Chapter 5a - History of Atheism

Faith in a Personal Godhead and inclination to serve Him are not the artificial products of material civilization. Many books have been written by empiric thinkers to prove the historical origin of a belief in God as a product and concomitant of material circumstances. Such attempts betray an attitude of self-contradiction in regard to the nature of the super-mundane. These writers, almost deliberately confound religion, which is the eternal spiritual function of all individual souls, with the apparently similar mental speculations on the same subject although it is more or less admitted by all persons as lying outside the range of our sensuous experience. Nevertheless these assume religion to be the equivalent of a bundle of ideas that have their temporary existence in their own imaginations, and proceed to analyze what they suppose to be the similar mental phenomena of past generations with the tacit object of finding further support for, and for the elaboration of their pre-conceived views. Religion is supposed to be only a special department of thought produced by the mind by working on a particular aspect of the materials presented to it by the senses. This mental religion is more or less the method as well as goal of investigation of empiric moralists, theologians and scientists. Empiric criticism of the Bible and all mental treatment of the subject of religion, are vitiated by the adoption of this faulty method of begging the question at issue.

It is necessary to approach the subject with a mind free from prejudices that may have been engendered by such tentative and inconclusive speculations. Love for God and desire to serve Him are functions of the soul, and, as such, are located beyond the sphere of our physico-mental experience which is strictly confined to the sense-perceptions of material space and time. They are not of the nature of positive or negative ideas, however refined, that have their non-permanent existence in our sensuous mind, nor are they of the nature of physical activities in continuation of such ideas, that bear the names of “love” and “service” in the current speech of the world. These have a beginning and an end and by their nature are subject to perpetual modifications. But love of God and service of God which belong to the soul, are eternal and unchangeable. They are not erring mental notions but the reality in the form of the only function of our souls and belong to a plane of existence higher than the sensuous mind, to which no critic of the empiric school has any access.

But our sensuous minds are, and have been always, enabled, by the grace of God, to believe, no doubt dimly and imperfectly, in the great difference that must always exist between the physio-mental and the spiritual, whenever we are in a position to turn to the subject, which is always knocking at our door, our unbiased attention, in other words, when we are sincerely desirous of knowing the Absolute. On the path of such enquiry, the first axiom to which our unreserved assent is invited is this, viz., that the service of the Absolute is the only function of our soul in her pure, natural state. The fact may also be stated thus in terms of her present temporary, deluded existence, viz., that the inclination to serve the Absolute is innate in the soul and is, spontaneously aroused and asserts its superiority to all other forms of activity as soon as the nature of the service is properly explained, the resistance of her physical and mental equipments notwithstanding provided she gives to the subject, which she is free to do, her unbiased attention. This natural inclination to serve God has been present in the souls of men in every position of their material civilization and independently of such civilization.

This inclination to serve God and the actual service of God which exist eternally, are screened from the view of deluded humanity by their preference for worldly activities through ignorance due to the desire for meddling with objects that seem to promise and also yield transient sensuous pleasures. But whenever there has been a determined effort by atheists to suppress religion altogether it has reacted against such pressure and successfully reasserted itself in a clearer form than before, triumphantly silencing its opponents. It is possible to write the history of this eternal conflict, in its various forms, of atheism against religion. The history of theism which is eternal can, therefore, be said in this sense to begin with this world, i.e., as soon as the individual soul comes under the conditions of material space and time, due to her eternal tendency towards the service of Godhead against her counter-tendency to worldliness, roused to activity by atheistical opposition.

Atheism, the correlative of theism, is of this world and has always existed, and has often predominated, in it.

In this world men are found to be naturally divided into two mutually hostile groups, viz.,

1. l) those who seek what is permanently good for them, and
2. those who desire what appears to be pleasant, without considering the consequences of its acceptance.

