Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/66

 their antiquity occupied the debate of the two brothers, and the journal goes on,—

We will not inquire into the antiquity of this Scripture. One might as well investigate the chronology of light and heat. Let the sun shine. Menu understood the matter best when he said: "Those persons best know the divisions of days and nights, who understand that the day of Brahma, which endures to the end of a thousand such ages, gives rise to virtuous exertions; and that his night endures as long as his day." The true India is neither now nor then, East nor West. Who has not lived under the Mussulman and Tartar dynasty? You will not have to penetrate far into the summer day to come to these. In the New England noontide are more materials for Oriental history than the Sanscrit contains. In every man s brain is the Sanscrit. Was not Asia mapped there before it was in any geography? The Vedas and their Angas are not so ancient as serene and deliberate thought. The mind contemplates them as Brahma his scribe. [18]