True.  The passage does not in anyway contain a eulogisation of the knowledge of the vital air.  It could be connected with the latter only on the ground of general subject-matter (prakara/n/a)[172]; which would involve an abandonment of the direct meaning of the text in favour of prakara/n/a[173].—­Moreover, the particle but (’But in reality he is,’ &c.), whose purport is to separate (what follows) from the subject-matter of what precedes, would not agree (with the pra/n/a explanation).  The following passage also, ’But we must desire to know the True’ (VII, 16), which presupposes a new effort, shows that a new topic is going to be entered upon.—­For these reasons we have to consider the statement about the ativadin in the same light as we should consider the remark—­made in a conversation which previously had turned on the praise of those who study one Veda—­that he who studies the four Vedas is a great Brahma/n/a; a remark which we should understand to be laudatory of persons different from those who study one Veda, i.e. of those who study all the four Vedas.  Nor is there any reason to assume that a new topic can be introduced in the form of question and answer only; for that the matter propounded forms a new topic is sufficiently clear from the circumstance that no connexion can be established between it and the preceding topic.  The succession of topics in the chapter under discussion is as follows:  Narada at first listens to the instruction which Sanatkumara gives him about various matters, the last of which is Pra/n/a, and then becomes silent.  Thereupon Sanatkumara explains to him spontaneously (without being asked) that the quality of being an ativadin, if merely based on the knowledge of the vital air—­which knowledge has for its object an unreal product,—­is devoid of substance, and that he only is an ativadin who is such by means of the True.  By the term ‘the True’ there is meant the highest Brahman; for Brahman is the Real, and it is called the ‘True’ in another scriptural passage also, viz.  Taitt.  Up.  II, 1, ’The True, knowledge, infinite is Brahman.’  Narada, thus enlightened, starts a new line of enquiry (’Might I, Sir, become an ativadin by the True?’) and Sanatkumara then leads him, by a series of instrumental steps, beginning with understanding, up to the knowledge of bhuman.  We therefrom conclude that the bhuman is that very True whose explanation had been promised in addition to the (knowledge of the) vital air.  We thus see that the instruction about the bhuman is additional to the instruction about the vital air, and bhuman must therefore mean the highest Self, which is different from the vital air.  With this interpretation the initial statement, according to which the enquiry into the Self forms the general subject-matter, agrees perfectly well.  The assumption, on the other hand (made by the purvapakshin), that by the Self we have here to understand the vital air is indefensible.  For, in the first place, Self-hood does not belong