[Footnote ref 460]
The Nyaya-Vais'e@sika having dismissed the doctrine of momentariness took a common-sense view of things, and held that things remain permanent until suitable collocations so arrange themselves that the thing can be destroyed. Thus the jug continues to remain a jug unless or until it is broken to pieces by the stroke of a stick. Things exist not because they can produce an impression on us, or serve my purposes either directly or through knowledge, as the Buddhists suppose, but because existence is one of their characteristics. If I or you or any other perceiver did not exist, the things would continue to exist all the same. Whether they produce any effect on us or on their surrounding environments is immaterial. Existence is the most general characteristic of things, and it is on account of this that things are testified by experience to be existing.
As the Nyaya-Vais'e@sikas depended solely on experience and on valid reasons, they dismissed the Sa@mkhya cosmology, but accepted the atomic doctrine of the four elements (_bhutas_), earth (_k@siti_), water (_ap_), fire (_tejas_), and air (_marut_). These atoms are eternal; the fifth substance (_akas'a_) is all pervasive and eternal. It is regarded as the cause of propagating sound; though all-pervading and thus in touch with the ears of all persons, it manifests sound only in the ear-drum, as it is only there that it shows itself as a sense-organ and manifests such sounds as the man deserves to hear by reason of his merit and demerit. Thus a deaf man though he has the akas'a as his sense of hearing, cannot hear on account of his demerit which impedes the faculty of that sense organ [Footnote ref 461]. In addition to these they admitted the existence of time (_kala_) as extending from the past through the present to theendless futurity before us. Had there been no time we could have no knowledge of it and there would be nothing to account for our time-notions associated with all changes. The Sa@mkhya did not admit the existence of any real time; to them the unit of kala is regarded as the time taken by an atom to traverse its own unit of space. It has no existence separate from the atoms and their movements. The appearance of kala as a separate entity is a creation of our buddhi _(buddhinirma@na) as it represents the order or mode in which the buddhi records its perceptions. But kala in Nyaya-Vais'e@sika is regarded as a substance existing by itself. In accordance with the changes of things it reveals itself as past, present, and future. Sa@mkhya regarded it as past, present, and future, as being the modes of the constitution of the things in its different manifesting stages of evolution _(adhvan)_. The astronomers regarded it as being clue to the motion of the planets. These must all be contrasted with the Nyaya-Vais'e@sika conception of kala which is regarded as an all-pervading, partless substance which appears as many in association with the changes related to it [Footnote ref 462].
The seventh substance is relative space _(dik)_. It is that substance by virtue of which things are perceived as being on the right, left, east, west, upwards and downwards; kala like dik is also one. But yet tradition has given us varieties of it in the eight directions and in the upper and lower [Footnote ref 463]. The eighth substance is the soul _(atman)_ which is all-pervading. There are separate atmans for each person; the qualities of knowledge, feelings of pleasure and pain, desire, etc. belong to _atman_. Manas (mind) is the ninth substance. It is atomic in size and the vehicle of memory; all affections of the soul such as knowing, feeling, and willing, are generated by the connection of manas with soul, the senses and the objects. It is the intermediate link which connects the soul with the senses, and thereby produces the affections of knowledge, feeling, or willing. With each single connection of soul with manas we have a separate affection of the soul, and thus our intellectual experience is conducted in a series, one coming after another and not simultaneously. Over and above all these we have Isvara. The definitionof substance consists in this, that it is independent by itself, whereas the other things such as quality (_gu@na_), action (_karma_), sameness or generality (_samanya_), speciality or specific individuality (_vis'e@sa_) and the relation of inherence (_samavaya_) cannot show themselves without the help of substance (_dravya_). Dravya is thus the place of rest (_as'raya_) on which all the others depend (_as'@rta_). Dravya, gu@na, karma, samanya, vis'e@sa, and samavaya are the six original entities of which all things in the world are made up [Footnote ref 464]. When a man through some special merit, by the cultivation of reason and a thorough knowledge of the fallacies and pitfalls in the way of right thinking, comes to know the respective characteristics and differences of the above entities, he ceases to have any passions and to work in accordance with their promptings and attains a conviction of the nature of self, and is liberated [Footnote ref 465]. The Nyaya-Vais'e@sika is a pluralistic system which neither tries to reduce the diversity of experience to any universal principle, nor dismisses patent facts of experience on the strength of the demands of the logical coherence of mere abstract thought. The entities it admits are taken directly from experience. The underlying principle is that at the root of each kind of perception there must be something to which the perception is due. It classified the percepts and concepts of experience into several ultimate types or categories (_padartha_), and held that the notion of each type was due to the presence of that entity. These types are six in number--dravya, gu@na, etc. If we take a percept "I see a red book," the book appears to be an independent entity on which rests the concept of "redness" and "oneness," and we thus call the book a substance (_dravya_); dravya is thus defined as that which has the characteristic of a dravya (_dravyatva_). So also gu@na and karma. In the subdivision of different kinds of dravya also the same principle of classification is followed. In contrasting it with Sa@mkhya or Buddhism we see that for each unit of sensation (saywhiteness) the latter would admit a corresponding real, but Nyaya-Vais'e@sika would collect "all whiteness" under the name of "the quality of white colour" which the atom possessed [Footnote ref 466]. They only regarded as a separate entity what represented an ultimate mode of thought. They did not enquire whether such notions could be regarded as the modification of some other notion or not; but whenever they found that there were some experiences which were similar and universal, they classed them as separate entities or categories.