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Indian Philosophy v2.c24.s22: XIV God

Indian Philosophy v2.c24.s22

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XIV God

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GOD

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Kaṇāda’s Sūtra does not openly refer to God. He traces the primal activities of the atoms and souls to the principle of adṛṣṭa.⁷ While he seemed to have been satisfied with the explanation of the universe by the principle of adṛṣṭa his followers felt that the principle of adṛṣṭa was too nebulous and unspiritual and made it dependent on God's will. God is the efficient cause of the world, while the atoms are the material cause. It is, however, hard to concede that Kaṇāda himself felt the need of a divine being. The famous passage¹ which occurs twice, and has been made to support theism by the later commentators, has no reference to God. Apparently Kaṇāda felt that the Vedas were the work of the seers, and not God. Praśastapāda does not make God central to his system, though he regards Īśvara as the cause of the world in the opening verse of his Padārthadharmasaṃgraha.² Śaṃkara's criticism³ in his commentary on the Vedānta Sūtra assumes that the system has no place for God, and that it believes in the eternal and uncreated nature of souls and atoms, and accounts for their varying states by the principle of adṛṣṭa.

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⁷ Sometimes V.S., ii. 1. 18–19, are said to contain the proofs for the existence of God, though it is difficult to accept this view. In ii. 1. 9–14, the existence of invisible eternal air is established, and in ii. 1. 15–17, an objection is raised that its existence is not a matter of perception or inference, but only of revelation, and ii. 1. 18–19, state that some of our notions have their origin in the perceptions of our ancestors and are handed down to us, and these constitute the logical ground for the existence of the corresponding objects (see Ui: Vaiśeṣika Philosophy, pp. 164–166). In iii. 2. 4–9, we find a similar treatment of the problem of self.

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¹ Tadvacanād āmnāyasya prāmāṇyam (i. 1. 3; x. 2. 9).

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² See the opening and the concluding portions of P.P. and pp. 48-49.

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³ S.B., ii. 3. 14.

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The criticisms of rival schools clearly brought out the unsatisfactory character of the non-theistic Vaiśeṣika. Countless millions of unthinking atoms cannot produce the marvellous unity in variety of the world. They are incapable of taking counsel together or carrying out a common plan of evolving a spiritual commonwealth. The logical minds of the Vaiśeṣika thinkers were not favourable to the hypothesis of mere chance. They soon realised that the atoms, however immutable and eternal were of no avail unless their activities were regulated by a presiding mind. God perceives the atoms, and in his intellect, first, arises the notion of duality and then the dyads are formed. Inference and scripture both require us to admit God.⁴ The four great elementary substances (mahābhūtas) are preceded by someone having a knowledge of them, since they are effects.⁵ The conventions of the meanings of words are established by God. Again, the Vedas are a collection of sentences which imply authorship of intelligent beings,⁶ and since the contents of the Vedas are free from error, inadvertence and the desire to deceive on the part of their authors, they must be due to an eternal omniscient, all-holy spirit (nirdoṣapuruṣa).¹ Again, souls in the pralaya state are devoid of intelligence, and so they cannot control the activity of the atoms, and within the world of atoms there is not to be perceived any source of motion. If we are to avoid infinite regress, we are thrown back on a first Mover as the origin and starting-point.² There need be only one such Mover. To admit a number is unnecessary. A plurality of gods may produce discord, and so there is one creator, and he is God.

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⁴ Keith : I.L.A., pp. 265-6; Nyāyakandalī, p. 54:

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⁵ ii. 1. 18-19.

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⁶ Buddhipūrvavākyakṛtir vede. See Upaskāra, vi. 1. 1.

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¹ Upaskāra, x. 2. 9. The whole argument rests on the acceptance of the authoritativeness of the Vedas. If we deny it, as the Buddhists do, the argument loses its force.

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² Cp. Aristotle’s theory of God as the First Mover, who starts all heavenly and earthly motions.

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The question whether God has a body is considered by Śrīdhara. It is not necessary for God to be embodied. Even a bodiless being can act. The immaterial soul operates towards the moving of the body. Though the body belongs to the soul, it does not supply the force impelling itself. The object impelled is the body, and God has such an object in the atoms. If it is argued that a body is necessary for the production of desire and effort, Śrīdhara replies, that it is the case only where desire and effort are adventitious (āgantukam), and not when they are natural (svabhāvikam). God’s intelligence, desire and effort, are eternal.³ Śrīdhara deals with a number of objections to the creation of the world by God. If it is said that God has no unsatisfied desires and so cannot possess the impetus to creation, he says that he has no selfish desires, but acts for the benefit of others. In conformity with the principle of karma, he allows pain in the world, and pain is, after all, not a great evil, since it helps us to realise the variety of all existence. It is no limitation of his independence that he reckons with the law of character.

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³ Nyāyakandalī, pp. 57–8.

