The Indian philosophy, from the place it holds in the primitive intellectual history of Asia, and from the insight it gives us into the character and peculiar tendency of the human mind in that early period, possesses a high, almost higher, interest than that offered by the beautiful and captivating poetry of this ancient people. However, even the poetry of the Indians contains much that refers to, or bears the stamp of, that peculiar mystical philosophy which we have more than once spoken of. We shall give a more correct and comprehensive idea of the Indian philosophy, if we observe, beforehand, that the six Indian systems which are the most prevalent and the most celebrated, and which, though in many points differing from the Vedas, are not to be regarded as entirely reprehensible or heterodox, the six Indian systems, we say, must be classed in couples, and that the first of each pair treats of the beginning of the subject discussed in the second, and the second contains the development and extension of the principles laid down in the first, or applies those principles to another and higher object of enquiry. In the whole Indian philosophy, there are in fact only three different modes of thought, or three systems absolutely divergent, and we shall give a sufficiently clear idea of these systems, if we say that the first is founded on nature,--the second on thought, or on the thinking self; and the third attaches itself exclusively to the revelation comprised in the Vedas. The first system which seems to be one of the most ancient, bears the name of the Sanchyá philosophy--a name which signifies "the philosophy of Numbers." This is not to be understood in the Pythagorean sense, that numbers are the principle of all things, or according to the very similar principle laid down in the Chinese books of I--King, where we find the eight koua, or the symbolic primary lines of all existence. But the Sanchyá system bears this name because it reckons successively the first principles of all things and of all being to the number of four or five-and-twenty. Among these first principles, it assigns the highest place to Nature--the second to understanding, and by this is meant not merely human understanding, but general and even Infinite Intelligence; so that we may consider this system as a very partial philosophy of Nature; and indeed it has been regarded by some Indian writers as atheistical--a censure in which the learned Englishman, Mr. Colebrooke, (to whose extracts and notices we are indebted for our most precise information on this whole branch of Indian literature)[52] seems almost inclined to concur. This system was however, by no means a coarse materialism, or a denial of the Divinity and of every thing sacred. The doubts expressed in the passages cited by Mr. Colebrooke, are directed far more against the Creation than against God; they regard the motive which could have induced the Supreme Being,