A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

228 THE ABSOLUTE AND MANIFESTATION.sand years after his death a similar state of things happened the ; mobs, and masses, and all sorts of races, had beenconverted to Buddhism, and they were much given to thesephilosophical ideas, but most of these people were verylow ; they had all sorts of peculiarities ; yet theyall became very clean and good people and took up the philosophy at once. But it was only for a few years. Thenthey brought their gods, and devils, and hobgoblins, outagain, and a tremendous hotch-potch was made of Buddhism in India. Then again came Materialism, license tothe higher classes, and superstition to the lower, whenSankaracharya arose, and he revivified once more theVedanta philosophy. He made it a rationalistic philosophy. In the Upanishads the arguments are very obscure.By Buddha the moral side of the philosophy was laid stressupon, and by Sankaracharya the intellectual side. It hasbeen worked out and rationalised and placed before men.Just such a state of things is in Europe to-day. You maypray all the world over for the salvation of these sceptics,but they do not come, they want reason. So, once morethe salvation of Europe depends on a rationalistic religion,and this is the only one the non-duality, the Oneness,the idea of the Impersonal God that ever had any holdon intellectual people. It comes whenever religion seemsto disappear, and irreligion seems to prevail, and that ishow it has taken ground in Europe and America, just forthat reason. One thing more has to be added to it. Inthe old Upanishads there is grand poetry ; they were poets:just as Plato says, inspiration comes unto people throughpoetry, it seemed as if these poets were raised above humanity to show these truths through poetry. They neverpreached, nor philosophised, nor wrote. Strains of musiccame out of them. In Buddha we bad the great, universal