English
In European philosophy it is described as ' the re- lation of total sameness in which a concept stands to all, and the relation of partial sameness in which it stands to each, of the constituent characters.’ ^ This third form of Syllogism — Identification — ^is said to have been introduced in Europe only in the last century by a great German philosopher, Hegel, and the Germans have proclaimed him 'worthy of im- mortal glory’ for it. The three, namely. Deduction, Induction, and Identification, together form a triad mutually supporting each other. By means of it the separate results of different forms 1. See page 170. 2. Hamilton, Logic 1. 179. 209 may be combined together in a harmonious and sub- stantial whole, and we arrive at a unity. ^ There is also another similar system in the Ved4nta named ( ) the BddJiasa- mdndclhikarnyam, in which with the elimination of contrary adjuncts all strangeness between smallness and greatness, &c., disappears, and the substrate alone remains as identical. The method of ( ) Anvaya-tyatireha is also used. It is the joint method of concomitance and non-concomitance, or, the inductive method of conjoint agreement and difference, or, the method of positive and negative instances. The Vedanta philosophy demonstrates its truths by means of such perfect tripartite systems of Negation, Position, and Identity, and arrives at the irrefragable conclusion of the Identification and unity of all the real. It establishes that there is but one Noumenon, and all else is but its phenomena, though, as it were, amongst the very phenomena, there are reflections of the Noumenon, the subject itself. Brahman, on various stages. It penetrates everywhere and embraces all. 1. A critic says: — ‘ Indeed, no course of reasoning can be con- sidered sound unless conducted by this method, and the results of deduction, induction, and identification, are made to harmonize and combine with each other as naturally and perfectly as the elements in a chemical compound.’ The same critic further observes : — ‘He ( Hegel ) is in philo- sophy what Browning is in poetiyr — gold in a quartz rock which has to go through a milling process in our own minds before we can get at it next to Bismarck and Von Moltke no other has done so much for German national unity, itself a historical event of the first magnitude.’ 210 The knowledge of the identity of all releases the individual soul, into complete independency from the adjuncts, and restores it in unity with Brahman. Bacon says: — ‘Things are preserved from destruction by bringing them back to their first principles.’ The process of ratiocination, reducing particulars to some genera], and deducing particulars from the general, is seen iii the Ved4nta phrase “ “The Lord hath set the world in the mind of men, that man may find it out.’’ Qankara in his Dakshindmnrtistotra says: — This may be translated in the words of Bacon thus : — ‘ The Lord hath framed the mind of man as a glass capable of the image of the universal world joying to receive the signature thereof, as the eye is of light.’ ^ The Vedanta subordinates the natural to the in- tellectual element, and after reducing the varieties of sentient being and those of insentient things, to an unconditional unity, proceeds still higher and arrives at the absolute unity, the substratum SR) of all. Brahman, which is whole and sole, a perfectly and universally self-identical, being-thought- bliss The thought directed to this Brahman is alone the true knowledge. This is called the knowledge of the divine whole ( )• It elevates the soul. “ True knowledge is a whole, and is at rest. Consistency and universality are the tests of truth. 1. Bacon’s Works. Vol. III. p. 220. 211 To this self-evidencing knowledge of the whole the faculty of mind is supposed to correspond. "Without the idea of good (God ) though a man gain the world he has no good of it. When the sun shines the eye sees, and in the intellectual world where truth is, there is sight and light,”’ Transcendent ideas reflect in no two minds with the same clearness and brightness, much less in many minds. They are differently judged by men in accordance with their own capacity. Those who could not understand them call them dreaming, those few whose intellectual powers are high call them the wisest and the best interpreters of the human and Divine thoughts. For the general reader an idea almost similar to that of the Vedflnta is giv'en below from the German philosopher Kant, which, it is hoped, wflll make the above most sublime Vedanta idea intelligible to him. Kant is said to have arrived at the same conclusion by the way of abstract reasoning and scientific proof. "There are not two sources of Knowledge’’, says Kant ; "on the one side external Objects, and on the other Human understanding. Knowledge has but one source, and that is the union of object and sub- ject. Thus water is the union of oxygen and hydro- gen, but you cannot say that water has two causes, oxygen and hydrogen ; it has only one cause ; viz., the union of the two. "The whole world is to us a series of Phenomena. Are these Appearances the production of the mind to which they appear ; or ai'e they the pure prcseuiah’on 1. See Plato^ translated by Jowet. Vol. Ill, p. 83. 