The Hindoos have sacred books of great antiquity, and a rich literature extending back twenty or thirty centuries; yet no history, no chronology, no annals.  They have a philosophy as acute, profound and, spiritual as any in the world, which is yet harmoniously associated with the coarsest superstitions.  With a belief so abstract that it almost escapes the grasp of the most speculative intellect, is joined the notion that sin can be atoned for by bathing in the Ganges or repeating a text of the Veda.  With an ideal pantheism resembling that of Hegel, is united the opinion that Brahma and Siva can be driven from the throne of the universe by any one who will sacrifice a sufficient number of wild horses.  To abstract one’s self from matter, to renounce all the gratification of the senses, to macerate the body, is thought the true road to felicity; and nowhere in the world are luxury, licentiousness and the gratification of the appetites carried so far.  Every civil right and privilege of ruler and subject is fixed in a code of laws, and a body of jurisprudence older far than the Christian era, and the object of universal reverence; but the application of these laws rests (says Rhode) on the arbitrary decisions of the priests, and their execution on the will of the sovereign.  The constitution of India is therefore like a house without a foundation and without a roof.  It is a principle of Hindoo religion not to kill a worm, not even to tread on a blade of grass, for fear of injuring life; but the torments, cruelties, and bloodshed inflicted by Indian tyrants would shock a Nero or a Borgia.  Half the best informed writers on India will tell you that the Brahmanical religion is pure monotheism; the other half as confidently assert that they worship a million gods.  Some teach us that the Hindoos are spiritualists and pantheists; others that their idolatry is more gross than that of any living people.

Is there any way of reconciling these inconsistencies?  If we cannot find such an explanation, there is at least one central point where we may place ourselves; one elevated position, from which this mighty maze will not seem wholly without a plan.  In India the whole tendency of thought is ideal, the whole religion a pure spiritualism.  An ultra, one-sided idealism is the central tendency of the Hindoo mind.  The God of Brahmanism is an intelligence, absorbed in the rest of profound contemplation.  The good man of this religion is he who withdraws from an evil world into abstract thought.

Nothing else explains the Hindoo character as this does.  An eminently religious people, it is their one-sided spiritualism, their extreme idealism, which gives rise to all their incongruities.  They have no history and no authentic chronology, for history belongs to this world, and chronology belongs to time.  But this world and time are to them wholly uninteresting; God and eternity are all in all.  They torture themselves with self-inflicted torments; for the body