On the Philosophy of the Asiaticks

Delivered 20th February, 1794.

Had it been of any importance, gentlemen, to arrange these anniversary dissertations according to the ordinary progress of the human mind, in the gradual expansion of its three most considerable powers, memory, imagination, and reason, I should certainly have presented you with an essay on the liberal arts of the five Asiatick nations, before I produced my remarks on their abstract sciences; because, from my own observation at least, it seems evident, that fancy, or the faculty of combining our ideas agreeably by various modes of imitation and substitution, is in general earlier exercised, and sooner attains maturity, than the power of separating and comparing those ideas by the laborious exertions of intellect; and hence, I believe, it has happened, that all nations in the world had poets before they had mere philosophers: but, as M. D'Alembert has deliberately placed science before art, as the question of precedence is, on this occasion, of no moment whatever, and as many new facts on the subject of Asiatick philosophy are fresh in my remembrance, I propose to address you now on the sciences of Asia, reserving for our next annual meeting a disquisition concerning those fine arts, which have immemorially been cultivated, with different success and in very different modes, within the circle of our common inquiries.

By science I mean an assemblage of transcendental propositions discoverable by human reason, and reducible to first principles, axioms, or maxims, from which they may all be derived in a regular succession; and there are consequently as many sciences as there are general objects of our intellectual powers: when man first exerts those powers, his objects are himself and the rest of nature; himself he perceives to be composed of body and mind, and in his individual capacity, he reasons on the uses of his animal frame and of its parts both exteriour and internal, on the disorders impeding their regular functions of those parts, and on the most probable methods of preventing those disorders or of removing them; he soon feels the close connexion between his corporeal and mental faculties, and when his mind is reflected on itself, he discourses on its essence and its operations; in his social character, he analyzes his various duties and rights both private and publick; and in the leisure, which the fullest discharge of those duties always admits, his intellect is directed to nature at large, to the substance of natural bodies, to their several properties, and to their quantity both separate and united, finite and infinite; from all which objects he deduces notions, either purely abstract and universal, or mixed with undoubted facts, he argues from phenomena to theorems, from those theorems to other phenomena, from causes to effects, from effects to causes, and thus arrives at the demonstration of a first intelligent cause; whence his collected wisdom, being arranged in the form of science, chiefly consists of physiology and medicine, metaphysicks and logick, ethicks and jurisprudence, natural philosophy and mathematicks; from which the religion of nature (since revealed religion must be referred to history, as alone affording evidence of it) has in all ages and in all nations been the sublime and consoling result. Without professing to have given a logical definition of science, or to have exhibited a perfect enumeration of its objects, I shall confine myself to those five divisions of Asiatick philosophy, enlarging for the most part on the progress which the Hindus have made in them, and occasionally introducing the sciences of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars, and the Chinese; but, how extensive soever may be the range which I have chosen, I shall beware of exhausting your patience with tedious discussions, and of exceeding those limits, which the occasion of our present meeting has necessarily prescribed.

I. The first article affords little scope; since I have no evidence, that, in any language of Asia, there exists one original treatise on medicine considered as a science: physick, indeed, appears in these regions to have been from time immemorial, as we see it practiced at this day by Hindus and Muselmáns, a mere empirical history of diseases and remedies; useful, I admit, in a high degree, and worthy of attentive examination, but wholly foreign to the subject before us: though the Arabs, however, have chiefly followed the Greeks in this branch of knowledge, and have themselves been implicitly followed by other Mohammedan writers, yet (not to mention the Chinese, of whose medical works I can at present say nothing with confidence) we still have access to a number of Sanscrit books on the old Indian practice of physick, from which, if the Hindus had a theoretical system, we might easily collect it. The Ayurvéda, supposed to be the work of a celestial physician, is almost entirely lost, unfortunately perhaps for the curious European, but happily for the patient Hindu; since a revealed science precludes improvement from experience, to which that of medicine ought, above all others, to be left perpetually open; but I have myself met with curious fragments of that primeval work, and, in the Véda itself, I found with astonishment an entire Upanishad on the internal parts of the human body; with an enumeration of nerves, veins, and arteries, a description of the heart, spleen, and liver, and various disquisitions on the formation and growth of the fetus: from the laws, indeed, of Menu, which have lately appeared in our own language, we may perceive, that the ancient Hindus were fond of reasoning in their way on the mysteries of animal generation, and on the comparative influence of the sexes in the production of perfect offspring; and we may collect from the authorities adduced in the learned Essay on Egypt and the Nile, that their physiological disputes led to violent schisms in religion, and even to bloody wars. On the whole, we cannot expect to acquire many valuable truths from an examination of eastern books on the science of medicine; but examine them we must, if we wish to complete the history of universal philosophy, and to supply the scholars of Europe with authentick materials for an account of the opinions anciently formed on this head by the philosophers of Asia: to know, indeed, with certainty, that so much and no more can be known on any branch of science, would in itself be very important and useful knowledge, if it had no other effect than to check the boundless curiosity of mankind, and to fix them in the straight path of attainable science, especially of such as relates to their duties and may conduce to their happiness.

