Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/119

 100 nmnerons ehildren, for by having many wivesF greater advantages are enjoyed, and, since they have no slaves, they have more need to have children around them to attend to their wants. The Brachmanes do not communicate a know- ledge of philosophy to their wives, lest they should divulge any of the forbidden mysteries to the profane if they became depraved, or lest they should desert them if they became good philosophers : for no one who despises pleasure and pain, as well as life and death, wishes to be in subjection to another, but this is characteris- tic both of a good man and of a good woman. Death is with them a very frequent subject of discourse. They regard this life as, so to speak, the time when the child within the womb becomes mature, and death as a birth into a real and happy life for the votaries of philosophy. On this account they undergo much discipline as a preparation for death. They consider nothing that befeills men to be either good or bad, to suppose otherwise being a dream-like illusioa, else how could some be affected with sorrow, and others with pleasure, by the very same things, and how could the same things affect the san^ individuals at dif- ferent times with these opposite emotions ? Their ideas abont physical phenomena, the same author tells us, are very crude, for they are better in their actions than in their reasonings, inasmuch as their belief is in great measure Digitized by Google