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The Terminology of the Vedas and European Scholars 29
which we are on all sides surrounded. Are we not struck with
variety and diversity in every direction? Is not differentiation the
universal formula? Whence have these manifold and different objects
of the universe proceeded? How is it that the same Universal-Father-
Spirit permeating in all and acting on all, produced these
heterogeneous items of the universe? Where lies the cause of
difference? A difference so striking and at once so beautiful! How
can the same God acting upon the universe produce an earth here
and a sun there, a planet here and a satellite there, an ocean here and
a dry land there, nay a Swami here and an idiot there? The answer
to this question is impressed in the very solar constitution. Scientific
philosophers assure us that colour is not an intrinsic property of
matter, as popular belief would have it. But it is an accident of matter.
A red object appears red, not because it is essentially so, but because
of an extraneous cause. Red and violet would appear equally black
when placed in the dark. It is the magic of sunbeams which imparts
to them this special influence, this chromatic beauty, this congenial
coloration. In a lonely forest mid gloom and wilderness, a weary
traveller who had betaken himself to the alluring shadow of a
pompous tree, lay down to rest and there sank in deep slumber. He
awoke and found himself enveloped in gloom and dismal darkness
on all sides. No earthly object was
visible
on either side. A thick black
firmament on high, so beclouded as to inspire with the conviction that
the sun had never shone there, a heavy gloom on the right, a gloom
on the left, a gloom before and a gloom behind. Thus laboured the
traveller under the ghastly, frightful windspell of frozen darkness.
Immediately, the heat- carrying rays of the sun struck upon the
massive cloud, and as if by a magic touch, the frozen gloom began to
melt, a heavy shower of rain fell down. It cleared the atmosphere of
suspended dust particles; and in a twinkling of the eye, fled the
moisture-laden sheet of darkness resigning its realm to awakened
vision entire. The traveller turned his eyes in ecstatic wonder from
one direction to the other, and beheld a
dirty gutter
flowing there, a
crystalline pond reposing here, a green grass meadow more beautiful