428 Colonel Kennepy on the Véddnta System. 
any thing unworthy of God.”* ‘TirepMANN expresses the same opinion 
in these words: ‘PLorinus teaches gross Spinozism, when he affirms that 
all things are parts of the divine nature, and allows that this is the 
first matter, which through innumerable changes is exhibited to us in count- 
less forms. He teaches refined Spinozism, when he considers God as the 
logical subject of the multitudinous phenomena that come within our 
experience, and when he endeavours to derive all our notions of sensible 
objects, from ideas belonging to the understanding.”’t 
From the preceding remarks it will also appear, that although Sir Wir- 
L1AM Jongs has, in his ‘‘ Essay on the Philosophy of the Asiatics,” given a pretty 
accurate account of the Véddnta, his observations respecting it, contained in 
his “ Essay on the Mystical Poetry of the Hindis and Persians,” are totally 
inapplicable to this system. ‘The beauty of the passage, to which I par- 
ticularly object, will perhaps excuse the length of the following quotation : 
“If these two passages were translated into Sanscrit and Persian, I am 
confident that the Véddntis and Sifis would consider them as an epitome 
of their common system ; for they concur in believing that the souls of 
men differ infinitely in degree, but not at all in kind, from the divine spirit, 
of which they are particles, and in which they will ultimately be absorbed ; 
that the spirit of God pervades the universe, always immediately present to 
his work, and consequently always in substance; that he alone is perfect 
benevolence, perfect truth, perfect beauty ; that the love of him alone is 
real and genuine love, while that of all other objects is absurd and illusory ; 
that the beauties of nature are faint resemblances, like images in a mirror, 
of the divine charms; that, from eternity without beginning, to eternity 
without end, the supreme benevolence is occupied in bestowing happiness, 
or the means of attaining it; that men can only attain it by performing 
their part of the primal covenant between them and the Creator; that 
nothing has a pure absolute existence but mind or spirit; that material 
substances, as the ignorant call them, are no more than gay pictures pre- 
sented continually to our minds by the sempiternal artist; that we must 
beware of attachment to such phantoms, and attach ourselves exclusively 
to God, who truly exists in us as we exist solely in him; that we retain, 
* Historia Critica Philosophia, tom II. p. 428. 
+ Trepmann’s Geist der Spekulativen Philosophie, vol. III. p. 429. 
