ts the constitution of man, they make a distinction
between the soul and the vital principle, asserting that it is the
latter only which expiates sin by transmigration. They divide society
into four castes--the priests, the military, the industrial, the
servile. They make a Brahmin the chief of all created things, and order
that his life shall be divided into four parts, one to be spent in
abstinence, one in marriage, one as an anchorite, and one in profound
meditation; he may then "quit the body as a bird leaves the branch of a
tree." They vest the government of society in an absolute monarch,
having seven councillors, who direct the internal administration by a
chain of officials, the revenue being derived from a share of
agricultural products, taxes on commerce, imposts on shopkeepers, and a
service of one day in the month from labourers.

[Sidenote: Both the Vedas and Institutes are pantheistic.]

In their essential principles the Institutes therefore follow the Vedas,
though, as must be the case in every system intended for men in the
various stages of intellectual progress from the least advanced to the
highest, they show a leaning toward popular delusions. Both are
pantheistic, for both regard the universe as the manifestation of the
Creator; both accept the doctrine of Emanation, teaching that the
universe lasts only for a definite period of time, and then, the Divine
energy being withdrawn, absorption of everything, even of the created
gods, takes place, and thus, in great cycles of prodigious duration,
many such successive emanations and absorptions of universe occur.

[Sidenote: Disappearance of the philosophical classes, and consequent
prominence of anthropocentric ideas.]

The changes that have taken place among the orthodox in India since the
period of the Institutes are in consequence of the diminution or
disappearance of the highly philosophical classes, and the comparative
predominance of the vulgar. They are stated by Mr. Elphinstone as a
gradual oblivion of monotheism, the neglect of the worship of some gods
and the introduction of others, the worship of deified mortals. The
doctrine of human deification is carried to such an extent that Indra
and other mythological gods are said to tremble lest they should be
supplanted by men. This introduction of polytheism and use of images has
probably been connected with the fact that there have been no temples to
the Invisible God, and the uneducated mind fe