INTRODUCTION
t8
in the heyday of its youth, as in the times of Plato and
Aristotle, it leaned for support on some other study, as politics
or ethics. I t was theology for the Middle Ages, natural
science for Bacon and Newton, history, politics and sociology
for the nineteenth-century thinkers. In India philosophy
stood on its own legs, and all other studies looked fo it for
inspiration and support. It is the master science guiding
other sciences, without which they tend to become empty and
foolish. The MU1)Qaka Upani
ad speaks of B,ahma
fJi,dya
pr the science of the eternal as the basis of all sciences,
sa1va-vidya-prati$lh4. "Philosophy," says Kautilya, "is
the lamp of all the sciences, the means of performing all
the works, and the support of all the duties." I
Since philosophy is a human effort to comprehend the
problem of the universe, it is subject to the influences of race
and culture. Each nation has its own characteristic mentality,
its particular intellectual bent. ,In all the fleeting centuries
of history, in all the vicissitudes through which India has
passed, a certain marked identity is visible. . It has held
fast to certain psychological traits which constitute its
special heritage, and they will be the characteristic marks
of the Indian people so long as they are privileged to have a
separate existence. Individuality means independence of
growth. It is not necessarily unlikeness. There cannot
be complete unlikeness, since man the world over is the
same, especially so far as the aspects of spirit are concerned.
The variations are traceable to distinctions in age, history
and temperament. They add to the wealth of the world
culture, since there is no royal road to philosophic develop-
ment any more than to any other result worth having. Before
we notice the characteristic features of Indian thought, a
few words may be said about the influence of the West on
Indian thought.
The question is frequently raised whether and to. what
extent Indian thought borrowed its ideas from foreign sources,
such as Greece. Some of the views put forward by Indian
thinkers resemble certain doctrines developed in ancient
Greece, so much that anybody interested in discrediting this
I See I.A., 1918. p. 102. See also B.G., Z. 32.
