If therefore, according to this system, knowledge alone unites the soul to God, the question comes, Of what use are acts of virtue, penances, sacrifices, worship? The answer is, that they effect a happy transmigration from the lower forms of bodily life to higher ones. They do not accomplish the great end, which is absorption and escape from Maya, but they prepare the way for it by causing one to be born in a higher condition.
The second system of philosophy, the Sánkhya of Kapila, is founded not on one principle, like the Vedanta, but on two. According to the seventy aphorisms, Nature is one of these principles. It is uncreated and eternal. It is one, active, creating, non-intelligent. The other of the two principles, also uncreated and eternal, is Soul, or rather Souls. Souls are many, passive, not creative, intelligent, and in all things the opposite to Nature. But from the union of the two all the visible universe proceeds, according to the law of cause and effect.
God not being recognized in this system, it is often called atheism. Its argument, to show that no one perfect being could create the universe, is this. Desire implies want, or imperfection. Accordingly, if God desired to create, he would be unable to do so; if he was able, he would not desire to do it. In neither case, therefore, could God have created the universe. The gods are spoken of by the usual names, Brahma, Indra, etc., but are all finite beings, belonging to the order of human souls, though superior.
Every soul is clothed in two bodies,—the interior original body, the individualizing force, which is eternal as itself and accompanies it through all its migrations; and the material, secondary body, made of the five elements, ether, air, fire, water, and earth. The original body is subtile and spiritual. It is the office of Nature to liberate the Soul. Nature is not what we perceive by the senses, but an invisible plastic principle behind, which must be known by the intellect. As the Soul ascends by goodness, it is freed by knowledge. The final result of this emancipation is the certainty of non-existence,—"neither I am, nor is aught mine, nor do I exist,"—which seems to be the same result as that of Hegel, Being = Not-Being. Two or three of the aphorisms of the Karika are as follows:—
"LIX. As a dancer, having exhibited herself to the spectator, desists from the dance, so does Nature desist, having manifested herself to the Soul."
"LX. Generous Nature, endued with qualities, does by manifold means accomplish, without benefit (to herself), the wish of ungrateful Soul, devoid of qualities."
"LXI. Nothing, in my opinion, is more gentle than Nature; once aware of having been seen, she does not again expose herself to the gaze of Soul."
"LXVI. Soul desists, because it has seen Nature. Nature desists, because she has been seen. In their (mere) union there is no motive for creation."
Accordingly, the result of knowledge is to put an end to creation, and to leave the Soul emancipated from desire, from change, from the material body, in a state which is Being, but not Existence (esse, not existere; Seyn, not Da-seyn).
This Sánkhya philosophy becomes of great importance, when we consider that it was the undoubted source of Buddhism. This doctrine which we have been describing was the basis of Buddhism.[69]
M. Cousin has called it the sensualism of India,[70] but certainly without propriety. It is as purely ideal a doctrine as that of the Vedas. Its two eternal principles are both ideal. The plastic force which is one of them, Kapila distinctly declares cannot be perceived by the senses.[71] Soul, the other eternal and uncreated principle, who "is witness, solitary, bystander, spectator, and passive,"[72] is not only spiritual itself, but is clothed with a spiritual body, within the material body. In fact, the Karika declares the material universe to be the result of the contact of the Soul with Nature, and consists in chains with which Nature binds herself, for the purpose (unconscious) of delivering the Soul. When by a process of knowledge the Soul looks through these, and perceives the ultimate principle beyond, the material universe ceases, and both Soul and Nature are emancipated.[73]
One of the definitions of the Karika will call to mind the fourfold division of the universe by the great thinker of the ninth century, Erigena. In his work, περὶ φύσεως μερισμοῦ he asserts that there is, (1.) A Nature which creates and is not created. (2.) A Nature which is created and creates. (3.) A Nature which is created and does not create. (4.) A Nature which neither creates nor is created. So Kapila (Karika, 3) says, "Nature, the root of all things, is productive but not a production. Seven principles are productions and productive. Sixteen are productions but not productive. Soul is neither a production nor productive."
Mr. Muir (Sanskrit Texts, Part III. p. 96) quotes the following passages in proof of the antiquity of Kapila, and the respect paid to his doctrine in very early times:—