Martin Buber: I and Thou

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Full text of "I and Thou"

Martin"
h i: B E P

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I AND THOU

MARTIN BUBER

TRANSLATED BY

RONALD GREGOR SMITH

Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

This work in its original, German form lias already,
since its publication fourteen years ago, exercised on
the Continent an influence, quite out of proportion to
its slender size. In view of this influence alone it may
be affirmed that I and Thou will rank as one of the
epoch-making books of our generation. It has hitherto
been comparatively unknown among English-speaking
students of philosophy and theology.

I and Thou is to be understood in the context of
Buber's previous intensive study, chiefly of Jewish
mystical writings. It is not an isolated phenomenon
among his works, but represents the culmination of
the intensely religious interest that characterises them
all. It is, indeed, philosophical; but it is not an
academic work of discursive philosophy. It is mystical,
but it belongs to what Pringle-Pattison has termed the
"higher Mysticism" of real communion with God, as
distinguished from the debased < mysticism that sub-
stitutes for the real present world a world of illusory
delights, where " absorption " in the Diym^ is experi-
enced. The decrying of mysticism as a whole, fashion-
able to-day among Protestant writers, has a weighty
retort in the present work. For an indubitably real
mystical experience is here set forth, not with contempt

for the means of human expression but with finished and
delicate power. For this reason, though we might call
I and Thou a " philosophical-religious poem ", it belongs
essentially to no single specialised class of learned
work. It has a direct appeal to all those who are
interested in living religious experience rather than in
theological debates and the rise and fall of philosophical
schools. It has first and foremost to be judged on its
intrinsic merits — by the impact, that is to say, which it
makes on our actual, responsible life, as persons and as
groups, in the modern world.

This immediate value of Buber's work becomes clear
if we consider its main thesis. There is, Buber shows,
a radical difference between a man's attitude to other
men and his attitude to things. The attitude to other
men is a relation between persons, to things it is a
connexion with objects. In the personal relation one
subject — I — confronts another subject — Thou 1 ; in
the connexion with things the subject contemplates and
experiences an object. These two attitudes represent
the basic twofold situation of human life, the former
constituting the. " world of Thou ", and the latter the
"world of I*"

The content and relation of these two worlds is the
theme of 1 and Thou. The other person, the Thou 9 is
shown to be a reality — that is, it is given to me, but it is
not bounded by me: " Thou has no bounds " ; the

1 Though the second person singular pronoun has almost dis-
appeared from modern English usage, it remains in one important
Bphere — in prayer. By its retention in the English text, therefore,
far from suggesting an obscure situation, it keeps the whole thought
iii the personal and responsible sphere in which alone it is truly to be
understood.

Thou cannot be appropriated, but I am brought up
short against it. The characteristic situation is here
one of meeting : I meet the Other. In the reality of
this meeting no reduction of the / or of the Thou,
to experiencing subject and experienced object, is
possible. So long as I remain in relation with my
Thou, I cannot experience it, but can only know it
in the relation itself. " In the act of experience Thou
is far away."

The world of objects or things, on the other hand,
presupposes a single centre of consciousness, one subject,
an I which experiences, arranges, and appropriates.
This is the characteristic world of modern activity;
in it the scientist and the statesman and the economist
carry on their particular work. In it, too, men seek
to understand their relation with other men. Indeed,
it is true that even when a Thou is truly confronted it
becomes an It. Nevertheless, to speak of and to act
towards another person as if his reality consisted in
his being simply a He, that is, an It, is disloyalty to
the truth of the meeting with the Thou.

There is, however, one Thou which never becomes an
It, the " eternal Thou ", God. Though we may speak
of God in the third person, the reality of His approach
is constituted in the fulness of the relation of an / with a
Thou. In truth, God may only be " addressed, not
expressed/'

Put in another way, this primary distinction between
the two orders in which men live concerns on the one
hand the meaning of community, and on the other hand
the meaning of organisation. Community consists in
the relation of persons, organisation in the connexion

vii

between things. It is Buber's signal achievement to
have so expressed the nature of the personal that it
may now reclaim its right to be taken seriously.

In the first place, this right affects our understanding
of the characteristic modern organisations of politics
and industry. J. H. Oldham, in his pamphlet, Chwch,
Community, and State, shows clearly that the reality of
our status as persons, living in mutual personal relation,
is a controlling factor distinct from our "rights as
individuals" and our inherited racial and cultural
gifts. This basic recognition on the part of one of the
leaders of the oecumenical Church movement shows
the explicit influence of Buber's thought in the sphere
of " practical " Christianity.

In the second place, this new awareness has had far-
reaching effects on philosophical thought. Hitherto,
what we have known about the mutual relation o\
persons has been relegated in theories of knowledge tc
a position subordinate to the contemplation of the on<
subject. The investigation was conducted within ai
impersonal system, a continuum regulated by the lawi
of cause and effect. The relation of the one observing
subject to the other observing subjects within the same
closed system was not seriously considered. Buber has
given intellectual status to the problem of the relation
between persons, and has thus called in doubt the
massive monistic system within which idealist philosophy
has worked.

The direct influence of Buber on philosophical thought
is nowhere more clearly shown than in the work oi
Professor Karl Heim. His book, Glaube und Denken
the third edition of which has already appeared ii

viii

English under the title God Transcendent, shows, espe-
cially in the earlier German editions, that his investi-
gation of the problem of transcendence lies under an
almost incalculable obligation to Buber's work. I and
Thou is the treasure-house from which the philosopher
selects the gems specially valuable for himself. Thus
Heim's development of the idea of " dimensions " to
express the difference between the " J — It experience "
and the " I — Thou relation " is a reflective analysis of
Buber's main thesis that " to man the world is twofold,
in accordance with his twofold nature". With Heim's
impressive systematic elaboration of this thought it may
be said that the old monistic way of thinking has given
way before the pressure of a new conviction.

In dogmatic theology, too, the same new tendencies
are at work. Objects are in the past, but the relation of
the I to the Thou is in the present. Theology, with its
fresh insight into the significance of the present moment,
is gaining in consequence a new understanding of the
essentially personal nature of God's relation to men and
of men's relation to one another. Theology has taken
on a new note of crisis, and is rediscovering the necessity
for decision, for a responsible response to the claim
made updn us, not in the dead past or the imagined
future but now, by the living God. What Buber has
done is to state in classic form the nature of the claim
made upon us by the "transcendent". It would
seem, indeed, as if the full reality indicated by Buber
has yet to be appreciated by dogmatic theologians.
For faith is a meeting : it is not a trust in the world of
It, of creeds or other forms, which are objects, and have
their life in the past ; nor is it, on the other hand, a

reliance on the " wholly other " God ; but it is the
meeting with the eternal Thou Who is both the Other
and the Present One. If we stress God's distance from
men by asserting His Otherness alone, and do not
realise at the same time the truth of His Presence in the
relation of the Thou to the Z, we are bound in the end
to reduce the idea of Transcendence itself to a sub-
human situation, and to take refuge in a paradox,
which is not the ultimate paradox, of the impassa-
bility of the gulf between God and men.

Buber's assertion of the present moment as the real
time for faith distinguishes it from the Moment ol
Eberhard Grisebach, with whose book Gegenwart, eint
Kritische Ethik (1928), I and Thou has sometimes beea
compared. For though Grisebach has undoubtedly
found Buber's distinctive terminology highly significant
for his own inquiry, we do not find in him Buber's pre-
suppositions of the given" Thou — " the a priori oi
relation, the inborn Thou " — and the eternal Thou
which not only gives, guarantees, the human Thou U
us, but also directly addresses us. Buber's time L
"filled time", his moment a religious moment, and his
thought is rooted in the concrete situation of religious
experience.

This sketch of the manifold influence of Buber's
thought may be concluded with a reference to the work
of Dr. Friedrich Gogarten. In his Ich Olaube an den
dreieinigen Gott (I believe in the Triune God) he attempts
an investigation of the relation of faith to history.
The controlling affirmation of his thesis is the reality
of our consciousness of other selves : history for him is
constituted where two persons meet. Applying this

thought to the modern theory of history as a process
within an unbroken causal system, where facts are to
be demonstrated in the light of controlling " eternal "
values or "..interpretations " of reality, he demonstrates
convincingly the inadequacy of its abstract presup-
positions about reality. The concrete reality, for him,
as for Buber, is the situation where responsible persons
confront one another in living mutual relation.

Though the influence of Buber is thus manifest in
every fundamental sphere of human activity, it is
possible to perceive both anticipatory and parallel
influences at work. Already in the middle of the
nineteenth century Soren Kierkegaard, in his attack
on the reigning Hegelian philosophy, had shown the
limits of thought along the old lines. And in 1921
Ferdinand Ebner published a little book, Das Wort und
die Geistigen Realitdten {The Word and Spiritual
Realities), where the understanding of Kierkegaard is
no less remarkable than the parallels of thought with
Buber. But the incisiveness and penetration of Buber's
thought/ is lacking in Ebner's chaotic and fragmentary
utterances. Ebner is content to affirm and reaffirm his
conviction that in the relation between one per3on and
another there is a unique spiritual reality.

Though few of the works we have noted have yet been
translated into English, there can be little doubt that
the trend of thought in England will be along the same
or similar lines. Already, indeed, in independence, I
believe, from continental writers, Professor John
Macmurray has developed the thesis of the ultimate
reality of personal relations in its application to theories
of the State, of marriage, of family life, and of economics.

But the pioneer work of Buber mil in any event remain

The inadequacy of a translation to do more than hint

at the power of the original is specially noticeable with

a poetical *work of this kind. Footnotes might have

helped to explain a word or two, or indicate nuances of

the German which the English has lost ; but, though

the word might have been explained, the impact .of the

argument would have been dissipated rather than

strengthened. The text stands therefore without any

commentary. To the reader who finds the meaning

obscure at a first reading we may only say that I and

Thou is indeed a -poem. Hence it must be read more

than once, and its. total effect allowed to work on the'

mind ; the obscurities of one part (so far as they are

real obscurities, and not the effect, as they must often

be, of poor translation) will then be illumined by the

brightness of another part. For the argument is not

as it were horizontal, but spiral ;• it mounts, and gathers

within itself the aphoristic and pregnant utterances of

the earlier part.

I have to thank many friends and helpers for advice
given at various points, in particular Frau Dr. Elisabeth
Botten, of Saanen, Switzerland, who repaired a little
of the havoc I wrought at points with the original text,
and most of all Dr. Buber himself, whose courteous and
encouraging help lightened my task considerably.

B. G. S.
Edinburgh,
February 1937.

So, waiting, I have won from you the end:
God's presence in each element.

Goethe.

PART ONE

To man the world is twofold, in accordance with, his
twofold attitude.

The attitude of man is twofold, in accordance with
the twofold nature of the primary words which he speaks.

The primary words are not isolated words, but
combined words.

The one primary word is the combination I-Thou.

The other primary word is the combination I-It;
wherein, without a change in the primary word, one
of the words He and She can replace It.

Hence the I of ipan is also twofold.

For the I of the primary word I-Thou is a different
I from that of the primary word I-It.

Primary words do not signify things, but they intimate
relations.

Primary words do not describe something that
might exist independently of them, but being spoken
they bring about existence.

Primary words are spoken from the being.

If Thou is said, the I of the combination I-Thou is
said along with it.

If It is said, the I of the combination I-It is said along
with it.

The primary word I-Thou can only be spoken with
the whole being.

The primary word I-It can never be spoken with the
whole being.

•
3

There is no I taken in itself, but only the I of the
primary word I-Thou and the I of the primary word
I-ft.

When a man says I he refers to one or other of these.
The I to which he refers is present when he says L
Further, when he says Thou or It, the I of one of the
two primary words is present.

The existence of I and the speaking of I are one and the
same thing.

When a primary word is spoken the speaker enters
the word and takes his stand in it.

The life of human beings is not passed in the sphere
of transitive verbs alone. It does not exist in virtue
of activities alone which have some thing for their
object.

I perceive something. I am sensible of something.
I imagine something. I will something. I feel some-
thing. I think something. The life of human beings
does not consist of all this and the like alone.

This and the like together establish the realm of It.

But the realm of Thou has a different basis.

When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing for
his object. For where there is a thing there is another
thing. Every It is bounded by others ; It exists only
through being bounded by others. But when Thou is
spoken, there is no thing. Thou has no bounds.

When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing ; he
has indeed nothing. But he takes his stand in relation.

•
4

It is said that man experiences his world. What
does that mean ?

Man travels over the surface of things and experiences
them. He extracts knowledge about their constitution
from them : he wins an experience from them. He
experiences what belongs to the things.

But the world is not presented to man by experiences
alone. These present him only with a world composed
of It and He and She and It again.

I experience something. — If we add "inner" to
" outer " experiences, nothing in the situation is changed.
We are merely following the uneternal division that
springs from the lust of the human race to whittle
away the secret of death. Inner things or outer things,
what wre they but things and things !

I experience something. — If we add "secret" to
'* open" experiences, nothing in the situation is changed.
How self-confident is that wisdom which perceives a
closed compartment in things, reserved for the initiate
and manipulated only with the key. secrecy without
a secret ! accumulation of information ! It, always It !

The man who experiences has no part/ in the world.
For it is " in him " and not between him and the world
that the experience arises.

The world has no part in the experience. It permits
itself to be experienced, but has no concern in the matter.
For it does nothing to the experience, and the experience
does nothing to it.

•
5

As experience, the world belongs to the primary
word I-It.

The primary word l-Thou establishes the world of
relation*

•

The spheres in which the world of relation arises are
three.

First, our life with nature. There the relation sways
in gloom, beneath the level of speech. Creatures live
and move over against us, but cannot come to us,
and when we address them as Thou, our words cling to
the threshold of speech.

Second, our life with men. There the relation is
open and in the form of speech. We can give and accept"
the Thou,

Third, our life with intelligible forms. There the
relation is clouded, yet it discloses itself; it does not
use speech, yet begets it. We perceive no Thou, but none
tbe less we feel we are addressed and we answer-
forming, thinking, acting. We speak the primary word
with our being, though we cannot utter Thou with our
lips.

But with what right do we draw what lies outside
speech into relation with the world of the primary word ?
In every sphere in its own way, through each process
of becoming that is present to us we look out toward
the fringe of the eternal Thou ; in each we are aware
of a breath from the eternal Thou ; in each Thou vir*
address the eternal Thou.

•
6

I consider a tree.

I can look on it as a picture : stiff column in a shock
of light, or splash, of green shot with the delicate blue
and silver of the background.

I can perceive it as movement : flowing veins on
clinging, pressing pith, suck of the roots, breathing
of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with earth and air —
and the obscure growth itself.

I can classify it in a species and study it as a type
in its structure and mode of life.

I can subdue its actual presence and form so sternly
that I recognise it only as an expression of law — of
the laws in accordance^ with which a constant opposition
of forces is continually adjusted, or of those in accord-
ance with which the component substances mingle and
separate.

I can dissipate it and perpetuate it in number, in
pure numerical relation.

In aH this the tree remains my object, occupies space
and time, and has its nature and constitution.

It can, however, also come about, if I have both will
and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound
up in relation to it. The tree is now no longer It I
have been seized by the power of exclusiveness.

To effect this it is not necessary for me to give up
any of the ways in which I consider the tree. There is
nothing from which I would have to turn my eyes away
in order to see, and .no knowledge that I would have
to forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement,
species and type, law and number, indivisibly united
in this event.

Everything belonging to the tree is in this : its form

and structure, its colours and chemical composition,
its intercourse with the elements and with the stars,
are all present in a single whole.

The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination,
no value depending on my mood ; but it is bodied over
against me and has to do with me, as I with it — only in
a different way.

Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from
the meaning of the relation : relation is mutual.

The tree will have a consciousness, then, similar to
our own % Of that I have no experience. But do you
wish, through seeming to succeed in it with yourself, once
again to disintegrate that which cannot be disintegrated %
I encounter no soul or dryad of the tree, but the tree
itself.

If I face a human being as my Thou, and say the
primary word I-Thou to him, he is not a thing among
things, and does not consist of things.

This human being is not He or She, bounded from
every other He and She, a specific point in space and
time within the net of the world ; nor is he a nature
able to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of
named qualities. But with no neighbour, and whole
in himself, he is Thou and fills the heavens. This
-does not mean that nothing exists except himself.
But all else lives in his light.

Just as the melody is not made up of notes nor the
verse of words nor the statue of lines, but they must be
tugged and dragged till their unity has been scattered
into these many pieces, so with the man to whom I

say Thou. I can take out from Mm the colour of his
hair, or of his speech, or of his goodness* I must
continually do this, But each time I do it he ceases to
be Thou.

And just as prayer is not in time but time in prayer,
sacrifice not in space but space in sacrifice, and to reverse
the relation is to abolish the reality, so with the m$n to
whom I say Thou. I do not meet with him at some time
and place or other. I can set him in a particular time
and place ; I must continually do it : but I set only a
He or a She, that is an It, no longer my Thou.

So long as the heaven of Thou is spread out over me
the winds of causality cower at my heels, and the
whirlpool of fate stays its course.

I do not experience the man to whom I say Thou.
But I take my stand in relation to him, in the sanctity
of the primary word. Only when I step out of it do
I experience him once more. In ihe act of experience
Thou is far away.

Even if the man to whom I say Thou is not aware of
it in the midst of his experience, yet relation may exist.
For Thou is more than It realises. No deception
penetrates here ; here is the cradle of the Real Life.

This is the eternal source of art : a man is faced
by a form which desires to be made through him into
a work. This form is no offspring of his soul, but is
an appearance which steps up to it and demands of it
the effective power. The man is concerned with an act
of his being. If he carries it -through, if he speaks the
primary word out of his being to the form which

appears, then the effective power streams out, and the
work arises.

The act includes a sacrifice and a risk. This is the
sacrifice : the endless possibility that is offered up on
the altar of the form. For everything which just this
moment in play ran through the perspective must he
obliterated ; nothing of that may penetrate the work
The exclusiveness of what is facing it demands that it
be so. This is the risk : the primary word can only he'
spoken with the whole being. He who gives himself to
it may withhold nothing of himself. The work does
not suffer me, as do the tree and the man, to turn
aside and relax in the world of It ; but it commands. If
I do not serve it aright it is broken, or it breakB me,

I can neither experience nor describe the form which
meets me, but only body.it forth. And yet I behold
it, splendid in the radiance of what confronts me, clearer
than all the clearness of the world which is experienced.
I do not behold it as a thing among the " inner " things
nor as an image of my " fancy/' but as that which exists
in the present. If test is made of its objectivity the
form is certainly not " there." Yet what is actually
so much present as it is % Aod the relation in which
I stand to it is real, for it affects me, as I affect it.

To produce is to draw forth, to invent is to find,
to shape is to discover. In bodying forth I disclose.
I lead the form across — into the world of It. The
work produced is a thing among things, able to be ex-
perienced and described as a sum of qualities. But from
time to time it can face the receptive beholder in its
whole embodied form.