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The Vaiśeṣika view of God is practically the same as that of the Naiyāyika ⁴ and is open to the same criticism. The world was originally regarded as a piece of mechanism, complete and self-sufficient, with atoms and souls held together in their place by the principle of adṛṣṭa. The difficulties relentlessly pressed by the critics of the Vaiśeṣika, that an unintelligent principle could not keep together the disjecta membra of the world, forced the later Vaiśeṣikas to accept a divine principle as a way out of the difficulties. God is not the creator of the world, since souls and atoms are co-eternal with him. God is distinguished from human souls by his omniscience and omnipotence, which qualify him for the government of the universe. He is never entangled in the cycle of existence. He sets the world under certain laws and lets it go, but he does not interfere with its course. The world is a gigantic piece of clockwork set in motion by its maker and guaranteed to go without any further interference. But a non-interfering God does not help the actual life of the world, while an interfering God runs the risk of upsetting his own laws. God and the world exclude each other, but if we do not revise the original premises, even "God" cannot help us. If we start with a plurality of entities unrelated to one another, we cannot correct their isolation by the mechanical device of a God who arranges things from outside. The world held together by the mechanical expedient of a foreign medium is a mere aggregate of things, and not an organic whole. The souls cannot even know one another. Each real thing will be a little world to itself shut up within the closed circle of its own internal content. Souls and their objects are essentially disparate, and their relation is an externally imposed harmony. Before we can arrive at a more satisfactory view, the starting-point must be surrendered. If there is a God, he could produce the ultimate elements of matter as well, and there is no need for maintaining the eternal and self-existent character of atoms and souls. If there is a God, the heavens and the earth hang on him, and the inconceivably small particles of matter moving through boundless realms of space are his creation as well.

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⁴ Devatāviṣaye bhedo nāsti naiyāyikaiḥ samam (Haribhadra’s Ṣaḍdarśanasamuccaya, p. 59).

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GENERAL ESTIMATE OF THE VAIŚEṢIKA PHILOSOPHY

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A critical consideration of the general principles of the Vaiśeṣika will help us to understand the central features as well as the limitations of the system. A philosophic theory should order and organise the manifold characters which reality reveals into a coherent and intelligible whole. The Vaiśeṣika attempts "to exhibit in one system the characters and interrelations of all that is observed."¹ It will be useful for us to distinguish, as Professor Whitehead does, sense-data, the world of perception and scientific objects. Sense-data are the actual colours, tastes, sounds, temperatures that we perceive. We build on these data the world of experience, and to account for these sense-data and the world of experience we postulate a number of scientific objects which are not objects of perception, though they account for all perception. In the Vaiśeṣika, also, we have sense-data, or the objects of perception, with which all experience starts. When we think together these objects by the categories of substance, quality and relations, we rise to the world of experience. As we have more than once urged, when we speak of a thing and its qualities, we are not stating facts, but interpreting them. When the Vaiśeṣika distinguishes eternal from non-eternal substances, qualities, etc., it emphasises the transient character of our experience and postulates a number of scientific objects as atoms and souls, and space and time, and ākāśa and manas. The theory may be regarded as satisfactory, if sense-data lead to the experienced world and the latter leads to the scientific objects, but, as we shall see, there is no such logical connection discernible.

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¹ Whitehead : The Concept of Nature, p. 185.

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The emphasis on the principle of negation marks the distinctive pluralistic tendency of the Vaiśeṣika. Reality is not a substance or an aggregate of substances which are the subjects of qualities, but an essential relatedness, where we find need for analysis and comparison, distinction and identification. The changing world of experience consists of a plurality of existent things standing in a complicated network of relations of all kinds with one another. The Vaiśeṣika has for its aim the representation of the universe as a systematic whole, a harmony of varying members. So long as we are not able to harmonise the jarring elements, we have not reached our logical ideal. The self-contradictory is the unthinkable, and yet there are members of the system which we are not able to think together as parts of one whole.

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The Vaiśeṣika admits the relative character of negation. The content which it denies is never excluded absolutely. Before we deny, the idea denied must be entertained. Again, the attempted suggestion which the negation refutes, rests on a positive identity which proves to be incompatible with the suggested content. We look for the jar on the ground and fail to find it, and we negate it. The real excludes because it is qualified incompatibly. Negation implies at its base a disjunction which is real. The aim of negation is to set before us reality conceived as a system. The simple affirmative is a one-sided abstraction as much as the simple negative. Mere "being" is the abstraction of an empty object, while mere "nothing" goes beyond mere emptiness. Mere "nothing" is the idea of a "that," or an entity which excludes and is excluded by any and every "what" or qualification. It is the abstraction of an object which negates all qualifications and is forced to reject even itself. Insistence on negation commits the Vaiśeṣika to the ideal of the world as harmony of elements, though, strictly speaking, such an ideal falls short, in principle, of ultimate truth and reality. Diversity, distinction and plurality have a meaning only within a whole. What the Vaiśeṣika regards as an independent individual is a factor discerned within the nature of the real. It confuses distincts and opposites. What is different need not be discrepant. Differents do not exclude one another, they only exclude the denial of their difference. There are incompatibles, but they are not final and absolute. Within limits they are found, but the logical view of identity demands that the real is the individual, the harmonious and the self-consistent. By postulating for all things a self-identity, the Vaiśeṣika is not able to rise to the conception of a true spiritual whole, where the reciprocal exclusiveness of parts is overcome. Though it makes both unity and plurality original to the world, the two are left side by side, and not worked into a whole. The Vaiśeṣika is not loyal to the conception of knowledge as an organised whole implied by its view of negation.