II. We have an ample field in the next division, and a field almost wholly new; since the mytaphysicks and logick of the Bráhmens, comprised in their six philosophical Sástras, and explained by numerous glosses or comments, have never yet been accessible to Europeans; and, by the help of the Sanscrit language, we now may read the works of the Saugatas, Bauddhas, Árhatas, Jainas, and other heterodox philosophers, whence we may gather the metaphysical tenets prevalent in China and Japan, in the eastern peninsula of India, and in many considerable nations of Tartary: there are also some valuable tracts on these branches of science in Persian and Arabick, partly copied from the Greeks, and partly comprising the doctrines of the Súfis, which anciently prevailed, and still prevail in great measure over this oriental world, and which the Greeks themselves condescended to borrow from eastern sages.

The little treatise in four chapters, ascribed to Vyása, is the only philosophical Sástra, the original text of which I have had leisure to peruse with a Bráhmen of the Védánti school: it is extremely obscure, and, though composed in sentences elegantly modulated, has more resemblance to a table of contents, or an accurate summary, than to a regular systematical tract; but all its obscurity has been cleared by the labour of the very judicious and most learned Sancara, whose commentary on the Védánta, which I read also with great attention, not only elucidates every word of the text, but exhibits a perspicuous account of all other Indian schools, from that of Capila to those of the more modern hereticks. It is not possible, indeed, to speak with too much applause of so excellent a work; and I am confident in asserting, that, until an accurate translation of it shall appear in some European language, the general history of philosophy must remain incomplete; for I perfectly agree with those, who are of opinion, that one correct version of any celebrated Hindu book would be of greater value than all the dissertations or essays, that could be composed on the same subject; you will not, however, expect, that, in such a discourse as I am now delivering, I should expatiate on the diversity of Indian philosophical schools, on the several founders of them, on the doctrines, which they respectively taught, or on their many disciples, who dissented from their instructors in some particular points. On the present occasion, it will be sufficient to say, that the oldest head of a sect, whose entire work is preserved, was (according to some authors) Capila; not the divine personage, a reputed grandson of Brahmaˊ, to whom Criˊshna compares himself in the Gítá, but a sage of his name, who invented the Sánc'hya, or Numeral, philosophy, which Criˊshna himself appears to impugn in his conversation with Arjuna, and which, as far as I can collect it from a few original texts, resembled in part the metaphysicks of Pythagoras, and in part the theology of Zeno: his doctrines were enforced and illustrated, with some additions, by the venerable Patanjali, who has also left us a fine comment on the grammatical rules of Paˊnini, which are more obscure, without a gloss, than the darkest oracle; and here by the way let me add, that I refer to metaphysicks the curious and important science of universal grammar, on which many subtil disquisitions may be found interspersed in the particular grammars of the ancient Hindus, and in those of the more modern Arabs. The next founder, I believe, of a philosophical school was Goˊtama, if, indeed, he was not the most ancient of all; for his wife Ahalyaˋ was, according to Indian legends, restored to a human shape by the great Raˊma; and a sage of his name, whom we have no reason to suppose a different personage, is frequently mentioned in the Véda itself; to his rational doctrines those of Canaˊda were in general conformable; and the philosophy of them both is usually called Nyáya, or