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OF THE HINDUS.
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and a definite term, but perpetually reverting to a primitive, inert, and reciprocal independence.
It might be supposed that the Vedanta philosophy, professing to carry out the doctrine of the Vedas, would have been next in order of time to those works; but this is questionable: and it seems not improbable that the system originated in the purpose of exonerating the Vedas from the charge of materialism, by founding upon such texts as have already been quoted the refinement of spiritual Pantheism, or idealism, and at the same time controverting the doctrine of the Sankhyas and the Nyáyikas, which maintained the distinct and independent existence of matter and spirit. The doctrine of the Vedánta is denominated zar Sozir Adwaita, non-duality; and the very title indicates the priority of a dualistic hypothesis: the main proposition contended for, in opposition to that which affirms two elements of creation, matter and spirit, being the existence of one only element in the universe, which universal element or principle is spirit.
But then comes the question, the solution of which has puzzled the philosophers, not of India only, but of the world; not only of ancient but modern times: not only Vyása and Sankara, but Parmenides and Plato; Mallebranche and Berkeley: Fichte and Schelling. If all is spirit, what is substance? The early teachers of the Vedanta school asserted it was the
Sakti, the perceptible power, the active energy, the manifested instrumentality of the Supreme Spirit; and
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