English
’ This is unmistakably one of those typical passages which mark him out as a consum¬ mate artist, whose appeal lies not so much in any lure of intellectualism, but in the esthetic effect produced by words of chiselled beauty and vivid imagery. While, therefore, we feel unconvinced by his logic, Mr. Russell impresses us with a pecu¬ liar persuasiveness that defies analysis into reasons. Indeed, it is only by straining the resources of lan¬ guage,—of the words ‘gospel, and ‘worship’—that the ‘gospel of unyielding despair’ can be made to serve as the keynote of a ‘free man’s worship.’ Truly, it is neither deserving of the name of ‘wor-' ship’ nor that of a ‘free man.’ On the one hand, the ‘proud defiance’ inherent herein is at the far¬ thest remove from the attitude of worship; on the other, a stupefying admiration for, and a craven submission or resignation to an ‘unconscious power, ’ trampling on our cherished ideals, give the lie direct * Perry, Pretent Philosophical Tendencies, p. 846. THE CULTURAL VALUE OP THE VEDANTA 3Q1 to the spirit of worship, and that of a ‘ free man.’ The ‘ gospel of unyielding despair ’ is not the gospel of a ' free man,’ but of a bondslave, enchained like Prometheus to the bed-rock of naturalism, un¬ relieved by the Promethean spark of the Tdeal. 1 Fear of the Lord,’ it has been well said, ‘ is rln- beginning of all wisdom.’ But it is, be it remem¬ bered, only the beginning—and neither the end nor the essence of wisdom. Thus, the fear of relentless matter rolling along and, as the psychologist will assert, the proud defiance is but the paralysing fear turned inside out—may mark the beginning of an intellectual curiosity, but it is, in the end, conduc¬ ive neither to intellectual uplift, nor religious edifi¬ cation. The cult of spiritual worship must neces¬ sarily be in a minor key, where worship thrives by thus working upon the instinct of fear, and man sinks into the comparatively insignificant position of a mere ‘ tooth in the wheel,’ forfeiting eventually the right to record his approval or disapproval of the ways of this unconscious power. This attitude might readily fall in with the modernist craze for the 1 Renaissance of instinct ’ with its gospel of In bete humaine, but it lacks the essentially human note of that elevating trust in the spiritual dignity of man, which is the best ministration to religious worship. Summarily speaking, the sense of being thus overwhelmed and awed into submission by an unconscious, albeit stupendous, power, and the sense of defeatism born of despair, and the conse¬ quent deification of the natural or the actual, give the lie direct to the attitude of worship. 3Q2 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDANTA The ingrained intellcctualism of Mr. Russell's standpoint has been, as we know, steadily on the increase, and, in his latest writings, it shows itself to be on the verge of bankruptcy, and stultifying itself by a veritable reductio ad absurdum. It appeared in excelsis in the course of lectures he delivered, under the auspices of the British Philo¬ sophical Institute during the Lent term of 1928. The course was entitled ‘ Philosophy of Physics,” and although some portion of it has been incorpo¬ rated in his Analysis of Matter, the course was of a more sketchy character, and therefore too intellec¬ tual to be intelligible to the ordinary student unini¬ tiated into the intricacies of mathematical logic. At the conclusion of one of these evening discourses (which I had been regularly attending)—and this was on the nature of Substance—one elderly gentle¬ man, an artist by profession, took the lead during the question-time and made the telling remark : “ I have followed with rapt attention the frame-work of the Physical universe which the lecturer this evening has unrolled before our admiring eyes. But when I am told, in the name of a Philosophy of Phy¬ sics, to believe that my wife sitting next to me is a mere ‘ formula ’ representing a group of events in the-series— x + f x (x) dt + f 2 (x) dt 2 +.f n (x) dt“, fi (x) being a continuous function of time, it sends a thrill of horror through my blood.” The whole house burst into a peal of laughter but the redoubtable Mr. Russell rose equal to the occasion and replied with a characteristic smile: “I can¬ not help it: such is, in the abstract, the character THE CULTURAL VALUE OP THE VEDINTA 3Q3 of the universe, and I was not consulted at the time of its creation.” Apart from the humour of the situation, there is a candid confession in Mr. Russell’s retort here, as to the real character of intellectualism. In his vocabulary the intellectual, or the scientific method for the matter of that, is the method of analysis and abstraction. And it is in the sense of a vicious abstractionism that the charge of intellectualism has been, curiously