Mahavira himself “fulfilled the law” by allowing gnats, flies, and other things to bite him and crawl over him for four months without ever once losing his equanimity. It is told that he met all sorts of pleasant or unpleasant events with an even mind whether they arose from divine powers, men, or animals. The Jainas did not deny that there were divine powers: there might be any number of them, and the influence they wielded for good or for ill (I think especially for ill) was not inconsiderable. Only they were not morally admirable like a man victorious through suffering. The greater willingness of the Jainas to admit gods into the wheel of being, and even to allow some homage to be paid to them, was one reason why they clashed less with the Brahmans. After the subsidence of Buddhism the Jainas managed to go on existing, somewhat despised and annoyed, but tolerated. While both Buddhists and Jainas place the prohibition to take life at the head of their law, its application is infinitely more thoroughgoing among the Jainas, who also attach to it ideas which have no place in Buddhist metaphysics. From the Jaina position, it seems to imply a tendency to primitive animism, though it is hard to say whether this comes from a real process of retrogression or simply from the Indo-Aryan desire for a synthesis—the more easily attained the more you assume. It is startling to hear that in the last census over eight millions were returned as animists—it proves that the old credences die hard. The Jainas took into their soul-world fire, water, wind, shooting plants and germinating seeds. The disciplinary results must have been inconvenient, but a religion was never less popular because it put its devotees to inconvenience. Those who still clung to animistic beliefs were already prepared to see a soul in the flickering fire, the rushing water, the growing blade. We all have odds and ends of animism; did not Coventry Patmore say: “There is something human in a tree?” With more detail the Jaina observes that trees and plants are born and grow old; they distinguish the seasons, they turn towards the sun, the seeds grow up: how, then, shall we deny all knowledge to them? “The asoka buds and blossoms when touched by a fair girl’s feet.” Can we help recalling the familiar lines in the “Sensitive Plant?”— “I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet; I doubt not they felt the spirit that came From her glowing fingers thro’ all their frame.” Now, Science, which is on the way to becoming very kind to man’s early beliefs, comes forward in the person of Mr. Francis Darwin to tell us that plants _have_ “mind” and “intelligence,” especially the hop and the bryony. All fairy-tales will come true if we wait long enough.