English
Thus the introduc¬ tion of Isvnra or God in Samkara’s system is not, as it is in Kant, of the nature of a baffling addition to an otherwise consistent moral idealism or ‘ ex- * *<r yuv i ma rto* tret tfn* WWtoifli —Com. on Y.S., II. i. xxxiv. 286 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDANTA elusive moralism,’ as Prof. Bosanquet styles it, of the Kantian point of view. The ‘ immense expan¬ sion ’ which the ‘ moral world ’ thus gains, accord¬ ing to Samkara, can be described with no loss of meaning, in Martineau’s well-known words : “ The rule of right, the symmetries of character, the re¬ quirements of perfection, are no provincialisms of this planet: they are known among the stars : they reign beyond Orion and the Southern Cross : they are wherever the universal spirit is.” # From such a cosmic expansion of the moral, that is, the anthro¬ pocentric point of view, Mr. Bertrand Russell would immediately recoil (as he has, with pointed em¬ phasis, done, e.g., in his Mysticism and Logic and Scientific Method in Philosophy) as he is con¬ vinced that an ‘ ethically inspired metaphysics ’ is, after all, bad metaphysics, as being fundamentally inconsistent with, or irrelevant to, a wider context —the cosmo-centric point of view which is the stand¬ point of philosophy, or what is virtually the same thing, the standpoint of the scientific method. It is instructive to note that Samkara and Russell, representing, as they do, two radically opposed lines of thinking, converge on this point, so far as they, in full sympathy with the contention of Mysticism as to the relative and practical nature of the distinc¬ tion between good and evil, concur in denying to it a theoretical or constitutive validity from the con¬ templative point of view. But their respective attitudes towards the problem and function of IHara or God explain a characteristic difference; * Study of Religion, Vol. I, p, 28, ISVABA AS CREATOR AND CREATION AS ULI 287 one, convinced of the parochial or practical nature of the distinction, would go the length of hazarding the paradox that ‘ the elimination of ethical consi¬ derations from philosophy is both scientifically necessary and an ethical advance ; ’* while the other, rooted in the same conviction, consolidates the moral values as furnishing the surest foundation and the truest keynote of a theistic construction of the world. Starting from the human end, Samkara follows up steadily this line of graded perfection until it cul¬ minates in its very apex, the Divine, as summing up in itself the meaning of the whole creation. On the other hand, Samkara has not, it should be carefully noted, construed the immanence of the Divine—to which his metaphysical or absolutistic predilections commit him—in such a way as to jeopardise or stultify the indispensable transcendence of the Divine in the interests of morality. Such an unethical relation between the human and the Divine is foreign to Samkara’s whole way of think¬ ing. The immanence in question, which is a natural sequel to his absolute monism, does in no sense render human agency or creativity superfluous or illusory. We are no mere Divine automata or mere conduit-pipes for the transmission of the Divine energy and agency. We are active, free, creative agents in a very real sense; we are no mere passive spectators in the world-drama but co-operate, on equal terms, with God as our co-operater in this * Mysticism and Logic and Other Essay a. 288 A systematic study of the vedinta drama of creation. It is no mere quasi-theistic con¬ cession, but a full, frank, and ungrudging recogni¬ tion, on Samkara’s part of the de facto individuality, freedom and independence of created beings. If, as some theistic writers have rightly contended, “ unless creators are created, nothing is really created,” then Samkara lias made provision for ‘ creation ’ in his system. According to Samkara, we are creators, architects of our own moral and spiritual fortune and the arbiter of our final destiny ; we are efficient causes—even if it be in a secondary sense—‘ second causes ’ in relation to God who is the First Cause. We as creators or ‘ second causes,’ are created in a sense and in another sense not created, as Samkara would have it in his doctrine of creation. We can do no better than allow Samkara himself to present his own case—which he does so admirably and succinctly by means of a telling example thus : “ I6vara, however, is to be conceived as a shower¬ ing cloud. Just as the showering cloud serves, in the matter of fructifying (or raising a crop of) corn or wheat, etc., as the common co-operating, in¬ variable condition, while the uncommon, varying, specific potencies, peculiar to their respective seed- forms, function causally in respect of the resulting differences in the form of corn and wheat, so does Ifaara or God serve as the universally concomitant, unvarying condition in the creation of human beings and deities, while the specific totum of karina (which is the true prinoipium individuationis accord- ing to Samkara), unique of its kind and peculiar to each of these, functions in the capacity of a cause ISVARA AS CREATOR AND CREATION AS LIDA 289 with regard to the eventual differentiation of human beings and deities.”