These seven peculiarities are enumerated to be the reasons why the doctrine defended by the progressive Buddhists is to be called Mahâyânism, or the doctrine of great vehicle, in contradistinction to Hînayânism, the doctrine of small vehicle. In each case, therefore, Asanga takes pains to draw the line of demarcation distinctly between the two schools of Buddhism and not between Buddhism and all other religious doctrines which existed at his time. _The Ten Essential Features of Buddhism._ The following statement of the ten essential features of Mahâyânism as presented in the _Comprehensive Treatise on Mahâyânism_, is made from a different standpoint from the preceding one, for it is the pronunciamento of the Yogâcâra school of Asanga {66} and Vasubandhu rather than that of Mahâyânism generally. This school together with the Mâdhyamika school of Nâgârjuna constitute the two divisions of Hindu Mahâyânism.[28] The points enumerated by Asanga and Vasubandhu as most essential in their system are ten. (1) It teaches an immanent existence of all things in the _Âlayavijñâna_ or All-Conserving Soul. The conception of an All-Conserving Soul, it is claimed, was suggested by Buddha in the so-called Hînayâna sûtras; but on account of its deep meaning and of the liability of its being confounded with the ego-soul conception, he did not disclose its full significance in their sûtras; but made it known only in the Mahâyâna sûtras. According to the Yogâcâra school, the Âlaya is not an universal, but an individual mind or soul, whatever we may term it, in which the “germs” of all things exist in their ideality.[29] The objective world in reality does not exist, but by dint of subjective {67} illusion that is created by ignorance, we project all these “germs” in the Âlayavijñâna to the outside world, and imagine that they are there really as they are; while the Manovijñâna (ego-consciousness) which is too a product of illusion, tenaciously clinging to the Âlayavijñâna as the real self, never abandons its egoism. The Âlayavijñâna, however, is indifferent to, and irresponsible for, all these errors on the part of the Manovijñâna.[30] (2) The Yogâcâra school distinguishes three kinds of knowledge: 1. Illusion (_parikalpita_), 2. Discriminative or Relative Knowledge (_paratantra_), and 3. Perfect Knowledge (_pariniṣpanna_). The distinction may best be illustrated by the well-known analogy of a rope and a snake. Deceived by a similarity in appearance, men frequently take a rope lying on the ground for a poisonous snake and {68} are terribly shocked on that account. But when they approach and carefully examine it, they become at once convinced of the groundlessness of this apprehension, which was the natural sequence of illusion. This may be considered to correspond to what Kant calls _Schein_.