The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus c10.45

c10.45

The unconditional (अन्यथासिद्धिशून्य), 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 Nyáya would accept only in the sense of an operation analysable into molar or molecular motion (परिस्पन्द एव भौतिको व्यापारः करोत्यर्थः—अतीन्द्रियस्तु व्यापारो नास्ति—Jayanta, Mañjarí, Áhnika 1), but would emphatically reject if it is advanced in support of the notion of a mysterious causal power or efficiency (शक्ति). With the Nyáya all energy is necessarily kinetic. This is a peculiarity of the Nyáya—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, *i.e.* a re-distribution of motion, but at the same time absolutely repudiating the Sáṅkhya 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. (समुदितसकलकारकनिकरपरिस्पन्द एव—Jayanta. सामग्री कार्यं—सामग्रीकार्य्यत्वे तु कार्यमस्तु किमन्तरालवर्तिन्या शक्त्या—Jayanta, *ibid.*, Áhnika 1, शक्तिनिराकरणम् । It may be noted that the Nyáya, while repudiating transcendental power (Śakti) in the mechanism of Nature and natural causation, does not deny the existence of metaphysical conditions like merit (धर्म), which constitute a system of moral ends that fulfil themselves in and through the mechanical system and order of Nature—*vide* Jayanta, अतीन्द्रियं किमपि कारणं कल्प्यतमेव धर्म्यादि—Áhnika 1, शक्तिनिराकरणम् ।)