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II ADHYAYA, I PÂDA, 11.
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by other men; so that, on account of the diversity of men's opinions, it is impossible to accept mere reasoning as having a sure foundation. Nor can we get over this difficulty by accepting as well-founded the reasoning of some person of recognised mental eminence, may he now be Kapila or anybody else; since we observe that even men of the most undoubted mental eminence, such as Kapila, Kanada, and other founders of philosophical schools, have contradicted one another.
But (our adversary may here be supposed to say), we will fashion our reasoning otherwise, i.e. in such a manner as not to lay it open to the charge of having no proper foundation. You cannot, after all, maintain that no reasoning whatever is well-founded; for you yourself can found your assertion that reasoning has no foundation on reasoning only; your assumption being that because some arguments are seen to be devoid of foundation other arguments as belonging to the same class are likewise devoid of foundation. Moreover, if all reasoning were unfounded, the whole course of practical human life would have to come to an end. For we see that men act, with a view to obtaining pleasure and avoiding pain in the future time, on the assumption that the past, the present, and the future are uniform. Further, in the case of passages of Scripture (apparently) contradicting each other, the ascertainment of the real sense, which depends on a preliminary rcfutation of the apparent sense, can be effected only by an accurate definition of the meaning of sentences, and that involves a process of reasoning. Thus Manu also cxpresses himself: 'Perception, inference, and the sâstra according to the various traditions, this triad is to be known well by one desiring clearness in regard to right.-He who applies reasoning not contradicted by the Veda to the Veda and the (Smriti) doctrine of law, he, and no other, knows the law' (Manu Smriti XII, 105, 106). And that want of foundation', to which you object, rcally constitutes the beauty of reasoning, because it enables us to arrive at unobjectionable arguments by means of the previous refutation of objectionable arguments? (No fear that because the
I The whole style of argumentation of the Mimâmsa would be
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