23. 'He who despises his adversaries with such words as are destructive to his own doctrine, such a one, so to speak, wishes the dishonour of his enemy at the cost of his own life.'
After thus reproaching those ministers collectively, the Great Being, wishing to revile them once more individually, addressed that minister who denied causality in these terms:
24. 'You profess that this universe is the product of essential and inherent properties. Now, if this be true, why do you blame me? What fault is mine, if this ape died in consequence of his nature? Therefore, I have rightly killed him.
25. 'If, however, I committed a sin by killing him, it is evident that his death is produced by an (external) cause. This being so, you must either renounce your doctrine of non-causality or use here such reasoning as does not befit you.
26. 'Further, if the arrangement, colour &c. of the stalks, petals &c. of lotuses were not the effect of some cause, would they not be found always and everywhere? But this is not so, they are produced from seeds being in water &c.; where this condition is found, they appear, not where it is not found.
'This, too, I would propound to Your Worship, to consider it well.
27. 'He who denies the agency of cause by means of reasoning with arguments, does not such a one desert his own tenets[167]? On the other hand, if he is averse to the use of argument, say, what will he do with his sole tenet (not supported by argument)?
28. 'And he who, not perceiving the cause in some particular case, proclaims for this very reason, that there does not exist causality at all, will not such a one, when he learns the manifest power of causality in that case, grow angry at it and oppose it with invectives?
29. 'And if somewhere the cause is latent, why do you say with assurance, it does not exist? Though it is, it is not perceived for some other cause, as for instance the white colour of the sun's disc is not seen at sunset.