ody must therefore exist independent of the
body. It would first of all only declare that beside the objective body
perceived by the senses, there is also something subjective, which the
five senses cannot perceive. The best name for this appears to me still to
be the Vedantic term _Atman_, which I translate into "the Self" (neuter),
because our language will scarcely allow the phrase "the Self"
(masculine). "Soul" has a too tender quality to be the equivalent of
_Atman_.

This Self is something that exists for itself and not for others. While
everything that is purely corporeal only exists for us men, inasmuch as it
is perceived, the Self exists by reason of the fact that it perceives.
While the _Esse_ of all objects is a percipi, a something perceived, which
has come into knowledge, the _Esse_ of the self is a _percipere_, a
perceiving, a knowing, that is, the Self can only be thought of as
self-knowing. The Self exists even when it does not yet clearly know
itself, but it is not the real Self until it knows itself; and it requires
long and earnest thought for the Self to know or recognise itself as
different from the ego or the body. But if the Self has once come to
itself, the darkness or the phenomenal appearance which the Vedanta
philosophers called _Avidya_ (not knowing, ignorance), or also _Maya_
(appearance, or illusion), vanishes.

The origin of this ignorance, this illusion, or the world of appearance,
is a question which no human being will ever solve. There are questions
which must be set aside as simply _ultra vires_ by every reasonable
philosophy. We know that we cannot hear certain tones, cannot see certain
colours; why not then understand that we cannot comprehend certain things?
The Vedanta philosophers consider the _Avidya_ (ignorance) as
inexplicable, and this was no doubt originally implied in the name which
they gave it. Their aim was, to prove the temporal existence of such an
_Avidya_, not to discover its origin; and then in the _Vidya_, the Vedanta
philosophy, to set forth the means by which the Avidya could be destroyed.
How or when the Self came into this ignorance, _Avidya_, or _Maya_
(illusion, or the phenomenal world), the Vedanta philosophers no more
sought to explain than we seek to explain how the Self comes into the
body, the bodily senses, and the phenomenal world which they perceive. We
begin our philosophy with what is given us, that is, with a Self, that in
its embodiment knows eve