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NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
of the object itself. The mind being a material principle, it is quite possible for it to move and attain the dimension of the object of perception. Perception is the immediate knowledge in which the mental modification is non-different (abhinna) from the object and is lit up by the self's light. The immediacy of perception, however, is not due to its being produced by sense-stinulation If that were so, then inference would have been as immediate as perception, since, according to the Naiyāyıkas, the mind as an internal sense is operative in inference On the other hand, there cannot be any immediate knowledge by intuition, because it is not due to the senses The connection of perception with sense-stimulation is more accidental than essential.
That there may be immediate knowledge without any stimulation of sense is admitted by many leading philosophers of the West. Any knowledge by acquaintance, Russell 2 thinks, gives us a direct knowledge of things. “ Direct cognition,” says Ewing,8 " would be quite possible without direct perception” With regard to perception, however, it is generally held in European philosophy that it is the cognition of an object through sensations Here the process of perception begins with the action of an external object. The object produces certain modifications in the sense organ and the nervous system and, through these, gives rise to a mental image corresponding to itself. In the Advaita Vedānta the order of the process is reversed. The mind goes out through sense and reaches the object, and there becomes literally changed into the form of the object. On this view, the perplexing question of the correspondence of a mental image to the object, of which it is the image, does not at all arise. The direct apprehen
1 VP , Chapter I 2 The Problems of Philosophy, Chapter V 3 Mind, April, 1930, p 140
