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OF THE HINDUS.
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place without the intervention of the Divine will, it proceeds from necessity. Nature is compelled to assume corporeal form that the ends of Spirit may be fulfilled, namely, that it may be embodied, until by a series of bodily migrations it has no longer need of such a state, it has attained knowledge which is the cause of its liberation, and its connection with matter ceases. "Soul desists," says the Sankhya Káriká*, "because he has seen (or fully understood) nature. Nature ceases (or withdraws) because she has been seen; that is, fully understood. It is not very intelligible why the soul, which in its independent state is described as already pure, should be allied with body merely to be purified, and so freed from the alliance. But this is a difficulty for the followers of the Sankhya to explain.
The mode in which the Divine will operates as it is alluded to in the Vedas, is not attempted to be explained. He wills creation to be, and it is. In the systems in which primæval crude matter is the subject of Divine agency, its development is ascribed to an influence communicated to it by the Divine will, by which it receives motion and life. This appears to have been expressed in language originally metaphorical, but some of the Puráñas have understood it literally, and abusing the figure of personification, have described the production of the world as if it was analogous to that of animal birth. The abuse is of very old date, and not confined to the Hindus.
* [66.]
