Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/29

 it is the absolute basis and is the One—Brāhma. This form is in accordance with the logical development. First came the multiplicity of determinations, and the advance consists in the resumption of determination into unity. That is the basis. What now remains to be given is partly something of a merely historical character, but partly, too, the necessary development which follows from that principle.

Simple Power, as the active element, created the world. The creating is essentially an attitude of thought towards itself, an activity relating itself to itself, and in no sense a finite activity. This, too, is expressed in the ideas of the Indian religion. The Hindus have a great number of cosmogonies which are all more or less barbarous, and out of which nothing of a fixed character can be derived. What we have is not one idea of the creation of the world, as in the Jewish and Christian religion. In the Code of Manu, in the Vedas and Puranas, the cosmogonies are constantly understood and presented differently. Notwithstanding this, there is always one feature essentially present in them, namely, that this Thought, which is at home with itself or self-contained, is the begetting of itself.

This infinitely profound and true trait constantly reappears in the various descriptions of the creation of the world. The Code of Manu begins thus: “The Eternal with one thought created water,” and so on. We also find that this pure activity is called “the Word,” as God is in the New Testament. With the Jews of later times—Philo, for example—σοφία is the “First-created,” which proceeds out of the One. The “Word” is held in very high esteem among the Hindus. It is the figure of pure activity, definite existence of an externally physical character, which, however, does not permanently remain, but is only ideal, and immediately vanishes in its external form. The Eternal created the water, it is stated, and deposited fruit-bringing seed in it; this seed became a