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NATURE AND FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE 11 and volition in the form of an exertion (samīhā) to obtair pleasurable objects and avoid painful ones. ?
Hence knowledge may be said to be a cognitive phenomenon which is always connected with conation through the mediation of feeling In any particular act of knowledge of an object, there is a feeling of being pleased or displeased with it and an active attitude of desire or aversion which may lead to certain overt movements towards or away from the object. The Nyāya, however, does not go so far as to say that knowledge is at once a phase of cognition, feeling and conation. In cognising an object we may also cognise its pleasurable or painful character and also become conscious of certain tendencies in relation to it. But the actual feelings of pleasure and pain or the conative processes of desire, etc., take us beyond cognition. Knowledge is not a phase of feeling or the will, although it may be always connected with them It has a distinctive and self-sufficient character of its own and should not be reduced to feeling or volition.
With regard to the essential nature of knowledge we may ask Is knowledge a substance or an attribute? Is it a mode or an activity ? According to the Nyāya, knowledge is an_attribute of_the_self It is not a substance, since it cannot be the stuff or the constitutive cause of anything, nor is it the permanent substratum of certain recognised and variant properties. The Sāmkhya and the Yoga systems look upon cognition as a substantive mode or modification (vịtti) of the material principle called buddhi, as it reflects the light or consciousness of the self in it This, the Naiyāyıka contends, is unintelligible. We cannot understand how the self's consciousness, which is immaterial and intangible, can be reflected on any material substratum. We should not speak of any reflection, but rather say that knowledge or consciousness belongs naturally to buddhi itself. But this
1 NB, 111-2
