Studious men of our hemisphere will find it
difficult so to restrain their attention, but that it will
wander to some object of present sense or recollection; and
even the buzzing of a fly will sometimes have the power to
disturb it. But if we are told that there have been men who
were successively, for ages past, in the daily habit of
abstracted contemplation, begun in the earliest period of
youth, and continued in many to the maturity of age, each
adding some portion of knowledge to the store accumulated by
his predecessors; it is not assuming too much to conclude, that
as the mind ever gathers strength, like the body, by exercise,
so in such an exercise it may in each have acquired the faculty
to which they aspired, and that their collective studies may
have led them to the discovery of new tracts and combinations
of sentiment, totally different from the doctrines with which
the learned of other nations are acquainted; doctrines which,
however speculative and subtle, still as they possess the
advantage of being derived from a source so free from every
adventitious mixture, may be equally founded in truth with the
most simple of our own."
"The forsaking of works" was taught by Kreeshna to the most
ancient of men, and handed down from age to age,
"until at length, in the course of time, the mighty art was lost.
"In wisdom is to be found every work without exception," says
Kreeshna.
"Although thou wert the greatest of all offenders, thou shalt
be able to cross the gulf of sin with the bark of wisdom."
"There is not anything in this world to be compared with wisdom
for purity."
"The action stands at a distance inferior to the application of
wisdom."
The wisdom of a Moonee "is confirmed, when, like the tortoise,
he can draw in all his members, and restrain them from their
wonted purposes."
"Children only, and not the learned, speak of the speculative
and the practical doctrines as two. They are but one. For
both obtain the selfsame end, and the place which is gained by
the followers of the one is gained by the followers of the
other."
"The man enjoyeth not freedom from action, from the
non-commencement of that which he hath to do; nor doth he
obtain happiness from a total inactivity. No one ever resteth
a moment inactive. Every man is involuntarily urged to act by
those principles which are inherent in his nature. The man who
restraineth his active faculties, and sitteth down with his
mind attentive to the objects of his senses, is called one of
an astrayed soul, and the practiser of deceit. So the man is
praised, who, having subdued all his passions, performeth with
his active faculties all the functions of life, unconcerned
about the event."
"Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event.
