The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.57

v2.c41.57

It is in fact hopeless to seek any real derivation of Greek philosophy from India: the alleged travels of Pythagoras and others to India are foolish and late inventions, of no real value whatever. The efforts made, and often most uncritically accepted, to find the influence of Pythagorean views derived from India on Plato is hopeless: the fact that Plato believes in the bondage of the soul in matter and in its immortality and transmigration is made the ground for the belief that he is indebted to the Sāṁkhya philosophy by Barthélemy St. Hilaire,⁴ a view which would be comic if it were not endorsed by the authority of Hopkins. The broad fact which should be recognized is that, the nature of the problem of existence being the same everywhere, and the mind of man not being essentially different in the India of the Upaniṣads and the Greece of the Pythagoreans and Plato, the results of the philosophy tend to resemble each other in diverse points.¹ But in philosophy it is not the results which matter: the solution of the riddle of the universe is, we may feel assured, reserved for no mortal, and the comparative value of two philosophies, even when the results in the mere sphere of theory as opposed to practical philosophy are similar, depends in the main on the methods adopted. In this respect the discrepancy between the Upaniṣads and Plato is sufficient to make us realize from what different foundations the structures of the two edifices of thought were raised.