the
self in each man, but not a real existence. But when the conception is
fully formulated the finite world is not admitted to exist save as a
mere illusion. All phenomena are a play--a play without plot or purpose,
which the absolute plays with itself.[18] This is surely transcendent
transcendentalism. One regrets that speculation did not take one step
more, and declare that the illusion was itself illusory. Then we should
have gone round the circle, and returned to _sensus communis_. We must
be pardoned if we seem to speak disrespectfully of such fantastic
speculations; we desire rather to speak regretfully of the many
generations of men which successively occupied themselves with such
unprofitable dreams; for this kind of thought is traceable even from
Vedic days. It is more fully developed in the Upanishads. In them occurs
the classical sentence so frequently quoted in later literature, which
declares that the absolute being is the "one [thing] without a
second."[19]

[Sidenote: The Gita.]
The book which perhaps above all others has molded the mind of India in
more recent days is the Bhagavad Gita, or Song of the Holy One. It is
written in stately and harmonious verse, and has achieved the same task
for Indian philosophy as Lucretius did for ancient Epicureanism.[20] It
is eclectic, and succeeds, in a sort of way, in forcing the leading
systems of Indian thought into seeming harmony.

[Sidenote: Intellectual pride.]
Some have thought they could discern in these daring speculations
indications of souls groping after God, and saddened because of the
difficulty of finding him. Were it so, all our sympathies would at once
be called forth. But no; we see in these writings far more of
intellectual pride than of spiritual sadness. Those ancient dreamers
never learned their own ignorance. They scarcely recognized the
limitations of the human mind. And when reason could take them no
farther they supplemented it by dreams and ecstasy until, in the Yoga
philosophy, they rushed into systematized mysticisms and magic far more
extravagant than the wildest _theurgy_ of the degraded Neoplatonism of
the Roman Empire.

A learned writer thus expresses himself:

"The only one of the six schools that seem to recognize the
doctrine of divine providence is the Yoga. It thus seems that the
consistent followers of these systems can have, in their perfected
state, no religion, no action, and no moral character."[2