that has fascinated many noble minds, without the pale of the Christian Church as well as within it. But in India, as in Europe, the attempt to rise above our human nature has resulted only in failure. The Yogin, or devotee, became a mere hypocrite or charlatan, leading an idle life, and supporting himself by a useless show of religious austerities or by more immoral devices. This result seems to have been manifest in our author's time. The true system of yoga had been lost, and must be revived. But the disciple differed from his master in one important point. He saw that the pure abstraction of a religious devotee was not possible for all men, and that it was opposed to the just claims of family and caste. He contended still that mental devotion (buddhiyoga) was the best, but that devotion by work (karmayoga) might also lead to the great blessing of nirvāņa.

But all work must be done without "attachment" (the Sanskrit term sanga having the same double meaning as this word), that is, it must be done simply as duty, without any emotion, with indifference to all attendant circumstances, and especially without any desire for reward (phala, fruit). To do even religious acts in the hope of gaining heaven,1 even the heaven of Indra, bound the soul still to the prison of the body in successive births. Its highest destiny, absorption into the Supreme Being, might be gained, or at least promoted, by works, but the necessary condition of such works was their absolute freedom. from all selfish hope of gain. If done in this spirit, then action was even laudable, especially such action as was

1 The ecclesiastic student will see a parallel to this doctrine in the teaching of the Quietist school, represented by Molinos and Madame

Guyon, which taught that the incentive to a godly life should not be the hope of heaven, but the pure love of God.

required by the particular caste to which a man might belong. It was the duty, therefore, of his hero, Arjuna, to fight, for he was of the Kshatriya or warrior caste, and this duty is enforced by much ingenious casuistry, by which renunciation (of works: sannyāsa) is reconciled with devotion by work (karmayoga), which is done by renouncing all the "fruit" of works. This kind of renunciation is called tyāga (forsaking). Works done in this spirit of absolute indifference to all external things might lead to the great blessing of nirvāņa; but if done from any desire of gain, they were imperfect, and could only lead to a temporary abode in one of the heavens of the gods, however good or useful they might be relatively. But though works are so far admitted into his system, the highest state below is that of perfect repose, with constancy in meditating on the Supreme; and his highest type of man is the recluse (muni), taking up a solitary resting-place far from the haunts of men, renouncing all the blessings of this world, and even hope itself, holding the mind in check until thought ceases, and thus waiting in pious abstraction for the happy hour when he will be absorbed into the infinite Brahma.

The material world was not, however, ignored by our author as an object of speculation. In treating of physics he adopts the system of Kapila, which has been generally adopted or acquiesced in by Hindu writers, though of different schools of thought in other respects. In the Sankhya system,1 Prakriti, or primordial matter, is assumed as the source of all material things: it is eternal, both as

1 For a fuller account of this system I must refer my readers to a translation, with notes, of the San

khya Kārikā, in this series of Oriental works.

to the past and the future; uncreated, and having in itself a potentiality of issuing forth and forming all material existences. It is acted upon unconsciously by a desire or purpose to set soul free from all contact with matter, that the former may know no longer the pains of this mortal life, by regaining its primal state of unconscious repose. This primal matter has three constituent elements, called guņas or threads, which are (1.) Sattwa (goodness), which is of a fine and elastic nature; (2.) Rajas (passion), the element of motion, active and restless, of which things animate (except the gods) are chiefly formed; and (3.) Tamas (darkness), the source of inanimate things and of stupidity and delusion. Nature, when undeveloped, is called Avyakta (unmanifested), and Vyakta (manifested) when developed in the manifold forms of the existing world. The nature and excellence of these forms depend on the nature of the guna that prevails in it, and the manner in which each may be modified by the other.

