[Sidenote:  The Gita.] The book which perhaps above all others has molded the mind of India in more recent days is the Bhagavad Gita, or Song of the Holy One.  It is written in stately and harmonious verse, and has achieved the same task for Indian philosophy as Lucretius did for ancient Epicureanism.[20] It is eclectic, and succeeds, in a sort of way, in forcing the leading systems of Indian thought into seeming harmony.

[Sidenote:  Intellectual pride.] Some have thought they could discern in these daring speculations indications of souls groping after God, and saddened because of the difficulty of finding him.  Were it so, all our sympathies would at once be called forth.  But no; we see in these writings far more of intellectual pride than of spiritual sadness.  Those ancient dreamers never learned their own ignorance.  They scarcely recognized the limitations of the human mind.  And when reason could take them no farther they supplemented it by dreams and ecstasy until, in the Yoga philosophy, they rushed into systematized mysticisms and magic far more extravagant than the wildest theurgy of the degraded Neoplatonism of the Roman Empire.

A learned writer thus expresses himself: 

“The only one of the six schools that seem to recognize the doctrine of divine providence is the Yoga.  It thus seems that the consistent followers of these systems can have, in their perfected state, no religion, no action, and no moral character."[21]

[Sidenote:  Indian philosophy a sad failure.] And now to take a brief review of the whole subject.  The Hindu sages were men of acute and patient thought; but their attempt to solve the problem of the divine and human natures, of human destiny and duty, has ended in total failure.  Each system baseless, and all mutually conflicting; systems cold and cheerless, that frown on love and virtuous exertion, and speak of annihilation or its equivalent, absorption, as our highest hope:  such is the poor result of infinite speculation.  “The world by wisdom knew not God.”  O, that India would learn the much-needed lesson of humility which the experience of ages ought to teach her!

[Sidenote:  Sacerdotalism.  The tyranny of sacerdotalism.] While speculation was thus busy Sacerdotalism was also continually extending its influence.  The Brahman, the man of prayer, had made himself indispensable in all sacred rites.  He alone—­as we have seen—­knew the holy text; he alone could rightly pronounce the words of awful mystery and power on which depended all weal or woe.  On all religions occasions the priest must be called in, and, on all occasions, implicitly obeyed.  For a considerable time the princes straggled against the encroachments of the priests; but in the end they were completely vanquished.  Never was sacerdotal tyranny more absolute; the proudest pope in mediaeval times never lorded it over Western Christendom with such unrelenting rigor as the Brahmans exercised over both princes and people.  The feeling of the priests is expressed in a well-known stanza: