Through the Christian religion this new
intuition which saw in the soul of man the highest of values, became the
centre and pivot of life and faith--a position to which even Plato, to
whom the objective, metaphysical idea was the essential, never attained.
It had been the most personal experience of Christ, and centuries after
his death the nations rediscovered it as their highest value. It
entitled Christianity to become the natural religion of Europe, and the
soul of its new system of civilisation. It formed the most complete
contrast to all Asiatic cults, Brahminism and Buddhism, a fact which,
since Schopenhauer, one is inclined to overlook. To the Indian, the soul
of man is not an entity; his consciousness is a republic, as it were,
composed of diverse spiritual principles and metaphysical forces which
are not centralised into an "I-centre," but exist impersonally, side by
side. This may be a great conception, but it is foreign to the feeling
of the citizen of Europe.
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