[45] The author alludes to Schelling's philosophy, which is called sometimes the "Philosophy of Nature," and sometimes the "Philosophy of Identity." M. Cuvier in his masterly introduction to his great work on Fossile Remains, mentions some of the extravagant theories broached in the department of geology alone by those German naturalists, who some years ago attempted to apply to natural philosophy, the metaphysical system of Schelling.—Trans.
[46] M. Abel Remusat.
[47] No Gentile people preserved so long and in such purity the worship of the true God as the Chinese. This no doubt must be ascribed to the secluded situation of the country—to the great reverence of the Chinese for their ancestors, as well as to the patriarchal mildness of their early governments; and, we must add, to the unpoetical character of the nation itself, which was a safeguard against Idolatry. There is historical evidence that, up to two centuries before the Christian era, idolatry had made little progress among this people. So vivid was their expectation of the Messiah—"the Great Saint who, as Confucius says, was to appear in the West"—so fully sensible were they not only of the place of his birth, but of the time of his coming, that, about 60 years after the birth of our Saviour, they sent their envoys to hail the expected Redeemer. These envoys encountered on their way the Missionaries of Buddhism coming from India—the latter, announcing an incarnate God, were taken to be the disciples of the true Christ, and were presented as such to their countrymen by the deluded ambassadors. Thus was this religion introduced into China, and thus did this phantasmagoria of Hell intercept the light of the gospel. So, not in the internal spirit only, but in the outward history of Buddhism, a demoniacal intent is very visible.—Trans.
[48] Schlegel here alludes to the celebrated Lessing, who in his work entitled "The Education of the Human Race," had maintained the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, a doctrine doubly absurd in a Deist, like Lessing, for the metempsychosis was a philosophical, though false, explanation of the primitive and universal dogma of an intermediate or probationary state of souls.—Trans.
[49] The four secondary faculties of human consciousness are, according to our author, the memory, the conscience, the impulses or passions, and the outward senses.—Trans.
[50] Μωüσης.
[51] Schlegel here alludes to that sort of intuitive mysticism in matters of religion, which was the boast of the adherents of Schelling's philosophy.—Trans.
[52] The valuable articles by this great Sanscrit scholar on Hindoo philosophy, have excited a greater sensation in France and Germany, than in his own country. It would be well if the Asiatic Society were to publish those articles in a separate form.—Trans.
[53] We have transcribed Sir William Jones's own words, as given in his Translation of Sacontalá.—Trans.
[54] See Colebrooke's article on the Vedas, in the 8th volume of Asiatic Researches.