•
10

— What, then, do we experience of Thou k
— Just nothing. For we do not experience it.
— What, then, do we know of Thou ?
— Just everything. For we know nothing isolated
about it any more.

•

The Thou meets me through grace — it is not found
by seeking. But my speaking of the primary word to
it is an act of my being, is indeed the act of my being.

The Thou meets me. But I step into direct relation
with it. Hence the relation means being chosen and
choosing, suffering and action in one ; just as any action
of the whole being, which means the suspension of all
partial actions and consequently of all sensations of
if actions grounded only in their particular limitation, is
bound to resemble suffering.

The primary word I-Thou can be spoken only with
the whole being. Concentration and fusion into the
whole being can never take place through my agency,
nor can it ever take place without me. I become
through, my relation to the Thou ; as I become /, I say
Thou.

All real living is meeting.

The relation to the Thou is direct. No system of ideas,
no foreknowledge, and no fancy intervene between /
and Thou. The memory itself is transformed, as it
plunges out of its isolation into the unity of the whole.
No aim, no lust, and no anticipation intervene between
I and Thou. Desire itself is transformed as it plunges

out of its dream into the appearance. Every means
is an obstacle. Only when every means has collapsed
does the meeting come about.

In face of the directness of the relation everything
indirect becomes irrelevant. It is also irrelevant if
my Thou is already the It for other Fs (" an object of
general experience "), or can become so through the
very accomplishment of this act of my being- For the
real, though certainly swaying and swinging, boundary
runs neither between experience and non-experience*
nor between what is given and what is not given,
nor yet between the world of being and the world of
value ; but cutting indifferently across all these provinces
it lies between Thou and It, between the present and
the object.

•

The present, and by that is meant not the point which
indicates from time to time in our thought merely the
conclusion of <( finished " time, the mere appearance of
a termination which is fixed and held, but the real, filled
present, exists only in so far as actual presentness,
meeting, and relation exist. The present arises only
in virtue of the fact that the Thou becomes present.

The / of the primary word I-It, that is, the / faced by
no Thou, but surrounded by a multitude of "contents,"
has no present, only the past. Put in another way,
in so far as man rests satisfied with the things that
he experiences and uses, he lives in the past, and his
moment has no present content* He has nothing

but objects. But objects subsist in time that has
been.

The present is not fugitive and transient, but continu-
ally present and enduring. The object is not duration,
but cessation, suspension, a breaking off and cutting
clear and hardening, absence of relation and of present
being.

True beings are lived in the present, the life of objects
is in the past.

•

Appeal to a " world of ideas " as a third factor above
this opposition will not* do away with its essential
twofold nature. For I speak of nothing else but the
real man, of you and of me, of our life and of our world
— not of an 7, or a state of being, in itself alone. The
real boundary for the actual man cuts right across
the world of ideas as well.

To be sure, many a man who is satisfied with the
experience and use of the world of thing? has raised
over y ^ bout himself a structure of ideas, in which he
finds refuge and repose from the oncome of nothingness.
On the threshold he lays aside his inauspicious everyday
dress, wraps himself in pure linen, and regales himself
with the spectacle of primal being, or of necessary being ;
but his life has no part in it. To proclaim his ways may
even fill him with well-being.

But the mankind of mere It that is imagined,
postulated, and propagated by such a man has nothing
in common with a living mankind where Thou may
truly be spoken. The noblest fiction is a fetish, the
loftiest fictitious sentiment is depraved. Ideas are no

more enthroned above our heads than Resident in them ;
they wander amongst us- and accost us. The man who
leaves the primary word unspoken is to be pitied ; but
the man who addresses instead these ideas with an
abstraction or a password, as if it were their name, is
contemptible. »

•

In one of the three examples it is obvious that the
direct relation includes an effect on what confronts me.
In art the act of the being determines the situation in
which the form becomes the work. Through the meet-
ing that which confronts me is fulfilled, and enters the
world of things, there to be endlessly active, endlessly
to become It, but also endlessly to become Thou again,
inspiring and blessing. It is " embodied " ; its body
emerges from the flow of the spaceless/ timeless present
on the shore of existence.

The significance of the effect is not so obvious in
the relation with the Thou spoken to men. The act
of the being which provides directness in this case is
usually understood wrongly as being one of feeling.
Feelings accompany the metaphysical and metapsychical
fact of love, but they do not constitute it. The accom-
panying feelings can be of greatly differing kinds. The
feeling of Jesus for the demoniac differs from his feeling
for the beloved disciple ; but the love is the one love-
Feelings are "entertained" : love comes to pass-
Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in hia love*
That is no metaphor, but the actual truth* Love does
not cling to the J in such a way as to have the Thou

only for its " content," its object ; but love is between

I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with
his very being know this, does not know love ; even
though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through,
experiences, enjoys, and expresses. Love ranges in its
effect,, through the whole world. In the eyes of him
who takes his stand in love, and gazes out of it, men are
cut free from their entanglement in bustling activity.
Good people and evil, wise and foolish, beautiful and
ugly, become successively real to him ; that is, set free
they step forth in their singleness, and confront him as
Thou. In a wonderful way, from time to time, ex-
clusiveness arises — and -so he can be effective, helping,
healing, educating, raising up, saving. Love is responsi-
bility of an I for a Thou. In this lies the likeness —
impossible in any feeling whatsoever — of all who love,
from the smallest to the greatest and from the blessedly
protected man, whose life is rounded in that of a loved
being, to him* who is all his life nailed to the cross of
the world, and who ventures to bring himself to the
dreadful point — to love all men.

Let the significance of the effect in the third example,
that of the creature and our contemplation of it, remain
sunk in mystery. Believe in the simple magic of life,
in service in the universe, and the meaning of that
waiting, that alertness, that " craning of the neck " in
creatures will dawn upon you. Every word would
falsify ; but look ! round about you beings live their life,
and to whatever point you turn you comeupon being.

Relation is mutual. My Thou attects me, as I
affect it. We are moulded by our pupils and built

up by our works. The "bad" man, lightly
touched by the holy primary word, becomes one
who reveals. How we are educated by children
and by animals ! We live our lives inscrutably
included within the streaming mutual life of the
universe.

— You speak of love as though it were the only re-
lation between men. But properly speaking, can you
take it even only as an example, since there is such a
thing as hate ?

—So long as love is " blind," that is, so long as it does
not see a whole being, it is not truly under the sway
of the primary word of relation. Hate is by nature
blind. Only a part of a being can be hated. He who
sees a whole being and is compelled to reject it is no
longer in the kingdom of hate, but is in that of human
restriction of the power to say Thou. He finds himself
unable to say the primary word to the other human
being confronting him. This word consistently in-
volves an affirmation of the being addressed. He is
therefore compelled to reject either the other or himself.
At this barrier the entering on a relation recognises its
relativity, and only simultaneously with this will the
barrier be raised.

Yet the man who straightforwardly hates is nearer
to relation than the man without hate and love.

But this is the exalted melancholy of our fate, that
every Thou in our world must become an It It does

not matter how exclusively present the Thou was in
the direct relation. As soon as the relation has been
worked out or has been permeated with a means, the
Thou becomes an object among objects — perhaps the
chief, but still one of them, fixed in its size and its
limits. In the work of art realisation in one sense
means loss of reality in another. Genuine contempla-
tion is over in a short time ; now the life in nature,
that first unlocked itself to me in the mystery of mutual
action, can again be described, taken to pieces, and
classified — the meeting-point of manifold systems of
laws. And love itself cannot persist in direct relation.
It endures, but in interchange of actual and potential
being. The human being who was even now single and
unconditioned, not something lying to hand, only
present, not able to be experienced, only a*ble to be
fulfilled, has now become again a H e or a She, a sum of
qualities, a given quantity with a certain shape. Now
I may take out from him again the colour of his hair
or of his speech or of his goodness. But so long as I can
do this he is no more my Thou and cannot yet be my
Thou again.

Every Thou in the world is by its nature fated to
become a thing, or continually to re-enter into the
condition of things. In objective speech it would be
said that every thing in the world, either before or after
becoming a thing, is able to appear to an I as its Thou.
But objective speech snatches only at a fringe of real
life. .

The It is the eternal chrysalis, the Thou the.
eternal butterfly — except that situations do not always
follow one another in clear succession, but often
c 17

there is a happening profoundly twofold, confusedly

entangled.

•

In the beginning is relation.

Consider the speech of "primitive" peoples, that is,
of those that have a meagre stock of objects, and whose
life is built up within a narrow circle of acts highly
charged with presentness. The nuclei of this speech,
words in the form of sentences and original pre-gram-
matical structures (which later, splitting asunder, give
rise to the many various kinds of words), mostly indicate
the wholeness of a relation. We say " far away " ; the
Zulu has for that a word which means, in our sentence
form, " There where someone cries out : ' O mother,
I am lost.' " The Fuegian soars above our analytic
wisdom with a seven - syllabled word whose precise
meaning is, " They stare at one another, each waiting
for the other to volunteer to do what both wish, but
are not able to do." In this total situation the persons,
as expressed both in nouns and pronouns, are embedded,
still only in relief and without finished independence.
The chief concern is not with these products of analysis
and reflection but with the true original unity, the lived
relation.

We greet the* ti&an we meet, wishing him well or
assuring him of our devotion or commending him to God*
But how indirect these worn-out formulas are f What
do we discern even dimly in " Hail ! " of the original
conferring of power ? Compare these with the ever
fresh Kaffir greeting, with its direct bodily relation,
" I see you ! " or with its ridiculous and sublime
American variant, " Smell me ! "

18"

It may be supposed that characterisations and ideas,
but also representations of persons and things, have
been taken out from representations of incidents and
situations that are specifically relational. The elementary
impressions and emotional stirrings that waken the
spirit of the " natural man " proceed from incidents — ex-
perience of a being confronting him — and from situations
— life with a being confronting hi™ — that are relational
in character. He is not disquieted by the moon that
he sees every night, till it comes bodily to him, sleeping
or waking, draws near and charms him with .silent
movements, or fascinates hinj with the evil or sweetness
of its touch. He does not retain from this the visual
representation, say, of the wandering orb of light, or
of a demonic being that somehow belongs to it, but
at first he has in him only the dynamic, stirring
image of the moon's effect, streaming through his body.
Out of this the image of the moon personally achieving
the effect only gradually emerges. Only now, that is
to say, does the memory of the unknown that is nightly
taken into his being begin to kindle and take shape as
the doer and bringer of the effect. Thus it makfes
possible the transformation of the unknown into an
object, a He or a She out of a Thou that could not
originally be experienced, but simply suffered.

This initial and long-continuing relational character
of every essential phenomenon makes it also easier to
understand a certain, spiritual element of primitive life
that is much discussed and observed, but not yet
properly grasped, in present-day study. I mean that
mysterious power the idea of which has been traced,
through many variations, in the form of the beliefs or

in the knowledge (both being still one) of many nature
peoples. Known as Mana or Orenda, it opens a way
to the Brahman in its primal meaning, and further to
the Dynamis and Charis of the Magical Papyri and of
the Apostolic Epistles. It has been characterised as
a supersensuous or supernatural power — descriptions
which depend on our categories and do not correspond
to those of the primitive man. The limits of his world
are set by his bodily experience, to which visits from
the dead, say, quite "naturally" belong. To accept
what has no sensuous qualities at all as actually existing
must strike him as absurd. The appearances to which
he ascribes the " mystical power " are all elementary
incidents that are relational in character, that is, all
incidents that disturb him by stirring his body and
leaving behind in him a stirring image. The moon
and the dead, visiting him by night with pain
or pleasure, have that power. But so, too, have
the burning sun and the howling beast and the chief
whose glance constrains him and the sorcerer whose
singing loads him with power for the hunt, Mana is
simply the effective force, that which has made the person
of the moon, up there in the heavens, into a blood-
stirring Thou. The memory of it left its track when
the image of the object was separated out from the
total stirring image; although it itself, indeed,
never appears other than in the doer and bringer
of an effect. It is that with which man himself, if
he possesses it— perhaps in a wonderful stone— can
be effective in this way. The « world-image n of
primitive man is magical not because human magical
power is set in the midst of it but because this human

power is only a particular variety of the general
magic power frdm which all effective action is
derived. Causality in his world-image is no unbroken
sequence but an ever new flashing forth of power and
moving out towards its production; it is a volcanic
movement without continuity. Mana is a primitive
abstraction, probably more primitive than, say, number,
but not any more supernatural than it. The memory
as it is being trained ranges the grand relational
. events, the elemental emotional shocks. The most
important for the instinct of preservation and the
most noteworthy for the instinct to understand — that
is, " that which effects/' stands out most forcibly of
all, and becomes independent. The less important,
the non-communal, the changing Thou of experi-
ences, retires and remains isolated in the memory, and
is gradually transformed into an object and very
slowly drawn into groups and classes. As third in the
arrangement, terrible when thus separated, at times
more ghostly than the dead and the moon, but always
more and more irrefutably clear, there arises up the
other, " unchanging " partner, " I".

Consciousness of the " I " is not connected with the
primitive sway of the instinct for self-preservation any
more than with that of the other instincts. It is not
the " I " that wishes to propagate itself, but the body,
that knows as yet of no " I ". It is not the " I " but
the body that wishes to make things, a tool or a toy, that
wishes to be a " creator ". ^Further, a cognosce* ergo sum,
in however naive a form and however childlike a con-
ception of an experiencing subject, cannot be found in
the primitive function of knowledge. The " I " emerges

power is only a particular variety of the genera!
magic power fr6m which all effective action is
derived. Causality in his world-image is no unbroken
sequence but an ever new flashing forth of power and
moving out towards its production; it is a volcanic
movement without continuity, Mana is a primitive
abstraction, probably more primitive than, say, number,
but not any more supernatural than it. The memory
as it is being trained ranges the grand relational
„ events, the elemental emotional shocks. The most
important for the instinct of preservation and the
most noteworthy for the instinct to understand — that
is, " that which effects," stands out most forcibly of
all, and becomes independent. The less important,
the non-communal, the changing Thou of experi-
ences, retires and remains isolated in the memory, and
is gradually transformed into an object and very
slowly drawn into groups and classes. As third in the
arrangement, terrible when thus separated, at times
more ghostly than the dead and the moon, but always
more and more irrefutably clear, there arises up the
other, " unchanging " partner, " I".

Consciousness of the " I " is not connected with the
primitive sway of the instinct for self-preservation any
more than with that of the other instincts. It is not
the " I " that wishes to propagate itself, but the body,
that knows as yet of no " I ". It is not the " I " but
the body that wishes to make things, a tool or a toy, that
wishes to be a " creator ". Further, a cognosce ergo mm f
in however naive a form and however childlike a con-
ception of an experiencing subject, cannot be found in
the primitive function of knowledge* The " I " emerges

round about it. The body comes to know and to
differentiate itself in its peculiarities ; the differentia-
tion, however, remains one of pure juxtaposition, and
hence cannot have the character of the state in which
I is implied.

But when the I of the relation has stepped forth
and taken on separate existence, it also moves, strangely
tenuous and reduced to merely functional activity, into
the natural, actual event of the separation of the body
from the world round about it, and awakens there the
state in which I is properly active. Only now can the
conscious act of the 7 take "place. This act is the first
form of the primary word I-It, of the experience in its
relation to I. The I which stepped forth declares itself
to be the bearer, and the world round about to be the
object, of the perceptions. Of course, this happens in
a " primitive " form and not in the form of a " theory
of knowledge "„ But whenever the sentence " I see the
tree " is so uttered that it no longer tells of a relation
between the man — I — and the tree — Thou — , but estab-
lishes the perception of the tree as object by the human
consciousness, the barrier between subject and object
has been set up. The primary word I-It, the word of
separation, has been spoken.

— That melancholy of our fate, then, arose in earliest
history %

— Indeed, yes — in so far as the conscious life of man
arose in earliest history. But conscious life means the
return of cosmic being as human becoming. Spirit
appears in time as a product — even as a by-product

of nature, yet it is in spirit that nature is tunelessly
enveloped.

The opposition of the two primary words has
many names at different times and in different
worlds ; but in its nameless truth it is inherent in
creation.

•

— But you believe then in the existence of a paradise
in the earliest days of mankind ?

— Even if it was a hell — and certainly that time to
which I can go back in historical thought was full of
fury and anguish and torment and cruelty — at any rate
it was not unreal.

The relational experiences of man in earliest days
were certainly not tame and pleasant. But rather
force exercised on being that is really lived than shadowy
solicitude for faceless numbers ! From the former a
way leads to God, from the latter only one to nothing-
ness.

•

Only brief glimpses into the context in time of the
two primary words are given us by primitive man,
whose life, even if it could be made fully accessible,
can represent only as it were allegorically that of the
real early man. We receive fuller knowledge from the
child.

Here it becomes crystal clear to us that the spiritual
reality of the primary words arises out of a natural
reality, that of the primary word I-Thou out of natural
combination, and that of the primary word I-It out of
natural separation.

The ante-natal life of the child is one of purely
natural combination, bodily interaction and flowing
from the one to the other. Its life's horizon, as it
comes into being, seems in a unique way to be, and yet
again not to be, traced in that of the life that bears it.
For it does not rest only in the womb of the human
mother. Yet this connexion has such a cosmic
quality that the mythical saying of the Jews, " in the
mother's body man knows the universe, in birth he
forgets it," reads like the imperfect decipherment of
an inscription from earliest times. And it remains
indeed in man as a secret image of desire. Not as
though his yearning meant a longing to return, as those
suppose who see in the spirit — confusing it with their
intellect — a parasite of nature, when it is rather (though
exposed to diverse illnesses) nature's best flower. But
the yearning is for the cosmic connexion, with its true
Thou, of this life that has burst forth into spirit.

Every child that is coming into being rests, like all
life that is coming into being, in the womb of the great
mother, the undivided primal world that precedes form.
From her, too, we are separated, and enter into personal
life, slipping free only in the dark hours to be close to
her again ; night by night this happens to the healthy
man. But this separation does not occur suddenly
and catastrophically like the separation from the
bodily mother ; time is granted to the child to exchange
a spiritual connexion, that is, relabi for the natural
connexion with the world that he gradually loses. He
has stepped out of the glowing darkness of chaos into
the cool light of creation. But he does not possess
it yet ; he must first draw it truly out, he must make

it into a reality for himself, he must find for himself
his own world by seeing and hearing and touching and
shaping it. Creation reveals, in meeting, its essential
nature as form. It does not spill itself into expectant
senses, but rises up to meet the grasping senses. That
which will eventually play as an accustomed object
around the man who is fully developed, must be wooed
and won by the developing man in strenuous action.
For no thing is a ready-made part of an experience ;
only in the strength, acting and being acted upon,
of what is over against men, is anything made access-
ible. Like primitive man the child lives between sleep
and sleep (a great part of his waking hours is also sleep)
in the flash and counter-flash of meeting.

