Page 36 - Hinduism

Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika similarly agree in their essentials and so can be treated together. The world is made of atoms. The world is created by Īśvara and is real. The souls are infinite in number. The Naiyāyikas establish Īśvara by inference. The world is composed of parts and is therefore the effect of a cause like a pot. Everything that is produced must have a producer who knows its causes and uses. So there must be a being who produced this world. He must be superior to souls whose knowledge is limited and who are bound by karma. The souls are undergoing the pleasure and pain of saṁsāra from the eternal course of karma. Some ātmans who perforrn the prescribed duties, without any object in view, simply to please God, attain power to perform Yoga by His grace, and by its means attain perpetual freedom from pain, which is mokṣa according these Schools of thought. There will be no more pleasure or pain or knowledge. So this sort of salvation is styled pāṣāṇa-mukti by others.
The true value of the Nyāya system lies in the extraordinary method of critical enquiry developed in the modern school. The modern Nyāya relegated the discussion of the problem of the ultimate entities to the background and developed into a science of correct knowledge. The discussion of the pramāṇas or means of correct knowledge acquired prominence in it. Even here inference is discussed in its minutest detail and in the most comprehensive 36