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268
ANUGËTA.
also, do not apprehend final determination, the understanding apprehends it. On this, too, they relate this ancient story,- a dialogue, o beautiful one! between the senses and the mind.
The mind said: The nose smells not without me, the tongue does not perceive taste, the eye does not take in colour, the skin does not become aware of any (object of) touch. Without me, the ear does not in any way hear sound. I am the eternal chief among all elements'. Without me, the senses never shine, like an empty dwelling, or like fires the flames of which are extinct. Without me, all beings, like fuel half dried and half moist, fail to apprehend qualities or objects, even with the senses exerting themselves?.
The senses said : This would be true as you believe, if you, without us, enjoyed the enjoyments (derived from our objects'. If when we are extinct, (there is) pleasure and support of life, and if you enjoy enjoyments, then what you believe is true; or if when we are absorbed , and objects are standing, you enjoy objects according to their natures by the mere operation of the mind.
' Cf. Kaushitaki-upanishad, p. 93; Khandogya, p. 297; Maitri, p. 158; and Brihadaranyaka, p. 284. The passages in the last two works seem to be identical ones.
'I. e. in their respective operations.
• The implication, of course, is, as Arguna Misra says, that this is not so, as what is not perceived by the senses cannot be ube object of the mind's operations,-a proposition which reminds one of the maxim, Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu,' apparently without Leibnitz's limitation of it. Cl. Archbishop Thomson's Laws of Thought, p. 52.
• As in sleep, &c.
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