The first production of Nature is (1.) Buddhi (intellect), which is the first link in the chain of agencies by which the soul becomes cognisant of the external world; (2.) Ahankāra (consciousness), the seat of our sense of being or self-consciousness. From Ahankara (which corresponds to the "mind-stuff" of Professor Clifford) proceed (3.) the five subtle elements (tanmātra), which underlie (4.) the five gross elements (mahābhūta). The former bear the technical names of sound, tangibleness, odour, visibleness, and taste. The gross elements are ether (ākāśa), connected with the subtle element called sound; air (vāyu), from the element tangibleness; earth, from the element called smell; light or fire, from the element visibility, and water from that of taste. From Ahankara proceed

the five senses (indriya-both the faculty and the bodily organ), which are the senses of hearing, touching, smelling, seeing, and tasting; and the five organs of action, the voice, the hands, the feet, and the organs of excretion and generation. A third internal faculty, called manas, is usually placed, in the order of enumeration, after the senses and the bodily organs, from its connection with them. It is the faculty by which the sensations are individually received and formed into concepts of a primary form: these are transmitted to consciousness (Ahankāra), by which they come into a clear, conscious state, as into the light, and then they are borne to intellect (Buddhi), by which they are formed into complete conceptions, which the soul sees as in a mirror, and thus becomes cognisant of an external world. The manas, as the seat of sensibility, is supposed to be also the seat of our passions or emotions; for the soul never acts: it is a pure light, existing in and for itself; it knows nothing of those desires that men have for earthly enjoyments, for these are as purely material as the objects of desire.

These twenty-three products are the whole of the Vyakta, or matter in a manifest, developed form, and, with the opposite natures of Prakriti (primal matter) and Soul (Atman) form the twenty-five principles of the Sānkhya system. The physical theory of Kapila had an extensive influence on Hindu modes of thought, being found in such different works as the Institutes of Manu, the Svetasvatara Upanishad, and the Purāņas. Parts of it were incorporated into other systems, in which Prakriti (Nature) occupies a subordinate position.

In the Sankhya system the soul is invested with a linga

or subtle body,1 formed of the three internal organs, Intellect (buddhi), Consciousness (ahankāra), and the Manas or receptive faculty and seat of desires, with the five subtle elements. This is peculiar to each soul, and forms the distinct disposition (bhāra), the separate nature of each individual. It accompanies the soul in its successive transmigrations to other bodies until a final separation from matter has been obtained; (by knowledge, according to Kapila; by pious meditation, according to Patanjali); and then the linga is absorbed for ever in the primal matter (Prakriti) from which it sprung; 2 the only source of existing things, according to the Sankhya school. Another part, and one that is obscure, in this system, is

1 Sometimes this subtle body is called the linga-sarira (linga-body), and at other times the linga and the linga-sarira are distinguished; but this, I think, is a late refinement. In the Atma-bodha (soulknowledge) the soul is said to be invested in five cases or sheaths (kosa). The three interior cases which are (1.) Vijnīna-maya (mere Intellection), (2.) Mano-maya (mere Manas), and (3.) Prāṇa-maya (only breath or the vital airs), form the subtle body.

2 The linga is referred to in c. xv. 7, 8. That which the soul takes with it on leaving a gross body is this permanent subtle body; not, as Mr. Thomson asserts, by the soul's connecting the senses with itself, that it may know: the reference is not to the soul's knowledge of matter, but to its öxnuμa or vehicle. This idea of a subtle body is not peculiar to Kapila. St. Paul speaks of a "spiritual body," and Sir H. Davy has a theory on this sub

ject not unlike that of the Sankhya school. "It does not appear improbable to me that some of the more refined machinery of thought may adhere, even in another state, to the sentient principle; for though the organs of gross sensation, the nerves and the brain, are destroyed by death, yet something of the more etherial nature, which I have supposed, may be less destructible. And, I sometimes imagine, that many of those powers, which have been called instinctive, belong to the more refined clothing of the spirit: conscience, indeed, seems to have some undefined source, and may bear relation to a former state of being" (Last Days of a Philosopher, p. 215). Here there is not only the assumption of a linga, but also a suggestion that it may be affected by the events of a former life, as Kapila taught. (See the translation of the Sankhya Kārikā in this series, p. 89.)