piece of knowledge is the result of certain causal collocations, and as such depends upon them for its production, and hence cannot be said to rise without depending on anything else.  It is meaningless to speak of the validity of knowledge, for validity always refers to objective realization of our desires and attempts proceeding in accordance with our knowledge.  People only declare their knowledge invalid when proceeding practically in accordance with it they are disappointed.  The perception of a mirage is called invalid when proceeding in accordance with our perception we do not find anything that can serve the purposes of water (e.g. drinking, bathing).  The validity or truth of knowledge is thus the attainment by practical experience of the object and the fulfilment of all our purposes from it (arthakriyajnana or phalajnana) just as perception or knowledge represented them to the perceiver.  There is thus no self-validity of knowledge (svata@h-prama@nya), but validity is ascertained by sa@mvada or agreement with the objective facts of experience [Footnote ref l].

It is easy to see that this Nyaya objection is based on the supposition that knowledge is generated by certain objective collocations of conditions, and that knowledge so produced can

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[Footnote 1:  See Nyayamanjari, pp. 160-173.]

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only be tested by its agreement with objective facts.  But this theory of knowledge is merely an hypothesis; for it can never be experienced that knowledge is the product of any collocations; we have a perception and immediately we become aware of certain objective things; knowledge reveals to us the facts of the objective world and this is experienced by us always.  But that the objective world generates knowledge in us is only an hypothesis which can hardly be demonstrated by experience.  It is the supreme prerogative of knowledge that it reveals all other things.  It is not a phenomenon like any other phenomenon of the world.  When we say that knowledge has been produced in us by the external collocations, we just take a perverse point of view which is unwarranted by experience; knowledge only photographs the objective phenomena for us; but there is nothing to show that knowledge has been generated by these phenomena.  This is only a theory which applies the ordinary conceptions of causation to knowledge and this is evidently unwarrantable.  Knowledge is not like any other phenomena for it stands above them and interprets or illumines them all.  There can be no validity in things, for truth applies to knowledge and knowledge alone.  What we call agreement with facts by practical experience is but the agreement of previous knowledge with later knowledge; for objective facts never come to us directly, they are always taken on the evidence of knowledge, and they have no other certainty than what is bestowed