They may be called useless by the busy and toiling portion of humanity; but if it is true that those also serve who only stand and wait,' then may we not hope that even the quiet in the land are not so entirely useless as they appear to be?

And while some of the most important doctrines of the Vedanta, when placed before us in the plain and direct language of the Vedanta-Sûtras, may often seem very startling to us, it is curious to observe how, if clothed in softer language, they do not jar at all on our ears, nay, are in full harmony with our own most intimate convictions. Thus, while the idea that our own self and the Divine Self are identical in nature might seem irreverent, if not blasphemous, one of our own favourite hymns contains the prayer,—

And that a higher gift than grace
Should flesh and blood refine,
God's Presence and His very Self,

And Essence all-divine!

This is pure Vedanta. We also speak without hesitation of our body as the temple of God, and of the voice of God within us; nay, we repeat with St. Paul that we live, and move, and have our being in God, yet we shrink from adopting the plain and simple language of the Upanishads that the Self of God and man is the same.

Again, the unreality of the material world, though proved point by point by Berkeley, seems to many a pure fancy; and yet one of our most popular poets, the very type of manliness and strength, both mental and physical, speaks like a Vedântist of the shadows among which we move :—

For more than once when I1

Sat all alone, revolving in myself

The word that is the symbol of myself,
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,

And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud

Melts into Heaven. I touched my limbs-the limbs
Were strange, not mine-and yet no shade of doubt,
But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self

The gain of such large life as matched with ours
Were Sun to spark-unshadowable in words,
Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.

It would be easy to add similar passages from Wordsworth, Goethe, and others, to show that after all there is some of the Indian leaven left in us, however unwilling we may be to confess it. Indian thought will never quite square with English thoughts, and the English words which we have to adopt in rendering Indian ideas are never quite adequate. All we can do is to strive to approximate as near as possible, and not to allow these inevitable differences to prejudice us against what, though differently expressed, is often meant for the same. There is one more point that requires a few remarks.

Metaphors.

It has often been said that the Vedanta-philosophy deals too much in metaphors, and that most of them, though fascinating at first sight, leave us in the end unsatisfied, because they can only illustrate, but cannot prove. This is true, no doubt; but in philosophy illustration also by means of metaphors has its value, and I doubt whether they were ever meant for more than that. Thus, when the Vedanta has to

explain how the Sat, the Real or Brahman, dwells within us, though we cannot distinguish it, the author of the Khandogya Up. VI, 13, introduces a father telling his son to throw a lump of salt into water, and after some time to take it out again. Of course he cannot do it, but whenever he tastes the water it is salt. In the same way, the father says, the Sat, the Divine, is within us, though we cannot perceive it by itself.

Another application of the same simile (Brihad. Âr. Up. II, 4, 12) seems intended to show that the Sat or Brahman, in permeating the whole elementary world, vanishes, so that there is no distinction left between the individual Self and the Highest Self1.

Again, when we read that the manifold beings are produced from the Eternal as sparks spring from a burning fire, we should remember that this metaphor illustrates the idea that all created beings share in the substance of the Supreme Being, that for a time they seem to be independent, but that they vanish again without causing any diminution in the Power from whence they sprang.

The idea of a creating as a making of the world iş most repugnant to the Vedântist, and he tries in every way to find another simile by which to illustrate the springing of the world from Brahman as seen in this world of Nescience. In order to avoid the necessity of admitting something extraneous, some kind of matter out of which the world was shaped, the Upanishads point to the spider spinning its web out of itself; and, in order to show that things can spring into existence spontaneously, they

1

See Deussen, Upanishads, p. 416, for a different explanation. 2 Brih. Âr. Up. II, 1, 20.

use the simile of the hairs springing from a man's head without any special wish of the man himself.

Now it may be quite true that none of these illustrations can be considered, nor were they intended as arguments in support of the Upanishadphilosophy, but they are at all events very useful in reminding us by means of striking similes of certain doctrines arrived at by the Vedanta philosophers in their search after truth.

CHAPTER V.

Purva-Mîmâmsâ.

It would be interesting to trace at once the same or very similar tendencies as those of the Vedanta in the development of other Indian philosophies, and particularly of the Sâmkhya and Yoga, and to see what they have to say on the existence and the true nature of a Supreme Being, and the relation of human beings to that Divine Being, as shadowed forth in certain passages of the Veda, though differently interpreted by different schools of philosophy. But it seems better on the whole to adhere to the order adopted by the students of philosophy in India, and treat of the other Mîmâmsâ, the PurvaMîmâmsî, that is the Former Mîmâmsâ, as it is called, in connection with the one we have examined. The Hindus admit a Pûrva-Mîmâmsâ and an UttaraMîmâmsâ. They look upon the Vedanta as the Uttara- or later Mîmâmsâ, and on that of Gaimini as the Pûrva-, or prior. These names, however, were not meant to imply, as Colebrooke1 seems to have supposed, that the Pûrva-Mîmâmsâ was prior in time, though it is true that it is sometimes called Prâkî, previous. It really meant no more than that

1 Colebrooke, Misc. Essays, vol. i, p. 239. Ritter, History of Philosophy, vol. iv, p. 376, in Morrison's translation. 2 Sarvadarsana-samgralia, p. 122, l. 3.