V. 10, 3) far more minute details. Here we are told

that the rain which carries the soul back to earth is taken up into rice, barley, herbs of every kind, trees, sesamum, or beans. It is very difficult to escape from these vegetable dwellings, and whoever the persons may be that eat this food and afterwards beget offspring, the germ of the soul, becomes like unto them. And yet we are told that everything is not left to accident, but that those whose conduct has been good will quickly attain a good birth in the family of BrahmaTias or Kshatriyas or Vaisyas, while those whose conduct has been bad, will quickly attain an evil birth in the family of a K&ndtiila,, an outcast, or, — and here we come for the first time on the idea of a human soul migrating into the bodies of animals, — he will become a dog or a hog. I think we can clearly see that this belief in a human soul being reborn as an outcast, or as a dog or a hog, contains what I called an ethical element. This is very important, at least as far as an explanation of the idea of metempsychosis in India is concerned. Whatever the influence of Animism may have been in other countries in suggesting a belief in metempsy- chosis, in India it was clearly due to a sense of moral justice. As a man, guilty of low and beastly acts, might be told even in this life that he was an out- cast, or that' he was a dog or a hog, so the popular conscience of India, when it had once grasped the idea of the continued existence of the soul after death, would say in good earnest that he would hereafter
JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 157
be an outcast or a dog or a hog. And after this idea of metempsychosis had once been started, it soon set the popular mind thinking on all the changes and chances that might happen to the soul in her strange wanderings. Thus we read that the soul may incur great dangers, because while the rain that falls from the moon (retodhaA) on the earth, fructifies and passes into rice, corn, and beans, and is eaten and then born as the offspring of the eater, some of the rain may fall into rivers and into the sea, and be swallowed by fishes and sea-monsters. After a time they will be dissolved in the sea, and after the sea- water has been drawn upwards by the clouds, it may fall down again on desert or dry land. Here it may be swallowed by snakes or deer, and they may be swallowed again by other animals, so that the round of existences, and even the risk of annihilation become endless. For some rain-drops may dry up altogether, or be absorbed by bodies that cannot be eaten. Nay, even if the rain has been absorbed and has become rice and corn, it may be eaten by children or by ascetics who have renounced married life, and then the chance of a new birth seems more distant than ever. Fortunately the soul, though it is conscious in its ascent, is supposed to be without consciousness in its descent through all these dangerous stages. The Brahmans have always some quaint illustrations at hand. The soul is like a man, they say, who in climbing up a tree is quite conscious, but on falling headlong down a tree loses his consciousness. Well. in spite of all this folly or childish twaddle, there are nevertheless some great thoughts running through it all. First of all, there is the unhesitating belief that
158 LECTURE V.
the soul does not die when the body dies ; secondly, there is the firm conviction that there is a moral government of the world, and that the fate of the soul hereafter is determined by its life here on earth, to which was soon added as an inevitable corollary, that the fate of the soul here on earth, must have been determined by its acts of a former life. All these thoughts, particularly on their first spontaneous appearance, are full of meaning in the eyes of the student of religion, and there are few countries where we can study their spontaneous growth so well as in ancient India.
Absence of Hells.
This belief in metempsychosis accounts for the ab- sence of hells as places of punishment, at least in the earlier phases of the Upanishads. A difference is made between souls that only pass through the manifold stages of animal and vegetable life in order to be born in the end as human beings, and those who are made to assume those intermediate forms of rice and corn and all the rest as a real punishment for evil deeds. The latter remain in that state till their evil deeds are com- pletely expiated, and they have a real consciousness of their state of probation. But when their debts are paid and the results of their evil deeds are entirely exhausted, they have a new chance. They may assume a new body, like caterpillars when changed into butterflies. Even then the impressions of their former misdeeds remain, like dreams. Still in the end, by leading a virtuous life they may become men once more, and rise to the world of the Fathers in the moon. Here a distinction is made, though not
JOUKNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 159
very clearly, between those whom the moon sets free and those whom he showers down for a new birth. Those who can answer the moon well, and assert their identity with the moon, as the source of all things, are set free to enter the Svargaloka By the Path of the gods. Those who cannot, return to the earth, may in time gain true knowledge, and finally likewise reach the Path of the gods and the world of the Devas, the home of the lightnings, and the throne of Brahman. Some of the later Upanishads, particularly the Kaushitaki-Upanishad, enter into far fuller details as to this last journey to the throne of Brahman. But, as is generally the case, though there may be some rational purpose in the general plan, the minor details become almost always artificial and unmeaning.
