________________
INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
Descartes identified external reality with extension. Extension is not identical with any of the quantitative determinations like shape, size and figure. He, however, did not regard the quantitative differences of physical things as unreal. They are the modes of matter; they are due to the action of motion on matter. He thus came to admit the reality of motion. But for him who has identified external reality with extension it was logically impossible to derive it from external reality. So, he maintains that God originally imparted motion, to matter. Motion implies change and time. So, he has to admit the reality of time. Since time, like motion, is out of place in his conceptual world view he had no option but to regard time also as a miracle, pointing to the agency of God. Time, according to him, is an infinite atomistic series of moments. Why was he led to this atomic view of time ? "In his anxiety to show that God was the continuous support of the world of flux, Descartes was driven to the atomic view of Time. He felt that if the future of the world depended solely on its antecedent state, there would be nothing for God to do, once the world had been created. Every moment Time seemed to annihilate the world; therefore, continuous creative intervention of God alone could guarantee the conformity of the future to the past."
According to Spinoza there is only one eternal universal substance 'God or Nature'. This substance possesses, among other infinite attributes, extension. Attributes appear in specific ways or modes. Motion, according to him, is the mode of extension since there can be no motion without extension. Logically we cannot deduce this mode from the substance or extension. Hence it is unreal. He seems to have been influenced by the method of geometry. This is the reason why he maintains that things eternally follow from the substance"; that causal relation is not temporal relation; that it is the relation between the constant and eternal things'.? This rules out all change and evolution and consequently makes time impossible, unwanted and unreal. Thus according to him temporal aspect of things is due to the modification of finite subjectivity. To reach truth means to escape this limitation and see things sub specie aeternitatis. In this sense time is unreal, it is the appearance which reflective knowledge eliminates. This trend could be traced back in Parmenides and Plato. 8
Descartes and Spinoza accepted only one ultimate substance and hence they had to maintain that extension (space) is one of the
