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TILE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
the object of philosophy has not been fully understood, for which reason people indulge in it as a mere scholarly pastime. Shakespeare makes one of his characters say to the physician :-- “If thy physics canst not cure me of such erils as the mind is
heir to, Then throw thy physic to the dogs, I'll have none of it."
This applies with full force to the philosopher as well in the West. But in the East the sole purpose of philosophy has been to relieve the suffering of humanity who are victims to those very evils alluded to by Shakespeare. Even in the West certain philosophers, especially the Greeks, imitated their brethren of the East, and tried to unravel the mystery of being. Some of them visited India and other countries and benefited by their learning and wisdom,--a fact which explains the remarkable similarity of thought between the Indian and the Greek systems, and also accounts for the minor differences existing between them. There are always more sides than one of looking at a thing; and when two persons look at the same thing from different points of view, their observations must differ, until one of them is able to make direct observations from both sides. Besides, the medium we possess for expressing our ideas is so defective that it is impossible to avoid all chances of error. One man may use a word to express a certain idea, another may express the same sense by a different word, meaning not to differ from the first, and yet a casual reader may be puzzled by the variation, and may even find it difficult to reconcile the two
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