Again, if Isvara be the
maker, all living things should silently submit, patient beneath the
maker's power, and then what use to practise virtue? Twere equal, then,
the doing right or wrong: there should be no reward of works; the works
themselves being his making, then all things are the same with him, the
maker, but if all things are one with him, then our deeds, and we who do
them, are also self-existent. But if Isvara be uncreated, then all
things, being one with him, are uncreated. But if you say there is
another cause beside him as creator, then Isvara is not the 'end of
all'; Isvara, who ought to be inexhaustible, is not so, and therefore
all that lives may after all be uncreated--without a maker. Thus, you
see, the thought of Isvara is overthrown in this discussion; and all
such contradictory assertions should be exposed; if not, the blame is
ours. Again, if it be said self-nature is the maker, this is as faulty
as the first assertion; nor has either of the Hetuvidya sastras asserted
such a thing as this, till now. That which depends on nothing cannot as
a cause make that which is; but all things round us come from a cause,
as the plant comes from the seed; we cannot therefore say that all
things are produced by self-nature. Again, all things which exist spring
not from one nature as a cause; and yet you say self-nature is but one:
it cannot then be cause of all.
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