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Very much of the same kind, again, is your account of the soul's resolving back all creation, by me- ditating upon it, into the primary and indissoluble element of Pracriti. For you mean only that the imagination can so fix its mental gaze on things as to see no longer their manifold variety of forms, but to take notice only of that primary principle which runs through all in common. Now such a meditation on our part may alter the look of things to us, but it makes no difference in the things themselves ; although if it did, I must confess to you the gain thereby is not to me so evident. For I had rather sXnkhta defect op science. 187 Bee the world in all its beautiful variety of mountain and sea, and shrub and flower, than have it all resolved into some moveable fluid, which you say is blind, therefore it has not the wisdom of mind ; and is not separable into elements, therefore it has not the beauty of nature. Such a kind of liberation of the soul, in which I should see nothing but such a dull kind of imiversal quick- silver, appears to me so far from being a victory worth striving for, that I would pray to avoid it as long as possible. But, in fact, it is clear, and I think some of your doctors admit, that the connexion of soul with nature in being will continue, so that the liberation turns out to be an imaginary one ; and you seem to me altogether to have overlooked the difference between concep- tion and reality, or as people who make plain tilings hard in Europe would say, between the subjective and the objective. " The great calmness with which you listen to me encourages me to ask, where after all is the science in that system of yours which professes to be so scientific ? You surely have lived near enough to the disciples of G6tama and Canada to learn that a mere illustration drawn from comparison between some points of resemblance, which may be either unreal or partial, has not the force of an argument which follows necessarily from proved sameness of being. Yet all your system seemed to me built upon such probability as may be drawn from illustrations, that is to say, upon mere comparison, which may be ever so fanciful. Again, there are in the Nydya* logic careful distinctions be- tween different kinds of causes, such as the material, the condi- tional, and the instrumental. But you Sdnkhya philosophers appear to argue that every effect is involved in its cause, as the oil in the olive-seed; therefore the world must have pre- existed in Pracriti, as you say with Capila, and I suppose also the followers of Patanjali would, unless they evolve it out of their Supreme Soul, for I do not see that they attribute creation to their Iswara, though guidance t they do. Some affinity, or * Nydya Apkoriimt, Parts u. and iii., and Dr Ballantyne's Zecf urv, Allahabad, 1853—54. t See Toga AphoritTM, §§ 12— 5. 188 SOUL AND WORLD NOT ACCOUNTED FOR. unacknowledged sympathy with your premises, appears so far to influence Vidydchdrya that he too makes the world come in a way out of the very substance of God. " But I must here ask, in what sense are you using the words effect and cause? for the wheelbarrow is not in the carpenter, nor is the statue in the sculptor, except so far as either may excogit- ate his idea. You cannot mean that the material is in the agent, though Vidyach&rya argued as if it were so. Nor yet should I understand that you find the effect in the instrument; for the sword-blade is not involved necessarily in the blacksmith's ham- mer and anvil. Rather, I suppose, you mean that the capacity must be in the material, which again you confound with the instrumental. As regards the world, this is much as if you had said that the stream is in the source, or the plant in the seed ; for you have chosen here arbitrarily to exclude the sup- position of agency. But then who told us that the world was a flux or a growth? whatever signs the world betrays, either in its fabric of agency, or in all its history of an overruling provi- dence, are all so many arguments against its being a mere flux, and, consequently, against your supposition of its origin having been in Pracriti. Here I should like to bring you and my vene- rable friend the A'chilrya together, and ask each of you simulta- neously a question. If the effect is in its cause, I ask you to what element in the indivisible Pracriti shall we trace back that which is truly spiritual in man, his conscience for example, or his purest aspirations, and again his guilty forebodings. These things certainly exist in us and not in Pracriti ; therefore Pracriti is not our cause. Again, to Vidy&chdrya I would put the question, if the Deity made the world out of His own substance, from what element in Himself did He make the passion, the darkness, and the guilt, which constitute the existence of so many depraved beings ? You both agree, that in the world are contained good- ness, passion, darkness ; to you then I say, flux out of Pracriti will not account for the first, and to our fiiend here, creation out of the divine substance leaves the two others unexplained. THEORY OP CAUSATION IMPERFECT. 189 " In one sense, however, I fully admit to you that the effect is implied in its cause, that is to say, every effect must have an adequate cause. But it is the necessity of this argument which leads me far and deep beyond the veil of Nature to a divine Iswara, who has created the world by mere choice of will and upholds it by wisdom. For though on this supposition I may not know how Pracriti came into being, I can give a credible ap- proximation to an account of it ; for you see I attribute it to an adequate cause, since any design conceived by power and wisdom (which perhaps are two names for one thing) is sufficient to have involved all the effects of Pracriti. The thoughts of a Deity may in a purely spiritual sense have contained, inasmuch as they forecast, the appearances we behold in nature. Here then we have a self-moving cause. Whereas, by observing capacities in the material of nature we trace no cause but only observe links. Even as regards nattfre, then, I humbly conceive nothing could be a cause in the sense we are seeking for one, unless it an- swered to the idea of a creative mind or an overruling governor. The cause we want must be an efficient or originating one. In the Nydya* logic I rather think the efficient and the instrumental kinds of causes are not clearly distinguished, whereas surely they ought to be ; for the wielder of a tool is one thing and the tool wielded is another ; just as the material wrought from may be a third, or may be so constructed as to be an instrument to itself. Neither then the tool nor the material are properly causes, but only the first or the efficient is the true cause, for only the first originates the action ; but, if you please, I must here go a step farther, though on difficult ground, and must maintain that there is no true efficient, and therefore nothing which is properly termed a cause, as regards an action done, except where there is a personal agent. Perhaps person is not the happiest word to use, but I mean one who has a self-determining activity ; and this, I suppose, requires an imity of self-consciousness; just as the Nydya admits that knowledge can only reside in soul. Common * Dr Ballftntyne's Lecture, pp. 18 — 38. 190 THE CAUSER OF CAUSES. sense shews such an axjtivity does not reside in the chisel or in the marble, and the reason of its absence is that these things do not possess consciousness, or understanding, or choice. Whereas the sculptor conceives a design, and proposes to himself an idea of his future work, which he might make diflFerently if he chose. In him then we have, as far as humanity admits of such a thing, a true cause, for we have an originator of an action ; nor does he owe us any account of his making his work one thing rather than another, except so far as principles of beauty or fitness guide his will ; and these again depend, like everything hiunan, upon some higher law, which the sculptor apprehends in virtue of his understanding. Every true cause, therefore, must be an efficient, and differs from capacities, or means, or any other things termed causes, just as the sculptor differs from the marble or the chisel with which he works.