212 of the things themselves ? Idealism or Kealism ? Neither; yet , both. The Mind and the object co- operating produce the appearance or Perception. In their union Perception is effectuated ‘A know- ledge of things per se is impossible’... Although we cannot know if our knowledge has any objective truth, we can be certain of its subjective truth. “ The non-ego and the ego, the objective world and the subjective mind, being jdaced face to face, the two co-operate to produce knowledge The objects are diverse and multiple, or numerous and various. The subject re- mains invariably the same. “ Sensibility has given us intuitions (i)erceptions), understanding has given us perceptions;understanding isdefined the faculty of judging. Reason is the faculty of ratiocination, of drawing conclusions from given premises. Reason reduces the variety of concep- tions to their utmost unity. It proceeds from ge- nerality to generality till it reaches the uncondi- tional. Every conception must be reduced to some general idea, that idea again reduced to some still more general idea, and so on till we arrive at an ultimate and unconditional principle, such as God. ( The Parmdtman of the Vedanta ). “ Reason not only reduces particulars to a general, it also reduces the particular from the general These two processes of reducing a particular to some general, and of deducing some particular from a general, constitute ratiocination. “Reason has three pure forms or ideas. These are wholly independent of experience ; they are above sensibility — above the understanding ; their 213 domain is reason, their function that of giving unity and coherence to our conceptions. “The understanding can form certain general conceptions, such as man, animal, tree ; but these general conceptions themselves are subordinate to a still more general idea, embracing all these ge- neral conceptions in the same way as the conception of man embraces several particulars of bone, blood, muscle, &c. This idea is that of the universe. (The Jagat of the Vedanta ). “In the same way all the modifications of think- ing being — all the sensations, thoughts and passions — require to be embraced in some general idea, as the ultimate ground and possibility for these modi- fications, as the noumenon of these phenomena. This idea is that of an ego—oi a personality — of a soul, ( of a self), in short. ^ ( The Sim or VramAtci of the Vedinta ). “Having thus reduced all the varieties of the ego to an unconditional unity, viz., soul, and having also reduced all the varieties of the non-ego to an un- conditional unity, viz ., — the world, our task would seem completed ; yet, on looking deeper, Ave find that these two ideas pre-suppose a third, a unity still 1, “That ‘Self (ego) which is the prior condition of there be- ing a natural world cannot be the creature of that world. It stands above and beyond the sphere of causes and effects ; it is no mere object among other objects driven along its pre-destined course by external forces in obedience to alien laws. On the contrary, it is a free autonomous Spirit, not only bound, but able, to fulfil the moral commands which are but the expression of its most essential being.” See Mr. Arthur Balfour’s jPouncblion^ of Belief pp. 141-2. 214 higher, the source of both the woi'ld and of the ego — viz., God. “God, the soul, and the world are therefore the three ideas of reason, the laws of its operation, the pure forms of its existence. They are to it what space and time are to sensibility, and what the catagories are to understanding.” ^ “And so each stage in the consciousness of the philosophising subject rising ever into a higher one, the evolution continues, till, with the complete elimination of contradiction, all strange- ness between subject and object disappears, and the soul comes to perfect self-cognition, and perfect self- certainty This is the position upon which Descartes stood ; the position upon which Spinoza stood. Schelling and Hegel arrived at this position by a different route. The student will find with an agreeable surprise the same idea as the foregoing, ( quoted below from the Brahma- s Atr as, I. 1, 4.) of the unity of the sub- ject and object, on a still higher and more sublime principle of embracing all as one and identical with Brahman, the Highest Self. It is rightly observed that the thing-in-itself is unknowable for man.