22u | CR Book VIII, Chapter 4 - Reifications [1940]

itself, you lose it. The carrot becomes a word att-
ached to a congeries of sense qualities which are
tolerably constant in constant conditions, but un-
seizable as soon as the conditions vary consider-
ably. (The carrot is not (really) a carrot). (3) Aft-
er you have exhausted your intellect in your
attempt to explain the self of the carrot in
terms of what it is not, you find that the
carrot is just what it is, you regain it again.
All question and argument stops. 'No thinking,
no reflecting. Emptiness, vast emptiness. Yet the-
rein something moveth, following it's own course.'
Thinking back to the process through which he
went, he may, however, say: It is not the carrot we
thought it was, and that is why in the universe
of discourse it is named a 'carrot'. And so
with the self.