CHAPTER X

VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY

THE following lecture on “The Atman,” by the Swami Vivekananda, delegate to the Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893, was originally delivered under the auspices of the Brooklyn Ethical Association, February 2, 1896, and presented to the author of this volume by the gifted lecturer, who has since departed to spirit life. In 1899 at Greenacre, a charming resort on the border line between New Hampshire and Maine, conducted by Miss Sarah Farmer (a true philanthropist) we were privileged to sit under the trees and listen to the following philosophy:

(1) The Differentiated: Personal God.

(2) The Partially Differentiated: Immanent God.

(3) The Undifferentiated: Impersonal God.

MANY of you have read Max Müller’s celebrated book, “Three lectures on the Vedanta Philosophy,” and some of you may, perhaps, have read in German, Professor Deussen’s book on the same philosophy. In much that is written and taught in the West about the religious thought of India one school of Indian thought is principally represented, that which is called “Advaitism,” the monistic side of Indian religion; and sometimes it is thought that all the teachings of the Vedas are comprised in that one system of philosophy. There have, however, been various phases of Indian thought, and perhaps this non-dualistic form is in the minority as compared with the other phases. From the most ancient times there have been various sects of thought in India, and, as there never was a formulated or recognized church or any body of men to designate the doctrines which should be believed by each school, people were very free to choose their own form, make their own philosophy and establish their own sects. We, therefore, find that from the most ancient times India was full of religious sects. At the present time I do not know how many hundreds of sects we have in India, and several fresh ones are coming into existence every year. It seems that the religious activity of that nation is simply inexhaustible.

Of these various sects, in the first place, there can be made two main divisions, the orthodox and the unorthodox. Those that believe in the Hindu Scriptures, the Vedas, as eternal revelations of truth are called orthodox, and those that stand on other authority, rejecting the Vedas, are the heterodox in India. The chief modern unorthodox Hindu sects are the Jains and the Buddhists. Excepting these, the orthodox Hindu sects comprise nearly the whole of the Hindu population of India at the present time, and all admit the authority of the Hindu Scriptures, the Vedas. Some of them declare that the Scriptures are of much higher authority than reason; others, again say that only that portion of the Scriptures which is rational should be taken and the rest rejected.

They, also, form various sects. These sects were divided into three groups—the Sankhyas, the Naiyayikas and the Mimamsakas. Of these three groups two, the Sankhyas and the Naiyayikas, although they existed as philosophical schools, failed to form any sect. The one sect that now really covers India is that of the later Mimamsakas, or the Vedantists. Their philosophy is called Vedantism. All the various philosophies are based on the Vedantas, the Hindu Scriptures, but the monists took the name to themselves as a specialty, because they wanted to base the whole of their theology and philosophy upon the Vedas and nothing else, and in the course of time they prevailed, and all the various sects of India that now exist can be referred to some form of these Vedantists. Yet these Vedantists are not unanimous in their opinions.

We find now that there are three principal variations among the sects. On one point they all agree, and that is that they all believe in God. All these Vedantists also believe the Vedas to be the revealed word of that God, not exactly in the same sense, perhaps, as the Christians or the Mahommedans believe, or the Buddhists, but in a very peculiar sense. Their idea is that the Vedas are an expression of the knowledge of God, and as God is eternal, His knowledge is eternally with Him, and so are the Vedas eternal. There is another common ground of belief; the belief in the creation in cycles; that the whole of this creation is appearing and disappearing; it is projected and becomes grosser and grosser, and that at the end of an incalculable period of time the whole thing becomes finer and dissolves, and subsides, and then comes a period of rest. Again, it begins to appear. They admit one material, which they call "akasa," something like the present ether theory of the scientists, and a power which they call "prana." About this prana they declare that by its vibration all the universe is produced. When a cycle ends, all this manifestation of nature becomes finer and finer and dissolves back to that akasa, that ether, which cannot be seen or felt, yet out of which everything is manufactured. All the forces that we see in nature, either as gravitation, or attraction, or repulsion, or as thought, as feeling, as nervous motion—all these various forces resolve into that prana, and the vibration of that prana ceases; in that state it remains until the beginning of the next cycle. Prana then begins to vibrate, and that vibration acts upon the akasa, and all these forms are thrown out in regular succession.

