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through the prison-walls of birth and breeding, and they generally feel it their mission to break through the walls. The new field into which their minds issue, tries and taxes their originality and their power. Akbo was neither a Brébman nor a Banyd&. He was a goldsmith by caste, and his mind was unfettered by any hereditary predilec- tions for the traditions of the Brahmans or the moral imbecilities of mercantile calculators. He wanted to think for practical purposes. When he had ideas, he managed to see that he had also words for his ideas, and his words are neither more nor less than his ideas. A practical philosophy is his method; and to find out the purest gold for the human soul is the all—absorbing aspiration of this goldsmith. He takes in hand thing after thing from what he finds among his surroundings, and rejects and destroys it as worthless alloy. He succeeds at last in finding his gold in the philosophy of Sankar, and this he turns into fancy ornaments with exultations and constructs his own system out of it. Whether he destroys or constructs, he has a singular power of getting rid of the most inveterate superstitions of the land. The Vedantic fabric which he constructs, was fitted for the audience that he drew about him, But this fabric is after all derivative. His great originality lies in his destructive system. He has a powerful wit for pithy and epigrammatic satire. His
onslaughts are dreadful and never: fail to hit the right 3
