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II ADHYAYA, I PÂDA, 15.
433
reality of everything apart from clay is disproved by reasoning. And if you ask whereupon that reasoning rests, we reply-on the fact that the clay only is continuous, permanent, while everything different from it is discontinuous, non-permanent. For just, as in the case of the snake-rope we observe that the continuously existing rope only-which forms the substrate of the imagined snake-is real, while the snake or cleft in the ground, which is noncontinuous, is unreal; so we conclude that it is the permanently enduring clay-material only which is real, while the non-continuous effects, such as jars and pots, are unreal. And, further, since what is real, i.e. the Self, does not perish, and what is altogether unreal, as e. g. the horn of a hare, is not perceived, we conclude that an effected thing, which on the one hand is perceived and on the other is liable to destruction, must be viewed as something to be defined neither as that which is nor as that which is not. And what is thus undefinable, is false, no less than the silver imagined in the shell, the anirvakanîyatva of which is proved by perception and sublation (see above, p. 102 ff.). - We further ask, 'Is a causal substance, such as clay, when producing its effect, in a non-modified state, or has it passed over into some special modified condition?' The former alternative cannot be allowed, because thence it would follow that the cause originates effects at all times; and the latter must equally be rejected, because the passing over of the cause into a special state would oblige us to postulate a previous passing over into a different state (to account for the latter passing over) and again a previous one, &c., so that a regressus in infinitum would result. Let it then be said that the causal substance when giving rise to the effect is indeed unchanged, but connected with a special operative cause, time and place (this connexion accounting for the origination of the effect).—But this also we cannot allow; for such connexion would be with the causal substance either as unchanged or as having entered on a changed condition; and thus the difficulties stated above would arise again.-Nor may you say that the origination of jars, gold coins, and sour milk from clay,
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