escribing the worship of the
unconverted pagans among whom he lived, that might have been written
yesterday by a Christian bishop in India. And we might ask why all
this polytheism was not swept out from among such a highly
intellectual people as the Indians, with their restless pursuit of
divine knowledge, by some superior faith, by some central idea.
Undoubtedly the material and moral conditions, and the course of
events which combine to stamp a particular form of religion upon any
great people, are complex and manifold; but into this inquiry I cannot
go. I can only point out that the institution of caste has riveted
down Hindu society into innumerable divisions upon a general religious
basis, and that the sacred books separated the Hindu theologians into
different schools, preventing uniformity of worship or of creed. And
it is to be observed that these books are not historical; they give no
account of the rise and spread of a faith. The Hindu theologian would
say, in the words of an early Christian father, that the objects of
divine knowledge are not historical, that they can only be apprehended
intellectually, that within experience there is no reality. And the
fact that Brahmanism has no authentic inspired narrative, that it is
the only great religion not concentrated round the life and teachings
of a person, may be one reason why it has remained diffuse and
incoherent. All ways of salvation are still open to the Hindus; the
canon of their scripture has never been authoritatively closed. New
doctrines, new sects, fresh theological controversies, are
incessantly modifying and superseding the old scholastic
interpretations of the mysteries, for Hindus, like Asiatics
everywhere, are still in that condition of mind when a fresh spiritual
message is eagerly received. Vishnu and Siva are the realistic
abstractions of the understanding from objects of sense, from
observation of the destructive and reproductive operations of nature;
they represent among educated men separate systems of worship which,
again, are parted into different schools or theories regarding the
proper ways and methods of attaining to spiritual emancipation. Yet
the higher philosophy and the lower polytheism are not mutually
antagonistic; on the contrary, they support each other; for Brahmanism
accepts and allies itself with the popular forms of idolatry, treating
them as outward visible signs of an inner truth, as indications of
all-pervading panthei