The atheist is not so much the man who denies the existence of any god as the man to whom God is not God, who looks upon the Deity as subordinate to powers void of holiness and nobility, the man who will not see in God the highest force in the world of nature and in the realm of the spirit. In this sense the Brahmans are thorough atheists. According to them, the universe with all that is in it--gods, men, and lower things--is created and governed by an iron law of soulless natural necessity. It has arisen by emanation from a cosmic Principle, Prajapati, "the Lord of Creatures," an impersonal being who shows no trace of moral purpose in his activity. Prajapati himself is not absolutely the first in the course of nature. The Brahmanas, the priestly books composed in this period to expound the rules and mystic significance of the Brahmanic ceremonies, give us varying accounts of his origin, some of them saying that he arose through one or more intermediate stages from non-existence (TB. II. ii. 9, 1-10, SB. VI. i. 1, 1-5), others deriving him indirectly from the primitive waters (SB. XI. i. 6, 1), others tracing his origin back to the still more impersonal and abstract Brahma (Samav. B. I. 1-3, Gop. B. I. i. 4). All these are attempts to express in the form of myth the idea of an impersonal Principle of Creation as arising from a still more abstract first principle. We have seen the poets of the Rig-veda gradually moving towards the idea of a unity of godhead; in Prajapati this goal is attained, but unfortunately it is attained by sacrificing almost all that is truly divine in godhead. The conception of Prajapati that we find in the Brahmanas is also expressed in some of the latest hymns of the Rig-veda. Among these is the famous Purusha-sukta (RV. X. 90), which throws a peculiar light on the character of Prajapati. It is in praise of a primitive Purusha or Man, who is, of course, the same as Prajapati; in some mysterious manner this Purusha is sacrificed, and from the various parts of his body arise the various parts of the world. The idea conveyed by this is that the universe came into existence by the operation of the mystic laws revealed in the Brahmanic rituals, and is maintained in its natural order by the same means. The Brahmanas do not indeed often assert on their own authority that Prajapati was himself sacrificed in order to produce the world, and in fact they usually give other accounts of the creation; but as their authors live in a rarefied atmosphere of mystical allegory in which fact and fancy are completely confused with one another and consistency ceases to have any meaning, none of them would have difficulty in accepting the Rigvedic statement that he was sacrificed. Hence they tell us on the one hand that Prajapati has created the world from a blind will for generation or increase, producing from each of his limbs some class of beings corresponding to it (e.g. MS. IV. vi. 3), or copulating with the earth, atmosphere, sky, and speech (SB. VI. i. 2, 1), or that he brought it into existence indirectly by entering with the Triple Science or mystic lore of the three Vedas into the primeval waters and thence forming an egg from which was hatched the personal Demiurge Brahma, who actually created the world (SB. VI. i. 1, 10); and on the other hand they relate that he created sacrifice and performed it, making of himself a victim in order that the gods, his offspring, might perform the rites for their own benefit, forming an image of himself to be the sacrifice, by which he redeemed himself from the gods (SB. XI. i. 8, 2-4; cf. AB. VII. 19, KB. XIII. 1, SB. III. ii. 1, 11), and that after creation he ascended to heaven (SB. X. ii. 2, 1). The thought that lies underneath these bewildering flights of fancy is one of mystic pantheism: all created existence has arisen by emanation from the one Creative Principle, Prajapati, and in essence is one with Prajapati; Prajapati is an impersonal being, a creative force, in which are embodied the laws of Brahmanic ritual, which acts only in these laws, and which is above the moral influences that affect humanity; and the whole of created nature, animate and inanimate, is controlled in every process of its being by these laws, and by the priest who possesses the knowledge of them. Thus there lies a profound significance in the title of "gods on earth" which the Brahmans have assumed.