Philosophy and Religion.

6 It is interesting to see how this very bold philosophy of the Vedanta was always not only tolerated, but encouraged and patronised by religion and by its recognised representatives. Nor did the Vedanta as a philosophy interfere with popular religion; on> the contrary, it accepted all that is taught about the gods in the hymns and in the Brahmanas, and recommended a number of sacrificial and ceremonial acts as resting on the authority of these hymns and Brahmanas. They were even considered as a necessary preliminary to higher knowledge. The creation of the world, though not the making of it, was accepted as an emanation from Brahman, to be followed in great periods by a taking back of it into Brahman. The individual souls also were supposed, at the end of each Kalpa, to be drawn back into Brahman, but, unless entirely liberated, to break forth again and again at the beginning of every new Kalpa.

Karman.

The individual souls, so far as they can claim any reality, date, we are told, from all eternity, and not from the day of their birth on earth. They are clothed in their Upâdhis (conditions) according to the merit or demerit which they have acquired by their former, though long-forgotten, acts. Here we perceive the principal moral element in the ancient Vedânta, so far as it is meant for practical life; and this doctrine of Karman or deed, to which we alluded before, has remained to the present day, and has leavened the whole of India, whether it was under the sway of Brahmans or of Buddhists. The whole

world, such as it is, is the result of acts; the character and fate of each man are the result of his acts in this or in a former life, possibly also of the acts of others. This is with them the solution of what we venture to call the injustice of God. It is their Théodicée. A man who suffers and suffers, as we say, unjustly, seems to them but paying off a debt or laying up capital for another life. A man who enjoys health and wealth is made to feel that he is spending more than he has earned, and that he has therefore to make up his debt by new efforts. It cannot be by a Divine caprice that one man is born deaf or dumb or blind, another strong and) healthy. It can be the result of former acts only, whether, in this life, the doer of them is aware of them or not. It is not even necessarily a punishment, it may be a reward in disguise. It might seem sometimes as if Avidyâ too, which is answerable for the whole of this phenomenal world, had to be taken as the result of acts far back before the beginning of all things. But this is never clearly stated. On the contrary, this primeval Avidyâ is left unexplained, it is not to be accounted for as little as Brahman can be accounted for. Like Brahman it has to be accepted as existent; but it differs from Brahman in so far as it can be destroyed by Vidyâ, which is the eternal life-spring of Brahman. The merit which can be acquired by man even in this state of Avidyâ is such that he may rise even to the status of a god, though for a time only, for at the end of a Kalpa even gods like Indra and the rest have to begin their career afresh. In fact it might be said with some truth that Avidyâ is the cause of everything, except of Brahman; but that the cause

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of that primeval Avidyâ is beyond our powers of conception.

Brahman is Everything.

These powers of conception are real indeed for all practical purposes, but in the highest sense they too are phenomenal only. They too are but Nâmarûpa, name and form; and the reality that lies behind them, the Atman that receives them, is Brahman and nothing else. This might become clearer if we took Brahman for the Kantian Ding an sich, remembering only that, according to the Kantian philosophy, the Rûpa, the forms of intuition and the categories of thought, though subjective, are accepted as true, while the Vedanta treats them also as the result of Nescience, though true for all practical purposes in this phenomenal life. In this sense. the Vedanta is more sceptical or critical than even Kant's critical philosophy, though the two agree with each other again when we remember that Kant also denies the validity of these forms of perception and thought when applied to transcendent subjects. According to Kant it is man who creates the world, as far as its form (Nâmarûpa) is concerned; according to the Vedânta this kind of creation is due to Avidyâ. And strange as it may sound to apply that name of Avidyâ to Kant's intuitions of sense and his categories of the understanding, there is a common element in them, though hidden under different names. It would be natural to suppose that this Atman within had been taken as a part of Brahman, or as a modification of Brahman : but no. According to Samkara the world is, as

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I tried to show on a former occasion, the whole of Brahman in all its integrity, and not a part only; only, owing to Avidyâ, wrongly conceived and individualised. Here we have in fact the Holenmerian theory of Plotinus and of Dr. Henry More, anticipated in India. If the Atman within seems limited like the Brahman when seen in the objective world, this is once more due to Avidyâ. Brahman ought to be omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent; though we know but too well that in ourselves it is very far from all this.

The Sthula- and Sûkshma-sarira.

These are the conditions or Upâdhis which consist of Manas, mind, Indriyas, senses, Prânas, vital spirits, and the Sarîra, body, as determined by the outward world. This Vedantic arrangement of our organic structure and our mental organisation is curious, but it seems to have been more or less the common property of all Indian philosophers, and supplied by the common language of the people. What is peculiar in it is the admission of a central organ, receiving and arranging what has been conveyed to it by the separate organs of sense. We have no word corresponding to it, though with proper limitations we may continue to translate it by mens or mind. It would represent perception as uniting and arranging the great mass of sensations, but it includes besides Upalabdhi, perception, Adhyavasaya, determination, also, so far as it depends on a previous interaction of percepts. Hence a man is said to see by the mind (Manas, vous), but he may

1 Theosophy, p. 280.

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also be said to decide and act by the mind (Manas). All this may seem very crude, leaving particularly the question of the change of mere sensations into percepts (Vorstellungen), a subject so carefully elaborated by modern philosophers, and of percepts into concepts, unapproached and unexplained. Here the philosophy of Herbart would supply what is wanted. He too, being opposed to the admission of various mental faculties, is satisfied with one, the Manas, and tries to explain all psychical phenomena whatever as the result of the action and interaction of elementary Vorstellungen (ideas or presentations).

By the side of the vital spirit, the Mukhya Prâna, we find a fivefold division into Prâna, Upâna, Vyâna, Samâna, and Udâna, meaning originally forth-, off-, through-, with-, and out-breathing, but afterwards defined differently and without much reference to any physiological data. This also is a doctrine common to most systems of Indian philosophy, though it is difficult to see by what physiological observations it could have been suggested.

What is more interesting is the distinction between the Sthûla- and Sûkshma-sarîra, the coarse and the fine body, the former the visible outward body; the latter invisible and consisting of Mukhya Prâna, vital spirit, Manas, mind, and Indriyas, organs of sense. This body is supposed to remain after death, while the outer body is dissolved into its material elements. The thin or subtle body, though transparent or invisible, is nevertheless accepted as material; and it is this Sûkshma-sarîra which is supposed to migrate after death from world to world, but, for the most part, in an unconscious state. It is not like a human body with arms and legs.