How, then, was that life-giving knowledge to be communicated to the rank and file of mankind? The solution which this problem received was in keeping with the esoteric tendency of Indian thought. The grand ideas in which the Soul of the East had found refuge could not be communicated as ideas to the average man, who was, ex hypothesi, as incapable of high thinking as of self-culture and mental self-control. Personal faith such as that which the devout Christian reposes in Christ, and in God the Father for Christ's sake, was not expected from him; for it was a vast conception that was presented to him, not a personality or a life. The truth of things must be taught to him, for he could neither evolve it nor discern it for himself; and though the notion of his growing, in the fulness of time, into oneness with that living truth of things which is the counterpart of supreme reality, was implicit in the creed of his teachers, the immediate bearing of the notion had not yet been realized. The truth of things must be taught to him; but it was not to be taught to him as abstract truth. What then? One course only remained. The truth must be taught to him symbolically. It must be embodied for him in a ceremonial system, and he must express his belief

in it by the due discharge of a series of prescribed rites. This is what happened in India; and the seed which was thus sown bore its inevitable fruit. The inner meaning of the symbol was gradually forgotten, until at last the symbol was mistaken for the reality to which it bore witness. Then the forces in the East which periodically make for immobility asserted themselves without let or hindrance. The tyranny of ceremonialism--a tyranny which is inherent in the assumption that the truth of things is to be taught ab extra--extinguished spiritual feeling, and suspended, if it did not wholly destroy, the inner life of the people. "Deeper than ever plummet sounded," the Soul of India "lay (as it is lying now) inactive." The process of its evolution was arrested; and the last and safest pathway to reality--the pathway of soul-growth, of the actual expansion and vivification of consciousness--was closed to mankind.

What remedy was there for this state of things? There was a remedy; but it was too obvious to be easily found, and centuries had to pass before it could suggest itself to Eastern thought. The symbolical, equally with the formal, teaching of spiritual truth, ends at last in the substitution of machinery for life. The path of salvation lies else-where. If you want the rank and file of mankind to realize the truth of a given conception of life, get them to act--to order their own lives--on the assumption that it is true.

Footnotes