Isha Upanishad

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Part II: The Instruments and Field of Vedanta.

Chapter I: Textual Inference.

The three principal means of intellectual knowledge are anumana, pratyaksha and aptavakya. Anumana, inference from data, depends for its value on the possession of the right data, on the right observation of the data including the drawing of the right analogies, the unerring perception of true identity & rejection of false identity, the just estimate of difference & contrast, and finally on the power of right reasoning from the right data. Pratyaksha is the process by which the things themselves about which we gather data are brought into our ken; aptavakya is evidence, the testimony of men who have themselves been in possession of the knowledge we seek. An error in pratyaksha, an error committed by the apta, an error of data or of reasoning from the data may, if serious in its bearing or extent, vitiate all our conclusions even if all our other means are correct and correctly used. Especially is this danger present to us when we are reasoning not from things but from words; when we are using the often artificial counters of traditional logic & metaphysics, we are apt to lose ourselves in a brilliant cloud, to be lifted from the earth, our pratistha, into some nebulous region where even

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if we win high victories we are not much advanced, since we get thereby nothing but an intellectual satisfaction and cannot apply our knowledge to life. This is the great advantage of the scientist over the metaphysician that he is always near to facts & sensible things which, when the truth of them is outraged by the freaks of the mind, present a much more formidable & tangible protest than words, those vague & flexible symbols of things which have been habituated to misuse ever since human thinking began. The metaphysician is too apt to forget that he is dealing with the symbols of things and not with the things themselves; he should but is not always careful to compare his intellectual results with the verities of experience; he is apt to be more anxious that his conclusions should be logical than that they should be in experience true. Much of the argumentation of the great Dravidian thinkers, though perfect in itself, seems to be vitiated by this tendency to argue about words rather than about the realities which alone give any value to words. On the other hand scientists as soon as they go beyond the safe limits of observation & classification of data, as soon as they begin to reason & generalise on the basis of their science, show themselves to be as much subject to the errors of the intellect as ordinary mortals. They too like the metaphysicians use words in a fixed sense established upon insufficient data and forge these premature fixatures into fetters upon thought and inquiry. We seem hardly yet to possess the right & sufficient data for a proper understanding of the universe in which we find ourselves; the habit & power of right reasoning from data, even if with insufficient materials right reasoning were possible, seem yet to be beyond the reach of our human weakness. The continued wrangles of philosophy, dogmatisms of science and quarrels of religion are so many proofs that we are yet unripe for the highest processes of thought and inquiry. How few of us have even the first elementary condition of truth-seeking, a quiet heart and a silent, patient & purified understanding. For the Vedantins were surely right in thinking that in order to be a discoverer & teacher of truth one must first be absolutely dhira,—live that is to say in a luminous calm of both heart & understanding.

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