The very austerity of the
Brahmans is tempting to the devotional soul, as a more refined
and nobler luxury.
Wants so easily and gracefully satisfied seem
like a more refined pleasure. Their conception of creation is
peaceful as a dream. "When that power awakes, then has this
world its full expansion; but when he slumbers with a tranquil
spirit, then the whole system fades away." In the very
indistinctness of their theogony a sublime truth is implied. It
hardly allows the reader to rest in any supreme first cause, but
directly it hints at a supremer still which created the last, and
the Creator is still behind increate.
Nor will we disturb the antiquity of this Scripture; "From fire,
from air, and from the sun," it was "milked out." One might as
well investigate the chronology of light and heat. Let the sun
shine. Menu understood this matter best, when he said, "Those
best know the divisions of days and nights who understand that
the day of Brahma, which endures to the end of a thousand such
ages, [infinite ages, nevertheless, according to mortal
reckoning,] gives rise to virtuous exertions; and that his night
endures as long as his day." Indeed, the Mussulman and Tartar
dynasties are beyond all dating. Methinks I have lived under
them myself. In every man's brain is the Sanscrit. The Vedas
and their Angas are not so ancient as serene contemplation. Why
will we be imposed on by antiquity? Is the babe young? When I
behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man; it is
more ancient than Nestor or the Sibyls, and bears the wrinkles of
father Saturn himself. And do we live but in the present? How
broad a line is that? I sit now on a stump whose rings number
centuries of growth. If I look around I see that the soil is
composed of the remains of just such stumps, ancestors to this.
The earth is covered with mould. I thrust this stick many aeons
deep into its surface, and with my heel make a deeper furrow than
the elements have ploughed here for a thousand years. If I
listen, I hear the peep of frogs which is older than the slime of
Egypt, and the distant drumming of a partridge on a log, as if it
were the pulse-beat of the summer air. I raise my fairest and
freshest flowers in the old mould. Why, what we would fain call
new is not skin deep; the earth is not yet stained by it. It is
not the fertile ground which we walk on, but the leaves which
flutter over our heads. The newest is but the oldest made
visible to our senses. When we dig up the soil from a thousand
feet below the surface, we call it new, and the plants which
spring from it; and when our vision pierces deeper into space,
and detects a remoter star, we call that new also.
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