Page:The Vedanta-sutras, with the Sri-bhashya of Ramanujacharya.djvu/55

 XXXViii ANALYTICAL OUTLINE OI-' CONTENTS.

joins issue with the Naiyydyika and points out that certain material bodies are not produced by those who control or enjoy them, that certain other material bodies, when their parts are seen to be organically put together, do not stand in need of any intelligent agent to control their working, and that there is no reason shown why in the case of the world the controlling intelligent being has to be only one, and has also to be other than the individual selves whose existence is admitted on both sides. Then the argument that every produced effect implies a competent agent to produce it, and that the world is such a produced effect is criticised ; and in the course of the criticism it is distinct- ly shewn that this kind of design argument necessarily makes the world appear too much like a man-made thing and makes the Brahman Himself become too much like a human being, while there is really no impossibility in the way of the individual selves themselves satisfying the de- mands of this argument. Here a warning is given that from this it should not be understood that the Mlmdmsaka is of opinion that logic is of no use whatsoever in acquir- ing a true knowledge of the Brahman. His opinion is that logic is useful in understanding the sdstras aright, and that apart from the sdstras there is really no means by which God can be proved (pp. 267-271.). And now the Vaiscshika intervenes as against the Mlmdmsaka to shew that God is capable of being proved solely by means of the process of logical inference. The material world is made up of constituent parts ; it is inert and gross, and is nevertheless set in motion and has a definite form ; therefore it cannot but be a produced effect. To infer a producing agent from the fact of there being a produced effect is never unjustifiable not even when we do not know the producibility of the effect and the productive competency