garb certainly does not strengthen the expectation of finding in them a
rigidly systematic doctrine.

And a closer investigation of the contents of the Upanishads amply
confirms this preliminary impression. If we avail ourselves, for
instance, of M. Paul Régnaud's Matériaux pour servir à l'Histoire de la
Philosophie de l'Inde, in which the philosophical lucubrations of the
different Upanishads are arranged systematically according to topics, we
can see with ease how, together with a certain uniformity of general
leading conceptions, there runs throughout divergence in details, and
very often not unimportant details. A look, for instance, at the
collection of passages relative to the origination of the world from the
primitive being, suffices to show that the task of demonstrating that
whatever the Upanishads teach on that point can be made to fit into a
homogeneous system is an altogether hopeless one. The accounts there
given of the creation belong, beyond all doubt to different stages of
philosophic and theological development or else to different sections of
priestly society. None but an Indian commentator would, I suppose, be
inclined and sufficiently courageous to attempt the proof that, for
instance, the legend of the âtman purushavidha, the Self in the shape of
a person which is as large as man and woman together, and then splits
itself into two halves from which cows, horses, asses, goats, &c. are
produced in succession (B/ri/. Up. I, 1, 4), can be reconciled with the
account given of the creation in the Chândogya Upanishad, where it is
said that in the beginning there existed nothing but the sat, 'that
which is,' and that feeling a desire of being many it emitted out of
itself ether, and then all the other elements in due succession. The
former is a primitive cosmogonic myth, which in its details shows
striking analogies with the cosmogonic myths of other nations; the
latter account is fairly developed Vedânta (although not Vedânta