PHILOSOPHY OF HINDUISM 85
The philosophy of the Upanishads can be stated in very few words. It has been well summarized by Huxley [1] when he says that the Upanishd philosophy agreed:—
“In supposing the existence of a permanent reality, or ‘substance’, beneath the shifting series of phenomena, whether of matter or of mind. The substance of the cosmos was’ Brahma’, that of the individual man ‘Atman’; and the latter was separated from the former only, if I may so speak, by its phenomenal envelope, by the casing of sensations, thoughts and desires, pleasures and pains, which make up the illusive phantasmagoria of life. This the ignorant, take for reality; their ‘Atman’ therefore remains eternally imprisoned in delusions, bound by the fetters of desire and scourged by the whip of misery.
Of what use is this philosophy of the Upanishadas ? The philosophy of the Upanishadas meant withdrawal from the struggle for existence by resort to asceticism and a destruction of desire by self mortification.
As a way of life it was condemned by Huxley [2] in scathing terms:—
“No more thorough mortification of the flesh has ever been attempted than that achieved by the Indian ascetic anchorite; no later monachism has so nearly succeeded in reducing the human mind to that condition of impassive quasi-somnambulism, which, but for its acknowledged holiness, might run the risk of being confounded with idiocy.” But the condemanation of the philosophy of the Upanishads is nothing as compared to the denunciation of the same by Lala Hardyal [3] :—
“The Upanishads claim to expound ‘that, by knowing which everything is known’. This quest for ‘the absolute’ is the basis of all the spurious metaphysics of India. The treatises are full of absurd conceits, quaint fancies, and chaotic speculations. And we have not learned that they are worthless. We keep moving in the old rut; we edit and re-edit the old books instead of translating the classics of European social thought. What could Europe be if Frederic Harrison, Brieux, Bebel, Anatole France, Herve, Haekel, Giddings, and Marshall should employ their time in composing treatises on Duns, Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, and discussing the merits of the laws of the Pentateuch and the poetry of Beowulf ? Indian pundits and graduates seem to suffer from a kind of mania for what is effete and antiquated. Thus an institution, established by progressive men, aims at leading our youths through Sanskrit grammar to the Vadas
1 Evolution and Ethics, p. 63.
2 Evolution and Ethics p. 64
3 Modern Review. July. 1912.