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II ADITYAYA, 2 PÂDA, 28.
419
doctrine on the impossibility of external things. For if external things are admitted, they must be either atoms or aggregates of atoms such as posts and the like. But atoms cannot be comprehended under the ideas of posts and the like, it being impossible for cognition to represent (things as minute as) atoms. Nor, again, can the outward things be aggregates of atoms such as pillars and the like, because those aggregates can neither be defined as different nor as non-different from the atoms?.- In the same way we can show that the external things are not universals and so on.
Moreover, the cognitions—which are of a uniform nature only in so far as they are states of consciousness—undergo, according to their objects, successive modifications, so that there is presented to the mind now the idea of a post, now the idea of a wall, now the idea of a jar, and so on. Now this is not possible without some distinction on the part of the ideas themselves, and hence we must necessarily admit that the ideas have the same forms as their objects. But if we make this admission, from which it follows that the form of the objects is determined by the ideas, the hypothesis of the existence of external things becomes altogether gratuitous. From the fact, moreover, of our always being conscious of the act of knowledge and the object of knowledge simultaneously it follows that the two are in reality identical. When we are conscious of the one we are conscious of the other also; and that would not happen if the two were essentially distinct, as in that case there would be nothing to prevent our being conscious of one apart from the other. For this reason also we maintain that there are no outward things.
* If they are said to be different from the atoms they can no longer be considered as composed of atoms; if they are nondifferent from atoms they cannot be the cause of the mental representations of gross non-atomic bodies.
- Avayavavayavirûpo vâhyo srtho nâsti ken ma bhad gåtivyaktyadirûpas tu syâd ily âsankyâha evam iti. Gâtyâdînân vyaktyâdînâm kâtyantabhinnatve svâtantryaprasangad atyantábhinnatve tadvadevâtadbhâvâd bhinnabhinnat vasya viruddhatvad avayavâvayavibhedavag gâtivyaktyâdibhedo spi nâstîty arthah.
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