Nyaya Science of Thought

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

Page 11

THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT.
beings in existence, which, happily, is not the case.
It might be urged that knowledge, consciousness, or the power to know or cognize is an independent quality which, when it comes in contact with the soul, enables it to perceive and know itself and other things, but this is untenable on the ground that qualities only inhere in substances * and cannot be conceived to exist independently of concrete things. The fact is that qualities are pure mental abstractions made after observation of a number of individuals; no one has ever seen them existing by themselves.
Besides, it is permissible to ask whether these qualities be indivisible and all-pervading, or atomistic ? But if we say that they are atomistic, then the cause of abstraction is thrown over board,
* That qualities inhere in substances is a self-evident truth, for they cannot be conceived to exist by themselves. If they could lead an existence independently of substance, we should have softness, hardness, manhood and the like also existing by themselves, which would be absurd. Moreover, if qualities were capable of leading an independent existence of their own, existence also would exist separately from all other qualities. But this would make existence itself a featureless function or attribute of nothing whatsoever, on the one hand, and all the other remaining qualities simply non-existent, on the other, because existence would no longer be one of their attributes. It follows, therefore, that qualities cannot be conceived to exist apart from substances.