________________
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ISVARA.
29
internal as well as external. Beginning with our own bodies and going up to Isvara, every object of our perception is thus made up of this consciousness plus a something else, which is beyond and distinct from it and the unavoidable mixture of both these is what we see everywhere and think of as reality. Indeed it is, and ever will be, all the reality that is possible for the human mind to know. Therefore to say that I svara is unreal, because He is anthropomorphic, is sheer nonsense. It sounds very much like the squabble on idealism and realism in occidental philosophy, which has for its foundation the mere play on the word real. The idea of Isvara covers all the ground ever denoted and connoted by the word real. Isvara is as much real as anything else in the universe ; and the word real means nothing more to us than what has now been pointed out. Such is the conception of Isvara, in Hindu philosophy.
