that he can get out of it, and visits it, chiefly or only, when the time for the battue has come. He pays his gamekeeper so much per head of game, and the gamekeeper makes it his business to destroy everything that is not game.

Under these sinister influences many of our most interesting birds and animals are ceasing to exist. The bustard and the bittern, owing to the increase of the population and the reclamation of the fens, are things of the long past. The buzzard, the harrier, and the peregrine falcon are becoming rarer and rarer. The fork-tailed kite is as dead as Queen Anne. The Cornish chough is nearly as extinct as the Cornish language. The principle of a preserve for interesting wild animals, such as would otherwise be extirpated, has been established by the Americans, on an extensive scale, in the Yellowstone Park. It has been secured by the British Legislature, thanks chiefly to the exertions of Mr. Edward N. Buxton, in a part of Somaliland and elsewhere in Africa; and a similar preserve, on a small scale, which might be well extended to the New Forest, has been set apart by the Crown, in Wolmer Forest in Hampshire. No tribute could be more appropriate to the memory of Gilbert White, none would have given him more pleasure, than the consecration in perpetuity of a region through which he so often wandered, to the wild animals and birds which he so keenly loved.

But why should not every large estate, if its owner be resident upon it, as is still happily the case in most parts of England, and if he have any love for real wild life, become, in itself, a sort of sanctuary? There is a balance in nature which man never transgresses but at his cost. Witness it, the wholesale destruction of owls and hawks, and the portentous increase of rats and mice. There is a principle of live and let live,' which enlightened self-interest no less than the public good, sentiment no less than reason, demand. There may be as much game on an estate as any true and moderate sportsman can desire; but is there not also room in it for the wild swoop of the sparrow-hawk, for the graceful hovering of the kestrel, for the solemn hoot of the owl, for the harsh scream of the jay, for the cheerful chatter of the magpie and the jackdaw? And among all the birds which charm the ear with their resonant cries, the eye by the beauty of their form, their colour or their flight, the historic imagination by the memories of the long past which are bound up with it, the raven, if only he can be induced to revisit and inhabit again the home of his ancestors, will always deserve the foremost place.

R. BOSWORTH SMITH.

REINCARNATION

FOR some years past intellectual Westerns have sought to expound to the West this essentially Eastern doctrine. Presumably deriving their knowledge from Brahminical philosophy, they have enunciated the basic principle of this ancient belief and speculated upon its farreaching influence upon Hindu thought, Hindu religion, even Hindu art. But one thing they have forgotten, or, remembering, have doubted their capacity to depict-the effect of this doctrine upon Hindu conduct; upon the daily life of the Hindu, prince and peasant alike. Resignation under the cruellest afflictions in the hope of improvement in a life to come; alien domination for seven long centuries; millions swept away by plague and pestilence and famine the history of India for seven long centuries is a living proof of the practical belief of her people in reincarnation. How could Westerns read that proof, though it be written in letters of fire?

Perhaps an exposition of that belief by a Brahmin not unacquainted with both East and West might be deemed pertinent.

It is a common opinion in the West-to some extent fostered by the writings of Mr. Kipling-that the ways of the Hindu are mysterious; that his motives of conduct are inscrutable; that it is impossible to predict under any given conditions how a Hindu would act. As against this common Western belief, the writer of this article seeks to prove that with one exception (to be mentioned hereafter) the ways of the Hindu are as clear as a crystal brook; that, of all people in the world, his motives of conduct can always be known to a certainty; that under any given conditions it is as easy to predict his course of conduct as to foretell that a stone thrown up into the air will surely return to earth; in fine, that the Hindu is the exact antithesis of what he is supposed to be-that his rules of conduct are as clearly defined as the laws of gravitation.

(1) The Hindu is nothing if not religious. His religious frame of mind has been at once his greatest fault and his greatest virtue. As an example of the former, it stopped the political development of his country since the days of Manu. The Roman, intellectually his inferior, outstripped him in the race for political progress; for

he had learnt early to separate religious laws from the principles of political science. The Hindu had not; hence his subsequent political stagnation. On the other hand, his religious instincts have made him the one man whose practice is identical with his belief. Nay, more; in religious principles he is the one catholic in the world. If he sees a beautiful idea in any religion whatsoever, he forthwith adopts it into his own and carries it into practice in his daily life. The Sermon on the Mount probably contains the noblest ideals known to man. The present writer, though a Brahmin, has no hesitation in admitting that, especially because the one 'Christian' he has ever met who actually practised those ideals was a 'heathen.' He was a young student in the Calcutta University who had read the Bible in the course of his English studies, and, reading it, had adopted the maxims of the Sermon as the teachings of a great rishi. Then, one day, being struck on the left cheek by a fellow student in a moment of anger, he meekly turned to him the right, saying nothing. Such is the practical religion of the Hindu.

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(2) As regards his daily life, he has only two leading principles upon which his entire conduct depends--the doctrines of reincarnation and of karma. The latter it is not necessary to define; it is equivalent to the Christian maxim as thou hast sown, so shalt thou reap.' The former is more subtle. Yet, comparing it with the basic principle of Christianity, the difference between them is not so great as it seems; certainly not essential. Christianity indeed allows man but one life of probation in which to be saved or lost the Brahminical doctrine of reincarnation several. But in either creed it is the sum total of good deeds that must save. In Christianity the probation lasts a portion of a century; in Brahminism several centuries. In the former, the actual moment of death is allimportant; in the latter that moment is only like the moment of sleep; there is a new day after it. Yet in Brahminism also there is a final death; only it comes at the moment of attaining perfection, after centuries of expiation, if need be. If then we compare this belief with the doctrine of purgatory in the Church of Rome, or with the general Protestant belief that hell is not eternal, there remains very little essential difference between the basic principles of Brahminism and Christianity.

