But, as knowledge, this comes only—things may be as I behold,
Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there are;
I myself am what I know not—ignorance which proves no bar
To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognize
What to me is pain and pleasure: this is sure, the rest—surmise.
If my fellows are or are not, what may please them and what pain,—
Mere surmise: my own experience—that is knowledge once again."A
A: La Saisiaz.
Experience, then, within which he (and every one else) acknowledges that all his knowledge is confined, yields him as certain facts—the consciousness that he is, but not what he is: the consciousness that he is pleased or pained by things about him, whose real nature is entirely hidden from him: and, as he tells us just before, the assurance that God is the thing the self perceives outside itself,
"A force