The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c6.s2.t4: 4. Physico-theological Proof
The System of the Vedânta according to Bâdarâyana's Brahma-Sûtras and Çankara's Commentary c6.s2.t4
- Language
- English
4. Physico-theological Proof
c6.s2.t4.1
(p. 500, 3:) “When the matter is considered with the help “of examples only, it is seen that in the world no non-intelligent “object without being guided by an intelligence brings forth “from itself the products which serve to further given aims “of man. For, *e. g.*, houses, palaces, beds, seats, pleasure- “gardens and the like are [only] contrived in life by intelligent “artists in due time for the purpose of obtaining pleasure and “averting pain. Exactly the same it is with this whole world. “For when one sees, how, for example, the earth serves the end “of the enjoyment of the fruit of the manifold works, and how, “again, the body within and without by possessing a given “arrangement of parts suitable to the different species and “determined in detail that it may form the place of the en- “joyment of the fruit of the manifold works,—so that even “highly skilled artists full of insight are unable to comprehend “it through their understanding,—how should this arrangement “proceed from the non-intelligent original-matter [of the Sân- “khyas]? For lumps of earth, stones and the like are in “no wise capable of this? Clay also, for example, is formed, “as experience teaches, to different shapes [only] so long as “it is guided by the potter, and exactly in the same way must “matter be guided by another intelligent power. He, there- “fore, who relies on the material cause only as clay, etc., “cannot rightly maintain, that he possesses the primordial “cause; but no objection meets him who, besides it [the clay], “relies on the potter etc. as well. For when this is assumed “there is no contradiction, and at the same time the scripture, “which teaches an intelligent power as cause, is thereby re- “spected. So that, as the arrangement [of the Kosmos] would “become impossible, we may not have recourse to a non- “intelligent power as the cause of the world.”
c6.s2.t4.2
⁶⁹ In the last phrase, the relationship between the Indian and the western cosmological proof, as well as the inadequacy of both, comes out very clearly; since considered empirically nothing stands in the way of a *regressus* from the effect to the cause, from this again to its cause, *etc. in infinitum*.