nfinitum_. Since there can be no being that has
not capacity of producing effects, and as this capacity can
demonstrate itself only in an infinite chain, it will be impossible
to know any being or to affirm the capacity of producing effects
as the definition of existence. Moreover if all things were
momentary there would be no permanent perceiver to observe
the change, and there being nothing fixed there could hardly be
any means even of taking to any kind of inference. To this
Ratnakirtti replies that capacity (_saamarthya_) cannot be denied,
for it is demonstrated even in making the denial. The observation
of any concomitance in agreement in presence, or agreement in
absence, does not require any permanent observer, for under
certain conditions of agreement there is the knowledge of the
concomitance of agreement in presence, and in other conditions
there is the knowledge of the concomitance in absence. This
knowledge of concomitance at the succeeding moment holds within

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itself the experience of the conditions of the preceding moment,
and this alone is what we find and not any permanent observer.

The Buddhist definition of being or existence (_sattva_) is
indeed capacity, and we arrived at this when it was observed that
in all proved cases capacity was all that could be defined of
being;--seed was but the capacity of producing shoots, and
even if this capacity should require further capacity to produce
effects, the fact which has been perceived still remains, viz. that
the existence of seeds is nothing but the capacity of producing
the shoots and thus there is no vicious infinite [Footnote ref l].
Though things are momentary, yet we could have concomitance between
things only so long as their apparent forms are not different
(_atadrupaparav@rttayoreva sadhyasadhanayo@h pratyak@se@na
vyaptigraha@nat_). The vyapti or concomitance of any two things
(e.g. the fire and the smoke) is based on extreme similarity and not
on identity.

Another objection raised against the doctrine of momentariness
is this, that a cause (e.g. seed) must wait for a number of other
collocations of earth, water, etc., before it can produce the effect
(e.g. the shoots) and hence the doctrine must fail. To this Ratnakirtti
replies that the seed does not exist before and produce the
effect when joined by other collocations, but such is the special
effectiveness of a particular seed-moment, that it produces both
the collocations or condit