English
Nor indeed do I see how any one who follows perception, which is one of the two great sources of all knowledge, can deny the sensible world to be in a state of flux, with life and death constantly succeeding each other, as the composition of various bodies is altered or modified ; so that growth and decay in the world are like the flow and ebb of a tide in the ocean of life. Some indeed may dispute how far these things proceed in their own natural order, or require an external guidance (though the signs of a guide are at least nowhere apparent) ; and Candda, either from want of subtilty or from deference to others, conceded that some forms and arrangements of atoms were eternal ; we, however, find no existing body which is not capable of being decomposed, as its parts are capable of being moulded again into a fresh form of life; neither can we trace any discernible limit to this process. Nothing therefore prevents us from saying that existence changes, and bodies come to an end. But this saying does not mean either that the minute particles, or atoms, out of which bodies are composed, themselves perish, or again that the vast whole in which these things revolve, like bubbles in an ocean, is in any danger of being dried up, and becoming dead." Blan. "We all, I may probably venture to say, feel much obliged to you for thus explaining your doctrine ; but permit me to ask, if it does not imply nothing but material nature to be eternal. Existence, you appear to say, depends only on an aggregation of particles, and each of its forms, when decomposed, loses its identity, or ceases to be ; though the atoms themselves 6 MATERIAL WORLD. may be cagt into another shape. The followers then of jour religion would seem to be, as our venerable Hindd Mend evi- dently thinks, NasticaSy or disowners of any spiritual existence beyond the present." Sauo. " You must pardon me if I disclaim entirely the ac- count you would give of us. Such a description would belong more properly to the Chdrvdcas. They are materialists, and some of tliem believe that the purusha or person of a man is merely his body; others say that the soul is only the animal life ; or perhaps, with rather more subtlety, that it is the result of the bodily organs of sensation ; or again, that it should be called the faculty of thought, but considered to have been engen- dered by the blending of different physical substances, just as spirit is produced by the fermenting of simpler liquors. But all such statements are merely different expressions of materialism : whereas the Updsacas, or worshippers of Buddha, diverge so entirely from such a doctrine, that one considerable division of us, the Y6gdchdras, look upon all appearances of material things as utterly untrustworthy, and maintain that our internal sensa- tion, or intelligence, is the only real being the eternity of which may be affirmed. Instead therefore of being materialists, they might rather be called spiritualists, or at least, believers in intelli- gence alone, and not in matter." " But pray," asked Blancombe, "how do they arrive at such a belief?" "Partly," answered the Saugata, "by following out the train of thought already explained, about the fluctuation of external life somewhat fiarther than is necessary. They remark that all the signs which we observe of external things are not the things themselves, but either the composite result of simpler parts, or coverings which like garments conceal the real body from us, or else inherent characteristics, and as it were belongings, just as it belongs to sunshine to be bright, or to water to be cool and soft. But now the bark of a tree, or the skin of a man, give but an imperfect notion of what the body is beneath ; and when you have penetrated to the body, you find it in one case consist of sap and fibre and MATERIAL WORLD. 7 sach things, and in the other of bone and flesh ; but all of these parts are again made up of simpler elements, and those of sim- pler still; and when you have divided down to the smallest divisible atoms, you have entirely got rid of the body of the man or the tree which you were inquiring about ; for only the minutest chemical particles remain ; but of these particles again you feel only that they are hard, or sharp, or round, or whatever they may be in character ; but what they are in essential being, or whether they have any being in themselves, is as much a secret to you as in the case of the original body, the being of which escaped from your feeling for it while it was in your hands/' " All that," said Blancombe, " cannot be denied ; but although it turns out that we see things in their properties or their inherent characteristics, rather than in themselves, does it not still follow that there remains something behind, too subtle, perhaps, for us to apprehend, but still which we must infer to exist, and therefore know to be real. You remember what you said of the root of the tree." "Yes," answered the Saugata, " that is the belief as to the reality of matter which I rather prefer; but then the Ydgdch^as go on to observe, that this reality, so far as it is real, being known only by mental infer- ence, is only a matter of belief, and therefore a creation of the mind. It therefore, after all, depends upon intelligence, which is the only thing of the being of which we are well assured. Moreover, in anotlier sense, the same persons assert (and here, strange as it may sound, I should not wonder if the wise Sadd- nanda were partly to agree with them,) the cause of the external world may be said to be ignorance. So long as we could trace the composition of various bodies, either of trees or men, we were in no danger of supposing them to have any real existence apart from the elements of which they consisted, which were very difierent from the appearance ; but when we had penetrated to the least traceable particles, our ignorance of what might or might not lie underneath or behind, started up in the form of knowledge, and said. Here you have the original forms of matter. 8 MAIMER AND MIND. Ignorance therefore creates matter, at the moment when we seemed to have discovered its non-existence." " I was not sorry," remarked Blancombe, " to hear you say that our knowledge of the material world rests after all upon mental belief, or at least you said what amounted to something of the kind ; only it is not clear to me how this doctrine of the Ydgdchdras, which you have been now expounding, diflFers from that of the total perisliableness, which you did not like to be charged with." " Rather," said Vidydchdrya, " it is clear that there is no great difference ; but the doctrines of Buddha make everything uncertain. Moreover, although the Muni here is too intelligent to maintain what had been so well refuted by Sancara, yet the doctrine of the external world having no reality, or rather even of an universal void, so that no reality can be held certain, is the original tenet of the Stitras of Buddha." " I am sorry," replied the Saugata, " that you approve as little of the doctrines of Buddha as he did of books which are by some considered venerable ; but perhaps the Y6gdchdras would not admit that the existence of things is rendered any the less certain by being made to depend upon intelligence. Perhaps they might argue that as any man observes or infers external objects, using how- ever mental intelligence, so when he is withdrawn, if the things continue to exist, they do so in virtue of being observed by some higher intelligence ; and so, upon the man's return, he may find them as it were in the same place, so far at least as the absence of change in material forms is possible. Again, some of them might say that the ultimate reality or latent substance of matter, which we trace only by inference, does not consist in the mere parts, nor even in their arrangement, but rather in the rule which binds them, or in the thought according to which they cohere, so as to be one thing rather than another; and thus their substance will be that principle which gives form to them, and, in fact, a sort of intelligence. Some such answer as this therefore might satisfy what you objected a little time back about the table's existing after a man left the room. Although, BAUDDHA TERMS EXPLAINED.