| There is a question much debated in European | | | | inherited from a previous birth is a store of rewards |
| philosophy but little argued in India, namely the | | | | and punishments which must be enjoyed or endured, |
| freedom of the will. The active European feeling the | | | | but it differs from Fate because we are all the time |
| obligation and the difficulties of morality is perplexed | | | | making our own karma and determining the character |
| by the doubt whether he really has the power to act | | | | of our next birth. |
| as he wishes. This problem has not much troubled | | | | The older Upanishads hint at a doctrine analogous to |
| the Hindus and rightly, as I think. For if the human will | | | | that of Kant, namely that man is bound and |
| is not free, what does freedom mean? What | | | | conditioned in so far as he is a part of the world of |
| example of freedom can be quoted with which to | | | | phenomena but free in so far as the self within him is |
| contrast the supposed non-freedom of the will? If in | | | | identical with the divine self which is the creator of all |
| fact it is from the will that our notion of freedom is | | | | bonds and conditions. Thus the Kaushîtaki |
| derived, is it not unreasonable to say that the will is | | | | Upanishad says, "He it is who causes the man whom |
| not free? Absolute freedom in the sense of | | | | he will lead upwards from these worlds to do good |
| something regulated by no laws is unthinkable. | | | | works and He it is who causes the man whom he will |
| When a thing is conditioned by external causes it is | | | | lead downwards to do evil works. He is the guardian |
| dependent. When it is conditioned by internal causes | | | | of the world, He is the ruler of the world, He is the |
| which are part of its own nature, it is free. No other | | | | Lord of the world and He is myself." Here the last |
| freedom is known. An Indian would say that a man's | | | | words destroy the apparent determinism of the first |
| nature is limited by Karma. Some minds are incapable | | | | part of the sentence. And similarly the |
| of the higher forms of virtue and wisdom, just as | | | | Chândogya Upanishad says, "They who depart |
| some bodies are incapable of athletic feats. But within | | | | hence without having known the Self and those true |
| the limits of his own nature a human being is free. | | | | desires, for them there is no freedom in all worlds. |
| Indian theology is not much hampered by the mad | | | | But they who depart hence after knowing the Self |
| doctrine that God has predestined some souls to | | | | and those true desires, for them there is freedom in |
| damnation, nor by the idea of Fate, except in so far | | | | all worlds. |
| as Karma is Fate. It is Fate in the sense that Karma | | | | |