Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/133

V E C V E D 117 literature. He published in 1746 an Introduction a la Connaissance de V Esprit Ilumain, with certain Reflexions and Maximes appended. He died of lung disease at Paris on 28th May 1747. The bulk of Yauvenargues s work is very small, but its interest is very considerable. In the Introduction, in the Reflexions, and in the minor fragments it consists, in fact, of detached and some what desultory thoughts, in the style wherein the 18th century so much delighted, on questions of moral philosophy and of literary criticism. Sainte-Beuve has mildly said that as a literary critic Vauvenargues " shows inexperience. " It would be truer to say that this part of his work has no value or interest beyond that of curiosity. He had no knowledge of any language but his own, and his literary criticism is limited to a repetition in crude form of the stock ideas of his time. Thus he exaggerates immensely the value of Racine and Boileau, but depreciates Corneille and even Moliere. It is almost sufficient to say that he blames Moliere for choosing " des sujets si bas," and shows an entire ignorance of all French litera ture before the 17th century, and of all other literature whatsoever, except a certain second-hand acquaintance with the classics. As a writer he stands far higher. His style is indeed, according to strict Academic judgment, somewhat incorrect, and when he attempts rhetorical nourishes (which is not often) they have usually the artificial and affected character stilted or namby-pamby which mars so much 18th-century work. His strength, however, is not really in any way that of a man of letters, but that of a moralist. Even here he is not superior to the weaknesses of his time. In his day the anti-religious or anti-Christian movement of thought was not fully declared, and he did not adopt the complete pliilosoplie attitude ; in his letters, at any rate, he poses somewhat ostentatiously as "neutral" between the religious and the anti- religious school. In some of his maxims about politics there is also traceable the hollow and confused jargon about tyrants and liberty which did so much to bring about, and to embitter when brought about, the struggles of the Revolution. It is in morals proper, in the discussion and application of general principles of conduct, that Yauvenargues shines. No century has ever excelled the 18th in moral theory, whatever may have been its deserts in respect of moral practice, and no 18th-century moralist has excelled Yauven argues. He is not an exact psychologist, much less a rigorous metaphysician. He has no worked-out or workable theory of moral obligation or of the moral sense. His terminology is merely popular arid loose, and he hardly attempts the co-ordination of his ideas into any system. His real strength is in a department which the French have always cultivated with greater success than any other modern people, the expression in more or less epigrammatic language of the results of acute observation of human conduct and motives. The chief distinction between Vauvenargues and his great predecessor La Rochefoucauld is that Vauvenargues, unlike La Rochefoucauld, thinks nobly of man, and is altogether inclined rather to the Stoic than to the Epicurean theory. He has indeed been called a modern Stoic, and, allowing for the vagueness of all such phrases, there is much to be said for the description. An edition of the Works of Vauvenargues, slightly enlarged, appeared in the year of his death, and in part or in whole has been frequently reprinted, all editions, however, being superseded by that of M. Gilbert (2 vols., Paris, 1857), which contains the previ ously unpublished correspondences above referred to and all other attainable matter, including some Dialogues of the Dead, some "characters" in imitation of Theophrastus and La Bruyere, and numerous short pieces of criticism and moralizing. Vauvenargues has been frequently written about, the comments best worth read ing, besides those contained in Gilbert s edition, being four essays by Sainte-Beuve in Causcries du Lundi, vols. iii. and xiv. VECELLIO. See TITIAN. VEDANTA. The Vedanta is the first and most impress ive structure of Indian philosophy, the creed of intellectual Hindus, and the basis of the popular Hindu religions. Its earliest germs lie in the Mantra portion of the Veda. The Nasadiyasukta (Rigveda, x. 129) propounds the genesis of the world from an inscrutable principle, darkness, neither existent nor non-existent, and from "one that breathed without afflation, other than which there was nothing, beyond it nothing." The genesis of things from a universal soul is taught in the Purushasukta (Rigveda, x. 90). The unreality of the internal and external orders of things, and the sole reality of a supreme spirit, or impersonal self, are set forth in the Upanishads or later portions of