ands of births,
man attains only the weariness of bewilderment, and is smothered
by the dust of imagination. When that dust is washed away by the
bland water of real knowledge, then the weariness is removed. Then
the internal man is at peace, and obtains supreme felicity."14

The result of these views is the awakening of an unquenchable
desire to "break from the fetters of existence," to be "delivered
from the whirlpool of transmigration." Both Brahmanism and
Buddhism are in essence nothing else than methods of securing
release from the chain of incarnated lives, and attaining to
identification with the Infinite. There is a text in the
Apocalypse which may be strikingly applied to this exemption from
further metempsychosis: "Him that overcometh I will make a pillar
in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out forever." The
testimony of all who have investigated the subject agrees with the
following assertion by Professor Wilson: "The common end of every
system studied by the Hindus is the ascertainment of the means by
which perpetual exemption from the necessity of repeated births
may be won."15 In comparison with this aim, every thing else is
utterly insignificant. Prahlada, on being offered by Vishnu any
boon he might ask, exclaimed, "Wealth, virtue, love, are as
nothing; for even liberation is in his reach whose faith is firm
in thee." And Vishnu replied, "Thou shalt, therefore, obtain
freedom from existence."16 All true Orientals, however favored or
persecuted by earthly fortune, still cry night and day upwards
into the infinite, with outstretched arms and yearning voice,

"O Lord, our separate lives destroy! Merge in thy gold our souls'
alloy: Pain is our own, and Thou art Joy!"

According to the system of Brahmanism, the creation is regularly
called into being and again destroyed at the beginning and end of
certain stupendous epochs called kalpas. Four thousand three
hundred and twenty million years make a day of Brahma. At the end
of this day the lower worlds are consumed by fire; and Brahma
sleeps on the abyss for a night as long

14 Vishnu Parana, p. 650.

15 Sankhya Karika, preface, p. 3.

16 Vishnu Purana, p. 144.

as his day. During this night the saints, who in high Jana loka
have survived the dissolution of the lower portions of the
universe, contemplate the slumbering deity until he wakes and
restores the mutilated creation. Three hundred and sixty of these
days and nights compose a y