OF THE A^DAS. 
73 
sages of the Atharva-Veda and the Chandogja Upanishad. 
But this is a mistake ; for he postulates the existence of 
" that One breathing breathless by Itself," i.e., the uncon- 
ditioned existing alone by his own inherent power without the 
accidents of time and space which are the conditions of our 
life.* Does he mean that there was neither relatively ? This 
doubtless is his meaning ; and in this sense the phrase is 
perfectly true, for we can know neither " entity" nor " non- 
entity " except as they are related to one another. The 
existence of the one necessarily implies the existence of the 
other ; and hence without a knowledge of both we can know 
neither. ^ And since there was then no entity, no trace, no 
atom of what afterwards became the world, the poet asserts 
with a philosophical precision with which we are scarcely 
prepared to meet in that remote age, " there was neither 
nonentity nor entity." This meaning is confirmed by E.V., 
X. 72, 1, "In the former age of the gods, the existent sprang 
from the non-existent," i.e., whatever now visibly exists 
had at one time no existence; and by the Sat. Br., "In the 
beginning this universe was indeed non-existent," as well as 
by the Aitareya Aranyaka, " Originally this (universe) was 
indeed soul only : nothing else whatsoever existed active or 
(inactive)." In the same sense the poet declares that there 
was neither " death " nor " immortality ;" for one is the nega- 
tive of the other, and hence without a knowledge of both 
we can know neither ; and since there was no " death/' inas- 
much as there was nothing to die, there could have been no 
" immortality " or the opposite of death. 
5 So it is explained in the Satapatha Br., X. 5, 1. " In the beginning 
this universe was, as it were, and was not, as it were. Then it was only 
that mind. Wherefore it has been declared by the rishi ' there was then 
neither nonentity nor entity," for mind was, as it were, neither entity nor 
nonentity." 
^ " The judgment cannot aflSrm or deny one notion of another, except by 
uniting the two, in one indivisible act of comparison." — Sir W. Hamilton' & 
Lectures on Metaphysics, Vol. I, p. 68. 
