In Asia and in Asiatic minds, there prevails an idea that knowledge can be assimilated once and for all.

That if you can obtain it, you immediately possess the knowledge of everything--the pass-key that shall unlock every door.

That is the reason of the prolonged fasting and solitary meditation of the ascetics.

They believe that by attenuating the bond between soul and body, the soul can be liberated and can temporarily identify itself with other objects, animate and inanimate, besides the especial body to which it belongs, acquiring thus a direct knowledge of those objects, and they believe that this direct knowledge remains.

Western philosophers argue that the only acquaintance a man can have with bodies external to his mind is that which he acquires by the medium of his bodily sensea--though thesa, are themselves external to his mind, in the truest sanse.