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mental principle of the Vedanta philosophy, ascribed to Vyasa, is demonstrated by Sir W. Jones, in his work "On the Philosophy of the Asiatics."—(Asiatic Researches, Vol. IV, p. 164). The fundamental tenet of the Vedanta school consists not in denying the existence of matter, that is of solidity, impenetrability, and figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception: that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms."
"These words express sufficiently the co-existence of empirical reality with transcendental Idealism.
"Thus only and from this aspect of the world as mental perception, can we begin to contemplate it. That such a contemplation, however, without any detriment to its truth, is one-sided, and therefore, the result of some arbitrary abstraction, is nevertheless felt by everybody and proved by that internal revolt, with which one accepts the world as one's mere mental perception, and of which, on the other hand, one can yet never entirely rid himself. Later on, however, we will make up for the one-sidedness of this consideration, by the enunciation of a truth, not so directly certain as that one from which we now proceed, but the only one to which a profounder injury can lead; still more difficult as an abstraction, the division of what is different, and union of that which is identical; a most important truth, which, if not dismaying, yet must appear critical to everyone, the following one in fact; that we can as well say, and must say—
'The World is my will.'"*[1]
We must begin to consider not only the world, but even our own body as mere perception. That from which we are now abstracting shall presently clearly show itself as Will, of which alone the world in its other aspect consists, for that
- ↑ * See Schopenhaur's chief work Die welt als Wille und Verstallung. Isis Unveiled, II. pp. 159 and 261.—L. A. S.
