1. Once more we may adduce, as a first example of such pantheistic poetry, the literature of the Hindoos, which along with its fantastic symbolism has also elaborated the type of art under discussion with distinction. In other words the Hindoo race, as we have seen, proceed in their conceptions from the point of most abstract universality and unity, which is then carried forward to the specific shaping of gods such as Trimûrtis, Indras, and the rest. This process of definition, however, is not adhered to with constancy; but to a like extent is suffered once more to break up, so that we find inferior gods are absorbed in superior gods, and the highest of all in Brahman. From this it is sufficiently obvious that this Universal constitutes the one persistent and unalterable basis of all. And if, as we freely admit, the Hindoos evince the twofold impulse in their poetry, namely, either to exaggerate the particular existence, in order that it may appear to the senses compatible with the significance of the Absolute, or, in the converse case, to suffer every form of definition to pass as mere negation when contrasted with the one abstraction of Being, yet at the same time there is another aspect of their literature, in which we also find artistic representation under the purer mode of imaginative pantheism we have just described, a mode in which the immanence of the Divine is exalted above all particular existence in which it is presented to sense and which as such disappears. We may no doubt be rather inclined to recognize in this later mode of conception a certain similarity with that type of the immediate unity of pure thought which we found to be characteristic of the religious consciousness of the Parsees. Among the Parsees, however, the One and Excellent is conserved in its independence as itself a fact of Nature, that is, Light. With the Hindoos, on the contrary, the One, or Brahman, is merely the formless One; and this it is which in its transformations through the infinite variety of the phenomenal world, first gives rise to the pantheistic mode of representation. So we read of _Krishna_ (_Bhagavad-Gita_, Lect. VII, II. 4 _et seq._): "Earth, water and wind, air and fire, reason and egoity are the eight pieces of my essential force; yet knowest thou somewhat more in me, a more exalted essence, which animates the earthly and supports the world. In it all existences have their origin. Ay, verily, thou knowest I am the origin of the entire universe as also its annihilation. Aught higher than myself is not; in me is this All conjoined together, as a chaplet of pearls on a thread. I am the taste of sweetness in all that flows; I am the splendour in the sun and moon, the mystic Word in the sacred writings, manhood in man, the clean savour in the Earth, brightness in flame, in all Being Life, meditation in all who repent. In that which has Life the Power of Life, in the wise Wisdom, in the glorious Glory.