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importance, we cannot say; all that we can say is, that in time the two intrinsically uncongenial themes parted company. Nor can we assert that theosophic thought would not have sprung up in the Hindu mind, endowed as we see it to be, independently from the sacrifice and its perverted scholastic scintillations. Given the mind, the thought will come. But it is easy to see that the beginnings of higher religion started around the sacrifice, by calling out the higher aspirations of the patrons of the sacrifice. Wisdom-searching Rājas, weary of the world, Janaka and Ajātaçatru at an earlier time, Buddha and Bimbisāra at a later time, have as much to do with the development of Hindu religion as the thirst for newer and larger truth on the part of the Brahmans themselves. The Rājas were the Mæcenases of the "poor clerics." We imagine very easily that some of them got a surfeit of the world, and were attracted to the things beyond. The beginnings of theosophy grew up around the sacrifice which was under their patronage. The Brahmans grew up to their patrons' – and, we may add, to their own – higher needs. They began to offer these patrons something more than ritual technicalities. In the long run they must hold their position and reputation by something better than by handling with ludicrous correctness fire-wood and sacrificial ladle; soma drink and obla-