Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/177

158 independent of the idea that knows it, because he has a strong sense that he himself is feeling, beholding, thinking, this reality, which he therefore views as an object meant by himself, and so as having no meaning apart from his point of view. The axiom which our European idealists often state in the form: No object without a subject, is therefore always, in one shape or another, upon the Hindoo’s lips. He states it less technically, but he holds it all the more intuitively. The world is One — why? Because I feel it as one. What then is its oneness? My own oneness? And who am I? I am Brahman; I myself, in my inmost heart, in my Soul, am the world-principle, the All. In this form the Hindoo’s Monism becomes at once a subjective Idealism; and this subjective Idealism often appears almost in the epistemological form in which that doctrine has so often been discussed, of late, amongst ourselves. But the further process of the Hindoo’s monistic philosophy leads beyond this mere beginning, and results in an elaborate series of reflections upon the mystery of the Self. The final product of these reflections transforms the merely epistemological Idealism, which, if abstractly stated, has with us often led to a rather trivial scepticism, into something very different from mere scepticism, namely into a doctrine not merely epistemological, but metaphysical. Let us follow a few steps of the process.

“1. Verily the universe is Brahm. Let him whose soul is at peace, worship it, as that which he would fain know.