c16p14-both
Observations such as these show us that (a) when external light strikes the retina of our eye, our inner light is stimulated to move out of the eye towards it; (b) in pressing outward, this inner light meets with a certain resistance, and the extent of this determines at what distance from the eye our visual ray comes to rest as the result of a kind of exhaustion. Just as the outer light reaches an inner boundary at our retina, so does the inner light meet with an outer boundary, set by the optical density of the medium spread out before the eye, Outer and inner light interpenetrate each other along the whole tract between these two boundaries, but normally we are not conscious of this process. We first become conscious of it where our active gaze - that is, the inner light sent forth through the eye - reaches the limit of its activity. At that point we become aware of the object of our gaze. So here we find confirmed a fact noted earlier, that consciousness - at least at its present state of evolution - arises where for some reason or other our volition conies to rest.
*