The Gita according to Gandhi 17

The Gita according to Gandhi -Mahadev Desai

B. THE GITA VIEW 2. THE GUNAS And his division of men according to their powers and aptitudes and later Aristotle's modification of it, were certainly due to a recognition of the three gunas. Was not Bacon too faintly thinking of the triple division of man's character into sattvika, rajasa and tamasa when he distinguished "the three grades of ambition in mankind"? "The first" he said, "was the desire to extend their power. which is vulgar and degenerate. The second to extend the power of their own country which has more dignity, but not less covetousness. (The third) if a man endeavours to establish and extend the power and domination over the universe, his ambition is nobler than the other two." In the same way Spinoza was using only another language for one guna passing out into another when he talked of man's "emotions or modifications" as "passages or translation from a lesser state of perfection to a greater". And look at Herbert Spencer's division of knowledge into three kinds: "Knowledge of the lowest kind is ununified knowledge; science is partially unified knowledge; philosophy is completely unified knowledge." an almost direct paraphrase, of the Gita (XVIII, 20-22) describing the sattvika, rajasa, and tamasa kinds of knowledge.