By description, even though carried on to all eternity, I attain nothing but the cognizing again and again of a certain occurrence as such, even under altered conditions, and in a state of disguise. But this act of recognition has nothing whatever to do with a genuine knowledge. I may meet a man year after year on the street, recognize him in every imaginable costume, be able to describe him with the fullest detail, all without knowing the man himself. And, to adapt this similitude to the Buddha-thought: Even if some day this man of himself should make himself known and say to me, “My name is so-and-so; I am such-and-such a person,” this would still mean nothing but an extension of the process of description. Really to know and comprehend means to know the energies at work in things. These, however, can be got at only in one single case: there where the individual comprehends them, _i.e._ in himself, in consciousness. Every other kind of intercourse betwixt me and the external world is all of it, positively all, nothing but a reaction. I can describe but I cannot explain, though I set myself to it never so scientifically. Though the intercourse betwixt myself and another be never so intimate the two _I_-worlds are for ever divided, the one from the other. Self-luminous and illuminating only oneself, each goes his own way through the beginningless infinitudes--a terrible thought when grasped in all its fullness. But it is verily so: actuality _is_ terrible, and whoso fails to recognize it as such does not know it. Here it may be interposed:-- “If each single person can do naught save react to the external world after his own individual fashion, how is it ever possible to arrive at uniformity in impressions, ideas, concepts?” The answer is:-- By means of language such a thing becomes possible. Again and again language misleads us into thinking that solid bridges of thought stretch from _I_ to _I_. But when I say, “That is green,” “That is a tree,” and so forth, and another person says the same, in strict truth we both agree only as regards the form of words. Each reacts in his own individual fashion, perceives his own “green,” his own “tree.” The Buddha instructs us that this individual perception and sensation also are merely forms of the individual combustion- or alimentation-process. These, too, are nourishment, a tasting, just like that of the tongue. _We all eat out of the one dish--every one eater for himself._ “Whence, then, springs the uniformity found in our terms of speech?” The answer is:--