, of dream, of deep sleep, and, lastly, of death. In the state of wakefulness the soul dwelling in the heart pervades the whole body, knowing and acting by means of the mind (manas) and the senses (indriyas). In the state of dreaming, the soul uses the mind only, in which the senses have been absorbed, and, moving through the veins of the body, sees the impressions (v&san&s) left by the senses during the state of wakefulness. In

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the third stage the soul is altogether freed from the mind also, bcth the mind and the senses are absorbed in the vital spirit, which alone continues active in the body, -while the soul, now free from all up&dhis or fetters, returns for a time to Brahman within the heart. On awaking, however, the soul loses its temporary identity with Brahman, and becomes again what it was before, the individual soul.

In the fourth state, that of death, the senses are absorbed in the mind, the mind in the vital spirit, the vital spirit in the moral vehicle of the soul, and the soul in the fine body (sftkshmasartra). When this absorption or union has taken place, the ancient Ved&ntists believe that the point of the heart becomes luminous so as to illuminate the path on which the soul with its surrounding (up&dhis) escapes from the body. The Soul or Self which obtains true knowledge of the Highest Self, regains its identity with the Highest Self, and then enjoys what even in the Upanishads and before the rise of Buddhism is called Nirvawaor eternal peace.

Xramamnktl.

It is generally supposed that this idea of Nirv&wa is peculiar to Buddhism, but like many Buddhist ideas, this also can be shown to have its roots in the Vedic world. If this Nirv&na is obtained step by step, beginning with the Path of the Fathers, or the Path of the Gods, then leading to a blissful life in the world of Brahman and then to the true knowledge of the identity of Atman, the soul, with Brahman, it is called Kramamukti, i.e. gradual liberation.

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THE VEDANTA-PHIL0S0PHY. 809

Givanmnkti.

But the same knowledge may be obtained in this life also, in the twinkling of an eye, without waiting for death, or for resurrection and ascension to the world of the fathers, the gods, and the god Brahman; and this state of knowledge and liberation, if obtained by a man while still in the body, is called by later philosophers Givanmukti, life-liberation.

It may take place in this life, without the help of death, and without what is called the Utkranti or the Exodus of the soul.

The explanation given of this state of perfect spiritual freedom, while the soul is still in the body, is explained by the simile of a potter's wheel, which goes on moving for a time, even though the impetus that set it going has ceased. The soul is free, but the works of a former existence, if they have once begun to bear fruit, must go on bearing fruit till they are quite exhausted, while other works which have not yet begun to bear fruit may be entirely burnt up by knowledge.

If we ask whether this Nirvana of the Brahman means absorption or annihilation, the Ved&ntist, different from the Buddhist, would not admit either. The soul is not absorbed in Brahman, because it has never left Brahman; there can be nothing different from Brahman; nor can it be annihilated, because Brahman cannot be annihilated, and the soul has always been nothing but Brahman in all its fulness; the new knowledge adds nothing to what the soul always was, nor does it take away anything except

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that nescience which for a time darkened the selfknowledge of the soul.

These living freed souls enjoy perfect happiness and ease, though still imprisoned in the body. They have obtained true Nirvibia, that is, freedom from passion and immunity from being born again. Thus the Brihad&rawyaka-Upanishad IV. 4, 6 says: ' He who is without desire, free from desire, whose desires have been fulfilled, whose desire is the self, his vital spirits do not emigrate; being Brahman, he becomes Brahman/

We should ask at once, Does then the soul, after it has obtained the knowledge of its true essence, retain its personality?

Personality of the Soul.

But such a question is impossible for the true Ved&ntist. For terrestrial personality is to him a fetter and a hindrance, and freedom from that fetter is the highest object of his philosophy, is the highest bliss to which the Ved&ntist aspires. That freedom and that highest bliss are simply the result of true knowledge, of a kind of divine self-recollection. Everything else remains as it is. It is true the Ved&ntist speaks of the individual soul as poured into the Universal Soul like pure water poured into pure water. The two can no longer be distinguished by name and form; yet the Ved&ntist lays great stress on the fact that the pure water is not lost in the pure water, as little as the Atman is lost in Brahman. As Brahman1 is pure knowledge and consciousness, so is the Atman, when freed, pure knowledge and con

1 Nitya-upalabdhisvarrlpa. Beussen, p. 346.

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the vedAnta-philosophy. 311
sciousness, while in the body it is limited knowledge and limited consciousness, limited personality only. Anything like separateness from Brahman is impossible, for Brahman is all in all.

Whatever we may think of this philosophy, we cannot deny its metaphysical boldness and its logical consistency. If Brahman is all in all, the One without a second, nothing can be said to exist that is not Brahman. There is no room for anything outside the Infinite and the Universal, nor is there room for two Infinites, for the Infinite in nature and the Infinite in man. There is and there can be one Infinite, one Brahman only; this is the beginning and end of the Ved&nta, and I doubt whether Natural Religion can reach or has ever reached a higher point than that reached by #aiikara, as an interpreter of the Upanishads.

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THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE VEDANTA. Equivocal Passages in the Upanishads.

IN laying before you a short outline of the Ved&ntaphilosophy, I had several times to call your attention to what I called the equivocality which is perceptible in the Upanishads, and likewise in the Ved&ntasfttras. In one sense everything that exists may be considered as Brahman, only veiled by nescience, while in another sense nothing that exists is Brahman in its true and real character. This equivocality applies with particular force to the individual soul and to the Creator. The individual soul would be nothing if it were not Brahman, yet nothing of what is predicated of the individual soul can be predicated of Brahman. A great portion of the Ved&nta-sfttras is occupied with what may be called philosophical exegesis, that is, with an attempt to determine whether certain passages in the Upanishads refer to the individual soul or to Brahman. Considering that the individual soul has been and will be, in fact always is, Brahman, if only it knew it, it is generally possible to argue that what is said of the individual soul, is in the end said of Brahman. The same applies to the personal God, the Creator, or as he is commonly called, Isvara, the Lord. He, too, is

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in reality Brahman, so that here again many things predicated of him may in the end be referred to Brahman, the Supreme Being, in its non-phenomenal character.

This amphiboly of thought and expression has found its final expression in the two schools which for many centuries have claimed to be the true representatives of the Ved&nta, that of #ankara and that of R&m&nu#a. I have generally followed the guidance of #afikara, as he seems to me to carry the Ved&nta doctrine to the highest point, but I feel bound to say that Professor Thibaut has proved that B&m&nugra is on many points the more faithful interpreter of the Ved&nta-sMras. tfankara is the more philosophical head, while B&m&nugra has become the successful founder of one of the most popular religious sects, chiefly, it seems, because he did not carry the Ved&nta to its last consequences, and because he managed to reconcile his more metaphysical speculations with the religious worship of certain popular deities, which he was ready to accept as symbolical representations of the Universal Godhead. Nor was R&m&nugra a mere dissentient from #ankara. He claimed for his interpretation of the Ved&nta the authority of philosophers more ancient even than #ankara, and, of course, the authority of the Ved&nta-sfttras themselves, if only rightly understood. R&m&nugra's followers do not possess now, so far as I know, manuscripts of any of these more ancient commentaries, but there is no reason to doubt that Bodh&yana and other philosophers to whom Ram&nugra appeals, were real characters and in their time influential teachers of the Ved&nta.

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£aakaxa and Ramann^a.

Ram&nugra and tfaiikara agree, of course, on many points, yet the points on which they differ possess a peculiar interest. They are not mere matters of interpretation with regard to the Sfttras or the Upanishads, but involve important principles. Both are strictly monistic philosophers, or, at all events, try hard to be so. They both hold that there exists and that there can exist but one Absolute Being, which supports all, comprehends all, and must help to explain all. They differ, however, as to the way in which the phenomenal universe is to be explained. #ankara is the more consistent monist. According to him, Brahman or Paramatman, the Highest Self, is always one and the same, it cannot change, and therefore all the diversity of the phenomenal world is phenomenal only, or, as it may also be called, illusory, the result of avidy& or of unavoidable nescience. They both hold that whatever is real in this unreal world is Brahman. Without Brahman even this unreal world would be impossible, or, as we should say, there could be nothing phenomenal, unless there was something noumenal. But as there can be no change or variance in the Supreme Being, the varying phenomena of the outer world, as well as the individual souls that are born into the world, are not to be considered either as portions or as modifications of Brahman. They are things that could not be without Brahman; their deepest self lies in Brahman; but what they appear to be is, according to #aiikara, the result of nescience, of erroneous perception and equally erroneous conception. Here Ramanu^a differs. He admits that all that really exists is Brahman, and that there is and

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can be nothing besides Brahman, but he does not ascribe the elements of plurality in the phenomenal world, including individual souls, to nescience, but to Brahman itself.

B&m&nugra.

Brahman becomes in fact, in the mind of Ramanugra, not only the cause, but the real source of all that exists, and according to him the variety of the phenomenal world is a manifestation of what lies hidden in Brahman. All that thinks and all that does not think, the kit and the a&it, are real modes (prakara) of Brahman. He is the antaryamin,theinwardrulerof the material and the immaterial world. All individual souls are real manifestations of the unseen Brahman, and will preserve their individual character through all time and eternity. Ramanu^a admits the great renovations of the world. At the end of each kalpa, all that exists is wrapt up for a time (during the pralaya) in Brahman, to appear again as soon as Brahman wills a new world (kalpa). The individual souls will then be once more embodied, and receive bodies according to their good or evil deeds in a former life. Their final reward is an approach to Brahman, as described in the old Upanishads, and a life in a celestial paradise free from all danger of a return to a new birth. There is nothing higher than that, according to Ramanu</a.

Sankara.

Ankara's Brahman on the contrary is entirely free from differences, and does not contain in itself the seeds of the phenomenal world. It is without qualities. Not even thought can be predicated of Brah

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man, though intelligence constitutes its essence. All that seems manifold and endowed with qualities is the result of Avidy& or Nescience, a power which cannot be called either real or unreal; a power that is altogether inconceivable, but the workings of which are seen in the phenomenal world. What is called tsvara or the Lord by R&manugra is, according to $ankara, Brahman, as represented by Avidy& or May&, a personal creator and ruler of the world. This which with R&manugra is the Supreme Being, is in the eyes of /Sankara the Lower Brahman only, the qualified or phenomenal Brahman. This distinction between the Param and the Aparam Brahman, the Higher and the Lower Brahman, does not exist for Ram&nu^a, while it forms the essential feature of tfaiikara's Vedantism. According to #a6kara, individual souls with their experience of an objective world, and that objective world itself, are all false and the result of Avidy&; they possess what is called a vyavaharika or practical reality, but the individual souls (gflva) as soon as they become enlightened, cease to identify themselves with their bodies, their senses, and their intellect, and perceive and enjoy their pure original Brahmahood. They then, after having paid their debt for former deeds and misdeeds, after having enjoyed their rewards in the presence of the qualified Brahman and in a celestial paradise, reach final rest in Brahman. Or they may even in this life enter at once into their rest in Brahman, if only they have learnt from the Vedanta that their true Self is the same and has always been the same as the Highest Self, and the Highest Brahman.

What has often been quoted as the shortest sum

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mary of the Ved&nta in a couple of lines, represents the Ved&nta of #ankara, not of R&m&nugra.

'In half a couplet I will declare what has been declared in millions of volumes, Brahma is true, the world is false, the soul is Brahma and is nothing else/

Slokardhena pravakshyami yad uktam granthakotibhift Brahma satyam gragan mithya, grivo brahmaiva naparam1.

This is really a very perfect summary. It means: What truly and really exists is Brahman, the One Absolute Being; the world is false, or rather is not what it seems to be; that is, everything that is presented to us by the senses is phenomenal and relative, and can be nothing else. The soul again, or rather every man's soul, though it may seem to be this or that, is in reality nothing but Brahma.

This is the quintessence of the Ved&nta; the only thing wanting in it is an account as to how the phenomenal and the individual comes to be at all, and in what relation it stands to what is absolutely real, to Erahman.

It is on this point #ankara and Ram&nu^a differ, R&manugra holdirg the theory of evolution, the Pariw&ma-v&da, £ankara the theory of illusion, the Vivarta-v&da.

Intimately connected with this difference between the two great Ved&ntist teachers, is another difference as to the nature of God, as the Creator of the world. R&m&nugra knows but one Brahman, and this, according to him, is the Lord, who creates and rules the world. #ankara admits two Brahmans, the lower and the higher, though in their essence they are but one.

1 A Rational Refutation of the Hindu Philosophical Systems, by Nehemiah Nilakantoa Gore, translated by Fitz-Edward Hall. Calcutta, 1862.

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Great as these differences on certain points of the Vedanta-philosophy may seem between ^ankara and R&mAnugra, they vanish if we enter more deeply into this ancient problem. Or rather we can see that the two meant much the same, though they expressed themselves in different ways. Though #ankara looks upon the individual soul and the personal God or tsvara as, like everything else, the result of AvidyS,, nescience, or M&y&, illusion, we must remember that what he calls unreal is no more than what we should call phenomenal. His vy&vah&rika, or practical world, is no more unreal than our phenomenal world, though we distinguish it from the noumenal, or the Ding an &ich. It is as real as anything presented to us by our senses ever can be. Nor is the vy&vah&rika or phenomenal God more unreal than the God whom we ignorantly worship. Avidy& or nescience with #ankara produces really the same effect as pami&ma or evolution with R&m&nugra. With him there always remains the unanswered question why Brahman, the perfect Being, the only Being that can claim reality, should ever have been subjected to parm&ma or change, why, as Plato asks in the Sophist and the Parmenides, the one should ever have become many; while #ankara is more honest in confessing, though indirectly, our ignorance in ascribing all that we cannot understand in the phenomenal world to that principle of Nescience which is inherent in our nature, nay without which we should not be what we are. To know this Avidy& constitutes the highest wisdom which we can reach in this life, whether we follow the teaching of #a£kara or R&m&nugra, of Sokrates or St. Paul. The old problem remains the same whether we say that the unchange

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able Brahman is changed, though we are ignorant how, or whether we say that it is due to ignorance that the unchangeable Brahman seems to be changed. We have to choose between accepting Avidy& as a fact not to be accounted for, or accepting change in the perfect Being as a fact not to be accounted for. This, however, would carry us into fields of philosophy which have never been cultivated by Indian thinkers, and where they would decline to follow us.

But whatever we may think of their Ved&ntic speculations, we cannot but admire the fearless consistency with which these ancient philosophers, and more particularly #ankara, argue from their premisses. If Brahman is all in all, they say—if Brahman is the only real Being—then the world also must be Brahman, the only question being, how? #afikara is quite consistent when he says that without Brahman the world would be impossible, just as we should say that without the absolutely real the relatively real would be impossible. And it is very important to observe that the Ved&ntist doe's not go so far as certain Buddhist philosophers who look upon the phenomenal world as simply nothing. No, their world is real, only it is not what it seems to be. #afikara claims for the phenomenal world a reality sufficient for all practical purposes (vy&vah&rika), sufficient to determine our practical life, our moral obligations, nay even our belief in a manifested or revealed God.

There is a veil, but the Ved&nta-philosophy teaches us that the eternal light behind it can always be perceived more or less darkly, or more or less clearly, through philosophical knowledge. It can be perceived, because in reality it is always there. It has

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been said that the personal or manifested God of the Ved&ntists, whether they call Him t*vara, Lord, or any other name, possesses no absolute, but a relative reality only—that he is, in fact, the result of Avidyi or Nescience, This is true. But this so-called relative reality is again sufficient for all practical and religious purposes. It is as real as anything, when known by us, can be real. It is as real as anything that is called real in ordinary language. The few only who have grasped the reality of the One Absolute Being, have any right to say that it is not absolutely real. The Ved&ntist is very careful to distinguish between two kinds of reality. There is absolute reality which belongs to Brahman only; there is phenomenal reality which belongs to God or Isvara as Creator and to all which he created as known to us; and there is besides, what he would call utter emptiness or aftnyatva, which with the Buddhists represents the essence of the world, but which the Vedantist classes with the mirage of the desert, the horns of a hare, or the son of a barren woman. Whenever he is asked whether he looks upon the Creator and his works as not absolutely real, he always falls back on this that the Creator and the creation are the Absolute itself, only seeming to be conditioned. The phenomenal attaches to their appearance only, which translated into our language would mean that we can know God only as He is revealed in His works or as He appears to our human understanding, but never in His absolute reality. Only while with us the absence of knowledge is subjective, with the Hindu it has become an objective power. He would say to the modern Agnostic: We quite agree with you as far as facts are concerned,

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THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE VEDANTA. 321
but while you are satisfied with the mere statement that we, as huraan beings, are nescient, we in India have asked the further question whence that Nescience, or what has made us nescient, or what is the cause, for a cause there must be, that we cannot know the Absolute, such as it is. By calling that cause Avidyfi, or May k the Agnostics might say that the Ved&ntists do not gain much; still they gain this, that this universal A gnosis is recognised as a cause, and as distinct both from the subject, as knowing, and from the objects, as known. We should probably say that the cause of Agnosis or of our limited and conditional knowledge lies in the subject, or in the very nature of what we mean by knowledge, and it was from this very point of view that Kant determined the limits and conditions of knowledge as peculiar to the human mind.

Though by a different way, the Ved&ntist arrived really in the end at the same result as Kant and more recent philosophers who hold with Kant that 'oui experience supplies us only with modes of the Unconditioned as presented under the conditions of our consciousness/ It is these conditions or limitations of human consciousness which were expressed in India by Avidy&. Sometimes this Avidy& is represented as a power within the Divine (dev&tma-sakti, Vedantas&ra, p. 4); sometimes, by a kind of mythological metamorphosis, the Avidy& or M&ya has become personified, a power, as it were, independent of ourselves, yet determining us in every»act of sensuous intuition and rational conception. When the Ved&ntist says that the relative reality of the world is vy&vah&rika, that is practical or sufficient for all practical purposes, we should probably say that' though reality under the (4) y

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forms of our consciousness is but a conditioned effect of the absolute reality, yet this conditioned effect stands in indissoluble relation with its unconditioned cause, and being equally persistent with it, so long as the conditions persist, is to consciousness supplying these conditions, equally real/

It may seem strange to find the results of the philosophy of Kant and his followers thus anticipated under varying expressions in the Upanishads and in the Ved&nta-philosophy of ancient India. The treatment of these world-old problems differs no doubt in the hands of modern and ancient thinkers, but the starting-points are really the same, and the final results are much the same. In thestf comparisons we cannot expect the advantages which a really genealogical treatment of religious and philosophical problems yields us. We cannot go back by a continuous road from Kant to $ankara, as if going back from pupil to teacher, or even from antagonists to the authorities which they criticise or attack. But when that treatment is impossible, what I call the analogical treatment is often very useful. As it is useful to compare the popular legends and superstitious customs of people who lived in Europe and Australia, and between whom no genealogical relationship is conceivable, it is instructive also to watch the philosophical problems, as they have been treated independently in different times and in localities between which no intellectual contact can possibly be suspected. At first no doubt the language and the method of the Upanishads seem so strange that any comparison with the philosophical language and method of our hemisphere seems out of the question. It sounds strange to us when the

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THE TWO S3HOOLS OP THE VEDANTA. 32$

Upanishads speak of the soul emerging from the veins,' ascending to the moon, and after a long and dangerous journey approaching at last the throne of God ; it sounds stranger still when the soul is made to say to a personal God, ' I am what Thou art, Thou art the Self, I am the Self, Thou art the True, I am the True.' Yet it is only the old Eleatic argument carried out consistently, that if there is but one Infinite or one God, the soul also can in its true essence be nothing but God. Religions which are founded on a belief in a transcendent yet personal God, naturally shrink from this conclusion as irreverent and as almost impious. Yet this is their own fault. They have first created an unapproachable Deity, and they are afterwards afraid to approach it; they have made an abyss between the human and the divine, and they dare not cross it. This was not so in the early centuries of Christianity. Remembering the words of Christ, 'Eyo> iv avrois, koi <rv iv €\xoi, tva Sxriv t€T€\€lo>jx4vol ds h, ' I in them and thou in me, that they be made perfect in one/ Athanasius declared, De Incarn. Verbi Dei, 54, Avrds (6 rov Otov koyos) iTir)vOp<&Trr)(T€v tva fjfiets OtoTroiriO&iAtv, ' He, the Logos or Word of God, became man that we might become God.' In more recent times also similar ideas have found expression in sacred poetry, though more or less veiled in metaphorical language. Not more than 200 years ago there was that noble school of Christian Platonists who rendered Cambridge famous in all Christendom. They thought the same thoughts and used almost the same language as the authors of the Upanishads 2000 years ago, and as the Indian Ved&nta- philosophers about 1000 years ago, nay as some solitary thinkers

Y2

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to be found at Benares to the present day. The following lines of Henry More might have been -written by a Ved&nta-philosopher in India:

' Hence the soul's nature we may plainly see: A beam it is of the Intellectual Sun. A ray indeed of that Aeternity, But such a ray as when it first out shone From a free light its shining date begun/

And again:

'But yet, my Muse, still take an higher flight, Sing of Platonick Faith in the first Good, That faith that doth our souls to God unite So strongly, tightly, that the rapid flood Of this swift flux of things, nor with foul mud Can stain, nor strike us off from th' unity Wherein we steadfast stand, unshaked, unmoved, Engrafted by a deep vitality, The prop and stay of things in God's benignity.'

The Ved&nta-philosophy, as we saw, is very rich in similes and metaphors, but no philosophy has at the same time so courageously removed all metaphorical veils, when the whole truth had to be revealed, as the Ved&nta, particularly in the mouth of #ankara. And what is peculiar to the Vedanta is that, with all its boldness in speaking unmetaphorical language, it has never ceased to be a religion.

The Ved&nta sanctioned a belief in Brahman as a masculine, as an objective deity, or as an Isvara, the Lord, the creator and ruler of the world. It went even further and encouraged a worship of the Highest Brahman under certain pratikas, that is, under certain names or forms or persons, nay even under the names of popular deities. It prescribed certain means of grace, and thereby introduced a system of moral discipline, the absence of which in purely metaphysical systems, is often urged as their most dangerous

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characteristic. The Ved&ntist would say that the truly enlightened and released soul, after finding its true home in Brahman, could not possibly commit sin or even claim merit for its good deeds. We read (Brih. Ar. IV. 4, 23),' He who has found the trace or the footstep (of Brahman) is not sullied by any evil deed.' And again: 'He that knows it, after having become quiet, satisfied, patient, and collected, sees self in Self, sees all as Self. Evil does not burn him, he burns all evil. Free from evil, free from spots, free from doubt, he becomes a true Brahmawa, his self is at rest in the Highest Self.'

Moral Character of the Vedanta.

To guard against the dangers of self-deceit, the Ved&ntists prescribe a very strict moral discipline as the essential condition of the obtainment of the highest knowledge. In the Upanishads (Brih. Ar. IV. 4, 22) we read: ' Br&hmans seek to know Him by the study of the Veda, by sacrifice, by gifts, by penance, by fasting, and he who knows Him becomes a sage. Wishing for that world (of Brahman) only, they leave their homes as mendicants. The people of old, knowing this, did not wish for offspring.. What shall we do with offspring, they said, we who have this Self and are no longer of this world ? And having risen above the desire for eons, wealth, and new worlds, they wander about as mendicants/

Here you find again in the Upanishad all the germs of Buddhism. The recognised name of mendicant, Bhikshu, is the name afterwards adopted by the followers of Buddha.

The danger that liberty of the spirit might de

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generate into licence, existed no doubt in India as elsewhere. But nowhere were greater precautions taken against it than in India. First of all there was the probation, through which every youth had to pass for years in the house of his spiritual teacher. Then followed the life of the married man or householder, strictly regulated by priestly control. And then only when old age approached, began the time of spiritual freedom, the life in the forest, which brought release from ceremonial and religious restriction, but at the same time, strict discipline, nay more than discipline, penance of every kind, torture of the body, and strictly regulated meditation.

Six requirements were considered essential before a Br&hman could hope to attain true knowledge, viz. tranquillity (sama), taming of the passions (dama), resignation (uparati), patience (titiksM), collection (sam&dhi), and faith (sraddM). All these preparatory stages are minutely described, and their object is throughout to draw the thoughts away from things external, and to produce a desire for spiritual freedom (mumukshatva), and to open the eyes of the soul to its true nature. It must be clearly understood that all these means of grace, whether external, such as sacrifice, study, penance, or internal, such as patience, collection, and faith, cannot by themselves produce true knowledge, but that they serve to prepare the mind to receive that knowledge.

▲soetlc Practioes.

It is well known that in India the perfect absorption of thought into the supreme spirit is accompanied, or rather preceded, by a number of more or less pain

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ful practices, which are fully described in their ancient catechisms (in the Yoga-sfttras, &c), and which continue to be practised to the present day in India. I believe that from a pathological point of view there is nothing mysterious in any of the strange effects produced by restraining or regulating the breathing, fixing the eyes on certain points, sitting in peculiar positions, and abstaining from food. But these things, which have of late attracted so much attention, are of small interest to the philosopher, and are apt to lead to much self-deceit, if not to intentional deception. The Hindus themselves are quite familiar with the extraordinary performances of some of their Yogins or so-called Mahatmas, and it is quite right that medical men should carefully study this subject in India, to find out what is true and what is not. To represent these performances as essential parts of ancient Hindu philosophy, as has lately been done bv the admirers of Tibetan Mah&tmas, is a great mistake.

Esoteric Doctrines.

It is likewise a mistake to suppose that the ancient Hindus looked upon the Upanishads or the Yed&ntastitras as something secret or esoteric. Esoteric mysteries seem to me much more of a modern invention than an ancient institution. The more we become familar with the ancient literature of the East, the less we find of Oriental mysteries, of esoteric wisdom, of Isis veiled or unveiled. The profanum vulgus, or the outsiders, if there were any, consisted chiefly of those who wished to stay outside, or who excluded themselves by deficiencies either of knowledge or of character. In Greece also no one was

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admitted to the schools of the Pythagoreans without undergoing some kind of preparation. But to require a qualifying examination is very different from exclusiveness or concealment. The Pythagoreans had different classes of students; naturally, as we have Bachelors and Masters of Arts; and if some of these were called io-vTtpiKoC and others ifarepiKol, that meant no more at first than that the latter were still on the outskirts of philosophical studies, while the former had been admitted to the more advanced classes. The Pythagoreans had even a distinctive dress, they observed a restricted diet, and are said to have abstained from flesh, except at sacrifices, from fish, and from beans. Some observed celibacy, and had all things in common. These regulations varied at different times and in different countries where the Pythagorean doctrines had spread. But nowhere do we hear of any doctrines being withheld from those who were willing to fulfil the conditions imposed on all who desired admission to the brotherhood. If this constitutes mystery or esoteric teaching, we might as well speak of the mysteries of astronomy, because people ignorant of mathematics are excluded from it, or of the esoteric wisdom of the students of Comparative Mythology, because a knowledge of Sanskrit is a tine qud non. Even the Greek Mysteries, whatever they became in the end, were originally no more than rites and doctrines handed down at the solemn gatherings of certain families or clans or societies, where no one had access but those who had acquired a right of membership. It is true that such societies are apt to degenerate into secret societies, and that limited admission soon becomes exclusiveness. But if outsiders

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imagined that these so-called mysteries contained any profound wisdom and were meant to veil secrets which it seemed dangerous to divulge, they were probably as much deceived as people are in our days if they imagine that doctrines of esoteric wisdom have been handed down by the Freemasons from the days of Solomon, and are now confided to the safe keeping of the Prince of Wales.

It is quite true that the doctrine of the Upanishads is called Eahasya, that is, secret, but it is secret in one sense only, that is to say, no one was taught the Upanishads in ancient times, who had not passed through the previous discipline of the two stages of life, that of the student, and that of the householder, or who had not decided from the first on leading a life of study and chastity. This secrecy was easy when there existed as yet no books, and when therefore those who wished to study the Upanishads had to find a teacher to teach them. Such a teacher would naturally communicate his knowledge to men only who had attained the proper age, or had fulfilled other necessary conditions. Thus we read at the end of the SamhitctUpanishad in the Aitareya-&rawyaka,(Let no one tell these Samhit&s to any one who is not a resident pupil, who has not been with his teacher at least one year, and who is not himself to become an instructor. Thus say the teachers.'

As to the study of the Ved&nta-s&tras, I know of no restriction, particularly at a time when MSS. had become more widely accessible, and when numerous commentaries and glosses enabled students to acquire a knowledge of this system of philosophy even by themselves. Nay, it is certainly curious that while

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the ordinary education and the study of the Veda was restricted to the three upper classes, we read again and again of members of the fourth class, mere Sftdras, sharing the knowledge of the Ved&nta, and joining the rank of the mendicants or Bhikshus.

Difference between India and Greece.

What constitutes, however, the most important difference between the ancient Ved&nta-philosophy in India, and similar philosophies in Greece, is the theological character retained by the former, while the latter tended more and more to become ethical and political rather than theological. With regard to metaphysical speculations the Eleatic philosophers, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus, come nearest to the Ved&nta-philosophers. Xenophanes may still be called almost entirely theological. He speaks of Zeus as the Supreme Being, as all in all. In fact, he represents the same stage of thought which is represented as the lower knowledge in the Ved&nta, a belief in Brahman, as masculine, which, to judge from the Upanishads themselves, was in India also earlier than a belief in Brahman as neuter. This belief left the individual soul face to face with the universal, but objective deity, it had not yet reached to the knowledge of the oneness of the Atman and the Brahman. Xenophanes retains his belief in Zeus, though his Zeus is very different from the Zeus of Homer. He is first of all the only God, neither in form nor in thought like unto mortals. Thus Xenophanes argues:

' If God is the strongest of all things, he must be one, for if there were two or more, he would not be the strongest and best of all things.'

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(EJ b* ivTiv 6 Beds airdvT(*)v KpttriaroVy iv* <f>ri<riv avrbv TTpocrrjKeLv tlvai' cJ yap hvo rj irkelovs &v ovk. hv In Kpdnorov kclI pikrurTov avrbv ctuai it&irmv. Clem. Strom, v. 601 c.)

He must also be immoveable and unchangeable (aKivr\T6s or aparinata). And again:

' He revolves everything in his mind without effort.'

('AW air&vevdc tiovoio voov (f>p€vl irdvTa KpabaCvti. Simpl. Phys. 6 a, m.)

' He is altogether mind and thought, and eternal/

(SvpLirdmra r tlvai (rdv Oedv) vovv kclI (frpoirqcriv kcu atbiov. Diog. ix. 19.)

'He sees altogether, he thinks altogether, he hears altogether/

(OSXOS 6pq, oSA.09 hi VO€l, oSAoS b4 T &KOV€l.)

So far Xenophanes is still theological. He has not gone beyond the conception of Brahman, as the supreme and only Being; his Zeus is still a masculine, and a personal deity.

In some of the utterances, however, that are ascribed to Xenophanes, he goes beyond. Plato at least ascribes to Xenophanes as well as to his successors, the philosophical tenet that all things are many in name, but in nature one1, which reminds one strongly of the Sat, or to Sp, of the Upanishads, that becomes manifold by name and form. Cicero, however (Acad, ii. 37, 118), states clearly that Xenophanes took this one to be God.

(Xenophanes unum esse omnia neque id esse mutabile et id esse Deum, neque natum unquam et sempiternum.)

Even the argument which we found in the Upani

1 Sophist, 242 5.

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shads, that what is cannot have sprung from what is not, is ascribed to Xenophanes also, who calls this One and All, which truly exists, unborn, unchangeable, imperishable, eternal,—all attributes that could easily be matched in the Upanishads. Like the Upanishads, Xenophanes insists on the One and All being intelligent (iaitanya, koyucSv), the only doubtful point being whether Xenophanes went so far as his successors in surrendering altogether its divine or Zeus-like character. According to Sextus (Hyp. Pyrrh. i. 225) it would seem that this was not the case. * Xenophanes,' he writes,' held that the All was one and that God was congenital (av^vris) with all things, or, as we should say, that God was immanent in the world. That Xenophanes conceived of this Being as 0-</>aipo€i&rfc, or spherical, is well known, but it hardly conveys any definite meaning to our mind; and you will find that ancient as well as modern authorities are by no means agreed as to whether Xenophanes considered the world as limited or unlimited *.

What is preserved to us of the physical philosophy of Xenophanes seems to be quite apart from his metaphysical principles. For while from his metaphysical point of view all was one, uniform and unchangeable, from his physical point of view he is said to have considered earth, or earth and water, as the origin of all things (Ik yalrjs yap iravra, Kai els yrjv irAvra Ttkevrq, Fragm. 8), ' All things are from the earth, and all things end in the earth;' and irivres yap yalrfs t€ Kal vbaros iKyevontada, Sext. Emp. adv. Math. ix. 361, and yrj Kai vboap TravQ' o<r<ra yivovrai 1)5* fyvovrai, Simpl. Phys. fol. 41 a.

1 Zeller, Die Philosophic der Qriechen, i. pp. 457-8.

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'Earth and water are all things, whatever is born or grows.'

Xenophanes is also credited with the statement that the earth arose from air and fire—theories which again might easily be matched in the Upanishads. But the essential point on which Xenophanes and the Upanishads agree is the first conception of the One Being, as the substance of everything, though that conception has not yet become purely metaphysical, but is, like the Brahman in the older Upanishads, still surrounded by a kind of religious halo.

On this point Parmenides marks a decided advance in the Eleatic school, the same advance which we observed in the later Upanishads. With him the concept of the One Being has become entirely metaphysical. It is no longer God, in the ordinary sense of the word, as little as the Highest Brahman is God, though whatever there is real in God, is the Highest Brahman. In the definition and description of this One Being, Parmenides goes even beyond the Ved&nta, and we see here once more how the dialectic flexibility of the Greek mind outstrips the dogmatic positiveness of the Hindu mind. According to Parmenides, what is, is; what is not, can neither be conceived nor enunciated. What is, cannot have a beginning or an end *. It is whole, unique, unmoved and at rest. We cannot say that it was or will be, but only that it

1 Cf. Simplicius, Phys. fol. 31 a, b : M<W 5' hi fiv0oi 68oto Acdreroi, <&s ioriv. rw&ry 5' ivi oijfiar* taoi IJoXAcfc f*&\\ dts dyiinjrov kov ical 6\vb\t$p6v cariv, OZ\ov now oy wis tc kclI arpcfih ijb* drikavrov Off nor* irjv ovb' l<mzt, ind vvw lanv dfiov irav>*Ev (wtx^s. riva y&p yivvav Siftcreai avrov; n§ v60(v avfrOlv; ovr* Ik /«) k6vros idcrcj &io$at a* ovSi voctv oif ycLp <par6v ovte votjtSv *E<ttiv 6n<us ovk &rn. ri 5' &v fuv zeal xpt°s Stpff€vf "torcpov 1j vpdaO* I* rov ptjfcvds ap£ap*vov <pvv; Ovrarc 1j irdfiwav

VC\4/A€V Xf*Wv lGTW $ OVKl.

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334 LECTUBE X.

is, for how could it have become anything but itself? Not from not being, for that is not, and cannot bring forth; nor from being, for this would never bring forth anything but itself. And this 6v cannot have parts, for there is nothing different from it by which its parts could be separated. All space is filled by it, and it is there immoveable, always in the same place, by itself and like itself. Nor is thinking different from being \ because there is nothing but being, and thinking is thinking of being. It is curious that Parmenides will not have this Being to be infinite, because he looks even upon infinity as something imperfect, because not having definite limits. In fact, this Real Being of Parmenides is by no means immaterial; we can best explain it by the simile we met with in the Upanishads, that all that is made of clay, is clay, differing only by name and form. Parmenides does not deny that these forms and names exist in the phenomenal world, he only insists on the uncertainty of the evidence which the senses offer us of these forms and names. And as in the Upanishads this erroneous knowledge or nescience is sometimes called tarn as or darkness, as opposed to the light (tegras) of true knowledge, we find that Parmenides also speaks of darkness (i/t>£ ibarjs) as the cause of erroneous, and of light {alBipiov irvp) as the cause of true knowledge.

We thus see how the level of thought reached by the earlier Eleatics, is much the same as that of the earlier Upanishads. They both start from religious ideas, and end in metaphysical conceptions, they both have arrived at the highest abstraction of to 6v, the

1 lojvrbv 5' karl votiv t€ ical ovvvch fori vorjpa, &c. Simplicius, Phys. ff. 19 a, 31 a, b.

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THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE VEDiNTA. 335

Sk. Sat, as the only reality; they both have learnt to look upon the manifold of experience as doubtful, as phenomenal, if not erroneous, and as the result of nf^me and form (poppas dvoixd&iv, n&marftpa). But the differences between the two are considerable also. The Eleatic philosophers are Greeks with a strong belief in personal individuality. They tell us little about the soul, and its relation to the One Being, still less do they suggest any means by which the soul could become one with it, and recognise its original identity with it. There are some passages (Zeller, p. 488) in which it seems as if Parmenides had believed in a migration of souls, but this idea does not assume with him the importance which it had, for instance, among the Pythagoreans. The psychological questions are thrown into the background by the metaphysical problems, which the Eleatic philosophers wished to solve, while in the Upanishads the psychological question is always the more prominent.

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LECTURE XI.

SUFIISM. Religion, System of Relations between Man and Ctod.

I ALLUDED in a former lecture to a definition of religion which we owe to Newman. 'What is religion/ he writes (Univ. Serm., p. 19), 'but the system of relations between me and a Supreme Being/ Another thoughtful writer has expressed the same idea, even more powerfully. c Man requires/ he said,' that there shall be direct relations between the created and the Creator, and that in these relations he shall find a solution of the perplexities of existence V

This relationship, however, assumes very different forms in different religions. We have seen how in the Ved&nta it was founded on a very simple, but irrefragable syllogism. If there is one being, the Vedantist says, which is all in all, then our soul cannot in its substance be different from that being, and our separation from it can be the result of nescience only, which nescience has to be removed by knowledge, that is, by the VedSnta-philosophy.

We saw in the Eleatic philosophy of Greece, the same premiss, though without the conclusion deduced from it, that the soul cannot form an exception, but

1 Disraeli in Lothair, p. 157.

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sufiism:. 837!

must, like everything else, if not more than everything else, share the essence of what alone is infinite, and can alone be said truly to exist.

Sufiism, its Origin.

We shall next have to consider a religion in which the premiss seems to be wanting, but the conclusion has become even more powerful, I mean the Sufiism among the Mohammedans.

As the principal literature of Sufiism is composed in Persian, it was supposed by Sylvestre de Sacy and others that these ideas of the union of the soul with God had reached Persia from India, and spread from thence to other Mohammedan countries. Much may be said in support of such a theory, which was shared by Goethe also in his West-Ostlicher Divan. We know of the close contact between India and Persia at all times, and it cannot be denied that the temperament and the culture of Persia lent itself far more naturally to the fervour of this religious poetry than the stern character of Mohammed and his immediate followers. Still we cannot treat Sufiism as genealogically descended from Ved&ntism, because Ved&ntism goes far beyond the point reached by Sufiism, and has a far broader metaphysical foundation than the religious poetry of Persia. Sufiism is satisfied with an approach of the soul to God, or with a loving union of the two, but it has not reached the point from which the nature of God and soul is seen to be one and the same. In the language of the Ved&nta, at least in its final development, we can hardly speak any longer of a relation between the soul and the Supreme Being, or of an approach of the soul to, or of W z

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a union of the soul with God. The two are one as soon as their original and eternal oneness of nature has been recognised. With the Sufis, on the contrary, the subject, the human soul, and the object, the divine spirit, however close their union, remain always distinct, though related beings. There are occasional expressions which come very near to the Ved&nta similes, such as that of the drop of water being lost in the ocean. Still, even these expressions admit of explanation; for we are told that the drop of water is not lost or annihilated, it is only received, and the Persian poet when he speaks of the soul being lost in God need not have meant more than our own poet when he speaks of our losing ourselves in the ocean of God's love.

Tholuck seems to have been one of the first to show that there is no historical evidence for the supposition that Sufiism is founded on an ancient Persian sect, prior to the rise of Islam. Sufiism, as he has proved, is decidedly Mohammedan in origin, and its first manifestations appear early in the second century of the Hedjra.

Mohammed said indeed in the KoiAn1, 'In Islam there is no monachism'; but as early as 623 a. d., fortyfive men of Mekka joined themselves to as many others of Medina, took an oath of fidelity to the doctrines of the prophet and formed a fraternity, to establish community of property, and to perform daily certain religious practices by way of penitence. They took the name of #ufi, a word that has been derived from sttf, wool, a hair-cloth used by penitents in the

1 See the 'Atodrifui-Ma'drif, translated by Lieut.-Col. H.Wilberfbrce Clarke, 1891, p. 1.

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/ sufiism. 339
early days of Islam, or from sftffy, wise, pious, or from $afi, pure, or from safa, purity.

Abstract of Bull Doctrines.

The principal doctrines of Sufiism have been summed up by Sir W. Jones as follows1: ' The Sufis believe that the souls of men differ infinitely in degree, but not at all in kind, from the divine spirit of which they are particles, and in which they will ultimately be absorbed; that the spirit of God pervades the universe, always immediately present to His work, and consequently always in substance; that He alone is perfect in benevolence, perfect truth, perfect beauty; that love of Him alone is real and genuine love, while that for other objects is absurd and illusory; that the beauties of nature are faint resemblances, like images in a mirror, of the divine charms ; that, from eternity without beginning to eternity without end, the supreme benevolence is occupied in bestowing happiness, or the means of attaining it; that men can only attain it by performing their part of the personal covenant between them and the Creator; that nothing has a pure absolute existence but mind or spirit; that material substances, as the ignorant call them, are no more than gay pictures presented continually to our minds by the sempiternal artist; that we must beware of attachment to such phantoms and attach ourselves exclusively to God, who truly exists in us, as we exist solely in Him; that we retain even in this forlorn state of separation from our Beloved, the idea -of heavenly beauty and the remembrance of our primeval voivs; that sweet musick, gentle breezes,

1 Sir W. Jones, Works, 1807, vol. iv. p. 212.

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fragrant flowers, perpetually renew the primary idea, refresh our fading memory, and melt us with tender affections; that we must cherish these affections, and by abstracting our souls from vanity, that is from all but God, approximate to this essence, in our final union with which will consist our supreme beatitude/

Rabia, the earliest 8nfl.

It is curious that the first person quoted as expressing Sufi opinions is a woman of the name of Rabia, who died 135 after the Hedjra. Ibn Khalikan tells a number of stories of her: * She would often in the middle of the night go on the roof of the house and call out in her solitude: " O my God, the noise of the day is hushed, the lover dallies with the beloved in the secret chamber; but I in my solitude rejoice in thee, for I know thee to be my true beloved."' Ferid eddin Attar tells of the same Rabia, that once when she was walking across the rocks, she cried out: * Desire of God has seized me; true thou art stone also and earth, but I yearn to see thee/ Then the High God spoke directly in her heart: * O Rabia, hast thou not heard that when Moses once desired to see God, only a mote of the Divine Majesty fell on a mountain, and yet it burst asunder. Be content therefore with my name/

Again, we are told that when Rabia came to Mekka on a pilgrimage, she exclaimed, ' I want the Lord of the Kaaba, what use is the Kaaba to me? I have come so near to God, that the word He has spoken applies to me: Whoever approaches me a span, I ap* proach him a yard/

There are ever so many stories about this Rabia,

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SUFIISM. 341
all intended to show her devotion, nay, her spiritual union with Allah. When she was asked to get married, she said: ' My inmost being is married, therefore I say, that my being has perished within me, and has been resuscitated in God. Sihce then, I am entirely in His power, nay, I am all Himself. He who wishes for me as his bride, must ask not me, but Him/ When Hassan Basri (a famous theologian) asked her by what way and by what means she had risen to that height, she answered: ' By losing everything that I had found, in Him.' And when asked once more, by what way and by what means she had come to know Him, she exclaimed: ' O Hassan, thou knowest by certain ways and by certain means; I know without ways and means/ When she was ill and laid up, three great theologians visited her. One, Hassan Basri, said: ' He is not sincere in his prayers, who does not bear patiently the castigation of the Lord/ The other, Shakik by name, said: 'He is not sincere in his prayers, who does not rejoice in His castigation/ But Rabia, still perceiving something of the self in all this, replied: * He is not sincere in his prayers, who, when he sees the Lord, does not forget that he is being chastised/

Another time when she was very ill, and was asked the cause of her illness, she said : * I have been thinking of the joys of paradise, therefore my Lord has punished me/ And again she said: * A wound within my heart devours me; it cannot be healed except through my union with my friend. I shall remain ailing, till I have gained my end on the last day/

This is language with which students of the lives of Christian Saints are familiar. It often becomes

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even more fervid both in the East and in the West, but it sounds to our ears less offensive in the East than in the West, because in Eastern languages the symbolic representation of human love as an emblem of divine love, has been accepted and tolerated from veryearly times.

But though it is impossible to trace the first beginnings of Sufiism directly to a Persian source, it cannot be denied that in later times Persia and even India, particularly after they had been brought under Mohammedan sway, contributed largely to the development of Sufiism and of Sufi poetry.

Connection of Sufiism with Early Christianity.

The chief impulse, however, which Sufiism received from without, seems to have come from Christianity in that form in which it was best known in the East. By the end of the third century, as Mr. Whinfield writes in the Preface to his translation of the Mesnevi, portions of Plato, of Aristotle, 'the parent of heresies/ and of the Alexandrian commentators had been translated into Arabic. The theosophy of the Neo-platonists and Gnostics was widely spread in the East. Sufiism might almost be called a parallel stream of mystical theosophy derived in part from Plato, 'the Attic Moses,' as he was called, but mainly from Christianity, as presented in the spiritual gospel of St. John, and as expounded by the Christian Platonists and Gnostics. Traces of the influence of Platonism have been discovered in the reference of the Sufis to the One and the Many, the figment of Not-being, the generation of opposites from opposites, the Alexandrian gnosis of the Logos, of ecstasy and intuition, and the doctrine

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sufiism. 348
propounded in the Phaedrus, that human beauty is the bridge of communication between the world of sense and the world of ideas, leading man by the stimulus of love to the Great Ocean of the Beautiful.

Traces of Christianity have been pointed out by Mr. Whinfield, not only in the distinct mention of the chief events of the Gospel history, but in actual renderings of sentences and phrases taken from the Gospels. The cardinal Sufi terms,' The Truth/ < The Way,' ' Universal Reason ' (Logos), * Universal Soul' (Pneuma), c Grace' (Fais), and ' Love,' are all treated by him as of Christian extraction.

Mr. Whinfield might in support of his theory have mentioned a poem in the Gulshen Has, the secret of the bed of roses, a very popular but anonymous poem on the principles of Sufiism written about the beginning of the fourteenth century, in which the mystic union of the soul with God is described as the essential feature of Christianity.

There we read:—

1 Dost thou know what Christianity is? I shall tell it thee. It digs up thy own Ego, and carries thee to God. Thy soul is a monastery, wherein dwells oneness, Thou art Jerusalem, where the Eternal is enthroned ; The Holy Spirit works this miracle, for know that God's being Rests in the Holy Spirit as in His own spirit. The Spirit of God gives to thy spirit the fire of the spirit, He moves in thy spirit beneath a thin veil; If thou art delivered by the Spirit from manhood, Thou hast found eternal rest in the sanctuary of God; He who has directed himself so that all passions are silent, Will surely, like Jesus, ascend to heaven.'

Abu Said Abul Choir, Founder of Sufiism.

Rabia may be called a Sufi before even the rise of Sufiism. Her Sufiism seems quite her own, without any traces of foreign influence. The real founder,

/\\~*, ~y
however, of the Sufis as a religious sect was Abu Said Abul Cheir, about 820 a. d.

Abu Yasid and Junaid.

Towards the end of the same century a schism took place, one party following Abu Yasid al-Bush&ni, whose pantheistic views were in open conflict with the Kor&n, the other following Junaid, who tried to reconcile Sufiism with orthodoxy. There were then, as at present, Sufis and Sufis. Some wrote in Persian, such as SenM, Ferid eddin Att&r, Jellal eddin R6mi (d. 1162), Jkml (d. 1172); others in Arabic, such as Omar ibn el Faridh, and Izz eddin Mutaddesi, others even in Turkish.

Some of their poetry is magnificent in imagery, and highly valued even by those who are afraid of the consequences of their doctrines. Sufiism was said to breed an alarming familiarity with the deity, and a disregard of human and divine ordinances, at least among those who have not reached the highest spiritual purity, and might be tempted to use their outward sanctity as a cloak for human frailty.

8nfl, Fakir, Darwiak.

The etymology of Sufi, as derived from gftf wool, because they walked about dressed in white woollen garments is now generally acceptedl. Formerly it was supposed that Sufi came from the Greek <ro<j)6s, which is impossible. At present the Sufis are generally known as Fakirs, iu Persian as Darwish, i. e. poor. Formerly they were also called Arif, theosophist, and Ahl alyakyn, the people of surety. Thus one of them, Abd al Razzak,

1 Sprenger, i. p. 262.

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says: 'AH praise to Allah, who by His grace and favour has saved us from the researches of conventional sciences, who by the spirit of immediate intuition has lifted us above the tediousness of tradition and demonstration, who has removed us from the hollow threshing of straw, and kept us pure from disputation, opposition and contradiction; for all this is the arena of uncertainty and the field of doubt, of error, and heresy; glory to Him who has taken away from our eyes the veil of externals, of form, and confusion.'

Asceticism.

The Sufis trust to the inward eye that is opened in raptures; and which, if it is weak or blind, tan be helped on by ascetic discipline. This ascetic discipline was originally no more than abstaining from food and drink, and other pleasures of life. But it soon degenerated into wild fanaticism. Some of the Fakirs indulged in violent exercises intended to produce convulsions, cataleptic fits, and all the rest. The Darwishes, who may be seen now turning round and round till they break out in delirious shouts, are the degraded descendants of the Sufis. Att&r and Jell&l eddin Rftmi, like true lovers of God, required no stimulants for their enthusiasm, and their poetical genius found utterance, not in inarticulate ravings, but in enraptured hymns of praise. The true Sufis were always honoured, not only for their genius, but for their saint-like lives, and they could well bear comparison with their contemporaries in the West, even such as St. Bernard.

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When speaking of the true and saint-like Sufis, Jell&l eddin says:—
i Faithful they are, but not for Paradise, God's Will the only crowning of their faith: And not for seething Hell flee they from sin, But that their will must serve the Will divine. It is no struggle, 'tis not discipline Wins them a will so restful and so blest; It is that God from His heart-fountain core Fills up their jubilant soul.'

It is true there is little of what we call theosophic philosophy in their utterances. That belongs almost exclusively to the Ved&ntist, and to a certain extent to the Yogins also of India. The Sufi trusts to his feelings, nay, almost to his senses, not, as the Vedantist, to his philosophical insight. He has intuitions or beatific visions of God, or he claims at least to have them. He feels the presence of God, and his highest blessedness on earth is the mystic union with God, of which he speaks under ever-varying, and sometimes, to us at least, startling imagery. Yet for his highest raptures he too confesses that human language has no adequate expression. As S&dy says, the flowers which a lover of God had gathered in his rose-garden, and which he wished to give to his friends, so overpowered his mind by their fragrance, that they fell out of his lap and withered; that is to say, the glory of ecstatic visions pales and fades away when it has to be put into human language.

The Mesnevi.

Jell&l eddin in the Preface to his Mesnevi, says: 'This book contains strange and rare narratives, beautiful sayings, and recondite indications, a path

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suyiisw. 347
for the devout, and a garden for the pious, short in expressions, numerous in its applications. It contains the roots of the roots of the roots of the Faith, and treats of the mysteries of union and sure knowledge.' This book is looked upon by Mohammedans as second only to the Kor&n, and yet it would be difficult to imagine two books more different one from the other.

Mohammed's Opinion.

Mohammed's idea of God is after all the same as that of the Old Testament. Allah is chiefly the God of Power; a transcendent, but a strongly personal God. He is to be feared rather than to be approached, and true religion is submission to His will (Islam). Even some of the Sufis seem to shrink from asserting the perfect oneness of the human and the divine natures. They call the soul divine, God-like, but not yet God; as if in this case the adjective could really be distinguished from the substantive, as if anything could be divine but God alone, and as if there could be even a likeness of God, or anything God-like, that was not in its essence God. Philosophical speculations on God were distasteful to Mohammed. ' Think on the mercies of God/ he says in one place, 'not on the essence of God.' He knew that theological speculation would inevitably lead to schism. ' My people shall be divided,' he says, * into three and seventy sects, of which all save one shall have their portion in the fire.' That one with Mohammed would certainly not have been that of the Sufis.

There is an interesting poem in which Said, the servant, first recounts one morning an ecstasy he had

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348 LECTUBE XI.

enjoyed, and is then warned by Mohammed against excessive fervour : Said speaks:

'My tongue clave fever-dry, my blood ran fire, My nights were sleepless with consuming love, Till night and day sped past, as flies a lance, Grazing a buckler s rim ; a hundred thousand years No longer than a moment. In that hour All past eternity and all to come Was gathered up in one stupendous Now,— Let understanding marvel as it may, Where men see clouds, on the ninth heaven I gaze, And see the throne of God. All heaven and hell Are bare to me and all men's destinies. The heavens and earth, they vanish at my glance, The dead rise at my look. I tear the veil From all the worlds, and in the hall of heaven I set me central, radiant as the sun. Then spake the Prophet (Mohammed), Friend, thy steed is
warm; Spur him no more. The mirror in thy heart Did slip its fleshly case, now put it up— Hide it once more, or thou wilt come to harm/

There are long systematic treatises on Sufiism, but they refer chiefly to outward things, not to the great problems of the true nature of the soul and of God, and of the intimate relation between the two. We read of four stages through which the Sufi has to pass.

