inasmuch as, without the recollection of a former experience, it is not possible for the child to suck the mother's milk.

Pratyabhijna is thus a source of right knowledge; and it may be brought under pratyaksha; only its process is somewhat different from other kinds of pratyaksha. While in other kinds of pratyaksha the contact of the sense-organ with the object is alone sufficient, in pratyabhijnana, smriti or recollection operates as an additional factor along with the contact of the sense-organ with its object. Bhranti or illusion, for example, is indeed classed under pratyaksha, though it is produced by the sense-organ in a morbid state.

8. Present both before and after, both at the time of experience and at the time of recollection, Atman recollects the thing which has persisted in Himself in the form of a samskara or latent impression.

Recollection here means consciousness of something as having been experienced before.

On hearing the word 'recollection (smriti)' here used, and without fully understanding the meaning of the definition given above of pratyabhijna, and

thinking that the Vedantin tries to establish the identity, of Atman on the strength of pratyabhijna which is none other than mere recollection, an objector asks as follows.

9. (Question): If by pratyabhijna is meant smriti or recollection of things, then how can mere recollection be an authority as to the persistent existence of Atman?

10-11. It may be objected:--In memory (smriti) the thing (remembered) does not directly appear nor is there an actual experience of the thing; nor can they be both the thing and the experience (related to each other) like two fingers; nor is the thing an object of experience, (the thing and experience thus related together) like the stick and the man holding it;

for, then, the same thing would apply to all cases of memory. Listen now to our answer:

The objection may be explained as follows:--If Pratyabhijnana is mere memory, it cannot prove the identity of Atman as the Vedantin supposes. Now, it is held that Pratyabhijnana bears testimony to former experience of a thing. So, it is mere memory. And as memory, it cannot have the probative force of pratyaksha as to the thing itself remembered, because the thing is not present to the senses; nor as to the actual experience itself, because the actual experience passed away. It cannot, therefore, have the probative force of pratyaksha as to both the thing and experience, regarded as independent of each other as two fingers are; and much less can it prove the thing to have been an object of experience.

If memory be held as a sufficient evidence as to the experience, then the same probative force will have to be attached to the memory of a thing called up by a mere word.