Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/71

 What it cuts through, then, is the empty space which separates these particles. But to this space one cannot, on account of its very emptiness, do any harm. For to harm a nothing is just the same as not to harm anything. As a consequence, one cannot by this cutting through of space incur any responsibility, and a divine punishment cannot be meted out for it. But if this be true of killing, how much more then of deeds which are punished less severely by men?

"Thus far, reason; now comes scripture.

"The sacred Veda teaches us that that which alone has any true existence, is the highest godhead, the Brahman. But if this be true, then all killing is an empty deception. This the Veda also says in so many words, in the passage where Yama, the god of death, tells the young Naçiketas of this Brahman, and among other things, says—

"But even more convincingly is this abysmal truth revealed to us in The Heroic Song of Krishna and Arjuna. For Krishna himself, having known no beginning, destined to know no end, the eternal, almighty, unthinkable being, the highest god, who for the salvation of all created beings suffered himself to be born as man—Krishna helped, in the last days of his earthly pilgrimage, the King of the Pándavas, the high-minded Arjuna, in the war against the Kauravas, because the latter had done him and his brothers grievous wrong. Now when both armies were drawn up in battle array, their bristling ranks opposed to one another, Arjuna espied among the hostile forces many a former friend, many a cousin and comrade of past days.