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 ancestors has been translated into a ceremonial cult of the ancestral manes, which constitutes the primary duty and function of every new head of the family. Hence the Hindu joint family system which keeps the whole property of the family as well as the governance of all its members under the sole control of the head of the family. Hence also the necessity of early marriage, lest death should overtake the Hindu before he has begotten the son upon whose survival the performance of the rites essential, not only to his own future felicity, but to that of all his ancestors depends, and, as an alternative, to mitigate the awful consequences of the default of heirs male of his own body, the introduction of adoption under conditions that secure to the adopted son precisely the same position as a real son would have enjoyed. Hence again the inferiority of woman, whom early marriage tended to place in complete subjection to man. Her chief value was that of a potential breeder of sons. In any case, moreover, she passed on her marriage entirely out of her own family into that of her husband, and terribly hard was her lot if she were left a widow before having presented her husband with a son. Even if she were left an infant widow of an infant husband and their marriage could not possibly have been consummated, she