All this reasoning, we reply, is entirely spun out of your own fancy, without any due consideration of the power of consciousness. The fact is, that in perceiving colour and other qualities of things, we are not aware of a 'shining forth' as an attribute of those things, and as something different from consciousness; nor can the assumption of an attribute of things called 'light,' or 'shining forth,' be proved in any way, since the entire empirical world itself can be proved only through consciousness, the existence of which we both admit. Consciousness, therefore, is not something which is inferred or proved through some other act of knowledge; but while proving everything else it is proved by itself. This may be expressed in technical form as follows-- Consciousness is, with regard to its attributes and to the empirical judgments concerning it, independent of any other thing, because through its connexion with other things it is the cause of their attributes and the empirical judgments concerning them. For it is a general principle that of two things that which through its connexion with the other is the cause of the attributes of--and the empirical judgments about--the latter, is itself independent of that other as to those two points. We see e.g. that colour, through its conjunction with earth and the like, produces in them the quality of visibility, but does not itself depend for its visibility on conjunction with colour. Hence consciousness is itself the cause of its own 'shining forth,' as well as of the empirically observed shining forth of objects such as jars and the like. Consciousness is eternal and incapable of change. This self-luminous consciousness, further, is eternal, for it is not capable of any form of non-existence--whether so--called antecedent non-existence or any other form. This follows from its being self-established. For the antecedent non-existence of self-established consciousness cannot be apprehended either through consciousness or anything else. If consciousness itself gave rise to the apprehension of its own non-existence, it could not do so in so far as 'being,' for that would contradict its being; if it is, i.e. if its non-existence is not, how can it give rise to the idea of its non-existence? Nor can it do so if not being; for if consciousness itself is not, how can it furnish a proof for its own non-existence? Nor can the non-existence of consciousness be apprehended through anything else; for consciousness cannot be the object of anything else. Any instrument of knowledge proving the non-existence of consciousness, could do so only by making consciousness its object--'this is consciousness'; but consciousness, as being self-established, does not admit of that objectivation which is implied in the word 'this,' and hence its previous non-existence cannot be proved by anything lying outside itself.