India: What can it teach us?: A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge — John Shaqi
India: What can it teach us?: A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of CambridgeMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Philosophy
India: What can it teach us?: A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
India; Sanskrit literature -- History and criticism; Vedas
We may thus be prepared to receive what India can teach us. In her
classic dialect, the Sanskrit, we may read with what success the
children of the men who journeyed from the ancient Aryan Home into the
Punjâb and Aryavartta have ventured "to look inward upon themselves,
upward to something not themselves, and to see whether they could not
understand a little of the true purport of that mystery which we call
life upon earth." It was perfectly natural, as well as perfectly
right, that as the beholder caught a glance of the Infinite Beyond,
the image impressed itself upon his sensorium, as would be the case
from looking at the sun, and he would as a result perceive that
Infinite in all that he looked upon. Thus to the Sanskrit-speaking
Aryan, as to the enlightened mind of to-day, not to see it was utter
blindness. What we call science, law, morality, religion, was in his
view pervaded alike throughout by this concept of Divine presence, or
else it would have been less than a dream that had not come to the
awaking. He was a follower of the light, not from the senses or the
logical understanding, but from the eternal world. Let us not dwell on
any darker shade of the picture. Clouds are dark to those who are
beneath them; but on the upper side, where the sun shines, they glow
with golden splendor. Let us be willing to contemplate India
fraternally, and upon that side where the radiance of the Divine sheds
a refulgent illumination.
ALEXANDER WILDER.
NEWARK, N. J., May 14th, 1883.
* * * * *
INDIA.
LECTURE I.
WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US?
When I received from the Board of Historical Studies at Cambridge the
invitation to deliver a course of lectures, specially intended for the
candidates for the Indian Civil Service, I hesitated for some time,
feeling extremely doubtful whether in a few public discourses I could
say anything that would be of real use to them in passing their
examinations. To enable young men to pass their examinations seems now
to have become the chief, if not the only object of the universities;
and to no class of students is it of greater importance to pass their
examinations, and to pass them well, than to the candidates for the
Indian Civil Service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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