visible agency (Adrishta or Apûrva) a new Ego would spring up, liable to suffer for its former acts, just as it was in this life. A man must learn therefore that he is not even what is meant by the Ego, for the Ego also has been formed by surroundings or circumstances, and will vanish again like everything else. Then what remains? There remains behind the body, and behind the Ego, or the individual person, what is called the Purusha or the Âtman, the Self, and that Self is to be recognised either as identical with what was in earlier times conceived and called the Divine, the Eternal, the Unconditioned, namely, Brahman, or as Purusha, perfect, independent, and absolute in itself, blissful in its independence and in the complete aloofness from everything else. The former was, as we saw, the view of the Vedânta, the latter is the view of the Sâmkhya-philosophy. Both may have had the same roots, but they differ in their later growth. The view which the Vedânta took of man has sometimes been mistaken for human apotheosis. But people forget that for these philosophers there were no theoi left whose company man could have joined, and whose eminence they could have reached. The Divine which they meant was the Divine in man, and what they wanted was reconciliation between the Divine within and the Divine without. Their Moksha or Nirvâna was not meant for Vergötterung, not even for the Vergottung of Eckhart; it was meant for complete freedom, freedom from all conditions and limitations, selfdom, in fact, whether as recovery of the Divine as Brahman, or as Âtman, or as something beyond all names that had ever been given to the Divine, as the eternal Subject, undetermined by any qualities,

satisfied and blissful in his own being and in his own thinking.

Whatever we may think of these two solutions of the world's great riddle, we cannot but admire their originality and their daring, particularly if we compare them with the solutions proposed by other philosophers, whether of ancient or modern times. None of them seems to me to have so completely realised what may be called the idea of the soul as the Phoenix, consumed by the fire of thought and rising from his own ashes, soaring towards regions which are more real than anything that can be called real in this life. Such views cannot be criticised as we criticise ordinary systems of religion or morality. They are visions, if you like, but they are visions which, to have seen is like having been admitted to the vision of another world; of a world that must exist, however different in its eternal silence from what we and from what the ancient seers of India imagined it to be.

The most curious thing is that such views could be held by the philosophers of India without bringing them into conflict with the representatives of the ancient religion of the country. It is true that the Sâmkhya-philosophy was accused of atheism, but that atheism was very different from what we mean by it. It was the negation of the necessity of admitting an active or limited personal god, and hence was carefully distinguished in India from the atheism of the Nâstikas or nihilists, who denied the existence of anything transcendent, of anything beyond our bodily senses, of anything divine. To call the Sâmkhya atheistic, and the Vedânta not, would be philosophically most unfair, and it does

the Indian priesthood great credit that they treated both systems as orthodox, or at all events as not prohibited, provided always that the students had, by a previous severe discipline, acquired the strength and fitness necessary for so arduous a task.

How different the world of thought in India was from our own, we may see by an extraordinary defence set up for the so-called atheism of the Sâmkhya-philosophy. It seems to us perfectly absurd, but it was by no means so, if we consider the popular superstitions of the Hindus at the time. It was a common belief in India that man could, by severe penance, raise himself to the status of a god, or Deva. There are ever so many legends to that effect. This might no doubt be called apotheosis; and it was expressly stated that it was in order to put an end to such vain desires of becoming personal gods that Kapila ignored or left out of question the existence of such theomorphic or anthropomorphic beings as could ever excite the rivalry of men. We are hardly prepared for such explanations, and yet in India they seem quite bond fide.

Vedanta and Sâmkhya.

We have thus finished our account of the Vedanta and of the Sâmkhya-philosophy. At first sight no two philosophies would seem to be so different from each other, nay, to start from such opposite points of view as the Vedanta and the Sâmkhya. The Vedântist of the school of Samkara looks upon the whole world, including animate and inanimate nature, including the small gods and the still smaller men, as a phenomenal manifestation of an unknown power which he calls Brahman. There is nothing beside it, nothing

that can be called real except this one invisible Brahman. Then came the question, But whence this phenomenal world? or rather, as he starts with the idea of there being but one real being from eternity to eternity, How could that eternal Brahman ever give rise to the world, not only as its efficient, but also as its material cause, if indeed there is anything material in the objects known to the Vedântist? Under the circumstances thus given, but one.answer is possible, That Brahman is the world, and that the world, so far as it is Brahman, but so far only, is real. The phenomenal world, such as we see it and live in it, is changeful, ever passing away, and consequently never, in the Vedântic sense of that word, real. We never see it or know it, as it really is, until we have become Vedântists. It is impossible to think that this eternal Being, whatever name be given to it, could ever change or be changed. This view of the universe as a development of Brahman was possibly the original view taken by Bâdarayana, and it was clearly that of Râmânuga and his followers, who explain the world as an evolution (Parinâma). But this was not Samkara's theory. He accepts the two facts that the world is changing and unreal, and yet that the real cause of it, that is, Brahman, is incapable of change.

Vedanta, Avidyâ, and Aviveka.

Hence nothing remains but to ascribe the changeful phenomenal character of the world to something else, and, according to the Vedanta, to ignorance, not, however, to our individual ignorance, but to some primeval ignorance directed towards Brahman as manifested and seen. This ignorance or Avidyâ,

again, is not to be called real, it is nothing by the side of Brahman, nothing therefore that could ever have dominion over Brahman. All such views are excluded by the postulate that Brahman is free, is one and all; though here again, other Vedântists differ from Samkara, and represent Avidyâ as an actual power (Sakti) of Brahman, or as Mâyâ, i. e. illusive power, which in fact performs, or is answerable for what we call creation. We should of course ask at once, Whence comes that Avidyâ or that Mâyâ, and what is it? How can it be anything, if not again Brahman, the only thing that exists? The answer given by Samkara, which satisfied his mind, if not the minds of other Vedântists, was that we know as a fact that Avidyâ or Nescience is there, but we also know that it is not there, as soon as we see through it, in fact, as soon as we are able to annihilate it by Vidyâ or knowledge, such as is given to us by the Vedanta-philosophy. The Vedântist holds that nothing that can be annihilated can claim true reality for itself. Therefore Avidyâ, though it is, must not be called something real. The great difficulty how Brahman could ever be affected by Avidyâ, which is a weakness or a defect, is avoided by looking upon Brahman, while affected by Avidyâ or seen through Avidyâ, as for the time under a cloud or forgetful of itself, but never really unreal. We ourselves also, that is the individual souls, can be in full reality nothing but Brahman, though for a while we are divided from it, because forgetful of Brahman through Avidyâ. While that state of Avidyâ lasts the true Brahman, neuter, may become to us Brahmâ, masculine, may become the creator and ruler of the world, and, as