The attempt to construct a world on general principles was neither peculiarly bold nor peculiarly new. The way was prepared by the idea of the world-soul as the origin and essence of the gods and the world, and the path was opened for a constructive philosophy, developing the world out of ideas and thoughts by this abstract single deity existing beside and above the plurality of mythological forms, the exaltation of the saints above the gods, and the consequent degradation of the latter, the perpetual suspension of the natural order of things by the transcendental and mystical world of the gods and saints, the removal of the boundaries between heaven and earth, and the constant confusion of the two worlds. After this, there was nothing remarkable in putting abstract ideas in the place of the gods, and removing entirely the distinction between the transcendental world and the world of sense. In fact, the philosophy of the Indians is, in the first instance, nothing but the dogmatism of the Brahmans translated into abstractions--nothing but scholasticism, and their philosophical ethics no less than their religious require the liberation from the body. Like all the productions of the Indian mind, with the exception of the Veda, the philosophical systems of the Indians, which arose in the seventh and sixth century B.C., are no longer before us in their original shape. We only possess them in a pointed compendious form which could not have been obtained without long labours, many revisions and reconstructions--and which is in reality of quite recent date. We are not in a position to ascertain the previous or intermediate stages through which the Brahmans passed before they brought their system to a close; here, as everywhere in India, the later forms have completely absorbed their predecessors, the fathers are lost in the children. Hence we can only guess at the original form of these philosophical systems. Still the order of succession, and the essential contents, are fixed not only on internal evidence--by the unalterable progress of development, which cannot be passed over--but also by the fragments of genuine old Indian philosophy contained in the system of Buddha, and in their turn presupposing the existence of certain ideas and points of view.[372]