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 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 out 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 I 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.