But whilst with positivism this mode of expression proceeds from the notion of an _I_ that can be “read” from the play of world-events as a unity pertaining purely to the economy of thought,--a coldly contemplative point of view--with the Buddha it issues from the idea of a beginningless, burning actuality that asserts its individual tendencies regardless of the external world. Man by his nature is an eater. To seek to dispose of him as a simple spectator is to play with concepts. All that is actual by its very nature is aliment. Herewith, as regards the problem of the concept, we stand in presence of the Buddha-thought. Before I pass to it, however, I consider it incumbent upon me, with respect to the criticism of positivism, yet once more in this place to emphasise the fact that nothing is further from my desire than to engage in polemical discussion. As a physicist, Ernst Mach is in my opinion one of the most original, nay, perhaps the most original of the thinkers of our day and time. His _Mechanik_ and _Wärmelehre_ are genuine products of intellect, works of fermentative value, and in this regard rank high above the smooth classicism of an H. von Helmholtz. One only marvels the more that a mind of such calibre should be able to find pleasure in such like mental diversions.[43] When positivism says, “There is no substratum to the _I_-concept, consequently the _I_-concept is the product of fancy and ‘actually’ admits of being extended to cover the whole world,” it is unaware that between and above the two extremes--the _I_-concept as the expression of an unconditioned constant, as a soul substance, and the _I_-concept as the expression of a fancy--there is a third alternative, the actuality itself, as pointed out and taught us by the Buddha, that _concepts do not exist at all but only the conceiving_, and that the _I_-process, albeit no unconditioned constant, dwells therein, is not on that account something dissolving over the whole world, _but is something conceiving itself at every moment of its existence_, even as the flame is a thing conceiving itself at every moment of its existence. By no inductive method can the limit of a flame be defined with regard to its environment, and yet there is such a limit, because the flame at every moment of its existence limits itself. Its very existence is just this self-limitation. In the very same way no inductive method can define the limits of the _I_-process: so far the positivists are right. But this fact by no means imports what positivism understands by it, that the _I_-process can now be dilated, spread out to any extent one chooses: it only intimates that the _I_ conceives itself and _alone_ conceives itself, and therefore cannot _be conceived_ inductively. When a blow swishes down, even the most correct-thinking of positivists can tell whether it has struck him or not. He “conceives” himself at every moment.