The Upanishads are dominated by this idea. The beautiful story of Nachiketas and Death has one burden,--that "he who sees seeming difference" (he who thinks that differences are real, and cannot see the One for the Many) "goes from death to death," whereas he who knows the One, the "all-comprehending One" who is "far beyond distinction's power," escapes from death and inherits

eternal life. It is desire for the things of earth that draws man back to earth; and desire for the things of earth is generated by belief in their reality. Know that they are unreal, and you will cease to desire them. Cease to desire them, and they will no longer draw you back to earth. "When all desires that linger in his heart are driven forth, the mortal immortal becomes, here Brahman he verily wins. When every knot of earth is here unloosed, then mortal immortal becomes." He who would escape from death must turn his eye away from outward things, and "behold the inner self." "After outward longings fools pursue, they tumble into death's wide-spreading net; whereas, the wise, sure deathlessness conceiving, want nothing here below among uncertain things." The vision of the One discredits the reality of the Many, and in doing so frees the soul from bondage to desire, and therefore to death and re-birth. "Sole sovereign, inner self of all creation, who makes the one form manifold--the wise who gaze on him within their self, theirs and not others is the bliss that aye endures." To say that knowledge of reality subdues desires for outward .things, is to say, in simpler and homelier language, that reason teaches man self-control. "The man who is subject to reason and mindful, constantly pure, he unto that goal truly reacheth from which he is not born again. Aye, the man who hath reason for driver, holding tight unto impulse's reins, he reacheth the end of the journey, that home of the Godhead supreme." But the man "who is the prey of unreason, unmindful, ever impure, to that

goal such a man never reacheth, he goeth to births and to deaths."

It is clear, from these and kindred passages, that the thinkers of the East attached immense importance to the effort and initiative of the individual soul. It is also clear that the highest achievement of the soul (as they conceived it) was to know the real from the unreal, and to translate that knowledge into feeling and action. Knowledge of reality was at once the goal of the soul's wanderings, and the path that led to the goal; and, that being so, the goal had but to become fully realized in order to make a sudden and final end of the path that led to itself.