No. 62.— 1909.] 



JNANA VASISHTAM. 



319 



and evolute of that one Reality resulting from the cosmic 

 illusion called Maya: Students of modern science will recall 

 Professor Huxley's definition of matter as " a name for the 

 unknown and hypothetical cause of certain states of our own 

 consciousness " (Lay Sermons, p. 142). A learned Christian 

 Professor, Dr. Sanday, not long ago wrote in this connection : — 

 All sure knowledge is knowledge of states of consciousness and 

 nothing more. The moment we step outside those states of cons- 

 ciousness and begin to assign a cause to them, we pass into the region 

 of hypothesis or assmnption. The first effort of thought is to 

 distinguish between "self" and "not-self," but neither of the 

 "self " nor of the "not-self " have we any true knowledge, we do not 

 even know that they exist, much less how they exist or what they 

 are. We might as well call the one X and the other Y as give them 

 the names we do. And if this holds good for a process of thought 

 which seems so elementary, much more must it hold good for 

 others which are more remote. When we call things about us 

 and give them names, as Adam is described as doing, what we 

 really name is only the states of our own consciousness, not the 

 things themselves. Judged by the standard of strict logic, the 

 world which we inhabit is a world of visions, of phantasms, of 

 hypothetical existences, and hypothetical relations. All thought 

 and all the objects of thought are at the bottom pure hypothesis. 

 Its validity is only relative. The propositions which we call true 

 are not true in themselves. When we call them true, all that we 

 mean is that to assume them gives unity and harmony to the 

 operations of the thinking mind. The belief that we can trust 

 our memory, that one state of consciousness is like another preced- 

 ing state of consciousness, that the ego is a centre of permanence, 

 that nature is uniform, and that what has happened to-day will 

 also happen to-morrow, all these beliefs stand upon the same 

 footing. They are working hypotheses, assumptions which enable 

 us to think coherently : we cannot say more. 1 



The great divine and philosopher, Bishop Berkeley, has 

 said in terms which a Vedantist would have used : — " The 

 physical universe which I see and feel and infer, is just my 

 dream, and nothing else. That which you see is your dream, 

 only it so happens that our dreams agree in many respects." 

 The Vedanta goes further and declares that underlying this 

 fiction of the universe there is a very real reality, not, as the 



Professor Sanday on " Professor Huxley as a theologian." 