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The Vaiśeṣika points out, however, that experience has things and relations. Substance, quality and action exist in themselves as also one in the other, and these are bound by a number of relations called sāmānya or generic nature, viśeṣa or specific marks, and samavāya or inseparable connection. Every substance has a generic quality, a specific difference, and with these latter it is bound up by the relation of samavāya. The affirmation of the reality of relations is a fundamental necessity for any satisfactory pluralistic metaphysics. If the relations are unreal, then there can be only one substance in the world called the Absolute; or the world is composed of monads, independent absolutes, which are unrelated and which can never be related.

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The theory of samavāya is a weak link in the Vaiśeṣika system. We cannot look upon samavāya as a connection between two distinct things and yet regard it as of a different kind from saṃyoga, or conjunction. If samavāya is distinct from saṃyoga, then the whole is something over and above the parts. The conception of the world as a systematic whole with interrelated elements is the implication of the Vaiśeṣika view of samavāya as of its view of negation. Its pluralism, therefore, is not final.

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The distinction of sāmānya (general) and viśeṣa (particular) is a distinction of the qualities of substances. What is the nature of viśeṣa, or particularity? It is quite true that we accept unique individuals at the common-sense level of life. But we cannot give a satisfactory account of what this particularity is. What is it that makes a thing the particular thing it is? All that we know of a thing is a number of its qualities and the way it behaves. The uniqueness cannot be defined: yet it seems to be inexhaustible. Individuality seems to be a mere assumption as good as non-existent. Take the individual soul. Is there anything which it cannot alter? If its individuality is something which changes with its historical life, it is then capable of alteration. If it is an unchangeable essence, then we do not know what it is. If we appeal to facts, we are given not "blue," but always "a blue," a "blue" of a certain sort, neither the universal by itself, nor the specification which makes the particular blue. We do not know how these unite to make a unique particular. Ultimately we cannot define what we mean by uniqueness. Though the theory of viśeṣa, or particularity, is not borne out by logical evidence, an obstinate empirical prejudice inclines us to grant unique indestructible essences to individuals. The individuality of the innumerable elements and souls is destructive of the individuality of the whole, and so, if the conception of an organised whole implied by the Vaiśeṣika view of negation and samavāya is to be sustained, the doctrine of individuals will have to be modified.¹

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¹ Cp. Bradley : "The natures of the many are therefore not each merely self-contained, because if you extirpate from each every reference beyond itself, you have no manyness left. 'And' has no signification except as the expression of a containing whole, and diversity apart from identity has lost its sense. The required particulars, therefore, are self-contradictory. And you cannot escape by drawing a distinction within each of separate aspects : for such a road leads to a division into fresh particulars, with regard to each of which the same dilemma results. If the many are not each itself beyond itself, they have ceased to be many; and, on the other hand, whatever fails to be self-contained is not individual and unique. Hence the particular beings, which, if they were possible, would each be unique, prove to be mere abstractions. And these because in principle self-discrepant are unreal, and in the end are senseless" (Logic, vol. ii, p. 651). See also Gentile : Theory of Mind as Pure Act, E-T., p. 113.

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The general notion is a common property said to exist, independent of the intelligence which conceives it, in substances, qualities and actions, and regarded as eternal in eternal substances and non-eternal in non-eternal ones. If the individuals and the universals are equally real, and if our scientific generalisations are regarded as dealing with these entities eternally fixed in the order of nature, then there ought to be universals corresponding to all conceivable entities, good, bad and indifferent. Besides, there are no universals which are eternal. Under the influence of formal logic which tends to make thought static, the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika emphasises essences and their qualities and their differences. Nothing can at the same time exist and not exist. Such is the law of contradiction, and under its influence things were divided into classes that were supposed to have been the same ever since the world began, and to continue to be so till the world comes to an end. Darwin's theory of evolution discredits belief in the fixity of species. One species develops into another by the accumulation of individual differences under natural selection. The classes are what they are as a result of the process of evolution carried on through millions of years. The classes are mutable in the highest degree, and tend to shade off into one another even to-day. Mendelian heredity may transform the nature of the horse beyond identification. The so-called universals are not immutable self-existent types, but represent stages of growth and development adapted to the changing conditions of the environment. When classes tend to melt away, the logician who plays with types and essences has his ground cut from under his feet. At any one stage the class character is denoted by the sāmānya, or generality, though this character is by no means stereotyped. When universals are said to be eternal, what is meant is not existence through endless time, but independence of time relations. The Jaina logicians argue that even the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika does not admit the universal notion of negation said to be common to antecedent negation, subsequent negation, etc.; nor does it admit the universal notion of universals. If the universal of the different universals or of the different kinds of negation is simply their common character, we can say that there is no other kind of universal than that of common character. The theory of sāmānya, or generality, is motived by the desire to distinguish the unchanging from the changing. If we assign the universals to a supersensible world of superior reality, it becomes difficult to bring them into relation with the particular individuals which embody them. It is not easy to relate the one eternal ubiquitous general essence with the many, non-eternal, discrete, isolated individuals. If the universal does not so much underlie the individual as coexist with it, we are brought to a position similar to Plato's theory of Ideas and the Universalia ante Res doctrine. Two utterly disparate things, as the universal and the individual, cannot be unified. We must dismiss the world of individuals as a vain show standing in no intelligible relation to reality. The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika admits that the universal and the individual are inseparable, since they are bound by the tie of samavāya. In other words, the distinction between the universal and the particular is a distinction in thought, but not a division in reality, and yet, inconsistently, the universals are given an independent existence. They are supposed to survive the destruction of the world, and during pralaya they have for their substratum, time, which is conceived as a real thing (kālikasambandha).

