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VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
the contrary, we reply, things have twofold aspects, just because it is thus that they are perceived. No man, however wide he may open his eyes, is able to distinguish in an object-e. g. a jar or a cow-placed before him which part is the clay and which the jar, or which part is the generic character of the cow and which the individual cow. On the contrary, his thought finds its true expression in the following judgments : this jar is clay'; 'this cow is shorthorned.' Nor can it be maintained that he makes a distinction between the cause and genus as objects of the idea of persistence, and the effect and individual as objects of the idea of discontinuance (difference); for as a matter of fact there is no perception of these two elements in separation. A man may look ever so close at a thing placed before him, he will not be able to perceive a difference of aspect and to point out 'this is the persisting, general, element in the thing, and that the non-persistent, individual, element.' Just as an effect and an individual give rise to the idea of one thing, so the effect plus cause, and the individual plus generic character, also give rise to the idea of one thing only. This very circumstance makes it possible for us to recognise each individual thing, placed as it is among a multitude of things differing in place, time, and character.—Each thing thus being cognised as endowed with a twofold aspect, the theory of cause and effect, and generic character and individual, being absolutely different, is clearly refuted by perception.
But, an objection is raised, if on account of grammatical co-ordination and the resulting idea of oneness, the judgment
this pot is clay' is taken to express the relation of difference plus non-difference, we shall have analogously to infer from judgments such as 'I am a man,' 'I am a divine being' that the Self and the body also stand in the bhedabheda-relation; the theory of the co-existence of difference and non-difference will thus act like a fire which a man has lit on his hearth, and which in the end consumes the entire house !—This, we reply, is the baseless idea of a person who has not duly considered the true nature of co-ordination as establishing the bhedåbheda-relation. The
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