onged series of rebirths, determined for better
or for worse by its own spirituality according to the law of Karma, not
in non-existence, but in its fusion with God, whose identity with the
soul of man is merely temporarily obscured by the world illusion of
Maya. Only the inconceivable is real, for it is God, but God dwells in
the heart of every man, who, if and when he can realise it and has
detached himself from his unworthy because unreal surroundings, is
himself God. Akin to Vedantic mysticism is the Yoga system, which
teaches extreme asceticism, retirement into solitude, fastings, nudity,
mortification of the flesh, profound meditation on unfathomable
mysteries, and the endless reiteration of magic words and phrases as the
means of accelerating that ineffable fusion of God and man. The
materialism of the Sankhya and the idealism of the Vedanta combine to
provoke the reaction of yet another system, the Mimansa, which stands
for the eternal and divine revelation of the Vedas, codifies, so to say,
their theology into liturgical laws, admits of no speculation or
esoteric interpretation, and seems to subordinate the gods themselves
to the forms of worship that consecrate their existence.

Of all the doctrines that these early speculations evolved, none has had
a more enduring influence on Hinduism than that of the long and indeed
infinite succession of rebirths through which man is doomed to pass
before he reaches the ultimate goal either of non-existence or of
absorption into the divine essence. For none has done more to fortify
the patriarchal principle which from the earliest times governed the
tribal family, and to establish the Hindu conception of the family as it
prevails to the present day. With that curious inconsequence which
frequently characterises Hindu thought, even when it professes to be
ruled by the sternest logic, the belief that every rebirth is
irrevocably determined by the law of Karma, _i.e._ in accordance with
the sum total of man's deeds, good and bad, in earlier existences, is
held to be compatible with the belief that the felicity of the dead can
only be assured by elaborate rites of worship and sacrifice, which a son
alone, or a son's son, can take over from his father and properly
perform. The ancient _patria potestas_ of tribal institutions has been
thus prolonged beyond the funeral pyre, and the ancient reverence for
the dead which originally found expression in an instinctive worship of
the