The Philosophy of the Upanishads c4.5

c4.5

So significant a phenomenon deserved and demanded a more comprehensive treatment than it had yet obtained. And my hope is to remove in some measure the cloud which hitherto has obscured this subject, and to exhibit order and consistency in place of the confused mass of contradictory conceptions, which alone had been supposed to exist. If the result is not a uniform and unified system, there is yet found a regular historical development, the key to which is an original, abrupt and daring idealism; and this in its further progress by a twofold concession, on the one hand to traditional beliefs, and on the other to the empirical prepossessions natural to us all, was gradually developed into that which we, adopting Western phraseology if not always in a Western sense, call pantheism, cosmogonism, theism, atheism (Sâṅkhya), and deism (Yoga). Chap. ix., “The Unreality of the Universe” (pp. 226–239), which by its paradoxical title attracts attention and provokes contradiction, or the final survey at the close of the book (p. 396 ff.), may well serve as a first introduction to these oriental teachings.