Now, however, when the soul has reached the world of the gods and the abode of Brahman, from whence there is no return to a new circle of cosmic existence, a stream of new ideas sets in, forming a higher phase philosophically, and probably a later phase historically, as compared with the Path of the Fathers and the Path of the Gods. We are introduced to a dialogue, similar to that between the soul and the moon, but now between the departed, standing before the throne of Brahman, and Brahman himself.
Brahman asks him : ' Who art thou ? '
And he is to answer in the following mysterious words :
' I am like a season, and the child of the seasons, sprung from the womb of endless space, sprung from light. This light, the source of the year, which is the past, which is the present, which is all living things
160 LECTURE V.
and all elements, is the Self. Thou art the Self, and what thou art, that am I.'
The meaning of this answer is not quite clear. But it seems to mean that the departed when asked by Brahman what he is or what he knows himself to be, says that he is like a season x, that is, like something that comes and goes, but that he is at the same time the child of space and time or of that light from which all time and all that exists in time and space proceeds. This universal source of all existence he calls the Self, and after proclaiming that Brahman before him is that Self, he finishes his confession of faith, by saying, ' What thou art, that am I.'
In this passage, though we still perceive some traces of mythological thought, the prevailing spirit is clearly philosophical. In the approach of the soul to the throne of Brahman we can. recognise the last results that can be reached by Physical and Anthropological Religion, as worked out by the Indian mind. In Brahman sit- ting on his throne we have still the merely objective or cosmic God, the highest point reached by Physical Religion ; in the soul of the departed standing face to face with God, we see the last result of Anthropological Religion. We see there the human soul as a subject, still looking upon the Divine Soul as an object. But the next step, represented by the words, 'What thou art, that am I,' opens a new vista of thought. The human soul, by the very fact that it has gained true knowledge of Brahman, knows that the soul also is Brahman, recovers its own Brahmahood. becomes in fact what it always has been, Brahman or the Universal Self. Knowledge, true knowledge, self-knowledge
1 The Sufi also calls himself the son of the season, see p. 357.
JOUENET OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 161
suffices for this, and there is no longer any necessity of toilsome travellings, whether on the Path of the Fathers or on the Path of the Gods.
Transmigration as conceived in the Laws of Mann.
Before, however, we enter on a consideration of this highest flight of Indian philosophy, and try to discover to what phases of thought this similarity or rather this oneness with God, this Homoiosis or Henosis, corre- sponds in other religions, we have still to dwell for a short time on the later development of the theory of transmigration as we find it in the Laws of Manu and elsewhere, and as it is held to the present day by millions of people in India. These Laws of Manu are. of course, much later than the Upanishads. Though they contain ancient materials, they can hardly, in their present metrical form, be assigned to a much earlier date than about the fourth century A. D. In their original form they must have existed as Sutras ; in their present metrical form, they belong to the >S'loka- period of Indian literature. There existed many similar collections of ancient laws and customs, com- posed both in Sutras and afterwards in metre, but as the Laws of Manu, or, as they ought to be more cor- rectly called, the Laws of the Manavas, have acquired a decided pre-eminence in India, it is in them that we can best study the later development of the belief in metempsychosis.
As I said before, when the idea of the migration of the soul through various forms of animal and vege- table life had once been started, the temptation was great to carry it out in fuller detail. Whereas in the Upanishads we are only told that a man who has led (•i; M
162 LECTURE V.
an evil life, attains an evil birth, and may actually come to life again as a dog or a hog, Manu is able to tell us in far more minute detail what particular birth is assigned to any particular crime. Thus we read in