We have now to follow our author through a path more difficult than the preceding one, and hear him explain the theory of ideas and their various modifications. These, says he, are known, not by their forms, since they have none, but only by their name. Through the practice of reflection and meditation we become acquainted with them. We call them arupa damma, things without a form or shape. They are designated under the name of tseit and tsedathit,[50] that is to say, ideas and the result of ideas. Where are these ideas to be met? Where have they their seat? In the six senses and nowhere else, is the answer. Having already become acquainted with the organs of the senses, it will be easy to find out the ideas that are as the tenants of the senses.
All the tseits inhabiting the organs of sense are called loki tseit, that is to say, ideas of the world, because they are to be met with in all the beings as yet subjected to concupiscence. They are distinct from lokoudra tseits, which belong properly to the beings free from passions, and who have entered into the four megga, or ways to perfection. The tseits of this world are eighty-one in number, classified as follows: the perception of each of the five organs, and the perception of the respective faculties of those organs. This gives ten tseits. There are three for the sense of the heart, the perception of the substance of the heart, of its faculty of knowing, and of the object of its knowledge.
Each of the six senses has ten constitutive forms or parts, viz.: earth, water, fire, air, colour, odour, taste, fluid, life, and the body attached primitively thereto. Now there is an action from each of these forms upon the subject. Thence ten tseits to each of the six senses.
There are no words so ill defined and so ill understood by our philosopher as the two words Tseit and Tsedathit. The first in a moral sense means idea, thought, perception, etc.; in a physical sense it means that secondary cause created by kan, producing the living being, the senses wherein reside the moral tseit. Tsedathit, being the result of ideas, must, of course, have likewise two meanings. In the first place it will designate the impressions made upon us by ideas; in the second, it will mean the secondary cause or life in the body, or the modifications of the principles of corporeal life.
This being premised, we may a little understand our author when he says: There are seven tsedathits existing at the same time as the eighty-one above-mentioned tseits, viz.: pasa tsedathit, so called because it is the real effect of the tsedathit to attain its object, and, as it were, to touch it. We may call it the agreement between the idea and its object. Wedana tsedathit, the feeling of the impression of an idea; thagnia tsedathit, the comprehension of the object; dzetana tsedathit, the inclination for the object; eketa tsedathit, the fixity on the object; dziwi-teindre tsedathit, the observance of what relates to form and name; and mana sikaramana tsedathit, consciousness. It is evident, therefore, that the tsedathit is neither the idea nor the object of the idea, but the result from the idea that has come in contact with an object. These seven results are, if we may say so, the third part of the idea. They do not give occasion to modifications of ideas. But those which really give rise to the greatest variety of results are the akuso tsedathit, or the results of evil thoughts and ideas, and their opposite, or kuso tsedathit, or the consequence of good and virtuous thoughts. To mention here all the kuso and akuso tsedathit would be but a dry exposition of the nomenclature of the vices and virtues, such as is met with in the catalogues of Buddhist moralists. They are all enumerated in the preceding note.
ARTICLE IV.
OF THE CAUSE OF THE FORM[51] AND OF THE NAME, OR OF MATTER AND SPIRIT.
The duty of our intelligence is to investigate the cause of all the modifications of forms and names. This being effected, we are delivered from all doubts and disquietude. When we perceive such a form, such an idea, &c., we are able forthwith to account for its causes. In this study we must copy the conduct of the physician, who, when attending a patient, sits by his bedside, closely examines the nature of the distemper and the causes that have given rise to it, in order to find out counteracting agents or remedies to check its progress at first, and gradually to uproot it from the constitution. In the moral order, the philosopher too has to examine the nature of all moral distempers, ascertain the principles or causes they spring from, and thereby become qualified to cure those disorders.
The beings that inhabit the three worlds, says our author, must have a cause. To say that they exist of themselves and without a cause is an absurdity. The very dissimilarity we observe among them indicates that their mode of existence results from certain causes. We, however, cannot agree with our antagonists, the Brahmins, who maintain that Maha Brahma is the cause of all that exists. This being is not out of the circle of Rupa and Nam; he is himself a compound of Nam and Rupa, that is to say, effect but not cause. In vain our opponents will add that all that is distinct of Maha Brahma is subjected to a cause, but that the Rupa and Nam, constituting his essence, are without a cause. This is removing the difficulty a little further, without advancing a step towards its solution; our answer must ever be the same.
Before expounding the opinions of our philosopher on this important subject, it is necessary to state the views entertained by that class of philosophers whose doctrines appear to have taken root in these parts. It is easy to perceive that they are modifications of the opinion of the Hindus on the same subject, and akin to that respecting the Adi Buddha, or supreme Buddha.
Some doctors maintain that there is a first cause or being that has made matter and spirit. Others, admitting the eternal co-existence of matter and of the supreme being, say that he is the remote cause of the organisation of matter, as we at present see it. But all agree in this, that no one can ever come to the knowledge of that first cause, and it is impossible ever to have an idea of it. Hence it is the height of folly and rash presumption to attempt to come to the knowledge of what is placed beyond the range of human investigation. It behoves us to apply all the powers of the mind to discover the immediate cause that certainly produces existence.