X11
Charles Johnston writes:</Now here counles in the moral of the
tale. It is axiomatic-at least with the modern Europeans; —-that
modern Europeans are the most important and admirable persons
in the world; that their achievnuments are to the achievements of
of other folk as wine is to water, as sunlight to moonlight. It is
instructive, therefore, for us to learn that the last and highest
achievement of the best intellect of modern Europe, and the only
achievement which is the outconne of pure reason and serious
thought, brings us exactly to where we were in the old Indian
days, when silver-tongued Shankara taught the final lessons of the
Vedanta.philosophy. Every conclusion, even the very phrases of
our best modern thought, have their counterparts in that great
teacher's work, and we are constrained to say, the Indian expres
sion of the ultimate truth has a far finer quality of style than the
modern, for Shankara says, the last reality is, not the reverted
Will-toward-life or some hypothetical Force, but our own inmost
and eternal selves; and we can easily see how much higher an
expression, from the point of view of power and beauty, Shankar's
is than .Kant's or Schopenhauers.'
If the phenomenal knowledge that connes to us through the
senses tends to withdraw us from the search for the underlying
principles of existence, we may well term this phenomenal know
ledge AziyaIgnorance, not because it is valueless in itself, but
because of its self-centering hostility to the higher kind of know
ledge. 'The Vedantin confines his attention to the highest pro
blems of life; and views with disfavour whatever tends to obscure
the philosophic vision. And the phenomenon has this tendency,
and receives hence such names as Auidly, ilusion, &c. The
absolute superiority of philosophy, if once admitted, justifies fully
the language adopted by the Vedantin in respect of the material
concerns of life. These concerns are paramount, it is true, to
physical science and to us as Dorlay men. But this is no reason
why we should forget that the concerns of science are after
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