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280 Philosophy of the Rāmānuja School of Thought [ch. cedents could not be explained. Thus the doctrine of causality stands unimpeached by any of the objections brought forward by the Cārvākas.
(8) The Nature of the Senses according to Venkațanātha.
The Naiyāyikas think that the visual organ has for its material cause the eight elements, for though it cannot perceive any other sense-data it can grasp colours like a lamp; and, following a similar course of argument, they hold that the tactile organ is made up of air, the gustatory organ, of water, the smell-organ, of earth, and the auditory organ, of space-element (ākāśa). Verkațanātha's main objection is directed against viewing the senses as the specific and most important instruments of the corresponding perceptions on the ground that in the act of perception many accessories, such as the subject, object, light, sense-organ, sense-contact, absence of obstruction, and other accessories participate in such a manner that it is impossible to single out the sense-organ as being the most important instrument (karana). Even if the sense-faculties be regarded as different from the sense-organs, they may be considered as the special ways of the ego-hood (ahamkāra), and this is testified by scriptural texts. Nerely on the ground that the visual sensefaculty can perceive colours, it would be wrong to argue that this sense-faculty is made up of the same element as colour; for the visual sense-faculty is not by itself responsible for the colourperception. The special predominance of the visional organ over other accessories in colour-perception, by which its affinity with the colour element may be shown, cannot be established.
Venkața urges that the same reasons that lead to the acceptance of the five cognitive senses lead also to the admission of the five conative senses and manas (mind). The function of the cognitive senses is believed to be of a special kind by which the senses can operate only in a special manner and under special conditions, and the same applies also to the conative senses. These are as much associated with the subtle body as the cognitive senses, and the view of Yādavaprakāśa that the conative senses came into being with this body and were destroyed with its destruction is regarded as false? Manas, being a part of the evolution of prakrti, cannot be regarded as all-pervasive. The ordinary argument that that which,
i Nyāya-siddhāñjana, p. 24.
