The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-08-19
WHAT vEDANTA TEACHES.
Federation, Convocation and Reincar-
 nation the Chief Doctrines.

and violent contrasts, Here can be seen the richest man in the world and some of the poorest; here is the great l est comparatively unoccupied urban area and the most densely populated part of the globe; here the buildings go the furthest into the air and the deepest into the ground; here are the learned men of the universities and the 1 lowest illiteracy of the slums; here the numbering old stage coach, the ob- sOlescent horsecar and the most mod ern of all intramural means of trans portatiOn-the subway.
 Contrasts without number, stranger even than these, are to be found by him who seeks, especially among the mental qualities of the people. A few words about only one of these. In the midst of hundreds of thousands of New Workers who regularly contribute of their means to send missionaries to India and other foreign lands to con- vert the natives to the Christian reli- zion, one finds, strangest of all anomalies, a rapidly growing and, toall outward appearances, intelligent body Of men and woman who have done just the opposite. They have given of their money to bring from this same India some of the wise men of that country, who are even now engaged in teaching them what is called the higest wisdom in that ancient land.
 The persons with these apparently antipodal idiosyncrasies belong to the Vedanta Society, an organization in- corporated under the laws of this State, | occupying the house 62 w. 71st street. And as if to complete the strangeness of the contrast, one finds the president of this society to be a professor in Columbia University and among the honorary members professors of na- tlonal reputation of other great Ameri- can institutions of learning, besides many graduates of American universi- ties, who listen to the teachings of these men who come from this so-called "heathen" country. Some persons will be interested to learn more about the odd society and what message these men from one of the most ancient civilizations in the world can have to bring to the most modern.
 Indeed, when one comes to think of it, there ought to be nothing strange in the fact of the oldest country in the world teaching !%the youngest. If, in- deed, as all philosophy teaches, znowl- edge comes only through experience, to have lived long and experienced much would seem to be the first re- quisite of q teacher. Moreover. it may be believed that a nation or a people that has passed through the varying vicissitude of at least five thousand years of life may well have re acquired some knowledge that might prove valu- able to people whose whole span of natural life does not much exceed a century, so that there is nothing in- herently absurd in the idea, and. in- deed, on the face of it, there is even an a priori presumption in favor of teacher who come thus accredited.
 What, then, is the message which these native Hindoo teachers, or sWamis, as they are called in India, bring to the Vedanta Society? They bring, first of all, the lesson of univer- sal toleration-that there is truth in all truth in all religious. It is a common practice among advanced thinkers to stamp as false the old religions which they have. rejected. Not so Vedanta. It points out that all true for their day and generation. No other position, they say, will stand logical analysis. For, if what we believed yesterday be false because we think differently to- fa raise because we shall certainly ad- vance from it to another belief here after, and in the same manner, assum- ing what everybody admits, that we shall continue to progress toward a per- feet realization of the truth, our each successive position will also be false. because it must in it's turn give way to another and truer one, which means, of course, that we shall always be wrong, which is reduction to an absurdity.
 The Scientists say that each success siVe modified belief is part of a main stairway, so to speak, of progress toward the ideal, of which each parti- cular stair is as necessary as every other. One has much right to stigma tize as false his beliefs of yesterday be-
  cause he thinks differently to-day as he has to condemn as useless and un- necessary the lower steps of stairway on which he has climbed to command ing outlook Each individual step. from lowest to highest, is necessary and important and true.
 To use another illustration: If one walks across the plains toward a dis tant mountain peak, each days pro- gress. gives different picture. At first the mountain may be hay and indis- tinct, but each days brings it nearer, until finally one sees it right before him. Now, each days picture was per- feet and complete in iteself from that point of view, although it was different from all it's predecessors and all it's successors. So say the Fedantists of truth. Men journey toward it from day to day. Some are further along than others, but "all men are struggling in the paths that lead to it. All see see it more or less distinctly and all will some day arrive in full view of it. This, then, is one of the lessons which the Swamis bring out of India, universal toleration of the beliefs of others.
 One of the most striking and essen- tial features of tho Vedanta philosophy yHyan a t10nr- 4t lou NpT