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PROOFS FOR THE SOUL BEING..
object caused by its previous states.” 105 This means that "as the present state of consciousness inherits its characters from the previous ones, the past in a way continues in the present, through its effect." 106 Similarly they also explain such "rudi. mentary experiences as sensation or feeling and higher forms of experience, such as judgement and inference.”107 The Buddhists believe that by accounting for continuity in the series of mental states and events, they can explain everything for which the identity of the soul has been considered necessary. But this is not correct. The successive constituents of a continuous series have to be held together in order that the series may form a continuity. Any constituent cannot do this work of holding together. This means that there must be some identical substance however refined it might be which performs its functions. Therefore, it is wrong to think that identity of self is an unnecessary notion.
It is now evident that Indian philosophers, including the Buddhists, think that we cannot adequately explain the fact of knowledge and morality without the hypothesis of a soul. So, even the Buddhist, who denied the substance-view of soul, have simply replaced it by the theory of a mind continuum and Pancha-skandha. The Cārvākas are the only exception. According to them the soul is nothing more than this conscious living body, which perishes along with the body at the time of death. They do not worry to explain knowledge beyond sense-perception and to them liberation with the sense of complete cessation of sufferings can only mean death. Hence, they do not care whether the soul exists or not. But all
105
106
Yosomitra, Abhidharma Kosa Vyākhya, ed. Woghihara, Tokyo, pp. 711-712, quoted in T. R. V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, p. 33. S. C, Chatterjee & D. M. Datta. An Introduction to Indian Philosophy (Calcutta University Press, 6th ed. 1960), p. 138. T. R. V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1955), p. 34.
107
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