80 SOCIAL SCIENTIST s otherwise inevitable onslaught of the ever-menacing law-givers. It is a concept which is totally inconsistent with the Samkhya standpoint. It is extraneous to the Purva-Mimamsa also. ^Among the opponents of Indian Idealism., the Lokayatas arc-the only philosophers to call for a total rejection of the idealist view of soul and its salvation. ... The first precondition for moving towards a sensible conception of freedom is to scrap all nonsense about it."48 The Lokayatas recognize that ^certain views and attitudes admirably suit the economic interest of the parasitical class,. or., as they put it, are created to be the source of their livelihood."47 A faith-oriented philosophy taking cudgels against logic may naturally be expected to abhor the Lokayata position. But the precarious position of the Nayaya exponents like Vatsyayana is understandable. Being the ideological propagandists on behalf of the oppressing class, they were hampered in taking a suitable view of freedom as a genuine need» of the people. They willingly surrendered to the opium of spiritualism. If the positive factors in Nyaya-Vaiseshika are overwhelming, this negative formulation is not only unfortunate but positively misleading and disastrous. The subservience to the law-givers makes even an eminent scientist like Prasastapada of the Vaiseshika school a split personality and he is thus the prototype of our contemporary scientists taking a dip in the Ganges to save the moon or the sun from the clutches ofRahu and Ketu at the time of the eclipses. ^Wherc traditional Indian philosophy really fails is thus in its effort to solve the problem of freedom. But this failure can be explained and hence it is possible for Indians today to overcome the most serious limitation of our philosophical tradition9'.48 It is to be specially noticed that in the Chandogya Upanishad, Uddalaka Aruni did not refer to any possibility of e final release5 while imparting instruction to his son about the first principle behind the multiplicity of nature. His more immediate concern was an intellectual or essentially scientific curiosity. It was reserved for the more leisured class of people like King Janaka and the court-saint Yajnavalkya to discuss immortality of the soul, ultimate freedom of the soul, and allied questions. -9 Dialectical materialism has its own way of resolving the age*old tangles in society. In our context, when the Indian working class is increasingly being guided by the doctrine of dialectical materialism in its movement, there can only be one development to be expected. And that is, ^caste society, which is only a form of class society, meets it^ ultimate historical destiny—the destiny of making room for classless society towards which millions of working men and women are marching today"*9. This course is irreversible. The brighter aspects forming part of the anti-idealist enunciations of the systems of Indian philosophy also serve as ideas assisting us to reach that destiny. Debiprasad Chattopadh-yaya deserves our gratitude for having dealt with these in a masterly and purposeful manner. This book. What is Living and What is Dead in Indian Philosophy, like the earlier works of Chattopadhyaya, is a challenge to