The primal nature of the effort to establish relation
is already to be seen in the earliest and most confined
stage. Before anything isolated can be perceived, timid
glances move out into indistinct space, towards some-
thing indefinite ; and in times when there seems to be
no desire for nourishment, hands sketch delicately and
dimly in the empty air, apparently aimlessly seeking and
reaching out to meet something indefinite. You may,
if you wish, call this an animal action, but it is not
thereby comprehended. For these very glances will
after protracted attempts settle on the red carpet-
pattern and not be moved till the soul of the red has
opened itself to them ; and this very movement of the
hands will win from a woolly Teddy-bear its precise
form, apparent to the senses, and become lovingly
and unforgettably aware of a complete body. Neither
of these acts is experience of an object, but is the
correspondence of the child — to-be sure only " fanciful "

— with what is alive and effective over against him.
(This " fancy " does not in the least involve, however, a
" giving of life to the universe " : it is* the instinct to
make everything into Thou, to give relation to the
universe, the instinct which completes out of its own
richness the living effective action when a mere copy
or symbol of it is given in what is. over against him.)
Little, disjointed, meaningless sounds still go out per-
sistently into the void. But one day, unforeseen, they
will have become conversation — does it matter that it is
perhaps with the simmering kettle ? It is conversation.
Many a movement termed reflex is a firm trowel in
the building up of the person in the world. It is simply
not the case that the child first perceives an object,
then, as it were, puts himself in relation with it. But
the effort to establish relation comes first — the hand of
the child arched out so that what is over against him
may nestle under it; second is the actual relation, a
saying of Thou without words, in the state preceding
the word-form ; the thing, like the 7, is produced late,
arising after the original experiences have been split
.sunder and the connected partners separated. In the
beginning is relation—as category of being, readiness,
grasping form, mould for the soul ; it is the a priori
of relation, the inborn Thou.

The inborn Thou is realised in the lived relations
with that which meets it. The fact that this Thou
can be known as what is over against the child, can be
^ taken up in exclusiveness, and finally can be addressed
with the primary word, is based on the a priori of
relation.

In the instinct to make contact (first by touch and

then by visual " touch. " of another being) the inborn
Thou is very soon brought to its full powers, so that the
instinct ever more clearly turns out to mean mutual
relation, " tenderness ". But the instinct to " creation ",
which is established later (that is, the instinct to set
up things in a synthetic, or, if that is impossible, in an
analytic way — through pulling to pieces or tearing up),
is also determined by this inborn Thou, so that a " per-
sonification " of what is made, and a " conversation ",
take place. The development of the soul in the child is
inextricably bound up with that of the longing for the
Thou 9 with the satisfaction and the disappointment of
this longing, with the game of his experiments and the
tragic seriousness of his perplexity. Genuine under-
standing of this phenomenon, which is injured by every
attempt to lead it back into more confined spheres, can
only be promoted if, during its observation and dis-
cussion, its cosmic and metacosmic origin is kept in
mind. For it reaches out from the undivided primal
world which precedes form, out of which the bodily
individual who is born into the world, but not yet the
personal, actualised being, has fully emerged. For only
gradually, by entering into relations, is the latter to
develop out of this primal world.

Through the Thou a man becomes 7. That which
confronts him comes and disappears, relational events
condense, then are scattered, and in the change con-
sciousness of the unchanging partner, of the Z, grows
clear, and each time stronger. To be sure, it is still
seen caught in the web of the relation with the

Thou, as the increasingly distinguishable feature of that
which reaches out to and yet is not the Thou. But it
continually breaks through with more power, till a time
comes when it bursts its bonds, and the I confronts
itself for a moment, separated as though it were a Thou ;
as quickly to take possession of itself and from then on
to enter into relations in consciousness of itself.

Only now can the other primary word be assembled.
Hitherto the Thou of relation was continually fading
away, but it did not thereby become an It for some Z,
an object of perception and experience without real
connexion — as it will henceforth become. It became
rather an It, so to speak, for itself, an It disregarded at
first, yet waiting-to rise up in a new relational event.
Further, the body maturing into a person was hitherto
distinguished, as bearer of its perceptions and executor
of its impulses, from the world round about. But this
distinction was simply a juxtaposition brought about by
its seeing its way in the situation, and not an absolute
severance of I and its object. But now the separated I
emerges, transformed. Shrunk from substance and
fulness to a functional point, to a subject which
experiences and uses, I approaches and takes pos-
session of all It existing "in and for itself", and
forms in conjunction with it the other primary word.
The man who has become conscious of Z, that is, the
man who says I^It, stands before things, but not over
against them in the flow of mutual action. Now with
the magnifying glass of peering observation he bends
over particulars and objectifies them, or with the field-
glass of remote inspection he objectifies them and
arranges them as scenery, he isolates them in observa-

tion without any feeling of their exclusiveness, or he
knits them into a scheme of observation without any-
feeling of universality. The feeling of exclusiveness
he would be able to find only in relation,, the feeling of
universality only through it. Now for the first time he
experiences things as sums of qualities. From each rela-
tional experience qualities belonging to the remembered
Thou had certainly remained sunk in his memory ; but
now for the first time things are for him actually com-
posed of their qualities. From the simple memory of the
relation the man, dreaming or fashioning or thinking,
according to his nature, enlarges the nucleus, the
substance that showed itself in the Thou with power
and gathered up in itself all qualities. But now also
for the first time he sets things in space and time,
in causal connexion, each with its own place and
appointed course, its measurability and conditioned
nature.

The Thou appears, to be sure, in space, but in the
exclusive situation of what is over against it,* wher?
everything else can be only the background out of which
it emerges, not its boundary and measured limit. It
appears, .too, in time, but in that of the event which is
fulfilled in itself :" it is not lived as part of a continuous
and organised sequence, but is lived in a" duration "
whose purely intensive dimension is definable only .
in terms of itself. It appears, lastly, simultaneously
as acting and as being acted upon — not, however, linked
to a chain of causes, but, in its relation of mutual
action with the i", as the beginning and the end of the '
event. This is part of the basic truth of the human
world, that only It can be arranged in order. Only

when things, from being our Thou, become our It, can
they be co-ordinated. The Thou knows no system of
co-ordination.

But now that we have come so far, it is necessary
to set down the other part of the basic truth, without
which this would be a useless fragment — namely, a
world that is ordered is not the world-order. There
are moments of silent depth in which you look on the
world -order folly present. Then in its very flight the
note will be heard ; but the ordered world is its indis-
tinguishable score. These moments are immortal, and
most transitory of all ; no content may be secured from
them, but their power invades creation and the know-
ledge of man, beams of their power stream into the
ordered world and dissolve it again and again. This
happens in the history both of the individual and of the
race.

To man the world is twofold, in accordance with his
twofold attitude.

He perceives what exists round about him — simply
things, and beings as things ; and what happens round
about him — simply events, and actions as events ; things
consisting of qualities, events of moments; things
entered in the graph of place, events in that of time ;
things and events bounded by other things and events,
measured by them, comparable with them : he perceives
an ordered and detached world. It is to some extent
a reliable world, having density and duration. Its
organisation can be surveyed and brought out again
and again; gone over with closed eyes, and verified
with open eyes. It is always there, next to your skin,

if you look on it that way, cowering in your soul,
if you prefer it so. It is your object, remains it as long
as you wish, and remains a total stranger, within you
and without. You perceive it, take it to yourself as
the " truth '*," and it lets itself be taken ; but it does not
give itself to you. Only concerning it may you make
yourself " understood " with others ; it is ready, though
attached to everyone in a different way, to be an object
common to you all. But you cannot meet others in it.
You cannot hold on to life without it, its reliability
sustains you ; but should you die in it, your grave •
would be in nothingness.

Or on the other hand, man meets what exists and
becomes as what is over against him, always simply a
single being and each thing simply as being. What
exists is opened to him in happenings, and what happens
affects him as what is. Nothing is present for him except
this one being, but it implicates the whole world.
Measure and comparison have disappeared ; it lies with
yourself how much of the immeasurable becomes reality
for you. These meetings are not organised to make the
world, but each is a sign of the world-order. They are
not linked up with one another, but each assures you
of your solidarity with the world. The world which
appears to you in this way is unreliable, for it takes
on a continually new appearance; you cannot hold
it to its word. It has no density, for everything in it
penetrates everything else ; no duration, for it comes
even when it is not summoned, and vanishes even when
it is tightly held. It cannot be surveyed, and if you wish
to make it capable of survey you lose it. It comes, and
comes to bring you out ; if it does not reach you,

meet you, then it vanishes ; but it comes back in another
form. It is not outside you, it stirs in the depth of you ;
if you say " Soul of my soul " you have not said too
much, But guard against wishing to remove it into
your soul — for then you annihilate it. It is your present ;
only while you have it do you have the present. Tou can
make it into an object for yourself, to experience and
to use ; you must continually do this — and as you do it
you have no more present. Between you and it there is
mutual giving : you say Thou to it and give yourself to it,
it says Thou to you and gives itself to you. You cannot
make yourself understood with others concerning it,
you are alone with it. But it teaches you to meet others,
and to hold your ground when you meet them. Through
the graciousness of its comings and the solemn sadness
of its goings it leads you away to the Thou in which
the parallel lines of relations meet. It does not help
to sustain you in life, it only helps you to glimpse
eternity.

The world of It is set in the context of space and time.

The world of Thou is not set in the context of either
of these.

The particular Thou, after the relational event has
run its course, is bound to become an It.

The particular It, by entering the relational event,
may become a Thou.

These are the two basic privileges of the world of
It. They move man to look on the world of It as the
world in which he has to live, and in which it is comfort-
able to live, as the world, indeed, which offers him
d 33

all manner of incitements and excitements, activity
and knowledge. In this chronicle of solid benefits the
moments of the Thou appear as strange lyric and
dramatic episodes, seductive and magical, but tearing
xis away to dangerous extremes, loosening the well-
tried context, leaving more questions than satisfaction
behind them, shattering security — in short, uncanny
moments we can well dispense with. For since we are
bound to leave them and go back into the " world ",
why not remain in it ? Why not call to order what
is over against us, and send it packing into the realm
of objects.? Why, if we find ourselves on occasion
with no choice but to say Thou to father, wife, or
comrade, not say Thou and mean It ? To utter the
sound Thou with the vocal organs is by. no means the
same as saying the uncanny primary word; more,
it is harmless to whisper with the soul an amorous Thou,
so long as nothing else in a serious way is meant but
experience and make use of.

It is not possible to live in the bare present. Life
would be quite consumed if precautions were not
taken to subdue the present speedily and thoroughly.
But it is possible to live in the bare past, indeed only in
it may a life be organised. We only need to fill each
moment with experiencing and using, and it ceases
to burn.

And in all the seriousness of truth, hear this : without
It man cannot live. But he who lives with It alone
is not a man.

PART TWO

The history of the individual and that of the human
race, in whatever they may continually part company,
agree at least in this one respect, that they indicate a
progressive augmentation of the world of It

In respect of the history of the race that is called in
question ; it is pointed out that the successive realms
of culture have their beginning in a primitive state,
whose colour may differ, but whose structure is constant.
In conformity with this primitiveness these cultural
realms begin with a small world of objects. The life
not of the race but of the particular culture would thus
correspond to the individual life. But, apart from the
apparently isolated realms, through the historical in-
fluence of other pre-existing cultures they take over,
at a certain stage, the world of It belonging to these
cultures. This stage is not reached early, but neverthe-
less precedes the generation of the heyday. It may take
the form of direct acceptance of what is contemporary,
as Greece accepted the Egyptian world ; or it may take
the form of indirect acceptance of what is past, as western
Christianity accepted the Greek world. These cultures,
then, enlarge their world of It not merely through their
own experience, but also through the absorption of
foreign experience. Only then does a culture, thus
grown, fulfil itself in decisive, discovering expansion.
(For the present let the paramount contribution made
by the perception and acts of the world of Thou be left
out of account.) Hence, in general, the world of objects
in every culture is more extensive than that of its
predecessor. Despite sundry stoppages and apparent

retrogressions the progressive augmentation of the world
of It is to be clearly discerned in history. It is beside
the point of this conclusion whether the character of
finitude or that of so-called infinity, more precisely non-
finitude, belongs to the " world-view " of a culture ;
though certainly a " finite " world can well contain
more parts, things, and processes than an "infinite".
It is also to be observed that it is important to compare
not merely the extent of natural knowledge, but also
that of social differentiation and that of technical
achievement. For through both of these the world of
objects is enlarged.

The primary relation of man to the world of It is
comprised in experiencing, which continually reconstitutes
the world, and using, which leads the world to its mani-
fold aim, the sustaining, relieving, and equipping of
human life. In proportion to the growing extent of
the world of It, ability to experience and use it must also
grow. The individual can, to be sure, more and more
replace direct with indirect experience, he can " acquire
items of knowledge ", and he can more and more reduce
his using of the world to specialised " utilisation " ;
nevertheless, a continual development of this ability,
from generation to generation, cannot be avoided.
This is the usual meaning of the talk about a progressive
development of the spiritual life. By this talk, guilt
of the real sin of speech against the spirit is undoubtedly
incurred ; for that " spiritual life " is for the most
part the obstacle to a life lived in the spirit, and at best
the material which, after being mastered and fashioned,
is to go to make that life.

It is the obstacle ; for the development of the ability

to experience and use comes about mostly through, the
decrease of man's power to enter into relation — the
power in virtue of which alone man can live the life of
the spirit.

•

Spirit in its human manifestation is a response of man
to his Thou. Man speaks with many tongues, tongues
of language, of art, of action ; but the spirit is one, the
response to the Thou which appears and addresses him
out of the mystery. Spirit is the word. And just as
talk in a language may well first take the form of words
in the "brain of the man, and then sound in his throat,
and yet both are merely refractions of the true event, for
in actuality speech' does not abide in man, but man
takes his stand in speech and talks from there ; so with
every word and every spirit. Spirit is not in the J, but
between I and Thou. It is not like the blood that
circulates in you, but like the air in which you breathe.
Man lives in the spirit, if he is able to respond to his
Thou. He is able to, if he enters into relation with his
whole being. Only in virtue of his power to enter into
relation is he able to live in the spirit.

But the destiny of the relational event is here set
forth in the most powerful way. The stronger the
response the more strongly does it bind up the Thou
and banish it to be an object. Only silence before the
Thou — silence of all tongues, silent patience in the
undivided word that precedes the formed and vocal
response — leaves the Thou free, and permits man to
take his stand with it in the reserve where the spirit
is not manifest, but is. Every response binds up the

Thou in the world of It. That is the melancholy of
man, and his greatness. For that is how knowledge
comes about, a work is achieved, and image and symbol
made, in the midst of living beings.

But that which has been so changed into It, hardened
into a thing among things, has had the nature and
disposition put into it to change back again and again.
This was the meaning in that hour of the spirit when
spirit was joined to man and bred the response in him —
again and again that which has the status of object
must blaze up into presentness and enter the elemental
state from which it came, to be looked on and lived in
the present by men.

The fulfilment of this nature and disposition is
thwarted by the man who has come to terms with
the world of It that it is to be experienced and
used. For now instead of freeing that which is bound
up in that world he suppresses it, instead of looking
at it he observes it, instead of accepting it as it is, he
turns it to his own account.

Take knowledge : being is disclosed to the man
who is engaged in knowing, as he looks at what is over
against him. He will, indeed, have to grasp as an object
that which he has seen with the force of presence,
he will have to compare it with objects, establish it in
its order among classes of objects, describe and analyse
it objectively. Only as It can it enter the structure of
knowledge. But when he saw it, it was no thing among
things, no event among events, but exclusively present.
Being did not share itself with him in terms of the law
that was afterwards elicited from the appearance, but
in terms of its very self. When a man thinks a general

thought in this connexion he is merely unravelling the
tangled incident ; for it was seen in particular form, in
what was over against him. Now the incident is in-
cluded in the It of knowledge which is composed of
ideas. He who frees it from that, and looks on it again
in the present moment, fulfils the nature of the act of
knowledge to be real and effective between men. But
knowledge can also be managed in such a way that it is
affirmed that " this, then, is how the matter stands, the
thing is called this, made in this way, its place is over
there " ; that which has become It is left as It, experi-
enced and used as It, appropriated for the undertaking
• to "find one's bearings" in the world, and then to
" conquer " it.

So too in art : form is disclosed to the artist as he
looks at what is over against him. He banishes it to
be a " structure ". This " structure " is not in a
world of gods, but in this great world of men. It is
certainly " there ", even if no human eye seeks it out ;
but it is asleep. The Chinese poet tells how men did
not wish to hear the tune he played on his jade flute ;
then he played it to the gods, and they inclined their
ears ; since then men also listened to the tune : thus
he went from the gods to those whom the " structure "
cannot dispense with. It longs as in a dream for the
meeting with noan, that for a timeless moment
he may lift the ban and clasp the form. Then he
comes on his way, and experiences what there is
to be experienced : it is made in this way, or this
is expressed in it, or its qualities are such and such,
and farther, it takes this place in the scheme of
things.

It is not as though scientific and aesthetic understand-
ing were not necessary ; but they are necessary to man
that he may do his work with precision and plunge it
in the truth of relation, which is above the under-
standing and gathers it up in itself.

And, thirdly, there is pure effective action without
arbitrary self-will. This is higher than the spirit of
knowledge and the spirit of art, for here the mortal
bodily man does not need to mix himself with the more
lasting stuff, but himself outlasts it as structure ; en-
circled by the sounding music of his living speech he
reaches the starry heaven of the spirit. Here the Thou
appeared to the man out of deeper mystery, addressed
him even out of the darkness, and he responded with
his life. Here the word has from time to time become
life, and this life is teaching. This life may have ful-
filled the law or broken it; both are continually
necessary, that spirit may not die on earth. This life
is presented, then, to those who come later, to teacji
them not what is and must be, but how life is lived in the
spirit, face to face with the Thou. That is, it is itself ready
on every occasion to become Thou for them, and open up
the world of Thou — no ; it is not ready : it continually
approaches and touches them. But they, having
become disinclined and unfitted for the living dealings
that would open the world to them, are fully equipped
with information. They have pinned the person down
in history, and secured his words in the library. They
have codified, in exactly the same way, the fulfilment or
the breaking of the law. Nor are they niggards with
admiration and even idolatry, amply mixed with
psychology, as befits modern man. lonely Face like

a star in the night, o living Finger laid on an unheeding
brow, o fainter echoing footstep !

The development of the function of experiencing
and using comes about mostly through decrease of
man's power to enter into relation.

How does this same man, who made spirit into a
means of enjoyment for himself, behave towards the
beings that live round about him ?

Taking his stand in the shelter of the primary word of
separation, which holds off the I and the It from one
another, he has divided his life with his fellow-men
into two tidily circled-off provinces, one of institutions
and the other of feelings — the province of It and the
province of I.

Institutions are " outside ", where all sorts of aims
are pursued, where a man works, negotiates, bears in-
fluence, undertakes, concurs, organises, conducts business,
officiates, preaches. They are the tolerably well-ordered
and to some extent harmonious structure, in which,
with the manifold help of men's brains and hands,
the process of affairs is fulfilled.

