re desires, wrath, dishonesty, and bad
conduct."[197] There would be some relief from this horrible doctrine if
in subsequent chapters of Manu there were kindly tokens of grace, or
sympathy for woman, or any light of hope here or hereafter; but the
whole teaching and spirit of the "Code" rests as an iron yoke upon
womanhood, and it is largely a result of this high authority that the
female sex has for ages been subjected to the most cruel tyranny and
degradation. It might well be said that, in spite of the horrors of
infanticide, the most merciful element of Hinduism with respect to woman
is the custom by which so large a proportion of female children have
been destroyed at birth. The same fatalistic principles affect all ranks
and conditions of Hindu society. The poor Sudra is not only low-born and
degraded, but he is immovably fixed in his degradation. He is cut off
from all hope or aspiration; he cannot rise from the thraldom of his
fate. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna declares to Arjuna that it is

"Better to do the duty of one's caste
Though bad or ill performed, and fraught with evil,
Than undertake the business of another,
However good it be."

Thus even the laws of right and wrong are subordinate to the fatality of
caste, and all aspiration is paralyzed.

On the other hand, it has been acknowledged repeatedly that the sternest
type of Puritan theology, as a moral and political force, is full of
inspiration; it does not deaden the soul; it stimulates the action of
free-will; its moral earnestness has been a great power in molding
national destinies. Mr. Bancroft has not hesitated to declare that the
great charters of human liberty are largely due to its strong conception
of a divine and all-controlling purpose. Even Matthew Arnold admitted
that its stern "Hebraic" culture, as he called it, had wrought some of
the grandest achievements of history. But Hindu fatalists, noble Aryans
as they were at first, have been conquered by every race of invaders
that has chosen to assail them. And no better result could have been
expected from a philosophy whose _summum bonum_ is the renunciation of
life as not worth living, and the loss of all personality by absorption
into the One supreme existence.

Buddhism does not present the same fatalistic theory of creation as
Brahminism, but it introduces even a more aggravated fatalism into human
life. Both alike load down the newly-born with burdens of guilt and
c