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'' " Certainly, you are quite right," said Vidy&h&ya, " in your conception that I spoke of a beginning." "Then why not worship the author of that beginning ?" asked Blancombe. " I have no objection to do so," answered the other, " and I trust you do not understand us to reverence imder the form of Siva any other spirit than that which has been distinctly set forth to you as supreme, and without duality." "Very well; yet why as the destroyer, rather than as the Creator?" asked Blancombe. "You seem to think," answered Vidy^hdrya, " that we have started from the wrong point of the cycle ; and certainly we are not unaware that the beginning of this Cali age, for example, has already been, and its end is not yet arrived. But what, my friend, must have been before it be- gan? Surely there must have been an end of all the former ages. Ton have travelled, as I believe, in that mountain range which our inspired ancestors happily termed in Sanscrit the abode of snow; or, at least, you have been in your lifetime upon other moimtains. You have observed, then, how each of the lower peaks appears to you in turn to be the last ; yet upon reaching its summit, there is perhaps a short descent, and then, peak upon peak again, each perhaps of greater altitude and dif- ficulty ; just so is it then with the successive creations of the 104 81VA — REVOLUTION. world. But still more justly, perhaps, we may compare them to a succession of circles, of which we ourselves stand in one of the innermost, and perhaps the smallest; whenever the line which bounds our immediate vision is broken down, we say, Lo, a beginning; and indeed things begin again and again. But beyond each circle to which the horizon of our contemplation expands, there is again another circle, and another. No Deity, therefore, or, to speak more accurately, no manifestation of the Eternal Spirit in any form can better represent the fluctuation of our worlds, or more worthily receive our homage, than the breaker down and the re-constructer of all things in succession ; who Himself never ends, because He is the end of all things, and in Him all things begin again. From this explanation you will already have perceived, both why we worship principally Siva, and why all the benign powers, which are represented in the Rig-Veda as animating the lively agencies of nature, may be considered as forms of Him who is eternally changing, and in change remains the same *J'^ * Vidy^hirya seems to UDite in his speech the philosophy of a Yed^tist, and the mythology of a worshipper of Siva — ^things difficult logically to combine. But •uch inconsistencies ought not to surprise us. NOTE ON PAGE 74. In considering whether Yaruna be ovpavo^, we should remember that in early Hind(i cosmogony the heavens are called the tocUers, (as the Hebrews spoke of the waters above the firmament 1) and hence Yaruna may possibly have got his function as " regent of the waters.** Thus some think, that from the ambiguity of the word Eishi the seven stars became the seven wise men. APPROXIMATION OF ST8TEMS. 105 CHAPTER IV. HOW CHA'RVA'CAS MAY BE REFUTED. 'Eaop^^es tit t6w adpea^ koI r3 ef^pcurror a^oO KdKKof, ipx^fieBa els hpouu^ rod AfffLiovpyiljaavros, ds ^iiffl Ukdrtaif. — Vet, Schtd, in ArisM. Op, Compare the Timaui, pw 47, a, h, c, d, e, (p, 40, ed. Tauchnitz.) 6\pts 8i^ — KaTwrnicoifieBa, Hiere IS a spirit in Man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him midentanding. — B<H)k <if Job, Bie adhibita Batio docet quid optomum sit; neglecta, mnltis impUcatar erroribus. — Cietro, "Well," said Blancombe, "there is one consolatory result firom all that has been said hitherto, however much the three doctrines which we have heard expounded may differ, they agree in a confession that there is something immortal in man, for the future happiness of which it is at least part of our busi- ness upon earth to provide. For although the Miini seemed to make his tree of eternal intelligence have its root in earth or nature, while the A'ch^a rather conceives of his soul-tree as fast rooted in the heavens with its faces in all directions, yet the first conceives of what is rooted in earth as branching up into the illimitable expanse of immortality, and the second makes his heavenly outgrowth drop its pendant boughs along all the worlds, so that, like a venerable banyan-tree, it becomes rooted firequently, and all living things grow, as it were, in its growth. Then again, although our wise friend Saddnanda might seem to have departed much from all others, in that he removes {Sarther from our visible world any need for a presiding and controlling intelligence, yet he too is warned either by nature, or by some monitor either inward or external, of the necessary existence of something, which must survive eveiy possible dis- location of our earthly frame, and which should disengage itself therefore, in time, from whatever may disqualify it for entering 106 OBJECTIONS OF MATERIAUST. into the mansions of the blessed. Moreover, in the stress which our wise friend justly lays upon knowledge, I recognise an important testimony to the existence and to the value of un- changeable truth." " Suppose then," proceeded Blancombe, " we all start toge- ther from these points on which we agreed, and add to them, if you think proper, any others which are not disputed among us, i8uch as that the Divine Being whom we worship cares at least for man, and has even dwelt either once or oftener in human form upon earth ; but in any case let us endeavour both to assure ourselves and to persuade others of the immortality which is reserved for man, and endeavour to spread the knowledge of whatever Divine Wisdom may enable us to lay hold on eternal life. For I suppose there is no danger of any Chdrvdca, such as those whom the Saugata refrises to associate himself with, being able to cheat uis out of this hope ; or to persuade us that, when this body is dissolved, there remains for the soul no hope of an inheritance to come." " But, if you will excuse me," said Wolff, about whose Ups there had been for some time an occasional twitching, as if he was itching to put in a word, " I am not quite sure that the materialism, as it is termed, of the Ch^lrv4cas ought so lightly to be set aside. There are at least a few difficulties which they probably would allege if any of their abler champions happened to be present ; and such as, if you have no objection, without at all pledging myself as one bound personally by them, I should like, acting only on their behalf, to throw out for your consideration." " They will have in you, I am afraid," remarked Blancombe, somewhat drily, ''as I thought, quite as able a champion as they could have foimd in their own ranks ; but pray what are the considerations which you allude to as things which should be taken into account?" "Why it appears to me," responded Wolff, "that a large portion of what has been brought forward by each of our friends, either in explanation or defence of their several opinions, would CAVILS. 107 be taken hold of hy any perverse Ch&rvkcsLy as throwing weight, 80 £Bur as it goes, into his side of the balance. He would assent, for instance, to all that the Bauddha doctor suggested in dispa- ragement of the Brahmans, and their sacred books, while he would embrace, with still greater eagerness, the S&nkhja doc- trine, expounded by Sad&nanda, of all things acting according to their properties, and especially the notion that intellect, or perceptive apprehension, is only an evolution of matter ; while, again, he might take occasion from the Yedantine subtleties about non-duality {Adwaita), to reject so clumsy a contrivance for explaining the world as that of matter and spirit; only instead of refining away the positive, and taking refuge in the impalpable, as the A'ch&iya has done, he would rather take his stand upon the solid substratum of the visible world, and desire farther proof before he assented to the necessity of anything else existing than that sensuous matter, which is evidently capable of being refined into sentient life, and which, when duly com- prehended, seems alone to fiimish as probable a solution as any one ia, of the riddles of the world.