We must remember that, like the Eleatic philosophers, the ancient Vedântists also started with that unchangeable conviction that God, or the Supreme Being, or Brahman, as it is called in India, is one and all, and that there can be nothing besides. This is the most absolute Monism. If it is called Pantheism, there is nothing to object, and we shall find the same Pantheism in some of the most perfect religions of the world, in all which hold that God is or will be All in All, and that if there really existed anything besides, He would no longer be infinite, omnipresent, and omnipotent, He would no longer be God in the highest sense. There is, of course, a great difference between saying that all things have their true being in and from God, and saying that all things, as we see them, are God. Or, to put it in another way, as soon as we say that there is a phenomenal world, we imply by necessity that there is also a non-phenomenal, a noumenal, or an absolutely real world, just as when we say darkness, we imply light. Whoever speaks of anything relative, conditioned, or contingent, admits at the same time something non-relative, non-conditioned, non-contingent, something which we call real, absolute, eternal, divine, or any other name. It is easy enough for the human understanding to create a noumenal or non-phenomenal world; it is, in fact, no more than applying to our experience the law of causality, and saying that there must be a cause for everything, and that that cause or that Creator is the One Absolute Being. But when we have done that, then comes the real problem, namely, how was the cause ever changed into an effect, how did the absolute become relative, how did the noumenal become phenomenal? or, to put

it into more theological language, how was this world created? It took a long time before the human mind could bring itself to confess its utter impotence and ignorance on this point, its agnosticism, its Docta ignorantia, as Cardinal Cusanus called it. And it seems to me extremely interesting to watch the various efforts of the human mind in every part of the world to solve this greatest and oldest riddle, before it was finally given up.

The Indian Vedântist treats this question chiefly from the subjective point of view. He does not ask at once how the world was created, but first of all, how the individual soul came to be what it is, and how its belief in an objective created world arose. Before there arises the knowledge of separateness, he says, or aloofness of the soul from the body, the nature of the individual soul, which consists in the light of sight and all the rest, is as it were not separate from the so-called Upâdhis, or limiting conditions such as body, senses, mind, sense-objects, and perception. Similarly as in a pure rock-crystal when placed near a red rose, its true nature, which consists in transparency and perfect whiteness, is, before its separateness has been grasped, as it were non-separate from its limiting conditions (the Upâdhis), that is, the red rose, while, when its separateness has once been grasped, according to legitimate authority, the rock-crystal reassumes at once its true nature, transparency and whiteness, though, in reality, it always was transparent and white,-in the same. manner there arises in the individual soul which is not separate as yet from the limiting conditions (Upâdhi) of the body and all the rest, knowledge of separate

ness and aloofness, produced by Sruti; there follows the resurrection of the Atman from the body, the realisation of its true nature, by means of true knowledge, and the comprehension of the one and only Atman. Thus the embodied and non-embodied states of the Self are due entirely to discrimination and non-discrimination, as it is said (Katha-Up. I. 2, 22): Bodyless within the bodies.' This nondifference between the embodied and non-embodied state is recorded in the Smriti also (Bhag. Gîtâ, XIII. 31) when it is said: 'O Friend, though dwelling in the body, it (the Âtman, the Self or the soul) does

not act and is not tainted.'

The Atman unchanged amidst the changes of the World.

You see now that what Sankara wishes to bring out, and what he thinks is implied in the language of the Upanishads, is that the Atman is always the same, and that the apparent difference between the individual soul and the Supreme Soul is simply the result of wrong knowledge, of Nescience, but is not due to any reality. He is very anxious to show that Pragâpati also in the teaching which he imparted to Indra and Virokana could not have meant anything else. Pragâpati, he says, after having referred to the individual or living soul (the gîva), seen, or rather seeing, in the eye, &c., continues, 'This is (if you only knew it) the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.' He argues that if the seer in the eye, the individual seer, were in reality different from Brahman, the immortal and fearless, it would not be co-ordinated (as it is by Pragâpati) with the immortal, the fearless Brahman.

The reflected Self, on the other hand, is not spoken of as he who is characterised by the eye (the seer within the eye), for that would indeed render Pragâpati obnoxious to the reproach of saying deceitful things.

Sankara, however, is honest enough to tell us that his explanation is not the only one that has been proposed. Others, he tells us, think that Pragâpati speaks throughout of the free and faultless Self (Atman), not of the individual soul at all. But he points out that the pronouns used in the text point clearly to two subjects, the individual soul on the one hand, and the highest soul on the other; and all that we have to learn is that the individual soul is not what it seems to be; just as, for our own peace of mind, we have to find out that what seemed to us a serpent, and then frightened us, is not a serpent, but a rope, and need not frighten us any more.

Nescience or Avidyâ the Cause of Phenomenal Semblance.

There are others again, he continues, some of our own friends (possibly the followers of Râmânuga), who hold that the individual soul, as such, is absolutely real; but to this he objects, remarking that the whole of the Vedânta-sûtras are intended to show that the one Supreme Being only is the highest and eternal intelligent reality, and that it is only the result of Nescience if we imagine that the many individual souls may claim any independent reality. It comes to this, that according to Sankara, the highest Self may for a time be called different from the individual soul, but the individual soul is never substantially anything but the highest Self, except through its own temporary Nescience. This slight concession

of a temporary reality of the individual soul seemed necessary to Sankara, who, after all, is not only a philosopher, but a theologian also, because the Veda, which in his eyes is infallible, gives all its sacrificial and moral precepts for individual souls, whose existence is thereby taken for established, though no doubt such precepts are chiefly meant for persons who do not yet possess the full knowledge of the Self.

There are many more points connected with the relation of the individual to the Highest Self, which Sankara argues out most minutely, but we need not here dwell on them any longer, as we shall have to return to that subject when treating of the systematic philosophy of Sankara. What distinguishes Sankara's view on the union of the individual soul with the Supreme Soul, is the complete Henosis or oneness which according to him always exists, but in the individual soul may for a time be darkened by Nescience. There are other modes of union also which he fully discusses, but which in the end he rejects. Thus referring to the teaching of Asmarathya (I. 4, 20), Sankara argues, 'If the individual soul were different from the Highest Self, the knowledge of the Highest Soul would not imply the knowledge of the individual soul, and thus the promise given in one of the Upanishads, that through the knowledge of the one thing (the Highest Soul) everything is to be known, would not be fulfilled.' He does not admit that the individual soul can be called in any sense the creation of the Highest Soul, though the reason which he gives is again theological rather than philosophical. He says that when the Veda relates the creation of fire and the