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280 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY doctrine, especially in contrast to the Nyāya-Vaišeşika. In the latter, the material out of which the visible universe is made possesses no spontaneity of its own. Its various parts have accordingly to be brought together and also kept together by some external factor-God or karma or both. But here there is a great, advance in the conception of praksti in that it is of an organic entity. It is able to of itself. Such an entity has no need for an external lator. This is at the and shows the futility of attempts like that of Vijñāna Bhiksu to read theism into the doctrine.2 But praksti, though its conception is different from that of the NyayaVaiseșika atoms, does not evolve for itself and therefore points to sentient purusa. It is this teleology implicit in praksti that the design argument here makes use of. It serves as the point of departure from the Svabhāva-vāda with which the doctrine has much in common, and tells us by the way that spirit is the only true ultimate in the Sāńkhya-Yoga. Unlike praksti, it is not a unity of parts; nor is it non-sentient like it. So it does not in its turn refer to anything beyond itself. A fourth argument is drawn from man's longing for escape from samsära or the spiritual instinct to be free. What strives to escape must be other than what it is to escape from, viz. praksti. The puruşas are conceived as many; and various arguments are put forward in support of that view,3 such as the divergent histories of men and the differences in their endowment-physical, moral and intellectual. But such reasoning only shows the plurality of the empirical selves. In themselves, it is hard to see how the puruşas can differ from one another. There is not even a semblance of explanation here as in the Nyāya-Vaiseșika, where each self is stated to be inherently characterized by its own visesa (p. 235).
The view of causation in the system is the very reverse of that in the Nyaya-Vaiseşika. It is described as sat-kāryavāda., for the product, according to it, is supposed to be there in the material cause always in a latent form. But sat-käryavāda like asat-kārya-vāda, it must be remembered, refers SK. st. 57 * SPB. i. 92-8.
3 SK. st. 18.
