spirit re-appeared in the totally different form of the Theosophical Society. The schismatic trinity of Brahmo Samajes are more Christian than Hindu, alike in essence and form, exotics, not indigenous. Let the Editor of the Indian Mirror, himself formerly one of the chief men in the Brahmo Samaj, and a blood cousin of Keshub, be heard upon this point. The following is taken from that paper for October 15th:

"

THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY AND THE BRAHMO SAMAJ.

History is apt to repeat itself, and the establishment of the Theosphical Society in India, eleven years ago, is an illustration of the truism. The word Theosophy, literally translated into Sanskrit, becomes Brahmagyan; and it was for the purpose of spreading this Brahmagyan that that illustrious Hindu, the great Rajah Ram Mohun Roy, established his Veda Somaj, since called the Brahmo Somaj. The objects of the Veda Somaj were the same as those of the Theosophical Society, both being established on broad cosmopolitan lines, and both advocating the propagation of the eternal truths contained in the Vedas. Owing to the inscrutable dispensation of Providence, the Veda Somaj failed to accomplish what the Theosophical Society has, in a large measure, already achieved. But probably the times were not ripe for the reception of Vedic knowledge and doctrines when Rajah Ram Mohun Roy attempted to instil them into his countrymen. There can be no doubt that he himself was born considerably in advance of his time; and even now most of those who profess to hold his memory dear and sacred, do not know exactly what Rajah Ram Mohun Roy was, and what were his beliefs and disbeliefs. All concede him to have been a reformer, but of what type few of his eulogists can exactly tell. One hears laudations of Rajah Ram Mohun Roy regularly every year in Bengal, in Bombay, in Madras, in the N. W. P. and in the Punjab. His name is constantly on our lips. How is it that the youth of the country have not yet adopted him as their model? The fact is that, as we have said, the full character of the Rajah has been revealed but to very few. And that character was grand, lovely, and complete. He was a thinker, who, while he held fast to his own faith, so lived that since his death, he has been claimed by Hindu, Brahmo, and Christian, by each as his own. In fact, Rajah Ram Mohun Roy was a great Theosophist fifty years before the establishment of the Theosophical Society. He was a great Theosophist, we have said, that is, he was a great Advaita or Vedantist. He was a Brahmagyani, full of the light of divine wisdom. To Madame Blavatsky, Sri Sankaracharya is "the Greatest Initiate living in historical ages." To Rajah Ram Mohun Roy, Sri Sankaracharya was " Bhagawan Bhasyakara." In this, too, history has repeated itself. The writings of the Rajah, which have come down to us, clearly show that he had complete faith in the cardinal doctrines of the Advaita philosophy. He himself translated both in the vernacular and in English the Vedanta-sara, Atmanatna Viveck, and five of the best Upanishads. He was also a believer in the Paranas and the Tantras, and the Bhagavatgita Mahanirvana, which deals chiefly with Brahmagyanam, was his favourite study. He was opposed to idolatry in any shape, and in the preface to his Isopanishad, he observed that the Puranas and the Tantras repeatedly declare God to be one, and above the apprehension of the external and eternal senses. At the same time, he admitted that those sacred writings declare also the divinity of many gods, and define the modes of their worship. But," he observed, "they reconcile these contradictory assertions by affirming frequently that the directions to worship any celestial beings are only applicable to those who are incapable of elevating their minds to the idea of an invisible Being." This is exactly the view of Theosophists to-day. The Rajah further held that it was proper in men to observe the duties and rites prescribed by the Shastras for each class according to their religious order, in

acquiring knowledge respecting God. But if it was right, it was not necessarily indispensable, for the great Vyasa in his Vedanta-Darsana declares that divine knowledge can be acquired even without the practice of the prescribed rites and duties, that is in the manner of the modern Initiates, as claimed in Theosophical literature. By the way, the memory of Rajah Ram Mohun Roy is held in great reverence, we have reasons to know, by the Initiates in Thibet, whither he had gone on one occasion to acquire knowledge of the religion of Gautama. Is it a wonder that this great Advait should have established the Veda Somaj for the spread of Vedic truths? It is much to be regretted that his successors in the Somaj should have departed from the original intentions and objects of its founder, and finally travestied it into an unrecognisable thing. To Brahmos to-day those are superstitions which to Rajah Ram Mohun Roy were cardinal articles of cultured faith, that is, a faith which has not blindly adopted its beliefs, but faith which has proved them before adoption. But the Veda Somaj has not, truly speaking, been killed by the Brahmos. It has been resuscitated in the Theosophical Society. Advaitism is once more preached in every town in India, and Hindus are recovering steadily what they had in their degeneracy lost of their grand philosophical religion. And not only that. That religion has gone forth to the world to conquer. Whether in the name of Esoteric Buddhism or Vedantism, wherever it has appeared, it has appeared only to conquer. In Europe and America, Sri Sankaracharya and Gautama have become hallowed names. Their teachings have been tested in the crucible of modern science, and they have stood the test. It is not to be wondered at that, under the circumstances, the most cultured minds in the West should be filled with the beauties and truths of Advaitism or Buddhism. To Rajah Ram Mohun Roy first, now to the Theosophical Society, India owes a debt immense of endless gratitude."

