( 9 ) embraced, as a doctrine, either Positivism or Theosophy. He concludes by accepting Comte's definition of Religion ; his view of Culture as Discipline, not merely intellectual but social, is substanially Positivist in conception. At the same time, his msistence on the primal brahma would lead the Theosophists to claim him as their own. However that may be, we do not see our way to identifying Religion with Culture. Religion is Worship, or a worshipping state of the mind, and has to be directed to another than self. That other is, trans-owlentally, God; humanistically, Humanity. In either case, Religion s altruistic. Culture, on the other hand, however varied or complete, is essentially, egoistic. It is a cultivation, education, development, training or development of self. Bankim Babu uses the word in a sense wider than the current English sense, but though it may be understood as perfection, spiritual and imoral, and embracing an ordered life, it cannot help being a state of self. Any mere condition of the self is not Religion, which can only mean a tending of the soul to a Being external to it. In the next place, Babu Bankim Chandra does not sufficiently insist on the Emotional element in Religion. That is an element insisted on in every view. The English apostle of Culture, Mathew Arnold, defines Religion as morality touched with emotion. Bankim Babu includes love and reverence in religion, but those feelings may be felt and practised as cold moral virtues, as mere duties, as discipline. It is not until they are kindled into the white heat of ecstasy that they become truly religious. One of Bankim Babu's latest deliverances on the subject of social reform is to be found in his letter to Maharaj Kumar Binoya Krishna, on the subject of sea-voyages, from which Wte take the following significant passage : I venture to think that Hinduism is not exclusively confined. within the Dharma Shastras. Hinduism is catholic in its scope.