The number of those who belong to the first group has always been infinitesimally small in this world which is of the nature of a temporary abode, or rather, house of correction, of those souls who have lapsed from the state of grace by reason of their preferring the pursuit of selfish enjoyment to service of Godhead. Atheism has been on the whole, the prevailing creed of this world. It has, however, been always compelled to masquerade in the garb of religion. But whenever atheism has been openly professed by the greatest leaders of thought and has appeared to be on the point of scoring a final and decisive victory over its rival with their influential support, the latter has invariably re-asserted itself, has demolished all efforts of the former and has consolidated its position by the refutation of such arguments as had been urged, or had seemed likely to be urged in the future, against it by its opponents, to an extent that was within the grasp of the contemporaneous generations. Atheistic opposition has thus resulted in the gradual and further elucidation of the theistic position. But although the opponents of theism have been silenced from time to time they are not always really converted to the views of their victorious rival, with the exception of a very small number;although most of them are compelled to profess a temporary, hypocritical allegiance to the manifested Truth, from worldly considerations. These hypocritical followers, indeed, afterwards prove the worst enemies of the re-established religion, and by their show of its acceptance prepare to betray the citadel to the enemy, till at last rottenness inside and outside the system necessitates a vigorous re-assertion of the Truth for the benefit of the few who really want to serve God.

It takes a considerable time after birth for a man to acquire a fair measure of experience of the material world. The term ‘matter’is applied to those external objects and their qualities that are perceived by the senses. In proportion as the senses of the child are developed they are enabled to have a fuller ‘knowledge’ of the qualities of material objects, and to enjoy in an apparently more and more ‘conscious’ manner the pleasures yielded by such exercise of the senses. The more the qualities of material objects are ‘enjoyed’the stronger the desire for such enjoyment becomes, till gradually the minds of men become so devotedly attached to this pleasurable exercise of the senses that they have no taste left for anything else. The pleasures of sound, touch, colour, taste and smell thus tend to colour and impart an overpowering charm to all activities of the mind and invite the deluded soul to be naturalized to the condition. The soul once enslaved to the mental outlook cannot be roused to grasp the unwholesome transitory character of the earthly sojourn although constantly reminded of the same by the most significant facts of her worldly experience, viz., birth and death, and she seems to forget for all practical purposes the fact that as soon as one dies one ceases to have any further connection by way of continuity of consciousness with these very material objects that appear to possess a distinctive individual reference to him when alive. If by rare good fortune, the clear consciousness of the transitoriness of the worldly life is awakened in the deluded soul, she naturally tries to desist from the exclusive pursuit of worldly enjoyment and turns round to reconsider the whole position. A person who stops in the midst of his worldly pursuits to consider the implication of their transitory nature, puts to himself in some form or other these three questions, viz. ‘Who am I, the apparent enjoyer of this world?’‘What is this vast world itself?’ ‘W hat is the real nature of the relation between this world and myself?’

Whenever the soul with her back to worldly pursuits asks the above questions she finds the answer in her own awakened consciousness The answer which the inquiring soul receives being put together in a systematic form, comes to be known as science and philosophy.

The answer which the soul receives may be either,

1. her own real consistent answer or
2. of a heterogeneous character.

But why does not the soul, who is in essence the same, receive the same kind of answer in all cases?

The real nature of the soul is purely spiritual. The answer which she gives when she is in her own proper condition is the true answer and is the same in all cases. This mundane world is not her real home. It is material, that is to say, not of the essence of the soul but the product of the deluding power of God which makes it resemble the realm of the spirit. The illusion-producing power who has made this world is of the nature of the shadow of the superior spiritual power of the Divinity. The individual soul is an infinitesimally small separable part of the latter whose nature she shares. The soul resident in this unspiritual world is under the delusion that her essence is material and she has a natural affinity with the deluding power although there is really no such affinity at all. This is a heterogeneous alliance. The deluded soul’s own proper nature is eclipsed and becomes dormant by the operation of the deluding energy resulting in the apparent identification by herself of her function with those of the body and limited mind, being thus unnaturally alloyed with the qualities of material energy. The individual soul whose real nature is purely spiritual, on imbibing this mixed character by operation of the material energy of God, functions by direction of the material mind in accordance with the dictates of this adventitious, unnatural, ‘second’ nature. The spiritual principle of selfluminous cognition, by such subordination to the principle of limitation, is perverted into the mind of the fallen jiva which is an extraordinary mixture, or rather incarceration, of spirit in a subtle material case. The answers that the mixed mind under the lead of the deluding material energy of God, returns to the questions put to it, are also necessarily heterogeneous, that is, selfcontradictory. These answers of the soul fettered in the material mind reflect the heterogeneity of customs, dress, food, language and mode of thought of the country of the temporary sojourn of the physical body which encases the mind. Differences in respect of place of residence, age and condition of the physical body, all tend to make the answer correspondingly different in every case. There is thus a twofold perversion due to the twofold incarceration of the soul in matter, viz., in the subtle form of mind and grosser form of physical body, by means of which she is deluded into relation of affinity with country, race, language, etc., which differ in the case of different individuals represented now by the physical body and mind.

