end is a fitting emblem of Eternity. His explanation is as follows:

"The opposite sides of the single obelisk (taking the ordinary one as double) will continually approach to parallelism, but which they will never attain; for how great soever the sectional axes, or the sum of two ordinates, may be, still this difference will equal unity; so the sides of the sectional obeliscal area can never become parallel to the axis.'

"But he sees the symbol in the whip of Osiris; saying, 'The planets are urged onwards in their orbits by laws indicated by the obelisk.' Again: When the axis bisects the obeliscal area, and another straight line drawn from the apex represents the axis of the pylonic area, we have what is commonly called the flail or whip of Osiris.' The cap of Osiris is the hyperbolic and parabolic conoid, representing eternity. He calls the pschent of Osiris, the hyperbolic reciprocal curve.' The beards of the Assyrian monuments, so evidently conventional, are of the obeliscal form, typifying the same dogma. The wings of Mercury, the prongs of the trident, the shape of the serpent and crocodile, and the horn of Isis tell them the

same tale. The horn of Jupiter Ammon, giving the name to the shell fish Ammonite, is nothing but a spiral obelisk.'

tends the firmament in the form of the goddess Neith, and on either side of the mortal who is changing his state, or shedding his earthly skin, are the conventionalised representations of attendant deities. This drawing has already appeared in Mr. Samuel Sharpe's "Egyptian Mythology," but there it was very small, while in Mr. Bonwick's page it is not only of considerable size, but coloured after the original.

Two Centuries of Bhartrihari. Translated into English verse by C. H. Tawney, M.A. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, and Co., Publishers to the University.

The title of Professor Tawney's valuable little volume requires some explanation for the English reader who is not an Anglo-Indian. Bhartrihari is not a state of rule or governance, but a man, a king, and a poet; and two centuries' of him signifies two collections, of one hundred stanzas each, of his compositions.

The legend of Bhartrihari is one with which we are more or less familiar under other names. He discovers the faithlessness of his wife, becomes disgusted with the world, abdicates the throne, and retires to the forest. Respecting the stanzas which bear his name there is the same question as concerning the authorship of the Homeric poems, some considering them a collection of current gnomic verses, others the harmonious offspring of a single mind, and that of the self-exiled prince. The date of the poems is placed within a hundred years of the end of the third century of our era.

Professor Tawney gives us an interesting insight into the typical mode of native government in the East, which might prove useful to those who are puzzled by Turks, baffled by Affghans, or studying Hindoos:

"Though the word 'Niti' is usually translated policy, most of the stanzas arranged under this head are rather of an ethical and social character. They inculcate maxims of worldly prudence, and seem designed to teach knowledge of men as individuals, rather than as members of political communities. The truth seems to me that, under the personal governments of the East, Achitophel and Chanakya have always been the types of a successful politician. The art of the model Indian statesman, if we may trust the testimony of the Niti S'âstras, consists in the power of managing the king's wives and astrologers, of conciliating the feudal chiefs, and above all of humouring the caprices of the sovereign himself, and using them for the advantage of his subjects and the prosperity of his rule."

The tone of Bhartrihari's thought is referred to as being in very close sympathy with the modern pessimism as manifested by Schopenhauer, and as not unlike the mental habit of Diogenes the cynic.

There are occasional parallelisms to be found between these stanzas and Western thought, no doubt evidencing the fact that even before the days of steam and printing the thoughts of one man somehow managed to reach another. Professor Tawney's versions show ease and epigrammatic power; and the stanzas themselves are worth

translation. We quote a few specimens:

When but a little I had learned, in my own partial eyes

I seemed a perfect Solon and immeasur ably wise;

But when a little higher I had climbed in wisdom's school,

The fever-fit was over and I knew myself a fool.

Not to swerve from truth or mercy, not for life to stoop to shame ;

From the poor no gifts accepting, nor from men of evil fame;

Lofty faith and proud submission-who on Fortune's giddy ledge

Firm can tread this path of duty, narrow as the sabre's edge ?

