reath, the sun, etc. Priests endeavoured to
advance through ritual works to the ideas which these works are
supposed to symbolise: the ritual is the training-ground for the
higher knowledge, the leading-strings for infant philosophy. Gradually
men become capable of thinking without the help of these symbols:
philosophy grows to manhood, and looks with a certain contempt upon
those supports of its infancy.

The nature of Brahma as conceived in the Upanishads is a subject on
which endless controversies have raged, and we need not add to them.
Besides, the Upanishads themselves are not strictly consistent on this
point, or on others, for that matter; for they are not a single
homogeneous system of philosophy, but a number of speculations, from
often varying standpoints, and they are frequently inconsistent. But
there are some ideas which are more or less present in all of them.
They regard Brahma as absolute and infinite Thought and Being at once,
and as such it is one with the consciousness, soul or self, of the
individual when the latter rids himself of the illusion of a manifold
universe and realises his unity with Brahma. Moreover, Brahma is
bliss--the joy of wholly perfect and self-satisfied thought and being.
Since Brahma as universal Soul is really identical with each
individual soul or _atma_, and vice versa, it follows that each
individual soul contains within itself, _qua_ Brahma, the whole of
existence, nature, gods, mankind, and all other beings; it creates
them all, and all depend upon it. Our Aupanishadas are thoroughgoing
idealists.

Another new idea also appears for the first time in the early
Upanishads, and one that henceforth will wield enormous influence in
all Indian thought. This is the theory of _karma_ and _samsara_,
rebirth of the soul in accordance with the nature of its previous
works. Before the Upanishads we find no evidence of this doctrine: the
nearest approach to it is in some passages of the Brahmanas which
speak of sinful men dying again in the next world as a punishment for
their guilt. But in the Upanishads the doctrine appears full-fledged,
and it is fraught with consequences of immense importance. Samsara
means literally a "wandering to and fro," that is, the cycle of births
through which each soul must everlastingly pass from infinite time,
and Karma means the "acts" of each soul. Each work or act performed by
a living being is of a certain degree of righteousness or
unrighteousnes