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the jug only indicates a term from which difference is intended to be conveyed, then that also becomes impossible, for how can we imagine that there is a term which is independent of any association of its difference from other things, and is yet a term which establishes the notion of difference?  If it is a term of difference, it cannot be independent of its relation to other things from which it is differentiated.  If its difference from the cloth is a quality of the jug, then also the old difficulty comes in, for its difference from the cloth would involve the cloth also in itself; and if the cloth is involved in the nature of the jug as its quality, then by the same manner the jug would also be the character of the cloth, and hence not difference but identity results.  Moreover, if a cloth is perceived as a character of the jug, the two will appear to be hanging one over the other, but this is never so experienced by us.  Moreover, it is difficult to ascertain if qualities have any relation with things; if they have not, then absence of relation being the same everywhere, everything might be the quality of everything.  If there is a relation between these two, then that relation would require another relation to relate itself with that relation, and that would again require another relation and that another, and so on.  Again, it may be said that when the jug, etc. are seen without reference to other things, they appear as jug, etc., but when they are viewed with reference to cloth, etc. they appear as difference.  But this cannot be so, for the perception as jug is entirely different from the perception of difference.  It should also be noted that the notion of difference is also different from the notions of both the jug and the cloth.  It is one thing to say that there are jug and cloth, and quite another thing to say that the jug is different from the cloth.  Thus a jug cannot appear as difference, though it may be viewed with reference to cloth.  The notion of a jug does not require the notions of other things for its manifestation.  Moreover, when I say the jug is different from the cloth, I never mean that difference is an entity which is the same as the jug or the cloth; what I mean is that the difference of the cloth from the jug has its limits in the jug, and not merely that the notion of cloth has a reference to jug.  This shows that difference cannot be the characteristic nature of the thing perceived.

Again, in the second alternative where difference of two

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things is defined as the absence of each thing in the other, we find that if difference in jug and cloth means that the jug is not in the cloth or that cloth is not in jug, then also the same difficulty arises; for when I say that the absence or negation of jug in the cloth is its difference from the jug, then also the residence of the absence of jug in the cloth would require that the jug also resides in the cloth, and