the use of the Benares College, by Dr.
Ballantyne.]

It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were both atheists, and that
Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism is an indefinite
term, and may mean very different things. In one sense every Indian
philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the gods of
the populace could not claim the attributes that belong to a Supreme
Being. But all the important philosophical systems of the Brahmans
admit, in some form or other, the existence of an Absolute and Supreme
Being, the source of all that exists, or seems to exist. Kapila, when
accused of atheism, is not accused of denying the existence of an
Absolute Being. He is accused of denying the existence of I_s_vara,
which in general means the Lord, but which in the passage where it
occurs, refers to the I_s_vara of the Yogins, or mystic philosophers.
They maintained that in an ecstatic state man possesses the power of
seeing God face to face, and they wished to have this ecstatic
intuition included under the head of sensuous perceptions. To this
Kapila demurred. You have not proved the existence of your Lord, he
says, and therefore I see no reason why I should alter my definition
of sensuous perception in order to accommodate your ecstatic visions.
The commentator narrates that this strong language was used by Kapila
in order to silence the wild talk of the Mystics, and that, though he
taunted his adversaries with having failed to prove the existence of
their Lord, he himself did not deny the existence of a Supreme Being.
Kapila, however, went further. He endeavoured to show that all the
attributes which the Mystics ascribed to their Lord are inappropriate.
He used arguments very similar to those which have lately been used
with such ability by a distinguished Bampton Lecturer. The supreme
lord of the Mystics, Kapila argued, is either absolute and
unconditioned (mukta), or he is bound and conditioned (baddha). If he
is absolute and unconditioned, he cannot enter into the condition of a
Creator; he would have no desires which could instigate him to create.
If, on the contrary, he is represented as active, and entering on the
work of creation, he would no longer be the absolute and unchangeable
Being which we are asked to believe in. Kapila, like the preacher of
our own days, was accused of paving the road to atheism, but his
philosophy was nevertheless admitted as orthodox, because, in addition
to sensuous