SACREJ> ISLES IN THE WEST. 129 



Virtue's reward is Swerga, a temporary and local heaven, but it is in- 

 sufficient to obtain heaven in our sense, or eternal bliss. The lord of heaven 

 is not the Supreme Being among the Hindus, no more than in the west for- 

 merly. They believed also that the soul was Qod, an emanation or portion 

 of him. The ancient philosophers, and Cicero said, that the soul was 

 God. This soul is called A'tmdy'm Sanscrit, and Autme or Autmd in Greek, 

 Animam deum, et prisci philosophorum, et Tullius dixit. Anima forma 

 divina, the soul is a divine form, or emanation, according to Macrobius;^^^ 

 and this was also the opinion of Pythagoras. Whether the Druids of 

 Britain had idols or not, is no where said ; but those on the continent cer- 

 tainly had, as well as those of Ireland. From a passage in Gildas, it 

 seems that they had, and that even some remained in his time. The de-^ 

 scription, he gives us of them, shows they did not belong to the Romans, 

 as they looked ^rzOT and stijf, like the moesta similachra Deormn of the 

 Germans, done without art. There is no reason why we should believe 

 them free from the errors of the other Druids on the continent. The 

 little we know of their do(5lrine is perfe611y conformable to that of the 

 Hindus: except their worshipping under the oak, which they called em- 

 phatically Dru or the Tree. Dru, m Sanscfit, ig a tree in general: it was 

 so in Greek formerly; and it signifies a forest in Russian. It was after- 

 wards restri6led to the oak among the Greeks; and the Celtic tribes. 

 There are no oaks in India, except in the mountains to the north: but 

 the Hindus have other trees equally sacred, and the Goths had a peculiar 

 regard for the ash tree. 



The White goddess is represented with a white complexion, mildly 

 beaming like the moon. Her clothes are zvhite, like the foam of the 



i^) Macrob. Lib. II. c. I2.' 



I i 



