39 
He showed that a theory built on the first proposition, 
“ Along with whatever any intelligence knows, it must, as the 
ground or condition of its knowledge, have some cognisance of 
■itself^’' can have no claims to be called demonstration, when 
the author himself is evidently uncertain about this first step. 
It is neither a theorem nor an axiom ; but a half-breed 
between the two. The author offers arguments to establish 
it, which yet he confesses not to be strict demonstration ; 
and at the same time he claims for it all the prerogatives of an 
axiom. It was shown that the two first w'ords of this leading 
proposition along with, must be rigorously interpreted, as 
contemporaneously with. If an intelligence can know a thing 
for the millionth part of a second, without being at the same 
instant cognisant of itself, this foundation will not bear the 
burden laid on it. 
In the absence of any definition of the word intelligence in 
this first proposition, and on the usual supposition that the 
lower animals have no cognisance of themselves, it may be 
contended that a bee is an intelligence of which the proposition 
is never for a moment true. And there is room for doubt 
whether it be rigorously true even of the human intelligence. 
The law of our consciousness may be that we are not capable 
of knowing two different things, self and not-self, exactly at 
one and the same time. Our intelligence may be in continual 
vibration between self and not-self. We may go through 
millions of millions of millions of such vibrations in a second. 
The duration of a wavelet of light, measured by the 600 bil- 
lions that beat upon the eye in a second, may be a vast period 
compared with that of a vibration of consciousness. Such a 
theory of human intelligence must be shown to be absurd, 
before this first proposition can claim the stringency of an 
axiom. 
The fatal absurdity of this theory of Knowing and Being 
is, that the fundamental proposition, and many others, as well 
as the conclusion, contain the term infinite. It is not “any 
