eld that it was
infinitely small. But in the existing text-books it is described as
infinitely large. It is immaterial and without beginning, end, parts,
dimensions, or qualities, incapable of change, motion, or action.
These definitions may be partly due to the influence of the Vedanta
and, though we know little about the historical development of the
Sankhya, there are traces of a compromise between the old teaching of
a soul held in bondage and struggling for release and later
conceptions of a soul which, being infinite and passionless, hardly
seems capable of submitting to bondage. Though the soul cannot be said
to transmigrate, to act, or to suffer, still through consciousness it
makes the suffering of the world felt and though in its essence it
remains eternally unchanged and unaffected, yet it experiences the
reflection of the suffering which goes on. Just as a crystal (to use
the Indian simile) allows a red flower to be seen through it and
remains unchanged, although it seems to become red, so does the soul
remain unchanged by sorrow or joy, although the illusion that it
suffers or rejoices may be present in the consciousness.

The task of the soul is to free itself from illusion, and thus from
bondage. For strictly speaking the bondage does not exist: it is
caused by want of discrimination. Like the Vedanta, the Sankhya
regards all this troubled life as being, so far as the soul is
concerned, mere illusion. But while the Vedanta bids the soul know its
identity with Brahman, the Sankhya bids it isolate itself and know
that the acts and feelings which seem to be its own have really
nothing to do with it. They are for the soul nothing but a spectacle
or play originating in its connection with Prakriti, and it is
actually said,[750] "Wherefore no soul is bound, or is liberated or
transmigrates. It is Prakriti, which has many bodily forms, which is
bound, liberated and transmigrates." It is in Buddhi or intellect,
which is a manifestation of Prakriti, that the knowledge of the
difference between the soul and Prakriti must arise. Thus though the
Sankhya reposes on a fundamental dualism, it is not the dualism of
good and evil. Soul and matter differ not because the first is good
and the second bad, but because the first is unchangeable and the
second constantly changing. Matter is often personified as a woman.
Her motives are unselfish and she works for the liberation of the
soul. "As a dancer after showing herself o