The Householder's Dharma (Ratnakaranda-Sravakachara)

every moment, from the physical matter of the brain, in place of âtman soul. Prof. Bowne observes as to this* :—

“By describing the mind as a waxen tablet, and things as impressing themselves upon it, we seem to get a great insight until we think to ask where this extended tablet is, and how things stamp themselves on it, and how the perceptive act could be explained even if they did. . . . The immediate antecedents of sensation and perception are a series of nervous changes in the brain. Whatever we know of the outer world is revealed only in and through these nervous changes. But these are totally unlike the objects assumed to exist as their causes. If we might conceive the mind as in the light, and in direct contact with its objects, the imagination at least would be comforted; but when we conceive the mind as coming in contact with the outer world only in the dark chamber of the skull, and then not in contact with the objects perceived, but only with a series of nerve changes of which, moreover, it knows nothing, it is plain that the object is a long way off. All talk of pictures, impressions, etc., ceases because of the lack of all the conditions to give such figures any meaning. It is not even clear that we shall ever find our way out of the darkness into the world of light and reality again. We begin with complete trust in physics and the senses, and are forthwith led away from the object into a nervous labyrinth, where the object is entirely displaced by a set of nervous changes which are totally unlike anything but themselves. Finally, we land in the dark chamber of the skull. The object has gone completely, and knowledge has not yet appeared. Nervous signs are the raw material of all knowledge of the outer world, according to the most decided realism. But in order to pass

* Metaphysics, pp. 407-10.