in their stead an eclectic pantheism, in which he incorporated whatever he found admirable in various creeds.
'I can but lift the torch
Of Reason in the dusky cave of Life,
And gaze on this great miracle, the World,
Adoring That who made, and makes, and is,
And is not, what I gaze on, all else, Form,
Ritual, varying with the tribes of men[1].'
Akbar's State Religion was a failure. It never took hold of the people. No eclectic philosophy ever does. But his broad-minded sympathy drew the severed links of the empire together and for a while created a nation where there had been races. His watchword was Toleration. He was tolerant of all shades of religion and every tinge of nationality. He encouraged Portuguese Jesuits and admired their painted and graven images; he presided over philosophical discussions in which every received dogma was freely criticized; he sanctioned the worship of the sun, 'Symbol the Eternal,' as the most glorious manifestation of Deity, and would himself daily set the example to his people, and
'Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures Time,'
To carry out his public toleration in the privacy of home, he took his wives from different races and religions. All this was not done out of policy alone: he had a distinctly philosophical bent of thought. The practical side of this open-minded attitude was
- ↑ Tennyson, Akbar's Dream (1892), p. 33.