logical, a title aptly bestowed; for it seems to be a system of metaphysicks and logick better accommodated than any other anciently known in India, to the natural reason and common sense of mankind; admitting the actual existence of material substance in the popular acceptation of the word matter, and comprising not only a body of sublime dialecticks, but an artificial method of reasoning, with distinct names for the three parts of a proposition, and even for those of a regular syllogism. Here I cannot refrain from introducing a singular tradition, which prevailed, according to the well-informed author of the Dabistán, in the Panjáb and in several Persian provinces, that, “among other Indian curiosities, which Callisthenes transmitted to his uncle, was a technical system of logick, which the Bráhmens had communicated to the inquisitive Greek”, and which the Mohammedan writer supposes to have been the ground work of the famous Aristotelean method: if this be true, it is one of the most interesting facts, that I have met with in Asia; and if it be false, it is very extraordinary, that such a story should have been fabricated either by the candid Mohsani Fánì; or by the simple Pársis and Pandits, with whom he had conversed; but, not having had leasure to study the Nyáya Sástra, I can only assure you, that I have frequently seen perfect syllogisms in the philosophical writings of the Bráhmens, and have often heard them used in their verbal controversies. Whatever might have been the merit or age of Goˊtama, yet the most celebrated Indian school is that, with which I began, founded by Vyaˊsa, and supported in most respects by his pupil Jaimini, whose dissent on a few points is mentioned by his master with respectful moderation: their several systems are frequently distinguished by the names of the first and second Mímánsá, a word, which, like Nyáya, denotes the operations and conclusions of reason; but the tract of Vyaˊsa has in general the appellation of Védánta, or the scope and end of the Véda, on the texts of which, as they were understood by the philosopher, who collected thém, his doctrines are principally grounded. The fundamental tenet of the Védántí school, to which in a more modern age the incomparable Sancara was a firm and illustrious adherent, consisted, not in denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but, in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending, that it has no essence independent of mental perception, that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms, that external appearances and sensations are illusory, and would vanish into nothing, if the divine energy, which alone sustains them, were suspended but for a moment; an opinion, which Epicharmus and Plato seem to have adopted, and which has been maintained in the present century with great elegance, but with little publick applause; partly because it has been misunderstood, and partly because it has been misapplied by the false reasoning of some unpopular writers, who are said to have disbelieved in the moral attributes of God, whose omnipresence, wisdom, and goodness are the basis of the Indian philosophy: I have not sufficient evidence on the subject to profess a belief in the doctrine of the Védánta, which human reason alone could, perhaps, neither fully demonstrate, nor fully disprove; but it is manifest, that nothing can be farther removed from impiety than a system wholly built on the purest devotion; and the inexpressible difficulty, which any man, who shall make the attempt, will assuredly find in giving a satisfactory definition of material substance, must induce us to deliberate with coolness, before we censure the learned and pious restorer of the ancient Véda; though we cannot but admit, that, if the common opinions of mankind be the criterion of philosophical truth, we must adhere to the system of Goˊtama, which the Bráhmens of this province almost universally follow.

