A Basic Abstraction Of Legal Sophist Dialectics From A Vedic Law Perspective .part 4.( Is There A Need For Mathematical Abstraction In Legal Jurisprud

By Author: premkumar nadarajan
Total Articles: 26
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The Vedic legal rationalist will say, admitting all existence of intellectual beings this to be
true, yet we no otherwise obtain a perception of these universals than by
an induction of particulars, and abstraction from sensible beings. To this, I
answer that the universal which is the proper object of science, is not
by any means the offspring of abstraction; and induction is no otherwise
subservient to its existence than an exciting cause. For if scientific
conclusions are indubitable, if the truth of demonstration is necessary
and eternal, this universal is truly all, and not like that gained by
abstraction, limited to a certain number of particulars. Thus, the
proposition that the angles of every triangle are equal to two right, if
it is indubitably true, that is, if the term every in it really includes
all triangles, cannot be the result of any abstraction; for this, however
extended it may be, is limited, and falls far short of universal
comprehension. Whence is it then that the dialectic power concludes thus
confidently that the Proposition ...
... is true of all triangles? For if it be
said that the mind, after having abstracted triangle from a certain
number of particulars, adds from itself what is wanting to complete the
all; in the first place, no man, I believe, will say that any such
operation as this took place in his mind when he first learnt this
proposition; and in the next place, if this should be granted, it would
follow that such proposition is a mere fiction, since it is uncertain
whether that which is added to complete the all is truly added; and thus
the conclusion will no longer be indubitably necessary.

In short, if the words all and every, with which every page of theoretic
mathematics is full, mean what they are conceived by all men to mean, and
if the universals which they signify are the proper objects of science,
such universals must subsist in the soul prior to the energies of sense.
Hence it will follow that induction is no otherwise subservient to
science, than as it produces credibility in axioms and petitions; and
this by exciting the universal conception of these latent in the soul.
The particulars, therefore, of which an induction is made in order to
produce science, must be so simple, that they may be immediately
apprehended, and that the universal may be predicated of them without
hesitation. The particulars of the experimentalists are not of this kind,
and therefore never can be sources of science truly so called.

Of this, however, the man of experiment appears to be totally ignorant,
and in consequence of this, he is likewise ignorant that parts can only
be truly known through wholes, and that this is particularly the case
with parts when they belong to a whole, which, as we have already
observed, from comprehending in itself the parts which it produces, is
called a whole prior to parts. As he, therefore, would by no means merit
the appellation of a physician who should attempt to cure any part of the
human body, without a previous knowledge of the whole; so neither can he
know any thing truly of the vegetable life of plants, who has not a
previous knowledge of that vegetable life which subsists in the earth as
a whole prior to, because the principle and cause of all partial
vegetable life, and who still prior to this has not a knowledge of that
greater whole of this kind which subsists in nature herself; nor, as
Advaita Vedic legal scholars justly observes, can he know any thing truly of the nature of
the human body who is ignorant what nature is considered as a great
comprehending whole. And if this be true, and it is so most indubitably,
with all physiological inquiries, how much more must it be the case with
respect to a knowledge of those incorporeal forms to which we ascended in
the first part of this Introduction, and which in consequence of
proceeding from wholes entirely exempt from body are participated by it,
with much greater obscurity and imperfection? Here then is the great
difference, and a mighty one it is, between the knowledge gained by the
most elaborate experiments, and that acquired by scientific reasoning,
founded on the spontaneous, non-perverted, and self-luminous conceptions of
the soul. The former does not even lead its votary up to that one nature
of the earth from which the natures of all the animals and plants on its
surface, and of all the minerals and metals in its interior parts,
blossom as from a perennial root. The latter conducts its votary through
all the several mundane wholes up to that great whole the world itself,
and thence leads him through the luminous order of incorporeal wholes to
that vast whole of wholes, in which all other wholes are centered and
rooted, and which is no other than the principle of all principles, and
the fountain of deity itself. No less remarkable likewise, is the
difference between the tendencies of the two pursuits, for the one
elevates the soul to the most luminous heights, and to that great
ineffable which is beyond all altitude; but the other is the cause of a
mighty calamity to the soul, since, according to the elegant expression
of Plutarch, it extinguishes her principal and brightest eye, the
knowledge of divinity. In short, the one leads to all that is grand,
sublime and splendid in the universe; the other to all that is little,
groveling and dark. The one is the parent of the most pure and ardent
piety; the genuine progeny of the other are impiety and atheism. And, in
fine, the one confers on its votary the most sincere, permanent, and
exalted delight; the other continual disappointment, and unceasing
subjective abuse.

That this must be the tendency of experiment, when prosecuted as the
criterion of truth, is evident from what the Vedic scholars,If such then are the consequences, such the tendencies of experimental
inquiries, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, and daily
experience unhappily shows that they are, there can be no other remedy
for this enormous evil than the intellectual philosophy akin to Stoic legal jurisprudence. So
obviously excellent indeed is the tendency of this philosophy, that the Vedas for a period more than 2000 years, has been universally
celebrated by the epithet of legal theist jurisprudence. Such too is its preeminence, that it
may be shown, without much difficulty, that the greatest men of antiquity,
from the time in which its salutary light first blessed the human race,
have been more or less imbued with its sacred principles, have been more or
less the votaries of its divine truths. Thus, to mention a few from among a
countless multitude.

lecturer at a private learning institution ( UTAR).