he analysis of knowledge. Sa@mkhya holds that our knowledge
of things are mere ideational pictures or images. External things
are indeed material, but the sense data and images of the mind,
the coming and going of which is called knowledge, are also in
some sense matter-stuff, since they are limited in their nature
like the external things. The sense-data and images come and go,
they are often the prototypes, or photographs of external things,
and as such ought to be considered as in some sense material,
but the matter of which these are composed is the subtlest.
These images of the mind could not have appeared as conscious,
if there were no separate principles of consciousness in connection
with which the whole conscious plane could be interpreted
as the experience of a person [Footnote ref 1]. We know that the
Upani@sads consider the soul or atman as pure and infinite
consciousness, distinct from the forms of knowledge, the ideas,
and the images. In our ordinary ways of mental analysis we do not
detect that beneath the forms of knowledge there is some other principle
which has no change, no form, but which is like a light which
illumines the mute, pictorial forms which the mind assumes.
The self is nothing but this light. We all speak of our "self"
but we have no mental picture of the self as we have of other
things, yet in all our knowledge we seem to know our self. The
Jains had said that the soul was veiled by karma matter, and
every act of knowledge meant only the partial removal of the
veil. Sa@mkhya says that the self cannot be found as an image
of knowledge, but that is because it is a distinct, transcendent
principle, whose real nature as such is behind or beyond the subtle
matter of knowledge. Our cognitions, so far as they are mere forms
or images, are merely compositions or complexes of subtle mind-substance,
and thus are like a sheet of painted canvas immersed
in darkness; as the canvas gets prints from outside and moves,
the pictures appear one by one before the light and arc illuminated.
So it is with our knowledge. The special characteristic
of self is that it is like a light, without which all knowledge would
be blind. Form and motion are the characteristics of matter, and

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[Footnote 1: _Tattakaumudi_ 5; _Yogavarttika_, IV. 22;
_Vijnanam@rtabha@sya_, p. 74; _Yogavarttika_ and _Tattvavais'aradi_,
I. 4, II. 6, 18, 20; _Vyasabha@sya,