________________
Presidential Address
(1) The new is not simply the old, it is the old and something more.
(2) And yet there is no insertion ab extra.
Now in regard to this one may well ask: Where does "the something more' come from, if it is not to come ab extra? And since insertion ab extra is impossible, 'the something more' of the new must be supposed to be originally latent in the old. So says the Samkhya, and the Pariņāmavādin Vedāntin. Yet in so far as the old is not the new but something less, we are faced with the antinomy that the new is at once old and new. How is this antinomy to be resolved? It is to be recognized as such says the Vivartavādin. The Jaina argues that the compresence of opposites is a fact, and consequently there is no antinomy. The Vivartavādin would answer: the resulting antinomy-the anirvacanīyatā or logical contradiction involved in the nature of the new is also a fact, and requires to be similarly recognized. Appyling this to the problem in hand, the deity cannot be treated as a quality which is evolved out of SpaceTime without being in Space-Time ab initio. Alexander's philosophy of God is a curious recast of the Play of Hamlet which opening with the ghost-scene of Space-Time has the entry of the Prince of Denmark-the deity-postponed till the end of the Act, or rather, thrown into the epilogue, and there too, to appear not as a person or super-person but as a quality! In truth, if we are to understand rightly the principle of Evolution, the first letter should be read with the last, as in the sphota theory of Indian philosophy, that is to say, the whole creation should
816