Forced as they were in these two directions, they were unavoidably brought at last to attempt to establish the theory independently, to construct Brahman and the world out of their nature and ideas. In all advanced stages of rational thought, fancy, or its reverse-side, abstraction, has seldom omitted to reflect the whole world as an organised unity in the brain of man, and to bring the oppressive multitude of things under some general conceptions and points of view. In the schools of the Brahmans it was the formal side of these philosophical efforts, the method of inquiry and investigation, in connection with the sacred scriptures, religious traditions, and the attempts to fix the interpretation of them, which was specially developed. On the other hand, the anchorites in the forest opposed these efforts from the opposite direction with the combined body of religious conceptions, with their views of Brahman. The highest object of the eremite was meditation, absorption in Brahman. The more uniform their own lives, the stiller the life around them, the greater the ferment in their minds. When these penitents were weary of the world of gods and marvels which occupied their dreams, when the endless multitude of bright pictures confounded their senses, they turned to the central conception of the world-soul, and attempted to think of this more deeply, acutely, comprehensively, to see the connection of Brahman and the world more clearly, and explain it more distinctly. As the fancy, and consequently the abstracting power of the Indians, was always superior to the power of division, and remained the basis of their view of the world, their constructive speculation, which was occupied with the contents of their religious conceptions, surpasses their powers of formal thought. The latter had indeed no other office than to arrange and organise the pictures supplied by the former.