Over against these Purushas, homogeneous units, countless in number, stands Prakriti, Matter, the second in the Samkhyan duality.  Prakriti is one; Purushas are many.  Prakriti is a continuum; Purushas are discontinuous, being innumerable, homogeneous units.  Continuity is the mark of Prakriti.  Pause for a moment on the name Prakriti.  Let us investigate its root meaning.  The name indicates its essence.  Pra means “forth,” and kri is the root “make”.  Prakriti thus means “forth-making “.  Matter is that which enables the essence of Being to become.  That which is Being—­is-tence, becomes ex-is-tence—­outbeing, by Matter, and to describe Matter as “forth-making” is to give its essence in a single word.  Only by Prakriti can Spirit, or Purusha, “forth-make” or “manifest” himself.  Without the presence of Prakriti, Purusha is helpless, a mere abstraction.  Only by the presence of, and in Prakriti, can Purusha make manifest his powers.  Prakriti has also three characteristics, the well-known gunas—­attributes or qualities.  These are rhythm, mobility and inertia.  Rhythm enables awareness to become cognition.  Mobility enables life to become activity.  Inertia enables immutability to become will.

Now the conception as to the relation of Spirit to Matter is a very peculiar one, and confused ideas about it give rise to many misconceptions.  If you grasp it, the Bhagavad-Gita becomes illuminated, and all the phrases about action and actor, and the mistake of saying “I act,” become easy to understand, as implying technical Samkhyan ideas.

The three qualities of Prakriti, when Prakriti is thought of as away from Purusha, are in equilibrium, motionless, poised the one against the other, counter-balancing and neutralizing each other, so that Matter is called jada, unconscious, “dead”.  But in the presence of Purusha all is changed.  When Purusha is in propinquity to Matter, then there is a change in Matter—­not outside, but in it.

Purusha acts on Prakriti by propinquity, says Vyasa.  It comes near Prakriti, and Prakriti begins to live.  The “coming near” is a figure of speech, an adaptation to our ideas of time and space, for we cannot posit “nearness” of that which is timeless and spaceless—­Spirit.  By the word propinquity is indicated an influence exerted by Purusha on Prakriti, and this, where material objects are concerned, would be brought about by their propinquity.  If a magnet be brought near to a piece of soft iron or an electrified body be brought near to a neutral one, certain changes are wrought in the soft iron or in the neutral body by that bringing near.  The propinquity of the magnet makes the soft iron a magnet; the qualities of the magnet are produced in it, it manifests poles, it attracts steel, it attracts or repels the end of an electric needle.  In the presence of a postively electrified body the electricity in a neutral body is re-arranged, and the positive retreats while the negative gathers near the