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194 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY man's mind altogether from the thought of a higher life and fixes it upon the world of sense. It smothers all consciousness of a deeper reality. Accordingly the ideal, if such an expression is admissible at all in this case, is one of hedonism, pure and simple. Pleasure in this life-and that of the individual
is the sole aim of man. Collective happiness, if it is ever thought of, is regarded as expressible in terms of individual happiness; and there is no conception of a general good to which the interests of the individual are to be subordinated. Of the four purusărthas.. or.. buman values! (p. 109) the Cārvāka rejects two, viz. dharma and moksa, thus restricting the scope of human effort to the attainment of sensual pleasure (kāma) or securing the means therefor (artha). Whatever virtues are cultivated are either based upon convention or are the result of worldly prudence. The useful is the only good which the doctrine knows of. Pain is recognized as an inevitable feature of existence; but that affords no reason, it is argued, for denying ourselves pleasure which appeals to us as desirable and towards which we are instinctively drawn. 'Nobody casts away the grain because of the husk.': The Carvāka is so impatient of obtaining pleasure that he does not even try to secure freedom from pain. He makes a compromise with evil, instead of overcoming it. Every man, according to him, must make the best of a bad bargain and enjoy himself as long as he lives.' The repudiation of the traditional teaching and all the moral and spiritual discipline for which it stands is a necessary corollary to this crude utilitarianism, whose motto is 'Sufficient unto the day is the good thereof.' One may think of a school of thought without the ideal of mokşa, but not without that of dharma also. It may be that death is fipal and nothing remains afterwards; but to believe in an ideal of life devoid of dharma is to reduce man to the level of the brute. It is difficult to believe that there could ever have existed such a school of thought. Even if we explain its extreme views as due to a reaction against the free specula
SDS. P. 3. * Yavajjivet sukham jivet, which seems to be a parody of the Vedic injunction-Yāvajjivam agnihotram juboti.
