call the
_R i_ t a, and which I believe meant originally no more than "the
straight line." It is applied to the straight line of the sun in its
daily course, to the straight line followed by day and night, to the
straight line that regulates the seasons, to the straight line which,
in spite of many momentary deviations, was discovered to run through
the whole realm of nature. We call that _Ri_ta, that straight, direct,
or right line, when we apply it in a more general sense, _the Law of
Nature_; and when we apply it to the moral world, we try to express
the same idea again by speaking of the _Moral Law_, the law on which
our life is founded, the eternal Law of Right and Reason, or, it may
be, "that which makes for righteousness" both within us and
without.[335]

And thus, as a thoughtful look on nature led to the first perception
of bright gods, and in the end of a God of light, as love of our
parents was transfigured into piety and a belief in immortality, a
recognition of the straight lines in the world without, and in the
world within, was raised into the highest faith, a faith in a law that
underlies everything, a law in which we may trust, whatever befall, a
law which speaks within us with the divine voice of conscience, and
tells us "this is _ri_ta," "this is right," "this is true," whatever
the statutes of our ancestors, or even the voices of our bright gods,
may say to the contrary.[336]

These three Beyonds are the three revelations of antiquity; and it is
due almost entirely to the discovery of the Veda that we, in this
nineteenth century of ours, have been allowed to watch again these
early phases of thought and religion, which had passed away long
before the beginnings of other literatures.[337] In the Veda an
ancient city has been laid bare before our eyes which, in the history
of all other religions, is filled up with rubbish, and built over by
new architects. Some of the earliest and most instructive scenes of
our distant childhood have risen once more above the horizon of our
memory which, until thirty or forty years ago, seemed to have
vanished forever.

* * * * *

Only a few words more to indicate at least how this religious growth
in India contained at the same time the germs of Indian philosophy.
Philosophy in India is, what it ought to be, not the denial, but the
fulfilment of religion; it is the highest religion, and the oldest
name of the oldest system of phil