we are discussing are existents and are therefore momentary.”  It cannot be said that the jug which has been chosen as an example of an existent is not momentary; for the jug is producing certain effects at the present moment; and it cannot be held that these are all identical in the past and the future or that it is producing no effect at all in the past and future, for the first is impossible, for those which are done now could not be done again in the future; the second is impossible, for if it has any capacity to

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[Footnote:  1:  See introduction to the translation of Kathavatthu (Points of Controversy) by Mrs Rhys Davids.]

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produce effects it must not cease doing so, as in that case one might as well expect that there should not be any effect even at the present moment.  Whatever has the capacity of producing anything at any time must of necessity do it.  So if it does produce at one moment and does not produce at another, this contradiction will prove the supposition that the things were different at the different moments.  If it is held that the nature of production varies at different moments, then also the thing at those two moments must be different, for a thing could not have in it two contradictory capacities.

Since the jug does not produce at the present moment the work of the past and the future moments, it cannot evidently do so, and hence is not identical with the jug in the past and in the future, for the fact that the jug has the capacity and has not the capacity as well, proves that it is not the same jug at the two moments (s’aktas’aktasvabhavataya pratik@sa@nam bheda@h).  The capacity of producing effects (arthakriyas’akti), which is but the other name of existence, is universally concomitant with momentariness (k@sa@nikatvavyapta).

The Nyaya school of philosophy objects to this view and says that the capacity of anything cannot be known until the effect produced is known, and if capacity to produce effects be regarded as existence or being, then the being or existence of the effect cannot be known, until that has produced another effect and that another ad infinitum.  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