In vain we multiply our points of view, our perspectives and plane
projections: no accumulation of this kind will reconstruct the concrete
solid. We can pass from an object directly perceived to the pictures which
represent it, the prints which represent the pictures, the scheme
representing the prints, because each stage contains less than the one
before, and is obtained from it by simple diminution.

But, inversely, you may take all the schemes, prints, pictures you like--
supposing that it is not absurd to conceive as given what is by nature
interminable and inexhaustible, lending itself to indefinite enumeration
and endless development and multiplicity--but you will never recompose the
profound and original unity of the source.

How, by forcing yourself to seek the object outside itself, where it
certainly is not, except in echo and reflection, would you ever find its
intimate and specific reality? You are but condemning yourself to
symbolism, for one "thing" can only be in another symbolically.

To go further still, your knowledge of things will remain irremediably
relative, relative to the symbols selected and the points of view adopted.
Everything will happen as in a movement of which the appearance and formula
vary with the spot from which you regard it, with the marks to which you
relate it.

Absolute revelation is only given to the man who passes into the object,
flings himself upon its stream, and lives within its rhythm. The thesis
which maintains the inevitable relativity of all human knowledge originates
mainly from the metaphors employed to describe the act of knowledge. The
subject occupies this point, the object that; how are we to span the
distance? Our perceptory organs fill the interval; how are we to grasp