mmorality, the excess of Cakti worship, is also not
peculiar to the Hindu. If one ask how the morality of India as a whole
compares with that of other countries, we reply that, including
religious excesses, it stands level with the personal morality of
Greece in her best days,[17]
and that without the religiously sensual (Hindu) element, it is
_nominally_ on a par with that of London or New York. There are good
and bad men, and these make good and bad coteries, which stand inside
the pale of a religious profession. There is not much theoretical
difference. Few of the older gods are virtuous, and Right, even in the
Rig Veda, is the moral power, that is, Right as Order, correct
behavior, the prototype both of ritual and of _[=a]c[=a]ra,_ custom,
which rules the gods. In the law-court the gods are a moral group, and
two of them, Varuna and Agni, hate respectively the sins of adultery
and untruth. In the law it is, however, Dharma and the Father-god or
his diadochos, who, handing down heavenly precepts, gives all moral
laws, though it must be confessed that the Father-god is almost the
last to care for morality. And pure Brahmanism stops with Brahm[=a].
In modern Hinduism, to kill, lust, steal, drink, so far from
offending, may please a god that is amorous, or bloodthirsty, or, like
Civa, is 'the lord of thieves.' Morality here has God himself against
it. In the Rig Veda, to sin is merely to displease a god. But even in
Brahmanism, as in Buddhism, there is not that intimate connection
between goodness and godness that obtains in Christianity. The
Brahman, like the Buddhist, was self-controlled, in order to exert
control upon the gods and the course of his own future life. He not
only, as is perhaps the case elsewhere, was moral with an ulterior
motive, but his moral code lacked the divine hand. It was felt as a
system which he applied to himself for his own good. He did not assume
that he offended a god by not following it, except in two special
cases, as in sins against Agni and Varuna. Ulterior motives are
deprecated, but because he that seeks absorption into God must quit
desires.[18]

We have said that the moral code of the Hindus at its best seems to be
on a par with the best as found elsewhere. Not to lie, not to steal,
not to injure another illegally,[19] to be brave, to be loyal, to be
hospitable,--these are the factors of its early and late law. In
certain late cases may be added 'to be self-restrained.' But if th