The Four Stages.

First comes the stage of humility, or simple obedience to the law and its representative, the Shaikh (nasut or shariat); then follows the way (tarikat), that is, spiritual adoration and resignation to the Divine Will; then 'Arftf, or Marifat, Knowledge, that is, inspired knowledge; and lastly Eakfkat, that is, Truth, or complete effacement in God.

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SUFIISM. 349

Th« Poetical iMXLgvw of Suflism.

When we read some of the Sufi enraptured poetry, we must remember that the Sufi poets use a number of expressions which have a recognised meaning in their language. Thus sleep signifies meditation; perfume, hope of divine favour; gales are illapses of grace; hisses and embraces, the raptures of piety. Idolators are not infidels, but really men of the pure faith, but who look upon Allah as a transcendent being, as a mere creator and ruler of the world. Wine is forbidden by Mohammed, but with the Sufi wine means spiritual knowledge, the wine-seller is the spiritual guide, the tavern the cell where the searcher after truth becomes intoxicated with the wine of divine love. Mirth, intoxication, and wantonness stand for religious ecstasy and perfect abstraction from all mundane thoughts. Beauty is the perfection of Deity; tresses are the expansion of His glory; the lips of the beloved mean the inscrutable mysteries of His essence; the down on the cheeks stands for the world of spirits; a black mole for the point of indivisible unity.

When we read some of this enraptured Sufi poetry we are at first somewhat doubtful whether it should not be taken simply in its natural sense, as jovial and erotic; and there are some students of literature who will not admit a deeper meaning. It is well known that Emerson rebelled against the idea of seeing more in the songs of Hafiz than what there is on the surface,—delight in women, in song and love. cWe do not wish/ he writes1, 'to make mystical

1 TTorAs, 1882, vol. iv. p, 201.

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850 LKCTDKE XI.

divinity out of the Songs of Solomon, much less out of the erotic and bacchanalian songs of Hafiz. Hafiz himself is determined to defy all such hypocritical interpretation, and tears off his turban and throws it at the head of the meddling dervis, and throws his glass after the turban. Nothing is too high, nothing too low, for his occasion. Love is a leveller, and Allah becomes a groom, and heaven a closet, in his daring hymns to his mistress or to his cupbearer. This boundless charter is the right of genius/ So it is, and there are no doubt many poems in which Hafiz means no more than what he says. No one would search for any but the most obvious meaning in such Anacreontic verses as the following:

' Wine two years old and a damsel of fourteen are sufficient society for me, above all companions, great and small/

* How delightful is dancing to lively notes and the cheerful melody of the flutes, especially when we touch the hand of a beautiful girl!'

'Call for wine, and scatter flowers around: what more canst thou ask from fate? Thus spake the nightingale this morning: what say est thou, sweet rose, to his precepts ?'

'Bring thou a couch to the garden of roses, that thou mayest kis3 the cheeks and lips of lovely damsels, quaff rich wine, and smell odoriferous blossoms/

But no one acquainted with the East,would doubt that some kind of half-erotic, half-mystic poetry, was a recognised style of poetry among Mohammedans, was tolerated and admired alike by laity and clergy. Nor

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8UFII8M. 351
was the mystic meaning a mere afterthought, forced into the poetry of the Sufis, but it was meant to be there from the first.

At first the perfume of such poetry has something sickening to us, even when we know its true meaning. But the Sufi holds that there is nothing in human language that can express the love between the soul and God so well as the love between man and woman, and that if he is to speak of the union between the two at all, he can only do so in the symbolic language of earthly love.

We must not forget that if earthly love has in the vulgar mind been often degraded into mere animal passion, it still remains in its purest sense the highest mystery of our existence, the most perfect blessing and delight on earth, and at the same time the truest pledge of our more than human nature. To be able to feel the same unselfish devotion for the Deity which the human heart is capable of, if filled with love for another human soul, is something that may well be called the best religion. It is after all the Christian command, ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.' If once we understand this, then no one can claim to come nearer to the highest Christian ideal than the true Sufi, whose religion is a burning love of God, whose life is passed in the constant presence of God, and whose every act is dictated by love of God.

Barrow, no mean theologian, and in no way tainted by religious sentimentalism, speaks in language which might have been used by the most fervent Sufi poets. 'Love/ he writes, 'is the sweetest and most delectable

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of all passioos; and when by the conduct of wisdom it is directed in a rational way toward a worthy, congruous, and attainable object, it cannot otherwise than fill the heart with ravishing delight: such, in all respects superlatively such, is God; who infinitely beyond all other things deserveth our affection, as most perfectly amiable and desirable. He is the most proper object of our love; for we chiefly were framed, and it is the prime law of our nature, to love Him; our soul, from its original instinct, vergeth towards Him as its centre, and can have no rest till it be fixed on Him. He alone can satisfy the vast capacity of our minds, and fill our boundless desires. He, of all lovely things, most certainly and easily may be attained; for, whereas commonly men are crossed in their affection, and their love is embittered from things imaginary, which they cannot reach, or coy things, which disdain and reject them, it is with God quite otherwise: He is most ready to impart Himself; He most earnestly desireth and wooeth our love; He is not only most willing to correspond in affection, but even doth prevent us therein: He doth cherish and encourage our love by sweetest influences and most consoling embraces; by kindest expressions of favour, by most beneficial returns; and whereas all other objects do in the enjoyment much fail our expectation, He doth ever far exceed it. Wherefore in all affectionate motions of our hearts toward God; in desiring Him, or seeking His favour and friendship; in embracing Him, or setting our esteem, our good will, our confidence on Him; in enjoying Him by devotional meditations and addresses to Him; in a reflective sense of our interest and propriety in

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sufiism. 853

Him; in that mysterious union of spirit, whereby we do closely adhere to, and are, as it were, invested in Him; in a hearty complacence in His benignity, a grateful sense of His kindness, and a zealous desire of yielding some requital for it, we cannot but feel very pleasant transports: indeed, that celestial flame, kindled in our hearts by the spirit of love, cannot be void of warmth; we cannot fix our eyes upon infinite beauty, we cannot taste infinite sweetness, we cannot cleave to infinite felicity, without also perpetually rejoicing in the first daughter of Love to God, Charity toward men; which in complection and careful disposition, doth much resemble her mother; for she doth rid us from all those gloomy, keen, turbulent imaginations and passions, which cloud our mind, which fret our heart, which discompose the frame of the soul;. from burning anger, from storming contention, from gnawing envy, from rankling spite, from racking suspicion, from distracting ambition and avarice; and consequently doth settle our mind in an even temper, in a sedate humour, in an harmonious order, in that pleasant state of tranquillity, which naturally doth result from the voidance of irregular passions.'

I have given the whole of this long passage, because, as Sir William Jones has pointed out, it differs from the mystical theology of the Sufis and Yogis no more than the flowers and fruits of Europe differ in scent and flavour from those of Asia, or as European differs from Asiatic eloquence. ' The same strain/ he writes, 'in poetical measure, would rise to the odes of Spenser on Divine Love and Beauty, and, in a higher key with richer embellishments, to the song of Hafiz

(4) A a

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and Jayadeva, the raptures of the Mesnevi, and the mysteries of the Bh&gavata/

Morality of Sufliam.

The Sufi's belief that he who is led by love is no longer subject to the outward law is by no means so outrageous as it has been represented. It does not mean that the true Sufi claims any licence for himself, it only means that he whose heart is filled with love of God and who never loses sight of God, can think no longer of the outward law, but is led in all his acts by the love of God only, claiming no merit for his good works, and feeling quite incapable of committing any act displeasing to God.

Extracts from Sufi Poets.

I shall now read you a few extracts from Sufi poets, translated by Sir William Jones:—
i In eternity without beginning, a ray of thy beauty began to gleam; when Love sprang into being, and cast flames over all nature.

' On that day thy cheek sparkled even under thy veil, and all this beautiful imagery appeared on the mirror of our fancies.

' Kise, my soul, that I may pour thee forth on the pencil of that supreme Artist, who comprised in a turn of His compass all this wonderful scenery.

'From the moment when I heard the divine sentence, " I have breathed into man a portion of my Spirit," I was assured that we were His, and He ours.

'Where are the glad tidings of union with thee, that I may abandon all desire of life ? I am a bird of holiness, and would fain escape from the net of this world.

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SUFIISM. 355

' Shed, O Lord, from the cloud of heavenly guidance, one cheering shower, hefore the moment when I must rise up like a particle of dry dust.

1 The sum of our transactions on this universe is nothing: bring us the wine of devotion; for the possessions of this world vanish.

'The true object of heart and soul is the glory of union with our beloved: that object really exists, but without it both heart and soul would have no existence.

' O the bliss of the day, when I shall depart from this desolate mansion; shall seek rest for my soul; and shall follow the traces of my beloved ;

'Dancing, with love of His beauty, like a mote in a sunbeam, till I reach the spring and fountain of light, whence yon sun derives all his lustre.'

The next extract is from Jellal eddin Rami's Mesnevi, as translated by Mr. E. H. Whinfield. JeMl eddin thus describes the perfect union with God:—

A loved one said to her lover to try him, Early one morning; 'O such a one, son of such a one, I marvel whether you hold me more dear, Or yourself; tell me truly, O ardent lover!' He answered: 'I am so entirely absorbed in you, That I am full of you from head to foot. Of my own existence nothing but the name remains, In my being is nothing besides you, 0 object of my desire. Therefore am I thus lost in you, Just as vinegar is absorbed in honey; Or as a stone, which has been changed into a pure ruby, Is filled with the bright light of the suu. In that stone its own properties abide not, It is filled with the sun's properties altogether; So that, if afterwards it holds itself dear,

'A a a

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'Tis the same as holding the sun dear, O beloved!

And if it hold the sun dear in its heart,

'Tis clearly the same as holding itself dear.

Whether that pure ruby hold itself dear,

Or hold the sun dear,

There is no difference between the two preferences;

On either hand is naught but the light of dawn.

But till that* stone becomes a ruby it hates itself,

For till it becomes one "I," it is two separate "I's,"

For 'tis then darkened and purblind,

And darkness is the essential enemy of light.

If it then hold itself dear, it is an infidel;

Because that self is an opponent of the mighty sun.

Wherefore 'tis unlawful for the stone then to say "I,"

Because it is entirely in darkness and nothingness/

Pharaoh said, *I am the Truth/ and was laid low.

Mansur Hallaj said, 'I am the Truth/ and escaped free.

Pharaoh's * I' was followed by the curse of God;

Mansur's ' I' was followed by the mercy of God, O beloved !

Because Pharaoh was a stone, Mansur a ruby;

Pharaoh an enemy of light, Mansur a friend.

O prattler, Mansur's ' I am He' was a deep mystic saying,

Expressing oneness with the light, not mere incarnation.

This poetical image of the Sun is often applied to the Deity by Sufi poets. Thus Jellal eddin says:—

None but the sun can display the sun,

If you would see it displayed, turn not away from it.

Shadows, indeed, may indicate the sun's presence,

But only the sun displays the light of life.

Shadows induce slumber, like evening talks,

But when the sun arises the 'moon is split asunder.'

In the world there is naught so wondrous as the sun,

But the Sun of the soul sets not and has no yesterday.

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sufiism. 357

Though the material sun is unique and single, We can conceive similar suns like to it. But the Sun of the soul, beyond this firmament,— No like thereof is seen in concrete or abstract. Where is there room in conception for His essence, So that similitudes of Him should be conceivable]

Sometimes the soul is called the mirror of God. Thus Jell&l eddin says:—

If a mirror reflects not, of what use is it ? Knowest thou why thy mirror reflects not? Because the rust has not been scoured from its face. If it were purified from all rust and defilement, It would reflect the shining of the Sun of God.

Often the Sufi poet warns against self-deceit:—

Whoso is restricted to religious raptures is but a man;

Sometimes his rapture is excessive, sometimes deficient.

The Sufi is, as it were, the 'son of the season/

But the pure (SUfi) is exalted above season and state.

Religious raptures depend on feelings and will,

But the pure one is regenerated by the breath of Jesus.

You are a lover of your own raptures, not of me;

You turn to me only in hope of experiencing raptures.

Whoso is now defective, now perfect,

Is not adored by Abraham; he is 'one that sets/

Because the stars set, and are now up, now down,

He loved them not; ' I love not them that set/

Whoso is now pleasing and now unpleasing

Is at one time water, at another fire.

He may be the house of the moon, but not the true
moon; Or as the picture of a mistress, but not the living one. The mere Sufi is the 'child of the season;'

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He clings to seasons as to a father,

But the pure one is drowned in overwhelming love.

A child of any one is never free from season and state.

The pure one is drowned in the light ' that is not begotten,

'What begets not and is not begotten* is God.

Go ! seek such love as this, if you are alive;

If not, you are enslaved by varying seasons.

Gaze not on your own pictures, fair or ugly,

Gaze on your love and the object of your desire.

Gaze not at the sight of your own weakness or vileness,

Gaze at the object of your desire, 0 exalted one.

The next extract is from J&mi's Sal&m&n and Abs&b as translated by Fitzgerald, the same Fitzgerald to whom Browning was so cruel. Jkmi ascribes all earthly beauty and all earthly love to the Divine presence, in it. Without that Divine light man would see no real beauty, would know no real love.

Salaman and Absab, by J ami.

O Thou, whose Spirit through this universe In which Thou dost involve Thyself diffused, Shall so perchance irradiate human clay That men, suddenly dazzled, lose themselves In ecstasy before a mortal shrine Whose light is but a shade of the Divine; Not till Thy secret beauty through the cheek Of Laila smite, doth she inflame Majntin; And not till Thou have kindled Shfrin's eyes. The hearts of those two rivals swell with blood. For lov'd and lover are not but by Thee, Nor beauty;—mortal beauty but the veil Thy Heavenly hides behind, and from itself Feeds, and our hearts yearn after as a bride

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8UFIISM. 359

That glances past us veil'd—but ever so

That none the veil from what it hides may know.

How long wilt Thou continue thus the world

To cozen with the fantom of a veil

From which Thou only peepest? I would be

Thy Lover, and Thine only—I, mine eyes

Seal'd in the light of Thee to all but Thee,

Yea, in the revelation of Thyself

Lost to myself, and all that self is not

Within the double world that is but one.

Thou lurkest under all the forms of thought,

Under the form of all created things;

Look where I may, still nothing I discern

But Thee throughout this universe, wherein

Thyself Thou dost reflect, and through those eyes

Of him whom Man Thou madest, scrutinise.

To thy Harim, Dividuality

No entrance finds—no word of This and That;

Do Thou my separate and derived self

Make one with Thy Essential! Leave me room

On that Divan which leaves no room for twain;

Lest, like the simple Arab in the tale,

I grow perplext, oh God! 'twixt 'Me* and 'Thee;'

If I—this Spirit that inspires me whence?

If Thou—then what this sensual impotence ?

We see here the same temper of mind for which the Christian poet prays when he says,' Let all do all as in Thy sight/ Sufiism, short of its extravagances, may almost be called Christian; nor do I doubt that it owed its deepest impulses to Christianity, more particularly to that spiritual Christianity which was founded on Platonist and Neo-Platonist philosophy. We saw that the Sufis themselves do not deny

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this: on the contrary, they appeal to Jesus or Isa as their highest authority, they constantly use the language of the New Testament, and refer to the legends of the Old. If Christianity and Mohammedanism are ever to join hands in carrying out the high objects at which they are both aiming, Sufiism would be the common ground on which they could best meet each other, understand each other, and help each other.

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LECTURE XII.

THE LOGOS. Religion a Bridge between the Visible and Invisible.

TT may be truly said that the founders of the -■- religions of the world have all been bridgebuilders. As soon as the existence of a Beyond, of a Heaven above the earth, of Powers above us and beneath us had been recognised, a great gulf seemed to be fixed between what was called by various names, the earthly and the heavenly, the material and the spiritual, the phenomenal and noumenal, or best of all, the visible and invisible world (6par6s and avoparos), and it was the chief object of religion to unite these two worlds again, whether by the arches of hope and fear, or by the iron chains of logical syllogisms \

1 A writer in the Christian Register, July 16, 1891, p. 461, expresses the same thoughts when he says : 'At the bottom of all religions is man's instinct of his relationship with the Infinite; and this will not be weakened, but on the contrary will be made stronger and firmer from age to age, as the survey of the career of the race gives man wider and wider experience, and enables him more and more clearly to interpret his history, and see it as a consistent whole, under the rule of invariable law. Religion therefore is something above or beyond any form in- which it has ever appeared, and Christianity is a distinctive, yet natural step in an unfolding process, not a supernatural form projected into human life from without, and not yet absolute religion.'

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This problem of uniting the invisible and the visible worlds presented itself under three principal aspects. The first was the problem of creation, or how the invisible Primal Cause could ever come in contact with visible matter and impart to it form and meaning. The second problem was the relation between God and the individual soul. The third problem was the return of the soul from the visible to the invisible world, from the prison of its mortal body to the freedom of a heavenly paradise. It is this third problem which has chiefly occupied us in the present course of lectures, but it is difficult to separate it altogether from the first and the second. The individual soul as dwelling in a material body forms part of the created world, and the question of the return of the soul to God is therefore closely con-J nected with that of its creation by, or its emanation from God.

We saw while treating of the last problem and examining the solutions which it had received that most of the religions and philosophies of the ancient world were satisfied with the idea of the individual soul approaching nearer and nearer to God and retaining its terrestrial individuality face to face with an objective deity. There was one religion only, or one religious philosophy, that of the Ved&nta, which, resting on the firm conviction that the human soul could never have been separate from the Divine Soul, looked upon a return or an approach of the soul to God as a metaphor only, while it placed the highest happiness of the soul in the discovery and recovery of its true nature as from eternity to eternity one with God. This contrast was most clearly shown in

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Sufiism as compared with Ved&ntism. The Sufi with all his burning love of God conceives the soul as soaring upward, as longing like a lover for a nearer and nearer approach to God, and as lost at last in ecstatic raptures when enjoying the beatific vision. The Ved&ntist on the contrary, after having once convinced himself by rigorous logic, that there can be but one Divine Substance, which he calls the Self or Atman, and that his human self cannot be anything different in its essence from the true and universal Self, from that which was and is and is to be, all in all, is satisfied with having by means of rigorous reasoning recovered his true self in the highest Self, and thus having found rest in Brahman. He knows no raptures, no passionate love for the Deity, nor does he wait for death to deliver his soul from its bodily prison, but he trusts to knowledge, the highest knowledge, as strong enough to deliver his soul from all nescience and illusion even in this life. It is true that some of the Sufis also come sometimes very near to this point, as when JeMl eddin says: ' The " I am He " is a deep mystic saying, expressing oneness with the Light, not mere incarnation.' Still in general the oneness which is the highest good of the Sufi, is union of two, not the denial of the possibility of real separation.

There are religions in which there seems to be no place at all either for an approach of the individual soul to God, or for its finding itself again in God. Buddhism, in its original form, knows of no objective Deity, of nothing to which the subjective soul could approach or with which it could be united. If we can speak of Deity at all in Buddhism, it would reside in the Buddha, that is in the awakened soul,

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conscious of its true eternal nature, and enlightened by self-knowledge. But that self-knowledge was no longer the Ved&nta knowledge of the Atman, or, if it was so originally, it had ceased to be so in that Buddhism which is represented to us in the sacred books of that religion.

In Judaism, on the contrary, the concept of the Deity is so strongly marked, so objective, so majestic, and so transcendent, that an approach to or a union with Jehovah would have been considered almost as an insult to Deity. There seem to be some reminiscences in the Old Testament of an earlier belief in a closer relationship between God and man, but they never point to a philosophical belief in the original oneness of the Divine and the human soul, nor could they possibly have led on to the concept of the Word as the Son of God. In the mythological religions of classical antiquity also there was little room for a union between human and divine nature. The character of the Greek and Roman gods is so intensely personal and dramatic that it excludes the possibility of a human soul becoming united with or absorbed in any one of them. The highest privilege that some specially favoured persons might have aspired to consisted in being admitted to the society of the Olympians. But here too we may catch some earlier reminiscences, for it is well known that some of the old poets and philosophers of Greece declared their belief that gods and men came from the same source, that the gods were immortal mortals, and men mortal immortals *.

1 Heraditi Reliquiae, ed. Bywater, No. LVIII, 'AO&varot BvtjtoI, Bvrjrol aBavaroi, (atvres rbv (Kfivcov $6varovt rbv h\ Ixtivwv fiiov rcOvcGrrts.

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But though a belief in the eternal oneness of what we call human and divine breaks out here and there\ yet it is in the Ved&nta religion only that it has received its full recognition and development. It has been reasoned out there without any of those metaphorical disguises which we find in other religions. One of the most familiar metaphors is that which expresses the essential oneness of the Divine and the human natures under the veil of fatherhood and sonship. Human language could hardly have supplied a better metaphor for expressing intrinsic oneness and extrinsic difference, yet we know to how much legend and mythology this metaphor has given rise. No metaphor can be perfect, but the weak point in our metaphor is that every human father is himself created, while we require a name for a power that begets, but is itself unbegotten. We must not suppose that whoever speaks of God as a Father or of men as the sons of God, expresses thereby a belief in the oneness of the Divine and human nature. That fatherhood of God may be found in almost every religion, and means no more than a belief in the fatherly goodness of God. Moses means no more than that when he says: * Ye are the children of the Lord your God' (Deut. xiv. 1); or when he speaks of 'the Rock that begat thee, and God that formed thee' (Deut. xxxii. 18); or when he asks2, 'Is not he

1 The famous Chinese inscription of the year 188 a.d., discovered lately in the valley of the Orkhon, begins with the following words : ' 0 Heaven so blue ! there is nothing that is not sheltered by Thee. Heaven and men are united together, and the universe is one (homogeneous)/ See G. Schlegel, La Stele Funeraire du Teghin Giogh, 1892.

3 I must remark once for all that when I quote Moses and other reputed authors of Old Testament Books, I simply follow custom,

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thy father that has bought thee ? hath he not made thee, and established thee?' (Deut. xxxii. 6). These ideas are not the historical antecedents of that belief in the Fatherhood of God and the Divine Sonship of Christ as the Word of God which pervades the Fourth Gospel. Abraham, who in the Old Testament is simply called the Friend of God, is spoken of by later Jews such as Philo, as through his goodness an only son \ while in one passage of the New Testament Adam is singled out as the son of God. But all this belongs to quite a different sphere of thought from that in which the Stoics moved, and after them Philo, and the author of the Fourth Gospel, and Christ Himself. With them the Son of God ywas the Word of God, and the Word of God as incarnate in Jesus.

The Oriental Influences in Early Christianity.

You cannot have listened to what the ancient Ved&nta philosophers of India and the more recent Sufis of Persia had to say about the Deity and its true relation to humanity, without having been struck by a number of similarities between these Oriental religions and the beliefs which we hold ourselves, or which were held by some of the most ancient and most eminent Fathers of the Church. So striking are some of these similarities, particularly with regard to the relation of the transcendent Deity to the phenomenal world and to the individual soul, that for a time it was taken almost for granted that Eastern
without expressing any opinion on the results of critical scholarship. Surely we may be allowed to speak of Homer, without committing ourselves to the opinion that he wrote all the books of the Iliad and Odyssey.

1 T€yovSts clairoiTjTds afrry povos vi6s, Philo, De Sobriet., 11 (1,401).

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influences had told on the minds of the early Fathers of the Church. Even Daehne, in his Darstdlung der Jildisch-Aleocaridririischen Rdigionsphilosophie, has not quite discarded that opinion. But though at present, after a more careful study of the Ved&nta and Sufi philosophy, the number of similarities has become even larger than before, the idea of a direct influence of Indian or Persian thought on early Christian religion and philosophy, has been surrendered by most scholars.

Borrowing of Religious Thoughts.

The difficulty of admitting any borrowing on the part of one religion from another is much greater than is commonly supposed, and if it has taken place, there seems to me only one way in which it can be satisfactorily established, namely by the actual occurrence of foreign words, or possibly the translations of foreign terms which retain a certain unidiomatic appearance in the language to which they have been transferred. It seems impossible that any religious community should have adopted the fundamental principles of religion from another, unless their intercourse was intimate and continuous—in fact, unless they could freely exchange their thoughts in a common language. And in that case the people who borrowed thought, could hardly have helped borrowing words also. We see this whenever less civilised nations are raised to a higher level of civilisation and converted to a higher religion; and the same thing happens, though in a lesser degree, when there has been a mutual exchange of religious thought between civilised races also. The language of Polynesian

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converts is full of English terms. The language even of a civilised country like China, after it had been converted to Buddhism, abounds with corrupt Sanskrit words. Even the religious language of Rome, after it had been brought for the first time under the influence of Greece, shows clear traces of its indebtedness. We find no such traces in the language of the early Christians. All the elements of their religious and philosophical terminology are either Greek or Jewish. Even the Jews, who had such frequent intercourse with other nations, and during the Alexandrian period borrowed so largely from their Greek instructors, betray hardly any religious imports from other Oriental countries in their religious and philosophical dictionary. At an earlier time, also, the traces of borrowing on the part of the Jews, whether from Babylonians or Persians, are, as we saw, very few and faint in Hebrew. No doubt neighbouring nations may borrow many things from each other, but the idea that they steal, or borrow silently and dishonestly, has little to support it in the history of the world. Least of all do they carry off the very cornerstones of their religion and philosophy from a foreign quarry. It would have been utterly impossible, for instance, for the early Christian Fathers to disguise or deny their indebtedness to the Old Testament or to Greek philosophy. No one has ever doubted it. But it is very different with Indian and Persian influences. The possibility of some highly educated Persians or even Indians living at Alexandria at or even before the time of the rise of Christianity cannot be disproved, but that Philo or Clement should have been the ungrateful and dishonest pupils of Indian

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THE LOGOS. 369

Pandits, Buddhist Bhikshus, of Persian Mobeds, is more than, in the present state of our knowledge, any serious student of the history of human thought could possibly admit.

Nor should we forget that most religions have a feeling of hostility towards other religions, and that they are not likely to borrow from others which in their most important and fundamental doctrines they consider erroneous. It has often been supposed that the early Christians borrowed many things from the Buddhists, and there are no doubt startling coincidences between the legendary life-stories of Buddha and Christ. But if we consider that Buddhism is without a belief in God, and that the most vital doctrine of Christianity is the fatherhood of God and the sonship of man, we shall find it difficult to believe that the Christians should have taken pride in transferring to the Son of God any details from the biography of an atheistical teacher, or in accepting a few of his doctrines, while abhorring and rejecting the rest.

There is still another difficulty in accepting the opinion that certain religions borrowed from each other. A more careful, historical study of the religions and philosophies of antiquity has enabled us to watch the natural and continuous growth of each of them. When we have learnt to understand how religions and philosophies which at first startled us by their similarities, have each had their own independent and uninterrupted development, we cease to look for foreign influences or intrusions, because we know that there is really no room for them. If, for instance, we take the Ved&nta philosophy, we can (4) Bb

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trace its growth step by step from the hymns to the Brahma Mas, the Upanishads, the Stitras, and their commentaries, and no one who has once understood that unbroken growth would dream of admitting any extraneous influences. The conception of death as a mere change of habitat, the recognition of the substantial identity of the human and the Divine Spirit, and the admission of true immortality as based .entirely on knowledge, and as possible even without the intervention of physical death—all these are intellectual articles of faith which, however different from the primitive religion of the Indian Aryas, are nevertheless the natural outcome of the Indian mind, left to itself to brood from generation to generation over the problems of life and eternity. If then we find traces of the same or very similar articles of faith in the latest phase of Judaism, as represented by Philo, and again in the earliest phases of Christianity, as represented by St. Clement, and other Hellenistic converts to Christianity, we must first of all ask the question, Can we account for the philosophical opinions of Philo who was a Jew, and of Clement who was a Christian, as the natural outcome of well-known historical antecedents, and, if so, is there any necessity, nay is there any possibility for admitting extraneous impulses, coming either from India or Persia, from Buddhism or Manicheism ?

Philo and his Allegorical Interpretation.

Let us begin with Philo, and ask the question whether we cannot fully account for his philosophy as the natural outcome of the circumstances of his

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THE L0G03. 371
life. It is going too far to call Philo a Father of the Church, but it is perfectly true that the Christianity of Clement and Origen and other Fathers of the Church owes much of its metaphysical groundwork and its philosophical phraseology to that Jewish school of Alexandria of which Philo is only one, though the best-known representative. Some of the early Fathers were no doubt under the more immediate influence of Greek philosophy, but otherscame under its sway after it had been filtered through the minds of Jewish philosophers, such as Philo, and of Jewish converts in Egypt and Palestine.

Philo was the true child of his time, and we must try to understand his religious philosophy as the natural outoome of the circumstances in which the old Jewish religion found itself, when placed face to face with Greek philosophy. Philo's mind was saturated with Greek philosophy, so that, as Suidas informs us, it had become a common saying that either Plato Philonizes or Philo Platonizes. It is curious to observe1 that each party, the Greeks and the Jews, and later on, the Christians also, instead of being pleased with the fact that their own opinions had been adopted by others, complained of plagiarism and were most anxious to establish eaeh their own claim to priority. Even so enlightened and learned a man as St. Clement of Alexandria writes : ' They have borrowed from our books the chief doctrines they hold on faith and knowledge and science, on hope and love and repentance, on temperance and the fear of God' (Strom, ii. 1). These complaints, coming from Clement,

1 See Hatch, Hibbett Lectures, pp. 250 seq. Tertulliani Apologeticus, ed. Bindley, cap. xlvii, note 9.

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may be regarded as well founded. But it is different with men like Minucius Felix on one side and Celsus on the other. These are both eager partisans. When Minucius Felix says that the Greek philosophers imitated the shadow of half-truths from the divine preaching of the Jewish prophets, one wonders whether he thought that Aristotle had studied Isaiah. And when Celsus says that the Christian philosophers were simply weaving a web of misunderstandings of the old doctrine, and sounded them forth with a loud trumpet before men, like hierophants round those who are being initiated in mysteries, did he really wish us to believe that the Apo3tles, and more particularly the author of the Fourth Gospel, had studied the principal writings of Plato and Aristotle? One thing, however, is made quite clear by their squabbles, namely that Judaism, Christianity, and Greek philosophy were fighting against each other on terms of perfect equality, and that they had all three to appeal to the judgment of the world, and of a world brought up almost entirely in the schools of Stoics and Neo-Platonists. Thus it was said of Origen that in his manner of life he was a Christian, but in his opinions about God, a Greek (Euseb. H. E., vi. 19). Justin Martyr goes so far as to say in a somewhat offended and querulous tone: * We teach the same as the Greeks, yet we alone are hated for what we teach, (Apol. i. 20). The same Justin Martyr speaks almost like a Greek philosopher when he protests against anthropomorphic expressions. 'You are not to think,' he writes, ' that the unbegotten God came down from anywhere or went up. . . . He who is uncontained by space and by the whole world, does

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not move, seeing that he was born before the world was born.' In another place he says (Apol. ii. 13) : 'The teachings of Plato are not alien to those of Christ, though not in all respects similar .... for all the writers (of antiquity) were able to have a dim vision of realities by means of the indwelling seed of the implanted word' (the Logos).

Synesius, 379-431.

Even so late as the fourth century, and after the Council of Nicaea, we meet with a curious instance of this mixture of Christian faith with Greek philosophy in a bishop, whose name may be familiar to many from Kingsley's splendid novel, Hypatia. Bishop Synesius (born about 370 A. D.) had actually been an attendant on Hypatia's lectures. Bishop though he was, he represents himself in his writings as very fond of hounds and horses, of hunting and fighting. But he was likewise an ardent student of Greek philosophy, and it is very interesting to watch the struggles between his religion and his philosophy, as he lays them bare in letters to his friends. He was evidently made a bishop, Bishop of Ptolemais, very much against his will, and he sees no reason why, even in his episcopal office, he should part with his horses and hounds. But not only that, but he declares that he cannot part with his philosophical convictions either, even where they clashed with Christianity. He confesses that he was by education a heathen, by profession a philosopher, and that if his duty as a bishop should be any hindrance to his philosophy, he would relinquish his diocese, abjure his orders, and remove into Greece. He seems, however, to have quieted his scruples, and to

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have remained in office, keeping his Greek philosophy to himself, which, as he says, would do no good to the people at large, and suffering them to live in the prejudices which they had imbibed, whatever that may mean.

If this wavering Christianity was possible in a bishop, and even after the Council of Nicaea, 325, we may imagine what it was in the first and the second centuries, when people who had been brought up on Greek philosophy persuaded themselves for the first time to join the Church of the Christians.

In trying to represent the important process which in the East, and more particularly at Alexandria, had brought the religious thoughts of the Semitic world face to face with the philosophical thoughts of Greece, I have allowed myself to anticipate what properly belongs to my next lectures. There can be no doubt, however, that this process of intellectual amalgamation between East and West, which we see still at work in the fourth century, took its origin much earlier, and chiefly in that school of Jewish thinkers who are represented to us in Philo. He must always remain to us the chief representative of a whole phase of Jewish thought, because though he himself appeals to former teachers, their works have not been preserved1. We should not attribute too much to Philo's personality, powerful though it was. On the contrary, we should try to understand the Philonic phase of Judaism as the natural result of the dispersion of the Jews over the whole civilised world, over * Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar and the islands of the sea/ and of their contact with the best thoughts of these countries.

1 Bigg, Christian Hatonists. p. 6.

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Like most of his fellow-exiles, Philo remained a firm believer in the Old Testament. He is first a Jew, and then a philosopher, though the Jew has to make many concessions in learning to speak and think in the language of Greek philosophy. Philo's position, after his acquaintance with Greek philosophy, reminds one often of that of Rammohun Roy, who was a firm believer in the Veda, when suddenly brought face to face with the doctrines of Christianity. He could not help being ashamed of many things that were found in the sacred books of India, just as, according to Celsus, Jews and Christians were really ashamed of their Bible \ He had therefore to surrender many of the effete traditions of his old faith, but he tried to interpret others in the light received from Christian literature, till at last he formulated to himself a new concept of the Deity and of man's relation to the Deity which seemed to be in harmony both with the intentions of Indian sages and with the aspirations of Christian teachers. The touchstone of truth which he adopted was much the same as that which Philo had adopted from Plato2, that nothing unworthy of the deity should be accepted as true, however sacred the authority on which it might rest. When this was once admitted everything else followed. Philo, with all his reverence for the Old Testament, nay, as he would say, on account of that very reverence, did not hesitate to call it 'great and incurable silliness' to suppose that God really planted fruit-trees in Paradise. In another place Philo says that to speak of

1 Bigg, Christian Platonists, p. 147.

2 Bigg, Christian FlaUmists, p. 51. Philo, De Sacrificio Ab. et Caini, xxviii. p. 181. We find the same in Clement, Horn. II. 40, *av XexOlv 1j ypa<piv /card rov $eov ipfvtios iariv.

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God repenting, is impiety greater than any that was drowned in the Flood \ The interpretation which he put on these and similar passages is of much the same character as that which is now put by educated natives of India on the hideous worship of the goddess Durga (Anthropolog. Religion, p. ICO). Yet, however implausible such interpretations may seem to us, they show at all events a respect for truth and a belief in divine holiness. Neither Philo, nor Clement, nor Origen could bring themselves to accept physical or moral impossibilities as simply miraculous2. Believing as they did in a Logos or Reason that ruled the world, everything irrational became ipso facto impossible, or had to be interpreted allegorically. When we consider how powerful a philosophical thinker Philo was, some of his allegorical interpretations seem almost incredible, as when he explains that Adam was really meant for the innate perceptive fcculty of the mind, and Eve for the samp in its operative character, which springs subsequently into being, as the helper and ally of the mind. In the same way Abel, according to Philo, stands for perishableness, Cain for self-conceit and arrogance, Seth for irrigation, Enos for hope, Henoch for improvement, Noah for justice, Abraham for instruction, Isaac for spiritual delight. In all this Philo is perfectly serious and firmly convinced of the truth of his interpretations. And why ? Because, as he says again and again, ' no one could believe such stories as that a woman was made out of a man's rib.' ' Clearly/ he says,' rib stands for power, as when we say that a man has ribs instead

1 See Philo, Quod Deus immutabilis, 1. 275. a Bigg, Christian Platonists, p. 137.

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of strength, or that a man is thick-ribbed. Adam then must represent the mind, Eve perception alreadyacting through the senses, and the rib the permanent faculty still dormant in the mind.' Even thus we must admire in Philo the spirit that is willing, though the flesh is weak.

These allegorical interpretations had become inevitable with Philo, as they had before with some of the more enlightened Greek philosophers, where we find them as early as Democritus, Anaxagoras, and as very popular with the Stoics, the immediate teachers of Philo. Whenever sacred traditions or sacred books have been invested by human beings with a superhuman authority, so that all they contain has to be accepted as the truth and nothing but the truth, what remains but either to call what is unworthy of the deity miraculous, or to resort to allegory ? Nor are Philo's allegories, though they are out of place, without their own profound meaning. I shall quote one only, which contaias really an excellent abstract of his doctrine. When speaking of the Cherubim who were placed, with a flaming sword that turned every way, to guard the approaches of the tree of life, Philo, after quoting some other attempts at interpretation, proceeds to say: ' I once heard even a more solemn word from my soul, accustomed often to be possessed by God and prophesy about things which it knew not; which, if I can, I will recall to the mind and mention. Now, it said to me, that in the one really existing God the supreme and primary powers are two, goodness and authority, and that by goodness he has generated the universe, and by authority he rules over what was generated; and that

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a third thing in the midst, which brings these two together, is Reason (Logos), for that by Reason God is possessed both of rule and of good. (It said) that of rule, therefore, and of goodness, these two powers the Cherubim are symbols, and of Reason the flaming sword ; for Reason is a thing most swift in its motions and hot, and especially that of the Cause, because it anticipated and passed by everything, being both conceived before all things and appearing in all things V

So far we can follow. But when Philo proceeds to make an application of his interpretation of the Flaming Sword as the symbol of reason in the story of Abraham and Isaac, and explains that Abraham when he began to measure all things by God, and to leave nothing to that which is generated, took e fire and knife' as an imitation of the Flaming Sword, earnestly desiring to destroy and burn up the mortal from himself in order that with naked intellect he might soar aloft to God, we have to hold our breath in utter amazement at so much folly united in the same mind with so much wisdom!

What is important for us, however, is to see that Philo, who is generally represented as almost unintelligible, becomes perfectly intelligible if we once know his antecedents and his surroundings. If, as some scholars supposed, Philo had really been under thfe immediate influence of Eastern teachers, whether Persian or Indian, we should be able to discover some traces of Persian or Indian thought. Nay, if Philo had commanded a larger view of the religions of the world, it is not improbable that his 1 See Dr. James Drummond, PhUo Judaeus, vol. i. p. 21.

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eyes would have been opened, and that he might have learnt the same lesson which a comparative study of ancient religions has taught us, namely, that mythological language is inevitable in the early stages of religious thought, and that, if we want to understand it, we must try to become children rather than philosophers. In one case Philo boldly declares that the story of the creation of Eve, as given in the Old Testament, is simply mythological \

These preliminary remarks seemed to me necessary before approaching the problem with which we are more immediately concerned, namely, how the gulf that was fixed in the Jewish mind between heaven and earth, between God and man, could be bridged over. We saw that with Philo the concept of the Deity, though it often retained the name of Jehovah, had become quite as abstract and transcendent as that of the only true Being, to Svrm ov, of Greek philosophers. It would not seem likely therefore that the Greek philosophers, from whom Philo had learnt his thoughts and language, could have supplied him with a bond to unite the visible with the invisible world. And yet so it was2. For after all, the Greek philosophers also had found that they had raised their Supreme Being or their First Cause so very high, and placed it so far beyond the limits of this visible world and the horizon of human thought, that unless some connecting links could be found, the world might as well be left without any cause and without any Supreme Being.

1 Td fart* M rovro /ivftwftls icrri (Legis aUegor. i. 70). * Bigg, 1.c, p. 259 note; Drummond, I.e., ii. p. 170.

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Logos.

This connecting link, this bond between the world and its cause, between the soul and its God, was to Philo's mind the Logos.

Let us lay hold at once on this word. Logos is a Greek word embodying a Greek thought, a thought which has its antecedents in Aristotle, in Plato; nay, the deepest roots of which have been traced back as far as the ancient philosophies of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus. This Greek word, whatever meaning was assigned to it by Christian thinkers, tells us in language that cannot be mistaken that it is a word and a thought of Greek workmanship. Whoever used it, and in whatever sense he used it, he had been under the influence of Greek thought, he was an intellectual descendant of Plato, Aristotle, or of the Stoics and Neo-Platonists, nay of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus. To imagine that either Jews or Christians could adopt a foreign terminology without adopting the thoughts imbedded in it, shows a strange misapprehension of the nature of language. If, as we are told, certain savage tribes have no numerals beyond four, and afterwards adopt the numerals of their neighbours, can they borrow a name for five without borrowing at the same time the concept of five? Why do we use a foreign word if not because we feel that the word and the exact thought which it expresses are absent from our own intellectual armoury ?

Philo had not only borrowed the Greek language in which he wrote, he had borrowed Greek thought also that had been coined in the intellectual mint of Greece, and the metal of which had been extracted from Greek ore. No doubt he used his loan for his own purposes,

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still he could only transfer the Greek words to concepts that were more or less equivalent. If we see such names as Parliament or Upper and Lower House transferred to Japan, and used there either in a translated or in their original form to signify their own political assemblies, we know that however different the proceedings of the Japanese Parliament may be from those of the English Parliament, the very concept of a Parliament would never have been realised in Japan except for its prototype in England. Besides, we see at once that this word, Parliament, and what it signifies, has no historical antecedents in Japan, while in England it has grown from a small seed to a magnificent tree. It is the same with Logos. There may have been some vague and faint antecedents of the Logos in the Old Testament1, but the Logos which Philo adopted had its historical antecedents in Greece and in Greek philosophy only. This is very important to remember, and we shall have to return to it again.

It is often supposed that this Logos of Philo, and the Word which was in the beginning, are something very obscure, some kind of mystery which few, if any, are able to fathom, and which requires at all events a great amount of philosophical training before it can be fully apprehended. It seems to me to require nothing but a careful study of the history of the word in Greece.

Logos in Greek, before it was adopted for higher philosophical purposes, meant simply word, but word not as a mere sound, but as thought embodied in sound. The Greeks seem never to have forgotten that logos, word, has a double aspect, its sound and its meaning, and that, though we may distinguish the

1 Bigg, l.c., p. 18, note.

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two, as we can the outside and inside of many things, they can never have a separate existence. Philo was fully aware of this, as is shown by the following passage from his Life of Moses, iii. 113 (ii. 154)1 : ' The Logos is double both in the universe and in the nature of man. In the universe there are both that which relates to the immaterial and pattern ideas, out of which the intelligible cosmos was established, and that which relates to the visible objects (which are accordingly imitations and copies of those ideas), out of which this perceptible cosmos was Completed. But in man the one is inward and the other outward, and the one is, as it were, a fountain, but the other sonorous (ytytovos), flowing from the former.'

Nothing could supply a better simile for God thinking and uttering the cosmos than the act of man in thinking and uttering his thought. It is only our complete misapprehension of the true nature of words which has led people to suppose that Philo's simile was merely fanciful. The idea that the world was thought and uttered or willed by God, so far from being a cobweb of abstruse philosophy, is one of the most natural and most accurate, nay most true conceptions of the creation of the world, and, let me add at once, of the true origin of species.

I was, I believe, one of the first who ventured to use the traditions of uncivilised races as parallel instances of classical myths, and as helps to the understanding of their origin, and I may venture perhaps on a new experiment of utilising the philosophical thoughts of a so-called savage race as likely to throw light on the origin of what the Greeks meant by Logos. 1 Drummond, I.e., ii p. 172.

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The Xrtgos among' the ¥1amath«.

The Klamaths, one of the Red Indian tribes, lately described by Mr. Gatchet and Mr. Horatio Hale, believe, as we are told, in a Supreme God, whom they call * The Most Ancient/ ' Our Old Father/ or < The Old One on high/ He is believed to have created the world that is, to have made plants, animals, and menBut when asked how the Old Father created the world, the Klamath philosopher replied: ' By thinking and willing' In this thinking and willing you have on that distant soil the germs of the same thought which on Greek soil became the Logos, and in the Fourth Gospel is called the Word.

It may be thought that such an idea is far too abstract and abstruse to arise in the minds of Red Indians of the present day or of thousands of years ago. It is quite true that in a more mythological atmosphere the same thought might have been expressed by saying that the Old Father made the world with his hands, or called it forth by his word of command, and that he breathed life into all living things. The world when created might in that case have been called the handiwork, or even the offspring and the son of God.

It did not, however, require much observation to see that there was order and regularity in nature, or thought and will, as the Klamaths called it. The regular rising of sun and moon would be sufficient to reveal that. If the whole of nature were mere lumber and litter, its author and ruler might have been a zero or a fool. But there is thought in a tree, and there is thought in a horse, and that thought is repeated again

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and again in every tree and in every horse. Is all this like the sand of the desert, whisked about by a sirocco, or is it thought and will, or what the Stoics called it, the result of a \6yos a-irepfiariKos ? As in our own scientific, so in the earliest age of human observation and thought, the reason which underlies and pervades nature could not escape detection. It answered readily to the reason of every thoughtful observer, so that Kepler, after discovering the laws of the planetary system, could ti-uly say that he had thought again the thoughts of God.

I cannot possibly give you here the whole history of the Logos, and all the phases through which it passed in the philosophical atmosphere of Greece before it reached Philo, the Jewish philosopher, or Christian philosophers, such as the author of the Introduction to the Fourth Gospel, St. Clement, Origen, and many others. In order to do that, I should have to carry you from the latest Stoics whose schools were frequented by Philo at Alexandria, to the Stoa where Aristotle taught his realism, and to the Academy where Plato expounded his ideal philosophy, nay, even beyond, to the schools of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus. All this has been extremely well done by Dr. Drummond in his Philo Judaeus. A short survey must here suffice.

The Historical Antecedents of the Logos.

Before we attempt even a mere survey of these historical antecedents of the Logos, or the Word, let us try to reason out the same ideas by ourselves. Logos means word and thought. Word and thought, as I hope to have proved in my Science of Thought, are inseparable,

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they are but two aspects of the same intellectual act. If we mean by thought what it means as soon as it is expressed in a word, not a mere percept, not even what it is often mistaken for, a Vorstellung, or what used to be called a sensuous idea, but a concept, then it is clear that a word, taken as a mere sound, without a concept expressed by it, would be a non-entity, quite as much as the concept would be a non-entity without the word by which it is embodied. Hence it is that the Greek logos means both word and thought, the one inseparable from the other.

As soon as language had produced such names as horse, dog, man or woman, the mind was ipso facto in possession of what we call concepts or ideas. Every one of these words embodies an idea, not only a general more or less blurred image remaining in our memory like the combined photographs of Mr. Galton, but a concept—that is, a genuine thought under which every individual horse or dog can be conceived, comprehended, classified and named. What is meant by the name horse, can never be presented to our senses, but only to our intellect, and it has been quite truly said that no human eye has ever seen a horse, but only this or that horse, grey, black, or brown, young or old, strong or weak. Such a name and such a concept as horse, could not represent the memory of repeated sensuous impressions only. These impressions might leave in our memory a blurred photographic image, but never a concept, free from all that is individual, casual and temporary, and retaining only what is essential or what seemed to be essential to the framers of language in all parts of the world. It is quite true that each individual has to learn his concepts or ideas by means

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of sensuous perception, by discovering what general features are shared in common by a number of individuals. It is equally true that we have to accept the traditional names handed down to us by parental tradition from time immemorial. But admitting all this, we should ask, Whence sprang the first idea of horse which we during our life on earth see realised in every single horse and repeated with every new generation ? What is that typical character of horse which can be named and can afterwards be scientifically defined ? Was there no artist, no rational being that had to conceive the idea of horse, before there was a single horse ? Could any artist produce the statue of a horse, if he had never seen a horse? Will material protoplasm, spontaneous evolution, the influence of environment, the survival of the fittest, and all the rest—will any purely mechanical process ever lead to a horse, whether it be a horse, or as yet a hipparion only? Every name means a species, and one feels almost ashamed if one sees how much more profound is the theory of the Origin of Species as conceived by Plato than that of modern naturalists.

The Origin of Species.

I confess I have always been surprised that these old elementary teachings of Plato's philosophy have been so completely ignored when the discussion on the origin of species was taken up again in recent times. And yet we should never have spoken of the origin of species but for Plato and his predecessors in Greek philosophy. For species is but a translation of cT8o9, and ctSos is almost a synonym of Ibia. Is it not perfectly unthinkable that living organic bodies,

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whether plants or animals, nay, that anything in this universe, could have come to be what it is by mere evolution, by natural selection, by survival of the fittest, and all the rest, unless its evolution meant the realisation of an idea ? Let us grant by all means that the present horse is the last term of a series of modifications, brought about by natural causes, of a type which has existed ever since the Mesozoic epoch; yet we cannot but ask Whence that type % and What is meant by type ? Was it mere undifferentiated protoplasm that by environment and other casual influences might have become either a horse or a dog ? or must we not admit a purpose, a thought, a \6yos, a a-it^piiariKos \6yoSy in the first protoplastic germ which could end in one last term only, a horse or a dog, or whatever else was thought and willed by a rational Power, or by what the ancients called the Logos of God ? Professor Huxley himself speaks of* the type of horse. What can he mean by that, if not the idea of horse ? It matters little how such a type or such an idea was realised, whether as a cell or as a germ, so long as we recognise that there was an idea or a purpose in it, or, to adopt the language of the Bed Indians, so long as we believe that everything that exists was thought and willed by the' Old One on high.' Is there reason in the world or not, and if there is, whose Reason is it ? That certain species were evolved from lower species, even during the short time of which we possess any certain knowledge, is no doubt a great discovery, but it does not touch the deeper question of the origin of all species. Whenever such transitions have been proved, we should simply have to change our language, and no longer call that a species which has been proved not

Oca

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to be a species. We must use our words as we have defined them, and species means an idea or an €?Sos, that is an eternal thought of a rational Being. Such a thought must vary in every individual manifestation of it, but it can never change. Unless we admit the eternal existence of these ideas in a rational Mind or in the Primal Cause of all things, we cannot account for our seeing them realised in nature, discovered by human reason, and named by human language. This becomes still clearer if, instead of natural productions, we think of geometrical forms. Can we imagine that a perfect circle, nay, a single straight line, was ever formed by repeated experiments ? or have we not to admit, before a perfect sphere becomes real, if ever it does become real, the concept of a perfect sphere in a rational, that is, a divine Mind ? The broad question is whether the world, such as we know it and have named it, is rational or casual. The choice does not lie between a belief in evolution and special creation, whatever that may mean, but between a belief in Reason and a denial of Reason at the bottom of all things.

If we want to account for a rational world and for the permanence of typical outlines in every species, our mind has to admit, first of all, a creative thought, or what Professor Huxley calls a type. Do we not see how every horse is moulded, as it were, in a permanent type, however much the Shetland pony may differ from the Arab? It is of no use for Physical Science to shut its ears against such speculations or to call them metaphysical dreams. Physical Science indulges in much wilder dreams when it speaks of protoplasm, of sperms and germs, of heredity, and all

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the rest. What is heredity but the permanence of that invisible and yet most real type which Plato called the idea ? Human reason has always revolted against ascribing what is permanent to mere accident, even to the influence of environment, to natural selection, survival of the fittest, and all the rest. It demands by right a real cause, sufficient for real effects; a rational cause, sufficient for rational effects. That cause may be invisible, yet it is visible in its effects, nor are invisible things less real than visible ones. We must postulate invisible but real types, because without them their visible effects would remain inexplicable. It is easy to say that like produces like, but whence the first type ? Whence the tree before there was a tree, whence man himself, before there was man, and whence that mould in which each individual seems cast, and which no individual can burst? The presence of these types or specific forms, the presence of order and law in the visible world, seems to have struck the human mind at a much earlier period than is commonly supposed. The Klamaths, as we saw, said that the world was thought and willed, Anaxagoras declared that there was Nous or Mind in the world.

Heraolitua.

