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96
RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AND OPINIONS
The distinction however did not escape the notice of the philosophers; and the schools, which are probably the most ancient, carefully discriminate between spirit and matter, as the two opposite elements by whose temporary association the world is compounded. This is particularly the case with the Sankhya, the doctrines of which school may be seen in the translation of one of its text-books (the Sankhya Káriká), printed in Oxford'. Matter is by the Sankhyas subtilized, in its undeveloped state, into a principle, the precise character of which is not very intelligible, but to which the vague denomination of "Nature" may be applied. They do not however question the reality of substance: the various forms of substance, gross material forms, they trace back through others more subtile, which proceed from one imperceptible, indefinable Prakriti or nature. They maintain that canses and effects are essentially the same, and there is no real difference between a product and that which produces is. Consequently, as all substances are proJucts of nature, nature itself is substantial; that is, it is matter. Matter and spirit, then, are the two elements of the universe; both unproduced; the former productive, the latter not; both eternal and independent; subject to change of form and condition, but incapable of destruction; combining, from the infuence of a controlling necessity, for a given object
1 Sánkhya Káriká, translated from the Sanskrit, &c. 1 Vol. 1to, 1937. Allen and Co.
