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 288 The Religion of the Veda

peoples are content to conclude their ofﬁces. Havu ing disciplined the young Brahman ; having taught him how to live an orderly, god~fearing, gochro- tented life; having secured safe continuation of his race through pious sons; and having ﬁnally gained his admission to the heavenly home of the blessed Fathersmwhat more is needed?

Not so the Hindu. Over this pigmy religion which is engaged only with the needs of the ponderable, perishable man, towers as a giant the grandiose con- ception, than which, in its way, no higher is possible, that the True in man is in fact the One True in all the Universe. There is one eternal truth: of this we ourw selves are part. The distracting, misleading, adhesion, cemented by every sense, to a divided individual ex- istence in aworld of illusory phenomena, come no on e knows whence, but none the less certainly false, re— quires time and patience to undo. The Hindu theory assumes four stages or ﬁgmmazs (literally, “ hermitages”) in the life of man after his rebirth at the investiture. The ﬁrst two stages, as we have seen, are disciplehood and householdership. Then come the two stages of Forest-«dweller, or Hermit, and Wandering Ascetic. In the hermit stage he simply lives in the forest, and may yet keep up some connection with wife and children, and continue his sacred practices. But in the last stage all worldly