And even before Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, after claiming fire, in its most abstract form, as the primitive element of all things, postulated something beside the material element, some controlling power, some force and law; and he too called it Logos, i.e. reason or word. Vague indications of the same idea may be discovered in the mythological tradition of a Moira or

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Heimarmene, that is Destiny, and Heraclitus actually used Heimarinen6, which Anaxagoras declared to be an empty name (kcv6v ovo\xa, Alex. Aphrod. de Fato, 2) as a synonym of his Logos. This is confirmed by Stobaeus, saying (Eel. i. 5, p. 178) that Heraclitus taught that the essence of Destiny was the Logos which pervades the substance of the universe. Here the Logos is what we should call law or reason, and what the ancient poets of the Veda called .Rita, the Right \ When we ask, however, what seems to us a most natural question, whose that reason was, or who was the law-giver, always acting in the fiery process of the universe, so that in all the wars and conflicts of the elements right and reason prevail, we get no answer from Heraclitus. Some scholars hold that Heraclitus took the Logos to be identical with the Fire, but to judge from certain expressions, his Logos seems rather a mode according to which the Fire acts (Kara rbv \6yov). Nor does it seem quite clear to me that Heraclitus would have called the individual soul a part of the Logos, instead of saying that the individual soul also, as an emanation (avadvfiCaa-is) of the universal fire, was under the control of the Logos. It is still more difficult to say what sense Logos possessed before Heraclitus adopted it, and applied it to express the order of the universe. There is nothing to show that like later philosophers he took it in the sense of word as the embodiment of thought and reason. It probably meant no more to Heraclitus, when he adopted it for a higher purpose, than reckoning, rule, proportion, relation, in which sense we see it used in such words as av&Koyov, what is iva \6yov, or as

1 M. M.'s Hibbert Lectures, p. 245.

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Heraclitus said, Kara \6yov, according to law. It is quite clear that the Logos of Heraclitus had not yet assumed in his mind that definite meaning of a chain of ideas connecting the First Cause with the phenomenal world, which it presented to the Stoics and to Philo. It was as yet no more than that general reason or reasonableness which struck the eyes and the mind of man even on the lowest stage of civilisation.

▲naxafforas.

When Anaxagoras substituted Nous, Mind, for Logos, he went a step beyond, and was the first to claim something of a personal character for the law that governs the world, and was supposed to have changed its raw material into a cosmos. We may be able to conceive a law without a person behind it, but Nous, Mind, takes a thinker almost for*granted. Yet Anaxagoras himself never fully personified his Nous, never grafted it on a God or any higher being. Nous was with him a something like everything else, a Xpypa> & thing, as he called it, though the finest and purest of all material things. In some of his utterances Nous was really identified with the living soul, nay, he seems to have looked upon every individual soul as participating in the universal Nous and in this universal chrema.

Socrates and Plato.

On the problem which interests us more specially, namely the relation of the Logos or Nous to man on one side and to God on the other, we gain little till we come to Aristotle and the Stoics. Socrates, if we take our idea of him from Xenophon,

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retained the mythological phraseology of Greece, he spoke of many Gods, yet he believed in One God1 who rules the whole world and by whom man was created 2. This God is omnipresent, though invisible, and when Socrates speaks of the thought in all (<£povrjo-is h iravrt), he seems to express the same thought as Heraclitus when speaking of the Logos, who always is aid Z&v, or as Anaxagoras when speaking of the Nous which ordered all things (buKoafirjce Trdvra xPWaTa) (Diog. Laert. ii. 6).

Though we may recognise in all this more or less eonscious attempts to account for the presence of something beside matter in the world, to discover an invisible, possibly a divine agent or agency in making, disposing, and ruling the world, and thus to connect the phenomenal with the noumenal, the finite with the infinite, the human with the divine, yet this last deliberate step was not taken either by Socrates, or by Plato. The simple question what the Logos was with respect to the Deity, received no definite answer from these philosophers.

It is well known that what we called before the permanent types of all things were called by Plato the ideas, by the Klamaths, the thoughts, willed by the Creator. These ideas, which taken together formed what Heraclitus meant by the eternal Logos, appear in Plato's philosophy as a system, built up architectonically, as the plan of the architecture of the visible universe. Plato's ideas, which correspond to our natural species and genera, become more and more

1 Sympos. viii. 9, nal ycLp Zft>s & avrvs hoKwv dvai woW&s iveavvfiias

2 Xen. Mem. i. 4, 5.

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general till they rise to the ideas of the Good, the Just, and the Beautiful. But instead of the many ideas Plato speaks also of one general and eternal pattern of the world which, like the idea of God, is not the Creator himself, nor yet separable from him. This pattern, though eternal, is yet a creation, though an eternal creation, a world of thought prior to the world of sense1. This comes very near to the Stoic Logos, as known to Philo.

In other places Plato admits a highest idea which allows of no higher one, the last that can be known, the idea of the Good, not simply in a moral, but likewise in a physical and metaphysical sense, the Summum Bonum. This highest idea of the Good is what in religious language would be called the Supreme Being or God. But Plato, as far as I can judge, is never quite explicit in telling us what he conceived this Good to be. It is true he speaks of it as the Lord of Light (Republ. vi. 508), and he speaks of the sun as the son of the Good, whom the Good begat in his own likeness, to be in the visible world in relation to sight and the things of sight, what the Good is in the intellectual world in relation to mind and the things of mind. . . . And the soul, he continues,' is like the eye: when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with intelligence. . . . And that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to the knower is what I would have you term the Idea of Good/

Here Plato leaves us, nor is he more explicit as to what the relation of that Idea of Good is to the other ideas, and how it can fulfil all that the old idea of

1 Jowett, Introd. to the Timaeus, p. 568.

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394 LECTUBE XII.

God or the Gods was meant to fulfil. Whether it was the only efficient cause of the world, or whether each of the many ideas possessed its own efficient causality, independent of the Idea of Good, is a question difficult to answer out of Plato's own mouth. Plato speaks of God and Gods, but he never says in so many words (This, my Idea of the Good, is what you mean by Zeus.' If we asked whether this Idea of the Good was personal or not, we should receive no answer from Plato. It is important, however, to keep in mind that Plato speaks of one general and eternal pattern of the world which, like the Idea of Good, is not the Creator himself, nor yet separable from him. This pattern,.though eternal, is created, a world of thought prior to the world of sense *.

What remains dark and doubtful in Plato's system is the relation of the visible to the invisible world, of the phenomena to their ideas. The expressions which he uses as to the phenomena participating in the ideal, or the visible being a copy of the invisible, are similes and no more. In the Timaeus he becomes somewhat more explicit, and introduces his theory of the creation of the universe as a living being, and like every living being, possessed of a soul, the soul being again possessed of mind2. This universe or Cosmos or Uranos is there represented as the offspring of God, and what is important to remark, he is called Monogen&s 3, the only begotten, the unigenitu8, or more correctly the unicus, the unique or single, the one of his kind. The imperfections that cannot be denied

1 See Jowett, Introd. to the Timaeus, p. 568. 8 Timaeus, 80 B, r6vdc rbv nofffiou fyoK iii\pv\ov Ivvovv tc. 8 ETs 68< povoytriis ovpavbs ycyov&s tan tc ko\ tr Icrrcu, Tim. 31 B.

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to exist in the world and in man are explained as due either to the Apeiron, i. e. formless matter, which receives form through the ideas, or in the case of men, to the fact that their creation was entrusted to the minor deities, and did not proceed direct from the Creator. Still the soul is everywhere represented as divine, and must have been to Plato's mind a connecting link between the Divine and the Human, between the invisible and the visible.

Aristotle. ,

Aristotle is far more explicit in defining what in his philosophy is to take the place of Zeus, for it is curious to observe how all these philosophers with all their sublime ideas about the Divine, always start from their old Zeus, and speak of their new ideas as taking the place of Zeus, or of the Godhead. It was the Zeus of his childhood or his Ocps which was explained by Aristotle as being really to itparov kivovv, the Prime Mover, possibly to ttp&tov clSoy, the Prime Form or idea, as distinguished from ff irpdrq vAry, the Prime Matter. He tells iis also what he considers all the necessary qualities of this Prime Mover to be. It must be one, immoveable, unchangeable, living, intelligent, nay it must be active, i.e. thinking intelligence, intelligence thinking itself (fj votjo-ls vorjo-em vorjcris, Metaphys. xi. 9, 4). The question of personality does not seem to disturb the Greek thinkers as it does us. Aristotle's transcendent Godhead represents the oneness of the thinker and thoughts, of the knower and the known. Its relation to matter (vAtj) is that of the form (dbos) subduing matter, but also that of the mover moving matter. With all this, Aristotle has

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not in the end elaborated more than a transcendent Godhead, a solitary being thinking himself, something not very different from what the later Valentinians might have called the General Silence, or what Easilides meant by the non-existent God who made the non-existent world out of non-existent materials1. This could not give any satisfaction to the religious sentiment which requires a living God, and some explanation of the dependence of the world on a divine ruler, and of the relation of the soul to a Supreme Being.

Stoios.

We have thus far examined some of the materials which were carried down the stream of Greek philosophy till they reached the hands of Philo and other Semitic thinkers who tried to reconcile them with their ancient beliefs in their own personal yet transcendent God. Before, however, we proceed further to watch the process by which these two streams, the one of Aryan, the other of Semitic thought, became united, at first in the minds of Jewish philosophers, and afterwards in the minds of Christian believers also, we have still to follow the later development of the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle in the schools of their successors, the Stoics and NeoPlatonists. We need not dwell on any of their theories, whether logical, ethical, or metaphysical, except those that touch on the relation of the finite to the infinite, the human to the divine, the (patvo^va to the 6vra.

1 Otfrcus ovk $jv $(ds lvolr)<ri tcoffpov ovk 6vra If ovk 6vrw. (Bigg, I.e., p. 28, 31.)

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The Stoics required a God in the old sense of the word. They were not satisfied with the supreme idea of Plato, nor with the Prime Mover of Aristotle. Like their predecessors, they also had discovered law, order, or necessity and causation in the visible world, and they postulated a cause sufficient to account for the existence of that law and order in the phenomenal cosmos. That cause, however, with the Stoics was not transcendent, but immanent. Reason or Logos was discovered by them as present in every part of the universe, as holding the universe together; nay it was itself considered as corporeal, and so far as it represented deity, deity also was to the Stoics something corporeal, though ethereal or igneous1. Yet they placed a difference between Hyle, matter, and the Logos or Supreme Reason or God which pervaded all matter. This Logos, according to them, was not only creative (ttoiovv), but it continued to control all things in the world. Some Stoics distinguished indeed befcween the Logos and Zeus, the Supreme God, but the orthodox doctrine of the Stoic school is that God and the Divine Reason in the world are the same, though they might be called by different names. The Stoics, therefore, were true pantheists. With them, as with Heraclitus, everything was full of the Gods, and they were anxious to say that this divine presence applied even to the meanest and most vulgar things, to ditches and vermin.

The Stoics, however, spoke not only of one universal Logos pervading the whole cosmos, they likewise admitted, as if in remembrance of Plato's ideas, a number of logoi, though in accordance with Aristotle's

1 JlrcD/ia votpdv teal mrputfos. Poseidon, in Stob. Eel. i. 58.

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teaching they held that these logoi dwelt within, and determined all individual things (Ao'yoi IwXol, univermlia in re). These logoi were called crncpixariKoC or seminal, being meant to account, like the sperms, for the permanence of the type in the phenomenal world, for what with less perfect metaphor we now call inherited specific qualities.

These Logoi, whether singly or comprehended as the one universal Logos, had to account for all that was permanent in the variety of the phenomenal world. They formed a system ascending from the lowest to the highest, which was reflected in what we should call the evolution of nature. A separate position, however, was assigned to man. The human soul was supposed to have received in a direct way a portion of the universal Logos, and this constituted the intelligence or reason which man shared in common with the gods. Besides this divine gift, the human soul was supposed to be endowed with speech, the five senses, and the power of reproduction. And here we meet for the first time a definite statement that speech is really the external Logos (A. itpofyopiKos), without which the internal Logos (A. hbiAScTos) would be as if it were not. The word is shown to be the manifestation of reason; both are Logos, only under different aspects. The animal soul was conceived as something material, composite, and therefore perishable, to which the Logos was imparted. Like the Ved&ntists, the Stoics taught that the soul would live after death, but only to the end of the world (the Kalpa), when it would be merged into the universal soul. Whence that universal soul took its origin, or what it was, if different both from the

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THE LOGOS. 399

Logos and from matter (tfAq), we are never distinctly told. What is clear, however, is that the Stoics looked upon the Logos as eternal. In one sense the Logos was with-God, and, in another, it might be said to be God. It was the Logos, the thought of God, as pervading the world, which made the world what it is, viz. a rational and intelligible cosmos; and it was the Logos again that made man what he is, a rational and intelligent soul.

Pnllo's Inheritance.

You see now what a large inheritance of philosophical thought and philosophical language was bequeathed to men like Philo, who, in the first century before our era, being themselves steeped in Semitic thought, were suddenly touched by the invigorating breezes of the Hellenic spirit. Alexandria was the meeting-place of these two ancient streams of thought, and it was in its Libraries and Museum that the Jewish religion experienced its last philosophical revival, and that the Christian religion for the first time asserted its youthful strength against the philosophies both of the East and of the West. You will now perceive the important representative character of Philo's writings which alone allow us an insight into the historical transition of the Jewish religion from its old legendary to a new philosophical and almost Christian stage. Whether Philo personally exercised a powerful influence on the thoughts of his contemporaries, we cannot tell. But he evidently represented a powerful religious and philosophical movement, a movement which later on must have extended to many of the earliest Christian converts

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at Alexandria, whether Jews or Greeks by birth and education. Of Philo's private life the only thing which concerns us is that he was a student who found his highest happiness in the study of his own religion and of the philosophical systems of the great thinkers of Greece, both ancient and modern. Born probably about 20 B.C., he died about the middle of the first century a.d. He was therefore the contemporary of Christ, though he never mentions him.

Philo's Philosophy.

What concerns us are the salient doctrines of Philo's philosophy. Philo never surrendered his belief in Jehovah, though his Jehovah had not only been completely freed from his anthropomorphic character, but raised so high above all earthly things that he differed but little from the Stoic Godhead. Philo did not, however, believe in a creation out of nothing, but like the Stoics he admitted a Hyle, matter or substance, by the side of God, nay as coeval with God, yet not divine in its origin. Like the Apeiron, the Infinite of Anaximander, this Hyle is empty, passive, formless, nay incapable of ever receiving the whole of what the Divine Being could confer upon it, though it is sometimes said that all things are filled or pervaded by God \ and nothing left empty2.

And yet the same God in his own essence can never, according to Philo, be brought into actual contact with matter, but he employed intermediate, and unembodied powers (bvvaii€L$), or, as we may call them,

1 As Plato said, Laws, 899, Bean? chat v\r}prj v&vra. * Tlavra ycip vtvXrjpwKfv 6 $c6st Kal IkcL it6vt<uv difkrfXvOf, Kai Ktvbv ovhlv ovhl tprjuov &vo\4\<Hirtv. Leg. alleg. I. vol. i. p. 52, iii. p. 88.

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THE L030S. 401

Ideas, in order that each genus might take its proper form1.

The XiOffos as a Bridge between God and the World.

Nothing therefore could be more welcome to Philo than this Stoic theory of the Logos or the Logoi for bringing the transcendent Cause of the World into relation with the phenomenal world. It helped him to account for the creation of the world, and for the presence of a controlling reason in the phenomenal cosmos, and he had only to apply to the Logoi the more familiar name of Angels in order to bring his old Jewish belief into harmony with his new philosophical convictions. As Milman has truly remarked, ' Wherever any approximation had been made to the truth of one First Cause, either awful religious reverence (the Jews) or philosophical abstraction (the Greeks) had removed the primal Deity entirely beyond the sphere of human sense, and supposed that the intercourse of the Deity with men, the moral government, and even the original creation, had been carried on by intermediate agency, either in Oriental language of an emanation, or in the Platonic of the wisdom, reason, or intelligence of One Supreme.'

Philo, who combines the awful reverence of the Semitic with the philosophical sobriety of the Greek mind, holds that God in the highest sense forms to himself, first of all, an ideal invisible world (kovixos vorirSs, ioparos) containing the ideas of all things,

1 'E£ €K(ivrj$ yap iravr* iyivvrjfftv 6 $(6st ovk kipavrSpwos aMs' oh y&p Iju Otpis aireipov zeal nc<pvpfi4vr]s v\rjs \pavtiv rbv tSpiova ttcu fxafcapiov, dkkcL rats aawn&TOis dw&pieoiv, Stv crv/iov 6voput ai ifttcu, tcaT€XPVaaT0 vpbs rb ytvos %Kaarov rijv ap/iOTTOvffav Xa&uv nopfrfjv. De Sacrificant, 13, p. 261.

(4) Dd

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sometimes called the world of ideas, kootijlos Ibt&v, or even the idea of ideas, Ibia t&v ibe&v. These ideas are the patterns, ra -napabetyviaTay of all things, and the power by which God conceived them is frequentlycalled the Wisdom of God (<ro<f>ia or £7ucmj/xq). Nay, personification and mythology creep in even into the holy of holies of philosophy, so that this most abstract Wisdom is spoken of as the Wife of God1, the Mother or Nurse of all things (jot^rry/) koI TiOrjvi) t&v oktov). Yet even thus, this Mother and Nurse is not allowed to bear or suckle her own children2. The Divine Wisdom is not allowed to come into contact with gross matter as little as God himself. That contact is brought about through the Logos, as a bond which is to unite heavenly and earthly things3 and to transfer the intellectual creation from the divine mind upon matter. This Logos is supposed to possess certain predicates, but these predicates which may be called the eternal predicates of the Godhead,— for the Logos also was originally but a predicate of the Godhead,—are soon endowed with a certain independence and personality, the most important being goodness (rj ayaOorrjs) and power (rj igovvCa). This goodness is also called the creative power (^ Troir/riKrj bvvaiiis), the other is called the royal or ruling power (fj pacrLkucrj bvvafiis), and while in some passages these powers of God are spoken of as God, in others they assume if not a distinct personality, yet an

1 Drummond, 1. c, ii. p. 206.

9 In some places, however, Philo forgets the supermundane character of this Sophia or Episteme, and in De ebriet. 8. i. 361 seq., he writes: if 8i rrapa5c^afi4vrf rb rod $cov owcppa, r€\€a<p6pois a/5f<rt, rbv povov koX ayairrp-dv ala&rjrbv vlbv atrffcvrjae tov&c rbv KSafxov.

s Philo, Vit. Mos. iii. 14 ; Bigg, Christian PkUonists, p. 259.

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independent activityx. Though in many places these powers (bwdfX€Ls) are used as synonymous with the Logos, yet originally they were conceived as the might of divine action, while the Logos was the mode of that action.

Irtgos as the Son of God.

It must always be remembered that Philo allows himself great freedom in the employment of his philosophical terminology, and is constantly carried away into mythological phraseology, which afterwards becomes hardened and almost unintelligible. Thus the intellectual creation in the Divine Mind is spoken of not only as a cosmos, but as the offspring, the son of God, the first-born, the only begotten (vlbs tov Otov, fxovoytvrjs, irpoDroyovos); yet in other places he is called the elder son (itpcar&vTepos vlos) as compared with the visible world, which is then called the younger son of God (i/ewrcpos vlbs tov Oeov), or even the other God (btvrepos 0co's).

All these terms, at first purely poetical, become after a time technical, not used once or casually, but handed down as the characteristic marks of a philosophical school. To us they are of the greatest importance as sign-posts showing the road on which certain ideas have travelled from Athens to Alexandria, till they finally reached the mind of Philo, and not of Philo only, but also of his contemporaries and successors, whether Jews, or Greeks, or Christians. Wherever we meet with the word Logos, we know that we have to deal with a word of Greek extraction. When Philo adopted that word, it could have meant for him sub

1 Bigg, Christian Platonists, p. 18, note. Dda

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stantially neither more nor less than what it had meant before in the schools of Greek philosophy. Thus, when the ideal creation or the Logos had been called by Philo the only begotten or unique son (vlds ixovoyevrjs), the son of God (vlbs 0eo£), and when that name was afterwards transferred by the author of the Fourth Gospel to Christ, what was predicated of Him can only have been in substance what was contained before in these technical terms, as used at first at Athens and afterwards at Alexandria. To the author of the Gospel, Christ was not the Logos because he was Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, but because he was believed to be the incarnate Word of God, in the true sense of the term. This may seem at first very strange, but it shows how sublime the conception of the Son of God, the first-born, the only one, was in the minds of those who were the first to use it, and who did not hesitate to transfer it to Him in whom they believed that the Logos had become flesh (<rap£ iydvtro), nay in whom there dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily *.

It is true that Christian writers of high authority prefer to derive the first idea of the Logos, not from pagan Greece, but from Palestine, recognising its first germ in the deutero-canonical Wisdom. That Philo is steeped in Jewish thought who would deny, or who would even assert? That the Hebrew Prophets were familiar with the idea of a Divine Word and Spirit, existing in God and proceeding from God, is likewise admitted on all sides. Thus we read in Psalm xxxiii. 6, ' By the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth'

> Col. ii. 9,

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(rfo"i and "9"J). Again, cvii. 20: 'He sent his word and healeth them;' civ. 30, 'Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created, and thou renewest the face of the earth;' cxlvii. 18, ' He sendeth out his word and melteth theni.' Still, in all these passages the word and the spirit do not mean much more than the command, or communication of Jehovah. And the same applies to passages where the Divine Presence or Manifestation is called his Angel, the Angel of Jehovah. Indeed it would be difficult to say what difference there is between the Angel of Jehovah, Jehovah himself, and God, for instance in the third chapter of Exodus; and again in Gen. xxxii, between God, the Angel, and Man. And this Angel with whom Jacob wrestled is mentioned by so ancient a prophet as Hosea xii. 4.

All these conceptions are purely Jewish, uninfluenced as yet by any Greek thought. What I doubt is whether any of these germs, the theophany through Angels, the hypostasis of the Word of Jehovah (pSn'i -o^ or lastly the personification of Wisdom (n9?r) could by themselves have grown into what the Greek philosophers and Philo meant by Logos. We must never forget that Logos, when adopted by Philo, was no longer a general and undefined word. It had its technical meaning quite as much as ovo-ia, v7rcpov<rCai a7rAa)(ns, evaxris, 04<o<ris. All these terms are of Greek, not of Hebrew workmanship. The roots of the Logos were from the first intellectual, those of the Angels theological, and when the Angels, whether as ministers and messengers of God, or as beings intermediate between God and men, became quickened by the thoughts of Greek philosophy, the Angels and Archangels seem to become mere names and

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reminiscences, and what they are truly meant for, are the ideas of the Platonists, the Logoi of the Stoics, the archetypal thoughts of God, the heavenly models of all things, the eternal seals imprinted on matterl. None of these thoughts has been proved to be Semitic.

Philo speaks distinctly of the eternal Logoi, ' which,' he says, 'it is the fashion to call Angels2/

Wisdom or Sophia.

And as little as the belief in Angels would ever have led to the theory of the Logos or the Logoi, as a bond between the visible and the invisible world, can it be supposed that such germinal ideas as that of the Shechinah or the Glory of God, or the Wisdom of God, would by themselves and without contact with Greek thought have grown into purely philosophical conceptions, such as we find in Philo and his successors. The Semitic Wisdom that says ' I was there when He prepared the Heaven/ might possibly have led on to Philo's Sophia or Episteme which is with God before the Logos. But the Wisdom of the Proverbs is certainly not the Logos, but, if anything, the mother of the Logos 3, an almost mythological being. We know how the Semitic mind was given to represent the active manifestations of the Godhead by corresponding feminine names. This

1 'I&cu, \6yoi$ tvuoi, <r<f>payi1ks, but also Swa^cis, &yyc\oi, and even

3 Philo, De Somniis, i. 19, dtiav&rois \6yois, ofc icakuv c$os d-yyikovs: ibid. i. 22, rafrras Hainovas f*kv ot dWoi <pi\6ao<poif 6 & lepos \6yos &yy4\ovs ttoa$e tcakfiv. Ibid. i. 28, &yy*\oi \6yot Oeioi.

5 De Profug. 20, p. 562, Ai6n yovimv fapeApraiv /cat Kadaporrarajv lAax«, iraTpds p\v 0covt . . . firjrpds 8i aofias, 5i* ijs rci 5\a jj\$tv c/s yivtaiv.

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is very different from representing the Intelligible World (the Koo-fxos votjtos) as the Logos, the Word of God, the whole Thought of God, or the Idea of Ideas. Yet the two ideas, the Semitic and the Greek, were somehow brought together, or rather forced together, as when we see how Philo represents Wisdom, the virgin daughter of God (Bethuel), as herself the Father, begetting intelligence and the soul1. Nay, he goes on to say that though the name of Wisdom is feminine, its nature is masculine. All virtues have the titles of women, but the powers and actions of
men Hence Wisdom, the daughter of God, is
masculine and a father, generating in souls learning and instruction and science and prudence, beautiful and laudable actions 2. In this process of blending Jewish and Greek thought, the Greek elements in the end always prevailed over the Jewish, the Logos was stronger than the Sophia, and the Logos remained the First-born, the only begotten Son of God, though not yet in a Christian sense. Yet, when in later times we see Clement of Alexandria speak of the divine and royal Logos (Strom, v. 14), as the image of God, and of human reason as the image of that image, which dwells in man and unites man with God, can we doubt that all this is Greek thought, but thinly disguised under Jewish imagery? This Jewish imagery breaks forth once more when the Logos is represented as the High Priest, as a mediator standing between humanity and the Godhead. Thus Philo makes the High Priest say: ' I stand between the Lord and you, I who am neither uncreated like

1 Bigg, I.e., p. 16, note ; p. 213. 9 Philo, De Prof., 9. (1, 653).

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God, nor created like you, but a mean between two extremes, a hostage to either sidel.

Is it possible that the injunction that the High Priest should not rend his clothes which are the visible cosmos (De Profugis, § 20), suggested the idea that the coat of Christ which was without seam woven from the top throughout, should not be rent, so that both the Messianic and the Philonic prophecies were fulfilled at the same time and in the same manner2 ?

To the educated among the Rabbis who argued with Christ or his disciples at Jerusalem, Logos was probably as well known as to Philo ; nay, if Philo had lived at Jerusalem he would have found little difficulty in recognising the Logos in Christ, as he had recognised the Logos as represented in Abraham and in Moses 3. If Jews could bring themselves to recognise their Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth, why should not a Greek have discovered in Him the fulness of the Divine Logos, i.e. the realisation of the perfect idea of the Son of God?

It may be quite true that all this applies to a small number only, and that the great bulk of the Jews were beyond the reach of such arguments. Still, enlightened Jews like Philo were not only tolerated, but were honoured by their co-religionists at Alexandria. It was recognised that to know God or Jehovah, as He was represented in the Old Testament, was sufficient for a life of faith, hope, discipline

1 Bigg, I.e., p. 20.

2 The words used in the N. T. xiribv v<pavrbs Zi B\ov remind one of Philo, De Monarch, ii. § 56, Bhos 8*' 6\ov vaxivOivos.

8 Leg. Alleg. III. 77. (i. 130). Philo does not seem as yet to have identified the Logos with the Messiah.

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and effort; but to know God in the soul, as Philo knew Him, was considered wisdom, vision, and peace. Philo, however vague and uncertain some of his thoughts may be, is quite distinct and definite when he speaks of the Logos as the Divine Thought which, like a seal, is stamped upon matter and likewise on the mortal soul. Nothing in the whole world is to him more Godlike than man, who was formed according to the image of God (xar ci/coVa Otov, Gen. i. 27), for, as the Logos is an image of God, human reason is the image of the Logos. But we must distinguish here too between man as part of the intelligible, and man as part of the visible world. The former is the perfect seal, the perfect idea or ideal of manhood, the latter its more or less imperfect multiplication in each individual man. There is therefore no higher conception of manhood possible than that of the ideal son, or of the idea of the son, realised in the flesh. No doubt this was a bold step, yet it was not bolder on the part of the author of the Fourth Gospel, than when Philo recognised in Abraham and others sons adopted of the* Fatherl. It was indeed that step which changed both the Jew and the Gentile into a Christian, and it was this very step which Celsus, from his point of view, declared to be impossible for any true philosopher, and which gave particular offence to those who, under Gnostic influences, had come to regard the flesh, the <ni/>£, as the source of all evil.

Monogends, the Only Begotten.

We tried before to trace the word Logos back as far

1 Sobriet. 11. (1, 401), ytyov&s tlffTroirjTos avr$ p6vos vi6s.

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as Anaxagoras and Heraclitus; we can trace the term povoycvrjs nearly as far. It occurs in a fragment of Parmenides, quoted above (p. 333), as an epithet of the Supreme Being, rd ov, where it was meant to show that this Supreme Being can be only one of its kind, and that it would cease to be what it is meant to be if there were another. Here the idea of -yen/s, meaning begotten, is quite excluded. The same word is used again by Plato in the Timaeus, where he applies it to the visible world, which he calls a £5oj> oparbv tcl opara irepUxov, an animate thing visible and comprehending all things visible, the image of its maker, a sensible God, the greatest and best, the fairest and most perfect, this one world (ouranos) Monogen&s, unique of its kind *.

And why did Plato use that word monogenes ? He tells us himself (Timaeus 31). 'Are we right in saying,' he writes, ' that there is one world (ouranos), or shall we rather say that there are many and infinite? There is one, if the created universe accords with the original. For that which includes all other intelligible creatures cannot have a second for companion; in that case there would be need of another living being which would include these two, and of which they would be parts, and the likeness would be more truly said to resemble not those two, but that other which includes them. In order then that the world may be like the perfect animate Being in unity, he who made the world (cosmos), made Him not two or infinite in number, but there is and ever will be one only, begotten and created/

1 Tim. 92 C, 6&* 6 /e6<rpos ovtw fpov bparhv rA 6para -ntpUxov, dtcwv rod voirfrovt $ebs ala$rjr6st fjUyiaros teal tipicrros tcdWicrrds T€ ical TcA.€<fcraros yiyovtv, cfc ovpavbs 6St /tovoycrlls &v.

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If applied to the begotten or visible world, monogene8 might have been and was translated the only begotten, unigenitus, but its true meaning was here also ' the one of its kind/ Here, then, in these abstruse Platonic speculations we have to discover the first germs of Monogenes, the only begotten of the Father, which the old Latin translations render more correctly by unicu8 than by unigenitus. Here, in this intellectual mint, the metal was melted and coined which both Philo and the author of the Fourth Gospel used for their own purposes. It is quite true that monogenes occurs in the Greek translation of the Old Testament also, but what does it mean there ? It is applied to Sarah, as the only daughter of her father, and to Tobit and Sarah, as the only children of their parents. There was no necessity in cases of that kind to lay any stress on the fact that the children were begotten. The word here means nothing but an only child, or the only children of their parents. In one passage however, in the Book of Wisdom (vii. 22), monogenes has something of its peculiar philosophical meaning, when it is said that in Wisdom there is a spirit intelligent, holy, nioTiogenes, manifold, subtle, and versatile. In the New Testament, also, when we read (Luke viii. 42) that a man had one only daughter, the meaning is clear and simple, and very different from its technical meaning in vlds novoywrjs as the recognised name of the Logos. So recognised was this name, that when Valentinus speaks of 'O Movoytvrjs by himself we know that he can only mean the Logos, or Nous, the Mind, with him the offspring of the ineffable Depth or Silence (Bt>0os), which alone embraced the greatness of the First Father, itself the father and

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412 LECTURE XII.

beginning of all things. Even so late as the Synod of Antioch (269 a.d.) we can still perceive very clearly the echo of the philosophical language of the JudaeoAlexandrian school. In their Confession of Faith they confess and proclaim the Son as ' begotten, an only Son (yevvrjTov, vlov novoywfj), the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation, the Wisdom and Word and Power of God, who was before the ages, not by foreknowledge, but by essence and subsistence, God, son of God.'

Philo, of course, always uses the only begotten Son (vl6s novoytvris) in its philosophical sense as the Thought of God, realised and rendered visible in the world, whether by an act of creation or by way of emanation. He clearly distinguishes the Supreme Being and the God, to ov, from the Thought or Word of that Being, the \6yos rod ovtos. This Logos comprehends a number of logoi1 which Philo might equally well have called ideas in the Platonic sense. In fact he does so occasionally, as when he calls the Logos of God the idea of all ideas (idea t&v ihe&v, 6 Otov \6yos). Whether this Logos became ever personified with him, is difficult to say; I have found no passage which would prove this authoritatively. But the irresistible mythological tendency of language shows itself everywhere. When Philo speaks of the Logos as the first-born (7rpa)royoi;os), or as the unique son (vibs povoyevrj?), this need be no more as yet than metaphorical language. But metaphor soon becomes hardened into myth. When we speak of our own thoughts, we may call them the offspring of our mind, but very soon they may be spoken of as flying away, as dwelling with our friends,

1 Drummond, I.e., ii. p. 217.

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THE LOGOS. 413
as having wings like angels. The same happened to the Logoi and the Logos, as the thought of God. His activities became agents, and these agents, as we shall see, soon became angels.

What is more difficult to understand is what Philo means when he recognises the Logos in such men as Abraham, Melchizedek, or Moses. He cannot possibly mean that they represent the whole of the Logos, for the whole of the Logos, according to Philo's philosophy, is realised twice only, once in the noumenal, and again, less perfectly, in the phenomenal world. In the phenomenal world in which Abraham lived, he could be but one only of the many individuals representing the logos or the idea of man, and his being taken as representing the Logos could mean no more than that he was a perfect realisation of what the logos of man was meant to be, or that the full measure of the logos as divine reason dwelt in him, as light and as the rebuking conscience \ Here too we must learn, what we have often to learn in studying the history of religion and philosophy, that when we have to deal with thoughts not fully elaborated and cleared, it is a mistake to try to represent them as clearer than they were when left to us by their authors.

Restricting ourselves, however, to the technical terms used by Philo and others, I think we may safely say that whosoever employs the phrase vlbs ixovoytvrjs, the only begotten Son, be he Philo, or the author of the Fourth Gospel, or St. Clement, or Origen, uses ancient Greek language and thought, and means by them what they originally meant in Greek.

Philo was satisfied with having found in the 1 Drummond, I.e., ii. pp. 210; 225 seq.

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414 lectube xn.

Greek Logos what he and many with him were looking for, the bridge between the Human and the Divine, which had been broken in religion by the inapproachableness of Jehovah, and in philosophy by the incompatibility between the Absolute Being and the phenomenal world. He does not often dwell on ecstatic visions which are supposed to enable the soul to see and feel the presence of God. In a beautiful allegory of Jacob's dream, he says : ' This is an image of the soul starting up from the sleep of indifference, learning that the world is full of God, a temple of God. The soul has to rise/ he says, ' from the sensible world to the spiritual world of ideas, till it attains to knowledge of God, which is vision or communion of the soul with God, attainable only by the purest, and by them but rarely, that is in moments of ecstasy.'

It is clear that this current which carried Hellenic ideas into a Jewish stream of thought, was not confined to the Jews of Alexandria, but reached Jerusalem and other towns inhabited by educated Jews. Much has been written as to whether the author of the Fourth Gospel borrowed his doctrine of the incarnate Logos directly from Philo. It seems to me a question which it is almost impossible to answer either way. Dr. Westcott, whose authority is deservedly high, does not seem inclined to admit a direct influence. Even Professor Harnack (l.c. i. p. 85) thinks that the Logos of St. John has little more than its name in common with the Logos of Philo. But no one can doubt that the same general current through which the name of Logos and all that it implies, reached Philo and the Jews, must have reached the author of the Johannean

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THE LOGOS. . 415

Gospel also. Such words as Logos and Logos monogenes are historical facts, and exist once and once only. Whoever wrote the beginning of that Gospel must have been in touch with Greek and Judaeo-Alexandrian philosophy, and must have formed his view of God and the world under that inspiration. In the eyes of the historian, and still more of the student of language, this seems to be beyond the reach of doubt, quite as much as that whoever speaks of' the categorical imperative' has been directly or indirectly in contact with Kant.

The early Christians were quite aware that their pagan opponents charged them with having borrowed their philosophy from Plato and Aristotle1. Nor was there any reason why this should have been denied. Truth may safely be borrowed from all quarters, and it is not the less true because it has been borrowed. But the early Christians were very angry at this charge, and brought the same against their Greek critics. They called Plato an Attic Moses, and accused him of having stolen his wisdom from the Bible. Whoever was right in these recriminations, they show at all events the close relations which existed between the Greeks and Christians in the early days of the new Gospel, and this is the only thing important to us as historians.

We cannot speak with the same certainty with regard to other more or less technical terms applied to the Logos by Philo, such as Trp<oT6yovos, the firstborn, dnibv 0€ov, the likeness of God, ivOpoa-nos Oeov, the man of God, irapdbtiyiia, the pattern, aiud, the shadow, and more particularly hpx^peis, the high

1 Bigg, Christian Platonists, pp. 5 seq.

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priest, i:apdK\r]Tos, the intercessor \ &c. But the important point is that all these names, more or less technical, were known to Philo, long before they were used by Christian writers, that the ideas contained in them were of ante-Christian origin, and if accepted by the followers of Christ, could at first have been accepted by them in their antecedent meaning only. Nay, may we now go a step further, and say that, unless these words had been used in their peculiar meaning by Philo and by his predecessors and contemporaries, we should never have heard of them in Christian literature? Is not this the strongest proof that nothing of the best thought of the Greek and of the Jewish world was entirely lost, and that Christianity came indeed in the fulness of time to blend the pure metal that had been brought to light by the toil of centuries in the East and in the West into a new and stronger metal, the religion of Christ ? If we read the beginning of the Fourth Gospel, almost every other word and thought seems to be of Greek workmanship. I put the words most likely to be of Greek rather than Jewish origin in italics:—In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with Qod, and the Word was God2. All things were made by him. In him was life, and the life was the light3 of the world. It was the true light which lighteth every man. And the Word was made flesh—and we behold his glory 4 as of the only begotten of the Father. No one hath seen Qod at any time; the only begotten

1 Hatch, Essays on Biblical Greek, p. 82. 8 The same amphiboly exists in Philo, see before, p. 398. 8 The <pSts of Plato, Republ. vi. 508, and of Philo, De Somn. i. 13, p. 632, vpGrrov plv 6 Otbs <pa>s tern. * The tya of PJulo.

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Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him V

We have thus seen how the Jews, with whom the gulf between the invisible and the visible world had -probably become wider than with any other people, succeeded nevertheless, nay possibly on that very account, in drawing the bonds between God and man as closely together as they can be drawn, and that they did so chiefly with the help of inspiration received from Greek philosophy. God before the creation was, according to Philo, sufficient for Himself, and even after the creation He remained the same (De mut. nom. 5, p. 585). When Philo calls Him the creator (kt£ott/s), the Demiurgos, and the Father, he does this under certain well-understood limitations. God does not create directly, but only through the Logos and the Powers. The Logos, therefore, the thought of God, was the bond that united heaven and earth, and through it God could be addressed once more as the Father, in a truer sense than He had ever been before. The world and all that was within it was recognised as the true Son, sprung from the Father, yet inseparable from the Father. The world was once more full of God, and yet in His highest nature God was above the world, unspotted from the world, eternal and unchangeable.

The one point in Philo's philosophy which seems to me not clearly reasoned out is the exact relation of

1 TSv ipxfi V & \6yo%, Kai & Xlyos ty irpds r6v 0c6v, ical & 0€^$ ty & X6yos. IlivTa 8i' avroi cylveTO* iv avr$ Cuij 1)vt fcal J} fcwi) -Jjv r& 4>&s t&v dvOpwircDV j}v rd (pws rb a\r)$tv6v, S 4<*rl£ci irdvra tfvOpooirov. teal 6 \6yos crcip£ iylvtro, teal k$€aa&/i€0a rr)v 8<5£av avrroO, 86£av &% l&ovoYcvovs irapd iraTp6s. &*&v ovficis l&paicc iruirorc & itovoycv^s vl6s, 6 &v tis tov k6\ttov tow varpos, ivetvos i^rfyfiaaTo^

W Ee

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418 LEOTUBE XII.

the individual soul to God1. Here the thoughts of the Old Testament seem to clash in Philo's mind with the teachings of his Greek masters, and to confuse what may be called his psychology. That Philo looked upon human nature as twofold, as a mixture of body and soul (<r<a\w. and ^rvxn) is clear enough. The body made of the elements is the abode, the temple, but also the tomb of the soul. The body is generally conceived as an evil, it is even called a corpse which we have to carry about with us through life. It includes the senses and the passions arising from the pleasures of the senses, and is therefore considered as the source of all evil. We should have expected that Philo, the philosopher, would have treated man as part of the manifold Divine Logos, and that the imperfection of his nature would have been accounted for, like all imperfections in nature, by the incomplete ascendancy of the Logos over matter. But here the Old Testament doctrine comes in that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. On the strength of this, Philo recognises the eternal element of the soul in the divine spirit in man (to O&ov irv€Vfia)9 while Soul (V^X1?) ^^ generally with him a far wider meaning. It comprehends all conscious life, and therefore sensation also (ala-Orjais), though this would seem to be peculiar to the flesh (<r&jAa or <r<£/>£). The soul is often subdivided by Philo, according to Plato's division, into three parts, which may be rendered approximately by reason (i/ofo kcl\ \6yos), spirit (Ovfjios), and appetite (iiriBvfila). Sometimes perception (afcrftyo-is), language (koyos), and mind

1 See an excellent paper by Br. Hatch,' Psychological Terms in Philo/ in Essays in Biblical Greek, pp. 109-180.

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(vovs) are said to be the three instruments of knowledge (De Congr. erud. gr. 18, p. 533). Then again each part is divided into two, making six, while the seventh, or he who divides them, is called the holy and divine Logos (6 Upds koX Otios \6yos). In other places Philo adopts the Stoical division of the soul into seven parts, that is, the five senses, speech and the reproductive power, but a separate place is reserved for the sovereign or thinking part (rd fjytfxoviKov, i. e. 6 vovs), and it is said that God breathed His spirit into that only, but not into the soul as the assemblage of the senses, speech and generative power. Hence one part of the soul, the unintelligent (iXoyov), is ascribed to the blood (afyia), the other to the divine spirit (irvev^a O&ov); one is perishable, the other immortal. The immortal part was the work of God Himself, the perishable (as in Plato), that of subordinate powers. What has been well brought out by Philo, is that the senses, which in man are always accompanied by thought, are by themselves passive and dull, and could present images of present things only, not of past (memory) or of future things (vovs). It is not the eye that sees, but the mind (vovs) sees through the eye, and without the mind nothing would remain of the impressions made on the senses. Philo also shows how the passions and desires are really the result of perception (al<rQr)o*t.s), and its accompanying pleasures and pains that war against the mind, and he speaks of the death of the soul, when overcome by the passions. This, however, can be metaphorical only, for the higher portion of the soul or the divine spirit breathed into man by God cannot perish. This divine spirit, a conception, it would seem, not of Greek origin,

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is sometimes spoken of by the Stoic term iiroa-iraafia, but Philo carefully guards against the supposition that any portion could ever be detached from the Supreme Divine Being. He explains it as an expansion from God, and calls the mind (vovs) which it confers on the soul of man, the nearest image and likeness of the eternal and blessed Idea.

We must not however expect a strictly consistent terminology in Philo, nor allow ourselves to be misled when we sometimes find him using mind or rums in the more general sense of soul (V^X1?)- What is important to us is that when it is necessary, he does distinguish between the two. But even then he hesitates between the philosophical opinion of the Stoics, that the mind after all is material, though not made of the four ordinary elements, but of a fifth, the heavenly ether, and the teaching of Moses that it was the image of the Divine and the Invisible \

But even if the soul is conceived as material, or at all events, as ethereal, it is declared to be of heavenly origin, and believed to return to the pure ether as to a father 2.

If, on the contrary, the mind is conceived as the breath (itvevfxa) of God, then it returns to God, or rather it was never separated from God, but only dwelt in man. And here again the Biblical idea comes in, that some chosen men such as prophets are

1 Be plantat. Noe, 5 (1, 832): Of i*\v &\Xoi rrjt cdOtplov Qvarcan rbv ijulrtpov vovv potpav tlw6vr(s tlvai, arvyyivuav dvQpwiry vpbs alQipa ivrjifw 6 8i fxiyas Maworjs ovbtvl rwv ytyovSrw rrjs Xoyncfjs tyvxrp rb cfaos dfxoicos wv6fxao€v, dAA*- tTirev aM)v rod Otiov teal dopdrov clitova.

a Quis rer. divin. heres, 57 (1, 614): Tb h\ vocpbv teal ovp&viov rip *h>XVs yivos wpbs al$4pa rbv KaBapurarov ws wpbs irar4pa <fyt£crflu.

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full of the divine spirit, and different so far from ordinary mortals.

Yet with all his admiration for the Logos as of divine origin, Philo seldom went so far as the Platonists. He never allowed that the soul even in its highest ecstasy could actually see God, as little, he says, as the soul can see itself (De Mut. nom. 2, p. 579). But in every other respect Reason was to him the supreme power in the world and in the human mind. If therefore an Alexandrian philosopher, familiar with Philo's philosophy and terminology, became a Christian, he really raised Christ to the highest position, short of primary Divinity, which he could conceive. He declared ipso facto his belief that the Divine Logos or the Word was made flesh in Christ, that is to say, he recognised in Christ the full realisation of the divine idea of man, and he claimed at the same time for himself and for all true Christians the power to become the sons of God. This was expressed in unmistakable language by Athanasius, when he said that the Logos, the Word of God, became man that we might be made God, and again by St. Augustine, Factus est Deus homo, ut homo fieret Deus1. Whatever we may think of these speculations, we may, I believe, as historians recognise in them a correct account of the religious and intellectual ferment in the minds of the earliest Greek and Jewish converts to Christianity, who, without breaking with their philosophical convictions, embraced with perfect honesty the religion of Christ. Three important points were gained by this combination of their ancient philosophy with their new re

1 See the remarks of Cusanus, in DUi^s Nicdlaus Cusanus, vol. ii. p. 847.

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422 L3CTUBE XII.

ligion, the sense of the closest relationship between human and divine nature, the pre-eminent position of Christ as the Son of God, in the truest sense, and at the same time the potential brotherhood between Him and all mankind.

How far this interpretation of the Logos, as we find it not only in Philo, but among the earliest converts to Christianity, may be called orthodox, is not a question that concerns the historian. The word orthodox does not exist in his dictionary. There is probably no term which has received so many interpretations at the hands of theologians as that of Logos, and no verse in the New Testament which conveys so little meaning to modern readers as the first in the Gospel of St. John. Theologians are at liberty to interpret it, each according to his own predilection, but the historical student has no choice; he must take every word in the sense in which it was used at the time by those who used it.

Jupiter as Son of God.

That the intellectual process by which the Greek philosophy adapted itself to the teaching of Christianity was in accordance with the spirit of the time, is best shown by an analogous process which led NeoPlatonist philosophers to discover their philosophical theories in their own ancient mythology also. Thus Plotinus speaks of the Supreme God generating a beautiful son, and producing all things in his essence without any labour or fatigue. For this deity being delighted with his work, and loving his offspring, continues and connects all things with himself, pleased both with himself and with the splendours his off

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THE LOGOS. 423
spring exhibits. But since all these are beautiful, and those which remain are still more beautiful, Jupiter, the son of intellect, alone shines forth externally, proceeding from the splendid retreats of his father. From which last son we may behold as an image the greatness of his Sire, and of his brethren, those divine ideas that abide in occult union with their father1.

Here we see that Jupiter, originally the Father of Gods and men, has to yield his place to the Supreme Being, and as a phenomenal God to take the place of the son of God, or as the Logos. This is Greek philosophy trying to pervade and quicken the ancient Greek religion, as we saw it trying to be reconciled with the doctrines of Christianity by recognising the divine ideal of perfection and goodness as realised in Christ, and as to be realised in time by all who are to become the sons of God. The key-note of all these aspirations is the same, a growing belief that the human soul comes from God and returns to God, nay that in strict philosophical language it was never torn away (&Tr6<nra(Tpa) from God, that the bridge between man and God was never broken, but was only rendered invisible for a time by the darkness of passions and desires engendered by the senses and the flesh.

1 Plotinus, Enneads, II; Taylor, Platonic Religion, p. 263.

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ALEXANDBIAN CHBISTIANITY. Stoics and Veo-Platonists.

T TRIED to show in my last lecture how Philo, -*- as the representative of an important historical phase of Jewish thought, endeavoured with the help of Greek, and more particularly of Stoic philosophy, to throw a bridge from earth to heaven, and how he succeeded in discovering that like two countries, now separated by a shallow ocean, these two worlds formed originally but one undivided continent. When the original oneness of earth and heaven, of the human and the divine natures has once been discovered, the question of the return of the soul to God assumes a new character. It is no longer a question of an ascension to heaven, an approach to the throne of God, an ecstatic vision of God and a life in a heavenly Paradise. The vision of God is rather the knowledge of the divine element in the soul, and of the consubstantiality of the divine and human natures. Immortality has no longer to be asserted, because there can be no death for what is divine and therefore immortal in man. There is life eternal and peace eternal for all who feel the

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divine Spirit as dwelling within them and have thus become the true children of God. Philo has not entirely freed himself from the popular eschatological terminology. He speaks of the city of God and of a mystical Jerusalem. Eut these need not be more than poetical expressions for that peace of God which passes all names and all understanding.

Anyhow the eschatological language of Philo is far more simple and sober than what we meet with even in Christian writings of the time, in which the spirit of the Neo-Platonist philosophy has been at work by the side of the more moderate traditions of the Jewish and the Stoic schools of thought. The chief difference between the Neo-Platonists and the Stoics is that the Neo-Platonists, whether Christian or pagan, trust more to sentiment than to reasoning. Hence they rely much more on ecstatic visions than Philo and his Stoic friends. On many other points, however, more particularly on the original relation between the soul and God, there is little difference between the two.

Plotinus.

Plotinus, the chief representative of Neo-Platonism at Alexandria, though separated by two centuries from Philo, may be called an indirect descendant of that Jewish philosopher. He is said to have had intercourse with Numenius, who followed in the steps of Philo *. But Plotinus went far beyond Philo. Bis idealism was carried to the furthest extreme. While the Stoics were satisfied with knowing that God is,

1 Porphyrius had to write a book to prove that Plotinus was not a mere borrower from Numenius.

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and with discovering his image in the ideas of th6 invisible, and in the manifold species of the visible world, the Neo-Platonists looked upon the incomprehensible and unmanifested Godhead as the highest goal of their aspirations, nay, as a possible object of their enraptured vision. When the Stoic keeps at a reverent distance, the Neo-Platonist rushes in with passionate love, and allows himself to indulge in dreams and fancies which in the end could only lead to self-deceit and imposture. The Stoics looking upon God as the cause of all that falls within the sensuous and intellectual experience of man, concluded that He could not be anything of what is effect, and that He could have no attributes (iiroios) through which He might be known and named. God with them was simple, without qualities, inconceivable, unnameable. From an ethical point of view Philo admitted that the human soul should strive to become free from the body (<f>vyri Zk tov <r<&naros) and like unto God (fj irpbs debv ^o/mofoxrts). He even speaks of faaxris, union, but he never speaks of those more or less sensuous, ecstatic, and beatific visions of the Deity which form a chief topic of the Neo-Platonists. These so-called descendants of Plato had borrowed much from the Stoics, but with all that, the religious elements predominated so completely in their philosophy that at times the old metaphysical foundation almost disappeared. While reason and what is rational in the phenomenal world formed the chief subject of Stoic thought, the chief interest of the Neo-Platonists was centered in what is beyond reason. It may be said that to a certain extent Philo's Stoicism pointed already in that direction, for his God also was

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conceived as above the Logos, and his essence remained unknown ; yet knowledge of the existence of God and likeness to Him were the highest goal, and refuge with Him was eternal life1. It has therefore been truly said that the Neo-Platonist differs from the Stoic by temperament rather than by argument.

The Neo-Platonist, like the Stoic, believes in a Primal Being, and in an ideal world (vovs, ko<t\xos votjtos), as the prototype of the phenomenal world (k6<tho$ oparos). The soul is to him also of divine origin. It is the image of the eternal Nous, an immaterial substance, standing between the Nous and the visible world. The more the soul falls away from its source, the more it falls under the power of what we should call matter, the indefinite (jk-neipov), and the unreal (to /ut^ &). It is here that philosophy steps in to teach the soul its way back to its real home. This is achieved by the practice of virtues, from the lowest to the highest, sometimes by a very strict ascetic discipline. In the end, however, neither knowledge nor virtue avail. Complete self-forgetfulness only can lead the soul to the Godhead in whose embrace there is ineffable blessedness. Thus when speaking of the absorption of man in the Absolute, Plotinus said: 'Perhaps it cannot even be called an intuition2; it is another kind of seeing, an ecstasy, a simplification, an exaltation, a striving for contact, and a rest. It is the highest yearning for union, in order to see, if possible, what there is in the holiest of the temple. But even if one could see, there would be nothing to see. By such similitudes the wise prophets try to give a hint how the Deity might be perceived, and the wise

1 De P*of. 15 (1, 557). * Tholuck, MorgerMndische Mysiik, p. 3.

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428 LECtUEE XIII.

priest, who understands the hint may really, if he reaches the holiest, obtain a true intuition.' These intuitions, in which nothing could be seen, were naturally treated as secrets, and the idea of mystery, so foreign to all true philosophy, became more and more prevalent. Thus Plotinus himself says that these are doctrines Ivhich should be considered as mysteries, and should not be brought before the uninitiated. Proclus also says, 'As the Mystae in the holiest of their initiations (rcAircu) meet first with a multiform and manifold race of gods, but when entered into the sanctuary and surrounded by holy ceremonies, receive at once divine illumination in their bosom, and like lightly-armed warriors take quick possession of the Divine, the same thing happens at the intuition of the One and All. If the soul looks to what is behind, it sees the shadows and illusions only of what is. If it turns into its own essence and discovers its own relations, it sees itself only, but if penetrating more deeply into the knowledge of itself, it discovers the spirit in itself and in all orders of things. And if it reaches into its inmost recess, as it were into the Adyton of the soul, it can see the race of gods and the unities of all things even with closed eyes.'

