The Religions of India c19.62.3

c19.62.3

We admire the spirit of the teachers in the Upanishads, but we have very little respect for the logical ability of any early Hindu teachers; that is to say, there is very little of it to admire. The doctors of the Upanishad philosophy were poets, not dialecticians. Poetry indeed waned in the extreme south, and no spirited or powerful literature ever was produced there, unless it was due to foreign influence, such as the religious poetry of Ramaism and the Tamil Sittars. But in secondary subtlety and in the marking of distinctions, in classifying and analyzing on dogmatic premises, as well as in the acceptance of hearsay truths as ultimate verities — we do not see any fundamental disparity in these regards between the mind of the Northwest and that of the Southeast; and what superficial difference exists goes to the credit of Buddhism. For if one must have dogma it is something to have system, and while precedent theosophy was based on the former it knew nothing of the latter. Moreover, in Buddhism there is a greater intellectual vigor than in any phase of Brahmanism (as distinct from Vedism). To cast off not only gods but soul, and more, to deny the moral efficacy of asceticism, this was a leap into the void, to appreciate the daring of which one has but to read himself into the priestly literature of Buddha’s rivals, both heterodox and orthodox. We see then in Buddhism neither a debauched moral type, nor a weakened intellectuality.