er parts of the
Vedic canon and sometimes form an appendix to a Brahmana so that the
topics discussed change gradually from ritual to philosophy[179]. It
would be excessive to say that this arrangement gives the genesis of
speculation in ancient India, for some hymns of the Rig Veda are purely
philosophic, but it illustrates a lengthy phase of Brahmanic thought in
which speculation could not disengage itself from ritual and was also
hampered by physical ideas. The Upanishads often receive such epithets
as transcendental and idealistic but in many passages--perhaps in the
majority--they labour with imperfect success to separate the spiritual
and material. The self or spirit is sometimes identified in man with the
breath, in nature with air, ether or space. At other times it is
described as dwelling in the heart and about the size of the thumb but
capable of becoming smaller, travelling through the veins and showing
itself in the pupil: capable also of becoming infinitely large and one
with the world soul. But when thought finds its wings and soars above
these material fancies, the teaching of the Upanishads shares with
Buddhism the glory of being the finest product of the Indian intellect.

In India the religious life has always been regarded as a journey and a
search after truth. Even the most orthodox and priestly programme admits
this. There comes a time when observances are felt to be vain and the
soul demands knowledge of the essence of things. And though later
dogmatism asserts that this knowledge is given by revelation, yet a note
of genuine enquiry and speculation is struck in the Vedas and is never
entirely silenced throughout the long procession of Indian writers. In
well-known words the Vedas ask[180] "Who is the God to whom we shall
offer our sacrifice? ... Who is he who is the Creator and sustainer of
the Universe ... whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death?"
or, in even more daring phrases[181], "The Gods were subsequent to the
creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it sprang? He who in
the highest heaven is the overseer of this universe, he knows or even he
does not know." These profound enquiries, which have probably no
parallel in the contemporary literature of other nations, are as time
goes on supplemented though perhaps not enlarged by many others, nor
does confidence fail that there is an answer--the Truth, which when known
is the goal of life. A European is inclined to ask what u