If the metaphysicks of the Védántís be wild and erroneous, the pupils of Buddha have run, it is asserted, into an errour diametrically opposite; for they are charged with denying the existence of pure spirit, and with believing nothing absolutely and really to exist but material substance; a heavy accusation which ought only to have been made on positive and incontestable proof, especially by the orthodox Bráhmens, who, as Buddha dissented from their ancestors in regard to bloody sacrifices, which the Véda certainly prescribes, may not unjustly be suspected of low and interested malignity. Though I cannot credit the charge, yet I am unable to prove it entirely false, having only read a few pages of a Saugata book, which Captain Kirkpatrick had lately the kindness to give me; but it begins, like other Hindu books, with the word Oˊm, which we know to be a symbol of the divine attributes: then follows, indeed, a mysterious hymn to the Goddess of Nature, by the name of Aˊryá, but with several other titles, which the Bráhmens themselves continually bestow on their Dévì; now the Bráhmens, who have no idea, that any such personage exists as Deˊviˋ, or the Goddess, and only mean to express allegorically the power of God, exerted in creating, preserving and renovating this universe, we cannot with justice infer, that the dissenters admit no deity but visible nature: the Pandit, who now attends me, and who told Mr. Wilkins, that the Saugatas were atheists, would not have attempted to resist the decisive evidence of the contrary, which appears in the very instrument, on which he was consulted, if his understanding had not been blinded by the intolerant zeal of a mercenary priesthood. A literal version of the book just mentioned (if any studious man had learning and industry equal to the task) would be an inestimable treasure to the compiler of such a history as that of the laborious Brucker; but let us proceed to the morals and jurisprudence of the Asiaticks, on which I could expatiate, if the occasion admitted a full discussion of the subject; with correctness and confidence.

III. That both ethicks and abstract law might be reduced to the method of science, cannot surely be doubted; but, although such a method would be of infinite use in a system of universal, or even of national, jurisprudence, yet the principles of morality are so few, so luminous, and so ready to present themselves on every occasion, that the practical utility of a scientifical arrangement, in a treatise on ethicks, may very justly be questioned. The moralists of the east have in general chosen to deliver their precepts in short sententious maxims, to illustrate them by sprightly comparisons, or to inculcate them in the very ancient form of agreeable apologues: there are, indeed, both in Arabick and Persian, philosophical tracts on ethicks written with sound ratiocination and elegant perspicuity: but in every part of this eastern world, from Pekin to Damascus, the popular teachers of moral wisdom have immemorially been poets, and there would be no end of enumerating their works, which are still extant in the five principal languages of Asia. Our divine religion, the truth of which (if any history be true) is abundantly proved by historical evidence, has no need of such aids, as many are willing to give it, by asserting, that the wisest men of this world were ignorant of the two great maxims, that we must act in respect of others, as we should wish them to act in respect of ourselves, and that, instead of returning evil for evil, we should confer benefits even on those who injure us; but the first rule is implied in a speech of Lysias, and expressed in distinct phrases by Thales and Pittacus; and I have even seen it word for word in the original of Confucius, which I carefully compared with the Latin translation. It has been usual with zealous men, to ridicule and abuse all those, who dare on this point to quote the Chinese philosopher; but, instead of supporting their cause, they would shake it, if it could be shaken, by their uncandid asperity; for they ought to remember, that one great end of revelation, as it is most expressly declared, was not to instruct the wise and few, but the many and unenlightened. If the conversion, therefore, of the Pandits and Maulavis in this country shall ever be attempted by protestant missionaries, they must beware of asserting, while they teach the gospel of truth, what those Pandits and Maulavis would know to be false: the former would cite the beautiful Aˊryá couplet, which was written at least three centuries before our era, and which pronounces the duty of a good man, even in the moment of his destruction, to consist not only in forgiving, but even in a desire of benefiting, his destroyer, as the Sandal-tree; in the instant of its overthrow, sheds perfume on the ax, which fells it; and the latter would triumph in repeating the verse of Sadiˋ, who represents a return of good for good as a slight reciprocity, but says to the virtuous man, “Confer benefits on him, who has injured thee,” using an Arabick sentence, and a maxim apparently of the ancient Arabs. Nor would the Muselmans fail to recite four distichs of Haˊfiz, who has illustrated that maxim with fanciful but elegant allusions:

Now there is not a shadow of reason for believing, that the poet of Shiraz had borrowed this doctrine from the Christians; but, as the cause of Christianity could never be promoted by falsehood or errour, so it will never be obstructed by candour and veracity; for the lessons of Confucius and Chanacya, of Sadiˋ and Haˊfiz, are unknown even at this day to millions of Chinese and Hindus, Persians and other Mahommedans, who toil for their daily support; nor, were they known ever so perfectly, would they have a divine sanction with the multitude; so that, in order to enlighten the minds of the ignorant, and to enforce the obedience of the perverse, it is evident a priori, that a revealed religion was necessary in the great system of providence: but my principal motive for introducing this topick, was to give you a specimen of that antient oriental morality, which is comprised in an infinite number of Persian, Arabick, and Sanscrit compositions.

