[Sidenote: The Vedas and Related Literature.] Every race possessing even the rudiments of culture has been impelled by a happy instinct, which, if we like, we may call inspiration, to record in more or less permanent form its experience of nature, of life, and of what seemed the mysteries of both. To this inspiration we owe the sacred books of the Jews. But it is now generally recognised that an impulse not wholly dissimilar also moved prophetic or poetic minds among other races, such, for instance, as the Egyptians, the Chaldaeans, and the Aryan conquerors of India, to inscribe on papyrus or stone, or brick or palm-leaf, the results of experience as interpreted by free imagination, traditional habits of thought, and limited knowledge. Of this ancient literature a considerable part is taken up by the mysteries apparently involved in life, conduct, and death. Most notably is this the case with the ancient Indian literature called the Vedas, and such sequels as the Upanishads, Sutras, and--much later--the Bhagavad Gîtâ. This collection, like our Bible, forms a library of writings issued at various dates extending over much more than a thousand years. [Sidenote: Indian Pantheism.] The forgotten singers and preachers of this prehistoric wisdom were as much haunted as we ourselves are with the harassing questions suggested by sin and sorrow, by life and death, and by aspirations after a higher state. And many, perhaps we may say most of them, found comfort in the thought that essentially they belonged to an all comprehensive and infinite Life, in which, if they acted purely and nobly, their seeming personality might be merged and find peace. Their frame of mind was religious rather than philosophical. But their philosophy was naturally conformed to it; and in their contrast of the bewildering variety of finite visible things with the unity of the Eternal Being of which all are phases, those ancients were in close sympathy with the thoughts of the modern meditative saunterer by field and river and wood. [Sidenote: Differences between Ancient and Modern Conditions of Thought.] But the enormous interval of time separating us from those early Indian thinkers necessarily involves very great differences in conditions of thought. And we should not be surprised if amidst much in their writings that stirs our sympathy, there is also a great deal which is to us incongruous and absurd. Therefore, it may be well before quoting these writings to note one or two points marking an almost incommensurable difference between their mode and ours of regarding the world. [Sidenote: 1. Survival In their day of Fetishistic and Animistic Ideas.]