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CREATION
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which is conditional, as our consciousness of a body while grasping it. The real, as we conceive it, is distinguished solely by the test of persistence; for by this test we separate it from what we call the unreal. Between a person standing before us and the idea of such a person, we discriminate by our ability to expel the idea from consciousness and our inability, while looking at him, to expel the person from consciousness. And when in doubt as to the trustworthiness of some impression made on our eyes in the duşk, we settle the matter by observing whether the impression persists on closer inspection ; and we predicate reality if the persistence is complete. How truly persistence is what we mean by reality, is shown in the fact that when, after criticism has proved that the real as presented in perception is not the objectively real, the vague consciousness which we retain of the objectively real, is of something wbich persists absolutely, under all changes of mode, form or appearance. And the fact that we cannot form even an indefinite notion of the absolutely real, except as the absolutely persistent, implies that persistence is our ultimate test of the real, whether as existing under its unknown form or under the form known to us" (The First Principles).
In the light of the above observations of the great English philosopher, it is easy to see that the objects of senses--whether we call them ideas or bodies--are impermanent and fleeting, hence, endowed only with a sort of relative reality as compared with the absolute persistence of substance. We may, therefore, call them mayavic (illusory), by way of a figure of speech.
The error of the Idealist, on the other hand, lies in his giving undue prominence to his one-sided view of things based on a system of abstractions, and in his denial of concrete nature ; for while it is true that the universe consists of forms, i. e., bodies, which, from the point of view of the perceiving consciousness, are only sensations or ideas, it is no less true that these bodies, sensations, or ideas, differ from one another
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