conceived of. In so far as it is represented as merely subjective, as a proof only for us, it is of course granted that it is not objective and has not been correctly conceived of in-and-for-itself. But, then, what is incorrect in it is not to be looked for in the fact that there is no such connection at all, that is to say, that there is no such thing as the elevation of Spirit to God.
The real point, therefore, would be the consideration of this connection in its determinateness. The consideration of it in this way is a matter at once of the deepest and most elevated kind, and just because of this it is the most difficult of tasks. You cannot carry it on by means of finite categories; that is, the modes of thought which we employ in ordinary life and in dealing with contingent things, as well as those we are accustomed to in the sciences, don’t suffice for it. The latter have their foundation, their logic, in connections which belong to what is finite, such as cause and effect; their laws, their descriptive terms, their modes of arguing, are purely relations belonging to what is conditioned, and which lose their significance in the heights where the Infinite is. They must indeed be employed, but at the same time they have always to be referred back to their proper sphere and have their meaning rectified. The fact of the fellowship of God and Man with each other involves a fellowship of Spirit with Spirit. It involves the most important questions. It is a fellowship, and this very circumstance involves the difficulty of at once maintaining the fact of difference and of defining it in such a way as to preserve the fact of fellowship. That Man knows God implies, in accordance with the essential idea of communion or fellowship, that there is a community of knowledge; that is to say, Man knows God only in so far as God Himself knows Himself in Man. This knowledge is God’s self-consciousness, but it is at the same time a knowledge of God on the part of Man, and this knowledge of God by Man is a knowledge of Man by God. The Spirit of Man, whereby
