The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c6.s1.90

c6.s1.90

But the Upanishads do not contain consummation. On the contrary, it is the dear, familiar, earnest human fight, doomed rather to disappointment, which very early Hindus here carry on, to find the secret of the world and the secret of self-conscious man in the hiddenmost folds of their own heart—that is what always holds attention, and that is the endearing quality of these texts. Therefore it is true that, wherever the spirit of the Upanishads has been carried there has sprung up genuine human sympathy, if not final intellectual consent. How this is so I shall hope to show later, at the proper point in the development of the religion of the Veda. But for a good while we shall be occupied with more primitive religious forms, though even through these sounds from time to time, almost in the manner of a Wagnerian *leitmotif*, the clarion note of the leading Hindu idea.