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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
Science disputes the accuracy of these conclusions and denies the very existence of a god. It reduces everything to natural causation, and replaces the notion of an anthropomorphic Architect by the 'eternal iron laws of nature.' The Hindus also endeavoured to formulate a theory about the world-process, and accounted for it in different ways. They divide themselves into two main camps, which may be called the Realistic and the Idealistic, because of the one pursuing the line of thought known as Realism, and of the other that of Idealism. To the former class belongs the system of Sankhya, which was founded by Kapila. Its teaching embraces the four great principles of good reason and science, namely, (1) that out of nothing, nothing comes, i.e., 'something' cannot come out of nothing, (2) that the effect lies in the cause, or, in other words, the cause is the potential, the unmanifested condition of the effect, (3) that the breaking up of the effect causes the unmanifested, the causal state to come into existence again, and (4) that there is an uniformity of the laws of nature throughout. As regards the origin of the world, the Sankhyas hold that the Universe is built out of the eternal cosmic matter, called Prakriti, in the sense of an evolution from the unmanifested into the manifested condition. The following account of the teaching of this school from Prof. P. C. Ray's ably written book, 'An Introduction to Hindu Chemistry,' will be found of great interest :
"The manifested world is traced to an unmanifested ground, the prakriti, which is conceived as formless and undifferentiated, limitless and ubiquitous, indestructible and undecaying, without beginning and without end. The unit of this prakriti is a mere abstraction;
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