Feelings are " within ", where life is lived and man
recovers from institutions. Here the spectrum of the
emotions dances before the interested glance. Here
a man's KV™g and hate and pleasure are indulged,
and his pain if it is not too severe. Here he is at home,
and stretches himself out in his rocking-chair.

Institutions are a complicated market-place, feelings
a boudoir rich in ever-changing interests.
The boundary line, to be sure, is constantly in danger
43

since the wanton feelings break in at times on tlie most
objective institutions ; but with united goodwill it may
be restored.

Most difficult of all is the reliable drawing of the
boundary line in the realms of so-called personal life.
In marriage, for instance, the line is occasionally not to
be fully drawn in any simple way ; but in the end it is
possible. In the realms of so-called public life it can
be perfectly drawn. Let it be considered, for instance,
how faultlessly, in the year of the parties and the
groups with their " movements " which aimed at being
above parties, the heaven-storming sessions on the
one hand, and on the other hand business, creeping
along the ground (smoothly like a machine or slovenly
and organically), are separated from one another.

But the separated It of institutions is an animated
clod without soul, and the separated I of feelings
an uneasily fluttering soul-bird. Neither of them
knows man : institutions know only the specimen,
feelings only the " object " ; neither knows the person,
or mutual life. Neither of them knows the present :
even the most up-to-date institutions know only
the lifeless past that is over and done with, and even
the most lasting feelings know 'only the flitting moment
that has not yet come properly into being. Neither of
them has access to real life. Institutions yield no
public life, and feelings no personal life.

Th$t institutions yield no public life is realised by
increasing numbers, realised with increasing distress :
this is the starting-point of the seeking need of the age.
That feelings yield no personal life is understood only
by a few. For the most personal life of all seems to

reside in feelings, and if, like the modern man, you
have learned to concern yourself wholly with your own
feelings, despair at their unreality will not easily in-
struct you in a better way— for despair is also an
interesting feeling.

The men who suffer distress in the realisation that
institutions yield no public life have hit upon an
expedient : institutions must be loosened, or dissolved,
or burst asunder, by the feelings themselves; they
must be given new life from the feelings, by the intro-
duction into them of the " freedom of feeling ". If the
mechanical State, say, links together citizens alien to
one another in their very being, without establishing,
or promoting, a being together, let the State, these
men say, be replaced by the community of love ; and
this community will arise when people, out of free,
abundant feeling, approach and wish to live with one
another. But it is not so. The true community does
not arise through peoples having feelings for one
another (though indeed not without it), but through,
first, their taking their stand in living mutual relation
with a living Centre, and, second, their being in living
mutual relation with one another. The second has its
source in the first, but is not given when the first alone
is given. Living mutual relation includes feelings, but
does not originate with the>m. The community is
built up out of living mutual relation, but the builder is
the living effective Centre.

Further, institutions of the so-called personal life
cannot be given new life by free feeling (though indeed
not without it). Marriage, for instance, will never be
given new life except by that out of which true marriage

always arises, the revealing by two people of tlie Thou
to one another. Out of this a marriage is built up by
the Thou that is neither of the Vs. This is the meta-
physical and metapsychical factor of love to which
feelings of love are mere accompaniments. He who
wishes to give new life to marriage from another source
is not essentially different from him who wishes to abolish
it. Both clearly show that they no longer know the
vital factor. And indeed, if in all the much discussed
erotic philosophy of the age we were to leave out of
account everything that involves experience in relation
to the I, that is, every situation in which the one is not
present to the other, given present status by it, but merely
enjoys itself in the other— what then would be left %

True public and true personal life are two forms of
connexion. In that they come into being and endure,
feelings (the changing content) and institutions, (the
constant form) are necessary; but put together they
do not create human life : this* is done by the third, the*
central presence of the Thou, or rather, more truly stated,
by the central Thou that has been received in the present.

The primary word I-It is not of evil — as matter
is not of evil. It is of evil— as matter is, which presumes
to have the quality of present being. If a man lets
it have the mastery, the continually growing world
of It overruns him and robs him of the reality of
bis own I, till the incubus over him and the ghost
within him whisper to one another the confession of
their non-salvation.

•
46

— But is the communal life of modern man not then
of necessity sunk in the world of It ? Can the two com-
partments of this life, economics and State, with their
present extent and completeness of structure, be con-
ceived to rest on any other basis but that of a deliber-
ate renunciation of all " directness ", and a resolute
rejection of every court of appeal which is " alien ", that
is, which does not arise from this sphere itself ? And
if it is the experiencing and using I that rules here, the
I that makes use of assets and work done in economics, and
strivings and opinions in politics, must we not thank this
unlimited mastery for the extensive and solid structure
of the great " objective "products in these two circles %
Is not, indeed, the productive greatness of the leading
statesman and the leading economist bound up with the
fact that he looks on the men with whom he has to deal
not as bearers of the Thou that cannot be experienced
but as centres of work and effort, whose particular
capabilities it is his concern to estimate and utilise ?
Would his world not fall in on him if, instead of adding
up He and He and He to make an It, he tried to calculate
the sum of Thou and Thou and Thou — which never
yields anything but Thou again 1 Would that not be
to exchange formative mastery for fastidious dilettan-
tism, and illuminating reason for cloudy fanaticism 1
And if we look from the leaders to the led, has not the
very development in the nature of modern work and
possession destroyed almost every trace of. living with
what is over against them — of significant relation %
It would be absurd to wish to return on this develop-
men t — and if the absurd did come about, the enormous
and nicely balanced apparatus of this civilisation, which

alone makes life possible for the enormous numbers of
men that have grown with it, would simultaneously be
destroyed.

— Speechmaker, you speak too late. Just a little time
ago you would have been able to believe in your speech,
now you no longer can. For, a moment ago, you saw as
I did, that the State is no longer led ; the stokers still
pile in the coal, but the leaders have now only the
semblance of control over the madly racing machines.
And in this moment, as you speak, you can hear as I
do that the levers of economics are beginning to sound
in an unusual way ; the masters smile at you with
superior assurance, but death is in their hearts. They
tell you they suited the apparatus to the circumstances,
but you notice that from now on they can only suit
themselves to the apparatus — so long, that is to say,
as it permits them. Their speakers teach you that
economics is entering on the State's inheritance, but you
know that there is nothing to inherit except the tyranny
of the exuberantly growing It, under which the 7, less
and less able to master, dreams on that it is the ruler.

The communal life of man can no more than man
himself dispense with the world of It, over which the
presence of the Thou moves like the spirit upon the face
of the waters. Man's will to profit and to be powerful
have their natural and proper effect so long as they are
linked with, and upheld by, his will to enter into relation.
There is no evil impulse till the impulse hasbeenseparated
from the being ; the impulse which is bound up with,
and defined by, the being is the living stuff of communal
life, that which is detached is its disintegration.
Economics, the abode of the will to profit, and State,

the abode of the will to be powerful, share in life as long
as they share in the spirit. If they abjure spirit they
abjure life. Life, to be sure, gives itself time to bring
its affairs to a real conclusion, and for a good while men
imagine they see a structure moving where for a long
time a machine has been whirling. The matter is
indeed not to be helped by the introduction of a little
directness. The loosening of the structure of economics or
of the State cannot compensate for their being no longer
under the dominance of the spirit that says Thou : no
disturbance on the "periphery can serve as substitute for
the living relation with the Centre. Structures of man's
communal life draw their living quality from the riches
of the power to enter into relation, which penetrates
their various parts, and obtain their bodily form from
the binding up of this power in the spirit. The statesman
or the economist who obeys the spirit is no dilettante \
he knows well that he cannot, without undoing his work,
simply confront, as bearers of the Thou, the men with
"whom he has to deal. Yet he risks doing it, not plainly
and simply but as far as the boundary set for him by the
spirit. The spirit sets this for him, and the risk that
would have shattered a separated structure succeeds in
the structure over which the presence of the Thou broods.
He is no fanatic; he serves the truth which, though
higher than reason, yet does not repudiate it, but holds it
inits lap. He does in communal life precisely what is done
in personal life by the man who knows himself incapable
of realising the Thou in its purity, yet daily confirms
its truth in the It % in accordance with what is right and
fitting for the day, drawing — disclosing — the boundary
line anew each day. So, too, only with spirit, not them-
e 49

selves, as starting-point, are work and possession to be
released ; only from the presence of spirit can meaning
and joy stream into all work, awe and sacrificial power
into all possession — tilting them not to the brim but
sufficiently; only from its presence can everything
that is worked and possessed, while remaining in
adherence to the world of It, yet be transfigured into
what is over against man — into the representation of
the Thou. There is no going backwards, but in the very
moment of deepest need a hitherto undreamt-of move-
ment forwards and outwards.

It does not matter if the State rules economics or is
given its authority by it, so long as both are unchanged.
It does matter if the organisation of the State becomes
freer and that of economics more equitable — but not
for the question asked here about the real life; they
certainly cannot become free and equitable with them-
selves as starting-point. It matters most of all if the
spirit which says Thou, which responds, remains by life
and reality, if that which is still interleaved "by spirit
in man's communal life is subjected to the State and to
economics or is independently effective, and if that of
spirit which still persists in man's personal life is re-
assimilated into the communal life. If communal
life were parcelled out into independent realms, one of
which is " the spiritual life ", this would certainly not be
done ; that would only mean to give up once and for all
to tyranny the provinces that are sunk in the world
of It, and to rob the spirit completely of reality. For
the spirit is never independently effective in life in
itself alone, but in relation to the world : possessing
power that petmeates the world of It, transforming it.

The spirit is truly " in its own realm " if it can confront
the world tliat is unlocked to it, give itself to this world,
and in its relation with it save both itself and.the world.
The distracted, weakened, degenerated, contradictory
spirituality which to-day represents spirit would be able
to do this only if it were to reach again the life of
spirit which can utter the Thou.

Causality has an unlimited reign in the world of It.
Every " physical " event that can be perceived by the
senses, but also every " psychical " event existing
or discovered in self-experience is necessarily valid as
being caused and as causing. Further, events to which a
teleological character maybe attributed are as parts of the
unbroken world of It not excepted from this causality ;
the continuum to which they belong certainly tolerates a
teleology, but only as the reverse side worked into a
part of causality, and not impairing its continuity tod
completeness.

The unlimited reign of causality in the world of It,
of fundamental importance for the scientific ordering
of nature, does not weigh heavily on man, who is not
limited to the world of It, but can continually leave it
for the world of relation. Here I and Thou freely confront
one another in mutual effect that is neither connected
with nor coloured by any causality. Here man is assured
of the freedom both of his being and of Being. Only he
who knows relation and knows about the presence of the
Thou is capable of decision. He who decides is free,
for he has approached the Face.

The fiery stuff of all my ability to will seethes

tremendously, all that I might do circles around me, still
without actuality in the world, flung together and seem-
ingly inseparable, alluring glimpses of powers flicker from
all the uttermost bounds : the universe is my temptation,
and I achieve being in an instant, with both hands
plunged deep in the fire, where the single deed is
hidden, the deed which aims at me — now is the
moment ! Already the menace of the abyss is removed,
the centreless Many no longer plays in the iridescent
sameness of its pretensions ; but only two alternatives
are set side by side — the other, the vain idea, and the
one, the charge laid on me. But now realisation begins
in me. For it is not decision to do the one and leave
the other a lifeless mass, deposited layer upon layer as
dross in my soul. But he alone who directs the whole
strength of the alternative into the doing of the charge,
who lets the abundant passion of what is rejected invade
the growth to reality of what is chosen — he alone who
" serves God with the evil impulse " makes decision,
decides the event. If this is understood, it is also known
that this which has been set up, towards which direction
is set and. decision made, is to be given the name of
upright ; and if there were a devil it would not be one
who decided against God, but one who, in eternity,
came to no decision.

Causality does not weigh on the man to whom freedom
is assured. He knows that his mortal life swings by
nature between Thou and It, and he is aware of the
significance of this. It suffices him to be able to cross
again and again the threshold of the holy place wherein
he was not able to remain ; the very fact that he must
leave it again and again is inwardly bound up for him

with the meaning and character of this life. There,
on the threshold, the response, the spirit, is kindled ever
new within him ; here, in an unholy and needy country,
this spark is to be proved. What is called necessity here
cannot frighten him, for he has recognised there true
necessity, namely, destiny.

Destiny and freedom are solemnly promised to one
another. Only the man who makes freedom real to
himself meets destiny. In my discovery of the deed
that aims at. me — in this movement of my freedom the
mystery is revealed to me ; but also in failure to fulfil
the deed as I intended it to be — in this resistance, too,
the mystery is revealed to me. He who forgets all that
is caused and mates decision out of the depths, who
rids himself of property and raiment and naked ap-
proaches the Face, is a free man, and destiny confronts
hrm as the counterpart of his freedom. It is not his
boundary, but his fulfilment ; freedom and destiny are
linked together in meaning. And in this meaning
destiny, with eyes a moment ago so severe now filled with
light, looks out like grace itself.

No ; causal necessity does not weigh heavily on the
man who returns to the world of It bearing this spark.
And in times of healthy life trust streams from men of
the spirit to all people. To all men indeed, even to the
dullest, meeting — the present — has come somehow,
naturally, impulsively, dimly : all men have somewhere
been aware of the Thou ; now the spirit gives them full
assurance.

But in times of sickness it comes about that the
world of It, no longer penetrated and fructified by the
inflowing world of Thou as by living streams, but

separated and stagnant, a gigantic ghost of the fens,
overpowers man. In coming to terms with a world of
objects that no longer assume present being for him he
succumbs to this world. Then smooth causality rises
up till it is an oppressive, stifling fate.

Every great culture that comprehends nations rests
on an original relational incident, on a response to the
Thou made at its source, on an act of the being made
by the spirit. This act, strengthened by the similarly
directed power of succeeding generations, creates in
the spirit a special conception of the cosmos; only
through this act is cosmos, an apprehended world, a
world that is homely and houselike, man's dwelling
in the world, made possible again and again. Only now
can man, confident in his soul, build again and again,
in a special conception of space, dwellings for God and
dwellings for men, and fill swaying time with new
hymns and songs, and shape the very community of men.
But he i3 free and consequently creative only so long as
he possesses, in action and suffering in his own life, that
act of the being — so long as he himself enters into
relation. If a culture ceases to be centred in the
living and continually renewed relational event, then
it hardens into the world of It, which the glowing deeds
of solitary spirits only spasmodically break through.
Thenceforth smooth causality, which before had no
power to disturb the spiritual conception of the cosmos,
rises up till it is an oppressive, stifling fate. Wise and
masterful destiny, that reigned, in harmony with the
wealth of meaning in the cosmos, over all causality, has
been changed into a demonic spirit adverse to meaning,
and has fallen into the power of causality. The very

karma tliat appeared to the forefathers as a charitable
dispensation — for what we do in this life raises us
up for a future life in higher spheres — is now recognised
as tyranny : for the karma of an earlier life of which we
are unconscious has shut us in a prison we cannot break
in this life. Where hitherto a heaven was established
in a law, manifest to the senses, raising its light arch
from which the spindle of necessity hangs, the wander-
ing stars now rule in senseless and oppressive might. It
was necessary only to give oneself to Dike, the heavenly
" way ", which means also our way, in order to dwell
with free heart in the universal bounds of fate. But
now, whatever we do, we are laden with the whole
burden of the dead weight of the world, with fate that
does not know spirit. The storming desire for salvation
is unsatisfied after manifold attempts, till it is stilled
by one who learns to escape the cycle of births, or by
one who saves the souls, that have fallen to alien powers,
into the freedom of the children of God. Such an
achievement arises out of a new event of meeting, which
is in the course of assuming substantial being — out of a
new response, determining destiny, of a man to his Thou.
In the working out of this central act of the being, one
culture can be relieved by another that is given up to
the influence of this act, Jbut it can also be given new life
in itself alone.

The sickness of our age is like that of no other age,
and it belongs together with them all. The history
of cultures is not a course of aeons in which one runner
after another has to traverse gaily and unsuspectingly
the same death-track. A nameless way runs through
their rise and fall : not a way of progress and develop-

ment, but a spiral descent through the spiritual under-
world, which can also be called an ascent to the inner-
most, finest, most complicated whirlpool, where there
is no advance and no retreat, but only utterly new
reversal — the break through. Shall we have to go this
way to the end, to trial of the final darkness ? Where
there is danger, the rescuing force grows too.

The quasi-biological and quasi-historical thought of
to-day, however different the aims of each, have worked
together to establish a more tenacious and oppressive
belief in fate than has ever before existed. The might
of karma or of the stars no longer controls inevitably the
lot of man ; many powers claim the mastery, but rightly
considered most of our contemporaries believe in a
mixture of them, just as the late Romans believed in a
mixture of gods. This is made easier by the nature
of the claim. Whether it is the u law of life " of a
universal struggle in which all must take part or re-
nounce life, or the " law of the sotd " which completely
builds up the psychical person from innate habitual
instincts, or the " social law " of an irresistible social
process to which will and consciousness may only be
accompaniments, or the " cultural law " of an un-
changeably uniform coming and going of historical
structures — whatever form it takes, it always means
that man is set in the frame of an inescapable happening
that he cannot, or can only in his frenzy, resist. Con-
secration in the mysteries brought freedom from the
compulsion of the stars, and brahman-sacrifice with
its accompanying knowledge brought freedom from
the compulsion of karma : in both salvation was repre-
sented. But the composite god tolerates no belief in

release. It is considered folly to imagine any freedom ;
there is only a choice, between resolute, and hopeless
rebellious, Blavery. And no matter how much is said,
in all these laws, of teleological development and
organic growth, at the basis of them all lies possession
by process, that is by unlimited causality. The dogma
of gradual process is the abdication of man before
the exuberant world of It. He misuses the name
of destiny : destiny is not a dome pressed tightly down
on the world of men ; no one meets it but he who went
out from freedom. But the dogma of process leaves
no room for freedom, none for its most real revelation
of all, whose calm strength changes the face of the
earth — reversal. This dogma does not know the man
who through reversal surmounts the universal struggle,
tears to pieces the web of habitual instincts, raises the
class ban, and stirs, rejuvenates, and transforms the
stable structures of history. This dogma allows you
in its game only the choice to observe the rules or to
retire : but the man who is realising reversal over-
throws the pieces. The dogma is always willing to
allow you to fulfil its limitation with your life and " to
remain free " in your soul ; but the man who is realising
reversal looks on this freedom as the most ignominious
bondage.

The only thing that can become fate for- a man is
belief in fate; for this suppresses the movement of
reversal.

Belief in fate is mistaken from the beginning.
All consideration in terms of process is merely an
ordering of pure " having become ", of the separated
world-event, of objectivity as though it were history ;

the presence of the Thou, the becoming out of solid
connexion, is inaccessible to it. It does not know
the reality of spirit ; its scheme is not valid for
spirit. Prediction from objectivity is valid only for the
man who does not know presentnesfc* He who is over-
come by the world of It is bound to see, in the dogma
of immutable process, a truth that clears a way through
the exuberant growth; in very truth this dogma en-
slaves him only the more deeply to the world of It.
But the world of Thou is not closed. He who goes out
to it with concentrated being and risen power to enter
into relation becomes aware of freedom. And to be
freed from belief that there is no freedom is indeed to
be free.

