The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s13.7

v2.c40.s13.7

The essential result appears to lie in this, that the distinction of subject and object is realized, and that, with the recognition of this distinction, it is seen that, as such, the subject cannot possibly be an object of thought or knowledge. These propositions are perfectly true, if duly confined to what they assert : consciousness essentially involves the distinction of subject and object, and clearly it is impossible to make the subjective activity an object of knowledge in exactly the same sense as the content of that activity is an object of knowledge.¹ But with this doctrine we make little progress to the understanding of the world, and the theory that it was really an anticipation of the view that the thing-in-itself is unknowable is not supported by any evidence whatever. On the contrary, the assertion of the unity of the self and the denial of plurality cannot be deduced on any legitimate manner from the doctrine so far arrived at, and these theories amount to no more than the desire to arrive at the conception of some permanent and abiding thing. But the identity of the self and the absolute is based merely on the abstraction of the self as subjectivity, and that of the absolute as subjectivity, and the identity is therefore meaningless and a mere matter of words.