XXIII. Where is Man as a Thinking and Remembering Being?

In the act of mental conception, the consciousness of self arises. Self-consciousness—as indicated in the preceding letters—is a possession that Man has acquired by the powers of the earth-world. But these are earthly powers of a kind that remain hid from the observation of the senses. What Man thinks in earthly life is, it is true, only what comes to him by means of his senses; but the power to think it does not come to him from any of the things that he thus thinks.