In order to discuss in an adequate manner and in detail these heterogeneous answers it would be necessary to examine the history of all countries, to come into direct contact with the peoples by means of journeys through those countries and to master the different languages of the world. This is not the present purpose and a cursory glance at them will suffice to afford the reader a working idea of their general nature.

Of the above two kinds of answers received by the soul that variety which is true is also the one that is alone reasonable. The heterogeneous answers, although extremely diverse in character, are also, however, divisible into two distinctive groups. The first group constitutes the body of empiric practice and theory of truth; the second group is represented by activities devised for the purpose of securing selfish, transitory, material enjoyment [(1) jnana and (2) karma].

We have stated above that the true answer is also the rational one. If objection is taken to our use of the word ‘rational’ in this connection on the ground that the material reason admits its affinity with the heterogeneity of physical Nature, our reply is that the vocabulary that is available for expressing spiritual facts has acquired the material connotation by habitual abuse. The current vocabulary both as regards its derivation and usage refers really and exclusively to the transcendental. The words ‘rational’ and ‘reason’ used by us in connection with the soul have reference to the distinctive spiritual faculty inherent in the soul that can never err and always serves the transcendental Truth. The corresponding material faculty that dominates the eclipsed soul being subservient to the deluding energy, is, in the case of fallen souls, the approver, by its constitution, of the heterogeneous existence. This faculty in its normal, spiritual condition naturally responds in the really rational way.

That group of the two divisions of heterogeneous answers which has been named practice and theory of truth is the perversion corresponding to the Truth in the shape of answer returned by the pure soul that accepts the real and rejects the unreal. This heterogeneous ‘knowledge’ in its synthetic or positive aspect represents the qualities of matter and favours the view that matter is eternal and the ultimate cause of everything, and, negatively, tries to establish the view that the Brahman or the Absolute is devoid of all distinctive qualities, a conclusion which is reached by the denial of the existence of matter.

That division of the heterogeneous answer which has been named activity in quest of transitory, selfish enjoyment, is the pursuit by the soul, under the domination of the deluding power, of non-God. The correlative of this is the pure rational activity of the soul in the form of the service of Godhead by means of spiritual thoughts and deeds.

The heterogeneous answer, with which most of us are more or less familiar, may be conveniently considered under two heads, according to the nature of the object of human life offered for our acceptance which is either, (l) material pleasure, or, (2) extinction of material existence. The heterogeneous answer confines itself, as regards its subject of reference, to phenomenal Nature which, according to this view, exhausts all existence. The view that holds material pleasure as the end is in its turn divided into two sections according as the pleasure to be pursued is either selfish or unselfish.

We shall consider first the view that the end of human life is the attainment of selfish material pleasure. According to the supporters of this opinion there is no God, no soul, no other world, and no moral consequence of acts done by us. Our only proper function is to spend the time in constant sensuous pleasures with discretion to avoid any unpleasant worldly consequence. Such view has seldom been fully acted upon in civilized society. It has remained practically confined as theory to the persons who have conceived and propounded it in the different ages and countries. Such individuals are the Brahmana Charvaka in India, Yang Chu in China, Leucippus in Greece, Sardanapalus in Central Asia, Lucretius in Rome. Von Holbach maintains that the religion that leads to one's own selfish pleasure, is alone admissible. Religion is defined by him as the contrivance of securing one’s own pleasure by means of the pleasures of others.

