This fundamental assumption of the Vai/s/eshikas we declare to be groundless because from the circumstance of the atoms having colour and other qualities there would follow the contrary of atomic minuteness and permanency, i.e. it would follow that, compared to the ultimate cause, they are gross and non-permanent.  For ordinary experience teaches that whatever things possess colour and other qualities are, compared to their cause, gross and non-permanent.  A piece of cloth, for instance, is gross compared to the threads of which it consists, and non permanent; and the threads again are non-permanent and gross compared to the filaments of which they are made up.  Therefore the atoms also which the Vai/s/eshikas admit to have colour, &c. must have causes compared to which they are gross and non-permanent.  Hence that reason also which Ka/n/ada gives for the permanence of the atoms (IV, 1, 1, ’that which exists without having a cause is permanent’) does not apply at all to the atoms because, as we have shown just now, the atoms are to be considered as having a cause.—­The second reason also which Ka/n/ada brings forward for the permanency of the atoms, viz. in IV, 1, 4, ’the special negation implied in the term non-eternal would not be possible[368]’ (if there did not exist something eternal, viz. the atoms), does not necessarily prove the permanency of the atoms; for supposing that there exists not any permanent thing, the formation of a negative compound such as ‘non-eternal’ is impossible.  Nor does the existence of the word ‘non-permanent’ absolutely presuppose the permanency of atoms; for there exists (as we Vedantins maintain) another permanent ultimate Cause, viz.  Brahman.  Nor can the existence of anything be established merely on the ground of a word commonly being used in that sense, since there is room for common use only if word and matter are well-established by some other means of right knowledge.—­The third reason also given in the Vai/s/.  Sutras (IV, 1, 5) for the permanency of the atoms (’and Nescience’) is unavailing.  For if we explain that Sutra to mean ’the non-perception of those actually existing causes whose effects are seen is Nescience,’ it would follow that the binary atomic compounds also are permanent[369].  And if we tried to escape from that difficulty by including (in the explanation of the Sutra as given above) the qualification ’there being absence of (originating) substances,’ then nothing else but the absence of a cause would furnish the reason for the permanency of the atoms, and as that reason had already been mentioned before (in IV, 1, 1) the Sutra IV, 1, 5 would be a useless restatement.—­Well, then (the Vai/s/eshika might say), let us understand by ‘Nescience’ (in the Sutra) the impossibility of conceiving a third reason of the destruction (of effects), in addition to the division of the causal substance into its parts, and the destruction of the causal substance; which impossibility involves the permanency of the atoms[370].—­There