his aim; he must separate from society, to which nevertheless he feels bound, that he may pursue it. The more he learns about himself, the more he discovers that he must get rid of himself; yet he is always pursued by that demon. To sink and be lost is his only hope,-to sink in Brahm. But is Brahm anything save a projection from himself? To sink in him, does it mean the same as to be nothing? interest of to a believer records. 24. Reflections such as these, upon which the whole condition Worth and of Hindoo society for thousands of years is the commentary, the Hindoo might suggest some doubts to those who think that the acknow- philosophy ledgment of wisdom received is unfavourable to the search after in the it; that the soul of man is most likely to be free when it is Hebrew working out its freedom for itself, or under the guidance of a set of wise men. But we who do acknowledge the Hebrew principle, who have that vantage-ground for contemplating the history of the universe, are not obliged to rest in this merely negative conclusion. We are bound to look upon the whole course of human thought as directed by a wisdom above man's -by One who, as the Apostle speaks, "orders the times before appointed and the bounds of men's habitations, that they may seek Him, if haply they may feel after Him and find Him." To one holding this faith, the seekings of the Bhagavad Gita, and of the whole Hindoo world, must be of profoundest interest. He must perceive, indeed, that they were baffled continually; Spirit in but he makes the discovery with sympathy, not exultation,-- which it with the certainty that they were struggling with questions studied. which belong to him and to the whole universe; to which he too has to seek an answer, and cannot rest till he finds one. And far from seeing only contradictions either in the method of the search or the result of it, he will have continually to be humbled by perceiving how much has been made known to these inquirers; what glimpses of light they have caught, what visions of good have cheered their dreary path, what strength has been given them for thought, for suffering, even at times for manly action. If he feels even a wish to deny or to explain away this fact, he will suspect himself of a secret atheism of having studied the Hebrew books to no profit. should be history. 25. These remarks belong especially, but not exclusively, to Its relation the subject we are now considering. For modern inquiries have to the after made it clear that the Sanscrit is the source of most of the European languages. We have, therefore, a right to expect that the habit of thought and feeling in the Sanscrit books may be traced, under different modifications, in the nations of which we shall have hereafter to speak. We may find, in fact, that these Hindoo books are the commencement of a course of inquiry which we shall have to trace in many windings through Greek The Buddbist school. and through modern philosophy. The spirit of man, which in SECTION III. THE PHILOSOPHER SEPARATING HIMSELF FROM THE PRIEST. 1. Any allusion to the formal schools of Hindoo philosophy will belong more properly to the second part of this sketch. But there is one great Eastern revolution, assigned by most authorities to the fifth or sixth century B.C., which stands in the closest connection with the history of philosophy. Indeed, the few glimpses which we possess concerning the external facts of a conflict that has led to the most surprising results, would be absolutely unintelligible to us if we were not helped by some previous knowledge of Hindoo speculations. 2. The Buddhist is constantly spoken of in Hindoo books as if he were the member of a philosophical sect. We know him as the professor of a religion which is received by nearly a third of the inhabitants of the globe. To reconcile two such opposite descriptions, we must recollect the remarks which have been made upon the apparently unsociable characters which are united in the Brahmin, and upon the nature of Brahm himself. The priest is the man who uses his soul or intellect, in distinction from the mass of men, who use only their senses. Brahm is the Intellect or Buddha. That there should be a sect of Brahmins who dwelt upon the idea of an intelligence in man, till they began to suspect that their own pretension to an exclusive monopoly of it was, in fact, a denial of Brahm's presence, might easily have been conjectured; that these same persons should exalt the meditative part of religion above the sacrificial would be most likely from the specimen of the same feeling we have discovered in the Bhagavad Gita. But there was a period Buddhist very memorable and critical, it would seem, in the history of The mankind generally, connected with the appearance of reformers revolution and legislators in various countries, perhaps marking the commencement of European society and civilization, when Brahminism was shaken to its centre in Hindostan, and when the worship of the One Intelligence was proclaimed aloud as incompatible with the pretensions of an hereditary caste. Buddhism. 3. Not the original Hindoo doctrine, as some have affirmed, in plain contradiction both to the letter and spirit of the Veds, but certainly the idea which lay hid in that doctrine, and ever and anon had threatened to break loose from it, did now become the inspiring idea of whole countries. The philosophy, disentangling itself from the old faith, became itself a faith. Budd- The inward hism is the most surprising effort of the human intellect to meaning of assert its own supremacy of which there ever has been, or perhaps ever will be, any record. European sages in the last century, and in the present, have cried out, " When will philosophy break loose from the fetters which priests have imposed upon it ?" Philosophy in Asia performed that task two thousand years ago. It threw off a yoke which was become quite intolerable; it affirmed that man's soul is capable of unlimited expansion; it claimed for that soul the homage due to a divinity it made no mere idle boast of power; it actually won the allegiance of multitudes. 