words the Vedas ask[180] “Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? ...  Who is he who is the Creator and sustainer of the Universe ... whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death?” or, in even more daring phrases[181], “The Gods were subsequent to the creation of this universe.  Who then knows whence it sprang?  He who in the highest heaven is the overseer of this universe, he knows or even he does not know.”  These profound enquiries, which have probably no parallel in the contemporary literature of other nations, are as time goes on supplemented though perhaps not enlarged by many others, nor does confidence fail that there is an answer—­the Truth, which when known is the goal of life.  A European is inclined to ask what use can be made of the truth, but for the Hindus divine knowledge is an end and a state, not a means.  It is not thought of as something which may be used to improve the world or for any other purpose whatever.  For use and purpose imply that the thing utilized is subservient and inferior to an end, whereas divine knowledge is the culmination and meaning of the universe, or, from another point of view, the annihilation of both the external world and individuality.  Hence the Hindu does not expect of his saints philanthropy or activity of any sort.

As already indicated, the characteristic (though not the only) answer of India to these questionings is that nothing really exists except God or, better, except Brahman.  The soul is identical with Brahman.  The external world which we perceive is not real in the same sense:  it is in some way or other an evolution of Brahman or even mere illusion.  This doctrine is not universal:  it is for instance severely criticized and rejected by the older forms of Buddhism but its hold on the Indian temperament is seen by its reappearance in later Buddhism where by an astounding transformation the Buddha is identified with the universal spirit.  Though the form in which I have quoted the doctrine above is an epitome of the Vedanta, it is hardly correct historically to give it as an epitome of the older Upanishads.  Their teaching is less complete and uncompromising, more veiled, tentative and allusive, and sometimes cumbered by material notions.  But it is obviously the precursor of the Vedanta and the devout Vedantist can justify his system from it.

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Instead of attempting to summarize the Upanishads it may be well to quote one or two celebrated passages.  One is from the Brihad-Aranyaka[182] and relates how Yajnavalkya, when about to retire to the forest as an ascetic, wished to divide his property between his two wives, Katyayani “who possessed only such knowledge as women possess” and Maitreyi “who was conversant with Brahman.”  The latter asked her husband whether she would be immortal if she owned the whole world.  “No,” he replied, “like the life of the rich would be thy life but there is no hope of immortality.”  Maitreyi said that she had no need of what would not