Greeks and
Romans, Saxons and Celts, with a dim background of Palestine, Egypt,
and Babylon, leaving out of sight our nearest intellectual relatives,
the Aryans of India, the framers of that most wonderful language the
Sanskrit, the fellow-workers in the construction of our fundamental
concepts, the fathers of the most natural of natural religions, the
makers of the most transparent of mythologies, the inventors of the
most subtle philosophy, and the givers of the most elaborate laws. It
is the purpose of historical study to enable each generation to
profit from the experience of those who came before, and advance
toward higher aims, without being obliged to start anew from the same
point as its ancestors after the manner of every race of brutes. He
who knows little of those who preceded is very likely to care little
for those coming after. "Life would be to him a chain of sand, while
it ought to be a kind of electric chain that makes our hearts tremble
and vibrate with the most ancient thoughts of the Past, as well as
with the most distant hopes of the Future."

In no just sense is this an exaggeration. Deep as science and research
have explored, extensive as is the field which genius and art have
occupied, they have an Herculean labor yet to perform before India
will have yielded up all her opulence of learning. The literature of
the world in all ages has been richly furnished, if not actually
inspired, from that fountain. The Wisdom of the Ancients, so much
lauded in the earlier writings of Hebrews, Greeks, and Phoenicians,
was abundantly represented in the lore of these Wise Men of the East.

The first Ionian sages lighted the torch of philosophy at the altar of
Zoroaster. The conquest of Asia Minor by the Persians brought Thales,
Anaximenes, and Herakleitos into contact with the Eranian dogmas. The
leaven thus imparted had a potent influence upon the entire mass of
Grecian thought. We find it easy to trace its action upon opinions in
later periods and among the newer nations. Kant, Hegel, Stewart, and
Hamilton, as well as Plato, Zeno, and Aristotle, had their prototypes
in the world and antiquity beyond. Even the first Zarathustra was an
exponent and not the originator of the Religion and Science of Light.
We are thus carried by this route back to the ancient Aryan Home for
the sources from which so many golden streams have issued. In the
Sanskrit books and mantras we must look for the treasures that make
human