*- No more lucidly could one express the solution of an age-long and knotty pro¬ blem of mighty importance—a problem on which vital issues of ethics and theology are staked—and no more profound solution could be given commen¬ surate with the needs of morality and religion. Such a solution irresistibly recalls a kindred one given by Martineau in his characteristic epigrammatic style : ‘ ‘ God is the author of our possibilities : we are the authors of our actualities.’-’ It clearly implies a delimitation of the Divine power or causality in the interests of human freedom and moral education. Such a limitation does not, however, argue to the presence of a superior or rival power coping with it, and imposing this limitation ab extra but it is essentially a ‘ self-imposed limitation.’ This limi¬ tation, gamkara frankly acknowledges, does in no way detract from the so-called * omnipotence ’ with which orthodox theology invariably invests its God ; and, moreover, an omnipotence which does not respect or safeguard the interests of morality does neither exalt the notion of Deity, nor redound to the credit of a rational theology. Not unreasonably, therefore, has Cleanthes, * the philosophical theist ’ in Hume’s Dialogues, confessed that he has ‘ been ® tws i nrr fv qwwt amrt wart w*fa> j i. xxxiv. . WUWJflr wfw—Com. on V.S., II. 37 290 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDINTA apt to suspect the frequent repetition of the word infinite, which we meet with in all theological writers, to savour more of panegyric than of philo¬ sophy, and that any purposes of reasoning, and even of religion would be better served, were we to rest contented with more accurate arid more moder¬ ate expressions.’ In this standing issue between Revelationism and Rationalism, between ‘ inflexible orthodoxy,’ and ‘ philosophical theism,’ between Authority and free thinking, Samkara has, in this very doctrine of creation, shown the way to the attainment of a much-needed balance, and adjust¬ ment of their rights satisfactory to the demands of the moral and the religious life. Such are the implications of that element of * determination ’ (^nttac?) operative in the creative act Oifo) conceived as tila or play—which is absolutely undetermined by an extraneous end but is, on the other hand, essentially self-sufficient and self-determined. Thus, there is no incompatibility in Samkara’ s admission of 'si along with ’—‘ not conditioned or determined by an (external) end ’ and yet conditioned or determined by an (internal) end, and not indeterminate or un¬ conditional—with reference to the creation of Thar a. Such is the case with two outstanding thinkers in the West, Spinoza and Kant. Spinoza, as we all know, is emphatic in his denial of teleology to God, on the ground of its being human, all-too- human. The ascription of purpose or end in a metaphysical or cosmic reference to God clearly implies an indigence or imperfection in a Being that ISVARA AS CBEATOR AND CREATION AS LlLl 291 is ex hypothesi all-perfect ( ens perfectissimum). Hence in the historical antithesis of mechanism and teleology, Spinoza appears as a staunch supporter of mechanism or mechanical and geometrical neces¬ sity. But that is not the last word of Spinoza’s philosophy, as has been so often pointed out by veterans in Spinoza scholarship. Spinoza’s denials in this reference have really been found to be more often sinned against than sinning. He does indeed deny both intellectus and voluntas to God. “If intellect belongs to the Divine nature,” as he puts it, ‘ ‘ it cannot be, like ours, posterior to the objects understood, or simultaneous with them, since God is the antecedent cause of them all ”—anticipating fully the famous antithesis which Immanuel Kant was led to draw between our understanding which is discursive, and the problematic, intuitive, or creative understanding ( intellectus archetypus) of God. In other words, when he denies intellectus to God, ‘ it is the schematic and partial knowledge of things from the outside, the knowledge which proceeds by the piecing together of parts and the inferring of the unknown from the known, that is unequivocally and justly repudiated.