the Hindu mind, but had remained latent during the stirring period when
the people were engaged in incessant wars. Climate, also, must have
affected the temperament of the race; and, as the Hindus steadily
pressed down the valley of the Ganges into warmer regions, their love of
repose and contemplative quietism would continually deepen. And when the
Brahmans became a fully developed hierarchy, lavishly endowed, with no
employment except the performance of religious ceremonies, their minds
could avoid stagnation only by having recourse to speculative thought.
Again, asceticism has a deep root in human nature; earnest souls,
conscious of their own weakness, will fly from the temptations of the
world. Various causes thus led numbers of men to seek a life of
seclusion; they dwelt chiefly in forests, and there they revolved the
everlasting problems of existence, creation, the soul, and God. The
lively Greeks, for whom, with all their high intellectual endowments, a
happy sensuous existence was nearly all in all, were amazed at the
numbers in northern India who appeared weary of the world and
indifferent to life itself. By and for these recluses were gradually
composed the Aranyakas, or forest treatises; and out of these grew a
series of more regular works, called Upanishads.[13] At least two
hundred and fifty of these are known to exist. They have been called
"guesses at truth;" they are more so than formal solutions of great
questions. Many of them are unintelligible rhapsodies; others rise
almost to sublimity. They frequently contradict each other; the same
writer sometimes contradicts himself. One prevailing characteristic is
all-important; their doctrine is pantheism. The pantheism is sometimes
not so much a coldly reasoned system as an aspiration, a yearning, a
deep-felt need of something better than the mob of gods who came in the
train of Indra, and the darker deities who were still crowding in. Even
in spite of the counteracting power of the Gospel mysticism has run
easily into pantheism in Europe, and orthodox Christians sometimes slide