Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 73

52
TIC KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
its vehicle, the brain. To this limited extent Haeckel is undoubtedly rigit.
But does the absence of the thought or idea of 'I' in the early stages of life prove the absence of the ego itself ? We think, not. There is no thought of 'I' also in sleep, or in a fainting fit, but does its absence then entitle anyone to say that the ego itself is non-existent under those conditions ? The animals also do not refer to or speak of themselves in the first or the third person, yet are they 'a people like unto us, as the Qur'an correctly points out. It is true that an infant just beginning to lisp refers to itself in the third person, but it is no less true that no infant ever feels pleasure or pain in the third person,' or appropriates to itself the experiences of others, or transfers to them its own. When a little one lisps 'give the baby a biscuit,' it surely does not mean that the biscuit is to be given to some one other than itself. The reference to the baby,' under the circumstances, is only a delightful instance of the infantine disregard of the rules of grammar, so pleasing to the heart of every mother. Many grown-up persons, particularly those from the lower strata of society, also refer to themselves by name, but no one ever maintains that they do not feel their own existence ' in the first person.' Those who are beginning to learn a foreign tongue, likewise, make ridiculous blunders in the use of words intended to express conventional or convenient abstractions of which the pronouns form a class by themselves. The infant hears itself spoken of as 'the baby,' and, not being particularly familiar with or skilled in the use of pronouns, fails to observe the