There is also a very important element in the Bhagavat Gita, equally characteristic of the Yoga school, whose final exponent, though not, in all probability, its founder, was Patanjali, the author of the commentary on Panini's grammar, who lived, it is believed, some three centuries before our era. We do not regard the directions as to choosing a lonely place, a fawn-skin seat, over sprinkled kusha grass, and the fixing of the attention on the tip of the nose, as necesssrily, or most characteristically belonging to the Yoga school, though they are undoubtedly important elements in that teaching. What seems more vital is the moral concept of action with disinterestedness, of action without atttachment, according to the primary motion of the will; this teaching, it seems to us, is at once characteristic of the Yoga system, and foreign to the spirit of the Upanishats; for the Upanishats, so high is their ideal, are not greatly concerned with fallen man or the means of his redemption. They look on man as an immortal spirit, already free and mighty, and therefore needing no redemption.

Man, needing to be redeemed, is a later thought; one springing from a more self-conscious age.

Now the connection of this thought with the Sankhya philosophy is obvious. It regards man, the spirit, as ensnared by Nature, and consequently as needing release and, for the Sankhya school, this release comes through an effort of intellectual insight. But this concept, man saved by intellect, is essentially untrue to life, where man lives not by intellect alone, or even chiefly, but by the will; and it became necessary, granting our fall, to find a way of salvation, of redemption through the will. This way is the Yoga philosophy. It is the natural counterpart and completion of the Sankhya and has always been so regarded, The pure spirit of the over-intellectual Sankhya becomes Lord of the more religious Yoga; - using religion in the sense of redemption to the will. But, though thus complementary, the two systems might easily come to be considered as opposing each other; and it seems to be part of the mission of the Bhagavat Gita - or rather, of certain passages forcibly imported into it, to reconcile the Sankhya and the Yoga once for all, and to blend these two with the Vedanta.

We need only quote two passages, which are obviously due to the Sankhya - Yoga reconciler. The first is dragged into the middle of the following sentence, and evidently has no true place there : "If slain, thou shalt attain to heaven; or conquering, thou shalt inherit the land. Therefore rise, son of Kunti, firmly resolved for the fight. Holding as equal, good and ill-fortune, gain and loss, victory and defeat, gird thyself for the fight, and thou shall not incur sin. And thus there shall be no loss of ground, nor does any defeat exist; a little of this law saves from great fear;" - the law, namely, that the slain in battle go to Paradise. Now into the midst of this complete and continuous passage has been inserted this verse: "This understanding is declared according to Sankhya hear it now, according to Yoga." Needless to say, the last part of it has as little to do with the Yoga philosophy as the first has with the Sankhya. Then again, in the next book, the third: "Two rules are laid down by me: salvation by intellect for the Sankhya; salvation by works for the followers of Yoga." So that one part of the Bhagavat Gita is devoted to the reconciliation of these two complementary though rival schools.