Plotinus and his school seem to have paid great attention to foreign, particularly to Eastern religions and superstitions, and endeavoured to discover in all of them remnants of divine wisdom. They even wished to preserve and to revive the religion of the Roman Empire. Claiming revelation for themselves, the NeoPlatonists were all the more ready to accept divine revelations from other religions also, and to unite them all

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into a universal religion. But what we mean by an historical and critical study of other religions was impossible at that time. While Philo with his unwavering adherence to the Jewish faith was satisfied with allegorising whatever in the Old Testament seemed to him incompatible with his philosophical convictions, the Neo-Platonists accepted everything that seemed compatible with their own mystic dreams, and opened the door wide to superstitions even of the lowest kind. It is strange, however, that Plotinus does not seem to have paid much attention to the Christian religion which was then rapidly gaining influence in Alexandria. But his pupils, Amelius and Porphyrius, both deal with it. Amelius discussed the Fourth Gospel. Porphyrius wrote his work in fifteen books against the Christiaus, more particularly against their Sacred Books, which he calls the works of ignorant -people and impostors. Yet no sect or school counted so many decepti deceptore8 as that of the Neo-Platonists. Magic, thaumaturgy, levitation, faith-cures, thought-reading, spiritism, and every kind of pious fraud were practised by impostors who travelled about from place to place, some with large followings. Their influence was widely spread and most mischievous. Still we must not forget that the same Neo-Platonism counted among its teachers and believers such names also as the Emperor Julian (331-363), who thought NeoPlatonism strong enough to oust Christianity and to revive the ancient religion of Borne; also, for a time at least, St. Augustine (351-430), Hypatia, the beautiful martyr of philosophy (d. 415), and Proclus (411-485), the connecting link between Greek philosophy and

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the scholastic philosophy of the middle ages, and with Dionysius one of the chief authorities of the mediaeval Mystics. Through Proclus the best thoughts of the Stoics, of Aristotle, Plato, nay, of the still more ancient philosophers of Greece, such as Anaxagoras and Heraclitus, were handed on to the greatest scholastic and mystic Doctors in the mediaeval Church ; nay, there are currents in our own modern theology, which can be traced back through an uninterrupted channel to impulses springing from the brains of the earliest thinkers of Asia Minor and Greece.

Before we leave Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists I should like to read you some extracts from a private letter which the philosopher wrote to Flaccus. Like most private letters it gives us a better insight into the innermost thoughts of the writer, and into what he considered the most important points of his philosophical system than any more elaborate book.

letter from Plottnus to Flftoons.

€ External objects,' he writes,c present us only with appearances,' that is to say, are phenomenal only. Concerning them, therefore, we may be said to possess opinion rather than knowledge. The distinctions in the actual world of appearance are of import only to ordinary and practical men. Our question lies with the ideal reality that exists behind appearance. How does the mind perceive these ideas ? Are they without us, and is the reason, like sensation, occupied with objects external to itself? What certainty could we then have, what assurance that our perception was infallible? The object perceived would be a something different from the mind perceiving it. We

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should have then an image instead of reality. It would be monstrous to believe for a moment that the mind was unable to perceive ideal truth exactly as it is, and that we had no certainty and real knowledge concerning the world of intelligence. It follows, therefore, that this region of truth is not to be investigated as a thing outward to us, and so only imperfectly known. It is within us. Here the objects we contemplate and that which contemplates are identical— both are thought. The subject cannot surely know an object different from itself *.

The world of ideas lies within our intelligence. Truth, therefore, is not the agreement of our apprehension of an external object with the object itself. It is the agreement of the mind with itself. Consciousness, therefore, is the sole basis of certainty. The mind is its own witness. Reason sees in itself that which is above itself as its source; and again, that which is below itself as still itself once more.

Knowledge has three degrees—opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, reason or dialectics ; of the third, intuition. To the last I subordinate reason. It is absolute knowledge founded on the identity of the mind knowing with the object known. There is a raying out of all orders of existence, an external emanation from the ineffable One (irpoobos). There is again a returning impulse, drawing all upwards and inwards toward the centre from whence all came (iTnorpoQrj).

1 Plotinus, Enneades, 1, 6,9, rb y&p bpluv wpbs rb bp&n*vov crvyycvh KaX Zfioiov woirjcrdp€vov 8c? km&&W€iv ry $4q. ov ydp hv vdmort *Tt€v 6<f>0a\pbs fjXiov f)\ioeib))s /xt) y€y€VT)fUvos, ov&l rb /caXbv hv tSoi if^X^I M kclXj) ytvojxivr). ytviaOw 5r) vpwrov leoctSi)? iros, teat xa\bs iros, ct piWti 0td<raa$ai $*6v re /cat *a\6v. Ed. D&bner, p. 37.

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Love, as Plato beautifully says in the Symposion, is the child of poverty and plenty. In the amorous quest of the soul after God, lies the painful sense of fall and deprivation. But that love is blessing, is salvation, is our guardian genius; without it the centrifugal law would overpower us, and sweep our souls out far from their source toward the cold extremities of the material and the manifold. The wise man recognises the idea of God within him. This he develops by withdrawal into the Holy Place of his own soul. He who does not understand how the soul contains the Beautiful within itself, seeks to realise the beauty without, by laborious production. His aim should rather be to concentrate and simplify, and so to expand his being; instead of going out into the manifold, to forsake it for the One, and so to float upwards towards the divine fount of being whose stream flows within him.

You ask, how can we know the Infinite ? I answer, not by reason. It is the office of reason to distinguish and define. The Infinite, therefore, cannot be ranked among its objects. You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer, in which the Divine Essence is communicated to you. This is ecstasy. It is the liberation of your mind from its finite anxieties. like only can apprehend like. When you thus cease to be finite, you become one with the Infinite. In the reduction of your soul to its simplest self (JhrAaxrts), its divine essence, you realise this Union, nay this Identity (Ivaxrts).

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Ecstatic Intuition.

Plotinus adds that this ecstatic state is not frequent, that he himself has realised it but three times in his life. There are different ways leading to it:—the love of beauty which exalts the poet; devotion to the One, and the ascent of science which makes the ambition of the philosopher; and lastly love and prayers by which some devout and ardent soul tends in its moral purity towards perfection. We should call these three the Beautiful, the True, and the Divine, the three great highways conducting the soul to 'that height above the actual and the particular, where it stands in the immediate presence of the Infinite, which shines out as from the depth of the soul.'

We are told by Porphyrius, the pupil and biographer of Plotinus, that Plotinus felt ashamed that his soul should ever have had to assume a human body, and when he died, his last words are reported to have been: ' As yet I have expected you, and now I consent that my divine part may return to that Divine Nature which flourishes throughout the universe/ He looked upon his soul as Empedocles had done long before him, when he called himself, 'Heaven's exile, straying from the orb of light, straying, but returning/

Alexandrian Christianity. St. Clement.

It was necessary to give this analysis of the elements which formed the intellectual atmosphere of Alexandria in order to understand the influence which that atmosphere exercised on the early growth

(4) Ff

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of Christianity in that city. Whatever progress Christianity made at Jerusalem among people who remained for a long time more Jewish than Christian, its influence on the world at large began with the conversion of men who then represented the world, who stood in the front rank of philosophical thought, who had been educated in the schools of Greek philosophy, and who in adopting Christianity as their religion, showed to the world that they were able honestly to reconcile their own philosophical convictions with the religious and moral teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Those who are truly called the Fathers and Founders of the Christian Church were not the simple-minded fishermen of Galilee, but men who had received the highest education which could be obtained at the time, that is Greek education. In Palestine Christianity might have remained a local sect by the side of many other sects. In Alexandria, at that time the very centre of the world, it had either to vanquish the world, or to vanish. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Irenaeus, Atbanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzen, Chrysostom, or among the Latin Fathers, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrosius, Hilarius, Augustinus, Hieronymus, and Gregory, all were men of classical learning and philosophical culture, and quite able to hold their own against their pagan opponents. Christianity came no doubt from the small room in the house of Mary, where many were gathered together praying1, but as early as the second century it became a very different Christianity

1 St. Clement, when he speaks of his own Christian teachers, speaks of them as having preserved the true tradition of the blessed doctrine, straight from Peter and James, John and Paul..

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in the Catechetical Schoolx of Alexandria. St. Paul had made a beginning as a philosophical apo^gete of Christianity and as a powerful antagonist of pagan beliefs and customs. But St. Clement was a very different champion of the new faith, far superior to him both in learning and in philosophical strength. The profession of Christianity by such a man was therefore a far more significant fact in the triumphant progress of the new religion than even the conversion of Saul, The events which happened at Jerusalem, the traditions and legends handed down in the earliest half Jewish and half Christian communities, and even the earliest written documents did not occupy the mind of St. Clement2 so much as the fundamental problems of religion and their solution as attempted by this new sect. He accepted the Apostolical traditions, but he wished to show that they possessed to him a far deeper meaning than they could possibly have possessed among some of the immediate followers of Christ. There was nothing to tempt a man in Clement's position to accept this new creed. Nothing but the spirit of truth and sincere admiration for the character of Christ as conceived by him, could have induced a pagan Greek philosopher to brave the scoffs of his philosophical friends and to declare himself a follower of Christ, and a member of a sect, at that time still despised and threatened with persecution. He felt convinced, however, that this new religion, if properly understood, was worthy of being accepted by the most enlightened minds. This proper understanding was what Clement would have called yzwo-is, in the best sense

1 Strom, i. 1, 11; Harnack, Dogmengeschichlc, i. p. 801, note. * Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, i. p. 800. Ffa

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of the word. The Catechetical School where Clement taught had been under the guidance of Greek philosophers converted to Christianity, such as Athenagoras(?) and Pantaenus. Pantaenus, of whom it is related that he discovered a Hebrew version of the Gospel of St. Matthew in India \ had been the master of Clement. His pupil, in openly declaring himself a Christian and an apologete of Christianity, surrendered nothing of his philosophical convictions. On one side Christian teachers were representing Greek philosophy as the work of the Devil, while others, such as the Ebionites, assigned the Old Testament to the same source. In the midst of these conflicting streams St. Clement stood firm. He openly expressed his belief in the Old Testament as revealed, and he accepted the Apostolical Dogma, so far as it had been settled at that time. He claimed, however, the most perfect freedom of interpretation and speculation. By applying the same allegorical interpretation which Philo had used in interpreting the Old Testament, to the New, Clement convinced himself and.convinced others that there was no antagonism between philosophy and religion. What Clement had most at heart was not the letter but the spirit, not the historical events, but their deeper meaning in universal history.

The Trinity of St. Clement.

It can hardly be doubted2 that St. Clement knew the very ancient Baptismal Formula,' In the name of the Fattier, the Son, and the Holy Ghost* from the Gospel of St. Matthew.

1 Bigg, l.c., p. 44.

* See, however, Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, i. p. 302, note.

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But whether that formula came to him with ecclesiastical authority or not, it would not have clashed with his own convictions. He had accepted the First Person, the Father, not simply as the Jehovah of the Old Testament or as the Zeus of Plato, but as the highest and most abstract philosophical concept, and yet the most real of all realities. He would not have ascribed to God any qualities. To him also God was Sirotos, like the primal Godhead of the Stoics and N^oPlatonists. He was incomprehensible and unnameable. Yet though neither thought nor word could reach Him, beyond asserting that He is, Clement could revere and worship Him.

One might have thought that the Second Person, the Son, would have been a stumbling-block to Clement. But we find on the contrary that Clement, like all contemporary Greek philosophers, required a bridge between the world and the unapproachable and ineffable Godhead. That bridge was the Logos, the Word. Even before him, Athenagoras \ supposed to have been his predecessor at the Catechetical School of Alexandria, had declared that the Logos of the Father was the Son of God. Clement conceived this Logos in its old philosophical meaning, as the mind and consciousness of the Father. He speaks of it as * divine, the likeness of the Lord of all things, the most manifest, true God V

The Logos, though called the sum of all divine ideas 3, is distinguished from the actual logoi, though sometimes represented as standing at the head of them. This Logos is eternal, like the Father, for the Father

1 Nov; real \6yos rov irarpds 6 vibs rod 0€ov. See Drummond, I.e., i. p. 48.

* &€ios, 6 (fKLvepdrraros 6vtojs 0«d*s, 6 t<$ OfCiroVfl rwv o\ojv l£ur<v0€($.

* Bigg, l.c, p. 92.

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would never have been the Father without the Son, nor the Son the Son without the Father. Such ideas were shared in common by the Christians and their pagan adversaries. Even Celsus, the great opponent of Christianity, says through the mouth of the Jew, * If the Logos is to you the Son of God, we also agree with you V

The really critical step which Clement took, and which philosophers like Celsus declined to take, was to recognise this Logos in Jesus of Nazareth. It was the same process as that which led the Jewish converts to recognise the Messiah in Jesus. It is not quite certain whether the Logos had been identified with the Messiah by the Jews of Alexandria 2. But when at last this step was taken it meant that everything that was thought and expected of the Messiah had been fulfilled in Jesus. This to a Jew was quite as difficult as to recognise the Logos in Jesus was to a Greek philosopher. How then did St. Clement bring himself to say that in a Jewish Teacher whom he had never seen the Logos had become flesh? All the epithets, such as Logos, Son of God, the first-born, the only begotten, the second God, were familiar to the Greeks of Alexandria. If then they brought themselves to say that He, Jesus of Nazareth, was all that, if they transferred all these well-known predicates to Him, what did they mean? Unless we suppose that the concept of a perfect man is in itself impossible, it seems to me that they could only have meant that a perfect man might be called the realisation of the Logos, whether we take it in its collective form,

1 'Cls €ty€ 6 A6yos tori? hfuv vl6s rod $tovf /ecd ij/i€is ivatvovpev. Harnack, I.e., i. p. 428, 609. * Bigg, I.e., p. 25, note.

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as it was in the beginning with God, or in its more special sense, as the logos or the original idea or the divine conception of man. If then all who knew Jesus of Nazareth, who had beheld His glory full of grace and truth, bore witness of Him as perfect, as free from all the taints of the material creation, why should not the Greek philosophers have accepted their testimony, and declared that He was to them the Divine Word, the Son of God, the first-born, the only-begotten, manifested in the flesh ? Human language then, and even now, has no higher predicates to bestow. It is the nearest approach to the Father, who is greater even than the Word, and I believe that the earliest Fathers of the Church and those who followed them, bestowed it honestly, not in the legendary sense of an Evangelium infantiae, but in the deepest sense of their philosophical convictions. Here is the true historical solution of the Incarnation, and if the religion of the Incarnation is pre-eminently 'a religion of experience,' here are the facts and the experience on which alone that religion can rest.

We saw that Philo, whose language St. Clement uses in all these discussions, had recognised his Logos as present in such prophets as Abraham and Moses; and many have thought that St. Clement meant no more when he recognised the Word as incarnate in the Son of Mary. But it seems to me that Clement's mind soared far higher. To him the whole history of the world was a divine drama, a long preparation for the revelation of God in man. From the very beginning man had been a manifestation of the Divine Logos, and therefore divine in his nature. Why should not man have risen at last to his full

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perfection, to be what he had been meant to be from the first in the counsel of the Father? We often speak of an ideal man or of the ideal of manhood, without thinking what we mean by this Platonic language. Ideal has come to mean not much more than very perfect. But it meant originally the idea in the mind of God, and to be the ideal man meant to be the man of God, the man as thought and willed by Divine Wisdom. That man was recognised in Christ by those who had no inducement to do violence to their philosophical convictions. And if they could do it honestly, why cannot we do it honestly too, and thus bring our philosophical convictions into perfect harmony with our historical faith ?

It is more difficult to determine the exact place which St. Clement would have assigned to the Third Person, the Holy Ghost.

The first origin of that concept is still enveloped in much uncertainty. There seems to be something attractive in triads. We find them in many parts of the world, owing their origin to very different causes. The trinity of Plato is well known, and in it there is a place for the third person, namely, the World-spirit, of which the human soul was a part. Numenius1, from whom, as we saw, Plotinus was suspected to have borrowed his philosophy, proposed a triad or, as some call it, a trinity, consisting of the Supreme, the Logos (or Demiurge), and the World. With the Christian philosophers at Alexandria the concept of the Deity was at first biune rather than triune. The Supreme Being and the Logos together comprehended the whole of Deity, and we saw that the

1 Bigg, I.e., p. 251.

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Logos or the intellectual world was called not only the Son of God, but also the second God (6€t5re/>os 0e<fe). When this distinction between the Divine in its absolute essence, and the Divine as manifested by its own activity, had once been realised, there seemed to be no room for a third phase or person. Sometimes therefore it looks as if the Third Person was only a repetition of the Second. Thus the author of the Shepherd1 and the author of the Acta Archelai both identify the Holy Ghost with the Son of God. How unsettled the minds of Christian people were with regard to the Holy Ghost, is shown by the fact that in the apocryphal gospel of the Hebrews Christ speaks of it as His Mother2. When, however, a third place was claimed for the Holy Spirit, as substantially existing by the side of the Father and the Son, it seems quite possible that this thought came, not from Greek, but from a Jewish source. It seems to be the Spirit which s in the beginning moved upon the face of the waters/ or * the breath of life which God breathed into the nostrils of man.' These manifestations of God, however, would according to Greek philosophers have fallen rather to the share of the Logos. Again, if in the New Testament man is called the temple of God, God and the Spirit might have been conceived as one, though here also the name of Logos would from a Greek point of view have been more appropriate to any manifestation of the Godhead in man. In His last discourse Christ speaks of the Holy Ghost as taking His place, and as in one sense even more powerful than the Son. We are told that the special work of the Spirit or the Holy Spirit is to produce holy life in man, that while God

1 Harnack, l.c, i. p. 623. * Renan, Lee ivangiles, pp. 103, 185*

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442 LECTURE XIII.

imparts existence, the Son reason (logos), the Holjf Ghost imparts sanctificationl. Clement probably accepted the Holy Ghost as a more direct emanation or radiation proceeding from the Father and the Son in their relation with the human soul. For while the Father and Son acted on the whole world, the influence of the Holy Ghost was restricted to the soul of man. It was in that sense that the prophets of the Old Testament were said to have been filled with the Spirit of God; nay, according to some early theologians Jesus also became the Christ after baptism only, that is, after the Holy Ghost in the shape of a dove had descended upon Him.

The difficulties become even greater when we remember that St. Clement speaks of the Father and the Logos as substances (hypostaseis), sharing the same essence (ousia), and as personal, the Logos being subordinate to the Father as touching His manhood, though equal to the Father as touching His godhead. We must remember that neither the Logos nor the Holy Ghost was taken by him as a mere power (bvvapis) of God, but as subsisting personally 2. Now it is quite true that personality did not mean with St. Clement what it came to mean at a later time. With him a mythological individuality, such as later theologians clamoured for, would have been incompatible with the true concept of deity. Still self-conscious activity would certainly have been claimed by him for every one of the three Persons, and one wonders why he should not have more fully expressed which particular activity it was which seemed to him not compatible

1 Bigg, p. 174.

8 Harnack, l.c, i. p. 581,1. 17.

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either with the Father or with the Logos, but to require a separate Person, the Holy Ghost.

It afterwards was recognised as the principal function of the Holy Ghost to bring the world, and more particularly the human soul, back to the consciousness of its divine origin, and it was a similar function which He was believed to have exercised even at the baptism of Christ1, at least by some of the leading authorities in the fourth and fifth centuries, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorius, and others.

The problem, however, which concerns us more immediately, the oneness of the human and divine natures, is not affected by these speculations. It forms the fundamental conviction in St. Clement's, as in Philo's mind. If, in order to bring about the recognition of this truth, a third power was wanted, St. Clement would find it in the Holy Ghost. If it was the Holy Ghost which gave to man the full conviction of his divine sonship, we must remember that this reconciliation between God and man was in the first instance the work of Christ, and that it had not merely a moral meaning, but a higher metaphysical purpose. If St. Clement had been quite consistent, he could only have meant that the human soul received the Holy Spirit through Christ, and that through the Holy Spirit only it became conscious of its true divine nature and mindful of its eternal home. We sometimes wish that St. Clement had expressed himself more fully on these subjects, more particularly on his view of the relation of man to God, to the Logos, and to the Holy Spirit.

On his fundamental conviction, however, there can

1 Harnack, I.e., i. pp. 91, 689.

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444 lecture xin.

be no uncertainty. It was Clement who, before St. Augustine, declared boldly that God became man in Christ in order that man might become Ood. Clement is not a confused thinker, but he does not help the reader as much as he might, and there is a certain reticence in his conception of the Incarnation which leaves us in the dark on several points. Dr. Bigg1 thinks indeed that Clement's idea of the Saviour is larger and nobler than that of any other doctor of the Church. * Clement's Christ/ he says, * is the Light that broods over all history, and lighteth up every man that cometh into the world. All that there is upon earth of beauty, truth, goodness, all that distinguishes the civilised man from the savage, and the savage from the beast, is His gift.' All this is true, and gives to the Logos a much more historical and universal meaning than it had with Philo. Yet St. Clement never clearly explains how he thought that all this took place, and how more particularly this universal Logos became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, while it was at the same time pervading the whole world and every living soul; also what was according to him the exact relation of the Logos to the Pneuma.

There are several other questions to which I cannot find an answer in St. Clement, but it is a subject which I may safely leave to other and more competent hands.

It may be said that such thoughts as we have discovered in St. Clement are too high for popular religion, and every religion, in order to be a religion, must be popular. Clement knew this perfectly well. But the philosophical thoughts in which he lived were 1 L.c, p. 72.

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evidently more widely spread in his time than they are even with us; and in the case of babes, Clement is quite satisfied that their Logos or Christ should be simply the Master, the Shepherd, the Physician, the Son of Mary who suffered for them on the cross. Besides, there was the Church which acted both as a guide and as a judge over all its members, particularly those who had not yet found the true liberty of the children of God. If Clement considers this as the Lower Life, still it leads on to the Higher Life, the life of knowledge and righteousness, the life of love, the life in Christ and in God. That purity of life is essential for reaching this higher life is fully understood by Clement. He knew that when true knowledge has been obtained, sin becomes impossible. 'Good works follow knowledge as shadow follows substance1/ Knowledge or Gnosis is defined as the apprehensive contemplation of God in the Logos. When Clement shows that this knowledge is at the same time love of God and life in God, he represents the same view which we met with in the Ved&nta, in contradistinction from the doctrine of the Sufis. That love of God, he holds, must be free from all passion and desire (iiTTaOrjs); it is a contented self-appropriation which restores him who knows to oneness with Christ, and therefore with God. The Ved&ntist expressed the same conviction when he said that, He who knows Brahma, is Brahma (Brahmavid Brahma bhavati). That is the true, serene, intellectual ecstasis, not the feverish ecstatic visions of Plotinus and his followers. Clement has often been called a Gnostic and a Mystic, yet these names as applied to him have a very different

1 Strom, viii. 13, 82.

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meaning from what they have when applied to Plotinus or Jamblichus. With all his boldness of thought St. Clement never loses his reverence before the real mysteries of life. He never indulges in minute descriptions of the visions of an enraptured soul during life, or of the rejoicings or the sufferings of the soul after death. All he asserts is that the soul will for ever dwell with Christ, beholding the Father. It will not lose its subjectivity, though freed from its terrestrial personality. It will obtain the vision of the Eternal and the Divine, and itself put on a divine form ((rxrjfia Otiov). It will find rest in God by knowledge and love of God.

Origen.

I cannot leave this Alexandrian period of Christianity without saying a few words about Origen. To say a few words on such a man as Origen may seem a very useless undertaking; a whole course of lectures could hardly do justice to such a subject. Still in the natural course of our argument we cannot pass him over. What I wish to make quite clear to you is that there is in Christianity more theosophy than in any other religion, if we use that word in its right meaning, as comprehending whatever of wisdom has been vouchsafed to man touching things divine. We are so little accustomed to look for philosophy in the New Testamant that we have almost acquiesced in that most unholy divorce between religion and philosophy; nay, there are those who regard it almost as a distinction that our religion should not be burdened with metaphysical speculations like other religions. Still there is plenty of metaphysical speculation

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underlying the Christian religion, if only we look for it as the early Fathers did. The true height and depth of Christianity cannot be measured unless we place it side by side with the other religions of the world. We are hardly aware till we have returned from abroad that England is richer in magnificent cathedrals than any other country, nor shall we ever appreciate at its full value the theosophic wealth of the Christian religion, quite apart from its other excellences, till we have weighed it against the other religions of the world. But in doing this we must treat it simply as one of the historical religions of the world. It is only if we treat it with the perfect impartiality of the historian that we shall discover its often unsuspected strength.

I hope I have made it clear to you that from the very first the principal object of the Christian religion has been to make the world comprehend the oneness of the objective Deity, call it Jehovah, or Zeus, or Theos, or the Supreme Being, rd 8v, with the subjective Deity, call it self, or mind, or soul, or reason, or Logos. Another point which I was anxious to establish was that this religion, when it meets us for the first time at Alexandria as a complete theological system, represents a combination of Greek, that is Aryan, with Jewish, that is Semitic thought, that these two primeval streams after meeting at Alexandria have ever since been flowing on with irresistible force through the history of the world.

Without these Aryan and Semitic antecedents Christianity would never have become the Religion of the world. It is necessary therefore to restore to Christianity its historical character by trying to discover

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and to understand more fully its historical antecedents. It was Hegel, I believe, who used to say that the distinguishing characteristic of the Christian religion was that it was non-historical, by which he meant that it was without historical antecedents, or, as others would say, miraculous. It seems to me on the contrary that what constitutes the essential character of Christianity is that it is so thoroughly historical, or coming, as others would say, in the very fulness of time. It is difficult to understand the supercilious treatment which Christianity so often receives from historians and philosophers, and the distrust with which it is regarded by the ever-increasing number of the educated and more or less enlightened classes. I believe this is chiefly due to the absence of a truly historical treatment, and more particularly to the neglect of that most important phase in its early development, with which we are now concerned. I still believe that by vindicating the true historical position of Christianity, and by showing the position which it holds by right among the historical and natural religions of the world, without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special, exceptional, or so-called miraculous revelation, I may have fulfilled the real intention of the founder of this lectureship better than I could have done in any other way.

Though I cannot give you a full account of Origen and his numerous writings, or tell you anything new about this remarkable man, still I should have been charged with wilful blindness if, considering what the highest object of these lectures is, I had passed over the man whose philosophical and theological speculations prove better than anything else what in

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this, my final course of lectures, I am most anxious to prove, viz. that the be all and the end all of true religion is to reunite the bond between the Divine and the Human which had been severed by the false religions of the world.

On several points Origen- is more definite than St. Clement. He claims the same freedom of interpretation, and yet he is far more deeply impressed with the authority of the Rule of Faith, and likewise with the authority of the Scriptures, known to him, than St. Clement \ Origen had been born and bred a Christian, and he was more disposed to reckon with facts, though always recognising a higher truth behind and beyond the mere facts. He evidently found great relief by openly recognising the distinction between practical religion as required for the many (\pi<mavL<rfibs o-co/maTiKos) and philosophical truth as required by the few (xpi<majH<rfxds itvtvuaTiKos).

After admitting that every religion cannot but assume in the minds of the many a more or less mythological form, he goes on to ask, 'but what other way could be found more helpful to the many, and better than what has been handed down to the people from Jesus ?' Still even then, when he meets with anything in the sacred traditions that conflicts with morality, the law of nature or reason, he protests against it, and agrees with his Greek opponent that God cannot do anything against his own nature, the Logos, against his own thought and will, and that all miracles are therefore in a higher sense natural2. A mere miracle,

1 Harnack, 1. c, i. p. 573.

a Contra Celsum, v. 23; Bigg, 1. c, p. 263 ; Harnack, i. p. 566, note ; Orig. in Joan. ii. 28.

(4) Gg

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in the ordinary acceptation of the term, would from his point of view have been an insult to the Logos and indirectly to the Deity. That the tempter should have carried Christ bodily into a mountain Origen simply declared impossible. His great object was everywhere the same, the reconciliation of philosophy with religion, and of religion with philosophy. Thus he says that a Greek philosopher, on becoming acquainted with the Christian religion, might well, by means of his scientific acquirements, reduce it to a more perfect system, supply what seems deficient, and thus establish the truth of Christianity1. In another place he praises those who no longer want Christ simply as a physician, a shepherd, or a ransom, but as wisdom, Logos, and righteousness. Well might Porphyrius say of Origen that he lived like a Christian and according to the law, but that with regard to his views about things and about the Divine, he was like a Greek2. Still it was the Christian Doctrine which was to him the perfection of Greek philosophy3, that is to say the Christian Doctrine in the light of Greek philosophy.

Origen was certainly more biblical in his perfect Monism than Philo. He does not admit matter by the side of God, but looks upon God as the author even of matter, and of all that constitutes the material world. God's very nature consists in His constant manifestation of Hiinself in the world by means of the Logos, whether we call it the thought, the will, or the word of God. According to Origen, this Logos

1 Contra Celsum, i. 2. * Eusebius, H. E., vi. 19.

8 Harnack, i. p. 562, note.

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in all its fulness was manifested in Christ as the perfect image of God. He is called the second God (SctJrepos 0eos), the Son, being of the same substance as the Father (dpoovatos t<d iraTpi). He is also called the wisdom of God, but as subsisting substantially by-itself (sapientia dei mbstantialiter subsistens), and containing all the forms of the manifold creation, or standing between the One Uncreate on one side and the manifold created things on the otherl. If then this Logos, essentially divine (opoovaios t<|> 0€<£), is predicated of Christ, we can clearly perceive that with Origen too this was really the only way in which he could assert the divinity of Christ. There was nothing higher he could have predicated of Christ. Origen was using the term Logos in the sense in which the word had been handed down to him from the author of the Fourth Gospel through Tatian, Athenagoras, Pantaenus, and Clement. Every one of them held the original unity of all spiritual essences with God. The Logos was the highest of them, but every human soul also was orginally of God and was eternal. According to Origen the interval between God and man is filled with an unbroken series of rational beings (naturae rationabiles), following each other according to their dignity. They all belong to the changeable world and are themselves capable of change, of progress, or deterioration. They take to some extent the plac$ of the old Stoic logoi, but they assume a more popular form under the name of Angels. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost belong to the eternal and unchangeable world, then follow the Angels ac

1 Harnack, i. p. 582-3.

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cording to their different ranks, and lastly the human soul.

With regard to the Third Person, Origen, like St. Clement, had never, as Prof. Harnack remarks (i. p. 583), achieved an impressive proof of the inner necessity of this hypostasis; nay it was not settled yet in his time whether the Holy Ghost was create or uncreate, whether it should be taken for the Son of God or not. Nevertheless Origen accepted the Trinity, but with the Father as the full source of its divinity (irrjyri rfjs 0«ottjtos) ; nay he speaks of it as the mystery of all mysteries, whatever this may mean.

All human souls were supposed by Origen to have fallen away, and as a punishment to have been clothed in flesh during their stay in the material world. But after the dominion of sin in the material world is over, the pure Logos was to appear, united with a pure human soul, to redeem every human soul, so that it should die to the flesh, live in the spirit, and share in the ultimate restoration of all things. Some of these speculations may be called fanciful, but the underlying thought represented at the time the true essence of Christianity. It was in the name of the Christian Logos that Origen was able to answer the Logos aMthfo of Celsus; it was in that Sign that Christianity conquered and reconciled Greek philosophy in the East, and Soman dogmatism in the West.

The Alogoi.

But though this philosophy based on the Logos, the antecedents of which we have traced back to the great philosophers of Greece, enabled men like St. Clement

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and Origen to fight their good fight for the new faith, it must not be supposed that this philosophical defence met with universal approval. As Origen saw himself, it was too high and too deep for large numbers who had adopted the Christian religion for other excellences that appealed to their heart rather than to their understanding. Thus we hear in the middle of the second century 1 of an important sect in Asia Minor, called the Alogoi. This seems to have been a nickname, meaning without a belief in the Logos 2, but also absurd. These Alogoi would have nothing to do with the Logos3 of God, as preached by St. John. This shows that their opposition was not against St. Clement and Origen, whose writings were probably later than the foundation of the sect of the Alogoi, but against the theory of the Logos as taught or fully implied in the Gospel ascribed to St. John. The Alogoi were not heretics ; on the contrary, they were conservative, and considered themselves thoroughly, orthodox. They were opposed to the Montanists and Chiliasts; they accepted the three Synoptic Gospels, but for that very reason rejected the Gospel ascribed to St. John, and likewise the Apocalypse. They denied even that this Gospel was written by St. John, because it did not agree with the other Apostles4, nay they went so far as to say that this Gospel ascribed to John

1 Harnack, 1. c, p. 617, note.

8 Thus St. John, the author of the Apocalypse, was called Theologos, because he maintained the divinity of the Logos. See Natural Religion, p. 46.

3 Epiphanius, 51. 8. 28: To> \6yov rov 0€ov dvofiaXKovrcu rbv bUcL 'Ioj&vptjv KTjpvxOivra,

4 Epiph. 31. 4 : <Pd<Tfcov<rt tn oh avfjupojvu rcL jStjSAia tow 1v6wov to?j koivots dtro<rr6kois.

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lied and was disordered \ as it did not say the same things as the other Apostles. Some ascribed the Fourth Gospel to the Judaising Gnostic Cerinthus, and declared that it should not be used in church 2.

This is an important page in the history of early Christianity. It shows that in the second half of the second century the four Gospels, the three Synoptic Gospels and that of St. John had all been recognised in the Church, but that at the same time it was still possible to question their authority without incurring ecclesiastical censure, such as it was at the time. It shows also how thoroughly the doctrine of the Logos was identified with St. John, or at least with the author of the Fourth Gospel, and how it was his view of Christ, and the view defended by Barnabas, Justin, the two Clements, Ignatius, Polycarp3, and Origen, which in the end conquered the world. Still, if it was possible for a Pope to make St. Clement descend from his rightful place among the Saints of the Christian Church, what safety is there against another Pope unsainting St. John himself4?

Though the further development of the Logos theory in the East and the West is full of interest, we must not dwell on it any further. To us its interest is chiefly philosophical, while its later development becomes more and more theological and scholastic. What I wished to prove was that the Christian religion

1 Epiph. 61. 18: Tb tiayyfoiov rb eh Swofta *1oj&wov ipfttercu . . . \iyovffi rd Hard. 'Iv&vvrjv tvayyiXiov, iwtidi) pi) rd ccbrd tws &vO(Tt6\ois i<ptf, adi6$(Tov rtvai.

a Ovk a£ia abrd <pa<riv *lvcu iv IkkKtjvI^.

s Harnack, i. pp. 162, note ; 422, note.

4 Bigg, 1. c, p. 272.

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in its first struggle with the non-Christian thought of the world, owed its victory chiefly, if not entirely, to the recognition of what, as we saw, forms the essential element of all religion, the recognition of the closest connexion between the phenomenal and the noumenal worlds, between the human soul and God. The bond of union between the two, which had been discovered . by slow degrees by pagan philosophers and had been made the pivot of Christian philosophy at Alexandria, was the Logos. By the recognition of the Logos in Christ, a dogma which gave the direst offence to Celsus and other pagan philosophers, the fatal divorce between religion and philosophy had been annulled, and the two had once more joined hands. It is curious however to observe how some of the early Apologetes looked upon the Logos as intended rather to separate God * from the world than to unite the two. It is true that Philo's mind was strongly impressed with the idea that the Divine Essence should never be brought into immediate contact with vile and corrupt matter, and to him therefore the intervening Logos might have been welcome as preventing such contact. But Christian philosophers looked upon matter as having been created by God, and though to them also the Logos was the intervening power by which God formed and ruled the world, they always looked upon their Logos as a connecting link and not as a dividing screen. It is true that in later times the original purpose and nature of the Logos were completely forgotten and changed. Instead of being a bond of union between the human and the Divine, instead of being accepted in the sense

1 Harnack, i. p. 443.

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which the early Fathers had imparted to it as constituting the divine birthright of every man born into the world, it was used once more as a wall of partition between the Divine Logos, the Son of God (povoycvris vlds rod 0eov), and the rest of mankind; so that not only the testimony of St. John, but the self-evident meaning of the teaching of Christ was made of no effect. No doubt St. Clement had then to be unsainted, but why not St. Augustine, who at one time was a great admirer of St. Clement and Origen, and who had translated and adopted the very words of St. Clement, that God became man in order that man might become God1. Not knowing the difference between 6*6$ and 6 deos, God and the God, later divines suspected some hidden heresy in this language of St. Clement and St. Augustine, and in order to guard against misapprehension introduced a terminology which made the difference between Christ and those whom He called His brothers, one of kind and not one of degree, thus challenging and defying the whole of Christ's teaching. Nothing can be more cautious yet more decided than the words of St. Clement2: ' Thus he who believes in the Lord and follows the prophecy delivered by Him is at last perfected according to the image of the Master, moving about as God in the flesh3/ And still more decided is Origen's reply to Celsus iii. 28: ' That human nature through its communion with the more Divine should become divine not only in Jesus, but in all who through faith

1 See before, p. 823.

* See Bigg, 1. c, p. 75.

3 OvrctK 6 r$ tcvply vaOSfitvos teal rjj 8o0c{<rp &' airrov KaTOKo\ov0Tj<ras wp<xpTjT€i(f t(\(ojs tKT€\€irai /car* tU6va rod SifcuTieakov kv <rap/el wcpnro\£iv 0*6s. Clem. Strom, viii. 16, 95.

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ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY. 457
take up the life which Jesus taught V It is clear that Origen, taking this view of human nature, had no need of any other argument in support of the true divinity of Christ. He might as well have tried to prove his humanity against the Docetae. With him both were one and could only be one. To Origen Christ's divinity was not miraculous, or requiring any proof from moral or physical miracles. It was involved in his very nature, in his being the Logos or the Son of God in all its fulness, whereas the Logos in man had suffered and had to be redeemed by the teaching by the life and death of Christ2. While Origen thus endeavoured to reconcile Greek philosophy, that is, his own honest convictions, with the teaching of the Church, he kept clear both of Gnosticism and Docetism. Origen was as honest as a Christian as he was as a philosopher, and it was this honesty which made Christianity victorious in the third century, and will make it victorious again whenever it finds supporters who are determined not to sacrifice their philosophical convictions to their religious faith or their religious faith to their philosophical convictions.

It is true that like St. Clement, Origen also was condemned by later ecclesiastics, who could not fathom the depth of his thoughts ; but he never in the whole history of Christianity was without admirers and followers. St. Augustine, St. Bernard, the author of De Imitatione, Master Eckhart, Tauler, and others, honoured his memory, and Dr. Bigg is no doubt right

1 "Iv 1) toOpanrlvtj r§ *p6s rb $€t6rcpov Koivwvlcf. yivrfrcu Btia olx Iv p6v<p r$ 'Irjaov dWd teal vatri rots /icrd rov morifaiv dvaXafxfidvown (tiov tv 'Irjffovs l&&a£(V.

* Harnack, i. p. 594.

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458 LECTURE XIIT.

in saying *' That there was no truly great man in the Church who did not love him a little/ And why ' a little only' ? Was it because he was disloyal to the truth such as he had seen it both in philosophy and in religion ? Was it because he inflicted on himself such suffering as many may disapprove, but few will imitate (fjutiixrjo-eraC n$ fxaXXov ^ yn\x,qa'€T(a) ? If we consider the time in which he lived, and study the testimony which his contemporaries bore of his character, we may well say of him as of others who have been misjudged by posterity:

* Denn wer den Besten seiner Zeit genug gelebt, Der hat genug gelebt fur alle Zeiten.'

1 L. c, p. 279.

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LECTURE XIV.

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE. The Xogos In the Latin Church.

HAVING shown, as I hope, that in the earliest theological representation of Christianity which we find in the Alexandrian Fathers of the Church, the most prominent thought is the same as that of the Ved&nta, how to find a way from earth to heaven, or still better how to find heaven on earth, to discover God in man and man in God, it only remains to show that this ancient form of Christianity, though it was either not understood at all or misunderstood in later ages, still maintained itself under varying forms in an uninterrupted current from the second to the nineteenth century.

We can see the thoughts of St. Clement and Origen transplanted to the Western Church, though the very language in which they had to be clothed obscured their finer shades of meaning. There is no word in Latin to convey the whole of the meaning of Logos ; again the important distinction between 0eo? and 6 0€o? is difficult to render in a language which has no articles. The distinction between ousia and hypostasis was difficult to express, and yet an inaccurate rendering

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might at once become heresy. St. Jerome * who had all his life used the expression tres personae, complained bitterly that because he would not use the expression tres substantiae, he was looked at with suspicion. ' Because we do not learn the (new) words, we are judged heretical.'

Tertullian.

We have only to read what Latin Fathers—for instance, Tertullian—say about Christ as the Logos, in order to perceive at once how the genius of the Latin language modifies and cripples the old Greek thought. When Tertullian begins (Apolog. cap. xxi) to speak about Christ as God, he can only say Be Christo ut Deo. This might be interpreted as if he took Christ to be 6 0€os, and predicated of Him the hypostasis of the Father, which is impossible. What he means to predicate is the ousia of the Godhead. Then he goes on: 4 We have already said that God made this universe Verbo, et Ratione, et Virtute, that is by the Word, by Reason, by Power.' He has to use two words verbum and ratio to express Logos. Even then he seems to feel that he ought to make his meaning clearer, and he adds: 'It is well known that with you philosophers also Logos, that is Speech (sermo), and Reason (ratio), is considered as the artist of the universe. For Zeno defines him as the maker who had formed everything in order, and says that he is also called Fate, God, and the mind of God, and the necessity of all things. Cleanthes comprehends all these as Spirit which, as he asserts, pervades the universe. We also ascribe to Speech, Reason, and Power (sermo, ratio, et virtus), through which, as we said, God made everything, a proper

1 Biographies of Words, p. 43.

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substance, the Spirit1, who as Word issues the fiat (of creation), as Reason gives order to the universe, and as Power carries his work on to a complete perfection2. We have learnt that he was brought out from God, and generated by prolation, and was therefore called Son of God and God, from the unity of the substance. For God is Spirit, and when a ray is sent forth from the sun, it is a portion from the whole, but the sun will be in the ray, because the ray is the sun's ray, not separated from it in substance, but extended. Thus comes Spirit from Spirit, and God from God, like a light lit from a light.'

We see throughout that Tertullian (l€0-240) wishes to express what St. Clement and Origen had expressed before him. But not having the Greek tools to work with, his verbal picture often becomes blurred. The introduction of Spiritus, which may mean the divine nature, but is not sufficiently distinguished from pneuma, logos, the divine Word, and from the spiritus sanctus, the Holy Ghost, confuses the mind of the readers, particularly if they were Greek philosophers, accustomed to the delicately edged Greek terminology.

Dlonystas the Axeopagite.

It would no doubt be extremely interesting to follow the tradition of these Alexandrian doctrines, as they were handed down both in the West and in the East, and to mark the changes which they experienced in the minds of the leading theological authorities in both Churches. But this is a work far beyond my strength. All that I feel still called upon to do is

1 Kaye explains that spirit has here the meaning of Divine nature; but, if so, the expression is very imperfect. 3 Tertulliani Apologeticus adversus Gentes, ed. Bindley, p. 74, note*

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to attempt to point out how, daring the centuries which separate us from the first five centuries of our era, this current of Christian thought was never entirely lost, but rose to the surface again and again at the most critical periods in the history of the Christian religion. Unchecked by the Council of Nicaea (325), that ancient stream of philosophical and religious thought flows on, and we can hear the distant echoes of Alexandria in the writings of St. Basil (329-379), Gregory of Nyssa (332-395), Gregory of Nazianz (328-389), as well as in the Works of St. Augustine (364-430). In its original pagan form Neo-Platonism asserted itself once more through the powerful advocacy of Proclus (411-485), while in its Christian form it received about the same time (500 A.D.?) a most powerful renewed impulse from a pseudonymous writer, Dionysius the Areopagite. I must devote some part of my lecture to this writer on account of the extraordinary influence which his works acquired in the history of the mediaeval Church. He has often been called the father of Mystic Christianity, which is only a new name for Alexandrian Christianity in one of its various aspects, and he has served for centuries as the connecting link between the ancient and the mediaeval Church. No one could understand the systems of St. Bernard (1091-1153) and Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) without a knowledge of Dionysius. No one could account for the thoughts and the very language of Master Eckhart (1260-1329) without a previous acquaintance with the speculations of that last of the Christian Neo-Platonists. Nay, Gerson (1363-1429), St. Theresa (1515-1582), Molinos (1P401687), Mad. de Guyon (1648-1717), all have been

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touched by his magic wand. Few men have achieved so wide and so lasting a celebrity as this anonymous writer, and, we must add, with so little to deserve it. Thoujgh Dionysius the Areopagite is often represented as the founder of Christian mysticism, I must confess that after reading Philo, St. Clement, and Origen, I find very little in his writings that can be called original.

Writings of Dionysius.

It is well known that this Dionysius the Areopagite is not the real Dionysius who with Damaris and others clave unto St. Paul after his sermon on Areopagus. Of him we know nothing more than what we find in the Acts. But there was a Christian NeoPlatonist who, as Tholuck has been the first to show, wrote about 500 a. d. The story of his book is very curious. It has often been told; for the last time by the present Bishop of Durham, Dr. Westcott, in his thoughtful Essays on the History of Religious Thought in the West, published in 1891. I chiefly follow him and Tholuck in giving you the following facts. The writings of Dionysius were referred to for the first time at the Conference held at Constantinople in 533 A. d., and even at that early time they were rejected by the orthodox as of doubtful authenticity. Naturally enough, for who had ever heard before of Dionysius, the pupil of St. Paul, as an author? Even St. Cyril and Athanasius knew nothing yet about any writings of his, and no one of the ancients had ever quoted them. But in spite of all this, there was evidently something fascinating about these writings of Dionysius the Areopagite. In the seventh century they were commented on by Maximius (died 662); and

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Photius in his Bibliotheca (c. 845) mentions an essay by Theodoras, a presbyter, written in order to defend the genuineness of the volume of St. Dionysius. We need not enter into these arguments for and against the genuineness of these books, if what is meant by genuineness is their being written by Dionysius the Areopagite in the first century of our era. I even doubt whether the author himself ever meant to commit anything like a fraud or a forgery \ He was evidently a Neo-Platonist Christian, and his book was a fiction, not uncommon in those days, just as in a certain sense the dialogues of Plato are fictions, and the speeches of Thucydides are fictions, though never intended to deceive anybody. A man at the present day might write under the name of Dean Swift, if he wished to state what Dean Swift would have said if he had lived at the present moment. Why should not a Neo-Platonist philosopher have spoken behind the mask of Dionysius the Areopagite, if he wished to state what a Greek philosopher would naturally have felt about Christianity. It is true there are some few touches in the writings ascribed to Dionysius which were meant to give some local colouring and historical reality to this philosophical fiction; but even such literary artifices must not be put down at once as intentional fraud. There is, for instance, a treatise De Vita Contemplativa, which is ascribed to Philo. But considering that it contains a panegyric on asceticism as practised by the Therapeutai in Egypt, it is quite clear that it could never have been written by Philo Judaeus. It was probably written by a Christian towards the end of the third

1 See the remarks of Renan, in Lea AvangiUs, p. 159.

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or the beginning of the fourth century. If for some unknown reason the author wrote under the name of Philo, this literary artifice could hardly have taken in any of his contemporaries, if indeed it was ever meant to do so \

But whatever the object of the writer may have been, whether honest or dishonest, certain it is that he found a large public willing to believe in the actual authorship of Dionysius the Areopagite. The greatest writers of the Greek Church accepted these books as the real works of the Areopagite. Still greater was their success in the West. They were referred to by Gregory the Great (c. 600), and quoted by Pope Adrian I in a letter to Charles the Great.

The first copy of the Dionysian writings reached the West in the year 827, when Michael, the stammerer, sent a copy to Louis I, the son of Charles. And here a new mystification sprang up. They were received in the abbey of St. Denis, near Paris, by the Abbot Hilduin. They arrived on the very vigil of the feast of St. Dionysius, and, absurd as it may sound, Dionysius the Areopagite was identified with St. Denis, the Apostle of France, the patron saint of the Abbaye of St. Denis; and thus national pride combined with theological ignorance to add still greater weight and greater sanctity to these Dionysian writings in France.

Translation by Scotns Eriffena.

The only difficulty was how to read and translate

1 Lucius, Die Therapeuten, Strassburg, 1880. Kuenen, Uibbert Lectures, p. 201.

(4) Hh

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them. France at that time was not rich in Greek scholars, and the language of Dionysius is by no means easy to understand Hilduin, the abbot of St. Denis, attempted a translation, but failed. The son of Louis, Charles the Bald, was equally anxious to have a Latin translation of the writings of St. Denis, the patron saint of France, and he found at last a competent translator in the famous Scotus Erigena, who lived at his court. Scotus Erigena was a kindred spirit, and felt strongly attracted by the mystic speculations of Dionysius. His translation must have been made before the year 861, for in that year Pope Nicholas I complained in a letter to Charles the Bald that the Latin translation of Dionysius had never been sent to him for approval. A copy was probably sent to Rome at once, and in 865 we find Anastasius, the Librarian of the Roman See, addressing a letter to Charles, commending the wonderful translation made by one whom he calls the barbarian living at the end of the world, that is to say, Scotus Erigena, whether Irishman or Scotchman. Scotus was fully convinced that Dionysius was the contemporary of St. Paul, and admired him both for his antiquity and for the sublimity of the heavenly graces which had been bestowed upon him.

As soon as the Greek text and the Latin translation had become accessible, Dionysius became the obj ect of numerou s learned treatises. Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas were both devoted students of his works, and never doubted their claims to an apostolic date. It was not till the revival of learning that these claims were re-examined and rejected, and rejected with such irresistible evidence that people

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wondered how these compositions could ever have been accepted as apostolic. We need not enter into these arguments. It is no longer heresy to doubt their apostolical authorship or date. No one doubts at present that the writer was a Neo-Platonist Christian, as Tholuck suggested long ago, and that he lived towards the end of the fifth century, probably at Edessa in Syria. But though deprived of their fictitious age and authorship, these writings retain their importance as having swayed the whole of mediaeval Christianity more than any other book, except the New Testament itself. They consist of treatises (1) on the Heavenly Hierarchy, (2) on the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, (3) on the Divine Names, (4) on Mystical Theology. There are other books mentioned as his, but now lostl. They are most easily accessible now in the Abb6 Mignes edition (Paris, 1857).

The Influence of the Dionysian Writing's.

If we ask how it was that these books exercised so extraordinary a fascination on the minds of the most eminent theologians during the Middle Ages, the principal reason seems to have been that they satisfied a want which exists in every human heart, the want of knowing that there is a real relation between the human soul and God. That want was not satisfied by the Jewish religion. It has been shown but lately by an eminent Scotch theologian, what an impassable gulf the Old Testament leaves between the soul and God. And though it was the highest object of the teaching of Christ, if properly understood, to bridge

1 See Harnack, 1. c, vol. ii. p. 426, note. Hha

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468 LECTUBB XIV.

that gulf, it was not so understood by the Jewish Christians who formed some of the first and in some respects most important Christian communities. Dionysius set boldly to work to construct, if not a bridge, at least a kind of Jacob's ladder between heaven and earth; and it was this ladder, as we shall see, that appealed so strongly to the sympathy of his numerous followers.

No doubt the idea that he was the contemporary of St. Paul added to his authority. There are several things in his works which would hardly have been tolerated by the orthodox, except as coming from the mouth of an apostolic teacher. Thus Dionysius affirms that the Hebrews were in no sense a chosen people before the rest, that the lot of all men is equal, and that God has a like care for all mankind. It is a still bolder statement of Dionysius that Christ before His resurrection was simply a mortal man, even inferior, as it were, to the angels, and that only after the resurrection did He become at once immortal man and God of all. There are other views of at all events doubtful orthodoxy which seem to have been tolerated in Dionysius, but would have provoked ecclesiastical censure if coming from any other source.

Sources of Dionysius.

It must not be supposed, however, that Dionysius was original in bis teaching, or that he was the first who discovered Greek, more particularly Neo-Platonist ideas, behind the veil of Christian doctrines. Dionysius, like the early Eleatic philosophers, starts from the belief in God, as the absolute Being, to ov, the conscious God as absolutely transcendent, as the

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cause which is outside its effects, and yet multiplies itself so as to be dynamically present in every one of them. This multiplication or this streaming forth of the Deity is ascribed to Love (ipoas) within God, and is supposed to be carried out according to certain designs or types (irpoopurixoC, TrapabtCyixara), that is to say, not at random, but according to law or reason. In this we can recognise the Stoic logoi and the Platonic ideas, and we shall see that in their intermediary character they appear once more in the system of Dionysius under the name of the Hierarchies of angels. The soul which finds itself separated from God by this manifold creation has but one object, namely to return from out the manifoldness of created things to a state of likeness and oneness with God (afoiJLoCaxns, evaxris, 0eWi?). The chasm between the Deity and the visible world is filled by a number of beings which vary in name, but are always the same in essence. Dionysius calls them a Hierarchy. St. Clement had already used the same terml, when he describes ' the graduated hierarchy like a chain of iron rings, each sustaining and sustained, each saving and saved, and all held together by the Holy Spirit, which is Faith.' Origen is familiar with the same idea, and Philo tells us plainly that what people call angels are really the Stoic logoi2.

