Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/326

304 of something else, namely, an idea. But of this truly astounding performance on the part of the will we need not go to trances to become astonished witness. For each one of us has experience of it, as a matter of fact, whenever he falls asleep. In lapsing into our nightly unconsciousness, it is our ideas that seem to go out directly, our will only seeming indirectly compelled to go with them. Baron Munchausen lifting himself up by his pig-tail is child's play to this self-extinction of the will, if will be in any sense the self.

V.

Having thus eliminated will from any intrinsic participation in the self except as included in the idea, we have reduced self to ideas. Of what ideas, then, is it made up? Clearly not of the simple main idea of the moment. No one ever mistook his idea of a beefsteak for himself. But one's train of thought is not wholly composed of beefsteaks or philosophy, or any other chain of single thoughts. For first it is a palpable fact of consciousness that the object of consciousness is complex. Take the