________________
770
Presidential Address
enjoined on the Brahmana that when his hair is white and his skin is wrinkled, and he has looked on his son's son, he shall turn his back on his home and his secular avocations, and withdrawing to the forest devote the remainder of his days to meditation on the nature of the Infinite Being and to the consummation of his deliverance by absorption in God." In the West there has not been the same sense of the sacred vocation of old age, and it has ever come to be the common opinion that the man is wisest who goes on with his accustomed work as if he were destined to live for ever, and happiest who is surprised by death when engrossed in his worldly concerns. While the Brāhmaṇa was called on to renounce everything, 'living without a fire, without a house, subsisting on roots and fruit,' Lord Gifford attached to his lectureship a very handsome endowment, " Now I ask, by the way, is it not nobler to be one of the nine Yogisvaras of the 'Bhagavata' Purana than to be a Gifford Lecturer ? However, this is not to underrate the immense service which the foundation is rendering to the cause of enlightened religion.
III
Brother-Delegates, I am afraid I have tried your patience too long in vindicating a special feature of Indian Philosophy which is its union with Poetry and Religion. Let me now pass on to that portion of Indian thought which is more generally acknowledged to be philosophy proper.
The History of the Darsanas has been hitherto regarded not as a history in the sense of an evolving