enough, pressed against the Upanishads and the Advaita-Vedanta in general. Thus, there is a volte face, a complete change of front, so far as it is maintained that here at least one system of Indian philosophical thought lays / exclusive emphasis upon contemplation, or Oetapta, without making the intellectual impulse subservient to some other end,—as all the other systems do, as a rule. What these somewhat contradictory rul¬ ings plainly reveal is the hollowness of the indict¬ ment on both the counts—of anti-intellectualism and intellectualism—as pressed against Indian philosophy. Does not this procedure on the part of critics lend countenance to the suspicion that any stick is good enough to beat a dog with? Admitting, under protest, the force of the contention that Indian philosophy has not always lived up to the ideal of theoretical consistency or intellectual curio¬ sity, one may yet reply that the charge cannot be maintained at least against Sriharsha’s Khandana- khanda Khadyam, or in a wider reference, against the thinkers of the Neo-logical (Navya Nyaya) school in the face of their dialectical finesse, wherein the 304 A' SYSTEMATIC STUDY OE THE VEDINTA urge of intellectual curiosity has been rigorously pursued—perhaps with a vengeance. After all, it must be admitted that the main drift of Indian philosophy has been in the direction of a subordina¬ tion of the logical values, along with others, to one Supreme Good, and decisively against the absolute authority or paramount claims of the intellectual ideal. In the West, however, this has never been the case—with the exception, however, of one brief interlude of philosophical thinking. But in Tndia at least philosophical thought has never been an intellectual pastime merely, cut off from the moor¬ ings of all other values of life. Free thinking in the sense of an unchartered freedom to indulge in polemics for their own sake has seldom found favour with the Indian mind. This is a fact that has to be accepted as such, and let not the judgment of fact be surreptitiously converted into a judgment upon fact. Just as there can be no disputing about tastes, so also there can be no comparative evaluation in this matter. No less confusing, on this very score, is the uncritical application to Indian philosophy, of the technique of philosophical thought and critical evaluation obtaining in the West. While an ex¬ aggerated sense of, or scrupulous regard for, the individuality of Indian thought and culture that defies comparison with all else is, to say the least of it, dogmatic and unphilosophical, it is no less reprehensible to make an off-hand use of such epi¬ thets as ‘rationalistic,’ ‘intellectual, or ‘anti-intel- lectualistic’ in the matter of describing the position THE CULTURAL VALUE OF THE VEDINTA 335 of Indian thinkers. Quite apart from the fact that philosophical labels are essentially misleading, the chances of misdirection on the part of these labels become all the greater when the canons of criticism are exotic in origin, and, therefore, must needs undergo some transformation in meaning as taken out of their proper context. It is a commonplace,— amounting almost to a truism—of all comparative studies, but it is more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Accordingly, - when we have recourse to such descriptive phrases as ‘Samkara is a rationalist’ or ‘a revelationist in the service of orthodoxy’ or even ‘a scholastic expounding theo¬ logical dogmatics’ and the like, seldom do we pause to consider whether we are not sometimes straining the resources of language beyond their breaking- point. The enormity of this procedure reaches its climax when, in appraising an old system of thought, we conveniently forget the interval of time that separates it from us, and apply our standards and canons of criticism to it. Following this questionable method, critics have not infrequently tabooed the philosophical system of Samkara as ‘ uncritical ’ or even as ‘ unphilosophical.’ It is, however, sheer perversity to apply a standardised method of evaluation all through, and on such appli¬ cation, brand a system as * uncritical,’ simply because it does not fall in with the current standard of critical thinking. No one, even with a modicum of historic sense, would make the preposterous claim that our standard of critical evaluation should be •applicable in toto to a system dating twelve cen- 49 306 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA turies back. Apart from a glaring historical anachronism involved in such a procedure, the claim itself is, on the very face of it, arbitrary and irra¬ tional. In reckoning his claims to be called a philosophical thinker, Saipkara must be placed in his proper historical setting and judged accordingly. Here, as elsewhere the supreme or crucial test is ‘ how strive you?