Gita Rahasya -Tilak 160

Karma Yoga Sastra -Tilak

CHAPTER VII THE KAPILA SAMKHYA PHILOSOPHY OR THE CONSIDERATION OF THE MUTABLE AND THE IMMUTABLE (KAPILA SAMKHYA-SASTRA OR KSARAKSARA-VICARA) The summary of the opinions of both these- schools is that the Cosmos or universe came to be created by the bursting forth of the constituents of one original substance; and on this account, the Atomic theory lost ground in India in ancient times, and now in the Western countries. Similarly, modern physicists have now also proved that the atom is not indivisible. It was not possible in ancient times to prove the Atomic theory or the Evolution theory by analysing and examining various material objects in the world by means of physics and other natural sciences. Experimenting again and again on the various objects in the world, or determining their qualities by analysing them in various ways, or making a comparison between the organs of the bodies of numerous present and former living things in the living world, and such other present day devices of the natural sciences were not available to Kanada or to Kapila. They have deduced their propositions from whatever material was before their eyes at the time. Still it is a matter of great surprise that the philosophical propositions laid down by the Samkhya philosophers as to how the growth or formation of the universe must have come about are not much different from the scientific propositions laid down by modern natural scientists. As the knowledge of biology has grown, the material proof of these opinions can now be given more logically, and by the growth of know- ledge of the natural sciences, human beings have undoubtedly benefited to a considerable extent from the Material point of view. But in order to impress on the minds of my readers that the modern natural scientists cannot tell us much more than Kapila as to how diverse perceptible created things came into existence out of one impercep- tible prakrti (Matter), I have in various places later on referred shortly to the propositions laid down by Haeckel for comparison side by side with the propositions of the Kapila Samkhya school. These propositions were not for the first time promulgated by Haeckel, and he has himself clearly admitted in his works that he was expounding his propositions on the authority of the works of Darwin, Spencer, and other previous natural scientists. Yet Haeckel has for the first time described succinctly and in an easily intelligible way all these various propositions, after properly co-ordinating them, in his book known as The Riddle of the Universe; and I have therefore, for the sake of convenience, taken Haeckel as the protagonist of all these natural scientists, and referred principally to his opinions in this and the next Chapter.