Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/291

Rh or the storm for its destructions. If it could answer the question, the tiger would indeed say, like man, that it had free will, it would have the egoism of the doer, it would say, “I kill, I devour;” but we can see clearly enough that it is not really the tiger, but Nature in the tiger that kills, it is Nature in the tiger that devours ; and if it refrains from killing or devouring, it is from satiety, from fear or from indolence, from another principle of Nature in it, from the action of the guna called tamas. As it was Nature in the animal that killed, so it is Nature in the animal that refrained from killing. Whatever soul is in it, sanctions passively the action of Nature, is as much passive in its passion and activity as in its indolence or inaction. The animal like the atom acts according to the mechanism of its Nature, and not otherwise, sadrigans cheshiate swasyih prakr'iieh, as if mounted on a machine, yantraridho mayaya.

Well, but in man at least there is another action, a free soul, a free will, a sense of responsibility, a real doer other than Nature, otherthan the mechanism of Maya ? So it seems, because in man there is a conscious intelligent will ; buddhs is full of the light of the observ- ing Purusha, who throughit, itseems, observes, under- stands, approves, or disapproves, gives or withholds the sanction, seems indeed at last to begin to be the lord of his nature. Manis not like the tiger or the fire or the -storm ; he cannot kill and say as a sufficient justification, “I am acting according to my nature,” and hecannot do it, because he has not the nature and not, therefore, the law of action, swadharma, of the tiger, storm or fire. He has a conscious intelligent will, a buddhs, and to that he must refer his actions. If he does not do so, if he acts