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Substance, quality and action are regarded as objective, while the relations are products of logical analysis, which we have no right to transform into facts of the cosmos. The first three categories are said to partake of the character of sattā, a fiction endowed with existence, and supposed to confer the same property on the three categories. The different relations, causal and reciprocal and mere togetherness of compresence, are not existents, since all existents are individual. Guṇa (quality) and karma (action) are different kinds or adjectives of substantives.¹ Whatever temporal alterations and spatial movements may happen, the guṇas may be looked upon as the continuant factors of causation, while the alterable states are the karma referring to the "occurrent, or in accordance with the scholastic usage, the occasional causal factor." A complete conception of substance includes both guṇa and karma, continuant and occurrent factors, neither being conceivable apart from the other.² Every substance has its unique essence (viśeṣa), its qualities (guṇa), and its modes of behaviour (karma). Common sense regards the occurrences of the world as the attributes of certain substances. The conception of a thing and its qualities is so familiar to us all that it enters into all our experience. The Vaiśeṣika takes it for a simple unambiguous axiom, which does not stand in need of much discussion or proof. Everything real is either a substance or an attribute of it. The attributes are dependent aspects of reality incapable of existing on their own account, and they imply a more ultimate form of living substance, to which they belong. The existence of a plurality of substances, each complete in itself and independent of all the rest, is accepted as a dictate of common sense, though we cannot form a satisfactory idea of what a substance is in itself.

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¹ W. E. Johnson distinguishes adjectives into transitive and intransitive; transitive adjectives are the relations. See Logic, vol. i, p. xxxv.

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² W. E. Johnson : Logic, vol. i, p. xxxvii.

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The naïve theory of substance and quality conceals a bottomless abyss of unsolved problems. Substance is defined as the substratum of qualities.³ So qualities have no independent existence. We distinguish in thought substance and quality, but there is no need to assume that qualities and actions possess a higher degree of reality than generality, particularity, etc. The Vaiśeṣika, however, assumes that there can be substance apart from any qualities. At the first moment of creation the substance is said to be without any qualities, the suggestion being that the metaphysical identity of a substance is not the same as the permanent identity of its properties. The essence of a substance, which makes it what it is, has little to do with the permanent qualities which are characteristic of and peculiar to it. The permanence of the qualities is not essential to its remaining what it is. The special qualities of substances are regarded as effects, *i.e.* qualities are derived from substances; but how can a substance become a cause, *i.e.* produce something different from itself? What is above all positive and concrete qualities is for our thought destitute of any content. It is an unknown X, a supposed I-know-not-what, lying behind all qualities. An inveterate habit of thought inclines us to give greater reality to substance than to qualities. The Vaiśeṣika substances are unknown substrata to account for the qualities of experience, the results of possible speculation, and not scientific observation. But the Vaiśeṣika believes also that a thing would lose its nature if it loses its qualities. The relation between substance and qualities is said to be one of samavāya, *i.e.* one cannot exist without the other.¹

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³ While substance was defined by the ancient Nyāya as the substratum of qualities and actions, modern Nyāya defines it as the substratum of qualities alone.

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¹ See Śaṃkara on Gauḍapāda’s Kārikā, iii. 5.

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Śaṃkara criticises this view of the relation between substance and quality. If the two are inseparably related, the inseparability must refer to place, time or nature. The two are not inseparable in place, since the cloth originating from the threads occupies the place of the threads only and not that of the cloth, while the qualities of the cloth, such as its colour, occupy the place of the cloth only and not that of the threads.² If inseparability in time is the essence of the samavāya relation, then the right and the left horns of a cow would be related in that way. If it is inseparability in nature or character, then it would be impossible to make any further distinction between substance and quality, since the two are one.³

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² V.S., i. 1. 10.

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³ S.B., ii. 2. 17.

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If the substance depends on its qualities, then it is not really independent. Substance is not only united with its qualities by the relation of samavāya, but all substances are united with the general notion of substantiality, and single substances are united in the same way with the notion of their own class.⁴ We do not perceive a substance apart from qualities, and the assumption of something which remains unchanged though the qualities change is an illogical one.¹ If we take our stand on the qualities which change, then there cannot be any permanent substance. The leaf which is verdant and full of sap to-day is sere and yellow to-morrow, and brown and shrivelled the day after. We cannot know what the permanent quality of the leaf is. The whole history of philosophy proves that the underlying core of a thing is an impenetrable mystery.² What a substance is, apart from its qualities and behaviour, we cannot hope to know. In the world of experience we are obliged to use the categories of substance and quality, though existence cannot be reduced to qualities, and yet substance, the Vaiśeṣika admits, is nothing apart from its qualities. We can define a substance only by its qualities. We can distinguish things by their different properties. We speak of a substance as the same at different times only so long as it has the same properties. When we find different qualitative groupings, we say that we deal with different things. Substance refers to the stable elements of our experience. Souls and atoms, space, time, ākāśā and manas refer to the constant factors in our experience.

