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Indian Logic and Atomism: An Exposition of the Nyaya and Vaiceshika Systems c19.s2: 2. The Proof of the Existence of God

Indian Logic and Atomism: An Exposition of the Nyāya and Vaiçeṣika Systems c19.s2

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2. The Proof of the Existence of God

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Udayana² divides his proof of the existence of God into five heads, but his exposition is far from simple; it is complicated by the desire to discuss more or less completely rival theories both of causation and knowledge whose inclusion in this place gives a somewhat artificial trend to his reasoning. The first proof adduced is based on the establishment of the unseen principle (adṛṣṭa) as that which governs the fates of men in their various lives. This principle is unintelligent in itself, and it must therefore act under the direction of an intelligent power, who does not create it or alter its inevitable action, but renders possible its operation.

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² *Kusumāñjali*; cf. his *Ātmatattvaviveka* and *Kiraṇāvalī*, pp. 97 ff.

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The second proof rests on the fact that right knowledge requires an external source and thus the Veda presupposes a creator. This conception is defended against objections to the doctrine of creation and destruction based on the regular alternation of day and night; the impossibility of the birth of a Brahman at the outset of creation without one of that caste to be his father; the impossibility of the inauguration of language or traditional arts; and the impossibility of cessation in the process of the ripening of the fruits of action. Merit, he replies, may produce miraculous birth, God may teach language and the arts assuming both the preceptor’s and the pupil’s forms,¹ in deep sleep the fruition of acts is suspended, and still more so at the destruction of the world, a view which removes the difficulty of the process of time. Positively too the decay of customs, morals, and learning show how the Veda gradually dies out, to be revived at a new creation.

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¹ NSM., pp. 150 ff.

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Thirdly, it is shown that no means of proof yields results opposed to the reality of God. He is not perceived, but *ex hypothesi* he is not perceptible. He is inferred, and inference is trustworthy; its refutation always rests on inference, which shows that it cannot inherently be invalid. Comparison yields only knowledge of the significance of words, and tells nothing of existence, and thus cannot negate God. Verbal testimony declares his being; when it seems to negate it, it merely denies him attributes. The argument from presumption. ‘If God were omniscient, would he not cause us to act without laying down injunctions?’ whence the uselessness of the Veda and the non-existence, therefore, of its author are deduced, is invalid, for we must have directions for our actions, and in any case presumption and non-apprehension are not valid means of proof.

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Fourthly, the Mīmāṃsā argument that, even if God exists, he cannot be the source of right knowledge for us, since his own knowledge lacks the essential characteristic of true knowledge, the apprehension of objects hitherto unknown, is met by a denial of this definition of knowledge; right knowledge is an independent impression in accord with reality, and its truth does not depend on novelty.

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Finally, with some repetition, direct proofs for the existence of God are adduced. These are the nature of effects; the combinations of atoms in creation; the support and destruction of the world; the existence of traditional arts; the authoritativeness of the Veda which produces right knowledge in us and presupposes a being who imparted this virtue; its existence, which implies a maker; its consisting of sentences like books made by man; and last the peculiar nature of number: duality and subsequent numbers as we have seen have no absolute existence but depend on the relating power of the intellect and thus at creation it must have been God whose concept of duality produced the binary atom, which ultimately starts the formation of the world. The first five of these arguments, however, may be interpreted of scripture as referring to the purport of words, which is God; their explanation, due to God; their preservation through him; their significance in words denoting God; and the affix of the imperative which alludes in commands of scripture to the expression of the will of God.

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Leaving aside these needless exercises of ingenuity, the argument for the existence of God rests on the fact that creation needs an agent. The argument runs, ‘Every effect must have an intelligent agent; the universe is an effect; therefore it must have an intelligent agent.’ This is the doctrine expressed by Çrīdhara¹ in commenting on Praçastapāda’s account of creation, in which the activity of a creator is assumed, but not expressly proved, and in the course of it he deals with some of the obvious objections to the theory. It is objected that God, having no unsatisfied desires, cannot possess the necessary impetus to action, to which the reply is that he acts for the benefit of other selves, which is a sufficient if not a selfish motive. The further objection that in that case he should create pleasure alone in the world is met by the retort that in his action God is moved by the necessity of conforming to the tendencies of beings conditioned by their former actions, and that pain is no unmixed evil since it leads beings to realize the vanity of mundane existence. Nor is it a disproof of his independent divinity that in creation he should award beings lots according to their deserts, which is the due mode for a master to treat his servants. The minor objection to creation that the knowledge of words would be impossible is incidentally refuted by the quaint argument that it is the pain of birth which causes ordinary beings to lose their memory while the mindborn sons of Brahman suffer no such pain, and from their past memory are able to revive at once the conventions of language.

