like Brahmanism.

A second, fundamental conception of Brahmanism is that all life, apart
from Brahma, is evil, is travail and sorrow. We can make this idea
intelligible to ourselves by remembering what are our own ideas of this
earthly life. We call it a feverish dream, a journey through a vale of
sorrow. Now the Hindu regards _all_ conscious existence in the same
light. He has no hope in a better future; so long as the soul is
conscious, so long must it endure sorrow and pain.

This conception of all conscious existence as necessarily and always evil,
leads naturally to the doctrine that it is the part of wisdom and of duty
for man to get rid of consciousness, to annihilate himself, in a word, to
commit soul-suicide. Brahmanism teaches that the only way to extinguish
self and thus get rid of the burden of existence, is by re-absorption into
Brahma. But this return to Brahma is dependent upon the soul's
purification, for no impure soul can be re-absorbed into the primal
essence. The necessary freedom from passion and the required purity of
soul can best be attained by self-torture, by a severe mortification of
the flesh; hence the asceticism of the Hindu devotee.

As only a few in each generation reach the goal, it follows that the great
majority of men must be born again, and yet again, until all evil has been
purged away from the soul and eternal repose found in Brahma. He who lives
a virtuous life is at death born into some higher caste, and thus he
advances towards the longed-for end. The evil man, however, is born into a
lower caste, or perhaps his soul enters some unclean animal. This doctrine
of re-birth is known as the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis).

Only the first three classes are admitted to the benefits of religion. The