"He is not qualified for meditation in whom the activities of the cognitive organs are obstructed.
"A youth of sixteen addicted to the last degree to the enjoyment of sensual pleasures,
"An old man in his dotage, how should either of these attain to emancipation?"
Some one will object: It is the nature of the personal soul to pass through a series of embodiments, and to be liberated is to be extricated from that series of embodiments; how, then, can these two mutually exclusive conditions pertain to the same bodily tenement? The objection is invalid, as unable to stand before the following dilemmatic argument:—Is this extrication, as to the nature of which all the founders of institutes are at one, to be held as cognisable or as incognisable? If it is incognisable, it is a pure chimera; if it is cognisable, we cannot dispense with life, for that which is not alive cannot be cognisant of it. Thus it is said in the Rasasiddhánta—
"The liberation of the personal soul is declared in the mercurial system, O subtile thinker.
"In the tenets of other schools which repose on a diversity of argument,
"Know that this knowledge and knowable is allowed in all sacred texts;
"One not living cannot know the knowable, and therefore there is and must be life."
And this is not to be supposed to be unprecedented, for the adherents of the doctrine of Vishṇu-svámin maintain the eternity of the body of Vishṇu half-man and half-lion. Thus it is said in the Sákára-siddhi—
"I glorify the man-lion set forth by Vishṇu-svámin,