of noble souls toward solitude, contemplation, and freedom from the bonds of the flesh and the temptations of the world ; but it gives this tendency an undue predominance over the social, practical, and world-reforming spirit of religion.. Among the Hindoos the ascetic system may be traced back almost to the time of Moses, certainly beyond Alexander the Great, Avho found it there in full force, and substantially with the same characteristics which it presents at the present day.' Let us consider it a few moments. The Yedas, portions of which date from the fifteenth cen- tury before Christ, the Laws of Mjmu, which were completed CK^ before the rise of Buddhism, that is, six or seven centuries before our era, and the numerous other sacred books of the Indian religion, enjoin by example and precept entire abstrac- tion of thought, seclusion from the world, and a variety of ' Comp. the occasional notices of the Indian gymnosophists in Strabo (lib. XV. cap. 1, after accounts from the time of Alexander the Great), Arrian (Exped. Alex. 1. vii. c. 1-3, and Hist. Ind. c. 11), Plinius (Hist. Nat. vii. 2), Diodorus Siculus (lib. ii.), riutareh (Alex. 64), Porphyry (De abstinent. 1. iv.), Lucian (Fugit. 7), Cle- mens Alex. (Strom. 1. i. and iii.), and Augustine (De civit. Dei, 1. xiv. c. 17 : "Per opacas Indise solitudines, quum quidam nudi philosophentur, unde gymnosophistae nominantur ; adhibent tamen genitalibus tegmina, quibus per caetera membrorum carent ; " and 1. xv. 20, where he denies all merit to their celibacy, because it is not "secundum fidem summi boni, qui est Deus'''). With these ancient representations agree the narratives of Fon Koueki (about 400, translated by M. A. Remusat, Par. 1836), Marco Polo (1280), Bernier (1670), HamUton (1700), Papi, Niebuhr, Orlich, Sonnerat, and others. - 150 T[]IED PERIOD. A.D, 311-590. penitential and meritorious acts of self-mortification, bj which the devotee assumes a proud superiority over the vulgar herd^ uf mortals, and is absorbed at last into the divine fountain of all being. Tlie ascetic system is essential alike to Brahmanism and Buddhism, the two opposite and yet cognate branches of the Indian religion, which in many respects are similarly re- lated to each other as Judaism is to Christianity, or alsc^ as Romanism to Protestantism. Buddhism is a later reformation of Brahmanism ; it dates probably from the sixth centur}^ be- fore Christ (according to other accounts much earlier), and, although subsequently expelled by the Brahmins from Hin- dostan, it embraces more followers than any other heathen religion, since it rules in Farther India, nearly all the Indian islands, Japan, Thibet, a great part of China and Central Asia to the borders of Siberia. But the two religions start from opposite princij)les. Brahmanic asceticism ^ proceeds from a pantheistic view of the world, the Buddhistic from an atheistic and nihilistic, yet very earnest view ; the one is controlled by the idea of the absolute but abstract unity and a feeling of contempt