The Philosophy of the Upanishads c9.s3.t4.1

c9.s3.t4.1

It is a weighty saying, that we must not put new wine into old wine-skins. But this requirement (like so many other of the requirements of Jesus) is on too lofty a plane, too unpractical, takes too little account of human relations and weaknesses, to be capable of more than approximate fulfilment. For it lies in the nature of things, that advance in the religious sphere can never be simple and absolute, but rather that by the side of the newer and better that which is old and dead must ever be still preserved, because it is regarded as something sacred. We shall see later how entirely Christianity was compelled to put its new wine into the old skins. Philosophy pursues a somewhat more untrammelled course. External liberty, however, is still not internal; and even in the course of development of the newer philosophy from Cartesius to Kant and onwards (to the greatest of all the battles for freedom that mankind has ever waged), we are only too often reminded of Goethe's grasshopper "that ever flits, and flitting leaps, and still in the grass sings its old song."