much
more are Pariahs, or non-caste men, deprived of this great boon! Brahman
is the material, as well as the efficient, cause of the world, which
springs from him by way of modification, but is his manifested self and
nothing more.

_BOOK II.--OBJECTIONS TO VEDANTIC DOCTRINES STATED AND REFUTED_

The Vedanta texts, the Vedas and the Upanishads, teach that Brahman is
the one only source of whatever exists outside himself; that his nature
is not only mighty, but also intelligent. The evidence for this supplied
in Book I. is, for the most part, the authority of the above texts; that
which they say must be accepted as "gospel," whatever human reason may
see or say to the contrary.

Book II. begins by stating and answering speculative objections on the
part of Sankhyaists. Though himself intelligence (not merely
intelligent) Brahman may give birth to a non-intelligent world, seeing
that like does not always spring from like [see above].

Atomists hold that there is apparent difference and separateness in
things. "Where, then," they ask, "is the oneness, the monism, for which
the Vedantists argue?" It is replied that it is only superficial thought
that fixes itself upon the manifoldness of things, losing sight of their
oneness. Deeper thought sees underneath the many a oneness which binds
them, and of which they are only the outward expressions. The great
ocean is one, but its waves and ripples are many. All at bottom is but
one: the Universal Being.

A non-intelligent first cause (_Prakriti_), such as the Sankhyaists
postulate, could never call into being an orderly world, for how could
unreason produce reason? Nor could atoms set in motion produce a planned
or intelligent universe, as the Atomists falsely say. There must be an
intelligent power controlling the atoms and contemplating the result to
be attained.

The view put forth by the Sankhya philosophers, that an external and
internal world exists in mutual independence, is contrary to thought and
experience--is, in fact, unthinkable. We know no external world: we have
never had any experience outside the region of our own consciousness;
yet what is regarded as external to the individual consciousness is not
_Maya_, as is taught in some of the Upanishads, and maintained by later
philosophers. This external world as a fact of consciousness is as real
as that consciousness and as the individual mind which makes mental
experience possible, and is the great All,