It was a little while before sunset when Phralaong had achieved his splendid victory over his proud foe. At that time he was wrapped up, as it were, in the profoundest meditation. The extremities of the branches of the Bodi tree[7] fell gently over him, and, by their undulations, seemed caressing, as it were, his tsiwaran; they resembled so many beautiful nosegays of red flowers that were offered to him. At the first watch of the night Phralaong applied all the energies of his powerful mind to ascertain the laws of the causes and effects, in order to account for all that is in existence. He argued in the following manner: "Pain and all sorts of miseries do exist in this world. Why do they exist? Because there is birth. Why is there birth? Because there is conception. Now conception does take place, because there is existence, or that moral state produced by the action or influence of merits and demerits. Existence is brought in by _Upadan_, or the combining of affections calculated to cause the coming into existence. The latter has for its cause the desire. The desire is produced by sensation. The latter is caused by the contact. The contact takes place because there are the six senses. The six senses do exist, because there is name and form, that is to say, the exterior sign of the ideal being and the type of the real being. Name and form owe their existence to erroneous knowledge; the latter in its turn is produced by the imagination, which has for its cause ignorance."[8] Having followed in his mind the succession of the twelve causes and effect, and reached the last link of that chain, Phralaong said to himself: "Ignorance, or no science, is the first cause which gives rise to all the phenomena I have successively reviewed. From it springs the world and all the beings it contains. It is the cause of that universal illusion in which man and all beings are miserably lulled. By what means can this ignorance be done away with? Doubtless by knowledge and true science. By means of the light that science spreads I clearly see the unreality of all that exists, and I am freed from that illusion which makes other beings to believe that such thing exists, when, in reality, it does not exist. The imagination, or the faculty to imagine the existence of things which do not exist, is done away with. The same fate is reserved to the false knowledge resulting therefrom to the name and form, to the six senses, to contact, to sensation, to desire, to conception, to existence, to birth, and to pain or miseries." * * * * *