India’s influence as an intellectual factor in modern European thought has thus far been of the slightest.  Her modern deism is borrowed, and her pantheism is not scientific.  Sanskrit scholars are rather fond of citing the pathetic words of Schopenhauer, who, speaking of the Upanishads, says that the study of these works “has been the solace of my life; it will be the solace of my death”; but Schopenbauer knew the Upanishads only in a very free form of translation, and it can scarcely have been the loose philosophy so much as the elevated spirit of these works that solaced the unphilosophical bitterness of his life.  This general impression will doubtless continue to be felt by all that study the best works of Brahmanism.  The sincerity, the fearless search of the Indic sages for truth, their loftiness of thinking, all these will affect the religious student of every clime and age, though the fancied result of their thinking may pass without effect over a modern mind.  For a philosophy that must be orthodox can never be definitive.  But, if one turn from the orthodox completed systems to the tentative beginnings of the Ved[=a]nta (in the Upanishads), he finds as the basis of this earlier speculation only an a priori meta-physical assumption.[35]

Apart from philosophical influence there is at present more or less interest in Europe and America in Indic superstition and spiritualism, and half-educated people will doubtless be influenced for some time to come by Mah[=a]tmaism and Yogism, just as they are moved by native seance-spirits and mesmerism.  Blavatskyism (which represents no phase of Buddhism) will always find disciples among the ignorant classes, especially in an agnostic or atheistic environment, so that one should attribute the mental attitude of such minds to their lack of culture rather than to India; for if Mah[=a]tmaism had not been discovered, they would still profess it under another name.  Buddhism, too, apart from Hartmann, may be said to have some influence on popular thought, yet it is a very unreal Buddhism, which amounts only to the adoption of an altruistic creed.  But we know of none among the many that profess themselves ‘Buddhists’ who has really adopted Buddhistic principles, and but few who even understand those principles.  A bar to the adoption of Buddhism lies in the implicit necessity of renunciation for all who would become perfected, and in the explicit doctrine of karma in its native form.  The true Buddhist is not satisfied to be a third-class Buddhist, that is, simply a man that seeks to avoid lust, anger, and ignorance.  He will become a second-class Buddhist and renounce the world, give up all family ties and earthly affections, and enter the Order.  But he will not do this, thinking that he is thereby to become perfect.  For, to be a first-class Buddhist, he must get wisdom.  He must believe in the impermanence of everything, and in the awful continuation of his own karma