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which the relation in question is supposed to exist. Now neither of them can as such be both identical with and different from the other. It would mean that. Mis both N and not-N and that N similarly is both M and not-M, which is a violation of the law of contradiction. When two things are distinct in fact, they cannot be the same. We cannot accept both sides of a contradiction to be true. But it may be said that this deficiency, if it be one, is vouched for by experience and that, since experience is our only guide, we must acquiesce in it (p. 161). Such an argument seems to the Advaitin like a refusal to think. He admits that we finally depend upon experience for determining the truth about things, but he does not therefore relinquish the right to re-examine the meaning of experience when it results in a palpable selfcontradiction and seek for a new explanation of it, if possible. The data of experience, merely because they are such, put us under no constraint to accept them under all circumstances as logical verities. Further, it may be granted for the sake of argument that there is no valid ground for doubting the reality of the content of experience as it ordinarily occurs, when there is agreement among thinkers about it. But the point in question is not one about which we find any such agreement. Even the realist Naiyayika, we know, postulates the new-fangled relation of samavaya in such cases with a view to avoid the necessity for admitting the real to be self-contradictory. Whatever view, therefore, we may hold about the verdict of experience in general, the present case at any rate is not one where it can be accepted without scrutiny. If M and N do not constitute an identity in difference directly it may be thought that they do so mediately through features or elements in them-some of which are identical and others different. Thus we may say that M and N possess one or more common features which may be represented by a and, at the same time, exhibit differences represented by x and y respectively. According to this explanation, what is identical is quite distinct from what is different; yet the entities, viz. M and N, by virtue of such features, it may be said, are identical with and, at the same time, different from each other. Such an explanation may seem to solve the difficulty,
