this great work. In his annotation to Schwegler he says with regard to Fichte: "What is said about the universal Ego . . . is not satisfactory. Let us generalise as much as we please, we still know no Ego but the empirical Ego and can refer to none other." Now, with the respect one has for Stirling's metaphysical acumen, one can only say that this statement of his is very difficult to understand. For it is exactly equivalent to the entire denial of the possibility of an 'abstract,' simply because we can never definitely cognise anything but a concrete with our physical senses. As said before, in dealing with the process by which the nature of the universal Self is established, the mere fact of a diversity, of the many, of concretes and particulars, necessarily requires for its existence, for its being brought into relief, the support and background of a continuity, a unity, an abstract and universal. The two, abstract and concrete, universal and particular, are just as inseparable as back and front. But looking for a highest universal and a lowest particular we find that the extremes meet. The highest universal, pure Being,, sattâ-sâmânya, is also the most irreducible point. The universal Ego is also the individual ego (the so-called empirical ego); the

1 Stirling's Schwegler. P. 428.

universal Being and the anû, atom, of the Vaisheshika system of philosophy, correspond to the Pratyag-âtmâ and the atom which, enshrining a self, is the Jîv-âtmâ. Between these two limits, which are not two but one, the allcomprehending substratum of all `the worldprocess, there fall and flow all other pseudouniversals and pseudo-particulars; pseudo, because each falls as a particular under a higher universal (or general) and at the same time covers some lower particulars (specials). The universal Ego is thus the only true, absolutely certain and final universal. "Hegel, in opposition to Fichte, . . . held that it is.. not the Ego that is the prius of all reality, but, on the contrary, something universal, a universal which comprehends within it every individual.”1 This is where the deviation from the straight path began. It began with Hegel. And the results were: (1) that dissatisfaction with Hegel which Stirling confesses to again and again; and (2) a tacit reversion, by Stirling himself, to that impregnable position of Fichte (as shown throughout Stirling's last work, What is Thought? in which he endeavours to make out that the double subject-object, 'I-me,' is the true Absolute). For if "we know no ego

1 Ibid. P. 315.

but the empirical ego," how much more do we know no being but empirical and particular beings, no nothing but empirical and particular non-commencements or destructions. Ego and Non-Ego we understand; they are directly and primarily in our constitution; nay, they are the whole of our constitution, essence and accidence, core and crust, inside and outside, the very whole of it. But Being and Nothing we understand only through Ego and Non-Ego; otherwise they are entirely strange and unfamiliar. Being is nothing else than position, positing, affirmation by consciousness, by the 'I'; Non-Being is nothing else than opposition, contra-position, denial by that same '.' Stirling practically admits as much in What is Thought? Fichte's approach, then, is the closer and not Hegel's, and Stirling's opinion that "the historical value of the method of Fichte will shrink, in the end, to its influence on Hegel" is annulled by his own latest research and finding. The probability indeed, on the contrary, is that Hegel's work will come to take its proper place in the appreciation of true students as only an attempt at a filling and completion of the outlines traced out by the earnest,

1 Ibid. P. 427.

intense, noble and therefore truth-seeing spirit of Fichte.1

By sheer force of intense gaze after the truth Fichte has reached, even amidst the storm and stress of a life cast in times when empires were rising and falling around him, conclusions which were generally reached in India only with the help of a yoga-vision developed by long practice amidst the contemplative calm of forest-solitudes and mountain-heights.2 Page

1 Dr. J. H. Stirling, in a very kind letter, writes as below, on this point: "Dr. Hutchinson Stirling would beg to remark only that he is not sure that Mr. Bhagavân Dâs has quite correctly followed the distinction between Fichte's and Hegel's use of the Ego in deduction of the categories-the distinction at least that is proper to Stirling's interpretation of both Stirling holding, namely, that Fichte, while without provision for an external world as an external world, has only an external motive or movement in his Dialectic, and is withal in his deduction itself incomplete; whereas Hegel, with provision for externality, is inside of his principle, and in his deduction infinitely deeper, fuller, and at least completer." I give this extract from Dr. Stirling's letter with the view that it may help readers to check and correct any errors made in this chapter, in the comparative appreciation of Hegel and Fichte.

Professor J. E. McTaggart, of Trinity College, Cambridge, also writes: ". I still maintain that Hegel has got

nearer the truth than Fichte."

2 Fichte's lecture on The Dignity of Man (pp. 331-336 of the Science of Knowledge, translated by A. Kroeger) is full of statements, which might be read as meaning, on Fichte's part, a belief in the evolution of the Jîv-âtmâ of the kind described in vedântic and theosophical literature, in direct contrast to Hegel's statements.

after page of his work reads like translations from Vedanta works. Schwegler, apparently unmindful of their value and even disagreeing with them, sums up the conclusions of Fichte in words which simply reproduce the conclusions of the Advaita-Vedânta as now current in India. Fichte's statement, quoted above, as to the transference of their characteristics to each other by the Ego and the Non-Ego, is the language of Shankara at the very commencement of his commentary, the Shariraka-Bhashya, on the Brahma-Sûtra. His distinction between the absolute Ego and the individual or empirical ego is the distinction between the higher Âtmâ and the Jîva. The words 'higher Âtmâ' are used here because one of the last defects and difficulties of the current Advaita-Vedânta turns exactly, as it does in Fichte, on the confusion between Pratyag-âtmâ and Param-âtmâ, the universal Ego and the true Absolute. Again, Fichte's view is thus stated by Schwegler: "The business of the theoretical part was to conciliate Ego and Non-Ego. To this end middle term after middle term was intercalated without success. Then came reason with the absolute decision: 'Inasmuch as the Non-Ego is incapable of union with the Ego, Non-Ego there shall be none.' This is to all appearance exactly the Vedanta method, whereby predicate after pre