A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

570 DR. PAUL DEUSSEN.mark will become at once evident on comparing the depth&.xd solidity as well as the unselfishness and the earnestness of purpose of India s ancient scholarship with theresults attained by our modern Indian Universities. Unselfish and genuine zeal for real scholarship and honestearnest thought must againbecome dominant in the lifeof our countrymen,ifthey are ever to risg to occupyamong nations a rank worthy of their own historic past.It is this iiind of desire for knowledge which has nfadeGermany what she is now, one of the foremost if notthe foremost, among the nations of the world.Yes, the desire to learn Sanskrit was strong in theheart of this German student. It was a long up-hillwork this learning of Sanskrit ;with him too it was tilesameworld-old story of successful scholars and their hardwork, their privations and their indomitable energy, andalso the same glorious conclusion of a really heroic achievement. He thus achieved success ;and now not onlyEurope but all India knows this man, Paul Deussen, whois the Professor of Philosophy in the University of KieLI have seen Prefessors of Sanskrit in America and inEurope. Some of them are very sympathetic towards-Vedantic thought. I admire their intellectual acumen andtheir lives of unselfish labour. But Paul Deussen or, ashe prefers to be called in Sanskrit, Deva-Sena and the^veteran Max Muller have impressed me as being thetruest friends of India and Indian thought. It willalways be among the most pleasing episodes in my life,my first visit to this ardent Vedantist at Kiel, his gentlewife who travelled with him in India, and his littledaughter, the darling of his heart, and our travelling togetherthrough Germany and Holland to London and the pleasantmeetings we had in and. about London.