The professed followers of unselfish material enjoyment have been very numerous and have in fact included the vast majority of the people in all ages and countries. The school of godless fruitive work (karma-kandis) of India is probably the oldest body of the credal followers of this view. According to this school Isvara (i.e., the Supreme Ruler) is an entity that has no antecedent (apurva). The view has been supported by learned mal-interpretation of the Vedic Scriptures. Democritus, the exponent of the view in ancient Greece, holds that unoccupied space and matter are eternal, the difference between substances being quantitative and not qualitative. Knowledge is merely the state of conjunction of certain external and internal substances. All substances are made up of atoms. Kanada maintains the permanent qualitative difference between different classes of atoms. According to the Vaisheshika School the individual soul and the Oversoul belong to the category of substances. Plato and Aristotle do not admit God to be the only eternal entity nor as the only cause of the world. This makes their systems share the defects noticeable in Kanada. Gassendi, Diderot and La Mettrie belong to this class. According to Comte we should regard theism as infancy, philosophy as childhood and positivism as mature stage in the evolution of thought. Men are required to be philanthropically disposed and to be disinterestedly religious in their conduct. The earth is the supreme fetish of Comte, the country his supreme medium and human nature his supreme being. Mill is in substantial agreement with Comte. The propounders of secularism in England include the names of Mill, Lewis, Paine, Carlyle, Bentham, Combe, Holyoake, Bradlaugh.

But the faculty of reason, even when it happens to be engrossed in matter, if only it could he induced to consider the subject in an impartial spirit, is bound to reject all these views for their extremely bad logic. The materialist proclaims the necessity and wisdom, above all things, of reducing the number of categories, and in fact it is this which leads him to deny the existence of the transcendental. But his own method leads him to the formulation of an infinite number of categories. Materialism is artificial and unscientific as it ignores the principle of self-consciousness and holds material Nature to be eternal. It calls self-consciousness a quality of matter and at the same time asserts it to be the regulative principle of the entity of which it is declared to be the quality. It involves the subordination of the principle of self-consciousness, which is the better and higher principle, to gross matter (Ferris). There is no proof of the permanence of matter (Prof. Tyndal). Boucher and Moleschott hold matter to be eternal, which is, however a mere assumption The view of Comte that man should cease from the enquiry of the beginning and end of the world, if really followed, would reduce man to equality with lifeless matter. No instance of any self-born man or of a man generated by the process of progressive evolution is known within the last three thousand years of human experience. The argument from design, if it be admitted, points to the principle of intelligence as the cause of the cosmic order and would thus be a complete refutation of all forms of materialism.

If again we consider the actual conduct of materialists in regard to society we find that they hold it necessary for men to be religious, in their acts. Sin and righteousness are held to he productive respectively of pain and pleasure of men in general. Pleasure for oneself should conform to the pleasure that is disinterested. By the practice of religion sin and its resultant misery are got rid of. It is necessary for men to investigate those laws that enable them to maintain their existence in society. The actions performed by men bear fruit even after their death for other beings of this world. In this sense acts never die. Acts are transformed into forces that did not exist before, such forces, being nourished by other future acts, are the cause of the continued improvement of the world. This is the disinterested reward of one’s acts.

The professors of disinterested material pleasure as the object of human life are, in fact, identical with the school that regard the selfish pleasure of oneself as the object of life. This is proved by Von Holbach under the name of Miraboud in his “System of Nature” (1770). In that work he has shown that there is no such thing as disinterestedness in this world. Religion is only a contrivance of securing on's own pleasures by making others happy. No one would care to do that which did not bring pleasure to himself. Even the sacrifice of life is made for pleasing oneself. All pleasures flowing from religion are for one's own self. Even love for God is for one's own pleasure. Whatever is natural is necessarily selfish because nature refers to the self. Selfishness is natural. Disinterestedness is unnatural and is never to be found.

The view that God is that which is without antecedent and identical with power or force, as propounded by Jaimini and Western scholars, never appeals to those who possess clearness of understanding. Those who accept their view have to be content with a part of the whole. The view of the non-antecedentists is directly opposed to the idea of God. Jaimini was well aware of the existence of a natural inclination in the hearts of men to submit to God and has accordingly very cleverly and with great assiduity conceived a god as the awarder of the fruits of our actions and included him in his category of the nonantecedent It is due to this cleverness in providing a reference to a god that the view of the Smarta Pandits advocating godless fruitive works, has been so vigorously prevalent in India. People with a cloudy intellect extend a ready welcome to the view of the professors of so-called disinterestedness in the hope of securing at a trifling cost the reward of unselfishness. This is another powerful reason for the spread of the creed of atheistic fruitive works.

