A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

432 THE MISSION OF THE VEDANTA.he whom you have chosen is the greatest of the prophets,the greatest of all the Avataras ;there is no harm in thjit,but you. must keep on a firm background of eternally^ trueprinciples. The strange fact is here, that the power of ouri nations has been holding good with us only so f.-u- MSthey are illustrations of the principles in the Vedcts. Theglory of Sri Krishna is that he has been the best preacherof o 1religion of principles and the best c commentator on the Vedanta that ever lived in IndiatTil-.* second claim of the Vedanta upon the attention ofthe world is that, of all the scriptures in the world, it Lthe one scripture the teaching of which is in entire harmony with the results that have been attained by the modernscientific investigations of external nature. Two minds inthe dim past of history,, cognate to teach other in form,kinship and sympathy, started, being placed in differentcircumstances, for the same goal through different routes.The one was the ancient Hindu mind and the other theancient Greek mind. The latter started in search ofthat goal beyond by analysing the external world.The former started by analysing the internal world.And even through the various vicissitudes of theirhistory it is easy to make out these two vibrationslight tending to produce similar echoes from thegoal beyond. It seems cleai- that the conclusions of modernmaterialistic science can be acceptable, harmoniously withtheir religion, only to the Vedantins, or Hindus as theycall them. It seems clear that modern materialism canhold its own and at the same time, approach spirituality bytaking up the conclusions of the Vedanta.. It seems to us,and to all who care to know, that the conclusions ofmodern science are the very conclusions the Vedantareached ages ago ;only in modern science they are written