sciousness of thine own being?—of thy being in so far as thou art a knowing being,—an Intelligence?
I. I do not understand thee; but help me once more, for I wished to understand thee.
Spirit. I must then demand thy whole attention, for I am here compelled to go deeper, and expatiate more widely, than ever.—What art thou?
I. To answer thy question in the most general way,—I am I, myself.
Spirit. I am well satisfied with this answer. What dost thou mean when thou sayest “I”;—what lies in this conception,—and how dost thou attain it?
I. On this point I can only make myself understood by contrast. External existence— the thing, is something out of me, the cognitive being. In my own case, I am myself this cognitive being, one with the object of my cognition. As to my consciousness of the former, there arises the question,—Since the thing cannot know itself, how can a knowledge of it arise?—how can a consciousness of the thing arise in me, since I myself am not the thing, nor any of its modes or forms, and all these modes and forms lie within the circle of its own being, and by no means in mine? How does the thing reach me? What is the tie between me, the subject, and the thing which is the object of my knowledge? But as to my consciousness of myself, there can be no such question. In this case, I have my knowledge within myself, for I am intelligence. What I am, I know because I am it; and that whereof I know immediately that I am it, that I am because I immediately know it. There is here no need of any tie between subject and object; my own nature is this tie. I am subject and object:—and this
