But the Hindu mind was destined to rise at a bound above Greek polytheism and Hebrew monotheism. It is well to see God in nature. There lies still a step beyond: to ignore nature. A firm belief in the reality of this world, in the value of this life, enters as an essential element into the belief in a personal God, superior to the world and distinct from it, like the Javeh of the Hebrews. The distinguishing characteristic of the Hindu mind is precisely a certain scepticism in regard to the world, a persuasion of the vanity of nature; so that the Hindu god possesses and can possess nothing in common with Jupiter or Javeh. He who sees no more in material force than a play of the senses, will see no more in the power which is supposed to direct that force than a play of the imagination; faith in a Creator shares the fate of faith in a creation. It is in vain for Hindu poets to vindicate _sraddhâ_ faith, for the gods. Indra in especial, the most popular of the divinities, to whom the supreme epithet of Visvakarman, the maker of all things, is given, is of all others most subject to be doubted. “There is no Indra. Who has seen him? Whom shall we praise?” (Rig. vii. 89, 3.) It is true that the poet after these bitter words represents Indra as appearing in person, as in the book of Job. “Here I am, O worshipper! behold me here. In might I overcome all creatures.” But the faith of the poet and of the thinker takes fire but for a moment; we enter into a period of doubt which Max Müller designates by the name of adevism and which he carefully distinguishes from atheism properly so called. And in effect Hindus did not reject the very notion of a god, the Greek θεός; they sought God simply back of and beyond the personal and capricious deities that up to that time they had adored; such deities became for them names simply, but names of some thing, of some being, unknown. “There is only one being, although the poets call him by a thousand names.” Buddhism itself, which came later and did no more than develop tendencies already existing in Brahmanism, was not, in Max Müller’s judgment, originally atheistic. Adevism was no more for India, with some slight exceptions, than a period of transition; the Hindu mind passed it as a step toward a higher level. And yet what anxiety, what incertitude, is expressed in certain hymns which belong, no doubt, to this unhappy epoch. The Vedic poets no longer glorify the sky nor the dawn, they do not celebrate the powers of Indra, nor the wisdom of Visvakarman and Pragâpati. They move about, as they themselves say, “as if enveloped in mist and idle speech.” Another says: “My ears vanish, my eyes vanish, and the light also which dwells in my heart; my mind with its far off longing leaves me; what shall I say, and what shall I think?... Who knows from whence this great creation sprang? and whether it is the work of a Creator or not? The most High Seer, that is in the highest heaven, he knows it, or perchance even