The Vedanta philosophy must here evidently be excepted; for to this Buddhism is as much opposed as to the old Indian religion of the Vedas. Moreover that endless confusion and unintelligibleness of the Buddhist metaphysics, which we have before spoken of, may first be traced to the source of Idealism; though in the progress of that philosophy, many errors have been associated with it--errors even which, in its origin, were most widely removed from it; for every system of error asserts and even believes that it is perfectly consistent, though in none is such consistency found. The basis and prevailing tendency of the Nyayà system (to judge from the extracts with which we have been furnished) is most decidedly ideal. On the whole we can very well conceive that a system of philosophy beginning with the highest act of thought, or proceeding from the thinking self, should run into a course of the most decided and absolute idealism, and that the general inclination of the Indian philosophers to regard the whole external world of sense as vain illusion, and to represent individual personality as absorbed in the God-head by the most intimate union, should have given birth to a complete system of self-delusion--a diabolic self-idolatry, very congenial with the principles of that most ancient of all anti-christian sects--the Buddhists. The Indian authorities cited by Colebrooke, impute to the second part of the Nyayà philosophy a strong leaning to the atomical system. We must here recollect that, as the Indian mind pursued the most various and opposite paths of enquiry even in philosophy, there were besides the six most prevalent philosophic systems, recognized as generally conformable to religion, several others in direct opposition to the established doctrines on the Deity and on religion. Among these the Charvacâ philosophy, which, according to Mr. Colebrooke, comprises the metaphysics of the sect of Jains, deserves a passing notice. It is a system of complete materialism founded on the atomical doctrines, such as Epicurus taught, and which met with so much favour and adhesion in the declining ages of Greece and Rome;--doctrines which several moderns have revived in latter times, but which the profound investigations of natural philosophy, now so far advanced, will scarcely ever permit to take root again.