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doctrine is given the chief place. But the Song remains, like the Upanishads themselves, and like Manu, an ill-assorted cabinet of primitive philosophical opinions. On the religious side it is a matter of comparative indifference whether that which is not the spirit is a delusive output of the spirit or indestructible matter. In either case the Spirit is the goal of the spirit. In this personal pantheism absorption is taught but not death. Immortality is still the reward that is offered to the believer that is wise, to the wise that believes. Knowledge and faith are the means of obtaining this immortality; but, whereas in the older Upanishads only wisdom is necessary (wisdom that implies morality), here as much stress, if not more, is laid upon faith, the natural mark of all sectarian pantheism.
Despite its occasional power and mystic exaltation, the Divine Song in its present state as a poetical production is unsatisfactory. The same thing is said over and over again, and the contradictions in phraseology and in meaning are as numerous as the repetitions, so that one is not surprised to find it described as "the wonderful song, which causes the hair to stand on end." The different meanings given to the same words are indicative of its patchwork origin, which again would help to explain its philosophical inconsistencies. It was probably composed, as it stands, before there was any formal Ved[=a]nta system; and in its original shape without doubt it precedes the formal S[=a]nkhya; though both philosophies existed long before they were systematized or reduced to Sutra form. One has not to imagine them as systems originally distinct and opposed. They rather grew out of a gradual intensification of the opposition involved in the conception of Prakriti (nature) and M=a]y[=a] (illusion), some regarding these as identical, others insisting that the latter was not sufficient to explain nature. The first philosophy (and philosophical religion) concerned itself less with the relation of matter to mind in modern parlance) than with the relation of the individual self (spirit) to the Supreme Spirit. Different explanations of the relation of matter to this Supreme Spirit were long held tentatively by philosophers, who would probably have said that either the S[=a]nkhya or Ved[ra]nta might be true, but that this was not the chief question. Later came the differentiation of the schools, based mainly on a question
