A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v1.c9.s1.129

v1.c9.s1.129

been a subject of deep and anxious thought among your ancient and modern thinkers. We in the West have done some good work too, and I do not write to depreciate the achievements of the Hellenic and Teutonic mind. But I know that on some of the highest problems of human thought the East has shed more light than the West, and by and by, depend on it, the West will have to acknowledge it. There is a very able article in the last number of the *Edinburgh Review* (Jan. 1881), on Dr. Caird's 'Philosophy of Religion.' Dr. Caird is a representative man in England, and more familiar than most Englishmen with the solid work of modern German philosophers. And what is the last result at which Dr. Caird arrives, and of which even the *Edinburgh Review* approves? Almost literally the same as the doctrine of the Upanishads! Dr. Caird writes: 'It is just in this renunciation of self that I truly gain myself; for whilst in one sense we give up self to live the universal and absolute life of reason, yet that to which we thus surrender ourselves is in reality our truer self.' And again: 'The knowledge and love of God is the giving up of all thoughts and feelings that belong to me as a mere individual self, and the identification of my thoughts and being with that which is above me, yet in me—the universal or absolute self, which is not mine or yours, but in which all intelligent beings Those who attempt to prove that India owes her civilisation—or at any rate such advance and progress in the arts and sciences which make civilisation worth the name—to Hellenic influence seem to be only one degree removed from a Dugald Stewart.