The world, outside of and independent of us, exists for us by communicating itself to our consciousness. What is thus made known must needs be expressed in the language peculiar to ourselves. A book, the contents of which were offered in a language unknown to us, would for us be without meaning. Similarly, the world would be meaningless for us did it not speak to us in our own tongue; and the same language which reaches us from things, we also hear from within ourselves. But in that case, it is we ourselves who speak. The really important point is that we should correctly apprehend the transposition which occurs when we close our perception against external things and listen only to that which then speaks from within. But to do this needs this new sense. If it has not been awakened, we believe that in what is thus told us about ourselves we are hearing only about something external to us; we fancy that somewhere there is hidden something which is speaking to us in the same way as external things speak. But if we possess this new sense, then we know that these perceptions differ essentially from those relating to external things. Then we realise that this new sense does not leave what it perceives outside of itself, as the eye leaves the object it sees; but that it can take up its object wholly into itself, leaving no remainder. If I see a thing, that thing remains outside of me; if I perceive myself, then I myself enter into my perception. Whoever seeks for something more of himself than what is perceived, shows thereby that for him the real content in the perception has not come to light. Johannes Tauler (1300-1361), has expressed this truth in the apt words: “If I were a king and knew it not, then should I be no king. If I do not shine forth for myself in my own self-perception, then for myself I do not exist. But if for myself I do shine out, then I possess myself also in my perception, in my own most deeply original being. There remains no residue of myself left outside of my perception.” J. G. Fichte, in the following words, vigorously points to the difference between self-perception and every other kind of perception: “The majority of men could be more easily brought to believe themselves a lump of lava in the moon than an ‘ego.’ Whoever is not at one with himself as to this, understands no thorough-going philosophy and has need of none. Nature, whose machine he is, will guide him in all the things he has to do without any sort of added help from him. For philosophising, self-reliance is needed, and this one can only give to oneself. We ought not to want to see without the eye; but also we ought not to maintain that it is the eye which sees.”