The instructions of the professors of disinterested material pleasures may be appreciated at first, to a certain extent, by people by reason of their own selfishness; but they will scruple less to commit sinful acts the more they will enter into the spirit of the system. It is in this way that the system quickly enough degenerates into one of expediency pure and simple in which every individual member is free to act for his own pleasures in a way that appears to him to be not obviously against the general interest, and soon learns to care only for the external appearance of his acts. In the absence of a God to punish, the only check on the most reckless pursuit of selfish pleasures will be the fear of public exposure; and various expedients will accordingly be devised for avoiding the consequences of such a contingency. The truth of this criticism is corroborated by the notoriously lax practices of the ordinary Smarta Pandits who are adepts in twisting the rules to any extent to suit their individual purposes.

In the nominal provision for the worship of a god as found in this system we do not notice any of the characteristics of real devotion to God. Some of these even opine that the worship of God is only a variety of fruitive works; or, in other words, that it is prescribed for people in a general way and is optional in their own case. Comte has provided for the worship of his conceptions as God for the reason that they appeared to him to be true. In this Comte is more sincere; but Jaimini and the others are more far-sighted. The views of Comte and Jaimini are identical in theory. Those theories of the elevationists in effect sometimes affect to say to devotion’, “I follow you. I make men fit for devotion to God. I shall bring the sinners to your feet after purifying their minds”. These professions are the result of duplicity When work truly follows devotion it does not claim any separate recognition of itself but is content to pass under the name of devotion. So long, however, as work is disposed to retain its own separate designation it seeks its own glorification as a rival process claiming equality with devotion. This attitude leads it to claim all credit for every effort for the advancement of science, of society and industry, etc. as flowing from itself. But as a matter of fact when such work is transformed into the nature of devotion, i.e., service of God, science, society, industry, etc., are rendered even more glorious and progressive.

The view that material extinction is the proper object of life is held by the philosophical schools of Buddhism and Jainism. The genesis of the view is supplied by the fact that material pleasure is essentially trivial and is not genial company for a spiritual being. The experience of this gives rise to the theory that all existence is misery. It is a significant fact that the ordinary, Buddhist of today, at any rate in Burma, is not a pessimist. He believes that God exists eternally, that He has created the world. It is He who appeared in this world as the Buddha and always exists as God in Heaven. Men will go to Heaven by doing good works and by following the rules laid down by the Buddha This is not the Buddhistic theory of the schools. In fact these pessimistic views, that have been adumbrated with so much subtlety of argumentation, are never accepted as common property by the Society. They are bound to remain locked up in books and in the minds of their teachers. The general population, if at any time they happen to pride themselves as the followers of these views, do so under the impression that those views are identical with their own cherished Opinions which, as have been pointed out above, are nothing but the spontaneous concomitants of human nature. Love of Humanity as the object of life, as propounded by Comte, worship of God under the name of the Nonantecedent, a constituent part of his fruitive works, as devised by Jaimini, the theory of material extinction propagated by Sakya Singha, all of these are bound to be reduced by the general body of their respective practising followers to one common form, viz., that of the religion that is natural to man. To this consummation they are tending even at the present moment

The pessimists of western countries come under this category. There is no such thing as re-birth according to these Western pessimists whose theory may be described as the view of material extinction as the desired end of human life which itself is limited to one single birth. The Buddhist and Jain Schools agree in holding material extinction as the proper end of human life attainable through a cycle of births and re-births.

According to Buddha the jiva can attain final extinction (parinirvana) as the result of long practice of gentleness, patience, forgiveness, kindness, unselfishness, meditation, renunciation and friendliness. There is complete cessation of existence on the attainment of ultimate extinction (parinirvana). After ordinary extinction (nirvana) existence as kindness persists.

The Jains maintain that in accordance with the stage of advancement of the jiva due to the exercise of all the good qualities under the lead of kindness and renunciation he attains successively to the conditions of Narada, a Mahadeva, a Vasudeva, a Para-Vasudeva and finally the state of the Divinity involved in total material extinction.

