A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v2.c34.43

v2.c34.43

The Vyāsa-bhāshya helps us to a clear mental representation of the details of this process, being perhaps the finest example before Newton of the exercise of a Scientific Imagination, and as memorable as any in the whole history of thought containing as it does the theory of potentials as in a nutshell :—As the owner of many fields can irrigate, from a field which is already flooded, others of the same or a lower level, without forcing the waters thereto with his hands, and merely by making an opening in the barrier or dyke, on which the waters rush in by their own force ;—or further, as the same person cannot force these waters, or the earthy matters held in solution therein, into the roots of the rice plants, but only removes the obstructive grasses and weeds, on which the fluids of their own power enter the roots ;—such is the action of an effectuating condition ( निमित्त ) added to a sum of material causes or conditions.