We have shown above that the theology of the Vedic period had resulted, before its close, in a form of pantheism, which was accompanied, as is attested by the Atharva Veda, with a demonology and witch-craft religion, the latter presumably of high antiquity. Immediately after this come the esoteric Br[=a]hmanas, in which the gods are, more or less, figures in the eyes of the priests, and the form of a Father-god rises into chief prominence, being sometimes regarded as the creative force, but at all times as the moral authority in the world. At the end of this period, however, and probably even before this period ended, there is for the first time, in the Upanishads, a new religion, that, in some regards, is esoteric. Hitherto the secrets of religious mysteries had been treated as hidden priestly wisdom, not to be revealed. But, for the most part, this wisdom is really nonsense; and when it is said in the Br[=a]hmanas, at the end of a bit of theological mystery, that it is a secret, or that 'the gods love that which is secret,' one is not persuaded by the examples given that this esoteric knowledge is intellectually valuable. But with the Upanishads there comes the antithesis of inherited belief and right belief. The latter is public property, though it is not taught carelessly. The student is not initiated into the higher wisdom till he is drilled in the lower. The most unexpected characters appear in the rôle of instructors of priests, namely, women, kings, and members of the third caste, whose deeper wisdom is promulgated oftentimes as something quite new, and sometimes is whispered in secret. Pantheism, _sams[=a]ra_,[1] and the eternal bliss of the individual spirit when eventually it is freed from further transmigration,--these three fundamental traits of the new religion are discussed in such a way as to show that they had no hold upon the general public, but they were the intellectual wealth of a few. Some of the Upanishads hide behind a veil of mystery; yet many of them, as Windisch has said, are, in a way, popular; that is, they are intended for a general public, not for priests alone. This is especially the case with the pantheistic Upanishads in their more pronounced form. But still it is only the very wise that can accept the teaching. It is not the faith of the people. Epic literature, which is the next living literature of the Brahmans, after the Upanishads, takes one, in a trice, from the beginnings of a formal pantheism, to a pantheism already disintegrated by the newer worship of sectaries. Here the impersonal _[=a]tm[=a]_, or nameless Lord, is not only an anthropomorphic Çiva, as in the late Upanishads, where the philosophic _brahma_ is equated with a long recognized type of divinity, but _[=a]tm[=a]_ is identified with the figure of a theomorphic man. Is there, then, nothing with which to bridge this gulf?