Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/406

354 ties that can be limited, and no attributes that can be defined. Brahm, in short, is an. To the Hindu, he is no more an object of worship or of regard than space is to us. He receives no homage, has no temple, hears no prayer. He is to them an unknown god; nay, no god at all.

The human mind, especially when endowed with the activity and subtlety characteristic of the Hindus, cannot rest here; it must have something more tangible than this emotionless, voiceless, thoughtless, actless being. Here is a world; here are men, trees, mountains, streams. Whence have they come? They must have some philosophy to account for the facts of material existence. To meet this demand, their philosophers offer to them two solutions of the problem. These two great systems are known as the, or the two system, and the , or the not two—that is, the one system. According to the former, there are two eternal existences—spirit and matter; according to the latter, but one eternal existence, which is spirit or mind.

The followers of the Adwita, (the system of one existence, or the purely spiritual theory, commonly called Vedantists, maintain that God