The Daimones.

We can trace the same idea still further back. In Hesiod, as we saw, and in Plato's Timaeus, the chasm between the two worlds was filled with the Daimones. In the later Platonist teaching these Daimones became

1 Bigg, 1. c, p. 68. a See pp. 406, 473, 478.

more and more systematised. They were supposed to perform all the work which is beneath the dignity of the impassive Godhead. They create, they will, and rule everything. Some of them are almost divine, others nearly human, others again are demons in the modern sense of the word, spirits of evil. Many of the ancient mythological gods had to accept a final restingplace among these Daimones. This theory of Daimones supplied in fact the old want of a bridge between God and man, and the more abstract the idea of God became in the philosophy of the Platonists, the stronger became their belief in the Daimones. The description given of them by Maximus Tyrius, by Plutarch and others, is often most touching, and shows deep religious feeling.

Thus Apuleius, De Deo Socratico, 674, writes:' Plato and his followers are blameless if, conceiving that the purely spiritual and emotionless nature of God precluded Him from direct action upon this world of matter, they imagined a hierarchy of beneficent beings, called Daimones, partaking of the divine nature by reason of their immortality, and of human nature by reason of their subjection to emotions, and fitted therefore to act as intermediaries between earth and heaven, between God and man.'

Maximus, the Tyrian (Diss. xiv. 5), describes these Daimones as a link between human weakness and divine beauty, as bridging over the gulf between mortal and immortal, and as acting between gods and men as interpreters acted between Greeks and barbarians. He calls them secondary gods (Ocol bcvrcpoi), and speaks of them as the departed souls of virtuous men, appointed by God to overrule every part of

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human life, by helping the good, avenging the injured, and punishing the unjust. They are messengers of unseen things, iyycXoi tQv a(f>av(av; and Plutarch, too, calls them messengers or angels between gods and men, describing them as the spies of the former, wandering at their commands, punishing wrong-doers, and guarding the course of the virtuous (Cessation of oracles, 13 ; Face in the orb of the moon, 30).

Origen points out that the angels were sometimes spoken of as gods in the Psalms (c. Cels. v. 4), but when challenged by Celsus why Christians do not worship the Daimones, and particularly the heavenly luminaries, he answers that the sun himself and the moon and the stars pray to the Supreme God through His only-begotten Son, and that therefore they think it improper to pray to those beings who themselves offer prayers to God (vfxvovfxiv ye debv kclI rdv Movoycvrj clvtov, c. Cels. v. 11; viii. 67).

Celsus, who doubts everything that does not admit of a philosophical justification, is nevertheless so convinced of the reality and of the divine goodness of the Daimones that he cannot understand why the Christians should be so ungrateful as not to worship them.

There is an honest ring in an often-quoted passage of his in which he exhorts the Christians not to despise their old Daimones :

t Every good citizen/ he says, * ought ta respect th& worship of his fathers. And God gave to the Daimones the honour which they claimed. Why then should the Christians refuse to eat at the table of the Daimones ? They give us corn and wine and the very air we breathe ; we must either submit to their benefits or quit the world altogether. All that is really im

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portant in Christianity is the belief in the immortality of the soul, and in the future blessedness of the good, the eternal punishment of the wicked. But why not swear by the Emperor, the dispenser of all temporal blessings, as God of all spiritual? Why not sing a paean to the bright Sun or Athene, and at any rate kiss the hand to those lower deities who can do us harm if neglected? It cannot be supposed that the great Roman Empire will abandon its tried and ancient faith for a barbarous novelty (l i. e. Christianity)/

Plutarch expresses the same strong faith in the Daimones, when he says :

' He who denies the Daimones, denies providence and breaks the chain that unites the world with the throne of God/

We can well understand, therefore, that those among the Platonists who had become Christians, required something to fill the empty niches in their hearts, which had formerly been occupied by the Greek Daimones. In order to bring the Supreme Godhead into contact with the world, they invented their own Daimones, or rather gave new names to the old. St. Clement speaks glibly of the gods, but he declares that all the host of angels and gods are placed in subjection to the Son of God2.

Even St. Augustine does not hesitate to speak of the gods who dwell in the holy and heavenly habitation, but he means by them, as he says, angels and rational creatures, whether thrones or dominations or principalities or powers.

1 Bigg, p. 266.

8 Strom, vii. 2, 3 : ®«o? t^i* vpoarjyoplav KiKkrjvrai ol GvvOpovoi row AkKojv $€afv inr6 rf Zojrrjpi wpwrov T€TayfJt4vcay ytvrjffofticvoi.

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We saw that when the logoi had been conceived as one, the Logos was called the Son of God, the first begotten or even the only begotten. When conceived as many, the same logoi had been spoken of as Angels by Philo, and as Aeons by the Gnostics \ They were now represented as a hierarchy by Dionysius. This hierarchy, however, has assumed a very different character from that of the Aristotelian logoi. The Stoics saw in their logoi an explanation of created things, of trees, animals, and fishes, or of universal elements, not only water, earth, fire, and air, but heat and cold, sweetness and bitterness, light and darkness, etc. The Platonists, and more particularly the Neo-Platonist Christians, had ceased to care for these things. It was not the origin and descent of species, but the ascent of the human soul that principally occupied their thoughts. The names which were given to these intermediate creations which had come forth from God, which had assumed a substantial existence by the side of God, nay after a time had become like personal beings, were taken from the Bible, though it is difficult to understand on what principle, if on any. Origen already had spoken of Angels, and Thrones, and Dominions, Princedoms, Virtues, and Powers, and of an infinite stairway of worlds, on which the souls were perpetually descending and ascending till they reached final union with God.

1 These Aeons of Valentinian were, as Dr. Bigg, p. 27, truly remarks, the ideas of Plato, seen through the fog of an Egyptian or Syrian mind. Aeon was probably taken originally in the sense of age, generation, then world. Our own word world meant originally ' age of men,' saecvlum.

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Influence of Dionysine during- the Kiddle Ages.

What puzzles the historian is why Dionysius, who simply arranges these ancient thoughts without adding much, if anything, of his own, should have become the great authority for Theosophy or Mystic Christianity during the whole of the Middle Ages. He is quoted alike by the most orthodox of schoolmen, and by the most speculative philosophers who had almost ceased to be Christians. His first translator, Scotus Erigena, used him as a trusted shield against his own antagonists. Thomas Aquinas appeals to him on every opportunity, and even when he differs from him treats him as an authority, second only to the Apostles, if second even to them.

The System of Dionysius.

One explanation is that he saw that all religion, and certainly the Christian, must fulfil the desire of the soul for God, must in fact open a return to God. Creation, even if conceived as emanation only, is a separation from God; salvation therefore, such as Christianity promises to supply, must be a return to God, who is all in all, the only true existence in all things. Dionysius tries to explain how a bright and spiritual light goes forth and spreads throughout all creation from the Father of light. That light, he says, is one and entirely the same through all things, and although there is diversity of objects, the light remains one and undivided in different objects, so that, without confusion, variety may be assigned to the objects, identity to the light.

All rational creatures who have a capacity for the divine nature are rarefied by the marvellous shining

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of the heavenly light, lightened and lifted up closely to it, nay made one with it. In this great happiness are all those spiritual natures which we call angels, on whom the light is shed forth in its untempered purity.

But as for men, who are clogged by the heavy mass of the body, they can only receive a kind of tempered light through the ministry of the angels, till at last they find truth, conquer the flesh, strive after the spirit, and rest in spiritual truth. Thus the all-merciful God recalls degraded men and restores them to truth and light itself.

But Dionysius is not satisfied with these broad outlines, he delights in elaborating the minute and to our mind often very fantastic details of the emanation of the divine light.

He tells us how there are three triads, or nine divisions in the celestial hierarchy. Possibly these three Triads may have been suggested by the three triads of Plato which we discussed in a former Lecture. In the first triad there are first of all the Seraphim, illumined by God Himself, and possessing the property of perfection. Then follow the Cherubim as illumined and taught by the Seraphim, and possessing the property of illumination. The third place in the first triad is assigned to the Thrones, or steadfast natures who are enlightened by the second order, and distinguished by purification.

Then follow in succession the Dominations, the Virtues, and the Powers, and after that, the Principalities, the Archangels, and Angels. These nine stations are all minutely described, but in the end their main object is to hand down and filter, as it were, the divine light till it can be made fit for human beings.

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Human beings are below the angels, but if properly enlightened they may become like angels, nay like gods. Partial light was communicated by Moses, purer light by Christ, though His full light will shine forth in heaven only. There the true Son is with the Father. The Father is the beginning from which are all things. The Son is the means through which all things are beautifully ordered, the Holy Ghost is the end by which all things are completed and perfected. The Father created all things because He is good—this is the old Platonic idea—and because He is good, He also recalls to Himself all things according to their capacity.

However much we may agree with the general drift of this Dionysian theology, some of these details seem extremely childish. And yet it is these very details which seem to have taken the fancy of generation after generation of Christian teachers and preachers and their audiences. To the present day the belief of the Church in a hierarchy of angels and their functions is chiefly derived from Dionysius.

mim>n on Dionysius.

The existence of this regular celestial hierarchy became, as Milman (vi. 405) remarks, an admitted fact in the higher and more learned theology. The schoolmen reason upon it as on the Godhead itself: in its more distinct and material outline it became the vulgar belief and the subject of frequent artistic representation. Milman writes:

'The separate and occasionally discernible being and nature of seraphim and cherubim, of archangel and angel, in that dim confusion of what was thought

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revealed in the Scripture, and what was sanctioned by the Church—of image and reality, this Oriental, half-Magian, half-Talmudic, but now Christianised theory, took its place, if with less positive authority, with hardly less questioned credibility, amid the rest of the faith/

Dr. Milman suggests with a certain irony that what made this celestial hierarchy so acceptable to the mediaeval clergy, may have been the corresponding ecclesiastical hierarchy. Dionysius in his Ecclesiastical Hierarchy proceeded to show that there was another hierarchy, reflecting the celestial, a human and material hierarchy, communicating divine light, purity, and knowledge to corporeal beings. The earthly sacerdotal order had its type in heaven, the celestial orders their antitype on earth. As there was light, purity, and knowledge, so there were three orders of the earthly hierarchy, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons; three Sacraments, Baptism, the Eucharist, the Holy Chrism; three classes, the Baptised, the Communicants, the Monks. The ecclesiastical hierarchies themselves were formed and organised after the pattern of the great orders in heaven. The whole worship of man, which they administered, was an echo of that above; it represented, as in a mirror, the angelic or superangelic worship in the empyrean. All its splendour, its lights, its incense, were but the material symbols, adumbration of the immaterial, condescending to human thought, embodying in things cognisable to the senses of man the adoration of beings close to the throne of God.

There may be some truth in Milman's idea that human or rather priestly vanity was flattered by all

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thisx; still we can hardly account in that way for the enormous success of the Dionysian doctrine in the mediaeval Church.

Seal Attraction of Dionysius.

The real fascination lay, I believe, deeper. It consisted in the satisfaction which Dionysius gave to those innate cravings of the human soul for union with God, cravings all the stronger the more the mere externals of religion and worship occupied at the time the minds of priesthood and laity. Not that this satisfaction could not have been found in the Gospels, if only they had been properly searched, and if the laity had been allowed even to read them. But it was dogma and ceremonial that then preoccupied the Church.

Tho Fifth Century.

As Dr. Westcott says, the ecclesiastical and civil disorders of the fifth century had obscured the highest glories of the Church and the Empire. Hence the chords touched on by Dionysius found a ready response in all truly religious minds, that is, in minds longing for the real presence of God, or for a loving union with God. This is what Dionysius promised to them. To him everything finite was a help towards the apprehension of the Infinite; and though human knowledge could never rise to a knowledge of the absolute, it might show the way to a fellowship with it. The highest scope with Dionysius was

1 Even on this point Dionysius is not original. He had been anticipated by St. Clement, who writes (Strom, vi. 13), 'Since, according to my opinion, the grades here in the Church of bishops, presbyters, and deacons are imitations of the angelic glory/

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DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE. 479
assimilation to, or union with God1. In order to reach this union the truly initiated have to be released from the objects and the powers of sight before they can penetrate into the darkness of unknowledge (ayvaxria). The initiated is then absorbed in the intangible and invisible, wholly given up to that which is beyond all things, and belonging no longer to himself nor to any other finite being, but in virtue of some nobler faculty united with that which.is wholly unknowable, by the absolute inoperation of all limited knowledge, and known in a manner beyond mind by knowing nothing (Westcott, I.e., p. 185). This is called the mystic union when the soul is united with God, not by knowledge, but by the devotion of love. Here was the real attraction of the Dionysian writings, at least with many Christians who wanted more from religion than arid dogma, more than vain symbols and ceremonies from the Church.

It is difficult for us to imagine what the religious state of the laity must have been at that time. It is true they were baptised and confirmed, they were married and buried by the Church. They were also taught their Creeds and prayers, and they were invited to attend the spectacular services in the ancient cathedrals. But if they asked why all this was so, whence it came and what it meant, they would not easily have found an answer. We must remember that the Bible was at that time an almost inaccessible book, and that laymen were not encouraged to study it. The laity had to be satisfied with what had been filtered through the brain of the clergy, and what was considered by the Church the best food for babes, 1 Weatcott, 1. c, pp. 157,159,161.

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Any attempt to test and verify this clerical teaching -would have been considered sinful. The clergy again were often without literary cultivation, and certainly without that historical and philosophical training that would have enabled them to explain the theological teaching of St. John in its true sense, or to explain in what sense Christ was called the Son of God, and mankind believed capable of Divine sonship. Christianity became altogether legendary, and instead of striving after a pure conception of Christ, as the Son of God, Popes and Cardinals invented immaculate conceptions of a very difFerent character. And that which is the source of all religion in the human heart, the perception of the Infinite, and the yearning of the soul after God, found no response, no satisfaction anywhere. How Christianity survived the fearful centuries from the fifth to the ninth, is indeed a marvel. Both clergy and laity seem to have led God-forsaken lives, but it was to these very centuries that the old German proverb applied,—

'When pangs are highest Then God is nighest.'

Nearness to God, union with God, was what many souls were then striving for, and it was as satisfying that desire that the teaching of Dionysius was welcome to the clergy and indirectly to the laity.

Five Stages of Myetic Union.

The mystic union of which Dionysius treats, was not anything to be kept secret, it was simply what the Neo-Platonists had taught as the last and highest point of their philosophy and their religion. They

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DIONY8IU8 THE ARECfrAGITE. 481
recognised a number of preliminary stages, such as purification (KaOapo-is), illumination (<fx»>n<rix6$), and initiation (fivrja-is), which in the end led to unification with God (cvuo-Ls) and deification (Oiaxris), a change into God. Sometimes a distinction was made between oneness (evaxns) and likeness (ojuiotaxns), but in the case of likeness with God, it would be difficult to explain any difference between likeness and oneness, between what is god-like, and what is godly.

Mysteries.

If there was an initiation (iavyjo-is), it must not be supposed that there was anything secret or mysterious in this preparation for the highest goal. The Henosis or union with the One and All was no more of a secret than was the teaching of St. Paul that we live and move and have our being in God. All that was meant by initiation was preparation, fitness to receive the Higher Knowledge. Still, many of the Fathers of the Church who had been brought up in the schools of Neo-Platonist philosophers, spoke of the union of the soul with God as a mystical union, and as a mystery. Thus Origen (c. Celsum, 1.1, c. 7) says that though Christianity was more widely spread than any other philosophy, it possesses certain things behind the exoteric teaching which are not readily communicated to the many. St. Basil distinguishes in Christianity between KTj/wy/mara, what is openly proclaimed, and drfyjutara, which are kept secret. Those who had been baptised were sometimes spoken of as fivo-rai or <£o)Tifofiez;oij enlightened, as distinguished from the catechumens, just as in the Greek mysteries a distinction was made between the initiated and the

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exoterics. The Lord's Supper more particularly, was often spoken of as a great mystery, but though it was called a mystery, it was not a secret in the ordinary sense. Clement denies expressly that the Church possesses any secret doctrines (h&aya? &k\a$ diroppriTovs1), though, no doubt, he too would have held that what is sacred must not be given to dogs. What may be called the highest mystery is at the same time the highest truth, whether in Christianity or in Neo-Platonism, namely the ivaxns or forXoxris, the perfect union with God. Thus Macarius (c. 330) says in his Homilies (xiv. 3): ' If a man surrender his hidden being, that is his spirit and his thoughts, to God, occupied with nothing else, and moved by nothing else, but restraining himself, then the Lord holds him worthy of the mysteries in much holiness and purity, nay, He offers Himself to him as divine bread and spiritual drink.'

It is this so-called mystery which forms the highest object of the teaching of Dionysius the Areopagite. He aJso admits certain stages, as preliminary to the highest mystery. They are the same as those of the Neo-Platonists, beginning with K&Oapo-is, purification, and ending with 0eWis and twcris, that is, deification, union with God, or change into God2. We shall now understand better why he calls that union mystic and his theology mystic theology.

My«tic and Scholastic Theology.

It seems to me that it was the satisfaction which Dionysius gave to this yearning of the human heart

1 Bigg, pp. 57, 140.

* We want a word like the German Vergottung, which is as different from Vergotterung as diwcis is from dwoOiowts.

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after union with God, far more than the satisfaction which he may have given to ecclesiastical vanity, which explains the extraordinary influence which he acquired both among the laity and the clergy. After his time the whole stream of theological knowledge may be said to have rolled on in two parallel channels, one the Scholastic, occupied with the definition of Christian doctrines and their defence, the other the Mystic, devoted to the divine element in man; or with what was called the birth of Christ within the soul. The Christian mystics, so far as their fundamental position was concerned, argued very much like the Ved&ntists and Eleatic philosophers. If we believe in the One Being, they said, which causes and determines all things, then that One Being must be the cause and determination of the human soul also, and it would be mere illusion to imagine that our being could in its essence be different from that of God. If, on the contrary, man is in his essence different from the One fundamental and Supreme Being, self-determined and entirely free, then there can be no infinite God, but we should have to admit a number of Godsj or divine beings, all independent of the One Being, yet limited one by the other. The Christian Mystics embraced the former alternative, and in this respect differed but little from the Neo-Platonists, though they looked for and found strong support for their doctrines in the New Testament, more particularly in the Gospel ascribed to St. John and in some of the Epistles of St. Paul. The Christian mystic theologians were most anxious to establish their claim to be considered orthodox, and we see that for a long time Dionysius continued to be recognised as an

Iia

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484 LECTUBE XIV.

authority by the most orthodox of Divines. Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, to quote the words of his editor, drew almost the whole of his theology from Dionysius, so that his Summa is but the hive, as he says, in whose varied cells he stored the honey which he gathered from the writings of Dionysius (Westcott, La, p. 144).

Mysticism, and Christian Mysticism.

In our days I doubt whether the mysticism of Dionysius would be considered as quite orthodox. Dr. Tholuck, a most orthodox theologian and a great admirer of the mystic poetry of the East and the West, draws a broad distinction between a mystic and a Christian mystic. He defines a mystic ' as a man, who, conscious of his affinity with all that exists from the Pleiades to the grain of dust, merged in the divine stream of life that pours through the universe, but perceiving also that the purest spring of God bursts forth in his own heart, moves onward across the world which is turned towards what is limited and finite, turning his eye in the centre of his own soul to the mysterious abyss, where the infinite flows into the finite, satisfied in nameless intuition of the sanctuary opened within himself, and lighted up and embraced by a blissful love of the secret source of his own being' (p. 20). 'In his moral aspect/ Dr. Tholuck adds,' the life of such a mystic is like a mirror of water, moved by an all-powerful love within, and disquieted by desire, yet restraining the motion of its waves, in order to let the face of the sun reflect itself on a^ motionless surface. The restless conflicts of self-] fyppd fM*c quieted and restrained by Jove, so that .the,,

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Eternal may move freely in the motionless: soul, and the life of the soul may be absorbed in the law of God/ Even this language sounds to our ears some1what extravagant and unreal. Nor would Dr. Tholuck himself accept it without considerable qualification, as applicable to the Christian mystic. * The Christian mystic/ he says (p. 24), 'need not fear such speculations. He knows no more and .wants to know no more than what is given him by the revelation of God; all deductions that go beyond, are cut short by him. He warms himself at the one ray that has descended from eternity into this finiteness, unconcerned about all the fireworks of purely human workmanship, unconcerned also about the objection that the ray which warms him more than any earthly light, may itself also be of the earth only. A Christian knows that to the end of time there can be no philosophy which could shake his faith by its syllogisms. He does not care for what follows from syllogisms, he simply waits for what is to follow on his faith, namely sight.1

Still, with all this determined striving after orthodoxy, Dr. Tholuck admits that mystic religion is the richest and profoundest production of the human mind, the most living and the most exalted revelation of God from the realm of nature, nay that after what he calls evangelic grace, it occupies the highest and noblest place.

There are Christian mystics, however who would not place internal revelation, or the voice of God within the heart, so far below external revelation. To those who know the presence of God within the heart, this revelation is far more real than any other can possibly be. They hold with St. Paul (1 Cor. iii.

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486 lecture xnr.

16) that' man is in the full sense of the word the temple of God and that the spirit of God dwelleth within him/ nay they go even further and both as Christians and as mystics they cling to the belief that all men are one in the Father and the Son, as the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father. There is no conflict in their minds between Christian doctrine and mystic doctrine. They are one and the same in character, the one imparted through Christ on earth, the other imparted through the indwelling spirit of God, which again is Christ, as born within us. The Gospel of St. John is full of passages to which the Christian mystic clings, and by which he justifies his belief in the indwelling spirit of God, or as he also calls it, the birth of Christ in the human soul.

Objection* to Mystic Religion reconsidered.

The dangers which have so often been pointed out as arising from this mystic belief which makes God all in all, and therefore would render Him responsible for the evil also which exists in this world, or would altogether eliminate the distinction between evil and good, exist in every religion, in every philosophy. They are not peculiar to this mystic religion. The mystic's chief aim is not to account for the origin of evil, as no human understanding can—but to teach how to overcome evil by good. The dangers to morality are much exaggerated. It is mere pharisaism to say that they exist in mystic religion only. It is to falsify history to charge mystics with ignoring the laws of morality. Are those laws observed by all who are not mystics ? Did the majority of criminals in the world ever consist of mystics, of men such as St. Bernard

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and Tauler ? Has orthodoxy always proved a shield against temptation and sin ? A man may be lenient in his judgment of publicans and sinners without losing his sense of right and wrong. There may have been cases where the liberty of the spirit has been used as a veil for licentiousness, though I know of few only; but in that case it is clear that true mystic union had not been effected. When the soul has once reached this true union with God, nay when it lives in the constant presence of God, evil becomes almost impossible. We know that most of the evil deeds to which human nature is prone, are possible in the dark only. Before the eyes of another human being, more particularly of a beloved being, they become at once impossible. How much more in the real presence of a real and really beloved God, as felt by the true mystic, not merely as a phrase, but as a fact! We are told how the Russian peasant covers the face of his Eikon with his handkerchief that it may not see his wickedness. The mystic feels the same; as long as there is no veil between him and God, evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds are simply impossible to one who feels the actual presence of God. Nor is he troubled any longer by questions, such as how the world was created, how evil came into the world. He is satisfied with the Divine Love that embraces his soul; he has all that he can desire, his whole life is hid through Christ in God, death is swallowed up in victory, the mortal has become immortal, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, is able to separate his soul from the love of God. This

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•488 . t : xeotueb xir.

is the language used by St. Paul; this is the language re-echoed by the noble army of Christian mystics, and more or less by all.those who, whether in India or Persia or Arabia, nay in Europe also, hunger and thirst after God, nay who feel themselves children of God in the very fullest and deepest sense of that word.

It has been said that the times in which we live are not congenial to mystic Christianity, that we want a stronger and sterner faith to carry us through the gales and the conflicting currents of the day. That may be so, and if the Church can supply us with stronger and safer vessels for our passage, let her do «o. But let her never forget that the mediaeval Church, though glorying in her scholastic defenders, though warning against the dangers of Platonic and mystic Christianity, though even unsainting St. Clement and denouncing the no less saintly Origen, never ceased to look upon men as St. Bernard (10901152), Hugo (died 1141), and Richard (died 1173) of St. Victor, as her brightest ornaments and her best guides.

St. Bernard.

While the great scholastic theologians were laying down definitions of dogmas, most of them far beyond the reach of the great mass of the people, the great mass of men, women, and children were attracted by the sermons of monks and priests, who, brought up in the doctrines of mystic Christianity, and filled with respect for its supposed founder, Dionysius the Areopagite, preached the love of God, a life in and for God, as the only true Christian life. Christ, they held, had'

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but rarely taught how to believe, but had constantly taught how to live. His fundamental doctrine had been His own life, and the chief lesson of that life had been that Christ was the Son of God, not in a mythological sense, but in its deepest philosophical meaning, namely as the thought and will of God incarnate in a perfect man, as the ideal of manhood realised in all its fulness, as the Logos, the true Son of God. St. Bernard of Clairvaux also preached that a. Christian life was the best proof of Christian faith. ' The reason/ he writes, 'why we should love God, is God Himself; the measure of that love is that we should love Him beyond all measure V ' Even mere reason/ he continues, 4 obliges us to do this; the natural law, implanted within us, calls aloud that we should love God. We owe all to Him, whatever we are; all goods of the body and the soul which we enjoy, are His work ; how then should we not be bound to love Him for His own sake ? This duty applies also to Non-Christians ; for even the heathen, though he does not know Christ, knows at least himself, and must know therefore that he owes all that is within him to God. In a still higher degree the Christian is bound to love God, for he enjoys not only the good things of creation, but of salvation also/

Love of Ctod.

This love of God, St. Bernard continues, must be such that it does not love God for the sake of any rewards to be obtained for it. This would be mercenary love- True love is satisfied in itself. It is

1 Be diligendo Deo, col. 1: Causa diligendi Deum Deus est, modus, sine modo diligere.

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490 LECTUBB XIV.

true our love is not without its reward, it is true also that the reward is He Himself who is loved, namely God, the object of our love. But to look for another reward beside Him, is contrary to the nature of love. God gives us a reward for our love, but we must not seek for it. Nor is this love perfect at once. It has to pass through several stages. On the first stage, according to St. Bernard, we love ourselves for our own sake. That is not yet love of God, but it is a preparation for it. On the second stage, we love God for our own sake. That is the first stage toward the real love of God. On the third stage, we love God for His own sake. We then enter into the true essence of the love of God. Lastly, on the fourth stage, we not only love God for His own sake, but we also love ourselves and everything else for the sake of God only. That is the highest perfection of the love of God.

This highest degree of love, however, is reached in all its fulness in the next life only. Only rarely, in a moment of mystic ecstasis may we rise even in this life to that highest stage.

Bostasls, aooordin? to St. Bernard.

St. Bernard then proceeds in his own systematic way to explain what this ecstasis is, and how it can be reached. The fundamental condition is humility, the only way by which we can hope to reach truth. There are twelve degrees of humility which St. Bernard describes. But besides humility, perfect love is required, and then only may we hope to enter into the mystic world. Hence the first stage is coTisideration of truth, based on examination and still carried on by discursive thought. Then follows contemplation of

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truth, without discursive examination. This contemplation is followed at last by what St. Bernard calls the admiratio majestatiSy the admiration of the majesty of truth. This requires a purged heart, free from vice, and delivered from sins, a heart that may rise on high, nay may for some moments hold the admiring soul in a kind of stupefaction and ecstasis (De grad. humil., c. 8, 22 seq.).

It is in a state such as this that the soul will enter into the next life. Our will will soften and will melt away into the divine will, and pour itself into it. And here we often find St. Bernard using the same similes as to the relation of the soul to God which we found in the Upanishads and in the Neo-Platonists. As a small drop of water, he says, when it falls into much wine, seems to fail from itself, while it assumes the colour and taste of wine; as the ignited and glowing iron becomes as like as possible to fire, deprived of its own original nature ; as the air when permeated by the light of the sun is changed into the brightness of light, so that it does not seem so much lighted up, as to be light itself, so will it be necessary that every human affection should in some ineffable way melt away and become entirely transformed into the will of God. For otherwise, how should God be all in all, if something of man remained in man? Nay the very caution which was used in the Ved&nta, is used by St. Bernard also. The soul, though lost in God, is not annihilated in this ecstasis. The substance, as St. Bernard says, will remain, only in another form, in another glory, in another power. To be in that glory is to become God, est deificari.

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492 lectube xrr.

*t* Bernard's Position in tho Church and State.

To modern ears these ideas, quite familiar in the Middle Ages, sound strange, some might look upon them as almost blasphemous. But St. Bernard was never considered as a blasphemer, even his orthodoxy was never suspected. He was the great champion of orthodoxy, the only man who could successfully cope with Abelard at the Synod of Sens (1140).

St. Bernards theology and his whole life supply indeed the best answer to the superficial objections that have often been raised against mystic Christianity. It has often been said that true Christianity does not teach that man should spend his life in ecstatic contemplation of the Divine, but expects him to show his love of God by his active love of his neighbours, by an active God-fearing life. In our time particularly religious quietism, and a monastic retirement from the world are condemned without mercy. But St. Bernard has shown that the contemplative state of mind is by no means incompatible with love of our neighbours, nay with a goodly hatred of our enemies, and with a vigorous participation in the affairs of the world. This monk, we should remember, who at the age of twenty-three had retired from the world to the monastery of Cisteaux, and after three years had become Abbot of Clairvaux, was the same Bernard who fought the battle of Pope Innocent II against the Antipope Anaclet II, who with his own weapons subdued Arnold of Brescia, and who at last roused the whole of Christendom, by his fiery harangues, to the second Crusade in 1147. This shows that beneath the stormiest surface the deepest ground of the soul

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DI0NY8HJ8 THE AREOPAGITE. 493
may remain tranquil and undisturbed. It shows, as even the Ved&ntists knew, that man need not go into the forest to be an anchorite, but that there is a forest in every man's heart where he may dwell alone with the Alone.

Hugo of St. Victor, Knowledge more certain than Faith.

Another charge often brought against so-called mystics and quietists, that they are narrow-minded and intolerant of intellectual freedom, is best refuted by the intimate friend of St. Bernard, the famous Hugo of St. Victor, the founder of the Victorines. When defining faith in its subjective sense as the act by which we receive and hold truth, Hugo of St. Victor, like many of the schoolmen, distinguishes between opinion, faith, and science, and he places faith above opinion, but below knowledge due to science. Opinion, he says, does not exclude the possibility of a contradictory opposite; faith excludes such possibility, but does not yet know what is believed as present, resting only on the authority of another through whose teaching what is to be believed is conveyed by means of hearing ($ruti). Science on the contrary knows its object as actually present; the object of knowledge is present to the mind's eye and is known owing to this presence. Knowledge by science therefore represents a higher degree of certainty than faith, because it is more perfect to know an object in itself by means of its immediate presence than to arrive at its knowledge by hearing the teaching of another only.> The lowest degree of faith is that when t^e believer accepts what is to be believed from mere piety, without understanding by his jeapon^ that and why he shpul&

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believe what he has accepted. The next higher stage of faith is when faith is joined to rational insight, and reason approves what faith accepts as true, so that faith is joined with the knowledge of science. The highest degree is when faith, founded in a pure heart and an unstained conscience, begins to taste inwardly what has been embraced and held in faith. Here faith is perfected to higher mystic contemplation.

How many people who now kneel before the images of St. Bernard and Hugo of St. Victor, would be horrified at the doctrine that the higher faith must be founded on reason, and that faith has less certainty than the knowledge of science.

Thomas Aquinas.

Thomas Aquinas thought it necessary to guard against this doctrine, but he also admits that from a subjective point of view, faith stands half way between opinion and scientific knowledge, that is to say, below scientific knowledge, though above mere opinion. He argues, however, that faith has more certainty than scientific knowledge, because Christian faith has the authority of divine revelation, and we believe what is revealed to us, because it has been revealed by God as the highest truth. (Non enim fides, de qua loquimur, assentit alicui, nisi quia a Deo est revelatum.) He does not tell us how we can know that it was revealed by God except by means of reason. Thomas Aquinas, however, though on this point he differs from St. Hugo, and though he cannot be called a mystic even in the sense in which St. Bernard was, nevertheless is most tolerant toward his mystic friends, nay on certain points the stem

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scholastic is almost a mystic himself. He speaks of a state of blessedness produced by a .vision of the Divine (visio divinae essentiae), he only doubts whether we can ever attain to a knowledge of the essence of the Divine in this life, and he appeals to Dionysius the Areopagite, who likewise says that man can only be joined to God as to something altogether unknown, that is, that man in this life cannot gain a quidditative knowledge of God, and hence his blessedness cannot be perfect on earth. In support of this Dionysius quotes St. John (Ep. I. iii. 2): ' But we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.'

Thomas Aquinas differs on other points also from the mystics who believe in an ecstatic union with God even in this life. According to him the highest end of man can only be likeness with God (Omnia igitur appetunt, quasi vltimvm Jinem, Deo as&imilari). Only of the soul of Christ does Thomas Aquinas admit that it saw the Word of God by that vision by which the Blessed see it, so that His soul was blessed, and His body also perfect1. Likeness with God is to him the mmmum bonum, and it is the highest beatitude which man can reach. This highest beatitude is at the same time, as Thomas Aquinas tries to show, the highest perfection of human nature; because what distinguishes man from all other creatures is his intellect, and it follows, therefore, that the highest perfection of his intellect in its speculative and contemplative activity is likewise his

1 SummOj iii. 14,1: Anima Christi videbat Verbum Dei ea visione qua Beati vident, et in animo Christi erat beata, sed in beatitudine animae glorificatur corpus.

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highest beatitude. (Beatitudo igitur vd fdicitas in actu intdlectus consistit substantialiteret princvpaliter magis quam in actu voluntatis (C. G. xiii. c. 26).) The highest object of this speculative and contemplative activitv of the intellect can only be God. And here again Thomas Aquinas shows an extraordinaryfreedom from theological prejudice. Granted, he says, that the highest end and the real beatitude of man consists in the knowledge of God, we must still distinguish between (1) a natural knowledge of God, which is common to all human beings; (2) a demonstrative knowledge of God, (3) a knowledge of God by faith, and (4) a knowledge of God by vision (msio Dei per essentiam).

If the question be asked which of these is the most perfect knowledge of God, Thomas Aquinas answers without the least hesitation, the last. It cannot be the first, because he held that a knowledge of God, as supplied by nature, by what we should call Natural Religion, is imperfect on account of its many errors. It cannot be the second, because demonstrative knowledge is imperfect in being accessible to the few only who can follow logical demonstrations, also in being uncertain in its results. It cannot be the third, or knowledge of God by faith, which most theologians would consider as the safest, because it has no internal evidence of truth, and is a matter of the will rather than of the intellect. But the will, according to Thomas, stands lower than the intellect. The only perfect knowledge of God is therefore, according to this highest authority of scholastic theology, the immediate vision of God by means of the intellect, and this can be given us as a supernatural gift only.

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DIONYSIUS THI ABEOPAGITE. 497

So far as immediate vision is concerned, Thomas agrees therefore with the mystics; he even admits, going in this respect beyond Dionysius, the possibility of a quidditative knowledge of God, only, it would seem, not in this life.

And while he admits the possibility of this intellectual vision, he holds that mere loving devotion to God can never be the highest beatitude. His reasons for this are strange. We love the good, he says, not only when we have it, but also when we have it not yet, and from this love there arises desire, and desire is clearly incompatible with perfect beatitude.

Hugo of St. Victor, on the other hand, accepted that vision as a simple fact. Man, he said, is endowed with a threefold eye, the eye of the flesh, the eye of reason, and the eye of contemplation. By the eye of the flesh man sees the external world; by the eye of reason he sees the spiritual or ideal world; by the eye of contemplation he sees the Divine within him in the soul, and above him in God. Passing through the stages of cogitation and meditation, the soul arrives at last at contemplation, and derives its fullest happiness from an immediate intuition of the Infinite.

Hugo saw that the inmost and the highest, the soul within and God above, are identical, and that therefore the pure in heart can see God.

Hugo is rich in poetical illustration. He compares, for instance, this spiritual process to the application of fire to green wood. It kindles with difficulty, he says; clouds of smoke arise at first, a flame is seen at intervals, flashing out here and (4) Kk

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498 LEOTUBE XIV.

there; as the fire gains strength, it surrounds, it pierces the fuel; presently it leaps and roves in triumph—the nature of the wood is being transformed into the nature of fire. Then, the struggle over, the crackling ceases, the smoke is gone, there is left a tranquil friendly brightness, for the master-element has subdued all into itself. So, says Hugo, do sin and grace contend; and the smoke and trouble and anguish hang over the strife. But when grace grows stronger, and the soul's eye clearer, and truth pervades and swallows up the kindling, aspiring nature, then comes holy calm, and love is all in all. Save God in the heart, nothing of self is left1.

1 This passage, quoted by Vaughan in his Hours with the Mystics, vol. i. p. 156 (3rd ed.), seems to have suggested what Master Eckhart writes, p. 431, 1. 19, ed. Pfeiffer.

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LECTURE XV.

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. Mystic Christianity.

rilHE stream of mystic Christianity which we have JL watched from its distant springs flows on in an ever deepening and widening channel through the whole of the Middle Ages. In Germany more particularly there came a time when what is called mystic Christianity formed almost the only spiritual food of the people. Scholasticism, no doubt, held its own among the higher ecclesiastics, but the lower clergy and the laity at large, lived on the teaching which, as we saw, flowed originally from Dionysius, and interpenetrated even the dry scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), of Bonaventura (1221-1274), and others. It then came to the surface once more in the labours of the German Mystics, and it became in their hands a very important moral and political power.

Tne German Mystics.

First of all, these German Mystics boldly adopted the language of the people, they spoke in the vulgar tongue to the vulgar people \ they spoke in the lan

1 The earliest trace of Sermons in German is found in a list of books of the tenth century from St. Emmeram at Augsburg/

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guage of the heart to the heart of the people. Secondly, they adapted themselves in other respects also to the wants and to the understanding of their flocks. Their religion was a religion of the heart and of love rather than of the head and of logical deduction. It arose at the very time when scholastic Christianity had outlived itself, and when, owing to misfortunes of every kind, the people stood most in need of religious support and consolation.

The Fourteenth Century in Germany.

The fourteenth century, during which the German mystics were most active and most powerful, was a time not only of political and ecclesiastical unrest, but a time of intense suffering. In many respects it reminds us of the fifth century which gave rise to mystic Neo-Platonism in the Christian Church. The glorious period of the Hohenstaufen emperors had come to a miserable end. The poetical enthusiasm of the nation had passed away. The struggle between the Empire and the Pope seemed to tear up the very roots of religion and loyalty, and the spectacle of an extravagant, nay even an openly profligate life, led by many members of the higher clergy had destroyed nearly all reverence for the Church. Like the Church, the Empire also was torn to pieces; no one knew who was Emperor and who was Pope. The Interdict fell like a blight on the fairest portions of Germany, every

Sermones ad populum teutonics ; cf. Naumann's Serapeum, 1841, p. 261. An edict of Charlemagne, in which he commands the Bishops to preach in the language understood by the people, goes back to the year 813. It was repeated in 847 at the Synod of Mayence under Rhabanus Maurus.

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kind of pestilence broke out, ending at last in the fearful visitation of the Black Death (1348-1349).

The Interdict.

This Interdict meant far more than we have any idea of. The churches were closed, no bells were allowed to be rung. The priests left their parishes; in many places there were no clergy to baptise children, to perform marriages, or to bury the dead. In few places only some priests were brave enough to defy the Papal Interdict, and to remain with their flocks, and this they did at the peril of their body and their soul. The people became thoroughly scared. They saw the finger of God in all the punishments inflicted on their country, but they did not know how to avert His anger. Many people banded together and travelled from village to village, singing psalms and scourging themselves in public in the most horrible manner. Others gave themselves up to drink and every kind of indulgence. But many retired from the world altogether, and devoted their lives to contemplation, looking forward to the speedy approach of the end of the world.

The People and the Priesthood.

It was during those times of outward trouble and inward despair that some of those who are generally called the German Mystics, chiefly Dominican and Franciscan monks, devoted themselves to the service of the people. They felt that not even the Papal Interdict could absolve them from the duty which they owed to God and to their flocks. They preached wherever they could find a congregation, in the streets,

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in the meadows, wherever two or three were gathered together, and what they preached was the simple Gospel, interpreted in its true or, as it was called, its mystic meaning. The monastic orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans were most active at the time, and sent out travelling preachers all over the country. Their sermons were meant for the hour, and in few cases.only have they been preserved in Latin or in German. Such were the sermons of David of Augsburg (died 1271) and Berchtold of Regensburg (died 1272). The effect of their preaching must have been very powerful. We have descriptions of large gatherings which took place wherever they came. The churches were not large enough to hold the multitudes, and the sermons had often to be delivered outside the walls of the towns. We hear of meetings of 40,000, 100,000, nay, of 200,000 people, though we ought to remember how easily such numbers are exaggerated by friendly reporters. The effect of these sermons seems to have been instantaneous. Thus we are told that a nobleman who had appropriated a castle and lands belonging to the cloister of Pfaefers, at once restored them after hearing Berchtold's sermon. When taken captive Berchtold preached to his captor, and not only converted his household, but persuaded him to join his order. He was even believed to possess the power of working miracles and of prophesying. One "year before his own death and while he was preaching at Ratisbon, he suddenly had a vision of his friend and teacher, David of Augsburg, and he prophesied his death, which, we are told, had taken place at that very moment. A woman while listening to his sermon fell on her knees and confessed her sins

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before the whole congregation. Berchtold accepted her confession and asked who would marry the woman, promising to give her a dowry. A man came forward, and Berchtold at once collected among the people the exact sum which he had promised for her dowry. We know, of course, how easily such tumours spring up, and how rapidly they grow. Still we may accept all these legends as symptoms of the feverish movement which these popular preachers were then producing all over Germany. No wonder that these German mystics and the Friends of God, as they were called, were disliked by the regular clergy* Even when they belonged to such orthodox orders as the Dominicans and Franciscans they were occasionally carried away into saying things which were not approved of by the higher clergy. They naturally sided with the people in their protests against the social sins of the higher classes. The luxurious life of the clergy, particularly if of foreign nationality, began to stir up a national antagonism against Rome. Nor was this unfriendly feeling against Rome the only heresy of which the German people and the German mystic preachers were suspected. They were suspected of an inclination towards Waldensian, Albigensian, and in general towards what were then called Pantheistic heresies. There is no doubt that the influence of the Waldensians extended to Germany, and that some of them had been active in spreading a knowledge of the Bible among the people in Germany by means of vernacular translations. We read in an account of the Synod of Trier, A.D. 1231, that many of the people were found to be instructed in the sacred writings which they possessed in German translations (Multi eorum instructi

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erant inScripturis Sanctis quashabebant intheutonicum translatas). Complaint is made that even little girls were taught the Gospels and Epistles, and that people learnt passages of the Bible by heart in the vulgar tongue (Puellas parvulas docent evangelia et epistolas —dociles inter aliquos complices et facundos docent verba evangelii et dicta apostolorum et sanctorum aliorum in vulgari lingua corde firmare)1. The Albigenses seem to have adopted the name of Kathari, the pure, possibly in recollection of the Katharsis which was a preliminary to the Henosis. This name of Kathari became in German Ketzer, with the sense of heretic. The inquisition for heresy was very active, but unable to quell the religious movement in Germany. The very orders, Dominicans and Franciscans, which were meant to counteract it, were not altogether safe against heretical infection. Among the earliest Dominicans who were celebrated as popular preachers, that is to say, who were able to preach in German, we find the name of the notorious inquisitor Konrad of Marburg, who was slain by the people in 1234 for his cruelties. The mystic sermons of Albertus Magnus were written in Latin and afterwards translated into German. The people naturally sided with those who sided with them. To them what is called mystic Christianity was the only Christianity they understood and cared for. They had at that time very little to occupy their thoughts, and their longing for religious comfort became all the stronger the less there was to distract their thoughts or to satisfy their ambition in the political events of the times.

1 Wackernagel und Weinhold, Altdeutsche Predigten, p. 347.

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Dominican* and Franciscans.

It may truly be said that the great bulk of the German people were then for the first time brought into living contact with their religion by these Dominican and Franciscan friars. However much we may admire the learning and the logical subtlety of the schoolmen, it is easy to see that the questions which they discussed were not questions that could possibly influence the religious thoughts or conduct of the masses. It had long been felt that something else and something more was wanted, and this something else and something more seemed best to be supplied by what was called mystic Christianity, by what Dionysius had called the Stulta Sapientia eaxedens laudantes1, 'the simple-minded Wisdom exceeding all praise.'

This simple religion was supposed to spring from the love which God Himself has poured into the human soul, while the human soul in loving God does but return the love of God. This religion does not require much learning, it is meant for the poor and pure in spirit. It was meant to lead man from the stormy sea of his desires and passions to the safe haven of the eternal, to remain there firmly anchored in the love of God, while it was admitted that the scholastic or as it was called the literary religion could give no rest, but could only produce a never-ceasing appetite for truth and for victory.

There was, however, no necessity for separating learning, from mystic religion, as we see in the case of St. Augustine, in Bonaventura, St. Bernard,

1 Stftckl, Geschichte der PhUosophie des MittetoUers, vol. i. p. 1030.

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and once more in Master Eckhart and many of the German mystics. These men had two faces, one for the doctors of divinity, their learned rivals, the other for the men, women, and children, who came to hear such sermons as Master Eckhart could preach, whether in Latin or in the vulgar tongue. At first, these popular preachers were not learned theologians, but simply eloquent preachers, who travelled from village to village, and tried to appeal to the conscience of the peasants, to men and women, in their native tongue. But they prepared the way for the German mystics of the next generation, who were no longer mere kind-hearted travelling friars, but learned men, doctors of theology, and some of them even high dignitaries of the Church. The bestknown names among these are Master Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, Ruysbrook, Gerson, and Cardinal Cusanus.

Eckhart and Tauler.

Every one of these men deserves a study by himself. The best-known and most attractive is no doubt Tauler. His sermons have been frequently published; they were translated into Latin, into modern German, some also into English. They are still read in Germany as useful for instruction and edification, and they have escaped the suspicion of heresy which has so often been raised, and, it may be, not without some reason, against Master Eckhart. Still Master Eckhart is a much more powerful, and more original thinker, and whatever there is of real philosophy in Tauler seems borrowed from him. In Eckhart's German writings, which were edited for

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the first time by Pfeiffer (1857), mystic Christianity, or as it might more truly be called, the Christianity as conceived by St. John, finds its highest expression. It is difficult to say whether he is more of a scholastic philosopher or of a mystic theologian. The unholy divorce between religion and philosophy did not exist for him. A hundred years later so holy and orthodox a writer as Gerson had to warn the clergy that if they separated religion from philosophy, they would destroy both1. Master Eckhart, though he constantly refers to and relies on the Bible, never appeals simply to its authority in order to establish the truth of his teaching. His teaching agrees with the teaching of St. John and of St. Paul, but it was meant to convince by itself. He thought he could show that Christianity, if only rightly understood, could satisfy all the wants both of the human heart and of human reason. Every doctrine of the New Testament is accepted by him, but it is thought through by himself, and only after it has passed through the fire of his own mind, is it preached by him as eternal truth. He quotes the pagan masters as well as the Fathers of the Church, and he sometimes appeals to the former as possessing a truer insight into certain mysteries than even Christian teachers.

He is most emphatic in the assertion of truth. .' I speak to you/ he says,' in the name of eternal truth.' 'It is as true as that God liveth.' 'Bi gote, bi gote,' 'By God, by God/ occurs so. often that one feels almost inclined to accept the derivation of 'bigot*

1 Bum a religione secernere putant philosophiam, utrumque perdunt. Gerson, Serm. I. .

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as having meant originally a man who on every occasion appeals to God, then a hypocrite, then a fanatic. Eckhart's attitude, however, is not that of many less straightforward Christian philosophers who try to force their philosophy into harmony with the Bible. It is rather that of an independent thinker, who rejoices whenever he finds the results of his own speculations anticipated by, and as it were hidden, in the Bible. Nor does he ever, so far as I remember, appeal to miracles in support of the truth of Christianity or of the true divinity of Christ. When he touches on miracles, he generally sees an allegory in them, and he treats them much as the Stoics treated Homer or as Philo treated the Old Testament. Otherwise, miracles had no interest for him. In a world in which, as he firmly believed, not one sparrow could fall on the ground without your Father (Matt. x. 29), where was there room for a miracle? No doubt, and he often says so himself, his interpretation of the Bible was not always in accordance with that of the great doctors of the Church. Some of his speculations are so bold that one does not wonder at his having incurred the suspicion of heresy. Even in our more enlightened days some of his theories about the Godhead would no doubt sound very startling. He sometimes seems bent on startling his congregation, as when he says, * He who says that God is good, offends Him as much as if he were to say that white is black/ And yet he always remained a most obedient son of the Church, only in his own way. Like other independent thinkers of that time, he always declared himself ready to revoke $t once anything and everything heretical

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in his writings, but he called on his adversaries to prove first of all that it was heretical. The result was that though he was accused of heresy by the Archbishop of Cologne in 1326, nothing very serious happened to him during his lifetime. But after his death, out of twenty-eight statements of his which had been selected as heretical for Papal condemnation, the first fifteen and the two last were actually condemned, while the remaining eleven were declared to be suspicious. It was then too late for Master Eckhart to prove that they were not heretical.

Eckhart was evidently a learned theologian, and his detractors were afraid of him. He knew his Plato and his Aristotle. How he admired Plato is best shown by his calling him Der grdze Pfaffe, the great priest (p. 261,1.21). Aristotle is to him simply the Master. He had studied Proclus, or Proculus, as he calls him, and he often refers to Cicero, Seneca, and even to the Arabic philosopher, Avicenna. He frequently appeals to St. Chrysostom, Dionysius, St. Augustine, and other Fathers of the Church, and has evidently studied Thomas Aquinas, who may almost be called his contemporary. He had received in fact a thorough scholastic training1, and was a match for the best among the advocates of the Church. Eckhart had studied and afterwards taught at the University of Paris, and had received his Degree of Doctor of Divinity from Pope Boniface VIII. In 1304 he became the Provincial of the Order of the Dominicans in Saxony, though his residence remained

1 How much Eckhart owed to his scholastic training has been well brought out by H. Denifle* in his learned article, Meister Eckeharfs Lateinische Schriften und die Orundanschauung seiner Lehre, im Archivfur Litteraiur und Kirchengeschichte, vol. ii. fasc. 3, 4,

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at Cologne. He was also appointed Vicar-General of Bohemia, and travelled much in Germany, visiting the monasteries of his order and trying to reform them. But he always returned to the Rhine, and he died at Cologne, probably in the year 1327.

Eckhart has been very differently judged by different people. By those who could not understand him, he has been called a dreamer and almost a madman ; by others who were his intellectual peers, he has been called the wisest Doctor, the Mend of God, the best interpreter of the thoughts of Christ, of St. John, and St. Paul, the forerunner of the Reformation. He was a vir saiictu8y even according to the testimony of his bitterest enemies. Many people think they have disposed of him by calling him a mystic. He was a mystic in the sense in which St. John was* to mention no greater name. Luther, the German Reformer, was not a man given to dreams or senti~ mentalism. No one would call him a mystic, in the vulgar sense of the word. But he was a great admirer of Eckhart, if we may take him to hava been the author of the Theologia Germanica. I confess I doubt his authorship, but the book is certainly* pervaded by his spirit, particularly as regards the* practical life of a true Christian1. This is what Luther writes of the book: * From no book, except the Bible, and the works of St. Augustine, have I learnt more what God, what Christ, what man and other things are, than from this (Luther's Werker 1883, vol. i. p. 378). A very different thinker, but

1 It has been translated into English by Miss Winkworth, anct was much prized by my departed friends, Frederick Maurice, Charles Kingsley, and Baron Bunsen.

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likewise no dr&amer or sentimentalist, Schopenhauer, says of Eckhart that his teaching stands to the New Testament as essence of wine to wine.

Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, another ardent admirer of the Theologia Germanica, speaks of it as ' that golden little book.'

Eckhart'* Mysticism.

It is a great mistake to suppose that Eckhart's so-called mysticism was a matter of vague sentiment. On the contrary, it was built up on the solid basis of scholastic philosophy, and it defied in turn the onslaughts of the most ingenious scholastic disputants. How thoroughly his mind was steeped in scholastic philosophy, has lately been proved in some learned papers by Dr. Denifte. I admit his writings are not always easy. First of all, they are written in Middle High German, a language which is separated by only about a century from the German of the Nibelunge. And his language is so entirely his own that it is sometimes very difficult to catch his exact meaning, still more to convey it in English. It is the same as in the Upahishads. The words themselves are easy enough, but their drift is often very hard to follow.

It seems to me that a study of the Upanishads is often the very best preparation for a proper understanding of Eckhart's Tracts and Sermons. The intellectual atmosphere is just the same, and he who has learnt to breathe in the one, will soon feel at home in the other.