With mind and senses unimpaired,

In act and voice the same, He moves among us like a ghost, Wealth's warmth has left his frame. The man of means is eloquent,

Brave, handsome, noble, wise; All qualities with gold are sent, And vanish when it flies.

The kindness of the bad at first

Is great, and then doth wane;
The good man's love, at th'outset small,
Slowly doth bulk attain;

Such difference between these two
In nature doth abide,

As 'twixt the shadow of the morn
And that of eventide.

A snake lay helpless in the box pining for lack of meat,

A rat by night gnaws through the side, and yields his foe a treat,

With strength recruited then the snake by that same hole escapes

Behold how vain our efforts are! Fate all

our fortune shapes.

This earth is but a lump of clay girt with a briny ditch,

Where hosts of squabbling kings contend,'

all striving to be rich,

One cannot blame these grovelling slaves

for clinging to their store,

But out on those who stoop to beg at any royal door!

We presume that Messrs. Trübner and Co. are the English agents for this little volume, though it bears only the name of the Calcutta publisher.

General Sketch of the History of Pantheism. In two volumes. Vol. I., from the earliest times to the age of Spinoza. London: S. Deacon and Co. 1878.

The anonymous author of the work before us very modestly says: "The following brief sketch does not aspire to the dignity of a history; it is merely an outline or epitome of a history. In its details there is but little novelty, being chiefly a compilation, taken more

frequently from translations and abridgments of originals, than from the originals themselves. Old well-authenticated facts have been treated under a new aspect; but there is no pretension to the discovery of a single new fact."

It is always valuable work to bring together to a focus radii that extending into dim distances afar might otherwise be difficult to find; but there is need of great care lest they be distorted in the process. The author quotes from Wordsworth the lines:

For I have learned To look on Nature; not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A Presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting

suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of

man:

A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

But on the next page he defines Pantheism as the "abstract worship of nature." Now, a true Pantheist would see God's hand not only in the vigour and suggestiveness of nature, but in every influence that stirs the world of mind, and would

worship not as in the abstract, but in poetic glow that seems to reach to very consciousness of presence. The author's Pantheism is a little too cold and intellectual. He says: "Pantheism is strictly a religion for the few, not for the many." The great mass of the people are as little capable of Pantheism as they are of Monotheism. They

are not capable of lofty abstractions, but must have recourse to forms and ceremonies, to images and pictures."

Under the head of Oriental Pantheism, which must be meant to represent the religion of the earliest times promised by the author, we find reference to the Vedas, Brahminism, other Hindu philosophies, and especially Buddhism, the Vedanta philosophy, and the Bhagavad-Gita; but with some surprise we note that no chapter is given to the oldest Pantheism we know of, that of Egypt.

In the section devoted to Modern Pantheism an important place is given to the little-known Vanini, of whom a full and interesting account is given. But Vanini appears to have been an advocate of annihilation rather than a pantheist. To the pantheistic mind it is easier to accept life beyond the seen than to conceive a great wall set up behind which the power that pervades all things and enkindles life has lost its sway.

IF the religious philosophy of Greece has been neglected, the error has lain the other way with regard to Homer. Perhaps an undue prominence has been given to the philosophic element of this rhapsodic school, which was eminently a school of poetry, in which even theology was for the most part regarded from the side of the dramatic and the picturesque, and taken as it actually existed around, rather than as arising from any earnest belief of the singer's own. Mr. Gladstone, as we have shown, sees in Homer the remains of primitive monotheism. Truly, no doubt; but whether this monotheism be primeval or merely prehistoric, there is unfortunately in Homer very little of it.

Seneca, some eighteen centuries ago, was laughing at the critics for disputing amongst themselves as to which of the philosophic sects of their time Homer had belonged. He is discoursing (Ep. lxxxviii.) upon the liberal arts, as being so called because they enlarge the mind and become a free man; and he characterises as puerile the stepping aside from the study of wisdom into the weighing of syllables and the scanning of verses.

