Radhakrishnan starts off by confronting the classic question of what Hinduism actually is. This, he does not answer directly, for a very good reason: Hinduism isn’t an internally recognized word, but a name given to the sub-continent of India by outsiders. Later, it was recognized by Hindus as being a practicable working name. This was because India, despite being diverse, had a common history, literature and civilization.

The backbone of Hindu culture and beliefs is the Vedas. Faith is the vision of the soul where the spiritual part of the world is apprehended, just as the material world is apprehended via the physical senses. The mind has two powers, reason and intuition. Reason correlates with the physical senses, intuition with faith. The Vedas are a collection of the intuitions of the soul, which became the spiritual intuitions which founded the cohesive Hinduism we now know. These intuitions have a perennial…