We still have to consider the relation of nature to spirit. “Nature, although it is quite inanimate, performs the office of preparing the soul for its freedom, just as it is the function of milk—of a substance having no sensation—to nourish the calf.” The Sanc’hya makes the following simile. Nature is like a _bajadere_ showing herself to the soul as to an audience; she is abused for her impudence in exposing herself too often to the rude gaze of the spectators. “But she retires when she has shown herself sufficiently; she does so because she has been seen, and the audience retires because it has seen. Nature has no further use as regards the soul, and yet the union remains a lasting one.” With the attainment of intellectual knowledge through the study of principles, the final, incontrovertible, single truth is learnt, that “I neither am, nor is anything mine, nor do I exist.” That is, the personality is still distinguished from the soul, and finally personality and self-consciousness disappear for the Indian. “Everything that comes forth in consciousness is reflected by the soul, but like an image which does not dull the crystal of the soul, and does not belong to it. In possession of this self-knowledge” (without personality) “the soul contemplates nature at its ease, thus exempt from all terrible variation, and freed from every other form and operation of the understanding, with the exception of this spiritual knowledge.” This is a mediate spiritual knowledge of the likewise spiritualized content—a knowledge without personality and consciousness. “The soul still indeed remains for some time in bodily garb, but this is only so after the same manner as the potter’s wheel, when the jar is perfected, still turns round from the effect of the previously given impulse.” The soul thus has, according to the Indians, nothing further to do with the body, and its connection therewith is therefore a superfluous one. “But when the separation of the already prepared soul from its body at length comes to pass, and nature is done with soul, the absolute and final liberation is accomplished.” Here we find the crowning moments in the Sanc’hya philosophy.