Collected Works (Vol. II)

AN ESSAY IN ONTOLOGY 235 being convinced on insufficient grounds.’ This is surely the last refuge of incompetence. But though, always on the original hypo- thesis of the infinity of space, &c., the Ad- vaitist position of the Vedantists and the great Germans is unassailable, yet on practical grounds the Dvaitists have all the advantage. Fichte and the others exhaust themselves trying to turn the simplé and obvious posi- tion that: ‘‘ If the Ego alone exists, where is any place, not only for morals and religion, which we can very well do without, but for the most essential and continuous acts of life? Why should an infinite Ego fill a non-existent body with imaginary food cooked in thought only over an illusionary fire by a cook who is not there? Whyshould infinite power usesuch finite means, and very often fail even then?” What is the sum total of the Vedantist position? ‘‘I’ am an illusion, externally. In reality, the true ‘I’ am the Infinite, and if the illusionary ‘1’ could only realise Who ‘I’ really am, how very happy we should all be!’ And here we have Karma, rebirth, all the mighty laws of nature operat- ing nowhere in nothing ! There is no room for worship or for morality in the Advaitist system. All the specious pleas of the Bhagavad-Gita, and the ethical works of Western Advaitist philosophers, are more or less consciously confusion of thought. But no subtlety can turn the practical argument; the grinning mouths of the Dvaitist guns keep the fort of Ethics, and warn metaphysics to keep off the rather green grass of religion. -That its apologists should have devoted -so much time, thought, scholarship, and in- genuity to this question is the best proof of the fatuity of the Advaita position. There is then a flaw somewhere. I boldly take up the glove against all previous wisdom, 1 Or as the Sunday-school boy said: ‘‘ Faith is the power of believing what we know to be untrue.’’ I quote Deussen with the more pleasure, because it is about the only sentence In all his writings with which I am in accord. revert to the most elementary ideas of canni- bal savages, challenge all the most vital premisses and axiomata that have passed current coin with philosophy for centuries, and present my theory. I clearly foresee the one difficulty, and will discuss it in advance. If my conclusions on this point are not accepted, we may at once get back to our previous irritable agnosti- cism, and look for our Messiah elsewhere. But if we can see together on this one point, I think things will go fairly smoothly after- wards. Consider! Darkness !_ Can we philosophi- cally or actually regard as different the dark- ness produced by interference of light and that existing in the mere absence of light? Is Unity really identical with .9 recurring? Do we not mean different things when we speak respectively of 2 sine 60° and of 4/3? Charcoal and diamond are obviously dif- ferent in the categories of colour, crystallisa- tion, hardness, and so on ; but are they not really so even in that of existence? The third example is to my mind the best. 2 sine 60° and ,/3are unreal and therefore never conceivable, at least to the present constitution of our human_ intelligences. Worked out, neither has meaning; un- worked, both have meaning, and that a different meaning in one case and the other. We have thus two terms, both: unreal, both inconceivable, yet both representing intelligible and diverse ideas to our minds (and this is the point!) though identical in reality and convertible by a process of reason which simulates or replaces that apprehen- sion which we can never (one may suppose) attain to. , Let us apply this idea to the Beginning of all things, about which the Christians lie frankly, the Hindus prevaricate, and the 1 Ratiocination may perhaps not take us far. But a continuous and attentive study of these quaint points of distinction may’ give us an intuition, or direct mind-apperception of what we want, one way or the other.—A. C.