The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c11.20

c11.20

From the possession of the three constituents, which is common to both the evolved and the unevolved, follow certain further characteristics of these entities, which form the discrimination between them and the other great principle of the Sāṃkhya, Purusha, or spirit. Unlike spirit, the evolved and the unevolved are without the power of discriminating between themselves and spirit: indeed without spirit they are wholly unconscious; they are objective only while spirit is the subject; they are common to all spirits whereas each spirit is unique; they are either creative, created or both creative and created, while spirit is neither created nor creative. While, however, it is expressly said that these distinctions arise from the possession by the unevolved of the three constituents which are likewise present in the evolved, the mode of the derivation of the characteristics is not given. Nor is this defect remedied in the account given of the arguments for the existence of the spirit as these arguments essentially assume that the nature of the unevolved and the evolved is something independently ascertained.