is requisite for the vulgar. On the contrary, it is only when
one becomes an ascetic that he is told to devote himself to the
pursuit of the knowledge of _[=a]tm[=a]_. In one passage there is
evidence that two replies were given to this fundamental question in
regard to works and knowledge. For after enumerating a list of good
acts, among which are knowledge and Vedic ceremonies, it is asked
which among them most tends to deliverance. The answer is vital. Or it
should be, but it is given in an ambiguous form (xii. 85-6): "Amid all
these acts the knowledge of self, _[=a]tm[=a],_ is the highest, for it
produces immortality. Amid all these acts the one most productive of
happiness, both after death and in this life, is the Vedic ceremony."

Knowledge gives real immortality; rites give temporary bliss. The
Upanishads teach that the latter is lower than the former, but each
answers the question. There were two answers, and Manu gives both.
That is the secret of many discrepancies in Hindu rules. The law-giver
cannot admit absolutely and once for all that the Vedic ceremony is of
no abiding use, as it can be of no use to one that accepts the higher
teaching. He keeps it as a training and allows only the ascetic to be
a philosopher indeed. But at the same time he gives as a sort of
peroration to his treatise some 'elegant extracts' from philosophical
works, which he believes theoretically, although practically he will
not allow them to influence his ritualism. He is a true Brahman
priest.

It is this that is always so annoying in Brahmanic philosophy. For the
slavery of tradition is everywhere. Not only does the ritualist, while
admitting the force of the philosopher's reasons, remain by Vedic
tradition, and in consequence refuse to supplant 'revelation' with the
higher wisdom and better religion, which he sees while he will not
follow it; but even the philosopher must needs be 'orthodox,' and,
since the scriptures themselves are self-contradictory, he is obliged
to use his energies not in discovering truth, but in reconciling his
ancestors' dogmas, in order to the creation of a philosophical system
which shall agree with everything that has been said in the Vedas and
Upanishads. When one sees what subtlety and logical acumen these
philosophers possessed, he is moved to wonder what might have been the
outcome had their minds been as free as those of more liberal Hellas.
But unfortunately they were bound to argue within limit