SOURCE: American Mercury, Vol. 12, No. 46, October, 1927, p. 253.

In the following essay, Mencken subjects Hindu Mysticism to the same skeptical treatment as fundamentalist Christianity—and finds both wanting.

Here is a little book [ Hindu Mysticism] by the professor of philosophy at Presidency College, Calcutta, which offers salubrious reading to those persons who still labor under the delusion that the Hindus are privy to a store of wisdom hidden from Western eyes, and that their religion is, in some vague way, more refined and civilized than Christianity. Professor Dasgupta, it appears, shares that notion himself, but he is too honest a man to conceal the facts that blow it up. Those facts he arranges neatly in six chapters. They show conclusively that the theology of even the most enlightened Hindus is almost as barbaric and nonsensical as the theology of the Swedenborgians or Seventh Day Adventists. It is grounded firmly...