436 Colonel Kennepy on the Véddnta System. 
reader. Unusually numerous, therefore, as these quotations no doubt are, 
they will enable the peruser of this paper to form his own judgment with 
respect to the point in question : namely, whether the Véddnta is a system(a) 
of material pantheism or emanation, or whether it is not one which has 
attained to the ne plus ultra of transcendentalism. In the latter case as it 
is unquestionably founded on the Védas, it must have been invented at least 
three thousand years ago; and, consequently, it cannot but excite surprise 
that man atthat remote period should have been capable of entering into 
such abstruse speculations, and of forming conceptions to the sublimity of 
which no philosopher of Europe has ever attained. Hence Sir Witi1am 
Jones hesitated not to remark: I have not sufficient evidence on the sub- 
ject to profess a belief in the doctrine of the Véddénta, which human reason 
alone could, perhaps, neither fully demonstrate nor fully disprove; but it 
is manifest that nothing can be farther removed from impiety, than a system 
wholly built on the purest devotion.”* 
Bombay, 5th December 1831. Vans Kennepy. 
* Works, Vol. 1. p. 166. 
NOTE. 
(a) Ir will be evident from what has been said in pp. 412-414 that the learned writer is 
under a misconception regarding Mr. Cotesrooke’s idea of the Véddnta system of phi- 
losophy. With respect to the views expressed in the Parmenides of Prato, it may be 
said that it was owing to the form of their investigation not being sufficiently general, that 
the Pythagoreans, and their followers the Platonists, could never arrive at truth in their 
speculations on the nature of the Deity. Any contemplation of his essence with reference 
to number, shape, size, quality, or proportion must lead to fallacious results, and can 
only tend to confound him with his works. ‘To say therefore that the Deity is zo » is to 
say that he is concrete, that is, that he is material. The mystic notions of Pythagoras 
about number and fire ever misled him and his followers in their search of truth. It is 
undoubtedly true that when we contrast the Deity with the gods of polytheism we 
call him one; and we must do the same when we speak of him or his attributes in a 
theological sense as the moral governor of the universe; but the case is altogether 
different when we philosophize upon the nature of his essence in the abstract. 
G. C. H. 
ee ee eel es 
