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Presidential Address
block. As against him Hegel and his followers emphasised the dynamic character of idea or thought: and later, Bergson has substituted the concept of Life for those of matter and mind, not only as their original unity, but also as a dynamic principle which makes for Creative Evolution.
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With all respect for the present-day European philosophy, I confess that I fail to understand the meaning of "dynamic" except in relation to "static", and submit that the substitution of the dynamic for the static is an error of the other extreme. The ultimate reality is in truth dynamic-cum-static,-the 'S'abala brahman', which is the synthesis of the dynamic and static-a synthesis expressed in Art by the image of Natarajan in that wonderful expression of movement and rest, which is the highest contribution of Dravidian India to philosophic Art, and in Metaphysics in the revolution of a contradiction or ontological antinomy within itself which the Samkara Vedantin calls anirvacanīyată of Māyā.
The second of these viz. 'emergent evolution' is virtually an attempt to express the synthesis of the two conflicting elements in causation, viz, the old and the new, and it comprises the following propositions.
*It would be beside my purpose to go into the problem of the First Cause according to Samkara Vedānta; nor does the doctrine of the S'abala Brahman represent my own interpretation of the Samkara Vedanta without an explanatory and re-interpretative note, which I cannot very well add here. I can only refer the reader who feels interested in the problem to the pages of the Siddhantales'a of Appayya Dikshita and to the Bhāmatī and Kalpataru on Br. Sūtra II 1.27 and to Brahmavidyabharaṇa on the Sūtra. " आत्मकृतेः परिणामात् " - I. 426.
