things is admitted to take place also without mental impressions,’ and ’mental impressions are not admitted to originate independently of the perception of external things.’—­Moreover, an impression is a kind of modification, and modifications cannot, as experience teaches, take place unless there is some substratum which is modified.  But, according to your doctrine, such a substratum of impressions does not exist, since you say that it cannot be cognised through any means of knowledge.

31.  And on account of the momentariness (of the alayavij/n/ana, it cannot be the abode of mental impressions).

If you maintain that the so-called internal cognition (alayavij/n/ana[410]) assumed by you may constitute the abode of the mental impressions, we deny that, because that cognition also being admittedly momentary, and hence non-permanent, cannot be the abode of impressions any more than the quasi-external cognitions (prav/ri/ttivij/n/ana).  For unless there exists one continuous principle equally connected with the past, the present, and the future[411], or an absolutely unchangeable (Self) which cognises everything, we are unable to account for remembrance, recognition, and so on, which are subject to mental impressions dependent on place, time, and cause.  If, on the other hand, you declare your alayavij/n/ana to be something permanent, you thereby abandon your tenet of the alayavij/n/ana as well as everything else being momentary.—­Or (to explain the Sutra in a different way) as the tenet of general momentariness is characteristic of the systems of the idealistic as well as the realistic Bauddhas, we may bring forward against the doctrines of the former all those arguments dependent on the principle of general momentariness which we have above urged against the latter.

We have thus refuted both nihilistic doctrines, viz. the doctrine which maintains the (momentary) reality of the external world, and the doctrine which asserts that ideas only exist.  The third variety of Bauddha doctrine, viz. that everything is empty (i.e. that absolutely nothing exists), is contradicted by all means of right knowledge, and therefore requires no special refutation.  For this apparent world, whose existence is guaranteed by all the means of knowledge, cannot be denied, unless some one should find out some new truth (based on which he could impugn its existence)—­for a general principle is proved by the absence of contrary instances.

32.  And on account of its general deficiency in probability.

No further special discussion is in fact required.  From whatever new points of view the Bauddha system is tested with reference to its probability, it gives way on all sides, like the walls of a well dug in sandy soil.  It has, in fact, no foundation whatever to rest upon, and hence the attempts to use it as a guide in the practical concerns of life are mere folly.—­Moreover, Buddha by propounding the three mutually contradictory systems, teaching respectively