oblest activity
has no charms; for he claims that he looks above and beyond all this to
that absolute equilibrium of soul when passion, and when all desire, shall
have been killed through self-mortification and self-abnegation and he
shall have attained mental poise and repose rather than a perfect
character. Thus, in its last analysis, his ideal is an intellectual,
rather than a moral, one; for it is again absorption into the Divine Soul;
and that he conceives to be the Supreme Intelligence rather than the
Perfect Will. This difference of ideal between the two faiths is
fundamental and must work for very diverse results.

In harmony with this is the other thought that the body, yea each and
every body with which the soul may clothe itself, is an unmitigated evil
because it is the highway to suffering and defers the final consummation.
Hence, the Hindu has no respect for the body and longs for the day of
final emancipation from flesh and all its ills.

How then shall the soul be freed from its many births so that it may pass
out of this bondage into the final freedom of _Sayutcha_, or emancipation?
To him _Yoga_, the way of meditation, represents the highest way of
release. To wean the mind, through this process, from all desire and
ambition and thus to reach absolute equilibrium of soul is the object of
_Yoga_. This indeed is the only condition whereby the soul can rise above
any future contact with earthly bodies.

Consequently the Hindu has, for many centuries, looked to the monastery
and the wilderness as the only places where this ideal can be safely and
speedily attained. To live among men, and thus to be subjected to
corroding cares and to the swaying passions of human society, renders the
attainment of beatification impossible. Under these circumstances the soul
finds no way of emancipation. Therefore the watchword of the Hindu is,
"flee from the world rather than overcome it." For the attainment of those
qualities which ensure final repose he immures himself in a _mutt_ or he
flees into the forest where, apart from men, he gives himself to
self-mortification and meditation that he may speedily find the desired
release. At the root of this idea, as its animating motive, lies the
worthy ambition of living a better life than the environments of a corrupt
society favour. And with this desire is coupled the idea that a full
rounded life and a perfected character are not only possible in the
solitude of a wildernes