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 the 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.
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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. Reversal 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 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.