good works but
by knowledge and meditation on the Lord assisted by his grace. The
released soul is not identified with the Lord but enjoys near him a
personal existence of eternal bliss and peace. This is more like
European theism than the other doctrines which we have been
considering. The difference is that God is not regarded as the creator
of matter and souls. Matter and souls consist of his substance. But
for all that he is a personal deity who can be loved and worshipped
and whereas Sankara was a religious philosopher, Ramanuja was rather
a philosophic theologian and founder of a church. I have already
spoken of his activity in this sphere.

4

The epics and Puranas contain philosophical discussions of
considerable length which make little attempt at consistency. Yet the
line of thought in them all is the same. The chief tenets of the
theistic Sankhya-Yoga are assumed: matter, soul and God are separate
existences: the soul wishes to move towards God and away from matter.
Yet when Indian writers glorify the deity they rarely abstain from
identifying him with the universe. In the Bhagavad-gita and other
philosophical cantos of the Mahabharata the contradiction is
usually left without an attempt at solution. Thus it is stated
categorically[783] that the world consists of the perishable and
imperishable, _i.e._, matter and soul, but that the supreme spirit is
distinct from both. Yet in the same poem we pass from this antithesis
to the monism which declares that the deity is all things and "the
self seated in the heart of man." We have then attained the Vedantist
point of view. Nearly all the modern sects, whether Sivaite or
Vishnuite, admit the same contradiction into their teaching, for they
reject both the atheism of the Sankhya and the immaterialism of the
Advaita (since it is impossible for a practical religion to deny the
existence of either God or the world), while the irresistible tendency
of Indian thought makes them describe their deity in pantheistic
language. All strive to find some metaphysical or theological formula
which will reconcile these discrepant ideas, and nearly all Vishnuites
profess some special variety of the Vedanta called by such names as
Visishtadvaita, Dvaitadvaita, Suddhadvaita and so on. They differ
chiefly in their definition of the relation existing between the soul
and God. Only the Madhvas entirely discard monism and profess duality
(Dvaita) and even Madhva thought it neces