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¹ NK., pp. 54-7; cf. SDS., ch. xv; NSāra, pp. 35, 36, 254 ff.; SSS. vi. 6 ff.; TC. ii. 2. 1 ff.; NBh., NV., NVT. on iv. 1. 21; ṢDS. 13; NM., pp. 190 ff.; GSAI. xix. 11-15; TR., pp. 171, 172; Kir., pp. 97-104.

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More serious is the argument that the syllogism adduced does not prove the result. A jar is certainly produced by the potter, but in addition to the knowledge of his material, his desire, and action he must have a body in order to bring about the result, and therefore God must have a body, which is contrary to our observation. The answer to this is that mere possession of a body cannot be the real point in question, for else a man while in sleep would be an agent; it must rather be the character of being an operator of instruments sufficient to bring about a result, and an unembodied being can possess this power, as in the case of the soul which moves by its volition the body. True the body exists and belongs to the soul, but it is the soul which impels, and God has the atoms to impel in lieu of the body which the soul has as its object. Nor is there any real difficulty in understanding how he can possess intelligence, desire, and volition as eternal, whence his power of creation may be derived. On the other hand, it is urged that the souls and the atoms together can account for the whole of creation. To this Çrīdhara replies that this cannot be, since, until creation has operated, the souls are not united with sense organs through which alone they can possess cognitions. If it is replied that the soul has an inherent intelligence which is all-pervading, the answer is that this is contrary to experience which shows that the soul on birth in a body finds all things new and that therefore it does not continuously function, so that we are compelled to resort to illegitimate hypotheses if we depart from the sound view that a soul needs sense organs to be conscious. It follows, therefore, that creation requires the operation of an active intelligence which is that of God. The unity of God follows from the fact that there is no ground to accept a multiplicity of equally omniscient beings to perform the work of creation, and further such a multiplicity would by interference rather hinder than further the result.

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The qualities¹ of God follow from his complete knowledge; he cannot be ignorant, nor have attachment or aversion from objects; hence he cannot have any activity, or acquire merit or demerit, or their consequences pleasure and pain. Nor can he have impressions, since all his knowledge is immediate and eternal. This enumeration, however, leaves one obvious difficulty;

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¹ NK., p. 58; SSS. vi. 14. He is all pervading, and has individuality, conjunction and disjunction.

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where shall we class the desire and activity which are manifested in creation? The point was evaded by some authorities who denied desire and activity, asserting that his pure and unimpeded intelligence constituted his creative power, thus reducing to intelligence the only special quality of God. But the modern Nyāya¹ on the other hand ascribe to God the possession of eternal happiness, thus bringing themselves into harmony with scripture and doubtless with popular belief. The same period is responsible for a determined effort to ascribe to God a body for the purpose of creation despite the refusal of Çrīdhara and Udayana to countenance this folly.² On one theory our merit may endow God with such a body as in an incarnation, just as a man's merit provides a body for his wife; another view makes the atoms, or the ether to be the body of God, the former being a natural development of Çrīdhara's parallel between the body and the atoms, though Çrīdhara does not press the parallel; yet another conceives the creator to be formed of two bodies in creation, himself and the object to be created, while yet another holds that God obtains a body for himself in the same way as does a demon by possessing some human medium.³ To such idle follies was popular theology reduced.

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¹ So also NSāra, p. 40; Raghunātha (PTN., pp. 1-3) ascribes time and space to God, and (pp. 15-22) denies him extension.

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² Cf. SSS. vi. 13.

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³ Athalye, TS., pp. 141, 142.