I regret that it would be quite impossible to give

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you even the shortest abstract of the whole of Eckhart's psychological and metaphysical system. It deserves to be studied for its own sake, quite as much as the metaphysical systems of Aristotle or Descartes, and it would well repay the labours of some future Gifford Lecturer to bring together all the wealth of thought that lies scattered about in Eckhart's writings. I can here touch on a few points only, such as bear on our own special subject, the nature of God and of the Soul, and the relation between the two.

Bokliart'e Definition of the Deity.

Eckhart defines the Godhead as simple esse, as actus purus. This is purely scholastic, and even Thomas Aquinas himself would probably not have objected to Eckhart's repeated statement that Esse est Dtus. According to him there is and can be nothing higher than to be1. He naturally appeals to the Old Testament in order to show that I am is the only possible name of Deity. In this he does not differ much from St. Thomas Aquinas and other scholastic philosophers. St. Thomas says: Ipsum esse est perfectissimum omnium, comparatur enim ad omnia ut actus . . . unde ipsum esse est actualitas omnium rerum et etiam ipsarum formarum2. Being without qualities God is to us unknowable and incomprehensible, hidden and dark, till the Godhead is lighted up by its own light, the light of self-knowledge, by which it becomes subjective and objective, Thinker and Thought, or, as the Christian mystics express it, Father and Son. The bond between the

1 Cf. Denifl6,l.c, p. 436.

2 See Deniflg, Meister Eckeharfs Laieinische Schriften, p. 436.

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two is the Holy Ghost. Thus the Godhead, the Divine Essence or Ousia, becomes God in three Persons. In thinking Himself, the Father thinks everything that is within Him, that is, the ideas, the logoi of the unseen world. Here Master Eckhart stands completely on the old Platonic and Stoic platform. He is convinced that there is thought and reason in the world, and he concludes in consequence that the world of thought, the Koa-fios voyjtos, can only be the thought of God. Granted this, and everything else follows. ' The eternal Thought or the Word of the Father, is the only begotten Son, and/ he adds, * he is our Lord Jesus Christ1.'

We see here how Eckhart uses the old Alexandrian language, and conceives the eternal ideas not only as many, but also as one, as the Logos, in which all things, as conceived by the Father, are one before they become many in the phenomenal world. But Master Eckhart is very anxious to show that though all things are dynamically in God, God is not actually in all things. Like the Ved&ntist, he speaks of God as the universal Cause, and yet claims for Him an extra-mundane existence. ' God,' he writes, ' is outside all nature, He is not Himself Nature, He is above it V

1 Daz sol man also verstan, Daz ewige wort ist daz wort des vater und ist sin einborn sun, unser herre Jesus Kristus. Eckhart, ed. Pfeiffer, p. 76, 1. 25.

* Daz got etwaz ist, daz von n&t uber wesen sin muoz, Was wesen hat, zit oder stat, das h5ret ze gota niht, er ist tiber daz selbe ; daz er ist in aUen creaturen, daz ist er dooh dar fiber ; was da in vil dingen ein ist, daz muoz yon ndt uber diu dine sin. Pfeiffer, 1. c., p. 268, 1. 10. See also Eckhart's Latin version: Deus sic totus est in quolibet, quod totus est extra quodlibet, et propter hoc ea quae sunt cujuslibet, ipsi non conveniunt, puta variari, senescere aut corrumpi.. . Hinc est quod anima non variatur nee

W LI

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And yet Master Eckhart is called a pantheist by men who hardly seem to know the meaning of pantheism or of Christianity. And when he further on ventures to say, that the worlds, both the ideal and the phenomenal, were thought and created by. God ou account of His. divine love, and therefore by necessity, and from all eternity, this again is branded as heresy, as if there could be any variance in the Divine Counsel, nay, as if there could be in God any difference between what we call necessity and libertyx. If human language can reach at all to these dizzy heights of speculation, nothing seems more in accordance with Christian doctrine than to say what Eckhart says: * God is always working, and His working is to beget His Son/

Creation is Emanation.

What is generally called Creation is conceived by Eckhart as Emanation. On this point he is at one with Thomas Aquinas and many of the most orthodox theologians. I do not appeal to Dionysius or Scotus Erigena, for their orthodoxy has often been questioned. But Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa, p. 1, qu. 19, a. 4, without any hesitation explains creation as emanatio totius entis ab uno, emanation of all that is from One. Nay, he goes further, and maintains that God is in all things, potentially, essentially, and present: per potentiam, essentiam et praesentiam; per essentiam, nam omne ens est participate divini esse; per potentiam,
senescit nee desinit extracto oculo aut pede, quia ipsa se tota est extra oculum et pedem, in manu tota et in quaUbet parte alia tota. Denifle, 1. c, p. 430. Pfeiffer, 1. c, p. 612,1. 28.

1 The condemned sentence was: Quam cito Deus fait, tarn cito mundum creayit, Concedi ergo potest quod mundus ab aeterno faerit*

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in quantum omnia in virtute ejus agunt; per praesentiam, in quantum ipse omnia immediate ordinat et disponit*. Such ideas would be stigmatised as pantheistic by many living theologians, and so would consequently many passages even from the New Testament, where God is represented as the All in All. But Eckhart argued quite consistently that unless the soul of man is accepted as an efflux from God, there can be no reflux of the soul to God, and this according to Eckhart is the vital point of true Christianity. A clock cannot return to the clockmaker, but a drop of rain can return to the ocean from whence it was lifted, and a ray of light is always light.

' All creatures/ he writes,' are in God as uncreated, but not by themselves.' This would seem to mean that the ideas of all things were in God, before the things themselves were created or were made manifest. 'All creatures/ he continues, 'are more noble in God than they are by themselves. God is therefore by no means confounded with the world, as He has been by Amalrich and by all pantheists. The world is not God, nor God the world. The being of the world is from God, but it is different from the being of God/ Eckhart really admits two processes, one the eternal creation in God, the other the creation in time and space. This latter creation differs, as he says, from the former, as a work of art differs from the idea of it in the mind of the artist.

The Human Sonl.

Eckhart looks upon the human soul as upon everything else, as thoughts spoken by God through creation. But though the soul and all the powers of

Stockl, Qesch. der PhUos. des Mittelalters, vol. ii. p. 519.

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the soul, such as perception, memory, understanding and will, are created, he holds that there is something in the soul uncreated, something divine, nay the Godhead itself. This was again one of the theses which .were declared heretical after his deathl.

In the same way then as the Godhead or the Divine Ground is without any knowable qualities and cannot be known except as being, the Divine Element in the soul also is without qualities and cannot be known except as being. This Divine Spark, though it may be covered and hidden for a time by ignorance, passion, or sin, is imperishable. It gives us being, oneness, personality, and subjectivity, and being subjective* like God, it can only be a knower, it can never be known, as anything else is known objectively.

It is through this Divine element in the human soul that we are and become one with God. Man cannot know God objectively, but in what Eckhart calls mystic contemplation, he can feel his oneness with the Divine. Thus Eckhart writes: * What is seen with the eye wherewith I see God, that is the same eye wherewith God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one eye and one vision, one knowing, and one loving. It is the same to know God and to be known by God, to see God and to be seen by God. And as the air illumined is nothing but that it illumines, for it illumines because it is illumined, in the same manner we know because we are known and that He makes us to know Him2/ This knowing and to be known is what Eckhart calls the Birth of the Son in the soul.

1 Aliquid est in anima quod est increatum et inoreabile ; si tota anima esset talis, esset increata et increabilis, et hoc est intellectus. * Pfeiffei, 1. c, p. 38,1. 10.

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'If His knowing is mine, and His substance, His very nature and essence, is knowing, it follows that His essence and substance and nature are mine. And if His nature and essence and substance are mine, I am the son of God.' ' Behold/ he exclaims,' what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God'—and be the sons of God.

This second birth and this being born as the son of God is with Eckhart synonymous with the Son of God being born in the soul. He admits no difference between man, when born again, and the Son of God, at least no more than there is between God the Father and God the Son. Man becomes by grace what Christ is by nature, and only if born again as the son of God can men receive the Holy Ghost.

What Eckhart calls the Divine Ground in the soul and in the Godhead may be, I think, justly compared with the neutral Brahman of the Upanishads, as discovered in the world and in the soul. And as in the Upanishads the masculine Brahman is distinguished, though not separated, from the neutral Brahman, so, according to Eckhart, the three Persons may be distinguished from the Divine Ground, though they cannot be separated from it.

All this sounds very bold, but if we translate it into ordinary language it does not seem to mean more than that the three Divine Persons share this underlying Godhead as their common essence or Ousia, that v they are in fact homoousioi, which is the orthodox doctrine for which Eckhart, like St. Clement, tries to supply an honest philosophical explanation.

If we want to understand Eckhart, we must never forget that, like Dionysius, he is completely under the

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sway of Neo-Platonist, in one sense even of Platonist philosophy. When we say that God created the world, Eckhart would say that the Father spoke the Word, the Logos, or that He begat the Son. Both expressions mean exactly the same with him.

All these are really echoes of very ancient thought. We must remember that the ideas, according to Plato, constituted the eternal or changeless world, of which the phenomenal world is but a shadow. With Plato, the ideas or the etbr} alone can be said to be real, and they alone can form the subject of true knowledge. Much as the Stoics protested against the independent existence of these ideas, the Neo-Platonists took them up again, and some of the Fathers of the Church represented them as the pure forms or the perfect types according to which the world was created, and all things in it. It was here that the ancient philosophers discovered what we call the Origin of Species. We saw how the whole of this ideal creation, or rather manifestation, was also spoken of as the Logos or the manifested Word of God by which He created the world, and this Logos again was represented, as we saw, long before the rise of Christianity, as the offspring or the only begotten Son of God. Eckhart, like some of the earliest Fathers of the Church, started with the concept of the Logos or the Word as the Son of God, the other God (bevrepos tfco's), and he predicated this Logos of Christ who was to him the human realisation of the ideal Son of God, of Divine Reason and Divine Love.

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Tlie Messiah and the XiOffos.

What the Jews did with the name of the Messiah, the Greeks had to do with the name of the Logos. The idea of the Messiah was there for ages, and though it must have required an immense effort, the Jews who embraced Christianity brought themselves to say that this ideal Messiah, this Son of David, this King of Glory was Jesus, the Crucified. In the same manner and with the same effort, and, as I believe, with the same honesty, the Greek philosophers, who embraced Christianity, had to bring themselves to say that this Logos, this Thought of God, this Son of God, this Monogen&s or Only begotten, known to Plato as well as to Philo, appeared in Jesus of Nazareth, and that in Him alone the divine idea of manhood had ever been fully realised. Hence Christ was often called the First Man, not Adam. The Greek converts who became the real conquerors of the Greek world, raised their Logos to a much higher meaning than it had in the minds of the Stoics, just as the Jewish converts imparted to the name of Messiah a much more sublime import than what it had in the minds of the Scribes and Pharisees. Yet the best among these Greek converts, in joining the Christian Church, never forswore their philosophical convictions, least of all did they commit themselves to the legendary traditions which from very early times had gathered round the cradle of the Son of Joseph and Mary. To the real believer in Christ as the Word and the Son of God these traditions seemed hardly to exist; they were neither denied nor affirmed. It is in the same spirit that Master Eckhart conceives the true meaning of the Son of God as the Word, and of God the Father as the speaker

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and thinker and worker of the Word, freely using these Galilean legends as beautiful allegories, but never appealing to them as proofs of the truth of Christ's teaching. Eckhart, to quote his ip&issima verba, represents the Father as speaking His word into the soul, and when the Son is born, every soul becomes Maria. He expresses the same thought by saying that the Divine Ground, that is the Godhead, admits of no distinction or predicate. It is oneness, darkness, but the light of the Father pierces into that darkness, and the Father, knowing His own essence, begets in the knowledge of Himself, the Son. And in the love which the Father has for the Son, the Father with the Son breathes the Spirit.. By this process the eternal dark ground becomes lighted up, the Godhead becomes God, and God in three Persons. When the Father by thus knowing Himself, speaks the eternal Word, or what is the same, begets His Son, He speaks in that Word all things. His divine Word is the one idea of all things (that is the Logos), and this eternal Word of the Father is His only Son, and the Lord Jesus Christ in whom He has spoken all creatures without beginning and without end. And this speaking does not take place once only. According to Eckhart 'God is always working1, in a now, in an eternity, and His working is begetting His Son. In this birth all things have flown out, and such delight has God in this birth, that He spends all His power in it. God begets Himself altogether in His Son, he speaks all things in Him.' Though such language may sound strange to us, and though it has been condemned by those who did not know its purport, as 1 Pfeiffer, 1. c, p. 264.

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fanciful, if not as heretical, we should remember that St. Augustine also uses exactly the same language: ' The speaking of God/ he says,' is His begetting, and His begetting is His speaking' (p. 100, 1. 27), and Eckhart continues (p. 100, 1. 29): 'If God were to cease from this speaking of the Word, even for one moment, Heaven and Earth would vanish/

With us, word has so completely lost its full meaning, as being the unity of thought and sound, the one inseparable from the other, that we cannot be reminded too often that in all these philosophical speculations Logos or Word does not mean the word as mere sound or as we find it in a dictionary, but word as the living embodiment, as the very incarnation of thought.

What has seemed so strange to some modern philosophers, namely, this inseparableness of thought and word, or, as I sometimes expressed it, the identity of reason and language, was perfectly familiar to these ancient thinkers and theologians, and I am glad to see that my critics have ceased at last to call my Science of Thought a linguistic paradox, and begin to see that what I contended for in that book was known long ago, and that no one ever doubted it. The Logos, the Word, as the thought of God, as the whole body of divine or eternal ideas, which Plato had prophesied, which Aristotle had criticised in vain, which the Neo-Platonists re-established, is a truth that forms, or ought to form, the foundation of all philosophy. And unless we have fully grasped it, as it was grasped by some of the greatest Fathers of the Church, we shall never be able to understand the Fourth Gospel, we shall never be able to call ourselves true Christians. For it is, as built upon the Logos,

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that Christianity holds its own unique position among all the religions of the world. Of course, a religion is not a philosophy. It has a different purpose, and it must speak a different language. Nothing is more difficult than to express the results of the deepest thought in language that should be intelligible to all, and yet not misleading. Unless a religion can do that, it is not a religion; at all events, it cannot live; for every generation that is born into the world requires a popular, a childlike translation of the sublimest truths which have been discovered and stored up by the sages and prophets of old. If no child could grow up a Christian, unless it understood the true meaning of Logos, as elaborated by Platonic, Stoic, and Neo-Platonic philosophers, and then adopted and adapted by the Fathers of the Church, how many Christians should we have? By using the words Father and Son, the Fathers of the Church felt that they used expressions which contain nothing that is not true, and which admit of a satisfactory interpretation as soon as such interpretation is wanted. And the most satisfactory explanation, the best solution of all our religious difficulties seems to me here as elsewhere supplied by the historical school. Let us only try to discover how words and thoughts arose, how thoughts came to be what they are, and we shall generally find that there is some reason, whether human or Divine, in them.

To me, I confess, nothing seems more delightful than to be able to discover how by an unbroken chain our thoughts and words carry us back from century to century, how the roots and feeders of our mind pierce through stratum after stratum, and still

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draw their life and nourishment from the deepest foundations, from the hearts of the oldest thinkers of mankind. That is what gives us confidence in ourselves, and often helps to impart new life to what threatens to become hard and petrified, mythological and unmeaning, in our intellectual and, more particularly, in our religious life. To many people, I feel sure, the beginning of the Gospel of St. John,l In the beginning was the Word/ and again,' The Word was made flesh/ can only be a mere tradition. But as soon as we can trace back the Word that in the beginning was with God, and through which (bt avrov) all things were made, to the Monogends, as postulated by Plato, elaborated by the Stoics, and handed on by the Neo-Platonists, whether pagan, Jewish, or Christian, to the early Fathers of the Church, a contact seems established, and an electric current seems to run in a continuous stream from Plato to St. John, and from St. John to our own mind, and give light and life to some of the hardest and darkest sayings of the New Testament. Let us reverence by all means what is called childlike faith, but let us never forget that to think also is to worship God.

Now let us return to Master Eckhart, and remember that according to him the soul is founded on the same Divine Ground as God, that it shares in fact in the same nature, that it would be nothing without it. Yet in its created form it is separated from God. It feels that separation or its own incompleteness, and in feeling this, it becomes religious. How is that yearning for completion to be satisfied ? How is that divine home-sickness to be healed? Most mystic philosophers would say, by the soul being drawn near

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to God in love, or by an approach to God, just as we saw in the Upanishads the soul approaching the throne of Brahman, as a masculine deity.

The Approach to God.

Eckhart, however, like the higher Ved&ntists, denies that there can be such an approach, or at all events he considers it only a lower form of religion. Thus he says, p. 80: * While we are approaching God, we never come to Him/—almost the very words of the Ved&nta.

Eckhart, while recognising this desire for God or this love of God as a preparatory step, takes a much higher view of the true relation between soul and God. That ray of the Godhead, which he calls the spirit of the soul and many other names, such as spark (Funklein), root, spring, also avvrqpj\(ns, in fact, the real Self of man, is the common ground of God and. the soul. In it God and the soul are always one potentially, and they become one actually when the Son is born in the soul of man, that is when the soul has discovered its eternal oneness with God. In order that God may enter the soul, everything else must first be thrown out of it, everything sinful, but also every kind of attachment to the things of this world. Lastly, there must be a complete surrender of our own self. In order to live in God, man must die to himself, till his will is swallowed up in God's will. There must be perfect stillness in the soul before God can whisper His word into it, before the light of God can shine in the soul and transform the soul into God.

Birth of the Bon.

When man has thus become the son of God, it is said that the Son of God is born in him, and his soul

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is at rest. You will have observed in all this the fundamental idea of the Vedanta, that by removal of nescience the individual soul recovers its true nature, as identical with the Divine soul; nor can it have escaped you on the other side how many expressions are used by Eckhart which are perfectly familiar to us from the Neo-Platonists, and from the Gospel of St. John, which can convey their true meaning to those only who know their origin and their history.

Passages from the Fourth Gospel.

The passages on which Eckhart relies and to which he often appeals are: 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father' (xiv. 9);«I am in the Father, and the Father in me' (xiv. 10); 'No man cometh unto the Father, but by me' (xiv. 6); «This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent' (xvii. 3). And again: ' And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own Self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was; that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us' (xvii. 5, 21).

These are the deepest notes that vibrate through the whole of Eckhart's Christianity, and though their true meaning had been explained long before Eckhart's time, by the great scholastic thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas himself, the two St. Victors, Bonaventura, and others, seldom had their deepest purport been so powerfully brought out as by Master Eckhart, in his teaching of true spiritual Christianity. Dr. Denifte is no doubt quite right in showing how much of this spiritual Christianity ipay.b? found in the writings of

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those whom it is the fashion to call rather contemptuously, mere schoolmen. But he hardly does fulljustice to Eckhart's personality. Not every schoolman was a vir saTictus, not every Dominican preacher was so unworldly, so full of love and compassion for his fellow-creatures as Eckhart was. And though his Latin terminology may be called more accurate and vigorous than his German utterances, there is a warmth and homeliness in his German sermons which, to my mind at least, the colder Latin seems to destroy. Dr. Denifte is no doubt quite right in claiming Eckhart as a scholastic and as a Roman Catholic, but he would probably allow his heresies at least to be those of the German mystic.

directions to Mystic Beligion.

We have observed already a number of striking analogies between the spirit of mystic Christianity of the fourteenth century and that of the Ved&ntaphilosophy in India. It is curious that the attacks also to which both systems have been exposed, and the dangers which have been pointed out as inherent in them, are almost identical in India and in Germany.

Excessive Asceticism.

It is well known that a very severe asceticism was strongly advocated and widely practised by the followers of both systems. Here again there can, of course, be no idea of borrowing or even of any indirect influence. If we can understand that asceticism was natural to the believers in the Upanishads in India, we shall be equally able to understand the motives

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which led Master Eckhart and his friends to mortify the flesh, and to live as much as possible a life of solitude and retirement from the world.

That body and soul are antagonistic can hardly be doubted, Plato and other Greek philosophers were well aware that the body may become too much for the soul, obscuring the rational and quickening the animal desires. Even when the passions of the flesh do not degenerate into actual excess, they are apt to dissipate and weaken the powers of the mind. Hence we find from very early times and in almost all parts of the world a tendency on the part of profound thinkers to subdue the flesh in order to free the spirit. Nor can we doubt the concurrent testimony of so many authorities that by abstinence from food, drink, and other sensual enjoyments, the energies of the spirit are strengthened1. This is particularly the case with that spiritual energy which is occupied with religion. Of course, like everything else, this asceticism, though excellent in itself, is liable to mischievous exaggeration, and has led in fact to terrible excesses. I am not inclined to doubt the testimony of trustworthy witnesses that by fasting and by even a more painful chastening of the body, the mind may be raised to more intense activity. Nor can I resist the evidence that by certain exercises, such as peculiar modes of regulating the breathing, keeping the body in certain postures, and fixing the sight on certain objects, a violent exaltation of our nervous system may be produced which quickens our imaginations, and enables us to see and conceive objects which are

1 The Sanskrit term urdhyaretas, applied to ascetics, is very significant.

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beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. I believe that the best physiologists are quite aware of all this, and perfectly able to account for it; and it would be carrying scepticism too far, were we to decline to accept the accounts given us by the persons themselves of their beatific visions, or by trustworthy witnesses. On the other hand, it is perfectly well known that when these ascetic tendencies once break out, they are soon by mere emulation carried to such extremes that they produce a diseased state both of body and of mind, so that we have to deal no longer with inspired or ecstatic saints, but with hysterical and half-delirious patients.

Another danger is an almost irresistible temptation to imposition and fraud on the part of religious ascetics, so that it requires the most discriminating judgment before we are able to distinguish between real, though abnormal, visions, and intentional or halfintentional falsehood.

The penances which Indian ascetics inflict on themselves have often been described by eye-witnesses whose bona fides cannot be doubted, and I must say that the straightforward way in which they are treated in some of the ancient text-books, makes one feel inclined to believe almost anything that these ancient martyrs are said to have suffered and to have done, not excluding their power of levitation. But we also see, both in India and in Germany, a strong revulsion of feeling, and protests are not wanting, emanating from high authorities, against an excessive mortification of the flesh. One case is most interesting. We are told that Buddha, before he became Buddha, went through the most terrible penances, living with

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the Brahmanic hermits in the forest. But after a time he became convinced of the uselessness, nay of the mischievousness of this system, and it is one of the characteristic features of his teaching that he declared these extreme self-inflicted tortures useless for the attainment of true knowledge, and advised a Via media between extreme asceticism on one side and worldliness on the other, as the true way to enlightenment and beatitude.

Much the same protest was made by Eckhart and Tauler in trying to restrain their enthusiastic pupils. They both recommended a complete surrender of all the goods of this world; poverty and suffering were in their eyes the greatest help to a truly spiritual life; not to be attached to this world was the primary condition for enabling God to appear again in the soul of man, or, as they expressed it, for facilitating the birth of the Son of God in man.But with all that, they wished most strongly to see the love of God manifested in life by acts of lovingkindness to our fellow-creatures. They believed that it was quite possible to take part in the practical work of life, and yet to maintain a perfect tranquillity and stillness of the soul within. Both Eckhart and Tauler took a prominent and active share in the affairs of Church and State, both tried to introduce muchneeded reforms in the life of the clergy and the laity. Stillness and silence were recommended, because it is only when all passions are stilled and all worldly desires silenced that the Word of God can be heard in the soul. A certain discipline of the body was therefore encouraged, but only as a means toward an end. Extreme penances, even when they were supposed to

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lead to beatific visions of the Godhead, were strongly discouraged. The original oneness of the human soul with God is accepted by all German mystics as the fundamental article of the Christian faith, but they differ as to the means by which that oneness may be restored. The speculative school depends on knowledge only. They hold that what we know ourselves to be, we are ipso facto, and they therefore lay the chief stress on the acquisition of knowledge. The ascetic school depends on penances and mortifications, by which the soul is to gain complete freedom from the body, till it rises in the end to a vision of God, to , a return of the soul to God, to a reunion with God.

'What is penance in reality and truth?' Tauler asks. ' It is nothing,' he answers, ' but a real and true turning away from all that is not God, and a real and true turning towards the pure and true good, which is called God and is God. He who has that and does that, (Joes more than penance.' And again: ' Let those who torture the poor flesh learn this. What has the poor flesh done to thee ? Kill sin, but do not kill the flesh!1

Tauler discourages even confession and other merely outward acts of religion. ' It is of no use,' he says, ' to run to the Father Confessor after having committed a sin.' Confess to God, he says, with real repentance. Unless you do this and flee from sin, even the Pope with all his Cardinals cannot absolve you, for the Father Confessor has no power over sin. Here we can clearly hear the distant rumblings of the Reformation.

But, though these excessive penances could do no good, they are nevertheless interesting to us as

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showing at all events what terrible earnestness there was among the followers of the Vedanta as well as among the disciples of Eckhart and Tauler. We read of Suso, one of the most sweetminded of German mystics, that during thirty years he never spoke a word during dinner. During sixteen years he walked about and slept in a shirt studded with 150 sharp nails, and wore gloves with sharp blades inside. He slept on a wooden cross, his arms extended and the back pierced with thirty nails. His bedstead was an old door, his covering a thin mat of reeds, while his cloak left the feet exposed to the frost. He ate but once a day, and he avoided fish and eggs when fasting. He allowed himself so little drink that his tongue became dry and hard, and he tried to soften it with a drop from the Holy Water in Church. His friend Tauler strongly disapproved of these violent measures, and at last Suso yielded, but not before he had utterly ruined his health. He then began to write, and nothing can be sweeter and more subdued, more pure and loving than his writings. That men in such a state should see visions, is not to be wondered at. They constantly speak of them as matters perfectly well known. Even Tauler, though he warns against them, does not doubt their possibility or reality. He relates some in his own sermons, but he is fully aware of the danger of self-deceit. * Those who have to do with images and visions,' he says \ 'are much deceived, for they come often from the devil, and in our time more than ever. For truth has been revealed and discovered to us in Holy Writ, and it is not necessary

1 Carl Schmidt, Johannes Tauler on Strassburg, p. 138. M m a

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therefore that truth should be revealed to us in any other way; and he who takes truth elsewhere but from Holy Writ, is straying from the holy faith, and his life is not worth much.'

Sinlessness.

Another even greater danger was discovered by the adversaries both of the Ved&nta and of Master Eckhart's philosophy. It is not difficult to understand that human beings who had completely overcome their passions and who had no desires but to remain united with the Divine Spirit, should have been declared incapable of sin. In one sense they were. But this superiority to all temptation was soon interpreted in a new sense, namely that no sin could really touch such beiugs, and that even if they should break any human laws, their soul would not be affected by it. One sees well enough what was intended, namely that many of the distinctions between good and evil were distinctions for this world only, and that in a higher life these distinctions would vanish.

We read in the Brih. Up IV. 4, 23: ' This eternal greatness of Brahman does not grow larger by works, nor does it grow smaller. Let man try to find the trace of Brahman, for having found it, he is not sullied by any evil deed/ The BhagavadgitA also is full of this sentiment,as,for instance, V.7 : 'He who is possessed of devotion, whose self is pure, who has restrained his self, and who has controlled his senses, and who identifies his self with every being, that is, who loves his neighbour as himself, is not tainted, though he performs acts/ And then again : ' The man of devotion who knows the truth, thinks he does nothing at all

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•when he sees, hears, touches, smells, feats, moves, sleeps, breathes, talks, takes, opens or closes the eyelids; he holds that the senses only deal with the objects of the Senses. He who, casting off all attachment, performs iactions, dedicating them to Brahman, is not tainted by sin, as the lotus leaf is not soiled by water/

Tauler's utterances go often quite as far, though he tries in other places to qualify them and to render them innocuous. ' Having obtained union with God/ he says, ' a man is not only preserved from sin, and beyond the reach of temptation, but all sins which he has committed without his will, cannot pollute him ; on the contrary, they help him to purify himself/ Now it is quite true that Tauler himself often inveighs against those who called themselves the Brothers of the Free Spirit, and who maintained that no sin which they committed could touch them, yet it must be admitted that his own teaching gave a certain countenance to their extravagances.

You may remember that the Ved&ntists too allowed the possibility of men even in this life obtaining perfect freedom and union with Brahman (grtvanmukti), just as some of the mystics allowed that there was a possibility of a really poor soul, that is a soul freed from all attachments, and without anything that he could call his own, obtaining union with God even while in this mortal body. Still this ecstatic state of union with God was looked upon as an exception, and lasted for short moments only, while real beatitude could only begin in the next life, and after a complete release from the body. Hence so long as the soul is imprisoned in the body, its sinlessness could be considered as problematical only, and both

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in Germany and in India saintly hypocrisy had to be reproved and was reproved in the strongest terms.

Want of Reverence for God.

There is one more charge that has been brought against all mystics, but against the mediaeval far more than against the Indian mystics. They were accused of lowering the deity by bringing it down to the level of humanity, and even identifying the human and divine natures. Here, however, we must hear both sides, and see that they use the same language and really understand what they say. No word has so many meanings as God. If people conceive God as a kind of Jupiter, or even as a Jehovah, then the idea of a Son of God can only be considered blasphemous, as it was by the Jews, or can only be rendered palatable to the human understanding in the form of characters such as Herakles or Dionysus. So long as such ideas of the Godhead and its relation to humanity are entertained, and we know that they were entertained even by Christian theologians, it was but natural that a claim on the part of humanity to participate in the nature of the divine should have excited horror and disgust. But after the Deity had been freed from its mythological character, after the human mind, whether in India or elsewhere, had once realised the fact, that God was all in all, that there could be nothing beside God, that there could be one Infinite only, not two, the conclusion that the human Soul also belonged to God was inevitable. It was for religion to define the true relation between God and man, and you may remember from my first course of Lectures, how some high authorities haye defined all religion to be the perception of this very

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relation between God and man. Nothing can be said against this definition, if only we clearly see that this recognition of a relation between the Divine and the Human must be preceded by what I called the perception of the infinite in nature and of the infinite in man, and the final recognition of their oneness. I wish indeed that our etymological conscience allowed us to derive rdigio with Lactantius and others from religare, to re-bind or re-unite, for in that case religio would from the first have meant what it means at last, a re-uniting of the soul with God.

This re-union can take place in two ways only; either as a restoration of that original oneness which for a time was forgotten through darkness or nescience, or as an approach and surrender of the soul to God in love, without any attempt at explaining the separation of the soul from God, or its independent subsistence for a time, or its final approach to and union with God. And here it seems to me that Christianity, if properly understood, has discovered the best possible expression. Every expression in human language can of course be metaphorical only, and so is the expression of divine sonship, yet it clearly conveys what is wanted, identity of substance and difference of form. The identity of substance is clearly expressed by St. Paul when he says (Acts xvii. 28) that we live and move and have our being in God, and it is very significant that it was exactly for this, the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, that St. Paul appealed to the testimony of non-Christian prophets also, for he adds, as if to mark his own deep regard for Natural and Universal Religion,' as certain also of your own poets have said.'

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The difference in form is expressed by the very name of Son. Though the concept of Father is impossible without that of Son, and the concept of Son impossible without that of Father, yet Christ Himself, after saying. 'I and My Father are one' (St. John x. 30), adds (xiv. 28), < My Father is greater than I.' Thus the pre-eminence of the Father is secured, whether we adopt the simple language of St. John, or the philosophical terminology of Dionysius and his followers.

A much greater difficulty has been felt by some Christian theologians in fixing the oneness and yet difference between the Son of God and humanity at large. It was not thought robbery that the Son should be equal with the Father (Phil. ii. 6), but it was thought robbery to make human nature equal with that of the Son. Many were frightened by the thought that the Son of God should thus be degraded to a mere man. Is there not a blasphemy against humanity also, and is it not blasphemous to speak of a mere man. What can be the meaning of a mere man, if we once have recognised the divine essence in him, if we once believe that unless we are of God, we are nothing. If we once allow ourselves to speak of a mere man, others will soon speak of a mere God.

Surely no one was more humble than Master Eckhart and Tauler, no one showed more reverence for the Son than they who had looked so deeply into the true nature of divine sonship. But they would not allow the clear statements of the New Testament to be argued away by hair-splitting theologians. They would not accept the words of Christ except in their literal and natural sense? They quoted the

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verses: ' That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me,, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us ' (St. John xvii. 21.) And again,' The glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.' (St. John xvii. 22; see also St. John xiv. 2, 3. These words, they maintain, can have one meaning only. Nor will they allow any liberties to be taken with the clear words of St. Paul (Rom. viii. 16), ' The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together/ They protest against wrenching the sayings of St. John from their natural and manifest purpose, when he says: ' Beloved, we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is/

Many more passages to the same effect might be quoted and have been quoted. Every one of them has been deeply pondered by Eckhart and his friends, and if, it was a mere question of reverence for Christ, nowhere was greater reverence shown to Him than in the preaching of these Friends of God. But if they had surrendered their belief in the true brotherhood of Christ and man, they would have sacrificed what seemed to them the very heart of Christianity. We may make the fullest allowance for those who, from reverence for God and for Christ and from the purest motives, protest against claiming for man the full brotherhood of Christ. But when they say that the difference between Christ and mankind is one of kind, and not of degree, they know not what they do, they

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nullify the whole of Christ's teaching, and they deny the Incarnation which they pretend to teach. Let the difference of degree be as large as ever it can be between those who belong to the same kind, but to look for one or two passages in the New Testament which may possibly point to a difference in kind is surely useless against the overwhelming weight of the evidence that appeals to us from the very words of Christ. We have lately been told, for instance, that Christ never speaks of Our Father when including Himself, and that when He taught His disciples to pray, Our Father which art in heaven, He intentionally excluded Himself. This might sound plausible in a court of law, but what is it when confronted with the words of Christ: ' Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.' Was that also meant to imply that His Father was not the same as their Father, and their God not the same as His God ?

Religion, the Bridge between the Finite and the Infinite.

It was the chief object of these four courses of Lectures to prove that the yearning for union or unity with God, which we saw as the highest goal in other religions, finds its fullest recognition in Christianity, if but properly understood, that is, if but treated historically, and that it is inseparable from our belief in man's full brotherhood with Christ. However imperfect the forms may be in which that human yearning for God has found expression in different religions, it has always been the deepest spring of all religion, and the highest summit reached by Natural Religion. The different bridges that have been thrown across the.

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gulf that seems to separate earth from heaven and man from God, whether we call them Bifrost or Kiavst or Es Sirat or any other name, may be more or less crude and faulty, yet we may trust that many a faithful soul has been carried across by them to a better home. You may remember how in the Upanishads the Self had been recognised as the true bridge, the best connecting link between the soul and God, and the same idea meets us again and again in the religions and philosophies of later times. It is quite true that to speak of a bridge between man and God, even if that bridge is called the Self, is but a metaphor. But how can we speak of these things except in metaphors ? To return to God is a metaphor, to stand before the throne of God is a metaphor, to be in paradise with Christ is a metaphor.

Even those who object to the metaphor of a bridge between earth and heaven, between man and God, and who consider the highest lesson of Theosophy to be the perception of the eternal oneness of human and divine nature, must have recourse to metaphor to make their meaning clear. The metaphor which is almost universal, which we find in the Vedanta, among the Sufis, among the German Mystics, nay, even as late as the Cambridge Platonists in the seventeenth century, is that of the sun and its rays.

The sun, as they all say, is not the sun, unless it shines forth; and God is not God, unless He shines forth, unless He manifests Himself.

All the rays of the sun are of the sun, they can never be separated from it, though their oneness with the source of light may for a time be obscured by intervening darkness. All the rays of God, every soul,

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every son of God, is of God; they cannot be separated from God, though their oneness with the Divine Source may for a time be obscured by selfhood, passion, and sin.

Every ray is different from the other rays; yet there cannot be any substantial difference between them. Each soul is different from the other souls; yet there cannot be any substantial difference between them.

As soon as the intervening darkness is removed, each ray is seen to be a part of the sun, and yet apart from it and from the other rays. As soon as the intervening ignorance is removed, each soul knows itself to be a part of God, and yet apart from God and from the other souls.

No ray is lost, and though it seems to be a ray by itself, it remains for ever what it has always been, not separated from the light, nor lost in the light, but ever present in the sun. No soul is lost, and though it seems to be a soul by itself, it remains for ever what it always has been, not separated from God, not lost in God, but ever present in God.

And lastly, as from the sun there flows forth not only light, but also warmth, so from God there proceeds not only the light of knowledge, but also the warmth of love, love of the Father and love of the Son, nay love of all the sons of the eternal Father.

But is there no difference at all between the sun and the rays ? Yes, there is. The sun alone sends out its rays, and God alone sends out His souls. Causality, call it creation or emanation, belongs to God alone, not to His rays or to Hi» souls.

These are world-old metaphors, yet they remain

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ever new and true, and we meet with them once more in the speculations of the Cambridge Platonists. Thus Henry More says:

'I came from God, am an immortal ray Of God; O joy! and back to God shall go/

Again:

'Hence the sours nature we may plainly see, A beam it is of th' Intellectual Sun,

A ray indeed of that Aeternity; But such a ray as when it first outshone, From a free light its shining date begun/

I hope I have thus carried out the simple plan of my Lectures, as I laid it down from the first. My first course was meant as an introduction, fixing the historical standpoint from which religions should be studied, and giving certain definitions on which there ought to be no misunderstanding between teachers and hearers. Then taking a survey of the enormous mass of religious thought that lies before the eyes of the historian in chaotic confusion, I tried to show that there were in it two principal currents, one representing the search after something more than finite or phenomenal in nature, which I called Physical Religion, the other representing the search after something more than finite or phenomenal in the soul of man, Anthropological Religion. In this my last course, it has been my chief endeavour to show how these two currents always strive to meet and do meet in the end in what has been called Theosophy or Psychological Religion, helping us to the perception of the essential unity of the soul with God. Both this striving to meet and the final union have found, I think, their most perfect expression in Christianity. The striving of the soul to meet God is expressed in

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542 LECTURE XV.

the Love of God, on which hang all the Laws and the Prophets; the final union is expressed in our being, in the true sense of the word, the sons of God. That sonship may be obtained by different ways, by none so truly as what Master Eckhart called the surrender of our will to the Will of God. You may remember how this was the very definition which your own revered Principal has given of the true meaning of religion; and if the true meaning of religion is the highest purpose of religion, you will see how, after a toilsome journey, the historian of religion arrives in the end at the same summit which the philosopher of religion has chosen from the first as his own.

In conclusion I must once more thank the Principal and the Senate of this University for the honour they have done me in electing me twice to this important office of Gifford Lecturer, and for having given me an opportunity of putting together the last results of my life-long studies in the religions and philosophies of the world. I know full well that some of these results have given pain to some learned theologians. Still I believe it would have given them far greater pain if they had suspected me of any want of sincerity, whether in keeping back any of the facts which a study of the Sacred Books of the World has brought to light, or in hiding the convictions to which these facts have irresistibly led me.

There are different ways in which we can show true faith and real reverence for religion. Wbat would you say, if you saw a strong and powerful oak-tree, enclosed by tiny props to keep it from falling, made hideous by scarecrows to drive away the birds, or

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CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 54&
shielded by flimsy screens to protect it from the air and the light of heaven ? Would you not feel that it was an indignity to the giant of the forest? Would you not feel called upon to pull out the tiny props, and let the oak face the gales, and after every gale cling more strongly to the earth, and send its roots more deeply into the rock beneath ? Would you not throw away the scarecrows and let the birds build their nests on its strong branches ? Would you not feel moved to tear off the screens, and let the wind of heaven shake its branches, and the light from heaven warm and brighten its dark foliage? This is what I feel about religion, yea about the Christian religion, if but properly understood. It does not want these tiny props or those hideous scarecrows or useless apologies. If they ever were wanted, they are not wanted now, whether you call them physical miracles, or literal inspiration, or Papal infallibility; they are now an affront, a dishonour to the majesty of truth. I do not believe in human infallibility, least of all, in Papal infallibility. I do not believe in professorial infallibility, least of all in that of your Gifford lecturer. We are all fallible, and we are fallible either in our facts, or in the deductions which we draw from them. If therefore any of my learned critics will tell me which of my facts are wrong, or which of my conclusions faulty, let me assure them, that though I am now a very old Professor, I shall always count those among my best friends who will not mind the trouble of supplying me with new facts, or of pointing out where facts have been wrongly stated by me, or who will correct any arguments that may seem to them to offend against the sacred laws of logic.

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544

STATIONS OF THE JOURNEY AFTER

Brth.Ar.Up.

JTAand. Up.

JTAand. Up.

Kaushtt. Up.

Taltt. Up.

VI. 2,18.

V. 10,1.

IV. 15, 5.

1.2.

1.6.

arftis

arifcis

artts

Aandramas

agnlA

ahar

ahar

ahar

aparapakshaA

vayuA

apuryamanaA

aporyamanaA

apftryamanaA

vrtshtiA

adityaA

pakshaA

pakshaA

pakshaA

brahma

shanmasaA

shanmasaA

shanmasaA

(praty&payate)

(udak)

(udak)

(udak)

devalokaA

samvatsaraA

samvatsaraA

——

adityaA

adityaA

adityaA

Aandramas

vaidyutam

ftandramas

Aandramas

devayftnaA

purosho * mana*

vidyut

vidyut

agnilokaA

vaA

brahmalokaA

purosho sm&navaA

purosho xmana* vaA

vayulokaA

(na punar avrtt

brahma

brahma (devapa

varunalokaA

m)

thaA)

(na punar avrtt

indralokaA

dhumaA

dhuniaA

M)

pnv/apatilokaA

ritriA

ratriA

brabmalokaA

apakshlyamanaA

aparapakBhaA

pakshaA

than masaA (dak.

shanmasaA

shinft)

(daksh.)

pitrOokaA

pitrtlokaA

JcandraA

ak&nA

tumnm

ftandramas (SomaA)

ftktaA

annum

v&yuA

ftk&raA

rnshrtA

v&yuA

■nnflrn

dhumaA

purushaA, yosha

abhram

*c.

meghaA vrtshflA vrlhiyaraA an nam 4ro.

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545

DEATH ACCORDING TO THE UPANISHADS.

>r»*h.Ar.Up.

PramaUp.

Khtkod.\Jp.

Mund. Up.

Kh&nd. Up.

Maitr. Brfth.

V. 10,1.

1.9.

vra. IS.

I. 2,11.

VIII. 6, 6.

Up. VI. 80.

vayuA

fcandramas

sy&rnaA (moon)

sAiyadvaram

rannayaA

uttarayanaA,

ftditya*

(punar AvartaA)

tabalaa (son)

puruaho * mrttaA

ftdityaA (lo

brahmapathaA

AandraA

adityaA

brahmalokaa

kadvaram)

stishumna

Jok&A

(na pnnar avartaft)

sauram dvftram brahmalokaA para gatiA

(*)

Nu

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ABD AL RAZZAK, page 344. Abel, 376.

Abelard and St. Bernard, 492. Abraham, as only son of God, 366, 409.

— allegorical meaning of, 376.

— and Isaac, 378.

Absolute, absorption in the, 427.

— Being, one, 314. Abstract noons, 78. Abu Jafir Attavari, 38.

Abu Said Abul Cheir, founder of

Snfiism, 343. Abu Yasld and Junaid, 344. Academy, the, 384. Accadian prayer, 14. Achaemenian inscriptions, 44. Acta Archelai, 441. Activity, acts of, 162. Adam, the son of God, 366.

— explained by Philo, 376. Adam's rib, Philo's interpretation
of, 376. Adams, 86,119. Adevism, 295. Adhyayas, 98. Aditi, sons of, 17.

— man restored to, by Agni, 140. Aditya, 17.

Adjectives, 78.

Adrasteia, 64 ».

Adrian I, 465.

Adyton of the soul, 428.

Aelian, 145 n.

Aeon, meaning of, 473 n.

Aeons of Valentinian, 473 n.

Aeshm, 201-202.

Afrlng&n, the three, 43.

N

Agni, 50, 121, 130, 135, 192, 234^

335

— real purpose of the biography of,

5, *, 8.

— as fire, 29.

— the visible and invisible, 154. AgnHoka, the world of Agni, 116. Agnosia, universal, 321. Agnostic, modern, and the Hindus,

320-321. Aham, ego, 248-249. Ahana, 178. Ahl alyakyn, 344. Ahmi yat ahmi, 52, 187 n.

— Zend = asmi, Sk., 55 n. Ahriman, in the Gat has, 45.

— word not known to early Greek
writers, 45.

— known to late Greek and Roman
writers, 45.

— and Ormazd, 183.

not mentioned as opponents
by Darius, 183.

— his council of six, 186. Ahura, 18,19, 20.

— names of, 54, 55.

— Zarathushtra*s talk with, 54, 55. Ahura Mazda, 18, 52,180,181,183,

188, 189, 203.

as the Supreme Being, 51.

the living God, 53.

givesthe soul the food destined
for the good, 116 n.

his discourse on guardian angels, 205-207.

acts by the Fravashis, 206.

Airyaman, Vedic Aryaman, 182.

Aitutakian heaven, 228, 229.

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548

INDEX,

Akaanga, 229, 230.

Ak&a, ether, 300.

Akem mand, 186.

Al Aaraf, 173.

Albertus Magnus, 466, 504.

Albigenses, 503.

— called Kathari, 504. Alexander, 45, 69.

— destroyed some of the sacred

MSS. of the Persians, 38.

— had the Zend A vesta translated
into Greek, 39. Alexandria, contract between Aryan and Semitic thought at, ix.

— Jewish school of, and its influ
ence on Christianity, 371, 374.

— the meeting-place of Jewish and

Greek thought, 399. of Jewish and Christian faith,

399Alexandrian Christianity, St. Clement, 433.

— Jews and Greek religion, 82. Allah, the God of Power, 347, 349,

35<5. Allegorical interpretations, 377. Alogoi, the, 452.

— denied the Logos, 453.

— opposed the Fourth Gospel, 453. Alphabetic writing, 31. Amalrich, 515.

Ambrosius, 434.

Amelius, 429.

Ameretad (Amardad), immortality, 186.

Ameret&t, 49.

American, English, and Irish customs, 62.

Ameshaspentas of the A vesta, 186, 188, 203.

Amitau^as, throne, 121, 123, 124.

— its feet and sides and furniture,
i*3Amnion, 14. Amoureux, French, and amourou,

Mandshu, 60. Amphiboly, 416 n. Amrtta, 79. Anaclet II, Antipope, 492.

An&bita, 206. Analogical method, vii.

— treatment, 322. Ananda, blessedness, 94. Anastasius, librarian, 466. Anaxagoras, 377, 380, 384, 389,

410, 430. Anaximander, Infinite of, 400. Ancient Prayers, 12.

— books lost, 57.

— religions and philosophies, how
to compare, 58. Angel of Jehovah, 405.

— wrestling with Jacob, 405. Angels, qualities of Ormazd, 185.

— of O. T. and the Ameshaspentas
of the Avesta, 187.

— Philo called the Logoi, 401, 406,

413.

— a Jewish conception, 405.

— roots of the, 405.

— of Origen, 451, 473.

— hierarchies of, 406, 469, 473,

478.

— spoken of as Gods, 471.

— St. Augustine on, 472,

— in happiness, 475.

— modern belief in, chiefly derived
from Dionysius, 476.

Angrd Mainyu or Ahriman, 45,183, 184, 185, 203.

Animal bodies, human souls migrating into, 217, 225, 231.

moral grounds of this belief,

217, 218.

Animism, 152,156.

— not connected with Metempsy
chosis, 153. Annihilation, not known in the Rig
veda, 166. &v6paroSy 361. Antaryamin, 315. Anthropological religion, 89,90,106,

160, 541. Anthropology, 61. Anthropomorphism, 153. &y0fxvwos 0cot7, 415. Antioch, Synod of, 412. Anumana, deduction, 102, 293.

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543

Apar&grita, 122.

Apeiron, formless matter, 395, 400.

Aphrodite, 63, 76.

&ir\oMTis, 482.

Apocryphal books of New Testament, 35.

&woios, 437.

Apologetes, the early, ziii, 455.

Apollo, 235.

Apollon, 64 n.

&w6<rwa0fiat 420, 423.

dvoOtaxris, 482.

Approach to God, 524.

Apsaras, 121, 122, 163, 199.

Apoleiu8 on Daimones, 470.

Apurva, 306.

Ara, lake, 121, 122, 124.

from ari, enemy, 142.

Arabic, translations of Greek books into, 324.

Archangels, 475.

d/>x«€/>€wj, 415.

Archimedes, 70.

Areimanios, 45.

Arif, name for Sufis, 344.

Aristides on Jupiter, 11.

Aristokles, 83.

Aristokrates, son of Hipparchus, 83.

Aristotle, 85,102,372,380,384,395, 430. 5", 521.

— knew the word Areimanios, 45.

— Zeus of, 395.

the Prime Mover of, 395, 397.

— his transcendent Godhead, 396. Aristoxenos, 83,84.

Armaiti, Aramati, 182, 186. Arnold of Brescia, 492. Artakshatar, (Ardeshlr), 40. Article, the, 78. 'Aruf or Marifat, 348. Aryan separation, 72.

— religion and mythology, common,

72-74.

— nations, 74.

— civilisation, 74.

— atmosphere in Indian and Greek
philosophies, 77.

— words, common, 78, 79. Asar-muLa-dagy 14.

Asat, 96.

Ascetic school, 530.

— practices, 326. Ascetics, Sk. name for, 527 n.

— visions of, 528.

— fraud among, 528.

— Indian, 528.

— sinlessness, 532. Asceticism of the Sufis, 345.

— excessive, 526.

— dangers of, 527, 534. A see, the As-bru, 169. Asha, righteousness, 44.

— vahishta, 186.

Asmodeus, Aeshma dadva in Tobit,

187.

— proves intercourse between Jews
and Persians, 187. Asraya, abode of the soul, 306. Asti, !<tti, est, ist, 78. Astdvldai, 201, 202. Astral body, 306. A8U, breath, Sk., 53, 248. Asura Varuna or Ahura Mazda, 49. Asura, and as, to be, Sanskrit, 53.

— from asu, 181.

— and Deva, 181.

— bad sense of, 181.

— highest deity in the Avesta, 181. Asuras, change of meaning of, 187.

— and Suras, 187. fights between, 188.

— non-gods, 188.

— opponents of the Devas, 250, 251. A tar, fire, 180.

Athanasius on oneness with God,

333.

— on the Logos made man, 421.

— a man of classical learning, 434.

— Dionysius unknown to, 463. Atharva-veda, 138, 140.

— Hell known in the, 167. Atharvan, 65. Atheism, 295.

Athem, Odem, 249. Athenagoras on the Son of God, ziii.

— Greek philosopher, 436, 451.

— on the Logos, 437.

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550

INDEX.

Athenians and Atlantidae, myth of,

8a. Atin, chiefs of, mourning for the
dead, 327. Atman, 248, 249, 250, 257, 272.

— and Brahman one, 94, 308.

— the Self, 155, 249, 363, 364. «— the true bridge, 167.

— A. S. retfm, O. H.G. adum, 249.

— most abstract name for the divine
in man, 249.

— its relation to Brahman, 263.

— unchanged amid the changes of
the worldj 272.

— Highest, 291.

— not lost in Brahman, 310.

— oneness with Brahman, 330. Attar, 345.

Attic Moses, name for Plato, 342,

, 4*5

Aturpad, the high priest, author or finisher of the Dlnkarci, 40,

41. Augustinus, 434. AuharmaoZ, first thought of, 56. avr6s, 249.

Avaiki, the spirit world, 228, 229. Avesta, 35, 36.

— the small, 43.

— and O. T., relation between, 47.

— on the soul entering Paradise,

115 n.

— religion of, misrepresented, 179.

— and Veda, names shared in com
mon by, 182.

— dualism of, 185.

— immortality of the soul in the,

190.

— and Veda, common background
of, 203. A vesta-Zend, difficult, 179. Avestic prayer, 18.

— language continued to be long
understood, 47.

— religion a mixture, 183.

— a secondary stage from the Vedic
religion, 189.

— religion, ethical, 190. Avicenna, 509.

Avidya or Nescience, 292, 298, 302, 314-316, 319, 320-321.

— called Maya, 303.

— &ankara's view of, 318.

— to know it is the highest wisdom,

318.

BABYLONIAN prayer, 15.

— religion, works on, 109. Bactria, Buddhists in, 46, 46 n. Badarayaita, 99, 100, 101, 116 «.,

306.

— early authorities quoted by, 100,
loon.

— on the soul after death, 116,1 i6n. Bad souls become animals, 156. Bayaffrava, 182.

Balavarman, 135.

Baptised, Communicants, Monks,

477. Baptism of Christ, 442,443.

— Eucharist, and Chrism, 477. Baptismal formula, 436. Baresman, Barsom, 240. Barn, root, 242.

Barnabas, 454. Barrow on Love, 351-353. Basil, 434. Basilides, 396.

— his non-existent God, 396. Bastholm, 75.

Bastian, 75.

Beatific visions, 527, 528.

Beautiful, the, in the soul, 433.

— the, the True, the Divine, 433. Beauty, in the Phaedrus, 343. Beginning, the, different accounts
o£ in the Upanishads, 96. Behisttin, 182.

Behram and Behram Yasht, 182. Bellerophon, 64 n. Berchtold of Regensburg, 502, 503.

