The Indian mind has grasped a great idea in referring what we call spirit to fixed laws no less than what we call matter. But in spirit it sees a force infinitely exceeding the force of matter. “The holy monk,” say the Jaina scriptures, “might reduce millions to ashes by the fire of his wrath.” Besides such tremendous powers as these he has all the minor accomplishments of the spiritualist or hypnotist: thought-reading, levitation, clairvoyance, &c., and he can always tame wild beasts. He is under strict obligations to use his powers with discretion. It is not right to make profit out of them: that man is anathema who lives by divination from dreams, diagrams, sticks, bodily changes, the cries of animals. The Jainas denounce magic not less strongly than the other religious teachers of the East. This is interesting because the reasons are lacking which are commonly held to explain the world-wide prejudice against magic: the Jainas do not attribute it to the agency of evil spirits, nor can their dislike of it be attributed to the professional jealousy of priests in regard to rival thaumaturgists. For the Jaina the power of magic-working lies in every one, and those who have developed their other spiritual powers have also this one at their command, but to avail themselves of it is an enormous sin. There is a weird story showing what infamies a magic-working “ascetic” may perpetrate. A monk carried off, by magical arts, all the women he met, till the king of that country trapped him in a hollow tree and had him put to death. The women were set free and returned to their husbands, except one, who refused to go back because she had fallen desperately in love with her seducer. A very wise man suggested that the monk’s bones should be pounded and mixed with milk, and then given to the woman to drink: this was done and she was cured of her passion. Over the whole East, the report that some one was working miracles, even the most beneficent, raised both suspicion and jealousy. This was why secrecy was recommended about all such acts. How far the belief in the extraordinary gifts of the ascetic rests on hallucination, and how far men in an artificially created abnormal condition can do things of which hypnotic manifestations are but the outer edge, it is not my purpose to inquire. The Jaina monks are said sometimes to fast for four days, and no doubt the stimulus of starvation (especially when the brain has not been weakened by long disease), produces an ecstatic state which men have everywhere supposed to indicate religious perfection. This may be observed even in birds, which from some difficulty in swallowing, die of starvation: I had a canary that sang for days before it died a sweet incessant song, the like of which I never heard: it seemed not earthly.