the Veda. The teaching of these Upanishads explicated and system atized, with little or no addition, constitutes the Vedanta. It has innumerable expositors among the Indian school men, of whom the most illustrious is Sankaracharya (see SANSKRIT LITERATURE, vol. xxi. p. 290), a philosopher of Kerala or Malabar, who lived, it is supposed, between 650 and 740. The term "vedanta," end of the Veda, u a synonym of "upanishad." Upanishad is said by the Indian scholiasts to denote, in the first place, the knowledge of the imper sonal self, the science of absolute being, paramdtmajhdna, brahmavidyd, in the second place, any treatise imparting that knowledge. The doctrines of the Upanishads con stitute the jndnakdnda, or gnostic portion of the Veda, as distinguished from the karmakancla, or ritual portion, comprised in the Samhitas and Brahmanas. They consti tute also the pardvidyd, or superior science, dealing with cessation from volition and action, and leading to extrica tion from metempsychosis, as distinguished from the apardvidyd, or inferior science, of the Samhitas, Brah manas, and Vedangas, which deals with action, and pro longs metempsychosis, leading only to higher embodiments in this world or in the paradises of the deities. The Vedanta philosophy is also called Aupanishadi Mimansa, Brahmi Mimansa, Sarlrakl Mimansa. The Sutras or mnemonic formulas in which the system is developed are the Vedantasutra, Brahmasutra, and Sarirakasutra. They are ascribed to Vyasa or Badarayana. The system is further styled the Uttaramimansa, as an investigation of the later portion of the Veda, as distinguished from the Piirvami- mansa of Jaimini, which is an investigation of the earlier portion of the Veda. The purport of the Purvamlmansa is dharmajijndsd, inquiry into sacred prescription ; the pur port of the Uttaramimansa, or Vedanta, is brakmajijndsd, inquiry into the real nature of the soul. There is, according to the Vedanta, but one substance or reality, ingenerable, immutable, incorruptible, eternal, and this is the supreme spirit, the impersonal self, the spiritual absolute, dtman, imramatman, brahman. The series of bodies and of environments through which the soul appears to pass in its /aeTeycroj/xdrwcrts are illusive, unreal, the figments of a fictitious illusion, mdyd, prakriti, avyaMa, avydkrita. The individual soul, jlvatman, vijiidndtman, is personal only in fictitious semblance, only so long as it is impli cated in the series of transmigratory states, and is in truth impersonal, one with the undifferenced self or Brahman. Its apparent and fictitious individuality, and its apparent action and suffering, are the individuality, the action, and the suffering of its illusory ad juncts, the organism and the faculties. The unity of all souls in the one soul is the highest truth, or, properly speaking, the only truth. On reaching and realizing this truth the individual soul returns to its isolation or state of pure indetermination. The duality of experience is fictitious and is surmounted by the true intuition, samyagjiidna. On the side of this intuition there abides only " the existent, the intelligence, the beatitude." Indian philosophy, and in particular its earliest form, the philo sophy of the Upanishads, or Vedanta, is governed throughout by two needs. First, there is the need to give consistency and coher ence to existing imagery, physical and hyperphysical, to work out a conception of the totality of things. Secondly, there is the need to put a stop to the miseries of metempsychosis. The idea of transmigration, foreign to the hide-Aryans of the Yedic hymns, appears to have been taken up by their successors from the lower races with which they intermingled, while retaining their supremacy among them. The Indo- Aryans of the Vedic hymns found life pleasurable and exciting. They prayed to the gods for their hundred years of it, and for an after-life with the whole body. This view of life was replaced by one of horror and aversion, pervading everything Indian with its gloom, the expectation of care, bereavement, sickness, pain, and death, in body after body, and through seon after a>on. The effort to work out a coherent and complete idea by means of some principle of unity appears in ,the following passages. In the Mundaka Upanishad : "Saunaka, the householder, ap proached Angiras and said, Holy sir, by knowing what may all this universe be known ? Angiras replied, Two sciences are to be known which they that transmit the Veda propound, a superior and an inferior science. Of these the inferior is the Rlyvcda, &e. The superior is that by which that undecaying being is attained. That which none can see, none can handle, which is without kindred, without colour, which has neither eyes nor ears, neither hands nor feet, which is imperishable, infinitely diversified, everywhere pre

sent, wholly imperceptible, that is the immutable, that it is that