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OF THE HINDUS.
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expose themselves justly to the imputation of gross materialism.
Little doubt can be entertained that the materialism of the Puranas derives some countenance from the Vedas. Universality is there predicated of the Supreme Being directly, without the intervention of any one of his hypostases. Thus it is said, “This whole is Brahma, from Brahmá to a clod of earth. Brahma is both the efficient and the material cause of the world. He is the potter by whom the fictile vase is formed; he is the clay of which it is fabricated. Every thing proceeds from him, without waste or diminution of the source, as light radiates from the sun. Every thing merges into him again, as bubbles bursting mingle with the air, as rivers fall into the ocean, and lose their identity in its waters. Every thing proceeds from and returns to him, as the web of the spider is emitted from, and retracted into itself*.” These and similar illustrations speak the language of materialism too plainly to be misunderstood, although it may be possible that the full extent of their signification was not intended; that these comparisons are not to be interpreted too literally; that they purpose no more than to assert the origin of all things from the same first Cause; that the authors of the texts may have been in the same predicament as the author of the “Essay on Man", and inculeated materialism without being aware of it.
* [Transact. R. As. Soc., III, 413.]
