To appreciate the attitude of the Hindu mind to the doctrines of Sin and Salvation, we must return again to the rough division of Hindus into--first, the mass of the people, polytheists; secondly, the educated classes, now largely monotheists; thirdly, the brahmanically educated and the ascetics, pantheists. It is only with the monotheists that we have now to deal. As already said--to the pantheist the word sin has no meaning. Where all is God, sin or alienation from God is a contradiction in terms. The conception of sin implies the _two_ conceptions of God and Man, or at least of Law and Man; and where one or other of these two conceptions is lacking, the conception of sin cannot arise. In pantheism, the idea of man as a distinct individual is relegated to the region of Maya or Delusion; there cannot therefore be a real sinner. Does such reasoning appear mere dialectics without practical application, or is it unfair, think you, thus to bind a person down to the logical deductions from his creed? On the contrary, persons denying that we can sin are easy to find. Writes the latest British apostle of Hinduism, for the leaders of reaction in India are a few English and Americans: "There is no longer a vague horrible something called sin: This has given place to a clearly defined state of ignorance or blindness of the will."[119] I quote again also from Swami Vivekananda, representative of Hinduism in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893. It is from his lecture published in 1896, entitled _The Real and the Apparent Man_. His statement is unambiguous. "It is the greatest of all lies," he says, "that we are mere men; we are the God of the Universe.... The worst lie that you ever told yourself is that you were born a sinner.... The wicked see this universe as a hell; and the partially good see it as heaven; and the perfect beings realise it as God Himself. By mistake we think that we are impure, that we are limited, that we are separate. The real man is the One Unit Existence." Such is the logical and the actual outcome of pantheism in regard to the idea of sin, and such is the standpoint of Hindu philosophy. [Sidenote: Sankarachargya, the pantheist's, confession of sins.]