According to both Buddhists and Jains the material world is eternal. Work which is without a beginning has an end. Existence is misery. Utter extinction (parinirvana) is happiness. The system of fruitive works propounded by Jaimini is harmful for the jiva. The rules that ensure utter extinction (parinirvana) are alone productive of good Indra and other gods although they are the masters of fruitive workers are the servants of those who follow the path of utter extinction (parinirvana).

Schopenhauer and Hartmann are material extinctionists admitting a single birth. According to Schopenhauer extinction is attainable by renouncing the desire for existence, by, voluntary abnegation (tyag), humility, acceptance of physical suffering, moral purity and asceticism (vairagya). According to Hartmann it is not necessary to undergo any suffering. Extinction is easy of attainment after death. Herr Bensa has demonstrated the impossibility of extinction by asserting the eternal nature of misery.

Most of the followers of current monism are material extinctionists. One section of the monists hopes for the spiritual bliss of the Brahman after extinction; the other section accepting the extinction of all existence after death, does not admit any other form of bliss. It is these latter whom I have classed as material extinctionists.

In the theory of material extinction the specific nature of the jiva is left uncertain. All these speculations are altogether atheistical. These views having been put forward with the object of preventing the oppressions by the exponents of material fruitive works could he propagated with such great vigour by the enthusiasm and perseverance of their preachers. In India on account of the oppression practiced on the Kshatriyas and the other varnas by the Brahmanas in course of the latter's efforts to further the establishment of the godless creed of fruitive works and the universal supremacy of the Brahmanas, the Kshatriyas handed together for the promulgation of the Buddhist, and the Vaishyas similarly combined to spread the Jain creed. When the factious spirit is reinforced by the clash of worldly interests it operates with great vigour. The Buddhist and Jain views were propagated in India in this way. In those countries into which those views were subsequently imported they were accepted as God-sent due to the absence of a stronger critical faculty in the peoples of those countries. It is a matter of history that the modern professors of material extinctionism in Europe, were led to propagate those views by their hatred of the Christian religion.

According to the Tantric view the whole world including the Chit and achit has been created by an eternal power named Maya. When the zeal of Buddhist preachers cooled down due to the barrenness of the philosophy of their creed there was an attempt to rehabilitate those doctrines in a new garb. It is at this stage that the Buddhist idea was transformed into the Tantric and the new theory known as Mayavada was propounded. This cult of Maya passed under the name of Buddhism inside that religion. This subtle form of Buddhism under the separate designation of Mayavada spread rapidly among the non-Buddhist populations. We have the genesis of the illusionist Vedantists when the cult of Maya assumed the form of a philosophy resting on Vedic interpretation. The same cult obtained currency among the hill tribes as Maya-Sakti-Vada conforming to the Tantra Shastras. The Tantric view according to many is derived from the Sankhya Philosophy of Kapila. But the latter is the progenitor of the Saiva cult in which physical Nature occupies an honoured position which may have been the cause of the mistaken view that assigns. to the Tantric cult its Sankhya origin. In the Tantra physical Nature is the mother of the conscious principle but these two are co-ordinate in the Sankhya philosophy. A form of extinction in the shape of absorption into physical Nature has also been imagined. The worshippers of the power of physical Nature sometimes supplicate her in imitation of the manner in which the professors of the principle of self-conscious power express the thoughts of their minds in addressing God (vide Holbach).

In the Mahanirvana-Tantra Mahadeva in praying to the principal power Adya Sakti Kali, addresses her in one passage as the creator of the world by the will of Para-Brahma. This corresponds to Sankhya. But in other passages she is described as alone existing in the form of chaos (tamas) after dissolution of the cosmos (pralaya); and she is also declared to be identical with the selfconscious principle in the jiva. All this is directly opposed to the Sankhya view. It cannot be said that the Sakti-vada of the Tantras originated from any philosophical system in particular. In fact the Tantra is so full of selfcontradiction that it does not admit of any systematic consideration. The distinctive Tantric processes, viz., the lata.sadhana, the panchamakara sadhana, sura sadhana, etc., do not appear to have been derived from any theistic philosophical system. Tantric (Saktivada) doctrine of supremacy of material power cannot be considered to be very different in character from the worship of the non-antecedent or god as mental formula (mantram) of atheistic fruitive works and the worship of physical Nature devised by Comte, etc.

