A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c8.s6.5

c8.s6.5

nor God, who can give us the essential rule for conduct. This must spring entirely from within ourselves. We cannot say that the Upanishadic seers envisaged this principle of moral autonomy unless of course we see it in that quotation from the Chhāndogya Upanishad where we are told that the mind should be meditated upon as the Ultimate Reality (S. 3. a), or even again in that other quotation from the same Upanishad where we are asked to regard the mind as verily the Ātman in us, as also the Ultimate Reality (S. 3. b). These passages have been understood by a recent writer on Hindu Ethics as involving the theory of Intuitionism. But it may be easily seen that inasmuch as it is the Mind which is here equated with the Highest Reality and not the Self which is mentioned as apart from it, we can only understand the passage as involving a lower intuitionism instead of the higher intuitionism of autonomy. Instances are not wanting even in the history of European Morals where aesthetic or sympathetic intuitionism prepares the way for the higher intuitionism of autonomy. It was not till the days of the Bhagavadgītā in the history of Hindu Ethics that the real nature of autonomy was clearly appreciated, and the categorical imperative of duty with all its Kantian purism severely inculcated. We have thus to regard the Upanishadic Ethics as on the whole deficient in the principle of autonomy as supplying the rules for moral conduct.