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The same reasoning disposes of the hypothesis that it is Brahman which effects the fictitious existence of the subsequent souls by means of the avidyas abiding within the earlier souls.
And if there is assumed a beginningless flow of avidyas, it follows that there is also a beginningless flow of the condition of the souls dependent on those avidyas, and that steady uniformity of the state of the souls which is supposed to hold good up to the moment of Release could thus not be established.
But here you reason in a manifest circle: the avidyas are established on the basis of the distinction of souls, and the distinction of souls is established when the avidyas are established. Nor does the argument of the seed and sprout apply to the present question.
For in the case of seeds and plants each several seed gives rise to a different plant; while in the case under discussion you adopt the impossible procedure of establishing the several avidyas on the basis of the very souls which are assumed to be due to those avidyas.
Let us then view the matter as follows those several avidyas which are assumed for the purpose of establishing the distinction of souls bound and released, to those same avidyas the distinction of souls is due.
And if you attempt to give to the argument a somewhat different turn, by maintaining that it is the avidyas abiding in the earlier souls which fictitiously give rise to the later souls, we point out that this implies the souls being short-lived only, and moreover that each soul would have to take upon itself the consequences of deeds not its own and escape the consequences of its own deeds.
The case is analogous to that of a person dreaming: the teachers and pupils and all the other persons and things he may see in his dream are fictitiously shaped out of the avidya of the one dreaming subject. For the same reason there is no valid foundation for the assumption of many avidyas.
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