Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/198

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correlate ; rather may the following beautiful passage from the Sacred Upanishad be applied to it : Id videndum non est : omnia videt ; et id audiendum non est : omnia audit ; sciendum non est : omnia scit : et intelligendum non est : omnia intelligit. Pæeter id, videns, et sciens, et audiens, et intelligens ens aliud non est.[1]

There can therefore be no knowledge of knowing, because this would imply separation of the Subject from knowing, while it nevertheless knew that knowing—which is impossible.

My answer to the objection, "I not only know, but know also that I know," would be, "Your knowing that you know only differs in words from your knowing. I know that I know means nothing more than I know, and this again, unless it is further determined, means nothing more than ego. If your knowing and your knowing that you know are two different things, just try to separate them, and first to know without knowing that you know, then to know that you know without this knowledge being at the same time knowing." No doubt, by leaving all special knowing out of the question, we may at last arrive at the proposition "I know" the last abstraction we are able to make ; but this proposition is identical with "Objects exist for me," and this again is identical with "I am Subject," in which nothing more is contained than in the bare word "I."

Now, it may still be asked how the various cognitive faculties belonging to the Subject, such as Sensibility, Understanding, Reason, are known to us, if we do not know the Subject. It is not through our knowing having become an Object for us that these faculties are known to us, for then there would not be so many conflicting judgments concerning them ; they are inferred rather, or

  1. " Oupnekhat," vol. i. p. 202.