Hence, even if the attempt had been or were in the future made to instil ethical notions into the minds of the Indian youth independently of all religious teaching, it could only result in failure.

For the Hindu, perhaps more than for any other, religion governs life from the hour of his birth to that of his death.

His birth and his death are in fact only links in a long chain of existences inexorably governed by religion.

His religion may seem to us to consist chiefly of ritual and ceremonial observances which sterilize any higher spiritual life.

But even if such an impression is not due mainly to our own want of understanding, the very fact that every common act of his daily life is a religious observance, just as the caste into which he is born has been determined by the degree in which he has fulfilled similar religious observances in a former cycle of lives, shows how completely his religion permeates his existence.