The Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha: Or, Review of the Different Systems of Hindu PhilosophyMadhava
ReligionEastern
The Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha: Or, Review of the Different Systems of Hindu Philosophy
Madhava
Philosophy, Hindu; Philosophy, Indic
Perhaps some one may ask: Why may not practical efficiency reside in
the non-fluxional (or permanent)? If so, this is wrong, as obnoxious
to the following dilemma. Has your "permanent" a power of past and
future practical efficiency during its exertion of present practical
efficiency or no? On the former alternative (if it has such power), it
cannot evacuate such past and future efficiency, because we cannot
deny that it has power, and because we infer the consequence, that
which can at any time do anything does not fail to do that at that
time, as, for instance, a complement of causes, and this entity is
thus powerful. On the latter alternative (if the permanent has no such
power of past and future agency), it will never do anything, because
practical efficiency results from power only; what at any time does
not do anything, that at that time is unable to do it, as, for
instance, a piece of stone does not produce a germ; and this entity
while exerting its present practical efficiency, does not exert its
past and future practical efficiency. Such is the contradiction.
You will perhaps rejoin: By assuming successive subsidiaries, there
is competent to the permanent entity a successive exertion of past and
future practical efficiency. If so, we would ask you to explain: Do
the subsidiaries assist the entity or not? If they do not, they are
not required; for if they do nothing, they can have nothing to do with
the successive exertion. If they do assist the thing, is this
assistance (or supplementation) other than the thing or not? If it is
other than the thing, then this adscititious (assistance) is the
cause, and the non-momentary entity is not the cause: for the effect
will then follow, by concomitance and non-concomitance, the
adventitious supplementation. Thus it has been said:
"What have rain and shine to do with the soul? Their effect
is on the skin of man;
"If the soul were like the skin, it would be non-permanent;
and if the skin were like the soul, there could be no effect
produced upon it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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