The first sect about whom I want to speak to you is that which we style in India the “Dualists.” The Dualists are those who believe that God, who is the Creator of the universe and its Ruler, is eternally separate from nature, eternally separate from the human soul. The souls, according to all the different theories, are eternal. God is eternal; nature is eternal; so are all souls. Nature and the souls become manifested and change, but God remains the same. According to the Dualists, again, this God is personal, in that He has qualities, not that He has body. No sect believes that God has body, only that He has human attributes; He is merciful; He is just; He is powerful; He is almighty; He can be approached; He can be prayed to; He can be loved; He loves in return, and so forth. In one word, He is a Human God, only infinitely greater than man; He has none of the evil qualities which men have. “He is the repository of an infinite number of blessed qualities”; that is their definition. This God is creating this universe out of nature. He cannot create without materials, and nature is the material out of which He creates this whole universe. Some of the Dualists are what they call the “Atomists,” who believe that this nature is nothing but an infinite number of atoms, and God's will, acting upon these atoms, creates. The Vedantists deny the atomic theory; they say this theory is perfectly illogical. Supposing there were atoms, according to the theory atoms must be indivisible. They are like geometrical points, without parts or magnitude, but something without parts or magnitude, if multiplied an infinite number of times, will remain the same. Anything that has no parts will never make something that has parts; any number of zeros added together will not make one single whole number. So, if these atoms are such that they have no parts or magnitude, out of such atoms the creation of the universe is simply impossible. Therefore, according to the Vedantic Dualists, there is this nature, which they call indiscrete or undifferentiated, and out of that God creates this universe. The vast mass of Indian people are Dualists. Human nature ordinarily cannot conceive of anything higher than this. We find ninety per cent. of the population of this earth of ours who believe in any religion are Dualists. All the religions of Europe and Western Asia are Dualistic; they have to be; they cannot think of anything which is not concrete. Man naturally likes to cling to that which his intellect can grasp. That is to say, he can only conceive of higher spiritual ideas by bringing them down to his own level. He can only grasp abstract thoughts by making them concrete. This is the religion of the mass of mankind all over the world. They believe in a God who is entirely separate from them, as it were, a great king, a high, mighty monarch. At the same time they make Him purer than the monarchs of the earth; they give Him all good qualities and remove the evil qualities from Him. As if it were ever possible for good to exist without evil; as if there could be any conception of light without a conception of darkness!

With all Dualistic theories the first difficulty to present itself would be, How is it possible that, under the rule of a just and merciful God, the repository of an infinite number of good qualities, there can be so many evils in this world? This question has arisen in all Dualistic religions, but the Hindus never invented a Satan as an answer to it. All of these sects, with one accord, lay the blame on man himself, and it was easy for them to do this. How? Because, as I have just now told you, they do not believe that souls were created out of nothing. We see in this life that we shape and can form all our own future; every one of us, every day, is trying to shape to-morrow. To-day we fix the fate of to-morrow; to-morrow we will fix the fate of the day after to-morrow, and so on. It is quite logical that this reasoning can be pushed backward, too. If, by our own deeds, we shape our destiny in the future, why not apply the same rule to the past? If, in an infinite chain, a certain number of links, repeated alternately, eternally recur, then, if one of these groups be explained, we can explain the whole chain. So, in this infinite length of time, if we can cut off one portion and explain that portion and understand it, then, if it be true that nature is uniform, the same explanation must apply to the whole chain of time. If it be true that we are working out our own destiny here within this short space of time, if it be true that everything must have a cause as we see it now, it must also be true that that which we are now is the effect of the whole of the past; therefore, no other person is necessary to shape the destiny of mankind but man himself. The evils that are in this world are caused by none else but ourselves. We have caused all this evil; and, just as we constantly see misery resulting from evil actions, so we can also see that much of the existing misery in the world is the effect of past wickedness in man. Man alone, therefore, according to this theory, is responsible; God is not to blame; He the eternally merciful Father is not to blame at all. “We reap that we sow.”

Another peculiar doctrine is that every soul must eventually come to salvation. No one will be left. Through various vicissitudes, through various sufferings and enjoyments, in the end, each one of them will come out. Come out of what? The one common idea of all Hindu sects is that all souls have to get out of this universe. Neither that universe which we now see and feel or even that which we can imagine, is the right, the real one, because both are mixed up with good and evil. According to the Dualists, there is beyond this universe one where there is only happiness and only good and, what is much dearer to them, where there will be no more necessity of being born and reborn, of living and dying. No more death there; no more disease. It will be eternal happiness, where they will be in the presence of God for all time and enjoy God forever. They believe that all beings, from the lowest worm up to the highest angels and gods, will all, sooner or later, come to that world where there will be no more misery. But this world will never stop; it goes on infinitely, although moving in waves and falls. Although moving in cycles, it never ends. The number of souls that are to be saved, that are to be perfected, is infinite. Some are in plants; some are in lower animals; some are in men; some are in gods, but all of them, even the highest gods, are imperfect, are in bondage. What is the bondage? The necessity of being born and the necessity of dying. Even the highest gods die. What are these gods, again? They mean certain states, certain offices.

