Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
principle is not the return to the first which Mind and Idea demand,
and which is effected by the removal of the negation in order to effect
a reconciliation with itself and to go back within itself. With the
Indians the third is still change and negation.
These three qualities are represented as the essential being of nature.
The Sanc’hya says, “We speak of them as we do of the trees in a wood.”
Yet this is a bad simile, for the wood is but an abstract universal, in
which the individuals are independent. In the religious ideas of the
Vedas, where these qualities also appear as Trimurti, they are spoken
of as if they were successive modifications, so that “Everything was
darkness first, then received the command to transform itself, and in
this manner the form”—which, however, is a worse one—“of movement and
activity (foulness) was assumed, until finally, by yet another command
from Brahma, the form of goodness was adopted.”
Further determinations of the intelligence in respect of these
qualities follow. It is said that eight kinds of intelligence are
counted, of which four pertain to what is good:—virtue first,
science and knowledge second, thirdly, freedom from passion, which,
may have either an external and sensuous motive—the repugnance to
disturbance—or be of an intellectual nature, and emanate from the
conviction that nature is a dream, a mere jugglery and sham; the fourth
is power. This last is eight-fold, and hence eight special qualities
are given as being present; viz. the power to contract oneself into a
quite small form, for which everything shall be penetrable; the power
to expand into a gigantic body; the power to become light enough to
be able to mount to the sun on a sunbeam; the possession of unlimited
power of action in the organs, so that with the finger-tips the moon
may be touched; irresistible will, so that, for instance, one may dive
into the earth as easily as in the water; mastery over all living and
lifeless existence; the power to change the course of nature; and the
power to perform everything that is wished. “The feeling that such
transcendent power,” Colebrooke goes on, “is within the reach of man
in his life is not peculiar to the Sanc’hya sect, but is common to all
systems and religious ideas, and such a power is in good faith ascribed
to many holy men and Brahmins in dramas and popular narratives.”
Sensuous evidence is of no account as opposed to this, for with the
Indian, perception of the senses is, generally speaking, absent:
everything adopts the form of imaginary images, every dream is esteemed
just as much as truth and actuality. The Sanc’hya ascribes this power
to man, in so far as he elevates himself through the working of his
thought into inward subjectivity. Colebrooke says, “The Yoga-sastra
names in one of its four chapters a number of acts by which such power
may be attained; these are exemplified by a profound meditation,
accompanied by holding back the breath and inactivity of the senses,