— his sermons and vision, 502. Beeeelung, animism, 152. Beyond, an invisible, vii.

— the, 168, 361. Bhadrapada, 145. Bhaga, solar deity, 182. Bh&gavata, the, 354.

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INDEX.

551

Bhedabhedav&da and Satyabheda
vada, 275, 276. Bhikshu, 325, 330. Bible, Jews and Christiana ashamed
of their, 375.

— a forbidden book, 479.

— early German translations of, 503.

learnt by heart, 504.

Bifrost, the bridge, 168,174, 539.

— only three colours in, 171. Bigg, Dr., xv, 90 »., 374 »•. 375 *•>

379 »-> 381 »., 390 n„ 40a n., 407 n., 436 n., 438 n., 449 n^

473 »•

— on Clement's idea of Christ, 444.

— on Origen, 458.

Bigot, derivation of, 507, 508. Birth of the Son in the soul, 516,

5*4Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, 477.

Black Death, 501.

Blood, community of, 61.

Bloomfield, iaon.

Bodh&yana, 100, 101, 313.

Body, the subtle and coarse, 296,

306.

— antagonistic to the soul, 527.

— subjection of, 527. Boehtlingk, 1 iot 115 n.,i 16 n., 117 ».,
n8n., 120 n., 128 ».

Bog, Slavonic God, 182.

Bohlen, 85.

Bonaventuraj 499, 505, 525.

Boniface, viii, 509.

Bonn, home of Eckhart, 509.

Book-writing, date of, 31.

Bopp, 73.

Borrowing of ideas and names among ancient nations, 58.

Brahma&arya, 119, 129.

Brahma-sutras, 98.

world, 119, 120.

Brahma the highest order of goodness, 164.

Brahman, 105-108, 155, 247, 249, 308.

— and Atman, one, 94.

— the Self, 99.

— as the True, 115, 115 ».

Brahman,world of, 121,126,129-130.

— and the departed, dialogue be
tween, 159.

— and Ahuramazda, arrival of the
soul before, 203.

— neuter, name for the highest

Godhead, 240, 241, 244, 248.

— derivation of, 240.

— and brthat, 242 ».

— means Veda, 240, 242.

— various meanings of, 240, 241.

— Vishnu and &va, 241.

— neut. changed to brahman mas.,

H*> 343.

— as word, 242.

— change of meaning, 242.

— and brahman, 243.

— as neut. followed by masc. forms,

^43

— caste, 247.

— identity of the soul with, 272,

282, 283.

— and the individual soul, 275.

— approach of the soul to, 277,278,

279.

— later speculations on, 278.

— the Real, 279.

— neuter, essence of all things, 279.

— nothing besides, 280.

— All in All, 280.

— being perfect the soul is so, 280.

— masculine and neuter, 283, 330,

517.

— the whole world is, 286.

— modified personal, 290, 291, 292.

— the Highest, 290, 291, 293.

— Sutras on, 291.

— is everything, 292.

— Indian sage asked to describe,

293.

— as sat* as &it, as ananda, 293.

— always subjective, 294.

— how men should believe in, 295.

— the world, emanation from, 295.

— presents itself as the world, 299.

— or the Infinite, everywhere, 304.

— we are, 294, 302.

— and Avidva the cause of the phe
nomenal world, 303.

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552

INDEX,

Brahman, is nothing and everything, 313, 314.

— R&m&nu^a's teaching about, 315.

— &inkara's teaching about, 315.

— the Atman not lost in, 310.

— one, 311.

— Higher and Lower, 316, 317.

— is what really exists, 317. Brahmaaas, 156, 370.

— do not harmonise with the Upa
nishads, 141. Brahmanas, priests appropriating sacrificial property, 162.

— transmigration of, 163. Brahmanists and Buddhists, voluminous literature of, 179.

Brahmans mentioned by Eusebius,

46 n. Bridge to another life, the, 167,177.

— called Setus in the Mah&bharata, ^167.

— Atman the true, 167 n.

— among North-American Indians,

168.

— among the Mohammedans, 172.

— adopted by the Jews in Pei-sia,

173. <— among the Todas, 173. not known in the Talmud, 174.

— known to peasants of Nievre,

*75^- of the A vesta and of the Upanishads, 194.

— between earth and heaven, 209.

— between God and man, 470, 539. Brig o' Dread, 174.

— not same as Bifrost, 174.

— from crusaders, 175. Brthad-aranyaka, 114,117,118,125,

171, 277. Brihas-pati, Brahmanas-pati, Vft&as
pati, 242. Brothers of the free spirit, 533. Bua tree, 229, 230. Buddha left no MSS., 32.

— silence of, on the soul after death,

333.

— the, 363.

— opposed excessive asceticism, 5 29.

Buddhism, no objective Deity in,

363.

— and Christianity, startling coin
cidences, 369. Buddhist Bhikshus, 369. Buddhists, prayer unknown to the,

12.

— in Bactria, 46. By water, 364 n.

CAIN, 376.

Cambridge Platonists, 323,539,541.

likeness to the Upanishads
and Vedantists, 321. Canis Major and Minor, the Dogs of

Hell, 146. Carpenter, J. Estlin, 35 n. Castes, earliest reference to the four,

247. Causality, belongs to God alone,

541. Celsus, 372,375,409, 452,455,471.

— Origen's reply to, 456.

— on the Logos, 438.

— on Daimones, 471. Ceremonial, 87.

—- in the Veda, 88.

Chariot, myth of, in the Phaedrus,

211. Charioteer and horses, 211.

— in Plato, and in the Upanishads,

211. Charis, wife of Hephaistos, 76, 80. Charites«Haritas, 76, 177. Charlemagne, commands the Bishops
to preach in the popular Ian*
guage, 500 n. Charles the Bald, 466.

— the Great, 465.

Charlotte Islands, Rev. C. Harrison
on, 222. Cherubim, Philo on the, 377.

— Dionysius on the, 475. Cheyne, Prof., 48.

Chief Cloud or Chief Death, 223,224, 225.

of Light, 223.

Chiliasts, 453.

China, Sanskrit words in, 368.

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Index.

553

Chinese prayer, 20.

— inscription on heaven and men,

365 nChrist, as the Logos or Word, xi, xiii.

— and His brethren, difference in
kind, not degree, xiii.

— religion of, blending the East
and West, 416.

— and His brethren, difference be
tween, 456.

— divinity of, 457.

— Dionysius* view of, 468.

— the chief lesson of the life of,

489.

— called the first man, 519.

— His birth in the soul, 530.

— as the Word of the Father,

520. difference between, oneof kind,
not of degree, 538. Christian theology as distinct from

Christian religion, xiii.

— and other religions, true object
of comparing, 8.

— advocate, 26.

— doctrines borrowed from Greece,

59.

— Register, writer in, on the Infi
nite, 361 n.

— doctrine, the perfection of Greek
philosophy, 450.

— expression for the re-union of the
soul with God, 535.

— religion, needs no props or scare
crows, 543.

— Mystics, their resemblance to the

Vedantists and Eleatic philosophers, 483. andNeo-Platonistsonthesoul,

483.

Tholuck on, 485.

their belief, 486, 487.

do not ignore morality, 486.

Dionysius looked on as their
founder, 488.

Father and Son of the, 512.

Christianity, a synthesis of Aryan
and Semitic thought, ix, 447.

Christianity, faith in, raised by a comparative study of religions,

— the best of all religions, 26.

— and Islam, real antecedents of,
little known, 27.

— early, its connection withSufiism,

343. mention of, in the Gulshen

Ras, 343. Oriental influences in, 366,

367, 368.

— Sufiism and the Vedanta-philo
sophy, coincidences between,

— and Buddhism, startling coinci
dences, 369.

— influenced by the Jewish school
of Alexandria, 371.

— in Alexandria, 434.

— different from that of Judea, 434.

— Theosophy in, 446.

— must be weighed against other
religions, 447.

— unhistorical, 448.

— truly historical, 448.

— why it triumphed, 454-455.

— built upon the Logos, 521.

— yearning for union with God,
finds its highest expression in,

539» 54a. Chryuostom, 434. Cicero, 112, 509. Cicero on the Zeus of Xenophanes,

331. Clarke, Lieut. - Col. Wilberforce,

338 n. Cleanthes, 460. Clement of Alexandria, 82, 370,

451

— on Gentiles borrowing from the

Bible, 58, 59.

— did not borrow from the East,

369.

— did not accept physical impossi
bilities as miracles, 376.

— on the Logos, 407.

— called Gnostic and Mystic, 445.

— on the soul, 446.

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554

INDEX*

Clement of Alexandria, denies all secret doctrines in the Church, 482.

Clements, the two, 454.

Clergy in the fifth century, 480.

Coat of Christ, 408, 408 n.

Concepts or ideas, 385.

— learnt by sensuous perception,

385. Conductors, 134. Confession, Tauler on, 530. Confucians believe in prayer, ia. Confucius, on love to our neighbour,

9Constantinople, conference of, 463. Contradictions in Sacred Books,

136. Cornill, 53. Corpus, kehrp, 79. Cosmic vortex, 150.

how to escape, 150.

Cosmos, God thinking and littering
the, 38a. Couvade, the, 60, 61. Cow sacrificed at funeral ceremonies,

170. Creation or emanation, 396, 514.

— Upani8had8 on, 397.

— out of nothing, 297.

— like a spider's web, 297.

— like hairs growing from the skull,

— to the Vedantist, 300.

— problem of, 362.

— through the Logos, 417.

— JEckhart admits two, 515. Credidi, 79.

Cronius, 144.

Crusaders and the Brig o' Dread,

175. Cusanu8, Cardinal, 421 n., 506.

— his Docta Ignorantia, 271. Cyprian, 434.

Cyrus, 45.

DADU, 31.

Daehne, 367.

Daeva-worship, abjuration of, 188.

Daevas, 44.

Dah, the root, 178. Dahana, Daphne, 178. Daimones, 305, 469-471.

— departed souls of good men,

470.

— Celsus on, 471.

— Plutarch on, 472. Daityas, 164. Daphne, Dahana, 178.

Darai preserved copies of the A vesta
and Zend, 38. Darius, 69.

— inscriptions of, 45. • Darkness, acts of, 163.

— and poison, personifications of,

186. Darmesteter, Professor, 40, 41,44».,

55, 17* »•

— on late use of Avestic, 47. Darwlsb, 344, 345. Dasein and sein, 302. David of Augsburg, 502. Dawn, legend of the, 178.

Dead, mourning for, in the Harvey

Islands, 227. Death, return of soul to God after,

92.

— journey of the soul after, 113-115,

116-117, 143.

passages from the Upanishads,

114 etteq,

— rewards and punishments after,

105. Zarathushtra questions Ahura
mazda on, 195-199.

— ' going into night,' 228. De Imitatione, 457.

Deity, in Buddhism no objective,

363.

— in Judaism, 364.

— in Greece and Borne, 364.

— at Alexandria', biune not triune,

440* Demiurge, 440. Demiurgos, 417. Demokritus, 82, 84, 377. DeniHe*, his article on £ckhart,509 n.,

511, 512 n., 525. Departed, abode of the, 140.

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555

Departed, raised to the rank of gods, 307.

— Herbert Spencer's view on this,

307, Depth or silence, 0vO6$t 411. Descartes, 102,51a. Desire, free from, 310. Deussen, 99, 99 n., no, 113 n.,

129 n., 240 n. Deva, not dens, 73.

— in the Veda and Avesta, 181.

— bright beings, 181.

— evil spirit in the Avesta, 181.

— modern Persian dlv, 181. Devaloka, 125, 146. Devas, 49, 154, 250, 251.

— souls eaten by the, 146,147,148.

— gods, became Daevas, evil spirits,

188, 189. Devayana, path of the gods, 117,

«5» 130, 151. *77

— or Milky Way, 171.

— or rainbow, 171.

Devil of the Old Testament, belief in a, 186.

— was it borrowed from the Per
sians? 186. Dialogue between Brahman and the departed, 159.

— on the Self; 250-256.

deductions from, 260.

&ankara's remarks on, 261.

— from the iftandogya-Upanishad,

285. Different roads of the soul, 127. Dillmann, 53. DlnkartZ, the, 38, 40.

— finished by Aturpad, 41.

— account of the Zoroastrian reli
gion in, 42.

— when begun and finished, 42.

— translated in Sacred Books, by

West, 42, 47. Diodorus Siculus and his appeal to
books in Egypt, 82. Diogenes Laertius, 38. Dionysius the Areopagite, 164,165,
a97» 43o, 4fat 462, 499» 5°5»

5°9, 5J4» 5i 7» 534

Dionysius, little original in his writings, 463, 468, 478 a.

— writings of, 463, 467.

— his life, 463-464, 467.

— his book a fiction, 464.

— a Neo-Platonist, 464, 467.

— his book accepted as genuine by

Eastern and Western Churches, 465-466.

— identified with St. Denis, 465,

466.

— translation by Scotus Erigena,

465, 466.

— influence of his writings, 467. why so popular, 467,468, 474,

478.

— on the Hebrew race, 468.

— on Christ, 468.

— sources of, 468.

— God as To dV, 468.

— love within God, 469.

— hierarchies of angels, 469.

— influence of, during the Middle

Ages, 474, 479, 482.

— system of, 474.

— his three triads or nine divisions
of angels, 475.

— work of his Trinity, 476.

— belief in angels, chiefly derived
from, 476.

— Milinan on, 476, 477.

— his celestial hierarchy reflected
on earth, 477.

— real attraction of, 478.

— his mystic union, 479, 480,

482.

— mysticism of, not orthodox,

484.

— looked on as the founder of the

Christian mystics, 488. Dionysos, worship of, came from

Egypt, 81. Dlrghatamas, 140. Disraeli, on religion, 336. Dlv, Devas, 181. Divine name, meaning in every,

— and human, knowledge of the
unity of, 93.

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556

INDEX.

Divine son ship, 94.

lost by sin, 94.

by nescience, 94.

— in man, 250.

— spirit of Philo, 419. in the prophets, 420.

— Logos in Christ, 421. dwelling in us, 425.

— ground of Eckhart, 516, 517. like the neutral Brahman,

517.

is oneness, 520.

the soul founded on, 523.

Divinity of Christ, 457.

Docetae, the, 457.

Docta ignorantia of Cardinal Cusa
nus, 271. Doctrines borrowed by the Jews
from the Zoroastrians, 47.

— Professor Chevne on, 48. Dogs passed by the departed, 138. Dominations, 475. Dominicans, the, 501, 502, 503,

504, 505.

— Eckhart, provincial of, 509. M(a, 417 ».

Dramuia or Dravitia, 100. Dreams gave the first idea of soul,
aSPDriver, Dr., 53. Drnmmond, Dr. J., 378 «., 379 «.,

382 «., 402 n., 412 ft., 413 11.

— on the Logos, 404.

Dualism, not taught by Zoroaster, 180.

— of the Avesta, 185-186.

— replaces the original Monotheism,

186.

— no sign of, in the Veda, 187. Durga, worship of, 376.

EARLY Christian view of the soul,

94.

language, Greek or Jewish?

368.

philosophers taunted with borrowing from Greek, 415.

the taunt returned, 415.

Earthly love to the Sufis, 351.

East, Greek philosophy borrowed
from the, 80. East, not West, the place of the
blessed, 139.

— and West blended in Christianity,

416.

Eastern religions, ignorant commentators on, 180.

Ebionites, 436.

Eckhart, Master, 90, 297, 457,4621

5o6> 543.

— suspected of heresy, 506, 508 ^

509.

— powerful sermons, 506.

— follows St. John, 507.

— appeals to pagan masters, 507,

509.

— assertion of truth, 507.

— never appeals to miracles, 508.

— appeals to the Fathers, 509.

— his scholastic training, 509 ft.

— studied at Paris, 509.

— lived at Bonn, 509.

— his character, 510.

— Schopenhauer on, 511.

— his mysticism, 511, 512.

— difficulty of his language, 511.

— Upanishads a good preparation
for, 511.

— his definition of the Deity, 512

5X3.

— follows Plato and the Stoics, 513.

— uses Alexandrian language, 513.

— called a Pantheist, 514.

— on creation as emanation, 514,

518.

— on the soul, 515, 516.

— his Divine ground, 516, 517.

— how to understand, 517.

— a Neo-Platonist, 518.

— Logos or Word, as the Son of

God, 518.

— Christ the ideal Son of God, 518.

— his view of Christ as the Word,

5*9

— nses the legendary traditions as
allegories, 520.

— his view of Christ's birth in the
soul, 520, 524.

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Google

INDEX.

557

Eckhart, Master, relation of the soul to God, 534.

— like the Ved&ntute and the Neo

Platonists, 525.

— passages in the Fourth Gospel
cited by, 525.

— his holy life, 526.

— stillness and silence commended
by, 5*9

— discouraged extreme penance,

529

— led an active life, 529.

— on the true brotherhood of Christ
and man, 536, 537. Ecstasis of St. Bernard, 490. . Ecstatic intuition, 433. Eden, lady of, 14. Ego, the, 248, 249,304.

— the being behind every, 105.

— what is it, 257, 264.

Egypt, influence of, on Greece, 8182.

— famous Greeks who studied in,

82.

— Pythagoras in, 84. Egyptian prayer, 13.

— religion, works on, 109. Ehyeh and Jehovah, Heb., 53. c75os, or species, 386.

tltcwv $eov, 415. Eileithyias, 63 n. Ekadesa, ekadesin, 129 n. Ekam sat, 237. Eleatic argument, 323.

— view of the Infinite, 93.

— monism, 93.

— philosophers, 69, 77, 106-107,

*7<>, 33Q» 335. 336, 468.

— German Mystics and Vedantists,

280.

— like the earlier Upanishads, 334.

— metaphysical problems, 335. 'EUsha and Elysion, 63. 4j\v$, 64.

Elysion, 63, 63 n., 64. Emanation, never condemned, 296.

— upheld by many, 297.

— stages of, 300.

Embryo, whence it comes, 301.

Emerson on Sufi language, 349. Empedokles, 85.

— and his soul, 433. Endless lights, 198.

— darkness, 199. Endymion, 64 n. Energism, 153. Enneads of Plato, 165. Enos, 376.

Eos, dawn, 29. Una, 93. Epicier, species, 74. Epictetas quoted, 10. Epiphanius, 453 n. Er, story of, 218.

— before the three Fates, 219. Eridu, lord of, 14. Erinnys, dawn, 29.

E-SagU, palace of the gods, 16.

Eschatological legends, general similarities in, 177.

Esoteric doctrines, 327.

a modem invention, 327.

'Esse est Deus,' Eckhart, 512.

Es-Sirat, the bridge of, 173, 539.

reached Mohammed through
the Jews, 200.

Eternal light behind the veil, 319.

Ethical origin of. metempsychosis,

I53> 154

— character of the A vesta, 190,

199.

— teaching not found in the Upani
shads, 190, 199. Ethics, 87. Euripides on the working of the
gods, 3. Europe, 64 n. Eusebius, 83, 450 n.

— mentions Brahmans, 46 n. Eve, Philo on the creation of, 379. Evil spirit not found in the early
part of the A vesta, 51.

— problem of the origin of, 184. — Zarathushtra tried to solve it,

184.

— no real good without possible,

185.

— existence of, 307.

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558

INDEX.

Evolution in the Upanishads, 397.

— held by Ramanu^a, 298, 317.

FAITH, different degrees of, 493,

494. Fakirs, 344, 345. Father, God as the, 417.

— pre-eminence of the, 536. Father and Son, 512, 536.

the Holy Ghost the bond between, 513.

simple meaning of, 53a.

Fathers, world of the, 119; path of the, 117, 148, 169, 170, 277, 308.

— — earliest conception of life after
death, 125.

faith in, given up, 183.

Fathers of the Church, men of Greek culture, 434*

Ferid eddln Attar, 344.

Feridun and the fire-temple of Baikend, 32.

Few, the, not the many, who influence nations, 69.

Fick, 64 n.

Fifth century, 478, 500.

— state of the laity, 479.

— Bible, unknown to laity, 479.

— the clergy, 479.

— no true religion, 480.

Fins, borrowed from Scandinavians, 62.

Firdusi, language of, 37.

Fire-worship, not taught by Zoroaster, 180.

Fire and sparks, 275.

— air, water, and earth, 287, 287 n. First person, the Father, 437.

— man, Christ called, 519. Fitsgerald, 358.

Five elements and five senses, 300.

— stages of mystic union, 480. Flaccus, Plotinus' letter to, 430. Flames burning the wicked, 171,172. Flaming sword and Reason, 378. Fleet, 99in.

Forest, life in the, 326.

— in each man's heart, 493.

Forgetfillness, desert plain of, 220,

221. Four states of the soul, 307, 308.

— stages of the Sufi, 348. Fourteenth century in Germany,

500. Fourth Gospel, 372, 384, 451, 521,

5^3.

— use of Logos in, 404.

— ideal son in, 409.

— use of Monogenee, 411, 413.

— whence the author got the idea
of the Logos, 414.

— in touch with Greek and Judaeo

• Alexandrine ideas, 415.

— Greek thought and words in
first chapter, 415, 416.

— opposed by the Alogoi, 453.

— attributed to Cerinthus, 454.

— passages from, appealed to by

Eckhart, 525. Franciscans, the, 501, 502, 503, 504,

505. Fraud among ascetics, 528. Fravardin Yasht, 205. Fravashis or Manes, 145.

— or Fravardin, 205, 206.

— wider meaning of, 205.

— the genius of anything, 205. Frazlshtd, 201. Freemasons, 320.

Friends of God, 503. Fundamental principle of the historical school, 2. Funeral pile, 114. rising from, 115.

GAH, the five, ^3. Gaimini, 99, 300.

Galton's combined photographs, 385. Gandharvas, 163.

Gaotama mentioned in the Fravardin Yasht, 46. Garo-nemana, 203. Gaster, Dr., 174. Gatavedas, 192, 193. Gatha literature, age of, 45.

— belonged to Media, 45. Gathas, the, 43, 44, 46.

Digitized by

Google
index:

S59

Gathic, the (Naaks), 44. Gayasimha, 135. Genealogical method, vi. General silence, the, of the Valen
tinians, 396. Genii, 205. Genitive, y€wcfi, 79. German Mystics, 499, 501,503, 506,

539 Eleatic philosophers and Ve
dantists, 28a.

their supposed heresies, 503.

their sermons, 506.

— translations of the Bible, 503.

learnt by heart, 504.

Germany, fourteenth century in, 500.

— feeling against Borne in, 503.

— popular preachers in, 506. Gerson, 46a, 506.

— against divorcing philosophy and
religion, 507. Gervasius of Tilbury, a 18 n. Ghatt&a, 163. Ttyv&aicw, 36. Gill, Rev. W. W., 237.

— on the Harvey Islanders, 327.

— no trace of transmigration in

Eastern Pacific, 331. <71va, living soul, 349. Givanmukti, life-liberation, 309. Gladisch, 85. Gna, Sanskrit, 36. (rftanakitorfa, 95, 104. Gnostic belief in the flesh as the
source of evil, 409. Gnostics, theosophy of, in the East,
m 342. yvoHris, 435.

God, natural religion the foundation of our belief in, 4.

— special revelation needed for a
belief in, 5.

— and the soul, 90, 91, 9a, 36a.

— throne of, 141.

— of the Ved&ntists, 320.

— Mohammed's idea of, 347.

— and man, how the Jews drew to
gether the bonds between, 417.

— sufficient for Himself, 417.

God, made man, St. Augustine on,

— vision of, 424.

— and evil, 486.

— those who thirst after, 488.

— love of, 489, 490.

— and the soul identical, 497.

— in three Persons, 513, 520.

— outside Nature, 513, 515.

— in all things, 513.

— as always speaking or begetting
the Word, 520.

— approach to, 524.

— oneness with, 533.

— want of reverence for, 534.

— many meanings of, 534.

— and man, relation of, 535. Godhead, struggle for higher conception of the, 237, 244.

— expressed in the Vedas, 237. in the Upanishads, 238.

— predicates of the, 402. Godly and God-like, 481.

Gods, belief in, almost universal,

59.

— procession of the, 212.

— residing in animals, 231.

— and men come from the same
source, 364.

— the, St. Clement on, 472.

— St. Augustine on, 472.

— path of the, 115, 117, 118, 12*,

148, 159, 169, 277, 308.

faith in, given up, 283.

Good birth, the good attain a, 156.

Thought Paradise, 197.

Word Paradise, 197.

Deed Paradise, 198.

— Plato's, 393.

— and evil, distinctions between,

53a.

Goodness, acts of, 162.

Gore's Bampton Lectures, 25 n.

Gospel of St. John, 342.

Gospels, the four, end of second century, 454.

Gotama, 206.

Grammar, certain processes of, universal, 59.

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560

INDEX.

Greece, our philosophy comes from, 66,67.

— and India, difference between,

330. Greek philosophy, its influence on Christian theology, z.

— prayer, 13.

— works lost, 33.

— and Indian thought, early sepa
ration o£ 65.

— and Roman religions, historical
background for the, 72.

— and Vedic Deities, 74.

— philosophy, a native production,

77,80-84. was it borrowed from the

East? 80. sources of, 85.

— mysteries, 328.

— and Jewish thought, blending of,

407, 414.

three points gained by,

421.

— and Jewish converts, 431. Greek 8 borrowed names of gods from

Egypt, 58.

— and Brahmans, coincidences be
tween, 64.

— of Homer's time, 74. Gregory the Great, 434, 465.

— ofNyssa, 434, 468.

»— of Nazianzen, 434, 468.

Grimm, 73, 174 n,

Gruppe, 88.

Guardian angels, Ahuramazda*s
discourse on, 205-207. Gubarra, 14. Guhyakas, 163.

Gulshen Ras on Christianity, 343. Guyon, Mad. de, 462.

HADHA-MlTHRIC,the (Nasks),

44* Hadhokht Nask, 43.

on the soul after death, 195.

Hans, songs of, 349, 35<>» 353* Haidas on the immortality of the
soul, 222, 225. ,

Haidas, resemblance to Persian
ideas, 222. H&jlabad, inscriptions of, 37. Halah and Habon, 48. Hale, Horatio, 383. Hall, Fitz-Edward, 317 ». Hamaspathmaeda, 207. Haonia, 65.

Haritas and Charites, 61, 76. Harnack, xv, 95 n., 436 »., 438 n.,

441 n., 443 w., 449 n., 451 n.

— on Origen s view of the Third

Person, 452. Harrison, Rev. C, on the Charlotte

Islands, 222. Harvey Islanders, Rev. W. W. Gill
on the, 227, 231. Hassan Basri, 341. Hatch, Dr., 371 »., 416 n., 418 n. Haug, 18 n., 37 «., 42, 44 »., 45,46,

47» 51* 55» l8i »•» l84> 185, 205,

226 »., 240.

— his wrong translation of Ahura's
name, 55. Haurvatad, 49, 186. Heaven in Samoa, 228.

— in Mangaia, 228, 229.

— in Raratonga, 228.

— in Aitutaku, 228.

— in Tahiti, 228.

— in the Society Islands, 228.

— and men united, 365 n. Hebrew borrowed little from Babylon or Persia, 368.

— prophets and the Divine Word,

404.

— race, Dionysius on, 468. Hebrews, Apocryphal Gospel of, 441. Hegel, 102.

— on Christianity as unhistorical,

448. Hegelian method misleading, vi. Heimarraend, destiny, 390. Heimdall, the watchman, 169. Helios, sun, 29. Hell, not known in the Rig-veda,

166.

— known in the Atharva-veda,

167,

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561

Hell in the Brahmanas, 167. Hells, absence of, in the Upanishads,

1*8.

— the Zoroastrian, 198, 199. t- of Plato, 216.

Henoch, 376.

Henosis or oneness of the individual
with the Supreme Soul, 274,

426, 481, 482, 504. Henotheism of the Veda, 48. Hephaistos, 80. Heraclitus, 85, 380, 384, 397, 410,

430.

— his Logos, 389, 390, 391.

— his use of Heimarmend, 390.

— his view of Fire, 390.

— his Logos is rule, 390.

— his Kara \6yov, 391. Herakles, 63, 534. Heredity, 389. Hermippos, 38, 39, 45.

— Pliny on, 38.

— his analysis of Zoroaster's books,

83. Herodotos, 45, 81. Hesiod, 469. Hesperia, 64. Hestia, 212.

Hetywanlana, Hell, 224, 225. 1 He who above all gods is the only

God/ 49. Hierarchies of Proclus and Diony
sius the Areopagite, 164, 165. Hierarchy, celestial, of Dionysius,

• 475.

— the earthly, 477. Hieronymus, 434.

High Priest's clothes, 408. Highest Being, 268.

— Self and the individual soul, 273,

274, 276, 308.

— Soul, 274.

— Being and the soul identical, 279. —-Atman, 291.

different stages in the belief
in, 291. Hilarius, 434.

Hilduin, Abbot of St. Denis, 466. Hillebrandt, 115 »., 138 w., 147 n.

Hillel and the Jewish religion, 9. Hindu prayer, modern, 21. Hiraftyagarbha, 130, 151. Historical method, v.

— school, fundamental principle of
the, 2.

— documents for studying the origin
of religion, 27.

— contact between India and Persia,

66.

— school, 522.

History, divine drama of, vi.

— of the world, constant ascent in
the, 2.

— of religion the true philosophy of
religion, 3. Holenmerian theory, 280. Holy Ghost, Vohuman a parallel to,

57.

St. Clement's view, 440, 443.

as the Mother of Christ, 441.

special work of, 441, 442,

443at the baptism of Christ, 442,

443bond between the Father and
the Son, 513. Homer, 365 n,

Homoiosis or Henosis, 161, 481. Homoousioi, 517. 6par6»t 361. Hotar or atharvan, 65. Hottentot idea of the moon, 148. Houris, none among the Jews,

200. Hugo of St. Victor, 488, 493, 494.

— on knowledge, 493.

— on vision, 497.

— rich in poetical illustration, 497,

498. Human and Divine, gulf between,

92. Human nature twofold, 418.

— becoming divine, 456.

— souls migrating into animal
bodies, 217, 225. moral grounds of this belief,

217, 218. Humboldt, 73.

Oo

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562

INDEX.

Humility, St. Bernard's twelve degrees of, 490. Huxley and the Gergesenes, 25. Hyios tou theou, z. Hyle, matter of the Stoics, 397.

— of Philo, 400. Hypatia, 373, 429. Hypostaseis, Father and Son as, 442.

I AM that I Am, 49, 5a.

found in the Elohistic section,

53never alluded to again in Old

Testament, 53. interpolated from a Zoroas
trian source, 53, 55.

what I Am, 55.

what thou art, 278.

He, Jellal eddln on, 363.

Iceland and Norway, 62. Ideal man, the, 440. Idealistic philosophy, 292. Ideas, eternal, 104.

— of Plato, 205,387, 389, 392, 469,

518.

our heredity, 389.

our species, 392.

are the changeless world, 518.

protested against by the Stoics,

518. taken up by the Neo-Platon
ists, 518.

— of Philo, 401. Ignatius, 454.

Ignorant commentators on Eastern
religions, 180. Illusion, theory of, held by &ankara,

317Ilya, the tree, 121, 122. linages, ancient sages think in, 141. Immortality of the soul, 158. never doubted in the Upani
shads, 210.

among the Haidas, 222.

Polynesians on, 226.

among the Jews, 233.

the Buddhists, 233.

— belief in, very general, 231.

— Vedanta doctrine on, 234^

Immortality, need not be asserted,

434. Incarnation and the Logos, xii.

— the, 439.

— reticence of St. Clement on,

444*. India, fragmentary character of the Sacred Books of, 33.

— and Persia, relation between the
religions of, 65, 179.

— rich philosophical literature in,

66.

— influence of religion and philo
sophy in, 68.

— conquest of, a sad story, 70.

— dreamers of, 71.

— and Greece, difference between,

33o.

— St. Matthew's Gospel in, 436. Indian and Persian thought long
connected, 65.

— and Greek thought, early separa
tion of, 65.

— philosophy, independent charac
ter of, 66, 67, 79. a native production, 77, 80,

85, 86. peculiar character of, 101.

— view of life, 68.

— Aryas, 67.

their language ours, 71.

— philosopher in Athens, 83. sees Sokrates, 84.

— Greek, Roman religions full
of common Aryan ideas, 85, 86.

— and Greek thought, parallelism
between, 212, 215.

— music, 282.

— Pandits, 369.

— ascetics, 528.

Individual soul, true nature of,

269. and the Highest Self, 273,

274/275, 279.

and Brahman, 275.

different from the Highest

Self, 276. R&m&nu^a's teaching, 315.

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568
kkdividual'Boul, &ankara's teaching,

316. Indra, 50^ 121, 122, 130, 133, 186,

335. 246, 250, 251, 253, 260.

— as demon, 182.

— Supreme God, 259.

— as Andra in the A vesta, 182. Indriyas, 305.

Infinite, perception of, shared by all . religions, vii.

— Eleatic view of the, 93.

— in nature, 89, 105, 535.

— in man, 89, 105, 535.

— one, 311, 534.

— writer in the Christian Register
on the, 361 n.

— of Anaximander, 400.

— how can we know the? 432.

— perception of the, 480.

' In Him we live and move/ &c,

94Innocent II, 492. Inspiration or firuti, 102.

— the idea of, 103.

— literal, 543.

Intellect, language the outer form
of the, 61. Interdict of fourteenth century, 500,

501. Interpretation, difficulties of, 123. Invisible things, reality of, 154. Ipse, 249. Irenaeus, 434. Isaac, 376. Isis, veiled, 327. . ' Islam, no monachism in,' 338. Islam, will of Allah, 347. Isocrates, 84. trvara, the Lord, 295, 306,316, 320,

324

— is Brahman, 312, 316. Italian and Latin, 72. lzads, the thirty, 43. Izeshan, sacrifices, 240. Iez eddln Mutaddesl, 344.

JACOB'S dream, Philo on, 414. Jacolliot, 81. Jamblichus, 446.

Jami's Salaman and Abs&d, extract
from, 358. Jasher, book of, 34. Jayadeva, 354. Jehovah, 51, 52, 408, 414, 447.

— Psalmist's words on, 50.

— and ehyeh, Heb., 53.

— of Philo, 400.

Jellal eddin Burnt, 344, 345.

on the true Sufis, 346.

extracts from his MesnevV

355. on the Sun as image of Deity,

356. %
on the soul, 357.

on self-deceit, 357.

on 'lam He,' 303.

Jesus of Nazareth, influence of Hi*
personality, xiii, xiv.

as perfect, 439.

as the ideal man, 440.

Jewish religion, God far removed
from man, ix.

— influence on the Zoroastrians, 48.

— doctors at the Sassanian court,

173 ». Jews, influence of Persian ideas on, 200.

— did not believe in Houris, 200.

— effect of the dispersion of, 374.

— and Christians ashamed of their

Bible, 375.

— borrowed very few religious terms
from the East, 368.

— enlightened, honoured at Alex
andria, 408. Jones, Sir W., on Sufiism, 339,353.

— translations of Sufi poets, 354
et seq. Jowett, 393 n., 394 n, Judaism and Buddhism, 233.

Deity in, 364.

Jugglers, Indian, 303. Julian, the Emperor, 429. Junaid, 344. Jupiter, Aristides on, 11.

— limited, 235.

— as Son of God or Logos, 422,

4^3.

Oo 2

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564

INDEX,

Jupiter, Plotinua on, 422. Justin Martyr against anthropomorphic expressions, 372, 454.

KAABA, the, 340. Kaegi, 13911. Kaklkat, 348. JT&kshushl, 121, 124. Kalpa, 3i5«

— to kalpa, 295. Zandala, 156.

Kant, on knowledge, 321.

— anticipated by the Vedantists,

321-322. Kant's philosophy, 3.

— Critique of Pure Season, 5. JTaraiias, 163. Karmakanda, 95, 104. Karman or Apurva, 306, 307. Kathari, 504.

— became ketzer, 504; tcdBa/HTKy 481, 482.

Kaupat, name for the Milky Way,

170. Kaushltaka, 130. Kausbltaki-TTpanishad, 120, 159,

278. Kaye, meaning of spirit, 461 n. Kepler, 384. Ketzer, 504. Iftandogya-Upanishad, 118, 119,

120, 125, 132.

— dialogue on the unseen in man,

155

— dialogue from.on the 86^,250-256.

— not belonging to the earliest Yedic
literature, 259.

— not later than Plato, 259.

— deductions from, 259, 200.

— dialogue from, 285-290. Khosroes, 41.

JTindvar bridge, 202. JTinva* bridge, 194.

— or judgment bridge, 194.

— identified with the Atman, Self,
in the Upanishads, 195.

— how made, 195.

-r in Persia, 168, 172.

— soul after passing the, 203.

JEinval bridge, crossing from earth
to heaven, 539. Kirjath-sepher, city of letters, 3a. 2Gt, perceiving, 94.

— Brahman as, 293.

— meaning of, 293, 294.

— and aiKt, 315. ifitra, 120. Kittel, 53.

Klamaths, the Logos among the,

», 383.

— their idea of creation, 383, 389. Klemm, 75.

Knowledge, Greek love of, 85.

— depends on two authorities, 102.

— blessedness acquired by, 148

— no return for those souls who
have true, 149.

— true, 160, 161.

— or faith better than good works,
in the Upanishads, 190.

— better than good deeds, 204.

— not love of God, 291.

— absence of, an objective power to
the Hindu, 320.

— six requirements for attaining,^.

— three instruments of, 419.

— three degrees of, 431.

— more certain than faith, 493. Kohut, Dr., 187, 200, 201. Konrad of Marburg, 504. K6<Tfios votjrds, 407, 513.

— IZtwv, 402. Krainamukti, 308.

Krantor, quoted by Proclus, 82.

Krishnagupta, 135.

Kronos, 64 n.

Kshathravairya, 186.

Kshatriyas, 156.

Kuenen, 9 «., 28 n., 53, 465 n.

Kuhn, 73, 171.

LACTANTIUS, 535Laity in the fifth century, 479. Language, the outward form of the intellect, 61.

— common background of philo
sophy, 71.

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565

Language, help derived by philosophy from, 77.

— eternal, 103. Lassen, 46 n.

Law, the (Nasks), 44.

Laws of Mann, or of the Manavas,

161. Lectures, plan of these, 541. Legenda A urea, bridge in the, 175. Legendary traditions of Christ re. jected by the Greeks, 519.

— used as allegories by Eckhart,

520. Lethe, the river, 221. Leverrier, 86. Lewy, Dr. H., on deriving Greek
from Hebrew, 63, 63 n. Liebrecht, notes to Gervasius, 175 n.,

218 ». life, Indian view of, 68, 69.

— modern view of, 68.

Light, deities representing, 134,

135

Lightning and the moon, 115 «.

Literary documents, 30.

Literature, written, a modern invention, 30.

Locke, 102.

Logau, quotation from, 3.

Logoi, 406, 412, 457, 469.

— of the Stoics, 397, 398, 473.

— are the angels of Philo, 401,413,

— conceived as one, 473. as many, 473.

— spoken of as Aeons by the Gnos
tics, 473. Log08* 34*, 373, 376, 378, 380-381, 4", 447* 450, 513. 5i8.

— doctrine of, exclusively Aryan, x.

— and the Incarnation, xii.

— the Zoroastrian, parallel to, 57.

— meaning of, 380.

— faint antecedents of, in Old

Testament, 381.

— of Philo, purely Greek, 381.

— history of, 381-384.

— among the Klamatbs, 383.

— 'thinking and willing/ 383.

Logos, historical antecedents of the

384.

— word and thought, 385.

— of God, 387.

— of Heraclitus, 389.

— connecting the first Cause and the
phenomenal world, 391.

— and Nous, 391.

— the, as a bridge between God and
the world, 401, 414.

— a predicate of the Godhead, 402.

— as the Son of God, 403.

— of Greek extraction, 403.

— only begotten or unique soil,

404.

— in Fourth Gospel, 404.

— theological use of, from Palestine,

404.

— roots of, 405.

— stronger than the Sophia, 407.

— as the high priest, 407.

— known to the Jews of Christ's
time, 408.

— the idea of all ideas, 412.

— recognised by Philo in the patri
archs, 413.

— realised in the noumenal and phe
nomenal worlds, 413.

— and Logos Monogends historical
facts, 415.

— and the powers, 417.

— used for creation, 417.

— becoming man, 421.

— Athanasius on, 421.

— historical interpretation, 422.

— of St. Clement, 437.

— of Athenagoras, 437.

— head of the logoi, 437.

— identified with Jesus, 438.

— manifested in man from the begin
ning, 439, 457

— and the pneuma, 444.

— of Oriffen, 450, 451.

— as Redeemer, 452.

— aldthds of Celsus, 452.

— doctrine of, identified with St.

John, 454.

— intervening between the Divine

Essence and matter, 455,

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666

INDSX.

Logos, a connecting link, not a dividing screen, 455.

— later a wall of partition, 456.

— in the Latin Church, 458

460.

— no Latin word with the fall mean
ing °£ 459-4^1

— Zeno's definition, 460.

— development in East and West,

454-461.

— the bond between the human
soul and God, 455.

— recognised in Christ, 455.

— view of the early Apologetes,

455

— the incarnation of thought,

— re-established by the Neo-Pla
tonists, 521.

— Christianity built upon, 521.

— history of, traced back, 523.

— Monogenes, 523.

— prophoriktfs and endttthetos,

242. '— 0vcpnartK6s, 384. Loka, 133, 135. Longfellow's translation from Logau,

3Lord's Supper, 482. Lorinser, 85. Lost books, 33. Lotze, zv. Louis I, 465. Love, child of poverty and plenty,

432.

— earthly, as a type of love to God,

351, 352.

— of God, 445, 489, 490, 505. wanting in the Vedanta
sutras, 291.

four stages of, 490.

Lower Brahman, return of the soul
to, 114. Lucretius, zi. Ludwig, 12 in. Luther, 510.

— on the Theologia Germanica,

Lykurgus, travels of, 83.

MAC ARIUS, and the my steries,48 2. Macrobius, 145. Maghavat, 253, 255. Magi came from Media, 44, 44 n. Mahabharata, quoted, on love to others, 9.

— Setus or bridges of the, 167. Mahatmas, 327.

Maiden, good works as a beautiful, 199, 202, 209.

— influence of this idea on Moham
medanism, 199. Makhir, god of dreams, 16. Mallas, 163. Man, to think, 79, 98. Man, infinite in, 105.

— essence of, 304.

— Philo's view of, 409.

— a manifestation of the Logos, 439. Manas, mind, 79, 249, 305. ManasaA, or amanavaA, 115 »., 134. Manas!, the beloved, 121, 124. Mangaian heaven, 228, 229. Manhood, perfect, as realised in the
ideal son, 409. Man!, 40, 41. Manichaeism, 40, 41, 370. Mantras, independent statements in
the, 137. not in harmony with the Upa
nishads, 137. Manu, laws of, transmigration in the,

161.

— age of these laws, 161.

— minute details of transmigration,

162.

— nine classes of transmigration,

163.

— punishments of the wicked, 165.

— nine classes of, 215. Marcus Aurelius quoted, 10. Marut, Mars, stormwind, 29. Mataravan, 234.

Matd, Matu, 14.

Matter, created by God, 455.

Mavra, or Mavriza, the Milky Way,

170. Maximius on the writings of Dkmy
sius the AreopagUe, 463.

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567

Maximus Tyrius, 470.

— on Daimones, 470.

Maya or Nescience, 303, 316, 318

3«

Mazda, 18, 19, 172.

Mazdaiflm, 41.

Media, birthplace of Zoroaster's religion, 44 n.

Melikertes, 63.

Melissus, 330.

/i€|tova, memini, 79.

Memory, powers of, 31.

Men clogged by the body, 475.

txivos, 79.

* Mere man,' 536.

Merodach, 14, 16.

Mesnevi, the, 346, 354.

— second only to the Koran, 347.

— extract from, 355, Messiah, the, 408, 408 n.

— recognised in Jesus, 438.

— and the Logos, 519.

both realised in Christ, 519.

Metempsychosis, 81, 8a, 151.

— belief in, 77, 152.

— not connected with Animism,

153.

— of ethical origin, 153, 154, 156.

— belief in, in Plato and the CJpani
shacls, 314-215. Michael, the Stammerer, 465. Migne's edition of Dionysius the

Areopagite, 467. Migration of souls, 335. Milky Way, 145, 170, 177.

and Pythagoras, 145.

Orion and Canis, 146.

names for, 170.

Mills, i8n.

1 Mills of God,' 3.

Milman on the intermediate agency
between God and creation, 401.

— on Dionysius, 476. Mlmamsa-sutras, 98.

— Purva and Uttara, 98, 99. Mind, the breath of God, 419, 420. Minokhired, weighing of the dead
in, 201. Minos, 64 n.

Minucius Felix, 372. Mira, not mkacula, 25. Miracles, 24, 25.

— physical, 543.

Miru, or Muru, mistress of the nether world, 229, 230, 230*.

Mithra, Vedic Mitra, 182, 194, 202, 206.

Mitra, 182.

Modern date of Sacred Books, 30.

Mohammedan prayer, 21.

— conquest of Persia, 41.

— poetry, half-erotic, half-mystic,

350. Mohammed s idea of God, 347. Moira, 389. Molinos, 462. Money, Phoenician and Egyptian
love of, 85. Monism in India and Greece, 270.

— of Origen, 450. Monogento, x, 366, 410.

— of Plato, 394.

— the only-begotten, 409.

— in Parmenides, 410.

— Supreme Being, 410.

— in the Timaens, 410.

— an used by Valentinus, 411.

— applied to the visible word, 411.

— used in Old Testament, 411.

— in Book of Wisdom, 411. Monotheism of the Avesta, 48.

— the original, of the Zoroastrians
replaced by Dualism, 186.

— no trace of this in the Veda,

187.

Montanists, 453.

Moon questions the sou], 120, 121.

— soul in the, 146, 147, 150.

— source of life, 147, 148,149.

— waxing and waning of, 147, 148.

— among Hottentots, 148.

— souls leaving, 158.

More'8, Henry, verses on the soul, 276.

— and the Holenmerian theory, 280.

— quoted, 324, 541.

— on the Theologia Germanica,

5*i.

Digitized by

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568

INDEX.

Moses and the Shepherd, 23.

— Jews at the time of, 70.

— use of name as author, 365 n. Mother-of-pearl and silver, 398.

— or nurse of all things, 402. Mrttyu, 79.

irirjciSt 481.

Muir, Dr., derivation of brAhman,

241. Mukhyapr&na, 305. Muller, Friedrich, 37 n. Munrfaka-Upanishad, 120.

— soul after death in, 124. Muspel, sons of, 169. fwarat or <fKOTi(6n€voi, 481. Mysteries among the Neo-Platon
ists, 428, 429.

— and magic, 429.

— meaning nothing mysterious, 481.

— denied by Clement, 482.

— Macarius on, 482.

— of Dionysius, 482.

Mystic Christianity, 462, 499, 505.

— likeness to Vedantism, 526.

— oneness with God, 533.

— philosophy, 284.

— religion, 91.

— objections to, 526.

excessive asceticism, 526.

— theology, 482, 483.

— Tholuck's definition of a, 484

485..

— objections to, 487.

— union, 479.

five stages of, 480.

— taught by the Neo-Platonists,

480. Mystical theology of the Sufis and

Yogis, 353. Mysticism and Christian mysticism,

484.

— of Eckhart, 511. Mystics, German, 297. Mythological studies, Aryan foundation of, 74.

—■ language misunderstood, 141.

NAXIKETAS, 223. Nainan, name, 79.

Namarupa, 286. Naowhaitbya, 186. Naraka, hell, 167. Narasamsa, Nairyasanha, 182. Nasatyau, 182 n. Nasks, the, 41-46.

— collected in eighth and end of
ninth centuries, 41, 42.

— three only complete, 42.

— imperfect in the time of Vologesis

I> 39- .

— division in the very early, 42.

— those now held sacred, 43.

— three classes of, 44. Nata*, 163.

Nature, infinite in, 105.

Natural religion, vii, 88,89,496,539.

— the foundation of our belief in

God, 4.

— St. Paul's regard for, 536. Natural revelation, 7.

traced in the Veda, 8.

Neander, xv.

Nehemiah NilakanlAa Gore, 317 n. Neo-Platonism, spread of, in the Ewt, 342, 359.

— in its pagan form in Proclus,

462. Neo-Platonists, 372, 380.

— and the wisdom of the East, 82.

— and their trust in sentiment and
ecstasy, 425-427

— and Stoics, 425-427.

— their visions, 426.

— belief in a Primal Being, 427.

— soul as image of the eternal Nous,

427.

— mystery among, 428.

— claimed revelation, 428.

— universal religion, 428.

— their mischievous influence, 429. Nescience, 268, 272, 274, 284, 310,

3", 5*5

— divides the individual and the
supreme soul, 272.

— or Avidya, the cause of pheno
menal semblance, 273.

— can be removed by £t*uti only,

293

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569

Nestorius, 443.

Newman, his definition of real religion, 90, 336.

New Testament, reference to lost books, 34, 35.

— language easy, 179. Nibelnnge, German of the, 511. Nicaen, council of, 373, 374, 462. Nicholas I, Pope, 466. Niedner, xv.

Nine olasses of transmigration, 163.

of Manu, 163, 164, 315, 221.

of Plato, 164, 215, 221.

Niobe, 64 ». Nirukta, 172. Nirvana, 308.

— of the Vedantist, 309, 310. Nizistd, 201.

Noah, 376.

North-American Indians, their belief
in a bridge between this world
and the next, 168. Noumenal world, 270.

— how did it become phenomenal,

270.

— Indian Vedantist view, 271. Nous, or mind, 389, 411, 420. '— of Anaxagoras, 391.

— txrhi*"* 391

— the eternal, 427.

Number, conception of universal,

59Numenius, pupil of Philo, 144, 425, 425 n.

— trinity of, 440.

Numerals, some savages with none beyond four, 380.

— borrowed from their neighbours,

380. Nyayish, the five, 43.

"OAE, 248. Odysseus, 220. oba, 79.

* Old One on High/ 387. Old Testament, writing mentioned in, 32.

reference to lost books in, 34.

names allegorised by Philo,376.

Old Testament, faint antecedents of
the Logos in, 381.

teaching on the soul, 418, 420.

leaves a gulf between God and
man, 467.

— and New Testament, language
adopted in translating certain
passages of the Sacred Books of
the East, 57. 6len, 64 n. Om, 118.

Omar ibn el Faridh, 344. 6V of Parmenides, 334. One Being, the, and the human
soul, 483. Oneness of God and the soul, viii,

53o, 534

— of God, in the A vesta and Old

Testament, 48.

— of the human and divine natures,

443

— of the objective and subjective

Deity, 447.

— how it can be restored, 530. Only begotten Son, 413.

— a Greek thought and used as
such, 413. Oppert, 35 n. Oriental and Occidental philosophy,
striking coincidences between,

85

— such coincidences welcome, 86.

— influences on early Christianity,

366.

idea now given up, 367.

Origen, xiii, 372, 384,424,446,448,

454, 45»> 463

— did not accept physical impossi
bilities as miracles, 376.

— his dependence on the Scriptures,

449

— on religion for the many, 449,453.

— his view of miracles, 450.

— great object of his teaching, 450.

— Christian doctrine, the perfection
of Greek philosophy, 450.

— Monism of, 450.

— on the Logos, 450.

— Divinity of Christ, 451.

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570

INDEX.

Origen, Angels or rational beings of,

45i> 469-47i

— on the Third Person, 452.

— accepted the Trinity, 45 a.

— on souls as fallen, 45a.

— his honesty, 457, 458.

— angels, &c., of, 473.

— denounced in the Middle Ages,

488.

— on doctrines for the few, 481. Origin of species, 386, 518.

— Plato's ideas, 386. Orion, 64 n.

— Milky Way and Canis, 146. Ormazd, 36, 181.

— Yasht, 54.

an enumeration of the names
of Ahura, 54.

— and Drukh, 183.

— council of, 186.

— angels, qualities of, 185. Oromasos, 45.

Orphics, the, 85.

Orthodox, 422.

Ouranos, 410.

'Our Father,' Christ never speaks
of, 538. Ousia, 513, 517.

— Father and Son sharing the same,

442.

— and hypostasis, difference be
tween, 459. ovffia, 78. ovaia bkitfitpT)?, 280.

PADA, 98.

Pahlav, parthav, 36, 37. Pafl&ai atrikas, 276. Pantaenus, xiii, 436, 451.

— found St. Matthew s Gospel in

India, 436. Pantheism, 270, 514, 515.

— and St. Paul, 94. Pantheistic heresies of fourteenth
century, 503. Papal infallibility, 543. Papias, xiv. xap&fi€tytia, 415. Paradise, 203.

Paradises of Good-Thought, GoodWord, and Good-Deed, 197,198. ParaA paravataA, 116, 116 n. irapcucXtfroSj 416.

Param and Aparam Brahman, 316. Paramatman, the Highest Self, 314. Parinama, 298. Parinama-vaoa, 317, 318. Parliament in Japan, 381. Parmenides, 330, 333, 410.

— like the later TTpanishads, 333.

— his idea of the One Being, 333,

334

— darkness and light, 334.

— and the migration of souls, 335. Parais, revelation or holy question,

55

— and the summer solstice, 145. Parthians, 37.

— not Zoroastrians, 40.