Nearly one half of jurisprudence is closely connected with ethicks; but, since the learned of Asia consider most of their laws as positive and divine institutions, and not as the mere conclusions of human reason, and since I have prepared a mass of extremely curious materials, which I reserve for an introduction to the digest of Indian laws, I proceed to the fourth division, which consists principally of science transcendently so named, or the knowledge of abstract quantities, of their limits, properties, and relations, impressed on the understanding with the force of irresistible demonstration, which, as all other knowledge depends at best on our fallible senses, and in great measure on still more fallible testimony, can only be found, in pure mental abstractions; though for all the purposes of life, our own senses, and even the credible testimony of others, give us in most cases the highest degree of certainty, physical and moral.

IV. I have already had occasion to touch on the Indian metaphysicks of natural bodies according to the most celebrated of the Asiatick schools, from which the Pythagoreans are supposed to have borrowed many of their opinions; and, as we learn from Cicero, that the old sages of Europe had an idea of centripetal force and a principle of universal gravitation, (which they never indeed attempted to demonstrate) so I can venture to affirm, without meaning to pluck a leaf from the neverfading laurels of our immortal Newton, that the whole of his theology and part of his philosophy may be found in the Védas and even in the works of the Súfis: that most subtil spirit, which he suspected to pervade natural bodies, and, lying concealed in them, to cause attraction and repulsion, the emission, reflection, and refraction of light, electricity, calefaction, sensation, and muscular motion, is described by the Hindus as a fifth element endued with those very powers; and the Védas abound with allusions to a force universally attractive, which they chiefly ascribe to the Sun, thence called Aditya, or the Attractor; a name designed by the Mythologists to mean the child of the Goddess Aditi; but the most wonderful passage on the theory of attraction occurs in the charming allegorical poem of Shiˊriˊn and Ferhaˊd, or the Divine Spirit and a human Soul disinterestedly pious; a work which from the first verse to the last, is a blaze of religious and poetical fire. The whole passage appears to me so curious, that I make no apology for giving you a faithful translation of it: “There is a strong propensity, which dances through every atom, and attracts the minutest particle to some peculiar object; search this universe from its base to its summit, from fire to air, from water to earth, from all below the Moon to all above the celestial spheres, and thou wilt not find a corpuscle destitute of that natural attractibility; the very point of the first thread, in this apparently tangled skein, is no other than such a principle of attraction, and all principles beside are void of a real basis; from such a propensity arises every motion perceived in heavenly or in terrestrial bodies; it is a disposition to be attracted, which taught hard steel to rush from its place and rivet itself on the magnet; it is the same disposition, which impels the light straw to attach itself firmly on amber; it is this quality, which gives every substance in nature a tendency toward another, and an inclination forcibly directed to a determinate point.” These notions are vague, indeed, and unsatisfactory; but permit me to ask, whether the last paragraph of Newton's incomparable work goes much farther, and whether any subsequent experiments have thrown light on a subject so abstruse and obscure: that the sublime astronomy and exquisitely beautiful geometry, with which that work is illumined, should in any degree be approached by the Mathematicians of Asia, while of all Europeans, who ever lived, Archimedes alone was capable of emulating them, would be a vain expectation; but we must suspend our opinion of Indian astronomical knowledge, till the Súrya siddhánta shall appear in our own language, and even then (to adopt a phrase of Cicero) our greedy and capacious ears will by no means be satisfied; for in order to complete an historical account of genuine Hindu astronomy, we require verbal translations of at least three other Sanscrit books; of the treatise by Parasara, for the first age of Indian science, of that by Varaˊha, with the copious comment of his very learned son, for the middle age, and of those written, by Bhascara for times comparatively modern. The valuable and now accessible works of the last mentioned philosopher, contain also an universal, or specious, arithmetick, with one chapter at least on geometry; nor would it, surely, be difficult to procure, through our several residents with the Pishwá and with Scindhya, the older books on algebra, which Bhascara mentions, and on which Mr. Davis would justly set a very high value; but the Sanscrit work, from which we might expect the most ample and important information, is entitled Cshétrádersa, or a View of Geometrical Knowledge, and was compiled in a very large volume by order of the illustrious Jayasinha, comprising all that remains on that science in the sacred language of India: it was inspected in the west by a Pandit now in the service of Lieutenant Wilford, and might, I am persuaded, be purchased at Jayanagar, where Colonel Polier had permission from the Rájá to buy the four Védas themselves. Thus have I answered, to the best of my power, the three first questions obligingly transmitted to us by professor Playfair; whether the Hindus have books in Sanscrit expressly on geometry, whether they have any such on arithmetick, and whether a translation of the Súrya siddhánta be not the great desideratum on the subject of Indian astronomy: to his three last questions, whether an accurate summary account of all the Sanscrit works on that subject, a delineation of the Indian celestial sphere, with correct remarks on it, and a description of the astronomical instruments used by the ancient Hindus, would not severally be of great utility, we cannot but answer in the affirmative, provided that the utmost critical sagacity were applied in distinguishing such works, constellations, and instruments, as are clearly of Indian origin, from such as were introduced into this country by Muselman astronomers from Tartary and Persia, or in later days by Mathematicians from Europe.

