Page:The Vedanta-sutras, with the Sri-bhashya of Ramanujacharya.djvu/57

 xl ANALYTICAL OUTLINE OF CONTENTS.

are, no doubt, produced effects ; but there is really nothing in the logic given above to prove that they were creat- ed by one agent at one particular time. All the things in the world do not possess the character of being a single produced effect, and a single agent cannot be proved to be their Creator. On the score that individual souls cannot be the creators of our wonderful world, and on the score that it is inappropriate to assume many individual souls to have been agents in the act of creation, it is not right to argue that there must be only one Creator of the world. Through the highly increased influence of their adrishta, individual souls can and do produce certain particular created effects. The conceptions of the simultaneous origination of all things and the simultaneous destruction of all things do not deserve to occupy the position of proved truth ; and a single person who is capable of creating all things at once is nowhere known to exist, and cannot be logically inferred, unless logical inference can make the improbable probable and the impossible possible. And scripture also contradicts the idea that all produced things have only one producing agent. God is not subject to karma, and is not actuated by the ' qualities ' of saliva, rajas, and tamas ; He can therefore neither desire creation nor produce creation. Further, He is without a material body and is devoid of all perceivable activity ; and an agent who produces through mere desire is unperceived and is hence unin- ferrible. Consequently, the Brahman who is the Highest Person can be proved only by the sastras ; and it is not opposed to reason, as shall be shewn later on, that He is the material cause as well as the instrumental cause of the whole universe, although there are portions in it which cannot be proved to be made up of constituent parts. Thus