follow a discipline at least to the extent of observing chastity and
eating only to support life. Severer austerities give clearer insight
into divine mysteries and control over the forces of nature. Europeans
are apt to condemn eastern asceticism as a waste of life but it has had
an important moral effect. The weakness of Hinduism, though not of
Buddhism, is that ethics have so small a place in its fundamental
conceptions. Its deities are not identified with the moral law and the
saint is above that law. But this dangerous doctrine is corrected by the
dogma, which is also a popular conviction, that a saint must be a
passionless ascetic. In India no religious teacher can expect a hearing
unless he begins by renouncing the world.

Thirdly, the deepest conviction of Hindus in all ages is that salvation
and happiness are attainable by knowledge. The corresponding phrases in
Sanskrit are perhaps less purely intellectual than our word and contain
some idea of effort and emotion. He who knows God attains to God, nay he
is God. Rites and self-denial are but necessary preliminaries to such
knowledge: he who possesses it stands above them. It is inconceivable to
the Hindus that he should care for the things of the world but he cares
equally little for creeds and ceremonies. Hence, side by side with
irksome codes, complicated ritual and elaborate theology, we find the
conviction that all these things are but vanity and weariness, fetters
to be shaken off by the free in spirit. Nor do those who hold such views
correspond to the anti-clerical and radical parties of Europe. The
ascetic sitting in the temple court often holds that the rites performed
around him are spiritually useless and the gods of the shrine mere
fanciful presentments of that which cannot be depicted or described.

Rather later, but still before the Christian era, another idea makes
itself prominent in Indian religion, namely faith or devotion to a
particular deity. This idea, which needs no explanation, is pushed on
the one hand to every extreme of theory and practice: on the other it
rarely abolishes altogether the belief in ritualism, asceticism and
knowledge.

Any attempt to describe Hinduism as one whole leads to startling
contrasts. The same religion enjoins self-mortification and orgies:
commands human sacrifices and yet counts it a sin to eat meat or crush
an insect: has more priests, rites and images than ancient Egypt or
medieval Rome and yet out does