(3) The Hindu does not believe that every man will necessarily be re-born as one of the lower animals. The sinner may be, as a just retribution; but even he not necessarily. Similarly, the just man may not necessarily re-appear as a still juster man. In either case, the Hindu does not limit the forms which the soul of man may take in its successive migrations. All that is essential to the doctrine is that in the case of the sinner the next form will be lower in moral perception, in the case of the just man higher; but the exact nature of the form the Hindu does not profess to know.

For instance, in the higher grade there may be a state intermediate between man and angel' (defining angel in the Christian sense); more than man, less than angel; may be, not must be. One just man may pass through the intermediate state; another, higher in merit, leap above it. In any case, this state is not necessarily to be identified with that of the spirit world of popular imagination; beings in that state may or may not have power to manifest themselves to us; the Hindu does not profess to know which. All that is essential to his belief is that in the higher grade various souls will pass through various higher stages, whatever those stages be, each according to its merits. And even as angels' may fall, so also may a soul in such eminence. But even then it would not be lost for ever, as Lucifer was lost, according to Christian teaching. Its trials would only be increased by that fall; perhaps, if the sin be very great, it would be set back several avatars. And even if it falls repeatedly, there would always remain the possibility of repentance. Nay, most Hindu thinkers believe that the usual lot of a soul is to pass through such a vicissitude, rising and falling, but rising on the whole, like the Himalayas from the plains of India, the summit of Gaurisankar being the perfection that is nirvana; only the most favoured soul can attain nirvana by a continuous rise. And the Creator alone must judge the moment when perfection is attained, applying a test far higher in the case of the soul thus favoured than in that of the average one that has risen and fallen. For even as the Christian, so also does the Hindu believe that the merit of each soul is to be judged by the light it has received, not by the Divine standard of perfection itself. Thus again do Brahminism and Christianity meet.

Bearing these principles in mind, the motives of conduct that rule the daily life of the Hindu should not be difficult to understand. Even as the Christian has two main commandments (to love God above all things and his neighbour as himself), so also has the Hindu these two doctrines of reincarnation and karma for his daily guidance. The perfect Christian is commanded to love his neighbour 'as himself.' The ideal Hindu has to obey exactly the same law in the doctrine of karma. In any given case if his own interest be in conflict with that of his neighbour, he is morally bound to forego the seeking of his interest; in fine, if he would be perfect, he must consider not merely himself but his neighbour likewise. In connection therewith one could hardly do better than quote some of the Hindu maxims of conduct from a book recently published, and written by an Indian Prince : 1

Blessed is he that wipes away the tears of others; for his own tears shall be wiped away.

Blessed is he that, seeking his own just happiness, gives up that search because

The Romance of an Eastern Prince. (Grant Richards.)

of the pain it might inflict upon another; for even in the hour that he has abandoned his search he shall have found it.

Blessed is he that, lying on his death-bed, finds the sum total of happiness he has brought to the world to be greater than the sum total of pain he has inflicted upon the world; for the balance shall be given back to him multiplied a thousandfold.

Then as maxims of conduct for those that seek a yet greater perfection:

If a bee sting you, and you in anger close your hand upon it to crush it, then I say unto you open your hand and let the bee go. What is the pain of the sting to the life of the bee? The life is all that the bee has. If you can but kill it or let it go, it behoves you to let it go.

If a murderer come to kill you with a drawn sword, and you have a pistol in your hand and raise it to shoot him dead at your feet, then I say unto you: cast away the pistol and let the murderer kill you. For then your soul, which is in grace, will find rest; but if you kill the murderer, who already has sin in his heart, his soul will burn in fire.

How like the Sermon on the Mount! Thus again do Brahminism and Christianity meet in the highest perfection!

There is, however, one difference-not indeed between Brahminism and Christianity, nor between the perfect Hindu and the perfect Christian, but between the average Hindu and the average Christian. The Hindu, because of his intense religious tendencies, tries to practise most of the principles of the doctrine of karma; the average Christian seldom tries to carry out the sublime precepts of the Sermon on the Mount. Consider the case of even the reprobate Hindu. There never has been known an instance of a Hindu consciously dying what Christians would call an unhappy death.' Imagine a hardened reprobate, sinning up to the last, accumulating crime upon crime. Then the moment he sees the hand of death upon him and realises the inevitable decree of fate, that instant his whole mental attitude changes. 'In this life I have been a failure,' he confesses in his inmost heart. 'I shall try to do better in the next; shall accept the pain awaiting me.' Such a frame of mind is not far distant from the Christian notion of repentance, though it be but a death-bed repentance. Even in these fallen days notorious dacoits or commonplace murderers may be seen in India walking to the gallows in calm dignity. 'Mere apathy,' says the average English spectator, scanning the immobile face. 'Stoic indifference,' perhaps comments his more intellectual brother, noting the steadfast eye. 'Christian resignation,' answers the Brahmin, reading the inmost heart.

If such be the case of the reprobate, what shall we say of the average Hindu, one who is neither saint nor confirmed sinner? Secretive, mysterious, uncommunicative indeed to the European; for the European in India has little of human sympathy in his make, little desire or capacity to make friendship that leads to

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