The reader is asked to remember that it was pointed out by me in a recent article that Buddhism and Hinduism "when fully resuscitated, will be as different from their immediate forbears as the adult is from the youth; the life is the same, the individuality identical, but the new corporeal investiture will differ from the old... ultimately, exoteric religion will be transfigured into esoteric doctrine; thus reverting to its primal aspect and vigor. Contemporary religions are but brutalisations of their primal types." My forecast is already beginning to be verified. Quite recently, a learned F. T. S. of Bengal, Shunker Nath Pandit, has been publishing in the Mirror a series of letters to prove that in the Vedas Idolatry is not supported but denounced, that there is approval of ocean voyages for Hindus, and that the hearing and even study of the Vedas was meant to be as free as air to all castes and peoples. He challenges every Pandit in India to gainsay his propositions-propositions which attack three of the most important pillars of modern Puranic orthodoxy. The great Dehli Bharata Mahamundala, or religious congress, which has just adjourned, passed a series of Resolutions of the most uncompromising character in favor of conservatism and against the Vedic aspirations of the Arya Samaj. Apparently they helped to provoke Shunker Nath Pandit to offset their Puranic authority with the supreme authority of the Veda itself, the Hindu's Sruti, or divine Revelation. Before modern education offered its benefits equally to all castes, the non-Brahmin had no appeal against the imperative denial of Vedic education to his social group, and the restriction of scriptural

teaching and interpretation to the Brahmans. The situation was even far worse for them than it was for the vassals of Medieval Europe and the serfs of modern Russia, for knowledge was not merely confined to the priestly and secular aristocratic classes, but the Sudra was forbidden to learn or even listen to the reading of the most sacred scriptures under penalties for disobedience that make the blood curdle to read about. The birchen rod of the English schoolmaster has been the enchanter's wand to splinter the adamant of Brahmanical supremacy, the Moses' rod to smite the rock of Puranic prerogative and let the primal Vedic truth come pouring out. The Sudra, even the Pariah, undergraduate is now free to study every book in the Sanskrit language, to criticize even the text of the Sruti itself, and discuss the evidence as to its mutilation or falsification by. interested priests of the bye-gone generations. What the printing-press and schoolhouse have done for the thought of the West, that they have begun to do for the thought of the East. The avalanche of scientific research is rumbling up the heights of Indian bigotry, and all abuses and pretences will in time be buried out of sight. Prompting the best men of India to seek after the truth at the bottom of their innumerable ceremonials and puzzling dogmas, this spirit will ultimately revive the pure religion of the Rishis and, in restoring it to their descendants, give back to them the heart to love, appreciate, and do loyal duty to their "distressful country." The isolation of the Hindus from the rest of mankind, so long prolonged under a false idea of their place in nature, will be exchanged for the more correct idea of the brotherhood of all nations of the earth, the fundamental unity of all religions, and their subordination to the superior majesty of truth. The ocean of Sanskrit learning has not yet been sounded by modern plummet, only a few pearls have been recovered from the banks near the shore. The true and only sounding-line is the golden strand of Esoteric meaning that runs throughout the scriptural texts and philosophical teachings. Ram Mohun Roy knew of its existence and sought for it in Tibet-where Swedenborg told us to search for the Lost Word; the Theosophical Society knows of it, has been permitted to handle it a little, and has told all seekers how it may be fully discovered and utilized. This accounts for our hold upon the Hindu heart despite all our faults and all the falsifications about us. I can cite an example in a paragraph I have read this very day in the Mirror. The Indian Witness, a Missionary (Protestant, of course) organ in Bengal, commenting in a very ungentlemanlike style upon the rumour of my retirement, closed its undignified attack by saying "Thec sophy has ignominiously failed in the East just as Spiritualism has in the West." The Mirror Editor thereupon retorts: "Theosophy has done more good for India within a dozen years than the efforts of the whole body of Missionaries for nearly a century." Why will not those foolish little people learn the great lesson from their own poet Milton, that "Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam." They will never convert India by ignoring the social

force at work beneath their Mission-houses, by ignorantly reviling the Hindu religions, nor by foolishly pitting fifth-rate graduates of theological colleges to debate Eastern Philosophy with such Indians as the late Mr. Subba Row, the living Mr. Manilal, or any other clever man of the class of which they are fair types.

