few can be said to have had a history. Many do not rise beyond the
mythological stage. Even the theories of Oriental peoples, the Hindus,
Egyptians, Chinese, consist, in the main, of mythological and ethical
doctrines, and are not thoroughgoing systems of thought: they are shot
through with poetry and faith. We shall, therefore, limit ourselves to
the study of the Western countries, and begin with the philosophy of the
ancient Greeks, on whose culture our own civilization in part, rests."
There are doubtless many other people who hold such uninformed and
untrue beliefs, which only show their ignorance of Indian matters.
It is not necessary to say anything in order to refute these views,
for what follows will I hope show the falsity of their beliefs. If
they are not satisfied, and want to know more definitely and elaborately
about the contents of the different systems, I am afraid they will have
to go to the originals referred to in the bibliographical notices of
the chapters.

There is another opinion, that the time has not yet come for an attempt
to write a history of Indian philosophy. Two different reasons are given
from two different points of view. It is said that the field of Indian
philosophy is so vast, and such a vast literature exists on each of the
systems, that it is not possible for anyone to collect his materials
directly from the original sources, before separate accounts are prepared
by specialists working in each of the particular systems. There is some
truth in this objection, but although in some of the important systems
the literature that exists is exceedingly vast, yet many of them are more
or less repetitions of the same subjects, and a judicious selection of
twenty or thirty important works on each of the systems could certainly
be made, which would give a fairly correct exposition. In my own
undertaking in this direction I have always drawn directly from the
original texts, and have always tried to collect my materials from those