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⁴ Śrī Harṣa asks as to why qualities which possess other qualities, like number, should not be included under substances. If qualities are defined

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¹ See, however, N.V., i. 1. 13, where "pṛthivyādiguṇāḥ" is taken as a dvandva compound, meaning earth, etc., and the qualities, suggesting that substances as well as qualities are apprehended by the senses.

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² The Sāṃkhya regards substance and quality as possessing the same reality; the Advaita Vedānta looks upon the conception of substance as an illogical one, representing a mode of thought. Cp. Locke: *Essay on the Human Understanding*.

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The Vaiśeṣika endeavours to take in all aspects of experience and fit them into a general scheme. The sensible world has a real basis independent of the percipient. The relations are real in the sense that they are not fabricated by the mind of man. The Vaiśeṣika does not think that experience comes to us as a mere manifold. It is grounded in laws which are not simply imposed on it. The categories of quality, action, generality, particularity and inherence are dependent (āśrita), while substance is the independent entity on which they all depend (āśraya). Substances are absolutely independent. Non-eternal substances which are caused are not truly sub-

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as the substrata of sāmānya, he asks whether they are not the substrata of positive entities like upādhis (Khaṇḍana, iv. 3). Alexander refuses to call quality a category.

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stances. The theory of the nine eternal substances becomes the central thesis of the Vaiśeṣika pluralism. These nine eternal substances are what Professor Whitehead calls scientific objects as distinct from perceptual objects and sense-data. Their value lies in their power to explain and order the data of perception, to make nature as perceived by the senses more intelligible. A naturalistic bias led the Vaiśeṣika thinkers to regard experience as an ever shifting phantasmagoria demanding explanation from outside. They regard objects of experience as shadows on the screen cast by substances behind. That shadows are cast on the screen of our minds by substances lurking behind, is a metaphysical assumption for which there is no warrant. We need not go behind experience and assume mysterious things in themselves. The Vaiśeṣika asks us to be loyal to the deliverances of the empirical consciousness, which is said to deal first and last with real and separate things, but it is itself going beyond the testimony of consciousness when it looks upon the world of experience as a sort of screen that stands between us and the imperceptible reals. The Vaiśeṣika sets to itself the task of simplifying or unifying phenomena, but adopts a false metaphysics when it assumes that the multiplicity of the world is the phenomenon of a noumenal multiplicity. When it once breaks up the unity of experience into a number of distinct elements, it is unable to reunite them into the whole. A scattered and dissociated diversity cannot engender unity unless it be through the instrumentality of a divine Providence. These substances both in their eternal self-identity and non-eternal manifestations do not form a coherent whole. There is no string by which we can tie them all together.

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The idea of the interconnection of substances is not well developed. While the Vaiśeṣika makes relatedness a central feature of the world of experience, still, in conceiving unrelated atoms and souls as the scientific objects, it makes all relations external and arbitrary. The world of true being, the nine eternal substances, remain for ever unaffected by change, and the ground of phenomenal change is not to be sought in any mark of the real itself. Relatedness thus becomes an external accident of the reals. Unrelated atoms cannot account for the phenomenal world. To generate the phenomenal things they must meet and clash. If the atoms are endowed with the property of motion, they are not rigidly unrelated, for even a movement of atoms is a negation of their unrelatedness. To accept adṛṣṭa is to surrender all possibility of philosophical explanation. If the Vaiśeṣika wishes to be faithful to its principle of the reality of relations, which it accepts in its account of padārthas, or the world of experience, it must give up its theory of the eternal non-changing substances, which are the scientific objects, and make relatedness also real. Real relatedness is inconsistent with the absolute independence of the related elements. The so-called eternal substances cannot therefore be the simple, changeless permanent elements, but only the relatively fixed points of one continuously altering system. If change and relatedness belong to the very essence of reality, then reality is not an aggregate of simple reals. The truly scientific object is not the eternal substance, but the ever-changing identity of the world itself.

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When the Vaiśeṣika posits eternal atoms, it means to suggest that in the vast reaches of space-time we have a host of supersensible particles too small singly to meet the edge of human vision, though they become visible when they enter into combinations which are more or less lasting, though by no means everlasting. The application of the causal principle, that out of nothing nothing comes, requires it to posit these eternal atoms. The Vaiśeṣika rightly argues that while latitude, longitude, shape, date and motion are space-time properties, smell, taste, colour, temperature and sound are space-time filling properties. Leaving aside sound for the present, the Vaiśeṣika traces smell, taste, colour and temperature, which are the contents of our experience to the atoms. Since these characters of our experience are permanent, it attempts to account for them on the hypothesis of eternal atoms. The changing aspects of experience are traced to non-eternal substances and permanent aspects to eternal ones. The ultimate data from which the Vaiśeṣika starts, and which it seeks to explain, are our sense-experiences. The atoms are frankly acknowledged to be inaccessible in themselves to our perception, though they are supposed to be indispensable for the occurrence of phenomena which we can and do observe.