4. Is the result one on which the lover of wisdom, or of his Its different kind, can delight to dwell? All possible forms in which the in- aspects. tellect can express its belief in itself and in its own powers have been discovered and tried. The Buddhist worships sometimes the pure, absolute unity; sometimes he sees a soul above his own soul, himself transfigured; sometimes he adores men who have done great works on earth, the one Buddha distributed in numerous Buddhas. Now he denies all symbols, now every Its outward thing is symbolical. He is the purest of theists, he is the most clothing. complete of atheists. He can conceive nothing too vast for human wisdom, he sees it all gathered up in an infant. He is always flying from himself, he can find nothing but images of himself. The philosophy which began by emancipating itself Its final from religion has created for itself a religion,-one especially narrow, artificial, material. Those who would not be priests or have priests practise all priestly impostures, are slavishly priestridden. The adored intellect makes no progress, the seeker after wisdom finds no resource but in identifying the search with the object, and confessing that he finds nothing. Can this be the process destined for the emancipation of mankind? results. 54 CHAPTER IV. the Euro- sophers Khoung-fou tseu. CHINESE PHILOSOPHY. Sympathy of 1. THOUGH we have said that the Buddhist revolution was an effort of philosophers to free themselves from the shackles of an hereditary faith, we are quite aware that it is not to an experiment of this kind that the teachers of the last century would century with have turned as an encouragement and an example to themselves. Mysticism, which belonged as much to the revolters from the Brahminical system as to that system itself, inspired them with nothing but contempt. But the Eastern world supplied them with another object, on which they could bestow the most fervent and unbounded admiration. They found in Khoung-foutseu all that they missed in these sages of India, with an entire absence of that which was offensive in them. They heard of a man who, six centuries B.C., considered the outward economy of an empire a worthier object of study than all hidden and abstracted lore, who prized maxims of life and conduct more than all doctrines respecting the Divinity, who had actually anticipated some of the most modern propositions respecting the governor and the governed. This man they found was not a mere name for a set of opinions: he had a distinct, marked personality; and his words and acts had not been limited to a narrow circle, or to one or two centuries. He had left an impression of himself upon the most populous empire in the world. After two thousand years his authority is still sacred among the people, the mandarins, the emperors of China; his influence is felt in every portion of that vast and complicated society. Reasons which justified it. Chinese and present, by him. 2. Such a fact as this is worthy of all attention. Great as is history, past the contrast between China and Hindostan-though that conexpounded trast can hardly be expressed more accurately than by saying that in India all history is a philosophy, and that in China all philosophy is a history-yet it is equally true of each people that its search after wisdom is the only satisfactory key to the events which have befallen it. The difficulty of understanding the long line of dynasties which preceded the birth of Khoungfou-tseu, though his words and acts compel us to believe in them, is a sufficient proof of this fact. We confess the antiquity of the empire, because it is needful as an explanation of the reform which he worked in it. The old faith must 3. This being the case, we are excused from dwelling as much upon the old faith of China as we were forced to do on that of be learnt in India. This faith we are obliged to examine in a great measure a great mea- with the eyes of Khoung-fou-tseu: he collected and remodelled sure from him. the books which contain it. He may have omitted much which seemed to him immaterial for the education of his country, and yet which, to a modern critic, might be of great use. At the same time we are not disposed to question the general accuracy of the conception which this teacher forined of the old institutions and the old creed of his country. There are abundant proofs of the fidelity with which he studied them, of the earnest desire which he had to preserve them. No one aspired less to His dislike the reputation of an innovator; his main object was to remove innovations: yet this desire was balanced by a profound reverence for that which was established. Nothing was to be brought back for the mere purpose of bringing it back. Order was not to be sacrificed even for the hope of redressing an evil. of innova tion. unmystical, takes the 4. Khoung-fou-tseu could not have produced the effect which The Chinese he has produced upon the empire of China,-- could not be utterly recognised in the character in which he has been recognised for so many ages,-if his mind had not been the very highest type of the Chinese mind; that in which we may read what it was aiming at both before and after he appeared to enlighten it. We may therefore acquiesce without difficulty in the opinion, The ancient that the Chinese religion was from the first of a much less high place of the and mysterious quality than that of almost any people upon the eternal. earth; that the belief of the eternal as distinct from, and opposed to, the temporal, which we have found so characteristic of the Hindoo, existed very dimly and imperfectly in it, and was supplied only by a reverence for the past; that the sense of connexion or communion with any invisible powers, though not absent, must have been weak and slightly developed; that the emperor The emperor must have been regarded always as the highest utterer of the divine mind; that the priest must have been chiefly valued as a minister of the ceremonial of the court; that rites and ceremonies must have had a substantive value in this land independent of all significance, which they have scarcely ever possessed elsewhere; that there was united with this tendency one which to some may seem incompatible with it-an attachment to whatever is useful and practical; that the Chinese must have entertained a profound respect for family relationships; that the relationship The father of father and son, however, will have so overshadowed all the rest, that they will have been regarded merely as different forms Obedience of it, or as to be sacrificed for the sake of it; that implicit virtues. obedience to authority will have been the virtue which every institution existed to enforce, which was to be their only preserver. If we suppose the reverence for the shades of ancestors, for the person of the emperor, for the dignity of the father, to have been joined with something of a Sabæan worship, with some The worship astrology and speculation about the future, we shall perhaps the sum of |