It is no longer which is true, the Christian Triune God, the Hindu million of Gods, the Mahommedan one God, the Buddhist Law? but from what facts did these arise, and why do they persist to-day? Out of what necessity, to justify what feeling, does the Christian require a Triune God, the Hindu many Gods, and the Buddhist no God but Law? Why does each reject the conception of the other? It is not what code is the true code of life, the Jewish code, the Christian, the Buddhist, but why are these Codes at all? Why had the Jews their ruthless code? Why have the Christians and Buddhists adopted codes they cannot act up to? Why have the Hindus in "caste" the most elaborate codes we know. Why did the Jews have no hereafter at all, the Mahommedans a sensual paradise, the Greeks the Shades, the Brahmins and Buddhists a transmigration of souls leading to Nirvana? These are very different ideas. What necessities do they serve? And so with the many facets of religions. Faiths do not explain man, perhaps man can explain his faiths. That is my new standpoint from which I shall see. CHAPTER XIII. CREED AND INSTINCT. I had six years of that life in India. I passed six years living in a solitary bungalow miles away from any other European, meeting them but occasionally, six years with practically no intercourse at all with the natives. For the jungle people who lived in the hills were few, and savage, and shy; and besides these, there were only a few Hindu or Mahommedan shop-keepers in the main bazaar, and the great crowd of coolie-folk who cultivate the estates. It was not a life in which it was possible to learn much of any people. Solitary planters living unnatural lives in isolated bungalows do not usually offer much of interest to an observer. The wild tribes were mere savages. The coolies came in gangs and worked for a few months and went home. It was a life of almost complete solitude, a life where for days and weeks perhaps, except for a few orders in the native tongues to headmen of gangs, or a short discussion about the work, no word was spoken. It was, may be, a time for reflection and thought, for reading and meditation, for such a search as was made. But it was no life for observation, for collection of facts, for seeing and understanding. Even had one tried to know the coolies or the jungle people, it had been impossible; for they too have the inaccessability of the Indian, and are not to be approached too near.