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2. If it be said--like milk or water; there also (intelligence guides).
What has been said--the Sânkhya rejoins--as to the impossibility of the Pradhâna not guided by an intelligent principle constructing this variously constituted world, is unfounded; for the Pradhâna may be supposed to act in the same way as milk and water do. Milk, when turning into sour milk, is capable of going by itself through a series of changes: it does not therefore depend on anything else. In the same way we observe that the homogeneous water discharged from the clouds spontaneously proceeds to transform itself into the various saps and juices of different plants, such as palm trees, mango trees, wood-apple trees, lime trees, tamarind trees, and so on. In the same way the Pradhâna, of whose essential nature it is to change, may, without being guided by another agent, abide in the interval
between two creations in a state of homogeneousness, and then when the time for creation comes modify itself into many various effects due to the loss of equilibrium on the part of the gunas. As has been said '(the Pradhâna acts), owing to modification, as water according to the difference of the abodes of the several gunas' (Sânkhya Kâ. I, 16). In this way the Unevolved acts independently of anything else.
To this reasoning the Sûtra replies 'there also.' Also, in the instances of milk and water, activity is not possible in the absence of an intelligent principle, for these very cases have already been referred to as proving our position. The Sûtra II, 1, 24 (where the change of milk into sour milk is instanced) meant to prove only that a being destitute of other visible instruments of action is able to produce its own special effect, but not to disprove the view of all agency presupposing an intelligent principle. That even in water and so on an intelligent principle is present is proved by scriptural texts, 'he who dwells in water' and so on.