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The Fourth Lesson: The Vedanta System.1187
nothing without itself.” It certainly appears that Rumanuga’s final position
is a retreat from his original one, and that he either was afraid to carry the
original conception to its logical conclusion, or else feared that the people
could not grasp the extreme position. This last idea seems to be correct, in
part) for many Hindus who adhere to the Vedanta teaching are not able to
grasp the extreme idealistic position of the Advaitist school of Sankaracharya,
and are better satisfied with the “qualified-monism” of the Vishishtadvaita
school of Ramanuga. While it is true that it may be said that there really are
two schools of Vedanta, as above stated, each equally entitled to the name
Vedantist, it still remains true that philosophical students, without prejudice,
both in India and in the West, recognize in the Advaita the true Vedanta—
that is, the Vedanta in which the thought and argument is carried logically
forward from premise to conclusion—the extreme logical consequence
being admitted, and not feared or compromised. The Vishisht-Advaita
school seems more allied with some of the schools of the Sankhya, or the
Yoga, than to its companion Vedantist school. And in our continuation of this
lesson on the Vedanta, we shall consider the Advaita school as representing
the original Vedanta doctrine carried to its logical and natural conclusion,
believing that the facts of the case warrant the same.
Before passing to the Advaitist explanation of the existence of the
phenomenal universe, however, let us stop a moment and consider some
conceptions held by certain Vedantists belonging to neither of the great
schools—independent reasoners, as it were, seeing a view of truth from their
own viewpoint. These independent Vedantists hold to a conception that is
an approach to a conception of a “manifestation,” and yet is not such in full
truth—something that may be spoken of as an “apparent manifestation,” as
it were. These views are chiefly expressed in symbols; for instance, one class
will compare Brahman and the individual souls to the sparks arising from the
blazing fire and returning thereto, but being always within the heat-waves of
the fire, and therefore not separate, although appearing to be so. Another
class favours the illustration of the perfume arising from a flower, which,