io6                      ALBERUNPS INDIA.

first who gave laws to you ? Was he an angel or a man ? "
The man of Cnossus said : " He was an angel. In
truth, with us it was Zeus, but with the Lacedeemonians,
as they maintain, the legislator was Apollo."

Further, he says in the same chapter: "It is the
duty of the legislator, if he comes from God, to make
the acquisition of the greatest virtues and of the highest
justice the object of his legislation."

He describes the laws of the Cretans as rendering
perfect the happiness of those who make the proper
use of them, because by them they acquire all the
human good which is dependent upon the divine good.

The Athenian says in the second chaj)ter of the
, same book: " The gods, pitying mankind as born for
trouble, instituted for them feasts to the gods, the
Muses, Apollo the ruler of the Muses, and to Dionysos,
who gave men wine as a remedy against the bitterness
of old age, that old men should again be young by
forgetting sadness, and by bringing back the character
of the soul from the state of affliction to the state of
soundness."

Further he says : " They have given to men by in¬
spiration the arrangements for dancing, and the equally
weighed rhythm as a reward for fatigues, and that they
may become accustomed to live together with them in
feasts aud joy. Therefore they call one kind of their
music praises, with an implied allusion to the prayers
to the gods."

Such was the case with the Greeks, and it is precisely

the same with the Hindus.    For they believe that their

The Rishis,   rcligious law and its single precepts derive their origin

of mndu""^^ from Rishis, their sages, the pillars of their religion,

p^'es2.      ^^*^ ^ot from the prophet, i.e. Narayana, who, when

coming into this world, appears in some human figure.

But he  only comes in order to  cut  away some evil

matter which threatens the world, or to set the world

right again when anything has gone wrong.   Further, no