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We perceive a series of colours, sounds, tastes and temperatures. These sense-data are perceived as a part of nature and not, as the Buddhists believed, as a part of mind; but need we assume atoms as the imperceptible causes of these sense-data? If we perceive colours and sounds, touches and tastes serially, one detached from the other, there may be some justification for regarding nature as composed of atomic bits. But the Vaiśeṣika rightly emphasises that nature as perceived is a togetherness, a mass of sense-data which melt into one another, a continuously flowing stream. From out of these sense-data we build our view of experience as consisting of things and their qualities and relations, but the atoms assumed are not integral factors of the world of experience. The atomic hypothesis only creates fresh difficulties and leads the Vaiśeṣika system into the dangers of subjectivism. We are not conscious of atoms, and yet they are imagined to be the only reality producing the experienced objects. The manner of the causation is mechanical, and what we perceive is divorced from what is—the atoms, the hypothetical and unverifiable causes of experience. These abstract foundations are not adequate to the concrete experience built on them. Our experience comes to us in a series of events which are in space and time. Every event has a spatial position, i.e. is somewhere; has a history, i.e. occurs at some time;

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but these properties of space and time do not exhaust the nature of the event. We do not know anything about the material points or atoms. All that we know is that bodies occupy several positions simultaneously, and so we say that they possess spatial extension and figure. Strictly speaking, we know neither a universal matter nor invisible atoms, but only bodies. A body is ordinarily regarded as that which moves. It is a portion of matter which maintains the natural position of its parts unchanged, while their relations to other positions are changed. An extended unit has fixed boundaries, and its identity is said to be unaltered so long as this independence of internal and external relations continues. What we call a thing or a body is a region of space which is marked by some distinguishing character that remains unchanged through time. In the complex given to us in experience we distinguish that which occupies space and time from space and time themselves. Matter is that something which fills the space-time framework.¹ The Vaiśeṣika has no sympathy with the Buddhist attempts, comparable to those of some Neorealists, as Alexander and Russell, to derive the individual from the universal, real things from their connections, terms from their relations, and matter from the union of space and time. We cannot have motion without things that move. The Vaiśeṣika regards the atom as a real entity and not a mere limiting conception.

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The atoms, according to the Vaiśeṣika, are said to possess the qualities of colour, etc.; and Śaṁkara argues that what has colour, etc., cannot be minute (aṇu) and eternal (nitya). Judging from experience, things possessing colour, etc., are gross and impermanent.² If non-perception is indicative of permanence, then even dyads which are too small for perception must be regarded as permanent.³ If something eternal is required as the basis of the universe, it cannot certainly be the atoms.⁴ The determinateness of the world is sought to be accounted for by the diversity of atoms. But altogether external and accidental relations cannot account for the determinate character of the world. The theory of transmutation of matter in its various states goes against the hypothesis of immutable atoms. While ordinary unreflective experience breaks the world into fragments, where everything is distinct if not separate, a little reflection tells us that things pass into one another. There is such a thing as becoming, evolution or development. The truth of things is not a plurality of types but one universal nature. The empirical tendency of the Vaiśeṣika should have led it to supersede the idea of being by that of becoming. If we are impressed by one thing more than another, it is the oneness of nature and the fundamental unity of origin of all classes of "atoms." The idea of development implies that a principle is more than any of the forms through which it passes.

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The real as presented to us is not atomic in character, but seems to be one stuff where qualitatively different aspects melt into one another. Śaṃkara says that the different elements are different conditions of one stuff, the earth is gross, the water fine, light finer, and air is the finest of all.¹ The atoms answering to the four elements cannot be assumed to have a greater and smaller number of qualities simply because earth has the four qualities of smell, taste, colour and touch, and water the three of colour, taste and touch, and so on. Again, all atoms cannot be said to have all the qualities. If they have only one quality, then we cannot perceive taste in earth, or colour in water, since the qualities of the effects have for their antecedents the qualities of the causes.² An immensity of distinct atoms cannot produce a harmonious universe. The mysterious relation of samavāya is invented to cover this difficulty. Dyads which originate from two atoms are said to be different from them, though related to them by way of inherence.

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¹ More accurately, events are the concrete stuff from which space and time are derived. Mere extension and pure serial process are both abstractions. If anything may be looked upon as the fundamental units of the universe, they are space-time-matter, or the events of Professor Whitehead. The static stuff of objects, space and time are all adjuncts of events.

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² V.S., iv. I. I.

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³ iv. I. 5.

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⁴ S.B., ii. 2. 15.

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¹ Modern science is reducing atoms to electrical emanations, and matter is becoming almost as ethereal as spirit.

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² S.B., ii. 2. 16.

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Atoms represent the permanent factors of the flux of events. There is that in nature which does not pass. There are some constants in our experience which we correlate with substances. Substance, as we have already seen, is the name for a way in which things behave. Our experience has some permanent characteristics in spite of its changing character. The conclusion that may be regarded as forced on us by experience is that the principle of nature is something which is eternally changing, though it remains for ever constant. The only helpful suggestion for philosophy which we get from the atomic theory is that the real is that which exists in and for itself. In concrete idealism the whole alone has such reality, for the individuality of the parts would mean the destruction of the individuality of the whole. But the relation of whole and parts is not free from difficulties, so that the real can be identified only with consciousness.

