—What is self-contradiction?
—If a man does not represent the a prior; 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 confrontation 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 explanation. 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.