We seem to understand something more when, as in the Vedenta philosophy, it is said of the truly-existing Being (God):[135] “that he has exhibited the “world and the heavens in the field of existence, but has nothing like an odor of being, nor taken a color of reality; and this manifestation is called _Máya_ that is, ‘the Magic of God,’ because the universe is his playful deceit, and he is the bestower of imitative existence, himself the unity of reality. With this pure substance, like an imitative actor, he passes every moment into another form. He, manifesting his being and unity in three persons, separate from each other, formed the universe. The connexion of the spirits with the holy Being is like the connexion of the billows with the ocean, or that of sparks with fire.” This is pure idealism; but man will spontaneously break through the shadowy illusion, and grasp at some reality; the trinity of the Hindus became _creation_, _preservation__, and _destruction_ (or renovation), the history of nature before their eyes. I shall here remark, without attempting to explain, the striking contrast in the religion of the same nation between the most subtile metaphysic theology and the grossest idolatry. In the latter, the symbolical representation prevails; it is known, that in its immoderate use they have entirely abandoned the normal proportions of the human form, and by the multiplication of members banished all fitness and beauty. Their plastic and graphic typification of an all-mighty, all-bestowing, and all-resuming God, with its three, four, five heads, so many and more arms, is repulsive; in their poetry he frightens us with innumerable mouths, eyes, breasts, arms, and legs, grinding between his teeth the generations of men, who precipitate themselves into his mouth like rivers into the ocean, or flies into fire.[136] The psychology of the Hindus is not less abstruse than the rest of their metaphysics. We have already mentioned the soul among the twenty-five categories as neither a production nor productive. The Indian philosophers distinguish spirit and soul, that is, a rational soul and a mere sensitive principle. The first is supposed enveloped with a subtile, shadowy form of the most delicate material ether. Some hold the soul to be incased in three sheaths, the intellectual, the mental, and the organic or vital sheath.[137] According to different views the vital spirit is _Máya_ herself, or an emanation of Máyá, in any case the illusive manifestation of the universe.