She first seduces the Soul into Her company by Her irresistible fascinations, and finally tires it by Her inexorable law of causality, which at the same time reveals Her inward gruesomeness to the deceived Soul. The Soul then rates Her at Her proper worth, when She also, in Her turn, becomes a penitent and obedient instrument at its hands, by letting go Her hold of causality on the Soul. And thus Nature proves successively a seducer, a task-master and a servant, in relation to the Soul, in accordance with the degree of spiritual progress attained by it. The Soul is originally stupefied with the darkness of involved or inchoate Nature and, in that condition, remains tossed about in Her unfathom able womb, till the Spirit quickens it, so that it may take its chance towards its permanent Spiritual Freedom, by consciously contacting Nature. At each Dissolution, the unemancipated Soul reverts to the "womb of Nature," and awaits its return to the highway of sam-sdra, with Her next Manifestation. The Salvation of the Soul, when once attained, is permanent and irrevocable, but, the unconscious stupor in which it is primarily plunged, has no beginning.

How the Soul comes by that oblivion, or, what amounts to the same thing, how it gets to be beginninglessly entangled in Nature, cannot be satisfactorily explained, and any endeavour to do so, however deftly managed, will be simply landing oneself in a vicious circle of ad infinitum regression. In other words, the Soul's state of bondage has no beginning, but has an end, while the Soul's Spiritual Freedom has a definite beginning, but no end. It is at this point the doctrine of the Agamanta becomes hard of comprehension to those who cannot accept it solely on the testimony of the saints that "know" the "mysteries of the Spirit". Be it remarked however en passant that similar difficulties-face us when we endeavour to examine other systems of philosophy put forth in India. There is hardly a philosophy or reasoned system without a cornering difficulty that is hydra-headed and protean-shaped, which, if it be deftly eschewed from one part of our discussion, certainly threatens us with paralysis, if not positive extinction, of thought, in another.

The Agamic mysticism makes quite a speciality of the subjective processes connected with the Soul's Emancipation. On the principle that the "cottage" in which the Soul lives, is a minified copy or replica of the outer Nature, and the active Spirit behind Nature, is again the Soul's Soul, a graduated course of spiritual discipline is prescribed, quite replete with apt methods to suit the Soul in every one of its stages, whereby it is first trained to enter upon a minute examination of the constitution and functions of Nature, through a detailed and searching inspection of its own "cottage", and then taught to slowly and steadily disentangle itself from the enmeshments of Nature, and is finally left in a condition fit for the Grace of Emancipation from the Spirit. The disentanglement from the meshes of Nature, is briefly marshalled as ten-fold (dasa-karyani), the condition of the Soul in its different grades of bondage to Nature, is ear-marked as eighteen-fold (ashta-dasa-avasthah), the course of Nature's manifestation is regarded as six-fold (shad-adhvanah), the mood of Nature is proclaimed as five-fold (pancha-kalah) and so on, and, in this fashion, many a precious hint is dropped in the Agamas, not only with reference to the procession of Nature in Her manifestation, and Her precession in Her involution, but also in connexion with Her unsuspected methods of seducing the unwary Soul, and with the only ways of keeping Her at Her proper vocation, to wit, as an obedient handmaiden of the Spiritward-bound Soul. All these, however, but make for a preparation to await the appearance of the Spirit, Who, at the right moment that is only known to Him, suddenly opens the door of His Kingdom (Sankarapura) upon the ever-expectant Soul, and admits it to His never-ending Fellowship (Ananya-sayujya). So much for an imperfect summary of a system of ancient thought, philosophy and mysticism, to an exposition of which, the various papers, now brought together for the first time, in book-form, from the periodicals in which they originally appeared, have addressed themselves.

The only mood in which the themes tackled by our author in this book, must be approached, is one of reverence and devotion, that was so eloquently pleaded for, recently, in the stirring address delivered by the Hon. Mr. V. Krishnasvami Aiyyar before the Convocation of the Madras University, an address which, though primarily addressed to "boys," has yet graver lessons for "old boys", as these are, in truth, no better than babes in the wide "school of Nature".

Madras, V. V. RAMANAN.

13th Dec. 1911.