IT

H. S. OLCOTT.

"MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS."*

(Continued from page 145.)

T goes, of course, without saying that the emotional and other developments in animals are in an as yet rudimentary stage. Still it is a most striking fact to know as a matter of inductive certainty that all the human mental attributes, save the moral sense proper, the religious bias, and the sense of the sublime, and intentional conceptual ideation (through language) are met with in the bud in animals. (Cf. also "Mental Evolution in Man," pp. 6-12, and 40-69, "Logic of Recepts"). Free-will, if a fact at all, grows out of conscious introspective thought and so follows the rise or conceptual ideation. Let me here add that the diagram referred to is only treated of here in its most impressive aspects.

Reducing the contention to its kernel, we find that the germ of all human mental superiority over the animal springs out of the germ of conceptual ideation. And as this only grows, as may be proved, on the vine-prop of language, the intellectual gap between the primeval Ape-Man and the lowest savage (with little or no power of abstraction) seems to be satisfactorily bridged. We should very much like to know how the anthropological scheme in the "Secret Doctrine" is going to accommodate this fact. The modern Evolutionist triumphs all along the line.

The chapter on Sensation contains some interesting observations of animal progress in this direction. Among such are the susceptibility of many unicellular and protoplasmic organisms to light and the notable endowments of the Medusa on p. 101. Preyer's theory of the origin and development of the Colour sense from that of mere temperature is examined evidently in a sympathetic spirit. Allusion is also made to the now indisputable evidence of the evolution of the special senses from modifications of the nerves of the integument. Thus the olfactory membrane in the human embryo begins as a pitting of the skin subsequently grown over by the structures found to surround it in the adult. Even the marvellously elaborate rods and cones of the vertebrate eye are but modified epidermal cells. And so on. Similarly, to descend the ladder and take up the general problem of nerve-origins, it is found that the rudimentary ganglia of jelly-fish more often resemble modified epidermal cells than true nerve-cells as evolved higher up in the organic hierarchy. By G. J. ROMANES, M.A., LL.D., F. R. S., Kegan Paul, Trench and Co.

"All the higher animals possess in various degrees the faculty of inferring."Mental Evolution in Man, p. 12.

募

The "occult" view that development takes place "from within without" does not therefore seem correct. A really careful investigation of the phenomena of sense-evolution, as explained for instance by Haeckel, (Origin and Development of the Sense-organs) negatives the notion with emphasis.

The next chapter deals with Pleasures and Pains, Memory and the Association of Ideas. Pains, says Spencer, are due either to excess or want of action (craving), classes corresponding generally to Bain's distinction between acute and massive pains (p. 105). Pleasure attends the medium degree of nervous action.

Mr. Grant Allen in the course of his able exposition of his subject shows by many examples* that "the Acute pains, as a class, arise from the action of surrounding destructive agencies; the Massive pains, as a class, from excessive function or insufficient nutriment," also that "Massive pains when pushed to an extreme, merge into the Acute class," so that "the two classes are rather indefinite in their limits, being simply a convenient working distinction, not a natural division."

Pains accompany disruption or disruptive tendency in the bodily tissues, where the latter is connected by afferent cerebro-spinal nerves with the brain. "There is to be perceived not merely a general qualitative, but also a roughly quantitative, relation between the amount of pain and the degree of hurtfulness, as well as between the amount of pleasure and the degree of wholesomeness" (p. 107). And the greatest pleasure result from stimulation of the largest nervous organs whose activities are most intermittent. And it is, therefore, well to note "that the amount of pleasure is in the direct ratio of the number of nerve-fibres involved, and in the inverse ratio of their natural frequency of excitation." Hence "we see (quoting Allen) wherein the feeling of Pleasure fails to be exactly antithetical to the feeling of Pain, just as their objective antecedents (?) similarly fail. Massive Pleasure can seldom attain or never attain the intensity of Massive Pain, because the organism can be brought down to almost any point of inanition or exhaustion; but in efficient working cannot be raised very high above the average. Similarly any special organ or plexus of nerves can undergo any amount of violent disruption or wasting away, giving rise to extremely Acute Pains; but organs are very seldom so highly nurtured and so long deprived of their appropriate stimulant as to give rise to very Acute Pleasure." The most pleasurable experience attends functions most important for the welfare of the individual or its species. Here it is urged we have a wide sphere for the working of Natural Selection.

Dr. Romanes points out that a given Memory is not "stored up" in any cell bat involves a multiplicity of nervous elements. Bain's view is that in a revived sound, &c., "the renewed feeling occupies the very same parts, and in the same manner as the original feeling, and no other parts, nor in any other assignable manner" (Senses and Intellect,

"Physiological Esthetics."