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CHAPTER SEVEN
The Occult Law of Sacrifice
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Western scholars and scientific men of the modern age draw a demarcation line between animals and men, and we are told that animals are only conscious, while human beings are self conscious. Self consciousness is supposed to be the naturally inherited property of every human being - that animals have only the consciousness of feelings through sensations but that they have no consciousness of their own individual existence, while human beings, in addition to the consciousness of the external world through feelings and thoughts have also a consciousness of their own existence. This distinguishing mark of the human being is easy to understand in superficial thought but it leaves the question open, what is self-consciousness, or consciousness of the self? In fact, what is self. Materialistic science does not admit a self other than the body. Consciousness and selfconsciousness, in this view, are merely the kaleidoscopic panorama – from the psychic side – of the various elements of the living body-elements that are changing every moment, replaced by others. According to this idea, man is a bundle of bones, muscles and nerves, whose chief and perhaps only function would be to store sensations, feelings and emotions.
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