Path of the Gods, 115,117,118,121, 125, 148, 159, 169, 170, 277, 308.

Fathers, 117, 125,148, 169,

277, 308.

— faith in, given up, 283. Pathaka, Mr., 99 n.

Paul and Barnabas quoted, 6. Pazend, 37.

Peer, simile of the, 299. Pehlevi, or Pahlavi, 36.

— first traces of, 37.

— coins, 46.

— literature, beginning of, 46. Pelasgians borrowed the names of
their gods from Egypt, 81. Penance, 530.

— shows earnestness, 531. People, the, and the priesthood, 501

506.

Persepolis, palace of, burnt by Alexander, 39.

Persia, loss of the sacred literature

°f> 35

— sacred books of, known to Greeks
and Romans, 38.

destroyed by Alexander, 38.

collected under Vistasp, 38.

preserved by Darai, 38.

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571

Persia, Mohammedan conquest of, 41. Persian and Indian thought long connected, 65.

— influence on Sufiism, 342.

— mobeds, 369.

'Person, not a man,1 115, 115 n.,

I34> 135

— follows after the lightning, 135,

136. Personal gods of the ancients, 235. Personality of Jesus, influence of
the, xiv.

— of the soul, 31a

— a limitation of the Godhead, 235,

23& Personification, 153. Pfeiffer, edition of Eckhart, 507. Phaedrus, myth of the chariot, 211

214. Phenicians and Greeks, 62, 63. Phenomenal and real, 269.

— and noumenal world, 270.

— world, &ankara's, 319.

Philo, xii, 145 »., 366, 368, 370,

37i, 374, 375 «•> 378, 384. 402 n., 450, 463.

— influence of his works, xv, xvi.

— did not borrowfrom the East,368.

— his allegorical interpretations,

37o. 376, 377

— not a Father of the Church, 371.

— a firm believer in Old Testament,

375

— bis touchstone of truth, 375.

— did not accept physical impossi
bilities as miracles, 376.

— on the Cherubim, 377.

— on the creation of Eve, 379.

— his language and concepts Greek,

380.

— on the Logos, 382.

— his inheritance, 399.

— his life, 400.

— his philosophy, 400.

— his Jehovah, 400.

— his Hyle, 400.

— ideas of, 401.

-r welcomes the theory of the Logos, 401.

Philo, mythological phraseology of, 403,412,413.

— steeped in Jewish thought, 404.

— did not identify the Logos with
the Messiah, 408 n.

— his distinct teaching about the

Logos, 409.

— his view of man, 409.

— use of Monogengs, 411, 412.

— recognises the Logos in the
patriarchs, 413, 439.

— on Jacob's dream, 414.

— his knowledge of various tech
nical terms, 416.

— indistinct on the soul and God,

418.

— his psychology, 418, 419, 420.

— on the senses, 419.

— his use of nous, 420.

— his bridge from earth to heaven,

424.

— eschatological language of, 425.

— his stoicism, 426.

— allegorised, the, Old Testament,

429.

— the Logos as intervening between
the Divine and matter, 455.

— treatise, De Vita Contemplatira,
ascribed to, 464. Philosophy of religion, 3.

— Indian, 66-68.

— language the common back
ground of, 71, 77.

— later growth of, 77.

— begins with doubting the evi
dence of the senses, 102.

— and religion, 294, 446, 455.

— of Philo, 370.

— of Clement, 370. <pws, 416 n.

<f <uTi<Tfi6s, 481.

Photius, 464.

Phraortes, from Greek Pravarti,

205. Physical impossibilities not accepted
as miracles by Philo, Clement,
or Origen, 376.

— religion, 89, 90, 106, 160,

541.

IV 0 ''f

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Google

572

INDEX.

Physical Religion, importance of the Veda for, 95.

— — last results of, 23a.

— science, wild dreams of, 388.

— teaching of Xenophanes, 332,

333Pindar, 210. Pisaihis, 163. Pitaras, not in Avesta, 205.

— the Vedic, 207.

— the Fathers in the Veda, Fra
vashis in the A vesta, 204. Pitrts, 121 n.

— and the summer solstice, 145.

— or Fathers, 190,191.

— as conceived in the Vedic Hymns,

191.

— invoked in the Vedic Hymns,

191. Pitrtyana, the Path of the Fathers,

"7».x30. *48

— belief in, the earliest period, 150. Plato, 85, 102,144, 244, 287*1., 299,

318, 373, 375> 38o, 384* 4<x>> 4**, 430, 5«

— uses Oromasos for Ahuramazda,

45

— the philosopher from the He
brews, 82.

— in Egypt, 82, 84.

— and Aristotle knew Zoroaster's
name, 83.

— in the East, 84.

— nine classes of rebirths, 164, 215.

— ideas, 104,105,205, 387,389,392,

469, 510.

— and the Upanishads and Avesta,
similarities between, 208, 209, 213.

— his mythological language, 209.

— asserts the immortality of the
soul, 210.

— length of periods of metempsy
chosis, 216.

— the philosophers of India, coinci
dences between, 217, 220.

— stronger differences, 220.

— first idea of metempsychosis
purely ethical, 218.

Plato, on Xenophanes' tenets, 331.

— Philonizes, or Philo Platonizes,

371.

— Justin Martyr on, 373.

— his ideas on the origin of species,

386, 392.

— his one pattern of the world,

393.

— highest idea of the good, 393,

394

— his Cosmos, 394.

— sduI divine, 395.

— called the Attic Moses, 415.

— his Trinity, 440.

— on the body as opposed to the
soul, 527.

— der groze Pfaffe, 509. Platonists at Cambridge, 323.

— their likeness to the Upanishads
and Vedantists, 321. Plato's authority, 208. Play on words, 278. Pliny on Hermippos, 38, 83. Plotinus, teaching of, on the soul,

280.

— on Jupiter, 422.

— follower of Philo, 424.

— on absorption in the absolute,

427.

— his attention to Eastern religions,

4*8.

— and the Christian religion, 429.

— his letter to Flaccus, 430.

— and the ecstatic state, 433,

445.

— on his soul, 433. Plutarch, 38, 83, 470.

— on Daimones, 471, 472. Po, night, 228.

Poetical language of Sufiism, 349. Poetry of the Mohammedans, halferotic, half-mystic, 350. Polycarp, 454. Polynesian converts, language of,

367Polynesians on the immortality of
the soul, 226-231. Popular preachers in Germany,

506.

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573

Popular religion for the unlearned,

5"Porphyrius, 144-145 *•> 425 »•> 429>

433

— on the tropics, 144.

— on Origen, 450.

Potter's wheel, simile of, applied to
the free sou), 309. Powers, 475. Practical religion for the many,

449. Praflfftpati, 96, 121, 122, 130, 133,

241, 247, 250, 251, 272.

— his first lesson on Self, the reflec
tion, 252, 262.

— his second lesson, dreams, 254,

263.

— his third lesson, dreamless sleep,

355. 263.

— his last lesson, the true Self, 256,

264.

— on the Highest Self, 267.

— a later deity, 259.

— his teaching to Indra, 261. Pra^fSA, knowledge, 123, 124. Pramadadasa Mitra and the simile
of the peer, 299. Pramftnas, two, 102. Pr&tia, breath, for the godhead,

237

— spirit, 245, 247, 248. Pratika, 295.

Pratyaksha, sensuous perception,

102, 293. Pravartin, Sk., 205. Prayer, as petition, unknown to the

Buddhists, 13.

— known to the Confucians, 12.

— Greek, 13.

— Egyptian, 13.

— Accadian, 14.

— Babylonian, 15.

— Vedic, 16, 17.

— Avestic, 18.

— Zoroastrian, 19.

— Chinese, 20.

— Mohammedan, 21.

— Modern Hindu, 21, Prayers, ancient, 12.

Predicates of the Godhead, 402.

Prepositions, 78.

Primal cause, 388.

Prime mover of Aristotle, 395.

Principalities, 475.

Proclus, hierarchies of, 164, 165.

— on the Mystae, 428.

— his connection with the mediaeval
mystics, 429, 430.

— and Neo-Platonism, 462.

— or Proculus, studied by Eckhart,

5<>9Prophets and the Divine Spirit, 420. irparrdyovos, 415. Prototokos, x. Psalmist's view of Jehovah, 50.

V>vxh> 237.

Psychic, 91.

Psychological Mythology, 75.

— Religion, 91.

— meaning of, 91.

importance of the Vedanta for,

95the gist of, 106.

— Religion or Theosophy, 541. Pulotu, or Purotu, the Samoan
heaven, 228. Punishment of the wicked in* the

A vesta, 203. little about, in the Upani
shads, 203. Purgatory among the Jews, 200.

— called Hamlstakanin the A vesta,

226. Purusha, 244, 246, 247, 252. Purusho manasaA, 115 n., 116 ». Purva Mlmamsa, 98, 99, 306. ascribed to Badarayana, 99,

101. Purvapakshin, 265. Pushan, 138. Pythagoras and his studies in Egypt,

82, 84.

— whence his belief in metempsy
chosis, 85, 152.

— and the Milky Way, 145. Pythagoreans, 77.

— schools of the, 328.

— different classes, 328.

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574

INDEX.

QUIETISM, 492.

RA, the sun-god, 227, 229. Rabia, the earliest Sufi, 340-541,

343. Rabbis, their teaching on man's good and evil works, 200.

— — on Paradise, and twelve
months* purgatory, 200.

— — in advance of the Old

Testament, 201. Radamanthys, 64 n. R&granya, warrior-caste, 247. Rahu, 120. Rainbow, 169, 170, 177.

— same as the Devay&na, 171. -— five colours of, 171.

Rain and seed as illustration of

God's work, 307. Rakshasas, 163. Ramanu^a, 273, 313, 315, 316.

— commentary by, 100, ioi, 107,

108,113.

— holds the theory of evolution,

108, 298, 317.

— Brahman of, 108.

— represents an earlier period of

Upanishad-doctrine, 113.

— on the soul after death, 114.

— and &ankara, their differences,

3I4-3I9

— his teaching about Brahman,

315. 3I7and about the individual soul,

315. Ramatlrtha, 111. Rammohun Roy, his faith, 375. Raratongan heaven, 228, 229. Rashnu, 202, 206.

— weighs the dead, 202. Reality, two kinds of, to the Vedan
tist, 320. Reason, xi, 378, 447.

— and the flaming sword, 378.

— whose is it? 387.

— spirit, and appetite as forming
the soul, 418.

— the supreme power to Philo,

421.

Reason, chief subject of Stoic
thought, 426. Relationship due to common
humanity, 59. common language, 61.

— really historical, 62.

— of mere neighbourhood, 62. Relative pronoun, 78. Religio, 535.

Religion, philosophy of, v.

— historical documents for studying
the origin of, 27.

— and mythology, common Aryan,

72.

— constituent elements of, 87.

— system of relations between man
and God, 336.

— Disraeli on, 336.

— a bridge between the visible and
invisible, 361.

— and philosophy, 446, 455.

— object of true, 449.

— must open a return of the soul to

God, 474.

— Physical, Anthropological, and

Psychological, 541.

— the bridge between the Finite
and the Infinite, 538.

— Principal Caird*s definition of,

54*Religions, comparative study of, raises our faith in Christianity, 24.

— advantage of this study, 24. Religious language, 28.

of ancient India, 29.

lesson of, 29.

— thought, borrowing of, 367. Renan, 464 n.

Resurrection, fate of the soul at the, according to the Zoroastrians, I93-I95*

Re-union of the Soul with God, 535.

two ways of, 535.

— Christian expression for, 535. Revelation, natural, 7.

traced in the Veda, 8.

— or the holy question of the

Parsis, 55.

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575

Revelation, internal and external,

485. Reverence for God, want of, 534. Re"ville, M., on the religions of

Mexico and Peru, 86. Rewards and punishments after
death, 195. -. Zarathushtra questions Ahura
mazdaon, 195-199. Rhabanue Maurus, 500 n. Ribhus, genii of the Seasons, 121 n. Richard of St. Victor, 488. Rig-veda, no knowledge of hell, 166.

— nor of annihilation, 166. iftshis, 306.

Rising on the third night, Persian
belief in, 194 ».

day, Jewish belief in, 194 n.

IKta, Right, same as the Logos of

Heraclitus, 390. River dividing heaven and hell, 146. Road beginning with light, 127,128. Rome borrowed religious language
from Greece, 368. Roots, expressive of acts, 153.

— hence Energism, 153. Rope and snake, 298. Roth, 85.

Roth, 166.

— on Brahman, 241.'

Russian peasant covering his Eikon,

487. Ruysbrook, 506.

SAAGA, great medicine man, 224, 225.

Sabala, 120.

Sacred books, their value, 56.

danger of using biblical language in translating the, 57.

of ancient religions, no system
in, 87.

how classified, 87.

of India, fragmentary character of, 33.

— Books of the East, vi. imperfect, 27.

author's edition of, 30.

modern date of, 30,

Sacred Books of the East, wisdom
of, 143. native interpreters often
wrong, 143. Sacrifice, the origin of religion, 88. Sacy, De, Sylvestre, 337. Sadhyas, 164. Sady, 346.

Said and Mohammed, poem on, 348. /Sakha, meaning of, 34. Salagrya, the city, 122. Samanyioi or Buddhists, 46 n.

— mentioned by Clement of Alex
andria, 46 n. Samsara, course of the world, 277. Samyagdaraana or complete insight,

293, 302. Sankara, commentary of, 126, 136,

234. 241. &ankara, 113, 116 n.

— the best exponent of the Vedanta,

"3

— on the soul after death, 114.

— and Schopenhauer, 281.

— and Natural Religion, 311.

— his school, 313.

— a Monist, 314.

— and R&manugra, their differences,

3I4-3I9

— his teaching aboutBrahman,3i5,

317.

— holds the theory of illusion, 317.

— points of resemblance with Ra
manugra, 318.

— his fearless arguments, 319.

— his phenomenal world, 319. &ankara's commentary on the Dialogue on Self, 261.

— difficulties, 262, 265-268.

— considers the Atman always the
same, 272. &ankara&&rya, 99*1., 100, 107, in.

— commentary by, 99, 101.

— holds the theory of nescience, 108.

— his view of Brahman, 108. Sanskrit, lost books in, 33.

— words in China, 368. Sarama, the dogs of, 190. Saranyu=Erinnys, 73.

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576

INDEX,

Sarpedon, 64 n. &arva, 182 n. £arvara = Kerberos, 73. Saasanians, 40.

— revive Zoroastrianism, 40. Sat, being, 94, 96, 335. Sattya, 279.

Sattyam, Sattya, 378, 279. Satyabhedavada and Bhedabheda
vada, 275, 276. Saurva, 186. Schein and Sein, 167 n. Schelling, xv. Schiller,'Die Weltgeschichte ist das

Weltgericht,' 1. Schlegel, 365 n. Schmidt, Carl, 531. Scholastic theology, 483, 499. Schoolmen, the, 505.

— true spiritual Christianity in their
teaching, 525. Schopenhauer and &ankara, 281.

— on Eckhart, 511.

Science, a, can be studied apart from its history, 3, 4.

— of Thought, 521. Scotus Erigena, 297, 514.

-< translates the works of Diony
aius the Areopagite, 465, 466,

474Seasons, brothers of the Moon, 121 n.

— genii of the, 121 n. Selene, moon, 29.

Self, the, 96,105,160, 239,250, 251, 262, 272, 447.

— the All in All, 93.

— not different from Brahman, 106.

— dialogue on, 250-256.

— to be worshipped and served, 253.

— the Highest, the Divine Self,

261, 268, 316, 325.

— means the individual, 266.

— &ankara*s view, 267.

— the living, never dies, 288.

— or Atman, 301.

— asserts its independence, 304.

— is really Brahman, 304, 305.

— the true, 316, 524.

— -deceit, Jellal eddln on, 357.

Self, the true bridge between the soul and God, 539.

knowledge of the Brahmans, 93.

Semitic and Aryan religions, coincidences in, 62.

— and Greek thought, coincidences
between, 63. Senai, 344. Seneca, 509. Senses, the five, 300.

— Philo on the, 419. Seraphim, 475.

Sermo, ratio, et virtus, 460.

Sermons in German, 499 n.

Seth, 376.

Setu, bridge, 169.

Setns or bridges, 167.

Seven sages, 70.

Sextus on Xenophanes, 332.

Shadow gave the first idea of soul,

259Shaikh, 348. Shakik, 341. Shahpuhar, 40.

— II, 40.

— and Aturpad, their dealings with
heresy, 40, 41. Shaplgan, treasury of, 38, 39, 40. Shechinah, 406. Shepherd, author of the, 441. Simplicius, prayer of, 13.

— quoted, 333 »., 334 w. Sinlessness, 532.

Sirens from Shir-chen, 63 n. Strozeh, the, 43.

Sita, bright, from asita, dark, i88n. Skambha, name of the Supreme

Being, 247. oki&, 415. /Sloka period, 161. Smrtti, 272.

Society Islanders' heaven, 228—231. Sokrates and the Indian philosopher,

83,84.

— and Plato, 391.

— his belief in one God, 392.

— and 'the thought in all,' 392.

— ideas of, 392. Solon in Egypt, 82.

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577

Soma, 50, 119, 119 *., 139, 140, 147.

— the moon, 121 n. Soma-loving Fathers, 191, 192. Son of God, xi, xii, xii»., 404.

Tertullian's definition, 461.

and humanity, oneness and
difference of, 536.

— of man, xii. Songs of Solomon, 350. Sons of God, 365, 542.

Sophia or Episteme, 402 n., 406.

<rwp6** 344Soul, 105, 447.

— return of, to God after death,

92.

— and God, 91,92, 336.

— early Christian view of, 94.

— Neo-Platonist view of, 94.

— to God, teaching of the Upani
shads on the relation of the,

— Vedanta theories on the, 113.

— its return to the Lower Brahman,

114.

— in the worlds of Brahman, 116.

— questioned by the moon, 120,121.

— in the moon, 146, T47.

— eaten by the Devas, 146,147.

— return of, to earth as rain, 154,

155

— clear concept of, in the Upani
shads, 154.

— passing into grain, &c, 155,156.

— good attain a good birth, 156.

— bad, become animals, 156.

— dangers of, when it has fallen as
rain, 157.

— unconscious in its descent, 157.

— immortality of the, 158.

— moral government in the fate of
the, 158.

— in the Avesta, immortality pf,

190.

— path of, in the Vedic Hymns, 190.

— fate of, at the general resurrec
tion, 193.

— and body, strife between, in the

Talmud, 201.

Soul, arrival of, before Bahman and AhuramazdA, 203, 278.

— after passing the 2£invat bridge,

203.

— tale of the, 210.

— immortality of, asserted by Plato,

210, 211.

— names for the, 248.

— has many meanings, 249.

— who or what has a, 257.

— first conception of, from shadow,

359.

— first idea of, arose from dreams,

359

— true relation of, to Brahman, 265.

— Ved&ntist view, 271.

— true nature of the individual, 269.

— individual and supreme, 272.

— not a created thing, 275.

— Henry More's verses on, 276.

— Plotinus on, 280.

— nature of, and its relation to the

Divine Being, 280.

— and Brahman, identity of, 282,

283, 284.

— different states of the, 307, 308.

— personality of, 310.

— the individual, 312.

— in its true essence is God, 323.

— and God in Sufiism, 337, 338,

339> 347, 3*3

— in Vedantisra, 338.

— Jellal eddln on, 357.

— individual and God, 362.

— return from the visible to the
invisible world, 362.

— of the Stoics, 398.

— universal, 399.

— Philo indistinct on its relation to

God, 418.

— its wider meaning to Philo, 418.

— its threefold division, 418.

— its sevenfold division, 419.

— perishable and imperishable parts,

41?:

— Old Testament teaching on, 418,

420.

— as coming from and returning to

God, 423, 424.

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578

INDEX.

Soul, influenced by matter, 427,

— the beautiful in the, 432.

— of God and eternal, 451,

— every fallen, 452.

— and the One Being, 483,

— Eckhart on, 515, 510.

— something uncreated in, 516.

— Divine element in the, 516.

— birth of the Son in the, 516.

— founded by Eckhart on the Di
vine Ground, 523.

— in iti created form separated
from God, 523.

— its relation to God according to

Eckhart, 524.

— oneness with God, 534.

— and the metaphor of the sun's
rays, 540.

— after death, journey of the, 113
et teq. passages from the Upani
shads, 114 etseq. met bv one of the faithful,

115 ft., 110 n.

wanderings of, 143.

three stages in the Upani
shads, 150.

first stage, 150.

second stage, 150.

third stage, 151.

Zoroastrian teaching on,

193

Plato's views, 208, 209.

silence of Buddha on, 233.

— — — all other religions on, 233. Souls, weighing of, 167.

— leaving the moon, 159.

— in the world of the gods, 159.

— before the throne of Brahman,

160.

— of the wicked, fate of, 198.

— revisiting earth among the Hai
das, 224.

— ethical idea, 225.

— of ' those who die on a pillow,'

228, 22991.

— scintillations of God, 276.

— receiving bodies according to
their deeds, 301.

Soul's inseparateness from Brahman, 126.

— journey more simple in the A vesta
than in the Upanishads, 204. Sparks and fire, 275. Special revelation needed for a belief
in God, 5. Species, cTBos, 386, 388.

— evolution of, 387.

— the ideas of Plato, 392. Speculations on Brahman, later, 278. Speculative school, 530.

Speech, universal, 59.

Spenser, odes of, 353.

Spenta Armaiti, 206.

Spentd mainyu, the beneficent spirit, 183, 184.

became a name of Ahura
mazda, 185.

antpfiariicoi, 398.

cr<paipo€ityst 337.

Sphere, concept of the perfect, 388.

Spiegel, 46 »., 48 n.

Spinoza, 102.

Spirit World, names for, among Polynesians, 228.

Spirit, as Word, Reason, and Power, 461.

Spiritism, 153.

Spiritus, Tertullian's use of, 461.

Spitama Zarathushtra, 205.

Sprenger, 344 n.

&raddadhau, credidi, 79.

Sraddha, 204.

&raddhas, 191.

Srdsh, 201, 202.

&ruti, or inspiration, 102, 104, 137, 141, 268, 272.

— is the Veda, 104.

— difficulties created by, 137.

— Brahmanas are, 141.

— only removes nescience, 293.

St. Augustine, 457, 462, 472, 505,

509.

— on God made man, 323, 421,

444, 456.

— a Neo-Platonist, 429.

— on the speaking of God, 521. St. Basil, 462.

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579

St. Basil, his distinction between
tcrjpvyfULTasJid My/Mara, 481. St. Bernard, 345,457,462,486-488,

494> 505

— on the Christian life, 489.

— his Ecstasis, 490.

— his twelve degrees of humility,

490.

— resembles the Vedantists and

Neo-Platonists, 491.

— his position in the Church* and

State, 492.

— and Abelard, 492.

— his theology and life, 492.

— and the Crusades, 492. St. Chrysostom, 509.

St. Clement of Alexandria, xii, xiii, 397» 384» 433, 434- 434 »•» 4^3, 517

— complains of plagiarism, 371.

— superior to St. Paul, 435.

— why he became a Christian, 435.

— his Master, 436.

— his faith in the Old Testament,

436.

— his allegorical interpretation of
the New Testament, 436.

— Trinity of, 436, 437, 442.

— Logos of, 437, 439, 444.

— recognised Jesus as the Logos,

438, 440.

— Holy Ghost of, 440, 442.

— his idea of personality, 442.

— oneness of the human and divine
natures, 443, 444.

— his idea of Christ, 444.

— his teaching for babes, 445.

— his higher teaching, 445.

— knowledge or Gnosis, 445.

— resembles the Vedanta teaching
and not Sufiism, 445.

— on gods and angels, 472.

«— on the celestial and earthly hierarchies, 478 n.

— uncanonised, 454, 456, 488.

— on the believer, 450. St. Cyril, 463.

St. Denis, and Dionysius the Areo* pagite, 465.

St. Jerome on new words, 460. St. Paul and Pantheism, 94.

— a philosophical apologete of Chris
tianity, 435. St. Theresa, 462. St. Victors, the two, 525. Sthula«arlra, the coarse body, 296. Stoa, 384. Stobaetis, 390.

Stoical division of the Soul, 419. Stoics, 372, 377, 380, 384, 39<5.

— Reason or Logos of, 397, 398,

399.

— Hyle, matter, of the, 397.

— God of the, 397.

— true Pantheists, 397.

— the Logoi of, 397, 398.

— external and internal Logos, 398.

— soul living after death, 398.

— universal soul, 398.

— and Neo-Platonists, 424-427.

— and God, 426. &udra caste, 247. £udras, 163.

— can study the Vedanta, 330. Sufi, son of the season, 160.

— Fakir, Darwlsh, 344.

— poets, extracts from, 354-361.

— derivation of, 338, 339, 344.

— doctrines, abstract of, 339.

— Rabia the earliest, 340.

— terms derived from Christianity,

343

— four stages of the, 348. Sufi ism, its origin, 337.

— not genealogically descended from

Vedantism, 337.

— soul and God in, 337.

— Tholuck on, 338.

— Mahommedan in origin, 338.

— treatises on, 348.

— Persian influence on, 342.

— its connection with early Chris
tianity, 342, 343.

— the founder of, 343. *

— poetical language of, 349.

— morality of, 354.

— may almost be called Christian,

359

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580

INDEX.

Sufiism, Christianity and the Ye* danta-philosophy, coincidences between, 366.

Sufis, the, 338, 539.

— their belief, 339.

— traces of Platonism among the,

— wrote both in Persian and Arabic,

344

— their asceticism, 345.

— their saint-like lives, 345.

— Jellal eddin on the true, 346.

— little theosophic philosophy
among, 346.

— mystical theology of, 353.

— appeal to Jesus, 360. Sukshmaaarira, the subtle (astral t)

body, 296.

— Theosophists and, 305. Summer Solstice, 145.

the ay an* of the Pitrts, 145,

146.

among the Parsis, 145.

Sun, Jellal eddin on, 356.

— and its rays, metaphor of the,

539> 54°Suparnas, 163. Supernatural religion, vii. Supreme Being, 239, 241, 273, 447.

one, in the Vedas, 50.

Xenophanes on, 50.

in the A vesta, 50.

— — of both Jews and Greeks
separated from man, 379.

or Monogenea, 410-412.

above Jupiter, 423.

Supreme Soul, 272.

Suras, how the word was formed, 187.

— connected with svar, 188. Suso, 506.

— his penances, 531. Sutra, 97.

— style, 97, 127, 130, 132, 133,

134, 13& Sutras, alone almost unintelligible, 127,

— laws of Manu existed first as,

161.

— and their commentaries, 370.

Svargaloka, 159, 171.

Svarga-world, 120.

Svayambhu, 248.

Svetaketu and his father, 285-290.

Sjkm&y 120.

Synesius, Bishop, 373.

Synod of Antioch, 412.

— of Trier, 503. ffwrfipfjins, 524.

TAHITIAN heaven, 228.

— faith, 231.

Talmud and Christian doctrines, 9, 10.

— no bridge to another life in the,

174.

— strife between soul and body, 201. Tangiia, iron-wood tree for souls,

230. Tartarus, 217.

Tat tvara asi, 105, 279, 285, 291. Tauler, 457, 487, 506, 536.

— his serin ons, 506.

— borrowed from Eckhart, 506.

— stillness and silence taught by,

— discouraged extreme penance,

5»9

— led an active life, 529.

— on confession, 530.

— on visions, 531.

— on 8inles8ne88, 533. Telang, Mr., 99 ».

Temple, Dr., on the personality of

God, 235. Tertullian, 434, 460.

— his Latin equivalents for Logos,

460.

— on the Son of God, 461.

— his use of spiritus, 461. ij rod ovros 04a, 214. Thales, 80, 85.

That and thou, identity of the, 106. Theodore of Mopsuestia, 443. Theodoras, 464. Theologia Germanica, 510, 510 n.

Henry More on, 511.

Theologos, name for St. John, 45 3. n. Theology, 87.

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Google

581

Theology, lessons of comparative,
i?8.

— mystic and scholastic, 482. Theopompos, 45.

Theos, 447.

0€o> and 6 0€O>, 456, 459. 0&Mm, 481, 482,482 n. Theosophic, 91.

— philosophy of the Vedantist, not
of the Sufis, 346. Theosophy, 91, 92, 106, 541.

— true meaning of, xvi.

— in Christianity, 446.

— highest lesson of, 539. Therapeutai, the, 464. Thihaut, 99, 100, 275 ».

— on Ram&nuoa, 313.

' Thinking and willing,' 383. Third or evil road, 130.

— Person of the Trinity, 441.

probably a Jewish idea, 441.

Origen's view, 452.

Tholuck, 463, 467.

— on Sufiism, 338.

— on mysticism. 484.

Thomas Aquinas, v, 297, 462, 466, 474, 494. 499> 5°9> 5", 5*4> 525

— — follows and depends on

Dionysius, 484, 495.

on faith and knowledge, 494.

not a true mystic, 494.

likeness to, not oneness with

God, 495.

free from theological prejudice, 496.

knowledge of God, 496.

intellectual vision, 497.

on creation, 514.

Thorns, 17491.

' Thou art that/ 268, 284.

Thought of God, 412.

Thoughts and words, unbroken chain of, 522.

Three qualities, the, 162.

— Fates, Er before the, 219. Thrones, 475.

Tilak, B. G., the antiquity of the Vedas, 145.

Tin-tir, lord of, 14. Todas, bridge to another life among the, 173.

— heaven and hell, 174. to *v teal to oV, 237.

to 6V. 78, 268, 278, 331, 334, 410, 447,468.

TO OVTWS 6v, 379.

Translation from Vedanta-sutras,

127 et seq. Transmigration in the Laws of

Manu, 161.

— nine classes of, 163.

— no trace of, in Eastern Pacific,

231. Trier, Synod of, 503. Trimurti, 241, 243. Trinity of St. Clement, 436.

— of Plato, 440.

— of Numenius, 440.

— ofOrigen, 452. Tropics of Porphyrius, 144.

— as gates for the soul, 145. True, the (Satyam), 213.

— coming back to the, 288. Truth, not served by assertions, 7.

— universality of, 51.

— underlying myth, 222.

— touchstone of, 375. Tundalas, poem of, 170.

Two gates, or two mouths, 144.

primeval principles, 184.

present even in Ahurainazda,

184, 185. Tylor, 75. Types, whence they arise? 387,

389.

— Huxley's idea of, 387, 388.

UNCERTAINTIES in most ancient texts, in.

Unions, not unigenitus, 411.

Union, not absorption, 290.

Union with God, Dionysius on, 478, 479, 480.

— mystic, 479.

five stages of, 480.

Universal Self, 160. .

— Soul, 310.

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582

INDEX.

Unknowable, the, of Agnostics,

105. Unknown, Absolute Being, 236,

237Unmindfulness, river of, 320, 221. Unseen in man, dialogue on the,

155. Upadhis, 271, 293, 296,303, 305.

— what they are, 305.

— caused by nescience, 305. Upani&had doctrine, an early and
late growth of, 113. Upanishads, 77, 79, 80, 94, 95,101, 104, 105, 107, 108, 224, 234, 340, 37o> 539

— are fragments, 96.

— different accounts of the be
ginning in the, 96.

— revealed, 97.

— difficult to translate, 109.

— texts very obscure, no.

— author's translation o£ 110.

— on the relation of the soul to

God, 113.

different statements on this in
the, 113.

— on the soul after death, 114 et
seq.

— historical progress in the,

— attempt to harmonise the differ
ent statements in the, 127.

— not in harmony with the Mantras,

— no attempt to harmonise them
with the teaching of the Yedas, 141.

— three stages of thought as to the
soul, 150.

— mythological language inter
preted, 142.

— on the return of souls to earth,

154

— belief in invisible things in the,

154

— knowledge or faith better than
good works in, 190.

— a later development than the

Vedic Hymns, 193.

Upanishads, struggle for a higher idea of the Godhead, 238.

— the Supreme Being in, 239.

— some passages early in, 291.

— evolution in, 297.

— equivocal passages in, 312.

— strange to us, 322, 323.

— germs of Buddhism in, 325.

— their doctrine called Rahasya,
secret, 329.

— study of, restricted, 329.

— the psychological problem always
uppermost, 335.

— study of, a help to reading Eck
hart, 511. Upis in Artemis Upis, 64 n. Urd, well of, 169. Utkranti, exodus of the soul, 309. Uttara Mlmamsa, 98, 99.

VAGASANEYAKA, 132.

Vagrasaneyins, 132.

Vahram, 201.

Vai, 201.

Vaimanika deities, 163.

Vawya-caste, 247.

Vai*yas, 156.

Vaitaranl, the river, 170.

Va*, 79.

Valentinians, the, 396.

Valkhas, or Vologesis I, 39.

— preserved the A vesta and Zend,

39Varstmansar Nask, 56. Varuna, 16, 17, 121, 130, 133, 181.

— not Ourauos, 73.

— above the lightning, 132, 135,

136.

— Ahuramazda, a development of,

183. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics,

498 ». Vayu, air, wind, 121,130, 131,132,

135, 347. Veda, poets of, and Zoroaster left no written works, 31.

— from vid, 35.

— and Vedanta, 95.

— o&a, 79.

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583

Veda, important for Physical and Psychological Religion, 95.

— superhuman, 103.

— knowledge, or language, 103.

— is Sruti, 104.

— a book with seven seals, 112.

— historical growth of, 142.

— struggle for higher idea of the

Godhead in, 237.

— the Supreme Being in, 239, 240.

— study of, restricted, 330.

— and A vesta, close connection of
languages of, 180. names shared in common, 182.

— common background of, 203. Vedanta, 95, 290, 539.

— literature, three periods of, 101.

— schools, two, 107,113,114.

— theories on the soul, 113, 126,

362,363.

— founded on £ruti, 14L

— doctrine on Immortality, 234.

— as a philosophical system, 282.

— still a religion, 324. •

— moral character of, 325.

— safeguards against licence, 326.

— soul and God in, 336.

— imparts highest knowledge, 293.

— philosophy, 66, 77, 102, 104,

105, 107, 108.

— — on the Self, 106.

fundamental principle of, 284,

292.

— — differs from mystic philosophy,

284. creation in the, 296.

— — rich in similes, 324.

no restriction on the study of,

329Sufiism and Christianity, coincidences between, 366, 459.

— its growth, 369,370. Vedanta-sutras, 97, 98, 101, 107,

108, 234, 290, 312.

number of, 98.

names of, 98.

translation* of, 114 n., 126.

——translation of first Sutra of third

Chap, of fourth Book, 12 7 et seq.

Vedanta-sutras, love of God wanting in, 291.

short summary of, 317.

Vedantism, is it the origin of Sufiism? 337.

— likeness to mystic Christianity,

526. Vedantist, a, on identity after death,

— on the Dialogue with Pragr&pati,

261.

— on the individual soul, 271.

— admits no difference between
cause and effect, 303. Ved&ntists, Eleatic philosophers and German Mystics, 280.

— personal God of the, 32a

— two kinds of reality to the, 320.

— Creator of the, 320.

— attain the same end as Kant, 321.

— on union with Brahman in this
life, 533. Vedic prayers, 16, 17.

— Hymns, path of the soul in, 190. invocation of the Fathers in,

191.

— poets and philosophers advanced
beyond their old faith common with the Zoroastrians, 189.

— Sanskrit difficult, 179.

— deities, some occur as demons in
the Avesta, 189. Vendldad and M&ni, 41.

— or Vindad, 42, 43.

— Sadah, 43.

— age of, 46,

— bridge of ITinval in the, 172.

— God and the Devil in the, 185. Verbal copula, 77.

Verbum, vrtdh, word, 242.

Vergottung and Vergotterung, 48 2 n.

Vesta, 36.

Vibhu, hail of Brahman, 121, 122.

Vid, to know, 35.

Vigrara river, 121, 122, 124.

— mean* ageless, 142, 170, 221. Vi&ak&hana, throne, 121, 123, 124.

— the feet and sides of, 123. Viro&ana, 250, 251, 253, 260.

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584

INDEX.

Virtues, 475.

Vishnu, 140.

Visions of ascetics, 538, 531.

Vispered, the, 43.

— age of the, a6.

Viftasp, sacred books of Zoroaster
collected under, 38. Visvakarman, 247. Vivarta, 298. Vivarta-vada, 317. Vizaresha, the fiend, 172, 194. Vohumand, good thought, 44, 49,

56, 186, 203.

— a parallel to the Holy Ghost, 57. Vorstellung, 385.

Vrtdh, 242.

Vritrahan, Veda — Verethraghna,

Avesta, 182. VyaBa-sutras, 98.

WACKERNAGEL and Weinhold,

504 «• Waits, 75. Waldensians, 503. Wassiljew, 32 n. Water the beginning of all things,

80, 85. Waxing and waning of the moon,

147, 148. Weber, 99 it., 166, 167 n. Weighing of souls, 167.

— of the dead in the Minokhired,

201.

— by Rashnu, 202. Weisse, xv. Wellhausen, 53. Weltgeschichte, ist das Weltgericht,

1. West, Dr., 42,47, 55 n.

— his translation of the Dtnkartf,

47, 5°Westcott, 204, 210 n., 212 «.

— on the Logos of the Fourth

Gospel, 414.

— story of Dionysius the Areopa
gite, 463.

— on the fifth century, 478. West-Ostlicher Divan, 337.

* What thou art, that am 1/ 160.

Whinfield on translations of Greek books into Arabic, 342.

— translations from the Mesnevt,

355Wicked, punishments of, in Manu,

165.

— cannot find the path of the Fathers
or Gods, 171.

— burnt by flames, 171, 172.

— fate of, after death, 198, 199. Widow-burning, appeal to lost books,

33Wife of God, 402. Wilford, 81.

Will, surrender of our, 542. Wisdom, the Semitic not the same
as the Logos, zi.

— of God, 402, 406.

— personification of, 405. •— or Sophia, 406.

— of the Proverbs, 406.

— as the Father, 407. Word, 242.

— as Brahman, 242, 243.

— or Logos, 302, 381.

— not mere sound but thought, 381,

385.

— and thought inseparable, 384.

— of God, 404,405,412.

— of the Father, 513.

— has lost its meaning, 521. a Words and thoughts, common Aryan
stock of, 72. Works, blessedness acquired by, 148. return to earth, 148.

— are exhausted, 150.

World of Agni, Vayu, &c, 121,133.

— connected with loka, 133, 135.

— as word and thought, 242.

— is Brahman, 499.

— the intelligible as the Logos,

407.

— and all in it, the true Son,

417.

— -a places of enjoyment, 133. spirit of Plato, 440.

wide truths, 10, 11.

Writing, no word for, in Veda or Avesta, 31.

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INDEX.

585

Writing known in some books of the Old Testament, 32.

XENOPHANES on one God, 59.

— on the Supreme Being, 235,

237

— Plato and Cicero on, 331.

— likeness of his teaching to the

Upanishads, 330, 331, 332, 333.

— Sextus on, 332.

— physical philosophy of, 332.

YAMA, 190, 192, 234.

— realm of, 137, 140.

— first of mortals, 138.

— the moon, not the sun, 138 n.

— near the setting sun, 139.

— tormentor of the wicked, 166.

— path of, 169.

— and Varuna, 190.

— on the fate of the wicked, 217,

218.

— in the world of the Fathers, 227,

228. Yamaloka, 146. Yashts, the, 43.

— age of, 46. Yasna, the, 43.

— the old and later, 46. Year, from, to the wind, 130. Yeshliha, moments, 121, 122. Yoga-sutras, 327.

Yogins, 327. Yogis, the, 353.

ZAOTAR, hotar, 65. Zarathushtra, 36, 206.

— author of the Gat has, 44.

— secession of, from the Vedic Devas,

182.

— his monotheism, 183.

— tried to solve the problem of the
existence of evil, 184.

— questioned by one of the de
parted, 198.

Zarathushtra's account of Ahura Mazda, 51.

— talk with Ahura Mazda, 54, 55.

— followers abjuring their faith in
the Devas, 188.

a real historic event, 188,189.

Zaremaya, oil of, 198, 221.

Zeller, Die PhUogophie der

Griechen, 81, 82, 83, 84,107 n.,

280 n.K 335. Zend Avesta, erroneous name, 35,36.

— translated into Greek, 39.

— preserved by Vologeses I, 39.

— language, 43. Zeno, 330.

— on the Logos, 460. Zeus, 105, 212, 447.

— deus, bright, 29.

— or Jupiter, lesson of, 29.

— and Dyaus, 73.

— wrong derivation from Qv, 73.

— of Xenophanes, 330, 331.

a personal deity, 331.

Cicero on, 331.

— of Aristotle, 395. Zimmer, 139 n,

Zoroaster, analysis of his books by Hermippus, 83.

— teaches neither Fire-worship nor

Dualism, 180.

— and the Vedic Rishis, religions
of, 181.

— name known to Plato and Ari
stotle, 83. Zoroastrian prayer, 19.

— religion, loss of many books, 56.

— idea of a spiritual and material
creation, 56, 57.

— parallel to the Logos, 57.

— Mazdayaznian, 188. Zoroastrianism revived by the Sas
sanians, 40. Zoroastrians in some points more simple than the Vedic philosophers, 189.

THE END.

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CATALOGUE OF PRINCIPAL WORKS

PUBLISHED BY

PROFESSOR F. MAX MULLER.

COMPILED BY M. W.

Hitopade&i. Eine alte indische Fabelsammlung, aus dem Sanskrit zum ersten Mai ins Deutsche tibersetzt. 1844. (Out offprint.)

Meghadfita, der Wolkenbote, dem K&lid&sa nachgedichtet. t 847. (Out of print.)

On the Relation of the Bengali to the Aryan and Aboriginal Languages of India. 1847. (Transactions of the British Association for 1847.)

Rig-Veda-Samhit&. The Sacred Hymns of the Br&hmans, together with the Commentary of S&ya?i&i&rya, edited by F. M. M. 6 vols. 4to. 1849-T873.

On the Turanian Languages. Letter to Chevalier Bunsen. 1853. (Out of print.) (In Bunsen's Christianity and Mankind, vol. Ill, pp. 263 seq.)

On Indian Logic (in Thomson's ' Laws of Thought').

1853Proposals for a Uniform Missionary Alphabet. 1854. Suggestions for the Assistance of Officers in Learning
the Languages of the Seat of War in the East.

1854.

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The Languages of the Seat of War in the East; with a Survey of the three Families of Language, Semitic, Aryan, and Turanian. Second Edition. With an Appendix on the Missionary Alphabet and an Ethnological Map by A. Petermann. 1855. (Out of print.)

Comparative Mythology. 1856. (Reprinted in ' Chips from a German Workshop/)

Deutsche Liebe. Aus den Papieren eines Fremdlings. 1857. Ninth Edition, 1889.

Buddhism and Buddhist Pilgrims. 1857. (Reprinted in ' Chips from a German Workshop.')

The German Classics from the Fourth to the Nineteenth Century. 1858. New Edition, by F. Lichtenstein. 2 vols. Oxford, 1886.

Correspondence relating to the Establishment of an Oriental College in London. (Reprinted from The Times, 1858.)

A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature. 1859. Second Edition, i860. (Out of print.)

Ancient Hindu Astronomy and Chronology. 1862. (From fourth volume of the Rig-Veda.)

Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Vol. I, 1861. Vol. II, 1867. Fourteenth Edition, 1886.

Hitopadesa. Sanskrit Text with Interlinear Transliteration, Grammatical Analysis, and English Translation. 1866.

A Sanskrit Grammar for Beginners. 1866. Second Edition, 1870. New and abridged Edition, by A. A. Macdonell. 1886.

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Chips from a German Workshop. 4 vols. 18671875. Second Edition. Vols. I, II. 1868. (Out of print. A selection published under the title of * Selected Essays/)

Volume I. Lecture on the Vedas, or the Sacred Books of the Brah
mans, delivered at Leeds, 1865. Christ and other Masters, 1858. The Veda and Zend-Avesta, 1853. The Aitareya-Brahmana, 1864. On the Study of the Zend-Avesta in India, 1862. Progress of Zend Scholarship, 1865. Genesis and the Zend-Avesta, 1864. The Modern Parsis, 1862. Buddhism, 1862. Buddhist Pilgrims, 1857. The Meaning of Nirvana, 1857. Chinese Translations of Sanskrit Texts, 1861. The Works of Confucius, 1861. Popol Vuh, 1862. Semitic Monotheism, i860.

Volume II. Comparative Mythology, 1856. Greek Mythology, 1858. Greek Legends, 1867. Bellerophon, 1855. The Norsemen in Iceland, 1858. Folk-Lore, 1863. Zulu Nursery Tales, 1867. Popular Tales from the Norse, 1859. Tales of the West Highlands, 1861. On Manners and Customs, 1865. Our Figures, 1863. Caste, 1858.

Volume III. German Literature, 1858. Old Gennj^Lover^ejm,_i658.

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Ye Schyppe of Fooles, 1858.

Life of Schiller, 1859.

Wilhelm Mfiller, 1858.

On the Language and Poetry of Schleswig-Holstein, 1864.

Joinville, 1866.

The Journal des Savants and the Journal de Trevoux, 1866.

Chasot, 1856.

Shakespeare, 1864.

Bacon in Germany, 1857.

A German Traveller in England a.d. 1598, 1857.

Cornish Antiquities, 1867.

Are there Jews in Cornwall ? 1867.

The Insulation of St. Michael's Mount, 1867.

Bunsen, 1868.

Letters from Bunsen to Max Muller in the years 1848 to

1859

Volume IV.

Inaugural Lecture, On the Value of Comparative Philology as a branch of Academic Study, delivered before the University of Oxford, 1868.

Note A. On the Final Dental of the Pronominal Stem tad.

Note B. Did Feminine Bases in d take s in the Nominative Singular ?

Note C. Grammatical Forms in Sanskrit corresponding to so-called Infinitives in Greek and Latin.

Rede Lecture, Part I. On the Stratification of Language, delivered before the University of Cambridge, 1868.

Rede Lecture, Part IL On Curtius' Chronology of the Indo-Germanic Languages, 1875.

Lecture on the Migration of Fables, delivered at the Royal Institution, June 3, 1870 (Contemporary Review, July, 1870).

Appendix. On Professor Benfey*s Discovery of a Syriac Translation of the Indian Fables,

Notes.

Lecture on the Results of the Science of Language, delivered before the University of Strassburg, May 23, 187a (Contemporary Review, June, 187a).

Note A. Qt6s and Deus.

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Note B. The Vocative of Dyaus and Zctfc. Note C. Aryan Words occurring in Zend but not in Sanskrit. ,

Lecture on Missions, delivered in Westminster Abbey,

December 3, 1873. Note A. Passages shewing the Missionary Spirit of

Buddhism. Note B. The Schism in the Brahma-Samaj. Note 0. Extracts from Keshub Ohunder Sen's Lectures. Dr. Stanley's Introductory Sermon on Christian Missions. On the Vitality of Brahmanism, postscript to the Lecture
on Missions {Fortnightly Review, July, 1874).

Address on the Importance of Oriental Studies, delivered at the International Congress of Orientalists in London, 1874.

Notes.

Life of Colebrooke, with Extracts from his Manuscript Notes on Comparative Philology (Edinburgh Review, October, 187a).

Reply to Mr. Darwin (Contemporary Review, January, 1875).

In Self-Defence.

Index to Vols. III. and IV.

On the Stratification of Language. Sir Robert Rede's Lecture, delivered at Cambridge. 1868.

Rig-Veda-SamhitlL The Sacred Hymns of the Br&hmans. Translated and explained by F. M. M. Vol. I: Hymns to the Maruts. 1869.

Rig-Veda-Pr&tis&khya: Das alteste Lehrbuch der Vedischen Phonetik. Sanskrit Text mit Uebersetzung und Anmerkungen. Leipzig, 1869.

Buddhaghosha's Parables translated from Burmese by Captain T. Rogers, with an Introduction containing Buddha's Dhammapada, translated from Pali by F. M. M. 1870.

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Letters on the War between Germany and France, by

T. Mommsen, D. F. Strauss, F. Max Miiller, and

T. Carlyle. 1871. Speech at the German Peace Festival in London,

May, 1871. Leipzig, 1871. Ueber die Resultate der Sprachwissenschaft. Vorle
sung. Strassburg, 1872. On Missions: a Lecture delivered in Westminster

Abbey, with an Introductory Sermon by A. P.

Stanley. London, 1873. (Out of print.) The Hymns of the Rig-Veda in the Samhita and Pada

Texts. (Reprinted from the Editio Princeps.)

2 vols. 1873. Lectures on Mr. Darwin's Philosophy of Language,
delivered at the Royal Institution in March and

April, 1873. (Out of print.) Introduction to the Science of Religion: Four Lectures
delivered at the Royal Institution. 1873. New

Edition, 1880. Basedow, J. B. (M.M/s great grandfather), a Biography,
in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 1875. Schiller's Briefwechsel mit Herzog Christian von

Schleswig-Holstein. 1875. Ueber Ablative auf d mit Locativbedeutung (Jahr
biicher fur Philologie. 1876, Heft 10, 'Selected

Essays'). On Spelling. London and Bath, 1876, 1886. Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, as
illustrated by the Religions of India. Hibbert

Lectures, 1878. Last Edition, .1891*

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The Upanishads, translated. (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. I, 1879; Vol. XV, 1884.)

Selected Essays on Language, Mythology, and Religion. 2 vols. 1881.

Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, in Commemoration of the Centenary of its First Publication. Translated by M. M., with Introduction byL. Noir& 1881.

The Dhammapada, translated from Pstli. 1881. (Vol. X, Part 1 of Sacred Books of the East.)

Buddhist Texts from Japan, edited in the Aryan Series of the Anecdota Oxoniensia, I, 1. 1881.

Sacred Books of the East. Letter to the Very Rev. the Dean of Christ Church. Oxford, 1882.

Sukh&vativyuha, Description of Sukhavati, The Land of Bliss, edited by F. M. M. and Bunyiu Nanjio. (Anecdota Oxoniensia, Vol. I, Part 11. 1883.)

India, What can it Teach us ? A Course of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge. 1882. New Edition, 1892.

Biographical Essays. London, 1884.

Rajah Rammohun Roy, 1774-1883 (written 1883). Keshub Chunder Sen, 1838-1884 (written 1884). Dayananda Surasvati, 1827-1883 (written 1884). Bunyiu Nanjio, 1849, and Kenjiu Kasawara, 1851-1883

(written 1884). Colebrooke, 1765-1837 (Edinburgh Review, Oct. 187a ; ' Chips
from a German Workshop,' iv, 377). Mohl, 1800-1876 (Contemporary Review, Aug. 1878). Bunsen, 1791-i860 (' Chips from a German Workshop,'

iii, 358). Kingsley, 1830-1875 (Translated from Deutsche Rundschau,

1877).

(4) Qq

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The Ancient Palm-Leaves, containing the Pragr/mP&ramita-HWdaya-Sdtra and the UshnishaVigraya-DMrawi, edited by F. M. M. and Bunyiu Nanjio, with an Appendix by G. Btihler. (Anecdota Oxoniensia. Aryan Series. Vol. I, Part in. 1884.)

The Dharma-Samgraha. An Ancient Collection of Buddhist Technical Terms. Prepared for publication by Kenjiu Kasawara, and after his death edited by F. M. M. and H. Wenzel. (Anecdota Oxoniensia. Aryan Series. Vol. I, Part v. 1885.)

Introduction to Book III of l The Hundred Greatest Men.' By F. M. M. and E. Kenan. 1885.

Muller, Wilhelm (M. M/s father), a Biography, in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 1885.

Scherer s History of German Literature. Translated by Mrs. Conybeare. Edited by F. M. M. 1885. New Edition, 1891.

Hymn to the Storm-Gods. Rig-Veda I, 168, in the ' Etudes arch^ologiques d^di^es' a Mr. le dr. C. Leemans. Leide, 1885.

Goethe and Carlyle. An Inaugural Address at the English Goethe Society. 1886.

The Science of Thought. 1887.

La Carita of Andrea del Sarto in the Chiostro dello Scalzo at Florence. With three Illustrations. 1887.

Biographies of Words, and the Home of the Aryas. 1888.

Three Introductory Lectures on the Science of Thought, delivered at the Royal Institution. 1888.

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Inaugural Address at the opening of the School for Modern Oriental Languages, established by the Imperial Institute, 1890.

Gifford Lectures delivered before the University of Glasgow, 1888-1892.

1. Natural Religion. 1889. New Edition, 1892.

2. Physical Religion. 1891.

3. Anthropological Religion. 1892.

4. Psychological Religion. (In the Press.) Deutsche Liebe. Aus den Papieren eines Fremdlings.

With Notes for the use of Schools. 1888.

Rig-Veda-Samhita. The Sacred Hymns of the Br&hmans, together with Sayawa's Commentary. New Edition, critically revised. Four vols. 1890-1892.

Three Lectures on the Science of Language. 1889. New Edition, with a Supplement, 'My Predecessors/ 1891.

The Science of Language : founded on Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution in 1861 and 1863. 2 vols. 1891.

Address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association, Cardiff, 1891.

Vedic Hymns, translated. Part I: Hymns to the Maruts, Rudra, V&yu, and V&ta. (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XXXH.) 1891.

Apastamba - Yagr/ifa- ParibhUshai,- S&tras. Translated. (Part of Vol. XXX of Sacred Books of the East.)

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