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1The philosophy of Kant, then, is the only philosophy with which a thorough acquaintance is directly presupposed in what we have to say here. But if, besides this, the reader has lingered in the school of the divine Plato, he will be so much the better prepared to hear me, and susceptible to what I say. And if, indeed, in addition to this he is a partaker of the benefit conferred by the Vedas, the access to which, opened to us through the Upanishads, is in my eyes the greatest advantage which PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xiil this still young c^tury enjoys over j^revious oiws, becaiiseT~believe that the influence of the Sanscrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival or“G7eeli literature in the fifteenth cenUiry : if, T say, tKe reader has also already received and assimilated the sacred, primitive Indian wisdom, then is he best of all prepared to hear what I have to say to hiin. My work will not speak to him, as to many others, in a strange and even Imstile tongue ; for, if it does not sound too vain, 1 might express the opinion that each one of the individual and dLsconuected aphorisms which make up the Upanishads may be deduced as a conseq^ucnce from the tKought I am going to impart, though the converse, that my thought is to be found in "the Upanishads, is by no means the casa
2But most readers have already grown angry with impatience, and burst into reproaches with difficulty kept back so long. How can I venture to present a book to the public under conditions and demands the first two of which are presumptuous and altogether immodest, and this at a time when there is such a general wealth of special ideas, that in Germany alone they are made common property through the press, in three thousand valuable, original, and absolutely indispensable works every year, besides innumerable periodicals, and even daily papers ; at a time when especially there is not the least deficiency of entirely original and profound philosophers, but in Germany alone there are more of them alive at the same time, than several centuries could formerly boast of in succession to each other? How is one ever to come to the end, asks the indignant reader, if one must set to work upon a book in such a fashion ? xlv PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
3As I have absolutely nothing to advance against these reproaches, I only hope for some small (hanks from such readers for having warned them in time, so that they may not lose an hour over a book which it would be useless to read without complying with the demands that have been made, and which should therefore be left alone, particularly as apart from this we might wager a great deal that it can say nothing to them, but rather that it will always be only pancorum hominum, and must therefore quietly and modestly wait for the few whose unusual mode of thought may find it enjoyable. For apart from the difficulties and the effort which it requires from the reader, what cultured man of this age, whose knowledge has almost reached the august point at which the paradoxical and the false are all one to it, could bear to meet thoughts almost on every page that directly contradict that which he has yet himself established once for all as true and undeniable ? And then, how disagreeably disappointed will many a one be if he finds no mention here of what he believes it is precisely here he ought to look for, because his method of speculation agrees with that of a great living philosopher,' who has certainly written pathetic books, and who only has the trifling weakness that he takes all he learned and approved before his fifteenth year for inborn ideas of the hriman mind. Who could stand all this ? Therefore my advice is simply to lay down the book. But I fear I shall not escape even thus. The reader who has got as far as the preface and been stopped by has bought the book for cash, and asks how he is to be indemnified. My last refuge is now to remind him that he knows how to make use of a book in several ^ V. H. JoooU. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XV
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1The philosophy of Kant, then, is the only philosophy with which a thorough acquaintance is directly presupposed in what we have to say here. But if, besides this, the reader has lingered in the school of the divine Plato, he will be so much the better prepared to hear me, and susceptible to what I say. And if, indeed, in addition to this he is a partaker of the benefit conferred by the Vedas, the access to which, opened to us through the Upanishads, is in my eyes the greatest advantage which PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xiil this still young c^tury enjoys over j^revious oiws, becaiiseT~believe that the influence of the Sanscrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival or“G7eeli literature in the fifteenth cenUiry : if, T say, tKe reader has also already received and assimilated the sacred, primitive Indian wisdom, then is he best of all prepared to hear what I have to say to hiin. My work will not speak to him, as to many others, in a strange and even Imstile tongue ; for, if it does not sound too vain, 1 might express the opinion that each one of the individual and dLsconuected aphorisms which make up the Upanishads may be deduced as a conseq^ucnce from the tKought I am going to impart, though the converse, that my thought is to be found in "the Upanishads, is by no means the casa
2But most readers have already grown angry with impatience, and burst into reproaches with difficulty kept back so long. How can I venture to present a book to the public under conditions and demands the first two of which are presumptuous and altogether immodest, and this at a time when there is such a general wealth of special ideas, that in Germany alone they are made common property through the press, in three thousand valuable, original, and absolutely indispensable works every year, besides innumerable periodicals, and even daily papers ; at a time when especially there is not the least deficiency of entirely original and profound philosophers, but in Germany alone there are more of them alive at the same time, than several centuries could formerly boast of in succession to each other? How is one ever to come to the end, asks the indignant reader, if one must set to work upon a book in such a fashion ? xlv PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
3As I have absolutely nothing to advance against these reproaches, I only hope for some small (hanks from such readers for having warned them in time, so that they may not lose an hour over a book which it would be useless to read without complying with the demands that have been made, and which should therefore be left alone, particularly as apart from this we might wager a great deal that it can say nothing to them, but rather that it will always be only pancorum hominum, and must therefore quietly and modestly wait for the few whose unusual mode of thought may find it enjoyable. For apart from the difficulties and the effort which it requires from the reader, what cultured man of this age, whose knowledge has almost reached the august point at which the paradoxical and the false are all one to it, could bear to meet thoughts almost on every page that directly contradict that which he has yet himself established once for all as true and undeniable ? And then, how disagreeably disappointed will many a one be if he finds no mention here of what he believes it is precisely here he ought to look for, because his method of speculation agrees with that of a great living philosopher,' who has certainly written pathetic books, and who only has the trifling weakness that he takes all he learned and approved before his fifteenth year for inborn ideas of the hriman mind. Who could stand all this ? Therefore my advice is simply to lay down the book. But I fear I shall not escape even thus. The reader who has got as far as the preface and been stopped by has bought the book for cash, and asks how he is to be indemnified. My last refuge is now to remind him that he knows how to make use of a book in several ^ V. H. JoooU. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XV
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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