"The field of the eye is appreciable colour. Substances possessing the same, severalty and number, disjunction and conjunction, priority and posteriority, viscidity, fluidity and size, action and genus in appropriate occurrence, inherence under the same condition the eye apprehends through connexion with light and appreciable colour. "Substance having appreciable touch and appreciable touch itself are the field of the skin; also what is suitable for being seen, except colour. Here also colour is the cause of perception of substance." The gist of this is that smell and taste reveal only qualities. and their genera, whereas sight and touch reveal also substance, action and so forth. Accordingly we should understand that, when we taste a thing, there is a combination of two senses, taste and touch: an apparently reasonable view. What may be the correct doctrine as regards seeing substances, i.e., things, through connexion with light and colour, I am not prepared to state. But at any rate it is a prima facie experience that we see not only colour, but also extension, and that may be enough; moreover, a joint prerogative of sight and touch over the other senses is in this respect, I believe, conceded. The curious doctrine that colour is cause of the tactual perception of substance is one which we might be shy of mentioning. It was due to a desire for a single cause of such perception, and was connected with a view that air is known not by perception, but by inference. We need hardly mention that it is as cause and not as object of perception generally that "colour" was selected by these realists. The doctrine was criticized and rejected by the "moderns." We will not go into the physical explanations of vision, or what in the case of sight is understood by "conjunction with the eye and light," or what is stated in this connexion as to action at a distance. Sufficient has been said to show that in their treatment of perception these Indian philosophers were at least on a level with the Greeks and with the scholastics of our own middle ages. They even attained the notion that all perception and cognition were due to a connexion of intelligence with a skin, a notion, which seems to be endorsed by modern science. What is known as the "relativity" of perception in the case of such pairs "long" and "short" was also considered and by some denied,* as we may also find in modern psychological works. §3. Process and Analysis of Perception. As a practical exemplification of the stages recognized by Indians in the process of perception we may quote a particular (Jain) statement† as follows :— Originating with a seeing, which occurs immediately upon conjunction of object and subject and which takes in existence only, we have a first apprehension of a thing qualified by intermediate generic forms-this is 'notice.' "Next comes desire for the speciality of the thing noticed this is 'curiosity.' Next, ascertainment of the speciality of the object of the curiosity-this is ' apperception.' "The same, when it has attained a confirmed condition, is ' retention' or 'contemplation.' 'From curiosity 'doubt' is distinguished by being preceded thereby. "Although all these are in a way the same, they have different designations in virtue of being special develop ments. "Owing to being experienced without confusion, even when they occur in incomplete form, owing to their revealing severally unanticipated developments of the * Tattva-cintamani, Vol. I, p. 560. + Pramana-naya-tattv-ālok-ālankāra, II, 7–18. thing, and owing to their successive origination, these overpass each other. "In some cases the succession is uncbserved by reason of rapid origination." The Nyaya-Vaiseshika philosophy is usually content for its purposes to distinguish in perception two stages, which I will represent by the terms "unquestioning" (nirvikalpaka) and "definitive" (savikalpaka). The literal meanings "without alternative" and "with alternative," while indicating the nature of the distinction, are unsuitable for use, and for the second there is a synonymous term vyavasaya (apperception) which is rather literally rendered by "decision." This important discrimination will justify a rather extensive quotation* : "Immediately upon conjunction with the eye there does not arise a cognition in the form 'pot,' as a something qualified by 'potness,' by reason of the previous nonexistence of the qualification 'potness'; for the cause of awareness of a qualified cognition is cognition of a qualification. And so at first there comes to pass a cognition not penetrating to a being qualified as between pot and potness; and it is this that is the 'unquestioning.' And this not perceived. For a cognition not penetrating to a being qualified is not perception, since that presents itself as 'I cognize a pot.' Here in the self a cognition comes to light by way of being a determination [thereof], in the cognition again 'pot,' and in the pot 'potness.' That which is the determination, the same is called a 'qualification'; in the qualification the further qualification is called the delimitant of the being that qualification. A cognition having for determination the delimitant of the being of a qualification is cause of the qualificand's being qualified Now in the unquestioning a determination such as * Siddhānta-muktāvalī, 58. 'potness' is wanting; hence in that cognition a glimpsing of the qualification of the pot, as qualified by potness, is not possible. Without the determination 'potness' there can be no cognition of what is qualified as 'pot,' because of the rule that cognition of a thing other than a genus is determined by some attribute.” The upshot of this is that there is in perception a stage at which the thing is indeed apprehended, but without discrimination of its "thisness" from its "essence," as the matter is elsewhere put. At that, the unquestioning, stage it is held that the cognition is really suprasensual and not subject to the alternative of truth and falsity. But what is the point of calling such a cognition suprasensual ? What appears to be meant is not that the thing, but that the cognition is not perceived, i.e. by the mind-organ. In other words, we perceive, but do not perceive that we perceive. Furthermore, the cognition is infallible, so that error, if any, must come in, as the Epicureans held, with the προσδοξαζόμενον. At the second, or definitive, stage we qualify the object by a generic term, recognizing that the pot is a pot. According to our system this implies a thinking of the genus itself, and we have to show how this comes about. In its realism the system demands that the genus must be there, in order to be thought; accordingly it is said to be apprehended by a non-mundane contact (alaukika-sannikarsha), which is designated sāmānyalakshanā, "having the generality for mark." Here again we may indulge in a quotation : Here, if by the word 'mark' self-identity is intended, we get the meaning, 'a presence of which the self-identity is an universal.' And this is to be understood as by way of a determination in a cognition having for object the thing connected with the sense-organ. Thus, where * Siddhanta-muktāvalī, 63. conjoined with the sense-organ is smoke, and with that for object the cognition 'smoke' has come to pass, in that cognition there arises the determination 'smokeness,' and with contact qua 'smokeness' a cognition 'smoke' having for object all smokes. "Conjunction with the sense-organ is to be understood as mundane (normal), and this in the case of exterior sense-organs. In the case of the mind-organ merely the universal by way of being a determination in the cognition. is 'presence.' Hence, when by verbal communication and so forth we are made aware of some ghost, a mental awareness of all ghosts is accounted for. "Furthermore, generality means 'being common' and that is in some cases eternal, 'smokeness' and so forth, in other cases non-eternal, 'pot' and so forth. Where a particular pot is cognized as being, by conjunction, on the ground or, by inherence, in its parts, thereupon there arises a cognition of all the grounds, or of all the parts, having that pot. 6 Nor "In perception nothing is presented without a contact; and so without generality-mark' how would there be a presentation of all smokes qua smoke and of all fires qua fire: this is why 'generality-mark' is accepted. should it be asked what harm there is in non-presentation of all fires and smokes: for, inasmuch as in regard to the perceived smoke a connexion with fire has been apprehended and other smoke is not given, there is then no accounting for the doubt whether 'smoke' is overlapped by 'fire'; whereas on my view, since by 'generality-mark' all smoke is given, a doubt is possible as to whether 'smoke' at other times in other places is overlapped by 'fire.'" We are now, perhaps, in a position to seize the whole |