Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/228

higher religious thought lacked the twin factors of metempsychosis and pessimism which really determine its Hindu character. Pessimist view of transmigration, and release from transmigration are the true signs of Hinduism in the broadest sense of that word: through these twin conceptions the Hindu idea, as we may call it, is marked off from all the rest of human thought; without these, Hindu speculations about the divine might readily pose as a kind of Volapük, or Esperanto, for all the world of religious thought from the Prophets and Plato to Spinoza and Kant. We may safely date the entrance of metempsychosis and pessimism towards the end, rather than the beginning of Vedic tradition. It seems to mark a most important division of the Veda into two periods. Other marks, such as more or less advanced priestly ritual; the presence or absence of complicated witchcraft practices; the sudden and unexpected glint of a brilliant theosophic idea; or the varying forms of Vedic literary tradition involve real distinctions of time, but they are more gradual, and are easily construed subjectively. They do not, at any rate, involve anything as vital as the presence or absence of that pessimist doctrine of transmigration which holds India captive – to its cost – even at the present day.

Next, where did the higher religion spring up