A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v2.c35.51

v2.c35.51

The unconditional (अन्यथासिद्धशून्य) as interpreted in this comprehensive sense is a far more fruitful conception than Mill's, and is well adapted to its work—the elimination of the irrelevant factors in the situation. In the end, the discrimination of what is necessary to complete the sum of causes, from what is dependent, collateral, secondary, superfluous or inert, (i.e. of the relevant from the irrelevant factors) must depend on the test of expenditure of energy. This test the Nyāya would accept only in the sense of an operation analysable into molar or molecular motion (परिस्पन्द एव भौतिको व्यापारः करोत्यर्थः—अतीन्द्रियस्तु व्यापारे नास्ति, Jayanta, Manjarī, A'hnika I); but would emphatically reject, if it is advanced in support of the notion of a mysterious causal power or efficiency (शक्ति). This is a peculiarity of the Nyāya—its insisting that the effect is only the sum or resultant of the operations of the different causal conditions—that these operations are kinetic, being of the nature of motion, in other words holding firmly to the view that causation is a case of expenditure of energy, in the kinetic form,—but at the same time absolutely repudiating the Sánkhya conception of power or productive efficiency as metaphysical or transcendental (अतीन्द्रिय), and finding nothing in the cause other than an unconditional invariable complement of operative conditions (कारणसामग्री) and nothing in the effect other than the consequent phenomenon which results from the joint operations of the antecedent conditions (समुदितसकलकारकनिकर परिस्पन्द एव—Jayanta—सामग्री कार्य्य—सामग्रीकार्य्यत्वे तु कार्य्य- मस्तु किमन्तरालबर्त्तिन्या शक्त्या—Jayanta, ibid, A'hnika, I, शक्तिनिराकरणम्—it may be noted that the Nyāya, while repudiating transcendental power (Sakti) in the mechanism of nature and natural causation,.