For instance, Indra, the king of gods, means a certain office; some soul which was very high has gone to fill that post in this cycle, and after this cycle he will be born again as man and come down, and the man who is very good in this cycle will go and fill that post in the next cycle. So with all these gods; they are certain offices which have been filled alternately by millions and millions of souls, who, after filling that office, all came down and became men. Those who do good works in this world, help others, but with an eye to reward, hoping to reach heaven or to get praise of their fellow men, must, when they die, have the benefit, the reward of these good works, so they become these gods. But that is not salvation; salvation never will come through this hope of reward. Whatever man desires the Lord gives him that. Men desire power; they desire prestige; they desire enjoyments as gods, and they get these desires fulfilled, but no effect of work can be eternal; the power of any work will be finished after a certain length of time; it may be eons, but after that it will be finished, and these gods must fall down again and become men and will be given one more chance for liberation. The lower animals will come up and become men, become gods, perhaps, again become men, or go back to animals, until will come the time when they will get rid of all this desire for enjoyment, this thirst for life, this clinging on to the “me and mine.” This “me and mine,” according to the Hindu sects, is the very root of all the evil in this world. If you ask a Dualist whose child this will be if it is not mine, he will say, “It is God’s”; if my property is not mine, “It is God’s.” Everything should be held as God’s.

Now, these Dualistic sects in India are great vegetarians, great preachers of non-killing of animals. But their idea about it is quite different from that of the Buddhist. If you ask a Buddhist, “Why do you preach against killing any animal?” he says, “We have no right to take any life,” and if you ask a Dualist, “Why do you not kill any animal?” he says, “Because it is the Lord's.” So the Dualist says that this “me and mine” is to be applied to God and God alone; He is the only “me,” and everything is His. When a man has come to that state that he has no “me and mine,” when everything is given up to the Lord, when he loves everybody and is ready even to give up his life for a little animal, without any desire for reward, then his heart will be purified, and when the heart has been purified then into that heart will come the love of God, which is inherent in every soul. This God is the very centre of attraction for every soul, and the Dualist says, “If you take a needle and cover it up with clay that needle will not be attracted by a magnet, but as soon as the clay has been washed off, the needle will be attracted by the magnet.” God is the magnet, and the human soul is the needle, and his evil works the dirt and dust that cover it. As soon as the soul is clear it will come by its natural attraction to God and remain with Him forever, but will remain eternally separate from God. Each soul, if it wishes, can take any form; will be able to make a hundred bodies if it wishes or to have no body at all, if it so desires. It will be almost almighty, except that it will be unable to create; that belongs to God alone. None, however perfect, can manage the affairs of this universe; that belongs to God. But all souls, when they become perfect, become happy forever and live eternally with God. This is the Dualistic statement.

One other idea the Dualists preach. They protest against the idea of praying to God, "Lord, give me this and give me that." They think that should not be done. If man must ask some material gift he should ask inferior beings for that; ask one of these gods, or the angels, or a perfected being for such things. God is only to be loved. It is almost a blasphemy to pray to God, "Lord, give me this and give me that." According to the Dualists, therefore, what a man wants sooner or later he will get, by praying to one of the gods, but if he wants salvation he must worship God. This is the religion of the masses of India.

Above them are what we call the qualified non-Dualists, with whom the real Vedanta philosophy begins. They make the statement that the effect is never different from the cause; the effect is but the cause reproduced in another form. If this universe is the effect and God the cause, it must be God Himself—it cannot be anything but that. If any nature exists separate from God Himself, it also will be infinite; so will be time and space. Thus multiplied, there will be millions of infinite and independent existences, which is not reasonable. They start, therefore, with the assertion that God is both the efficient and material cause of this universe; that He Himself is the Creator, and He Himself is the material out of which the whole of nature is projected. The word which is "creation" in your language is, in Sanskrit, exactly "projection," because there is no sect in India which believes in creation, as it is regarded in the West, a something coming out of nothing. It seems at one time there were a few that had some such idea, but they were very quickly silenced. At the present time I do not know of any sect that believes this. What we mean by creation is projection of that which already existed. Now, this whole universe, according to this sect, is God Himself. He is the material of this universe. We read from the Vedas, "As the uranabha spider takes the thread out of his own body and draws it in, even so this whole universe has come out of that Being."

