agree to elect a chief, whom they invest with a sufficient authority for framing regulations which are to be obligatory on every member of society, and power for enforcing obedience to those regulations. Hence the origin of society. Men, at first practising virtue, enjoyed a long life, the duration of which reached to the almost incredible length of a thingie. But they having much relaxed in the practice of virtue, it lessened proportionably to their want of fervour in the observance of the law, until, by their extreme wickedness, it dwindled to the short period of ten years. The same ascending and descending scale of human life, successively brought in by the law of merit and demerit, takes place sixty-four times, and constitutes an andrakap, or the duration of a world. It remains only to mention rapidly some particulars regarding the end of a revolution of nature. The cause of such an event is the influence of the demerits, prevailing to such an extent as to be all-powerful in working out destruction. Two solemn warnings of the approaching dissolution of our planet are given by Nats, one nearly 100,000 and the other 100 years before that event. The bearers of such sad news make their appearance on earth with marks of deep mourning, as best suited to afford additional weight to their exhortations. They earnestly call on men to repent of their sins and amend their lives. These last summonses are generally heeded by all mankind, so that men, when the world is destroyed, generally migrate, together with the victims of hell who have atoned for their past iniquities, to those seats of Brahmas that escape destruction. There are three great principles of demerit, concupiscence, anger, and ignorance. The world also is destroyed by the action of three different agents, fire, water, and wind. Concupiscence is the most common, though the less heinous of the three. Next comes anger, less prevailing, though it is more heinous; but ignorance is by far the most fatal of all moral distempers. The moral disorder then prevailing causes destruction by the agency that it sets in action. Concupiscence has for its agency fire; anger, water; ignorance, wind; but in the following proportion. Of sixty-four destructions of this world, fifty-six are caused by conflagration, seven by water, and one by wind. Their respective limits of duration stand as follows: conflagration reaches to the five lowest seats of Brahmas; water extends to the eighth seat, and the destructive violence of the wind is felt as far as the ninth seat.