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.
★
As experience, the world belongs to the primary word I-It.
The primary word I-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 the 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 we address the eternal Thou.