45. There can be no reasoning, without an insight into the meanings of the significant terms and their significates; and it is consideration of both sides of the question that leads to our right judgment. Hence it is reasoning that leads us to truth, as the light guides us amidst the darkness of night. 46. Therefore drive off the multitudes of multifarious desires and doubts from your mind, by means of the clearness (light) of your understanding (obtained by your habit of right reasoning), and also by your attention to the true interpretation of the _sástras_; and then rise and fly aloft to the higher region of light and truth, and attain the highest, best and most perfect state of Divine felicity and self-liberation. CHAPTER CLXVIII. STORY OF THE HEWN STATUE OR CARVED IMAGE. Argument:--The false and ignorant Attribution of creation, to the increate and self-manifest world. Vasishtha continued:--As the unconscious tree, displays various forms in its branches; so doth the unconcerned spirit of God, exhibit the airy semblance of creation in air. 2. And as the ocean describes the whirlpools, insensibly upon its surface; so doth the spirit of God, exhibit this rotatory worlds unconcernedly, on the surface of its own vacuum, and as they are seen by all. 3. The Lord gives also to the sensible part of his creation, their internal faculties of the mind, understanding and egoism, as also many other powers under different appellations. 4. The phenomenal world is the production of the insensible Intellect, whose volitive faculties are as loose as the rolling eddies of rivers and seas. 5. The mind and understanding and all mental faculties, proceed from the Divine Intellect; in the same manner as the whirlpools and eddies, and waves and surges rise on the surface of the sea. 6. As a picture is nothing except its canvas, so the world which is no more than a painting, is drawn on the substratum of the intellect; and this is a vacuous substance, with the lustre of the world in it. 7. What I have said before of the insensibility of the tree and sea, in the production of the branches and whirlpools by them; the same instance applies to Intellect also, which shows the creation rising in its vacuity, not by an act of its intention or will, but by ordinance of fate, which governs all things, (and rules over Jove himself). This is the doctrine of fatalism. 8. And as a tree exhibits its various forms, receiving the several names of a plant, a shrub, a creeper &c.; so doth the intellect display its many features, like its flowers &c., and called by the different appellations of earth, air, water &c. 9. And as the branches and leaves of a tree, are not different from the tree itself; so the productions of the great Intellect, are no other than its very substance (or are essentially the same with itself).