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Numerical Difference and Absolute Non-Existence
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comes out of a particular cause. It is a fact that oil is produced by pressing oil-seeds and not sands. How can the situation be met except on the hypothesis that oil depends upon oil-seeds and not upon sands? If nothing were produced, then everything would be either eternal like space that is unproduced or a fiction like a square circle. But effects belong to neither of the kinds. An explanation must be offered. The difficulty is solved by positing the dependence of the effect upon the cause. The effect is not a nonentity though it is unreal before its origination. It is not, however, absolutely unreal as a chimera. It is real in so far as it is identical with the causal substance of which it is a modification. But it is unreal also in so far as it is an unprecedented phenomenon. If this explanation be accepted, the problem of causality is solved. The truth of this explanation is proved by the reductio ad absurdum of any other theory, e.g., the theory of emergence of an absolutely pre-non-existent effect held by the Nyāya-Vaišeșika school or the theory of manifestation of an absolutely existent effect. It has been irrefutably shown by Nāgārjuna, the pattern and paragon of sceptics, that an existent effect has no necessity for a cause and a non-existent also cannot be made existent. A combination of existence and non-existence is logically incompatible and exclusion of both is rejected by the Law of Excluded Middle. Nagarjuna concludes that causation is only an appearance of which no rational explanation is possible. It is alogical in character and so cannot be real, as reality must not contradict the laws of thought which are also the laws of being.
The Jaina would agree with Nagarjuna subject to a qualification. Nāgārjuna is right in his criticism of the Sänkhya and Nyāya theories, but he has taken the formulation of these theories at their face value. He has read contradiction in the theories and his criticism is, no doubt, correct, and it is fully deserved because these philosophers have been hasty in their evaluation of the nature of reality and because also their representation is not wholly correct. These philosophers have failed to notice that existence is not exclusive of non-existence. Existence is only a part-characteristic and so also is nonexistence. The Naiyāyika errs by emphasizing one or the other as the exclusive characteristic. But the nature of reals, as has
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