Nyaya Science of Thought

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

Page 49

THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT.
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hetu is the statement of the logical connection, called vyapti, advanced in proof thereof.
Illustration. There is fire in this hill (pratijna), because there is smoke on it (hetu).
draws the inference. Upanaya and nigámana, besides serving no useful purpose, are also objectionable as pure repetition of what is already stated in the pratijña and hetu; and udâharana would reduce logic to a child's play. For while it may be necessary to cite an actual instance of vyapti (logical connection) in a veetraga ka thâ (lecture to a pupil) to enable little children to familiarize themselves with the basis of inference, it is bad rhetoric to do so in the course of a visigishu-katha (logical discussion) with a clever and presumably learned opponent. And, after all udáharana only tends to establish the validity of vyapti, and may be useful in showing the necessary relationship between the sadhana and its sádhya ; it is of no real help in anumâna which pre-supposes the knowledge of this relationship.
The modern syllogism of three steps, or propositions, as they are called, is also open to objection for similar reasons. It is the culmination of a highly elaborate system of ratiocination, it is true, but it is no less true that the system of which it is the outcome is not a natural but a highly artificial one. The prac. tical value of modern logic, as a science, is to be judged from the fact that its inferential processes, though suitable, to a certain extent, for the purposes of the school-room, are never actually resorted to by men--not even by lawyers, philosophers and logicians--in their daily life, nor can they be carried out without first bending the current of thought from its natural channel, and forcing it into the artificial and rigid frame-work of an Aristotelian syllogism.
The syllogism that answers the practical requirements of life and is natural to rational mind, then, consists of two and only two stops-pratijña and hetu.