The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c11.14

c11.14

The absence of any attempt to examine more closely the nature of perception and of inference and their mutual relations is striking, and indicates how firmly fixed was the view of the system that perception gave immediate knowledge of reality, and that inference gave mediate knowledge. The, admission by the side of these two principles, which alone were allowed by the Vaiśeṣika school, of the conception of authority, harmonises with the uncritical attitude of the school to the problem of knowledge, and with its essentially practical end, the removal of misery. The belief in the Vedic tradition from the point of view of purely scientific interest could not be accepted without examination: to the supporters of a system with a definite means of salvation the presence in the midst of their tenets of one which might not bear close examination was indifferent, since it did not vitally affect the main structure of the system.