If the effect is the cause reproduced, the question is, how do we find this material, dull, unintelligent universe produced as the manifestation of God, who is not material, who is eternal intelligence? How, if the cause is pure and perfect, is the effect quite different? What do these qualified non-Dualists say? Theirs is a very peculiar theory. They say that these three existencies, God, and nature, and the soul, are One. God, is, as it were, the soul; and nature and souls are the body of God. Just as I have a body and I have a soul, so this whole universe and my soul also are the body of God, and God is the soul of my soul. Thus God is the material cause of the universe. The body may be changed—may be young or old, strong or weak—but that does not change the soul at all. It is the same eternal existence, manifesting through the body. Bodies fall off one after another, but the soul does not change. Even so this whole universe is the body of God, and in that sense it is God. But the change in this universe does not affect God. Out of this material He creates this universe, and at the end of a cycle His body becomes finer, it contracts, and at the beginning of another cycle it becomes expanded again, and out of it evolve all these different worlds.

Now, both the Dualists and the qualified non-Dualists admit that the soul is by its nature pure, but through its own deeds it is made impure. The qualified non-Dualists express it more beautifully than the Dualists, by saying that the soul's purity and perfection become contracted and again become manifest, and that what we are now trying to do is to manifest the intelligence, the purity, the power which is natural to the soul. Souls have a multitude of qualities, but not that of almightiness or all-knowingness. This is the nature of the soul. It has become contracted through past misdeeds, every wicked deed contracts the nature of the soul, and every good deed expands the nature of the soul, and these souls are all part of God. "As from a mass of fire millions of sparks fly, of the same nature, the same ingredients, yet not the same, so even from this infinite Being, God, these souls have come. Each has the same nature, yet not the same." Each has the same goal. The God of the qualified non-Dualists is also the Personal God, the repository of an infinite number of blessed qualities, only He is interpenetrating everything in the universe. He is immanent in everything and everywhere, and where the Scriptures say that God is everything they say that that means that God is interpenetrating everything, not that God has become the wall, but that God is in the wall. There is not a particle, not an atom in the universe where He is not, both internal and external. The souls are all limited; they are not omnipresent; each soul is very, very limited, but they get expansion of their powers and become perfect. No more is there birth and death for these souls; they live with God forever.

Now we come to the Advaitist, the last, and what we think the fairest flower of philosophy and religion that any country in any age has produced, where human thought attains its highest expression and even goes beyond the mystery which seems to be impenetrable. This is the nonDualistic Vedantism. It is too abstruse, too elevated to be the religion of the masses. Even in India, its birthplace, where it has been ruling supreme for the last three thousand years, it is not able to permeate the masses. As we go on we will find that it is difficult for even the most thinking man and woman in any country to understand Advaitism. We have made ourselves so weak; we have made ourselves so low. We may make great claims, but we naturally want to lean on somebody else. We are like little, weak plants, always wanting a support. How many times I am asked for a "comfortable religion"; very few ask for the truth. Fewer still dare to learn the truth, and fewest of all dare follow truth in its practical bearings. It is not their fault; it is all the weakness in the brain. Any new thought, especially of a high kind, creates a disturbance, wants to make a new channel, as it were, in the brain matter, and that unhinges the system, throws men off their balance. Then come a hundred sorts of surroundings, a huge mass of ancient superstitions, paternal superstition, class superstition, city superstition, country superstition, and beyond this all the vast mass of superstition that is innate in the human being. Yet there are a few brave souls in this world who dare conceive the truth, who dare take it up, and who dare follow it up to the last end.

