Page:The Vedanta-sutras, with the Sri-bhashya of Ramanujacharya.djvu/56

 ANALYTICAL OUTLINE OF CONTENTS. XXXIX

of the agent. Both these are rightly inferred from the nature of the effect itself. Thus we arrive at God. The distri- bution of pleasure and pain to individuals in accordance with the merit and demerit .of their karmas cannot take place of itself. Hence a Person who is capable of award- ing skilfully the fruits of karmas in accordance with the various karmas themselves is also to be necessarily postu- lated. It is not right to hold that the individual selves themselves are the producing agents of the world and the distributors of the fruits of karmas, as their power and knowledge are seen to be inadequate to serve such a pur- pose, and as the inferred cause must in every way be competent to produce the observed effect. Nor is it right to maintain that this design argument proves the inferred creator of the world to be too human and to be thus devoid of the qualities of omniscience and the lordship of all things. Non-omniscience and non-lordship do not affect the producibility of things ; and if they are not found in association with the producing Creator, surely there is nothing wrong in it. This design argument does not fail even on account of the fact that God has no material body in the way in which human agents have bodies. The will of God which is based on His mind is alone the active agent in creation ; and His mind is eternal and unassociat- ed with matter. Accordingly God can be conclusively proved by logic. However, it cannot be proved that He is both the instrumental and the material cause of the world, in as much as that which forms the material cause is seen to be extremely different from that which forms the instrumental cause (pp. 271-277.).

This position of the Vaiseshika is then taken up for final disposal, and it is shewn that his design argument is defective in many ways. The world and its various parts