V. From all the properties of man and of nature, from all the various branches of science, from all the deductions of human reason, the general corollary, admitted by Hindus, Arabs, and Tartars, by Persians, and by Chinese, is the supremacy of an all-creating and all-preserving spirit, infinitely wise, good, and powerful, but infinitely removed from the comprehension of his most exalted creatures; nor are there in any language (the ancient Hebrew always excepted) more pious and sublime addresses to the being of beings, more splendid enumerations of his attributes, or more beautiful descriptions of his visible works, than in Arabick, Persian and Sanscrit, especially in the Koran, the introductions to the poems of Sadiˊ, Nizaˊmiˋ, and Firdausˋi, the four Védas and many parts of the numerous Puránas: but supplication and praise would not satisfy the boundless imagination of the Vedántì and Sùfì theologists, who blending uncertain metaphysicks with undoubted principles of religion, have presumed to reason confidently on the very nature and essence of the divine spirit, and asserted in a very remote age, what multitudes of Hindus and Muselmans assert at this hour, that all spirit is homogeneous, that the spirit of God is in kind the same with that of man, though differing from it infinitely in degree, and that, as material substance is mere illusion, there exists in this universe only one generick spiritual substance, the sole primary cause, efficient, substantial and formal of all secondary causes and of all appearances whatever, but endued in its highest degree, with a sublime providential wisdom and proceeding by ways incomprehensible to the spirits which emane from it; an opinion, which Goˊtama never taught, and which we have no authority to believe, but which, as it is grounded on the doctrine of an immaterial creator supremely wise, and a constant preserver supremely benevolent, differs as widely from the pantheism of Spinoza and Toland, as the affirmation of a proposition differs from the negation of it; though the lastnamed professor of that insane philosophy had the baseness to conceal his meaning under the very words of Saint Paul, which are cited by Newton for a purpose totally different, and has even used a phrase, which occurs, indeed, in the Véda, but in a sense diametrically opposite to that, which he would have given it. The passage, to which I allude is in a speech of Varuna to his son, where he says: “That spirit, from which these created beings proceed; through which, having proceeded from it, they live; toward which they tend and in which they are ultimately absorbed, that spirit study to know; that spirit is the Great One.”

The subject of this discourse, Gentlemen, is inexhaustible: it has been my endeavour to say as much on it as possible in the fewest words; and, at the beginning of next year, I hope to close these general disquisitions with topicks measureless in extent, but less abstruse than that, which has this day been discussed, and better adapted to the gayety, which seems to have prevailed in the learned banquets of the Greeks, and which ought, surely, to prevail in every symposiack assembly.