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INFERENCE
95
bodies is posited in order to account for this swiftness, slowness etc.12 The opponent objects : "But what about the succession belonging to time itself. If that requires no other time then why the succession belonging to jar, etc. should require time? If that does require another time then why no infinite regress ?”; he is answered : “This is like asking why white colour requires no other white colour in order to make it a white colour. The point is that it is the very nature of time that it exhibits succession without requiring another time."13 Lastly it is argued that since temporal proximity and remoteness are obviously something distinct from spatial proximity and remoteness (one standing nearer might be older, one standing farther might be younger) time must be something distinct from space.lIt can easily be seen that both the views in question posit time as an independently existing substance because according to them the presence in objects of the features like succession, simultaneity, swiftness, slowness, etc. remains unaccounted for unless time is thus posited. The objection that the succession exhibited by time itself should require another time was just rejected on the ground that that would lead to an infinite regress. The same objection is once more considered in a slightly different form. Thus the opponent asks as to what is the ground for dividing time into the three phases past, present and future, his point being that if time is really one such a division should be impossible.15 Jayanta replies that there is no real division within the body of time itself but that such a division is practically attributed to time owing to a corresponding division observable somewhere else, that is, owing to a threefold division exhibited by the acts going on there.16 The opponent objects : “But an act too does not exhibit a threefold division all by itself, and if it really does then why posit time ?"'17 Jayanta replies : “No, an act is of three types according as it has produced the result due to it, is actually producing this result, or is yet to produce this result, it being called 'past' in the first case, 'present in the second, 'future in the third. And as associated with an act as thus exhibiting a threefold division time too is said to exhibit a corresponding threefold division, just as the sky, even if in itself one and impartite, is said to exhibit a multifarious inner division according as it is associated with one thing here, with another thing there."18 In this connection Jayanta answers somebody's objection that in a leaf falling from the tree what is observed is the time revealed through the past course and the time revealed through the future course but
