If now, in the _objective_ comprehension of the intellect, we go back as far as we possibly can, we shall find that the necessity or the need of _knowledge in general_ arises from the multiplicity and the _separate_ existence of beings, thus from individuation. For suppose there only existed _a single_ being, such a being would have no need of knowledge: because nothing would exist which was different from it, and whose existence it would therefore have to take up into itself indirectly through knowledge, _i.e._, image and concept. It would _itself_ already be all in all, and therefore there would remain nothing for it to know, _i.e._, nothing foreign that could be apprehended as object. In the case of a multiplicity of beings, on the other hand, every individual finds itself in a condition of isolation from all the rest, and hence arises the necessity of knowledge. The nervous system, by means of which the animal individual primarily becomes conscious of itself, is bounded by a skin; yet in the brain that has attained to intellect it passes beyond this limit by means of its form of knowledge, causality, and thus there arises for it perception as a consciousness of _other_ things, as an image of beings in space and time, which change in accordance with causality. In this sense it would be more correct to say, “Only the different is known by the different,” than as Empedocles said, “Only the like is known by the like,” which was a very indefinite and ambiguous proposition; although points of view may certainly also be conceived from which it is true; as, for instance, we may observe in passing that of Helvetius when he says so beautifully and happily: “_Il n’y a que l’esprit qui sente l’esprit: c’est une corde qui ne frémit qu’à l’unison_,” which corresponds with Xenophon’s “σοφον ειναι δει τον επιγνωσομενον τον σοφον” (_sapientem esse opportet eum, qui sapientem agniturus sit_), and is a great sorrow. But now, again, from the other side we know that multiplicity of similars only becomes possible through time and space; thus through the forms of our knowledge. Space first arises in that the knowing subject sees externally; it is the manner in which the subject comprehends something as different from itself. But we also saw knowledge in general conditioned by multiplicity and difference. Thus knowledge and multiplicity, or individuation, stand and fall together, for they reciprocally condition each other. Hence it must be inferred that, beyond the phenomenon in the true being of all things, to which time and space, and consequently also multiplicity, must be foreign, there can also be no knowledge. Buddhism defines this as _Pratschna Paramita_, _i.e._, that which is beyond all knowledge (J. J. Schmidt, “On the Maha‐Jana and Pratschna Paramita”). A “knowledge of things in themselves,” in the strictest sense of the word, would accordingly be already impossible from the fact that where the thing in