6 SIR M. MONIER WILLIAMS ON THE MONISM, PANTHEISM, AND 
“The (German) pantheist tells me that I have not a real 
distinct existence and unity of my own, but that Iam merely 
a phenomenal manifestation or an aggregate of many mani- 
festations of the one infinite Being.” 
Then again, we know that a favourite dogma with all 
pantheists is, Hw nihilo nthil fit, nothing is produced out of 
nothing ; Sanskrit, navastuno vastusiddhih or a-satah saj Jayeta 
kutas, “how can something be produced out of nothing?” so 
that if there is a Supreme Creator, he cannot create the ex- 
ternal world out of nothing. 
Hence he evolves all visible nature out of Himself, and all 
nature is Himself. 
And is it not the case that some of our own modern 
scientists are continually telling us that all Nature is one, and 
that mind and matter are inseparable ? or that all the ele- 
ments are mere modifications of one element? or again, that 
all the forces which act on the elements are mere modifica- 
tions of one force; or that “ everything is everything else” ?* 
The poimt to be noticed is that im India the Unity- 
theory was current many centuries before it was even heard 
of in Europe, and that there this idea is found to be compa- 
tible not only with dualistic, but with the grossest polytheistic 
doctrines and practices. 
I found infact that, although, in my conversations with 
learned Brahmans, they laid the greatest stress on their 
dogma, Ekam eva advitiyam, “ there is only one Being, without 
a second,” they always, when questioned, admitted the truth 
of another Vedantic dogma, Maya-cid-yogonadih, “the union 
of the one Essence with Illusion is from all eternity.” In 
other words, the one infinite Essence is associated from all 
eternity with Maya, “Illusion” (also called Avidyd, Ajnana, 
Ignorance), which is also eternal (so far, at least, as it is 
confessedly “‘ without beginning,”) though merely an illusory 
essence. 
In point of fact the modern Vedantist holds that it is from 
this one Illusory Essence, associated from eternity with the one Real 
Essence, that the whole external universe is evolved. 
From this Illusory Essence, too, are evolved the separate 
individual spirits of men, whose sense of individuality ceases 
at the moment when they deliver themselves from all Illusion 
(or Ignorance) and attain a knowledge of the Truth, that is, 
of their own identity with the one spiritual Essence. 
* The President of the Royal Society in a recent speech quoted this 
saying of the eminent chenist Galen. 
