If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow — in… - Friedrich Max Müller

If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life... again I should point to India.

It is curious to see how the descendants of the same race, to which the first conquerors and masters of India belonged, return . . . to accomplish the glorious work of civilization, which had been left unfinished by their Arian bretheren.

जिस आर्य को हम ग्रीक, रोमन, जर्मन, सेल्ट और स्लाव के विभिन्न चरित्रों में पाते हैं उस आर्य को यहाँ हम एकदम नए चरित्र में पाते हैं। उसके उत्तरी देशान्तरों में उसकी सक्रिय और राजनैतिक ऊर्जाएँ प्रकट होती हैं और वे उच्चतम उत्कृष्टता हासिल करती हैं। साथ ही हमें मानव चरित्र का दूसरा पहलू भी मिलता है, निष्क्रिय, ध्यानस्थ, जो भारत में सम्पूर्ण रूप से विकसित हुआ।

He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather challenge it for the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would for the good ship to which he trusts his own life, and the lives of those who are dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahmin, or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu.