"In the universa] quest for knowledge, recent European “‘progress” in the natural sciences did not matter, for the ancients— Indians and Europeans— already understood nine-tenths of Being; indeed, natural forces and human nature “were grasped in a more pristine and clear way by the ancient philosophers ‘who lived much nearer the gods’ ... than the later ones, that is, by [those] whose vision was not muddied by a jumble of traditions.”4*"