see again and again how the germs of the infinite, which are latent in such concepts as that of the dawn from the very beginning, burst out under different forms in the hymns of the Rig-veda. The Dawn. One of the salient features of the dawn was its widespreading splendour. All the other luminaries had their small circumscribed spheres. The dawn, however, was always called the far-reaching, reaching to the very ends of heaven and earth. Thus we read, 'The Dawns adorn themselves with splendours in the ends of the sky1' End and Endless. , This end and the ends of heaven and earth are often mentioned as the limit of everything that can be seen. We hear of the enemies of Indra who could not reach the end of heaven and earth 2. and of the birds which at the time of dawn come forth from the ends of heaven 3. Then we meet with questions as to where the end of the waters in heaven may be. In one passage the poet says: 'Where is the highest point, where is their lowest, O waters (of heaven), where is your middle, where your end 4 ? ' This is how ideas sprout and grow, and this is how the idea of the endless and infinite opens slowly and quietly before our very eyes. the Absolute. Aditi is a name for the distant East, but Aditi is more than the dawn. Aditi is beyond the dawn, and in one place (I. 113, 19) the dawn is called the face of Aditi.' (M. M., Hymns to the Maruts, 1869, pp. 230-231. See also Lectures on the Science of Lan guage, 1864, ii. 547.) 1 Ví añgate diváh ánteshu aktűn-ushásah. Rv. VII. 79, 2. 2 Ná yé diváh prithivyẩh ántam âpúh. Rv. I. 33, 10. 3 Diváh ántebhyah pári. Rv. I. 49, 3. Kva svit ágram kva budhnáh âsâm ấpah mádhyam kvã vah nûnám ántah. Rv. X. 111, 8. Heaven and earth are called at first wide and broad, afterwards dûre-ante, with distant ends (I. 185, 7). Then the roads are mentioned on which day and night wander across heaven and earth, and these roads are distinctly called ananta or endless. Thus we read, 'The same road of the two sisters, that is, of day and night, is endless. Again, Wide and endless roads go round heaven and earth on all sides 2. After this there was but a small step before the light of the sun could be called endless (I. 115, 5), before heaven was called endless (I. 130, 3; IV. 1, 7), and before the power of several of the gods received the same name. Thus we read, 'The end of thy power, O Indra, cannot be reached. The same is said of the might of the Maruts, the storms (I. 167, 9; I. 64, 10); and of Vishnu (VII. 99, 2); and at last even of the power of the rivers Sarasvati and Sindhu (VI. 61, 8; X. 75, 3). Endless in the Avesta. The same intellectual process which in the Veda is carried on before our eyes in all its completeness, can be watched, though in a more fragmentary form only, in the Avesta also. There, too, we read, for instance, in the XIII Yast (I. 2), the Yast of the Farvardîn (i.e. the Fravashis): 2. Through their brightness and glory, O Zarathustra, I (Ahura Mazda) maintain that sky there above, shining and seen afar, and encompassing this earth all around. 3. It looks like a palace, that stands built of a heavenly 1 Samânáh ádhvâ svásroh anantáh. Rv. I. 113, 3. 2 Anantasah urávah visvátah sîm pári dyavâprithivî yanti pánthâh. Rv. V. 47, 2. 3 Nahí te ántah sávasah parináse. Rv. I. 54, 1; see also I. 100, VI. 29, 5. 15; substance, firmly established, with ends that lie far apart, shining in its body of ruby over the three-thirds (of the earth); it is like a garment inlaid with stars, made of a heavenly substance, that Mazda puts on, along with Mithra and Rashnu and Spenta-Ârmaiti, and on no side can the eye perceive the end of it.' This is what I meant when I said that the infinite was perceived in the finite phenomena of nature, till those phenomena themselves were conceived and named as endless beings. Theogonic Elements. Every one of our perceptions comprises a multitude of ingredients, though we are not aware of them till we call them by a name. We think of the dawn and of heaven and earth at first neither as finite nor infinite; but as soon as our attention is called to their character, we speak of them and conceive them as either finite or infinite. Not every object, however, of our sensuous perception can be thus called and conceived. A stone is not infinite, nor a shell, nor an apple, nor a dog, and hence they have no theogonic capacity. But a river or a mountain, and still more the sky and the dawn, possess theogonic capacity, because they have in themselves from the beginning something going beyond the limits of sensuous perception, something which, for want of a better word, I must continue to call infinite. All this Professor Gruppe, if he had read with a willing and unprejudiced mind, would easily have discovered in my former explanations, instead of assuring me and other Vedic scholars 'that Vedic poets do not fly up to the solar bird.' It is painful to see a real scholar condescend to such unscholarlike manoeuvres. How the Perception of the Infinite led to Religious Ideas. If then we have clearly established the fact that our experience, or our states of consciousness, or our Ego-knowledge, whatever you like to call it, consists of perceptions of the finite, and with it, at the same time, of the infinite, we may now go on to divide off that portion in the perceptions of the finite and the infinite which constitutes the proper domain of religion; and we have to show how these perceptions are worked up into religious concepts and names. It may, no doubt, be said that the perception of the infinite is in itself a perception of something negative only, of something which is not the finite such as we perceive it in all its variety, and of which therefore we can predicate nothing except that it is. We know that the infinite is, but we do not know what it is, because it always begins where our finite knowledge seems to end. This is perfectly true logically, but it is not true psychologically. The human mind in discovering the infinite behind the finite, does not separate the two. We can never draw a line where the finite ends and the infinite begins. The sky, for instance, was perceived as blue or grey, it had its horizon, and so far it was perceived as finite; but it was at the same time the infinite sky, because it was felt that beyond what was seen of the sky there is and must be an infinite complement which no eye could see. The infinite per se, as a mere negative, would have had no interest for primitive man; but as the background, as the support, as the subject or the cause of the finite in its many manifestations, it came in from the earliest period of human thought. There were in fact few finite things which were conceived without some infinite complement. Tangible, Semi-tangible, Intangible Objects. Let us see how this arose. It might seem as if our five senses delivered to us nothing but objects complete in themselves, which we can touch and handle all round, which we can smell, taste, see and hear. But is that so? It is true1, no doubt, of such objects as stones, bones, shells, flowers, berries, logs of wood. All these are complete in themselves, and no one would suspect anything in them beyond what we can see and touch. But very soon our surroundings accustom us to other objects which seem indeed perfect in themselves, but which do not lie completely within the grasp of our senses. Without being aware of it, we are made familiar with objects which we treat as if we knew them as well as a stone, or a bone, or a shell, but which, if we examine them more closely, contain more or less of an unknown residuum. I call this first class of objects, those which we know all round, tangible objects, and I distinguish them from semitangible and intangible objects, which we shall now have to examine. Trees. Trees, mountains, rivers and the earth seem all very tangible and completely perceptible objects, but are they so? We may stand beneath a tree, touch it, look up to it, but our senses can never take in the whole of it. Its deepest roots are beyond our reach, 1 See Hibbert Lectures, p. 180 seq. |