We ought to admire the Indian mind, which first seized the idea of time in relation to development and soared out of the cage of history (veritable or imaginary) into liberal æons to account for one perfect soul, one plant that had accomplished its heavenly destiny. But though the Indian seer argues with Plato that virtue has its own reward (not so much an outward reward of improved environment as an inward reward of approximation to perfection), he disagrees with the Greek philosopher with regard to the practical result of all this as it affects any of us personally. Plato found the theory of transmigration entirely consoling; the Indian finds it entirely the reverse. Can the reason be that Plato took the theory as a beautiful symbol while the Indian takes it as a dire reality? The Hindu is as much convinced that the soul is re-born in different animals as we are that children are born of women. He is convinced of it, but he is not consoled by it. Let us reflect a little: does not one life give us time to get somewhat tired of it; how should we feel after fifteen hundred lives? The wandering Jew has never been thought an object of envy, but the wandering soul has a wearier lot; it knows the sorrows of all creation. “How many births are past I cannot tell, How many yet may be no man may say, But this alone I know and know full well, That pain and grief embitter all the way.”[1] Footnote 1: “Folk-Songs of Southern India,” by Charles E. Gover, a fascinating but little-known work. Rather than this—death. How far deeper the gloom revealed by these lines from the folk-songs of an obscure Dravidian tribe living in the Nilgiri Hills, than any which cultured Western pessimism can show! Compared with them, the despairing cry of Baudelaire seems almost a hymn of joy:— “’Tis death that cheers and gives us strength to live, ’Tis life’s chief aim, sole hope that can abide, Our wine, elixir, glad restorative Whence we gain heart to walk till eventide. Through snow, through frost, through tempests it can give Light that pervades th’ horizon dark and wide; The inn which makes secure when we arrive Our food and sleep, all labour laid aside. It is an Angel whose magnetic hand Gives quiet sleep and dreams of extasy, And strews a bed for naked folk and poor. ’Tis the god’s prize, the mystic granary, The poor man’s purse and his old native land, And of the unknown skies the opening door.”