As power over the incubus is obtained by addressing
it with its real name, so the world of It, which a moment
ago was stretched in its uncanniness before the puny
strength of men, is bound to yield to the man who
knows it for what it really is — severance and alienation
of that out of whose abundance, when it streams close
at hand, every earthly Thou is met, and of that which,
though seeming at times great and fearful like the
mother-god, yet always had a motherly air.

— But how can the man in whose being lurks a ghost,
the I emptied of reality, muster the* strength to address
the incubus by name % How can the ruined power in a
being to enter into relation be raised again, when an
active ghost tramples continually on the ruins ? How
does a being gather itself together, that is madly and
unceasingly hunted in an empty circle by the separated

I ? How may a man who lives in arbitrary self-will
become aware of freedom ?

— As freedom and destiny, so arbitrary self-will and
fate belong together. But freedom and destiny are
solemnly promised to one another and linked together
in meaning; while arbitrary self-will and fate, soul's
spectre and world's nightmare, endure one another,
living side by side and avoiding one another, without
connexion or conflict, in meaninglessness — till in an
instant there is confused shock of glance on glance,
and confession of their non-salvation breaks from
them. How much eloquent and ingenious spirituality is
expended to-day in the efiort to avert, or at least to veil,
this event t

The free man is he who wills without arbitrary self-
will. He believes in reality, that is, he believes in the
real solidarity of the real twofold entity I and Thou.
He believes in destiny, and believes that it stands in
need of him. It does not keep him in leading-strings,
it awaits him, he must go to it, yet does not know where
it is to be found. But he knows that he must go out
withf his whole being. The matter will not turn out
according to his decision; but what is to come will
come only when he decides on what he is able to will.
He must sacrifice his puny, rmfree will, that is con-
trolled by things and instincts, to his grand will, which
quita defined for destined being. Then he intervenes
no more, but at the same time he does not let things
merely happen. He listens to what is emerging from
himself, to the course of being in the world; not
in order to be supported by it, but in order to bring
it to reality as it desires, in its need of him, to be

brought — with human spirit and deed, human life and
death. I said he believes, but that really means he
meets.

The self-drilled man does not believe and does not
meet. He does not know solidarity of connexion, but
only the feverish world outside and his feverish desire
to use it. Use needs only to be given an ancient name,
and it companies with the gods. When this man says
Thou, he means " my ability to use ", and what
he terms his destiny is only the equipping and
sanctioning of his ability to use. He has in truth no
destiny, but only a being that is defined by things and
instincts, which he fulfils with the feeling of sovereignty
— that is, in the arbitrariness of self-will. He has no
grand will, only self-will, which he passes off as real will.
He is wholly incapable of sacrifice, even though he may
have the word on his lips ; you know him by the fact
that the word never becomes concrete. He intervenes
continually, and that for the purpose of " letting things
happen ". Why should destiny, he says to you, not be
given a helping handl Why should the attainable
means required by such a purpose not be utilised ? He
sees the free man, too, in this way ; he can see him in
no other. But the free man has no purpose here and
means there, which he fetches for his purpose : he has
only the one thing, his repeated decision to approach
his destiny. He has made this decision, and from time to
time, at every parting of ways, he will renew it. But
he could sooner believe he was not alive than that the
decision of his grand will was inadequate and needed to
be supported by a means. He believes ; he meets.
But the unbelieving core in the self-willed man can

perceive nothing but unbelief and self-will, establishing
of a purpose and devising of a means. Without sacrifice
and without grace, without meeting and without present-
ness, he has as his world a mediated world cluttered with
purposes. His world cannot be anything else, and its
name is fate. Thus with all his sovereignty he is wholly
and inextricably entangled in the unreal. He knows
this whenever he turns his thoughts to himself; that
is why he directs the best part of his spirituality to
averting or at least to veiling his thoughts.

But these thoughts about apostacy, about the I
emptied of reality and the real J, thoughts of letting
himself sink and take root in the soil called despair by
men, soil out of which arise self-destruction and rebirth,
would be the beginning of reversal.

Once upon a time, tells the Brahmana of the hundred
paths, gods and demons were at strife. The demons
said, : " To whom can we bring our offerings ? " They
set them all in their own mouths. But the gods set the
gifts in one another's mouths. Then Prajapati, the
primal spirit, gave himself to the gods.

— It is understandable that the world of It, given
over to itself, that is, not brought into contact with and
melted down by the Thou as it comes into being, takes
on the alien form of an incubus. But how is it that (as
you say) the I of man is emptied of reality % Surely,
whether living in or out of relation, the I is assured of
itself through its self-consciousness, that strong golden

thread on which the many-coloured circumstances are
strong. If now I say, " I see you ", or, " I see the tree ",
perhaps the seeing is not real in the same way in both,
but the I in both is real in the same way.

— Let us make trial if this is so. The form of the
words proves nothing. If many a spoken Thou indicates
fundamentally an It, addressed as Thou only from habit
and obtuseness, and many a spoken It fundamentally a
Thou, its presentness remembered as it were remotely
with the whole being, so are countless Fs only indispens-
able pronouns, necessary abbreviations for " This man
here who is speaking ". You speak of self-consciousness ?
If in the one sentence the Thou of relation is truly meant
and in the other the It of an experience, that is, if the I
in both is truly meant, is it the same I out of whose
self-consciousness both, are spoken ?

The I of the primary word I-Thou is a different I
from that of the primary word I-It.

The I of the primary word I-It makes its appearance
as individuality and becomes conscious of itself as subject
(of experiencing and using).

The I of the primary word I-Thou makes its appear-
ance as person and becomes conscious of itself as
subjectivity (without a dependent genitive).

Individuality makes its appearance by being differen-
tiated from other individualities.

A person makes his appearance by entering into relation
with other persons.

The one is the spiritual form of natuial detachment,
the other the spiritual form of natural solidarity of
connexion.

The aim of self-differentiation is to experience and to

tse, and the aim of these is " life ", that is, dying that
asts the span of a man's life.

The aim of relation is relation's own being, that is,
sontact with the Thou. For through contact with eveiy
Thou we are stirred with a breath of the Thou, that is,
>f eternal life*

He who takes his stand in relation shares in a reality,
bhat is, in a being that neither merely belongs to him
nor merely lies outside him. All reality is an activity in
which I share without being able to appropriate for
myself. Where there is no sharing there is no reality.
Where there is self-appropriation there is no reality.
The more direct the contact with the Thou, the fuller is
the sharing.

The I is real in virtue of its sharing in reality. The
fuller its sharing the more real it becomes.

But the I that steps out of the relational event into
separation and consciousness of separation, does not
lose its reality. Its sharing is preserved in it in a living
way. In other words, as is said of the supreme relation
and may be used of all, " the seed remains in it ". This
is the province of subjectivity in which the I is aware
with a single awareness of its solidarity of connexion
and of its separation. Genuine subjectivity can only
be dynamically understood, as the swinging of the I in
its lonely truth. Here, too, is the place where the desire
is formed and heightened for ever higher, more un-
conditioned relation, for the full sharing in being.
In subjectivity the spiritual substance of the person
matures.

The person becomes conscious of himself as sharing
in being, as co-existing, and thus as being. Individuality

becomes conscious of itself as being such-and-suoii and
nothing else. The person says, " I am ", the individual
says, " I am such-and-such". " Know thyself ", means
for the person " know thyself to have being '% for the
individual it means " know thy particular kind of being *\
Individuality in differentiating itself from others is
rendered remote from true being.

We do not mean by this that the person in any way
" gives up " Ms special being, his being different —
only that this being is not his observation-point, but
simply there, the necessary and significant conception
of being. Individuality, on the other hand, revels in
its special being or, rather, mostly in the fiction of its
special being which it has made up for itself. For to
know itself means basically for it (for the most part)
to establish an authoritative apparent self, capable of
deceiving it ever more and more fundamentally, and
to procure for itself, in looking to and honouring this
apparent self, the semblance of knowledge of its own
bein§ as it really is. Real knowledge of its being would
lead it to self-destruction — or to rebirth.

The person looks on his Self, individuality is concerned
with its My — my kind, my race, my creation, my genius.

Individuality neither shares in nor obtains any reality.
It differentiates itself from the other, and seeks through
experiencing and using to appropriate as much of it as
it can. This is its dynamic, self-difiEerentiation and
appropriation, each exercised on the It within the
unreal. The subject, as it thinks itself to be, may make
as much as it likes into its own ; in virtue of this it a c quires
no substance, but remains a functional point, experienc-
ing and using, no more. None of its extensive and

manifold defined being and none of its zealous " individu-
ality " can help it to win substance.

There are not two kinds of man, but two poles of
humanity.

No man is pure person and no man pure individuality.
None is wholly real, and none wholly unreal. Every man
lives in the twofold I. But there are men so defined
by person that they may be called persons, and men
so defined by individuality that they may be called
individuals. True history is decided in the field
between these two poles.

The more a man, humanity, is mastered by individu-
ality, the deeper does the I sink into unreality. In
such times the person in man and in humanity leads a
hidden subterranean and as it were cancelled existence —
till it is recalled.

The stronger the I of the primary word I-Thou is
in the twofold I, the more personal is the man.

According to his saying of I — according to what he
means, when he says I — it can be decided where a man
belongs and where his way leads. The word I is the
true shibboleth of mankind.

So listen to this word !

How discordant the I of the individual ! It may stir
great compassion if it comes from lips compressed in
the tragedy of concealed self-contradiction. It may rouse
horror if it comes chaotically from lips that wildly,
heedlessly, unsuspectingly, show forth the contradiction.
If it comes idly and glibly it is painful or disagreeable.

He who speaks the separated I, with emphasis on the
f 65

capital, lays bare the shame of the world-spirit which
has been degraded to spirituality.

But how lovely and how fitting the sound of the
lively and impressive I of Socrates ! It is the I of endless
dialogue, and the air of dialogue is wafted around it in
all its journeys, before the judges and in the last hour
in prison. This I lived continually in the relation with
man which is bodied forth in dialogue. It never ceased
to believe in the reality of men, and went Qut to meet
them. So it took its stand with them in reality, and
reality forsakes it no more. Its very loneliness can
never be forsakenness, and if the world of man is silent
it hears the voice of the daimonion say Thou.

How lovely and how legitimate the sound of the full
I of Goethe ! It is the I of pure intercourse with nature ;
nature gives herself to it and speaks unceasingly with it,
revealing her mysteries to it but not betraying her
mystery. It believes in her, and says to the rose,
" Then thou art it " — then it takes its stand with it in a
single reality. So the spirit of the real remains with
it when it turns back to itself, the gaze of. the sun
abides with the blessed eye that considers its own
radiance, and the friendship of the elements accompanies
the man into the stillness of dying and becoming.

This is the sound through the ages of the " sufficient,
true, and pure " saying of the I by those persons who,
like Socrates and Goethe, are bound up in relation.

And to anticipate by taking an illustration from the
realm of unconditional relation : how powerful, even to
being overpowering, and how legitimate, even to being
self-evident, is the saying of I by Jesus ! For it is the 7
of unconditional relation in which the man calls his Thou

Father in* such a way that he himself is simply Son,
and nothing else but Son. Whenever he says i* he can
only mean the I of the holy primary word that has been
raised for him into unconditional being. If separation
ever touches him, his solidarity of relation is the greater ;
he speaks to others only out of this solidarity. It is
useless to seek to limit this I to a power in itself or this
Thou to something dwelling in ourselves, and once again
to empty the real, the present relation, of reality. I and
Thou abide ; every man can say Thou and is then I,
every man can say Father and is then Son : reality
abides.

•

— But how if a man's mission require him to know
nothing but connexion with his particular Cause,
that is, no longer to know any real relation with or
present realisation of a Thou — to have everything
about him become an It, serving his particular Cause ?
"What of Napoleon's saying of the J ? Is it not
legitimate ? Is this phenomenon of experiencing and
using not a person ?

— Indeed the lord of the age manifestly did not know
the dimension of the Thou. It has been justly ex-
pressed in the words that all being was for him valore.
He who indulgently compared with Peter the followers
who denied him after his fall had no one whom he
himself could have denied ; . for he had no one whom
he recognised as a being. He was for millions the
demonic Thou, the Thou that does not respond, that
responds to Thou with It, that does not respond
genuinely in the personal sphere but responds only in
his own sphere, his particular Cause, with his own

deeds. This demonic Thou> to which no one can
become Thou, is the elementary barrier of history,
where the basic word of connexion loses its reality, its
character of mutual action. In addition to (not
between) person and individual, free and self-willed
man, there is this third, towering in times of destiny,
fraught with destiny. Towards him everything flames,
but his fire is cold. To him a thousand several
relations lead, but from him none. He shares in no
reality, but in him immeasurable share is taken as
though in a reality.

He sees the beings around him, indeed, as machines,
capable of various achievements, which must be taken
into account and utilised for the Cause. In this
way, too, he sees himself — except that he must continu-
ally ascertain anew by experiment his power of achieve-
ment (whose limits he does not experience) : he treats
himself, too, as an It.

Thus, then, his saying of 7 is not a lively impressive,
not a fall one ; but it is all the less a saying (like that of
the modern individual) that deceives about these things.
He does not speak of himself, but only " with himself
as starting-point '\ The I that he utters and writes
is the necessary subject for the sentences of his deter-
minations and arrangements — no more and no less. It
has no subjectivity, but it has also no self-consciousness
concerned with its defined being, and thus all the more
no illusion of the apparent self, " I am the clock, which
exists, and does not know itself" — so he himself ex-
pressed his destined being, the reality of this phenomenon
and the unreality of this I, at the time when he was
hurled from his Cause, and for the first time had,

and dared, to speak and think of himself, and
to take thought for his I — which now appeared for the
first time. The I that appears is utot a mere subject,
but neither does it move towards subjectivity ; freed
from its enchantment, but not saved, it expresses itself
in the fearful word that is as legitimate as it is
illegitimate : " The universe beholds us ! " In the end
it sinks back in mystery.

Who would dare to assert, after such a course and
such a fall, that this man understood his tremendous,
prodigious mission — or that he misunderstood it? It
is certain that the age, for which the demoniacal, with-
out present, has become master and model, misunder-
stands him. It does not know that what rule here are
not lust for power and enjoyment of power, but destiny
and consummation. It grows enthusiastic over this
despotic brow, and has no suspicion of what signs are
written across it, like the figures on the face of the
clock. It industriously imitates this way of looking
on living beings, without understanding its need and
its necessity, and exchanges the rigorous attention
of this J to the particular business for excited self-
consciousness. The word " I " remains the shibboleth
of mankind. Napoleon spoke it without power to enter
into relation, but he spoke it as the J of a consummation.
He who strives to say it as he said it only betrays the
desperateness of his own self-contradiction.

— What is self-contradiction ?

— If a man does not represent the a priori of
relation in his living with the world, if he does not

work out and realise the inborn Thou on what meets it,
then it strikes inwards. It develops on the unnatural,
impossible object of the I, that is, it develops where
there is no place at all for it to develop. Thus con-
frontation of what is over against him takes place within
himself, and this cannot be relation, or presence, or
streaming interaction, but only self-contradiction. The
man may seek to explain it as a relation, perhaps
as a religious relation, in order to wrench himself from
the horror of the inner double-ganger ; but he is bound to
discover again and again the deception in the explana-
tion. Here is the verge of life, flight of an unfulfilled life
to the senseless semblance of fulfilment, and its groping
in a maze and losing itself ever more profoundly.

At times the man, shuddering at the alienation
between the I and the world, comes to reflect that some-
thing is to be done. As when in the grave night-hour
you lie, racked by waking dream — bulwarks have fallen
away and the abyss is screaming — and note amid your
torment : there is still life, if orjly I got through to it —
but how, how ? ; so is this man in the hours of
reflection, shuddering, and aimlessly considering this
and that. And perhaps, away in the unloved know-
ledge of the depths within him, he really knows the
direction of reversal, leading through sacrifice. But he
spurns this knowledge ; " mysticism " cannot resist the
sun of electric light. He calls thought, in which he rightly
has great confidence, to his aid ; it shall make good
everything for him again. It is, in truth, the high art
of thought to paint a reliable picture of the world

that is even worthy of belief- So this man
says to his thought, " You see this thing stretched out
here with the cruel eyes — was it not my playfellow once ?
You know how it laughed at me then with these very-
eyes, and they had good in them then ? And you see
my wretched I — I will confess to you, it is empty, and
whatever I do in myself, as a result of experiencing
and using, does not fathom its emptiness. Will you
make it up between me and it, so that it leaves off and I
recover % " And thought, ready with its service and its
art, paints with its well-known speed one — no, two
rows of pictures, on the right wall and on the left. On
the one there is (or rather, there takes place, for the
world-pictures of thought are reliable cinematography)
the universe. The tiny earth plunges from the whirling
stars, tiny man from the teeming earth, and now history
bears him further through the ages, to rebuild per-
sistently the ant-hill of the cultures which history
crushes underfoot. Beneath the row of pictures is
written : " One and all." On the other wall there
takes place the soul. A spinner is spinning the orbits
of all stars and the life of all creation and the history
of the universe ; everything is woven on one thread,
and is no longer called stars and creation and universe,
but sensations and imaginings, or even experiences, and
conditions of the soul. And beneath the row of pictures
is written : " One and all."

Thenceforth, if ever the man shudders at the aliena-
tion, and the world strikes terror in his heart, he looks
up (to right or left, just as it may chance) and sees a
picture. There he sees that the I is embedded in the
world and that there is really no I at all — so the world

can do nothing to the I, and he is put at ease ; or he
sees that the world is embedded in the I, and that there
is really no world at all — so the world can do nothing to
the Z, and he is put at ease. Another time, if the man
shudders at the alienation, and the I strikes terror in
his heart, he looks up and sees a picture ; which picture
he sees does not matter, the empty I is stuffed full with
the world or the stream of the world flows over it, and
he is put at ease.

But a moment comes, and it is near, when the
shuddering man looks up and sees both pictures in a
flash together. And a deeper shudder seizes him.

PART THREE

The extended lines of relations H^t^p^&e etarn^F
Thou.

Every particular Thou is a glimpse thrBl^KQjnj&S
eternal Thou ; by means of every particular T^P^re^
primary word addresses the eternal Thou. Through
this mediation of the Thou of all beings fulfilment, and
non-fulfilment, of relations comes to them : the inborn
Thou is realised in each relation and consummated in
none. It is consummated only in the direct relation
with the Thou that by its nature cannot become It.

