We seem to be arriving at a time when, with the circling of our knowledge of the globe, a great synthesis of all human thought on the ancient and ever-engrossing problem of Creation is quite naturally and inevitably taking shape. The world-old wisdom of the Upanishads, with their profound and impregnable doctrine of the universal Self, the teachings of Buddha or of Lao-tzu, the poetic insight of Plato, the inspired sayings of Jesus and Paul, the speculations of Plotinus, or of the Gnostics, and the wonderful contributions of later European thought, from the fourteenth century mystics down through Spinoza, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Ferrier and others; all these, combining with the immense mass of material furnished by modern physical and biological Science, and Psychology, are preparing a great birth, as it were; and out of this meeting of elements is already arising the dim outline of a philosophy which must surely dominate human thought for a long period.
A new philosophy we can hardly expect, or wish for; since indeed the same germinal thoughts of the Vedic authors come all the way down history even to Schopenhauer and Whitman, inspiring philosophy after philosophy and religion after religion. But it is only to-day that our knowledge of the world enables us to recognize this immense consensus; and it is only to-day that Science, with its huge conquests in the material plane, is able to provide—for these world-old principles—somewhat of a new form, and so wonderful a garment of illustration and expression as it does.
The philosophy of the Upanishads was nothing if not practical; and the same has been said by every great religion of its own teaching. (“Do the will and ye shall know of the doctrine.”) It is not sufficient to study and investigate the art of Creation as an external problem; we have to learn and to practise the art in ourselves. So alone will it become vital and really intelligible to us. The object of the present volume is to show something of both these sides, the speculative and the practical.
