118
What then is our neighbour—What then do we conceive to be the limits of our neighbour, I mean that whereby he, so to speak, engraves and impresses himself on us? We know nothing of him but the changes wrought in us by him,—our knowledge of him is like a hollow, unmoulded space. We impute to him the sensations which his actions arouse in us, thus giving him a false, inverted positivity. According to our knowledge of our selves, we form him into a satellite of our own system, and if he shines or grows dark to us, and we are the ultimate cause in either case, we still believe the contrary! Oh world of phantoms, in which we live! Oh world, dreamt of as full and upright, yet so perverse, topsy-turvy and void!
119
Experience and fiction.—However highly a person way develop his self-knowledge, nothing can be more imperfect than the picture embodying all the cravings that constitute his being. He can only just name the more important ones: their number and power, their flux and reflux, their mutual action and counter-action, and, above all, the laws of their subsistence will remain totally unknown to him. Hence this subsistence becomes a matter of chance: our daily experiences throw out it "but" now to the one, then to another of our cravings, and these greedily seize upon it, but the whole coming and
