The Hindu is as much convinced that the soul is re-born in different animals as we are that children are born of women. He is convinced of it, but he is not consoled by it. Let us reflect a little: does not one life give us time to get somewhat tired of it; how should we feel after fifteen hundred lives? The wandering Jew has never been thought an object of envy, but the wandering soul has a wearier lot; it knows the sorrows of all creation.
“How many births are past I cannot tell,
How many yet may be no man may say,
But this alone I know and know full well,
That pain and grief embitter all the way.”[[1]]
[1]. “Folk-Songs of Southern India,” by Charles E. Gover, a fascinating but little-known work.
Rather than this—death. How far deeper the gloom revealed by these lines from the folk-songs of an obscure Dravidian tribe living in the Nilgiri Hills, than any which cultured Western pessimism can show! Compared with them, the despairing cry of Baudelaire seems almost a hymn of joy:—
“’Tis death that cheers and gives us strength to live,
’Tis life’s chief aim, sole hope that can abide,
Our wine, elixir, glad restorative