Men have addressed their eternal Thou with many
names. In singing of HiW who was thus named they
always had the Thou in rirind : the first myths were
hymns of praise. Then the names took refuge in the
language of It ; men were more and more strongly
moved to think of and to address their eternal Thou
as an It But all God's names are hallowed, for in them
He is not merely spoken about, but also spoken to.

Many men wish to reject the word God as a legitimate
usage, because it is so misused. It is indeed the most
heavily laden of all the words used by men. For that
very reason it is the most imperishable and most indis-
pensable. What does all mistaken talk about God's
being and works (though there has been, and can be, no
other talk about these) matter in comparison with the one
truth that all men who have addressed God had God
Himself in mind ? For he who speaks the word God
and really has Thou in mind (whatever the illusion by

which he is held), addresses the true Thou of his life,
which cannot be limited by another Thou, and to which
he stands in a relation that gathers up and includes all
others.

But when he, too, who abhors the name, and believes
himself to be godless, gives his whole being to addressing
the Thou of his life, as a Thou that cannot be limited by
another, he addresses God.

If we go on our way and meet a man who has
advanced towards us and has also gone on his way, we
know only our part of the way, not his — his we experi-
ence only in the meeting.

Of the complete relational event we know, with the
knowledge of life lived, our going out to the relation,
our part of the way. The other part only comes upon
us, we do not know it ; it eomes upon us in the meeting.
But we strain ourselves on it if we speak of it as though
it were some thing beyond the meeting.

We have to be concerned, to be troubled, not about
the other side but about our own side, not about grace
but about will. Grace concerns us in so far as we go
out to it and persist in its presence ; but it is not our
object.

What we know of the way froih the life that we
have lived, from our life, is not a waiting or a being
open*

The Thou confronts me. But I step into direct relation
with it. Hence the relation means being chosen and
choosing, suffering and action in one ; just as any action
of the whole being which means the suspension of all

partial actions, and consequently of all -sensations of
actions grounded only in their particular limitation, is
bound to resemble suffering.

This is the activity of the man who has become a
whole being, an activity that has been termed doing
nothing : nothing separate or partial stirs in the man
any more, thus he makes no intervention in the world ;
it is the whole man, enclosed and at rest in his wholeness,
that is effective — he has become an effective whole.
To have won stability in this state is to be able to go out
to the supreme meeting.

To this end the world of sense does not need to be
laid aside as though it were illusory. There is no illusory
world, there is only the world — which appears to us as
twofold in accordance with our twofold attitude. Only
the barrier of separation has to be destroyed. Further,
no " going beyond sense-experience " is necessary ;
for every experience, even the most spiritual, could yield
us only an It. Nor is any recourse necessary to a world
of ideas and values ; for they cannot become presentness
for us. None of these things is necessary. Can it be
said what really is necessary ? — Not in the sense of a
precept. For everything that has ever been devised and
contrived in the time of the human spirit as precept,
alleged preparation, practice, or meditation, has nothing
to do with the primal, simple fact of the meeting.
Whatever the advantages in knowledge or. the wielding
of power for which we have to thank this or that practice,
none of this affects the meeting of which we are speaking ;
it all has its place in the world of It and does not lead
one step, does not take the step, out of it. Going out
to the relation cannot be taught in the sense of precepts

being given. It can only be indicated by the drawing
of a circle which excludes everything that is not this
going out. Then the one thing that matters is visible,
full acceptance of the present.

To be sure, this acceptance presupposes that the
farther a man has wandered in separated being the more
difficult is the venture and the more elemental the
reversal. This does not mean a giving up of, say, the
I, as mystical writings usually suppose : the I is as
indispensable to this, the supreme, as to every relation,
since relation is only possible between I and Thou.
It is not the I, then, that is given up, but that false
self-asserting instinct that makes a man flee to the
possessing of things before the unreliable, perilous world
of relation which has neither density nor duration and
cannot be surveyed.

•

Every real relation with a being or life in the world is
exclusive. Its Thou is freed, steps forth, is single, and
confronts you. It fills the heavens. This does not mean
that nothing else exists ; but all else lives in its light.
As long as the presence of the relation continues, this
its cosmic range is inviolable. But as soon as a Thou
becomes It, the cosmic range of the relation appears as
an offence to the world, its exclusiveness as an exclusion
of the universe.

In the relation with God unconditional exclusiveness
and unconditional inclusiveness are one. He who
enters on the absolute relation is concerned with nothing
isolated any more, neither things nor beings, neither
earth nor heaven ; but everything is gathered up in the

relation. For to step into pure relation is not to disregard
everything but to see everything in the Thou, not to
renounce the world but to establish it on its true basis.
To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does
not help a man to reach God ; but he who sees the world
in Him stands in His presence. " Here world, there
God " is the language of It ; " God in the world " is
another language of It ; but to eliminate or leave behind
nothing at all, to include the whole world in the Thou,
to give the world its due and its truth, to include nothing
beside God but everything in Him — this is full and
complete relation.

Men do not find God if they stay in the world. They
do not find Him if they leave the world. He who goes
out with his whole being to meet his Thou and carries to
it all being that is in the world, finds Him who cannot
be sought.

Of course God is the " wholly Other " ; but He is also
the wholly Same, the wholly Present. Of course He is
the Mysterium Tremendum that appears and overthrows ;
but He is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to
me than my Z.

If you explore the life of things and of conditioned being
you come to the unfathomable, if you deny the life of
things and of conditioned being you stand before nothing-
ness, if you hallow this life you meet the living God.

Man's sense of Thou, which experiences in the re-
lations with every particular Thou the disappointment
of the change to It, strives out but not away from
them all to its eternal Thou ; but not as some-

thing is sought: actually there is no such thing as
seeking God, for there is nothing in which He could not *
be found. How foolish and hopeless would be the
man who turned aside from the course of his life in
order to seek God ; even though he won all the wisdom
of solitude and all the power of concentrated being he
would miss God. Bather is it as when a man goes
his way and simply wishes that it might be the way :
in the strength of his wish his striving is expressed.
Every relational event is a stage that affords him a
glimpse intp the consummating event. So in each
event he does not partake, but also (for he is waiting)
does partake, of the one event. Waiting, not
seeking, he goes his way; hence he is composed
before all things, and makes contact with them which
helps them. But when he has found, his heart is not
turned from them, though everything now meets him
in the one event. He blesses every cell that sheltered
him, and every cell into which he will yet turn. For
this finding is not the end, but only the eternal middle,
of the way.

It is a finding without seeking, a discovering of the
primal, of origin. His sense of Thou, which cannot be
satiated till he finds the endless Thou, had the Thou
present to it from the beginning ; the presence had only
to become wholly real to him in the reality of the
hallowed life of the world.

God cannot be inferred in anything — in nature, say,
as its author, or in history as its master, or in the
subject as the self that is thought in it. Something else
is not " given " and God then elicited from it ; but God
is the Being that is directly, most nearly, and lastingly,

over against us, that may properly onfy be addressed,
not expressed.

Men -wish to regard a feeling (called feeling of de-
pendence, and recently, more * precisely, creaturely
feeling) as the real element in the relation with God. In
proportion as the isolation and definition of this element
is accurate, its unbalanced emphasis only makes the
character of complete relation the more misunderstood.

What has already been said of love is even more
unshakably valid here. Feelings are a mere accom-
paniment to the metaphysical and metapsychical fact
of the relation, which is fulfilled not in the soul but
between I and Thou* A feeling may be considered
ever so essential, it remains nevertheless subject to the
dynamic of the soul, where one feeling is outstripped,
outdone, and abolished by another. In distinction
from relation a feeling has its place in a scale. But
above all, every feeling has its place within a polar
tension, obtaining its colour and significance not from
itself alone, but also from the opposite pole: every
feeling is conditioned by its opposite. Thus the
absolute relation (which gathers up into reality all those
that are relative, and is no more a part, as these are,
but is the whole that completes and unifies them all),
in being reduced to the status of art. isolated and
limited feeling, is made into a relative psychological
matter.

If the soul is the starting-point of our consideration,
complete relation can be understood only in a bipolar
way, only as the coinddentia oppositorum, as the
g 81

coincidence of oppositions of feeling. Of course, the
one pole — suppressed by the person's basic religious
attitude — often disappears from the reflective conscious-
ness, and can only be recalled in the purest and most
ingenuous consideration of the depths of the being.

Yes ; in pure relation you have felt yourself to be
simply dependent, as you are able to feel in no other
relation — and simply free, too, as in no other time or
place : you have felt yourself to be both creaturely and
creative. You had the one feeling then no longer
limited by the other, but you had both of them limit-
lessly and together.

You know always in your heart that you need God
more than everything ; but do you not know too that
God needs you — in the fulness of His eternity needs
you ? How would man be, how would you be, if God
did not need him, did not need you % . You need God,
in order to be — and God needs you, for the very mean-
ing of your life. In instruction and in poems men
are at pains to say more, and they say too much —
what turgid and presumptuous talk that is about the
" God who becomes " ; but we know unshakably in
our hearts that there is a becoming of the God that is.
The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny.
There is divine meaning in the life of the world, of man,
of human persons, of you and of me.

Creation happens to us, burns itself into us, recasts
us in burning — we tremble and are faint, we submit.
We take part in creation, meet the Creator, reach
out to Him, helpers and companions.

Two great servants pace through the ages, prayer and
sacrifice. The man who prays pours himself out in

unrestrained dependence, and knows tliat lie has — in an
incomprehensible way — an effect upon God, even though
he obtains nothing from God ; for when he no longer
desires anything for himself he sees the flame of his
effect burning at its highest. —And the man who makes
sacrifice ? I cannot despise him, this upright servant of
former times, who believed that God yearned for the
scent of his burnt-offering. In a foolish but powerful
way he knew that we can and ought to give to God.
This is known by him, too, who offers up his little will
to God and meets Him in the grand will. " Thy will be
done," he says, and says no more ; but truth adds for
him " through me whom Thou needest ".

What distinguishes sacrifice and prayer from all
magic ? — Magic desires to obtain its effects without
entering into relation, and practises its tricks in the
void. But sacrifice and prayer are set " before the Face",
in the consummation of the holy primary word that
means mutual action : they speak the Thou, and
then they hear.

To wish to understand pure relation as dependence
is to wish to empty one of the bearers of the relation,
and hence the relation itself, of reality.

The same thing happens if we begin from the opposite
side and look on absorption, or entering, into the Self
(whether by means of the Self's deliverance from all being
that is conditioned by 7, or by its being understood as
the One thinking Essence) as the essential .element in
the religious act. By the first way of looking on the
act it is imagined that God enters the being that is freed

from Z, or that this being is merged in God ; by the
second, that the being takes its stand directly in itself
as though it were in the divine One. That is, by the
first way, in a supreme moment the saying of the Thou
ceases, for there is no more twofold being, and by the
second the saying of the Thou does not in truth exist at
all, for there is in truth no twofold being : the first way
believes in the unification, the second in the identification
of the human with the divine. Both assert a state that
is beyond I and Thou, the first — as in ecstasy — one that
becomes, the second — as in the self-observation of the
tKnkiag subject — one that is and that reveals itself.
Both abolish relation, the first as it were dynamically,
through the swallowing up of the I by the Thou —
which is, however, no longer Hhou, but that which alone
is — and the second as it were statically through the self-
recognition of the I, which has been freed andhas become
the Self, as that which alone is. If the doctrine of depend-
ence considers the J that bears the span of pure relation
in the world to be so weak and empty that its ability
to bear it is no longer credible, the one doctrine of
absorption causes the span of relation to disappear at
its consummation, the other treats it as a delusion to be
overcome.

The doctrines of absorption appeal to the great
sayings of identification, the one above all to the Johan-
nine " I and the Father are one ", the other to the teaching
of Sandilya : " The all-embracing, this is my Self in
my very heart ".

The ways these sayings lead are opposed tooneanother.
The first arises (after a subterranean course) in the life
of a person of mythical proportions and advances to

a doctrine, the second emerges in a doctrine and
only then leads to the mythical life of a person.
The character of the saying is transformed along these
lines. The Christ of the Johannine tradition, the Word
that once became flesh, leads to the Christ of Eckehardt,
perpetually begotten by God in the human soul. The
coronation formula for the Self in the Upanishad,
" This is the real, the Self, and Thou art the Self",
leads in a much shorter space to the Buddhistic formula
of dethronement, " It is not possible to lay hold of a
Self and a Self-appertaining in truth and in reality ".

The beginning and end of each way demand separate
consideration.

That the appeal to the %v eo-jiep cannot be substan-
tiated becomes clear to all who read impartially, section
by section, the Gospel according to John. It is really
the Gospel of pure relation. Here is a truer verse than
the familiar mystical verse : "I am Thou and Thou art
I ". The Father and the Son, like in being — we may even
say God and Man, like in being — are the indissolubly
real pair, the two bearers of the primal relation, which
from God to man is termed mission and command,
from man to God looking and hearing, and between
both is termed knowledge and love. In this relation
the Son, though the Father dwells and works in him,
bows down before the " greater " and prays to him.
All modern attempts to interpret this primal reality of
dialogue as a relation of the I to the Self, or the like —
as an event that is contained within the self-sufficient
interior life of man — are futile : they take their place in
the abysmal history of destruction of reality.

— But what of mysticism? Does it not inform us

how unity without duality is experienced ? May we
dispute the truth of its account ?

— I know not of a single but of two kinds of happening
in which duality is no longer experienced. These are
at times confused in mystical utterances — I too once
confused them.

The one is the soul's becoming a unity. That is some-
thing that takes place not between man and God, but
in man. Power is concentrated, everything that tries
to divert it is drawn into the orbit of its mastery, the
being is alone in itself and rejoices, as Paracelsus says,
in its exaltation. This is the decisive moment for a man.
Without it he is unfit for the work of the spirit ; with
it, he decides, in his innermost being, if this means
a breathing-space, or the sufficient end of his way.
Concentrated in unity, he can go out to the meeting,
to which he has only now drawn quite close, with the
mystery, with salvation. But he can also enjoy to the
full this blessed concentration of his being, and without
entering on the supreme duty fall back into dissipation
of being. — Everything on our way involves decision,
purposive, dimly seen, wholly mysterious : this in the
innermost being is the primal mysterious decision,
carrying the mightiest consequences for our destiny.

The other happening- lies in the unfathomable nature
of the relational act itself, in which two, it is imagined,
become one : " one and one united, bareness shines there
into bareness *\ I and Thou are absorbed, humanity,
which just before confronted the godhead, is merged
in it — glorification, deification, and singleness of being
have appeared. But when the man, illuminated and
exhausted, falls back into the cares of earthly affairs,

and with knowledge in his heart thinks of the two
situations, is he not bound to find that his being is
split asunder and one part given to perdition ? What
does it help my soul that it can be withdrawn anew from
this world here into unity, when this world itself has of
necessity no part in the unity — what does all " enjoy-
ment of God " profit a life that is rent in two ? If that
abundantly rich heavenly moment has nothing to do
with my poor earthly moment — what has it then to
do with me, who have still to live, in all seriousness still
to live, on earth ? Thus are the masters to be under-
stood who have renounced the raptures of ecstatic
" union ".

Union that was no union : as illustration I take the
men who in the passion of the engrossing Eros are so
enraptured by the miracle of the embrace that their
knowledge of I and Thou perishes in the feeling of a
unity that does not and cannot exist. What the
ecstatic man calls union is the enrapturing dynamic of
relation, not a unity arisen in this moment of the
world's time that dissolves the I and the Thou, but the
dynamic of relation itself, which can put itself before
its bearers as they steadily confront one another, and
cover each from the feeling of the other enraptured one.
Here, then, on the brink, the relational act goes beyond
itself ; the relation itself in its vital unity is felt so
forcibly that its parts seem to fade before it, and in the
force of its life, the / and the Thou, between which it is
established, are forgotten. Here is one of the phenomena
of the. brink to which reality extends and at which it
grows dim. But the central reality of the everyday hour
on earth, with a streak of sun on a maple twig and the

glimpse of the eternal Thou, is greater for us than all
enigmatic webs on the brink of being.

This will, however, be opposed by the claim of the
other doctrine of absorption that universal being and
self-being are the same and that therefore no saying
of the Thou is able td yield final reality.

This claim is answered by the doctrine itself. One
of the Upanishads tells how Indra, the prince of the
gods, comes to Prajapati, the creative spirit, in order
to learn how the Self is found and recognised. For a
hundred years he is a pupil, is twice dismissed with in-
sufficient information, till finally the right information
is given him : " If a man, sunk in deep sleep, rests
dreamlessly, this is the Self, the Immortal, the Assured,
the Universal Being." Indra departs, but soon a
thought surprises him. He turns back and asks : " In
such a condition, O Exalted One, a man does not know
of his Self that 'This is I', and that * these are
beings'. He is gone to annihilation. I see nothing
propitious here", —"That", replies Prajapati, "is
indeed so ".

In so far as the doctrine contains an affirmation
about true being — however the matter stands with
its content of truth, which cannot be ascertained in this
life — it has nothing in common with one thing, with
lived reality ; for it is bound to reduce this too to the
world of appearances. In so far, too, as the doctrine
contains guidance for absorption in true being, it leads
not to lived reality but to " annihilation", where no
consciousness reigns and whence no memory leads ; the
man who has emerged from this annihilation may
still propose, as representing his experience, the

limiting words " absence of duality " ; lie does not dare
to call it unity.

But we with holy care wish to foster the holy good
of our reality, that is gifted to us for this and perhaps
for no other life that is nearer truth.

In lived reality there is no unity of being. Reality
exists only in effective action, its power and depth
in power and depth of effective action. "Inner"
reality, too, exists only if there is mutual action. The
most powerful and the deepest reality exists where
everything enters into the effective action, without
reserve the whole man and God the all-embracing — the
united I and the boundless Thou.

The united I : for in lived reality there is (as I have
already said) the becoming one of the soul, the con-
centration of power, the decisive moment for a man.
But this does not involve, like that absorption, dis-
regard of the real person. Absorption wishes to pre-
serve only the " pure ", the real, the lasting, and to cast
away everything else; but in this concentration the
instinctive is not thought too impure, the sensuous is
not thought too remote from its course, what is con-
cerned with emotion is not thought too. fleeting : every-
thing must be gathered into the orbit of its mastery.
This concentration does not desire the self that is set
apart, but the whole, unimpaired man. It aims at,
and is, reality.

The doctrine of absorption demands, and promises,
refuge in the One thinking Essence (" that by which this
world is thought "), refuge in pure Subject. But in lived
reality there is not something thinking without some-
thing thought, rather is the thinking no less dependent

on the tiing thought than the latter on the former. A
subject deprived of its object is deprived of its reality.
Something thinking in itself alone exists— in thought :
first, as its product and object, as a limiting idea -without
an imaginable subject ; secondly, by anticipation, in the
definition of death, which can be replaced by its likeness
of the deep sleep, which is just as impenetrable ; and
lastly, in the affirmation of the doctrine concerning a
condition of absorption, resembling deep sleep, which
is by nature without consciousness and memory.
These are the loftiest peaks of the language of It. The
sublime strength of their disregard must be respected,
and in the very glance of respect recognised as what is,
at most, to be experienced, but not to be lived.