Especially he stigmatises mere argumentativeness, and very wittily instances the discussions which had turned upon Homer. "For one while," he says, "they make him a stoic, in pursuit of virtue alone, and flying from pleasure, so as not to be drawn thereby from what is right and fit, even by a promise of immortality; at another time they represent him as an epicurean, highly extolling the state of a peaceful city, whose inhabitants spend their time in songs and banquets; at another time as a peripatetic, allowing three sorts of good; at another time as an academic or sceptic, affirming all things to be uncertain. Now to me he seems to be none of these in particular, because their several doctrines are all to be found in him."

This is as if we were to fight over Shakespeare, whether he were to be pronounced a ritualist or an evangelical, a spiritualist or a follower of Comte. The great minds, whether of poets or philosophers, are nowise sectarian, though their followers may strive often to constrain them to an appearance of support of cramped and dogmatic

views.

the

Learned volumes have been compiled, and especially in the 17th. and 18th centuries, upon Hebraizing tendencies of Homerupon the question whether he was a moral philosopher, and also upon his theology, gnomology, and psychology.

The theology of Homer is indeed most confusing. Representing the conceptions of his time by record rather than preachment, he has not the unifying consciousness of a religious man, which with glowing faith and spiritual instinct burns away minor external vagaries of belief, and fuses the stray centralising tendencies he finds into one harmonious agreement.

The Greek poetic mind had a marvellous power of absorption from the more deeply religious thought of other peoples. Egypt, India, Phoenicia, contributed not only conceptions of deity, but cosmogonical plans and visions of the unseen. With large, easy, artistic hand, Greece wrought them all into her pantheon and her philosophy, as a modeller might blend wet inasses of white and yellow clay, or a sculptor fit to his work alternate ivory and gold.

In the Homeric theology divinity is seen in series after series of diverse powers, wondrous activities, on high, below, afar, anigh, forces of aid, of comfort, of gloom and fear, potencies small and great.

There are the high Olympian deities, in whose king reside whatever monotheistic elements were called for by the higher consciousness of man, and whatever conceptions of majesty, rule, and justice remained from older revelations of heavenly things.

But Zeus, if to one Homeric singer he be true Lord of all, yet with another is made to do ungodly things; and even Zeus, according to a decaying tradition of

an older theology, is himself but God of God, being son of a careworn personification of Time. In the Olympian group, after Zeus of the bright sky, are Herè, his sisterwife; Athenè, queen of the air, or daughter of the sky, regarded generally as representing wisdom, and in harmony with Zeus, while being on earth the clear-seeing help of heroes. Phoibos, the god of arrowy rays, with his twin sister Artemis, is akin to the sun, but rather as moving in its far-darting beams than as attached to its bulk. Hephaistos is fire flame, a mechanical power, occupying a menial rather than an exalted position in Olympos. Ares is stormy turbulence personified, a confusing influence, belonging to the din rather than to the direction of war. Aphrodité is brightness rising from sea-foam, and flushing passion of love. Hermes is the intellectual faculty and the emblem of craft, with a messenger's office and a movement like the wind. In many respects he corresponds with the Egyptian Thoth, being, like him too, the guide of souls bound for Hades.

There are the earth-pervading deities, human-formed blossomings of Nature, representing rich wealth and summer, and the power and elevation of wine. There are the under-world deities, reigning over a world hidden from the sun, but with the power themselves of visiting the light of Olympos. From the Hades being regarded as localised beneath the earth, the under-world gods became the patron deities and guardians of the treasures of the mines. From the real Hades come the avenging lights, the Erinyes, who can see in the dark and discover evil deeds. The attendant ministers of the Governor of Hades are also Night, Sleep, Death, and Dream. Among lesser deities is Poseidon, the lord