In a year, by means of this persistent application, the boys were able to read with tolerable fluency, both in Pâli and in Sanscrit. But the rigor of their labors was not lessened thereby. Rather, instruction now took a severer turn; for, young as they were, the little students were of Brahman birth, and, therefore, entitled to the highest education. According to the law, Asvarman now began to expound to these pathetic children the doctrines of the three mystic philosophies:—the Sankhya, the Vedanta, and the Yoga—speculations of such profound abstraction and such absolute intellectuality, that their effect on these childish minds would have been amusing had it not been pitiable. Solemnly, with his wide, unfathomable eyes fixed on the dull orbs of the priest, Oman, now at the age of nine, informed his master that Nature was created in order that the world-soul might become united with itself; that contemplation is the soul’s highest duty till its time of liberation from material fetters; and that only essence is infinite. Just how much of this found some sort of home in the boy’s young mind, to reappear long years afterward with new meaning attached to it, it were difficult to say. Probably it was at this time, and through the agency of those vast philosophisms, that Oman’s double self began dimly to be shadowed forth. By the time he was eleven, and had been for three years a Snataka, he commenced in his own fashion to meditate, and, also in his own fashion, to suffer. Much that had hitherto lain dormant within him began to stir. He realized that he could scarcely fathom his own state. There seemed to lie within him two distinct natures: the one strong, non-combative, but self-rebellious; the other gentle, and weak, and shrinking. Until now he had had no clear idea of this. He had been all things at once. But the elements were beginning to resolve themselves. He had moods, of longer or shorter duration, during which one set of characteristics or the other seemed to dominate him. Half the time he wondered at himself angrily for his indecisiveness. The other half he shrank from self-analysis, and from any effort at study as well. Immersed as he was in a self-conflict which he believed to be part of everybody’s ordinary life, his attempts at understanding himself tinctured all his thoughts, and his questions as to the philosophies and their significance always bore a personal relation to himself and his needs. Here he found not a little assistance. But with the Vedas it was different. There was nothing there to apply in any way to the inner life. The formal ritual, the Sutras, the Mantras, were all mere objective texts. And, gradually, as he strove in vain to find in them something personal, their meaningless intricacy impressed itself more and more upon him.