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LIBERATION AND ITS MEANS ....
143 "In the name of positing a means you cannot deny the end itself; for example, an eye reveals a colour and you cannot suggest that this eye reveals itself while there exists no colour. Certainly, an object has got a tangible type of form, a cognition the opposite type of form. Thus a visual cognition is of the form of a revelation, but this revelation reveals an object without revealing itself. Here what makes the revelation is a cognition, what is revealed is the object; and the revelation only requires that this cognition be produced, not also that this cognition be cognised. So, it is utterly untenable to argue that an object cannot be apprehended unless the cognition concerned is apprehended; for a cognition means the apprehension of an object and it does not mean the apprehension of this cognition itself."63 Then it is denied that a cognition cognises itself because it is of the form of an illuminating agent, the point being that nothing in the world is found to cognise itself; the suggestion that a cognition, a word, a lamp - these three things cognise themselves is rejected as follows : "Neither a word nor a lamp either cognises itself or is instrumental in cognising something without requiring the aid of certain accessories. Thus a word is cognised through an ear while it is instrumental in cognising the thing denoted only in case the convention concerned is already learnt; similarly, a lamp is visually cognised through an eye while it is instrumental in visually cognising a thing only when an eye is there to do the cognising. [True, the visual cognition of an ordinary thing requires a lamp while the visual cognition of a lamp itself requires no other lamp, but that is not to say that a lamp cognises itself.] As for a cognition, it is found only to reveal an object and not to reveal itself, for at the .time when an object is cognised the cognition concerned is not cognised."64 Then the idealist has argued that since we often recognise an object as a cognised one a cognition is cognised necessarily; Jayanta retorts that this only means that in the cases in question a cognition too is cognised and not that in every case a cognition is cognised necessarily, adding the point that unlike the Kumārilite he is not of the view that a cognition is necessarily incapable of being perceived. Lastly, Jayanta takes note of the idealist's emphasis that to posit a cognition without positing the object concerned is a "lighter' hypothesis than to posit both a cognition and the object concerned; in a nutshell, the former's counter-emphasis is that the important consideration is not whether or not a hypothesis is light