What does the Advaitist declare? He says, if there is a God, that God must be both the material and the efficient cause of the universe. Not only is He the Creator, but He is also the created. He Himself is this universe. How can that be? God, the pure, the spirit, has become this universe? Yes; apparently. That which all ignorant people see, this universe, does not exist. You and I and all these things we see, what are these? Mere self-hypnotisms; there is but One Existence, the Infinite, the ever existing One. In that Existence we dream all these various dreams. It is the Atman, beyond all, the Infinite, beyond the known, beyond the knowable; in and through That we see this universe. It is the only reality. It is this table; It is the audience before me; It is the wall; It is everything, minus the name and form. Take the form of the table, take away the name; what remains is that It. The Vedantist does not call It either He or She; these are fictions, delusions of the human brain; there is no sex in the soul. People who are under illusion, who have become like animals, see a woman or a man; living gods do not see men or women. How can they who are beyond everything have any sex idea? Every one and everything is the Atman—the Self—the sexless, the pure, the ever blessed. It is name and form that makes the difference. It is the name, the form, the body, which are material, and they make all this difference. If you take off these two differences of name and form, the whole universe is One; there are no two, no three, but One everywhere. You and I are one. There is neither nature, nor God, nor the universe, only that One Infinite Existence, out of which, through name and form, all these are manufactured. How to know the Knower? It cannot be known. How can you see your own Self? You can only reflect yourself. So all this universe is the reflection of that One Eternal Being, the Atman, and, as the reflection falls upon good or bad reflectors, good or bad images are cast up. So, in the murderer, the reflector is bad and not the Self. In the saint the reflector is pure. The Self—the Atman—is by its own nature pure. It is the same that is reflecting itself from the lowest worm to the highest and most perfect beings, the one Existence of the universe. The whole of this universe is One Unity, One Existence, physically, mentally, morally and spiritually. We are looking upon this One Existence in different forms and creating all these images upon it. To the being who has limited himself to the condition of man this world is what he sees. To the being who is on a higher plane of existence it may become like heaven. There is but one Soul in the universe, not two. It neither comes nor goes. It neither reincarnates nor dies, nor is born. How can it? How to die? Where to go? All these heavens and all these earths, and all these places are vain imaginations of the mind. They do not exist; never existed in the past and never will exist in the future.

I am standing here, omnipresent, eternal. Where can I go? Where am I not already? I am reading this book of nature. Page after page I am finishing and turning over, and one dream of life goes away. Another page of life is turned over; another dream of life comes, and it goes away, rolling and rolling, and when I have finished my play I let it go and stand aside, throw away the book, and the whole thing is finished. What does the Advaitist preach? He dethrones all the gods that ever existed, or ever will exist in the universe and places on that throne the Self of man, the Atman, higher than the sun and moon, higher than the heavens, more infinite than this infinite universe itself. No books, no Scriptures, no science can ever imagine the glory of that Self, that appears as man, the most glorious God that ever was, the only God that ever existed, ever exists, or ever will exist. I am to worship, therefore, none but my Self. "I worship my Self," says the Advaitist. Whom to bow down to? I salute my Self. Whom to go to for help? Who can help me, the Infinite Being of the universe? These are fools’ dreams, brain hallucinations; who ever helped any one? Never. Wherever you see a weak man, a Dualist, weeping and wailing for help from somewhere above the skies it is because he does not know that the skies also are in him. He wants help from the skies, and the help comes. We see that it comes; but it comes from within, and he mistakes it as coming from without. Sometimes a sick-man is lying on his bed, and he hears a tap on the door. He gets up and opens the door. Nobody. He goes back to his bed, and again he hears the tap. He gets up and opens the door. Nobody. At last he finds that it was his own heart beating, which he interpreted as a knock at the door. Thus all this vain search after the gods above, gods of the skies, gods of the water, after it has completed the circle, comes back to the point from which it started—the human soul—and man finds that the God for whom he was searching in every hill and dale, for whom he was seeking in every little brook of water, in every temple, in little churches, in worse heavens, that God whom he was even imagining as sitting in heaven and ruling the world, is his own Self. I am He, and He is I. None but I was the God, and this little I never existed.

Yet, how could that perfect God have been in this delusion? It never was. How could a perfect God have been dreaming? He never dreamed. Truth never dreams. One cloud is there; another comes and pushes it aside and takes its place. Another comes and pushes that one out. The very question where did this illusion arise is absurd. Illusion arises from illusion alone. There will be no illusion as soon as the truth is seen. Illusion always rests upon illusion; it never rested upon God, the Truth, the Atman. You are never in the illusion; it is illusion that is in you, before you. “As before the eternal blue sky clouds of various hue and color come; they remain there for a short time and again disappear, leaving it the same blue, eternally standing, even so are you, eternally pure, eternally perfect; you are the veritable gods of the universe; nay, there are not two; there is but One.” It is a mistake to say you and I; say “I.” It is I who am eating in millions of mouths; how can I be hungry? It is I who am working in an infinite number of hands; how can I be inactive? It is I who am living the life of the whole universe; where is death for me? I am beyond all life, beyond all death. Where to seek for freedom, for I am free by my nature? Who can make me bound, the God of this universe? What are these books for me? These Scriptures of the world are but little maps, wanting to delineate my glory, who am the only existence of the universe. Thus says the Advaitist.

