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SAMAYASARA
version fell into the hands of Schopenhauer, who by personal temperament and philosophic tradition was eminently fit to appreciate the philosophy of the Upanishads. It was he who first popularised its study among German students. He himself used them as a Bible “It has been the solace of my life and I hope It will be the same in my death.” The Upanishads peculiarly appealed to the German students, because thcy themselves at the time of Schopenhauet wete in possession of a philosophy quite analogous to this
Deussen on the Upanishads.—Speaking of the concepts of the Upanishads in their relation to Philosophy, Deussen writes: “The whole of religion and philosophy has its root in the thought that the universe is only appearance and not icality. This fact that philosophy has from the earliest times sought to determine a first principle of the universe proves that it started from a more or less clear consciousness that the entire Empirical reality is not the true essence of things, that in Kant's words is only appearance and not the thing-in-itself. There have been three occasions on which philosophy has advanced in a clearer comprehension of its recurring task and of the solution demanded. First in India in the Upanishads, again in Greece in the philosophy of Parmenides and Plato and finally at a more recent time in the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer” Deussen adds “All great religious teachers therefore, whether in carlicr or later tunes, nay even all those at the present day whose religion rests upon faith are alike unconsciously followers of Kant: The new testament and the Upanishads, the two noblest products of the religious consciousness of mankind are found, when we sound their deeper meaning, to be nowhere in irreconcilable contradiction, but in a manner the most attractive serve to clucidate and complete one another." The purport of these words of Deussen is that Kant's philosophical agnosticism is the last word in philosophy and that a religion not associated with Kantian metaphysics is far from being a genuine religion. It places the philosophy of the Upanishads on a par with that of Kant and Plato. If he wants to express his admiration of the philosophy of the Upanishads by comparing it to his own national philo
