It is curious that both the sacred texts—­the Veda and the Koran—­to which this supernatural position is ascribed should be collections of obviously human, incongruous, and often insignificant documents connected with particular occasions, and in no way suggesting or claiming that they are anterior to the ordinary life of man on earth.  It is still more extraordinary that systems of philosophy should profess to base themselves on such works.  But in reality Hindu metaphysicians are not more bound by the past than their colleagues in other lands.  They do not take scripture and ask what it means, but evolve their own systems and state that they are in accordance with it.  Sometimes scripture is ignored in the details of argument.  More often the metaphysician writes a commentary on it and boldly proves that it supports his views, though its apparent meaning may be hostile.  It is clear that many philosophic commentaries have been written not because the authors really drew their inspiration from the Upanishads or Bhagavad-gita but because they dared not neglect such important texts.  All the Vedantist schools labour to prove that they are in harmony not only with the Upanishads but with the Brahma-sutras.  The philosophers of the Sankhya are more detached from literature but though they ignore the existence of the deity, they acknowledge the Veda as a source of knowledge.  Their recognition, however, has the air of a concession to Brahmanic sentiment.  Isolated theories of the Sankhya can be supported by isolated passages of the Upanishads, but no impartial critic can maintain that the general doctrines of the two are compatible.  That the Brahmans should have been willing to admit the Sankhya as a possible form of orthodoxy is a testimony both to its importance and to their liberality.

It is remarkable that the test of orthodoxy should have been the acceptance of the authority of the Veda and not a confession of some sort of theism.  But on this the Brahmans did not insist.  The Vedanta is truly and intensely pantheistic or theistic, but in the other philosophies the Supreme Being is either eliminated or plays a small part.  Thus while works which seem to be merely scientific treatises (like the Nyaya) set before themselves a religious object, other treatises, seemingly religious in scope, ignore the deity.  There is a strong and ancient line of thought in India which, basing itself on the doctrine of Karma, or the inevitable consequences of the deed once done, lays stress on the efficacy of ceremonies or of asceticism or of knowledge without reference to a Supreme Being because, if he exists, he does not interfere with the workings of Karma, or with the power of knowledge to release from them.