e may seize a fair woman
in war, and "be her husband and she shall be thy wife. And it shall be
that if thou hast no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither
she will." These teachings and many others like them have drenched
Europe with blood and scorched it with fire. Men have grown out of
them; they no longer heed nor obey them, for man's reason performs its
eclectic work on Revelation, chooses the good, rejects the evil. This
is very good, but it destroys Revelation as a basis. Christians have
outgrown the lower part of their Revelation, and do not realise that
in striving to explain it away they put the axe to the root of its
authority.

So also is it with the Institutes of Manu, to take but one example
from the great sacred literature of India. There are precepts of
the noblest order, and the essence and relative nature of morality is
philosophically set out; "the sacred law is thus grounded on the rule
of conduct," and He declares that good conduct is the root of further
growth in spirituality. Apart from questions of general morality, to
which we shall need to refer hereafter, let us take the varying views
of women as laid down in the present Sm[r.][t.]i as accepted. On many
points there is no wiser guide than parts of this Sm[r.][t.]i, as will
be seen in Chapter IV. With regard to the marriage law, Manu says:
"Let mutual fidelity continue unto death." Of a father He declares:
"No father who knows must take even the smallest gratuity for his
daughter; for a man, who through avarice takes a gratuity, is a seller
of his offspring." Of the home, He says: "Women must be honoured and
adorned by their fathers, husbands, brothers and brothers-in-law who
desire happiness. Where women are honoured, there the [D.]evas are
pleased; but where they are not honoured, any sacred rite is fruitless."
"In that family where the husband is pleased with his wife and the
wife with her husband [note the equality], happiness will assuredly be
lasting." Food is to be given first in a house to "newly-married women,
to infants, to the sick, and to pregnant women". Yet the same Manu is
supposed to have taken the lowest and coarsest view of women: "It is
the nature of women to seduce men; for that reason the wise are never
unguarded with females ... One should not sit in a lonely place with
one's mother, sister or daughter; for the senses are powerful, and
master even a learned man." A woman must never act "independently, even
in