The thought underlying the last statement is that there is only one Soul, every individual consciousness being but an illusory semblance, and that the knowledge of this fact constitutes the all coveted emancipation. As one diffusive breath passing through the perforations of a flute is distinguished as the several notes of the scale, so the Supreme Spirit is single, though, in consequence of acts, it seems manifold. As every placid lakelet holds an unreal image of the one real moon sailing above, so each human soul is but a deceptive reflection of the one veritable Soul, or God. It may be worth while to observe that Plotinus, as is well known, taught the doctrine of the absolute identity of each soul with the entire and indistinguishable entity of God: "Though God extends beyond creation's rim, Yet every being holds the whole of him." It belongs to an unextended substance, an immateriality, to be everywhere by totality, not by portions. If God be omnipresent, he cannot be so dividedly, a part of him here and a part 28 Ibid. pp. 1, 16. 29 Ibid. pp. 48, 142, 174. 30 Vishnu Purana, p. 57. 31 Ibid. p. 651. 32 Rammohun Roy, Translations from the Veda, 2d ed., London, 1832, pp. 69, 39, 10. of him there; but the whole of him must be in every particle of matter, in every point of space, in all infinitude. The Brahmanic religion is a philosophy; and it keeps an incomparably strong hold on the minds of its devotees. Its most vital and comprehensive principle is expressed in the following sentence: "The soul itself is not susceptible of pain, or decay, or death; the site of these things is nature; but nature is unconscious; the consciousness that pain exists is restricted to the soul, although the soul is not the actual seat of pain." This is the reason why every Hindu yearns so deeply to be freed from the meshes of nature, why he so anxiously follows the light of faith and penance, or the clew of speculation, through all mazes of mystery. It is that he may at last gaze on the central TRUTH, and through that sight seize the fruition of the supreme and eternal good of man in the unity of his selfhood with the Infinite, and so be born no more and experience no more trouble. It is very striking to contrast with this profound and gorgeous dream of the East, whatever form it assumes, the more practical and definite thought of the West, as expressed in these lines of Tennyson's "In Memoriam:" "That each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, and, fusing all The skirts of self again, should fall Remerging in the general Soul, Is faith as vague as all unsweet: Eternal form shall still divide The eternal soul from all beside, And I shall know him when we meet." But is it not still more significant to notice that, in the lines which immediately succeed, the love inspired and deep musing genius of the English thinker can find ultimate repose only by recurring to the very faith of the Hindu theosophist?