No one knows when its sacred books were written, when its civilization began, what caused its progress, what its decline.

Gentle, devout, abstract, it is capable at once of the loftiest thoughts and the basest actions.

It combines the most ascetic self-denials and abstraction from life with the most voluptuous self-indulgence.

The key to the whole system of Hindoo thought and life is in this original tendency to see God, not man; eternity, not time; the infinite, not the finite.
Buddhism, which was a revolt from Brahmanism, has exactly the opposite truths and the opposite defects.

Where Brahmanism is strong, it is weak; where Brahmanism is weak, it is strong.