Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/254

morality which the Tamils had formed were the real basis of their civilization. That the sentiments of morality and religion predominated in the minds of the Tamils is evident from their ancient literature. The authors extolled piety, charity, truthfulness and tenderness to life and expressed a contempt for the perishable objects of the physical world. Their pure and elevated maxims were however mixed up with others of a peurile and imaginary character, resulting from that confusion of ideas which is natural in the early stages of civilization. They believed in the transmigration of souls, and were taught to suppress all desire, which was considered the cause of rebirths. Even the best intellects, among them had not yet learned to discern the impassable limits which divide the province of reason from that of speculation. They tried to understand nature and its mysterious author, by a subtle self-analysis, instead of by close observation and careful study of the phenomena of the outside world: and their wise men wasted their time in brilliant but barren reveries regarding the life after death. So much were they engrossed with the thoughts of a future state, that they sadly neglected the affairs of their present state. In fact, they gloried in poverty and utter renunciation of the world, as the only means of suppressing desire and securing the salvation of their souls from the stormy ocean of re-births. Herein lay the seeds of national decay, which soon laid low the Tamils and all other Hindu races, and made them an easy prey to every invading power.