Page:An Essay On Hinduism.pdf/87

 There is but one Being, no second ; nothing really exists but the universal spirit called Brahman, and whatever appears to exist is mere illusion. That Brahman which is the one sole, self-existing supreme and all-pervading Self (Atman), the only existing Essence, the one eternal germ of all things, delights in infinite expansion, in infinite expansion of itself, in infinite creation, dissolution, and re-creation through infinite varieties, and diversities of operation: Hence all visible form is an emanation from God, and hence, to begin with, the lowest visible objects-water, wood, and stones, birds, beasts and men; these are but steps in the infinite evolution of his being. Hence, also, a series of higher forms of existence such as demigods, good and evil spirits, inferior gods, superior gods, is traceable upwards in an ascending scale from man. All these men, gods or demigods, start from, and end in, the same essence.

As Hindus held a pantheistic theory of the nature of god, a fight for the propagation of that god worshipped by a particular tribe is meaningless to them. They tolerated idolatry frankly and openly. Idolatry is in fact nothing more than a representation of the abstract by the concrete, of remote by proximate, and of the principal by the agent. It is in fact possible for a very small class of people to conceive of abstract conception of God, and the writer may well express his own scepticism regarding the existence of any man on earth who can conceive of infinities like time, space or God with the same vividness as that of a finite object.

All worship, according to the pantheistic doctrine is due to the reverence of some great power manifested. As people conceive of God only by manifestations, it is but natural