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.
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