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OF THE HINDUS.
109
These duties are all repeatedly enjoined, and Hindu authorities commend as earnestly as those of any other language, and the people practise, in general, as much as most other people, the duties of their social condition, filial piety, paternal tenderness, kindness to inferiors, and obedience to the king. These, however, as well as the duties of caste, and even devotional rites, are held to be only subordinate and preliminary obligations, steps leading towards perfection, but stopping at the threshold, and to be cast away as soon as the interior of the temple is entered. All the obligations of social life do no more than qualify a man to abandon them: they are of no avail, they are impediments in his way when he undertakes to consummate the end of his being, when he would lose himself entirely in imperturbable meditation upon his own nature, by which alone he can know that he himself is one with the Divine nature, by which alone he can be identified with the umiversal soul, and emancipated for ever from the necessity of future existence.
Now it is true that in the present constitution of Indian society this distribution of the periods of life, beyond that of the student, is never regarded, except by a few, who prefer a life of lazy mendicity, or by some half-crazed enthusiast, who thinks it possible to realise the letter of the law. The great body of the people, Brahmans included, pursue their worldly avocations as long as their faculties permit, spend the decline of life in the bosom of their families, and die
