Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 451

THE MATERIALIST SCHOOL
411
Spinoza and his disciples endeavoured to palm it oil as
but the atheists of India
a new invention of their own
recognized this doctrine many centuries before them, and
drew from it pretty much the same deductions which their
European brethren afterwards drew, and which have been
propagated in modern times with such deplorable success.
According to this odious doctrine there is no other god
but Matter, which is divided into an infinite number of
substances, forming as many deities according to some,
and forming but one god according to others. They hold
neither
that there can be neither vice nor virtue during life
heaven nor hell after death. The truly wise man, according
to them, is he who enjoys every kind of sensual pleasure,
who believes in nothing that is not capable of being felt,
and who looks upon everything else as chimerical.
God, that is to say Matter, remarks a philosopher of this
;
;
saktis or faculties, which
These are Knowledge,
are like so many wives to him.
The body, by
Desire, Energy, and Maya, or Illusion.
applying all its senses at one and the same time to a par-
ticular object, enjoys unalloyed pleasure, which is said to
be imperfect when the enjoyment is limited to a part only
It is also from this want of consciousness,
of the senses.
or from its partial application, that pain and sleep originate.
Death is merely the total failure of the application of bodily
The body thus becomes in-
consciousness to the senses.
sensible and perishes.
It is, they say, simply to amuse and divert Himself with
the pleasures of infancy that God, that is to say Matter,
assumes the form of a child. Similarly He attains the
Such, briefly,
respective stages of adolescence and old age.
according to this school, is the whole secret of birth, life,
and death.
The second sakti or divine faculty is Desire, the effects
God is man,
of which are as varied as its impressions.
This
horse, insect, &c, in fact, whatever He wishes to be.
Desire is, in different creatures, as varied as their inclina-
tions.
But each is satisfied when enjoying what pleases
abominable school, possesses four
him most.
The sakti
ledge
:
that
however, obscures that of Know-
hinders one from knowing that there is
of Desire,
is,
it