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❖ ❖ மறைமலையம் – 27
in throwing stones on innocent animals and even on grown-up persons. But such does not seem to be the case since all souls have defects in various grades and degrees which with the help of creation they strive and struggle to remove. This supreme purpose of creation cannot be in the least understood, unless, you recognize the potential existence of the evil principle called Anavam in the Saiva Siddhanta. Of this evil principle Prof. Henry Drummond the great scientist and theologian writes:
"There is a natural principle in man lowering him, deadening him, pulling him down by inches to the mere animal plane, blinding reason, searing conscience, paralysing will."8
So far as my knowledge of various religions and various systems of philosophy goes, I venture to say that I have not come across any other religion or philosophy in which this root- cause of creation, the pre-existence of the evil principle is recognized and explicitly mentioned as in the system of Saiva Siddhanta. Of course, there is a hint of it in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament as has been so penetratingly pointed out by Dr. F.C.S. Schiller, but it has unfortunately escaped the notice of almost all commentators on the book.
Now, let us turn to the fourth category: the twofold deeds good and bad. Every life from amoeba upwards is endowed with intelligence and this enables all organisms from the lowest to the highest to respond to the impressions proceeding from surrounding objects and perform certain functions either in opposition to, or in concurrence with, those impressions. In answering thus to outside calls the lower organisms learn to repeat what is favourable at first to the maintenance of their own life and afterwards to the maintenance of the life of their own offspring. The first act of every living being meets with great resistance offered by both the inside and outside things, that is, by its own body and by the things external to it. All the products of matter do not yield readily to the will of an intelligent being, unless it exercises its intelligence constantly and devises newer and newer means to bend them to its will. In this way it
