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enjoyment. Blame is to the bad man, after death, like praise to the good man-as worthless as it is to the trunk of a tree or a clod of earth. Fame, therefore, according to Yang Choo, is but a phantom, virtue is but a delusion, and enjoyment has alone some reality and good in it. Hence he advises men not to care for praise or blame, virtue or vice, except as a means of enjoyment; to seek merely to make themselves as happy as they can while happiness is within their reach; to eat and drink, for to-morrow they die. That is one of the oldest systems of ethical materialism and of materialistic ethics. It is a very simple theory, and to the vast majority of men it will seem a very consistent theory. A few exceptionally constituted natures may combine a materialistic creed with generous and self-denying conduct, but the ordinary man of all lands and ages will find in a materialism which denies God and a future life the justification of sensuality and selfishness.1

None of the greater systems of Hindu philosophy can be properly classed as materialistic; but among the minor systems there is one-the Charvāka philosophy-closely akin to that just described. It assumes that perception by the senses is the only source of true knowledge. It maintains that the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water, are the original principles of all things,

1 See Appendix VI.

and that they are eternal. It represents intelligence as resulting from a modification of the aggregate of these elements, when combined and transformed into the human body, just as the power of inebriation is produced by the mixing of certain ingredients. The faculty of thought, according to it, is destroyed when the elements from which it arises are dissolved. There is no soul apart from the body: the soul is only the body distinguished by the attribute of intelligence. The various phenomena of the world are produced spontaneously from the inherent nature of things, and there is nothing supernatural-no God, no fate even, no other world, no final liberation, no recompense for acts. Prosperity is heaven and adversity is hell, and there is no other heaven or hell. The so-called sacred books-the three Vedas -were composed by rogues or buffoons. exercises of religion and the practices of asceticism are merely a means of livelihood for men devoid of intellect and manliness. The sole end-the only reasonable end-of man is enjoyment:

The

"While life remains let a man live happily, let him feed on ghee, even though he runs in debt;

When once the body becomes ashes, how can it ever return again?" That, so far as I know, is the only system of thorough materialism among the philosophies of India. And certainly, in one sense, it is as thorough as can be imagined. It shows no reverence

for any kind of authority or tradition-no deference to respectability or public opinion. It recoils from no consequence of its principles. At the same time, it is manifestly a very poor and ignoble kind of philosophy. It is the theory of men who wish to dispense with all thoughts of God and of a moral government, in order that they may feel free to indulge in a selfish and sensuous life.'

II.

Philosophy began its wonderful career in Greece by attempting to resolve all the phenomena of the universe into a single material first principle, such as water, or air, or fire; or rather, it began by conjecturing how all things might have been evolved from such a principle. And yet it was not merely materialistic, for matter was supposed to be filled by other than material powers-by spontaneity, by life, by intelligence. The first system of Greek materialism, properly so called, was that wrought out by Leucippus, and especially by Democritus, in the fifth century before Christ. The materialism of the present day is substantially the materialism of Democritus. This explains why some recent German writers, favourable to materialism, have extolled Democritus as a speculative and scientific genius of the very highest 1 See Appendix VII.

D

order, equal or superior to Plato and Aristotle. For such an opinion the fragmentary sentences which are all that remain of his numerous works supply no warrant. At the same time, Democritus was undoubtedly a man of great knowledge for the age in which he lived, a clear and consistent if not very profound thinker, and endowed with remarkable aptitudes for mathematical and physical investigation. There is, further, no reason to question that the high reputation which he gained for moral worth-for modesty, disinterestedness, integrity, for cheerful wisdom, for love of truthwas well merited. The views of moral life which he inculcated are the very best that one can conceive associated with materialistic and atheistic

principles. He held that the sovereign good of man was not to be found in the pleasures of sense, in wealth, in honours, or power-not in external things, nor in what depends on accident or on others-but in tranquillity of mind, in a wellregulated, pure, and peaceful soul. There are true and beautiful thoughts in his fragments on veracity, on courage, on prudence, on justice, on the restraint of passion, the regulation of desire, respect for reason, obedience to law, &c.

Democritus explained the universe by means of space and atoms-the empty and the full. The atoms, infinite in number, moving in infinite space, give rise to infinite worlds. These atoms are eter

nal, and they are imperishable. There is no real creation and no real destruction; nothing comes from nothing, and what is ultimate in anything never ceases to be; what is called creation is merely combination, what is called destruction is merely separation. The quantity of matter in the world, and consequently the quantity of forcefor force is merely matter in motion-can neither be increased nor diminished, but must be ever the same. The atoms, he further held, have in themselves no qualitative differences, but merely quantitative; they differ from one another only in shape, arrangement, and position. All the apparently qualitative differences in objects are due simply to the quantitative differences of the atoms which compose them. Water differs from iron merely because the atoms of the former are smooth and round, and do not fit into but roll over each other; while those of the latter are jagged and uneven and densely packed together. In thus resolving all qualitative differences into quantitative differences, the system of Democritus involved a distinct and marked advance over Chinese and Hindu materialism, or any of the previous Greek philosophies which had attempted to explain the world by physical principles. The soul Democritus regarded as only a body within the body, made of more delicate atoms; thought as only a more refined and pure sensation; and

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