tem cannot be upheld;
so the doctrine that ideas are different from each other; the doctrine
that everything is momentary, void, &c.; the doctrine of the distinction
of individuals and classes; the doctrine that a former idea leaves an
impression giving rise to a later idea; the doctrine of the distinction,
owing to the influence of Nescience, of the attributes of existence and
non-existence; the doctrine of bondage and release (depending on absence
and presence of right knowledge)[409].

Further, if you say that we are conscious of the idea, you must admit
that we are also conscious of the external thing. And if you rejoin that
we are conscious of the idea on its own account because it is of a
luminous nature like a lamp, while the external thing is not so; we
reply that by maintaining the idea to be illuminated by itself you make
yourself guilty of an absurdity no less than if you said that fire burns
itself. And at the same time you refuse to accept the common and
altogether rational opinion that we are conscious of the external thing
by means of the idea different from the thing! Indeed a proof of
extraordinary philosophic insight!--It cannot, moreover, be asserted in
any way that the idea apart from the thing is the object of our
consciousness; for it is absurd to speak of a thing as the object of its
own activity. Possibly you (the Bauddha) will rejoin that, if the idea
is to be apprehended by something different from it, that something also
must be apprehended by something different and so on ad infinitum. And,
moreover, you will perhaps object that as each cognition is of an
essentially illuminating nature like a lamp, the assumption of a further
cognition is uncalled for; for as they are both equally illuminating the
one cannot give light to the other.--But both these objections are
unfounded. As the idea only is apprehended, and there is consequently no
necessity to assume something to apprehend the Self which witnesses the
idea (is conscious of the idea), there results no regressus ad
infinitum. And the witnessing Self and the idea are of an essentially
different nature, and may therefore stand to each other in the relation
of knowing subject and object known. The existence of the witnessing
Self is self-proved and cannot therefore be denied.--Moreover, if you
maintain that the idea, lamplike, manifests itself without standing in
need of a further principle to illuminate it, you maintain thereby that
ideas ex