h, beyond doubt, gives utterance to the highest conception of
Brahman's nature that Sa/nd/ilya's thought was able to reach, is by
/S/a@nkara and his school again declared to form part of the lower vidya
only, because it represents Brahman as possessing qualities. It is,
according to their terminology, not j/n/ana, i.e. knowledge, but the
injunction of a mere upasana, a devout meditation on Brahman in so far
as possessing certain definite attributes such as having light for its
form, having true thoughts, and so on. The Ramanujas, on the other hand,
quote this text with preference as clearly describing the nature of
their highest, i.e. their one Brahman. We again allow that /S/a@nkara is
free to deny that any text which ascribes qualities to Brahman embodies
absolute truth; but we also again remark that there is no reason
whatever for supposing that Sa/nd/ilya, or whoever may have been the
author of that vidya, looked upon it as anything else but a statement of
the highest truth accessible to man.

We return to the question as to the true philosophy of the Upanishads,
apart from the systems of the commentators.--From what precedes it will
appear with sufficient distinctness that, if we understand by philosophy
a philosophical system coherent in all its parts, free from all
contradictions and allowing room for all the different statements made
in all the chief Upanishads, a philosophy of the Upanishads cannot even
be spoken of. The various lucubrations on Brahman, the world, and the
human soul of which the Upanishads consist do not allow themselves to be
systematised simply because they were never meant to form a system.
/S/a/nd/ilya's views as to the nature of Brahman did not in all details
agree with those of Yaj/n/avalkya, and Uddalaka differed from both. In
this there is nothing to wonder at, and the burden of proof rests
altogether with those who maintain that a large number of detached
philosophic and theological dissertations, ascribed to different
authors, doubtless belonging to different periods, and not seldom
manifestly contradicting each other, admit of being combined into a
perfectly consistent whole.

The question, however, assumes a different aspect, if we take the terms
'philosophy' and 'philosophical system,' not in the strict sense in
which /S/a@nkara and other commentators are not afraid of taking them,
but as implying merely an agreement in certain fundamental features. In
this latter sense we may ind