The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c11.27

c11.27

cation of this abstract conception as the Sāmkhya asserts. The existence of numerous individuals who are conscious is a totally different thing, for their number and individuality are conditioned by the possession of a different objective content in consciousness, and when this is removed there would remain nothing at all, or at the most the abstract conception of subject, which could not be a multitude of individual spirits. Had the Sāmkhya conception been that of a number of souls as opposed to spirits, no logical objection could be raised to the theory of multiplicity, but the sharp distinction of spirit and nature, and the assertion that there is no real connection between them, deprive spirit of any possible reality.