and
flowers and fruits and roots and bark. From the grass and water that is
taken by a cow are produced milk and butter, substances whose nature is
different from that of the producing causes. Substances of different
kinds when allowed to decompose in water for some time produce spirituous
liquors whose nature is quite different from that of those substances
that produce them. After the same manner, from the vital seed is produced
the body and its attributes, with the understanding, consciousness, mind,
and other possessions. Two pieces of wood, rubbed together, produce fire.
The stone called Suryakanta, coming in contact with the rays of the Sun,
produces fire. Any solid metallic substance, heated in fire, dries up
water when coming in contact with it. Similarly, the material body
produces the mind and its attributes of perception, memory, imagination,
etc. As the loadstone moves iron, similarly, the senses are controlled by
the mind.[804] Thus reason the sceptics. The sceptics, however, are in
error. For the disappearance (of only the animating force) upon the body
becoming lifeless (and not the simultaneous extinction of the body upon
the occurrence of that event) is the proof (of the truth that the body is
not the Soul but that the Soul is something separate from the body and
outlives it certainly. If, indeed, body and Soul had been the same thing,
both would have disappeared at the same instant of time. Instead of this,
the dead body may be seen for some time _after_ the occurrence of death.
Death, therefore, means the flight from the body of something that is
different from the body). The supplication of the deities by the very men
who deny the separate existence of the Soul is another good argument for
the proposition that the Soul is separate from the body or has existence
that may be independent of a gross material case. The deities to whom
these men pray are incapable of being seen or touched. They are believed
to exist in subtile forms. (Really, if a belief in deities divested of
gross material forms does no violence to their reason, why should the
existence of an immaterial Soul alone do their reason such violence)?
Another argument against the sceptic is that his proposition implies a
destruction of acts (for if body and Soul die together, the acts also of
this life would perish,--a conclusion which no man can possibly come to
if he is to explain the inequalities or condition witnessed in the
universe).[805]