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being deprived of its immortality, since all compounded effects are liable to dissolve and disintegrate. It follows from this that the one omniscient soul cannot be a real entity, or thing in itself, if it is to be regarded as a compound of the ordinary consciousness plus an extra conscious quality.
Furthermore, the only substance which can become associated with spirit, is matter, an unconscious material which can only act as a veil to curtail knowledge, but which is otherwise quite incapable of augmenting it in the least.
We thus conclude that omniscience is the very nature of the soul-substance, not of any particular soul exclusively.
Those who deny the possibility of omniscience on the authority of certain pious rishis (saints) forget that if testimony were admitted on the point it would necessarily end by proving that which it was adduced to refute, for he who would deny the very possibility of omniscience in others would have to be omniscient himself.
NYAYA.
* The common error of materialism which imagines that musk, coffee and other similar substances actually give rise to consciousness seems to have arisen from the fact that these substances partially remove the obstacles from the path of the little gleam' with which we adjust our daily affairs. It is, however, quite inconceivable how an unconscious thing can possibly give rise to or increase the quantity of consciousness, when even the knowledge of one soul-a conscious beingcannot be tacked on to another.
C
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