ices on them. It should be
remembered that these Sutras form a collection, and that they are the
work of many hands, and belong to different periods.

_BOOK I.--BRAHMAN, THE SUM AND SUBSTANCE OF EVERYTHING_

The ego and the non-ego differ in themselves and in their attributes. It
will be found, however, that the non-ego depends on the ego, and is its
product. Individual souls, on the other hand, representing so many egos,
are themselves but manifestations of the supreme universal
soul--Brahman; that is, Brahman and the Atman [the individual soul] are
identical, the latter being the product of the self-revealing of the
former. [With this one may compare the "ontological ideas" of Plato, the
"absolute substance" of Spinoza, and the "absolute idea" of Hegel; all
of them standing for the One only existing Being which manifests itself
to thought and to sense in various forms.]

"What, then," asks the Vedantist, "is Brahman"?

The word comes from _brih_, "to be great." Hence Brahman is something,
or someone, transcendently great. The word may be defined as connoting
that whence all things proceed. This implies absolute, unoriginated
origin, absolute subsistence, and also reabsorption, for as all things
go forth from Brahman, so shall all things return to that whence they
started forth.

The Scriptures [Vedas] lay most stress on Brahman as the source and
origin of all things. What qualities there are in the world inhere in
Brahman, or they could not be in the world which has sprung from him.
There could be no intelligent souls without a previously existing
intelligent Brahman. That Brahman, the Supreme Being, is all-knowing is
proved from the fact that the Veda itself, the source and centre of what
is knowable, proceeds from Him as its one, only author.

This Brahman, as set forth in the Vedanta texts as the cause of the
world, is therefore intelligent, and by no means to be identified with
the non-intelligent Pradhana (_Prakriti_) which the Sankhya [atheistic]
philosophy makes to be the world's cause. What looks like a separate,
conscious, individual soul or mind is really but the outworking of
Brahman, the highest and first of beings.

The difference is apparent, but not real. So teaches Sankara; but his
rival commentator, Ramanuga, endeavours to show that Brahman, the
supreme self of the universe, is absolutely free from the effects of
conduct. But the individual selves, which we call souls, are not, for it
is t