n Pantheism.]

The forgotten singers and preachers of this prehistoric wisdom were as
much haunted as we ourselves are with the harassing questions suggested
by sin and sorrow, by life and death, and by aspirations after a higher
state. And many, perhaps we may say most of them, found comfort in the
thought that essentially they belonged to an all comprehensive and
infinite Life, in which, if they acted purely and nobly, their seeming
personality might be merged and find peace. Their frame of mind was
religious rather than philosophical. But their philosophy was naturally
conformed to it; and in their contrast of the bewildering variety of
finite visible things with the unity of the Eternal Being of which all
are phases, those ancients were in close sympathy with the thoughts of
the modern meditative saunterer by field and river and wood.

[Sidenote: Differences between Ancient and Modern Conditions of
Thought.]

But the enormous interval of time separating us from those early Indian
thinkers necessarily involves very great differences in conditions of
thought. And we should not be surprised if amidst much in their writings
that stirs our sympathy, there is also a great deal which is to us
incongruous and absurd. Therefore, it may be well before quoting these
writings to note one or two points marking an almost incommensurable
difference between their mode and ours of regarding the world.

[Sidenote: 1. Survival In their day of Fetishistic and Animistic Ideas.]

1. First, they were much less removed than we are from the influence of
fetishistic and animistic traditions. Even in the Greek and Roman
classics the casual reader is often revolted by the grossly absurd
stories told of gods and heroes. And, indeed, it is impossible to
conceive of the amours of Zeus (or Jove), for instance, with Leda,
Europa or Danae as having been first conceived during an age marked by
the poetic genius and comparative culture evinced in the most ancient
epics. But the most probable solution of the puzzle is that the earliest
civilization inherited a number of animal stories, such as are
characteristic of savagery in all parts of the world, and that the first
literary generations into whose poetic myths those stories were
transferred, being as much accustomed to them as to other surroundings
of their childhood, such as bloody sacrifices, mystic expiations, and
fantastic initiations, saw no incongruity in anything told them of the
gods. B