n of absorption the human
soul is not only deprived of its separate existence, but also of all
self-knowledge, which is the true basis of personality.

As to the process of this salvation we are here taught, as in all
Hindu writing, that it is attained through metempsychosis, or
reincarnation. The human soul, like the divine, in Brahmanism, passes
through many incarnations (some writers say 8,400,000) before it
receives the crown of perfection, or of absorption. Krishna says: "As
a man, casting off old clothes, puts on others and new ones, so the
embodied self, casting off old bodies, goes to others and new ones."
"I have passed through many births, O Arjuna, and you, also," says
Krishna; "I know them all, but you, O terror of your foes! do not know
them."

This devious and tedious path of reincarnation is the one over which
every soul must pass. And between every incarnation and that which
follows, the soul, clothed upon with a subtle body, passes through
many heavens and hells in order to eat the fruits of its past actions.
And there is a remnant of these fruits left which necessitates the
return to a new body and a new human existence.

These upper and nether regions through which the soul passes and
settles its accounts with the past, are not in any sense permanent.
Concerning this, the Bhagavad Gita says that men, "reaching the holy
world of the Lord of Gods, they enjoy in the celestial regions the
celestial pleasures of the gods. And having enjoyed that great
heavenly world, they enter the mortal world when their merit is
exhausted." After, perhaps, millions of these human incarnations (and,
indeed, the incarnation may be of lower animal and of vegetable), the
self will gradually be perfected, they say, and will pass on into the
calm essence of the supreme Soul, as a drop of water descends in rain
and blends again with the ocean. I see absolutely no reason why this
interminable process of metempsychosis should lead to the perfection
of the soul rather than to its complete demoralization. Indeed, there
is nothing ethical at all in the character of these reincarnations, so
far as they are described by Hindu writers.

III

This, then, is the "Divine Lay" of the Hindu religion, the book most
cherished and most highly extolled by more than two hundred and thirty
million Hindus.

We are, first of all, impressed by the many contradictions which
disfigure the book. Hardly a page is free from conflicting doctrine