The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c11.23

c11.23

It is impossible to imagine that so complicated a system could have arisen from independent speculation on the nature of existence. The conception of spirit in the Sāṃkhya is clearly nothing more than the carrying to a further limit of the conception of the self in the teaching of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad. The distinction of the subjective and the objective, and the recognition of the fact that the subject is in a sense opposed to the object, has led to the hypostatization of the subject as a separate entity opposed to all objectivity, and to the doctrine that the subject is somehow dragged into unsatisfactory contact with objectivity, from which is to be set free by recognizing its true nature, and its essential distinction from the object. Starting from the fact of normal consciousness the whole content of consciousness is attributed to nature, the element which makes it conscious to spirit, but, in place of the recognition of the fact that without content there can be no subject, the existence of the subject is asserted as reality, but the content of consciousness is represented as an error due to the failure of spirit to realize its true nature. While, however, the error of hypostatization of a mere aspect of the total process of consciousness is found equally in Yājñavalkya and his followers,[*] the Sāṃkhya makes a departure in two points of fundamental importance from the lines of the earlier philosophy. In both cases the points represent concessions to popular opinion, and in both cases, from the point of view of philosophy, the result is unsatisfactory. In the first place, in accordance with the obvious existence of many men a multitude of souls is allowed as real: in the second place, while, as in the Vedānta, much of the world is admitted to be the product of ideal elements,[†] a certain amount is left which remains, as will be seen, in some sense other than a product of the ideal elements.