, and yet not a meaning that can be brought into any
relation with his will.

* * * * *

A man is _wise_ only on condition of living in a world full of fools.

GENIUS AND VIRTUE.

When I think, it is the spirit of the world which is striving to
express its thought; it is nature which is trying to know and fathom
itself. It is not the thoughts of some other mind, which I am
endeavouring to trace; but it is I who transform that which exists
into something which is known and thought, and would otherwise neither
come into being nor continue in it.

In the realm of physics it was held for thousands of years to be a
fact beyond question that water was a simple and consequently an
original element. In the same way in the realm of metaphysics it
was held for a still longer period that the _ego_ was a simple and
consequently an indestructible entity. I have shown, however, that it
is composed of two heterogeneous parts, namely, the _Will_, which is
metaphysical in its character, a thing in itself, and the _knowing
subject_, which is physical and a mere phenomenon.

Let me illustrate what I mean. Take any large, massive, heavy
building: this hard, ponderous body that fills so much space exists,
I tell you, only in the soft pulp of the brain. There alone, in the
human brain, has it any being. Unless you understand this, you can go
no further.

Truly it is the world itself that is a miracle; the world of material
bodies. I looked at two of them. Both were heavy, symmetrical, and
beautiful. One was a jasper vase with golden rim and golden handles;
the other was an organism, an animal, a man. When I had sufficiently
admired their exterior, I asked my attendant genius to allow me to
examine the inside of them; and I did so. In the vase I found nothing
but the force of gravity and a certain obscure desire, which took the
form of chemical affinity. But when I entered into the other--how
shall I express my astonishment at what I saw? It is more incredible
than all the fairy tales and fables that were ever conceived.
Nevertheless, I shall try to describe it, even at the risk of finding
no credence for my tale.

In this second thing, or rather in the upper end of it, called the
head, which on its exterior side looks like anything else--a body in
space, heavy, and so on--I found no less an object than the whole
world itself, together with the whole of the space in which all of
it exists, and