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Essential Philosophy of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism
A philosophy built upon mere abstractions and generalizations from phenomena, which can in reality never be individually generalized from, must result in pure atheism or anthropomorphic Deism. Principal Caird says in his philosophy of religion. “Generalization so far from apprehending reality is a process which takes us away from it, and the further it advances, the more abstract our thought becomes, the further do we recede from the real objective truth of things.” If the Nyaya and Vaisheshika thus represent the positive side of the method of abstract generalization, the Charvakas the materialists represent the negative aspect. They were not far from the modern materialists when they maintained life, thought or energy to be the result of material organization, but their philosophy made few disciples and converted none. All experience is in favour of declaring that dead matter is never capable of producing life and even the best representatives of modern physical science stand confessed of their ignorance of the real nature of matter and energy perse, at the altar of eternal truth. Even Mr. Huxley says, “In perfect strictness it is true that chemical investigation can tell us little or nothing directly of the composition of living matter and it is also in strictness true that we know nothing about the composition of anybody whatever as it is.” Observation has proved that every atom of matter is full of energy in one form or another. So that instead of postponing the appearance of mind to the last stage of material organization as the modern evolutionists have done, it is more consistent with reason to regard it as co-existent.
The Nyaya philosophy regarded it as the very beginning but the intermeddling of a God isolated from his creation did not satisfy subsequent reasoners, such philosophy being subversive of that real knowledge which must by the very conditions of knowledge or thought look upon thought and intelligent being as inseparable. It is in some such train of reasoning that we find an explanation of Prakriti and Purusha of Kapila's Sankhya. The
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