There are a few scholars who admit the existence of nothing except mental ideas. They hold that the objective world has no real existence. Ideas are the only entities. The soul that is held by others as the subjective reality, is also ineffective. There is really nothing except ideas. Bishop Berkeley and a few others are more or less of this opinion. It is they who have given the view the name of Idealism.

Mill has also admitted this view to a certain extent. Idealism should not be regarded as identical with spiritualism. Idealism is merely the mental contemplation of material objects perceived through the senses. Such contemplation establishes the connection of the principle of self-consciousness with physical Nature. It is not essentially different from matter. Idealism is, therefore, by no means outside materialism. Among the undifferentiating monists a few have held that there are no such things as God or any substantive cosmic entities, but it is only the ideas of them that have existence and that it is the idea that is the undifferentiated truth. This view is altogether trivial. Its professors never acted up to their principles. Idealism should logically be classed under materialism.

There is a certain class of people who argue that what is supposed to exist, does not really exist. All entities are impermanent and they belong to the category of the non-existent as soon as they undergo transformation or destruction. Therefore, the non-existent is the eternal and true. This opinion has no substance. Such sophistical argument is advanced by a class of deluded people who are especially fond of indulging in abstruse futile hair-splitting.

That the non-existent is true is a proposition that carries its own refutation. From such abstruse speculations has arisen a body of opinions which is known in the English language as Skepticism, supported by Hume and a few others. Skepticism, although in itself it is inconclusive and unnatural, was at one time welcomed by people and also accepted in practice. The doctrines of selfish material pleasure and material extinction give rise to so much mischief in the world that men came to entertain a great contempt even for the very name of such religion. The nature of man is pure and endowed with the tendency. of devotion to God. It never finds joy in materialism. Skepticism is nothing but the last desperate attempt of the human reason to break its chains by its own strength after it is banished by materialism to the dungeon of ignorance and finds its hands and feet heavily fettered with chains of iron.

It was attempted to be established by rank materialism that matter is eternal and that matter alone is true. Many echoed the views of Huxley that no matter what the event may be unless it is affirmed to be the transformation of material causes it is not a scientific proposition. Nothing can be proved except matter and that which sets it in motion. The principles of cognition and feeling, it was affirmed, will be altogether discarded by the Scriptures in the long run. The soul will be steadily submerged under the rising tide of materialism. Freedom will be put into bondage by the dead hand of Providence. It was when a numerous body. of men were arguing in this immoral strain that the nature of man feeling its own degradation made an attempt to direct its reason along a different track. Disregarding all the evil consequences of this new effort, being determined to destroy the materialistic theory at all costs, human reason gave birth to Skepticism. The evil in the form of materialism was undoubtedly got rid of but Skepticism did even more harm to theism than what it prevented. People began to suspect that we cannot find the real truth. We can only experience the qualities of objects. Where is the proof that even this experience is True? By means of the senses we perceive different qualities separately. As for instance we perceive colour by the eye, sound by the ear, smell by the nose, touch by the skin and taste by the tongue. The knowledge of the object is obtained by means of the aggregate of the qualities imbibed severally through the five channels of such knowledge. We would have obtained the knowledge in a different form if instead of five we had ten additional senses. Under the circumstances whatever knowledge we happen to possess is wholly tentative and doubtful. By such Skepticism although materialism was destroyed, spiritualism did not profit in any way. Skepticism admits unreservedly the real existence of objects. What it asserts is that we do not possess any knowledge of the real nature of objects as our knowledge is imperfect, and also that we have no means of having the requisite kind of knowledge. Skepticism destroys itself in as much as it admits the undoubted existence of the reality. If there is such a thing as Absolute Reality Skepticism is left no ground to stand upon. On a careful consideration Skepticism appears to be meaningless jargon. Who is it that doubts that I exist?—I myself? Therefore, I exist.

All these three views, viz., materialism or the doctrine of material power, idealism and Skepticism are forms of atheism that have existed from ancient times. These include all possible varieties of atheism.