"I can venture to affirm, without meaning to pluck a leaf from the never-fading laurels of our immortal Newton, that the whole of his theology, and part of his philosophy, may be found in the Vedas, and even in the works of the Sufis. The most subtle spirit, which he suspected to pervade natural bodies, and, lying concealed in them, to cause attraction and repulsion; the emission, reflection, and refraction of light; electricity, calefaction, sensation, and muscular motion, is described by the Hindus as a fifth element, endued with those very powers; and the Vedas abound with allusions to a force universally attractive, which they chiefly ascribe to the Sun, thence called Aditya, or the Attractor"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Sir William Jones, in his Discourse before the Asiatic Society, delivered at Calcutta, February 20th; 1794
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Indian_philosophy
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Indian philosophy
30 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Indian philosophy →
Related Quotes
"The Indian religious traditions... accepted the concept of non-being on an equal footing with that of being. Like man…"
"No people in the world have ever attained to such a grandeur of thought in ideal conceptions of the Deity and its off…"
"The two foundations of twentieth-century physics—quantum theory and relativity theory—both force us to see the world …"
"Mathematical science was so perfect and astronomical observations so complete that the paths of the sun and the moon …"
"India contains the whole history of philosophy in a nutshell."
"The priority of India is clearer in philosophy than in medicine, though here too origins are veiled, and every conclu…"
"But nowhere else has the lust for philosophy been so strong as in India. It is, with the Hindus, not an ornament or a…"
"In a Rajput painting of the eighteenth century we see a typical Indian “School of Philosophy”—the teacher sits on a m…"
"The Mohammedan invasions put an end to the great age of Hindu philosophy. The assaults of the Moslems, and later of t…"
"The logic of the Greeks prevents them having the idea at all and it is to the Indian cultures that we must look to fi…"