1From the attentive study of this equation it follows that, in the neutral state, the BEING — that is, MAN IN HIS TOTAL ACCEPTATION — is simultaneously the I and the NOT-I.
2But he is also the MANIFESTING principle and the MANIFESTED; in consequence he will oscillate, in a manner we might call pendular, between the I and the NOT-I.
3In other words: he is positive in his origin and negative in the course of the incarnation.
4This explains the duality of the points of view enunciated, and the exactness of the postulate sustained by T. P.
5Let us pass now to a second difference, of a somewhat subtler character, which we easily establish by returning to our example of the motor-car.
6The mode by which the mind recognises the impressions that reach it from all regions of the organism much resembles the mode in which the various mechanical phenomena occurring in the engine are registered on the instrument panel.
7The nervous system, like the cables and transmissions to the panel, conducts to certain regions of the cerebral cortex the signals of what occurs in the various sections of the body.
8The I, whose mediate instrument of knowledge is consciousness, perceives the various readings noted on the cerebral panel; but perceives also that this panel and its registering apparatus, connected to the nervous network, are not itself, but a marvellous mechanism placed at its disposal to control and act upon the NOT-I.
9And now a question that will allow us to establish a still subtler difference: could the engine start itself?
10We do not believe we exaggerate in affirming that it could not do so without our concurrence and consent.
11But if the engine had, like us, a brain capable of thinking, it would affirm flatly: that it was itself that pressed the bendix button.
12Such an affirmation would strike us as simply ridiculous; but if we think it over we shall be obliged to recognise that an identical affirmation is implicit in all our judgements and in the various states of mind we traverse.
13We say: I want this or that, and merely because we want it we expect it will come at once into our power.
14It happens instead that many things we desire seem reasonable to the I; and, not being so, the desire remains what it was.
15What desires and what wants may be compared with the engine; what decides and orders, with the one who sets the engine going.
16Said otherwise:
17the NOT-I is what desires and wants, and the I is that which, expressing itself in consciousness and by means of the will, satisfies or not the solicitations of the alter ego.
18In the human being, what thinks is not the brain.
19The thinker uses the brain as he uses the body and its annexed organs; together they constitute his means of expression — whence he suffers the limitations imposed by their specific passivity.
20THE SUBCONSCIOUSNESS.
21Let us now attack the problem of the subconscious.
22C. P. says that whatever is not conscious is unconscious — which is equivalent to saying that what is not light is shadow.
23But between light and shadow — we have said it already — there intervenes a region we call · 17
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.