xliv
tained notions similar to those of Haas, d'Alviella and others, but after his intimate acquaintance with the literature of the Hindus he had to change or modify his views. We
among scholarly circles, in the West. It would be perhaps too much to complain that classical scholars, for instance, should have a decided repugnance to admit any actual influence on Greek thought or institutions as having been exercised by the thinkers of the East, however ungrudgingly that privilege is conceded to Egypt. Personally I think that they are quite in the right in maintaining that such an influence is, except in a few instances, at present entirely unproven. But surely there are many points of analogy which are most instructive, and suggestive at least of more than an analogical connection; points that may throw light upon the natural course of the evolution of human conceptions and, in doing so, help to throw light on dark corners of the history of that culture out of which our own has arisen. It is a common saying that it is impossible to know any one language well without at the same time knowing another, and I venture to think that a similar remark holds good of the history of religion or of ethics, or of institutions, or of philosophy."
"I know of men who could not construe a line of Sanskrit, and who speak and write of your ancient literature, religion, and philosophy as if they knew a great deal more than any of your best Srotriyas. How often you must have smiled on reading such books! The idea that anything could come from the East equal to European thought, or even superior, never enters the mind of these writers, and hence their utter inability to understand and appreciate what is really valuable in Oriental literature. There is no problem of philosophy and religion that has not
