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SATYASASANA-PARIKSA
ded from asserting a logically necessary relation between their corresponding negations as negations have no independent logical relation apart from that of their opposite positives. The result will not be different even if either of the terms be given a positive interpretation. Thus if the probandum be asserted to be positive identity, it cannot be proved from negative probans, because there can be no relation between a positive and a negative term. Causality and identity of essence are recognized to be the two types of necessary relation. But these two relations are found to obtain between positive entities and not non-entities, nor between an entity and a non-entity. The same difficulty will stand in the way if the probans is supposed to stand for a positive fact. But let us see if the Buddhist can establish his position by making the probans and probandum both positive. Thus it may be interpreted that the 'necessity of being known together' means 'identity of the cognition and the probandum is identity of the two'. But this interpretation would make the inference a case of tautology because the probans will not be different from the probandum. What the Buddhist seeks to establish by this argument is that the content and the cognition are not different but identical. So 'identical cognition' is found to be the probandum and the probans is also nothing but “identical cognition'. But the Buddhist may argue that the truth of the identity of cognition is established by means of abolition of the difference between content and the cognition, because an identical cognition is incompatible with the numerical difference of contents. Thus in every cognition the content is cognized together with the cognition. And the cognition is as much a content of itself as the content is supposed to be. This necessary compresence of the contents in the same cognition is not intelligible without identity. The felt difference inust then be an illusion. The Jaina avers that the necessity of compresence of two or more contents in one cognition proves neither the identity of the contents inter se nor the identity of the contents with the cognition. Thus a substance and its qualities are always perceived together, but this identity of perception does not annul the difference of the contents, nor the difference of the cognition from them. Nor is it our conviction that when many things such as the chair and the table and the other furniture in a room are perceived together, their mutual differences are abolished. But if this association be regarded as accidental, the example of substance and quality will rebut all doubt of falsity of inference. The subjectivist himself admits that the omniscient Buddha cognizes all the different consciousness-centres (which appear as so many subjects). But he does not conclude that all the different subjective centres are really identical with the Buddha. Moreover, we do not find any logical absurdity in the supposition that things may be perceived together and yet be different from one another. Thus, for
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