“Know the truth and be free in a moment.” All the darkness will vanish. When man has seen himself as one with the infinite Being of the universe, when all separateness has ceased, when all men, all women, all angels, all gods, all animals, all plants, the whole universe has been melted into that oneness, then all fear disappears. Whom to fear? Can I hurt myself? Can I kill myself? Can I injure myself? Do you fear yourself? Then will all sorrow disappear. What can cause me sorrow? I am the One Existence of the universe. Then all jealousies will disappear; of whom to be jealous? Of myself? Then all bad feelings disappear. Against whom will I have this bad feeling? Against myself? There is none in the universe but me. And this is the way, says the Vedantist, to this knowledge. Kill out this differentiation, kill out this superstition that there are many. "He who, in this world of many, sees that One; he who in this mass of insentiency sees that One Sentient Being; he who in this world of shadow catches that Reality, unto him belongs eternal peace, unto none else, unto none else."

These are the salient points of the three steps which Indian religious thought has taken in regard to God. We have seen that it began with the Personal, the extra cosmic God. It went from the external to the internal cosmic body, God immanent in the universe, and ended in identifying the Soul itself with that God, and making one unit Soul of all these various manifestations in the universe. This is the last word of the Vedas. It begins with Dualism, goes through the qualified monism and ends in the perfect monism. We have seen, also, how very few in this world can come to the last, dare believe in it, and fewer still dare act according to it. Yet we know that therein lies the explanation of all ethics, of morality and all spirituality of the universe. Why is it that every one says, "Do good to all others"? Where is the explanation? Why is it that all great men have preached the brotherhood of mankind, and greater men have preached the brotherhood of all lives? Why is it so? Because, whether they were conscious of it or not, behind all that, through all their irrational and personal superstitions, was peering forth the eternal light of the Self, denying all manifoldness, denying that there are two existences in the universe and asserting that the whole universe is but One.

Again, the last word gave us one universe, which, through the senses we see as matter, through the intellect as souls and through the spirit as God. To the man who throws upon himself evils, which the world calls wickedness and evil, this very universe will change and become a hideous place; to another man, who wants enjoyments, this very universe will change its appearance and become a heaven, and to the perfect man the whole thing will vanish and become his own Self.

Now, as society exists at the present time, all these three stages are necessary; the one does not deny the other; one is simply the fulfilment of the other. The Advaitist, the qualified Advaitist, does not say that Dualism is wrong; it is a right view, but a lower view. It is not wrong. It is on the way to truth; therefore, hurt none; let everybody work out his own vision of this universe, according to his own ideas. Hurt none, injure none, deny the position of none; take man where he stands, and, if you can, lend him a helping hand and put him on a higher platform, but do not injure and do not destroy. All will come to truth in the long run, "when all the desires of the heart will be vanquished, then this very mortal will become immortal"; then the very man will become God.

Comment is unnecessary. The Swami has spoken for India as well as for himself. This is a first-hand utterance of a native Hindu who has uttered faithfully the tenets of his faith. We offer as a supplement to this setting forth of Oriental philosophy some beautiful verses by a Western poet, Richard Realf, which impress us as a beautiful connecting link between the best thought of the Occident and the best thought of the Orient.

SPIRIT AND ITS EXPRESSION

Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer;
Rare is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it is rarer,
Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter;
And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered the meter.

Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the growing;
Never a river that flows, but a majesty sceptres the flowing;
Never a Shakespeare that soared, but a stronger than he did enfold him,
Nor ever a prophet foretells, but a mightier seer hath foretold him.

Back of the canvas that throbs the painter is hinted and hidden;
Into the statue that breathes the soul of the sculptor is bidden;
Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issues of feeling;
Crowning the glory revealed is the glory that crowns the revealing.

Great are the symbols of being, but that which is symboled is greater;
Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward creator;
Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift stands the giving;
Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive nerves of receiving.

Space is as nothing to spirit, the deed is outdone by the doing;
The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the wooing;
And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from the heights where those shine,
Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the essence of life is divine.