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VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
be found together? You have maintained that nondifference belongs to a thing viewed as cause and genus, and difference to the same viewed as effect and individual; and that, owing to this twofold aspect of things, nondifference and difference are not irreconcileable. But that this view also is untenable, a presentation of the question in definite alternatives will show. Do you mean to say that the difference lies in one aspect of the thing and the non-difference in the other? or that difference and nondifference belong to the thing possessing two aspects ? On the former alternative the difference belongs to the individual and the non-difference to the genus ; and this implies that there is no one thing with a double aspect. And should you say that the genus and individual together constitute one thing only, you abandon the view that it is difference of aspect which takes away the contradictoriness of difference and non-difference. We have moreover remarked already that difference in characteristics and its opposite are absolutely contradictory.-On the second alternative we have two aspects of different kind and an unknown thing supposed to be the substrate of those aspects; but this assumption of a triad of entities proves only their mutual difference of character, not their nondifference. Should you say that the non-contradictoriness of two aspects constitutes simultaneous difference and nondifference in the thing which is their substrate, we ask in return—How can two aspects which have a thing for their substrate, and thus are different from the thing, introduce into that thing a combination of two contradictory attributes (viz. difference and non-difference)? And much less even are they able to do so if they are viewed as non-different from the thing which is their substrate. If, moreover, the two aspects on the one hand, and the thing in which they inhere on the other, be admitted to be distinct entities, there will be required a further factor to bring about their difference and non-difference, and we shall thus be led into a regressus in infinitum.-Nor is it a fact that the idea of a thing inclusive of its generic character bears the character of unity, in the same way as
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