their categories and their syllogisms as well as Aristotle. The
conception of a dual principle in deity which the early Church traced in
all the religious systems of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Assyria, and whose
influence poisoned the life of the Phoenician colonies, and was so
corrupting to the morals of Greece and Rome, was also elaborated by the
Sankhya philosophy of Kapila, and it has plunged Hindu society into as
deep a degradation as could be found in Pompeii or Herculaneum.[23] The
Indian philosophy partook far more of the pantheistic element than that
of Greece. Plato and Aristotle had clearer conceptions of the
personality of the deity and of the distinct and responsible character
of the human soul than any school of Hindu philosophers--certainly
clearer than the Vedantists, and their ethics involved a stronger sense
of sin.

German philosophy has borrowed its pantheism from India rather than from
Greece, and in its most shadowy developments it has never transcended
the ancient Vedantism of Vyasa.

As in the early centuries, so in our time, different systems of religion
have been commingled and interwoven into protean forms of error more
difficult to understand and dislodge than any one of the faiths and
philosophies of which they were combined. As the Alexandrian Jews
intertwined the teachings of Judaism and Platonism; as Manichaeans and
Gnostics corrupted the truths of the Old and New Testaments with ideas
borrowed from Persian mysticism; as various eclectic systems gathered up
all types of thought which the wide conquests of the Roman Empire
brought together, and mingled them with Christian teachings; so now the
increased intercommunication, and the quickened intellectual activity
of our age have led to the fusion of different systems, ancient and
modern, in a negative and nerveless religion of humanity. We now have in
the East not only Indian, but Anglo-Indian, speculations. The
unbelieving Calcutta graduate has Hegel and Spinoza interwoven with his
Vedantism, and the eclectic leader of the Brahmo Somaj, while placing
Christ at the head of the prophets and recognizing the authority of all
sacred bibles of the races, called on Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and
Mohammedans to unite in one theistic church of the New Dispensation in
India. Not even the old Gnostics could present so striking an admixture
as that of the Arya Somaj. It has appropriated many of those Christian
ethics which have been learned from a cen