LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

for myself, a Vampire, and having, just now, none of these human or inhuman ideas, meant simply to say that the pious priest’s fourth son being great at second and small in the matter of first causes, adopted to their fullest extent the doctrines of the philosophical Buddhas.[125] Nothing according to him exists but the five elements, earth, water, fire, air (or wind), and vacuum, and from the last proceeded the penultimate, and so forth. With the sage Patanjali, he held the universe to have the power of perpetual progression.[126] He called that Matra (matter), which is an eternal and infinite principle, beginningless and endless. Organization, intelligence, and design, he opined, are inherent in matter as growth is in a tree. He did not believe in soul or spirit, because it could not be detected in the body, and because it was a departure from physiological analogy. The idea “I am,” according to him, was not the identification of spirit with matter, but a product of the mutation of matter in this cloud-like, error-formed world. He believed in Substance (Sat) and scoffed at Unsubstance (Asat). He asserted the subtlety and globularity of atoms which are uncreate. He made mind and intellect a mere secretion of the brain, or rather words expressing not a thing, but a state of things. Reason was to him developed instinct, and life an element of the atmosphere affecting certain organisms. He held good and evil to be merely geographical and chronological expressions, and he opined that what is called Evil is mostly an active and transitive form of Good. Law was his great Creator of all things, but he refused a creator of law, because such a creator would require another creator, and so on in a quasi-interminable series up to absurdity. This reduced his law to a manner of haphazard. To those who, arguing against it, asked him their favourite question, How often might a man after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag fling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poem? he replied that the calculation was beyond his arithmetic, but that the man had only to jumble and fling long enough inevitably to arrive at that end. He rejected the necessity as well as the existence of revelation, and he did not credit the miracles of Krishna, because, according to him, nature never suspends her laws, and, moreover, he had never seen aught supernatural. He ridiculed the idea of Mahapralaya, or the great destruction, for as the world had no beginning, so it will have no end. He objected to absorption, facetiously observing with the sage Jamadagni, that it was pleasant to eat sweetmeats, but that for his part he did not wish to become the sweetmeat itself. He would not believe that Vishnu had formed the universe out of the wax in his ears. He positively asserted that trees are not bodies in which the consequences of merit and demerit are received. Nor would he conclude that to men were attached rewards and punishments from all eternity. He made light of the Sanskara, or sacrament. He admitted Satwa, Raja, and Tama,[127] but only as properties of matter. He acknowledged gross matter (Sthulasharir), and atomic matter (Shukshma-sharir), but not Linga-sharir, or the archetype of bodies. To doubt all things was the foundation of his theory, and to scoff at all who would not doubt was the corner-stone of his practice. In debate he preferred logical and mathematical grounds, requiring a categorical “because” in answer to his “why?” He was full of morality and natural religion, which some say is no religion at all. He gained the name of atheist by declaring with Gotama that there are innumerable worlds, that the earth has nothing beneath it but the circumambient air, and that the core of the globe is incandescent. And he was called a practical atheist—a worse form apparently—for supporting the following dogma: “that though creation may attest that a creator has been, it supplies no evidence to prove that a creator still exists.” On which occasion, Shiromani, a nonplussed theologian, asked him, “By whom and for what purpose werst thou sent on earth?” The youth scoffed at the word “sent,” and replied, “Not being thy Supreme Intelligence, or Infinite Nihility, I am unable to explain the phenomenon.” Upon which he quoted—

      How sunk in darkness Gaur must be

       Whose guide is blind Shiromani!

At length it so happened that the four young men, having frequently been surprised in flagrant delict, were summoned to the dread presence of the university Gurus,[128] who addressed them as follows:—

      “There are four different characters in the world: he who perfectly obeys the commands; he who practices the commands, but follows evil; he who does neither good nor evil; and he who does nothing but evil. The third character, it is observed, is also an offender, for he neglects that which he ought to observe. But ye all belong to the fourth category.”

      Then turning to the elder they said:

“In works written upon the subject of government it is advised, ‘Cut off the gambler’s nose and ears, hold up his name to public contempt, and drive him out of the country, that he may thus become an example to others. For they who play must more often lose than win; and losing, they must either pay or not pay. In the latter case they forfeit caste, in the former they utterly reduce themselves. And though a gambler’s wife and children are in the house, do not consider them to be so, since it is not known when they will be lost.[129] Thus he is left in a state of perfect not-twoness (solitude), and he will be reborn in hell.’ O young man! thou hast set a bad example to others, therefore shalt thou immediately exchange this university for a country life.”

      Then they spoke to the second offender thus:——

      “The wise shun woman, who can fascinate a man in the twinkling of an eye; but the foolish, conceiving an affection for her, forfeit in the pursuit of pleasure their truthfulness, reputation, and good disposition, their way of life and mode of thought, their vows and their religion. And to such the advice of their spiritual teachers comes amiss, whilst they make others as bad as themselves. For it is said, ‘He who has lost all sense of shame, fears not to disgrace another; ‘and there is the proverb, ‘A wild cat that devours its own young is not likely to let a rat escape;’ therefore must thou too, O young man! quit this seat of learning with all possible expedition.”

      The young man proceeded to justify himself by quotations from the Lila-shastra, his text-book, by citing such lines as—

      Fortune favours folly and force,

      and by advising the elderly professors to improve their skill in the peace and war of love. But they drove him out with execrations.

As sagely and as solemnly did the Pandits and the Gurus reprove the thief and the atheist, but they did not dispense the words of wisdom in equal proportions. They warned the former that petty larceny is punishable with fine, theft on a larger scale with mutilation of the hand, and robbery, when detected in the act, with loss of life[130]; that for cutting purses, or for snatching them out of a man’s waistcloth,[131] ‘the first penalty is chopping off the fingers, the second is the loss of the hand, and the third is death. Then they call him a dishonour to the college, and they said, “Thou art as a woman, the greatest of plunderers; other robbers purloin property which is worthless, thou stealest the best; they plunder in the night, thou in the day,” and so forth. They told him that he was a fellow who had read his Chauriya Vidya to more purpose then his ritual.[132] And they drove him from the door as he in his shamelessness began to quote texts about the four approved ways of housebreaking, namely, picking out burnt bricks, cutting through unbaked bricks, throwing water on a mud wall, and boring one of wood with a centre-bit.

But they spent six mortal hours in convicting the atheist, whose abominations they refuted by every possible argumentation: by inference, by comparison, and by sounds, by Sruti and Smriti, i.e., revelational and traditional, rational and evidential, physical and metaphysical, analytical and synthetical, philosophical and philological, historical, and so forth. But they found all their endeavours vain. “For,” it is said, “a man who has lost all shame, who can talk without sense, and who tries to cheat his opponent, will never get tired, and will never be put down.” He declared that

Скачать книгу