Selected Speeches of V R Gandhi

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

Page 83

(Logos) is his First Principle. These predicates, in which physical, ethical and logical order in the world appears as still identified, prove only the undeveloped state of thought which does not yet know how to separate the different motives. The Stoics had a little different view of the Logos. According to them the entire universe formed a single, unitary, living, connected whole, and that all particular things were determinate forms assumed by a divine primitive power which was in a state of eternal activity. In their view, the deity, as the actively productive and formative power, is a kind of Logos; also the rational part of souls is a consubstantial emanation from the divine Logos. The Christian idea of Logos is largely influenced by the Stoics' doctrine ; only-there are added to it the appeal to and the supremacy of authority. Right knowledge was, therefore, not possible except through divine revelation. All knowledge is, as Numenius said, the kindling of the small light from the great light which illumines the world. Later Logos gets entirely personified. Origen teaches that God begets the eternal Son, the Logos, as the sum-total of his world-thoughts, and through him the realm of free spirits, which, limited within itself, surrounds the daily as an ever-living garment.
I have given the above illustration simply for confirming the idea that a word, with advancing civilization develops in meaning. I need not go into the discussion of the various meanings that were attached to Karma at different periods of its history. My present purpose is only to present to the readers
69