The old religion rested on the contrast between the friendly spirits who gave light and water, and the demons of darkness and drought. From this arose the conception that certain objects belonged to the gloomy spirits and were pleasing to them; that by contact or defilement with them a man gave the evil spirits power over him. Contact with corpses, dead hair, skin, or bones, defilement with the impurities of the body, spittle, urine, excrement, &c., gave the evil powers authority over the person so defiled. This faith we find in full force and the widest extent among the Arians of Iran; but it must have existed in a degree hardly less among the Aryas on the Indus and the Ganges. According to the new views of the Brahmans, the two sides of nature--the bright, pure, and clear side belonging to good spirits, and the foul and dark side belonging to evil spirits--existed no longer; all nature had become dark and defiled; even the Brahmans, the best part of creation, participated, like the other orders, though in a less degree, in this defilement and gloom. In the new doctrine the world fell into two halves, a supersensual and a sensual. The first was indeed supposed to be present in the second, but only in a corrupt and adulterated form; the sensual side had, at bottom, no right to exist; it must be utterly removed and elevated into Brahman. As corrupted Brahman the whole sensual world was imperfect and transitory, wavering between growth and destruction, and filled with evil because through its own nature it was impure. The new system required, therefore, in order to be consistent, that man should not only keep himself removed from all impurity, but should also free himself from all the vileness of nature which clung to him; that he should liberate himself from nature herself, and the whole realm of sense. As the whole existing world was more or less impure, consistency required that all ancient customs of purification, all usages intended to remove defilements when incurred, must be allowed to drop in order to proclaim the elevation and destruction of sensual nature as the only duty of man. Nevertheless the Brahmans allowed the old rites of purification to exist beside the old sacrifice. As the latter is efficacious for salvation and increase of power in the person sacrificing, so is the old purification meritorious, not because it keeps the evil at a distance, but because it removes the grossest defilement; and from this point of view it is developed by the Brahmans to a far wider extent. He who could not attain to the highest must be content with something less. The performance of these duties of purification is, according to the doctrine of the Brahmans, an act of merit for this world and the next, and saving for the soul. Sacrifice and purity form the circle of the good works, which, according to the measure of completeness, lead souls for a longer or shorter time into the heaven of Indra, while disregard