and the Jains all
deny the existence of Is'vara (God). Nyaya believes that Is'vara
has fashioned this universe by his will out of the ever-existing
atoms. For every effect (e.g. a jug) must have its cause. If
this be so, then this world with all its order and arrangement
must also be due to the agency of some cause, and this cause is
Is'vara. This world is not momentary as the Buddhists suppose,
but is permanent as atoms, is also an effect so far as it is a
collocation of atoms and is made up of parts like all other individual
objects (e.g. jug, etc.), which we call effects. The world
being an effect like any other effect must have a cause like any
other effect. The objection made against this view is that such
effects as we ordinarily perceive may be said to have agents
as their causes but this manifest world with mountains, rivers,
oceans etc. is so utterly different in form from ordinary effects
that we notice every day, that the law that every effect must have
a cause cannot be said to hold good in the present case. The
answer that Nyaya gives is that the concomitance between two
things must be taken in its general aspect neglecting the specific
peculiarities of each case of observed concomitance. Thus I had
seen many cases of the concomitance of smoke with fire, and had
thence formed the notion that "wherever there is smoke there is
fire"; but if I had only observed small puffs of smoke and small
fires, could I say that only small quantities of smoke could lead
us to the inference of fire, and could I hold that therefore large
volumes of smoke from the burning of a forest should not be
sufficient reason for us to infer the existence of fire in the forest?

326

Thus our conclusion should not be that only smaller effects
are preceded by their causes, but that all effects are invariably
and unconditionally preceded by causes. This world therefore
being an effect must be preceded by a cause, and this cause is
Is'vara. This cause we cannot see, because Is'vara has no visible
body, not because he does not exist. It is sometimes said that
we see every day that shoots come out of seeds and they are
not produced by any agent. To such an objection the Nyaya
answer is that even they are created by God, for they are also
effects. That we do not see any one to fashion them is not
because there is no maker of them, but because the creator cannot
be seen. If the objector could distinctly prove that there was
no invisible m