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CHAPTER III
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causes such as the senses then this difference in degree of quality would not have existed at all. Even in the illustration of a person cited above if the person is only real and his different capacities are all illusory, then how is it that the same person is sometimes said to be father and greater than another person and sometimes smaller?
We must therefore admit that over and above the general thing, there is such a thing as particular which must be regarded as true along with the general; these particulars do not spring out of the relations with external things but are merely brought out clearly by them. That does not mean that we should not at all recognise these particulars. Now if we regard these particulars as false or illusory and eliminate each particular at every stage, there will come a time when we shall have to eliminate the substance the general thing for divested of its particulars no general thing can ever stand, can ever exist. The word Samanya signifies that the substance is uniform and one; the words uniform' and 'one' are relative terms
The fact is that both the substance and the quality are true and different from each other, but at the same time both are also identical. To say that both of them are absolutely identical is therefore quite wrong.
Here the advocates of the view of absolute, identity would perhaps argue that if every thing stands in some relation to some thing then by stretching the proposition to its logical extremity we may as well say that owing to the multiplicity of relations there is multiplicity in the thing itself.
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