Selected Speeches of V R Gandhi

Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi Godiji Jain Derasar Mumbai

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nature of matter and energy per se, 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 any body 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 coexistent. 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 Prakṛti and Puruşa of Kapila's Sänkhya. The Sānkhyas had advanced further, if advance it may be called, than the Vaiseṣikas in their analysis of matter and had demonstrated a theory of evolution, anything more entirely novel than which even the Vedanta has not to teach. They postulated Prakṛti or undifferentiated cosmic matter as the eternal basis of cosmic evolution; and they definitely enumerated the various evolving stages of this matter with its properties, being hereupon called the Sankhyas. They however thought it would be impossible to postulate matter without mind and
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