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When the Vaiśeṣika asserts the universal and real character of space and time, what it means is that the universe as it appears to us is an endless expanse, an immeasurable extent, an abyss in which there are no bounds, no bottom, no end. Every event has spatial and temporal properties. If the spatial position of a thing remains the same while the temporal varies, we say that the body is at rest; if it varies continuously as the time varies continuously, we speak of motion. Since our experience has a spatio-temporal character, the Vaiśeṣika infers that space and time stand there outside us, as empty receptacles waiting for things and events to fill them. The truth seems to be that spatial and temporal relations are constituted out of spatial and temporal perceptions. If the spatial and temporal characters of our experience demand the assumption of the universal substances of space and time, there is no reason why we should not have one vast intelligence in the vast heaven, one vast light and one vast darkness, vast cosmic reservoirs of all properties, good, bad and indifferent, which characterise our actual experiences. Space and time cannot be regarded as derivatives from experience, which presupposes them. That space and time are universal, all-pervading substances, is their way of saying that whatever is, is in space, and whatever happens, happens in time. Things of the world are in motion, i.e. occupy space and change their behaviour in time. The space void of bodies and the time void of events are called substances. To account for our experiences, which have the features of spatiality and temporality, the Vaiśeṣika assumes an immensity or infinite space that refuses to submit to bounds and a duration that cannot be completed. But these infinite space and time are metaphysical hypotheses and not descriptions of facts.

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Though space without time changes does not seem to be absurd, time is nothing without changes or events, even as a relation is nothing without terms that are related. Time is interpenetrated by real stuff. Time does not involve a plurality of things. It might occur in a single substance. A person may change his character, a flower may change its colour. Space, dealing as it does with properties of position, distance, etc., requires various real things. Time alone of itself does not imply such a variety of coexistence. It no more involves coexistence than one real thing involves others.

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The argument by which atoms are assumed is not applied to space and time. The Vaiśeṣika does not say that the continuance of time arises out of the separate indivisible instants of time or the continuance of space out of separate points or spatial units. If the difficulty of the crumbling of matter into nothing is to be avoided only by the assumption of indivisible atoms, the continuity of space and time can only be accounted for on an analogous theory of points and instants. If in the latter the assumption of one universal space or time is feasible, the assumption of one universal matter is quite a legitimate hypothesis even for the explanation of the physical universe. We have things in certain relations to each other which we call spatial and events in certain relations which we call temporal. Time and space represent the relations of the objects for our experience. These spatial and temporal relations are facts for immediate experience, and the theory that events occur in a given space and a given time, involving changes in the given persistent atomic stuff, is the result of metaphysical reflection. A universal space, a universal time and persistent atoms are all hypothetical explanations and not given facts.¹ The defective definition of substance as the substratum of qualities leads the Vaiśeṣika to regard space, time, etc., as substances. Matter is the stuff which fills space and time, and if we wish to be accurate we must say that the fundamental concept by which the universe can be explained is space-time-matter stuff, a conclusion of which some Vaiśeṣikas had a dim apprehension. Śivāditya says that ākāśa, space and time are one in reality, though conceived as threefold on account of the diverse effects,² a view confirmed by Candrakānta Tarkālaṃkāra, who argues that, according to Kaṇāda, space, time and ākāśa are one substance only, though variously called space, or time, or ākāśa, according to the effects produced by it and the variety of external conditions attending it.³ Space and time are abstractions from nature. Later Naiyāyikas described space and time as the modes of God.¹

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¹ Cp. Whitehead: "We must not conceive of events as in a given time, a given space, and consisting of changes in given persistent material. Time, space and material are adjuncts of events. On the old theory of relativity, time and space are relations between materials; on our theory they are relations between events" (*Enquiry*, p. 26).

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² Ākāśāditrayaṃ tu vastuta ekam eva upādhibhedān nānābhūtam (*Saptapadārthī*, p. 17).

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³ See App. B, p. iv, to V.S., in *Sacred Books of the Hindus* series. See also S.P.S., ii. 12.

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¹ Athalye : Tarkasaṃgraha, p. 131.

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Consciousness is an activity, the property of a thing confronted in relations of extension and succession by another thing, the non-conscious world. The relation between the soul and its qualities is one of samavāya. Śaṃkara raises the question of the relations of the ātman to the qualities of knowledge, etc., and contends that the Vaiśeṣika cannot allow the two equal rank, since the self is permanent and the qualities impermanent. If it allows them equal rank, then there cannot be a condition of ātman when it is free from the qualities. In short, ātman must be impermanent as much as the qualities.² The narrowness of mental life is accounted for by the assumption of the atomic manas, but it is difficult to conceive satisfactorily the relation between soul and manas. When the Vaiśeṣika distinguishes the soul substance from the quality of consciousness, it is adopting a mechanical view. The conception of experience as the resultant of the interaction of something outside our mind with it, we have already seen, makes all experience unintelligible. We do not know what the innermost essence of the soul is. Its different qualities of pleasure, pain, knowledge, etc., arise through the interaction of unintelligent selves with unintelligent atoms. When the soul is freed, the qualities disappear, and the released soul, rid of all qualities, is a unit devoid of any internal variety, and is therefore not real at all. The object swallows the subject. Man is a creative centre co-operating in the making of the world which he knows. Experience, which is the problem for philosophy, is neither nature closed to mind nor mind isolated from nature. Psychical and physical reality are everywhere in closest alliance. The basis of all is consciousness and not externality. Physicists, with their atoms and forces, and psychologists, with their souls and faculties, have again and again fallen into the temptation of hypostatising abstractions. There is a good deal to be said for the theory adopted by the Advaita Vedānta and the Sāṃkhya that everything other than the transcendental self arises in the course of cosmic evolution.

