All such ideas of the existence of bare perceptions, apart from any content of experience, are based upon a misuse of the word “perception.” The infant has no “perceptions.” He “experiences” under the circumstances and antecedent conditions proper to himself. It is only we, the adult, who, looking back, can speak of the existence of bare perceptions at this stage, somewhat as, looking back, we can record of Cæsar’s Commentaries: “Written in the year so and so before Christ.” Wherever there are perceptions, a certain content of experience also is always present, were it only this, that with respect to any definite perception one has no experience at all! To separate perception from experience and then pose the question: “How can pure perceptions pass into experience?” is the same as to separate shell from kernel and then ask, “How can the kernel ever get into the shell?” The truth is this: The kernel cannot get into the shell at all; both alike are the outcome of a single process of growth. And in the selfsame way experience cannot get into the perceptions at all; both alike are the outcome of a single process of growth. We learn to experience as the flame learns to burn, the flower to blow. We can do nothing save “conceive,” lay hold of the outer world. Experiences, as imagined in vulgar thought, there are not. Such would be “concepts,” and where there are “concepts” there must be “things conceived.” Where these are, there must be identities. Where there are identities, there can be no processes. Where there are no processes, there can be no actuality. All that we call experience is, so to speak, of the nature of a parallax. Otherwise put: All our knowledge is only the expression of our ignorance. I can say of anything that I know it, only as set off against the total mass of all that I do not know. An _actual_ experience would require that I should be able to prognosticate something with _unconditioned_ exactitude. It may further be objected:-- If there are no actual experiences, how can I ever come to have this experience--that there are no experiences? For if it also is no actual experience it has no value. If, on the other hand, it is an actual experience, how is such a thing possible? The answer is:-- Through an intuitive comprehension of my own self, whereto I receive the inciting impulse from the Buddha-teaching. With this, we come to the final objection:-- “If there are no concepts, what then is that as which I conceive myself?” In plain words, we are now confronted by that pivot and pole of all thinking--What is self-consciousness? On the problem of self-consciousness, a teaching is compelled to show whether it is actual or not. For nothing in the world has sense and meaning in itself, but acquires such only through its relation to me, only from out of self-consciousness.