Yet in spite of their exuberance Hinduism and the jungle have considerable uniformity.  Here and there in a tropical forest some well-grown tree or brilliant flower attracts attention, but the general impression left on the traveller by the vegetation as he passes through it mile after mile is infinite repetition as well as infinite luxuriance.  And so in Hinduism.  A monograph on one god or one teacher is an interesting study.  But if we continue the experiment, different gods and different teachers are found to be much the same.  We can write about Vishnuism and Sivaism as if they were different religions and this, though incomplete, is not incorrect.  But in their higher phases both show much the same excellences and when degraded both lead to much the same abuses, except that the worship of Vishnu does not allow animal sacrifices.  This is true even of externals.  In the temples of Madura, Poona and Benares, the deities, the rites, the doctrines, the race of the worshippers and the architecture are all different, yet the impression of uniformity is strong.  In spite of divergences the religion is the same in all three places:  it smacks of the soil and nothing like it can be found outside India.

Hinduism is an unusual combination of animism and pantheism, which are commonly regarded as the extremes of savage and of philosophic belief.  In India both may be found separately but frequently they are combined in startling juxtaposition.  The same person who worships Vishnu as identical with the universe also worships him in the form of a pebble or plant.[402] The average Hindu, who cannot live permanently in the altitudes of pantheistic thought, regards his gods as great natural forces, akin to the mighty rivers which he also worships, irresistible and often beneficent but also capricious and destructive.  Whereas Judaism, Christianity and Islam all identify the moral law with the will and conduct of the deity, in Hinduism this is not completely admitted in practice, though a library might be filled with the beautiful things that have been said about man and God.  The outward forms of Indian religion are pagan after the fashion of the ancient world, a fashion which has in most lands passed away.  But whereas in the fourth century A.D.  European paganism, despite the efforts of anti-Christian eclectics, proved inelastic and incapable of satisfying new religious cravings, this did not happen in India.  The bottles of Hinduism have always proved capable of holding all the wine poured into them.  When a new sentiment takes possession of men’s souls, such as love, repentance, or the sense of sin, some deity of many shapes and sympathies straightway adapts himself to the needs of his worshippers.  And yet in so doing the deity, though he enlarges himself, does not change, and the result is that we often meet with strange anachronisms, as if Jephthah should listen appreciatively to the Sermon on the Mount and then sacrifice his daughter to Christ.  Many Hindu temples are served by dancing