Through The Thou A Person Becomes I.

But When A Man Draws A Lifeless Thing Into His Passionate Longing For Dialogue, Lending It Independence And As It Were A Soul, Then There May Dawn In Him The Presentiment Of A World-wide Dialogue With The World-happening That Steps Up To Him Even In His Environment, Which Consists Partially Of Things. Or Do You Seriously Think That The Giving And Taking Of Signs Halts On The Threshold Of That Business Where An Honest And Open Spirit Is Found?

I Have Learned A New Form Of Service From The Wars Of Frederick, King Of Prussia. It Is Not Necessary To Approach The Enemy In Order To Attack Him. In Fleeing From Him, It Is Possible To Circumvent Him As He Advances And Fall On Him From The Rear And Force Him To Surrender. What Is Needed Is Not To Strike Straight At Evil But To Withdraw To The Sources Of Divine Power, And From There To Circle Around Evil, Bend It And Transform It Into Its Opposite.

But It Can Also Happen, If Will And Grace Are Joined, That As I Contemplate The Tree I Am Drawn Into A Relation, And The Tree Ceases To Be An It. . . . Does The Tree Then Have Consciousness, Similar To Our Own? I Have No Experience Of That. But Thinking That You Have Brought This Off In Your Own Case, Must You Again Divide The Indivisible? What I Encounter Is Neither The Soul Of A Tree Nor A Dryad, But The Tree Itself.

When I Confront A Human Being As My Thou And Speak The Basic Word I-thou To Him, Then He Is No Thing Among Things Nor Does He Consist Of Things. He Is No Longer He Or She, A Dot In The World Grid Of Space And Time, Nor A Condition To Be Experienced And Described, A Loose Bundle Of Named Qualities. Neighborless And Seamless, He Is Thou And Fills The Firmament. Not As If There Were Nothing But He; But Everything Else Lives In His Light.

Nothing So Tends To Mask The Face Of God As Religion; It Can Be A Substitute For God Himself.