English
At least you allow, I apprehend, that praise and blame imply at any rate volition, and probably also some kind of sequence between volition and action ; whatever therefore magnifies the mechanical power of nature, and so lessens the sphere of volition, seems to leave bad men a greater liberty of obeying whatever evil impulse a good man would, by the energy of conscience and will, endeavour to restrain. So that, on the whole, your doctrine, if it does not create uneasiness of the saddened spirit, seems to encourage a licentiousness of the animal appetite. Whether then that can be true knowledge, which tends to such evil results, appears to me at least a question." " Say rather," here answered Sad^anda, " that there ought to be no question of such evils as you describe being due to ignorance and passion rather than to knowledge. The first form of intellect is virtue {dharma) : and knowledge (Jnydna) is followed by dispassion {vairdgya) ; for he who knows the practice of the pious is animated thereby to strain after their felicity; and having distinguished the ex- cellence of soul from the elements of whatever partakes of tamos (darkness), a man accomplishes its liberation. Whereas for want of knowledge, not only lower temptations may corrupt a man, but even the scriptures (sruti) may become to him the means of entanglement. Thus, for example, a man WHETHER IMPROVING. 65 who reads of bloody sacrifices in the Vedas, is tempted to shed blood; whereas by knowing that such ordinances were only temporary or faulty, he will learn to respect life. Thus you see that all true knowledge has a constant tendency to improve, even to an indefinite extent, until man becomes truly divine, and so enjoys the highest blessedness. By no lower means, such as human works, could he aspire to such a reward, for it is evident that, as they are themselves finite, so their recompence must have an end ; but since knowledge is capable of indefinite expansion, and since the soul enjoying it is completely extricated firom the trammels of Pracriti in any of her manifestations, so it alone renders perfect and eternal. But even venerable persons who suffer themselves to be fettered by scripture without true knowledge, must find impediments to their onward progress ; as, for example, they may feel compelled to sacrifice blood, or authorised to practise incantations against the life of their enemy, because such actions are enjoined or sanctioned in the Vedas. Much more then, such left-handed worshippers as you alluded to, sin not firom knowledge, but firom ignorance. Thus you will find the Tatwa-sarndsa justly class intoxication, sloth, and im- purity, with atheism, as finiits of tamas.^' " Very well," answered Blancombe, *^ but the proper remedy for ignorance is instruction. How then shall we proceed to give those benighted persons of whom we have spoken true instruction ; or by what method of enlightenment would you propose to reclaim them from their errors? For surely we could do them no greater service, than by imparting to them that knowledge upon which you believe the salvation of their souls depends." " Why," said Sad^anda, "we have not been wanting in efforts of the kind." " But to what then," asked Blancombe, " are we to ascribe the vicious practices, the low idolatry, and the ignorance, which prevail among so many men who may naturally be capable of better things?" " Perhaps the reason may be," replied the other, " such men are not really capable of improvement. They may have committed sins in a former life, for which their present M. P. 5 66 MISSIONARY CHALLENGE. degradation is a just punishment ; or they may come of some stock hopelessly incurable. We have already seen that all things act according to their qualities; and in certain families there are hereditary diseases; for which reason our wise lawgiver Mann forbids the Brahman youth to marry into any tainted family, however large may be the dowry he might purchase by doing so. If then persons are for any reason cursed with in- curable blindness, it is not wonderful that the wisdom of our S6.nkhya teachers should not have been able to rescue them from an inevitable lot." "But at least," said Blancombe, ** you must feel that it would be a great triumph of benevolence and enlightenment to succeed in such a task ; perhaps, indeed, if any doctrines should appear more capable of such success than others, that circimistance would alone go far to prove the superior excellence of the doctrines which so prevailed. What then if we both try, by disseminating the highest truth, to lift up a larger portion of the benighted children of Manu into the enjoyment of knowledge ? It will be no mean testimony either to our sacred books, or to your profound and subtle doctrines, if either of us renders a whole community of men purer in life and more enlightened in understanding than they have ever hitherto been. There are parts of India, as I have heard, where men murder their children newly bom under the impression that such murder is an act of piety ; nor need I enumerate to you a thousand acts of wickedness which we daily observe, and which are forbidden even by the laws of Manu. Tell me then, how you would proceed in such a benevolent undertaking as the reformation of the moral sentiments among vicious or ignorant men. Or if , as you imply, your efforts in that direction have not hitherto been successful, may not such a failure imply some want of adaptation in your doctrine to the eternal conscience of mankind. At least let me repeat here some such declaration as I have already ventured to make in reference to the duty of searching after Truth. Just as there it was admitted that we should not lightly despair of finding that treasure, the existence AUTHORITIES. 67 of which somewhere is implied even in the term knowledge, so here let all the virtues of which the Miini has spoken, and which you also endeavour to practise, persuade us to think hopefully of the possibility of enlightening large masses, even though they consisted of the Sudra and the Ch4nd4la, and let us not desist from this inquiry, until we have decided, either what is truest, or at least most likely to lead men into the paths of knowledge, and to the waters of immortality." NOTE ON CHAPTKR 11. In addition to Ck)lebrooke may be mentioned as authorities for this and for the following chapter, the texts and lectures published for the use of the Benares College, on the Vedanta, Nyaya, and other philosophies ; the Rig- Veda hymns, translated by Professor Wilson ; the same eminent scholar's lectures, lus account of Hindu sects in general, and his editions of the Yishnu Purdna, and of the Sdnkhya Karika. For the Benares College texts I am indebted to the kindness of Mr Muir; and I understand that the comments, by which the difficulty of the original texts is so much mitigated, are due to Dr Ballantyne. They tend to place Hindu thought in a more £Bkvourable light than some works more generally read ; such as the meritorious, but &r fix>m penetrating, work on Missions, by the Rev. Dr JhifL Many of the Hindu deities are described by Sir William Jones ; whose account, however, should be tested by the more accurate ideas derivable fix)m the Rig- Veda and Professor Wilson's other publi- cations, such as that on the sects of India (published in the Asiatic Researches^ and reprinted at Calcutta) and the analyses furnished in Colebrooke. A Mend tells me that the infanticide occasional among the Bajpnts is not connected with religion ; but that at Qanga Sugar, at the mouth of the Hooghly, it was so. The challenge in the text, however, might be applied to either. 5—2 68 rEDANTIXE REMARKS. CHAPTER in. WkaitkeSaipa Veddaiine tkinkt. ** It must be dear, from 11 that has been taid, thai roch a system, if it be eren perfectlv oomprdiensible, cannot be represented by language, but most be fnfiBmd by the mind frtxn the principles." — SiB Graves EULrcBTOV. " The lugbest point of speculation is that in which tkougkt and mttenee, fbr- maUv considered, become one ; and the logos, or reason, as an emanation of the Divinity, reigns alone, at once the osmrr of all being, and the amiemi of all tkotiglU, Every complete system of philosophy, accordingly, rests in GoD, as its highest idea and its final aim Thus it is the goal, that God should be Au. nr All." — MORSLL.