[FN#203] Go-i in Japanese, mostly used by the So-To School of Zen.  The detailed explanation is given in Go-i-ken-ketsu.

17.  Personalism of B. P. Bowne.

B. P. Bowne[FN#204] says:  They (phenomena) are not phantoms or illusions, nor are they masks of a back-lying reality which is trying to peer through them.”  “The antithesis,” he continues,[FN#205] “of phenomena and noumena rests on the fancy that there is something that rests behind phenomena which we ought to perceive but cannot, because the masking phenomena thrusts itself between the reality and us.”  Just so far we agree with Bowne, but we think he is mistaken in sharply distinguishing between body and self, saying:[FN#206] “We ourselves are invisible.  The physical organism is only an instrument for expressing and manifesting the inner life, but the living self is never seen.”  “Human form,” he argues,[FN#207] “as an object in space apart from our experience of it as the instrument and expression of personal life, would have little beauty or attraction; and when it is described in anatomical terms, there is nothing in it that we should desire it.  The secret of its beauty and its value lies in the invisible realm.”  “The same is true,” he says again, “of literature.  It does not exist in space, or in time, or in books, or in libraries . . . all that could be found there would be black marks on a white paper, and collections of these bound together in various forms, which would be all the eyes could see.  But this would not be literature, for literature has its existence only in mind and for mind as an expression of mind, and it is simply impossible and meaningless in abstraction from mind.”  “Our human history”—­he gives another illustration[FN#208]—­“never existed in space, and never could so exist.  If some visitor from Mars should come to the earth and look at all that goes on in space in connection with human beings, he would never get any hint of its real significance.  He would be confined to integrations and dissipations of matter and motion.  He could describe the masses and grouping of material things, but in all this be would get no suggestion of the inner life which gives significance to it all.  As conceivably a bird might sit on a telegraph instrument and become fully aware of the clicks of the machine without any suspicion of the existence or meaning of the message, or a dog could see all that eye can see in a book yet without any hint of its meaning, or a savage could gaze at the printed score of an opera without ever suspecting its musical import, so this supposed visitor would be absolutely cut off by an impassable gulf from the real seat and significance of human history.  The great drama of life, with its likes and dislikes, its loves and hates, its ambitions and strivings, and manifold ideas, inspirations, aspirations, is absolutely foreign to space, and could never in any way be discovered in space.  So human history has its seat in the invisible.”