58 The Religion of the Veda of the Upanishads is literary and historical, We are captivated by the quality of the endeavor more than by the quality of the thing accomplished. From the literary side the Upanishads captivate not because they are finished products--they are anything but that-but because they show great power and originality as a kind of rhapsodic philo- sophic prose poems. From the point of view of the history of human thought, what entitles them to enduring respect is that they show us the human mind engaged in the most plucky and earnest search after truth-and let me add that this search is carried on in the sweetest of spirit, without fear of offending established interests, and entirely free from the zealotism that goes with a new intellectual era, But the Upanishads do not contain consummation. On the contrary, it is the dear, familiar, earnest human fight, doomed rather to disappointment, which very early Hindus here carry on, to find the secret of the world and the secret of self-conscious man in the hiddenmost folds of their own heart-that is what always holds attention, and that is the endearing quality of these texts. Therefore it is true that, wherever the spirit of the Upanishads has been carried there has sprung up genuine human sympathy, if not final intellectual consent. How this is so I shall hope
