obstructions and obstacles in the way of attaining divine knowledge are immense both in number and in magnitude, auxiliary means for their removal must be resorted to.-Hence the origin of all manner of prescriptions for the ultimate attainment of the coveted knowledge. To three great or generically distinct classes of means we may briefly refer.

Some of the Orthodox schools insist, more largely than others, on certain devotional exercises, as preparatory means. -Hence, those long-continued recitations of portions of the Vedas in particular sitting or standing postures; -on the banks of rivers, or in sacred spots, or in private houses devoid of animals and men; with the eyes half closed and fixed on the tip of the nose.-Hence, those strange suppressions of the breath, in ways and modes endlessly diversified ; and those internal utterances or repeated mutterings of the peculiar name of God, and the triliteral monosyllable AUM, and other mystical names and texts which constitute efficacious devotion.-Hence, those attempts at fixing the mind on the lotus of the heart, the pineal gland, or some other internal object; to habituate it to the concentration of its thoughts, without the intervention of any objects sensible or intellectual, on that inconceivable, imperceptible, happy, placid being, which is without beginning, middle, or end :— and thus gradually prepare the soul for that absorbed contemplation through which it may obtain final deliverance.

Some of the schools, after the example of the sacred standards, insist more largely on the practice of austerities as preparatory means. The desires and affections, the passions and appetites, are allowed to be grand counteractives in the way of attaining to perfect knowledge. It is not easy for the soul to keep these under control. It is not easy to persuade itself that their appropriate objects have no reality,or at least none apart from the Supreme Spirit. It is not easy to convince and satisfy itself that fruits and viands, odours and perfumes, and all the varied objects of sense-that friends and foes, parents and brothers, sisters and wives and children;that all are unreal, and illusory, or at best, only portions of the Supreme Spirit differently modified and combined! What

then must be done? What can be done, except to attempt to extirpate the instincts, to quench the sensibilities, to extinguish the affections, to blunt in the corporeal organs all susceptibility of external impression;-and thus virtually reduce the heart to a petrifaction, the mind to a state of idiocy, and the body to that of an immovable statue? Hence those amazing self-inflicted severities of which all have heard--severities, practised more or less by thousands and tens of thousands for ages before the Christian era, and down to the present time.-Hence the exhortations of the Divine Legislator to such of the higher castes as have performed all religious duties,-read the Vedas in the form prescribed, offered sacrifices to the best of their power,paid all their debts of service to the sages, the manes, and the gods. They are enjoined to abandon all food eaten in towns-to take up the consecrated fire and sacrificial implements and to repair to the lonely forest. There they are to live at first on pure food, such as green herbs, flowers, roots, fruit, and oils found in fruits. They are to wear a black antelope's hide, or a vesture of bark-to bathe evening and morning-to suffer the hairs of the head, the beard and the nails to grow continually. They are to slide backwards and forwards on the ground-or to stand a whole day on tip-toe—or to continue in motion rising and sitting alternately. In the hot season, they are to sit exposed to five fires,-four blazing around, with the sun above; in the rains, to stand uncovered without even a mantle, when the clouds pour the heaviest showers; and in the cold season to wear humid vesture. They are by degrees to increase the austerity of devotion;-so that by enduring harsher and harsher mortification, they may eventually dry up the bodily frame; and thus restrain all the bodily organs; and root out those passions and appetites by which these are naturally hurried away into the commission of divers injurious acts. When thus multiplying self-inflicted penances, they are to reflect on the transmigrations of men caused by their sinful deeds; on their separation from those whom they love; or their union with those whom they hate; on their agonizing departure from this corporeal frame; on

their formation again in the womb, and the gliding of the vital spirit through ten thousand millions of new births. Above all, they are, with firm faith and complete power over the organs of sense and action, and an exclusive application of mind, to reflect on the subtile essence of the Supreme Spirit, and its complete existence in all beings, "whether extremely high, or extremely low." With minds thus intensely fixed,— heeding nought that is earthly, without one feeling or desire, with no companion but the soul,-they are to feed on nought but water and air, till the mortal frame totally decay. Having at length "shuffled off" the material vehicle, they may rise to exaltation in the divine essence. The Brahman who practises these austerities, is called a Sanyasi, or one who "forsakes all actions that are desirable." But thousands and tens of thousands who are not Brahmans, by exceeding, if possible, the latter in the infliction and endurance of aggravated sufferings, strive to aspire to a share of the honours of the Sanyasi. These are called Yogis, from Yog, or devotion. These are the real gymnosophists, or naked philosophers of the ancients, who often practise their unexampled severities in the solitudes of the forest. They include many of those called by the moderns fakirs, who delight to carry on their lacerating operations in the presence of multitudes. Their avowed object, like that of the Sanyasis, is to root out every human feeling and passion; to detach the senses from all the means of gratification; to deaden them to every external influence-whether the burning heats, or the chilling colds-the luxurious banquet, or strains of melody—the idol of ambition, or the treasures of avarice-the entreaties of tender affection, or the clamours of cruel reproach. The self-inflicted tortures of this class are endless. Some keep the palms of their hands clenched till the nails have pierced into the flesh; others hold one or both arms upright, till the fluids cease to circulate and they become shrivelled into stumps. Some walk or creep along, on their hands and knees, till they are twisted and unnaturally deformed; others hang over a slow fire. Some stretch themselves upon beds of iron spikes; others stand upright till their limbs are greatly swoln and ulcerated. Some

carry iron collars around the neck, and fetters on the limbs ; others bind themselves with ropes or chains to trees, till they expire. Some inhume themselves in the ground, leaving only a small hole through which to breathe; others keep gazing so stedfastly and so long at the heavens, that the muscles of the neck become contracted, and no aliment but liquid can pass through. The number of those who practise the most aggravated of these severities is greatly diminished. But the multitudes who assume the name, and profess to practise them in a greater or less degree, are still prodigious. Hence, the swarms of religious mendicants that infest the country, some almost naked, to indicate that they have subdued their passions; others wearing tigers' skins, to point out that they reside chiefly in the forests. Numbers smear their bodies with the ashes of cow dung, wear long hair clotted with filth, fasten artificial snakes round their foreheads, put strings of human bones around their necks, carry human skulls filled with ordure,-with a hundred other tokens and emblems of pretended self-denial.

There are other schools which maintain that, without the devotional exercises of practical religion, and without resorting to self-inflicted tortures, it is possible, by means of profound meditation, and a discriminating acquaintance with the true principles of things, to attain to divine knowledge. Hence, in order to aid the soul in analyzing and banishing those false impressions which arise from the instinctive monitions of consciousness, and the natural inferences of the reflective intellect under the influence of ignorance and illusion, -hence the immense piles of logical and dialectic subtilties.Hence those endless discussions as to the different kinds and degrees of evidence by which demonstration may be arrived at, and certainly obtained;-such as perception, inference, affirmation; and, included in or resulting from these, comparison or analogy, tradition, capacity, aspect, and privation of four sorts-antecedent, reciprocal, absolute, and total.-Hence those varying enumerations of the constituent principles of which this universe is composed; the mode and order of their derivation from the essence of Brahm; their divisions, com

binations, and mutual relations.-Hence those interminable debates as to "predicaments" or objects of proof; and the number of distinct "categories" to which all things perceptible and imperceptible, sensitive and cognitive, material and immaterial, ought to be reduced,-preparatory to a more general resolution of the whole into the sole-existing category, which is Brahm.-Hence those acute disquisitions on the incumbrances which hinder the progress of the soul in the contemplation of what is immutable-Hence, those endless divisions and subdivisions of "the affections of intellect, its sentiments or faculties, whether obstructing, disabling, contenting, or perfecting the understanding: "-the obstructing class, according to one of the principal schools, being divided into five sorts, viz. obscurity, illusion, extreme illusion, gloom, and utter darkness, which are again subdivided into sixty-two species;—the disabling class, comprising twentyeight species, and so of the rest ;-each species being defined, discussed, admitted, or denied, according to the doctrines of the varying schools.-Hence the never-ending controversies respecting the number of qualities which may be predicated of soul, such as number, quantity, severalty, conjunction, disjunction, &c.; and of the constituent parts of matter, such as individuality, priority, posteriority, velocity and elasticity; antecedent, emergent, and absolute negation, mutual privation, &c. &c.-Hence those forms and examples of syllogism, with classifications of the divers varieties of fallacy, or semblance of reason; of the different sorts of fraud, or perversion and misconstruction; of the twenty-four kinds of futile answer, or self-confuting reply; of the twenty-two distinctions of failure in argument, &c. &c. ;-all of which united might well be allowed to rival some of the more striking parts of the wondrous fabric of Aristotelian subtilty.

By one or other of the varied means now pointed out, the disciple may at length acquire a discriminating knowledge of the real nature of things, apart from the influence of illusion;-may attain "the glorious prerogative of seeing all things in God, and discriminating the divine unity which comprehends all things ;"--and may thus reach that state