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VEDANTA-SUTRAS.
pûrvapaksha is ill-founded the siddhânta should be illfounded too;) for there is no valid reason to maintain that a man must be stupid because his elder brother was stupid. -For all these reasons the want of foundation cannot be used as an argument against reasoning.
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Against this argumentation we remark that thus also there results want of release.' For although with regard to some things reasoning is observed to be well founded, with regard to the matter in hand there will result 'want of release,' viz. of the reasoning from this very fault of illfoundedness. The true nature of the cause of the world on which final emancipation depends cannot, on account of its excessive abstruseness, even be thought of without the help of the holy texts; for, as already remarked, it cannot become the object of perception, because it does not possess qualities such as form and the like, and as it is devoid of characteristic signs, it does not lend itself to inference and the other means of right knowledge.-Or else (if we adopt another explanation of the word 'avimoksha ') all those who teach the final release of the soul are agreed that it results from perfect knowledge. Perfect knowledge has the characteristic mark of uniformity, because it depends on accomplished actually existing things; for whatever thing is permanently of one and the same nature is acknowledged to be a true or real thing, and knowledge conversant about such is called perfect knowledge; as, for instance, the knowledge embodied in the proposition,' fire is hot.' Now, it is clear that in the case of perfect knowledge a mutual conflict of men's opinions is impossible. But that cognitions founded on reasoning do conflict is generally known; for we continually observe that what one logician endeavours to establish as perfect knowledge is demolished by another, who, in his turn, is treated alike by a third. How therefore can knowledge, which is founded on reasoning, and whose object is not something permanently uniform, be perfect knowledge?-Nor can it be said that he who maintains the
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impossible, if all reasoning were sound; for then no pûrvapaksha view could be maintained.
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