er princes of the world "never were not."[68]

The Vedantist philosopher, however, though he considers all souls as
emanations from God, does not believe that all of them will return into
God at death. Those only who have obtained a knowledge of God are rewarded
by absorption, but the rest continue to migrate from body to body so long
as they remain unqualified for the same. "The knower of God becomes God."
This union with the Deity is the total loss of personal identity, and is
the attainment of the highest bliss, in which are no grades and from which
is no return. This absorption comes not from good works or penances, for
these confine the soul and do not liberate it. "The confinement of fetters
is the same whether the chain be of gold or iron." "The knowledge which
realizes that everything is Brahm alone liberates the soul. It annuls the
effect both of our virtues and vices. We traverse thereby both merit and
demerit, the heart's knot is broken, all doubts are split, and all our
works perish. Only by perfect abstraction, not merely from the senses, but
also from the thinking intellect and by remaining in the knowing
intellect, does the devotee become identified with Brahm. He then remains
as pure glass when the shadow has left it. He lives destitute of passions
and affections. He lives sinless; for as water wets not the leaf of the
lotus, so sin touches not him who knows God." He stands in no further need
of virtue, for "of what use can be a winnowing fan when the sweet southern
wind is blowing." His meditations are of this sort: "I am Brahm, I am
life. I am everlasting, perfect, self-existent, undivided, joyful."

If therefore, according to this system, knowledge alone unites the soul to
God, the question comes, Of what use are acts of virtue, penances,
sacrifices, worship? The answer is, that they effect a happy
transmigration from the lower forms of bodily life to higher ones. They
do not accomplish the great end, which is absorption and escape from Maya,
but they prepare the way for it by causing one to be born in a higher
condition.

The second system of philosophy, the Sankhya of Kapila, is founded not on
one principle, like the Vedanta, but on two. According to the seventy
aphorisms, Nature is one of these principles. It is uncreated and eternal.
It is one, active, creating, non-intelligent. The other of the two
principles, also uncreated and eternal, is Soul, or rather Souls. Souls
are many, passive, not cre