Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace.
- Alfred Russel Wallace
- Date:
- 1913
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace. Source: Wellcome Collection.
23/180 page 11
![III] Permanence of Character ing that the people it describes were our intellectual and moral equals. The wonderful collection of hymns known as the Vedas is a vast system of religious teaching as pure and lofty as those of the finest portions of the Hebrew scriptures. A few examples from the translation by Sir Monier Monier-Williams will show that its various writers were fully our equals in their conceptions of the universe, and of the Deity, expressed in the finest poetic language. The following is a portion of a hymn to The Investing Sky : The mighty Varuna, who rules above, looks down Upon these worlds, his kingdom, as if close at hand. When men imagine they do aught by stealth, he knows it; No one can stand or walk, or softly ghde along Or hide in dark recess, or lurk in secret cell But Varuna detects him and his movements spies.. * * * » This boundless earth is his, His the vast sky, whose depth no mortal e'er can fathom. Both oceans find a place within his body, yet In the small pool he lies contained ; whoe'er should flee Far, far beyond the sky would not escape the grasp Of Varuna, the king. His messengers descend 11](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18022121_0024.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
