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 228 The Religion of the Veda

arose. In the transition from the nature gods, the legends, the ritual, and the folk-lore practices, to the settled theosophy of later times, many conceptions ﬂit like phantoms across the vision of these specua lators or seers, sometimes not to be heard of a second time. The air is charged with experimental, electric thought. No religious or philosophic literature of ancient times has buried so many “lost children " as the Hindu in the storm and stress period that ends with the Upanishads. No peeple of thinkers have started to rear so many ediﬁces of thought to be abandoned without regret or scruple when found wanting in the end. They have left behind them many a ruin which they might well enough have ﬁnished, and within which the religious thinkers of many another nation, less exacting, would have cheerfully settled upon as permanent and congenial habitations. Philip Sidney’s saying: “Reason can: not show itself more reasonable than to leave off reasoning on things above reason,” does not hold with the Hindus. They would certainly have stigu matised such sweet reasonableness as the philosophy of sloth, if they had ever heard of it. On the contrary, the old questions of whence, why, and whither fascinate and enthrall their thoughts from the time of the Vedic Rishis to the present day. Remarkable as this may sound, we have really no

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