mind from the times of the later Rig Veda hymns down to the present day. Its Brahma holds in solution, more or less vaguely defined, the Orphic hymn and the Eleatic philosophy. Here, in Eastern form indeed, and without Hellenic energy of will, is the mystical Orphic "Zeus, first, midst, and last; Zeus, element and ruler; Zeus, essence and father; Zeus, one and all." Here the "Kosmos" of Xenophanes, "that sees, hears, and thinks;" his "all-ruling, spheric Unity of Mind, incomprehensible, without beginning, end, or change ;" and the "Ens unum" of Parmenides, whereinto all differences dissolved. Here the Anaxagorean "Noûs," or Mind, "ruler of all." Here negation of the manifold; Heraclitean sense of universal flux; Zenonic dialectics, proving that there could be no substantial being in this perpetual evanescence. Here the Western Cynic is foreshadowed in the Eastern Gymnosophist. Here Philo's Logos (vdíateros naì ngoqoqixòs), essential and manifest, embracing all. Here Seneca's "All, one only, and deity."" Here Marcus Aurelius's "One God, one substance, one law, one common reason, and one truth."3 Here the "ecstasy" of Plotinus; here Persian Sufism, mystic Jelalleddin and Sadi; here Berkeley's idealism, and Malebranche's vision of "all in God." Here, without its scientific basis or its intense practical vitality, Goethe's sense of a universal cosmic Soul. And here Hegel's identity of Thought and Being, of subject and object. The Vedanta must have influenced Plotinus: it anticipates Spinoza. The Sânkhya foreshadows at once the skeptics, the posi On this point see Grote's Plato, ch. xxxviii. 2 Epistle, 92. tivists, the rationalists, the quietists, of later times. An earlier Kantian criticism, as elaborate too in its way, denies the certitude of the understanding, yet holds fast to the rock of moral sanctions. An earlier Fichtean intuition affirms selfishness to be the false and unreal, and pursues the liberty of spiritual obedien as "the blessed life." All these are of course in forms peculiar to Hindu genius. Here also is the substance of all great philosophies of evil, holding that it is the condition of finiteness, or comes of things taken in fragments, seen in part; that the world must not be conceived apart from God, if we would know it as it is. And here are unmistakable forms of spiritual courage and trust, and all-controlling aspirations to the highest thought, as the soul's native place; to absolute good, as rounding the universe and leaving out no life that is or can be; aspirations which foreshadow Christian ideals of the divine, and yield, as do the best of these also, hints of a purer worship yet to come, that shall supplant defects which are constantly characteristic of Christian thought; and especially that imperfect sense of the essential unity of all life, and that lack of intellectual liberty which must ever result from all exclusive claims of personal or historical authority over the religious nature of man. SANKHYA. OUR UR sketch of Religious Philosophy thus far, while illustrative of the general features of Hindu thought, has represented in the main what is I called the Vedânta or Orthodox school of belief. This is founded on the Vedas, as well as most congenial with the national mind. Yet we have already seen that it was capable of emancipating itself from idolatry of scripture, and affirming the intimacy of man with God through his own essential nature. We have now to examine a different path to the affirmation of spiritual being and sovereignty; one in which these elements of freedom are still more prominent, the Sânkhya system of Kapila. Little is known of Kapila; whose name, a synonym of Fire, hovers, like the names of other found- Kapila and ers of Hindu schools, between mythology and the Sânkhya. history. He is held by some to have been an incarnation of Agni; by others, of Vishnu. The origin of his system cannot be definitely assigned to any special date. More important than any such historical determination is the fact that its persistence and productivity show it to be a natural and spontaneous growth of the Aryan mind. Like all other systems of Oriental philosophy, it is |