17. They have no stir or agitation of reason, nor any flash of understanding or mental faculties in them; they are not afraid of or averse to base actions, but remain and move on as stone-mills and wheels:— 18. Their manliness consists in the emotions of their passions and affections, and in exhibitions of the signs of their cupidity and aversion, and they delight mostly in actions, that appear pleasant at the time being or present moment. (They are occupied with the present only, being forgetful of the past and careless of the future). 19. As there is no appearance of a body of rainy clouds, over the dry and parched lands of the desert, so there is no shadow of pure and cooling knowledge ever stretched out on the minds of these people. (_i.e._ They have never come under the benign influence of civilization). 20. Rather dwell in a dark cave as a snake, or remain as a blind worm in the bosom of a stone; or limp about as a lame stag in the barren desert, than mix in company of these village people. 21. These rude rustics resemble the potions of poison, that are mixed with honey; they are sweet to taste for a moment, but prove deadly at last. (Such are the robbers of deserts and woods). 22. Again these villainous villagers are as rude as the rough winds, which are blowing with gusts of dust amidst the shattered huts, built with grassy turfs and tufts of the dried leaves of trees. (The word _trina_ means straw also or a straw built hut). 23. Being thus spoken unto by me, the traveller felt himself as glad, as if he was bathed in ambrosial showers. 24. The passenger said:—Who art thou sir, with thy magnanimous soul, that seemest to me to be full and perfect in thyself, and full of Divine spirit in thy soul. Thou lookest at the hustle of the bustle of the world, as a passer is unconcerned with the commotion of the villages beside his way. 25. Hast thou sir, drunk the ambrosial draught of the gods, that gave thee thy Divine knowledge? and art infused with the spirit of the sovran Virát, that is quite apart from the plenum it fills, and is quite full with its entire voidness (stretches through all, and unmixed with any). 26. I see thy soul to be as void and yet as full as his, and as still and yet as moving as the Divine spirit; it is all and not all what exists, and something yet nothing itself. 27. It is quiet and comely, shining and yet unseen; it is inert and yet full of force and energy, it is inactive with all its activity and action; and such soul is thine. (These antithetic attributes of the Divine soul, are applied objectively to that of Vasishtha in the second person, as they are subjectively put to one’s ownself in the first person in many other places. Thus in the Bhagavad Gítá where Krishna assumes to himself the title of Brahma and says “Resort to Me alone” so says the Sufi Mansur “I am the true one” so says Hastamulaka in his celebrated rhapsody. “I am that eternal that is conceived by every one.”)