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334
VEDÂNTA-SÛTRAS.
by name and form are in ordinary language called 'existent,' the term 'non-existent' is figuratively applied to them to denote the state in which they were previously to their differentiation.
18. From reasoning and from another Vedic passage.
That the effect exists before its origination and is nondifferent from the cause, follows from reasoning as well as from a further scriptural passage.
We at first set forth the argumentation.-Ordinary experience teaches us that those who wish to produce certain effects, such as curds, or earthen jars, or golden ornaments, employ for their purpose certain determined causal substances such as milk, clay, and gold; those who wish to produce sour milk do not employ clay, nor do those who intend to make jars employ milk and so on. But, according to that doctrine which teaches that the effect is non-existent (before its actual production), all this should be possible. For if before their actual origination all effects are equally non-existent in any causal substance, why then should curds be produced from milk only and not from clay also, and jars from clay only and not from milk as well ?—Let us then maintain, the asatkâryavâdin rejoins, that there is indeed an equal non-existence of any effect in any cause, but that at the same time each causal substance has a certain capacity reaching beyond itself (atisaya) for some particular effect only and not for other effects; that, for instance, milk only, and not clay, has a certain capacity for curds; and clay only, and not milk, an analogous capacity for jars.—What, we ask in return, do you understand by that'atisaya ?' If you understand by it the antecedent condition of the effect (before its actual origination), you abandon your doctrine that the effect does not exist in the cause, and prove our doctrine according to which it does so exist. If, on the other hand, you understand by the atisaya a certain power of the cause assumed to the end of accounting for the fact that only one determined effect springs from the cause, you must admit that the power can
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