RELIGIOUS PRACTICES
alternative to lhakti and the almost certainly false beliefs
•with which lhakti is always associated. Owing to the
disparagement during recent centuries of mystical theology,
or the way of knowledge, many religiously minded
Europeans are not even aware that an alternative to lhakti
exists. The existence of that alternative must be pro-
claimed and its practical uses and cosmological implications
set forth. The second task before the rational idealist is
the harder of the two. Accepting as inevitable the con-
tinued existence of a large residuum of practisers of
Ihakti-marga, he will have to do all in his power to turn
this irrepressible stream of Ihakti into the channels in
which it.will do the least mischief. For example, it is
manifest that lhakti directed towards deified leaders and
personified nations, classes or parties must result in evil,
not only for society, but ultimately (whatever the im-
mediate good effects in regard to the minor virtues) for the
individual as well. To repeat this obvious fact in and out
of season is perhaps the most wearisome but also the most
necessary of the tasks which the rational idealist must
undertake. Towards the transcendental religions his atti-
tude should be discriminatingly critical. The point that
he must always remember and of which he must remind
the world is that, whenever God is thought of, in
Aristotle's phrase, as the commander-in-chief rather than
as the order of the army—as a transcendent person rather
than as an immanent-and-also-transcendent principle of
integration—persecution always tends to arise. It is an
extremely .significant fact that, before the coming of the
Mohammedans, there was virtually no persecution in India.
The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang, who visited India in
the first half of the seventh century and has left a circum-
stantial account of his fourteen-year stay in the country,
makes it clear that Hindus and Buddhists lived side by
side without any show of violence. Each party attempted
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