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² See S.B. on Gauḍapāda’s Kārikā, iii. 5.

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If we accept the doctrine of the plurality of souls, for which we did not find any metaphysical justification in the examination of the Nyāya Philosophy, we now have souls on the one side and space-time-matter on the other. The characteristic feature of the latter is movement or passage, and so it is called in the Sāmkhya Philosophy prakṛti. The Sāmkhya, with its doctrine of puruṣas or souls and prakṛti or nature, marks an advance on the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika conception.

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Closer analysis reveals to us that relations, attributes and qualities are all subordinate to existents, which are of two different kinds, matter and non-matter or souls, prakṛti and puruṣa; and we may profit by the suggestion of the Ṛg-Veda, which is also found in the first chapter of Genesis, that the brooding spirit of order elicits out of an original chaos a hierarchy of living beings and the natural world. Only that can be called a substance which has existence as a whole. Nowhere in the world do we come across a whole confined to a here and a now. We cannot mark off the limits of things from one another. We have of course degrees of oneness or individuality. The highest kind of individuality we come across is that of the finite individual, but even that is not self-contained. The true substance is that which includes finite minds and the world of nature. The fundamental reality of the world is the Absolute Spirit expressed in the dissolving view of the universe, forming and transforming itself as it passes along. Experience is one continuous "passage" or interrelatedness. Space can be broken into points, time into instants, and matter into atoms; but we have seen that the universe cannot be regarded as space and time and matter, but space-time-matter, so that prakṛti, or that which changes, forms the fundamental stuff of the universe, and its fractional elements are to be looked upon not so much as things but as events.

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The categories of the Vaiśeṣika are defective, whatever standpoint we may adopt. If we take them as distinctions which have a meaning on the plane of ordinary life, then we may point to certain distinctions in common use which do not find a place in the list of categories, such as the conceptions of values and ends. If we take them as a philosophical interpretation of experience, then all the variety and change of the world can be reduced to a single concept. The finite souls and the world of nature are aspects of the continuous advance adapted to each other. The Vaiśeṣika view that the soul is another strand of the real, between which and matter there is a good deal of difference, is sound.

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If the whole nature of object-experience may be assigned to prakṛti, which is an ever-advancing growth of events, what is the place of soul in this scheme? This is the problem of theory of knowledge, and we have already seen how the Nyāya theory adopted by the Vaiśeṣika, that the individual soul has a passive mind into which, as into an empty receptacle, the world outside conveys ideas of its nature, is inadequate. The study of inanimate objects determines the whole philosophical attitude of the Vaiśeṣika. The shadow of materialism darkens the background, and souls are regarded as substances of the same nature as the atoms, unintelligent in themselves.

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Atoms and souls, space and time, are mere sounds and symbols which have no meaning apart from experience. The Vaiśeṣika makes them serve as dummies on which it could hang its theories. These are merely names for the different aspects of our experience. As we have seen in our criticism of the Nyāya, both the psychological and the physical orders are rooted in a universal consciousness which is not to be confused with the psychological consciousness. It underlies the distinction of subject and object. Until this view is accepted, the Vaiśeṣika will have no explanation for the genetic order, the objective reality and the ever-changing character of cosmic evolution with its members of plants, animals and men. To indent upon adṛṣṭa is arbitrary, and God cannot take the place of adṛṣṭa until he is transformed into an absolute Consciousness. If the unity of substance is compatible with the variety of its states, then there does not seem to be any special difficulty in the way of our envisaging the whole wealth of varied existence in the world as the qualitative aspects of a fundamental Being. The defect of the Vaiśeṣika is that it does not piece together its results into a single coherently articulated structure. It is not a philosophy in the sense implied by the famous saying of the *Republic* that he who sees things together is the true dialectician or the philosopher. A catalogue of items is not a systematic philosophy. The many-sided context of human life is ignored by the Vaiśeṣika, and its physical philosophy and moral and religious values are not worked into a unified interpretation. An atomistic pluralism is not the final answer to the intellectual demand for a rational interpretation of the universe. But we agree with the Vaiśeṣika in thinking that the refined analysis of the mere logician gives no more than a science of the possible, an abstract formalism dissociated from the real world. Philosophy may criticise but cannot cut itself loose from common sense. Common sense may not be all, but it is certainly the first condition of all fruitful philosophy. Only the method of philosophy is different from that of common sense. It tries to press as far beyond and above the facts presented to the senses as possible. Creative logic, which is the instrument of philosophic genius, seeks to ground the world in a higher principle. The same facts noticed by the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika thinkers are capable of a more satisfactory interpretation; and, as we shall see, the Sāṃkhya and the Vedānta arrive at more satisfactory philosophical constructions justifying the faith in "one God, one law, one element."

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