n and disjunction described above, since the
letters themselves, which are ever recognised as the same, are not
different. But as those processes of conjunction and disjunction are not
matter of perception, we cannot definitely ascertain in the letters any
differences based on those processes, and hence the apprehension of the
udatta and so on remains without a basis.--Nor should it be urged that
from the difference of the udatta and so on there results also a
difference of the letters recognised. For a difference in one matter
does not involve a difference in some other matter which in itself is
free from difference. Nobody, for instance, thinks that because the
individuals are different from each other the species also contains a
difference in itself.

The assumption of the spho/t/a is further gratuitous, because the sense
of the word may be apprehended from the letters.--But--our opponent here
objects--I do not assume the existence of the spho/t/a. I, on the
contrary, actually perceive it; for after the buddhi has been impressed
by the successive apprehension of the letters of the word, the spho/t/a
all at once presents itself as the object of cognition.--You are
mistaken, we reply. The object of the cognitional act of which you speak
is simply the letters of the word. That one comprehensive cognition
which follows upon the apprehension of the successive letters of the
word has for its object the entire aggregate of the letters constituting
the word, and not anything else. We conclude this from the circumstance
that in that final comprehensive cognition there are included those
letters only of which a definite given word consists, and not any other
letters. If that cognitional act had for its object the spho/t/a--i.e.
something different from the letters of the given word--then those
letters would be excluded from it just as much as the letters of any
other word. But as this is not the case, it follows that that final
comprehensive act of cognition is nothing but an act of remembrance
which has the letters of the word for its object.--Our opponent has
asserted above that the letters of a word being several cannot form the
object of one mental act. But there he is wrong again. The ideas which
we have of a row, for instance, or a wood or an army, or of the numbers
ten, hundred, thousand, and so on, show that also such things as
comprise several unities can become the objects of one and the same
cognitional act. The ide