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The obvious objections to the proofs of the existence of God were urged by rival schools.⁴ The assumption that the universe is a product can be assailed; we can adduce only individual cases of products; to assert that the whole of which they are parts must be a product is a paralogism. Nor indeed can we prove that every thing is produced, even among ordinary things, for our sphere of knowledge is severely limited. Again the atoms, ether, time and space, souls and minds are admittedly eternal and uncreated; therefore the argument that the universe must have a creator is inconsistent and illogical. Nor indeed is it legitimate to call the world a product and argue thence to the cause, unless the cause can be proved independently. Moreover, God as possessing will must have desire and pleasure and pain, and so is no more than glorified man. In truth it is plain that a creator who is only powerful to create and destroy at intervals in strict accordance with merit and demerit and who exercises no influence at all on the fates of mankind is a strange anomaly.

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⁴ Cf. the Jain attacks, ŞDST., pp. 117 ff. ; Syādvādamañjarī, pp. 49 ff. ; Çankara, BS. ii. 2. 37-41 ; Vaibhāṣika views, SSS. iv. 4. 23-38; SS. i. 92-9 ; the Mīmāṃsā agrees in denying God and creation or destruction ; PSPM., pp. 85-8 ; ÇV., pp. 356 ff. ; see also KKK. ii. 45 ff., and for a modern restatement of the issues Pringle Pattison, The Idea of God, pp. 298-321. See also Arist. Met. xii. 6 ff.

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But, whatever the difficulties in the theory, it is plain that it was impossible for the schools to remain without it, for they could not otherwise conceive the beginning and end of the world in which they believed as an established traditional doctrine, and which, it must be remembered, was especially connected with Çiva as the destroyer and the Brahmanical deity par excellence. Moreover, even had they been willing to ignore this dogma, they would have been in no better case, for, on their theory of eternal independent substances, there is no ground of connexion between self and body, and an intermediary must be found. The Jain view of self-moving atoms is more simple in one sense, but it is less philosophical, reflecting as it does nothing but a primitive animism. The intervention of God as the first origin of motion was thus natural, and it obviously adapted itself well to the traditional cosmogony. But, even so, one difficulty remains obvious; how comes it that all the souls lose their activity at the time of dissolution, and regain it at the coming into being of the world? Such a preconceived harmony is inexplicable unless a direct intervention of God is imagined, consisting at least in postponing, while not diverting, the fruition of action—as in deep sleep, but, curiously enough Çrīdhara shrinks from drawing this obvious, and indeed necessary conclusion. While the Vedānta suppresses the reality of the individual in the absolute, and the Sāṃkhya insists on the existence only of mutually unconnected individuals, in both cases denying any possibility of system in the universe, the Nyāya-Vaiçeṣika produces, but in a mechanical and external form, a certain measure of unity. All three, however, agree in denying any real value to human experience and endeavour, and stand in fundamental contrast with the tendency of recent thought, whether theistic¹ or atheistic,² to view the process of the universe as real and to insist on the fact, not of the independence and self-sufficiency of the individual, but of the necessity of the communion of selves as the basis of their reality.³

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¹ e. g. G. H. Howison, The Limits of Evolution, pp. 325 ff. ; Hastings Rashdall, Theory of Good and Evil, ii. 239 ff.

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² e. g. J. E. McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, pp. 37 ff.

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³ Contrast Pringle Pattison, Hegelianism and Personality, pp. 225 ff., and The Idea of God, pp. 385 ff. In B. Bosanquet's Value and Destiny of the Individual, as in F. H. Bradley's Appearance and Reality, the individual is overwhelmed in the absolute as in Çañkara.

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On a lower plane of popular thought stands the conception of the Nyāyasāra,⁴ reflected in the Sarvasiddhāntasaṃgraha,⁵ in which Çiva appears as the omniscient creator by whose grace, the reward of devotion, the worshipper obtains release in the form of eternal pleasurable consciousness. This in the Nyāya and Vaiçeṣika we find, as in the Vedānta of Rāmānuja, an effort to adapt philosophy to meet the cravings of popular theology.

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⁴ pp. 38, 40, 41.

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⁵ v. 10, 31-5 (Vaiçeṣika) ; vi. 10-21, 40-4 (Nyāya).

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