f Western savants.

I argue for a study of those teachings which, though hoary with age, are
today all-important as the foundation upon which the many-aisled temple of
Hinduism is built and (if I may change the figure) as the cement which
binds the whole structure together.

A few years ago it was generally thought that Brahmanism was little else
than the insane ravings of well-meaning, but unguided, or, worse still,
misguided, denizens of darkness; the whole literature was considered a
mass of intellectual and moral rubbish. How much the verdict of Western
scholars upon this subject has changed during the last quarter of a
century I need not mention. All men who have investigated the subject give
today unstinted praise to the heart and intellect of those sages who
produced much of the ancient religious literature of India. They will not
endorse the statement of the great German philosopher who exclaimed, "In
the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that
of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life--it will be the solace
of my death." And yet many claim that its truths are numerous and
spiritually helpful. Hopkins writes(7):--"The sincerity, the fearless
search of the Indic Sages for truth, their loftiness of thinking, all
these will affect the religious student of every clime and age, though the
fancied result of their thinking may pass without effect over a modern
mind." And Barth truly remarks(8):--"The religion of India has not only
given birth to Buddhism and produced, to its own credit, a code of
precepts which is not inferior to any other; but in the poetry which they
have inspired there is at times a delicacy and bloom of moral sentiment
which the Western world has never seen outside of Christianity. Nowhere
else, perhaps, do we meet with an equal wealth of fine sentences." Of
their intellectual acumen Dr. Matheson says: "It is not too much to say
that the mind of the West, with all its undoubted impulses towards the
progress of humanity, has never exhibited such an intense amount of
intellectual force as is to be found in the religious speculations of
India.... These have been the cradle of all Western speculations; and
wheresoever the European mind has risen into heights of philosophy, it has
done so because the Brahman has been the pioneer. There is no intellectual
problem in the West which had not its earliest discussion in the East; and
there is no modern solution of that