The Buddha, the " fulfilled " and the fulfiller, makes
no affirmation on this point. He refuses to assert that
unity exists or that it does not exist, that he who has
passed all the tests of absorption exists after death in
unity or that he does not exist in unity. This refusal,
this " noble silence ", is explained in two ways : one,
theoretical, because fulfilment is beyond the categories
of thought and expression ; and two, practical, because
disclosure of the existence of fulfilment does not estab-
lish a true life of salvation. Combination of the two
explanations indicates the truth that he who treats
what is as an object of assertion pulls it into division,
into the antithetics of the world of It, where there is no
life of salvation. " If, monk, the opinion dominates
that soul and body are one in being, there is no life of
salvation ; if, O monk, the opinion dominates that the
soul is one and the body another, then too there is no
life of salvation ". In the mystery that is observed as

in the reality that is lived, " It is thus " and " It is not
thus ", being aoid non-being, do not reign ; but " thus
and otherwise ", being and non-being at once, the un-
fathomable — this reigns. The primal condition of
salvation is undivided confrontation of the undivided
mystery. It is certain that the Buddha is of those who
have known this. Like all true teachers he does not
wish to impart an opinion, but to teach the way. He
denies only one assertion, that of the '* fools", who say
there is no action, no deed, no power, and says " Men
can walk in the way ". He ventures only one assertion,
which is decisive : " There is, O Monks, an Un-
born, neither become nor created nor formed ". If there
were not this, there would be no goal ; there is this, the
way has a goal.

Loyal to the truth of our meeting, we can follow the
Buddha as far as this, but a step further would be
disloyalty to the reality of our life.

For we know, from the truth and reality that we do not
extract from ourselves but which is given for us to share
in, that if the goal described by the Buddha is only one
of the goals, then it cannot Ha ours, and if it is the goal,
then it is falsely described ; and also, if it is one of the
goals, the way may lead as far as it, and if it is the goal,
the way leads, at most, nearer to it.

The Buddha describes as the goal the " cessation of
pain ", that is of becoming and passing away — release
from the cycle of births. ' c Henceforth there is no return ' 5
is the formula of the man who has freed himself from the
appetite for living and thus from the necessity to become
ever anew. We do not know if there is a return ; we
do not extend beyond this life the lines of this time-

dimension in which we live, and do not seek to expose
what will be disclosed to us in its own time and disposition.
But if we did know that there is a return we would not
seek to escape it, and we would long not indeed for
gross being but for the power to speak, in each existence
in its own way and language, the eternal I that passes
away, and the eternal Thou that does not pass away.

We do not know if the Buddha actually leads to the
goal of release from the necessity of returning. He
certainly leads to a preliminary goal that concerns us —
to the becoming one of the soul. But he leads thither
not merely (as is necessary) apart from the " thicket of
opinions ", but also apart from the " illusion of forms " —
which for us is no illusion but rather the reliable world
(and this in spite of all subjective paradoxes in observa-
tion connected with it for us). His way, too, then, involves
disregard ; thus when he- speaks of our becoming aware
of the events in our body he means almost the opposite
of our physical insight with its certainty about the senses.
Nor does he lead the united being farther to that supreme
saying .of the Thou that is made possible for it. His
innermost decision seems to rest on the extinction of
the ability to say Thou.

The Buddha knows the saying of the Thou to men —
witness his intercourse with his pupils, in which, though
high above them, he speaks very directly — but he does
not teach it ; for simple confrontation of being with
being is alien to this love where " all that has become
is illimitably comprised in the breast ". He certainly
knows too, in the silent depths of his being, the saying
of the Thou to the primal cause — away beyond all those
"gods" that are treated by him like pupils. This act

of his springs from a relational event that has taken on
substance ; this act, too, is a response to the Thou : but
about this response he preserves silence.

His succession among the peoples, however, that
" great vehicle ", has contradicted him magnificently.
It has addressed the eternal human Thou under the
name of Buddha himself. And it awaits, as the
Buddah that is to come, the last of the age, him by
whom love is to be fulfilled.

All doctrine of absorption is based on the colossal
illusion of the human spirit that is bent back on itself,
that spirit exists in man. Actually spirit exists with
man as starting-point — between man and that which is
not man. In renouncing this its meaning, its meaning
as relation, the spirit that is bent back on itself is
compelled to drag into man that which is not man, it
is compelled to make the world and God into functions of
the soul. This is the spirit's illusion about the soul.

" Friend ", says the Buddha, " I proclaim that in this
my fathom-high ascetic's body, affected with sensations,
there dwells the world and the beginning of the world
and the extinction of the world and the way that leads
to the extinction of the world ".
That is true, but in the last resort it is no longer true.
Certainly the world " dwells " in me as an image,
just as I dwell in it as a thing. But it is not for that
reason in me, just as I am not in it. The world and I
are mutually included, the one in the other. This
contradiction in thought, inherent in the situation of
It, is resolved in the situation of Thou, which sets
me fuee from the world in order to bind me up in
solidarity of connexion with it.

I bear within me the sense of Self, tliat cannot
be included in the world. The world bears within
itself the sense of being, that cannot be included
in the image. This sense of being, however, is
not a " will " that can be thought, but simply the
total status of the world as world, just as the
sense of Self is not a "knowing subject" but
simply the total status of the I as I. Here no further
" reduction " is possible ; he who does not honour the
last unities frustrates their apprehensible but not
comprehensible sense.

The beginning and the extinction of the world are
not in me ; but they are also not outside me ; they
cannot be said to be at all, they are a continuous happen-
ing, connected with and dependent on me, my life, my
decision, my work, and my service. But they do depend
not on whether I " affirm " or " deny " the world in
my soul, but on how I cause my attitude of soul to the
world to grow to life, to life that acts upon the world,
to real life — and in real life the ways of very different
attitudes of soul may intersect. But he who merely
"experiences 5 * his attitude, merely consummates it
in the soul, however thoughtfully, is without the world —
and all the tricks, .arts, ecstasies, enthusiasms, and
mysteries that are in him do not even ripple the skin of
the world. So long as a man is set free only in his Self he
can do the world neither weal nor woe ; he does not
concern the world. Only he who believes in the world
is given power to enter into dealings with it, and if he
gives himself to this he cannot remain godless. If only
we love the real world, that will not let itself be extin-
guished, really in its horror, if only we venture

to surround it with the arms of our spirit, our hands will
meet hands that grip them.

I know nothing of a " world " and a " life in the
world " that might separate a man from God. What
is thus described is actually life with an alienated
world of 7^, which experiences and uses. He who truly
goes out to meet the world goes out also to God. Con-
centration and outgoing are necessary, both in truth, at
once the one and the other, which is the One.

God comprises, but is not, the universe. So, too, God
comprises, but is not, my Self. In view of the
inadequacy of any language about this fact, I can say
Thou in my language as each man can in his, in view
of this I and Thou live, and dialogue and spirit and
language (spirit's primal act), and the Word in eternity.

Man's religious situation, his being there in the Pres-
ence, is characterised by its essential and indissoluble
antinomy. The nature of its being determines that
this antinomy is indissoluble. He who accepts the
thesis and rejects the antithesis does injury to the
significance of the situation. He who tries to think out a
synthesis destroys the significance of the situation. He
who strives to make the antinomy into a relative
matter abolishes the significance of the situation. He who
wishes to carry through the conflict of the antinomy other
than with his life transgresses the significance of the
situation. The significance of the situation is that it is
lived, and nothing but lived, continually, ever anew,
without foresight, without forethought, without pre-
scription, in the totality of its antinomy.

Comparison of the religious with the philosophical
antinomy will make this clear. Kant may make the
philosophical conflict between necessity and freedom
into a relative matter by assigning the former to the
world of appearances and the latter to the world of
being, so that in their two settings they are no longer
really opposed, but rather reconciled — just as the
worlds for which they are valid are reconciled. But if I
consider necessity and freedom not in worlds of thought
but in the reality of my standing before God, if I know
that " I am given over for disposal " and know at the
same time that " It depends on myself", then I cannot
try to escape the paradox that has to be lived by
assigning the irreconcilable propositions to two separate
realms of validity ; nor can I be helped to an ideal
reconciliation by any theological device : but I am
compelled to take both to myself, to be lived together,
and in being lived they are one.

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great
language. Independently, without needing co-opera-
tion of sounds and gestures, most forcibly when they
rely wholly on their glance, the eyes express the mystery
in its natural prison, the anadety of becoming.
This condition of the mystery is known only by the
t animal, it alone can disclose it to us — and this con-
dition only lets itself be disclosed, not fully revealed.
The language in which it is uttered is what it says —
anxiety, the movement of the creature between the
realms of vegetable security and spiritual venture.
This language is the stammering of nature at the first

touch of spirit, before it yields to spirit's cosmic venture
that we call man. But no speech will ever repeat what
that stammering knows and can proclaim.

Sometimes I look into a cat's eyes. The domesti-
cated animal has not as it were received from us (as
we sometimes imagine) the gift of the truly " speaking "
glance, but only — at the price of its primitive disin-
terestedness — the capacity to turn its glance to us
prodigious beings. But with this capacity there enters
the glance, in its dawn and continuing in its rising, a
quality of amazement and of inquiry that is wholly
lacking in the original glance with all its anxiety.
The beginning of this cat's glance, lighting up under
the touch of my glance, indisputably questioned me :
" Is it possible that you think of me ? Do you really
not just want me to have fun ? Do I concern you ?
Do I exist in your sight ? Do I really exist ? What
is it that comes from you ? What is it that surrounds
me? What is it that comes to me? Whatisit?" ("I"
is here a transcription for a word, that we do not have,
denoting self without the ego ; and by " it " is to be
imagined the streaming human glance in the total
reality of its power to enter into relation.) The
animal's glance, speech of disquietude, rose in its
greatness — and set at once* My own glance was
certainly more lasting; but it was no longer the
streaming human glance.

The rotation of the world which introduced the
relational event had been followed almost immediately
by the other which ended it. The world, of It sur-
rounded the animal and myself, for the space of a
glance the world of Thou had shone out from the

depths, to be at once extinguished and put back into
the world of It.

I relate this tiny episode, which I have experienced
several times, for the sake of the speech of this almost
unnoticeable sunrise and sunset of the spirit. In no
other speech have I known so profoundly the fleeting
nature of actuality in all its relations with being, the
exalted melancholy of our fate, the change, heavy with
destiny, of every isolated Thou into an It. For other
events possessed between morning and evening their
day, even though it might be brief; but here morning
and evening flowed pitilessly mingled together, the
bright Thou appeared and was gone. Had the burden
of the world of It really been removed for the space of
a glance from the animal and from myself? I myself
could continue to think about the matter, but the
animal had sunk back out of the stammer of its glance
into the disquietude where there is no speech and almost
no memory.

How powerful is the unbroken world of It> and how
delicate are the appearances of the Thou I

So much can never break through the crust of
the condition of things ! fragment of mica,
looking on which I once learned, for the first time,
that I is not something " in me " — with you I was
nevertheless only bound up in myself; at that time
the event took place only in me, not between me and
you. But when one that is alive rises out of things,
and becomes a being in relation to me, joined to me
by its nearness and its speech, for how inevitably short
a time is it nothing to me but Thou ! It is not the
relation that necessarily grows feeble, but the actuality

of its immediacy. Love itself cannot persist in the
immediacy of relation ; love endures, but in the inter-
change of actual and potential being. Every Thou in
the world is enjoined by its nature to become a thing
for us, or at all events to re-enter continually the
condition of things.

Only in one, all-embracing relation is potential still
actual being. Only one Thou never ceases by its nature
to be Thou for us. He who knows God knows also very
well remoteness from God, and the anguish of barrenness
in the tormented heart; but he does not know the
absence of God : it is we only who are not always
there.

The lover in the Vita Nuova rightly and properly
says for the most part Ella and only at times Voi.
The spectator of the Paradiso, when he says Colui>
speaks from poetic necessity, and knows it. If God is
addressed as He or It, it is always allegorically. But
if we say Thou to Him, then mortal sense has set the
unbroken truth of the world into a word.

Every real relation in the world is exclusive, the
Other breaks in on it and avenges its exclusion. Only
in the relation with God are unconditioned exclusiveness
and unconditioned inclusiveness one and tie same,
in which the whole universe is implied.

Every real relation in the world rests on individuation,
this is its joy — for only in this way is mutual knowledge
of different beings won — and its limitation — for in this
way perfect knowledge and being known are foregone.
But in the perfect relation my Thou comprehends but is

not my Self, my limited knowledge opens out into a
state in which I am boundlessly known.

Every real relation in the world is consummated in
the interchange of actual and potential being ; every
isolated Thou is bound to enter the chrysalis state of
the It in order to take wings anew. But in pure relation .
potential being is simply actual being as it draws breath,
and in it the Thou remains present. By its nature the
eternal Thou is eternally Thou ; only our nature compels
us to draw it into the world and the talk of It.

The world of It is set in the context of space and time.

The world of Thou is not set in the context of either
of these.

Its context is in the Centre, where the extended lines
of relations meet — in the eternal Thou.

In the great privilege of pure relation the privileges
of the world of It are abolished. By virtue of this
privilege there exists the unbroken world of Thou :
the isolated moments of relations are bound up in a life
of world solidarity . By virtue of this privilege formative
power belongs to the world of Thou : spirit can penetrate
and transform the world of It. By virtue of this privilege
we are not given up to alienation from the world and the
loss of reality by the I — to domination by the ghostly.
Eeversal is the recognition of the Centre and the act of
turning again to it. In this act of the being the buried
relational power* of man rises again, the wave that
carries all the spheres of relation swells in living streams
to give new life to our world.

Perhaps not to our world alone. For this double
100

movement, of estrangement from the primal Source, in
virtue of which the universe is sustained in the process
of becoming, and of turning towards the primal Source,
in virtue of which the universe is released in being, may
be perceived as the metacosmical primal form that
dwells in the world as a whole in its relation to that
which is not the world — form whose twofold nature is
represented among men by the twofold nature of their
attitudes, their primary words, and their aspects of the
world. Both parts of this movement develop, fraught
with destiny, in time, and are compassed by grace in
the timeless creation that is, incomprehensibly, at once
emancipation and preservation, release and binding.
Our knowledge of twofold nature is silent before the
paradox of the primal mystery.

The spheres in which the world of relation is built
are three.

First, our life with nature, in which the relation
clings to the threshold of speech.

Second, oux life with men, in which the relation takes
on the form of speech.

Third, our life with intelligible forms, where the relation,
being without speech, yet begets it.

In every sphere in its own way, through each process
of becoming that is present to us, we look out toward
the fringe of the eternal Thou ; in each we are aware
of a breath from the eternal Thou ; in each Thou we
address the eternal Thou.

Every sphere is compassed in the eternal Thou,
but it is not compassed in them.

101

Through every sphere shines the one present.

We can, however, remove each sphere from the
present.

From our life with nature we can lift out the " physi-
cal " world, the world of consistency, from our life
with men the " psychical " world, the world of sensibility,
and from our life with spiritual beings the " noetic "
world, the world of validity. But now their transparency,
and with it their meaning, has been taken from them ;
each sphere has become dull and capable of being used —
and remains dull even though we light it up with the
names of Cosmos and Eros and Logos. For actually
there is a cosmos for man only when the universe becomes
his home, with its holy hearth whereon he offers sacrifice ;
there is Eros for man only when beings become for hi™
pictures of the eternal, and community is revealed along
with them ; and there is Logos for man only when he
addresses the mystery with work and service for the
spirit.

Form's silent asking, man's loving speech, the mute
proclamation of the creature* are all gates leading into
the presence of the Word.

But when the full and complete meeting is to take
place, the gates are united in one gateway of real life,
and you no longer know through which you have entered.

Of the three spheres, one, our life with men, is marked
oub. Here language is consummated as a sequence,
in speech and counter-speech. Here alone does the word
that is formed in language meet its response. Only
here does the primary word go backwards and forwards

102

in the same form, the word of address and the word of
response live in the one language, I and Thou take their
stand not merely in relation, but also in the solid give-
and-take of talk. The moments of relation are here,
and only here, bound together by means of the element
of the speech in which they are immersed. Here what
confronts us has blossomed into the full reality of the
Thou. Here alone, then, as reality that cannot be lost,
are gazing and being gazed upon, knowing and being
known, loving and being loved.

This is the main portal, into whose opening the two
side-gates lead, and in which they are included.

" When a man is together with his wife the longing of
the eternal hills blows round about them."

The relation with man is the real simile of the relation
with God ; in it true address receives true response ;
except that in God's response everything, the universe,
is made manifest as language.

— But is not solitude, too, a gate ? Is there not at
times disclosed, in stillest loneliness, an unsuspected
perception % Can concern with oneself not mysteriously
be transformed into concern with the mystery ? Indeed,
is not that man alone who no longer adheres to any
being worthy to confront the Being ? " Come, lonely
One, to him who is alone ", cries Simeon, the new theo-
logian, to his God.

— There are two kinds of solitude, according to that
from which they have turned. If we call it solitude to
free oneself from intercourse of experiencing and using
of things, then that is always necessary, in order that

103

tlie act of relation, and not that of the supreme relation
only, may be reached. But if solitude means absence of
relation, then he who has been forsaken by the beings
to which he spoke the true Thou will be raised up by God,
but not he who himself forsook the beings. He alone
adheres to various ones of these who is greedy to use
them ; but he who lives in the strength of present realisa-
tion can only be bound up in relation with them.
And he alone who is so bound is ready for God. For
he alone confronts the reality of God with a human
reality.

Further, there are two kinds of solitude, according
to that towards which they have turned. If solitude
is the place of purification, necessary even to the man
who is bound in relation, both before he enters the Holy
of Holies and in the midst of his ventures between
unavoidable failing and the ascent to proving true
— to this solitude wg are by nature disposed. But if
solitude is the stronghold of isolation, where a man
conducts a dialogue with himself — not in order to test
and master himself for that which awaits him but in
the enjoyment of the conformation of his soul — then
we have the real fall of the spirit into spirituality.
The man can advance to the last abyss, where in his
self-delusion he imagines he has God in himself and is
speaking with Him. But trxdy though God surrounds
us and dwells in us, we never have Him in us. And we
speak with Him only when speech dies within us.

A modern philosopher supposes that every man
necessarily believes either in God or in " idols ", that is,

104

in some sort of finite good — his nation, his art, power,
knowledge, the amassing of money, "the ever new
subjugation of woman " — which has become for him an
absolute value and has set itself up between him and
God ; it is only necessary to demonstrate to him the
conditioned nature of this good, in order to " shatter "
the idol, and the diverted religious act will automatically
return to the fitting object.

