Note (return) — SA@NKARA'S INTRODUCTION (continued 4)

According to this latter doctrine the process, whose constituting members are the act of knowledge, the object of knowledge, and the result of knowledge405, is an altogether internal one, existing in so far only as it is connected with the mind (buddhi). Even if external things existed, that process could not take place but in connexion with the mind. If, the Bauddhas say, you ask how it is known that that entire process is internal and that no outward things exist apart from consciousness, we reply that we base our doctrine on the impossibility of external things. For if external things are admitted, they must be either atoms or aggregates of atoms such as posts and the like. But atoms cannot be comprehended under the ideas of posts and the like, it being impossible for cognition to represent (things as minute as) atoms. Nor, again, can the outward things be aggregates of atoms such as pillars and the like, because those aggregates can neither be defined as different nor as non-different from the atoms406.—In the same way we can show that the external things are not universals and so on407.