Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/26

desert has something divine which he finds not in the city, because it is more silent, more solitary, and more vast; and yet he will not adore it as his God, because the desert is not infinite. The ocean would become his divinity, because it absorbs all things, if it were not for its strange commotions and noise. The sun which illuminates the universe would be worthy of his worship, if they eye of man did not embrace its resplendent disk. The firmament would be his god, if it were not dotted by the sparkling luminaries; or night would be his god but for its mysterious sounds. His god is all these things united—immensity, obscurity, immobility, silence. There we behold suddenly arise, through the hidden impulsion of a powerful growth, colossal and barbarous empires, that as suddenly fall with a crash, overwhelmed by the weight of other empires more gigantic, and leaving no trace either of their rise or fall. Their armies are undisciplined and the people unintelligent. The army is chiefly characterized by the number of men that compose it. There war has less for its aim to prove the heroism of a nation than its populousness, and even victory would not establish a legal title, except that victory supposes strength, and strength is considered an attribute of the divinity.

Thus we see that the Hindoo theology and history are identical. Turning our eyes westward we behold, at the very portals, a region which ushers in a new world in politics, morals, and theology. The Oriental deity of infinitude is here decomposed, and loses its formidable and austere characteristics: its unity is multitude. There the deity was motionless; here multitude displays an unceasing activity. There silence reigned; here everything is sound, cadence, and har-