This conception presupposes that man's relation to
the finite goods he has " idolized " is of the same nature
as his relation to God, and differs only in its object ;
for only with this presupposition could the mere sub-
stitution of the true for the false object save the erring
man. But a man's relation to the " special something "
that usurps the throne of the supreme value of his life,
and supplants eternity, rests always on experiencing and
using an It, a thing, an object of enjoyment. For this
relation alone is able to obstruct the prospect which
opens toward God — it is the impenetrable world of It ;
but the relation which involves the saying of the Thou
opens up this prospect ever anew. He who is dominated
by the idol that he wishes to win, to hold, and to keep —
possessed by a desire for possession — has no way to God
but that of reversal, which is a change not only of goal
but also of the nature of his movement. The man who
is possessed is saved by being wakened and educated to
solidarity of relation, not by being led in his state of
possession towards God. If a man remains in this state
what does it mean when he calls no longer on the name
of a demon or of a being demonically distorted for him,
but on the name of God ? It means that from now on
he blasphemes. It is blasphemy when a man wishes,

105

after the idol has crashed behind the altar, to pile up an
unholy sacrifice to God on the desecrated place.

He who loves a woman, and brings her life to present
realisation in his, is able to look in the Thou of her eyes
into a beam of the eternal Thou. But he who eagerly
desires " ever new subjugation " — do you wish to hold
out to his desire a phantom of the Eternal ? He who
serves his people in the boundlessness of destiny, and
is willing to give himself to them, is really thinking of
God. But do you suppose that the man to whom the
nation is a god, in whose service he would like to enlist
everything (for in the nation's he exalts his own image),
need only be given a feeling of disgust — and he would
see the truth ? And what does it mean that a man is
said to treat money, embodied non-being, " as if
it were God " ? What has the lust of grabbing and
of laying up treasure in common with the joy in the
presence of the Present One ? Can the servant "of
Mammon say Thou to his money ? And how is he to
behave towards God when he does not understand how
to say Thou ? He cannot serve two masters — not even
one after the other : he must first learn to serve in a
different way.

He who has been converted by this substitution of
object now " holds " a phantom that he calls God.
But God, the eternal Presence, does not permit Himself
to be held. Woe to the man so possessed that he thinks
he possesses God !

The " religious " man is spoken of as one who does
not need to take his stand in any relation to the world

106

and to living beings, since the status of social life, that
is defined from outside, is in him surpassed by means
of a strength that works only from within. But in
this idea of the social life two basically different things
are combined — first, the community that is built up out
of relation, and second, the collection of human units
that do not know relation — modern man's palpable
condition of lack of relation. But the bright building
of community, to which there is an escape even from
the dungeon of " social life ", is the achievement of the
same power that works in the relation between man and
God* This does not mean that this one relation is set
beside the others ; for it is the -universal relation, into
which all streams pour, yet without* exhausting their
waters. Who wishes to make division £nd define
boundaries between sea and streams ? There we find
only the one flow from I to Thou, unending, the one
boundless flow of the real life. Life cannot be divided
between a real relation with God and an unreal relation
of I and It with the world — you cannot both truly pray
to God and profit by the world. He who knows the
world as something by which he is to profit knows God
also in the same way. His prayer is 'a procedure of
exoneration heard by the ear of the void. He — not the
" atheist," who addresses the Nameless out of the
night and yearning of his garret-window — is the godless
man.

It is further said that the " religious " man stands
as a single, isolated, separated being before God, since
he has also gone beyond the status of the " moral "
man, who is still involved in duty and obligation
to the world. The latter, it is said, is still burdened

107

with responsibility for the action of those who act, since
he is wholly defined by the tension between being and
** ought to be **, and in grotesque and hopeless sacrificial
courage casts his heart piece by piece into the in-
satiable gulf that lies between them. The "religious "
man, on the other hand, has emerged from that tension
into the tension between the world and God ; there the
command reigns that the unrest of responsibility and of
demands on oneself be removed ; there is no willing of
one's own, but only the being joined into what
is ordained ; every " ought " vanishes in uncon-
ditioned being, and the world, though still existing,
no longer counts. For in it the " religious " man has
to perform his particular duties, but as it were without
obligation — beneath the aspect of the nothingness of all
action. But that is to suppose that God has created
His world as an illusion and man for frenzied being. He
who approaches the Face has indeed surpassed duty
and obligation — but not because he is now remote from
the world ; rather because he has truly drawn closer
to it. Duty and obligation are rendered only to the
stranger ; we are drawn to and full of love for the
intimate person. The world, lit by eternity, becomes
folly present to him who approaches the Face, and to
the Being of beings he can in a single response say
Thou. Then there is no more tension between the
world and God, but only the one reality. The man is
not freed from responsibility ; he has exchanged the
torment of the finite, pursuit of effects, for the motive
power of the infinite, he has got the mighty responsi-
bility of love for the whole untraceable world-event, for
the profound belonging to the world before the Face of

God. He has, to be sure, . abolished moral judgments
for ever ; the " evil " man is simply one who is com-
mended to him for greater responsibility, one more
needy of love ; but he will have to practise, till death
itself, decision in the depths of spontaneity, unruffled
decision, made ever anew, to right action. Then action
is not empty, but purposive, enjoined, needed, part
of creation ; but this action is no longer imposed upon
the world, it grows on it as if it were non-action.

What is the eternal, primal phenomenon, present
here and now, of that which we term revelation ? It
is the phenomenon that a man does not pass, from the
moment of the supreme meeting, the same being as he
entered into it. The moment of meeting is not an
" experience " that stirs in the receptive soul and grows
to perfect blessedness ; rather, in that moment some-
thing happens to the man. At times it is like a light
breath, at times like a wrestling-bout, but always — it
happens, the man who emerges from the act of pure
relation that so involves his being has now in his being
something more that has grown in him, of which he did
not know before and whose origin he is not rightly able
to indicate. However the source of this new thing is
classified in scientific orientation of the world, with its
authorised efforts to establish an unbroken causality, we,
whose concern is real consideration of the real, cannot
have our purpose served with subconsciousness or any
other apparatus of the soul. The reality is that we
receive what we did not hitherto have, and receive it in
such a way that we know it has been given to us. In

109

the language of the Bible, " Those who wait upon the
Lord shall renew their strength ". In the language of
Nietzsche, who in his account remains loyal to
reality, " We take and do not ask who it is there that

Man receives, and he receives not a specific " content "
but a Presence, a Presence as power. This Presence
and this power include three things, undivided, yet
in such a way that we may consider them separately.
First, there is the whole fulness of real mutual action, of
the being raised and bound up in relation : the man can
give no account at all of how the binding in relation
is brought about, nor does it in any way lighten his life
— it makes life heavier, but heavy with meaning.
Secondly, there is the inexpressible confirmation of
meaning. Meaning is assured. Nothing can any
longer be meaningless. The question about the mean-
ing of life is no longer there. But were it there, it would
not have to be answered. You do not know how to
exhibit and define the meaning of life, you have no
formula or picture for it, and yet it has more certitude
for you than the perceptions of your senses. What
does the revealed and concealed meaning purpose with
us, desire from us ? It does not wish to be explained
(nor are we able to do that) but only to be done by us.
Thirdly, this meaning is not that of " another life ", but
that of this life of ours, not one of a world " yonder "
but that of this world of oiirs, and it desires its con-
firmation in this life and in relation with this world.
This meaning can be received, but not experienced ;
it cannot be experienced but it can be done, and this is
its purpose with us. The assurance I have of it does

110

not wish to be sealed within me, but it wishes to be
born by me into the world. But just as the meaning
itself does not permit itself to be transmitted and made^
into knowledge generally current and admissible, so
confirmation of it cannot be transmitted as a valid
Ought ; it is not prescribed, it is not specified on any
tablet, to be raised above all men's heads. The
meaning that has been received can be proved true by
each man only in the singleness of his being and the
singleness of his life. As no prescription can lead us
to the meeting, so none leads from it. As only accept-
ance of the Presence is necessary for the approach to
the meeting, so in a new sense is it so when we emerge
from it. As we reach the meeting with the simple
Thou on our lips, so with the Thou on our lips we leave
it and return to the world.

That before which, in which, out of which, and into
which we live, even the mystery, has remained what it
was. It has become pfesent to us and in its present-
ness has proclaimed itself to us as salvation ; we have
" known " it, but we acquire no knowledge from it
which might lessen or moderate its mysteriousness. We
have come near to God, but not nearer to unveiling being
or solving its riddle. We have felt release, but not
discovered a " solution ". We cannot approach others
with what we have received, and say " You must
know this, you must do this ". We can only go, and
confirm its truth. And this, too, is no " ought ", but we
can, we must.

This is the eternal revelation that is present here and
now. I know of no revelation and believe in none
whose primal phenomenon is not precisely this. I do

111

not believe in a self-naming of God, a self-definition of God
before men. The Word of revelation is I am that I am.
That which reveals is that which reveals. That which
is is, and nothing more. The eternal source of strength
streams, the eternal contact persists, the eternal voice
sounds forth, and nothing more.

The eternal Thou can by its nature not become It ;
for by its nature it cannot be established in measure
and bounds, not even in the measure of the immeasur-
able, or the bounds of boundless being ; for by its nature
it cannot be understood as a sum of qualities, not even
as an infinite sum of qualities raised to a transcendental
level ; for it can be found neither in nor out of the
world; for it cannot be experienced, or thought;
for we miss Him, Him who is, if we say " I believe that
He is " — " He " is also a metaphor, but " Thou " is not.

And yet in accordance with our nature we are continu-
ally making the eternal Thou into It, into some thing —
making God into a thing. Not indeed out of arbitrary
self-will ; God's history as a thing, the passage of God
as Thing through religion and through the products on its
brink, through its bright ways and its gloom, its enhance-
ment and its destruction of life, the passage away from
the living God and back again to Him, the changes
from the present to establishment of form, of objects,
and of ideas, dissolution and renewal — all are one way,
are the way.

What is the origin of the expressed knowledge and
ordered action of the religions ? How do the Presence
and the power of the revelation (for all religions necess-

112

arily appeal to some kind of revelation, whether through
the medium of the spoken word, or of nature, or of
the soul : there are only religions of revelation) — how
do the Presence and the power received by men in
revelation change into a " content " %

The explanation has two layers. We understand the
outer psychical layer when we consider man in himself,
separated from history, and the inner factual layer, the
primal phenomenon of religion, when we replace him in
history. The two layers belong together.

Man desires to possess God ; he desires a continuity
in space and time of possession of God. He is not content
with the inexpressible confirmation of meaning, but
wants to see this confirmation stretched out as some-
thing that can be continually taken up and handled,
a continuum unbroken in space and time that insures
his life at every point and every moment.

Man's thirst for continuity is unsatisfied by the life-
rhythm of pure relation, the interchange - of actual
being and of a potential being in which only our power
to enter into relation, and hence the. presentness (but
not the primal Presence) decreases. He longs for exten-
sion in time, for duration. Thus God becomes an object
of faith. At first faith, set in time, completes the acts
of relation \ but gradually it replaces them. Resting in
belief in an It takes the place of the continually renewed
movement of the being towards concentration and
going out to the relation. The " Nevertheless I believe "
of the fighter who knows remoteness from as well as
nearness to God is more and more completely trans-
formed into the certainty of him who enjoys profits,
that nothing can happen to him, since he believes
i 113

that there is One who will not let anything happen to
him.

Further, man's thirst for continuity is unsatisfied
by the life-structure of pure relation, the " solitude " of
the I before the Thou, the law that man, though binding
up the world in relation in the meeting, can nevertheless
only as a person approach and meet God. He longs
for extension in space, for the representation in which
the community of the faithful is united with its God.
Thus God becomes the object of a cult. The cult, too,
completes at first the acts of relation, in adjusting in
a spatial context of great formative power the living
prayer, the immediate saying of the Thou, and in linking
, it with the life of the senses. It, too, gradually replaces
the acts of relation, when the personal prayer is no longer
supported, but displaced, by the communal prayer,
and when the act of the being, since it admits no rule, is
replaced by ordered devotional exercises.

Actually, however, pure relation can only be raised
to constancy in space and time by being embodied in
the whole stuff of life. It cannot be preserved, but only
proved true, only done, only done up into life. Man can
do justice to the relation with God in which he has come to
share only if he realises God anew in the world according
to hi* strength and to the measure of each day. In
this lies the only authentic assurance of continuity.
The authentic assurance of duration consists in the
fact that pure relation can be fulfilled in the growth and
rise of beings into Thou, that the holy primary word
makes itself heard in them all. Thus the time of human
life is shaped into a fulness of reality, and even though
human life neither can nor ought to overcome the

lid

relation of It, it is so penetrated with relation that
relation wins in it a shining streaming constancy ;
the moments of supreme meeting are then not flashes
in darkness but like the rising moon in a clear starlit
night. Thus, too, the authentic assurance of constancy
in space consists in the fact that men's relations with
their true Thou, the radial lines that proceed from all
the points of the I to the Centre, form a circle. It is
not the periphery, the community, that comes first,
but the radii, the common quality of relation with the
Centre. This alone guarantees the authentic existence
of the community.

Only when these two arise — the binding up of time in
a relational life of salvation and the binding up of
space in the community that is made one by its Centre —
and only so long as they exist, does there arise and exist,
round about the invisible altar, a human cosmos with
bounds and form, grasped with the spirit out of the
universal stuff of the seon, a world that is house and home,
a dwelling for man in the universe.

Meeting with God does not come to man in order that he
may concern himself with God, but in order that he may
confirm that there is meaning in the world. All revelation
is summons and sending. But again and again man brings
about, instead of realisation, a reflexion to Him who
reveals : he wishes to concern himself with God instead
of with the world. Only, in such a reflexion, he is no
longer confronted by a Thou, he can do nothing but
establish an It-God in the realm of things, believe that
he knows of God as of an It, and so speak about Him.
Just as the " self "-seeking man, instead of directly living
something or other, a perception or an affection, reflects

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about his perceptive or reflective Z, and thereby misses
the truth of the event, so the man who seeks God
(though for the rest he gets on very well with the self-
seeker in the one soul), instead of allowing the gift
to work itself out, reflects about the Giver — and misses
both.

God remains present to you when you have been sent
forth ; he who goes on a mission has always God before
him : the truer the fulfilment the stronger and more
constant His nearness. To be sure, he cannot directly
concern himself with God, but he can converse with Him.
Reflexion, on the other hand, makes God into an object.
Its apparent turning towards the primal source belongs
in truth to the universal movement away from it ; just
as the apparent turning away of the man who is fulfilling
his mission belongs in truth to the universal movement
towards the primal source.

For the two primary metacosmical movements of
the world — expansion into its own being and reversal
to connexion — find their supreme human form, the
. real spiritual form of their struggle and adjust-
ment, their mingling and separation, in the history of
the human relation to God. In reversal the Word is
born on earth, in expansion the Word enters the chrysalis
form of religion, in fresh reversal it is born again with
new wings.

Arbitrary self-will does not reign here, even though
the movement towards the It goes at times so far that
it threatens to suppress and to smother the movement
out again to the Thou.

The mighty revelations to which the religions appeal
are like in being with the quiet revelations that are to

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be found everywhere and at all times. The mighty
revelations which stand at the beginning of great com-
munities and at the turning-point of an age are nothing
but the eternal revelation. But the revelation does not
pour itself into the world through him who receives it
ag through a funnel; it comes to him and seizes his
whole elemental being in all its particular nature, and
fuses with it. The man,, too, who is the " mouth " of
the revelation, is indeed this, not a speaking-tube or
any kind of instrument, but an organ, which sounds
according to its own laws ; and to sound means to modify.

The various ages of history, however, show a quali-
tative difference. There is a time of maturing, when the
true element of the human spirit, suppressed and buried,
comes to hidden readiness so urgent and so tense that
it awaits only a touch from Him who touches in order
to burst forth. The revelation that then makes its
appearance seizes in the totality of its constitution
the whole elemental stuff that is thus prepared, melts
it down, and produces in it a form that is a new form
of God in the world.

Thus in the course of history, in the transforming of
elemental human stuff, ever new provinces of the world
and the spirit are raised to form, summoned to divine
form. Ever new spheres become regions of a theophany .
It is not mail's own power that works here, nor is it
God's pure effective passage, but it is a mixture of the
divine and the human. He who is sent out in the
strength of revelation takes with him, in his eyes, an
image of God ; however far this exceeds the senses, yet
he takes it with him in the eye of the spirit, in that
visual power of his spirit which is not metaphorical

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but wholly real. The spirit responds also through a
look, a look that is formative. Although we earthly
beings never look at God without the world, but only
look at the world in God, yet as we look we shape
eternally the form of God.

Form is also a mixture of Thou and It. In belief
and in a cult form can harden into an object ; but, in
virtue of the essential quality of relation that lives on
in it, it continually becomes present again. God is near
His forms so long as man does not remove them from
Him. In true prayer belief and cult are united and
purified to enter into the living relation. The fact that
true prayer lives in the religions witnesses to their true
life": they live so long as it lives in them. Degeneration
of the religions means degeneration of prayer in them.
Their power to enter into relation is buried under
increasing objectification, it becomes increasingly
difficult for them to say Thm with the whole undivided
being, and finally, in order to be able to say it, man
must come out of the false security into the venture of
the infinite — out of the community, that is now over-
arched only by the temple dome and not also by the
firmament, into the final solitude. It is a profound
misunderstanding of this impulse to ascribe it to " sub-
jectivism " ; life face to face with God is life in the one
•reality, the only true "objective", and the man who
goes out to this life desires to save himself, in the
objective that truly is, from that which is apparent
and illusory, before it has disturbed the truth of the
real objective for him. Subjectivism empties God of
soul, objectivism makes Him into an object— the latter
is a false fixing down, the former a false setting free ;

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both are diversions from the way of reality, both are
attempts to replace reality,

God is near His forms if man does not remove them
from Him. But when the expanding movement of
religion suppresses the movement of reversal and
removes the form from God, the countenance of the
form is obliterated, its lips are dead, its hands hang
down, God knows it no more, and the universal dwelling-
place that is built about its altar, the spiritually appre-
hended cosmos, tumbles in. And the fact that man,
in the disturbance of his truth, no longer sees what is
then taking place, is a part of what has then taken
place.

Disintegration of the Word has taken place.

The Word has its essence in revelation, its effect in
the life of the form, its currency during the domination
of the form that has died*

This is the course and the counter-course of the
eternal and eternally present Word in history.

The times in which the living Word appears are
those in which the solidarity of connexion between i"
and the world is renewed ; the times in which the
effective Word reigns are those in which the agreement
between I and the world are maintained ; the times in
which the Word becomes current are those in which
alienation between I and the world, logs of reality,
growth of fate, is completed — till there comes the great
shudder, the holding of the breath in the dark, and the
preparing silence.

But this course is not circular. It is the way. In
each new aeon fate becomes more oppressive, reversal
more shattering. And the theophany becomes ever

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nearer, increasingly near to the sphere that lies between
beings, to the Kingdom that is hidden in our midst,
there between us. History is a mysterious approach.
Every spiral of its way leads us both into profounder
perversion and more fundamental reversal. But the
event that from the side of the world is called reversal
is called from God's side salvation.

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