y broke upon the lonely
shore; and I gradually fell into that state so well known among
solitary travellers:--no distinct remembrance of my own separate
being remained to me: I seemed to be but a part of some great
whole, to undulate with the lake, to vegetate with the trees, to
sigh with the winds, to blossom with the flowers.'

This feeling of the infinite so pervaded antiquity, that man almost lost
the consciousness of his own personality in the immensity of the
universe, regarding himself but as an element of the absolute unity of
the world. His imagination fell into profound reverie, he felt himself
but as an integral part of a universal movement drawing all things to a
single centre, confounding all beings with one sole substance. We have
only to open the Vedas to convince ourselves how deeply this feeling
pervaded the early philosophy of the Hindoos. For example:

'Brahma is eternal, the only substantial being, revealing himself
in happiness and joy. The universe is his name, his image; this
primal existence, containing all in itself, is the only one
substantially existing. All phenomena have their cause in Brahma:
he is not subjected to the conditions of time and space. He is
imperishable; he is the soul of the world; the soul of every
individual being. The universe is Brahma--it comes from Brahma--it
subsists in Brahma--Bramah, or the sole self-existing being, is the
form of all science, the form of systems of worlds, without end
forever. The universes of stars are one with him; they have no
being but as they exist in the supremacy of his will. This eternal
will is the central heart of all that is. It reveals itself in
creation, in preservation, in destruction, in motion, in rest, in
space, in time.'

Such an absorption of all things in the infinite, with the consequent
loss of personality, individuality, and all moral responsibility, had a
most depressing effect upon the character of the people who embraced
this strange system. This is so manifest that it may be plainly read in
the sombre character of their architectural remains.

'In their subterranean, vast, and dim excavations; in the gigantic
proportions of their colossal architecture, always impressing us
with sadness and with the nothingness of man; in their long, still,
damp, dreary cities of sepulchres; in their half-shrouded and