Outlines of Indian Philosophy c19.80.2

c19.80.2

The buddhi, which so far as our present purpose is concerned may be taken as the equivalent of the manas of the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika,² is conceived here not as passive but as endowed with self-activity and as the abode of numberless impressions acquired through experience during a beginningless past. Owing to this circumstance, every buddhi has its own special bent and different persons may not therefore be impressed in the same manner by the same object. Though one, the object becomes ‘severalized,’ as it were, in the act of being apprehended on account of the bias of individual percipients. These two factors, viz. the objects and the particular bent of the percipient, co-operate in all knowledge and the resulting image may not, and generally is not, an exact copy of the former. It is in this power of meddling with the object which the buddhi possesses that we have to seek for the source of error. But the power only emphasizes one aspect rather than another of what is given and does not add any new feature to it. In other words, the activity which the buddhi exercises is selective, the theory being that only so much of the nature of an object is known as is in kinship with the perceiver's mood at the time. Like only appeals to like.¹ This alters very much the complexion of the resulting error. It is one of omission and not of commission as in the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika. It is right so far as it goes; only it does not go sufficiently far.